“Maybe there’s more to it than that,” I said, remembering Randel’s suggestion that if the thermal resources were vast enough it might be a place to build a power plant. Either plan probably explained Felix’s proprietary air the day I’d run into him at the spring.
“Well Felix sure has him some fancy ideas about it. It’s that college education, ya know.”
“So, do you think Dorothy’s new version of the will has something in it about that?” I asked, opening my vacu-packed brownie.
“Wouldn’t surprise me. I read the durn thing. Couldn’t make sense of it a bit. That first will, the one she had me do up a long time ago? That wasn’t so bad. I knew what it was saying. This thing, it’s got all kinds of clauses—I think that’s what they call ’em—clauses that don’t make no sense at all. I said, I ain’t signin’ that thing till I know what it means. She said, ‘Dad you better do it now, you’re not getting any younger’.” He mimicked Dorothy’s nasal whine pretty well. He stood up and chucked the chile can out into the bushes.
I forced myself not to say anything. I’d go out there later and pick up his trash and haul it back with my own. I crumpled my little bits of packaging materials, including the remains of the brownie. I’d always thought I never met a brownie I didn’t like, but I finally had.
“She wanted me to sign that new will right there on the spot. Don’t think she even showed it to the other kids. And she durn sure didn’t want me to take it home with me. Hell, I mighta taken it into my head to show it to another lawyer and get me a second opinion. I said that to her once—about gettin’ a second opinion—and she just about hit the roof.”
I didn’t have any trouble picturing that.
The wind had picked up even stronger now and a few drops sprinkled out of the sky. Lightning flashed in the distance beyond Weaver’s Needle. Willie wandered outside the circle of firelight mentioning something about seeing about a tree. It reminded me that I hadn’t answered nature’s call myself since early afternoon. Using my flashlight to be sure I wasn’t about to surprise a rattlesnake, I found myself a bush in the opposite direction from where Willie’d gone.
I decided to set my tent up while I could still handle the flapping fabric. Rusty trotted along beside me while I unsaddled Molly and rubbed her down. The tent was relatively easy to master and I had it up in about ten minutes. I put the rain flaps over it and stashed all my other gear inside. The sprinkles of rain proved to be no more than that, for now anyway.
“Got some coffee going here,” Willie said. He’d watched my progress with the tent. In the back of my mind I debated whether to invite him to share it. I hadn’t much doubt that his little pup tent wouldn’t survive if the wind got much stronger. But I still didn’t really know him very well. I decided to have some coffee and think about it.
“Is that your mine back there?” I asked as we sat on our rocks again with mugs in hand.
For a minute I thought the gun was coming back out again.
“None a your damn business,” he snarled. “Who told you about any mine anyway?”
“Melanie mentioned that you liked to go prospecting,” I tried. “And, well, after Bud Tucker was murdered and your truck was found abandoned, it began to look like you might have been killed too. Keith Randel at the café in White Oaks was the only one who didn’t believe it. He told me you had this favorite place and that you might have come here.”
“Bud Tucker was murdered?” His face registered confusion.
“Well, that’s the other thing I needed to talk to you about. Bud’s daughter remembered the two of you going off together in White Oaks, back in February this was. So the police assumed you were together and that whoever shot Bud might have abducted you and taken your truck.”
His brows pulled together as I talked. The confusion deepened.
“Bud Tucker wasn’t murdered,” he said. “Hell, I should know. I shot him myself.”
Chapter 21
I think my mouth must have actually hung open. Time seemed suspended like something tangible in the air between us. Finally I found my voice.
“You shot Bud Tucker?”
“Yep. He, he . . .” His face crumpled as he realized what he was saying. “It wadn’t no murder though. It was an accident.”
“What?”
The old man set his coffee mug on the ground between his feet and gripped the sides of his head with both hands. Two wet tracks trailed down his cheeks. His beaten straw hat flipped off and fell behind him. He didn’t notice. His fingers worked the scalp, as if he were trying to squeeze the memory out of his brain.
“Willie,” I said gently, “tell me what happened.”
His mouth worked rapidly but no words came out.
“The police found a pack of your things in one of the mines,” I said. “A blanket and some clothes. And Bud was wearing one of your shirts. I found him. At first we thought it was you.”
He stood up and paced to the far end of the clearing, like he wanted to just walk away but didn’t know where he’d go. When he paced back toward me I noticed his eyes were bright with moisture. I patted the rock where he’d been sitting.
“Come tell me about it. Why was Bud wearing your shirt?”
He flopped down a little too hard on the rock seat and winced. He rubbed his lower back and said, “Shouldn’t be doin’ that, I guess.” He stared into the fire.
“Whew—where to start,” he said, wagging his head side to side. “Well, Bud and me went up to look around a little. We used to go prospecting together a lot. All over New Mexico and Arizona. Thought we’d found us the Lost Dutchman Mine once. Turned out to be nothin’. Anyway, I hadn’t seen Bud in awhile so I called him up and said how about let’s go find a few nuggets and he said okay, so I went down there in February and we were just gonna look around a little.
“Went into one of them mines, the two of us did, and we were pokin’ around a little, goin’ deeper and deeper, into a shaft we’d never been to before. Just lookin’ at stuff. Well, it was the weirdest thing, what we found. Bunch of big cans of stuff, like five gallon buckets. Some of ’em had labels with real scientific names on ’em. Hell, I didn’t know what any of it said really. Bud was moving a couple of the cans around to get a better look and I guess his arm brushed against one that had some spilled on the outside.
“Well, he starts shaking his arm like this—” he demonstrated “—and yelling ‘ouch, ouch, this stuff’s burnin’ me,’ and I didn’t know what he’d gotten himself into so I just says, ‘get the shirt off!’ He did. He peeled that shirt off and sure enough that stuff’d eaten through the material and made his arm red in a little place. He threw the shirt on the ground and I got him a clean one out of my pack. We rinsed off his arm with some canteen water and he put my shirt on.”
He got up and added more wood to the fire.
“When did the gun come into it?” I asked.
“I’m gettin’ to that,” he said. “Well, he’d just finished buttoning up the clean shirt when we heard a car drive up. It stopped right near my truck, where the road ends and the trail starts. So Bud and me says to each other, ‘We better get outta here.’ So we run out the mine shaft and decide to hide out in one of them old buildings. There’s only one that ain’t about ready to fall down so we choose that one. And we see these two guys walk up this path to the mine we’d just left. One of ’em’s a local guy. Bud knew him by name but I can’t remember what it was. And the other guy was some greasy-looking city dude. Long hair down to his ass—in a braid, if you can believe that.
“They head for the mine and about two minutes later they’re sneaking back out and we know that they found Bud’s shirt and are out looking for us. I mean, with my truck parked there and all it must have been pretty clear that we were still around. We’re scared. That city guy’s got a gun that he’s pointing around so I pull out my little sidearm here just to be ready.”
His voice wavered and he scrubbed at his face with his hands.
“Guess I wasn�
��t too steady with her that day,” he continued, “cause the next thing I know, she fires. Just like that. I didn’t even know I’d put my finger on the trigger but blam, there went a shot. And I looked over and there was Bud, lyin’ on the floor, just still as de—” His voice cracked.
He stood up and paced the length of the clearing again. Took a deep, ragged breath.
“I didn’t know what to do. It was gonna be a matter of seconds before those two guys found me. No way they didn’t hear that shot. Only thing I could think was, run. So I did. Hid behind some bushes while they searched the buildings. Soon as they saw Bud, they left. Got in this dark blue car and hightailed it outta there. Well, I did the same. Drove and drove.”
“Until you got to Las Cruces.”
He nodded.
“Then you remembered that they’d seen your truck and could easily identify it, so you got some money at the ATM and bought a bus ticket to Phoenix.”
“You figured all that out?” he asked, wide-eyed.
“It wasn’t difficult. The police traced the vehicle right away after we started looking for you.” I shifted position on the rock. The seat was starting to get hard. “After you got to Phoenix, you got more money out of your account. Then they lost track of you.”
“Yep. Took some more money outta the bank and bought Little Bit from this guy I knew here a long time ago. Got me a few supplies and came up here. Are the police still after me?”
I didn’t tell him that they never had been, except for questioning. “I don’t think so, Willie. But what about your family?”
“Let me think about that.” He stared into the fire for ten minutes or so, then announced, “I’m hittin’ the sack now.” He poured the dregs of his coffee cup onto the ground and edged into his tent, placing the cardboard carton across the entrance.
I looked over at Rusty who was lying contentedly on the ground behind my rock seat. I pulled my jacket tighter around my shoulders, eased off the rock and sat on the earth in front of it, using the rock as a backrest. I stared up at the briskly moving clouds until the fire had almost completely died away.
Sometime during the night the storm intensified, whipping the flaps of my tent wildly a couple of times then dying down. I heard thunder in the distance but the rain never materialized here. I burrowed down into my sleeping bag and Rusty posted himself just inside the tent’s zipped door.
By daylight my body was so stiff I could hardly crawl from my little cocoon. I rummaged through my things and swallowed three ibuprofen with some of my bottled water. I’d slept soundly, considering the rough conditions and everything I had on my mind.
Today I had to decide what to do about Willie.
While I wasn’t particularly eager to return him to the loving arms of either Felix or Dorothy, I did feel the rest of the family needed to know that he was alive and well. And if it became known that he was okay, the police just might want to ask some more questions. And I couldn’t deny the fact that he’d confessed to shooting Bud Tucker.
All this was running through my mind as I debated whether to slip back into the somewhat crusty jeans I’d removed the night before, which would leave me without a clean pair to wear home. My shirt wasn’t in much better shape, but I decided I’d rather come back from the trail ride filthy so I could shower and change into clean clothes back in my unused motel room.
I pulled on the smelly set and emerged from the tent. The air was fresh with the scent of moisture on sage. I took a deep breath and was astounded to see that the sandy wash I’d traversed the day before was now a rushing stream. I quickly checked to be sure the animals were still with us.
Little Bit and Molly grazed happily in their little area and Rusty was, as always, at my side hoping food would soon appear.
“Can you believe this runoff?” I said to Willie as he emerged from his tent. It looked little the worse for wear through the windy night. I wondered if he’d gotten up to reset it at some point.
He noticed the rushing water for the first time. “Hell fire!” he shouted. “My mining gear!” He started to rush down the path toward the water.
“Willie! No! That water’s got to be—” I was about to say ten feet deep, but it was too late. He’d run right into it and was already five yards downstream.
Without thinking I raced after him and plunged in.
Chapter 22
The first dunk took my breath away. The silty brown torrent was ice cold. I came up with a gasp and looked around for Willie. He was ahead by ten yards now, paddling as he rode the current, working his way across to the side where his mine was. I bobbed again, touched the bottom and slung water from my eyes.
I spat foamy water and tried to paddle after Willie. My feet touched bottom for an instant. I tried to kick off and propel myself across but succeeded only in sending myself downstream facing backward.
Anyone who thinks they can battle mother nature and win needs a lesson like this one. I managed to get myself facing forward again, but after only a couple of minutes struggling against the current I gave in and rode it down. I could vaguely hear Rusty barking behind me but couldn’t turn my head to look. I kept my eyes on Willie’s bobbing head. He was making progress to the far side and I did my best to follow his path.
Muddy water filled my eyes again and again.
Willie began to slow, reaching out for tree branches along the bank. I came up behind him, almost close enough to grab for him. Missed. He sped ahead again, turning his head as he passed his wooden cross marker.
“Help—” His words were taken away as he went under.
My feet hit the bottom and I tried to dig them in. Bad idea. The water rolled me over and threw me up butt-first. I righted myself, choking and swiping at the long strands of wet hair pasted over my face, looking around to get my bearings. Rusty was behind me, paddling furiously. Willie’s head bounced like a cork as he popped above the surface ahead of me. I lifted my feet and rode the current after him.
Straining, I reached out and got a fistful of shirt collar. I gripped the shirt and the nearly-weightless man in it. My right hand full of shirt, I tried to paddle with my left. When my feet hit the bottom for a second, I pushed toward the bank, wondering what I’d do if we both hit the rocks. The canyon walls were much lower now, but we’d drifted back to centerstream. I watched for any opening. Ahead on the left, a good-sized sandbar. I focused all my energy there. With burning arms and legs that had gone numb, I pushed.
Willie had stared at me when I first grabbed him. Now he rode along, limp. The water tried to carry us around the sandbar, back to the deeper channel, but I wouldn’t let it.
“No!” I shouted. I felt my knees hit bottom. Crawled, using my one free hand to pull us onto the high ground. Willie suddenly weighed a ton. I gripped him under both arms and pulled, scrambling on my knees to work his body onto firm sand.
Coming at me, I could see Rusty still free-floating. I raised one arm and waved to get his attention. It wasn’t necessary. He was headed toward me with the single-mindedness that only animals have. At last his feet touched bottom and he crawled forward with everything he could muster.
A swirl of brown water rushed up onto our tiny shore. I pushed Rusty toward a high spot with one hand while I grabbed again at Willie’s shirt collar with the other. The water foamed over my legs but wasn’t able to grip me. I watched Willie sputter and cough.
Then I collapsed.
Chapter 23
Hot sun blazed into my eyes when I tried to open them.
I raised one hand to shade my face. Granules of sand fell into my right eye and I slammed them shut again. Rolled to my side and shook my face. My hair hung to my shoulders in muddy ropes. I shrugged a shoulder upward and wiped my face against it. On hands and knees I pushed myself up and sat on my haunches.
Willie lay facedown on the sandbar, his feet extended into the water. Rusty was higher, on dry ground. He shook himself vigorously then cocked his head toward me.
“Oh, god,” I groaned, brushing
my hands against my pant legs to remove some of the sand.
Rusty barked sharply twice to let me know he was all right. He trotted over to me and licked my face. Decided sand didn’t taste all that great and backed away. I reached out and draped my hand over his shoulders.
“You scared me back there,” I said. “Why’d you jump in, you silly thing.”
He barked again.
Willie moaned. I crawled to him and rolled him onto his side. His eyes were wide open, his mouth working. He reached up to wipe sand off his lips, only to discover that his hands were even more coated.
“Hell of a thing,” he grumbled.
“Are you all right?” I asked, watching him carefully.
“Hell, yes. Been through worse than this,” he growled.
Maybe so, I thought, but not at the age of eighty-four.
He raised himself to his knees then used my shoulder to brace himself while he stood. It took a few seconds but he soon stood upright, shaking out his limbs in the human version of what Rusty had just done. I followed his example, brushing off as much sand as I could.
Considering that we’d only lain there a few minutes the water had receded remarkably. What had been a gushing torrent earlier was now just a steady flow.
“Flash flood,” Willie said.
“No kidding. Why on earth did you jump in there?”
“Why’d you?”
“To save your sorry ass. You were headed downstream fast.”
“Hell, I’ve survived worse in my day. Woulda done just fine here too.”
There was no point in arguing with him. I jammed my hands into my back pockets and stared upstream. Not a cloud remained in the sky. Last night’s storm that skipped our campsite entirely and dumped its fury in the mountains had dissipated and blown away in tatters of harmless vapor.
Reunions Can Be Murder: The Seventh Charlie Parker Mystery Page 19
