Anna preceded her up the scattered white gravel that served as Sheila's front walk. A pot, cheaply painted in a pseudo Mexican motif, stood beside the metal steps. In it was a thoroughly dead geranium. Anna expected a remark from Mrs. Drury, but the heart really seemed to have gone out of the woman.

Anna climbed the steps and unlocked the door. The cluttered living room was a mare's nest of magazines, old newspapers, books, folders, memos with coffee rings on them. Everywhere there were snapshots: in shoe boxes and envelopes, piled in ashtrays. Under the sofa's one end table was a basket two feet high and half that wide almost full of them.

Leaving Mrs. Drury to come to terms with the relics of her daughter's life, Anna busied herself opening windows and turning on fans. The trailer was hot as an oven but not as bad as Anna had anticipated. At least it didn't stink. The dishes were done and the garbage taken out. Given the mess the living room was in, this tidiness was surprising.

When the day came for her to die, Anna wondered if she'd have as much foresight. Zachary hadn't. He'd left the stereo on and a steak defrosting on the kitchen counter. But Zachary had meant to come back. Had Sheila? Again Anna considered a suicide. Again she rejected the idea.

Opening the refrigerator, she saw a jar of dill pickles, three Old Milwaukees, a shoe box lid full of film, half a stick of margarine still in its paper wrapper, some processed American cheese slices, half a loaf of bread, and a shriveled carrot. A bachelor's refrigerator. The freezer wasn't any more appetizing. There was a bag of frozen french fries and a pint of ice cream, open with a spoon with a bamboo handle and one serrated edge stuck in it.

Anna went back into the living room. Mrs. Drury still stood just inside the door but at least she had put her handbag down. "We'll start with her pictures," the woman said, a weary eye traversing the boxes and bowls and piles of photographs. "I expect most will have to be thrown away but there may be a few I'll want to keep. Or you might want some." She looked at Anna hopefully, as if wanting her to be Sheila's friend.

"Yes," Anna said, unsure what Mrs. Drury would want to keep-would want her to keep. Anything with Sheila in it, she decided.

Since Sheila was the photographer, Anna had thought there wouldn't be many of those. Evidently Drury had had a camera with a tripod. She'd put herself in nearly half the pictures.

The snicking sound of snapshots shuffling and the hot, still air quickly dulled Anna's mind. The photos, for the most part, were not interesting enough to offset her growing drowsiness. There were two shots of Craig Eastern that Anna studied with more care than the rest. Both were of him crouching beside a snow-dusted prickly pear. He was smiling. It must've been in December or January before the RV site proposal and the ensuing smear campaign he'd launched.

"Someone has already been through my daughter's things," Mrs. Drury said sharply.

Anna's head snapped up at the accusing tone. "Not that I know of, Mrs. Drury," she replied soothingly. "No one's been over here to do it until today."

Sheila's mother just glared.

"Just you and me," Anna added helplessly.

Mrs. Drury seemed to think that over, her lips pursed, wrinkles radiating from beneath her nose like a cat's whiskers. After a moment, she shook her head. "No," she stated flatly. "Not just you and I. Look." Grabbing the edges of the basket between her feet, she gave it a shake. Anna looked. Like everything else in the room, it was tumbled full of snapshots. "You of all people should have noticed," Mrs. Drury said and Anna knew that in the woman's mind she had been turned into Sheila's dearest friend.

"What?" she asked politely.

"There's all different things in here," Mrs. Drury explained with exaggerated patience. "Look: horses." She threw two snapshots onto the coffee table. "Flowers." A picture of blooming cholla was tossed on the pile. "Here's some kind "of dog." A long shot of a coyote looking back over its shoulder was thrust into Anna's hand. "Sheila was not tidy, but she was organized. She kept her pictures according to subject. Even when she was little, she'd take pictures with her Brownie Instamatic. Then when they came back, she'd sort them into things and put each thing in a box."

Tears were running down Mrs. Drury's face, runneling her makeup, dripping spots of pale orange onto her jacket. Anna liked her better at that moment than she had since they'd met.

"I should have noticed," Anna agreed, knowing she should have. The pictures were canted at funny angles. Some of them were super close-ups-so close it was hard to tell what they were of. Lots were shot through things: knotholes, doorways, cans with both ends cut out. Attempts at Art, Anna surmised. But every container she had looked through had been of one subject: rock pictures in the mason jar, birds in the ashtray, Sheila in uniform in the candy dish.

A wooden shoe, a ceramic vase made to look like a paper bag, and several other containers stood empty on the coffee table. Someone had dumped their contents into the basket.

"Is there something to drink?" Mrs. Drury asked plaintively.

"I'll get you a glass of water," Anna said, glad to have something to do.

"No," Mrs. Drury said. "To drink."

"Beer?"

"That would be all right."

Anna got two beers from the refrigerator. There was a six-pack under the counter. She put it in to cool. Later they might need it. Bringing the beers and one glass into the living room, she sat beside Sheila's mother on the couch.

They drank in silence, Anna from the can, Mrs. Drury pouring the beer into the glass half an inch at a time like a woman measuring out medicine.

"Why would somebody go through your daughter's pictures?" Anna asked finally.

"I don't know," Mrs. Drury said. "They weren't any good."

They finished the beers. Anna carried the cans into the kitchen, rinsed them, and crushed them into neat circles under her heavy boots. Beneath the sink, where she guessed it would be, was Sheila's recycle bag.

"Might Sheila have taken photographs of something someone didn't want her to see?" Anna hunched down to look under the cups and across the Formica counter that separated the kitchen from the living area.

Mrs. Drury was shaking her head. Her face sagged with confusion and fatigue. "I couldn't ever see why she took any of the pictures that she did. They weren't ever of anything. Just things you see every day. She might've, I suppose. Sheila took pictures of everything and she wasn't ever socially ept."

Anna didn't know if Mrs. Drury meant socially apt or if she believed "ept" was the opposite of "inept." But Sheila did, from the looks of it, take pictures of everything. "Everything" might include something someone wanted to go unrecorded.

By late afternoon they had finished sorting through the photos, collecting boxes from the two bedrooms and even the bath. They found nothing suspicious. No sinister types exchanging packages, no car license numbers, no middle-aged men in motel lobbies with blondes. Either they'd been found and removed or never existed.

Mrs. Drury had a surprisingly little pile she'd chosen to keep. Mostly to be polite, Anna had selected three or four of Sheila to take home.

Mrs. Drury made toasted cheese sandwiches for supper. They washed them down with a second beer. Mrs. Drury turned on the television and they listened to Channel 9 predict more hot and dry for West Texas and New Mexico. At least, tonight, there would be no lightning.

After the news, Mrs. Drury left the set on to watch a rerun of an old Andy of Mayberry and Anna went out to the truck and brought in the backpack Sheila had been carrying the day she was killed.

It smelled faintly of decay and there were specks of dark brown on it that Anna chose to think were mud. The police had wrapped a yellow "Police Line Do Not Cross" tape around it.