Death Climbs a Tree Read online

  “Not if I can help it. But I may not have any choice. The property owners would be within their rights to bring charges. And that could include anyone down on the ground.”

  “Good thing it’s so near the city line.” Andrew turned to Joan. “It’s only a hundred yards or so, Mom. I could run that far and not work up a sweat.”

  “Your friend up in the tree couldn’t,” Fred said. “And city cops could pursue you into the county. Believe me, if I could move those trees across the line and dump them in the sheriff’s lap, I’d do it. I’m afraid someone’s going to get hurt.”

  “Get hurt?” Andrew’s voice rose. “You wouldn’t hurt anyone over this.”

  Fred raised his eyebrows. “We try,” he said with a little too much patience, “not to hurt anyone if we can help it. But if we have to force her down, it could get ugly. And who knows who’s going to come out of the woodwork to protest the protesters.”

  “So she needs protection, not persecution.” Andrew gripped his fork. Joan couldn’t remember when he and Fred had been at loggerheads like this. She hated it.

  “Just keep your distance from her. I don’t want to see her hurt any more than you do. And I don’t want to see you tangled in something more than you can handle.” Fred put his hand on Andrew’s shoulder. Joan was sure Fred didn’t want a fight with Andrew any more than she wanted to see it.

  Andrew released his grip on the fork. “You mind if I take her some of your bread? Maybe some ham and cheese? Feeding someone isn’t getting tangled.”

  Fred’s dad, a baker, had brought his sons up knowing how to bake bread, and Fred kept them supplied whenever the pressure of his job allowed.

  “Ask your mother.” Fred stood. “I don’t want to have anything to do with it. See you tonight.” He gave Andrew’s shoulder one more pat, swallowed the last of his coffee, and left.

  Could have been worse, Joan thought. She let out the breath she’d been holding.

  “You go right ahead and take it,” she told Andrew. “And anything else you think she’ll eat. Something hot to drink, too. Does she have a thermos?” It seemed the least she could do for a good violinist.

  “Yeah, Mom. They know how to do it.” He finished the last bite of pancake and put his dishes in the sink. Then he spread out the sandwich makings on the kitchen counter and set to work.

  “You planning to bike out there?” Joan asked him.

  “Sure, why?”

  “I could give you a ride.”

  “I can manage.”

  “I know, but I’m kind of curious.”

  “Deal. I’m a little tight for time.”

  Joan brushed through her straight brown hair, twisted it and pinned it up on her head, and grabbed her shoulder bag. Her spring jacket would be enough, now that the sun was up. “Let’s go.”

  Nothing in Oliver was very far away. They reached the woods in ten minutes.

  “Turn here,” Andrew told her.

  Joan turned onto a winding gravel road with trees on both sides. It threatened to shake her gizzard out, if it didn’t do in her old Honda Civic wagon first. She slowed to a crawl.

  “We’re almost there,” Andrew said.

  They rounded a curve and reached a small clearing edged with what looked like surveyors’ stakes.

  “Stop here. We walk the rest of the way.” He slid out of the car almost before it stopped.

  Joan picked her way over the uneven ground, glad it wasn’t muddy. Andrew’s hiking boots were better suited to the terrain than the citified walking shoes she wore to and from work.

  There wasn’t any construction equipment in the clearing, but she could see what looked like bulldozer tracks, and some of the tree stumps looked fresh. Ahead, Andrew was calling up into a huge oak a little way inside the woods. Far above, the leaves were still only tight buds. Joan wasn’t good at identifying trees by their bark, but the old leaves on the ground left no doubt. Rounded, knobby oak leaves, not pointy ones, meant a white oak, she thought. Anyone, though, could spot Sylvia’s oak tree by the wooden platform high off the ground. Rather than being nailed into the branches, the platform seemed to swing from ropes, and what looked like a hammock was slung even higher.

  A familiar face peered down at them.

  “Joan! What are you doing out here?” The voice was faint.

  “I came with my son!” Joan yelled back.

  “Wait.” Andrew punched numbers on his cell phone. “You’ll wear your voice out.” Looking up into the tree, he talked into the phone. “Sylvia, I brought you some food. My mom came along.” He handed Joan his phone.

  “Joan?” Sylvia’s voice was easier to hear now that it was in her ear. “I didn’t know Andrew was your son.”

  There’s a lot we don’t know about each other, Joan thought. “I’m glad you have a cell phone. I was worried how you could let anyone know if you needed help.”

  “I’m lucky the signal is so good out here.”

  “What happens when the battery runs down?”

  “I have spares, and whoever brings me food and stuff takes them off to recharge.”

  Now Joan could see a basket coming down to them on a rope. Andrew reached up for it and swapped the garbage bags in it for the sandwiches and drinks he’d brought in clean bags. The way he held one black plastic bag he’d picked out of the basket suggested that it held worse than mere garbage. At his signal, Sylvia began hauling the basket back up.

  “How do you two know each other?” Joan asked when the two-handed operation was complete and Sylvia was sitting down again, with the phone to her ear.

  When Andrew and Sylvia answered at the same time, she couldn’t understand either of them. She erased the air with her hand. Andrew nodded and hushed.

  “… in the park,” Sylvia finished whatever she’d been saying. “Later, he came to a meeting on campus. Anyone can volunteer. We sign up volunteers wherever we can, like orchestra rehearsal. Can’t you just picture old Alex carting off my toilet bag?”

  Joan could hear the laughter in Sylvia’s voice.

  “Did you get any takers at the orchestra?”

  “Birdie Eads, of course. We’re good friends. And John Hocking, probably ’cause he knows me from work. And one of the French horns, and a trombone. Not Mr. High-and-Mighty Nicholas, of course, even if I do sit with him. He’s holding it against me that I’ll miss the concert. I’m a little surprised to see you, Joan. Thank you for coming.” It was the most gracious speech she had ever heard from Sylvia.

  “Sure. Not Jim Chandler?”

  “He hasn’t offered, but he could. He lives over there, across the creek.” Sylvia stood up as easily as if she weren’t floating in a tree and pointed, but Joan couldn’t see anything but trees. “From up here I can see that far. I’m glad the leaves aren’t out yet. It’s still cold at night, but a lot more interesting than it’s going to be when the trees leaf out and block my view of everything more than a few yards away. And I’ve got a good sleeping bag.”

  “Good luck to you, then. I’ll give you back to Andrew.” Joan handed him the phone and walked into the woods, the bare branches moving overhead and the thick layers of dead leaves a rustling cushion under her feet. Even bare, the trees cast enough shade to make the woods feel cool, and she could smell the rich, damp soil the rotting leaves produced. It was still early for morels, though, and she wasn’t surprised not to see any. She would come out mushroom hunting in a few weeks. She had learned to love morels as a child living in Michigan, where her family had hunted for them.

  The sound of an engine startled her. Who else would be here so early in the morning? Was Fred right about the people coming out of the woodwork? She turned to hurry back. Her foot caught in a greenbrier, and she grabbed a sapling to keep from falling.

  I’m being silly, she thought. It’s just someone else Sylvia signed up.

  But now she could see Andrew and another man in the clearing, facing off. The stocky man wore jeans, boots, and a stripe of blaze orange on his jacket. An orange c
ap with a bill hid his hair, but nothing could obscure his freckles or his sunburned nose. At the moment, only his short legs kept him from being nose to nose with Andrew.

  “She’ll be up there exactly as long as we let her be.” The man reached up to punctuate his words with stiff finger jabs to Andrew’s chest.

  Andrew stood his ground, but his words were mild. “Not up to me.”

  “You better believe it. We have a schedule to keep, and when she’s in the way, I call in the cops and out she goes.” Two more jabs with the last three words.

  Andrew looked down at him. “Keep your hands to yourself,” he said softly.

  “Or what?”

  “Or I may be the one to call the cops,” Joan said.

  The man whirled. “What the … who are you?”

  “My name is Spencer. The man you’re poking is my son. My husband is Lieutenant Fred Lundquist of the Oliver Police Department.” She didn’t ordinarily throw Fred at people like that. Still, it seemed the thing to do at the moment. She expected Andrew would tell her to butt out, but he looked amused.

  The man actually pulled off his cap, uncovering a shock of hair even redder than his nose. If he’d ditch the hat, he wouldn’t need that vest, even in hunting season. “Tom Walcher. Walcher Construction.” He stuck out the hand that had been jabbing Andrew.

  Startled, she gave him hers and wished she hadn’t when he crunched her fingers.

  “Look, lady,” he said. “You gotta understand, that woman’s sitting on top of our job site. She’s a liability to us, and we can’t be responsible for what might happen to her way up there. Besides, we’ve got a schedule to meet. If that woman up there and your son down here get in our way, we’ll stop them.”

  “Legally, I hope.”

  “They’re not legal! There’s a law against trespassers, and that’s what you all are: trespassers.”

  Joan turned to her son. “Are we done here, Andrew?”

  “I think so.” He put the phone to his ear. “Sylvia, I’ll talk to you later.” He stuck it back in his pocket. “And you, I’m sure, Mr. Walcher.” He slung Sylvia’s garbage over his back far more casually than he’d picked it up. “Come on, Mom.”

  Joan turned her back on Tom Walcher and walked carefully past the bulldozer tracks and stumps to the car. Not a good time to fall on her face. Andrew, with his surefooted boots and long legs, reached the Honda ahead of her, but her dignity was intact. She watched him open the hatch and stick the bags in the back. Don’t break, she begged the bags. Please don’t break!

  3

  On the way back to town, she asked him, “Where are you going to dump that stuff?”

  “Don’t worry, Mom. I’ll take care of it.” He reconsidered. “You mind if I throw her laundry in with mine? She won’t have much.”

  Her Andrew, volunteering to do laundry? Had he fallen for Sylvia? Or only her environmental cause?

  “Go right ahead.”

  He flipped his cell phone open. “Sylvia? You okay?” He listened. “Nah, I think he’s all bark. But if you have any trouble with Walcher or anybody else, you call.… Sure, me or Skirv or any of the others. We’ll be there in a flash.… Uh-huh. See you.” And he tucked the phone away.

  Didn’t sound like a guy calling a woman who interested him. She supposed Skirv could be the percussion player she knew from the orchestra, but as unreliable as he was, she’d hate to need him for anything important. And she couldn’t imagine him standing up to Tom Walcher.

  “Andrew, do you think you could get out there in time to stop any trouble?”

  “If you could lend me the car, maybe. It’s not as if you used it during the day.”

  Joan felt herself being sucked deeper and deeper.

  “Don’t get into something you can’t handle.”

  He laughed. “Walcher? You saw him. You called his bluff with Fred, and he folded.”

  She wished she could be so sure. She pulled up at the Oliver Senior Citizens’ Center and left the motor running. “I’ll walk home—you leave the car there. If you need it for a real emergency, call the center and let me know. Leave a message if I don’t answer.”

  “Thanks, Mom.” He unfolded himself from the passenger seat and came around to take her place behind the wheel. “That reminds me. Rebecca called earlier. Nothing special, she said. She’s fine. Just kind of checking in.”

  “Does she want me to call back?”

  “Nope. Just said to tell you she loved you.”

  That was something. For years her daughter wouldn’t have made such a call. Nowadays, she even made noises about coming home to Oliver to be married, whenever she and the concert violinist to whom she was engaged got around to it. Joan would call her, but not now. She was already tight for time.

  She stood at the door to the center and watched Andrew drive off. It felt strange to arrive at work in a car. At least she wouldn’t miss out on walking home.

  “Trouble at home?” Annie Jordan asked when Joan went in. Annie was a stalwart at the center who answered the phone and did whatever else was needed without thought of payment for her services. This morning she was sitting at Joan’s desk, an Aran pullover taking shape under her ever-present knitting needles and crooked, arthritic fingers. She reached up to stick a cable needle into the white bun on her head.

  Joan checked her watch. Late enough that she probably should have called ahead. Well, there had to be some perks to being the center’s director. “No, we’re fine. I went out to see the tree sitter who was in the paper this morning. She’s one of my violinists.”

  “I saw that article. Can you imagine doing that?” Annie hardly looked at the complicated pattern she was creating in yarn.

  “I can now. I drove out there with Andrew. He took her some food.”

  “He sweet on her?”

  “Hard to tell these days.” Joan kept her voice casual, but she knew it wouldn’t fool Annie. “I don’t think so.” I hope not, she thought. She’s much too old for him. At least thirty. Though who am I to say? Fred’s that much older than I am.

  Her attempt to be rational wasn’t working. The difference between her early forties and Fred’s early fifties hardly seemed to matter, but at twenty-one, Andrew was still a college student and her baby. She was fighting an uphill battle to try to remember that he was an adult.

  “I knew her mother,” Annie said. “She looks just like her.”

  “Knew?”

  “She died young. Hit by a truck. Those girls had to finish growing up by themselves. Their father was never much use. Then he died, too.”

  How much difference had that made in how Sylvia turned out? Joan had been a grown woman by the time her own parents died. Young, but grown. “And she has a sister?”

  “Two or three. They’ve scattered. Sylvia’s pretty much on her own now. I wonder if she’ll lose her job over this business.”

  “She said she had vacation time coming.”

  “If they honor it,” Annie said.

  “She works at Fulford. Why wouldn’t they honor it?”

  “You never know. People can always find an excuse to let you go.”

  “If she loses her job, the orchestra might lose her for good.” A new worry, but she banished it. The orchestra was her other job. It wasn’t fair to the center to let it intrude here. “Anything happening here, Annie?”

  Annie tucked her knitting into its bag and yielded Joan’s desk chair. She waved at the mail. “A few phone messages, but nothing to worry about. You want me to put your name in the pot for lunch?” The center was a senior nutrition site, which served low-cost hot meals at noon. Annie called them “eats for old folks,” but anyone was welcome to eat there, and Joan did from time to time, especially during the cold winter months.

  “Yes, please.” She hadn’t asked Andrew to fix her a sandwich while he was raiding the kitchen for Sylvia, and the elderly Fuji apple in her desk drawer wouldn’t see her through the day. Odds were good she wouldn’t manage supper before rehearsal in the evening,
either.

  Routine as it was, the rest of the morning flew by. Long before lunchtime, the meat loaf and apple pie were calling to Joan’s nose. She made herself take part in the center’s late-morning exercise class to make up for the morning walk she’d missed, but also to keep herself from drooling over the papers on her desk.

  When the time finally came, Sylvia Purcell was the topic of those gathered at the long folding tables.

  “I remember how we loved those woods when we were children,” one man said. “We tramped through them and thought we were great outdoorsmen.”

  “And what are we going to breathe when they cut down all the trees, I’d like to know,” said his wife. “Someone ought to give that girl in the tree a medal.”

  “Her father would split a gut if he knew she was pulling such a dumb stunt,” a second man said.

  “I think her mother would get a kick out of it,” said the woman next to him. “She was big on environmental causes. That woman had more causes than anyone else I know.”

  “She cared about poor people,” Annie said. “And this project they’re fighting is for poor people.”

  “Yes,” said Mabel Dunn. “Like Cindy Thickstun. You know Cindy, and her daughter. The daughter has four little kids and barely makes ends meet. Since her husband took off, she’s been living with her mom. That makes six people in Cindy’s little two-bedroom house. Cindy’s sleeping on the sofa, and her grandchildren are really getting on her nerves, day after day, all cramped like that. She can’t pay their rent, and she’s desperate to move them into decent housing her daughter can afford. I know they’re on the list for those apartments. That’s who Miss Save-the-Trees is hurting.”

  “And Diane Barnhart, who cleans for me,” said Annie. “Diane has the contract to clean all those apartments when the construction is finished. It comes to way more than she makes in a year. She’s married, but Bert’s unemployment ran out months ago, so now he helps her. I don’t think they have enough to eat.”

  The moist, flavorful meat loaf turned to dust in Joan’s mouth. Did Sylvia have any idea? Did she care?