The Price Of Silence. Kate Wilhelm

to do with people. No computers, and no numbers.”

      Barney grinned and held up his beer can in a salute. “My sentiments exactly.”

      “These are about ready,” Seth said. “Hon, you want to bring out that tray?”

      Jan stood up and went inside, came back with a tray of salads from Safeway. “Chow,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind store salad. It’s too hot in there to cook. Thank God, it’s not as hot as last month, and by this time next month we’ll be freezing. That’s Brindle for you.”

      After a bite or two of the buffalo burger, Todd said it was delicious. “Have you given up on beef?”

      “Not if it’s local,” Seth said. He told them about a butcher shop out of Bend, local beef only. “If it comes from Grace Rawleigh’s ranch, you know it’s going to be great. Have you met her yet? She’s a direct descendant of the town’s founder, Joe Warden.”

      They hadn’t. “You’re in for a treat,” Jan said with more than a touch of malice. “And now that her daughter Lisa’s in town for a visit, it’s like a two-scooper treat.”

      Seth gave her a stern look and she grinned and shrugged. “Just repeating what I’ve heard. I haven’t met Lisa,” she said to Todd. “But from talk I hear at the store, she’s a bundle of fun. A ballbuster, if you get what I mean.”

      Seth put his can down. “Jan, cut it out.”

      “Okay. I’ll keep it clean. She and her ex are having a big fight over the spoils of a divorce, her third. From what I’ve heard, Lisa doesn’t feel like she’s met a man until she’s slept with him. And she’s a serial marrier who believes in marital freedom.” She rolled her eyes and grinned at Seth. “Clean enough?”

      “Jesus,” he muttered. Before Jan could say more, he said, “Lisa lives down in L.A. She’s into movies, maybe produces or directs, something like that, not as an actress. She comes back every few years for a visit and sometimes, they tell me, there’s trouble while she’s here. And that’s all we know about her.” He gave Jan a warning look.

      For a moment she met his look with an expression of defiance. Then she averted her gaze. “Plus she has mysterious plans for Brindle. She’s thirty-five. And that’s really all we know about her.”

      But it wasn’t all, Todd thought. A new tension was in the air, the silence uncomfortable. “Are Sam and Grace still married?” she asked. “They don’t seem to live together.”

      “They don’t,” Jan said promptly. “He lives in that big ugly stone house on Crest Loop, the one that looks like a gargoyle looming over the town. It’s Grace’s house but she hangs out at the ranch when she isn’t traveling. She’s gone a lot and hardly ever gets over here except to lay down the law about this or that. The hotel is hers, too. There’s a general manager or something who runs it. Mort Cline.”

      “It seems to me that in such a small community, where everyone knows all about everyone else, there shouldn’t be any crime to speak of or any need to lay down the law,” Barney said.

      Seth kept his gaze on a bun he was slathering with mustard as he said, “Just last week I had to break up a brawl. Three eight-year-olds in the park going at it. And yesterday I had to go tell an old man to stop burning trash outside. A real crime wave.” He put a burger on the bun and bit into it.

      “Aha, so there’s more to Brindle than meets the eye,” Barney commented.

      Jan looked at him, suddenly all traces of cuteness gone, her eyes narrowed, her face pinched. “Brindle is rotten to the core,” she said. “There’s something really foul about this place. I hate it!”

      Seth put his hand on her arm and she drew back. “Sorry. Anyone, more beer?”

      

      Walking home later, Todd asked, “What did you make of them?”

      “Cute couple.”

      “Come on, don’t be coy.”

      He had his arm around her waist and hers was around him, but when they turned off First Street, lit with street lamps and shop windows, onto darker Juniper, his hand slid down to rest on her buttock. He said he liked to feel her muscles as she moved.

      “Okay. She’s miserable, and he’s chomping at the bit, bored out of his skull. Enough?”

      “More,” she said. “Something to do with Lisa. I guess we’re too new to let us in on whatever it is. Are you bored here?”

      “No time to be bored.”

      She believed that. He was working hard, and to her eye he was more contented than she had ever seen him.

      “What about you?” he asked.

      “No time,” she said. “Since the newspaper is in pretty good shape now, I’ll also be working with Ruth Ann on the centennial edition. Scanning stuff, enhancing old photographs. My kind of thing. And tomorrow we’ll meet the alluring Lisa and Grace. I’ll be watching you, kiddo. No funny stuff.”

      He laughed and squeezed her bottom.

      

      Seth scraped dishes as Jan loaded the dishwasher. “You can’t leave it alone, can you?” he asked, opening a can of beer.

      “I thought he should be warned, or maybe she should be. Whatever.”

      “You know nothing happened.”

      “Not her fault.”

      “Jesus, let’s drop it.”

      They had been in Brindle three months when he’d seen a Corvette, speeding on the highway, make a squealing turn onto First and drive into the hotel parking lot. He had followed, and the memory of the encounter was still vivid.

      “Miss, may I see your driver’s license?” he had asked the young woman walking toward the lobby. He already had his ticket book in his hand.

      She stopped and turned, a thin young woman, blond, blue-eyed, who looked him over, then smiled slightly. “I’m afraid I don’t have it with me,” she said. “Are you the new policeman? Are you going to arrest me?” She held out her hands, as if waiting for handcuffs, smiling. “Or maybe we could go somewhere and talk it over. Privately.”

      He backed up a step, her invitation as blatant as a prostitute’s in any red-light district. He felt his face flushing, heating. Then Ollie Briscoe, the chief, came from the lobby.

      “What’s the problem?” he asked, drawing near them.

      “He’s going to arrest me,” Lisa said. “Take me to a back room somewhere and…interrogate me.” She kept her gaze on Seth, her smile deepening.

      “She was doing sixty coming into town, fifty pulling in the lot,” Seth said.

      Ollie Briscoe waved him away. “You run along, Sonny. I’ll handle this.”

      “Sonny,” Lisa said. “How adorable. I’ll be seeing you, Sonny.” She gave him another long appraising look, nodded, and repeated, “I’ll be seeing you.”

      He had avoided her for the several days that she was in town, and now here she was back again. He took a long drink from his can, wishing that he had not told Jan about the incident. Her comment had been that if Lisa got anywhere near him, Jan would pull every hair out of Lisa’s head one by one, either before or after she scratched out her eyes.

      Five

      The alluring Lisa was a disappointment, Todd decided when they met at Ruth Ann’s house on Sunday. Lisa was too thin, brittle in a curious way with jerky movements, and if her jeans had been any tighter, she would have been immobilized. She had on high-heeled boots and a red silk shirt that could have been buttoned higher. Her hair was bottle platinum-blond, styled in a way that was meant to suggest no styling, pulled back over her ears,