Biting the Moon by Martha Grimes

Author:Martha Grimes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner

29

When they got back to Salmon, Reuel took them to the Coffee Shop for hamburgers and coffee. The light inside was harsh, a washday glare, light reflected back off white Formica tabletops and the waitresses’ starched aprons. A jukebox, its front dizzy with dissolving colors, was playing an old Willie Nelson song. Set into the wall in each booth was a menu of the jukebox offerings.

The three of them took a booth, Mary and Andi sitting across from Reuel. The tables were preset with knives and forks wrapped in paper napkins lying beside paper place mats scalloped around the edges. They were covered with join-the-dots puzzles, and objects buried in clouds, and differences between two cartoon pictures that looked the same but weren’t.

Kids’ games, Mary thought. Oh, well. . . .

As she was joining dots, a waitress came over to the booth to take their order. She and Reuel exchanged a few pleasant words, and they ordered burgers and coffee and chocolate milkshakes. After this, Mary went back to the place mat. The games were so easy, she couldn’t imagine they’d hold a kid’s interest for more than ten minutes. She completed all of them in seven, while Andi and Reuel sat talking about trapping and poaching.

Mary wished they wouldn’t, for it only took her back to the awful incident in Medicine Bow. Distracting herself with the place mat hadn’t lasted long. She could hardly bear thinking about the coyote pups. If you thought about it too long, you could wind up thinking you had to do something.

Andi was talking about Harry Wine. “When he said he’d never lost anyone yet, what did you mean by ‘except one’?”

Reuel didn’t answer right away. He had fitted himself back against the wall, one arm thrown across the top of the bloodred Naugahyde seat as his long fingers turned a matchbook cover around and around on its edge. “Young girl name of Atkins, Peggy Atkins. Can’t recall exactly where she was from, somewhere back east—”

“That’s the one!” Mary said to Andi.

Reuel frowned. “What one?”

Andi said, “In the paper I was reading. It was several years ago, wasn’t it?”

“Three, maybe four. She’d come here several times to float the Salmon. She joined up with Wine’s Outfitters.” His look at Andi was rueful. “I got a feeling it’d be better if I didn’t tell you all this.”

Andi shrugged. “You might as well.”

Mary knew the shrug did not imply indifference, unless it was indifference about how she got the information. As long as she got it.

Reuel sighed and went on. “I think she was twenty, give a year, take a year—”

“Nineteen, according to the paper.”

“Yeah. I only saw her three or four times. Twice in here, having a meal with Harry. Pretty girl, real pretty. Once, they were sitting right here in this booth, as a matter of fact.”

Andi’s eyes traveled the length and breadth of the booth, then to the floor, as if the ghostly imprint of Peggy Atkins clung to it.

“Now it just seemed to me they were some closer than captain and crew, you know—more’n just business.

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