by Gwen Florio
Charlie had the good grace to look abashed. “I didn’t mean—what I meant was, that’s how Edgar would see it.”
Lola moved around the room, pulling up the covers on the bed, stepping into her clothes, running her fingers over her head in a futile effort to untangle her curls, her actions dictated by the same icy being that seemed to have taken over both body and brain. “Whatever.” She stopped and looked somewhere past him, training her eyes on a bit of the wall over his shoulder. She picked up a set of keys from the dresser and flung them toward him.
He caught them reflexively, stepping backward to deal with the force of their trajectory.
“Those are your brother’s car keys. I’ll take our truck today,” Lola said. “You take the girls. Naomi can get herself a new bodyguard for the day.” Not giving him a choice. “I’ve got some things I need to do.”
She slipped out the back door and into the truck. As soon as the motor caught, the front door opened. Lola trod the gas and watched as Charlie, arms folded across his chest, went small in the rearview mirror.
She checked her headlong rush on the outskirts of Gaitero. It wouldn’t do to get stopped for speeding; besides, the mine offices wouldn’t be open for another couple of hours. Still, Kerns had the look of a guy who arrived early and stayed late, giving his subordinates heartburn and avoiding the home front in the process. She wondered, briefly, what life in the Arizona desert was like for Mrs. Kerns, or if she was one of those wives who stayed at home in, say, Indiana while her husband moved up mining’s corporate ladder via stints in unappealing locales like Mongolia and eastern Wyoming. Lola steered the truck past a Burger King and pulled into a café next door. Inside, she ordered wheat toast and scrambled eggs, reluctantly shaking her head to questions about bacon or sausage. Go healthy, the chilly inner voice advised her. And double up on the protein, not to mention the coffee. She’d need her strength and her wits, both. And for as long as possible, she’d have to keep Naomi and Edgar from finding out what she was up to. The protesters outside the mine entrance were sure to notice a truck with Montana tags passing through the gates, driven by a woman who in no way appeared to be a mine worker.
Lola doused her eggs with hot sauce and a liberal shake of pepper. She forked them up with her left hand and flipped open her notebook to jot down questions, an exercise that took but a moment. There was only one real question, the same one she’d posed to Charlie. WTF? she wrote before turning her full attention to breakfast. Which, more or less, is what she asked Kerns after rolling through the gates of Conrad Coal with a flippant wave to the security guards, trying hard not to let her middle finger wag higher than the others.
Kerns was on the phone, his back to her, when she waltzed into his office. He swiveled in his chair, bristling as though she’d flipped him off instead. “I’ll have to call you back,” he said into the phone, and hung up. Despite the office’s walk-in freezer temperature, sweat slicked his forehead. Lola fell into a chair and recited her planned spiel, the one that featured the damning figures she’d memorized.
“Where’d you get these numbers?” Kerns was on his feet.
Lola lifted a shoulder. “Doesn’t matter where.” He’d figure it out fast enough, she knew, remember that he’d left her alone in the office after being hoodwinked by a couple of schoolgirls in mismatched playclothes. His desktop, this morning, was a vast empty plain but for the photos and a vacant in-box. A woman with a blank, Botoxed expression looked out of one of the photos, her graying hair disguised by blonde highlights and angled in the de rigueur bob of the middle-age woman.
“Bet your wife will be glad when you’re out of here. How much longer do you think you’ll be staying, anyway? Under the circumstances.”
Kerns’s fingers performed a quick dance on the desk’s glassy surface. “What if I told you your numbers were wrong? Which they are. I hope you’re not thinking about publishing this sort of nonsense. We’ll sue you quicker than you can say anthracite. Is your little pissant newspaper going to pay for a lawyer to defend you against the resources of Conrad Coal?”
Lola lolled back in her chair and propped one ankle on her knee, letting him see the grungy running shoes that had left dusty prints across his carpet. Technically, the fact that he was standing gave him the advantage. But he was sweating and she wasn’t. She grinned up at him. “Believe me, Mr. Kerns. When—and notice that I’m not saying if—I publish something, it’ll be suit-proof.” The grin and the cocky words hid the confusion rising fast within her. She tried to maintain her tone while giving it voice. “But I have to say, I’m puzzled by one thing. I should think it would be to your advantage to let this be known.” She sketched her theory of the bomber backing off once the mine’s precarious financial standing was known. It took only a few sentences, but by the time she finished, his face was purple. The fingertip performance went from tango to mazurka.
“You don’t understand a goddamn thing. Get out of my office.”
Lola unfolded herself from the chair in a series of leisurely movements designed to disguise the fact that she was now officially stumped. She opted for honesty.
“I don’t get it.”
Kerns came around from behind the desk like a stone hurled from a slingshot. Despite her vow to hold her ground, Lola took a quick step back.
He strode past her. “What about ‘get out’ don’t you understand?” He yanked open the door to the outer office. “Celeste. Call security if Miss Wicks’s ass isn’t walking through your door by the time I count three. One—”
“I’m going, I’m going.” Lola was in the outer office before he got to “two.”
Behind her, the phone rang. Kerns barked a greeting into it, followed quickly by “My God.” And then, “Where was Anna? Oh, thank the good lord.” Celeste hovered in the doorway, her wide-eyed expression mirroring Lola’s own. Lola edged back into the inner sanctum. Kerns called to Celeste, “Tell the guys to bring my car around. And a second car to follow me. I want two men with me and two behind. Some asshole just bombed my house.”
He finally noticed Lola. “You. Out. Now.”
Lola got out. But not so quickly that she didn’t catch a glimpse, over her shoulder, of Kerns reaching yet again for the phone.
“Get me Gar Laurendeau,” he said.
Celeste reached around Lola and slammed the office door in her face.
THIRTY-SIX
Once again, the column of greasy black smoke, the wailing sirens, the agitated chatter in Diné on KTNN.
A line of cars idled in the heat, lookie-loos gathering, but not too close, at the entrance to the gated development where Kerns lived.
People left their cars and held phones high, dodging the late-arriving news crews with their unwieldy equipment balanced on their shoulders. The news vans, rooftop satellites fully extended, pulled off the road and formed what Lola knew would be an hours-long encampment.
Lola coasted past, for once entirely lacking in envy. The reporters would sit in the hot sun, waiting for absolutely nothing of substance. Maybe tribal police and that slab-jawed FBI man would stage a news conference late in the day, where they’d say all the usual things. “All avenues being pursued.” “Extraordinary cooperation among law enforcement agencies.” “No. We can’t reveal any details that will jeopardize an active investigation. No, we can’t comment on that, either. No, no suspects have been identified. Sorry, folks. That’s all for now.” Lola mouthed the phrases to herself, knowing she’d see something very much like them as soon as stories started going up online. With any luck, she’d glean more information back at the house.
Charlie and Edgar were in the shade house when she arrived, facing one another in chairs pulled to one side of the table, elbows on knees, sweating glasses in hand. Edgar’s head jerked when she appeared. A look passed across his face. The girls sat at the table, listlessly shaking a Yahtzee cup. The men turned toward Lola, glances flicking between them, won
dering who should be the one to tell her.
She saved them the trouble. “I already know. I drove by the site on my way back. It’s a cluster.”
“Back from where?” Frost edged Charlie’s words. But at least they appeared to be on speaking terms again. Lola kissed the top of Margaret’s head and ignored his entirely justified suspicion. “Who’s winning?”
Margaret thrust her lips at Juliana. “She is. For now.” It wouldn’t matter to Margaret that Juliana had two years on her. Margaret played to win, even against her parents, and the only thing that made her angrier than losing was when someone threw the game her way.
“Careful, Juliana,” Lola said. “She cheats.” Which Margaret did, without compunction, whenever she deemed herself losing badly enough. Lola dodged her daughter’s halfhearted swat, pulled up a chair beside Charlie, reached for his glass, and took a long swig. Lemonade again. She wished, mightily, for a cold beer. She was sick of Naomi’s teetotaler fiction. She handed the glass back to Charlie. “They said nobody was hurt this time.”
“Could have been, though.”
“Was anyone in the house?”
“His wife goes to Phoenix every Tuesday with some of the other wives.” This, from Edgar. “They shop for clothes, go to fancy restaurants, that sort of thing.” He left the subtext—the sort of thing nobody here can afford to do—unspoken.
The notion distracted Lola. “That’s a long way to go for shopping.” And where, she wondered, would the women wear the good clothing they bought? Lola imagined linen sheaths, strappy sandals that showed off pedicured toes, maybe some humorous straw hats against the sun. She juxtaposed the image in her mind with the cheap cotton blouses and loose slacks that seemed standard reservation wear for women of a certain age. She pushed away the thought that sooner rather than later, she’d find herself in that category.
“Where’s Thomas?”
From Charlie’s expression, Lola knew he’d divined the reasoning behind her question.
“Should be on his way,” Edgar said. “No matter what he’s doing, he usually manages to show up when it’s time to eat.”
No matter what he’s up to, indeed, Lola thought.
“There’s more,” Charlie said. He looked at his brother.
Edgar knotted his hands together. Veins pushed against the skin of his forearms. “Apparently today was just a prelude.”
At the table, the girls made no pretense of not listening. Lola thought of how she’d burdened Margaret with her own fears. Let her hear, she thought. At this point, the more she knows, the better. Lola didn’t want to frighten her child any more than she already had. But neither did she want to brush off Margaret’s concerns.
“Charlie?” she said, when neither man spoke for a few moments.
“This is off the record,” he warned.
Lola narrowed her eyes to let him know the insult had registered. After trying unsuccessfully, early in their relationship, to avoid talking about their jobs with one another, they’d fallen back on an agreement that anything either told the other—about crimes being investigated, in Charlie’s case, or written about, in Lola’s—was privileged information, not to be shared without explicit approval. Lola didn’t appreciate the reminder. But Charlie was waiting for some sort of acknowledgment.
“Goes without saying.”
“Somebody left a warning in the house.”
“How? Where?” said Lola. “I can’t imagine anything there survived. I couldn’t actually see the place, but that was one heck of a cloud of smoke. It looked like enough for three houses.”
Charlie’s mouth twitched. “In the freezer.” In his world, people were forever stashing things in freezers—money, whether illicitly gained or not, drugs, jewelry—in the belief that the refrigerator would survive a fire. Which, in this case, was apparently true.
“Well?” Lola didn’t appreciate the way they kept drawing it out, teasing her with details but withholding the actual information. They’d been tag-teaming the narrative, so she turned to Edgar, awaiting the next installment. He studied his drink, swirling his glass so that the ice clinked against the sides.
“It was something to the effect that he’d gotten off easy,” he finally said. “‘You weren’t here this time. But you could have been. And the next time, you will be.’”
“‘Next time,’” Lola repeated.
“Right.”
“Sounds like a promise.”
“Exactly.”
“Sounds like the note left for Naomi,” she added. And it sounds like what Canyon Man said to me. But she kept that part to herself. She took a breath and avoided Charlie’s eyes. “There doesn’t have to be another bombing. The mine’s probably going to shut down anyway. Listen to what I’ve found out.” This time, she recounted the numbers to Edgar, the list coming more easily with repetition, and ended on a bit of a flourish, telling him what he surely already knew. “The mine’s a goner. All you need to do is publicize that, and the bombings stop. I tried to talk to Kerns about it this morning, but he’s not having any of it. I don’t get it. Anyhow, maybe he’ll change his mind now. It could save his life.”
“Where’d you get those numbers?” Edgar said, and Lola finally saw a resemblance between the brothers. She had only seen Charlie angry, truly furious, a handful of times, and she remembered each nearly to the day and hour. She’d remember Edgar, too, when this date rolled around the following year. Was it because she’d gotten the numbers? Or because Kerns had concealed them even from him?
“It doesn’t matter. They’re accurate.”
Charlie half-rose from his seat. To go to his wife, or his brother?
Lola held her breath. Charlie glanced over his shoulder and sank back in his seat. A teasing citrus scent reached her a moment before the rustle of silk. A cool hand dropped to her shoulder. “Lola. You’re back. And you’ve been busy.”
Lola took the fresh glass of lemonade that Naomi offered. “How much of that did you hear?”
Naomi spoke to Lola but looked at her husband. “Enough. Interesting theory. If it’s true, it makes sense. Gar? Maybe you could use your influence with Kerns to get him to listen to reason.”
Edgar, raging moments before, turned tame in the presence of his wife. “Sure. Great idea.”
Lola choked on her so-called lemonade. “Went down the wrong way,” she said by way of explanation.
The shade house’s dimness, usually so inviting, on this day felt claustrophobic. She checked an impulse to move everyone out of the shadows and into the sun, with its pitiless glare on falsehood, evasion. She glared at her feet instead of Edgar. Her shoes’ mesh fabric was worn and faded, and her little toe poked through on the left one. She needed a new pair. Lola vowed to start watching sales when she got home. Her own feet felt large and clumsy next to Naomi’s slender sandaled ones. She thought about feet and shoes until her flush of anger at Edgar had subsided enough for her to trust her voice.
“Kerns will probably take it better coming from you than from me,” she said.
“Not just Kerns,” Edgar replied. “I got a call just before I came home. Conrad Coal’s flying in a bunch of the muckety-mucks from headquarters, day after tomorrow. The tribe’s called another meeting then, to update people on the investigation and on new security precautions. The Conrad execs will be there to talk about the company’s role. Kerns wants me in on it, too.”
Naomi moved to stand behind him. She kneaded his shoulders and dug her knuckles against the base of his neck. “God, you’re tense,” she said. It was the first time Lola had seen Naomi touch her husband.
Edgar’s head lolled back and he closed his eyes. “Think about it,” he said. “Two of our tribal members dead. The mine likely to shut down—either permanently, if Lola’s right, or at least temporarily because of this goddamn crazy bomber. Think what that’s going to mean around here. All those jobs lost.”
>
Naomi murmured soothing phrases, barely audible. Lola caught only a few words. “Survived for centuries without it … will again.” A coughing fit interrupted her soliloquy. She turned away, resuming when her body stopped its convulsions. “Tough people … Strong.”
Lola turned away. She felt as though she were observing a private moment. Charlie caught her eye and inclined his head toward the house. They slipped into the kitchen. The girls had preceded them. They sat on stools at the island, twisting and turning in dramatic boredom.
“I’m hungry,” said Margaret. Who was always hungry.
“I want to ride Valentine,” said Juliana.
“Me, too.” Riding took precedent even over food in Margaret’s rigid hierarchy. “We can look for Bub,” she added.
Charlie started to shake his head. “The bombing today—” he began.
Lola cut him off. The girls’ world had been disrupted enough. “I’ll go with you,” she said. “But not now, not while it’s so hot. Wait until after dinner”—Margaret’s imminent protest vanished—“and I’ll go for a run with you while you ride Valentine.”
Much hilarity ensued at the notion that Lola could keep up with Valentine. She let the girls take their shots, relieved to hear Margaret’s familiar chortle for the first time since Bub had gone missing. “We can race,” she added. She allowed that Valentine had the edge for a short distance, but she’d trained herself to jog for miles while the pony appeared to do little besides doze all day in the corral, waking only to stuff his fuzzy face with more hay. “You watch. I’ll cover more ground than he does,” she said to hoots from the peanut gallery.
Behind her, Naomi busied herself with a simple dinner of hamburgers and salad, although Lola suspected these would be the best hamburgers she’d ever eaten. She allowed herself to luxuriate in the brief normalcy afforded by the scene. Normal, that is, considering that a man’s house had been blown to bits, and that her dog was still out there somewhere, waiting for her to find him.
