Nevada Barr - The Rope: An Anna Pigeon Novel

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thank you, Scott Sticha, not only for making the expanse of Lake Powell accessible but for finding the people who helped me so much. Thank you, Steve Luckesen. You were not only my guide but kept me company during the writing process in the character of Steve Gluck. I hope you enjoy Gluck as much as I enjoyed your intelligence and companionship. Thank you, Valerie Reynolds, for easing me through the technicalities of boating and educating the public on water quality issues. Thank you, Julie Smith, for picking me up and dusting me off every time I threw myself down and wailed, I cant go on! Thank you, Nancy Christiansen, for being there when I needed you. Thank you, Mr. Paxton, for being Mr. Paxton.

A LSO BY N EVADA B ARR

FICTION

Anna Pigeon Books

Burn

Borderline

Winter Study

Hard Truth

High Country

Flashback

Hunting Season

Blood Lure

Deep South

Liberty Falling

Blind Descent

Endangered Species

Firestorm

Ill Wind (a.k.a. Mountain of Bones )

A Superior Death

Track of the Cat

Nevada Barr Collection

OTHER NOVELS

Bittersweet

NONFICTION

Seeking EnlightenmentHat by Hat

ONE

Regis Candor took a swig of his beer and watched his neighbor, Jenny Gorman. She was sitting on the other picnic table, her feet on the bench, smoking a cigarette as Gilbert and Dennis swaggered into the square of grass and trees fenced in by seasonal housing. Park employee housing at the Rope was set out in two neat quads, two-bedroom duplexes on each of the sides, surrounding squares of defiantly green grass with four locust trees only slightly taller than Regis and not yet as big around as his wrist.

One square was for NPS seasonals, the other for concessions workers, kids that pumped fuel and sucked crap out of the houseboats and made Dangling Dogs at the Dangling Rope Marina snack bar. The duplexes didnt blend into the red/roan/rust/buff motif of Lake Powell. They were painted the same dead gray as the marina. Regis figured maintenance got a good deal on gray paint.

Gil and Dennis were college boys from Pennsylvania whod come to Lake Powell to work on their tans and get laid. When they werent absorbed in one of those pastimesor both simultaneously, if Dennis was as much of an outdoorsman as he claimedthey did maintenance work.

Regis watched them flop bonelessly down, Gilbert next to Jenny, Dennis at her feet, arms thrown along the table. Both were covered in dust and sweat and, no doubt, wouldnt shower until Ms. Gorman had every opportunity to be impressed with their machismo.

Hey, guys, she said, blowing out a lungful of smoke.

Hey, they answered in unison. Heckle and Jeckle, clowns.

Jenny Gorman looked like the Girl Next Door every boy wishes lived next door: dark wavy hair, big hazel eyes, a well-cut mouth, and enormous tits. Jenny was used to being ogled, Regis guessed. In high school she must have had to wave Hi at breast level when she met guys. Thats where they would have been looking. Gil and Dennis still were. Regis didnt think the breasis were implants. Plastic never moved like real flesh and blood.

Gorman didnt flaunt her body, but hed seen her flash a little cleavage to get some idiot to fall off his water skis or drive his boat into the dock. Served the fools right, he thought, and took another pull on his Dos Equis.

Evenings at Dangling Rope were Regiss favorite part of his job. It was as close to being a kid at camp as a grown man could get and not be arrested. His peerspermanent park employeeswhined too much about pay, promotion, retirement. Seasonals, no matter what their age, exuded a sense of childlike freedom, as if they were actors in an old movie and any day now they were going to get their big break. Being around seasonals made him feel like a wise old man, though hed not yet turned thirty.

Thirty was year after next. He pushed that thought away. Forty wasnt the new thirty, and thirty was the start of forty. Forty was the start of skin sagging, breasts sagging, scrotums sagging, lines and fat and receding hair. Thirty had one upside; at thirty hed be a rich man. If he fulfilled all the old horrors requirements.

Butt first, Bethy, his wife of at least two more years, came out of their side of the duplex, a casserole dish in her oven-mitted hands. Hash brown casserole, all cheese and butter and potatoes. Four years of marriage and his wifes bottom was spreading big-time. To be fair, the weight gain wasnt entirely her fault, but Regis wasnt in the mood to be fair.

When they met she was a seasonal interpreter at Rainbow Bridge. Shed been thin and athletic in those days, canyoneering on her days off. Regis had loved watching her cute little behind bobbing ahead of him in the slots, and hed needed a wife, so hed followed that taut, flexing little gluteus maximus right to the altar.

Bethys charmother than the tight ass and the conveniencewas the gypsy lifestyle she promoted that summer, the sense of a life full of possibilities. The fantasy Bethy. As soon as she had the ring on her finger she changed back to the real Bethy. Two more years, Regis told himself. Two more years and a lot more drugs.

Hash brown casserole!Gil ejaculated. Food excited him almost as much as Jennys chest.

Goes right to your hips, Regis said, glancing at his wifes rear end as she bent over to set the hot dish on the table. Gil laughed. Gorman shot him an evil look.

Bethy fled back inside. Regis looked at the screen door and considered going in to make sure she was okay. There was no point. What was okay for Bethy?

Jenny stubbed out her smoke and tucked the butt into a ziplock bag shed taken from the pocket of her shorts. Gil Morraine took the opportunity to inch closer. Regis had read Heckle and Jeckles personnel files. Ciphers. Dicks for brains and beer for spiritual sustenance.

Both had made a play for Ms. Gorman. Jenny was thirty-three to their twenty-one-going-on-thirteen. Big tits were evidently equalizers on the age issue for these boys. When Jenny blew them offfiguratively, not literallytheyd started a rumor she was gay.

Regis smiled into the neck of his bottle. The fools never did catch on. Jenny was gay, queer as a three-dollar bill. She just didnt advertise it. The Park Service was seriously homophobic. Regis had discovered her sexual preferences when hed gone into her duplex to check on a maintenance report and noticed a letter. Pornographic didnt do it justice; it would have won a Penthouse Letter of the Week competition.

The letter had been signed Cindy.

Jenny started rolling another cigarette.

Oooh, roll your own, tough mama, Dennis said.

Tougher than you, weenie boy, Gilbert said good-naturedly. Dennis laughed. Regis guessed there was a private joke regarding weenie boy. He had no desire to be let in on it. Neither, apparently, did Jenny.

She grinned past Gil at Regis, winked, licked the paper, and sealed the tobacco in. The lick was longer than it needed to be and ran lovingly the length of the cigarette. Heckle and Jeckle were entranced.

Dennis took the matches from her hand to light the cigarette. After hed wasted three without getting a flame he could keep alive in the faint breeze off the lake, Jenny took them back. Nice try, Casanova. She lit her cigarette.

Im off the next two days, Gil said, his tone suggesting this news would be catnip to any kitten. Got a couple of new videos. How about you bring the popcorn?

I thought youd get enough of this place. I figured you for town on lieu days. Smoke trickled out with the words.

You call Page, Arizona, a town ? Come back to civilization with us and well show you a town . Dennis waggled his eyebrows as if hed said something wildly suggestive.

King of the single entendre, Regis said. Jenny laughed. Heckle and Jeckle looked at Regis as if noticing him for the first time. They probably were, hidden as he was behind Jennys glorious tatas.