“So you knew them well.”
“I knew them.”
“Who were they?”
“Well,” Zhondra said, “Carol Littleton was one. Dinah Truebrand was one of the other two. She wrote the litany they sang. And then there was Stelle Cary. Stelle is boring. She knew she was a lesbian from the time she was twelve. She’s only here because she wanted to spend some time in a place where that wasn’t a weird thing to be.”
“What kind of litany was this?” Gregor asked, thinking about Jackson and his reference to various parts of the female anatomy.
Zhondra Meyer opened the long center drawer of the desk and pulled out a single piece of typing paper. “I thought somebody was going to ask for that eventually. I’ve been keeping this for days. I’m afraid Dinah has more zeal than artistic talent.”
Gregor looked down at the sheet Zhondra Meyer handed him and blinked.
“Great Mother of Us All, make sacred my body,” it read and then:
Make sacred all my limbs
Make sacred my throat and tongue
Make sacred my thighs and breasts
Make sacred the folds of my vulva
Make sacred the flower of my clitoris
Gregor tried to hand the sheet to Clayton Hall, but he wouldn’t have it.
“I’ve already seen it,” Clayton said.
Gregor put the sheet down on the desk. “Very interesting,” he told Zhondra Meyer. “Does this really help women find their—spirituality?”
“I wouldn’t know. It’s like I said. I’m an atheist. But you see what I mean, Mr. Demarkian. There’s nothing of devil worship about it. There’s no violence. There’s no sacrifice. They just sing this thing or something like it, and light candles and close their eyes. They’ve done it hundreds of times in the last year or so and there’s never been any problem with it at all. Why should there suddenly be one now?”
Gregor thought about it. “You’re sure of what went on in these rituals? They couldn’t be telling you one thing and doing another?”
“I suppose they could, Mr. Demarkian, but why should they bother? I’m really quite tolerant of other people’s beliefs. I wouldn’t have stopped them, even if they had been sacrificing mice or whatever. But they weren’t. The whole point about the goddess movement is how nonviolent and antihierarchical it is. What they don’t like about Christianity is the whole idea of blood sacrifice.”
“Are these three women around here someplace where I could talk to them?”
“Of course. Do you want me to get them now?”
“Not just yet,” Gregor said. “What about this pine grove or whatever. Is it close?”
“Just off the terrace and down the hill about fifty feet.”
“Could we go there right away?”
“Of course.”
Zhondra Meyer got off her chair and went to the hearth to put her sandals on. Clayton Hall started to look uncomfortable.
“You know,” he said, “we’re pretty sure the baby wasn’t killed in the grove. It wouldn’t be like you were going to view the crime scene or something.”
“I understand that,” Gregor said. “I just want to see what this place is like. So many people seemed to be interested in it.”
Zhondra Meyer opened a set of French doors and stepped out onto the terrace. “Come with me,” she said. “It really isn’t very far at all. And it’s very clean, too. Goddess worshippers don’t litter.”
Gregor stepped out onto the terrace and looked around. Even from back here, the house was enormous. It looked like a hotel. He and Clayton Hall followed Zhondra. They went across the flagstones and onto the grass. Then the lawn began to slope gently toward a stand of trees.
“Be careful,” she called back to them, “there’s a path here and you’ve got to take it. The lawn is riddled with gopher holes. If you get off the track, you’re likely to break your ankle.”
Gregor stayed on the track. Clayton Hall wasn’t so careful, but nothing awful happened to him. Zhondra Meyer seemed to adhere to the path like a train on a track. It came naturally.
“That’s funny,” she said, stopping suddenly. “Somebody must have been drunk.”
“What do you mean?” Gregor came up behind her.
Zhondra Meyer pointed forward, and Gregor saw it. There was a clearing in the stand of trees, an almost perfect circle of pines. The clearing was covered with dead pine needles. At the center of it was a pile of stones made to look like the lip of a well. Next to the lip was what seemed to be a pile of old clothes.