Death Climbs a Tree (2 page)

Even so, the many narrative introductions to the variations involving individual instruments, from the flutes and piccolos to the xylophone and whip, ate up much more rehearsal time than fighting through the music alone would have done. The commonsense thing to do would be to dismiss the narrator for the next rehearsal or two and bring him back closer to the performance. But common sense was not in charge. After they struggled through the fugue, Jim smiled down at Alex and said, “I think that went well, don't you? When do you want me here next week?”

She all but batted her eyelashes at him. “First thing, if you can make it. It adds so much to have you here.”

He murmured something that made her blush. Alex blushing? Joan could hardly believe her eyes. Then he waved at them all and left the stage.

Alex tapped her baton. “Sousa, please.” It would be their first run-through this season of “Stars and Stripes Forever.” Joan hoped their young piccolo player had it under her belt—the girl had struggled with some of the hard bits in the Britten. But she whipped flawlessly through the rapid variations on the tune to which Joan remembered singing “Be kind to your web-footed friends,” and the orchestra stamped the floor in approval.

Afterward, the tuba player, a boy Joan knew was still in high school, raised his hand and asked to try it.

“That solo?” Alex said, her eyebrows high.

“Sure. I learned it in marching band. I mean, there wasn't much to the tuba part, so I borrowed the piccolo part, just for the fun of it.”

Joan held her breath. If he could pull it off, the kids in the audience would love it. But she knew better than to try to pressure Alex into anything.

Alex looked at her watch. “We still have a couple of minutes. All right, take it from the piccolo solo, this time with tuba instead of piccolo.”

The boy was amazing, and the orchestra roared its delight. Even Alex was beaming.

“You win,” she said. “We'll use you both. I'll want you in front of me, where the children can see you. If you don't want to stand, we can put a chair over there for the tuba.” She pointed to the spot usually reserved for the soloist in a concerto.

When the boy went back to zip his tuba into its case, the trombone player next to him pounded him on the back, and his smile threatened to split his face.

Tory, Joan remembered. His name is Tory Isom. And the piccolo is Heather Mott. I'll have to list them both on the program as soloists. Gives me something better to use in the publicity for the children's concert than Britten and a businessman. We'll have to get the paper to shoot a photo of them. Play up the contrast between the tuba and piccolo.

She'd almost forgotten what being short a first violin would do to that section, but when people were packing up, Birdie Eads came over to her.

“Where does this leave me?” she asked, worry all over her round face. If Sylvia was a lark, Birdie was a hen. Not a bird you could imagine very far off the ground. “Will I move up to Sylvia's chair?” Birdie sat third, behind Nicholas and Sylvia.

“I imagine so. We'll have to ask Nicholas, but I don't know why not.” Unless I miraculously find some terrific violinist who ought to sit up there with him. Fat chance. I'll be lucky to find anyone at all.

“So everyone will move up one?”

“Probably, until Sylvia comes back. She's going to be hard to replace. Any suggestions?”

“No.” Birdie avoided Joan's eyes. She looked nervous about moving up to sit with Nicholas.

Joan could understand that, but she wasn't about to ask. With luck, she'd be home before Alex realized one of her best violinists was deserting her for a tree.

2

When Joan opened the paper at breakfast a week later, Sylvia Purcell stared at her from the front page. She'd turned in the sandals for sneakers and was well wrapped in sweats and what looked like a warm winter jacket. The flyaway hair had disappeared under a knitted hat. Maybe she could survive a few chilly nights. If she had a sleeping bag, anyhow. The picture showed her on some kind of platform up in the tree, with a tarp fixed overhead and folded into walls she could let down from the roof. At least she wasn't straddling a branch, and the tarp should keep her from drowning if it rained. The caption said she was seventy feet from the ground. Like sitting on top of a seven-story building.

“Swap you sections?” Joan's son, Andrew, asked, holding out the Lifestyle section. Now a junior at Oliver College, Andrew kept his expenses down by living at home. Since Joan's marriage to Detective Lieutenant Fred Lundquist of the Oliver Police Department, money hadn't been so impossibly tight, but she was still grateful for Andrew's college scholarship and his good sense.

“In a minute. I just want to read about Sylvia.”

Andrew's dark, curly head peered over the paper from the other side of the table. Even sitting down, he was tall. “You know her?”

“She's one of my first violins. Was, anyhow. She's missing our next concert to sit up in that tree. Last week she told me she wouldn't play, but she had no qualms about asking the orchestra to support her. She needs people down on the ground, she said. I'm not sure what for.”

“All kinds of things, Mom.” He drowned another stack of pancakes in syrup.

Joan couldn't understand how he stayed skinny with all those pancakes. Just looking at them, she could feel herself expand to a size 14.

“I promised to take food out there.” He lit into the pancakes.

“You did what?” Fred came into the kitchen in a trim sport coat, his thinning blond hair damp and smelling like Joan's shampoo. He dropped a kiss somewhere in the vicinity of her mouth, sat down beside Andrew, and reached for the pancakes. They stuck to Fred better than they did to Andrew, but his large Swedish frame could support the pounds.

“I volunteered to help the tree sit.”

“It's illegal trespass. You know that, I assume.”

“Oh, come on, Fred.” Andrew had a dripping forkful of pancakes halfway to his mouth. “How big a deal is trespassing? You planning to arrest her?”

“Not if I can help it. But I may not have any choice. The property owners would be within their rights to bring charges. And that could include anyone down on the ground.”

“Good thing it's so near the city line.” Andrew turned to Joan. “It's only a hundred yards or so, Mom. I could run that far and not work up a sweat.”

“Your friend up in the tree couldn't,” Fred said. “And city cops could pursue you into the county. Believe me, if I could move those trees across the line and dump them in the sheriff's lap, I'd do it. I'm afraid someone's going to get hurt.”

“Get hurt?” Andrew's voice rose. “You wouldn't
hurt
anyone over this.”

Fred raised his eyebrows. “We try,” he said with a little too much patience, “not to hurt anyone if we can help it. But if we have to force her down, it could get ugly. And who knows who's going to come out of the woodwork to protest the protesters.”

“So she needs protection, not persecution.” Andrew gripped his fork. Joan couldn't remember when he and Fred had been at loggerheads like this. She hated it.

“Just keep your distance from her. I don't want to see her hurt any more than you do. And I don't want to see you tangled in something more than you can handle.” Fred put his hand on Andrew's shoulder. Joan was sure Fred didn't want a fight with Andrew any more than she wanted to see it.

Andrew released his grip on the fork. “You mind if I take her some of your bread? Maybe some ham and cheese? Feeding someone isn't getting tangled.”

Fred's dad, a baker, had brought his sons up knowing how to bake bread, and Fred kept them supplied whenever the pressure of his job allowed.

“Ask your mother.” Fred stood. “I don't want to have anything to do with it. See you tonight.” He gave Andrew's shoulder one more pat, swallowed the last of his coffee, and left.

Could have been worse, Joan thought. She let out the breath she'd been holding.

“You go right ahead and take it,” she told Andrew. “And anything else you think she'll eat. Something hot to drink, too. Does she have a thermos?” It seemed the least she could do for a good violinist.

“Yeah, Mom. They know how to do it.” He finished the last bite of pancake and put his dishes in the sink. Then he spread out the sandwich makings on the kitchen counter and set to work.

“You planning to bike out there?” Joan asked him.

“Sure, why?”

“I could give you a ride.”

“I can manage.”

“I know, but I'm kind of curious.”

“Deal. I'm a little tight for time.”

Joan brushed through her straight brown hair, twisted it and pinned it up on her head, and grabbed her shoulder bag. Her spring jacket would be enough, now that the sun was up. “Let's go.”

Nothing in Oliver was very far away. They reached the woods in ten minutes.

“Turn here,” Andrew told her.

Joan turned onto a winding gravel road with trees on both sides. It threatened to shake her gizzard out, if it didn't do in her old Honda Civic wagon first. She slowed to a crawl.

“We're almost there,” Andrew said.

They rounded a curve and reached a small clearing edged with what looked like surveyors' stakes.

“Stop here. We walk the rest of the way.” He slid out of the car almost before it stopped.

Joan picked her way over the uneven ground, glad it wasn't muddy. Andrew's hiking boots were better suited to the terrain than the citified walking shoes she wore to and from work.

There wasn't any construction equipment in the clearing, but she could see what looked like bulldozer tracks, and some of the tree stumps looked fresh. Ahead, Andrew was calling up into a huge oak a little way inside the woods. Far above, the leaves were still only tight buds. Joan wasn't good at identifying trees by their bark, but the old leaves on the ground left no doubt. Rounded, knobby oak leaves, not pointy ones, meant a white oak, she thought. Anyone, though, could spot Sylvia's oak tree by the wooden platform high off the ground. Rather than being nailed into the branches, the platform seemed to swing from ropes, and what looked like a hammock was slung even higher.

A familiar face peered down at them.

“Joan! What are you doing out here?” The voice was faint.

“I came with my son!” Joan yelled back.

“Wait.” Andrew punched numbers on his cell phone. “You'll wear your voice out.” Looking up into the tree, he talked into the phone. “Sylvia, I brought you some food. My mom came along.” He handed Joan his phone.

“Joan?” Sylvia's voice was easier to hear now that it was in her ear. “I didn't know Andrew was your son.”

There's a lot we don't know about each other, Joan thought. “I'm glad you have a cell phone. I was worried how you could let anyone know if you needed help.”

“I'm lucky the signal is so good out here.”

“What happens when the battery runs down?”

“I have spares, and whoever brings me food and stuff takes them off to recharge.”

Now Joan could see a basket coming down to them on a rope. Andrew reached up for it and swapped the garbage bags in it for the sandwiches and drinks he'd brought in clean bags. The way he held one black plastic bag he'd picked out of the basket suggested that it held worse than mere garbage. At his signal, Sylvia began hauling the basket back up.

“How do you two know each other?” Joan asked when the two-handed operation was complete and Sylvia was sitting down again, with the phone to her ear.

When Andrew and Sylvia answered at the same time, she couldn't understand either of them. She erased the air with her hand. Andrew nodded and hushed.

“… in the park,” Sylvia finished whatever she'd been saying. “Later, he came to a meeting on campus. Anyone can volunteer. We sign up volunteers wherever we can, like orchestra rehearsal. Can't you just picture old Alex carting off my toilet bag?”

Joan could hear the laughter in Sylvia's voice.

“Did you get any takers at the orchestra?”

“Birdie Eads, of course. We're good friends. And John Hocking, probably 'cause he knows me from work. And one of the French horns, and a trombone. Not Mr. High-and-Mighty Nicholas, of course, even if I do sit with him. He's holding it against me that I'll miss the concert. I'm a little surprised to see you, Joan. Thank you for coming.” It was the most gracious speech she had ever heard from Sylvia.

“Sure. Not Jim Chandler?”

“He hasn't offered, but he could. He lives over there, across the creek.” Sylvia stood up as easily as if she weren't floating in a tree and pointed, but Joan couldn't see anything but trees. “From up here I can see that far. I'm glad the leaves aren't out yet. It's still cold at night, but a lot more interesting than it's going to be when the trees leaf out and block my view of everything more than a few yards away. And I've got a good sleeping bag.”

“Good luck to you, then. I'll give you back to Andrew.” Joan handed him the phone and walked into the woods, the bare branches moving overhead and the thick layers of dead leaves a rustling cushion under her feet. Even bare, the trees cast enough shade to make the woods feel cool, and she could smell the rich, damp soil the rotting leaves produced. It was still early for morels, though, and she wasn't surprised not to see any. She would come out mushroom hunting in a few weeks. She had learned to love morels as a child living in Michigan, where her family had hunted for them.

The sound of an engine startled her. Who else would be here so early in the morning? Was Fred right about the people coming out of the woodwork? She turned to hurry back. Her foot caught in a greenbrier, and she grabbed a sapling to keep from falling.

I'm being silly, she thought. It's just someone else Sylvia signed up.