It was one of the boys, Molly's grandson Darren. "Mr. Tully, this is Darren. Me and Mikey found a pair of red high heels stuck almost side by side in the muddy bank of the river. And no tracks around them. Not a one. It's like they wuz thrown there from the reeds. We thought you ought to know. Ladies' bright red high heels." He added, "The dancing kind," as if he too were at measurement. His voice paused. "Kind of spooky if you ask me."

"'Bout where, Darren?"

"Directly opposite Cosgrove's front door, this side of the big bend. I lined it up, and we took a couple of telescopic shots of the shoes, but didn't go near them. There's still no tracks there."

"I'll check it out after I get breakfast from your grandmother. I got to make sure they feed Art."

"He in there again?"

"Want us waiting? We got us some interesting flyers here. Won't be wasting our time."

"Stay put if you want, Darren. Me, I need breakfast first. I'll be along." As an afterthought of interest he said, "See anything else interesting? Any long-lost pals come along the way?"

Silence was as good as nothing, he figured.
*

When Si Tully told Molly about the red high heels, she allowed a serious look to come across her comely face, as much omen as it was surprise. Her eyes were bright with morning, the same light sitting on her cheeks. She wore a pastel dress and a red apron. Her legs were long as she leaned over the counter. Flour sat a pattern on her apron, another bit was dust on her short sleeve. Si thought Molly was an aces cook, a sylph if he could have dragged the word out of the past, and that she, like all natural redheads, had those marvelous green eyes bearing all the powers of a spade. He dared think she could have owned him any time she wanted to. And he had long counted on her for sage advice at times. It was part and parcel of her being, and their own small network of two people too long in the fancy of the other, but without direct participation of the ultimate possibilities.

Molly Popp had kept the whisper of her shape all these years, thin and agile, and her hips could still be seen making the measure of the mystical valley. Si Tully often marked women by their hips. Si would fix them in place with their minds. In addition, Molly's hair was always in neat arrangement and she wore no makeup except her continual smile. Once, the two of them gabbing on a Christmas Eve, she told Silas it was the memory of Branner Popp, the only man she had ever known, that coaxed her through some odd days with a smile (as if Branner had never left, he thought). Now that smile had disappeared for a moment with talk about the red high heels. One of her hips dotted his horizon for the barest second, and his flush was slow but crawled toward permanence. On numberless nights she had assailed him and he feared that that dreamy marquee had showed itself again.

"Sounds like trouble to me, Si. You know how I feel about odd things like that." As if to add punctuation to her statement, or to stress her beliefs, she wagged the coffee pot at him. A breast moved under a large flower on her dress. It too wore the dust of flour.

He nodded and she poured, but he knew she was coming back at him, her head cocked, wonder showing. "It's not just a pair of shoes, Si. They're not usual around here unless there's a dance or a special time. Red high heels means a fellow's in the mix, being chased or chasing. That's easy enough to see. Red high heels mean finery and a pitch at elegance. Silk underwear, the whole lot." Her face had not even reddened. "I guess I wore them maybe twice in my whole life. Once to Lonnie and Mella-Sue's wedding, and once when Bran and me went down to Westford to that hotel for the big centennial dance." The way she tilted her head was as much recapture as Si could assess, but that was plenty enough for him, grandmother or no grandmother.

"I'd look along the river a ways," she said, pouring another mouthful of coffee in his cup. She shivered at her delivery, the vibrations very strong along her spine. It was part of her announcement. Conviction came in the tone of her voice.

Si Tully, subsequently in a couple of attempts, looked along the river and found nothing.

Two weeks later, the issue of the red high heels about the last thing on her mind, Molly saw an article in the paper about a missing woman, the wife of a rich industrialist. The woman's husband had flown from the airport at Beverly to the Washington, DC. It was a night flight. When he came back the next morning his wife was not at home. After a few days she was declared missing. There was still no trace of her. Molly did not like it, the vibrations and the red shoes locking together in her mind.

She'd mention the shoes to Si again. It was only right. Molly had found out small rumors and innuendoes about the flyer husband had surfaced. He was a ladies man. Molly had called a few old pals. The rumors were persistent. The line of flight from Washington to the capital, crossing the Atlantic's edge, went right down the Saugus River, out of the hills and right over the huge spread of the coastal marshes, a thousand acres of saline and often brackish marshland sitting south of town, a salty delta full of tidal life. That knowledge set her tingling. Silas ought to know all that. It was only right. If he didn't listen to another woman on this account, it would serve him right.

"I won't tell you your job, Si, but you know how things come at me. I plain think that poor girl was thrown out of that aeroplane. The whole thing stinks to high heaven. I just got this feeling invading me all of a sudden."

"Molly, how in hell can I check out a thousand acres?" He swung around on the diner stool, nobody else yet in for breakfast.

Behind the counter those discernible hips of hers were making statements, of that he was sure, when she said, "You ain't saying she ain't worth the extra mile, that poor girl? And him flighty with another one don't know her dues is coming. You saying that, Silas Tully? Some people stays and pays their dues."

If she wasn't making a promise, she was providing decent room for one. The age-old tingle again became apparent somewhere south of his belt line, grandma or no grandma. He was thinking about prerogatives and intentions, and soon realized they didn't mix with crime or details. A couple of times he and Marsh set out on one of Guy's rental canoes, and plied their way through brackish pools, tide spills, and the tidal runs through parts of the marsh. Nothing was ever found. No lady belonging to the red high heels. No dancing lady no longer dancing.

Molly, at breakfast one day in the diner, said, "If I was you, Si, I'd let someone down at the Boston lab have those shoes to check them out. Where they come from, like what store and such. Shoes like that come from big city stores, from Style-town. Give them to that guy at the lab you know, and get them out of your mind. Most important, get them out of my mind. I keep thinking about that girl gone missing and her husband flying around doing his thing. That bugs the hell out of me." She turned her back on him, leaned against the stove counter, her charms moving at him, slowly, relentlessly.

He suddenly realized she was charming him, using him. Not a wholly new thought either way, he thought he'd like to kiss her anyplace she wanted kissing.

It hit Silas Tully that she knew what she was doing. That she couldn't say any more than he could say; the two of them stuck in neutral, pleasant, hungry, but in a forced neutral gear. He was willing to wager that Branner Popp had known those measurements all the time.

The boys in their pursuit caught up with a few strange birds…and Silas Tully made more assessments, more broad calculations. The laboratory proved by DNA checking that the shoes belonged to the missing woman. An investigation by capital police ensued. There would be an inquest, even without a body.

The boys in their pursuit caught up with a few strange birds…and Silas Tully made more assessments, more broad calculations. The laboratory proved by DNA checking that the shoes belonged to the missing woman. An investigation by capital police ensued. There would be an inquest, even without a body.

All vibrations had been noted, all electrical connections made and understood, all dalliance moved aside on the downside of life. Silas Tully walked around the counter one morning shortly thereafter and put his arms around Molly and said, "I wasted enough time, Molly, 'bout half my life. You still got them high heel shoes you wore to the centennial dance?"

The grid line moved, sparked. She smiled and said, "You're not as slow as I thought you were, Si."

THE END