The Wilding Probate: A Bucky McCrae Adventure

by D. J. Butler

  So, you know, it’s not all happy endings and rainbows in Howard County.

  I’d decided on the drive not to mention the bum to Dad. I was safe, I didn’t think the old man would bother me again, and there was no sense worrying Dad about it when there wasn’t anything he could do. When I opened the door, I was hit by the smell of pizza.

  Dad and Evil sat on the couch, both in that guy way where you lie on your shoulders and just your head is propped up against the sofa back. Dad’s tie was loosened so much he could have worn it as a belt. Evil was gnawing on a slice of mushroom and olive.

  “You must have collected on a bill,” I said. I threw my poncho over the banister, kicked my way out of my boots, and took a slice of plain cheese. Señor Pepperonio’s was the nicer of Howard’s two pizza joints, despite the fact that the owners apparently didn’t know the difference between Spanish and Italian. The nearest chain pizza parlor was Yakima.

  “Nope.” Dad kept his eyes on the screen, where Daniel Day-Lewis was running, you know, with his hair all flowing out behind him like a flag in the wind. That guy must use some powerful conditioner; my hair’s long, and when I run it just bounces, even when it’s not in a ponytail. The crusts of Dad’s pizza were piled in a bowl on the floor, next to two empty Michelob bottles and a third bottle that was still half full. “But I got a new engagement. Sally Harris wants me to file a discrimination suit against the County.”

  “I thought you were golfing with Sam Barlow today.” Sam Barlow was Howard County’s Magistrate. He held court in a trailer next to St. Joe’s, and heard little cases—misdemeanors, suits under five thousand dollars, things like that. He took care of the small stuff, and that lightened the load on the District Court.

  “Got confused on the dates.” Dad sighed. “Sam’s already gone fishing. Guess I ought to let you schedule my social calendar, too. Anyway, gave me time to talk to Sally. Her case is airtight, her supervisor flat out told her he’d denied her raise because she wouldn’t go out with him. The County’ll settle.”

  “Nice,” I said. “So we can pay for this pizza in, like, eighteen months.” I dragged the ottoman over next to the armchair and arranged myself.

  “He brought the pizza.” Dad took his eyes off the TV and jerked a thumb in Evil’s direction. “Guy shows up at your door with three large pies, you can’t really turn him away.”

  “Unless it’s that alfredo sauce pizza crap, Jim,” Evil added around a mouthful of carbohydrates and cheese. He didn’t take his eyes off the movie. “Then you have to refuse it, because…dude, that isn’t pizza.”

  “I landed a client today, too,” I said. It was an exaggeration, at least. I hadn’t landed anybody—an existing client had come in to talk to my Dad.

  “Oh, yeah?” Dad picked up a pizza crust and licked salt off it.

  “Mrs. Wilding.”

  “Came in about the will, I bet.” Dad shook his head. “I should have called her already.”

  “I told her you’d come by.”

  “Good. And what’s wrong with that guy Follower?”

  “Fellows.” I chewed on my pizza for a moment and organized my thoughts. “One, he’s too clean. His suit’s way too nice. I don’t buy that he grew up around here, and I don’t buy for a second that he’s an assistant DA. That’s a government job, and those guys make peanuts.”

  Dad shrugged. “In Howard County. Maybe they get paid more in Brooklyn.”

  “No way. He was dressed like an assistant DA on TV, not an assistant DA in real life. Two, I don’t think he’s from New York. He was driving a car with California plates.”

  “Probably a rental. What’s he going to do, drive out from New York City?”

  “Yeah, it looked like one. But why not Washington plates, or Idaho, or Oregon?”

  Dad shrugged. His grin looked amused, but also pleased. “Rental cars move around.”

  “True. But also, I caught him in a total lie.”

  “Yeah?”

  “He said he grew up in Lost Bend, and knew a lot of Wachigonk Indians as a kid.”

  Evil snorted and then made a coughing noise like he had pizza stuck in both his nose and his windpipe. “What the hell is a Wachigonk Indian?”

  “There’s no such thing.” Dad looked at me closely and cocked one eyebrow. “Did he say ‘Wachigonk Indian?’”

  “Well, no,” I admitted. “But he agreed to it easy enough.”

  Evil was laughing so hard he almost fell off the couch.

  “In other words,” Dad said, “you asked ‘did you know any Wachigonk Indians growing up?’ and he said ‘sure.’”

  “I wouldn’t have said ‘sure.’” I pointed at Evil, still laughing. “I would have said ‘what the heck is a Wachigonk Indian?’”

  “Maybe he misheard you. Or maybe he didn’t want to admit he didn’t remember the names of the local tribes.”

  “Yeah, but Wachigonk?”

  “Or maybe,” Dad stretched his face out in his bemused-considering-a-hypothetical expression, “he thought you were an idiot, and he was humoring you. It was a job interview, after all.”

  I felt my face go all hot and I shoved the stub of my pizza slice into my mouth to keep from saying anything embarrassing.

  Dad shrugged and reached over to squeeze my knee. “I don’t care,” he said. “We don’t have enough work for another lawyer, anyway. He showed up out of nowhere and left his resume this morning, and I figured you might as well talk to him. I thought it might be interesting to you to meet a big city lawyer. That could be you in six or seven years. Besides,” he grinned, “Gladys did say that if he spent too much time at the Fun Lanes he’d make all our beer boil.”

  “That’s not going to be me in seven years,” I said. “For one thing, I’ve never had that nice a manicure in my life.”

  “You know what I mean.” Dad looked at me closely. “You gotta think about your future, Bucky.”

  “I am,” I agreed. “I’ve almost earned my Associate’s Degree through the CWI online courses.”

  “Wow,” Evil said. I guess he’d forgotten about my online classes, too. “You almost have your college degree? We still have two years of high school to do.”

  “Associate’s,” I said. “Remember? It’s no big deal.” It was a big deal. I stayed up late at night to do the online work, even over the summer, and since Howard was giving me credit for some of the courses, I was on track to graduate from high school a year early and earn my Associate’s at the same time.

  “Next step is your Bachelor’s.” Dad drained his beer. “I want you out of state for that. I’d like to see you in California or New York or somewhere exciting. Your grades, you should get a scholarship.”

  “There’s time enough for that,” I said. “First I have to worry about paying for the next pizza.”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Evil pointed at the boxes. “There’ll be leftovers.”

  “I’ll call Mrs. Wilding first thing in the morning,” Dad said. “I can go see her up at the ranch. Then he frowned. “Kind of sad, some of the wills you have to put through probate.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. Dad’s sentimentality was endearing, but it wasn’t his best trait as a lawyer.

  “Well, I recall the will favors our client. So that’s a good thing. But if I remember right, it’s not so great for everyone else.”

  “Who else is there?”

  “There were two kids. Not Marilyn’s, kids from a previous marriage. Or relationship, anyway. They grew up and moved away when you were young. The son went off to military school somewhere, I think, which was kind of a surprising move, given what an old hippie Aaron Wilding was. Kids rebel against their parents, I guess. The daughter… I think she went into politics. Or started her own tech company, or something.”

  “Do you remember their names?” Not that it mattered.

  Dad shrugged. “No. Do you have the will?”

  Oops. “I left it at the office.”

  “Right.” Dad belched as he stood, up, s
cattering crumbs on the carpet. At home he sometimes had the manners of an orangutan, but even with his slight gut and his quickly receding hairline, he was a handsome man. For the thousandth time I wondered what Mom had seen in that developer with the helmet head of pomade and the long horns on the front of his Cadillac. I immediately clamped down on the thought, killing it dead. Dad patted down his pockets, looking for keys. “I’ll go get it,” he said.

  “You’ve had three beers, Dad.”

  “Jim’s had five,” Evil corrected me.

  I hesitated, thinking of the bum. I’d scared him off, but I still wasn’t crazy about the idea of driving back to the office alone.

  “I’ll come with you,” Evil said, as if, just this once, he’d read my mind.

  “How many beers have you had?” I asked him.

  “I am a minor,” he said, and then belched.

  “Right.” I stood up and headed back toward my boots and poncho. “I guess that means I’ll drive.”

  “So I’m thinking,” Evil said as I drove up the Stub toward Ranch Road, “about how I can prove my love to you.”

  “Stop right there.” I slowed down for a jackrabbit, and then turned onto the highway. “I have a better idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Finish high school. Go do some college somewhere, go into business.”

  “I don’t know if I’d be good at that.”

  “Sure you would,” I said. “You’re dependable, you’re a problem solver, and you’re persistent. And ten years from now, when you own your own car lot or software company in Spokane, you can marry your secretary.”

  “Bucky…”

  “See, there’s one of the problems. To be clear, one of the many problems. You still call me Bucky.”

  “It’s your name.”

  “No, it isn’t. My name is Rebecca, which is feminine. Becca or Becky would also be feminine, but Bucky isn’t. Bucky is a kid name. Bucky is what you call someone who isn’t masculine or feminine.”

  “Uh… I’m not sure I get it.”

  “You’re not in love with me,” I told him. “You’re just comfortable around me. I’m like your cousin, and this town is small enough that you think that’s a good enough reason to get married.”

  Evil was silent for a bit. He’s not an abstract thinker. We snaked past a trailer park and the Forest Service station.

  “I think being comfortable’s important,” he said. “Comfort, and trust, and you said I was dependable.”

  “Yep,” I agreed. “That’s why I like having you as a friend, Evil. That’s why Dad doesn’t mind if sometimes you crash on our couch or call him Jim. But even if you’re going to someday decide that’s enough of a basis for getting married…don’t you think you owe it to yourself to take your time? Don’t you wonder if maybe, just maybe, you might fall deliriously in love with some mysterious, dark-eyed woman, and want to marry her?”

  “Maybe.” Evil pulled a stick of gum from his shirt pocket and popped it into his mouth. “In the meantime, I suppose I’d better freshen my breath.”

  “Just in case you meet a mysterious, dark-eyed woman tonight at the Fun Lanes?”

  “Just in case you decide that as long as I’m a friend, I might as well be a friend with benefits.”

  “Don’t kid yourself.” I laughed. “You weren’t even a boyfriend with benefits.”

  I saw the lights of the Comfort Lodge and slowed down. In the dark, it would be way too easy to miss our gravel parking lot and stick the truck into a knot of trees.

  “I’ll figure you out yet…Becky,” Evil said slowly. “I think I’ve still got time.”

  “Sorry, time’s up.” I pulled into the lot and set the parking brake. “We’re here.”

  Turning off the headlights left the gravel lot in a silvery-blue pool of starlight, with just a splash of moon from the thin waxing crescent. I found the Fun Lanes key on my ring as I crossed the parking lot.

  “Beer lights burned out,” Evil said behind me. “Both of ’em.”

  I looked up and saw he was right. McCrae’s—the bar—had a Coors neon light in one window and a Budweiser in another. Both were dark.

  “Good eye, detective,” I said.

  He kicked at the gravel modestly. “First rule of deer hunting. Keep a close watch on the beer.”

  “Probably a power surge. The box is in the office, I’ll check the fuses there.” I stepped onto the boardwalk and froze.

  The wood of the doorframe next to the lock had been ripped out. It looked as if someone had taken a crowbar and a hatchet to it at the same time, and I could see the exposed deadbolt. “Nuts,” I said. I wondered if it might have been the kids from St. Joe’s. I could probably give Sheriff Sutherland a decent description of most of them. “Well, I hope the electricity gave out first, and all the beer they stole was warm.”

  “Bucky,” Evil said.

  I opened the door.

  Something crashed into me, moving fast and hard. In the darkness I saw nothing except a shadow that exploded out of the open door. The shadow barreled me to the ground and then flashed left, away from the road and toward the river.

  “Hey!” Evil chased the running shadow.

  I rolled to my feet. My head hurt, and I was sucking hard to get cold air back into my lungs, but I was wearing my poncho and it had padded me against the worst of the blow. Light, I thought. I needed to get the lights back up, and maybe put a pot of coffee on while I waited for the sheriff department to show up.

  I stepped into the dark cavern of the Fun Lanes.

  The main fuse had definitely been tripped; the clock faces and vending machines and safety lights that were normally always on were dark. I hoped Evil caught the jerk who’d done this and gave him a black eye.

  I moved beyond the bowling alley to the office. As I pushed the office door open, a voice in the darkness beyond hissed at me.

  “McCrae!”

  Bang! Bang! Bang! Gunshots, in the office. I saw the flashes and confused silhouettes, and then something heavy hit the floor. A burning smell—sort of like firecrackers, but not quite—filled the enclosed space of the office.

  An adrenaline surge filled my body. My heart roared inside me. Holy crap-holy crap-holy crap—I’m going to die!

  I threw myself to the ground, expecting more shots, but they never came. Something clattered on the floor next to me, and then the office’s back door slammed open and starlight flooded in.

  For a moment, framed against the starlight, I saw the shooter. I couldn’t see his face, but I got a clear look at his body. He wore a khaki shirt, black pants, a utility belt with flashlight and pistol, and badges that identified him by his job.

  It was a Howard County Deputy Sheriff’s uniform.

  Then he disappeared.

  I scooted forward to get behind the shelter of the desk, my entire body trembling.

  Feet thudded, the deputy running away.

  I hoped Evil would get him. But Evil was chasing the other guy. And if they had guns, Evil catching up to one of them might be bad news for Evil.

  In the darkness I put my hand on something warm. It took me only a moment to realize it was a pistol, and I wrapped my fingers around the grip.

  It was a semi-automatic, like Dad’s desk gun, and it felt natural in my hand. I popped up from behind the desk, pointing the gun at the door. The deputy was gone, and that was a good thing. I was shaking like a gum wrapper in a hurricane, and if I’d had to pull the trigger I’d have missed for sure. I’d never had to pull a gun on another person in my life before, and now I’d done it twice in one evening.

  I edged around the desk and poked my head out the door. I saw the aspens and scrub bushes whose names I didn’t know clustered around the top of the slope; I saw the concrete flagstones that made a slightly irregular path to the parking lot and the highway along the side of the building; no sign of the deputy.

  I found the fuse box. In the dark I fumbled around a lot, and for a moment I worried I’d shoot the box and sta
rt a fire, but the box’s cover was open and after a few moments of prodding with my fingers I found that the main switch was flipped. I snapped it the other way, and the dull green light of the clock face on the wall smudged back into existence.

  I shut the door.

  Then I remembered that something heavy had fallen to the ground.

  “Hold still,” I said. I tried to make my voice as hard and cold as I could, but I knew I wasn’t doing a very good job. I edged back around to the door and hit the light switch.

  The lights in the office are fluorescent tubes, so they flickered a few moments as they came in. The gray snapping light made the office look surreal. I saw the room as if I was seeing it in black and white and through really old film, and the puddle on the floor was black.

  Lying on his side in the puddle was the crazy-eyed bum in the corduroy jacket.

  “Holy crap!” I shouted.

  He said nothing and didn’t move.

  “Mister!” I prodded him with a toe. “You awake?”

  I felt for his pulse at his neck, and found nothing. I held my hand in front of his mouth and nose and felt no breath.

  He was dead.

  I looked at the gun in my hand.

  It was a Beretta, like Dad’s.

  Just like Dad’s.

  “Oh no,” I said. “No, no, no.”

  I circled the desk. I watched where I was walking, but I saw that in the dark I had already stepped in the bum’s blood and left clear boot prints in the carpet.

  The pistol drawer was open and empty.

  I looked at the bum again. My mind spun around like a Fourth of July pinwheel rocket, and I forced myself to try to think, focus, notice details. The bum lay on his side, but his lower back was bloody. He had blood on his face too, and on the back of his head. He looked as if he’d been beaten up, quite apart from the shooting. I drew aside a fold of corduroy with the pistol and saw three bullet holes in the jacket, over the small of his back.