Beauty Queen

anxiously looking for signs of vandalism. But the windows were unbroken. As they stopped the car, she could see the padlock on the front door.
    She shut off the engine, and started to cry.
    For the first time in days, she felt Liv's arms around her, warm and comforting.
    "You must cry," said Liv soothingly. "It is very good to cry, no?"
    After she'd dried her eyes, they got out of the car.
    The "cabin" was actually a small hillbilly type of farmhouse. It had a front porch where one could "set a spell" in a rocking chair. The clapboard was very weathered, peeling off, and the little brick chimney was crumbling at the top. It was shaded by white birches, bent and broken by winter storms. A few straggling irises still grew by the porch. Off against a nearby hill, Mary Ellen could see a mound of moldy weathered hay—the remains of the pile of bales where she and her father used to fix targets for shooting.
    She unlocked the padlock, and they went in.
    Everything was pretty much as she and her father had left it: the ancient wicker and leather furniture in the living room, the painted table in the kitchen, a hand-pump right by the sink which went clankety-clank and drew sweet water directly up from the well under the house.
    Liv kept clapping her hands with delight, transported back into her own childhood. They unloaded the car.
    The first thing Mary Ellen did, when Liv was outdoors, was to check the padlocked chest in the bedroom, where her father had kept his gun collection. The guns were all there, the Kentucky rifle, the 1868 Colt .45, the buffalo gun. Quickly she put the Beretta and the ammo clip in there, and padlocked it again.
    From here, it would be easy to get to Pawling. Because of the summer heat, Jeannie Colter was concentrating her activities at Windfall right now, and the staff was jokingly calling it "the summer White House." Here also, she would be able to do a little target shooting—though she couldn't take a chance on firing the Beretta until it was aimed at Jeannie Colter.
    Meanwhile, she would just try to relax.
    She and Liv scoured up the kitchen, arranged the groceries (there was no refrigerator, so they would have to drive often to town). They got out the dusty kerosene lamps, cleaned them and filled them, and hauled in firewood for the fireplace. They swept and dusted the bedroom and made up the bed (whose mattress smelled just a little musty).
    Liv was in a state of almost feverish excitement, asking all kinds of questions. "Are there any berries to pick?" "Are there any deer or other animals to see?"
    Mary Ellen suspected that Liv, too, was covering up her nervousness.
    The next day, Mary Ellen drove almost to Hartford, Connecticut, to make a phone call from a pay phone at a rest area along the highway.
    She dialed Armando's number in New York City.
    When Armando answered, she said. "Okay, I've got it all worked out. Don't write anything down, okay? Just try and remember everything."
    "Okay," said Armando. "I was beginning to think I'd never hear from you."
    "You're going to think this is a little strange, but the best place to hit her is at her church some evening."
    "If you don't think it's strange," said Armando, "then I don't think it's crazy. But why the church?"
    "Well," said Mary Ellen, "Colter is one strange lady. The other people on the staff tell me that she has this thing about her mother, and I believe it. Her mother was super-religious, right? Now Colter feels guilty, because her mother died before she got saved. Her mother is buried in the churchyard down here at the First Baptist Church. It's right off Route 22 just south of Quaker Hill Road—you won't have any trouble finding it, because there's a sign right on the road. So every evening Colter goes down to the churchyard there, and she mopes around her mother's grave. I mean, she goes down there late, when there usually isn't anyone around— sometimes after midnight."
    "Sounds pretty weird," said Armando.
    "It is weird," said Mary Ellen. "I guess she does it late because no one will see her at that hour. And of course she always takes me with her, because she knows it's a tricky situation."
    Armando started to laugh softly.
    "Now," said Mary Ellen, "here's what you have to do. Next week is a week that she's not going anywhere to make speeches or anything. She told me she's tired, and she wants to take a few days off. She's going to be staying there at Windfall. I want you to come up here and stay at the Bel Aire Motel,