The Deepest Water Page 5

  She stopped their forward motion and looked at the roots he was examining. "If a boat was already in the water, I guess you could get into it from there," she said. "But look at those trees. How would you get a boat of any size at all through them?"

  "Trails and such up there?"

  "Yes. You can hike from the cottages all the way to Coop Halburtson's property; it's shorter than going by the road, actually. Up there the trail merges with the road."

  Caldwell made a noncommittal sound, then said, "Okay, onward."

  He had her stop once more, another place where, if there was a boat already in the water, a person could come down the side of the shore and board it, but it would be impossible to get a boat up there in the first place. After that she headed toward the ramp.

  She remembered the year Jud and Coop Halburtson had built the ramp. For years it had been simply a dirt incline, but winter rains kept eroding it, guttering it, and they had built a new one of logs. It had taken a year of weekend labor to fell the right trees, cut them the right lengths, peel off the bark, and get them to the shore. She could see Jud digging, smoothing dirt, then gravel, using a sledgehammer to drive long metal bars into the ground to hold the first log at the edge of the water. That one was ten feet long; they had borrowed a horse to help move it into place. Jud called it the anchor log, the one that held all the others back. The rest were six feet long; Jud and Coop had placed them carefully, sinking them just enough, filling in between them with more dirt, tamping it down. She had been their water girl, trotting back and forth to the house above, bringing them water or iced tea or lemonade from Florence's kitchen. For the first several years she had been afraid the ramp would sink so far into the ground that it would disappear, but Jud said it was just settling in, getting comfortable, and it had been years now since there had been any change. When it was rainy, the ramp was slick and it was easier to pull the boats up, but it was treacherous underfoot. Today it was dry.

  The second the boat touched the ramp, three very large dogs began to bark.

  "Spook!" she called. A gray dog appeared ready to jump into the water to meet them, nearly manic with excitement, and the other two dogs stopped barking.

  When they got out of the boat, Caldwell helped her pull it up the ramp, all the way to the shed. Spook danced around her the whole time, not jumping on her, but too excited to sit still as the others were doing. After the boat was put away, Abby knelt down and hugged Spook, and the dog licked her face, licked her hands, making a soft whimpering noise.

  When Abby stood up, her eyes were hot with unshed tears. Softly she called, "Here, Sal. Come on, Bear." They came to her, and she petted them both as they greeted her with licks on her hands.

  "Sal is their mother," Abby said then. "Coop always said she went out and mixed it up with a bear, and these two were the result." Sal was also large, but sleek, a gray, short-haired dog of no particular breed; her offspring were both much bigger than she was, both shaggy, one black and- brown, Bear, the other gray and black, Spook.

  "Do you have to check in with the Halburtsons, anything like that?" Caldwell asked as Abby rubbed her hands on her jeans.

  She shook her head. "I called and told them I'd pick up the van and take Spook home with me. I told them I'd be with the police. They won't expect me to pay a visit today."

  She couldn't face them again so soon, she thought. Florence had wept so hard before the memorial service, she had become faint, and Coop had not been much better, the shock of discovering Jud's body still making his hands shake, his voice quavery. Their grief was too intense, their sympathy too hard to cope with now. And it was too hard on them, too, she added to herself, justifying not going up to see them. They were both eighty and had lost their best friend. It was too hard on all of them.

  It was obvious that Caldwell had seen all he wanted to see of the boat shed; now he led the way to the carport, where the van, a pickup truck, and a two-year-old Taurus were parked. There was enough graveled space to turn, to maneuver a boat to the ramp, release it, and then go park. The three dogs trotted with them to the van.

  "In, Spook," Abby said, opening the back door. The dog jumped in instantly, then sat down on the backseat.

  "Mind if I drive?" Caldwell asked.

  She shrugged and handed him the keys, walked around and got in the passenger seat.

  "One more thing I'd like to do before we call it a day," he said, starting the engine. "I'd like to have a look at that trail."

  He drove out the driveway and turned toward the state park, driving very slowly, examining the woods on both sides. Before they reached the entrance to the park, he pulled over to the side of the road.

  "Who'd see a car stopped about here late at night?"

  She looked at him in surprise. They weren't hidden by trees or bushes or anything else. "Whoever came along," she said.

  "It's one or one-thirty in the morning," he said. "Who'd be coming along?"

  "Maybe a late arrival. Or someone from one of the cottages getting in late. I don't know."

  "Let's get out and walk a couple of minutes."

  Resignedly she got out. "Stay, Spook." She opened her window a few inches and closed the door. "The trail?"

  "You can get to it from here, can't you?"

  She nodded.

  "Not at the deep part yet, are we?"

  "No. We're still west of it." They couldn't see the water, but she knew exactly where they were. She led the way across the road; then, weaving in and out around trees, they came to the trail and stopped. "This is it."

  Caldwell grunted, and she wondered what he had expected: a neatly groomed, bark-mulch trail with rails and signposts? She turned and began to follow the trail until the water came into view. Now they could see the cabin; they were about six feet above the lake, but the trail was not straight for more than a few feet at any place. It wound among the trees, around boulders, skirted the lake, then back into the woods once more. And it was rough with roots and rocks.

  "Imagine doing this at one or one-thirty at night," she said sharply. "I'm telling you, the idea is insane."

  "Hold up," he said. "If you used a flashlight, who would notice?"

  "No one," she had to admit. The campsites were too far away, in deep woods, and no one in the cottages had a view of the finger at this point. "But when you get near the water, if anyone on shore happened to look, you'd stand out showing even a candle up here."

  "Who'd be up looking at one or one-thirty in the morning?"

  She shrugged helplessly and started to walk again. Now he had someone lugging a canoe or small boat and holding a flashlight at the same time. He called a stop again in just a minute; they were at the place where the roots afforded access to the water, only three feet down. She watched him examine the rough ground, the tree, the roots. He didn't touch anything and didn't get close to the roots, but looked them over care-fully.

  Then he said, "Onward."

  She knew they would not get much farther before Sal and Bear would set up a clamor, but silently she led the way. The trail took a sharp turn toward the road, then angled back, and Sal and Bear began to bark and came leaping through the forest.

  She called their names, and they stopped, not wagging their tails, just watching.

  "Coop's property," she said.

  "Would they cross over his line, come after anyone on this side of it?"

  "No. He trained them. They know his property."

  Caldwell nodded. "Right. And the trail leads back to the road now?"

  "Yes. A couple hundred yards, but it's like the rest of it, zigzags all the way."

  "Let's have a look."

  She sighed and followed the trail, back and forth among trees, around rocks, over roots and blowdowns, to the road. "See?" she said tiredly. They caught glimpses of Sal and Bear now and then, pacing them.

  "Okay," Caldwell said. "Wait here and I'll bring the van." He began to walk down the road.

  She hurried after him. "You can't get it alone. Spook w
ouldn't let you."

  "Even after we've been together the way we've been?" he asked, looking surprised and a little offended.

  "Not even. Coop trained her, too. She knows her job is to guard the cabin, the rowboat, the van, me."

  The lieutenant stopped moving and regarded her soberly. She realized the implication of what she had just said. But Spook had let someone enter Jud's house, someone who had put her out and closed the door on her, locked the dog door on her, someone who had killed Jud and left without being attacked. If she had attacked anyone, there would have been signs; Coop would have seen signs, or the police investigators would have seen them.

  "Just how savage can she get?" Lieutenant Caldwell asked softly.

  Abby swallowed hard and shook her head. Spook was big and strong; she could get savage enough to frighten off a bear or a cougar. No stranger would have dared to try to get past her.

  They started to walk again, not speaking now. At the van Spook whined softly. "I was going to say, Why don't you drive," Caldwell said, "but I think you're too beat. I'll do it."

  Not just beat, she thought. Shaken, stunned, frightened ... Something else, not just beat. It had been someone Jud had known, someone Spook had known well enough to let in without attacking.

  5

  Felicia Shaeffer had always thought of the basalt ledge out in the lake as the break until Jud wrote about it and called it Siren Rock; it had become that in her mind as well. Standing at the rear window of her cottage, she watched Abby row a man close to Siren Rock, then along the other side of the ledge, as if to demonstrate that there really were no good passages through, except the two narrow ones that only a suicide-bent fool would try to navigate after dark.

  Florence Halburtson had called to tell her that Abby was coming with some more police officers, and she expected that now Abby would come through the break and deposit the policeman on the park side, let him question the people over here. But they didn't come this way, and soon were out of sight again. They shouldn't dawdle much longer, Felicia thought worriedly, or they would have to drive down that damned road in the dark, and while she didn't care a fig about the police officers, she did not want Abby in a car coming down the mountain at night.

  She gazed about her cottage distractedly. When Herbert, her husband of forty-two years, died, she had completely remodeled the building. Walls had come out, a woodstove put in, a skylight cut into the ceiling, rugs and carpets junked, and good, washable vinyl put down, and then, finally, at sixty-nine years old, she had a real studio. That had been four years ago, and she loved her studio with a passion that had not diminished a bit. She had sold the big house in Eugene and bought a condo unit, big enough for one, she had told her four grown children. Her daughter Sara had suggested that perhaps she and her husband and three children could share the big house, so Felicia would not be lonely. She had no intention of having any of them move in on her, or to move in with any of them. Besides, she had her two beautiful dogs, Daisy and Mae, snow-white, curly-haired poodles, who had more sense than all her kids put together. She had never said that out loud, but she certainly thought it. None of her children had come to the lake in years. They had no idea of what all she had done to the cottage, and expressed their bewilderment and dismay again and again at her eagerness to stay out here for extended periods. She had told them to butt out.

  After years of working at the kitchen table when no one else was using it or in the bedroom when Herbert was not sleeping, she had a real workroom. Easels were set up; a long table held many clay figures, some fanciful, some realistic; pots and tubes of paint and brushes were arranged so that she could find exactly what she wanted at any hour of the day or night; there were shelves of books and manuscripts, a television, CD player, and a computer with an excellent oversize monitor. She liked to museum-hop on the Internet, as well as keep in touch with an ever-growing network of friends from all over the world, many of them beginning artists who valued her comments on the digitized art they e-mailed her. Her illustrations were everywhere in the cottage, on the walls, in frames leaning against the walls, on the worktable. She illustrated children's books and was good at it, and had no intention of retiring and entering a community where she would have company, organized recreation, competent medical attendants around the clock if needed. She suspected that her dutiful children conspired to ease her into such a place every time they got together.

  During the past week, since Jud's murder, they had taken turns calling her, urging her to go into town, where she would be safe. "You're all bugging the bejesus out of me!" she had exclaimed to Junior the last time he called. "I have work to do. Leave me alone."

  Her husband was an accountant, she had told Jud years ago, and unfortunately all four children were accountants also. Not in fact, but in spirit. Jud had laughed delightedly, and they had spent the afternoon labeling people: four categories, they had decided. Accountants, bureaucrats, beasts of burden, and artists.

  "Oh shit," she had said. "We need another one. What about scientists?"

  "Artists," he had said without hesitation. "Some of them, anyway. Surrounded by pencil pushers, grant writers, Bunsen burner igniters, and computer data tabulators."

  Felicia was sitting at her kitchen table, her two dogs at her feet, her gaze on the lake, but she was no longer seeing it, thinking instead of the many times she and Jud had sat here, talking, joking, companionable in a way she had not known with anyone else. No need to explain things with him, or explain herself or try to. Of course, when Herbert died, she had missed him. You have to miss someone you've lived with for more than forty years, but this missing was different. She missed Jud in a way she had not expected, had not been prepared for, and could not quite understand. It wasn't as if he had been with her all that much, a couple of times a week, then gone for weeks sometimes, but she had always known he would be back, that they would sit and talk while she made fantastic figures out of clay, her models. Or he would sit while she painted or sketched. Often he would bring fish or something, and they would share dinner and drinks. Or he would pick up an order she had placed at a store in Bend and deliver it and linger. Now and then he would show up with a duck, and she would make a special dinner that he particularly loved.

  She missed him with a deep, painful ache that continued to grow instead of recede as the days passed.

  She was still at the table when Daisy and Mae both lifted their heads, came wide awake, and started to bark. Then she heard it, too. A car had pulled up to the house. She went to the door and opened it, and expecting police officers and perhaps Abby, she was surprised to see instead a young woman with frizzy brown hair. She was alone.

  "I'm Detective Ellen Varney," her visitor said. "Mrs. Shaeffer?"

  "You're a detective?"

  "Yes, ma'am." She pulled out identification, and Felicia opened the door wider and motioned for her to enter.

  "You drove down the mountain alone?"

  Detective Varney nodded, but she was looking at the large studio with interest, ignoring the two poodles that were checking her out with equal interest.

  "Well, that gets you a cup of tea," Felicia said. "I was just about to make some. Come on to the kitchen. Green tea," she said, leading the way through the clutter of her studio. "Good for the heart, or the liver, or something." She glanced back when she realized her guest had stopped and was examining a group of watercolors in frames.

  "You illustrated the Greta series!" Detective Varney exclaimed. "I loved them when I was a child! The pictures are wonderful!"

  "For that you can have your choice of honey or sugar with your tea," Felicia said. "Sagebrush honey, put up by a Klamath family over by La Pine. Rare, and very special."

  The detective hurriedly joined her in the kitchen area; she looked embarrassed, Felicia thought with amusement. "Sit down, won't be a minute. You could start your questions while the kettle comes to a boil."

  Detective Varney pulled a notebook from her bag, sat at the table, and looked out over the lake. "
You can't see much of the upper end from here, can you?"

  "No. You can see Siren Rock and a bit beyond, that's all."

  "Were you here on Friday when Judson Vickers was shot?"

  "Yes. Here most of the time. And no, I didn't see or hear anything out of ordinary, not until Florence Halburtson called and told me about the shooting."

  She busied herself with scalding a little blue porcelain teapot, added leaves, then boiling water, and began to carry things to the table. She talked as she moved about. "Jud was a dear friend, Detective Varney. I’d like to see whoever did that to him dropped out of a boat with an anchor tied to his feet in the deepest water out there. But I don't have any real information for you, Fm afraid. I don't know who did that, or why. And I don't know how anyone got over there in the middle of the night, unless he drove up the mountain in the daylight and came back down the next day. You know Coop's dogs didn't set up a clamor, I suppose. And they would have if anyone had put a boat out over there. And there just isn't any other way."