Montana by Gwen Florio Page A

cabin to ask you.”
    Lola closed her eyes and let it come back to her. But for the staring eyes, the wound like a beauty mark, Mary Alice could have been napping. Lola had put her hands to Mary Alice’s face, her head rolling easily as Lola lifted. Fresh blood rippling like satin. A scream—her own. Falling back. Somehow righting herself and stumbling down the hill toward the cabin and her car.
    “Her head,” she said thickly. “You saw her head.” Mary Alice could not possibly have been alive, could not have lain for hours alone but for the dog’s mute vigil, the life leaking out of her while Lola dawdled at the airport. “She was dead.”
    Saying the word aloud for the first time. She took slow, deliberate breaths to steady herself, focusing in turn on each object on the sheriff’s desk. Not the newspaper. She couldn’t face that photograph yet. But the pencils. The telephone. Files. Blotter. Calendar. The safety of the mundane. Her inventory ended at a narrow, arched pegboard. She reached for it, fingertips wandering across its polished surface, anchoring herself.
    “Cribbage?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Ivory?”
    “Elk antler.”
    Lola withdrew one of the pegs, black and gleaming, topped with a blue-green stone. He answered before she could ask. “Buffalo horn, set with turquoise. Wilson Bird over on the reservation made it. The man’s an artist.”
    “Beautiful.”
    “Yes,” he agreed. “Any idea what Mary Alice was doing up on that hill with her sleeping bag? Were you two planning some sort of campout?”
    “A campout? Like we were kids?” It was almost enough to make her smile, the idea of the two of them shaking out their respective sleeping bags under the trees, crawling in and whispering secrets, grown women shedding the confusions of adulthood with a return to schoolgirl ritual. It would have been fun. Fun . “Not the two of us,” Lola said. “Just her. I found this in her kitchen.” She pulled out the note she’d retrieved from the cabin and smoothed it onto his desk.
    “Don’t!” He grabbed her hands and pulled them away. The paper fell back into its trifold creases. Lola extricated her hands.
    “I don’t suppose it occurred to you not to touch this. The crime lab can lift fingerprints from paper. Could have.”
    Guilt stabbed at Lola. She rejected it. “Any fingerprints that might have been on this note are probably on every surface in that kitchen.”
    “Most of which you already touched,” he reminded her. “Verle, too.”
    Lola prodded at the paper, belatedly stopping short of actual contact. “Are we going to talk about something that’s too late to fix? Or can we focus on this note?” She’d memorized its abbreviated contents. Mouthed the words as he read them. Lola—Camping on the Two Medicine. Back before you get here. If you beat me home, you know where to find the liquor.
    She gave him a minute to digest it. A wall clock hung behind his head, second hand twitching audibly in its endless circuit around the face. “The thing is,” she said, “Mary Alice was going to pick me up at the airport. She sent me an email a couple of days ago to double-check my flight number and arrival time. So that business about me getting to the cabin before her doesn’t make sense. And then there’s the voicemail she left me.” She pulled out her phone and played it for him. He jotted down the words.
    Hey, you. I might be late. I’ve got to take care of something here. I’ll call when I’m on my way. You sit tight ’til I get there. Love you.
    The sheriff’s hand hesitated over the love you. “She didn’t say what she had to take care of?”
    Lola shook her head. “I’ve re-checked both my voicemail and my email. She didn’t leave me anything after that. But maybe she tried to send me something and it didn’t go through. You should look at her computer. I can probably help you unlock it. She’s changed her password every two weeks for years, but I know the formula