by Dakota Kahn
What I did have was warm water, a glass of wine, and a CD playing something so cheesy and smooth and relaxing I had to hide it from country Blake like it was a dirty magazine. Flutes and keyboards and…
My phone ringing woke me up.
I charged out of the tub, threw on a robe, and almost answered it, until I saw the number. Local area code, but nobody I knew. Not Blake with news, and he was the only person I wanted to talk to.
The phone rang three more times, and went to voice mail. It took a minute for the message to record, and I pushed the play button, and listened to it back.
Except there was no message. Just dead air, a recording of pregnant silence. There wasn’t even breathing, just a creepily full kind of stillness that made me sure somebody was sitting there, phone to their mouth.
Holding their breath. Waiting for me to—
The phone rang again and I screamed and almost dropped it. The same number again.
Nobody spooks Kate Becker and gets away with it. I answered the phone, saying loudly into the mouthpiece, “Listen, buster, I don’t know who you think you are—”
“Miss Kate Becker?” the voice said.
It was quiet, but a quiet voice that demanded attention. I went silent almost inadvertently, though I wanted to shout “Who wants to know?”
Instead, I barely squeaked out a, “Yes?”
“Miss Kate Becker, I’d heard you met with an unfortunate accident, not just today, but two days in a row. Once inside the The Real Jimmy’s Saloon… do you know why it is called The Real Jimmy’s?” he said, for the voice on the other end was male, though so quiet I could only just be sure.
“No,” I said.
“It is because back in Crestgold’s heyday, there were these three James brothers, one of who was also named James… oh, I’m getting distracted. I distract myself quite easily, Miss Becker. It comes with age, I find. You were hurt in the Real Jimmy’s, and then again this afternoon, accosted outside the Whiskey Mountain. Is that correct?”
For all I knew, I was talking to the accoster right then, so I squared my jaw and set my body up firm, like I was getting ready to take, or land, a punch.
“Listen, buddy, I got nothing to say to some stranger on the phone who thinks they know my business but won’t tell me their name. Spill it, or I’m hanging up.”
There was an empty sound on the other end, like a single dry bean rattling alone inside a metal can. I had no idea what the heck that was, but it spooked me. Especially when I figured out it was supposed to be a laugh.
“Spirit. Plenty of spirit. You want to know who I am, Miss Kate Becker?”
“Darn tooting,” I said, starting to feel a might ornery.
“Would it be enough to say I’m a prospective employer who wanted to understand why, exactly, you’ve taken such pains upon yourself before I make you my offer?”
“No, it would not be enough. And I’m not going to work for anybody who’s working for Wendover or Sparks or Greene or whoever’s looking to bribe me. In fact, I don’t think we have anything to say to each other at all.”
I wish new phones were a little more like old ones, where when you hang them up you clang a big hunk of plastic down on a metal tongue, and it makes a big ‘ding’ noise and you’ve done something good and final. Even a clamshell cell phone gives you something to close.
Hanging up a modern smartphone means pulling it away from your ear and poking at it like some kind of idiot. In fact, if you poke too hard, you won’t even hit the button right and instead of ending the call you’ll put the other person on speaker.
Like I just did.
“You are still there, Miss Becker,” my quiet voiced caller said, after a second.
“Yeah, well… so what?” I said, trying to save face (I don’t think it worked.)
“So, it is my belief that you went to the pains you did because you were not satisfied with the answers about the terrible crime that happened in Crestgold, and you wanted to find out for yourself. Is this correct?”
“Sure,” I said, tiring of the whole game. There was a bed to go to, a duck to hug, a world to forget.
“Then I appreciate your zeal, and I would like to discuss hiring you,” he said.
“No dice, buddy. Not until you tell me who you are, so I can know who I’m telling to buzz off.”
There was a pause. Maybe he was trying to decide what to do, or just forcing drama into the moment. Either way, it worked, and I gasped when he told me:
“I am the Landowner.”
Chapter 13
I think it is a curse of modern life that truly momentous occasions bring about the most boring, quotidian, and occasionally vulgar reactions.
The great debate of the last year in my hometown, my world, has revolved around the Crestgold property. It was going to be taken, developed, turned into something that would not just change that little patch of land, but would change the future of Whispering Pines forever. People in the rest of the country would no longer look at you with confusion when you said our name.
We’d be a place, but just how would that place develop, and who would guide it? That was up to a mystery. The land was privately owned - that was made clear by the clerks who explored town charters, old deeds, all kinds of information. And when all the dust had settled, there was one word - a pseudonym, a representation of the shadowy master who controlled this town’s destiny: The Landowner.
And when I realized I was talking to him, my reaction was to drop my phone and say, “Holy crap!”
When I write my memoirs, it’s going to be a much different scene, let me tell you.
But whoever it was, this Landowner, he had a sense of humor because he made that awful rattling sound again that was his laugh, and said, muffled there on the floor, “Yes, I’m quite impressive.”
“You’re… wow. You’re the Landowner,” I said.
“Am I?” he replied. I could almost hear the arrogant smirk over the phone and was about to get a bit of dudgeon going, before I realized how strange it was for him to be talking to me.
“You have attorneys,” I said. “You have Barker, King and Hill. Why in the world should you want to talk to me?”
“Should I hang up? Do you neither want nor require work?”
“No, no, no, no. I’m just surprised. In fact… as far as I know… I’m the only person who isn’t your lawyer who has actually talked to you.” And just that revelation made me immediately suspicious of who this “you” could be.
“By the end of this conversation I’m quite confident you will be my lawyer, too, so it will indeed only be my representatives who have ever talked to me.”
“Wow,” I said, thinking solely of the prospect. The chances this would give me. The expense accounts and large checks. Barker, King and Hill have private booths in restaurants not just in lil’ Whispering Pines, but in Reno. Houses in Tahoe.
They are powerful, powerful men. And again, that little pest my conscience gave me pause.
“Let’s say I do take the job,” I said, speaking slowly, deliberately. “That means that every lawyer in town is going to be on the Landowner’s payroll. That means that if anyone in town has a dispute with something you want… they’d have nowhere to turn.”
And I meant it. Lawyers get a bad rap, and God knows they’ve earned them. But just like a bodyguard or a emergency room doctor, when you need one you really need one.
The Landowner said, “Oh, that’s silly. There’s always enough lawyers. And are you so special you need to be kept behind a glass wall, break in case of emergency?”
“I’m not special, believe me. But that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in what I do, or that I can’t make a difference.” Because I actually am kinda special, thank you very much Mr. Landowner.
“Hmm,” the Landowner said. I imagined he was rubbing his chin. These kinds of rich folks rub their chin when they go ‘hmm’.
“So, thank you, I guess, but I decline,” I said, saying goodbye to personal booths and Tahoe
houses and being horrible to paralegals who are desperate to work with me. Just the honest life…
“Excellent. I will give you a test, and if you pass it, you may work with me.”
“Didn’t you hear me, Mr. Landowner?” I said, putting on a bit of an attitude. “I told you no.”
“Formality. You’ll say yes tomorrow night, after the town council decides on a developer. Because who they pick will be very important for the development of this town, yes. For everyone’s future. Not just in terms of jobs or money, either. The town’s very soul may be at stake.”
“Well, who should they pick?” I said.
“I can’t decide that. I own the land, but I cannot fully dispose with it as I like. It’s all in the charters - they’re very specific in what kind of power I can wield should I choose to. In many ways, allowing this development at all will curtail my ability to mold Whispering Pines in any meaningful fashion.”
That was a very strange thing to say. What kind of “molding” was the Landowner planning on doing, or had been doing? Who the heck was this character?
I could have just hung up and got back in the tub. Or in bed, where Matador was curled up at the foot, waiting for his master to come in so he could lightly quack at her.
But I am a curious creature by nature, so I had to ask my question.
“If you’re giving up power, why allow the development at all?”
“Because the town must grow or die. Dangerous and strange times seek us all in the future. I do not want what happened to Crestgold to happen to Whispering Pines,” he said, all hushed and ominous.
“You mean you don’t want it to go broke?” I said.
“No, not that at all. I don’t want it to be sent to hell.”
Thunder should have rolled at that moment. It was all kinds of ominous. And ridiculous.
“Okay,” I said, now really ready to hang up.
“Kate Becker, I believe you want what’s best for Whispering Pines. You wouldn’t care so much about proving who the real killer of James Wendover was otherwise.”
A bit late for all this. Rip Chiaki already threw over my best case scenario for his innocence.
“Because it was not Rip, I can tell you that. I know.”
“Then you have an idea who did it?” I said.
Another mysterious silence, with a mysterious chuckle. I’d had it about up to here with mystery.
“Look, Mr L, I don’t care how creepy and mysterious you want to be. People’s lives are at stake, and—”
“I know this: if whoever killed Wendover is connected to a developer, that developer cannot win the contract with the city. It would spell moral disaster, and help give rise to very bad things indeed. And we have to know before hand. You, Kate have to find out before tomorrow night’s council meeting: who killed James Wendover?”
“Yeah?” I said, “Or what?”
“Or there will be a cloud over Whispering Pines it can never escape. Or the earth will open up again, and swallow the entire town just when it’s on the cusp of coming into its destiny. Or everything you’ve loved about your hometown will dwindle and disappear. Or…” Another of those long pauses.
“Or what?” I said, again.
“Or you won’t get a nice job worth lots of money. Will you do it? Will you save your town?”
“Sure, okay,” I said.
Chapter 14
It didn’t fully dawn on me what I’d agreed to until it was 8:30 in the A.M., Blake was on my doorstep looking like he hadn’t slept a wink last night, and Matador was flapping at the back door begging to go out and get mucky in the swamp.
“In less than 12 hours,” I said to Blake, without even a good morning or an OMG-you look terrible! - “I have to find out who killed James Wendover or life as we know it is over.”
“Hmm,” Blake said, then he stumbled in and sat at the table. He looked at it like he was shocked, shocked to find no breakfast there, then silently looked at me with a solitary wish in his eyes - a wish for eggs and bacon and coffee and a girlfriend who did not say strange things when he walked into her home exhausted but rather made food and cooed at him while he told all about his horrible night.
And since I knew I was going to be asking a lot from him for the rest of the day, that’s just what I did.
“Gudger was sure there was a cave leading from the base of… what’s that hill? The one with like the two peaks and that… anyway, so he nearly broke his neck at 2 in the morning trying to find a way down there. Did break his leg. We got him airlifted out, and before we’d even got back to town Woody ran his patrol car off the edge of a ravine. He wasn’t even in the car at the time. He swore it took off by itself.”
Blake took a deep swig of coffee, caught his breath, then started again.
“It took hours to sweep through all of the places that were rigged with lights, because we didn’t want a repeat of your mishap with the collapsing stairs. Luckily there were plenty of lights left over from the construction crews. Those gallows were destroyed, by the way, and now Chief Dulap wants an investigation into that since he’d ordered the crews to leave them be, seeing as they’re a crime scene.”
Another deep breath, another long drink of coffee. This was probably as much as I’d ever heard Blake talk at once, and he seemed to realize it as he drained his cup. He was all out of words, and he just kind of sat in place, pushing his mug around in a circle.
“It all sounds terrible,” I said, sitting across from him with scrambled eggs, covered in salsa, and a look of genuine sympathy on my face.
“End of the world as we know it?” he said.
I nodded, without a word. Drank my own coffee, and waited for his own questions to come.
“Are you going to unpack that for me?”
I took a satisfying bite of eggs (the trick is fresh Parmesan cheese. None of that grated shakey-stuff, get flakes, or just do it yourself from a big block. Tasty!) and looked at him, a Parmesan-enhanced grin on my face.
Blake sighed. “Or just leave me to hang? I’ll take a nap, tell me when you’re ready to—”
“No, no, sourpuss, I’m just teasing!” I said, then told him, in many more words than he’d used, about what happened in my evening. He was starting to get bored when I described just how warm the water was in my tub, but the phone call from the Landowner got his interest.
“Do you think it was a trick?” he said.
“Because of course nobody important could ever want my help with anything?” I said, folding my arms and acting miffed.
“Yes, that’s just what I mean. But what proof did he offer you?”
I shrugged. “Big guys like that, they don’t offer proof. You say no to them, they’ve got a dozen other people they can call.”
“Not a dozen other people who are already trying to solve a murder they’re interested in,” Blake pointed out.
He was right. I was awful special.
But I couldn’t let that go to my head, because I had a full day of detecting to do… and really no idea where to start. And however much Blake wanted to pass out, I needed him for some of it. Most of it. Probably all of it.
“Come on,” I said, getting off my duff and patting him on the shoulder. “I’ll drive.”
I did not drive. Blake has a lot of manly notions, among them that he should be the one behind the wheel when we were in a car together. While he navigated the twisty roads leading from my backwoods house toward the town proper, I filled him in on all I had been doing, while keeping an eye on him to make sure he didn’t pass out from exhaustion behind the wheel.
“I’ve got four suspects. Or kinda suspects,” I said.
“And I’m guessing Rip Chiaki isn’t on that list?” Blake said, barely stifling a yawn before giving up and letting it come.
“No, because the Landowner himself doesn’t believe Rip did it.”
“Do innocent people throw Sheriff’s Deputies over walls and steal their cars?” Blake asked, irritatingly reasonable.
“Yes
, when they’re being railroaded and suspect their rights aren’t as important as political expediency.” I don’t know if it was true, but it sounded right to me.
“In my experience,” Blake started, and then yawned again. “Hell, I dunno what’s going on right now. Just… don’t get either of us killed.”
“Okay. But my four suspects…”
“I’m listening.”
“Number one is Mr. Greene. He was there, almost at the scene of the crime!”
“Okay,” Blake said. “So what are your big doubts there?”
I, who had been all ready to say all the reasons I thought Greene was guilty, was momentarily taken aback. My doubts?
“Well… I know why I think he’s guilty,” I said, suddenly feeling weirdly defensive.
“Because he’s big and ugly and nearly punched me and yelled at you. You don’t like him. That’s fine, but it’s not evidence. Real evidence comes from examining your doubts. Give ‘em to me.”
“Okay,” I said, giving it a real hard think. Frankly, I didn’t want to doubt Mr. Greene, because he looked good to me, by which I meant bad. But Blake was the professional bad guy getter. I’d follow him.
“Okay,” I said again. “Well, he was waiting in his office for his workers, and I’m sure they all said that was the case.”
“I talked to them,” Blake said. “They did.”
“Okay. Well, then, he also wasn’t the brains of his outfit. According to what I’ve heard, the plans for the casino, for all the Wendover stuff was in Wendover’s head. Without him, there’s really no company. Greene was not an idea men, so he’d killed the Golden Goose.”
“Well, there wouldn’t be a story about killing the Golden Goose unless people did it from time to time,” Blake said. “Who’s next?”
“The most obvious is Sparks,” I said, thinking about the man’s puffy hair and big grinning face. Could he have hanged James Wendover?
In a heartbeat if he thought it was good for business.
“Sparks probably knew all about Wendover’s business. My feeling is that people in town were leaning toward the casino, and Sparks could probably tell, too,” Blake said.
