Part 6 (1/2)

We went in order of seniority that afternoon, as always. I don't remember what my father recited, but he was inclined toward aphorisms, particularly when neatly housed in heroic couplets, so it was more than likely something from Pope or Dryden. For my part, I'd quickly thumbed through Bartlett's Quotations an hour or so before and located a few lines about the law. I recited them without enthusiasm, then nodded to Billy for the last recitation of the day.

”Your turn,” I said.

My father drew in a somewhat impatient breath, already suspecting that he would not much care for Billy's choice. ”Your brother had rather cut gra.s.s with a mustache trimmer than read anything other than that romantic drivel his mother pushes on him,” he'd grumbled years before as the two of us sat in his study, gravely pondering Euripides, while Billy frolicked in the yard, tumbling madly, hand over hand. It was a judgment he'd never changed, although I think my mother's departure had greatly challenged it, suggested that he might have learned something from the poets she'd cherished, their ardent songs of love.

”So, William, what do you have for us?” he asked now.

The rhythmic motion of my brother's feet stopped suddenly. He smiled softly, fiddled unnecessarily with the right cuff of his s.h.i.+rt, then rose, his eyes quite still, his voice very nearly solemn as he recited.

The desire of the moth for the star.

Of the day for the morrow.

The yearning for something afar

From the sphere of our sorrow.

When he finished, he sat down and fixed his gaze on the hearth. A soft golden light danced in his face, an effect that gave him an exposed and vulnerable look, something I'd never seen before.

”Who's the poet?” my father asked.

”Sh.e.l.ley.”

”Your mother's favorite,” my father said. ”No wonder. She was always looking for something afar.”

Billy nodded. ”Still is, I suppose,” he said softly.

I looked at him intently. ”Are you?” I asked.

His eyes drifted over to me. ”Maybe,” he said with a quiet, strangely somber smile.

Two weeks would pa.s.s before I put it together, the quotation he'd chosen, the pensive mood with which he'd offered it. Two weeks before I learned that in fact he had found that afar thing he'd spoken of that afternoon.

And that her name was Dora March.

Part Two.

Chapter Seven.

In the days immediately following my brother's murder, Sheriff T. R. Pritchart made every effort to find Dora March. He traced every lead, talked to everyone who might have known anything about where she'd gone. From me he learned that the ring we'd found beside Billy's body was my mother's. From Betty Gaines he discovered that a car had been parked on the road behind Dora's house not long before Billy's death. She'd also heard a voice coming from Dora's house, a male voice, Betty insisted, though she could not be sure it was Billy's. Rus.h.i.+ng through the rain, skirting along the edge of the lawn, she'd been able to make out only a little of what she'd heard.

Four lines:.

I don't believe it.

It's not true.

It can't be true.

It's you!

As to Dora's whereabouts, Henry Mason, an employee at the Sentinel, turned out to be the best witness. He'd seen Dora that day walking on the road that led to Royston, he told T.R. She'd been carrying a suitcase and headed toward the concrete pillar that marked the stopping place of the Portland bus. It had been raining, he said, and so he'd stopped, picked her up, and driven her to the bus station in Port Alma. She'd looked very tense, according to Henry, but she'd given no explanation as to why she was leaving town. From the look on her face, he'd gotten the idea that something had happened, the sudden illness of a relative, perhaps, or some other distressing news that had abruptly called her away. He'd asked her where she was going. She'd replied only, ”Away for a while,” so that Henry had fully expected her to return to Port Alma in a few days, had not in the least guessed that she was ”on the run.” He'd dropped her off at the bus station at ”somewhere around three” in the afternoon, he told Pritchart, and had then driven directly home.

According to Sheila Beacham, who'd sold her the ticket, Dora had looked nervous and upset when she bought her ticket to Portland. She'd gone directly to her bus, then taken a seat at the very rear.

After that, she had simply vanished.

And so, during the next few days, I'd searched Dora's house again and again, gone through closets, the small attic, even dug through the ashes in her fireplace and peered up its blackened chimney, looking everywhere for some sign of where she'd fled. I'd found only the battered anthology of English verse she'd left behind. The label inside read Ex Libris, Lorenzo Clay, Carmel, California, a clue, perhaps, to where she'd once been, but not to where she'd gone.

”I know you want her caught fast, Cal,” Sheriff Pritchart said the afternoon he summoned me to his office.

He'd found out that I was conducting my own investigation and wanted to stop me, he said, before I ”got into trouble.”

”It's up to other people to find Dora March,” T.R. told me. ”Not you, Cal. That's not your job at all.”

He leaned against the gun cabinet in his office, a row of rifles propped on their stocks behind the gla.s.s door. A steel chain was threaded through each trigger guard, then locked to an eyebolt in the wooden frame.

”You understand?”

When I gave no answer, he watched me silently, then said, ”You look like h.e.l.l, Cal.” He noticed me studying the lock on the gun case, the ravaged look in my eyes. ”I wish William had just steered completely clear of Dora,” he added.

An earlier judgment reared its head, Death follows her.

”But he just couldn't keep away from her, I guess,” T.R. said wearily.

”He loved her,” I told him in a matter-of-fact tone that gave no hint of the boiling wave I rode.

”It cost him his life.”

That seemed the most bitter of all conclusions, that Billy had died for love. I recalled the joy and peace that had come over him during the last hours of his life. It was as if he'd finally solved the great riddle of his existence, found in Dora the one key that unlocked him.

”Some money too, I guess.”

T.R. was referring to the embezzlement, paltry sums stolen from petty cash, fraudulent notes made in Dora's hand.