Distinctly Montana Magazine

politics, and a bellyful of academic ambition. Twenty-five years later, the hair, like the politics, had disappeared; none of his scholarly papers had ever been published; and now he had the belly of a Republican banker with the only fire inside his spastic colitis, caused, perhaps, by his fat, rich Main Line Philadelphia wife, Charity, who by all accounts had none and was reputed, when drunk, to be meaner than a tow sack full of drowning cats. The Ritters lived in a large restored Victorian in the Winding Woods neighborhood south of the Meriwether River, a collection of winding streets that often fooled even the natives. By nine o’clock that Wednesday morning I was parked and ready. Except for a pair of house painters struggling down the street with their scaffolding toward the Ritter’s neighborhood, the streets were empty. I started out going through the motions: carrying my clipboard around and asking dumb questions, waiting for Ritter to come home after his appointment with Mac and before he went back to the college for his eleven o’clock office hours. I thought I would see what the professor did with his free time between nine and seven. Around a quarter to ten, as far as I could tell, Ritter still hadn’t shown up. I walked up to the door of his house, picked up the rolled paper on the steps, and rang the bell. It seemed that I could hear distant chimes through the thick oak door, but I wasn’t sure. After a bit, I rang again, waited, then knocked. The heavy doors un- locked, swung open slowly. Nobody answered my “Any- body home?” shout, either. I glanced at the alarm keypad and the security company sticker below it. I suddenly felt very exposed. I dropped the newspaper, trotted to the rent car, and moved it to a wandering cross street where I could see the front door. All the way, I told myself that nothing was wrong, that I was just unsettled, perhaps even slightly nervous because this case seemed so ambiguous from the beginning. I’d always been better at finding people than following them. I also know better than to work for friends. The longer I looked at the open door, the more it bothered me. I called the Ritter residence several times on the cell phone, without an answer. The professor didn’t answer his office telephone, either. So I called Mac on the hour. “What’s going on?” “Did Ritter show up for his appointment this morning?” “Of course, why?” “How did he seem?” “Fine, why?” “The front door of his house is open,” I said. “Oh, hell,” Mac said. “I know his wife’s at home. He told me they had words this morning. But they have words almost every morning with their bran flakes.” “And you can’t tell me what they were, right?” “ I can tell you that they were just the usual, nothing out of the ordinary,” he said. “Look, buddy, I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I said. “We’ve got three choices. I can go in and out like a cat burglar, and if nothing is wrong, we’re cool. Or I can place an anony- mous call to the alarm company. Or the police.” “What do you think?” “He forgot to lock the door on his way out,” I said, “and she’s sleeping one off. Except...” “Except what?” “They’ve got a three-car garage, so he probably went out that way,” I said. “And rumor has it that she has her first vodka of the day with the morning paper.” “And the paper is still on the front steps?” “You got it,” I said. “You better check it out,” he said without further explanation. “Be prepared, Mac,” I said. But no one could have been prepared for this. The double front doors opened directly into the bright light of a large atrium formed by a skylight cut through the attic and the roof above, with living and dining rooms and library set off to the sides, the kitchen at the end, and a wide stairway on the right leading to a balcony. But I didn’t know that then. That information all came later. As I stepped across the threshold, I heard a strangled scream from above. Through the flood of sunlight pour- ing into the atrium, I glimpsed a pale shape teetering on the balcony rail, a flash of light behind her — Mrs. Ritter in a white nightgown and robe, I later learned — then the figure screamed and swooped down toward me. To learn what happens next read the novel The Right Madness published by Viking, 2005. You may get turned on to other James Crumley novels.~ Editor www.distinctlymontana.com 37

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