Carved in Bone - Jefferson Bass [102]
As I mounted the sagging steps to the porch, O’Conner reached over and pushed down on the arm of the rocker beside his, setting it into motion. I synchronized my timing, then eased down into it. I found my rhythm matching his.
“Hey.” I said, “Why aren’t you in jail? The sheriff said he was gonna arrest you days ago.”
He chuckled. “They’re watching my house in town. They don’t know about this place yet.”
After a minute, he reached into his shirt pocket and took out a photo and handed it to me. Its corners were unraveling and the colors had faded with age, but there was no mistaking the pretty blonde girl smiling at the camera. It was Leena.
“She sent me that while I was overseas. Last letter I ever got from her.” I studied her face; she looked almost like I’d imagined her, but there was a trace of sadness or fear in her face that I hadn’t expected. Perhaps things had already started to unravel for her, too. Or maybe I was just imagining things in hindsight.
“Mind if I borrow this and make a copy? I’ll take good care of it.”
“ ’Course not. Anything that helps. Any headway on the case?”
“Not really. Not unless you count the break-in and the cave-ins as headway. There might be some disgruntled students who’d consider an attempt on my life to be a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t shed any light on the murder.”
“Maybe not directly. But somebody’s mighty nervous. Afraid there’s something more you’re about to find out, or about to figure out.”
“Well, I wish I were as smart as someone seems to think I am.”
“Answer’s bound to bubble up soon. You’ve just got to let it simmer for a while.” He stood up. “Speaking of simmering, how about a cup of tea?”
“Sure, if you’re having some, too.”
O’Conner disappeared through the screen door, then emerged a minute later and handed me one of two pottery mugs, handmade, imprinted with the outlines of lacy ferns. “Nice mugs,” I said, remembering some of what Kathleen had taught me about shapes and glazes. “Local potter?”
He smiled. “Local as you can get. Made ’em myself. Everything you’re holding in your hand came off this property—the clay, the ferns, the spring water, the honey, even the tea.”
“You’re a regular one-man biosphere.”
“I like being self-sufficient when I can. Meeting your own needs for food and utensils seems satisfying at some deep level, at least to me. Helps keep a man honest, somehow.”
For a reputed outlaw, O’Conner was quite the renaissance man: philosopher, potter, beekeeper, tea farmer. I took a sip of the steaming brew and swirled it in my mouth, startled—it wasn’t like any tea I had ever tasted. Underneath the honey, there was a bitter, rocky tang to it. It tasted somehow of mountains and leaves and roots and springs. “That’s interesting. I think maybe I like it, but I’m not quite sure. What is it?”
He bowed slightly, acknowledging the slight compliment. “Ginseng. ‘Sang,’ most folks around here call it. Makes you smarter, healthier, hornier, and more virile, if five millennia of Chinese and Native Americans can be believed. Those UT coeds better watch out for you tomorrow, Doc.” Visions of Sarah and Miranda flashed into my mind, and I felt myself blush. “See,” O’Conner said, “it’s working already.”
I laughed, despite the embarrassment. “Well, I don’t feel any smarter yet.”
“That doesn’t kick in till the third or fourth cup. It’s tea, Doc, not a miracle potion.”
We rocked and sipped. Across the valley, a swirl of thick mist crept up the hillside. As it met the morning sun, which was slanting over the ridge behind us, the mist grew soft and wispy around the margins, then gradually faded to nothing. “Doc, you think we humans are anything more than a passing wisp of fog ourselves?”
He wanted to talk about mortality? “All depends on how you look at it, Jim.” I pointed across the valley. “Before it evaporated,