Silent Retreats by Philip F. Deaver Read Free Book Online Page A

long and pink. Skidmore had never seen it before. She pointed out the window, toward the wood storefront on the other street. He was stunned. The blood surged into his head, swelling the arteries in his neck. Even at this distance, he recognized her. She looked old, bundled in black and gray wool, a ragged black scarf.
    "She's been sending me notes."
    "Notes?"
    "Handwritten things, saying she's spying on me."
    "It's not spying if she tells you."
    "Do you know her?"
    Skidmore tried to think. What might Jolinda have said in those notes? "How do you think I'd know her?"
    "Maybe one of your Indian families, one of your clients, something?"
    "I don't know who she is, with her goddamned crazy notes."
    "Better tell me," Fiona said. She was getting dressed.
    Skidmore watched out across the way, avoiding Fiona's eyes. If he looked at her, he knew what she would look like. She would look just a little afraid, but there would be an edge of determination there also, and that was the part of the look that would mean trouble. She was not going to let this pass. And neither would Jolinda. The radiator pipes rattled and knocked with the rushing of steam. Out on the street, Jolinda gave Skidmore a big, ominous Indian wave.
    "Well," Fiona said. She pulled on her jeans, the long familiar legs disappearing behind the light blue. "I'm gonna talk to her and find out what in hell's going on around here." Fast, she pulled on a blue and white flannel shirt, disappearing into clothes. She sat on the bed and strapped her sheathed knife to the outside of her leg, slid on her boots. "Looks like an Indian woman to me," she said, and went out the door.
    Skidmore heard her clomp down the slanting stairway. Quickly, he gathered up his beer and his tapes and his tape recorder, and put all the stuff in a shopping bag. Then he too left, latching behind him the door to the apartment, scurrying off down the hill toward his trailer. All the way home, he kept an eye out.

Arcola Girls
    On Saturday night, Arcola girls would come north on the two lane for the dance. The road, Route 45, was flat, and the grass grew right up to the edge, crowding in on them, narrowing the alley of their headlight beam. With their windows open they could smell the warm, damp night air and the cornfields as they came. They could hear everywhere the swarms of crickets. Sometimes grasshoppers would land right on the windshield or thump onto the hood. Crows would sweep from the wires, stay on the road until the last moment, picking at run-over barn cats and field mice. The car tires would thump on the seams of the concrete road. It was a seven-mile drive.
    By eight in the evening their white Chevys and green Mustangs and burgundy Corvairs would be cruising through the drive-in and making the Webster Park loop. They would glide through the downtown, past the community building where the dance was just getting started. Sometimes you'd hear their tires screech as they stopped, or they'd peel out at the intersection, showing off. You could hear them laughing.
    One of them, named Kelly, had beautiful blond hair, long like that of Mary Travers. There was one named Karen who was famous for singing like Connie Francis, and sometimes at the dance she'd join the band and sing "Where the Boys Are,” just for fun. Another, Sandra, was very tall, and her hair was ratted in a bubble after the fashion. She had odd eye-habits, always seeming to observe. Sometimes, playing in the park, she'd be running—her strides were long and confident like a boy's.
    They all wore shorts and colorful sweatshirts, white tennis shoes. At the dance they would huddle together in a corner, doing committee work on the latest rumor, the latest dirty joke. Sandra, alert in the corners of her eyes, would look over her shoulder in case anyone was coming.
    "I think you love those girls," my girlfriend said to me on the phone one night, "the way you watch them."
    There were two bad S curves in the road from Arcola. They were