“All right, Ruth.” She patted Ruth’s hand. “I’ll just pop over and take a look.”
Ruth propped herself on one elbow. “Take my poncho,” she said. “Your coat is soaked through. And take that hat on the peg.”
She heard the back door open, letting in the violent sounds of storm. “Vera?”
“Yes?”
“Knock on the glass door in back. That way Nancy can see who it is.”
“All right, Ruth.”
“Goodbye, Vera.”
“Back in a minute, Ruth.” Ruth heard the door close. The storm’s noise continued unabated. Then she realized it was her heart’s wild rhythm. She held her breath, listening for Vera’s return.
She heard a scream and shots and the sound of glass shattering.
She rolled over. “It was so noisy out there,” she muttered. “With the wind and the rain I couldn’t hear anything. I was ill.”
She snuggled deeper into the covers. Vera Frye? Good heavens! What was she doing out at that hour in that weather? She slept.
The charge was manslaughter. Surely Mrs. Frye had been the first-reported “prowler.” Old people living alone could be affected mentally, the judge decided. The sentence was suspended.
The Lowells put the house into the hands of a realtor and moved. Ruth made a deal with the same realtor and swapped the house for the place next door, pointing out that her own house with its established landscaping was by far the more attractive purchase.
She began moving in as soon as the deal was consummated (it had been accomplished without her having to see Nancy again, and Ruth was grateful, knowing the guilt Nancy would feel at having shot Ruth’s best friend).
The needlepoint occupied the living room wall. It felt right that it should still be there.
Changes
by Stephen Wasylyk
Fifteen minutes from home, the front, blowing in faster than predicted, squeezed the Cessna into an ever-narrowing space between the churning clouds and the green mountaintops. The gray opaque wall of rain hit just as Klauder skimmed the last crest and dropped into the valley, Otto’s booming voice in his earphones telling him he was cleared straight in. Fine — if he could see the runway. Sweating, he kicked rudder, fishtailing to peer through the side windows, picked up the black strip more through luck than ability, and wrestled the gust-tossed Cessna to a bouncy landing.
Helping Sal, Otto’s mechanic, tie it down in the wind-driven rain, he should have been pleased he’d escaped a hospital bed or worse, but during the entire flight from Baltimore, he’d had the feeling that this was one of those days that start out badly and continue downhill.
A highly disapproving Otto — big, crewcut, and khaki clad — tossed a towel at him when he entered the office.
“You just used up a good portion of your luck, dummy. If you don’t concentrate on getting your instrument rating, we’ll be scraping you off a mountain. Your good friend, our esteemed and respected sheriff, said to have you call as soon as you landed. If you landed.”
Klauder finished the entry in his logbook. “Meg tell you why?”
“She didn’t have to. Know a guy named Fen Dexter?”
“Only to say hello. He lives across the lake.”
“Lived. Drowned day before yesterday after you took off.”
“I doubt if she needs me for a drowning. Hand me the phone.”
Meg sounded relieved. “About time, Klauder. I could see you flying around in those clouds, all confused, not knowing exactly where you were. Sort of like your love life.”
“I’ve never been confused, either while flying or in my love life.”
“They all say that as they climb out of the wreckage,” she said smugly. “How are you fixed for time?”
“I can spare all you need. Is it about Fen Dexter? Otto told me he drowned.”
She sighed. “Dead men don’t drown, Klauder.”
The day slid down another notch.
Sheriff Meg Boniface was waiting in her new office, cream-painted walls, walnut furniture, and beige rug on the floor. She’d slimmed down since her bypass surgery. Not the only change. A bit more gray in the bobbed hair, a few more lines in the square-jawed face. But the back was still ramrod straight and the uniform crisp.
Her department had new quarters — a yellow brick, one story building on a landscaped lot — complete with the latest in high-tech electronics. Klauder had said it made him feel old, since none of it had been around when he’d been on the force in Philadelphia. Makes me feel ancient, too, Meg had said, but people are still people and a scumball is still a scumball. Until the androids start walking around, no microchip can change that.
The county commissioners had no choice. Condos being built along the lake, the ski lift doing a landslide winter business, houses sprouting in fields that had always grown corn. The sheriff’s department had to expand — and Meg could easily have budgeted for a full-time detective, but she still kept him as investigative consultant, with both well aware that since his wildfowl carvings had brought him more money than he’d ever spend, helping her out had become a hobby, his per diem contributed to the department fund.
She looked pointedly at the rain-streaked window. “You lucked out.”
“Not really. Over strange territory I’d have turned back, but I knew exactly how many mountains I had to cross.”
She half smiled. “That’s more than the rest of us can say.”
He settled in one of her guest chairs. “So tell me about Fen Dexter. All I know is he had one of the nicest houses on the lake.”
She tented her hands. “Fen was only fifty-eight, but he retired from his sales manager’s job after his wife died a couple of years ago. Had a little money, he said, and there was no point in working for himself. No children, you see. Had a little broad-beam skiff he fixed up with a canopy, a deck chair, and an electric motor, so each day he’d run out a few hundred yards, turn off the motor, rig up his tackle, settle down in the deck chair, and drink beer. Often as not, he’d fall asleep, but then he wasn’t much interested in catching fish anyway. I always felt he was just marking time until he joined his wife.”
Not too many years since he’d gone through that himself. She’d gone out of her way to bring him back. Fen hadn’t been that lucky.
“About all we’ve ever had on the lake is small outboards and sailboats, but since they built those condos at the north end, we’ve had a slew of new people with nineteen, twenty footers with big twins racing around.”
“I’ve noticed. They don’t bother me in the cove, but I’ve seen and heard them. The lake is your jurisdiction, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, we have a police boat, but we don’t run it except on summer weekends when traffic gets heavy. Anyway, day before yesterday, a couple of wiseass kids in a sport cruiser thought it would be real cool to shake Fen up, so they open it up, head for him, and turn at the last second. The big wake just rolls that skiff over, which they think is hilarious.”
“I’m sure you’ve refined their sense of humor.”
“Oh, they won’t be laughing for the rest of the summer, even though they did us a favor. No telling how long Fen might have drifted around out there with no one the wiser. Fellow named Gegenbach saw it happen, so he ran his boat over to give Fen a hand, expecting him to surface spitting and cursing a blue streak, but no Fen. He’s beginning to think Fen is trapped under the skiff when he sees the body, drags it aboard, heads for shore, and calls us, thinking that Fen had been knocked out and drowned. So did we until we noticed the hole in his chest. Blood all washed away, you see. Fen was dead when he hit the water. Until we get the autopsy results, we won’t know when he was shot and how, and maybe how he got out there with his fishing rod in hand.”