Ivy Get Your Gun

by Cindy Brown

  “But maybe we’d hurt them. Frank said something to me about needing to protect the bats.”

  “Frank has bats in his own belfry,” said Josh. “The ones in the mine are Brazilian free-tailed bats. Tons of them in Arizona. Most common ones around.” He turned to Cody. “Tell you what. You can be one of the first people through when we start up the mine tours.”

  “Cool,” Cody said.

  “Seems like that might be a while,” Uncle Bob said. “I mean, considering the age of that mine and all.”

  “Just takes money. And those guys behind us,” Josh looked over his shoulder, “could take care of it like that.” He snapped his fingers.

  I glanced behind us. A little cloud of dust followed at a distance. “Wait, do they own the mine?” I asked. “The investors from Philadelphia?”

  “Yep. The mine and the land around it, but not the mineral rights. Some corporation bought those from my dad before he died. Who knows why—the mine’s been played out for decades.” We rode around the curve of the hill and could now see the chuckwagon, a campfire glowing next to it. “But here’s the real question,” Josh said, “are you hungry for gold or for steak?”

  “Steak,” Bob and Dad and I all said together.

  “Gold,” said Cody.

  “Really?” I said. Cody loved steak.

  He nodded and looked longingly at toward the mine.

  “Gold makes some people crazy,” Josh said. “Never felt it myself.”

  The smell of meat cooked over mesquite wafted toward us. “I changed my mind,” said Cody. “Steak instead of gold. Definitely steak.”

  Chapter 36

  “Grub’s up!” Billie rang a big iron triangle affixed to the chuckwagon, startling all of us sitting around the campfire. Cody covered his ears. It was awfully loud. “We got beans, cornbread, coleslaw, and steaks, plus apple pie for dessert. To drink, we’ve got Budweiser, a local ale called Kiltlifter, and water. Come and get it.” She stood behind a table made of an old door and two sawhorses, and in front of a makeshift kitchen setup composed of several propane barbecue grills and a couple of coolers. Though Billie was obviously the designated cook, she wore her saloon girl costume. Guess she didn’t say no to Nathan.

  We lined up in front of the table as she ladled out cowboy fare from cast-iron kettles and blue enamel pots. Our little group consisted of Josh, Nathan, my family, and the investors. I’d studied them during the mercifully short pre-dinner sing-along, by the light of the campfire and a few strategically placed lanterns. The men all had Philly accents, and their Western wear was new. They may have been going for a Magnificent Seven look, but ended up looking like Goodfellas who’d gotten stranded near a Saba’s Western Wear. They all seemed nice enough, though a couple of them couldn’t keep their eyes off Billie’s breasts as she bent to serve the food.

  “Put your eyes back in your head,” she said to an investor wearing a brand new white cowboy hat.

  “Just admiring what’s on offer, Billie.” He knew her? I didn’t remember Nathan doing any introductions.

  “Too rich for your blood, Mario,” Billie said.

  The investors went through the line first. Then Dad and Uncle Bob heaped their plates full and grabbed longnecks out of a cooler. Cody and I got our food, then filled blue enameled mugs with water from a big water jug with a spout. I was working, after all. We sat back down around the campfire on some logs that had been set up for seating. I balanced my plate on my knees and lifted my glass to my lips, thirsty after the long dusty ride. But something was off. Even over the smell of the mesquite fire and the grilled meat and the cornbread, I could smell…

  “Stop!” I jumped up and knocked Cody’s glass from his hands before he could take a sip, scattering food and water everywhere.

  “What?” said everyone.

  “The water. There’s something wrong with the water.”

  “Seems fine to me.” Billie sniffed at her cup. “Better be since I just drank two cups.”

  “Women,” Nathan said to the investors. “Always making a fuss about something.”

  Was I wrong? I turned to my uncle. “I thought I smelled—”

  Suddenly all hell broke loose. Gunshots rang out in the night and a figure appeared on the top of the chuckwagon.

  “Give me all your gold,” shouted Chance, pointing a pistol at the group.

  “I don’t have any gold.” Cody had a big grin on his face, obviously delighted to be part of the show.

  “Your valuables, then,” said Chance. “Give them up, or you’ll all be vulture food. And speaking of food, I want one of those steaks too.”

  No one moved. Cody giggled.

  “Wait,” I said. “I really think there’s something wrong with—”

  “Don’t believe me?” Chance said. “Maybe this’ll convince you.” He squeezed off a shot aimed at Josh’s feet. Josh kicked over the tin cup he’d set near his boot, pulled his gun out of its holster as he jumped to his feet, and aimed at Chance. Pow! The shot rang out in the desert air and Chance fell off the top of the wagon onto a carefully placed “sack of flour” (filled with foam).

  “That’ll teach any bandits to keep their grubby hands off my friends,” said Josh. “And my steak.”

  Nathan led the applause, Josh took a bow, and Chance jumped up from his spot on the flour sack and tipped his hat. Everyone clapped.

  Everyone except Billie.

  She just lay on the ground.

  Chapter 37

  “Shit!”

  I don’t know who said it. I just know that Chance and Josh and Uncle Bob and I all ran toward Billie at the same time.

  She lay in the dirt next to the chuckwagon, breathing rapidly, thrashing her arms and legs like she was having a seizure. Then suddenly she was still. Josh began CPR, while Chance backed off, wild-eyed.

  “No one touch that water!” Uncle Bob commanded. “What did you smell?” he asked me.

  “Bitter almonds.”

  “Cyanide.” He didn’t have to say more as we all looked at Billie, inert and pale in the moonlight. Cody hugged my dad hard. Nathan and the Philly investors huddled in a tight knot. Someone cried quietly.

  “I’m calling 911.” Uncle Bob dialed as he spoke. “How do they get here?”

  Josh kept pounding on Billie’s chest. “Tell them to take Gold Road. We’re about a half mile northeast of the mine.”

  My uncle got through to 911, explained the route, and hung up the phone. “They’re on their way.”

  “Did you say cyanide?” my dad asked. “Wouldn’t Billie have smelled it too?”

  “Only about half the population can detect it,” Uncle Bob said. “Ivy must be one of them. And Billie,” he looked sadly at the body in the dirt, “was not.”

  None of us spoke again for ten minutes. Josh kept doing CPR, even though we could all see it wasn’t working. I knelt on the ground next to Billie, rocks digging into my knees. Every few minutes I spelled Josh at CPR, pounding on Billie’s chest and breathing into her mouth and hoping somehow that my will would bring her back. It didn’t.

  Finally Uncle Bob roused himself. “Help should be here soon,” he said. “In the meantime, let’s get everyone out of here so the EMTs can do their job. Josh and Ivy, you stay here with Billie. The rest of you can use the steps of the chuckwagon to mount your horses. Chance, can you help everyone saddle up?”

  No answer. We all looked around. No sign of Chance.

  “Maybe he went to be by himself?” I said. “He and Billie were…close.”

  “Huh.” My uncle stared into the darkness that surrounded us, lit only by a sliver of a moon. “Alright then.” He grabbed the reins of his horse, led her to the chuckwagon steps, and eased his bulk onto her back. “I’m going to look for Chance. Keith,” he said to my dad, “can you get the rest of them back to Gold Bug?”

  “Sure.” My
dad approached his horse and swung himself into the saddle with practiced ease. I stared at him. “Used to do a bit of riding,” he said quietly to me.

  “But earlier you used the…” He’d used the mounting box like everyone else.

  “Didn’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.” Then louder, to the group. “All right, folks, follow me.”

  “You know the way?” asked Nathan, whose hair stuck to his forehead in spikes.

  “Yeah,” my dad said. “I know the way.”

  After the group had gone, Josh and I worked for another five minutes in silence. Finally, he sat back on his heels. I put Billie’s head in my lap. I knew she couldn’t feel the hard ground, but still.

  The campfire turned orange and then red. Finally, just as the ambulance appeared down the dirt road, the last glowing ember flickered and died.

  Chapter 38

  “Smelled a lot of cyanide before?” a county patrolman asked me.

  Josh and I stood in Gold Bug’s dirt lot next to the officer’s car, near the ambulance that held Billie, her face covered with a sheet.

  “No, but…” I had to be careful. I’d studied up on poisons after a cruise ship death I investigated a few months ago. I could tell the police about that later, but Josh couldn’t know I was a PI. I opted for a different truth. “I read a lot of Agatha Christie. She used cyanide in several of her books.”

  “We did too.” Josh frowned. “I mean, the mine did. Use cyanide.”

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Used it to separate gold from ore. Common practice back then—even today in some parts of the world.”

  “How long has the mine been closed?” asked the officer.

  “Since 1942.”

  “Then the cyanide couldn’t have come from there.”

  “Sure it could. Well, not exactly from the mine. When the town went bust, people just left crap behind. The company did too, left stuff or sometimes buried it.” Josh kicked a rock and watched it tumble down the ridge to the dried-up sewage sludge puddle. “I’ve heard there are tanks of the stuff buried out here in the desert. Looks like somebody found one of them.”

  I called Matt on the way home from Gold Bug. He was pretty pissed. “If you didn’t insist on keeping us a secret, I could’ve been there.”

  Along the highway shoulder, glass glittered in my headlight beams like the eyes of animals. “And you could’ve died.”

  “So could you. Ivy, I don’t want to fight. I just want to be with you, especially if it’s dangerous. I want to protect you.”

  “I can protect myself, thank you very much.”

  “What part of ‘I don’t want to fight’ do you not understand?”

  “Listen, I’m just calling to tell you why Cody might be upset for a few days.”

  “I hope that’s not the only reason you’re calling.”

  “Of course it’s not. In a completely selfish way, I wish you had been there. I wish you were here right now.”

  Matt’s voice softened. “How about I be there in an hour? Stay over at your place tonight?”

  “Yes.” I found myself close to tears. “Yes, please, yes.”

  The next morning Matt left for the group home. A half hour later, I did too. I wanted to be there at breakfast to make sure Cody was okay, given the past night’s events.

  “Why did Billie die?” Cody stirred the Rice Krispies in his bowl, never lifting the spoon to his mouth.

  “She was poisoned by the water.”

  “That I almost drank.”

  I nodded.

  “I almost died?” asked Cody.

  I didn’t want to think about it, so I didn’t answer. Matt jumped in. “Good thing Ivy was there.” He poured me a cup of coffee, placing a hand on my shoulder and letting it graze my cheek before taking the coffeepot away. “She saved you.”

  Last night I’d asked Josh who had access to the water. “Besides all of us at the cookout?” he said. “Pretty much everybody else too. We set up the chuckwagon early in the day. Billie brought the food out later, but we had the water there from the get-go bein’ as how this is the desert.”

  Was it Chance who tampered with the water? Did he run off because he was guilty or because he was broken up about Billie? Uncle Bob never did find him. Were the police looking for him? And how was Billie’s death—Billie’s murder—connected with the accidents and Mongo and—

  Cody interrupted my thoughts. “But why would someone kill Billie?”

  I’d asked myself the same question. Was Billie really the target? Anyone could have drunk the water. It was just luck that all the men (except for Cody) had opted for beer. Or was it?

  “Why?” Cody asked again.

  “I don’t know,” I said, “but I’m going to find out.”

  Chapter 39

  “Was Billie a drinker?” I asked Nathan. I’d called him on my way to check the wildlife cameras in Sunnydale.

  “Damned if I know. Can’t believe this shit is happening again,” he muttered. “Gonclosusdown.”

  “They’d really close us down?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. They’re going to study our water, make sure it’s not all contaminated. But goddammit, that means we can only serve bottled water.”

  “That’s not so bad.”

  “We can also only use bottled water to wash dishes, clean the place, everything. Even need to use it in the bathrooms. You know how much this is going to cost me? Crap, I forgot to order that Purell stuff. Need a shitload of it.”

  “So you don’t know if Billie drank?” His lack of concern about Billie’s death did not endear him to me.

  “She probably did. You can ask Chance when he turns up.”

  “Probably did? Why do you think that?”

  “I’ve never known a gambler who didn’t drink.”

  That seemed like a generalization, but it also seemed like a good bit of information. “Billie was a gambler?”

  “A gambler? Hell, Billie was the house.”

  I made my rounds of Sunnydale’s golf courses and our wildlife cameras. Nothing except a few coyotes, but I still felt encouraged from the photos the day before, like Lassie was just out on a tear and would come home when he was done. Some may have called it denial. It was one of my personality traits.

  I stopped over at Marge and Arnie’s afterward. After knocking I heard, “Come in—door’s open.”

  “Should you really be leaving the door unlocked?” I asked Arnie, who was propped up on the living-room couch.

  “It’s Sunnydale,” he said. “What’s going to happen?”

  I could have reminded him about the guy who nearly killed Marge last spring, but I kinda liked having a fellow denier. “Where’s Marge?” I said instead.

  “On the phone with her agent. He’s trying to talk her into doing a show she’s not crazy about.”

  “Marge is a Broadway legend. Why would she need to do a show she didn’t like?” I wondered if it was about the money. She and Arnie must’ve sunk a bundle into Gold Bug Gulch.

  “He says she needs to keep her name out there; that if she doesn’t, she’ll go from legend to has-been pretty quick.”

  Aargh. The agent was right, and not just about Marge. I hadn’t been onstage in the Valley since The Sound of Cabaret last spring. I’d had a few commercials and an independent film role, and played Nancy in Oliver! At Sea! onboard a cruise ship, but Phoenix audiences had not seen me for a good six months. Annie Get Your Gun would be great in terms of money, prestige, and my résumé, and it would fill the blank spot in my acting calendar perfectly. I needed to nail this callback. Maybe I should go home and practice…

  Nice, Ivy. Your friend was killed last night and you’re thinking about your acting career. I shook my head at my shallow self and focused on what really mattered: “What do you know about Billie?”

 
Arnie shook his head. “Such a shame. She was a nice woman. Don’t know much about her, though. Lived not too far from the Gulch, in a trailer out in the desert somewhere near Wickenburg. With Mongo. When he was hired on, he mentioned to Nathan that Billie had a theater background. She was working in a bar at the time, cooking and pouring drinks. Nathan figured he was killing a bunch of birds with one stone.”

  Just Arnie saying “killing” brought back the feeling I’d been trying to shake all day—Billie’s head lying in my lap, her body cool to the touch…No. The best thing I could do for Billie now was to find out what happened. “Did she drink?” I asked.

  “Dunno. The few times I met her, she was working.”

  “Ever hear anything about her gambling?”

  “Oh,” said Arnie, “you’re asking about the game.”

  “Sure,” I said. “The game.”

  Arnie sat back on the couch and hooked his arms around a couple of cushions, in full storytelling mode. He even took the cigar out of his mouth. “The way I heard it, this Gold Bug poker game has been going on—off-and-on—for forty years.”

  “Forty years? How is that even possible?”

  “You know how I said Billie worked in a bar? The place has been around forever, has a nice little back room. Years ago, a few guys started playing a friendly little game. They never stopped, took Sunday and Monday nights off, but that was it. After a while the game got bigger and it got less friendly, so someone needed to step up and organize it. That was Billie. She’s the hostess—takes care of the money and takes any heat there might be.”

  “Has there been? Any heat, I mean?”

  Arnie shrugged. “Nothing I ever heard about. Local law enforcement looks the other way about the gambling—I think some of them even sit at the table. I guess there were fights every so often. Billie broke them up. She was one tough cookie.”

  Ah. The sore losers behind Billie’s bruises.

  “This is all hearsay, you know. I’ve never played there. Too rich for my blood.”