Skeleton Key(10)

I brought this woman here, Faye reminded herself. I met her at the naturopath conference and brought her here, all the way from Hartford. I can’t just kick her out the door and expect her to fend for herself.

“Zara Anne,” Faye said. “Do you remember at all, when it was this happened? How long ago exactly?”

“It was after six. Ann Nyberg was on the news. And Diane Smith had already been. But I didn’t worry about it. Because you said—”

“Well, yes. I know what I said. But it’s after eleven.”

“I heard it go by later,” Zara Anne said. “I recognized the noise. And I went out on the porch and looked at it.”

“You looked at it going by.”

“She was going by, too. You know. That girl. The one with the millions of dollars who lives in Washington Depot and is on the news all the time.”

“Kayla Anson.”

“I don’t think people should have millions of dollars like that, when so many other people have nothing. I don’t think it’s fair. Do you believe in Marxism?”

The last thing Faye wanted was to get into a discussion of Marxism with Zara Anne. Then she tried to remember Zara Anne’s last name and couldn’t, which made her feel incredibly stupid. Maybe she was getting too old for this. Years ago, she had left her husband because the sex had been so awful. She had wanted nothing more in her life but lover after lover, male and female, orgasm after orgasm. She’d even written a philosophy about it, and the philosophy had been published as a book by a small press in New Jersey. The small press was dedicated to feminist and environmental issues, with (of course) a definite political slant. The same press had published four of Faye’s other books. Then one of the books had made it onto one of the national bestseller lists, and Faye had switched her allegiance to Simon and Schuster. Her reasons were entirely practical. Under all the outsized jewelry and flowing, not-quite-over-being-a-hippie clothes, Faye Dallmer was a supremely practical woman. Simon and Schuster paid advances in six figures. That was all she needed to know.

Faye went back to the door to the garage one more time. The Jeep was still gone. The Escort was still there. At this point, it didn’t matter so much if the Jeep had been stolen by kids or professional car thieves. If it had been stolen by thieves, she ought to call the police on principle. If it had been stolen by kids, she had to worry that they’d had an accident in it The Jeep didn’t go missing for hours at a time like this. The kids always brought it back and parked it where it belonged before she’d even had a chance to worry about it.

Faye went back to Zara Anne. The phone was on a small table between the couch and the biggest armchair. Faye sat down on the armchair and began punching numbers into the pad.

“I’m going to call the town police,” she said. “We should have done this hours ago. There may have been an accident”

“You told me not to worry,” Zara Anne said stubbornly.

The phone rang and rang in Faye’s ear. Then it was picked up and Faye recognized the voice of Rita Venotti, who seemed to have been on the night shift at the police department before forever.

“Oh, Rita,” Faye said. And then she explained, in detail, so that Rita wouldn’t say what Zara Anne had, that it had happened before, that there was nothing to worry about.

“I could send somebody out,” Rita said. “I could send Danny Hazelton. Would that be all right?”

“That would be fine,” Faye said.

“We don’t have any accidents over the radio,” Rita said. “I don’t think you have to worry about that. We monitor the state police all the time.”

“Maybe it was professional thieves, then,” Faye said. “Although it hardly seems possible.”

“I know, I know,” Rita said. “It hardly does seem possible. It used to be you never had to worry about any of that out here.”

Faye put the phone down. Zara Anne was wielding the remote, punching channels as if her life depended on them. Sometimes, late at night, she settled on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and watched the PTL club as if it were a documentary. Now she had found a rerun of an ancient Hawaii Five-O episode. Jack Lord was looking just as tense and phony as he ever had.

“Zara Anne,” Faye said carefully. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about some things. I’ve been meaning to talk to you about us.”

“You’ve been meaning to throw me out,” Zara Anne said. “I could see it coming.”

“I don’t think it’s a question of throwing you out,” Faye said. “I think it’s more of the order of, well—”