by Betty Webb
“Does what you wanted to see me about have anything to do with those sirens that work me up this morning?” I asked. “More squabbling over the Black Basin Mine?”
Before he could answer, a detention officer carrying a big box of doughnuts entered the lobby. After handing a glazed to my guy, he continued on toward the sheriff’s side of the complex. Until he was out of sight, the deputy fanned the pages of his magazine, finally landing on a color spread that featured a Manhattan penthouse, all steel and chrome.
“What do you think of this?” he asked.
“It’s okay if you like that sort of thing. Me, I’m not into the industrial look. Who wants to come home from work to an apartment that looks like a factory?”
“People who never had to work in one, probably.” He flipped the pages again. “So sirens roused you from your beauty sleep? I’ll tell the boys to mute them from now on whenever they pass the Covered Wagons.”
“That’s neighborly of you.”
“We here in Walapai Flats pride ourselves on being neighborly.”
“So I’ve noticed.”
“It’s not necessarily because we feel warm and fuzzy all the time, but we have to take good care of our tourists or they won’t come back with all their lovely money.”
“I’ve noticed that, too.”
He placed the doughnut carefully in his desk drawer. “As I was saying, Walapai Flats depends on the tourist trade, which is why what happened this morning is such a damned shame. The roadblock on Route 47’s got everyone up in arms. People at the resort, they’re all pissed off, so we’re working on a detour through the desert. The people with four-wheel-drives, they’ll be okay, but I don’t know about the rest. That’s some rugged country out there.”
“Another bad accident?’
“In a manner of speaking. Seems…” He broke off when two much younger deputies walked by, their faces ashen. My guy waited until they disappeared down the corridor toward the sheriff’s office, then he motioned me to lean in closer.
“What?” I whispered.
He looked down at Urban Living again. Almost without moving his lips, he muttered, “Don’t tell anyone you heard it from me, but Deputy Stark got shot. He’s laying out there dead in his cruiser, a bullet through his forehead. It happened some time last night, about a mile from the Lakes.”
I felt more satisfaction than I should have. Regardless of his off-hours behavior, Stark was a law officer who’d presumably died in the line of duty. “Has there been an arrest?”
The deputy shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard. He wasn’t the world’s most popular guy.”
I flashed back to Connie Stark’s battered face and the frustration I’d noticed on Sheriff Alcott’s. Monty’s, too. “Why are you telling me all this?”
He closed his copy of Urban Living, then tossed it into the waste basket. “Because you tried to help Connie. She’s my granddaughter.”
***
As Blue, tail a-wag as usual, escorted me to the lodge, I saw Dusty helping ranch guests mount up on some bored-looking horses. Keeping my face averted, I was able to make it inside without being spotted. Luck stayed with me as I crossed the deserted reception area, I saw Hank Olmstead walking toward me, Ted in tow. Ted smiled broadly, but the look on Olmstead’s face was less welcoming. He frowned when I requested a few moments alone.
“We’re busy, Miss Jones. Can’t you come back later?”
“If you want to help Gabriel Boone, you’ll answer a few questions.”
Ted clapped Olmstead on the shoulder. “That’s okay, Dad. Dusty and I can handle things.” Without waiting for an answer, he flashed me a big smile and left.
Still frowning, Olmstead turned on his heel and headed toward the office. Without being invited, I followed.
“How crazy is Gabe Boone?” I asked, as soon as we were seated. “Crazy enough for an insanity defense?”
“Mr. Boone is not mentally ill.”
“He talks to a dead man.”
“I talk to God. Does that make me crazy?”
On that one, I kept my opinion to myself. “Gabe says something, John Wayne answers. John Wayne says something, Gabe answers. A regular tête-à-tête. Is he on medication?”
Olmstead sat back in his big leather chair and crossed his arms in front of his chest. “Gabriel Boone is as sane as you or me.”
As far as I was concerned, that cast doubt on us both. “He says he owes you a debt, Mr. Olmstead. Mind telling me what it is? It could be important to his defense.”
For a moment I thought he’d retreat into his usual stodgy non-answers, but he didn’t. “Mr. Boone endured some rough years after his wife died,” he said. “Did you know that the land Sunset Trails sits on used to belong to him, and that our house out back is where he and his wife once lived? This was a cattle spread then, not a particularly successful one, but it did well enough to pay the bills and put a little aside until Abby Boone fell ill.”
“Cancer, by any chance?”
His face became mulish. “The exact nature of her illness isn’t relevant.”
“Actually, it is. I know Abby Boone fell ‘ill’ after the government started testing their nukes in Nevada. And at Silver Ridge last night, I…”
“What were you doing in Silver Ridge?” he interrupted.
“Attending the Downwinders meeting with Olivia Eames. Gabe’s sister-in-law was there, along with several people from Walapai Flats.”
“Don’t tell me you’re hanging out with that reporter!”
“Well, yes.”
“Stay away from her. She’s does nothing but stir up trouble.”
I don’t like people telling me what or what not to do but I kept my tone civil, something I felt increasingly difficult to do around this man. “You know Olivia?”
“Well enough to know that she’s determined to rake up a subject more wisely left alone.”
“Like radioactive ranchland?”
I thought his eyes would pop out of his head in fury, but he grasped the edges of his desk and took a deep breath. “You see? People hear those old stories and jump to conclusions. But let me assure you that the land in and around Walapai Flats is perfectly safe and has been for years, or I would never have moved my family down here from Salt Lake City.”
Hank Olmstead may have been arrogant and stiff-necked, but I believed him, because there was no doubt that he treasured his family above all else. “I hope you didn’t rely on the Atomic Energy Commission’s claim that the land was clean.”
Like so many men of his age and religious beliefs, he didn’t like his pronouncements argued with, and although he’d let go of the desk, his voice still crackled with anger when he replied, “I am not stupid, Miss Jones. After what transpired at Nevada Test Site, no one around here believed a word those folks said. In fact, the AEC’s propensity for telling lies is one of the reasons it was eventually disbanded. To make certain the land was safe, I did exactly what every sensible rancher and homeowner in the quad-state area was doing and bought myself a Geiger counter and tested every square foot of this entire property before entering escrow. This county, along with the rest of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado, is now perfectly safe, so I and the other members of the Walapai Flats Chamber of Commerce would appreciate it if you don’t go around blabbing about the problems the area used to have.”
“Because it would be bad for business?”
He grabbed onto the desk again. “Miss Jones, the economy in this part of the state is based on tourism. There is nothing to be gained by alarming people unnecessarily.”
“Speaking of rocks that glow in the dark, how safe do you think the Black Basin Mine will be? Would you feel comfortable having one of your children work there?”
He looked relieved to have the conversation shift away from the bomb tests. “I have faith in Cole Laveen’s leadership. Roger Tosches was all about the money, but Mr. Laveen remembers the human connection.”
In a way, Olmstead had just described himself. A
formal, forbidding man, but one with a heart. If he was right about Cole Laveen, workers at the Black Basin would fare better than had the Navajos at Moccasin Peak.
“About Tosches, someone told me…” I stopped, my attention caught by the sound of boots clomping down the hallway toward the office. Oh, please. Not Dusty. Not now.
The door opened to reveal a pudgy man wearing beat-up Western wear covered by a white apron. “Everything’s clean and put away, Hank. After I take a break, I’ll put together the lunch buffet, then work on dinner. Hope your guests like lasagna.”
“I’m certain they’ll like yours, Mr. Carola. And thank you so much for helping us out like this. You’ve been a Godsend.”
“Always glad to do it for you, Hank. You’ve been mighty generous to me and mine.” He closed the door and clomped away.
“Our substitute cook,” Olmstead explained, unnecessarily. “Until Gabe comes back.”
Dream on, I thought. That old man belonged some place where he couldn’t hurt himself or others, but trying to convince Olmstead was a lost cause. “I’m glad you brought up Tosches,” I said. “Word is, he’d been trying to buy Sunset Trails and you two had a heated argument over it.”
He didn’t bother with a denial. “That ‘someone’ being Leilani, no doubt. I wish my daughter hadn’t been so free with private family information, but at twenty-two, she’s still naive enough to trust everyone, including reporters and private investigators. Since she’s already let the cat out of the bag, yes, Mr. Tosches was trying to buy Sunset Trails, and I’m sure she told you why he thought he could. Our financial difficulties, correct?” Without waiting for a reply, he continued. “Because of the economy, things were tight for a while, but we survived. During Mr. Tosches’ last visit I thanked him for his offer but requested that he discontinue stopping by, that we here at the ranch needed to concentrate on our guests, not business discussions with him. Perhaps if he’d taken my advice he would still be alive.”
As if realizing what he’d said, he backtracked. “Not that his death had anything to do with us.”
Maybe. Maybe not. “Do you think he believed more uranium could be found on your land?”
A dry laugh. “He couldn’t possibly be that foolish. As I said, before Jeanette and I purchased the ranch, I went over every inch of the place with a Geiger counter. There were no hot spots which might have indicated either fallout or uranium deposits. Mr. Tosches wanted to build another resort like Sunset Canyon Lakes, that’s all. Now, not that this hasn’t been an interesting digression, but I thought you wanted to talk about Gabriel Boone.”
“Correct. You started to tell me why Gabe feels so indebted to you.” Indebted enough to confess to a murder he didn’t commit to get your son out of jail.
The story Olmstead told was a sad one. After Boone’s wife died from esophageal cancer, the bank foreclosed on his ranch. He spent the next few years wrangling for other ranchers until his drinking problem became so serious he couldn’t hold a job. “The property passed through several hands before my wife and I turned it into a guest ranch,” he said. “We were doing fairly well, too, until Jeanette…” He swallowed. “But on June 12, 1996, the day Mr. Boone arrived at Sunset Trails…”
He turned away and pretended to sneeze, not before I saw a drop of moisture on his cheek.
“Gesundheit,” I said, to help this proud man save face. But I also wondered why a busy man like Olmstead could remember the exact day a drifter had turned up at his ranch.
“Thank you.” He grabbed a tissue and made a big deal out of blowing his nose.
“Go on.”
He cleared his throat. “That day Mr. Boone was pretty much at the end of his tether. His clothes were in rags, he had the shakes, he could barely talk. He wanted a job, but there was no way I could use anyone in his condition. Still, I felt sorry for him so I sent him over to the wrangler’s cookhouse for a square meal. One for his dog, too, although the blue-eyed thing looked a lot healthier than Mr. Boone.”
He stared off into space.
I waited.
“About an hour later is when…Jeanette was in the family quarters out back, hanging up a picture. You’ve probably sneaked out there and seen our house, right?”
“Big fenced yard. Good idea, with such a big family and the Virgin River being so close by.”
His mouth twisted. “It wasn’t fenced then. Jeanette was careful, a pearl of great price. She always kept close watch on everyone, especially the kids with Down syndrome. One of her sisters was living with us to help out, so everything should have been fine. But when Jeanette…” He had to take a few more breaths before continuing. “When Jeanette had the heart attack, it was chaos. I was up here at the lodge, and Miguel, that’s our second oldest, called me from the house and I ran back there, and the kids were crying and screaming, and her sister was doing chest compressions, but I could see there was nothing to be done, but I took over and tried for the longest time, but the Lord had already called her home.”
After taking a big gulp of air, he fell silent for so long I had to prompt him, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Olmstead, but what does this have to do with Gabriel Boone?”
He stood up. “Excuse me, but I need to get a drink of water. Would you like one?”
“I’m fine.”
For the next few minutes I sat there alone, listening to pots rattle in the kitchen, beyond that, the sound of horses neighing. Floating over the musty smell of record books and old leather, I could smell garlic and oregano.
When Olmstead returned, his eyes and nose were noticeably red. Sitting down, he said, “Life is for the living, even amidst death. In our grief, we didn’t remember that Leilani wasn’t in the house. She’d always been highly intelligent, curious, and very active despite her leg, so we’d bought one of those big swing sets that had a slide, teeter totter, all the bells and whistles, just to keep her occupied. To make a long story short, while the rest of us were working on Jeanette, we forgot about Leilani. The children had been warned about the river, told to never to go there, but once she realized she wasn’t being watched, she made a beeline for it.” He gave me a sad look. “She was only five. You know how children are at that age.”
“Tell them not to do something, and that’s the first thing they do.”
“Exactly. In that, I failed her. But Mr. Boone didn’t.”
“How so?”
“He’d finished eating at the cookhouse and was walking toward the road when he saw her playing on top of the riverbank. When she suddenly disappeared, he knew she’d fallen in. Taking no care for his own safety, he ran and jumped in after her. The current’s strong at that spot, and he almost drowned saving my daughter’s life. For that, I and my family will be eternally grateful to Mr. Boone.”
I could see it in my mind. A broken-down old drunk carrying a load of grief no one should have to carry, showing up at his old homestead to beg for a job, and getting turned down. Free meal or not, many men would have been bitter enough to just walk away.
Not Gabe Boone.
I remembered his face, the one I’d seen in the interview room. Careworn. Noble.
Olmstead had answered only half my question. “I can see why you’re indebted to Gabe, but why does he feel indebted to you?” Looked at from another angle, Gabe had a strong reason to resent the entire Olmstead clan, since they were living on the ranch he’d once owned.
Olmstead shrugged. “We took him in, helped him get straightened up, but that’s what anyone in our situation would do. Once he was released from rehab…”
“Who paid for that?” A good rehab facility could run thousands of dollars per week, and the free state-run places had long waiting lists.
“We did, of course.”
In other words, Hank Olmstead paid for it out of his own pocket.
Glossing over his extraordinary generosity, he continued, “Once Mr. Boone felt better, we gave him a job and he’s been with us ever since. So you see, we’re the ones who owe the debt, not Mr.
Boone. We lost Jeanette that day but Gabriel Boone gave us back our Leilani.”
***
The death of a peace officer brings out even more law enforcement than the death of a gazillionaire. On the way from the ranch toward Sunset Canyon Lakes, I drove though a desert literally carpeted with police cruisers. Hoping for some first-hand information, I approached several officers but found none willing to talk. Forced to mind my own business, I allowed myself to be directed off the highway and onto a rough track between two mesas. The detour, which was almost as rough as the riding trail along the Virgin River, curved far away from the actual crime scene.
Less than fifteen minutes after returning to the blacktop, I knocked on Nancy Donohue’s front door. When she answered, she was surprisingly genial.
“Another bad penny turns up,” she sniped. “Come on in, Jones, but don’t expect hors d’oeuvres. Coffee’s all you’re going to get and that’s only because Olivia made it.”
The reporter was sitting on the floral sofa, her thin fingers curled around a carafe.
I settled myself at the other end of the floral sofa and asked, “Have either of you heard about Deputy Stark?”
Nancy, who’d plopped herself down on the overstuffed chair across from us, responded only with a nasty smile, but Olivia nodded. “I’ve already started checking to see if his death is connected to the Black Basin Mine. The kid who found the body works here and is desperate for his fifteen minutes of fame, so he told me all about it.”
“Kid?” I realized then that I’d taken it for granted Monty found the body. What did that say about the way my mind was tracking?
“Danny Ross, a sometimes golf caddy,” Olivia said. “Very photogenic, like all the help seems to be here, so I snapped a picture, just in case. He lives in Walapai Flats, said he comes over to caddy whenever he’s needed. Which was this morning, happily.”
“What’d he say?”
“Pretty much what you’d expect. He noticed Stark’s cruiser sitting on the side of the road with its door open. When he stopped and looked inside, he saw Stark slumped across the passenger’s side. He called 9-1-1. Not that it did any good.”
