High Country- Pigeon 12 by Nevada Barr Page A
Authors: Nevada Barr
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, Women Sleuths, Mystery, Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths
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maybe parsley. Whatever it was, she liked it.
"I'm okay." She was glad to have the business of loading fresh bread into baskets. "How about you? The back of your arm doesn't look too good."
"I'll live. Look, I don't know what got into Jim tonight but I . . . You want to get a drink after work? Unwind. Bad-mouth Wither?"
Anna laughed and turned, baskets in hand. "My treat," she said. "You saved my life. Let me buy you a beer."
Delivering her hard-won rolls, Anna suffered a small maelstrom of thoughts and feelings. Had mayhem been attempted? What had caused Jim Wither to take against her so suddenly and vehemently? Why did Scott wish to have a drink with her? Friendship? Boredom? A taste for older women? Professionally, it was good to get this chance to sound him out. As an affianced woman, she doubted she should be looking forward to it quite as much as she was.
Briefly, she wondered how many officers of the law were married when they went into undercover work. And how many were still married when they came out of it. When one donned a new world, the rules, moves and traditions of the old dropped away. Without conscious decision the unthinkable was thought, the unacceptable became the norm. Lines one learned never to cross shifted or vanished altogether.
Slipping off to the staff bathroom, Anna took a moment to pull herself together. She was merely having a drink with a potential source of information, not committing adultery with the entire Knicks team. Her nerves, usually dependable, had grown frayed. The high drama of the spilled or hurled cauldron oddly enough wasn't the most wearing factor. It was the cheek-by-jowl parade of the small and annoying: a room searched while she was out, a surly "brother," unsettling undercurrents first in Camp 4 then the Ahwahnee's kitchen. Of all the things Anna hated, high on the list were secrets she was not privy to.
Since coming to Yosemite Valley she'd had a sense of a dark river flowing below the surface, a cold current which had swept away four young people. She credited this ambient evil with bringing professional thugs into her dorm room; hikers smelling of petrol, with new boots, into Dixon Crofter's tent cabin; dope smoke that paralyzed lungs and made an obsessive culinary expert so angry he'd accidentally or in the throes of black passion nearly scalded her half to death.
These anomalous secrets to which she was not privy might not be connected. The metaphorical river whose undertow tugged at her mind was not necessarily of a piece. Secrets were like rabbits. If you got two in January, by year's end you had two hundred.
Secrets corrupted. Camp 4 was tainted. The Ahwahnee, James Wither, were part of something bigger; maybe he was just a half-crazy cook with a grievance and the corruption centered around the Yosemite Lodge, where Mark despoiled maids. Maybe it was fostered by the NPS staff. Anna couldn't begin to guess. She was severed from the society of rangers more completely than if she had, in truth, been a waitress. As a real concessions employee she would have been allowed to make friends.
Lest she grow too philosophical-or maudlin-she focused on being a good waitress for the next four hours. Wither didn't relent to the point of apologizing or commit any radical act like speaking to her, but the hostile stares were gone and her orders were served up as they should have been. Still, she felt a weight lift when at nine o'clock Wither went off duty.
At ten-thirty her last table, a party of four, two nice couples from Canada come south for a holiday, left. Anna went into the bowels of the building, to the employee locker room. Regardless of history, fresh paint or company goodwill, backstage rooms were uniformly dreary whether one worked as an elf in Macy's on Thirty-fourth Street or served pasta primavera in God's country.
She flopped on a scarred bench in a horseshoe of lockers that looked as if they'd been salvaged
"I'm okay." She was glad to have the business of loading fresh bread into baskets. "How about you? The back of your arm doesn't look too good."
"I'll live. Look, I don't know what got into Jim tonight but I . . . You want to get a drink after work? Unwind. Bad-mouth Wither?"
Anna laughed and turned, baskets in hand. "My treat," she said. "You saved my life. Let me buy you a beer."
Delivering her hard-won rolls, Anna suffered a small maelstrom of thoughts and feelings. Had mayhem been attempted? What had caused Jim Wither to take against her so suddenly and vehemently? Why did Scott wish to have a drink with her? Friendship? Boredom? A taste for older women? Professionally, it was good to get this chance to sound him out. As an affianced woman, she doubted she should be looking forward to it quite as much as she was.
Briefly, she wondered how many officers of the law were married when they went into undercover work. And how many were still married when they came out of it. When one donned a new world, the rules, moves and traditions of the old dropped away. Without conscious decision the unthinkable was thought, the unacceptable became the norm. Lines one learned never to cross shifted or vanished altogether.
Slipping off to the staff bathroom, Anna took a moment to pull herself together. She was merely having a drink with a potential source of information, not committing adultery with the entire Knicks team. Her nerves, usually dependable, had grown frayed. The high drama of the spilled or hurled cauldron oddly enough wasn't the most wearing factor. It was the cheek-by-jowl parade of the small and annoying: a room searched while she was out, a surly "brother," unsettling undercurrents first in Camp 4 then the Ahwahnee's kitchen. Of all the things Anna hated, high on the list were secrets she was not privy to.
Since coming to Yosemite Valley she'd had a sense of a dark river flowing below the surface, a cold current which had swept away four young people. She credited this ambient evil with bringing professional thugs into her dorm room; hikers smelling of petrol, with new boots, into Dixon Crofter's tent cabin; dope smoke that paralyzed lungs and made an obsessive culinary expert so angry he'd accidentally or in the throes of black passion nearly scalded her half to death.
These anomalous secrets to which she was not privy might not be connected. The metaphorical river whose undertow tugged at her mind was not necessarily of a piece. Secrets were like rabbits. If you got two in January, by year's end you had two hundred.
Secrets corrupted. Camp 4 was tainted. The Ahwahnee, James Wither, were part of something bigger; maybe he was just a half-crazy cook with a grievance and the corruption centered around the Yosemite Lodge, where Mark despoiled maids. Maybe it was fostered by the NPS staff. Anna couldn't begin to guess. She was severed from the society of rangers more completely than if she had, in truth, been a waitress. As a real concessions employee she would have been allowed to make friends.
Lest she grow too philosophical-or maudlin-she focused on being a good waitress for the next four hours. Wither didn't relent to the point of apologizing or commit any radical act like speaking to her, but the hostile stares were gone and her orders were served up as they should have been. Still, she felt a weight lift when at nine o'clock Wither went off duty.
At ten-thirty her last table, a party of four, two nice couples from Canada come south for a holiday, left. Anna went into the bowels of the building, to the employee locker room. Regardless of history, fresh paint or company goodwill, backstage rooms were uniformly dreary whether one worked as an elf in Macy's on Thirty-fourth Street or served pasta primavera in God's country.
She flopped on a scarred bench in a horseshoe of lockers that looked as if they'd been salvaged
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