Leaning on the kitchen counter, I smoked a cigarette, worked on the day. The piano gleamed in the light of the kitchen lamp. It wasn't as good a piano as I had in New York, but it was fine, an upright with a strong, clear sound. A guy from Albany with a key to the cabin came out a few days before I came up each time and tuned it for me; and I kept the heat on low in the front room all winter, so the piano did all right. Those things cost me. But the reason I came up here and the reason I played were pretty much the same, and this setup worked for me.
I finished the last of the coffee. If I spent the day practicing, the new Mozart might begin to sound like music.
Music; sleep; walking in the silent winter woods: that sounded like a good day to me.
But I thought about Eve Colgate's eyes as she told me about what she'd lost. And I thought about Tony's eyes, and about other kinds of loss. There were so many kinds.
Halfway up 30 toward Eve Colgate's there was a 7-Eleven.
I bought more coffee and some other things, drank the coffee in the car with the Mozart Adagio in the CD player.
If I couldn't play it at least I could listen to it.
Eve Colgate's yellow house seemed to stand more somberly on the hilltop under the gray sky than it had yesterday in the sunlight, but it was still a vaguely comforting sight, like an old friend at a funeral.
I parked in the drive behind the blue pickup. As I started inward the porch the black dog raced, barking and yapping, around the side of the house. He stopped when I did, cocked his head, wagged his tail tentatively a few times; but when I started forward again he snarled and dug his feet in as he had the morning before. His breath was visible on the cold air.
Eve Colgate came around the house, wiping her hands on a stained red sweatshirt. "Leo!" she called.
"Okay, Leo," I said. "You're tough. I know." I reached Into the 7-Eleven bag, brought out the doughnut I'd bought for him. "Come on." I squatted, held out a piece. He looked at it, looked at Eve Colgate. "It's okay," she said. He grabbed the piece of doughnut and inhaled it, wagged for more. I held out the rest. "Sit," I said. He didn't. I gave it to him anyway, dusted sugar from my gloves, scratched his ears.
"You can't buy him that easily," Eve Colgate said.
"I'm not in the market. I just want a friend." I straightened up, took the wrapped package from the back of my car. The dog escorted me up the drive, nuzzled Eve Colgate's hand when he reached her.
"Good boy." She scratched him absently. Her eyes swept over my face as though registering small changes since she'd last seen me. Then she looked at the package I was holding. "Come inside," she said.
I followed her through a vestibule where a yellow slicker hung on a peg into a single room running the width of the house. On the right was a kitchen, not new but ample and serviceable. On the left an antique dining table and chairs, carefully refinished, stood under the front window. There was a woodstove like mine on the hearth, its flue running up the fireplace chimney. A couch, an easy chair, a side table, a cedar chest on the bare, polished floor. A few framed watercolors—none of them Eva Nouvels—hung on the walls and on the mantel there was a china pitcher and bowl painted in the bright yellows and purples of spring.
I shrugged off my jacket, looked around for a place to put it. Eve took it from me, pausing as her eyes caught the worn shoulder holster with the .22 from the car slipped into it.
"Do you always wear that?"
"Yes." A long time ago I'd stopped answering that question with anything more elaborate.
She turned, hung my jacket in the vestibule. She pulled off her sweatshirt and hung it there, too. Under it she wore a thick white turtleneck tucked into flannel-lined jeans.
The air was warm, and pungent with cinnamon. There was music, too, strings. Schubert, maybe.
"Do you want coffee?" Eve asked. "I've been baking."
"Sounds great. Smells great."
She handed me a plate of sticky looking sweet rolls. "How do you take your coffee?"
"Black." I bootlegged a piece of roll for Leo, who was walking between my legs, head twisted to sniff at the plate.
I put the plate and the wrapped silver on the cedar chest, sat on the couch. Eve brought over coffee in two white mugs. She made good coffee; better than mine, much better than the 7-Eleven's. The rolls were warm and sweet and crunchy with walnuts.
She kicked off her shoes, sat cross-legged on the other end of the couch, her back against the armrest. "How's Tony?"
"I haven't seen him today." I could have guessed how he was, but she could guess, too.
"The police are looking for his brother, aren't they?"
"That's what I hear."
She poured cream into her coffee from a round jug. "Tony used to work for me, before his father got sick. Spring, summer, and fall, as a laborer. I was sorry to lose him when he took over the restaurant." She cupped her hands around her coffee. "I don't have anything to offer him, except sympathy and money. He won't want
my sympathy. He won't want my money either, but he might need it." She sipped at her coffee, was quiet a moment. "I'll say this to Tony later, but I'll tell you now. If there's anything he needs—lawyers, whatever it is—I can take care of it."
"Why tell me?"
"So somebody with a more level head than Tony will know what options he has."
"You're right," I said. "He won't want it."
"Trouble can be expensive. Especially . . ." she paused. "Do you think Jimmy could have killed that man? I hardly know Jimmy. When he was young Tony brought him by occasionally."
"Could have?" I said. "He could have. I don't know anyone who couldn't, for a strong enough reason."
She fixed me with her pale, disturbing eyes. "Do you really believe that?"
"It's true. Reasons vary, but everybody's got one he thinks is good enough. If you're lucky you never get the chance to find out what yours is."
She explored my face briefly, then looked away, as though she hadn't found something she had hoped, but not expected, to find.
The flashing, contrapuntal figures of the music filled the air around us. I put down my coffee, picked up the wrapped package. I laid it on the couch between us, unwound the paper, watched her face as she watched my hands.
At first she didn't react. Then her face drained of color and her hand went slowly to her mouth. She stared at the candlesticks and tray resting on the crumpled paper as though she needed to count every vein in every leaf engraved on them.
She reached out a hand. I stopped it with mine. "Don't touch them. There may be prints."
She looked surprised, as though she'd forgotten I was there. She drew back her hand, shook her head slowly. "They were a wedding gift from Henri's mother," she half whispered. She looked away, hugged her chest. Her face was still pale but her voice was stronger as she said, "I deal with my memories in the way I can. I kept these, but I haven't looked at them in thirty years."
I drank my coffee, gave her time.
"I'm sorry," I said. "You had to identify them. I didn't realize it would be hard."
"No," she said, shaking her head again. "It's all right. What do we do now?"
"Two things. We try to lift prints from these, and we try to find the blond girl who fenced them."
"What if she's not from around here?"
"I have a feeling she is. She could have gotten more for things like these in New York, or even Albany or Boston; if she's not local, why fence them here?" I put my mug down. "You know, both finding the girl and identifying the prints would be a lot easier if you'd report this to the police."
She flushed angrily. "And when they found her and my paintings, the whole world would know who I am."