Antler Dust (The Allison Coil Mystery Series Book 1)

by Mark Stevens

  “He and I have met. I applied for work at his ranch, but ended up with Weaver.”

  Allison had wondered if they might have a glass of wine, or something stronger. A drink was routine after a day around the barn. Nothing about Trudy suggested this would be a time to linger over a cocktail. She was on edge.

  Trudy poured hot water into two cups to steep the tea. Allison smelled orange and herbs.

  “So you read the police blotter? A regular thing?”

  “Sometimes. It’s a glimpse at the state of mischief.”

  Breathing the humid air of the greenhouse reminded Allison of the spas in the $175-per-night hotels from her old traveling days. Trudy’s graciousness in person stood in stark contrast to the disjointed telephone conversation. Trudy looked so tame. She was a portrait of the word “meek,” with long, slow blinks of her eyes and a too-easy smile. She was a true flower child, frozen in time.

  “Nobody has checked Rocky’s place?” said Allison.

  “Not that I know of,” said Trudy. “I myself don’t get out often.”

  Allison listened with increasing respect as Trudy described her personal health and general situation. Trudy looked into the steaming tea more than anywhere else, but she spoke with clarity and purpose.

  “And George hasn’t gone to look?” said Allison.

  “We’re husband and wife, I suppose,” said Trudy, “but not that close. Anymore. Rocky was one of several who came around to help me out with groceries, errands, whatever. Fix this, carry that. But George doesn’t know that we’re good friends and I don’t want him to. George has his secrets, believe me. This one’s mine.”

  Given everything else, Trudy was certainly justified.

  “Where does he live?”

  “In a trailer about halfway back up the canyon. You’d never see it from the road unless you were looking, but it’s right there before the road forks. I’m going on memory, having seen it only from the road. I’ve never been there.”

  “I’ll ask around,” said Allison. “Least I can do.”

  “It shouldn’t be too hard to find, I wouldn’t think.”

  “You haven’t even asked your husband about Rocky?”

  Trudy took a breath and sighed slowly. “I can understand why it would seem a bit awkward—to help,” she said.

  “No, look, I’ll stop asking questions. I do want to help. Rocky—we were friends for a while, although I haven’t seen him around much. We went out a couple of times. I liked him; he’s a helluva hunter. You know, he could be absolutely anywhere.”

  “Sure.”

  “But you have reason to believe—”

  “He hasn’t stayed gone for so long. And, well ...”

  Another one of those telephone pauses.

  “George’s airplane.”

  “What about it?” said Allison. Word in the valley had it that George would fly certain clients up over the Flat Tops to Meeker, give ’em an aerial buzz of the herds, whet their appetite.

  “I have a friend at the Eagle-Vail airport. He calls whenever George comes back. It’s a favor. It puts me on alert that he’s in the area. It seems to change my whole view of the world, even my rate of seizures, so it’s helpful to know. Anyway, I called over there today because sometimes Rocky would go with him, on a long hunt. But George’s plane hasn’t budged in weeks.”

  “Could George have used another plane?”

  “Why would they use a different plane? And anyway Rocky would have told me he was going off for days and days. He would have, believe me.”

  On cue, a guttural rumble from a car—or something—cut through their quiet space. Allison guessed pickup truck, maybe an older model.

  “I believe you,” said Allison. “Do you have the key to Rocky’s place?” said Allison.

  The engine sound cut abruptly.

  As Trudy stood up, the side door to the garage opened and slammed with authority. Trudy didn’t flinch. She handed Allison the key.

  “George,” she said under her breath. “No mention of this.”

  “Of course,” said Allison.

  Trudy looked down. She was steeling herself.

  George came through the door, a dumbstruck look on his red face. Trudy turned and offered a smile.

  “Hello,” she said, as if the world had suddenly started to spin on an endlessly cheery axis. “We have company.”

  ****

  Allison drove toward home up the dark canyon, knowing she should wait for morning. What did one more night matter? She wasn’t about to return to Trudy’s as long as George hovered around. George had been spooked, no question. Allison had said hello and then good-bye—“Just leaving.”

  She drove slowly down the stretch of dirt road where Trudy had indicated Rocky lived and she found an opening in the thicket. Her well-used Blazer, painted a custom gray and black by the Gypsum kid who sold it to her, was nicked and rough-hewn. The plunge through the thicket, with both sides of the body scraping branches, was the equivalent of a soft-touch car wash.

  Her headlights found a silvery trailer, dead and dark. It could wait until morning, until she had daylight for bearings and nerve. It would wait until morning.

  Allison slept fitfully in her A-frame, painfully aware of Trudy’s predicament. There was no sign of Slater. She might have to go into Rocky’s place alone, without a semi-official wing of authority to protect her.

  Open the door, see Rocky wasn’t there, tell Trudy.

  Open the door, find him drunk, tell Trudy.

  Open the door, find him dead, tell Trudy.

  Open the door, find something, tell Trudy.

  Why did this seem so daunting? It wasn’t as if she was breaking in. It was a passed-along key, surely a sign of trust.

  In the morning, feeling a bit woozy, she awoke thinking she’d steal a half hour from her personal routines and a half hour from her boss before showing up for work. She was, by far, the most punctual guide in the bunch. Old city habits. She drove down to Rocky’s trailer in a bit of a mental fog, letting her promise to Trudy pull her along. At the entrance, she noticed that one other set of car or truck tracks headed into the clearing, but the tracks looked old and stiff.

  She parked next to the trailer where the previous vehicle had stopped. The feeling of quiet and cold was pervasive. A layer of snow clung to the trailer’s roof. Certainly, with someone here and the heat running, it would have melted.

  She knocked on the trailer door. And waited. Hoping nobody was watching, she inserted the key, gave the door a push. She called out: “Rocky?” The key wasn’t necessary. The door opened before the lock turned.

  The trailer was empty.

  There were no notes, messages or signs of struggle.

  She examined a few pictures up on the cupboards: Rocky with his kills, all decent-sized animals. She stepped to Rocky’s kitchen table, picked up a three-year-old motorcycle magazine and flipped through it, wondering about the world of a lonesome, thirty-fiveish guide in the mountains and about his personal hopes and dreams. Was he working for anything, toward anything?

  The catalog underneath the magazine was cheap and crudely made. At first it didn’t even register—the cover photo of a man kneeling in a field, holding up a palm-size gizmo only slightly larger than a cell phone. It wasn’t really even a catalog, but more of a brochure. She leafed through it.

  Unprecedented accuracy said the caption beneath. A photo of two men hunched over a mountain lion, attaching a radio collar. AUDITRACK. Features: auxiliary sensor data, long-term data storage in animal unit, operates under canopy. Allison flipped the page over and a clear picture stared at her. It was the identical GPS gear she had found next to the bulletless elk. Download by radio. Built in transmitter. Spreadsheet to determine battery life. Adjustable neck. Durable. On and on.

  The brochure was addressed to Rocky Carnivitas at a P.O. Box in Glenwood Springs. Allison stuffed it into her back pocket.

  She explored the trailer more purposefully, meticulously and found a matching GP
S collar in a closet off the bedroom.

  This one sat next to an unplugged battery charger.

  Rocky the wildlife biologist? Allison had a simple answer for her own rhetorical question: I don’t think so.

  ****

  Allison called Trudy from Weaver’s barn and had a quick conversation to let her know that Rocky’s trailer was empty and that she’d keep looking. Trudy thanked her profusely and didn’t even ask if Allison could return the key.

  Throughout a day of packing up a new hunting party and delivering another group’s kill to a nearby taxidermist, Allison ran through the odds of Rocky not being involved with the dead elk. The answer was obvious.

  After leaving the taxidermist, she drove up to Grumley’s barn and sat in her Blazer next to the corral for a minute, to let the moment settle. She had to have her questions ready—and what if there was a convenient explanation about Rocky? This was the same spot where she had parked on her very first visit to the canyon, responding to a small ad in the Glenwood Springs paper: Guides needed. Horse exp. required. Will train other skills. Grumley had done the interviewing and clearly didn’t trust her city looks and soft exterior. Her background. She had sat in the car too long beforehand, brewing up a mild panic attack and questioning if she could complete the long strange trip from ad exec to mountain woman, via plane crash. She hadn’t interviewed well, in part because she had left a mental door ajar where self doubt could creep in. She couldn’t let that happen again.

  Remembering the packed gun rack in the office, Allison got out and knocked on the doorjamb inside the barn, asked for George Grumley.

  “Not around,” said an older, whiskered man in brown chaps. It looked like who was getting ready to ride. Maybe it was a permanent condition. She recognized him from the talk with Sheriff Sandstrom under the eaves of Weaver’s barn.

  “I’m actually looking for Rocky,” said Allison.

  “Why didn’t you say so?”

  Allison didn’t reply.

  “Haven’t seen him, now that you mention it. But it’s not too unusual.” He pronounced it unuzle and relished mangling the word.

  “Is he up with the camps?”

  “No doubt.”

  “Have you seen him since the big dump?”

  “Can’t rightly say. But—no, probly not. My name’s Boyles. Yours?”

  “Allison Coil.” She noticed a walkie-talkie on his belt. “I work down at Weaver’s.”

  “I’ll ask the boss when he comes back. Ack-shoo-lee, we have a chalk board right over here.”

  Boyles led the way to a board mounted between two stalls. “Says Rocky ... well, it says nothing about Rocky. Looks like someone erased his last destination. Now sometimes that boy will get deep in his cups and need a few days to come out of it. His trailer is—”

  “There was no answer at his trailer. No sign of him. Would anybody else know?”

  “What?”

  “If he’s been around.”

  “Not likely. I’m here more than anybody else: chief cook and bottle washer. Believe me, he’ll turn up.”

  “Thanks,” said Allison. “It’s really no big deal. It’s just that I know someone who wants to talk to him.”

  “Whatever,” said Boyles. “No doubt the storm slowed him up a bit. But in any tough situation I’d put my money on the old Rockster. No question.”

  Allison thanked him and left, wondering about the gnawing in her guts, possibly the same sense of dread that was gnawing at Trudy.

  ****

  Grumley showed Boyles where to park the truck, tucked down and out of sight from the road that split the valley. Boyles punched off the headlights. Across the road, An A-frame sat nestled against a stand of trees straight across a broad, moonlit field. One window revealed a soft glow from inside the house.

  “Allison’s place,” said Boyles. “City girls.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The old leave-one-light-on bit. You know, when nobody’s home. A city thing.”

  “You can tell she’s not home?”

  “I’d bet dollars to donuts. Do we want her home?”

  “Not exactly,” said Grumley.

  “What are we doin’?”

  “Pokin’ around. And, if nothing else, delivering a message.”

  “No time for US mail?”

  “Not exactly. She needs something to think about.”

  “One inquiring little bitch,” said Boyles. “Probly thought I was going to get all alarmed, like she was the only one to notice Rocky ain’t been around.”

  The sight of Trudy talking with the Allison Coil pest had been enough. But hearing Boyles tell about her asking questions, probably on Trudy’s behalf, well, that called for a shot across the city girl’s cute little bow.

  They crossed the snowbound field quickly, skirting the edge by the creek bed, so they could come up behind the house through the trees.

  Boyles knocked innocently. He would make up a story on the spot if she or anyone else answered. A second knock. Grumley hung back in the darkness.

  Still nothing.

  Boyles tried the handle as Grumley came up onto the porch. “Locked,” said Boyles.

  “Give it a shoulder.”

  The door rattled but didn’t open.

  “How un-neighborly,” said Grumley. “Give it the old linebacker tackle.”

  “I played wing.”

  “Whatever.”

  Boyles took a step back and lowered his shoulder.

  “Are you sure you want this much damage?” said Boyles.

  “You got any better ideas?” said Grumley.

  “We could try the kitchen window. Sometimes people get careless.”

  The kitchen window slid up an inch or two. Boyles shimmied it the rest of the way. He put his heel in a cup formed by Grumley’s gloved hands, eased up and disappeared through the opening.

  Grumley heard a thump and right behind it a crashing sound. He waited at the front door, which opened a minute later.

  “Goddamn flowerpot right underneath the window.”

  “Like we care,” said Grumley. Potting soil covered the counter around the sink. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Grumley positioned Boyles at the door to stand guard. “This won’t take long.”

  First he emptied the closet, throwing everything out in a heap. He emptied the dresser, all five drawers, flinging underwear and sweaters on the floor. Toss the bed, leave all the cupboards open. He was not quite sure what he was looking for—something he had overlooked from the spot where Rocky went down in the snow, something he couldn’t get a grip on. Clothes and belongings were scattered everywhere, leaving nothing in its original place. Upstairs, there wasn’t much to do but turn over the twin beds and mess things up.

  “Lights on the road,” said Boyles. “Slowing.”

  Grumley was balling sheets and blanket into a knotted wad.

  “Turning on the driveway,” said Boyles.

  “Shit.”

  “The mess in the sink,” said Boyles. “I don’t think it’ll stand out.”

  “Fuck it,” said Grumley, skipping down the stairs. “Fuck it.”

  The headlights were snaking their way in across the field, bumping up and down.

  “Come on,” said Grumley. They jumped off the porch and ducked off to the side as the headlights swept the front of the cabin.

  “Christ,” muttered Grumley, after they jogged across a few yards of open clearing between the A-frame and the stand of trees to the back.

  Boyles crouched down as another light clicked on inside.

  “Message delivered?” said Boyles.

  “Shit,” said Grumley. “I was just getting started.”

  Seven

  The sheriff ’s office, one block off the main drag in Glenwood Springs, was cool and clinical. The receptionist, Officer McNabb according to her nametag, pointed Allison toward a deputy who waited a minute to stop reading a newspaper and finally grabbed a clipboard. His nametag said Deputy Gerard. He was
plump, bored and had seen it all. Allison ran through the details of the burglary at her cabin, what she’d found, the hours she had been gone.

  “Anything missing?” said the deputy.

  “Nothing so far. Even a stash of cash, a couple hundred dollars, was overlooked.”

  “Sometimes you don’t realize what’s missing for a while.”

  “I know.” Allison had been hit in Denver once and had not realized for weeks that a camera was gone, along with the obvious TV and DVD player.

  She wanted to remain calm about the explanation. But the sensation of dread she had felt when she realized a stranger or strangers had been stomping around in her private place came back to her. It wasn’t a big deal compared to a swim in icy Long Island Sound with airplane parts and dead bodies as your companions. But it had rattled her.

  “A geranium by the kitchen window was smashed. The door wasn’t broken, so that’s how they must have gotten in.”

  “They?”

  Deputy Gerard shifted back in his chair and studied her.

  “I think ‘they.’ There were two sets of footprints in the snow this morning that led away from the house.”

  “But they didn’t take anything?”

  “I don’t have much.”

  “No idea what they were after?”

  “No. None.”

  A radio crackled. Gerard cocked his head to listen.

  “Big cheese is pulling in.”

  Gerard stood up and took on a more professional air.

  “Anything new on Ray Stern?” said Allison.

  “Zip. Of course, that’s not official. Of course, I didn’t say anything.”

  The front door opened and Sandstrom clomped in, trailing two deputies. One was guffawing, maybe at a bad joke. He spotted the presence of a woman and squared up. Together the three officers created a huddle of leather jackets, olive green uniforms, guns and thick black belts. Their angry boots had lost of bit of shine to the mucky streets.

  “It’s the guide,” said Sandstrom. “Allison something.”

  “Coil,” she said.

  “What’s new?”

  “I was burgled. Your staff has a report.”