Lone Creek

25

Saint Helena Cathedral was a lovely Gothic structure built in the early 1900s, designed by an Austrian architect and modeled after a church in Vienna. A pair of Irishmen had been the driving force behind it, one a bishop and the other an immigrant who'd struck gold. My own paternal grandfather had grown up in a stone hovel near the north bank of the Shannon, four miles from the nearest little village, and no one in the family even had a bicycle. He'd spent his life working in the mines instead of owning one. The name had been O'Davoren originally, but he'd dropped the "O" at Ellis Island. That was in the days when there was a lot of "No Irish Need Apply" sentiment around, especially back east, so he'd kept moving on until he ended up here.

I'd suggested the cathedral to Laurie as a meeting place because I wasn't sure how well she knew her way around, and you could see its twin spires from miles away. I told her to park nearby and I'd find her. The neighborhood was residential and quiet, so she wouldn't have to worry about being seen.

And it was as unlikely a spot for an ambush as I could think of.

But I recognized something else at work in my mind. The cathedral carried a strong association with Celia. Except for my own brief boyhood fling with piety, my family had pretty much been the Catholic equivalent of jack Mormons-sincere enough, but playing fast and loose with the rules. Still, we rarely missed Sunday Mass. Celia would go with us, always wearing a pretty dress and behaving like she was at first communion, although by the end of that summer her confessions must have burned the priests' ears.

She'd just gotten her driver's license then, and in the afternoons after church, my folks would let her take our old Ford Falcon for a couple of hours and I'd tag along. Our usual routine involved a stop at Gertie's Drive-In for whatever fast food we could afford, then just cruising. She liked to drive the steep hilly streets on the west side, checking out the majestic old houses that had been built when Helena was awash with mining money. It was the kind of wistful daydreaming that all kids did, but hers had a practical and determined edge. She'd guess at their values, and if one was for sale, she'd look it up in the paper and find out. She'd even describe the kind of furniture she'd buy for the place if it was hers.

For a hardscrabble ranch girl like her, there was only one way that was ever likely to happen-hooking up with a rich guy like Pete Pettyjohn. And oddly enough, we started running into him more and more often. Soon it became clear that on those Sunday excursions that had started with just Celia and me, there was no more room for a fourteen-year-old little-brother type.

I cleared my head of the past when I got to the cathedral, and started looking for the vehicle that Laurie Balcomb had told me she'd be driving, a new silver Mercedes SUV. It wasn't the kind of rig you'd want to take hunting, but no doubt it was fine for the highway and around town, if a little over the top. I circled the block in my pickup until I spotted it.

She was waiting in the driver's seat, wearing huge sunglasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and a scarf covering her hair and tied under her chin. It wasn't a bad look-the sort of thing you saw on tabloid covers in grocery store checkout racks, of celebrities trying to dodge paparazzi-although around here, it was likely to draw more attention than it deflected. But it was true that she was hard to recognize.

I pulled up next to her and leaned across the seat to open my passenger door. She stared like she couldn't believe I was driving this old crate that she'd seen hauling trash yesterday-and that I expected her to get into it. But she did, with her nostrils twitching. I had quickly showered and changed again, but that hadn't done anything for the truck.

She gave me a nervous smile and pressed my hand with her own. The warmth of the gesture took me aback. She was wearing the same kind of tight jeans I'd seen her in yesterday and a soft eggshell turtleneck, an outfit that showed off her figure. I couldn't help remembering that image of her on Kirk's video, rising bare-skinned out of the stream.

Couldn't help remembering what had happened to me next.

"I appreciate your thinking of me," I said. "Sorry if I was bristly on the phone."

"I understand completely. You've had a terrible time." Then she bit her lower lip, like a little girl. "But I'm not sure you'll still thank me after what I have to tell you."

"I'd rather know it than not," I said.

Her grip tightened on my hand. "Will you promise to keep it just between us?"

It was another echo of Kirk.

"Sure," I said.

She let go and settled back. I started driving, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror for anyone following.

"My husband was very upset after you called last night," she said. "What did you say to him? He didn't tell me."

"That somebody came to my place while I was gone and burned the lumber I took from the ranch," I said.

I couldn't see Laurie's eyes behind those sunglasses, but her mouth opened in dismay.

"And that I figured he was behind it," I went on. "That I was going to call the sheriffs and start an investigation, and it was going to mean a whole lot of trouble and bad publicity for him and his business. But if he dropped the charges against me, I'd call it even."

"No wonder he was so enraged," she murmured. "Wesley does not like it when someone puts his back against a wall."

I wasn't heading anywhere in particular, just letting the pickup find its way. We'd been going south on Rodney Street toward the city's outskirts, but I turned right on Broadway, looping back downtown.

"Let's get back to your bad news," I said.

"The sheriff came by and talked to Wesley, early this morning. Kirk's gone missing. Did you hear?"

I nodded.

"When Wes came back inside, he went ballistic-even worse than last night. He told me not to breathe a word to anybody that there was any kind of trouble. The way he looked was frightening. And-he can be dangerous. I thought you should know that."

Leaving aside that this wasn't exactly news, it was very interesting that she was both warning me and betraying him.

"Has he ever hurt you?" I said.

Her face turned away. "Not directly. He has other ways of handling things."

"That doesn't sound like a very cordial arrangement."

"Maybe I'll tell you a story some day," she said, with her face still averted.

In a perverse way, that made me feel better-her fear helped explain why she was siding against him.

"Why not now?" I said.

But she backtracked. "I don't mean he's a bad man. He's charming, and most of the time he treats me well. But he's such a control freak. The truth is he's very insecure. He grew up dirt-poor."

That didn't buy him much sympathy from me. I knew a lot of people who'd been in that boat-Madbird had flat gone hungry sometimes as a kid-and my own family had never been more than a paycheck or two away from disaster.

"I think that's the real reason he wanted to raise thoroughbreds," she said. "They're beautiful, graceful, well bred-everything he feels he's not. The irony is, he doesn't like horses."

The parallel between the thoroughbreds and Laurie herself was clear, and she must have realized it. Maybe it was another part of the reason she was doing this.

There was no telling how genuine her concern for me was, and I didn't want to come right out and suggest that Balcomb and Kirk might have been involved in something illicit. I decided to try sneaking up to it.

"So when Balc-your husband-blew up this morning, it was about Kirk?" I said.

"I don't know what it was about." Her curtness dead-ended the probe. "Are you friends with him?"

"We've known each other a long time. I wouldn't call us friends."

"Of course I hope nothing bad happened to him, but he creeps me out," she said. "I started to get the feeling he was almost stalking me."

She'd have been a lot more than creeped out if she'd suspected how close to the truth she was.

We coasted down the Sixth Avenue hill and crossed Last Chance Gulch. Downtown was as quiet as an old photograph, with nothing open but the bars and nobody moving on the streets. The truck, of its own accord, climbed the next hill toward the west side and the grand old houses that Celia had loved.

"Well, thanks for the heads-up," I said. "I admit I don't know what to do about it."

"You're not going to leave here?"

"I would, but I can't."

"Funny," she said quietly. "It's the same with me."

"You mean leaving your husband?"

She nodded.

"Can't or won't?" I said.

She held up her hand palm first to silence any more questions. I realized I was crossing a line.

"I'll try to help," she said. "I'll watch him like a hawk. If I think he's up to something I'll call you. So answer your damned phone, OK?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Where were you all morning?"

I was startled at her sudden, out-of-the-blue left turn-and I imagined a hint of jealousy in her tone.

"Sweating out a hangover," I said. "Cutting firewood."

She sniffed. "How manly." Then her voice took on the teasing tone she'd left me with yesterday. "By the way, I haven't forgiven you for not being honest with me."

"Who told you about my old life?" I said.

"I have my sources."

I pulled the truck over to the curb and swung around to face her.

"More to the point, why'd you ask?" I said. "Why are you bothering with me?"

Maybe I spoke more strongly than I meant to. Her coquettish look vanished, and she pressed back against the door, turning her face aside again.

"I feel drawn to you," she said. "You seem so at home here, in a way. But really, you're not at home anywhere."

"I guess I don't see the draw in that," I said.

"Maybe I should have put it differently. A kinship." Her left hand fidgeted to the gearshift, fingers brushing it lightly, then dropped away and returned to clasp her right.

She said, "I'd better go."

I started driving again, this time back toward her car.

"These old houses are so beautiful up here," she murmured. "Don't you wish you lived in one?"

It was the kind of thing anybody would have thought.