“There’s only one thing missing,” said the dragonfly. Anna blinked and focused. Jonah, clean and scrubbed from white to pink, was addressing those on the bench.
“Bob?” Ridley asked.
“What makes that the most ridiculous thing Ridley has said in his entire career under my tutelage?” Jonah asked his audience.
“Nobody misses Bob?” Adam suggested.
“Gold star to the man on the top shelf,” Jonah said. “I shall provide what’s missing. It is always left to the pilot.” He opened the door to the antechamber widely enough to stick his arm through, then pulled something into the sauna. “Voilà!” he said and held up a six-pack of Leinenkugel beer.
Anna found the energy to raise her head. “You are the handsomest man on the island,” she said sincerely and was rewarded with the first bottle.
Heaven is constructed of small things, and Anna was grateful to have a bit of it that night.
Nobody did miss Bob and Anna chose not to wonder where he was, why he would miss a chance to clean up.
Why he would give up an opportunity to see Robin naked.
Robin washed her hair and body. The girl had as close to a perfect figure as Anna could imagine, and she loved the way the brown hair, heavy with water, slithered familiarly over the square shoulders as Medusa’s pet snakes might have. Unless the men with whom they shared the sauna moved in rarer circles than Anna thought they did, they probably hadn’t seen a woman’s body that exquisitely made either. Perhaps because of this, or because of Robin’s youth and their genuine affection for her, or perhaps because the sauna demanded it, they never infringed on her privacy by the smallest notice or attention. Between sips of beer, Jonah lathered his head again. Ridley poured water slowly over it so the pilot could rinse effectively. They chatted about the weather and when they might get in the air next and the need to haul more fuel up for the generator.
Bob Menechinn would have poisoned the very air and water.
Not to mention that Anna never ever wanted to see him naked. On the ice, she had felt him to be capable of watching her die without lifting a finger. Yet he had saved her life. She felt he was indifferent – or pleased – that Katherine Huff was dead. Yet he had expressed sorrow. Half a dozen times, she had felt he was passively stalking Robin. Yet he had never done – or even said – anything improper, or at least nowhere as improper as Jonah. She finished her beer. Her chin was back on her knee, her eyes were half closed.
“Would you like me to wash your hair?”
Robin was looking up from below, the gentle glow from the candle stealing fifteen years from her face and touching her cheeks with clear amber. Molly, Anna’s older sister and a psychiatrist in New York City, had once told Anna there were only two things mental health professionals could agree on for the cure of depression: exercise and helping others.
“Thanks,” Anna said, unsure whether she accepted the offer for Robin’s good or because she had doubts about whether she could hold her arms in the air long enough to work up any suds. Where the harness of the Sked had weighed heaviest, her shoulders felt like melted wax. Come morning, they would hurt like hell.
She sat on the lower bench and did nothing while her head was doused and rubbed and soaped and rinsed. Had she been a cat – a water-loving cat – she would have purred.
“Hey!” A hand caught her arm. She’d fallen asleep under Robin’s kind ministrations and would have tipped over had Adam not caught her.
“I think I’m fully baked,” she said. “I’m heading back.”
“Do you want somebody to walk you to the bunkhouse?” Adam asked.
Anna did not. Being sleepy after stew, beer, sauna and playing in the snow for fourteen hours did not constitute frailty. She left them sweating on the wooden benches and slipped into the anteroom. Steam rose off her body in lazy wisps and curls. Under the light of the forty-watt bulb, her skin glowed pink. She slipped her feet into her clogs, wrapped her towel around her and opened the door to the world.
The wind had grown neither fiercer nor kinder but continued to fret the island with snow-filled gusts. Snowflakes whirled and dashed through the light, but whether they were new from heaven or snatched up from the nearest roof for this occasion Anna couldn’t tell. Bitingly clean air entered her lungs, and she no longer felt quite so tired. With windchill, the temperature couldn’t have been more than a degree or two above zero yet she was not cold. This was a phenomenon of the sauna she’d not experienced to such an extent before. A feeling akin to invulnerability came over her. For the fun of feeling it completely, she walked a few yards from the light. In the darkness, near the carpenter’s shop, she dropped her towel and turned her face into the wind. For a minute, it was close to flying.
Then it was cold.
She was turning to run for the bunkhouse when she heard a metallic clunk. Nature made a myriad of noises and could mimic most sounds men made. Metal on metal wasn’t one of them. Rewrap-ping herself in her pitiful scrap of terry cloth, she held her hand over her eyes in hopes of blocking the sting of the snow. The shop was the only building at this end of the housing area.
Forgetting she wasn’t in uniform, wasn’t armed and did not have to check out things that went bump in the night, she walked the three yards to the carpenter’s shop, opened the door and switched on the light.
The fetid reek of the windigo’s breath hit her. Bob Menechinn was hunkered over the Sked. The garbage bags that had served as Katherine’s shroud had been removed. Not torn or cut off, neatly removed and set to one side. On top of them were Bob’s gloves. The parka Katherine had died in was unzipped and folded open.
The image of a werewolf eating human flesh smashed into the view of man and corpse and Anna’s tired mind reeled. A gust of wind snatched the towel from her. The icy tongue of the windigo slid over her butt and up her spine.
20
“Doing a little corpse desecrating in your spare time?” Anna asked.
“I was saying good-bye.”
“You couldn’t say good-bye with her parka zipped?”
“I was looking for the cell phone.” Bob rocked back on his heels, and Anna could see the first shock of her appearance wearing off.
“You were looking for the cell phone in the dark,” Anna said.
Menechinn raked her with his eyes, trying to use her nakedness against her. She chose not to notice. She couldn’t help but notice what Mother Nature was doing to her backside. The wind was as a cat-o’-nine-tails against her bare flesh.
“What’s with the light?” was called across the wind. Adam. He had left the sauna and noticed the shop light on. In seconds, he was behind Anna, serving as a windbreak. He retrieved her towel and handed it to her. Anna wrapped it around her body and was surprised what the addition of this paltry protection did for her courage.
“Hey, Bob,” Adam said.
Bob stood and dusted imaginary snow or dust from his coat front. Moving deliberately, he took up his gloves, looked piously down on what had once been his graduate student and moved his lips as if in prayer.
Adam stepped so close, Anna could feel his bare chest against her back. The gesture wasn’t sexual and she wasn’t offended. The body heat was welcome.
Finished, Bob turned to them and, pulling on his gloves, said, “Katherine and I were closer than just teacher and student.”
Anna felt a shiver down her spine and realized it had nothing to do with her nervous system. The muscles in Adam’s chest and abdomen flinched, as if he’d taken a rabbit punch.