Still Life (A Three Pines Mystery)

Again Clara cleared her mind, opened it wide. And lo and behold, an idea appeared. Fully formed. Whole and perfect and disturbing. Within moments she was out the front door and chugging up rue du Moulin. As she approached Timmer's home she instinctively crossed to the other side and averted her eyes. Once beyond it she re-crossed the road and made her way past the old schoolhouse, still bedecked in yellow police tape. Then she plunged into the woods, wondering for a moment at the folly of her actions. It was getting on dusk. The time when death waits in the woods. Not in the form of a ghost, Clara hoped, but in an even more sinister guise. A man with a weapon designed to make ghosts. Hunters crept into the woods at dusk. One had killed Jane. Clara slowed down. This was perhaps not the brightest idea she'd had. Actually, it was the box's idea, so she could blame it if she was killed. Clara heard a movement ahead. She froze.

The woods were darker than Gamache had expected. He'd entered by a route he was unfamiliar with and spent a moment looking around, getting his bearings. He had his cell phone with him in case he got lost, but he knew the cellular grid was unreliable at best in the mountains. Still, it was some comfort. He turned full circle, slowly, and spotted a small flash of yellow. The police tape circling the spot where Jane had died. He made for it, the woods still soaked from the day's downpour, and drenching his legs and feet as he went. Just outside the cordon he stopped again and listened. He knew it was the hunting hour, he'd just have to trust that it wasn't his time. Trust, and be very, very careful. Gamache spent ten minutes searching before he found it. He smiled as he made his way to the tree. How often had his mother chastised him as a child for staring down at his feet, instead of looking up? Well, she'd been right again. When they'd first searched the site he'd been looking on the ground when what he wanted wasn't down there. It was up in the trees.

A box.

Now Gamache stood at the foot of the tree contemplating the wooden structure twenty feet up. Nailed to the trunk was a series of wooden planks, rungs, their nails long since rusted and bleeding a deep orange into the wood. Gamache thought of his warm seat by the window in the Bistro. His amber Cinzano and pretzels. And the fireplace. And he started climbing. Hauling himself up one rung at a time he remembered something else, as one trembling hand reached up and strangled the next rung. He hated heights. How could he have forgotten? Or had he perhaps hoped this time would be different? As he clung to the slimy, creaky, narrow slats and looked up to the wooden platform a zillion feet above, he froze.

Had the noise come from ahead or behind? Clara wondered. It was like sirens in the city, the noise seems omnipresent. And now she heard it again. She turned and looked behind her. Back there the trees were mostly pines and held their dark needles, making the woods prickly and black. Ahead, into the red sunset, the woods were more mixed, with maples and cherry. Clara made instinctively for the light, not sure whether she should make a lot of noise, like in the spring to warn the bears, or be as quiet as possible. She supposed it depended on what she thought was with her in the woods. A bear, a deer, a hunter, or a ghost. She wished she had a box to consult. Or Peter. Yes, Peter was almost always better than a box.

Gamache willed his hands to move to the next rung. He remembered to breathe and even hummed a little song of his own devising. To ward away terror. He climbed toward the dark patch above him. Breathe, reach, step. Breathe, reach, step. Finally he made it and his head poked through the small square cut in the floor. It was as the book described. A blind. You'd have to be blind drunk to want to sit up there, thought Gamache. He hauled himself through the hole and to his feet, feeling a wave of relief, which was replaced a moment later by blinding terror. He dropped to his knees and scrambled to the tree trunk, hugging it to himself. The fragile box was perched twenty feet up the tree and hung out five feet into the air, hovering there with only a rickety old rail between Gamache and oblivion. Gamache dug his hands into the bark, feeling the wood pinch his palm, glad for the pain to concentrate on. His horrible fear, and the terrible betrayal, wasn't that he'd trip and fall, or even that the wooden blind would tumble to the ground. It was that he'd throw himself over the edge. That was the horror of vertigo. He felt pulled to the edge and over as if an anchor was attached to his leg. Unaided, unthreatened, he would essentially kill himself. He could see it all happen and the horror of it took his breath away and for a moment he gripped the tree, closed his eyes, and fought to breathe deeply, regularly, from his solar plexus.