John Saul (15 page)

MaryAnne shook her head. “I haven’t had time—”

“Then the time’s just come,” Olivia declared. “As it happens, I’ve got nothing better to do this afternoon than meddle in your life, so what do you say we get started?”

For the next two hours, they toured the ranch, first going through the barn and tack rooms, then each of the other outbuildings, Olivia identifying everything they saw, even promising to teach MaryAnne how to use the tractor. Their inspection of the buildings completed, Olivia taught her how to saddle a horse, and they set off on Buck and Fritz to ride the land. After they covered the property, Olivia
glanced up at the mountains toward the Coyote Creek campground. “What do you say—shall we ride up and take a look at the campsite that got torn up the other day?”

MaryAnne hesitated, then shook her head. “It’s getting a little late. I’d like to be at the ranch when the kids come home.”

It was nearly four when they got back, but except for Bill Sikes, who was stacking firewood against the side of the house, the place was still deserted.

“When you get right down to it,” Olivia said after they finished taking care of the horses and were settled on the front porch with glasses of wine, “I’m not sure what you need a full-time handyman for at all. If you decide to get rid of Sikes, or he just clears out—and believe me, he’ll never do that—don’t bother to replace him. One field, a pasture, and a barn. That’s all that’s left up here, and it doesn’t take much work to keep them up. Between you and the kids, there shouldn’t be any problem at all. And I can always lend a hand if you need it.”

“I couldn’t possibly ask—” MaryAnne began, but Olivia silenced her with a gesture.

“Don’t tell me what you could ask and what you couldn’t. We’re neighbors, and that means we help each other. Besides, if it weren’t for Audrey, I wouldn’t be here, and I guess I feel like I owe her.”

“Audrey?” MaryAnne repeated. “You mean you knew her before you came here?”

Olivia nodded. “We were friends in Sun Valley. I’m not certain we would have had much in common, except both of us were nursing broken romances.” Suddenly she laughed, a great booming sound that rose from her chest, loud enough to flush a covey of quail from the brush by the creek. “I guess if I’m going to be completely honest, I’ll have to admit I was kind of jealous when Ted came along. And let me tell you, when Audrey married him a month after she met him, I had plenty to say! Told her she was just on the rebound, that she hardly knew Ted—you name it, I guess I said it.”

MaryAnne chuckled ruefully. “I guess I told her all the same things. But she proved us wrong, didn’t she?”

Olivia nodded, sighing. “She sure did. Anyway, after they moved up here, I started driving up to see them practically every weekend, and the longer I spent here, the more I started hating Sun Valley. So finally I just packed up and moved. Took a beating in my practice, but it’s been worth it. Or it was up until Ted and Audrey died.” She fell into pensive silence, her eyes taking in the ranch, and the mountains above. When she spoke again, her voice was low. “Remember earlier, I said that lately there’s been something about this place that hasn’t seemed quite right?” MaryAnne nodded. “Well, I’m still not sure what it is. But there’s a reason why the animals are spooking, and it seems to me we’d better find out what it is. The next time it happens, you call me. Okay?”

MaryAnne’s brows rose skeptically. “In the middle of the night?”

Olivia Sherbourne threw back her head once again, her laughter echoing across the valley. “I get called in the middle of the night over a sick cat!” she declared. She finished her wine and stood. “Well, it’s been fun, but all good things come to an end. I’d better go check my machine and see whose cattle are bloating and whose horses are colicky. Call me if you need anything, okay?”

“Okay,” MaryAnne agreed. She walked Olivia out to the truck, but just as the vet was about to climb in, MaryAnne held her back with a hand on her arm. “Olivia, could I ask you a question? About Ted and Joey?”

Olivia Sherbourne seemed to tense, but the impression was so fleeting that when the vet dropped back down to the ground to face her, MaryAnne decided she had only imagined it.

“Ted and Joey?” Olivia asked. “What about them?”

“I’m not sure.” MaryAnne faltered, suddenly wondering if she should have brought up the subject at all. “It’s just—well, I’m wondering if there was a problem between them. Charley Hawkins said something I thought was a little strange, then tried to pass it off as nothing. But then Rick Martin was out here asking questions the other day, and—well, I’m just wondering if you know anything about it.”

Olivia hesitated just a fraction of a second too long before
she spoke. “I know Ted was pretty hard on Joey the last couple of years, but if you’re asking me if Ted abused Joey, I’d have to say no.” A sardonic smile curved her lips. “Of course, everyone has his own definition of abuse, doesn’t he? So I suppose different people would say different things about it. As far as I could tell, though, Ted was just trying to get Joey straightened out and teach him some responsibility.”

The reply raised more questions in MaryAnne’s mind than it answered. “What about Audrey?” she asked. “Did she think Ted was too hard on Joey?”

For a moment MaryAnne wasn’t sure the veterinarian was going to reply at all, but finally Olivia shrugged. “There was a lot Audrey never talked to me about and a lot I never asked her.” She swung up into the cab of her truck and started the engine. “Look,” she added, “don’t go looking for trouble. If you do, I guarantee it’ll find you first! See you soon.” She put, the pickup in gear and drove off, and MaryAnne waited until she had disappeared around the first curve of the driveway before starting back to the house. But as she picked up the glasses from the table on the front porch and took them to the kitchen, with Storm trailing after her, she realized what Olivia had just told her had done nothing to ease her worries.

What had Audrey not talked about, and Olivia not asked?

Something about Joey?

Or Ted?

Or something else entirely?

Then she decided that Olivia was right—it was stupid for her to go looking for trouble. If there were anything seriously wrong with Joey, or between Joey and his father, Audrey would have talked about it with her.

Wouldn’t she?

Or were there things Audrey had kept even from her childhood friend?

T
he sun dropped behind Sugarloaf Mountain, and the afternoon shadows began their march down the valley. MaryAnne glanced at the clock above the sink.

Not quite five, and she had already made up her mind that she wouldn’t start worrying in earnest until at least a quarter after. She turned on the oven and opened the big Sub-Zero refrigerator, taking a quick inventory of the possibilities for dinner.

She instantly rejected tuna casserole—there were still three, each of a different size, and each marked with a carefully lettered piece of masking tape that identified the name of its donor. But they’d had tuna casserole last night, and though the children had all eaten it, it was obvious they hadn’t enjoyed it much. Moving past the tuna casseroles, and making a note to transfer their contents into other dishes tomorrow, so at least she could return the bowls to their rightful owners, she spied a large container on the bottom shelf, marked “Spaghetti—Olivia Sherbourne.”

Perfect, she decided, pulling the Tupperware container out of the refrigerator, then turning the oven off again. She selected a pan from the long row hanging from an enormous wooden rack that was suspended by heavy chains over the cooking island in the center of the kitchen, emptied the spaghetti sauce into it, and began heating it over one of the six burners on the range. She was rummaging in the pantry, searching for spaghetti, when Storm bounded to the door, whining eagerly and scratching to be let out: MaryAnne glanced out, saw nothing, but opened the door anyway. The shepherd took off around the corner of the house, barking joyfully. Moving out into the yard,
MaryAnne watched him tear down the driveway, disappear around the first curve, then reappear a moment later, his tail high, chasing a stick someone she couldn’t yet see must have thrown.

“Get it, Storm!” she heard Joey call, and a second later Logan’s voice chimed in.

“Bring it here, Storm! Bring it back!”

The dog snatched up the stick on the fly, whirled around, and charged back down the drive, skidding to a halt as the three children suddenly appeared.

Carrying packages.

MaryAnne’s smile of welcome faded as the children came up the last few yards of the driveway, Logan already running toward his mother, a large shopping bag barely held off the ground.

“Wait’ll you see what we got, Mom! I got new jeans, and two western shirts, and”—he came to a halt, his eyes glistening with pleasure, then stared down at his feet—“look at these!” he finished. “Real cowboy boots! They’re Acmes!”

MaryAnne gazed at the boots, their brown leather polished to a high sheen, but instead of admiring them, her eyes shifted to Alison, who had stopped a few feet away and at least had the good grace to look embarrassed.

“I thought I told you not to buy anything,” she said, beginning to add up the expenses that had to be contained in the bags not only from the Mercantile, but from Conway’s as well. Logan’s boots alone must have been more than a hundred dollars.

Alison’s mouth opened, but no words came out, and her eyes instinctively went to Joey.

“It was my fault, Aunt MaryAnne,” he said, his grin fading as he saw the expression in his godmother’s eyes. “I mean—my mom, well, she’s been letting me do my own shopping since last year, and we have accounts at all the stores, and …” His voice trailed off.

“They were having sales, Mom,” Alison rushed in. “You know, for back to school. And we can take it all back. Joey said—”

“I don’t care what Joey said,” MaryAnne cut in. “I care
what
I
said, and
I
said you weren’t to buy anything. How are we ever going to afford—”

And then she remembered the books she’d pored over just that morning, and the balances that had shown in all the various ranch accounts.

Pages flicked into her mind, pages on which Audrey had carefully recorded every purchase in every store in which she shopped. Audrey’s ideas of shopping had obviously borne no resemblance to her own thrifty habits. And why should they have? For Audrey, the money had been unlimited; since the day she’d married Ted, she’d never had to worry about what she spent. Obviously Joey had picked up the same habits, and, again, why shouldn’t he have?

“All right,” she said, her anger already melting. What the children had done wasn’t going to bankrupt her, and their happy excitement was worth a fortune. “Let’s go in and see what you’ve done, and decide what you’re going to be taking back,” she said, suppressing a smile beneath a stern demeanor. “Believe me, it will be the three of you who walk back to town with the things you’re going to return! And I want your promise that you won’t do something like this again. If I can’t trust you to do as I ask, how can I trust you to go to town by yourselves again?”

Alison was staring at the ground now, and Logan’s chin was quivering at the possibility of losing his brand new cowboy boots.

“It’s not their fault, Aunt MaryAnne,” Joey pleaded as the children followed her into the house. “Alison didn’t want us to buy anything at all, but I talked her into it.”

“I understand, Joey,” MaryAnne told him gently. “I know your mother let you shop for yourself, but Alison and Joey never have before.” She held the kitchen door open, letting the three youngsters go in ahead of her. “Okay,” she said, pointing to the kitchen table. “Let’s see what you’ve bought.”

While MaryAnne filled a pot with water for the spaghetti, the three kids began opening their bags, spreading out the purchases they’d made. For Alison, there were three pairs of jeans, which MaryAnne recognized as a brand that had always been far beyond their means back home, along
with three shirts, three sweaters, and some socks and underwear.

“Do you know how much those jeans cost?” MaryAnne demanded, pouncing on what were obviously the most expensive items.

“They’re sixty dollars each, except they were marked down to half price,” Alison told her. “And I got three, in different sizes, because I’m growing so fast now and the woman said they probably wouldn’t be on sale again until next year.”

Frowning, MaryAnne abandoned the jeans and picked up one of the shirts. It was one hundred percent cotton, slightly larger than the size Alison currently wore, but not so big it would look strange. The other two shirts were the same size, only their colors differing.

All of them had been marked down fifty percent.

The sweaters were all a soft wool, almost as velvety as cashmere, and in feminine shades Alison normally scorned—cornflower-blue, pale lavender, a pearly-pink the color of a delicate seashell.

“Where’s all the stuff you usually want to buy?” she asked. “All the punk-look things we always argue about?”

Alison flushed. “I guess I figured I’d better buy good stuff,” she said. “I sort of splurged on the scarf, though. I’ll take it back, if you want me to.”

MaryAnne shook her head. “It’s gorgeous. And you’re going to need it when winter hits, so let’s just keep it all.”

She turned to Logan’s acquisitions and discovered that, like Alison, though he’d bought too well, he’d bought wisely. Everything he had chosen were things she would have purchased for him herself. Even his jeans were in a length that would have to be turned up at the cuffs for the first few months, but would certainly last him through at least a year. The shirts he’d bought were smaller versions of the ones Joey had bought for himself, except for a bright blue western shirt, shot through with silver and piped with black, a tight row of mother-of-pearl snaps running down the front, two more on each of the pockets, and three more on each of the cuffs.

“Isn’t it cool?” Logan asked as she stared at it, his face alight with excitement.

“Where on earth are you going to wear it?” MaryAnne asked.