The Edge

Tarcher seemed perfectly harmless to me, just painfully shy, just the opposite of Maggie, and that was perhaps why she didn't like her. Cal Tarcher made her impatient.

    "Yes, I saw her," Cal said. She took two steps toward the door. It seemed that now she wanted to get out of there. "It was around nine-thirty. She was driving her Porsche down Fifth Avenue, playing her car stereo real loud. I was eating a late dinner at The Edwardian. There were maybe ten, twelve people there. We all got up and went outside to wave to Jilly. She was singing at the top of her lungs."

    "What was she singing?" I asked. "Songs from the musical Oklahoma. And laughing. Yes, I remember she was laughing. She shouted at everyone, told them she was going to go serenade all the dead folk in the cemetery. Then she did a U-turn and headed back east on Fifth Avenue."

    "That's what everyone else said, more or less." Maggie added, "The cemetery is just south of the main part of town, really close to the ocean, so it's possible that's what she did. But then, much later, she was driving north up the coast road."

    I remembered that Rob Morrison lived south of town. No, I thought, Jilly wouldn't break her marriage vows, not Jilly. She wanted to have a kid. She wouldn't screw around with anyone else. But I knew I wouldn't be able to leave it alone. I'd have to ask Maggie.

    "Maybe she went to the cemetery and something happened to her," Cal said.

    "Like what?" Maggie said, her words bitten out. "I don't know," Cal said slowly, ducking eye contact with every one of us. "But sometimes you can see odd shadows there, hear things, soft-sounding things. The trees whisper to each other, I've always thought. The hemlocks always seem to be crowding in toward the graves. You can imagine that their roots are twisted around a lot of the older caskets, maybe cracking them open, maybe releasing-" Cal shrugged. Then she tried to smile. "No, that's silly, isn't it?"

    "Yes," Maggie said. "Very silly. Dead people don't hold any interest, and that's all there is at the cemetery. Just moldy old bones. Now, Cal, Mac here doesn't know you're an artist and you have flights of fancy. Stop acting weird. You know you're not, really."

    "I still wouldn't want to go there at night," Cal said. "Even if I was drunk. It's a creepy place."

    "Are you saying that Jilly seemed drunk when you saw her at nine-thirty?" I asked.

    Cal was silent. Maggie said, "Nobody else said anything about her being drunk. Just high spirits, Mr. Pete said, and that was just Jilly. I asked the doctors at the hospital after they'd done tests on Jilly. Her blood alcohol level was consistent with a couple of glasses of wine. And the toxicology screen was negative. So forget the drunk thing. Now, Cal, you didn't see her after that?"

    Cal shook her head. She took a step toward the door. I stepped forward. "Maggie, why don't you and Paul continue your chat. I'll walk Miss Tarcher to her car." I thought she was going to make a mad dash for the front door to escape me. What was wrong with the woman?

    "Wait, Cal," I said, and pitched my voice low, filled with cool authority, the perfect FBI voice. She reacted instantly to that voice and came to a dead halt. I cupped her elbow in my right hand and went outside with her.

    It was a cool, very clear morning, just a light breeze to ruffle the hair on your head. I breathed in the ocean smell, still new in my lungs.

    I didn't say anything until we reached her car, a light blue BMW Roadster, its top down. She was looking at her feet again, walking quickly, eager to get away from me. I lightly touched her shoulder when she opened the car door and said, "Hold on a minute, Miss Tarcher. What's wrong? Who are you so afraid of?"

    For the first time, she looked up at me with a straightforward look, no eye-shifting. I saw that her eyes were a pale blue behind the glasses, with shades of gray. Cool eyes, intelligent. And something else I couldn't pinpoint. She straightened, her shoulders going back. She wasn't as short as I'd thought. In fact she suddenly looked tall, standing there with a very conscious arrogance. Her voice was as cool and intelligent as her eyes. "That, Mr. MacDougal, is none of your business. Good day to you. I will see you tomorrow night, unless you decide to leave town before then." She looked back toward the house for a moment, and added, "Who cares?" "I do," I said.

    She gave me an indifferent nod, climbed into her Beemer and was around the curve