Текст книги "Cold Betrayal"

Автор книги: J. A. Jance

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

4

Ali wasn’t surprised when the doorbell rang in the middle of the afternoon. Bella, having lived most of her life in a condo where there had been a knocker rather than a doorbell, had taken several weeks to learn that a ringing doorbell meant company. With B. out of town, the dog had taken possession of B.’s customary chair. When the bell rang, Bella bounded down and scampered to the door. Leland soon ushered Athena into the library with Bella barking at her heels. As Athena sank into the chair opposite Ali’s, the dog leaped into her lap. Athena hardly noticed. Absently patting the dog’s head, she looked distressed and uncertain. Ali was surprised to see her usually self-possessed daughter-in-law in such apparent disarray.

“Are you all right?” Ali asked.

“I’m not,” Athena answered, “but thank you for talking to Gram. I called between classes. She said you made her day because it sounded like you believed her.”

“I did believe her,” Ali agreed, “and I still do. As soon as I called, she knew exactly who I was, and she had no difficulty keeping her story straight. I’ve learned a thing or two about Alzheimer’s in the last year or two, and Alzheimer’s patients have trouble doing that. In fact, she didn’t seem impaired in any way. When I asked her if she had any enemies or if she knew of anyone who might wish her ill, she mentioned something about a disagreement over Communion glasses at church. That didn’t strike me as the kind of quarrel that would rise to the level of an attempted homicide.”

“Did you speak to Sheriff Olson?”

Ali nodded. “I did. He seems to be of two minds on the subject. His first choice is that Betsy turned on the burners herself and doesn’t remember doing it. His second option is that the whole incident is a figment of her imagination. He felt compelled to imply that anyone who would go outside barefoot in the snow is a couple tacos short of a combination plate.”

“In other words, one way or another, he thinks this is all Gram’s fault. What do you think?” Athena asked.

“If my house was filled with gas and I thought it might explode, I’d boogie out through the nearest door, barefoot and stark naked, too, if necessary—snow or no snow.”

“So you think someone really did try to kill her?” Athena asked.

“I do,” Ali answered.

“But who?” Athena asked.

“That’s the question, isn’t it. Let’s think about that. If you look at the homicide statistics in this country, most of the victims and perpetrators are involved in some kind of criminal enterprise. Drug users and drug dealers knock one another off with wild abandon. Your grandmother’s not likely to be involved in any kind of illegal activity, so we can discount the idea that this is some kind of criminal infighting.”

Ali paused. “She has arthritis, right?”

Athena nodded.

“Elderly folks are often easy targets for druggies looking for stashes of narcotics. The problem with that is that after I spoke to Sheriff Olson, I also spoke to the deputy who responded to her 911 call. Deputy Severson said there was no sign of rifling or attempted burglary, and that Betsy could find nothing missing from the house—including checking her supply of medications, which were right there on the kitchen counter. In other words, we can disregard the idea that whoever did this intended to rip off her meds.”

“What does that leave?” Athena asked.

“Jealousy, maybe?” Ali asked. “What about her love life?”

“Gram’s love life?” a disbelieving Athena asked. “Are you kidding?”

From her expression, it was clear that Athena had never considered the idea that her grandmother might have a love life.

“Older people can fall in love, too,” Ali said gently. “Maybe Betsy is caught up in some kind of love triangle.”

“No,” Athena said, shaking her head. “Not possible. I can’t imagine Gram doing such a thing.”

“We have to find out,” Ali said. “You’ll need to ask her.”

“Me?” Athena asked faintly. “Why me?”

“Who else is going to do it? Right now you and I are the only ones who have Betsy’s back and are taking her concerns seriously. To find out what really happened up there, you’ll probably have to go there. You’ll need to find out what’s going on in your grandmother’s life and who her friends are, including any possible love interests. Maybe Sheriff Olson is right. Maybe she has reached a point where she needs more help than she’s willing to accept. And if it turns out she is having mental difficulties, you may be the only one who can help her make whatever arrangements are deemed necessary.”

“I’m not a detective,” Athena objected. “I wouldn’t have any idea how to go about doing something like that.”

“You’re Betsy’s granddaughter,” Ali said. “You don’t have to be a detective to ask those kinds of questions. In fact, it’s an obligation, and you’d be remiss if you didn’t. Which brings us to yet another possible motive.”

“What’s that?”

“Greed,” Ali answered. “As in, follow the money. How well off is your grandmother?”

Athena shrugged. “She’s okay, I guess. I mean, we’ve never really talked about her finances. It’s not my place.”

“Again, if someone tried to murder her and the authorities are brushing it off, it’s your place now. For instance, is her home paid for?”

“I’m sure,” Athena said, “and what’s left of the farm is paid for, too. Gramps owned a lot of land around Bemidji, land he sold off years ago. What we still call ‘the farm’ is really just a house on twenty acres. It’s not a real farm, not the way it used to be.”

“Has she ever seemed hard up to you?”

“Not at all,” Athena said. “Never. When Gramps was alive, he bought a new car every other year, and he always paid cash. He bragged that he never bought a car on time. After he retired, he and Gram took long road trips every year, driving all over the country, sometimes for as long as a month or more at a time. That stopped after Gramps died. That’s also when Gram stopped getting a new car every other year, but that was her choice. It wasn’t because she couldn’t afford it. She said that she did so little driving on her own that she didn’t need a new car every time she turned around.”

“Tell me about your parents,” Ali pressed quietly. In the years she had known Athena, she had said little about her parents. Ali knew Athena was estranged from them, but both Athena and Chris had been guarded about supplying any details. Now, however, the ground rules had shifted in Ali’s favor. To help guide Athena through this current crisis, Ali needed more information—the backstory that Athena had previously been reluctant to share.

Athena’s eyes filled with tears. “You remember when Chris and I went to Minnesota?”

Ali nodded. She remembered it well. She remembered hoping Chris would be able to help mend whatever fences needed mending.

“What happened?”

“You don’t know my mom,” Athena said. “We’ve never gotten along, ever. When I was little, she wanted me to wear dresses and play with Barbie dolls. I wanted to wear overalls and hang out with Gramps. When I’d go stay with them, he’d let me sit in his lap and drive a tractor. Mom was appalled. When it was time for college, Mom wanted me to go to the University of Minnesota and join the same sorority she belonged to. She made it clear that if I didn’t do things her way, she and Dad wouldn’t pay a dime of my schooling costs.” Athena paused. “Mom’s not big on unconditional love.”

“I guess not,” Ali agreed.

“The problem is, I’m not big on being bossed around, either, so we’re not exactly a good fit. When I told them I’d choose my own school and that I had no intention of joining a sorority ever, Mom said that was it. If I wasn’t going to do things the way she and Dad said, then I was on my own as far as schooling was concerned. I’d have to pay for it myself. That’s when I joined the National Guard. That was a place where my early tractor driving with Gramps came in handy. I trained in a transport unit and ended up getting deployed to Iraq where I got blown up by an IED. I came home like this,” she added, glancing down at her prosthetic arm and leg.

Ali nodded. “I know about that. I also know that your grandmother came to visit you at Walter Reed while your parents didn’t.”

“Yes,” Athena said bitterly. “Their position was that I’d made my own bed and now should lie in it.”

There are conversations mothers-in-law are allowed to initiate and ones they are not. Taking a deep breath of her own, Ali stepped into uncharted territory. “Tell me about your first husband,” she said.

When Chris had first mentioned that he and Athena were dating, Ali had been concerned that not only was Athena six years older than he was, she had already been married and divorced.

Athena sighed and squared her shoulders. “Okay,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Jack and I met in basic training. He was from Minneapolis, where he had been an all-star quarterback in high school. He was used to being a big deal. He joined up for the same reason I did—to get some help going to school. My dad’s a dentist, and it was ironic that I fell for a guy who wanted to go to dental school. By joining the National Guard he hoped to get through school without accumulating a crushing amount of debt.

“It was a first relationship for both of us. You remember that old song with the line ‘we got married in a fever’? That was us. We were in lust, not in love. We eloped right after basic training. I’m sure Mom thought we were pregnant. We weren’t. What surprised me, though, was that the moment my parents met Jack, they adored him, my dad even more than my mom. I think Dad saw Jack as the son he never had.”

“Did you love him?” Ali asked.

“Jack?” Athena shrugged and paused for a moment before continuing. “I cared about him, but what I felt for him isn’t anywhere near what I feel for Chris. I can see now that I married Jack more to get back at my folks than anything else, and the whole thing blew up in my face. It turns out, karma is like that. Jack just graduated from dental school. The plan is that he’ll gradually take over my father’s practice so Dad can retire. And that’s what hurts more than anything—the idea that my parents would choose an ex-son-in-law over their own daughter.”

Athena paused again and seemed to be thinking about what to say next. “I can see now how wrong it was for us to rush into marriage. We were both too young. He wasn’t ready to settle down; he still wanted to sow some wild oats—which he did, by the way. We ended up in different National Guard units. Mine deployed; his didn’t. I found out he was cheating on me with Janice before I even shipped out. Jack started talking divorce while I was still in Iraq. He had me served with the papers while I was deployed, and the divorce became final while I was in Walter Reed. I didn’t fight it because by then a divorce was what I wanted, too. Still, it blew me away to think that he and Janice were already married and expecting a baby before I got out of rehab and made it back home to Bemidji.”

Ali remained quiet. She knew more than most how much loving and losing at a very young age can hurt. If there was more to this story, she needed to wait patiently until it finally spilled out.

“There was no way I was going to go back home and live with my folks, so I stayed with Gram instead,” Athena went on. “She had a wheelchair ramp built on the front of the house and let me sleep in her downstairs bedroom. I felt guilty that she had to go up and down the stairs, but she said climbing stairs was good for her. I lived with her while I went through rehab, got fitted with my prostheses, and got my teaching degree. I was able to sign up for school with one of the earliest distance-learning programs, one that allowed me to take courses online and go at my own pace. I finished my degree in three years and took the first job I was offered—here in Sedona.”

Ali nodded. “What happened when you and Chris went back to visit?”

Athena sighed. “I didn’t tell my folks we were coming. I told Gram, of course, because we were going to stay with her, but I asked her not to tell my parents. I wanted to surprise them. They were surprised, all right, and so was I. It turns out that Janice now works in my dad’s office as a receptionist, and Mom takes care of Jack and Janice’s son, Jason, while they’re at work. While Jack was away at school, Janice and the boy stayed with my parents, living in my old room. I found that out when I went by the house. Mom wasn’t exactly overjoyed to see me. I left and haven’t been back.”

Ali already knew that Athena’s parents had never bothered to acknowledge the arrival of Chris and Athena’s twins, which made their betrayal of volunteering to look after a non-grandchild all the more hurtful to their daughter.

“That must have been a shock,” Ali said. “Why didn’t Betsy warn you?”

Athena shrugged. “She probably didn’t know about it. She and my mother aren’t exactly pals. Never have been; never will be. Mom and Dad try to boss Gram around the same way they tried to with me.” Athena paused. “So what am I supposed to do now?”

Ali thought for a moment before she answered. “We make sure your grandmother knows that we’re behind her—that we believe that someone did indeed try to harm her last night. Now, tell me. Does Betsy have a security system?”

“Yes, but she turned it off when she came home from bingo. She doesn’t leave it on when she’s at home because it’s inconvenient when she has to take the dog out. Thank goodness Princess smelled the gas and woke Gram up.”

“But she didn’t bark earlier when whoever turned the burners on was in the house?” Ali mused.

“I guess not.”

A dog that didn’t bark? Ali didn’t like where that thought was taking her. The last time that had happened it had been because the intruder had been someone the dog in question knew quite well.

“Okay,” Ali said, without passing along that last conclusion. “Tell your grandmother that from now on, inconvenient or not, the alarm stays on.”

Athena nodded.

“Is there anyone left in town that you trust who could stay with your grandmother for the next little while?”

“Not really.”

“Does Betsy’s house have Internet access?”

“It does. She had Wi-Fi installed while I was there, but she may have discontinued the service. She had a computer, but it’s most likely dead by now. She doesn’t use it.”

“Tell her she needs to reinstate her Wi-Fi because she’ll have a new computer shortly,” Ali said.

“Why?”

“Because your grandmother is about to become a client of High Noon Enterprises,” Ali said with a smile. “I’ll talk to B. and to Stuart and see what kind of security equipment is needed in this particular situation. Come to think of it, I may even have to go to Bemidji myself to oversee the installation.”

“You’d do that?” Athena asked.

“Of course,” Ali said. “Why wouldn’t I?”

Athena glanced briefly at her watch, then she sprang out of her chair, came over to Ali, and bent down to give her mother-in-law a hug. “Thank you,” she whispered in Ali’s ear. “Thank you so much.”

5

Walking close to the buildings with her eyes modestly lowered, Enid didn’t worry about being recognized. People would know from her manner of dress—the ankle-length gingham dress and the heavy oxford shoes—and from the way she wore her hair—in long braids wrapped around the crown of her head—that she most likely belonged to one of the religious sects that had taken up residence in this far-flung corner of Mohave County.

When voters in and around Colorado City had suggested creating a local law enforcement district and hiring their own marshal, Bishop Lowell had organized enough opposition to defeat the proposal. For one thing, the Mohave County deputy they had now, Amos Sellers, was a member in good standing of The Family. When the next vacancy occurred, he’d most likely be elevated to the status of Elder. Besides, Bishop Lowell was opposed to having any more law enforcement scrutiny than absolutely necessary.

Even though women in The Family weren’t allowed to vote, Enid had heard all the pro and con discussions before the election. She knew that the Colorado City area fell under the jurisdiction of the Mohave County Sheriff’s Office, which was headquartered in the town of Kingman, a place she had never seen. Because the Grand Canyon—another place Enid had never seen and often wondered about—lay between The Encampment and Kingman, travel between the two places wasn’t easy. The most direct route took four hours and required crossing three separate state lines. The other, all inside Arizona, made for a seven-hour one-way trip. Lack of law enforcement oversight was one of the reasons The Family and groups like them had chosen to settle in this remote part of the state.

Kids and women from The Family weren’t allowed to spend time in town without being supervised. Just being caught walking alone on the street would have been enough to call for a public caning from Bishop Lowell. Although Enid didn’t worry about people in town recognizing her, she was anxious that someone from The Family might see her—someone who had come to town that day to pick up a tractor part or stop by the bank. If the person who found her turned out to be one of the Elders, there would be hell to pay. As far as the townsfolk were concerned, though, the only people who knew her, other than the nurses in Dr. Johnson’s office, were the clerks and bag boys in the supermarket and maybe, just maybe, the clerk at the gas station where Enid was headed.

On those occasions when Aunt Edith had stopped to gas up before heading home, Enid was allowed to go inside and use the restroom. She may have paused briefly to admire some of the items under the glass counters, but because she never had any spending money, she never bought anything. That made it unlikely that the clerk would know her on sight. Still, once Enid got to the station, she waited until several people entered the market at once and inserted herself in the middle of the group.

It was three o’clock in the afternoon. From her visits to the grocery store and from watching people standing in line at the checkout counter, Enid knew this was the time of day when tourists who had spent the day wandering the Vermillion Cliffs or the North Rim of the Grand Canyon headed south to Flagstaff or Phoenix. These were folks who loved taking their hulking RVs and minivans off the beaten track. Enid understood from what they said and from the curious glances they sent in her direction that Colorado City was definitely off the beaten path. She was hoping she’d be able to convince one of those hardy-type travelers to take her along wherever they were going.

The first group waiting for stalls in the restroom consisted of two families with several school-age children. Standing in line behind them, Enid gathered from their conversation that they were all on spring break—whatever that was—and they were heading home to Phoenix. The kids went into the stalls first. Then, after washing their hands, they ducked out into the market to buy treats. When the first mother emerged from one of the three stalls and went to the washbasin, Enid found the courage to speak to her.

“Is there a chance of getting a ride from here to Flagstaff?” she asked.

The woman looked her up and down, with her gaze pausing a moment too long on Enid’s bulging tummy.

“Certainly not,” she said firmly. “I’ve warned my children to never have anything to do with strangers, and I have no intention of setting a bad example.”

Flushing with embarrassment, Enid fled into the nearest unoccupied stall and stayed there. Once the group left, she stripped out of her dress. Then, wearing only her shift, she sat on the toilet and used the stolen pair of scissors from her cloth bag to remove a foot or so from the bottoms of both the dress and the shift. She didn’t worry about the jagged cuts on the shift as she whacked that off just above her knee. After all, the shift wouldn’t show. The hem of the dress was the problem.

The full gathered skirt contained plenty of material, and the scissors were small. By the time Enid had cut her way around the whole thing—trying to keep to the same line of checks as she went—her hand ached and a blister was forming on her thumb. She wadded up the discarded material and tossed it into the trash, then she took out the needle and thread. She could have done a better job of hemming if she’d had straight pins and an iron to work with, but the best she could do was turn up a tiny hem as she went, tacking it with long, efficient stitches.

As she worked on the dress, Enid tried to reassure herself, Not all the people on the Outside will be like that.

Several women came and went while she was sewing. One of them rattled the door on Enid’s stall and demanded, “What are you doing in there, having a baby?”

Enid had to stifle a giggle because, in a way, that was exactly what she was doing—having an Outside baby.

With the hemming job complete, Enid slipped the dress back on over her head. The new length seemed strange. She wasn’t used to seeing bare skin above the tops of her heavy-duty shoes. Ducking out of the stall, she examined herself in the mirror, but the one above the sink was too short for her to see the bottom of her dress.

More women came and went. Most of them were older women with silver hair and with varicose-veined legs sticking out from under Bermuda shorts. The weather seemed cold to Enid. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would be dressed in summer clothes. They talked about places like Wisconsin and Minnesota—more places that Enid could hardly imagine. The women generally took turns using the single handicapped stall, although, as far as Enid could see, none of them looked handicapped. They met her requests for a ride with somewhat more gentleness than the first one had employed, but the answer was still the same—N-O.

In The Family, women were not allowed to wear jewelry of any kind except a plain gold wedding band. Any other jewelry, including watches, was considered vain, ungodly, and wicked. From fifteen on, boys were allowed to wear watches, while the womenfolk were forced to tell time by following the positions of the sun. There was no window in Enid’s restroom refuge, so the sun’s timekeeping abilities were lost to her. Even so, she knew that more than an hour had passed, and she was starting to grow anxious. By now Aunt Edith, finished with her errands, was probably at home or very nearly so. Soon someone would sound the alarm that Enid had gone missing, and the search for her would be on in dead earnest.

The restroom door opened again. The two women who entered wore boots and jeans and hiking boots. Their hair was cut short. They weren’t wearing lipstick or makeup. In fact, they looked more like men than women, although they went inside the stalls the same way the others had. Through the intervening walls, they talked easily of the hike they had taken and how soon they would arrive back at their RV park. They weren’t particularly threatening, and they seemed kind enough, nodding to Enid as they left. Still, their mannish appearances was so far outside her realm of experience that she let them leave without asking them for help.

The woman who arrived immediately after they left was an older Indian lady with iron-gray hair pulled back into a complicated knot at the back of her neck. Enid knew a little about Indians. The ones who came through town occasionally were mostly Navajo. The men wore jeans, cowboy shirts, and boots along with shiny silver and turquoise bolo ties or handmade belt buckles. The women often wore brightly colored dresses and amazing turquoise necklaces, similar to the ones that were for sale in this very gas station, where handmade jewelry was arranged in a glass display case near the register.

Boys from The Family always made fun of the “squaws wearing their squaw dresses,” but Enid often found herself envying those brightly colored, flowing dresses that bore little resemblance to the bland, home-sewn shapeless things she and the other women in The Family wore until their colors faded away to nothing.

Some of the older boys liked to tease the younger girls, telling them that the Indians came to town looking for women and girls they could kidnap for their scalps and claiming that Indians liked blond-haired scalps more than any others.

Based on what she’d been told, Enid should have been terrified of the new arrival, but she wasn’t. The old Indian woman had a wise, kind face that was creased with a network of sun-deepened smile lines. When she came out of the stall and went to the basin, she nodded at Enid’s reflection in the faded mirror.

“I need to get to Flagstaff,” Enid blurted out urgently, saying the words fast enough that there was no time to change her mind. “I’m looking for a ride.”

Drying her hands, the woman turned to Enid with her brow furrowed into a frown. “We’re not going all the way to Flag,” she said. “Twenty miles this side, but you’re welcome to ride with us that far if you want.”

When Enid left the restroom at last, she scurried along beside the heavyset woman, hoping that the Indian woman’s ample body and voluminous skirt would shield her from the curious glances of both the clerk and the customers gathered around the cash register. Once outside, the woman led the way to a dusty pickup truck, an older-model Ford. A scrawny Indian man in a white Stetson, a black shirt, faded jeans, and equally faded boots was finishing filling the gas tank and returning the hose to the pump.

He looked up at Enid questioningly as she and the woman approached the vehicle. “She’s going to Flagstaff and needs a ride,” the woman explained. “I told her we’ll take her as far as we’re going.”

Under the wide brim of the Stetson, the man’s bronzed face was impassive, registering neither surprise nor objection. He simply nodded, as though picking up strangers and giving them rides was the most natural thing in the world. He waited until the pump burped out a receipt that he folded carefully before putting in his wallet.

“Okay then,” he said. “Let’s go.”

The woman climbed in first, taking the seat in the middle with the floor-mounted gearshift between her legs. Once seated, her body seemed to spread out in both directions, leaving just enough room for the driver and Enid to crowd into the cab on either side. It was a tight fit. Enid had a hard time closing her door. She was relieved when the old truck’s engine rumbled to life and then purred smoothly as they drove across the paved lot and onto the roadway. The truck may have been older than most of the vehicles at The Encampment, but this one seemed to run better.

Enid sat pressed up against the door with both arms resting on her swollen belly. As they headed south in the gathering dusk, the road was familiar at first. Enid realized then that she had been inside the restroom far longer than she had thought. The sun was already setting in the west as they drove past the dirt track called Sanctuary Road that, two miles later, would arrive at the first houses built inside The Encampment.

From that intersection on, Enid was in territory that was wholly new to her. The dark sky overhead was familiar, and so were the emerging stars, but she knew nothing of the surrounding landscape. Was the Grand Canyon just over there? she wondered, looking to the west. Was she riding past it in the dark without being able to see it?

They rode for miles in utter silence. The woman was the first to speak. “When’s your baby due?” she asked.

“A month and a half,” Enid answered.

“A boy or a girl?”

“A girl.”

The woman nodded, her smile visible in the reflected light from the dashboard. “That’s good,” she said. “Then when you have a son, he will always have an elder sister to look up to.”

Enid thought about that statement. It didn’t seem to jibe with the way things worked in The Family. Yes, little boys valued their older sisters when they were little and needed food to eat or to have their diapers changed, but there came a time when that was no longer true. That’s when the balance of power shifted. It didn’t take long for boys to start looking down on the very girls who had once cared for them. About that same time, though—about the time the girls were betrothed and sent to live with their future husbands’ families—the boys left their birth homes, too, going to live in the boys’ dormitories near the church where they were overseen by Bishop Lowell’s wives and trained to work in the fields. After that, the only time The Encampment’s boys and girls saw each other was during supervised events at church.

“Does your family know you’re out here by yourself?” the woman asked.

Enid nodded. “My mother’s in the hospital in Flagstaff,” she said, surprised at how easily the lie came to her lips. “I’m going to see her.”

The old woman nodded, seeming to accept Enid’s statement at face value.

As the silence deepened once more, the size of Enid’s lie seemed to grow around her, filling the cab of the truck, robbing it of air. She wished what she had said was true—that her mother was in a hospital someplace, but, of course, that wasn’t likely. In Enid’s heart of hearts, she hoped her mother was Outside somewhere—that she had somehow escaped life in The Family and that someday Enid might even be able to find her.

•   •   •

Enid had only the vaguest memories of her mother, or, at least, of the woman she thought had been her mother. She’d had blond hair, too, worn in braids wrapped around the crown of her head, just the way Enid wore hers. She remembered that a woman with blond hair, kind eyes, a sweet voice, and a wonderful smile had been part of Enid’s childhood for a while. She was there for a time, and then she was gone. After she disappeared, Enid went to live with another family. Then when she was five and betrothed to Gordon, she had come to live in his household under the strict thumb of Aunt Edith. Once, when Enid had asked Aunt Edith who her mother was and where she had gone, Aunt Edith had replied that Enid’s mother was dead. End of story.

Except it wasn’t. Last summer, Enid had broken one of The Family’s cardinal rules and had paid an unauthorized visit to the pig sheds. The two women who tended the Tower family pigs lived in a small tin Quonset hut near a similar building that housed their charges. Never referred to by name, they were known only as the Brought Back girls—girls who had attempted to escape The Family and had lived Outside before being returned home. According to The Family’s strictures, they were considered wicked and evil and were not to be spoken to under any circumstances.