Swan Peak (Dave Robicheaux 17)

“Thirty-one years ago Ridley Wellstone’s stepdaughter was mixed up with a porn actor. She and her mother were both murdered. The murder remains unsolved.”

“Where’s Clete?”

“In his apartment, up at the main house.”

“You guys stay out of this.”

“I’d love to. Would you pass on your sentiments to the Wellstones?” I replied.

CHAPTER 26

THE PREVIOUS AFTERNOON, after Troyce had talked to the bartender at the nightclub, he had been silent all the way back to the cottage. Then he had left Candace by herself and gone away for three hours, claiming he had to get the truck serviced and to buy pike-fish tackle at Seeley Lake. This morning he had gotten up in the false dawn and had showered in cold water because the pilot had gone out on the tank; in the frigid temperature of the kitchen, without shoes or a shirt on, he had fixed breakfast for both of them but had left most of his uneaten on the plate. Minutes later, without explanation, he had driven off in the first pink touch of sunrise on the birch trees, leaving her a fifty-dollar bill to buy lunch in case he wasn’t back by noon.

But he returned four hours later, a lump of cartilage working in his jaw, the armpits of his red shirt dark with sweat. He clenched his stomach, his face white around the mouth with discomfort.

“You sick?” she said.

“I got to go to the can,” he replied.

Ten minutes later, he came out of the bathroom, drying his hands on a towel, blowing out his breath. “I feel like I was poisoned. What’d I eat last night?”

“What you always do — steak.”

“Anyway, I’m okay now. Let’s pack it up,” he said.

“We just got here.”

“That’s right. We been here. So let’s go see some other place.”

“Like where?”

“Glacier Park, then all points west. Next stop, the Cascade Mountains. How would you like that?”

“Where have you been, Troyce?”

“Here and yon, taking care of this and that. Come on, gal, let’s head ’em up and move ’em out.”

“Were you following that guy?”

“Which guy?”

“The bartender, the one that looks like he’s got strands of black wire combed across his head.”

“I just been taking care of business, that’s all. You don’t take care of business, somebody will take care of it for you, and that don’t usually work out too good.”

Fifteen minutes later, through the windshield of the truck, she watched the sun-spangled canopy of birches sweeping by overhead, the shadows of their leaves netting the dashboard and her skin and clothes, the ethereal blue-gray beauty of the lake and Swan Peak disappearing behind the truck. She looked at Troyce’s chiseled profile and cupped her hand on the point of his shoulder and tightened her fingers on the bone and muscle. But she didn’t speak, not at first, because she couldn’t find the vocabulary that would make Troyce understand her sense of apprehension.

“You fixing to tell me something?” he asked.

“No, because I haven’t figured it all out. When I do, I’ll tell you,” she replied.

“How am I supposed to read that, Candace?”

“I never had any understanding of the big mysteries and why things happen and why people get hurt and do the things they do to each other. I don’t think figuring it out comes with age, either. Otherwise we’d want to listen to old people. But we don’t, because most of them act selfish and childish and have to be tolerated and taken care of. I can’t even figure out us, much less anything that’s bigger than us.”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as though he was either amused by her words or honestly trying to understand them. He blew his horn and swung around a truck on the two-lane, pressing the accelerator to the floor, barely getting back in before he hit the double yellow warning lines. “You’re too deep for the likes of me,” he said.

“I made you a promise, but I’m not keeping it,” she said.