Track of the Cat by Nevada Barr

sound of her voice but he was not awake, his third eyelid remained half closed.
    "Somebody done her in, Piedmont. Miss Scarlet did it in the library with the pinking shears. Colonel Mustard did it in the kitchen with a cougar."
    The snapshots from Sheila Drury's clothes rod were facedown on the desk.
    Turning them over one by one, she looked through them slowly. They'd been taken not far from where she had found Drury's body. Less than a mile downstream where the creek flowed from one emerald pool to the next over a wide smooth floor of stone.
    Did that mean anything? Had Christina killed her lover in passion? Or just to get back the photos? Was Sheila Drury blackmailing her? Some might think it a form of poetic justice to do in their blackmailer at the scene of their indiscretion. But a mile upstream through rough country?
    And what was the pack all about?
    Could Drury have been blackmailing anyone else?

    "Slow down, slow down," Anna murmured. Pressing Piedmont's tail to her upper lip, she twirled the tip as if it were the end of a blond mustache.
    "We must use the little gray cells."
    The few left I haven't drowned, she thought. Against her better judgment, she took another sip of Sauvignon Blanc. Clearheadedness, desirable as it might be, couldn't compete with habit.
    On the back of an announcement of an equal opportunity meeting Anna wrote: WHO HAD REASONS TO KILL SHEILA DRURY and underlined it.
    Christina Walters. She'd already been through that.
    Craig Eastern. He hated Drury-if "hated" wasn't too strong a word-for her attempts to develop the camping area for R.V. sites. Harland Roberts thought Craig was crazy enough to hurt her, why not Sheila?
    Mrs. Thomas Drury. She'd mentioned something about insurance money.
    There'd been problems between mother and daughter. That had been fairly obvious. Try as she might, Anna couldn't picture Mrs. Drury more than four feet off a paved trail.
    Who else? She stared at the blank sheet of paper. Rogelio? Because Sheila was opposed to reintroducing prairie dogs?
    "My mother-in-law," Anna said dryly. "Because Ranger Drury had such appalling manners as to eat ice cream with a grapefruit spoon?"
    Piedmont was not amused. Anna laughed, a snort of silent amusement. What now? Form some intelligent theory then set about questioning the suspects? "Where were you at such and such a time?"
    A knock startled her from her musings, startled Piedmont from her shoulders. Automatically she checked her radio, turned up the squelch. It was working. If there was an ambulance run or a problem in the campground they'd've radioed-for a ranger's 20,000 a year, she was on call twenty-four hours a day. Who would come to her door? It occurred to her that emergencies were more common than social calls anymore. The thought made her suddenly lonely.
    "Come in," she hollered. The door rattled and she realized she'd locked it. Embarrassed at her newly suspicious nature, Anna bounded across the room to open the door.
    Christina Walters was on the top step. Just as Anna jerked the door wide, she was turning to go. Looking a little shamefaced at being caught creeping away, the woman turned back.
    Given her recent speculations and the color photos that were lying on her desk, Anna could think of nothing to say. Even the old stand-bys of "Good evening. May I help you?" and "Won't you come in?" had deserted her.
    "I came for that beer," Christina Walters said shyly and looked up at Anna with eyes as dark and unfathomable as Zachary Taylor's. The same velvet brown that Anna'd lost herself in so many times. "May I come in?"
    "Sure," Anna answered ungraciously and stood aside more like a doorman than a hostess.
    Christina walked in, seemingly over her shyness of a moment before. She studied the few postcards Anna had taped up on the wall with an apparently unfeigned interest. Piedmont came out from his skulking place under the table and twined himself around her ankles as if she were a long-lost cousin.
    Anna watched, still