“Frank! Please don’t worry. I’m home, I’m safe, just a little bruised.”

“We’re leaving Boise tomorrow morning-”

“You’re coming home!”

“No,” he laughed, “but I’m glad you sound so excited about the idea. We think our guy is in Montana now. We have some pretty solid leads.”

“Oh.”

“Sorry. I’m anxious to get back, too. Twice as anxious now.”

“So where will you be?” I asked.

“I’ll call you when I know for sure. We’re still working on finding a place to stay.”

“Frank, you know how you’ve been telling me about the people you’ve met there, with the Boise PD?”

“Yes,” he said warily.

“Is there anyone there who might be willing to look something up for you?

He groaned. “For me, huh?”

“Okay, for me. It’s important.”

“What is it?”

“I need to know if there’s an arrest record for a Robert or Bobby De-Mont in the summer of 1940.”

“Did you just say ‘1940’?”

“Yes.”

“Irene-”

“Come to think of it,” I said, remembering that Gerald mentioned that school had just let out for the summer, “it was probably June of 1940.”

There was a pause. “Want to tell me why I should put any new acquaintance of mine to that kind of trouble?”

I told him about the conversation with Gerald Spanning.

“Hmm. Any idea at all what the charges might have been?”

“No, but to send a lawyer all the way to Boise-”

“A lawyer and a bunch of money,” he said.

“If it was a violent crime against a woman, it would be worth it to De-Mont to have it hushed up, don’t you think?”

“I’ll see if I can get anyone interested in it. Spell the name for me again.”

I did. “Thanks, Frank.”

“Irene?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful, okay?”

“You, too.”

“Think about staying somewhere else, okay?”

“I have been, much more seriously,” I said. “I’ll give you Travis’s cell phone number in case you can’t reach me here.”

He told me that Pete wanted to talk to Rachel, and I put her on.

“Travis,” I said, “Frank doesn’t think it’s a good idea for us to stay here, at least for a while. Do you mind if we stay somewhere else tonight?”

He looked relieved. “I didn’t want you to feel insulted. Let me pay for a couple of hotel rooms somewhere, or we could stay in the van. Either way, I’d feel safer.”

“I think I know someone who’d probably love to have us stay over at her place. The rooms are small, but the food is great. And wait until you see the gardens.”

26

Jack was willing to take care of the pets, so Travis and I arrived on Mary’s doorstep about an hour later. Rachel had been invited to join us for dinner but wasn’t going to stay overnight.

“Travis!” Mary cried, as he entered the house. Within moments she had instructed him to call her Aunt Mary if he wanted to, because even Frank and Rachel called her that. “So there’s no need to stand on genealogical ceremony,” she said. “Irene, he must be half-starved, waiting so late for his dinner. Travis, I hope you like beef stew, because I’ve got a big pot of it simmering on the stove.”

I never really think of her as motherly, or even grandmotherly, but as I watched her fuss over him in an agreeable way, I began to realize there were sides of Mary Kelly I didn’t always get to see. She might spoil Frank or goad me, but her treatment of Travis was more tender, and solicitous without being oppressively so.

“What happened to your hand?” she asked. His answer earned me a look of reproof from her. “Sweet heavens, Irene! I expected you to take better care of him!”

“Yes, I managed to injure him within twenty-four hours of meeting him,” I said.

“That’s not true!” he protested. “Irene has been nothing but good to me. And I think she was hurt worse today. I told you what happened, Aunt Mary-my injury was my own fault, not Irene’s.”

“Well, I’m just thankful you weren’t hurt any more seriously than that,” she said, turning back to the stove. Travis couldn’t see her face from where he sat, so he didn’t see her smile. I decided she must have been pleased that he had started calling her Aunt Mary. Maybe that was it.

She then began regaling him (and Rachel) with stories of some of the more ridiculous moments of my childhood. The story of Barbara locking me in my grandmother’s outhouse had already been met with hilarity.

It was with some relief, then, that I heard Rachel’s cell phone ring in the middle of the story about the time my father took off work to come to my school for a conference with one of the nuns, only to discover that the good sister had been barricaded in the library. Aunt Mary hadn’t reached the part about the fire when the phone rang.

It was McCain, trying to reach me through her. I told her I’d talk to him and she handed the phone to me. I glanced over at Travis, who was listening to Mary tell another story. I walked out of the kitchen. Rachel watched me, but didn’t say anything.

“I understand you’ve had a rotten day,” McCain said.

“I understand you have, too.”

He laughed. “Well, nobody’s giving me half a million to cheer me up.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your inheritance, Ms. Kelly. Arthur Spanning remarried your aunt.”

“I know,” I said. “I just talked to their priest today. He can tell you that neither Travis nor I knew that, by the way.”

“He can tell me that you acted like you didn’t know.”

“Ask Rachel to give you Harold Richmond’s number-he can tell you what happens to people who don’t let go of one idea. Maybe you’ve only ever had one in your lifetime, and this is it. But trust me, it’s a bad one.”

“Why should I doubt that the sole beneficiary of Briana Maguire’s estate should be interested in five hundred thousand dollars?”

“She didn’t have five hundred thousand. I doubt she had five hundred.”

“You should talk to your buddy Reed Collins about the papers that were found in Mr. Ulkins’s office.”

I sighed. “That can only mean something came to her through Arthur. Travis should have it. Travis already has most of Arthur’s money, and Arthur wouldn’t have wanted me to take anything from his estate. I’ll talk to his lawyer, if it will make you lay off.”

“Where is that lawyer, by the way? No one seems to be able to locate him. And you’re keeping your cousin damned close to you, aren’t you?”

“Look,” I said, “I was going to offer to help you out here, but maybe I’ll just have you talk to my own lawyer.”

“We’ll talk again, Ms. Kelly. By then, you’ll need that lawyer.”

I walked back toward the kitchen just in time to hear Travis say, “These stories are funny, but they must be embarrassing to Irene. Don’t you have any positive stories to tell about her?”

As I stepped into the room, I said, “She’s too old to change her habits, Travis.”

“I’ve got all kinds of stories about her,” Mary said. “But I don’t want her head to swell. She knows I’m proud of her.”

“Do you?” Travis asked me.

It was the look of worried uncertainty on Mary’s face that made me say, “Of course I do. And the reverse is true as well. She knows I’m proud of her.”

“This stew is about to burn,” Mary said, suddenly turning away to stir the pot.

I was assigned to the smaller of the two small guest rooms, to sleep on a bed that I had slept in before, and had always found to be comfortable. But on those previous occasions, I hadn’t been thrown against a wall a few hours before bedtime.

At about three in the morning, I decided to break down and take half of one of the pain pills I had brought with me, prescribed for an older injury. I rarely took them, but I needed sleep. I got back into bed and was trying to find a tolerable position, trying not to think of Ulkins, when there was a slight tapping at the door.