Chris Klick

CONCERTO IN DEAD FLAT
CHAPTER ONE

"Put your lips together like this," she said. But my lips would never go together like that and we both knew it. Hers were a youthful pink. Pouty. The oversized, sensual lips of a French woman in her early twenties. Placed tightly together—as they were now—they resembled a budding red rose. When parted, they were the exploding morning flower, hungry for the heat of the sun.

My passport lay open on the bed. It showed a man approaching forty with sandy hair and strong features. A head shot, it didn't show my six foot four inches, or my two hundred and ten pounds; and in the cheap photo, my eyes looked more blue than the gray green they actually were. Nowhere did it mention that I was a self-employed, former professional musician who spent his time chasing down recording artists owed back royalties typically "mistakenly" misplaced by creative corporate accounts. On the plane over to Italy I had listed my visit as tourism, but this was in fact a small white lie. I was in Paris on business, and business wasn't looking so good.

Because of an acute lack of space in my Parisian hotel room—room 31, Hotel de Grande—my tutor, Sylvie, had taken to the bed where she now sat cross-legged, her books and papers chaotically spread before her, her cotton skirt tossed over her ankles, her lips bunched tightly and pointing at me as if inviting a kiss. My mind was not fully on the French language as it should have been.

"It has been twenty years since I've done this," I reminded her. It felt like about that long since my last kiss as well.

"You can do it," she encouraged in her delightful French-scented English. "Think of all the money you are paying me."

That encouraged another try with my lips. Later, when I reviewed our conversation in my head, I realized how the content could have been so easily misunderstood, especially when muffled by a wall and overheard by the hotel guest occupying the room next door. It seems this hotel guest was out on her room's half-balcony during this brief exchange in my tutorial. Believing Sylvie and I were discussing sexual acts for hire, she had promptly complained to management. So the next morning there I was, with my horrible French, trying to explain myself and to defend Sylvie's honor and my own. I apparently did a rather poor job of it: I was denied any more female "guests" in my room by the seventy-some-year-old matron who owned the hotel. It was this family atmosphere I liked so much about the hotel, so I made no attempt to change her mind. My French was so limited at the time, it would have done no good anyway.

I deserved as much for having French lessons at eleven on a Saturday night, but with my days consumed by looking for maestro Stephan Shultz and my attention preoccupied by the distractions of a city I truly adored, there remained few hours for language tutorials. Sylvie's employer, a French language agency, had left the working out of details to tutor and student, and so now, given the objections of my hotelier, either other arrangements would have to be made, or I would need to smuggle Sylvie up the fire stairs.

At nine-thirty that Sunday morning, I took a run along the tow path of the Seine under a penetrating September sun. Like wings, or insect legs, Notre Dame's flying buttresses caught and carved this light into a matrix of shadows. Sight of the cathedral stole my breath away, despite its familiarity. An imposing structure, stained by centuries of city smog, witness to a dozen wars and God-only-knows how many millions of pilgrims, it loomed ominously, majestically, triumphantly. Though, by nature, I was not as religious as spiritual, I nonetheless felt a moment of communion with God. In this, of all places.

Construction on the tow path forced me up stone stairs climbed by a thousand sailors, a thousand times that many lovers, by writers and painters too numerous to name, film makers, politicians and ladies of the night. A sense of that which had gone before-of history-oozed out of every crack in every stone, filled the branches of every tree that lined the boulevards, occupied a chair at every cafe.

Parisians carried baguettes like New Yorkers carried briefcases, only without the handle: secured beneath an elbow outstretched like a lance, gripped like a tennis racquet, or brandished like a cane.

I marveled at the tempo of this city, which, on God's day, seemed more like a sleepy village than one of the world's premiere urban centers.

My appointment that Sunday noon with a former colleague of Stephan Shultz, one Adrian Pascale, professor of music at the university, took place in his cramped, viewless apartment, a walk-up with just enough space in the living room for a Yamaha grand piano, a four-track tape recorder and a CD collection that would have made even my dear friend Lyel envious. Pascale, a surprisingly young-looking man, had dark expressive eyebrows, long hair pulled back in a pony tail, and powerful, inquisitive green eyes. I already knew, from having talked with him on the phone, that he spoke exceptional English, which came as a great relief. I was scheduled to visit Sylvie at her place at ten that evening—my French was barely beyond ordering bread and butter. Without his English, I would have been lost.

While he brewed me a cup of espresso I looked through his library of CDs and we discussed at a distance several re-recordings of which I was unaware. The rest of the room's decor amounted to a terra cotta urn containing a dusty bouquet of dried flowers, a mirror alongside the piano bench—either to frame the narcissistic or to check and correct posture—and a framed page of a hand-scribed musical score that bore his signature as well as an embossed star with the number one in its center.

"It was a competition I won," he said, delivering the demitasse. "It's how all this got started," he continued, taking a seat on the piano bench and offering me the room's only chair. Pupil and teacher. I was immediately uncomfortable, both because they still haven't made a chair for six-foot-four and because I didn't want him too complacent about who was running things. When you need answers from people, it's best to have them out of their element.

"Competition?" I inquired politely, not really interested.

"I was sixteen at the time. The assignment, it was to fill the gap in a Bach sonata. We were given the page three and the page five. We were to compose the page four, connecting these two. I won. This page, it won," he said pointing. "At the time, I have the visions of being the next Mozart. Instead," he said sweeping his arm, but his face revealing disappointment, "a somewhat obscure chair in musical history at the university." In the blink of an eye, he checked himself in the mirror. "And you, Mr. Klick. You are a liar, which is why it is I have invited you here to my home. I am fascinated by liars. As an academic, I rub elbows with them daily."

I sipped the bitter coffee, drank in his bitter words, and wondered if the heat I felt in my cheeks could be seen on my face.

He informed me, "The media calls him Steven Shultz, just as you did over the phone when we spoke. However, if you know the man—and you do not, despite your claim to the contrary—then you know it is actually Ste-ph-an." He raised his finger at me, as teachers tend to do. Then he lit a non-filter Gauloise without offering me one. I took that as a compliment. "Curiosity is a funny thing. I was immediately curious about you."

"My business with Mr. Shultz is confidential," I said.

"You're working for his wife," he stated flatly. I had no idea what he was talking about. I tried not to show it.

He sucked on the cigarette, collapsing his cheeks. When he next spoke, gray exhaust chased his words. "She should relax. These things have a way of blowing over."

I forced a smile. Shultz was owed a considerable sum of money in back royalty payments withheld from him by a former recording company. My interest and that of my partner, Bruce Warren, was in the finder's fee for putting him in touch with this money.

Adrian Pascale flirted with the mirror again and gassed himself up with a chest full of smoke.

"Last week I was in Italy," I explained dryly, mention of the wife clicking into place. "The maestro was recently seen at a cocktail party outside of Todi. An area called Beverly Hills, after Beverly Pepper, the artist, who has installed a good many close friends in the area. I was left with the understanding that the maestro was currently visiting here in Paris. Moi aussi!" I attempted. "Me too."

He asked incredulously, "You are suggesting the wife did not send you?"

"Perhaps you've read about a certain Japanese company which is in the process of acquiring a major Hollywood studio, complete with that company's recording division? An audit of the recording side of things revealed an accounting 'error' in Mr. Shultz's favor. My partner and I make our living matching people like Mr. Shultz with lost property and misappropriated funds, including royalty money."

His expression changing, he said, "I think I read about you." He killed the cigarette with a twist.

"That would have been my partner, Bruce Warren. He's the attorney side of the team." I forced another smile. "He gets all the press."

"So you are not working for the wife."

"I thought we had already established that." I said hastily, "I heard about the fireworks between Shultz and the cello player. It was suggested that he followed her here. Is that where the wife comes in?" As the question passed my lips it seemed rhetorical.

A knock on the door interrupted any possibility of a reply. He rose and answered the door. What followed was a volley of expletives, in French, as four men-my size or better-barged into the apartment and headed straight for the piano.

Beside himself Adrian Pascale danced around the room wildly, hollering at them in French as they disassembled the Yamaha grand. From the hall, one of them grabbed a dolly, a quilted pad, and some straps. What little of the conversation I understood had to do with Adrian Pascale's astonishment that they would do this on a Sunday. He was appalled that they had tricked him in this way. "Dimanche?" he kept shouting, moving from one corner of the tiny room to the other, but not interfering with their work.

The repo boys paid him no mind. They were numb to such complaints. In a matter of a very few minutes the piano, and its legs, had been wrapped, placed onto a dolly and moved out to the landing. Adrian Pascale attempted to shut the door in disgust when one of them returned for the bench. Pascale finally slammed the door shut.

I stood and offered Adrian his only chair. He glared at me and lit another cigarette. "On a Sunday!" he exclaimed in French. "Two months is all I owe. It's nothing! But now, how am I supposed to tutor? My God, I have a student tomorrow night! They came on a Sunday!" he added hysterically.

Bruce and I were not above paying for information—when needed. I considered cutting Mr. Pascale a deal, but I wasn't sure how much he could help, and I feared his hysterics and present concerns would force him into inventing information for me, solely to save his piano. Again I offered him the chair. This time he accepted.

"What is the cellist's name?" I asked, towering over him as he fueled the ember of his cigarette with a disgusting inhale.

He seemed to have forgotten about me.

"Stephan Shultz's woman friend," I reminded.

"Woman? She's not much more than a girl, that one."

"Her name," I repeated.

"Allison Star."

"She's here in Paris?"

Numbed by his loss, he mumbled, "Julia is putting her up at her flat. Julia's number is in... hand me that small directory, there... yes." It was a photocopy of a listing of the music department students.

A minute later I crossed the hole in the room previously occupied by the piano, and reached the door. I had lost him for the time being.

"Who was to expect such trouble on a Sunday?" he asked.

I left him still sitting in that chair, struggling with his cigarette pack, tearing it, giving up on it and tossing it across the room. He was staring at himself in the mirror. In another minute or two, he would be crying.

© Ridley Pearson

DEAD AIM
CHAPTER ONE

The condition of the sky sets the tone for the day, more so than temperature or wind. Even on the coldest of days, with a brittle northerly blowing hoarfrost along the hardened surface of snow crust, a bright, crystal sky elevates my mood. Such a sky is intoxicating.

On that day in early September, the sky was a flawless expanse of mountain-air blue. It said, "Smile." It said, "Enjoy." I was doing both. My binoculars were trained on a pair of mergansers, members of the diving-duck family, the male richly colored, the female less so. The deck off the east side of the log cabin I regularly house-sit allows me a slightly elevated view of the slough that snakes along the border of the property’s five acres. The slough is a slow-moving, spring-fed creek that doubles as a source of irrigation water for the local farmers fortunate enough to own water rights. It is also haven to waterfowl, brook trout, songbirds, and a variety of bushy vegetation that grips its banks stubbornly. Arctic willow hugs its edges in dense clumps that stretch fifteen feet high, obscuring both sight of the creek and a neighbor’s nearby horse corral. The slough is the lifeblood of all flora and fauna along its edges, for the five acres are considered high desert, and if left to nature, little grows other than knee-high sage and an assortment of hearty wildflowers and weeds.

The mergansers motored silently from right to left—upstream—seemingly effortlessly, narrow silver wakes trailing behind, breaking the slough’s mirrored surface. How beautiful they were in their motionless swimming, paired, black agate eyes peering back into my non-glare lenses. The binoculars were strong enough to allow me to spot a flotilla of water bugs navigating the oscillating motion of the wake as they randomly scooted about, their tiny legs miniature pontoons on the hard glass-like surface of the slough’s dark water. They looked like pleasure craft avoiding the much larger ferry as they darted in behind the passing ducks.

I heaved a sigh of contentment. Birding was something new to me. Previously I had considered it a decidedly effeminate hobby meant for bald-headed, red-lipped bibliophiles. But a few months earlier, on another of my visits, curiosity and admiration had won out. The great blue heron was to blame. It, like well-postured women and vintage champagne, I found irresistible.

I was thankful that I had the good fortune to relax in a deck chair while watching mergansers feed. Tough life, this. But I also felt the torment of the child who has built a multi-towered sand castle and now must face the change in tides and the inexorable advance of the threatening waves. I had earned this time off—I had a sore shoulder and insurance claims to prove it—and it was passing much too quickly. Soon I would face a jetway again, and the short flight back to Horrorwood. Ugh.

That’s one reason I was annoyed when the mergansers took to wing, although I confess that ducks landing and ducks taking to flight are wonderful sights to behold. Had it been a natural response to a predator, or simply a desire to change diet for a few hours, their departure might not have bothered me. But it was because of the Jeep Wagoneer that pulled into my gravel driveway and the subsequent sounding of its horn that they flew, and I knew they would not return today. Probably not ever. My enjoyment of these particular two mergansers was over. In all, we had shared some twenty-five minutes together, and I could only reflect on what the rest of their lives might be like. It was duck-hunting season, my slough a sanctified retreat preserved from the scattering steel shot of anxious hunters. This Wagoneer had startled my comrades back into the sky, back into the game, and whether they would even survive the evening was now a matter of conjecture. By leaving here they had thrown themselves back into it, and I was anything but pleased. I was wearing tennis shorts and a layer of number 4 block (I figured the September sun couldn’t do anything but enhance my summer bronze). I made no attempt to slip on the T-shirt that lay next to the St. Pauli Girl. This was my house, my time off, and this Wagoneer was uninvited. If the driver didn’t like looking at a bare chest and abdomen, then that couldn’t be helped. They weren’t bad, as far as male chests and abdomens go, and I wasn’t feeling modest. I was feeling intruded upon.

"Hello," I offered in my best neighborly voice.

She waved with three fingers as she struggled to fix a scarf about her hair, securing it against the light breeze that had intruded as quickly as she had. I shielded my eyes against the harsh afternoon sun and fished blindly for my sunglasses, which lay somewhere near the T-shirt and beer bottle. My fingers struck plastic and I raised them toward my eyes.

"Mr. Klick?"

"Chris or Christopher," I corrected.

"I’m sorry to barge in on you like this, unannounced and all. I tried to find a phone number—"

"It’s not under my name. I’m house-sitting."

Her shadow stretched to my thighs. I could only see a silhouette, yellow fuzz burning its edges. "I asked Nola where you lived," she explained, referring to our small town’s beloved postmistress. "I told her it was an emergency."

"Is it?"

"I think so."

"With emergencies they either are or they aren’t. They’re quite dependable that way—you know when you’ve got one."

"You’re angry. I have violated your privacy. I can understand your anger. I have to admit right up front that I’m not much on popular music. Stopped listening to the radio ten years ago. Would I know any of your songs? I understand you’re a producer."

I debated correcting her. I had been an unpublished songwriter once—maybe that counted. It struck me that she didn’t care about any of it anyway, so why bother with it? She probably didn’t know the difference between a back-up singer and a lead singer, a producer and an arranger, a gig and a session. Not many did. Upon hearing that I had found Brenda Catiglio and had bailed her out of some trouble, a local rag had decided that qualified me for celebrity status. I had refused the interview, but even so they had managed to dig up some dated misinformation, and had spread it across page 17—of 20. She was trying to build me up. We both knew it. I wondered why.

I climbed out of the deck chair and motioned to it. "Have a seat." She hesitated. "Sit down. I’ll grab another chair. Beer?"

"No, thanks."

"Sure?" I asked over my shoulder.

"Oh, okay." She shrugged. It was a nice shrug. Genuine. Self-conscious and insecure. "If it’s no trouble," she added.

"All I do is open ’em and pour ’em," I reminded. "Back in a jiffy –"

When I returned a few minutes later, she was poised in the chair with her neck resting on its rim, eyes closed behind sunglasses, blouse unbuttoned and hanging at her sides revealing a skintight leotard made of purple Lycra. It pressed her breasts flat and smoothed her narrow waist. A chain of perspiration specks clung to tiny hairs on her breastbone. She had the skin of a sunworshiper. I placed her in her late twenties, early thirties. I had a decade on her, stood a good foot taller, and probably weighed in eighty pounds heavier. She was a little too perfect for my tastes. She had a very feminine jawline and a very delicate neck. I wondered what that body looked like when it wasn’t being flattened by Lycra. How far did that tan run? I dragged my chair with my foot so it would make a racket, and I sat down facing her, but with one eye still on the slough. Still hoping for a second curtain call by the mergansers. She made a sound like a vacuum cleaner coming to a stop—winding down—and sat up. "Got to take every advantage of that sun," she said. "Won’t be with us much longer."

"Agreed." I handed her a glass of beer. She seemed perfectly comfortable in the leotard. To her it was obviously acceptable summer dress—just like my tennis shorts were to me. I was less comfortable. I found myself distracted. I’d been alone in my little cabin for a few too many weeks, I decided. The slow, steady movement of her as she breathed had me mesmerized.

"I read that you visit here often," she began.

"Off and on."

"When you’re not out doing what it is you do."

"That’s right."

She sipped the beer. I swigged. She said, "You like it here?"
"It’s quiet. I like that. Open. That’s nice. I spend a lot of time in the city. This is better for me."

"Then you like the city?"

"Some of them. Yes."

"I’m from southern California originally. Came up here to Idaho to ski. Fell in love with it. Me and a thousand others," she said, laughing gracefully. "Couldn’t stand the hustle of Snow Lake. Moved down here to Ridland, away from it, but still close enough for the restaurants and the powder days. You like to ski?"

"Yes."

She looked over. "I’m bothering you."

"To what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?" She toyed with the idea of buttoning her blouse, but I must have willed her off. She nervously fooled with a button and let the fabric fall open again. I wondered if she caught my smirk. I have trouble hiding my smirks.

"We’ve only lived in Ridland about five months," she declared somewhat loudly. She wasn’t ready yet, and she wouldn’t be pushed into it. Her use of we did not go unnoticed. I noticed the ring then, the little band of gold that says "I do," or "I did," and almost never "I will." I had trouble masking my disappointment. I swigged again and tapped out a rhythm connecting the bottom of the Pauli Girl with the beige metal armrest. I looked back out at the slough, hoping to see my winged friends, wondering why this woman had come along to scare them off. "We met up at Snow Lake at the end of last season," she continued. Then she spun the ring to make sure I’d noticed it. "I read how you saved that woman’s life—Brenda Catiglio—and you seemed like someone I should talk to."

"The press exaggerates. I found her is all. I was actually looking for someone else, someone owed some back royalties. It was a fluke. She was in some trouble. I was handy."

"And she’s Carmine Catiglio’s daughter?"

I nodded.

"I bet he was pleased."

I nodded again. I was still uneasy at having an Atlantic City casino owner claim he owed me a favor. Probably the same feeling as being a close friend to a politician.

"The article said you make a living at it. You track down former pop musicians who are owed royalty checks and then help them get what’s rightfully theirs. Isn’t that what it said? I mean, besides writing your own songs?"

"That’s what it said. Yes."

"So you obviously like to help people."

"I like music. This happens to be the side of the business I’ve ended up in. I got here via a very circuitous route. And it’s not all Robin Hood—although I admit I like that part of it. I do it for money, for a percentage, Mrs. –"

"Oh. I’m sorry. How rude of me! Nicole Russell. Call me Nicky."

"Nicole suits you better."

She shrugged again. She had a patent on that shrug. Careless and indifferent. "My father always called me Nicole." She hesitated just long enough for me to feel her grief. The mergansers could have felt it had they still been swimming out there. It probably would have scared them off, it was so intense. "You can call me that if you like."

"I like." That made twice she had used language to tell me something. First the we, and now the past tense in conjunction with her father. So it would be a contest of subtle semantics and nuances. I hoped she wasn’t going to make me pry everything out, a bit at a time. The green Pauli Girl bottle was half empty and my September sun was slanting quickly through the sky. I nearly ended our conversation with a blunt rudeness—I keep them handy for such moments—but Nicole had aroused my curiosity, at least my curiosity, and now I wanted her mystery as well. I feared I had taken the job before I even knew what it involved.

She moved in the chair and the Lycra flexed with the effort, softly shifting the flesh beneath. Again she sipped the beer. If she kept it up it would be flat by the time she was half finished. It made me uneasy. Beer—especially my green Girl—is to be appreciated.

"Fall’s a beautiful time of year, isn’t it?" she asked.

"I like the migrations. Fall and spring are special because of that. They’re the seasons of change. Winter and summer, they’re the seasons of stability."

"Birds or big game? The migrations, I mean. Are you a hunter?"

"Birds. And no to number two. I like to watch." I saw her blush and wondered why.

"I get so angry at his hunting," she spit. Her jaw muscles hardened and tensed. Again the Lycra flexed, and again my mind wandered. I’d been cooped up too long. "If he hadn’t gone hunting, none of this would have happened." It was a private comment—her way of telling me a little bit more.
"It might save us some time if you’d just explain."

She cocked her head toward me.

"Don’t move," I demanded sternly. Behind her soft-green lenses her brows cinched down tightly and her forehead wrinkled.

By the time I saw them, their wings were set. Two mallards just at the tips of the willows. Nicole obeyed and remained still. I had heard the whistling of their wings that is unique to ducks. I wondered if she had. They dropped steeply and skidded into the slough, webbed feet dragging behind them and frothing the surface. They ruffled their wings in unison, shaking off the water they had gathered on landing. "Okay," I said, "if you move real slowly. " She brought her head around to look and I saw her smile.

"I love that color green," she said. "I think that’s my favorite color green."

"Iridescent."

She nodded slowly. "A couple," she whispered.

"It’s Mr. Russell, is that it?"

She nodded again, still watching the mallards.

"He didn’t show up last night," I suggested.

She agreed with that, in her own way. At least I took it for agreement. Then she added, "Two nights ago," and confirmed my suspicions.

"And you’ve spoken to the police?"

"I didn’t want to at first." She wouldn’t look at me. "Ridland’s such a small town. So off on its own. Self-contained, really. Everyone knows everybody’s business. You must get the same treatment as we do. They like us, but we’re not really part of it here. They have their own group here and there seem to be some unspoken rules to the club."

"What did they say? The police, I mean."

"They? You mean him. He pointed out rather crudely that forty miles up the road is a world-famous resort with a lot of ‘young things,’ I think is how he put it. I challenged that notion. I told him I had already been up to Snow Lake and made the rounds and that none of his friends had seen him."

"And?"

"It’s the truth. It’s the first thing I did. I know all about failed relationships, believe me. But that’s not the way it is."

"What’d he say to that? To your looking around, I mean."

"He pointed out that there are eighteen hundred condominiums for rent—especially this time of year—and another three thousand motel and hotel rooms. He suggested that finding anyone up there wouldn’t be easy."

"He’s right."

"You’re missing the point. That’s not where he is."

"Where is he?"

She took a deep breath and watched the mallards poke their necks into the water, biting off food from the bottom. Their white tails stuck straight up in the air. They looked fake, like capsized decoys. "You know they say there’s a feeling, in here," she said, depressing the Lycra beneath her breasts, "that tells you when something bad has happened. I always thought that was some sort of romantic notion—fanciful, you know—bullshit," she said harshly, surprising me. She sniffled and I saw her swallow away another attack of tears.

"Anything’s possible," I said tenderly, drawing on my beer.

"It’s not him. It’s not Paul," she said, confusing me.

"Meaning?"

"I don’t know about Paul. Not in here, anyway. Not in my heart. We were convenient for each other at the time. It’s pleasant enough—but no fireworks. No infatuation. Just convenient, that’s all. With Paul I can’t be sure. With Paul I can’t feel anything in here. There’s too much clogging it up. Too many impure emotions in the way. With Paul it’s different."

"I don’t think I follow you."

"It’s Harper. It’s Harper I feel in here. Something’s happened to Harper."

"Harper?"

"My black Lab. Paul used him to hunt. He’s a retriever. The best damn dog in the world." She sat forward and crossed her arms tightly. She buckled over and sobbed uncontrollably. "Harper’s hurt…or dead," she blurted out after a while. "I just know he is."

It took me another fifteen minutes to get the whole story. Her husband had been missing for the better part of two days. Last night, going to bed, she’d been struck in her heart with a violent pain she attributed to her dog Harper. A dog! I saw my obituary fifty years from now: Finder of Missing Persons—and Pets. She had checked the kennel. Harper was missing, food still in the bowl. She couldn’t remember seeing him. Had he been there the first night? Had Paul taken Harper with him? She couldn’t remember.

"Goddammit, Mr. Klick, I’m scared!" she said, frightening the mallards who flew off in unison. "And no one seems to care."

"I care," I told her, my eyes staying with the mallards who circled, saw us, and rose quickly into the blue, darting over toward the river and an uncertain future. "Go home and stay by the phone. Your husband may call." I didn’t tell her what I was envisioning: a twenty-year-old waitress with a middle-aged man.

"I can pay you. Money I have."

"I don’t work for a fee," I explained. "Not exactly. It’s kind of complicated. I don’t handle things like this. This is for private investigators." I didn’t have the heart to tell her I had no interest in a missing-dog investigation.

As she stood to leave I heard five quick dull pops from a shotgun far in the distance. The river, I thought gravely. The mallards.

"Iridescent," I whispered.

Nicole Russell looked at me curiously.

© Ridley Pearson

AIM FOR THE HEART
CHAPTER ONE

There is nothing quite as satisfying as a morning run. There are things more enjoyable, but nothing quite as satisfying. In the mountains, at that moment in time when the sun is about to crest the eastern ridge, rays splintering into a sky littered with clouds, the air becomes absolutely still, as if the earth is holding its breath, awaiting the new day.

Padding along the rutted dirt road that curled around a sage-covered hill below Tom and Julie Shanklin's A-frame, I was greeted with the first trumpeting of a robin, a welcome burst of melody interrupting the stillness. Within moments neighboring birds joined in, and soon a whistled chorus charged the dawn with an intoxicating energy.

My friend Lyel's new puppy, Derby, trotted at my side, her tail wagging, tongue drooping. Part shepherd, part collie, with sad brown eyes and a coy, baby-toothed grin, she was a joyful companion.

I have never been accused of being a workaholic. I spend as much time as possible in appreciation of life and the world around me. For this reason, I have not accumulated enough capital reserve to acquire any material goods of significant permanence. No house. No property. No stocks or bonds or securities of any sort. I divide my time between work and play as unequally as possible. Work is tied loosely to the edges of the music business and a partner in L.A. The reason I had been able to take time off to play was that I had spent the month of May locating a woman who had once been a member of a popular Motown trio. I had found her in Baltimore, where she and her husband ran a motel, and across town, a coin-op laundry. She was due a generous amount of money that my partner, Bruce Warren, had pried loose from a record company. The money, back royalties, had been buried for years in the tabular columns of a ledger book. For our part, Bruce and I split twenty-five percent of the pretax amount, which came to $18,500. I had left Los Angeles with a little shy of nine grand, a sum I hoped might carry me through a summer of fly-fishing and birding in the dusty hills of central Idaho.

I turned around at the third gate up Townsend Gulch, a distance that made my round trip run just over four miles. As I passed the Shanklins' again, I noticed the Dobermans were out and roaming, so I kept Derby close. She was still of a size and naivete that would make her little more than a breakfast muffin for a Doberman, even though the Shanklins' Dobermans are as gentle as lambs. She growled and whined, tucking her previously wagging tail submissively between her scurrying legs as she strode alongside, one eye cocked toward her adversaries, who had the consideration to halt at the big gate and allow us to pass.

A mile and a half later the two of us turned right onto the narrow gravel lane that feeds Lyel's property, property I have come to think of as my own. Lyel allows me residence in the "guest cottage," a log cabin that sits alongside a deliciously private trout stream that plays host to an enormous amount of bird life. He occupies the main house, seven thousand square feet of bachelor opulence, if and when he's in town, which amounts to about the same span of time that I'm in town. Therein lies the absurdity of the designation "house sitter," a title he once bestowed upon me. Lyel always arrives in town shortly after I do, and always stays until I leave. In short, he could just as easily house sit, since he's there when I'm there.

* * *

Lyel showed up just before noon as I was contemplating the enormous task before me: installing a lawn sprinkling system. Lyel had ordered the parts; I was supposed to supply the labor. He had brought me a St. Pauli Girl and a turkey sandwich from the Southside Deli in Butte Peak. We left Derby sleeping in the shade of the deck and took a break beneath the dancing leaves of a mountain ash. Lyel wore red and black jams, a white cotton golf shirt, and size fourteen flip-flops. I asked him where he found flip-flops that size and he told me that they had been hanging as demonstration models in the local drugstore.

Lyel keeps himself young by surrounding himself with young women. He has two housecleaners, a woman to mow his lawn, and a part-time cook. All four look perfectly wonderful in bikinis, and all seem to appreciate Lyel as much as I do—though in a different way.

A distant sound caught his attention. "Ag-cat," Lyel said. He knows airplanes the way I know birds. The small plane was flying low, traveling from our right, passing directly over the town of Ridland and headed for a landing at Butte Peak's small regional airport.

"Urn," I acknowledged in mid bite. Small planes don't do much for me, except interrupt my serenity and scare away birds.

It wasn't until the plane exploded that I paid any attention; and then, because it was several miles away, it seemed somewhat surreal. A huge yellow-orange mushroom erupted into the tranquil blue of that midday sky, driving a black cloud of smoke above it like a top hat.

A moment later a second explosion rocked the ground beneath us. We were four miles away, and we glanced at each other in disbelief. A tower of red-black flame peaked at about a hundred feet.

"That," Lyel said, "was the gas station."

Lyel was seldom wrong.

© Ridley Pearson