Blowing Smoke (16 page)

I
whirled around. Sinclair was holding a bolt-action rifle. The woman grabbed the binoculars back from me and scurried away, pausing every now and then to look over her shoulder. Probably to make sure I wasn't coming after her. In a short while, she disappeared into the lodge.

“I don't know who sent you, and I don't care,” he said. “What I do know is that you're upsetting people, and I can't have that.”

I gestured toward the weapon. “That's not very peaceful of you.”

“Sometimes peace needs to be protected.” Sinclair took a couple of steps back, but he was still aiming his rifle right at my midsection. “I want you to get in your car and drive out of here. And I don't want you coming back.”

The boat I'd been watching was moving on the water now at a good clip. It dodged another motorboat, then headed into the open waterway. I wondered where the hell Humphrey was going.

“First tell me where Pat Humphrey is heading and I will.”

“I don't think you're in a position to insist on anything,” Sinclair said, emphasizing his point by jabbing me in the ribs with the barrel of his rifle again.

That was his mistake.

First Geoff had pointed his Glock at me, and now here was Sinclair with his rifle doing the same thing. On another day I might have been scared, on another day I might have left. But not today. Today I was pissed. Sometimes there are definite advantages to being in a really bad mood.

“Don't you know you're not supposed to poke people with that,” I snapped. “That's for shooting deer.”

Then, before Sinclair knew what was happening, I'd grabbed the barrel of the rifle and wrenched it out of his hands. Sinclair's jaw went slack with surprise as I aimed the weapon at him.

“How do you like it?”

He put his hands in the air palms out and began backing away. “Please don't shoot me,” he pleaded.

“Don't worry. Not that I wouldn't like to, but you're not worth serving jail time for,” I told him. Then I turned and started for the lake.

“What are you doing?” he cried as I flung the rifle as far away from the shore as I could manage.

“My own weapon-management program.” I watched it sink below the waves. “This way no one gets hurt.” In the mood I was in, I was afraid I might plug him if I had the chance.

When I turned back, Sinclair looked as if he were going to cry. He rubbed his hands across his chest. “Do you know how much that cost?”

“I thought Wal-Mart sold those things pretty cheap.”

He flushed. “You had no right to do that. None. I have to be able to defend my property.”

“Against what? Marauding squirrels?”

Sinclair drew himself up. “I will protect my clients' right to privacy to the death.”

“Oh, please. Now where did Pat Humphrey go?”

He took a deep breath and shrugged. “I didn't even know she was in that boat. You were the one looking through the glasses, not me.”

Talking with him was pointless. I started back up the grass, with Sinclair tagging along besides me. His skullcap kept slipping off his head, and he kept pushing it back on. Finally, he gave up, took it off, and put it in his pocket.

“Try bobby pins,” I told him. “It works for the Orthodox Jews.” When I got about twenty feet away from the lodge, I stopped and studied the area.

“You have to go,” Sinclair yammered in my ear. “If you don't go, I will be forced to call the police.”

I ignored him and concentrated on trying to figure out where Pat Humphrey had been staying. There were only two possibilities. The lodge or the cabins. But the lodge had only one entrance, which ruled that out, because Pat Humphrey would have had to have gone by me when she left and she hadn't. I checked the outside of the building just to make sure I hadn't overlooked an exit, then went inside.

“What are you doing?” Sinclair squeaked as I walked behind the counter and pulled the sign-in book toward me.

“What does it look like I'm doing?” I said as I quickly ran my finger down the pages.

Apparently the Center for Enlightened Self-Awareness hadn't caught on with the holiday crowd yet. Not many people had registered over the past month, and Pat Humphrey wasn't one of the people that had—or if she had, she hadn't done it under her own name. There was only one other thing I could think of to do: look in the cabins. Which meant I needed the passkey, because Sinclair was not about to help me. I scanned the area around the counter. It wasn't there. It wasn't by the mailboxes, either.

“Come out from there.” Sinclair slapped the counter. “Come out this instant. You're not allowed. That's for employees only.”

“Pretend I am.” The damned thing had to be here somewhere. And then I spotted it hanging on a hook over where the telephone was.

“Leave that key alone,” Sinclair cried as he reached over the counter and tried to grab it.

But I was faster. I got it first. Sinclair straightened up and dabbed at the beads of perspiration covering his forehead with the sleeve of his robe while I clenched the key in my hand.

I came out from behind the desk. “Tell me which cabin Pat Humphrey is staying in and I won't go into the others.”

“But she isn't here,” Sinclair wailed.

“Okay. Wrong tense. Was here. Fine,” I told Sinclair when he didn't answer. “If that's the way you want it.” I walked out the door and strode across the lawn. Sinclair, holding his robes up to mid-calf, dogged my steps.

“And even if she was, what difference could it possibly make,” a panting Sinclair demanded.

I skirted a tree stump. “I don't know. Maybe it's not going to make any, but as long as I'm here, I'd like to see for myself.”

“You mean you're going to go through all of these cabins?” Sinclair said as I knocked on the first one.

“That's the general idea.”

I waited for a response. When there wasn't any, I knocked again. A moment after that, I opened the door and went inside. The first thing I noticed was the musty smell, the same smell as the cabins in which I'd stayed in the Catskills when I was a kid.

“You should open a window and air this place out,” I said as I looked around.

The room was large. The furnishings consisted of matching made-up twin beds, two nightstands, an oval-shaped rag rug, two white dressers, and an old chair in the corner. The place looked untenanted, but I checked the closet and the dresser drawers to make sure. They were empty. I walked into the bathroom and peered into the medicine chest. Those shelves were empty, too.

“See,” Sinclair cried triumphantly as I closed the door to cabin one and went on to cabin two. “What did I tell you? You're just wasting your time.”

“Let me be the judge of that.”

But that was vacant as well. So was cabin number three.

“How long are you going to do this for?” Sinclair demanded of me while I trudged toward the fourth cabin.

“Until I find what I'm looking for.”

“The woman in here is sick,” Sinclair said when I reached it. “She's resting, and I won't have her disturbed.”

“I think I'll let her tell me that.”

He stepped in front of me and spread his arms out, attempting to bar my way. “She's under a doctor's care.”

“Really?” I went around him.

“Yes, really.” Sinclair's voice rose.

“If she's that ill, why isn't she in a hospital?”

He grabbed my arm. “Her emotional state is extremely fragile. Are you prepared to take responsibility for precipitating a crisis?”

I shook him off. “Absolutely. I've done worse.” By now I was about five inches away from the door.

“At least let me go in and prepare her.”

“I don't think so.”

He went for my arm again. This time he knocked the passkey to the ground. I ignored it.

“Wait,” he said as I rapped on the door.

“Who is it?” a woman asked.

A moment later, Amy stepped outside.

A
my froze when she saw me. She was wearing a white robe and a pendant similar to the one Sinclair had on. Her dark hair looked as if it needed to be brushed, and her eye makeup was half rubbed off.

“Well, well, well,” I said. “What a pleasant surprise seeing you here.”

“I tried to keep her away,” Sinclair told her.

Amy moved her hand away from the doorknob and managed a slight smile. “It's all right. No harm done.”

“I take it you're a member of this particular establishment?”

Amy flushed. “What if I am?”

“Nothing. I was just thinking about how pleased your mother will be.”

“My spiritual life is none of my mother's business.”

“In this case, given the circumstances, I think I'm going to have to disagree.”

Amy shrugged. “Then tell her. I don't care. In fact, I want you to. I insist on it.” She began raking her fingers through her hair. “You know, I feel sorry for her.”

“And why's that?”

“Because she has no connection with anything other than her own base needs. None of my family does.”

“Maybe that's a good thing.”

Sinclair broke in. “Sister Uma. I was telling Robin you were sick. That you needed your rest.”

“Sister Uma?” I raised an eyebrow.

Amy drew herself up and grasped her medallion in her right hand. “It's Hindi,” she informed me. “It's my chosen name. It means Blessed. It comes from Genesis in the Bible.” And she closed her eyes and recited, “
‘I will bless her, and she shall be a mother of nations: kings of peoples shall come from her.' ”

Looking at Amy, I decided if she were God's idea of blessed, I'd take another road.

“I'd still come here even if the center didn't exist.” Amy indicated the area. “I love it here. I always have. The colors. The smells. The sounds of the water and the wind. The cows in the fields. I used to dream about them when I was a little girl.” Amy straightened her shoulders. “Coming here for me is like going to
sessin.
The Reverend Ascending Moon helps me focus,” she said. “He helps me center myself.”

“You mean you're off-kilter?”

Amy glowered at me. “You can make fun if you want, but it just shows how closed off to new thoughts and feelings you are. They threaten you.”

“Have you thought that the reason I'm speaking to you this way is because I'm tired of being lied to.”

Amy took a deep breath. “There is truth in everything.”

“Really? How profound. Do you know that the Reverend Ascending Moon, as you call him, is Paul Sinclair, a two-bit petty crook from Buffalo.”

Amy ran a hand up and down the chain of her pendant. “I know all about the reverend's past history. It's irrelevant. People change. People evolve. You have to allow for that possibility.”

“Fine. Tell me where Pat Humphrey evolved to and I'll leave.”

“I don't know,” she whispered.

“Can't you see how upset Sister is?” Sinclair demanded of me.

I ignored him. “You do know what happened at the estate?”

“I know,” Amy whispered.

“I'd think you'd want to be there lending your mother moral support.”

Amy picked a strand of dark thread off her robe. “She doesn't need me.”

“Are you sure?”

She looked down at the floor.

“But she needs Pat Humphrey, right? Is that why you're not going to tell me where she is?”

Amy remained silent.

“Did you also know that your brother might be in trouble? That he might be charged? That Pat Humphrey might have information relevant to Shana Driscoll's death?”

“I want to lie down,” Amy said.

“When we're done.”

“Can't you leave me alone,” she wailed. “We didn't talk. I swear I didn't even know she was here.” She dissolved in a puddle of tears, but I was unmoved. I had the feeling she was one of those women that started crying the moment she didn't like how things were going.

I pushed by her and went inside the cabin. The odor of sandalwood hung in the air.

“Hey,” Amy cried as I walked inside. “You can't come in here. What are you doing?”

“Checking things out.” I scrutinized the room. There were two beds. Both were unmade.

“I'm sick,” Amy said sullenly. “I need rest.”

“So Sinclair told me.”

It suddenly occurred to me that he wasn't there anymore. I wondered if he really had gone to call the police. Hopefully, I'd be out of here before they arrived.

Amy shook her head. She watched me as I walked over to the nearest bed, picked up a bright red shirt that was on it, and held it up to the light, then dropped it back down. It was too big to be Pat Humphrey's. I glanced at the clothes lying on the other bed. Small-sized linen pants. A silk T-shirt. A silk bathrobe.

“Who's your roommate?” I asked Amy.

“Those are my clothes.”

I held the pants up. “No they're not.”

She flushed again and began fiddling with her pendant I dropped the pants back on the bed and walked over to the closet and looked inside. Three white robes, just like the one Amy was wearing, were hanging on the steel rod, along with a selection of slacks and blouses. My glance traveled downward to a suitcase lying on the floor.

“That's mine,” Amy said, moving toward me.

I bent down and read the tag before she could take it away. “You always travel with Pat Humphrey's suitcase?”

“She lent it to me a while ago.”

I just stared at Amy. She bit her lip and stared back at me. By now she was breathing hard, but I couldn't tell if it was from anger or exertion.

“Has it ever occurred to you,” she said, “that Pat Humphrey doesn't want my mother to find her.”

I remained silent.

“Don't tell her,” Amy begged. “Please.”

“Why not?”

“Pat has her reasons.”

“You were the one in the boat with her, weren't you?” I intuited.

Amy blanched.

“Where did she go?”

“I wasn't with her.”

“You're lying.”

“That's enough.”

I turned around. Sinclair was standing by the door. He had a nasty smile on his face and two unsmiling, powerful-looking men flanking him. Somehow they didn't look like members of his congregation. I think I would have preferred seeing the police.

“These two gentlemen will escort you off the premises,” Sinclair announced.

“Gentlemen? Now there's a misnomer if I ever heard one.”

“Be quiet.”

“Where'd you get them from?” I asked.

Sinclair folded his hands together in an attitude of prayer. “I think there have been enough questions asked here for one night.”

“And if I don't agree?”

“I said that's enough,” he yelled.

Amy cringed at the loud noise. He went over and stroked her arm.

“I'm sorry, my dear,” he said. “I didn't mean to scare you.”

“That's touching.”

He pointed at me. “Get her outside. Now.”

One of the men took one arm, the other took the other, and they marched me out of the room. Sinclair joined them a moment later.

“It must be tough having to keep that sensitive front up all the time,” I said.

Sinclair came up till he was about two inches in front of me. “Just be glad I don't beat up women,” he hissed. “Unlike the person who did that.” He pointed to my jaw. “Though if I see you again, I'll make an exception to that rule. Do you understand what I'm telling you?”

“Absolutely. You couldn't be clearer.”

“Good.” He turned to the two men. “Make sure she leaves the area.”

“So you guys trying to find inner peace, too?” I asked both of them as they escorted me to the parking lot. “Or are you here for the fishing?”

They could have been deaf for all the response I got. They walked me to my vehicle and stood there, arms crossed, while I got in.

I waved to them as I hit the accelerator. “'Bye, assholes.”

The bigger one growled and started toward me. But it was too late. I was already in motion.

“Next time, guys.” And I gave the car more gas.

 

 

It was probably the letdown, but all of a sudden I realized I was ravenous. My stomach was rumbling. I drove into the first rest stop I came to after I got off Wolfe Island, bought two Big Macs, a Coke, and a large order of fries, and called the Taylor estate. Moss Ryan got on the line. He sounded tired and edgy.

“It's late to be calling here,” he said to me.

I licked the ketchup off my fingers. “Don't you ever go home, or have you taken up permanent residence?”

“Of course not,” Ryan snapped. “I'm just staying here till things calm down. Rose can't handle all of this by herself.”

“Where's Geoff?”

“With Rose. She's very upset by everything that's happened.”

“I can't understand why.”

“Do you have anything to tell me or not?” Ryan said impatiently. “Because if you don't ...”

“Actually I do.” And I told him about my evening's adventures.

There was a brief pause on the other end of the line, and then he said, “I can't believe you lost her.”

“Hey, you think someone else can do better, be my guest and go hire them.”

“No. I want you to go back and see if she's still there.”

“Now?”

“Tomorrow.”

I guess I should have been politer to the two gentlemen in Sinclair's employ. Either that or come back armed. “And if she is?”

“Call me.”

“And then what?”

“We'll take it from there.”

“And if she's not?”

“Then you're to keep looking.”

I finished off the last five French fries and unwrapped the second Big Mac. “Are you sure Rose will agree to this?”

“Absolutely positive.”

“Maybe I should talk to her.”

I could hear his sigh of exasperation. “You can call her tomorrow morning if you want. No earlier than ten, though.”

“Why can't I speak to her tonight?”

“Because she's already taken her sleeping pill for the evening.”

“I see.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Moss Ryan demanded.

“Nothing”

“I'm sorry,” he said. “It's just been a zoo around here.”

“I can imagine.”

“And it's only going to get worse.”

That I could believe.