“Thank you,” I praised her, rubbing her head. “I hope you think it was worth all that effort.”
It was a gold link bracelet, a heavy piece, big enough to be a man’s. I pushed the couch back against the wall and sat down to examine the trophy. Two amethysts were set among the links. I turned them over but the backs of the stones hadn’t been inscribed.
I tossed it from one hand to the other. It looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t think of any recent male guests who might have lost it. What men had visited me lately? Robin had come over on Saturday, but he hadn’t gone near the couch. Terry Finchley and Roland Montgomery had sat there when they came to accuse me of torching the Prairie Shores Hotel on Saturday, but it was hard to imagine how they could have dropped it so it fell underneath. It would be so much more likely for something someone dropped to land in the cushions if one of them had lost it. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask Finchley.
The only way I could really see it getting down underneath like that was if someone had been sleeping on the sofa bed—when it was pulled out there was a gap between the end of the springs and the floor. Guests of mine had occasionally forgotten a watch or a ring that they’d absently laid on the floor after going to sleep.
Cerise and Elena had been my only recent overnight guests. I thought I’d know if Elena had been carting around such a valuable knickknack, but maybe not. She could have stolen it, after all, hoping to trade it for liquor. Maybe it had belonged to Cerise’s boyfriend and she wore it the way girls did when they went steady in my high school. Maybe I should drive down to Lawndale and show it to Zerlina since it was much likelier that Cerise had owned it than Terry Finchley. But would Zerlina know? And if Maisie was standing militantly in front of her, would she even say?
I was feeling better but not well enough to deal with Maisie. Anyway, the bracelet was scarcely the most urgent item on the agenda. I stuffed it in my jeans pocket and looked down at Peppy’s expectant face.
“You’ve been treated badly the last few days by the people who ought to be worshiping you. You’d like to go to the lake, wouldn’t you?”
She thumped her tail happily.
37
Hunting for Rabbits
I walked along the beach, Peppy dancing around me, dropping sticks for me to throw. It was almost October. The water had grown too cool for me, but she could swim happily for another month if we didn’t get any heavy storms.
I ambled along to the rocky promontory jutting east into the water. When I sat to stare at the water Peppy jumped down the rocks to explore for rabbits. It was a pretty steep drop, but she occasional found them burrowing in the boulders along the shore.
The water had a flat silvery sheen, a flinty shade that you don’t see in summer. You can tell the seasons by the color of the lake, even if nothing else in the landscape changes. When it’s calm the water seems infinitely enticing, offering to hold you, to caress you until you sleep, as though there were no cold depths, no sudden furies that could dash you helpless against the rocks.
It was helplessness I feared. A life like Elena’s, bobbing along without any channel markers to guide it. Or my own the last few days, nibbling circumspectly at the edge of the dam but not daring to dive clean in. Letting myself wait on Ralph MacDonald, for instance. I didn’t even know if it was out of fear of him, fear of his veiled threats I’d been doing so. Maybe I was just too worn by my aunt’s recent escapades to have energy left for taking charge of my own affairs. It was an ego-salvaging theory, at any rate.
I should overcome my repugnance and pay some attention to Elena’s problems, though. It wasn’t fair to her or to Furey to just hand her affairs over to him. At least I could hunt out Zerlina to ask again if she knew anyone who would shelter Elena. My shoulders drooped at the prospect.
I could stop by the Central District to see if Finchley recognized the bracelet—and to check on whether Furey had turned up anything on Elena. If he hadn’t, I’d organize my own search in the morning, maybe call in the Streeter Brothers to help out. And I could go see Roz—it was time I went on the offensive with Ralph MacDonald. Whether he was connected personally with the fire or not, he had something on his mind; I’d stood passively by far too long.
I stood up abruptly and called to the dog. Peppy gained the top in three easy jumps and danced around eagerly. When she saw we were getting in the car instead of returning to the beach, her tail sagged between her legs and she slowed to a painful crawl.
The Chevy was crawling pretty painfully too. I’d put in more transmission fluid, checked the oil, looked with a semblance of intelligence at the plugs and the alternator. Tomorrow I’d have to make the time to bring it to a garage. And make the money for paying a mechanic and hiring a rental car in the interim.