Ophelia Was

by Scott Lininger

Primrose Whistler strolled down the Carnival midway, its wide lane fresh swept and blissfully quiet in the morning light. Tonight it would be crowded with rubes come out to ride the iron and test their skill at the games, but for now it was peaceful. She walked past the razzles and blowers and Smilin' Jake's pin store, nodded to her fellow jointees out to count their slum and smoke bleary-eyed cigarettes. As she reached her own booth, she read the hand-painted sign declaring "Joe Odin, The World's Greatest Guesser" and mused at the affection she'd developed for the joint. It was just colorful layers of lumber and bally cloth, but in the last two years it had become her home.

In her hands she carried a pair of Styrofoam cups capped with big, green straws, their sides beady with dew. Joe had given Prim exacting instructions on procuring these from one of the local vendors. Odin was a man of expensive tastes, a particular dresser and lover of luxuries, but he could also name a dollar-priced delicacy for every stop along the Carnival Trail. This morning she felt like being nice to him.

"Joe!" she called. "Where'd you go? Got your magic juju. Get it while it's cold."

"Ah, Whistler. Perfect timing. Come and say hello to our guest."

Guest? Prim followed his voice and found her employer behind the joint, standing before a slump-shouldered girl who was sitting on a bench with clasped hands. Prim walked over and gave Joe his drink, then she tipped her own toward the girl. "Hey, I'm Prim. Apple juice?"

"Oh, hello. No, I've had barrels of it. My whole life. Nancy Rosham. I mean, that's my name. No for no thank you." Nancy Rosham was painfully teenaged, with long, mousy hair showing the waves of recently abandoned braids. Her face was all baby fat, spots, and fishbowl glasses. She wore not one but two ratty dresses, as if the outer one was in the middle of molting, and a pair of bright orange sweat bands on her wrists with the word GRODY on them.

Prim smiled at her warmly. She'd gone through her own awkward, adolescent stage, not so many years ago. "Hiya, Nancy. Pleased to meet you."

The girl looked at the ground and blushed. "You must be Mr. Odin's... helper. Oh, my, what must it be like to live such adventures? Do you love it? I'm terribly yearnful about carnivals and mysteries. You're quite famous, to say the truth, at least to me. I know about the people you help, that Mr. Odin does, I mean. I've been at the library looking up newspaper articles about him. I love the library, don't you? It's such a place for imagining. Imagining is all that I have, most of the time."

Strapped to Nancy 's shoulders was an extremely heavy backpack, with book bindings peeking through half-burst zippers. Visible titles included C.S. Lewis, L.M. Montgomery, and Shakespeare, as well as a spiral sketchbook that made Prim's artist brain curious about what a kid like this would be drawing.

"Sorry," said Nancy . "Everyone tells me I talk too much."

Prim shot Odin a bemused look. He ignored her as he finished a pull on his straw, then sighed contently and dabbed his bearded lips with a silk handkerchief. "Miss Rosham lives in town," he said. "It seems that she heard something of our case here last summer, and she came seeking our advice. Miss Rosham, could you please repeat exactly what you told me?"

"Oh, oh yes. Well, it's just that... I need help. There is a man, a very threatening man, who has been stalking me. For over a week now I've seen him watching me, at the library, at the pool, and even one night from my bedroom window."

Prim leaned against the back wall of the joint. "Yikes. You told your parents about this, right?"

Her features fell. She pushed her glasses up on her nose. "I'm an orphan. My mother died when I was young and that's... all."

"Well your, ah, guardians then?"

"I told the librarians, of course, and one of my counselors from last year, and even officer Hazel over at the police department. They all told me I'd been reading too many romance stories, like they always do. Which is kind of true, but not the way they meant it. I've written it all in my diary, every detail that I could remember and some other things from my intuition , and reread it a thousand times. That makes it more clear, don't you think? Once it's been read out loud?"

Prim wasn't sure. About any of it. "Tell me what you remember, but stick to the real, okay?"

Her eyes became distant. "Oh, yes. Oh, he's very tall, with light hair. Sandy hair. That's what they call it, isn't it? When it's not quite blonde and not quite brown? He's a very nice face, not too old, but his eyes... they're not nice at all. I think he might have been a soldier. He has one of those short, soldier hair cuts, and he walks with a limp. He must have been in a war, don't you think? And he was shot in the leg and had to pull himself out of a foxhole with his wonderfully muscular arms? That night that he was outside my window, down in the orchard, I could see him with a cane, and the next morning I went to where he'd been standing. That spot is hidden in a mulberry bush. I found footprints in the mud, with a track of holes like a cane would leave. That's when I knew I hadn't dreamt it."

Prim considered the story. What would a grown man be doing following a gawky orphan girl like this? There were certainly sickos who would hunt most anyone who seemed alone and vulnerable. Prim couldn't gauge what Odin thought, as he was staring out toward the fairground's bleachers with a look of concentration.

"What about your friends? Has anyone else seen him?"

Nancy scratched at her wrist bands. "My best friend is Ophelia Trask. Mr. Odin helped her last summer. That's how I heard of you." Her voice grew quiet. "She'd been raped by that volleyball coach, and Mr. Odin guessed it all and saved her, just like magic. So I knew that Mr. Odin could help me, too."

" Nancy , has Ophelia seen the man or not?"

"Oh, Ophelia doesn't live here anymore, so she couldn't have, since he only appeared last week. She and her family moved away after the court case. It was just terrible for her. A lot of the kids at the high school didn't believe her, even after the trial proved her right. I know what that is like, to have people not believe you." She was looking at Prim, nervously. Prim tried to keep smiling but was having a hard time.

"Any other friends?"

Nancy gazed at the sky and sighed. "Ophelia didn't leave me her address, or I think I would have written. Poor Ophelia. The last thing she said to me was ' Eden was a prison, not a garden.' Isn't that the most romantic phrase? Almost like a poem. I was so jealous that I hadn't come up with it, but then Ophelia was just the most romantic soul. Oh, how I've wished that my name were Ophelia. Things would happen to somebody named Ophelia. Nothing ever happens to me."

Prim grit her teeth. " Nancy , I was here last summer when Ophelia Trask came to the booth and Joe guessed that she was in trouble. In fact, I saw Ophelia a dozen times over the days we were here, and, I'm sorry, I didn't see you once with your best friend."

Nancy looked at her feet and put her hands under her knees. "Well, she wasn't my best friend then . I was in the hospital at the time. I was having a very bad summer. Some boys had said the most awful things, and... I'd... slit my wrists." She opened her mouth as if to say more, but for once she was at a loss.

The wristbands. Prim suddenly felt sick to her stomach. She pushed off from the joint and put her hand on Nancy 's shoulder. " Nancy ..."

The girl sniffed as she spoke. "I have to go now. I have swimming lessons, and I've a long walk over the rec center."

"Okay."

"Are you going to help me?"

Joe stepped in. "We shall expend every effort," he said, "in identifying your mysterious follower."

"Thank you, oh, you do believe me, then? That's... wonderful." Nancy smiled briefly, straightened her backpack, and walked off toward the gates of the fairground. When she was out of sight, Odin bowed as if he'd done a great performance.

"Wow," said Prim.

"Indeed. I am pleased that you were back in time to meet her yourself. It would be hard to do her justice."

"Yeah, thanks."

"Impressions?"

"Troubled girl. Spends all her time at the library because she can't afford to do anything else, alienates authority figures with regular lies, dreams up stalkers and best friends."

Odin drummed his fingers on his vest. "That simple?"

"You really think a cheerleader like Ophelia Trask would exchange so much as a word with her?"

"No, on that lie we agree. And there are others. She is not a child of poverty, for one."

"She dresses like that on purpose?"

"Did you note the patterned discoloration of her teeth? Consistent with one who has recently had her braces, never inexpensive, removed. The books she carried were new, leather, and without a binding sticker as the local library would apply. My guess is that her family has considerable money, though she'd wish us to think otherwise."

Prim talked around her straw as she finished a drink. "Kinda creeps me out that she volunteered trying to kill herself."

"Desiring attention is not an uncommon motive for suicides."

Prim's nod changed into a head shake. "So what do we do?"

"We investigate."

"Whoa. Girl who cried wolf, Joe. Waste of time. Just because you said you'd try doesn't mean..."

"This time, the wolf is real ." He smiled with closed lips, looking rather wolfish himself. "The entire time we were speaking with her, there was a tall man with hat, coat, and cane watching from the grandstands over there. Only when she left did he disappear."

A cloud passed over the sun. Prim looked to the empty bleachers and thought it through. There were still echoes of depression in that girl's voice, and Prim couldn't banish the image of ugly scars under gaudy wrist bands. "Man, if she is in trouble, nobody's going to believe her."

"By her own testimony, they do not. That part I believe."

"But where do we start, short of stalking her ourselves?"

Odin laughed. "Haven't you guessed? Her bedroom is amidst an orchard, she is weary of the most sublime beverage the world has to offer, and you knew her name before you ever met her."

"What, Nancy ?"

"Please, Whistler, it's in your hand ."

Prim looked down at the Styrofoam cup and rotated it until the printed logo came into view. It was a bright green apple tree above the words: "Rosham Orchards: 70 Years of Family Pride in Every Delicious Sip."

#

Prim trudged toward the end of the wooded lane, cursing the uncomfortable, heeled shoes she was wearing. After some debate with Joe, she'd reluctantly agreed to play this role for her interview of whoever waited at Rosham Orchards. She was dressed in a skirt and clean blouse, her hair pulled up behind a conservative black ribbon. It wasn't exactly what she used to at the Carnival, but she did look the part.

It had been a long walk, but at least there was shade. The apple trees loomed everywhere, their branches heavy with fruit but smelling of rot. The gravel driveway took one final turn and she saw a dilapidated structure emerge from the leaves. It was a great, two-story farm house, almost a mansion in scale, but its decorations and setting were humble with whitewash and packed dirt. Various farm implements were scattered about like rusty sculptures, and a pair of porch dogs watched her lazily through the intense heat. The larger of them barked once, half-heartedly. The only other sound was the buzzing of fruit flies swarming beneath the branches.

Prim laughed at herself. What the hell was she doing here? But she kept walking toward the front door, her eyes and ears scanning for people. The windows on the lower floor were all open, screenless, revealing shadowy rooms without a sign of l ife . The top floor windows, one of which was presumably Nancy 's, were hidden behind peeling green shutters. Just as she was about to decide nobody was here, Prim heard a rhythmic sound from behind the house... an axe, slow but regular.

Chock!

She skipped the porch and went toward the sound, stepping over a trio of filthy dolls left face down in the dirt. She reached the corner and peeked around.

Chock!

She saw a man with his naked back to her, hard muscles glistening with sweat as he split wood with an expert swing. One of the apple trees had died and dried, and a great pile of firewood was growing up around its corpse.

Chock!

"Excuse me," said Prim.

Chock!

"Excuse me, sir?" she said louder.

He stopped. The axe swung down to his side, and an irritated face turned to look at her. The hairs on his chest and chin were silver. His eyes were narrow as he took in Prim's petite academic casual. From the shape of his jaw, Prim knew instantly that he was related to Nancy .

"My name is Primrose Whistler," she said. "I'm looking for Rosham Orchards."

He set his axe against the trunk, wiped his palms on his jeans, and walked over. He offered his hand skeptically. "Guess you found it, then."

Prim took his hot handshake and noted that he wore an iron ring on his right pinky, the kind that Joe had taught her they give to engineering graduates in Canada . "I'm a friend of Nancy Rosham. Are you her... guardian?"

He looked down with slow reluctance. She felt very small next to him, but resisted the impulse to add more words to the silence. Finally, " Nancy doesn't have any friends."

"I'm a librarian in town," she lied. " Nancy comes in a lot. I'm very worried about her, Mr...?"

"We're all, every one of us, always worried about Nancy ." He sighed and pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket, wiped his face. "I'm Max Allen. Nancy is my daughter."

He walked a few steps over to the house, reached through the open window there, and pulled out a white T-shirt that he put on without ceremony. He reached again and came back with a pitcher of apple juice, its golden contents clinking with ice. He poured a glass and offered it to Prim. She shook her head. He shrugged and took a long drink, ending with an exhaled "ahh."

"She tell you her last name was Rosham?" he asked.

Prim heard a deep wound in his voice. She spoke carefully. "She said she was an orphan."

Max Allen winced. "Rosham was my wife's maiden name. She died ten years ago. I try very hard to be a good father, Miss Whistler. I do everything I can to support my daughter, but no matter how hard I try, she repays me with shit like this." His face suddenly looked much older. He set the glass down on the window sill, a bit too hard, and turned to face Prim, his fists on his hips. "What'd she do this time?"

Prim inhaled. "Nothing, so far as I know. Nancy told me she's being stalked. She claims that a threatening man has been following her for the last week."

He pursed his lips. "Miss, my daughter has a weakness for fantasy. She grew up in this place, an only child." He waved his arm as if in explanation, past the maze of dappled trunks and overgrown mulberry bushes, past a stone-walled garden bursting with wildflowers. Toys and birdhouses were scattered everywhere. "I appreciate your concern, but if this town had a dime for every tall tale that Nancy 's spun, I could finally retire." He spit on the ground. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have work to do."

Prim followed him. "Mr. Allen, I have some reason to believe she's telling the truth this time, at least partially."

He blew out a breath.

"I saw a man watching her," she continued. "I'm sure you don't like strangers coming in and telling you how to be a parent, but I'm worried about your daughter, and I'm not going to just walk away from this."

Mr. Allen stopped and looked back with lowered brow, considered Prim's stubborn stance, and then rubbed his face. "Lady, what do you want from me?"

"A few answers."

"Hard without the questions."

"Let's start with who might be stalking her."

"Nobody. I told you, she doesn't have friends. No enemies, either. Most people don't give her a second glance."

"She must have somebody she's close to."

"Well, it's not me," he said. Prim saw something play across his lips. Jealousy? She waited until he spoke again. "She writes a lot of letters to her Aunt Penny in Denver ."

"Okay, tell me about her ."

"Wife's sister. I used to work for her dad, Mr. Rosham. That's how I met my wife, Lidia. When the old man died, Lidia got the orchard and Penny got the money." He scowled, kicked at one of the toys laying on the ground. "Mr. Rosham had a small fortune. Penny sends Nancy fancy gifts, dotes on her. She thinks I'm a shitty dad. Hates my guts, and the feeling is mutual."

There was nothing overtly violent in his words, but Prim felt danger prickling her neck, heard one of Joe's lessons in her head. Sometimes your body is better at reading people than you are. It was something in how he said "Lidia."

"What happened to Nancy 's mom, Mr. Allen?"

He straightened his shoulders. "She was killed during harvest. It was another bad year, in a long string of them. We couldn't afford enough labor to get the crop down before it rotted, so me and Lidia gloved up and went climbing with the crew. She fell like an apple. Broke her neck."

Prim waited.

"I know what you want to ask next," he said. "Well, I didn't push her, no matter what Penny says. I had no reason to. The orchard ain't mine. The whole property's been held in trust for Nancy . She turns eighteen next week, and then it'll all be hers, not that she's got a drop of interest in continuing the family business." He looked more sad at that than he had at describing his wife's death.

"Mr. Allen, I have to ask, what happens to the orchard if, God forbid, something should happen to Nancy ?"

His face got red. Prim was aware that he could throttle her with all the ease in the world, but she thought of Joe and stood her ground.

"I'll be honest, lady. I'd rather say 'none of your damn business,' but if I do you'll get it in your head that I've got something to hide. Fine, then. Anything happens to her before next week, the orchard goes to Aunt Penny. After that, it'd go to me. Now I've been patient with your nosiness. I think it's time you leave ."

Prim's job was to get clear information, and she didn't feel anywhere near that. From all these family stories, she couldn't noodle out what was important. She needed Joe for that. Better to concentrate on gathering more.

"Listen, you're probably right about this all being a case of an overactive imagination, but you must believe that I'm just trying to make sure your daughter is safe. Could I please bother you for one more thing?"

Nancy had mentioned footprints under a mulberry bush outside her bedroom window. If Prim could find those, it would corroborate the girl's story, but the bushes ringed the entire house. She'd need to find out which window was the bedroom to know where to start. Maybe she could kill two birds with one stone...

He grumbled.

"Do you have your sister in-law's address? Maybe just an old letter? I'd like to contact her and see if anything in Nancy 's correspondence has been worrisome of late."

Prim could tell he was about to refuse. She spoke before he could, with complete sincerity. "Mr. Allen, I know about her attempted suicide last summer. I just want to make sure that something like that isn't going through Nancy 's head again."

He shut his mouth. His face drained of its color. "Fine," he sighed. "Come on inside. She's got a pile of letters in her room." Perfect.

Prim followed through the foyer, up creaking stairs to a bare hallway too tall for its breadth. At its end was an open door, and beyond that a stifling room where the sun streamed through gaps in the closed shutters, its light cutting the shadows into blades of glowing dust. Nancy 's tiny bed was covered in books. Hundreds of dolls stared down at them mutely from shelves set into the plaster.

The only wall that wasn't awash in porcelain and glass eyes was a mural, hand-rendered into a remarkable scene. A painted window opened onto a moody sunset, or maybe sunrise, illuminating a mystical landscape of purple, grassy hills. Fairy tale towers framed the view, wrapped in dragons and flowing hair from fairy heads. Below was an orchard bearing golden apples, and in its center between the branches of a mulberry bush stood a man with a cane, his face and eyes so perfectly rendered that Prim at first almost thought they were real.

"Whoa," said Prim. " Nancy painted this?"

The floor of the room was littered with empty tubes, messy palettes, and brushes of all sizes. The air smelled powerfully of drying oil paint.

"It's all she's done for the last week," said her father. He was but a shadow amidst the sunbeams, the motes swirling in his breath. "Besides making up stories, it's her one talent."

Prim was a trained artist, but in her years at university she'd never, ever seen a teenager, a child , paint something so thoroughly confident. She took a step closer, her mind forgetting her investigation, her role, her unwelcoming host. The brush strokes were fluid, the colors unmuddied with the typical restroking of a novice's hand. Every detail was there to behold. The cane man, Nancy 's stalker, looked up at Prim with an expression of perfect menace, his eyes like embers in shadow.

"Wow," said Prim.

"Miss Whistler," said Allen. " Nancy only has one more year of high school. She was almost kicked out last year for the trouble her stories caused."

"Uh huh," said Prim, her mind absorbed in the painting. The imaginary orchard was filled with tiny frames on easels. One of them contained Joe Odin's bearded face, its colors and style mimicking Van Gogh's famous self portraits. Prim gaped and wondered if she would find herself in there someplace.

"Principal Morris barely passed her this year. I'm worried about this stalker business being the last straw. I have to ask, does anybody at the school know about this? Know that you're here?"

Prim shook her head absently as she hovered her fingers mere inches from the still-wet oil paint. "Relax, Mr. Allen. I didn't tell anybody I was coming here."

When he replied, his voice was coming from just behind her, cold as ice. "That's good. That's a relief to hear."

Prim noticed that the painted tower windows were covered in bars. It triggered an after-image in her brain, some part of her subconscious that had noticed a pattern in the light that her waking mind had missed in her exuberance about the mural.

Eden was a prison, not a garden.

Prim spun and saw Mr. Allen blocking the doorway, and now that her eyes had adjusted to the low light she could see that the real window was covered in iron bars, too.

"Lady, you're not a librarian, are you?"

#

Hand concealed in his linen suit pocket, Joe Odin fingered his gunmetal ace and entered the recreation center like a gentle breeze. He had already ensured his advantage but remained alert for danger, his mind perfectly open. The inner air was HVAC cold and laden with chlorine. Everything was Nixon era, wood panel and plastic. The place's tired look was mirrored in the only visible face, a teenager who sat doodling behind the welcome desk and didn't even look up.

On Odin's left was a hallway toward the locker rooms, on his right a staircase leading to a balcony above the indoor pool. No sign of the man with a cane, but Joe knew he was here. The staircase appeared to be the only escape from the 2 nd floor.

He mounted the stairs calmly and emerged into a low-pile space, moth-eaten and filthy, with ping pong tables and a handful of exercise machines. Florescent lights hummed in tune with the AC. On a weight-strained bench of chairs sat a hispanic man in coppery suit and hat. He was the room's only occupant, reading a Spanish paperback, Mi Arma es Rápido by Micky Spillane, and looking bored. His right leg thrust toward the picture windows overlooking the pool, the limb as wooden as the cane that rest against it.

Down in the water, a dozen children were arrayed in the shallow end, their attention on their handsome instructor, a 20-something lifeguard with muscled physique and sandy hair buzzed high-and-tight... like a soldier. Joe found Nancy at the farthest end of the pool, sitting near the diving boards in her dresses and backpack. She watched the lifeguard, a look of intense longing on her face.

Swimming lessons, indeed.

As Joe glanced from the man in copper suit to the lad with copper tan, it was as if he saw two threads of Nancy 's fantasies woven clumsily together. He looked forward to pulling those threads apart.

But first things first.

Joe strode toward the man. "Hello, Abelando." He swiped off the man's hat and tossed it across the room, revealing slicked back hair with strands of gray in the pitch, a gold cross earring, a scar beneath his eye. Joe rested a calf skin loafer onto the cane, keeping the pocket of his jacket pointed toward the man's surprised face.

"How do you know my name?"

"A guess. I take professional interest in those who shadow little girls." The man took the bait and glanced guiltily down to where Nancy sat. Joe caught the look like a samurai cutting down an arrow. "Exactly right, Mr. Ruiz."

Abelando Ruiz stuck out his jaw, defaulting to Mike Hammer tough. "What do you want?"

"Do you know who I am?" asked Joe.

"Saw her talking to you this morning. Carnival man."

"My name is Joe Odin."

Ruiz snorted. "What's a bullshit age guesser care about a crazy girl?"

"You're forty three on December 5th."

Ruiz widened his eyes. Joe leaned in closer.

"You're from Denver , but originally Chihuahua by your accent. You have been inside , as they say. During younger years you played criminal, but gang life grew sour when your brother was killed, didn't it?"

Ruiz raised up one arm as if being physically assaulted. His thick lips were sweating despite the blasting AC. He kept looking at Joe's right hand pointed just so. "Jesus, put down the gun, man."

"Behind bars you found God, I think," continued Joe. With his left middle finger, he tapped his own face at the spot where Ruiz bore the scar. "Post-incarceration you removed the tattoo rather than seek revenge, trading vengeance for a tear-shaped reminder." Joe smiled viciously. "What do you think of my 'bullshit' now, Abelando?"

"I think you got the wrong idea."

Joe pulled back but kept his foot on the cane. "You're stalking a teenaged girl. Tell me, what could possibly be the 'right' idea?"

Ruiz's brow bunched up. "I'm a PI, okay? The girl is just a job. I was hired to follow her."

"All the way from the mile high city? Long way for a wolf to run for such paltry meat."

Ruiz looked puzzled, overwhelmed. "I worked for the same client last year, her Dad . On a job back in Denver ." He thumped his chest. "I'm good at what I do, okay? Repeat business, that's all."

"Do orphans have fathers these days?"

Ruiz showed his palms. "I'm telling the truth! I don't do enforcement or hits. I'm not some rapist. I got nothing to hide." Joe catalogued the man's body language, read the quick pulse and bobbing of adam's apple. His suit showed no signs of a concealed holster, and his leg would ensure clumsiness if he tried to make a move.

"I swear! I'm a good guy."

Odin pulled his hand from his pocket and turned it over in front of Ruiz. Not a pistol, but a lockpick gun.

" Mierda ," said Ruiz.

"You own a beautiful car, Abelando. You should be commended for keeping your registration and insurance up to date."

Ruiz wasn't stupid. As two and two came together, he shook his head and laughed nervously. "Jesus Christ. You lock it up after?"

"Not to worry. Grand theft auto isn't in the local vocabulary." Joe took his foot off the cane. "But yes, I did." He settled down in the seat next to Ruiz as if they were old friends and studied the scene in the pool. Ruiz looked around to where his hat had landed, decided it was too far or too humiliating to go fetch it, then took out a handkerchief and dabbed his forehead, looking at Joe warily.

"You're something."

"She told me she was an orphan," said Joe to the window. "Yet she seems to have a father, yes?"

"What are you doing with this?"

"She asked me to lend aid, and I'm in the habit." Joe stretched back and put his arm over the back of the chairs, his forehead lined in concentration. "She knew you've been following her, and she claimed to be frightened."

"I never would harm her."

"We've established that I believe you." Joe pursed his lips, impatient.

"Right." Ruiz ran his fingers through his hair. "Okay, well, I guess it doesn't hurt to talk it through. We're on the same side, you and me."

"Let's not be too hasty."

"Hasty? Heh. It's been, like, the slowest week of my life. All she does is walk from home to this place. Moons over that lifeguard. Goes to the library."

"Anyone in town could have told you that."

A thin smile spread across Ruiz's face. "Yeah, job is kinda loco , huh? Whole family too, let me tell you. Her Dad hired me last year to trail his sister in law, this rich lady who lives in Denver . Penny Rosham. He's convinced that Penny's trying to put her niece on the suicide rolls. Penny's convinced that he murdered his wife." He threw up his hands--latin exasperation. "Whole family is tearing at each other's throats."

"Could explain a fractured personality, but it creates many questions."

"No, it's simple. You know about the orchard?"

"I know that Nancy 's family owns Rosham Orchards and that it is a well established local operation."

"Well, the business is shit, but the land is worth millions. And guess who's heir to the whole spread?" He pointed his finger like a gun down at Nancy 's bespectacled form.

Joe spoke as if checking items off a list. " Nancy attempted suicide last summer. The father thinks that the Aunt drove her to it, for the inheritance."

"I read a bunch of letters that Penny wrote to Nancy around that time. Poisonous stuff. Not proof enough to call the police, but proof enough for me."

"You believe the Father, then?"

Ruiz nodded seriously. "Yeah, but shit, I think I believe Penny, too. Old man is tore up in the head. After I seen him up close I wouldn't bet against him killing his wife. I'll be glad when this job is over."

"Soon?"

"Another week the girl turns eighteen, and Penny won't be next in line anymore, see? Old man, he's worried that aunt Penny will hire a hit man. He's paying me five large to make sure his little girl blows out the candles."

"Sounds like a bad joke."

Ruiz shook his head. "I got a daughter of my own, and the way that Nancy 's been raised makes me sick. She's a fancy ball they all kick between them. You ask me, she's the least crazy of them all. Know what her Dad tole me he did? After she got out of hospital last year? He put bars on her window and locked her up. So he could keep her safe until school started."

The lights hummed. Joe felt a tug of worry, thinking of Prim alone with the man. Everything had just gotten more complex. Down below, Nancy Rosham was standing now near the edge of the glimmering water, her hand on the rusted stand of the diving boards.

"No, you are not insane," Joe whispered to her. It was hard to tell through the reflections of water and glass, but he sensed that she was looking at him, directly, smugly. "Self absorbed, manipulative, depressed perhaps, but in control." He closed his eyes to summon every detail of her testimony, playing it back like a movie reel. A stalker dreamed into lover. An orphan cast as victim. And Ophelia Trask as personal ideal.

Why?

Nothing ever happens to me .

Newspaper fantasies of the famous Joe Odin, his celebrity woven as rescuer, just another character in the romance.

I wish my name were Ophelia .

When Joe opened his eyes, he felt clarity mixed with panic. "Abelando, has Nancy ever worn that backpack before today?"

Ruiz shrugged. "No, first time."

Joe got up and ran, taking the steps three at a time.

Nancy saw him move, and jumped into the water.

#

Max Allen seemed ten feet tall in the doorway, made of sunlit stripes of muscle and bone. He kept his eyes in a shadow, pushing his face toward inhuman and enabling him to watch Prim's every twitch. She'd listened to him as he ranted and accused, his voice a low tremble. He'd talked incoherently about Nancy and Penny and Lidia, about his wasted life, his investment of twenty years into this graveyard of trees, the tremendous risks he'd taken.

He would stop to only to converse with himself, saying things like "We can't let this stand." Prim had the panicky feeling that he was building himself up to do something.

To her.

She tried to get angry, at least at herself, but the fear was winning out. She could see no way to escape, no weapons at hand, and she was convinced that he did not intend to let her go. As she scanned from the barred window to the blocked doorway, the only thing she could think of was to keep him talking.

"I seen you coming," he hissed. "I knew Penny would make some sort a move before her birthday."

"Mr. Allen, please. Whatever else has happened, Nancy doesn't deserve to be in the middle of this."

"She's pulled the wool over on you," he scoffed. "You really think she's some innocent? She plays people. You're as stupid as everyone else. She'll say or do anything to get what she wants."

There it was, her tiny ember of anger. Prim grasped at it. "Does she take after her mother or you in that regard?"

He laughed, a terrible sound.

"You know, it is funny to me. I loved my wife, but I was able to do what I had to. Nancy ... we'll see."

It was the closest thing to a confession that Prim had heard. It turned her blood to ice. And if he was admitting to his wife's killing, then he was admitting to contemplating Nancy 's.

"She's your daughter."

"Apparently not. Apparently she's an orphan."

"You're a monster."

"She's a thankless bitch. You're her auntie's meddler."

"I never even heard of Penny before you told me her name."

"Bull. Shit. Come to my home, try to find out if I've been keeping letters from Nancy ? The next thing you say better be the truth , lady."

"You killed your wife."

Even the dust in the air seemed to freeze.

His fingers bent into claws, and he lunged for her.

Prim bolted, moving as fast as she could toward the door. He stepped sideways, incredibly fast. His big hand wrapped her throat and his weight slammed her hard into the wall, smearing cool, slick paint into her back and hair, destroying the mural as her breath was forced from her lungs.

Prim brought her knees up as hard as she could. One connected with his thigh and the other with his hip bone. He only cursed and leaned harder, replacing his palm with his forearm to lift her off the floor by her chin.

She drew a precious breath as he shifted, clawed at his arm with her right hand, tearing skin but gaining zero leverage. With her other she flailed toward the nearest wall and felt one of the dolls on the shelf. She grabbed a fistful of silken hair and smashed its porcelain skull into Allen's face. With both hands now, Prim pushed against his arm and managed to move it up just enough to bite.

He howled so loudly that her ears rang. She tasted his blood in her mouth as gravity spun. She slammed into the floor, the useless heels slipping on the hardwood.

Prim saw red. Part of her wanted to attack, to try to disable him before he could get his bearings, to punish this twisted shit.

She kicked off her shoes and ran.

Down the hall to the vertiginous stair case, not slowing as the sure sensation of his hot breath tickled her neck. But no hands pulled at her clothing, no tackle broke her kneecaps. On the main level now, she threw an aching shoulder into the kitchen door and burst clumsily onto the dirt behind the house. Scrambling over scraped knees, she barely got her footing before she heard his boots stomping at the base of the stairs and across the floor.

He was coming to kill her.

Prim ran toward the first thing that sparked hope between her ragged breaths, around the cords of firewood where she first had met the man. Her hands wrapped around the solid handle of the axe, and she swung it hard just as he reached her.

Meeting the arc of her attack, he slapped his palm onto the handle and pulled the axe from Prim's grip with ease.

"Enough!" he roared.

But Prim wasn't done. She kicked the beam supporting the wood pile's nearest end, and a ton of old apple tree came rolling down the sudden slope it created. It caught up Max Allen's damaged leg and took him under like a terrible, crushing wave. Joints tore and bone snapped, and he almost completely disappeared beneath the avalanche.

Prim fell back and screamed, then watched in horror as his movements slowed, trembled, and stopped.

#

Joe dove into the deep end and found himself in cool, blue silence. Bubbles trailed in slow motion as he kicked away from the surface. He'd stripped off his jacket and shoes as he'd run, but his remaining clothes made his limbs sluggish in the water. How heavy would two dresses be? She was a very clever, very stupid girl.

His ears screamed from the pressure as his eyes found her thrashing shape at the bottom. Within seconds he touched her. She had tried to squirm out of the leaden backpack's loops, but she was caught up in her idiot plan. Her eyes were open and pleading, wild with panic, an animal terror of death that made him ache with compassion.

Already, Joe's lungs were burning. He was acutely aware that there would be no second chance at this. The backpack was gaining pounds by the second as the books drank the pool. He must get her free or she would drown.

The bubbles that had been streaming from her mouth suddenly stopped. Her thrashing turned to convulsions, complicating his task of untangling her, but his sure fingers finally released the last strap, and Joe groaned into the water and strained bodily against her weight. He kicked them both off the bottom, her tattered dresses trailing behind them like seaweed and willow leaves.

An inverse mushroom cloud exploded above them. Joe felt strong limbs help them the final meters, and he surfaced into blessed air. But Nancy 's breath did not draw, her weight was like a corpse. There was crowd and noise and people screaming about CPR. Forgotten, Joe slumped down against the cinder block wall and prayed.

The ambulance arrived. He sat, exhausted and dripping, and watched the strangely violent ritual as they emptied her lungs and summoned the miracle of breath.

They carted her away, barely alive, and he noted with bitter amusement that the soldier-cut lifeguard was going along, holding Nancy 's hand all the way.

#

"An artistically gifted child grows up in the crossfire of familial strife, the heir to a fantastic but illiquid fortune that defines her only apparent value. So she acts out, retreats into fiction, covets any attention from those beyond the family walls." Joe Odin strode around the back of the trailer, practicing his disgusted soliloquy, untying bally knots as they took down the joint. "It is all as she scripted. The stalker is revealed, the lifeguard is made to notice her. Ophelia Trask becomes the model for her lurid fame, and she recruits me to play the part of hero."

Prim sat on the same bench that Nancy Allen had occupied just a few days before. She was holding a hand mirror up over her head. "You sure she wanted you to save her?"

"Or the lifeguard would do in a pinch. She planned it all very carefully. Did I tell you that she called the local television station when she arrived at the pool?" Joe waved his hand as if shooing a fly. "It was only her reputation that kept the cameras from being there when she jumped. They were tired of being manipulated by her. I share their frustration. In a few short days she will be one of the wealthiest eighteen year olds in the state, and I shudder to imagine the trouble she will cause with it."

"Shoulda let her drown, then."

Joe stopped and chewed on his lower lip as if considering the possibility. "Well, we could not have done that ."

The disappointment in his voice made Prim laugh out loud. She tilted the mirror. "I swear, I am never going to get this paint out of my hair."

Odin crossed his arms. "It could be much worse."

"Yeah, coulda been pink."

"Or death."

Prim gave him a look. "I don't like mother Joe. He's annoying."

"He only wants to reinforce that you must be more careful in the future."

"For the hundredth time, it's no big deal." Prim tried hard to put on her devil-may-care, but the image of Max Allen's broken body left her smile just short. When she raised her eyes, Joe's were waiting for them.

"It was self defense, Whistler."

"No shit, Joe."

He nodded at her solemnly then returned to his tear down, working his way around the trailer until he was out of sight. "He will recover, but behind bars, I promise you. I've expended all of my influence with the local authorities, and Abelando Ruiz has agreed to testify. He was very upset when I told him what happened to you."

"Jesus, is there anybody you haven't told?" The words came out more embarassed and angry than she had meant, but there it was. Her independence wanted to lash out more, to tell Joe to take his damn influence and stuff it. She was not helpless. She did not need a mother hen.

But she bit her tongue. Underneath her wounded pride was a certain warmth. She was touched at his protectiveness. Unlike Nancy Rosham, she chose this strange, carnival family of hers.

There's fighting, she thought, and then there's fighting.

Joe popped his head over the trailer like a bearded gopher from a colorful hole. "Whistler! Are you going to fawn over your hair all night ? We need to be on the road by dark, and I do not pay you by the hour."

Prim looked in the mirror and watched as a smile, unbidden, crept across her face.

"Righto," she said. "Keep your pants on."

Prim stood up and got back to work.