Beautiful Dead

  I was baffled—instead of staying down under the knockout punch the way Laura and Jim had, Logan came back at me. “Truth time?” he said, his voice dry and harsh. “You want to hear it the way it is, Darina? You’re acting like a total screwball. No one can believe a word you say. Nobody—not Hannah, not Lucas—nobody likes you, the way you’re acting.”

  “Run that by me again,” I argued, my chest heaving. “Didn’t I just rescue an injured woman from off the side of a mountain? Since when was that a crime?”

  “That’s not the point and you know it. What’s the big deal with Angel Rock and Foxton? What are you hiding? What takes you out there in the middle of the night?”

  “No comment!”

  I succeeded in pushing past him at last. We hit a line of maple trees; I heard the rustling leaves build to the sound of wings beating.

  “This is a free country, Logan. I can go where I like.”

  “So go,” he said, suddenly resigned. The fight was over. I circled him warily, still expecting him to land a rabbit punch. “So you’ll move your car?” I checked.

  “Sure.” He shrugged and walked back the way we came. “Go wherever it is you need to go, Darina. But from now on, don’t come to my house looking for help the next time you reach rock bottom and you need a shoulder to cry on.” He slammed his car door and screeched off.

  As it happened, even though Logan cleared my exit, I still couldn’t drive away.

  “Darina, you have a visitor,” Jim told me from the porch before I could ease into gear.

  There was a stranger holding a bunch of flowers standing next to him and it took me some time to remember where I’d seen him before. It didn’t click until he stepped out of the shadows and I made out his skinny frame and slickedback gray hair. It was Peter the gardener from the Taylors’ place. Anyone else, and I would have made my excuses and left. He recognized me at about the same moment. I saw him blink and swallow. Then he kept on coming down the drive. “Peter Hall,” he introduced himself through the driver’s window. “I came to say thanks.”

  “For what?” I was thinking along the lines of Raven Taylor and the screwed-up drawing and the kid’s scared eyes.

  “For bringing my wife, Jenna, off the mountain earlier today. Without you, the incident could have turned nasty.”

  My jaw dropped, but I recovered quickly and nodded. We went into the house. Laura put the lilies in a vase, then she and Jim left me alone to talk to Peter.

  “I had no idea she was your wife,” I told him.

  “Thank you anyway,” he told me. “I just came from the hospital. The doctors want to keep her there for a couple of days. They need to wait until the trauma subsides before they decide what to do next—maybe surgery, maybe not. Plus, Jenna’s pretty shaken up, so they sedated her.”

  “She’s going to be OK?” I asked.

  “Sure. Her friends are too. She wanted me to say thanks.”

  “It’s weird that we already met,” I reminded him.

  He chose not to follow this up. “I have to go. I need to pick up Jenna’s horse trailer from Foxton.” He cut the conversation short by getting up to leave. “So thank you, Darina.”

  I followed him out of the house, glad anyway to be out of Laura’s hearing. “What took your wife and her riding buddies up there so early?” I asked.

  “Some romantic notion about watching the sun come up over Amos Peak. They’ve been planning to do it all fall.”

  “And look what happens when they do.” I sighed. “Do they know what spooked Jenna’s horse?”

  “No clue,” Peter told me, heading for his truck, parked farther down the street. “They say horses can see in the dark, so maybe they noticed something in the shadow of a rock—coyote maybe. And the guy who was riding with them said there was a weird wind up there—horses hate squally weather; it drives them crazy.”

  “Yeah, I guess that was it.” I planted myself between him and the driver’s side door. I was relieved, but I still had a long list of questions, not all connected with this morning’s rescue. “Do you want me to show you exactly where they parked the trailer?” I asked.

  “No—thanks. You’ve already helped plenty.”

  “Really—it’s no problem. I’d like to.”

  “Jump in then,” he told me, not wanting to be impolite. Peter Hall was clearly a well-brought-up guy, bringing homegrown lilies to say thank you and speaking with an educated accent. “Do you need to tell your folks?” he asked.

  I shook my head and climbed in the passenger side. “Did you pick the flowers from the Taylors’ garden?” I asked. “Only, I remember seeing pink lilies by their summerhouse.”

  “No, these were from my place. Jenna likes to grow flowers. Do I turn left out of town?”

  “At the next light. Head for Turkey Shoot Ridge. How long have you worked for the Taylors?”

  “Several years. Why?”

  “No reason.” I sat quiet as we cruised out of town, past a small industrial park, through some run-down housing into the burnout area. It was around three thirty in the afternoon when we hit the highway. Time I ran into some luck, I thought, with Peter’s radio playing quietly in the back-ground. If you could call it luck that a woman falls from her horse and brings me into contact with the one guy I know who gets up close and personal with Raven Taylor.

  “So, Darina, are you a student at Ellerton High?” Peter asked.

  I nodded.

  “And can I ask what brought you out to Foxton early today?”

  I gave the old “couldn’t sleep” excuse. “I like to drive,” I explained. “I get in the car and try to get rid of my demons.”

  Peter nodded like he understood. “Lucky for Jenna you did.”

  “You ought to know—I knew Arizona,” I told him quietly, jumping right in.

  The radio gave us tomorrow’s weather forecast. Peter Hall glanced at me. “It’s almost a year now,” he said quietly. “There was Jonas before her, and Summer and Phoenix since.”

  Slight and skinny, wearing dark-blue jeans and a crisp pale-blue shirt—the slim hands on the steering wheel didn’t look like they’d spent forty years plus doing hard physical work. These were some of the things about him that didn’t add up.

  “The families are hit hard,” I commented. “Mrs. Madison doesn’t leave the house much. And I saw Jonas’s mom at Bob’s wake. It’s real bad for them.”

  “I’ve been with the Taylors a long time,” he informed me. We’d driven past the giant neon crucifix on the hill—a marker I used every time I drove this road. We were ten minutes from the Foxton turnoff. “I miss that girl more than I can say.”

  “You do? I mean, sure you do.” I tried to keep the surprise out of my voice, but Peter picked it up.

  “She was a complex kid—hard to get to know,” he went on. “But once you saw what went on behind that slick image she built up, she won you right over to her side.”

  “I never knew her well,” I admitted. Slowly, slowly, I was turning the key and behind that door lay the real Arizona Taylor. “I don’t know anyone who did.”

  “Hard on the outside, soft as honey on the inside. A sweet, sweet girl.”

  “Turn left at the light,” I told him, swallowing my surprise as we came to the Foxton junction. “Drive by the creek, past the fishermen’s shacks.”

  “You should’ve seen her take care of Raven,” Peter explained. “She loved him like no one else did. The others—Frank and Allyson—they don’t have the patience or the time. They don’t have the heart. But Arizona did.”

  I shook my head in disbelief. “So we can talk about Raven?”

  “Sure. You saw him in the summerhouse. What’s the use pretending you didn’t?”

  “I just thought—”

  “No one speaks about Raven, huh? That’s the way his parents want to play it.”

  “And Arizona, when she was alive—the same?”

  He nodded. “The entire family. With Frank and Allyson, it’s out of some kind of shame, l
ike he’s a black mark against their name. That’s mostly why they send him to residential school. But Arizona had different reasons—she thought silence was the best way to protect him. She didn’t want people asking questions, upsetting him in that way.”

  “And where do you come in?”

  “I’m the part-time gardener,” he shot back.

  “And bodyguard?”

  “Gardener—period.” The road was getting rough. We came to a sharp bend and he put on the brakes. The back wheels spat up dirt. “That is, until my contract with them runs out at the end of this month.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then the house gets sold and I lose my job.”

  “Here’s the horse trailer,” I said, “right up ahead.”

  I helped Peter hitch the trailer onto his truck, letting time pass before I pried some more. I decided I liked the guy—he was solid and straightforward, he didn’t play mind games.

  He put me in the driver’s seat of his truck and told me to reverse toward the trailer. “OK, hold it there. I’m turning the lever—that’s cool. Good, we’re hitched. Want to drive?” he asked when he walked back to the truck.

  “I never towed a trailer before,” I admitted.

  “You look like you can handle it,” he told me with a grin. He jumped in the passenger side and advised me on the best way to ease forward onto the road. “So did you get what you wanted out of your visit with Frank?”

  “No. I asked for music lessons, but he turned me down.” I drove slowly along the creek side toward the main highway. “Actually, I didn’t want to learn guitar,” I confessed. “I’d heard stories about Arizona. I wanted to check them out.”

  “What kind of stories?” For a second Peter’s defenses were back up.

  “Some people are saying she didn’t commit suicide out at Hartmann. That wasn’t how it happened.” Was that a step too far? Would the hired help totally clam up?

  But no.

  “I agree with them,” he told me, fighting the emotion behind his words. “What reason did Arizona have to take her own life? Why in God’s name would she leave Raven behind?”

  “Exactly!” In my excitement I pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake and we shot out of the intersection and onto the freeway. Luckily the light was green.

  “She looked out for him,” Frank insisted. “To tell you the truth, she was a better mother to the boy than Allyson ever was.”

  “Too interested in her career, huh?” I was back in control, coasting down toward Turkey Shoot.

  “Not really that. A lot of women have careers and a family, no problem. No—with Allyson it’s like she has no maternal instinct. It’s a missing gene.”

  “Frank Taylor doesn’t come across as a warm, loving kind of guy either.” He was all brain and no heart, it seemed to me.

  “Now you understand why Arizona stepped into the parenting role. And Jenna and I—we did what we could. Still do, as long as we’re able.”

  I drove in silence for a while. A new question had wormed itself into my brain, but I shelved it for a while. “What is it with Raven?” I asked instead. “OK, so he has autism and they feel ashamed. But what’s the bottom line—why do they really hide him away?”

  “He needs a lot of care—medication and supervision twenty-four/seven. Then there are his mood swings, which can lead to self-harm. Plus, he suffers from hyperactivity. The only time he’s calm is when he’s drawing.”

  “That sounds tough to handle. And does he understand much of what goes on around him? Can he talk?” Arizona had told me he didn’t even know what a smile meant.

  “No speech,” Peter confirmed. “But Arizona had a way of getting through to him. She was the only one who could.”

  “He really misses her?”

  “Like crazy. When he’s home from school, he walks from room to room, looking for her, wanting to show her his latest sketches.”

  “And you?” There—the question slithered out. “Arizona meant more to you than you’re telling me?” Peter took a deep breath, overcame whatever doubts were still lingering, and forged ahead. “Jenna and I—we’re the parents of Frank’s first wife, Kathryn.”

  “You’re Arizona’s grandparents?” I gasped.

  “It was tragic—Kathryn died giving birth to Arizona.

  She never knew her mother, so we did all we could to fill the gap.”

  “I warned you she was too clever for you.” Hunter was himself again, stern and in control. He’d heard me coming after Peter had dropped me off at my house, where I’d picked up my car and headed straight back out to Foxton. The overlord had walked out of the barn to meet me.

  “What you said was ‘subtle,’ not clever. I don’t call her lying and concealing a clever thing to do. Guess the latest—she has grandparents!”

  He looked carefully at me. “You’re angry.”

  “Of course I’m angry. Aren’t you?” In fact, I half expected this to be my last discussion about Arizona with the leader of the Beautiful Dead. “Tell me—is she out of here? Did you send her back to limbo?”

  “Which answer do you want—yes or no?” Hunter demanded.

  “Yes, if she carries on lying to us. If it was down to me, I’d say good-bye, Arizona, and move on to Summer.” Only there was Raven’s future in the balance, and the remote chance that I could find out the truth about what happened to his sister and get him to understand…

  “Exactly.” Hunter read my thoughts. “That’s why we’re here.”

  “So you didn’t send her back, even after what she did?” It was cold out here in the yard, and for once the moon was hidden behind a dense bank of clouds. I shivered as I waited impatiently for Hunter’s answer.

  “I dealt with that,” he said slowly. “From now on Arizona will be honest.”

  “She’d better be, because I’ve got a lot of new stuff on her. For instance, these grandparents, Jenna and Peter Hall—they care about Raven. Arizona isn’t the only one looking out for him.”

  “But Arizona heard they’re leaving at the end of the month.” Hunter and Arizona were ahead of me, as always. “They’re not blood relatives to Raven. Allyson Taylor won’t grant them the right to carry on visiting.”

  “Arizona told you that?”

  He nodded. “Since I last saw you, we reached a better understanding.”

  “You forgave her?” For holding out, for challenging his authority, for casting a shadow of doubt over the actions of his long-dead wife? I was stunned, but I got my head together and pressed on. “Did she say why she concealed all that stuff?”

  He scratched his jaw. “You have to admire her strength of mind,” he said without answering my question. “She kept up that barrier for almost a year, even with me. No one got through it. That shows character.”

  “But why?”

  “Here she is,” Hunter said, stepping to one side so I could see Arizona in silhouette, standing in the barn doorway, backed by soft lamplight. “You can ask her yourself.”

  “I’m shocked Hunter didn’t punish you,” I told Arizona as we walked on the dark hillside.

  “What makes you think I’m not punished?” She picked up her pace, moving slightly ahead of me, dressed in only a T-shirt and jeans. The wind blew her hair across her face.

  “You’re still here,” I pointed out.

  “He cut back my time on the far side,” she said in a flat voice. “I had two weeks, now I only have one.”

  “Jeez!” I caught up with her so I could make out the expression on her face. “Seven days to sort out the whole lousy mess?”

  “Plus, he sent me back to the day it happened—to try and make me remember more details. It hurt like hell.”

  “Don’t I know it? So he actually time traveled you. Did it work?”

  Arizona shook her head. “I got to the point on the day I died where I was walking by the lake. I can still see that in my head—the low sun, the frost on the shore, the sparkling water. I wasn’t alone, but I don’t know who was with me, a
nd I was scared.”

  “Then what?”

  “Then there was a blast of fear—pure terror—a blur then a total blank. Hunter pulled me out of there and dragged me back to the present. It felt like I was being torn apart. And all for nothing.”

  We walked a while, keeping step now. “I guess Hunter knew that there’d be nothing new,” I said softly.

  “Like I say, he was punishing me. I relived it to a certain point, and for what?”

  “For the chance to have this conversation with me,” I pointed out. “It’s truth time, Arizona, and I’m all ears.”

  We sat under the water tower, leaning against its iron legs and surrounded by silence. I waited a long time for Arizona to begin.

  “Picture this. It seems like all my life I’m living in a house with people who are in total denial. At first they pretend nothing is wrong with their darling baby boy. Raven won’t feed and he won’t hold eye contact, but why worry? The au pair deals with the feeding problem while Dad and Allyson go to work. Raven has seizures—they call in the doctors, who convince them he’ll grow out of it. They call it petit mal, so it sounds fancy and everything’s OK.”

  “You knew it wasn’t?”

  “From the very start. He was only a small baby when I first watched him dig his nails into his own flesh. When he got teeth, he bit himself instead. He was so little and helpless. We both were.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I toughened up. I got to understand that helpless wasn’t a good place to be, so I began to throw in challenges—‘How come you’re not picking up on this? Why don’t you make some real effort here?’ But my dad and Allyson, they don’t do illness and disability.”

  I broke in to tell her that I had, as a matter of fact, learned a lot of this from her grandfather. If she was shocked or ashamed, she hid it well. “You were a kid back then,” I pointed out. “But Peter and Jenna—they were adults. They could see what was happening—surely they cared.”

  Arizona gave me one of her hard, dismissive glances. “Everybody cared,” she argued. “But Allyson—she’s the powerful one. She did things her way. She said if my grandparents had any complaints about the way she was handling Raven’s situation, they could leave.”