“Right. You’re probably aware, there are all kinds of animal rights activists.”
“Sure. Everything from Ducks Unlimited and the Humane Society to people who throw blood on fur coats and bust up labs where they experiment on animals,” Hawk said.
“Well actually, most animal rights activists wouldn’t put themselves in the same basket with duck hunters and people who kill cats and dogs because there are too many of them,” Willen said. “Animal rights folks believe, pure and simple, that animals don’t belong to humans for food, clothing, experimentation, or entertainment. We’re against causing needless pain and suffering to animals.” His tone was mild, but it was clear that he counted himself among the faithful.
Now she noticed his clothes: canvas boots with rubber soles, cotton denim blue jeans, and the fisherman’s sweater she’d taken for a heavy wool knit on the day that Nina had died was in actuality some kind of patterned fleece. No animal products there (although, Sally reflected, to clothe Nels Willen, rubber trees had bled on plantations in the Putu-mayo, petroleum had been pumped and pipelined and refined halfway across the world, and scarce desert water had been lavished on behemoth cotton plantations, maybe in Egypt, or maybe in Arizona). Once again, Sally wondered about Willen’s celebrated epiphany.
“Angelina believed in animal rights, and she wanted Wild West to support the cause,” he said. “But, even so, there’s some difference of opinion among the Wild West people on those matters. It’s still being worked out,” Willen said.
“What do you mean?” Sally was pressing.
“Let’s just say there are various views as to whether the land or the animals are most important. It’s a little complicated. I don’t really have the energy to explain just now,” Willen said.
“Thomas Jackson thought there was something wrong with Nina.” Sally tried another tack.
Willen put his head in his hands. “He was right about that,” he said. “She’d walk into a room, start a sentence, and trail off in the middle. Then she’d walk out. She’d get really angry for no reason. Memory lapses, disorientation, all the signs of what looked to me like a brain problem. I was worried about a tumor, and was going to suggest a CAT scan.”
“So why in the world would you bring her a gun?” Sally asked. “I’d think that’d be the last thing you’d want to do with somebody whose mental stability you doubted.” Not to mention the fact that your average animal rights supporter wouldn’t want much to do with something that could blow a terminal hole in a living creature.
“Seems pretty obvious in retrospect,” Willen agreed. “But she said she was scared. There were a bunch of people around her place she didn’t know. She suspected somebody was out to get her. She just wanted it for protection. I should have told her to get a dog.” He took a long pull on the latest beer. “I finally had to take it away from her when I saw her shoot into the woods on the morning she died.”
Sally and Hawk exchanged a look. “When that morning?” Sally asked.
“Maybe half an hour before we heard those other shots,” Willen said. “She was out behind the house, by the wood-pile. I couldn’t see who or what she was firing at. Then she just slumped over and started to shake. I grabbed the gun, stuck it under the tarp on the woodpile, then took her into the house. She couldn’t speak. I took her up and put her to bed, then went out into the woods to see if she’d hit anyone or anything. The next thing we knew, there were more shots. You were there, Sally. You know what happened after that.”
Willen pulled the elastic bands off the ends of his braids and began combing out his hair with his fingers. They waited. He rebraided his hair, and said at last, “Think I’d better find that motel room now. I’m so beat, I might just crash out on your couch here in about a minute.”
“You’re welcome to do so,” said Hawk. “Maybe you shouldn’t drive.”
Willen left the remains of his fourth beer on the table. “Thanks, but I think I need to be by myself for a while,” he said. “I’ll be okay. Reckon I can find my way to the Holiday Inn. Thanks for the pizza.”
They watched him walk out to his car, dejected but steady on his feet, and decided they’d let him go.
The moment he’d driven away, two things occurred to Sally. First, if Willen’s prints were all over the gun he’d brought to Shady Grove, a gun that had just been fired, he’d offered a neat explanation. Second, he hadn’t said one word about the recent trauma of finding poor gunshot Jimbo Perrine.
Chapter 11
The Goodwill Ambassador
The morning of the meeting, Sally dressed with unaccustomed care. Not that she wasn’t fussy about clothes, as Hawk had often pointed out. But then, he was one of those people who got up and put on a pair of jeans and a shirt and never gave it a second thought. If you held your hand over his eyes and asked him what he was wearing, he might have a little trouble coming up with the color of the shirt. She, on the other hand, generally had to try and reject various permutations of three or four different outfits, grimacing at herself in the mirror, twisting and turning in the effort to get a look at her backside and seeing every onion ring she’d ever consumed showing up somewhere between her shoes and her earrings.
But this particular morning presented a daunting fashion challenge. How could she avoid sending up red flags with animal rights partisans at the Wild West meeting? She could manage with jeans or cotton pants, or a skirt and any number of cotton or synthetic blouses or sweaters. The leather jacket would have to stay in the closet; ditto the wool overcoat. The nylon ski jacket was just too woodsy, the fleece still too bulky and casual, but it would have to do.
The problem was the shoes. Among the forty-odd pairs crowding the closet she shared with Hawk (another thing he liked to mention), she owned only three pairs of shoes that weren’t made of leather: rubber beach flip-flops, wedgie canvas espadrilles that tied around the ankles, and a pair of red Keds she’d bought on impulse after listening to Elvis Costello sing “The Angels Wanna Wear My Red Shoes.” It was too cold for the first two, and the Keds had turned out to look dorky rather than cool, even with jeans. Stone Jackson was going to be at this meeting, and she had no intention of facing him in dorky shoes.
So in the war between sensitivity and vanity, vanity won. She went for the boat-necked dark gray knit top, form-fitting with the three-quarter sleeves, and the snug ankle-length black skirt. Put together, in control, an edgy touch of sex. There wasn’t much she could do about her high-heeled boots, but maybe she could tuck her feet under her chair and the skirt would cover her sins.
She did make some concessions. She’d put aside the cashmere sweater she really wanted to wear. She didn’t need some righteous Dub-Dub explaining that because of her, some poor wrinkly sheep was walking around naked in Mongolia.
Which was pretty much what Randy Whitebird said to Thomas Jackson when the latter walked into the meeting with Caterina Cruz, forty minutes late, sporting what looked to be a well-loved ski sweater.
“Nina bought me this sweater almost thirty years ago in Switzerland,” Stone told Whitebird. “I don’t think the sheep’s suffering much anymore.”
Cat Cruz was shorter and less angular than Nina, and clearly more concerned with elegance. Where Nina had embraced Wyoming’s easygoing attitude about dress, Cat’s idea of casual made allowances neither for Rocky Mountain informality or animal lovers’ sensibilities. She wore black wool pants, soft leather boots, and a cowl-necked pink angora sweater, along with an array of tasteful but noticeable gold jewelry. She could have been mistaken for a Beverly Hills socialite, heading for a little power shopping on Rodeo Drive. But she had her sister’s shiny black eyes and acute expression as she surveyed Wild West’s makeshift headquarters, not much liking what she saw.
The operation looked to be running on a shoestring. They’d rented a three-room office suite, relatively spacious but bare, with fluorescent light fixtures and a restroom of its own. The furniture in the main room consisted of a sagging thrift-shop couch; a rickety cof
fee table, probably acquired from the same source; a banged-up gray metal desk; and a small assortment of plastic lawn chairs. They also had a fiberboard bookshelf that held files and books. In a second room, a mini-refrigerator, a microwave, an electric tea kettle, and a metal and Formica dinette set did duty as a kitchen. Through a door opening from the main room, Sally could see that the third room was empty, except for two sleeping bags laid out on inflatable camping pads, with a desk lamp between, attached to a wall outlet by a long extension cord. Two backpacks stood propped against opposite walls.
“Well, Thomas,” said Caterina Cruz, raising an eyebrow and turning to Jackson, “it doesn’t look like they’re squandering my sister’s money on fancy furnishings anyhow.” Then she turned to the people who’d sat around cooling their heels, waiting for her to arrive, and said, “Sorry we’re late,” looking not one bit sorry, in Sally’s opinion.
“We’ve just been visiting with your local law enforcement,” Stone explained. “It took a little longer than we’d planned.”
Sally could imagine. Two celebrity-size egos walk into the Albany County Courthouse, expecting to give the Deputy Dawgs maybe ten or fifteen minutes of their valuable time. Old Scotty Atkins wouldn’t need more than a whiff of high-falutin’ attitude to decide to back and fill and stall and stonewall until they’d gotten sick of him. For that matter, Sheriff Dickie Langham might have taken a turn at them himself, putting on the “aw shucks” and besieging them with seemingly stupid questions until everybody was ready to puke cornpone.
Not to mention that Dickie Langham’s awareness of the presence of McDonald’s franchises everywhere might inspire him to ask Stone Jackson some questions.
Jackson and Nina’s sister did look a little weary for so early in the day, and Sally evidently wasn’t the only one to notice. Nels Willen pulled himself out of one of the lawn chairs and gave Cat a big hug. “It’s been a while, darlin’,” he told her, “I’m so awful sorry.” And then he moved to hug Stone in turn. The expressions on their faces nearly broke Sally’s heart.
But they pulled themselves together, as everybody got acquainted. Sally noted that Cat seemed to have heard of Whitebird, but not met him. Whitebird was sitting next to a mild-faced man with a receding hairline and thin graying ponytail, who’d been introduced as Terry Kean, the genius behind thirty years of all-star benefit concerts. If there were whales or farmers to be saved, wolves or prisoners of conscience to be freed, Terry Kean had been there to make sure that tickets got sold, that the sound system worked, and that all the performers had their contract-specified brands of vitamins, mineral water, and massage therapists.
Far more important, the artists had learned that, more often than not, benefits lost money. Of course, lots of concerts lost money. But there were other problems. Many people in the music business regarded doing good as, at best, a clever cover for self-interest (good press) and, at worst, a waste of time better spent overtly feathering one’s own nest. In L.A., they might talk about good karma, but they believed in above-average marginal returns. That was why even the most cynical respected Terry Kean. He seemed to have the knack of turning a profit, while looking noble.
Cat hugged him hard, saying, “It’s been like ten years, T.K.”
“Yeah,” replied the man, grinning. “Back when we thought raising five mill for Amnesty International was going to liberate the world.”
“Well,” said Cat, “I haven’t entirely given up hope. Appears you haven’t either.”
“Nope,” said Kean. “But I’m too homely to be a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. Glad to see they’re still sending out the pretty ladies.”
“Right. And if pretty ladies were all it took to defeat world hunger, we’d be doing benefits for eye jobs and liposuction,” Cat replied.
Sally cracked up. If this was UNICEF, she was prepared to sign on for trick-or-treating.
Pammie Montgomery, Quartz, and Lark, the blonde who’d taught the yoga class (and walked into Nina’s office that morning, just in time to see Sally sneaking the mysterious note into her DayMinder) were in the other room, setting up the lunch on the dinette table. They were called in to introduce themselves. Cat shook their hands and immediately dismissed them as bit players.
Sally, on the other hand, was treated to a dose of the Cruz charm that had attracted her to Nina, and that had evidently earned Cat her UNICEF gig. “My sister said really nice things about you and the work you’re doing,” Cat told her, grasping both of Sally’s hands, leaning over for a Hollywood air kiss, and whispering in Sally’s ear, “and she put her money where her mouth was. Let’s have a drink after the meeting, okay?”
That was intriguing, to say the least. But Sally was even more interested in the way Caterina Cruz greeted the woman who’d been introduced as Kali. Sally had never seen a mongoose approach a snake, but she’d bet there was some of the same energy in the air.
“Hello, Kelly Lee,” said Cat, putting a hand on the woman’s arm not as a gesture of familiarity, but more as if she didn’t want even the impersonal intimacy of a handshake. No eye contact, no follow-up, no “How are you?” Just nothing.
Kelly Lee? Sally thought the name might suit better than Kali, but now she had some idea where the goddess title might have come from. Stone had said that Kali was a “little bit of a thing,” and he hadn’t exaggerated. She couldn’t have topped five feet or a hundred pounds. But Kali was a figure to be noticed, even at first glance: sharp-featured as a ferret, dressed all in white fleece down to her clogs, blonde hair cropped in the same short, spiky cut Nina had worn. In that outfit, she should have looked like a lamb. That wasn’t even close. Sally tried not to stare, but suddenly, she understood why the encounter between Cat Cruz and Kali had put her in mind of the mongoose and the snake. Kali—Kelly Lee?— wore long, dangly silver-and-onyx earrings that were, on closer inspection, lifelike renderings of writhing snakes.
“Hello, Caterina,” whispered Kali, in a voice hardly louder than the sound of leaves rustling in the wind. “Our cherished sister is gone, but I swear to you that I will do everything in my power to see that her splendid vision lives on.”
Our sister? Nobody had said that Kali was actually related to Nina; probably she was just doing a particularly inappropriate and insensitive rendition of the all-women-are-sisters-in-Mother-Earth thing. Sally didn’t know Cat Cruz, but if her own sister had been killed, and somebody else came around claiming some kind of phony kinship, she’d have wanted to ram a fist down the somebody’s throat.
“I assure you, I have every intention of honoring Nina’s vision,” Cat replied, staring unblinking into Kali’s deep blue eyes. Then she turned her attention to the group. “I’ll be going through Nina’s papers out at Shady Grove this week, trying to pull together a full accounting of the foundation’s finances and projects. I’ll expect you to assist with any materials you’ve moved to this office, or anywhere else. The sooner the better, but no later than this time next week. It’s going to cost money to put this benefit together, and I need to know where that money’s coming from, and where Nina intended it to go. I’ll need copies of all correspondence on those matters along with bank statements, investments, spread sheet summaries, and any other relevant records. Naturally, I’ll want to see your salaries and job descriptions. No games here, people. As executor of my sister’s will, I’ll be stepping in as acting chief executive officer of Wild West. If I have to pull the plug, on the benefit or the whole operation, I will.”
So much for the goodwill ambassador portion of the program.
“Absolutely, Cat,” Whitebird interceded. “With everything that’s happened, we haven’t had the chance to catch up with all the paperwork. But just as soon as this meeting’s over, we’ll start putting it all together. It’s a little more diffi-cult, of course, since you’ve asked the staff to vacate the ranch, but we can do it.”
Vacate the ranch? So she’d kicked them all out of Shady Grove? And Cat was planning to stay out there? There’d be no better opportu
nity to get started on the book about Nina. Sally would have to see if Cat would let her come out and take a look at the papers.
“See that you do, Mr....Whitebird, is it? I loved my sister, but I’m not a sentimentalist. I’ve spent the better part of the last weeks meeting with lawyers, and now with cops. I still don’t understand how she had some kind of freak show running at her house, and all over her woods, and somebody still managed to shoot her and disappear.”
Nobody said a word.
“We don’t understand it either,” Whitebird finally ventured. “But as we’ve all heard by now, she’s not the only victim this year. Sometimes even the ones carrying the guns get in the way of a bullet. It appears that hunting season in Wyoming is as dangerous to humans as it is to other animals.”
Nels Willen slouched lower in the lawn chair, a picture of wretchedness.
The meeting might have broken up there and then, but Kali stepped in. “I’d suggest that everyone get some lunch, and then we can get down to the business of planning a concert that will be a fitting tribute to Nina.”
Stone put his arm around Cat. “Why don’t we do that?” he said. “It’s been a long morning, and I’m feeling a little peckish.”
Whitebird retreated. Cat conceded the moment. She and Stone led the way into the room where the buffet had been laid out on the Formica-topped table.
It was a Pammie Montgomery triumph, an abundant and appealing vegan spread. There were gorgeous grilled vegetable sandwiches on focaccia, alongside plates of more such vegetables for those who disdained risen bread, Sally assumed, on account of feeling compassion for yeast. There was a pot of a rosemary-scented white bean soup keeping warm on the hot plate, a bowl of sesame-flavored slaw salad, made with red cabbage and cucumbers, dishes of plump dried fruit and mixed nuts, a platter of chocolate-dipped strawberries. There were bottles of sparkling and still water, tea bags for herb tea.
“You,” said Cat, shooting an index figure at the beaming Pammie, “are hereby appointed our official caterer. This totally rocks. I assume you do real food,” she said, and then added, in response to Pammie’s polite puzzlement, “not just vegan menus.”
Bye, Bye, Love Page 11
