by Laura Crum
"Maybe it was someone he already knew. And didn't know would be here."
The waiter served steak sauteed with garlic and mushrooms onto both our plates and pushed his tableside kitchen away. For several minutes we both ate in silence, then I looked up and met Lonny's eyes.
"I just can't really believe it, you know. I can't believe Jack's dead. I think about him eating dinner here with Joanna, just the way we're doing now, and then, sometime in the next few hours he goes out on that deck and someone shoots him in the head, and he's dead. Gone. Over. Finished. We'll never see him again. It seems impossible."
Lonny said nothing. I had a sudden vision of Jack floating face down in the icy waters of the lake. Jesus.
Setting down my fork abruptly, I said, "I don't even know what to feel. I just keep thinking it's impossible. That we'll go back to the hotel and there Jack will be in the coffee shop, talking to some old boy and this will all turn out to be a big mistake." Putting my napkin on the table, I got up. "I have to use the bathroom."
The ladies' room proved difficult to find in the semidark of the restaurant. In the end I discovered a corridor with a sign that said Restrooms. The corridor, I noticed, emptied out into the casino, one of the exits I'd noticed earlier. As I walked toward the door marked Women, I noticed something else. Next to a bank of phones was a door that led out onto the deck.
Peering through the windowed top half I could see white flakes drifting down against the darkness; it had started to snow. This door was shielded from the view of the other doors by a small storage shed outside. Jack could have walked out this way and no one would have noticed.
Suddenly I was sure that was exactly what he'd done, though I had no way of knowing. I stared at the snow, which appeared to float upward as easily as down in lighthearted defiance of gravity, and wondered again, why?
Jack had gone to the men's room, perhaps, and wandered outside for a look at the night. I tried to imagine someone following him-a friend, a stranger? Maybe it had simply been a casual mugging gone awry, Nevada's version of Central Park. I wondered, suddenly, if Jack had been robbed.
Sighing, I went into the ladies' room and then rejoined Lonny. "I think I know how Jack went out on the deck," I told him after we'd finished our steaks.
"Gail." Lonny's face and voice were serious. "Why don't you forget about this? Do you have any particular reason to suppose that the police need your help to find Jack's murderer?"
Instead of snapping back the sharp reply I had in mind, I hesitated and gave Lonny's questions some thought.
"I don't know," I said at last. "I just can't get it out of my mind. A couple of days ago I introduced Jack to Joanna and now he's dead."
"What if Joanna killed him?"
"Why would she? It doesn't make sense. Though I will admit that I don't feel I know her all that well anymore. All this frustrated 'love' for a man she hardly knows and who treated her like shit-it boggles my mind. How could she be so stupid? The Joanna I was friends with in college would never have acted like that. "
Lonny shrugged. "People change," he said. "I've done equally stupid things in my time. Are you ready to go?"
"Sure." I smiled at him, meaning to comfort, guessing that his last remark was a reference to his estranged wife, who had left him, he felt, due to his deficiencies. "It's snowing outside," I added.
Lonny's eyes crinkled at the corners. "I like that. Maybe we'll get snowed in. Have to stay in your hotel room all day tomorrow and snuggle."
I laughed. "What about skiing? I thought you wanted to ski."
"Skiing's fine. But I prefer snuggling." Lonny's green eyes conveyed a warmth no words could ever do justice to.
"Well, let's go get a start on it." I stood up and reached for his hand.
FIVE
Snow sifted down all night, intensifying somewhere near dawn into a blizzard. Snug on the fourth floor of the Foresta, wrapped in Lonny's arms, the roar of the wind in the pine boughs outside was a teasing thrill-no threat involved.
First light showed a white and gray kaleidoscope through the window, all whirling snow and opaque sky. I'd barely had time to contemplate this scene, and feel Lonny's hand reach for my breast, when a knock sounded on the door.
"Detective Holmquist here." The voice was as quiet, and as persistent, as I remembered. The man was like the blowing snow, I thought, gentle, but in the end, overpowering.
"Just a minute," I said and hauled myself out of bed.
Lonny shot an annoyed glance at the clock, which read 6:30, and rolled out himself. "I'll be in the shower," he grumbled.
I threw on some sweat pants and a T-shirt and went to the door. "Good morning, Detective."
Claude Holmquist took in my appearance and said mildly, "I was under the impression lectures started at seven."
"Lectures?" I echoed. "Oh, yeah, lectures." I'd forgotten almost entirely the ostensible purpose of my stay here.
I held the door open. "Come on in."
Blue was lying on the floor near my bed and lifted his head and growled as the man stepped through the doorway, then started to get stiffly to his feet. I pointed a finger at him. "You stay there and be quiet." At this he subsided, nose on paws, a baleful stare fixed on Claude Holmquist, but no further overt signs of hostility.
The detective, for his part, regarded the dog without comment, then walked across the room and took a seat in the one chair that wasn't covered with discarded pieces of my clothing.
Seeing that he held a cup of coffee in a paper cup, I didn't offer him any, but went to the machine the hotel had provided, and started the process of making a cup for myself. Lonny's muffled splashing sounded from the other side of the bathroom door; with my back to the detective, I said, "I have a friend staying with me."
When I turned around, his face showed nothing. As far as I could tell, I might have had four or five friends, all cavorting merrily in my bed, and he wouldn't have raised an eyebrow.
He maintained his polite silence until my coffee was ready in its plastic cup and I had cleared another chair and was seated, then settled those mild eyes on my face. "I'd like to ask you a few more questions about your friend Joanna Lund."
"Okay."
"What do you know of her recent life-since she left vet school?"
"Not much. She's a practicing vet in Merced. We haven't spoken to each other very often in the last three years." I tried to keep my voice as neutral as Detective Holmquist's.
"Any romantic entanglements?"
"Only what she told me. During the time we were together here, I mean."
"And what did she tell you?"
At that, I hesitated. Was I going to provide Joanna with a motive for murder? What should I reveal, if anything?
Claude Holmquist caught my indecision and spoke briskly. "Dr. McCarthy, this is a murder investigation. Jack Hollister was murdered; he did not kill himself." The anemic-looking eyes stayed on my face. "He was shot through the back of the head, at an angle which makes it virtually certain he could not have held the gun himself He was not robbed; his wallet was found on his body with a thousand dollars in it."
There's one piece of useful information, I thought, even as I digested the import of his words.
"We've spoken to the sheriff's department in Santa Cruz County." He was consulting his notes. "I spoke to a Detective Ward, who says she knows you."
"Jeri Ward. Yes."
"She said you would be cooperative."
The words hung between us. I took a swallow of coffee and tried to decide what to say. In the end, I opted for simplicity. "I guess I feel protective of Joanna. I introduced her to Jack, and I truly believe it was a coincidence. I'm ninety-nine percent sure she had nothing to do with his murder, and I'm hesitant to do or say anything that will cast further suspicion on her."
"Ninety-nine percent? Not one hundred?"
"No, not one hundred. I haven't seen her in three years. She does seem to have changed. On the other hand, she has no earthly reason to have murdered
Jack."
"These things happen, you know. Anger, perhaps, a spur of the moment rage. Was Dr. Lund in the habit of carrying a gun in her purse?"
"Not that I ever knew. Not in college, anyway. And I'm pretty sure I would have known, if she had one at that time." I hesitated. "Was her purse big enough to have held the gun that shot Jack?"
The detective regarded me levelly. "Possibly," he said at last. "We haven't found the gun yet. I have a feeling it's in the lake. The bullet came from a twenty-two; however we don't know the exact model. We have a suspicion it may have had a silencer on it. However, to answer your question, many types of twenty-two pistols certainly would have fit in Dr. Lund's purse."
Well. If he was willing to tell me this much, he must trust me, at least a little. In another second I realized the other implication of his words. I trust you, now you have to trust me. I was being coaxed to tell what I knew about Joanna.
Claude Holmquist was waiting. Not asking, waiting. The narrow face and inoffensive demeanor masked, I already knew, a keen mind. The very fact that I still wasn't speaking was telling him something.
In the end, I asked him a question. "Has Joanna told you about her love affair?" The coward's way out, my mind mocked me.
"Dr. Lund stated she had a boyfriend, with whom she was currently at odds. She said she dated Jack Hollister to make the boyfriend jealous. She refused to give us his name, and we didn't press her at this time."
"I see." I thought about it a minute and decided I couldn't do Joanna any harm that she hadn't already done herself. "He wasn't exactly a boyfriend," I said.
I told the story of Joanna and Todd Texiera more or less the way it had been told to me, leaving out my own interpretation. When I was done, the detective asked me, "Was it your impression that Dr. Lund was distraught over the failure of this relationship?"
"Yes, I suppose you could say that," I said slowly. "But she still had no reason to kill Jack and, bearing in mind I haven't seen her in three years, I would definitely say she was innocent."
"Why?"
"She seemed so indifferent to the whole issue of Jack and his murder except in the sense that it was adding stress to her already stressed-out situation. She didn't seem truly worried about being a suspect. She seemed completely absorbed in her failed 'romance.' "
Detective Holmquist looked as if he was about to ask me another question, but Lonny opened the bathroom door at that moment and emerged, wearing a towel around his waist. This necessitated introductions, and I was amused at the contrast-Lonny towering over the smaller man, but rendered somewhat at a disadvantage by his semi-naked state; Detective Holmquist slight and frail-seeming, but lent a good deal of dignity by his gray suit.
After ascertaining that Lonny had been in Santa Cruz on the night Jack was murdered, the detective asked him, "How well did you know Dr. Hollister?"
It took Lonny a moment to frame a reply to this question; even before he spoke, I knew what the gist of his words would be. "Not well," he said, "but I've known him for thirty years or more."
At this, the detective pricked up his ears. "Could you tell me about him?"
Lonny sat down on one corner of the bed, holding his towel firmly around him with one hand, and thought for a minute. "Jack and I were part of the same world," he said at last. "We were both involved with livestock and we knew the same people. We knew each other first through rodeo; Jack was riding broncs and I was a dogger."
"Dogger?"
"Bulldogger. It's a rodeo event," Lonny explained. "Basically you jump off a horse and wrestle a steer to the ground."
I was amused to catch a fleeting expression of what?-surprise? consternation?-disturb Detective Holmquist's flawlessly bland face for a split second. Bulldogging was obviously in the same category as throwing Christians to the lions, as far as he was concerned.
Lonny was still talking, explaining as well as he could the way in which rodeo people all know one another, and Jack's prominence in that world. I listened, thinking while I did so that no real image of Jack Hollister as a human being was emerging from the words. The Jack of whom we were all talking, and thinking, was a cardboard figure-the "big man," the local rancher's son who'd "done good."
I tried to conjure up a more intimate version of Jack and found I couldn't do it. I simply hadn't known him closely enough to have any idea what made him tick.
Claude Holmquist was asking Lonny about Jack's ex-wives.
"I knew them. Vaguely. I hardly remember the first one. Karen, I think. They divorced a long time ago. When he was in his early thirties."
"Karen Harding." The detective was looking down at his notepad.
"The second one was Elaine. He called her Laney. Blond and beautiful-that's about all I remember. The most recent was Tara. They just divorced-a couple of years ago, I think."
Detective Holmquist nodded. "Can you tell me anything about them?"
"Not much about the first two. Neither of them rode, and the most I knew of either was that she was Jack's wife. My impression was that Laney was chosen for her rather, um, prominent features. "
Claude Holmquist permitted himself the ghost of a smile. "And Tara Hollister?"
"Tara was, is, tough. Tough acting, anyway. She's a lot younger than Jack, and good-looking in a hard way. She rides and ropes. Considers herself a horse trainer." Lonny let it go at that.
I agreed with everything he'd said, though I might have added that I couldn't stand Tara Hollister. However, nobody'd asked me.
Claude Holmquist was staring at the pad in his lap. "Bronc Pickett?" he asked.
"He's Jack's foreman." Lonny grinned at the thought of Bronc. "He's an ornery old fart, and a hell of a roper. He and Jack went roping together most weekends. He's been with Jack a long time-as long as I've known them."
"Travis Gunhart?"
"Jack's hired hand. Nice kid." Lonny shrugged. "He ropes a little-he's pretty handy. That's about all I know."
The detective closed his pad and asked what sounded like a final question. "Did Dr. Hollister have any children?"
"No. There was always some talk about that, though. I never paid much attention. Ropers are as bad as a bunch of old women at gossip."
I rolled my eyes mentally at this statement, but managed to keep my mouth shut.
"Anything else you can add?" Claude Holmquist stood up, looking at Lonny and me in turn.
I shook my head and Lonny said, "No, I don't think so."
The detective nodded civilly. "You're both free to go. Someone will be in touch with you in Santa Cruz, Dr. McCarthy, if you're needed."
"All right." I stood up, too, and escorted him to the door. He thanked me for my time as he stepped out into the hallway, his rabbitlike demeanor unchanged, but my impression of the ferret within was strong. I wondered if he'd been grilling Joanna and decided that if he had, she was probably reduced to an emotional pulp at this point. Not an appealing prospect.
But one I needed to deal with, for reasons of curiosity as well as altruism. I wanted to ask Joanna some questions.
SIX
An hour later I was knocking on the door of her room, having showered, dressed, walked Blue, and promised Lonny I'd go skiing with him in the afternoon if the weather cleared. At the moment, it was showing no signs of doing that. Stormy blasts bent the pine boughs outside the windows, and the lake was hidden by a blur of whirling white.
Joanna answered her door wearing the same terry cloth robe she'd been wearing when I left her yesterday. Her hair didn't look as if she'd combed it since then, and her eyes were puffy. She turned without a word and walked back into the room.
Shutting the door behind myself, I followed her and sat down in a chair. Joanna was sitting on the edge of the bed, staring out the window at the blowing snow. I had a feeling she'd been sitting like that for hours, maybe all night. I was trying to decide what to say to her when she spoke.
"I called Todd last night." Her voice was barely audible.
"So what did he have to say?" I tri
ed to keep the what-in-hell-did-you-do-that-for out of my voice.
"Nothing. I told him what was happening to me up here and he basically said that's too bad, honey, and hung up."
I waited, hoping she'd say more.
She raised her eyes from the floor to my face and in the brief turn of her head I saw the pure Swedish structure of her cheekbones, undiminished despite the swollen eyes and tangled hair.
"Some girl answered the phone," she said. "I called Todd, at the apartment where he's living, and this girl answered like it was her place. He's already moved in with someone else."
Slow tears had started to roll down her face as she spoke. Unlike the noisy sobbing of yesterday, this was entirely silent. Simply tears running from her eyes.
I didn't know what to do. Perhaps I should have gone to her and held her, but between the estrangement I felt and my own awkwardness, I couldn't bring myself to do it. Any impulse I might have had to offer more advice and platitudes died at the sight of such abject misery.
After a minute she said, "I know you were right, yesterday. I've got to get over him. It's just hard to do." Her wet eyes shifted to the blowing snow outside the window. "I'm sorry I was such an idiot, Gail. I didn't want to hear it-that I ought to give Todd up. He's the only man I've ever loved, the only one I ever wanted. And now he's gone."
"I'm sorry."
We sat in silence while Joanna watched the snow and I watched her. Hardhearted though it sounds, I was wondering how to bring up the topic of Jack and his murder. I was genuinely sorry for Joanna, but it didn't change the fact that someone had killed Jack and she was still a suspect.
She didn't seem aware of this, or rather, as I'd told the detective, she didn't seem to care. Her misery over Todd Texiera had engulfed her to such a degree that I doubted if she cared much whether she was arrested or not.
