Barnstorming (Gail Mccarthy Mysteries) by Laura Crum Page B

canes or the shadows on the wall.
    This little house continues to amaze me. Nobody knows better than I do how it got built. I spent every single day of its creation with Blue and the crew; I heard the hammers bang, the saws whine, the men shout and laugh and tease each other. I argued and discussed and agonized with Blue over every detail: no one knows as I do how the hand-scraped hickory plank floor was chosen, why the walls are plastered a faded terra cotta color, or how the willow twigs came to line the open-beam ceiling. Despite this, the house appears to me as if it has always been here, exactly as it is now. Every detail appears inevitable, intrinsic to the whole. Though I know how the house was made, exactly as any other house is made, I still believe it was more born, coming into the world just as it was meant to be. I see myself as its midwife, rather than its creator.
    My eyes drift around the sitting room, taking in the small, elevated alcove, with a rough, peeling, red madrone trunk as its defining pillar. I know how the tree trunk came to be here. The madrone tree grew down in the horse corrals; for many years I admired it. But madrones don’t like traffic around their feet. Eventually it died. When we came to build the house, Blue said the
tokonoma
traditionally had a pillar of unmilled, “found” wood. The madrone was chosen, cut down, and given the place of honor. How it came to be that every sinuous curve of its upright, graceful trunk fit the small alcove perfectly, linking raised floor to ceiling beam in a rough, joyful, rising flight of unpredictable loveliness, I couldn’t say. Like the rest of the house, it seemed meant to be.
    I rock the chair and look at the old desk and the cedar chest we inherited from Blue’s parents, at the hand-painted scroll in the alcove that Blue brought home from Japan. I smile at the beaded bamboo curtain that leads to Mac’s room. I love it all. Perhaps that’s the bottom line. Nothing fancy. I love this little house that we built.
    The light is dying now; the sun’s long rays disappearing, turning to a diffuse glow. I sit and rock. I can see Jeri Ward’s car coming up the driveway. Soon I am going to have to go back to the world of murder suspects. But for right now, I am happy.
    Jeri walked to the door and I waved her in. “Here’s your map,” I said. “And I want to show you something.”
    I pointed to the spot on the map where I had noted the downed tree that Blue and Mac had shifted. “I didn’t come this way yesterday,” I said. And I pointed to the route I had used to get to the ridge trail. “I came this way. So I didn’t see this tree that was blocking the trail. But I’m guessing it was there yesterday afternoon. Which would explain why Jane apparently backtracked up the ridge trail and ended up in the warm meadow. I think she turned around when she got to the tree and came this way.” I pointed again on the map with my finger. “I’m guessing she was aiming to ride from there up to the pampas grass meadow and from there strike the swingset trail back to Moon Valley. But she never made it.” I thought of Jane’s sightless eyes and shivered.
    “Anyway, Mac and Blue moved that tree this morning. I guess we never thought of it being evidence, just a nuisance. It was obviously put there by someone who was trying to block the trail to horses. And I guess I told you that Jane and I talked quite a bit about all these trail access problems and how someone, we don’t know who, keeps trying to block the ridge trail. Anyway, I’m sure she saw red when she met that tree. It would have been very hard to move single-handedly, while you were trying to hold your horse with one hand.”
    Jeri nodded. “I see.”
    “I did wonder, after we saw what I thought was Ross Hart’s indoor agriculture, if he might not be blocking the trail so no one could look right at the light in his obviously new little attic. Did you call on Ross?” I asked.
    “I tried,”