Kate excavated a Spanish shawl, a calf-length velvet skirt, a black silk blouse, an antique concho belt, and silver filigree earrings. Classic Southwest fashion brought into vogue in the 1920s by the small international set who surrounded D.H. and Frieda Lawrence when they lived in Taos. Ruby braided her mother’s hair into a coil, looping and pinning it with a large silver barrette at the back of her neck.
“Pretty,” she said approvingly, dabbing Kate’s lips and cheeks with rouge.
Kate lifted her skirt and stepped lightly out of the house, gliding across the yard, turning back to Ruby to wave.
Ruby grinned, happy with her secret. Soon, she’d be gone. That was certain. So far, it was her secret. But Quinn would soon know. She’d written him that morning.
As Kate approached the clinic, she looked at the clouds stretched out in filaments. Gold and red kite strings. The land and sky were consolation for everything. A vast and changing altar.
“Hello, Elaine,” Kate said. She wondered if David had discussed Ruby’s recent incident.
“We’re almost closed unless it’s an emergency,” Elaine said.
Kate blushed. “David is expecting me.”
The doctor and Hector Trujillo emerged from an exam room. Kate glanced from Hector to Elaine. Although impossible to know who knew what, Kate assumed everyone knew everything. Likely Hector had mentioned the showdown with Troy and the scratch on Ruby’s cheek. Likely the entire mountain knew about it.
“Kate and I are going to the opera,” David announced boyishly. “Do you like opera, Hector?”
“I am sure it is a beautiful thing,” he said. “A thing to see before we die, no?”
“You two better get going,” Elaine prompted.
Elaine was invaluable to David but her excessive sense of duty made him feel guilty. Then again, everything made him feel guilty. A list that now included his failure to invite Hector Trujillo to the opera.
He stepped aside to let Kate pass down the hall to the back of the clinic into his office.
“You look nice,” he said.
Kate nodded appreciatively. “Nice” sounded sincere. She sat in one of the mismatched leather club chairs that faced the doctor’s disorderly desk. He slid onto his swivel chair and began to jot notes from his examination of Hector Trujillo. He had ordered a CAT-scan for Hector’s lungs. He was worried about Hector.
Kate studied the photographs on the wall of a youthful half-naked David Tanner surrounded by rivers, rapids, waterfalls.
“You’re a brave soul,” she said.
“It looks scary but …” He eyeballed the picture of his matchstick kayak in the pounding rapids of Lava Falls. “No, it is scary. I mean, it depends. If it’s Lava Falls and the Colorado, it’s serious. Lava Falls is a ten.”
His modesty surprised her.
“On the Colorado, the rapids are in a class of their own. Ten is mother of mothers.” He sighed with pleasure. “Once in the arms of the river, the river master says, Flow is the only way to go.”
Kate sighed too, recalling the happy outings on the Salmon with Ruby and her cousins. Mostly flat water, nothing very scary.
After he finished his notes and shut down the computer, David checked the lock on the Phoenix floor safe. He locked his bar refrigerator and file cabinets. He bolted the window and chained his outside door.
“Expecting someone?” Kate smiled. She never locked anything.
“I was recently robbed,” he said.
Shock registered on Kate’s face. Activity in the local underground economy included counterfeiters, heroin and pot importers, meth manufacturers, a variety of illegal goods, and caravans of undocumented transients. However, robbery went against local code. It was disrespectful to take a poor man’s money or things. People got drunk and drove off mountain roads. Or sickened to death from pesticides in the orchards and fields. Or overdosed on drugs. Or got fatally shot. But robbery was extremely rare.
“They copped some drugs,” David shrugged. “I try to keep a good supply on hand.”
Kate knew the farmers and their families depended on Dr. Tanner. They protected him. They would never steal from him. “But who?”
“Teenagers,” he said.