DU PRÉ WOKE UP smelling Madelaine’s hair. The phone. The damned telephone was ringing.
Maria, my daughter who lives in the library and I only see by the light of her computer screen? A beer bust? I don’t think so.
Du Pré fumbled for the light, got out of bed, went round to the other side, and lifted the receiver. Madelaine stirred.
“’Lo,” he said.
“Du Pré?” It was Michelle Leuci’s voice.
“Yes, it is me,” said Du Pré.
“Rollie just called,” she said. “Another one.”
“What other one?” said Du Pré.
“Another murder,” said Michelle. “A young woman, an anthropologist from Canada.”
“Oh,” said Du Pré.
“She was strangled. She had been working late, researching in one of the collections. Now, the security there is tight, so whoever did it had to have the right ID and code cards—if I have that story right.”
Du Pré was thinking of Benetsee standing on the Canadian rock with the bullroarer thundering.
“Okay,” said Du Pré, “so where was Chase?”
“They’re looking for him.”
“When did this happen?”
“Sometime early evening,” said Michelle. “She was last seen alive about six P.M. The ME’s report will take a day or so.”
Six would be …four here. Jesus Christ.
Du Pré remembered the angle of the sunlight. Benetsee had been there close to four, on that rock.
Goddamn that old man.
“I will try to call Lucky in the morning,” Du Pré said. There was a phone number in that letter, he thought.
“Where was she found?”
“Rest room. Apparently the killer was just waiting behind the door. Strangled her with some piece of rawhide.”
“Rawhide?” said Du Pré. That stuff was usually pretty stiff.
Michelle said, “Bart’s flying me back…Just a minute. He wants to talk to you.”
The phone was shuffled.
“Yo,” said Bart. “Listen, Gabriel…”
“I get your house buttoned up for you,” said Du Pré before Bart had a chance to ask. “The doors and windows come, I put the doors on backward and the windows in upside down,” said Du Pré.
“Thanks,” said Bart, hanging up.
The telephone rang again.
“Yo,” said Du Pré.
“Papa,” said Maria, “did Bart’s lady find you okay?”
“Yes,” said Du Pré. “Hey, how come I never see you anymore?’ ‘
“I’m sorry, Papa,” said Maria. “You know I want to do well there. There will be all of these people went to really good schools, you know, and…”
“Yeah,” said Du Pré. She will not be a little Métis girl much longer, my Maria. What she wants is not here now. But she will come back.
“Why don’t we go on a picnic for lunch, just you and me, eh?” said Maria.
“Yes,” said Du Pré. “I miss you.”
“I’m sorry, Papa,” said Maria softly. She hung up.
Madelaine was sitting up in the bed, mussed and beautiful.
“Who was those?” she asked.
Du Pré told her.
“Lots of nuts in Washington, D.C.,” said Madelaine.
At midday, Du Pré pulled up to his house. Maria was sitting on the porch. She had a big hamper, and she was smiling widely. She walked to the car and got in and leaned over and kissed Du Pré on the cheek.
The day was warming. This late in the year, it took some time to get past the night’s frost and then the sun was golden. The grasshoppers had died, the mosquitoes, too.
They drove for an hour, all the way to a favorite place, where a spring bubbled up from below a gray-yellow scarp near the barely traveled road. There was a pool there, thick with willows and small, darting trout. Indians centuries ago had carved pictographs in the soft limestone. Vanished peoples, no one knew who they were. There was one worn, dark carving that looked sort of like a Viking ship, but it had been dismissed as a fraud by experts. Still, it looked older than all of the other carvings.
Maria had made tuna salad and a bowl of crudité and had brought some pop for herself and some whiskey for Du Pré.
“It is a lovely day, Papa,” said Maria.
He looked at his pretty daughter. I don’t understand any of my women, but I am glad they like me, Du Pré thought.
“I know you are working very hard,” said Du Pré.
Maria sighed. “I am scared,” she said, “I think when I get to the college in the East, I will fail, you know. I hardly know anything.”
Du Pré laughed. Maria could read a book and then, months later, tell you what page and paragraph held some obscure bit of information you might have expressed an interest in. Get out of the way, you Muffles and Hilaries, you have little moccasin tracks right up your backs. Not that my daughter will wear moccasins, or has since she was twelve. That was when she tired of going to powwows. Indian bullshit, she had said. Du Pré’s eyes opened wide and his brows rose. He was supposed to wash her mouth out with soap, but all he could do was laugh.
Then a couple years later, she had decided to be a badass, wearing torn clothes and boots and chewing gum so loudly she rattled the windows. Got caught with a bunch of kids drinking, maybe doping. Let her school-work slide. Ran around with guys so dumb, they’d be in Deer Lodge Prison as soon as the courts could arrange it. A month after their eighteenth birthday, for their thirtieth stolen car.
But that had all changed. When Du Pré was figuring out, slow, since he was so dumb, who had killed Bart Fascelli’s long-vanished brother Gianni, Maria had changed. Perhaps she saw the hurt Du Pré had at finding that his father, Catfoot, had done it. Catfoot was dead more than twenty-five years, but it still hurt.
And then Bart had said he’d pay to send her to any school she could get into for as long as she cared to go and kept her grades up.
A straight, bright road from nowhere to the big world.
The dumb boys, the gum, the insolence evaporated. Maria’s face was pressed to her computer screen, keyboard, books.
Bart had more money than all but a handful of countries, as nearly as Du Pré could figure it. Almost killed him, but he was doing well.
“What’s Bart’s girlfriend like?” said Maria.
“I think she is a tough cop with a heart of butter,” said Du Pré. “I hope Bart don’t fuck it up.”
“He will if he starts thinking he’s not good enough for her.”
“Yes,” said Du Pré.
They drove on back home.
Du Pré walked past the living room a couple of hours later. Maria was on the telephone, practically yelling.
“I tell you, you deaf bastard,” she said, “you screw this up—I know you, you start to think that you are not good enough for her—I won’t go to college!”
She slammed the phone down. Du Pré looked at her in awe. He grinned.
“Bart’s the kind of guy needs a good woman,” said Maria, “so I was just telling him what to do and seeing that he does it.”
“Oh,” said Du Pré.
“I read his label pretty well,” said Maria, “all the fine print, too.”
“Oh,” said Du Pré again.
Du Pré turned to go.
“Papa,” said Maria.
Du Pré halted.
“I read yours well, too. You are both nice men. I love you.”
She smiled sunnily.
Du Pré nodded and walked away without saying anything, but he was feeling very lucky.