Read Online At Ease with the Dead by Walter Satterthwait - Free Book Online Page A

Alice, “The letter was explicit?”
    She smiled. “For a twelve-year-old girl, it was a revelation.”
    â€œDid it have a return address?”
    â€œNo. But the envelope had been postmarked in Gallup, New Mexico.”
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œFebruary, Nineteen twenty-five.”
    â€œWhat happened to the letter?”
    â€œI kept it for years. It was destroyed in the forties, in a fire. I was out of the country at the time and didn’t find out about it until I returned.”
    â€œAnd the woman, whoever she was, didn’t sign her name?”
    â€œNo. She signed it, ‘Your Heart.’” She smiled. “I’ve always thought that was rather fine. If I’d wanted to, I suppose I could’ve found out who she was. But it would’ve seemed like prying, like intruding on something very private and personal.”
    â€œHow would you’ve gone about finding out?”
    â€œMy father had a Navajo guide. Raymond Yazzie. He came to El Paso once with his son, Peter, a boy about my age. A very nice boy, very clever. We got along and Peter and I began writing to each other. We corresponded for quite a while, up until the time I graduated from college. If I’d asked him about the woman, I feel sure he would’ve told me.”
    â€œWould he’ve known about her?”
    â€œI suspect so. He often went along when his father acted as a guide for mine.”
    I nodded. “You said your mother learned about the affair. Do you know that for a fact?”
    â€œYes. I heard them fighting about it, downstairs, the day he returned from that last trip. Usually they were careful not to argue in front of me, but presumably this time they thought I was asleep. Or perhaps they were both so angry they really didn’t care. My mother was shrieking, howling like a madwoman. I’d never heard her scream like that before. Nor curse like that, either—the phrase ‘that filthy bitch’ came up with a certain frequency. I knew she was talking about a woman, but I had no idea then specifically who she meant. Finally, she threw something at him, a vase or a plate. I heard it shatter. He stormed out the front door and left the house.”
    â€œAnd then?”
    â€œHe came back sometime during the night—he was there at breakfast, when I came downstairs. He was very subdued, very quiet, and he remained that way all week, until just before he died.”
    I nodded. “If you’re right, and your mother killed him, why would she wait a week?”
    â€œI think that what happened, probably, was that she believed she’d won. That she’d convinced him not to see this woman again. And then, the night of the seventh, I think he told her he wanted a divorce.”
    â€œDid you hear him say that?”
    â€œNot actually hear him, no. But it makes sense. That day, the seventh, my father suddenly stopped sulking and became his old self again. As though he’d come to an important decision. He and my mother talked for a long time in the study before she came up to bed.”
    I said, “And you really feel your mother was capable of murder?”
    She smiled. “I think that given the proper circumstances, anyone is capable of murder. And my mother was not a terribly pleasant woman, I’m afraid. She was rigid and unyielding and physically withdrawn. The classic Ice Maiden. She hated to be touched, by me or by my father. And sex, good Lord, sex was something that only happened to animals. It was at her insistence that they slept in separate rooms.”
    â€œWhich doesn’t mean she killed him.”
    â€œNo. But she also hated Indians.” She smiled. “Along with blacks, Jews, Catholics, and Democrats, in approximately that order. I think she must have found it especially galling that my father would leave her for a physical relationship, and with an Indian woman. I think that brittle reserve of hers must’ve simply