The Serpents Trail Read online

  When I reached him at his office his voice on the line held a note of sadness along with relief at hearing from me. I cut short his commiserations by canceling the appointment, to which he agreed.

  “I tried to call you earlier. The hospital told me you already know about Sarah. I’m sorry, Maxie, there’s a complication. The hospital called just after you left there to say that they need you to sign permission for a postmortem. Can you go back?”

  A postmortem?

  “Why? She died in the hospital. Not at home. Isn’t that unusual?”

  “They want to make sure of the cause of death, because it happened sooner than expected. I don’t know exactly why. The doctor is concerned with covering all the bases, I think. Anyway, they seem to feel it’s necessary and there’s no reason to refuse, is there?”

  None that I could think of. Sarah’s untimely departure was something I’d like to know more about myself. I agreed to go back. We rescheduled our meeting for the following morning, when he said we could discuss arrangements for her burial.

  “Are you sure it’s my signature they need?” I asked before hanging up, thinking perhaps it should be Alan’s responsibility.

  There was a distinct and uneasy hesitation before Westover said, “Not according to what Sarah told me she wanted. She was very specific that you should take care of everything, including any decisions relating to her medical condition, or arrangements after she died.”

  “Does he know that?”

  “I’m not sure. Haven’t heard from him for a day or two. But the hospital knows you’re legally responsible and won’t allow him to make decisions. So it’s up to you. Okay?”

  “Of course, but . . .”

  “Good. I’ll call and let them know you’ll be back soon. It’ll be fine, Maxie. We’ll talk tomorrow. The postmortem will give us an extra day to make sure all the arrangements are satisfactory.”

  Why in the world would Sarah make me responsible for everything that would result from her death? I wondered, as I walked back to the table, where I found Ed Norris already giving his order for lunch to a short blond waitress with an out-of-date hairdo.

  “It’s closer to noon than breakfast, so I changed my mind. Sure you don’t want anything?”

  “No, thanks,” I told him, feeling no appetite whatsoever. “Just coffee.”

  “Something else wrong?” he asked, noticing my frown of concern as I sat down.

  I explained the situation and my assigned part in it, including the need to return to the hospital.

  He nodded. “Makes sense. She knew Alan would resent being responsible for any of it—probably make a hash of it as usual. Where is he anyway? That attorney have any idea?”

  I assured him Westover had not. But it was a question that needed answering—among others.

  I am pretty much of a live-and-let-live sort. Forging ahead to find answers to questions like the one held by the open back door of Sarah’s house the night before had presented me with an unexpected difficulty or two in the past. I had an apprehensive feeling that answering those that were beginning to surface in my mind might be another such situation and could take some careful handling. There was something disturbing about the unexpectedness of Sarah’s death, the idea of a postmortem, and knowing that she had, for some reason, felt it better for me than for Alan to be in charge of making decisions for her; something that needed serious answers—if I could find them.

  I kept Ed company until he had finished his sandwich and cup of soup, then arranged to meet him for dinner that evening, dropped him off at the airport to rent his own wheels, and returned to the hospital to sign the papers for the postmortem. That done, I headed back to my rig next to the house on Chipeta Avenue, with a quick stop for a few supplies at a nearby Albertsons grocery that I remembered from other visits to Grand Junction.

  Stretch had spent the morning alone in the Winnebago and met me enthusiastically at the side door—all wiggles and wags. He is a good traveler and a real character, affectionate and remarkably patient, while maintaining an independent and adventurous spirit that’s much larger than he is.

  All in all, I would rather have a dog than a cat. You never really own a cat. Cats just don’t seem to give a damn. Years before the arrival of Stretch, a silky Seal Point Himalayan once owned me. I mean that Samantha allowed me the regality of her presence in the house—an exercise in her aloofness and my humility at best. At the opposite end of the companionship spectrum is my dachshund—bless him.

  Wiping the licks he gave me from my face, I put away the groceries and decided we could both use a good walk. Time to myself without other people for some uninterrupted thinking wouldn’t hurt, either. Later, before meeting Ed, I intended to see about cleaning up the chaos of Sarah’s bedroom upstairs and taking a quick inventory of the rest of the contents of the house.

  A glance at the thermometer before leaving told me that the noon temperature was once again inching into the mid-nineties, so I was glad for the shade from the trees that lined the street between it and the sidewalk as we walked slowly east along Chipeta for several blocks. With Stretch tugging on his leash to explore every unfamiliar smell he came to along the way, I enjoyed the yards and houses that we strolled past. The architecture of communities in the Lower 48 is always different than that of Alaska, where nothing has as much longevity or tradition. Grand Junction was no exception, especially in that older and central part of town, where many of the houses were historic. They were an assortment of styles: some Victorian, like Sarah’s; others, bungalows, or Tudors with steep roofs that framed their doors and narrow porches. The yards were rich with well-established shrubs and large trees, many surrounded with late summer flowers in orderly beds and low hedges trimmed to rectangular correctness. There were even a few topiaries.

  They reminded me that Sarah’s grandfather had been responsible for the lovely house, full of antiques and family heirlooms that she had inherited from her father. That grandfather had come to Grand Junction in the early days of the twentieth century, married the daughter of an influential doctor, and found a lot on which to build the large Victorian just off what was now historic Seventh Street. He had become an important figure in the city’s growth and success, active in its civic and social circles. His fortune had been made as a prominent orchard owner, earning him a position as a member of the board of the Grand Valley Fruit Growers Association. His son had succeeded to his father’s standing and was also involved in community service to the extent of serving a term as mayor. He had added both vineyards and a winery to the orchards he inherited. I had no idea how much Sarah had received from her father, but had no doubt it was a considerable amount.

  At the end of the fourth block, Stretch and I turned north on a side street that led us to Gunnison, across which lay a large park, green with expansive lawn under more huge trees. I found a place under one of them, sat down in the shade, and let Stretch off his leash for a free run, knowing he wouldn’t wander out of sight. Aside from a car or two passing along Gunnison and the hum of other traffic in the distance, it was quiet and peaceful. Sarah and I had walked there in the past, so it was a familiar place where I felt more at home thinking about her.

  Ed was right. As I sat there quietly, barely aware of the sounds of the city around me, the world did seem much smaller without her in it. She had been my dependable friend for so long I couldn’t yet feel she was gone, probably wouldn’t for some time to come. Her absence would settle in gradually, as the death of a handful of other, less treasured friends had for me. At sixty-three, I had reached an age where I should expect to lose people that I knew and cared about more and more often. One at a time, folks I had met, liked, and come to count on would go, leaving sudden emptiness in place of presence.

  Sarah was not the first, but for me she had been the best, and was the most grievous loss apart from my Joe and Daniel. No one else had known me so long or so well. There was now no one left who could remember me as a girl. It felt like a piece of my life had vani
shed with her, and it had. I had a few photos in an album or two to remind me that I had once been young enough to whisper in the university library instead of studying, gossip about flirtations and romances, borrow each other’s clothes, walk in the rain, and lavishly fill days with laughter and companionship. How could we possibly have been so brand-new and trusting—so far from the realization that we wouldn’t live forever?

  Feeling older than I had the day before, I leaned back to watch a cloud drift slowly across the blue of the afternoon sky and wondered again what it was that my friend had wanted to tell me. Her few confused words from the night before came back into my mind.

  It was so dark, she had said. There was someone that I couldn’t see. Then, It’s not right. Will you fix it? He’s not right.

  But she hadn’t said who she meant by he.

  Stretch, finally tired of exploring, came back to lie down at my side, muzzle on paws, panting slightly, even in the shade, at the unaccustomed heat.

  Sarah had mentioned something about Sardines, the game we had sometimes played in college and, once or twice, after. I wasn’t sorry she had seemed to think she was back in those long past days, for they had been happy ones for the most part. I would like to have been sure that she knew I was there for her at the end, but I had to smile, remembering that silly game. Once we had even been “It” together—had hidden in a closet. “You know—where we hid?” she had asked. Had she remembered that particular time, too?

  It had been a large closet in someone’s house in Seattle. Not large enough for the whole group to climb in together as, one by one, they searched, found, and packed in to join us in hiding. In the crush of bodies, someone had been shoved against the closet’s back wall and dislodged a panel that fell open, exposing another closet in the bedroom next door. We had tumbled through the opening in a tangle, the resulting crash and our laughter giving away our hiding place to those still searching.

  I smiled, remembering that the incident had sparked Sarah’s interest in secret spaces of all kinds. She had begun a collection of puzzle boxes with trick ways of opening them, and found a book in the library that described how to build secret compartments in desks, chests of drawers, and other furniture. It taught us how to hide small items behind electrical switch plates, moldings, even floorboards of a room. We had played games with the ideas; removed and replaced baseboards to create hiding places for our diaries and jewelry, found or created spaces to leave messages for each other in innocent, everyday items—an umbrella handle, a hollowed-out book. Our secret games had inspired the creation of the space that hid the shotgun in my Winnebago. In my house in Alaska I had a puzzle box in which she had once sent me a birthday gift, refusing to provide a clue as to how it could be opened. It had taken me days to finally learn the solution to the riddle and retrieve the earrings she had placed inside. I still sometimes wore them.

  At the house, Maxine. I wrote it all down. You can read it, Sarah had murmured the night before as Nurse Tolland walked in.

  Did she still have that penchant for secrets? Could she have hidden what she said she had written? It would be—would have been, I thought sadly, remembering to change the tense—very like her.

  There was a note taped to the motor home door when I returned, and the snarl of a lawn mower coming from the backyard.

  Please stop next door and see me when you come back, the note said, and was signed Doris Chapman, who I remembered was Sarah’s neighbor. I slipped it into a pocket as I walked between my rig and the house to see who was at work in the yard. Alan maybe? Finally?

  But it wasn’t Sarah’s son.

  A short, olive-skinned man not much younger than I am was guiding the mower in an ever-diminishing rectangle on one side of a walk that led to a garden shed with an open door. He turned a corner and, seeing me coming toward him, shut off the engine, took off the billed cap he was wearing, and wiped perspiration from his forehead as he watched me approach. It was a gesture that reminded me of someone tugging a forelock in deference, but he raised his chin, straightened his shoulders, and gave me a direct look that told me he was confident of himself and his right to be where he was, doing what he was doing.

  “Hello. I’m Maxie McNabb, a friend of Sarah’s.” I held out a hand, which he did not hesitate to take.

  “And I,” he told me with dignity, “am Tomas, the once-a-week gardener.”

  He gave his name a Spanish stress on the last syllable and “once-a-week gardener” the formality of a title. I smiled and an instant twinkle appeared in his dark eyes as we both appreciated this small bit of humor without comment.

  I’m going to like this man, I thought.

  “Missus Nunamaker is not at home,” he said—a statement with an implied question in it.

  “No,” I told him, realized it was the first time I must tell someone about Sarah’s passing, and my throat constricted over a lump as I swallowed hard. “Mrs. Nunamaker died at the hospital early this morning.”

  “Oooh!” The twinkle vanished and his face fell into lines of distress. “So soon?”

  I nodded.

  “I am very sorry,” he said, his precise English taking on a more south-of-the-border accent in his concern. “You were her good friend, yes? I remember her saying your name before. Is there something I can do for you, Missus McNabb?”

  “Maxie, please. Just Maxie.” I assured him there was not.

  “Then,” he said with a sharp, determined nod of his head as he replaced his cap, “I will make her yard as clean and beautiful as it is possible.”

  I left him aggressively attacking the rest of the lawn and went to see Doris Chapman, the next-door neighbor—another person to whom I expected I must carry bad news.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DORIS CHAPMAN CAME OUT ONTO THE PORCH AND stood waiting and rubbing her hands together as I crossed the lawn between the two houses and went up her front steps. Though almost as wide as she was tall, she seemed a little thinner and older than when I had last seen her. She had always reminded me of one of those toys that bounce back up when you push them over.

  “I’ve already heard about Sarah—from the hospital,” she said and reached out to pull me down into a generous hug. “I’ve been checking every few hours. I’m so sorry. She’s been a good friend and neighbor. I’ll miss her every single day.”

  I had forgotten that Doris was the demonstrative, grandmotherly sort but, though the hug was not unwelcome, I had a feeling she needed it more than I did.

  “Come in. Come in, please.”

  She ushered me into the living room of her much smaller house, which was crowded with knickknacks on small tables and crocheted antimacassars on the arms and back of each of three overstuffed chairs. Family pictures crowded most of the wall space and overflowed onto the mantel in silver frames.

  “Now wait right there. I have something for you,” she said, disappearing through a doorway. She returned almost immediately with a casserole dish in one hand, a loaf of warm home-baked bread in the other, both of which she pressed upon me.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t . . .” I began, but she didn’t let me finish.

  “You must eat, and it’s just a small thing. I wanted to do something.”

  It was what women of her age, one generation older than mine, had learned was proper. When there is a death in a family, people want to do something. Providing food for the living was that something and I was evidently now the closest person to Sarah’s family that she could find. It would have hurt her feelings to refuse her offerings and I had, at times, done the same myself for others in similar situations.

  “It’s very good of you, Doris. Thank you,” I told her simply and let it be. I did have to eat something, sometime, after all, and the smell of that freshly baked bread was irresistible.

  She asked about plans for a funeral and nodded when I told her I would let her know after my meeting with Don Westover the next morning.

  “Did you bring that other man with you?” she asked. “I was making the tamale
pie when I saw him go in the back door this morning.”

  “I came alone. When did you see him?”

  “About ten o’clock—after you left and before the gardener arrived.”

  That made it clear she did not mean Tomas.

  “Was it Sarah’s son, Alan?”

  She frowned. “Oh, no. I haven’t seen him for several days. No, this man had dark hair, and wore sunglasses. I don’t remember seeing him before. That’s why I thought he must have come with you.”

  If not Alan, then who? Had the intruder from the night before returned?

  “Did you see him leave?”

  She said she hadn’t, though I suspected that very little happened next door of which Doris was not aware.

  “But earlier there was that woman who’s been taking care of Sarah.”

  Woman? I started to ask, then just nodded, assuming it must have been the nurse Westover had mentioned. I should have asked.

  Thanking her again, I took the casserole home to the Winnebago, put it in the refrigerator, and poured myself a glass of iced tea. Buttering a generous slice of the still warm bread, I sat down at the dinette table to consider whether or not to call the police before going into Sarah’s house. If it was the intruder, perhaps I should. Calling would be better than getting out the shotgun—which, I must admit, crossed my mind. On the other hand, would an intruder still be inside hours later? Probably not.

  Stretch had deposited himself at my feet and was watching the bread go from hand to mouth with a silent longing that was not quite begging, so I absentmindedly tore off a bite and gave it to him. I don’t usually let him have people-food and never when he begs—except for popcorn, which he loves and I can’t bear to eat without sharing. There is nothing you can imagine that is quite as soulful as the eyes of a mini-dachshund staring up at the popcorn bowl to inspire an unendurable case of guilt.