Read Endangered Species Online
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Suspense, #Mystery & Detective, #Women Sleuths, #Pigeon; Anna (Fictitious character), #Women park rangers, #Cumberland Island National Seashore (Ga.)
getting caught. As long as they covered the island at least once, Guy
wouldn't much care how they spent their time. On an island eighteen
miles long and three wide it wasn't as if they were going to wander off.
Their job was mainly to be around just in case.
Both tanks were topped. Absently, she followed the hose back toward the
pump. Sweat beaded on her upper lip and her shirt stuck to her back
between her shoulder blades. It was 6:35 in the morning.
Parked behind the pumper truck was a battered orange Volkswagen bug, the
chassis turned to burnt metal lace around fenders and door from the
incursion of rust. The din of the Mark IV had covered the sound of its
arrival and, lost in her thoughts, Anna had not seen it. Inattention
made her nervous. Dreamers were easy marks. Muggers, rapists,
pickpockets, could cut them out of a crowd. Purse snatchers made a
living off of them. The frank delirium of a southern August carried
away sharpness on zephyrs of scented air, softened reality with a brush
of Spanish moss. The South was famous for vivid eccentricity. Anna
could see why. Anger flared in the heat; reality became tenuous.
The Volkswagen belonged to Lynette. A cross dangled from the rearview
mirror and the Virgin Mary rode in regal splendor on the narrow dash.
Brochures of Cumberland Island and field guides to the Southeast were
scattered over the back seat and the floor. A box of files filled the
passenger side.
It was "Tuesday. Probably Lynette's lieu days were midweek .
Anna hoped so. It would be a relief to know there was someone to sit
with Tabby. She regained the stairs and climbed to the apartment. The
door was open but the screen closed and latched. From within came the
murmur of prayers. A faint clicking accompanied them and at first Anna
thought someone was telling the rosary through her fingers, but the
sound was coming from a flat green insect the size of her thumbnail
clinging to the screen.
"God can forgive anything." Lynette's low voice trickled out through the
wire mesh. She spoke in a monotone, the intensity of her personality
rather than changes in pitch adding color to her words.
"Not this he can't. Not me," Tabby returned. Her voice was choked with
tears. Her voice was always choked with tears. Though Anna understood
and even empathized, it was beginning to get on her nerves. Sliding
down, fanny on the steps, back against the railing, she settled in for
some unabashed eavesdropping. If she was caught she could pretend she
simply didn't want to disturb their devotions.
What a prince, Anna thought of herself dryly. Tilting her head back
against an upright, she closed her eyes the better to listen.
"That's kind of arrogant in a way," Lynette said gently ." It's like
saying, 'My sin is so magnificent not even God can forgive it."' "You
don't understand," wailed the eternally drowned voice of the widow.
" Try me."
Anna's ears pricked up, or felt as if they did, but the hoped-for
revelation was not forthcoming. Tabby cried out ," can't!" and
dissolved again.
Anna liked Tabby well enough but the woman had a bit of the invertebrate
about her. It was hard to picture her under an airplane, her pregnant
belly thrust up like a fecund shark fill, unscrewing the panel to the
actuator arm. Nor could she picture her offing her husband.
What about offing Slattery?
Twisted soap opera plots gamboled through Anna's brain. The baby was
Hammond's, Hammond was going to tell Todd. Tabby had been jilted by
Hammond. Or jilted by Todd. Todd and Hammond were secret lovers.
Everybody was related and separated at birth.
She laughed and pulled herself up from the warm wood. Prayer service
was over. She wanted to make herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich
and get on with the day. Banging on the screen she yelled, "Somebody
let me in."
Lynette unlocked the screen. Round without in any way being fat, her
face was a soft oval, eyes wise and blue. In the 1930s she would have
been considered a beauty. Lynette was in her late twenties and, if one
saw with the eyes only, she looked it. Fine lines were forming around
her mouth, and her forehead was creased from years of raising her
eyebrows in concerned interest. To the other senses, Iynette registered
as considerably younger. Innocence, trust, a wit that was sharp but
never cutting, gave her a childlike quality that somehow missed being
treacly.
"Off today?" Anna asked, to have something to say.
Lynette shook her head, her permed curls quivering charmingly .
"don't go on till ten-thirty."
Anna nodded. Boatloads of tourists from St. Marys would be arriving.
Lynette gave them a tour of the splendid ruin of Dungeness mansion, the
impressive bones of what had been one of the prenuer homes in the 1880s.
Fire and time had reduced it to memories evoked by steps, stone patios,
partial walls, and cold fireplaces. For Anna's money it was as
inspiring in its own way as the ruins of the Anasazi in Mesa Verde
National Park. Dungeness had yet to acquire the patina of centuries but
already it spoke of a unique human history, a nostalgia for better days.
"'Fabby is making herself sick over something," Lynette saiel as Anna
spread a meticulously even layer of peanut butter on a slice of raisin
bread.
"Other than death and impending birth, what do you figure?"
Lynette flicked up a bit of peanut butter from the side of the jar and
put it in her mouth. Her fingers were tapered, almost pointy, her teeth
small and even ." A fight?" she hazarded ." That would be a drag,
wouldn't it? To tell your sweetie he's a real son of a bitch and then
have him die thinking you meant it? Even if you did?"
"A drag," Anna agreed ." Was Todd a son of a bitch?"
"Who ever knows, but I don't think so. He seemed sweet and sweet on his
wife. No eyeballing-the-naked-ladies sort of thing."
"Does Tabby have anyplace to go? The NPS isn't going to toss her out on
her ear anytime soon, but she can't stay here forever .
Whoever replaces Todd is going to need a place to live."
"Tabby's from money," Lynette told her ." Old lumber money out of
Seattle. Her folks will take care of her and the baby."
"Now would be a good time to start," Anna said sourly, and wriggled her
PB&j into a sandwich bag stolen from the Belfores' cupboard.
"They're somewhere in the Far East on a Stanford University tour to see
primitive peoples." Lynette spoke as if she were reading the words from
a snooty brochure ." Incommunicado for another week or so. Then they'll
come."
Relief hit Anna harder than she would have expected. Being even
peripherally responsible for the weeping, gestating girl was tiring ."
At least she'll be financially secure." The meager lunch complete, she
turned her back to the counter so she could watch Lynette ." Both widows
are," she said. Nothing but polite confusion crossed Lynette's smooth
face ." Slattery's wife will be taken care of by his life insurance."
" Slattery wasn't married," Lynette said. It didn't sound as if she
believed it, at least not a hundred percent.
"A wife and a little boy in Washington State." Anna knew she was being
cruel. She needed the truth and didn't know any other way to get at it.
Fleetingly, she wondered if biologists testing pain response in animals
forgave their actions with the same rationale.
"A little boy?" Lynette echoed, her voice small and stunned.
She might have suspected Slattery was married but Anna was willing to
bet the farm on the fact that he had a child was new information.
Lynette turned and left the kitchen without a word.
Anna had delivered the blow, made the world a slightly more miserable
place, and gotten virtually nothing for it but the sense that maybe,
just maybe, Lynette was lying about not knowing Hammond had a wife. Not
much to pin a murder indictment on.
Heat and the dusty jolt of the truck brought on a wave of fatigue .
Had there been a time she could stay awake all night, eat cold pizza for
breakfast, and bound out to take on a new day? She remembered there
had. Of course she did; one of the wonderful things about youth was
attaining a respectable distance from it. In retrospect, all things
became possible: endurance greater, grades improved, tomance polished to
a fine shine.
Slowing the truck to a crawl, she began a mental list of things to do.
It was not yet eight a.m. The office would be empty. There'd be a
phone she could use and the necessary privacy to make the most of it.
Frieda would have had time to cull, charm, and weasel information from
all available sources. Between the computer, the phone, and her
wide-ranging, if eclectic, contacts, there was little she couldn't
ferret out of a federal agency. With luck she would have gotten the
dirt on Hammond's suit against Utterback and his connection with the
Belfores.
This murder was not unlike the Deep South itself, intricate,
slow-moving, relationships unclear, each aspect draped or veiled by
something else. Facts married to their first cousins producing
information that was slightly out of whack.
A silver pickup appeared in the lane ahead and politely pulled to the
side so Anna would have room to pass. Peeking from behind palmetto
fronds, the little truck looked almost coy and Anna smiled as she slowed
to squeeze by. Dot was driving, wild gray curls halfcaptured beneath a
red ball cap, hands in the ten and two position .
Anna glimpsed Mona nearly hidden behind a stack of antiquated turtle
files. The fawn was on her lap, his head out the open window like a
dog's.
As the pumper truck edged by, both women waved and both grimaced
identical grimaces as they pointed to the pile of paperwork between
them. On Mesa Verde there were two trees that had joined together late
in life. Pushed over by a storm, they became one rather than die. Anna
wondered how many years it took human beings to grow together like that.
When she reached the fire dorm she found Dijon balancing on a
four-by-four that had been laid on the ground to delineate parking lot
from "lawn." A subtle distinction the sand did not recognize.
"Where the hell have you been?" he asked as the truck rolled to a stop.
Before she could answer, had she indeed intended to, he tossed his
yellow pack into the truck bed and was jerking open the damaged door ."
You're late," he accused, and looked at his watch .
"Taxpayers' dollars at work and all that. At my salary you've j!lst
upped the gross national debt by a buck and a quarter."
The other truck was gone, as was the ATV. Dijon had been left all
alone. Entertaining himself was not his strong suit. 'ro make amends,
Anna told him of the vandalism of the truck. She omitted her nudity,
preferring to seem a coward than a prude.
Dijon indulged in a favorite law enforcement pastime: Monday morning
quarterbacking. A minute or so after he'd finished telling Anna what he
would have done-and with the guaranteed success rate of hindsight-he