Due for Discard

by Sharon St. George

  Nick dipped into his beef goulash and I tasted my cream of asparagus soup.

  “Well, if it isn’t alias Ingrid Wiggins.” I looked up to see Arnie Palmer standing at our table. “We meet again, Aimee.”

  Hard to believe this was a coincidence, but if Arnie was stalking me, he was pretty brazen about it. Apparently he wasn’t going to move on until I introduced Nick.

  Nick looked at me deadpan and said, “Ingrid who?”

  I kicked at him under the table, my first shot hitting the center post, which was painful, because I was wearing open-toed sandals. The second try connected with Nick’s shin. He set his spoon down and waited.

  “Arnie Palmer, I’d like you to meet my boyfriend, Nick Alexander. Nick, this is the man I told you about.”

  “Umm,” Nick said. “Remind me.” He was enjoying my predicament far too much.

  “The ballet,” I said, “remember? You said I should go with Arnie so you wouldn’t have to take me.”

  Nick nodded. “Of course.” He stood and reached out a hand to Arnie. “Put it there, Buddy. You did me a favor.”

  Arnie winced, and I knew Nick’s handshake had been the I can beat the shit out of you any time I want to version he favored for establishing dominance.

  At that point Arnie took his leave, and I followed his progress, wondering if he was eating alone or meeting someone. I was doubly surprised when he approached a table where Lorraine Beardsley sat alone. She brightened when she saw him and offered her cheek. He gave her a quick air kiss and sat. They looked far too chummy to have met for the first time the night before.

  “Are you going to tell me what that was about?” Nick asked.

  “I’d rather not.”

  He looked toward the table where Arnie sat. “Christ, Aimee, he shakes hands like a girl.”

  “I’m not dating him.”

  “Fine.” He was silent for about two seconds, then asked the question I was dreading. “Who the hell is Ingrid Wiggins?”

  “It’s my alias. I’m a single woman. I don’t give out my real name to every man I meet.”

  “Okay, that’s probably a good idea. Where’d you meet that guy?”

  “Can we change the subject?” I couldn’t go into detail without confessing my bait-the-stalker museum escapade. And besides, Nick’s tone sounded way too proprietary.

  “All right.” Nick put up his hands in surrender. “Let’s get back on track. We were talking about Tango before your little friend showed up. When do you have to be back to work?”

  I checked my watch. “Twenty minutes. And he’s not that little.”

  “Eat your soup.”

  I ate while Nick related Tango Bueller’s story.

  Tango had returned to Timbergate quietly several weeks earlier. Early enough to have been in town when Bonnie disappeared. Having a respected officer of the law as his nearest relative had worked in Tango’s favor, but it put considerable pressure on Marco. His reputation, and probably his career, depended on Tango’s parole remaining unblemished.

  Tango’s redemption was not making me feel better about my brother’s future. DA Keefer needed an arrest, and from the way Marco behaved toward me at the hospital, he hadn’t gotten over his grudge against Harry. A lot depended on how much his prowess between the sheets could influence the DA. Satisfying her libido was one thing, but what if she had fallen in love with him? He’d surely use that to his advantage—a frightening scenario.

  I drew my attention back to Nick, who was detailing the remarkable feats Tango had accomplished during his two-plus years in prison. He’d kicked his meth habit and finished his dual master’s degrees in biology and botany through a correspondence program. Once he was out of prison, the leg injury Harry inflicted would have qualified Tango for disability, but Buck Sawyer offered him a job, and he took it. Tango was currently on staff at Recovery Ranch, a plot of agricultural land in the foothills east of Timbergate.

  “Recovery Ranch?” I asked. “Didn’t I read where Buck had donated that property?”

  “Buck’s money is helping support every anti-drug effort in the county, even that soup you’re eating. Stone Soup was his brain child. Recovery Ranch is an experimental farming project that supplies all the produce and most of the other food served here.”

  “How does Helping Hand fit into the picture?”

  “Recovery Ranch operates under the umbrella of the Helping Hand Rescue Mission.”

  “That’s why Tango had the brochure in his car?”

  “Most likely,” Nick said. “He probably keeps stacks of them on hand to dispense to the down-and-outers in his old haunts.”

  “How does that explain where he was headed last night when he saw my car along the side of the highway?”

  “He was headed home. He lives at Recovery Ranch.”

  “So he was simply playing Good Samaritan when he stopped?”

  “It’s what he does now. Atonement. Harry said you thought Tango recognized your car.”

  “He must have. He wrote the note. ‘Amends, Tango.’ ”

  “Twelve-step language. Buck says he attends meetings every day. Wouldn’t accept the job unless he could fit them into his schedule. Tango probably thought finding your flat tire was serendipity. An unexpected opportunity to apologize.”

  “Does Harry know what you’ve told me about Tango?”

  “He does now. Tango has a right to some privacy, but he did leave the note, so I suspect he won’t mind if you know his story. He couldn’t tell you himself. He’d be ill-advised to approach you in any way, considering you were the victim of the attack that sent him to prison.”

  His words triggered a shudder of recollection. Nick noticed. “Sorry.”

  “Forget it.” I checked the time. “Let’s go, I’m already late.”

  On the drive back, I asked Nick the question everyone in Sawyer County would have asked, given the opportunity.

  “How did Buck Sawyer get so rich? Was it lumber?”

  “No, but that’s the common misconception about Buck, because most of the wealthiest families between northern California and Canada got their start with lumber.”

  “Then what was it?”

  “Fish. Buck’s great, great granddaddy Salmoneus Sakellaridis emigrated from Greece, changed his name to Samuel Sawyer, and started a fishing business over on the coast.”

  “So the family fortune is all from fishing?”

  Nick shook his head. “Hardly. The first Samuel built up quite a fleet, but wise investing down through the generations played a major role. Now Buck owns a piece of nearly every commodity on the globe.”

  “So how did he end up here? I thought Sawyer County was named for his family.”

  “Not true, but that’s an interesting story. He met his first wife in college over on the coast. She told him she was from Sawyer County, and he took that coincidence as a good sign. They dated all through college, but when he proposed, she had one condition. She hated the ocean climate, couldn’t get used to the fog. She wanted to live where the sun shines from morning to night, and where summers are hot and dry. Buck promised if she would marry him, they’d have a second home here.”

  “I thought he lived here year-round?”

  “He has for the last twenty years, since he took over the reins of the business.”

  “It sounds like he was devoted to his first wife. What happened to her?”

  “After their daughter died, she insisted they start a foundation dedicated to drug rehab programs and fighting drug trafficking. She was devoted to the cause, but her spirit was broken. Her health failed over the next few years. Officially, she died of congestive heart failure. Buck says that’s medical jargon for a broken heart.”

  “Close enough,” I said. “Speaking of medical jargon, here we are.”

  Nick stopped at the entrance to my building, where Orrie Mercer stood guard. His face glistened with a sheen of sweat, and his features bore the familiar look of challenge.

  “What’s his problem?” Ni
ck asked.

  “I don’t know. The heat, maybe. He always looks like that.”

  “Let me park the car; I’ll walk you inside.”

  “That’s not necessary.” I opened the door and got out. “I suppose I should thank you for lunch.”

  “Not unless you mean it,” he said.

  I shut the door a little too hard. He put the car in gear and drove away a little too fast.

  Chapter 21

  My car was delivered that afternoon by the manager of the tire shop. He came inside to take my credit card number and get my signature on his paperwork. I wondered why he had come himself instead of sending one of his employees. Forgetting to fix the flat didn’t seem like that big a deal. After we finished our transaction, I asked if he’d found a nail in the tire.

  He handed me my receipt. “That’s the thing. That’s why I came instead of sending one of my crew.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How long were you driving on that low tire?”

  “It wasn’t low when I left the Civic Center. I went about five miles before I noticed the problem. Why?”

  “It looks a little fishy.”

  “Fishy how?”

  “Like tampering. We see a lot of nails in tires. Usually the tire won’t go flat right away. In this case, the air leak wasn’t coming from a nail. There was a puncture wound in the tire. That’s why it went flat so fast.”

  “What kind of puncture?”

  “Hard to say. Ice pick, something like that.”

  “Are you saying someone punctured my tire deliberately?”

  “It’s possible. I thought you should know.”

  I felt my face flush. Damn. Had Tango set this up? How could he have known my car was parked at the Civic Center?

  “Were you able to repair it?” I asked.

  “Sure. It’s fine. Lots of good tread left.” His duty done, he left with poorly chosen parting words. “Have a nice day.”

  I had almost convinced myself that the rattler on my deck was the work of hungry raccoons. Now, with a suspicious flat tire, I wasn’t so sure. These supposedly unrelated incidents smelled fishy, to use the tire guy’s word. If they were warnings, veiled threats, then someone out there knew where I lived and what I drove, and suspected I was snooping into the Bonnie Beardsley case.

  My nice day took another turn for the worse when Dr. Beardsley strolled into the library an hour before quitting time. For a man on the wrong side of middle age with a recently deceased wife, Beardsley seemed to get younger and more amiable every day. His charisma quotient was definitely on the rise. He looked around my deserted domain with satisfaction. Why that should please him soon became apparent.

  “Ms. Machado, I’m happy to find you alone. We haven’t spoken for several days. I was hoping we could catch up.”

  “Of course. I have some time now.”

  He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, I do not. I had hoped you might be free for dinner tonight.”

  There it was. One of those moments every working woman dreads.

  He picked up on my reluctance. “Strictly a business dinner, I assure you. Please don’t misinterpret my intentions.”

  “I understand,” I said, “but I’m afraid my fiancé wouldn’t be comfortable with that. We always spend our evenings together.”

  Disappointment clouded Beardsley’s countenance for a moment, but he quickly reverted to his usual good-natured affect.

  I pulled my desk calendar close and picked up a pen. “Do you have any free time tomorrow?”

  “I’m afraid not. My schedule is hectic, trying to make up for lost time.”

  After he left, I blew out a breath, relieved that I’d dodged that bullet. With any luck Nick wouldn’t find out he’d been promoted from fictional boyfriend to fictional fiancé. I was still staring after Beardsley when I heard the door to the library employees’ restroom open.

  “Had to take a leak,” Orrie Mercer said. He adjusted his crotch and banged out the front door. Apparently he had come in while I was distracted by Vane Beardsley’s problematic dinner invitation. The courtship of Orrie Mercer and Maybelline had evolved from oddly amusing to exceedingly annoying. There were public facilities in the building. He had no business using the library staff’s private restroom. I resolved to have a talk with Maybelline first thing in the morning. At the moment, there were more important things on my mind.

  I had an hour to fill before quitting time, so I went online to follow up on what I’d learned from Maybelline the day before about Quinn’s late wife. The woman had been a television talk show host in Paris. That struck me as an odd coincidence, since Quinn had dated Bonnie Beardsley during her run as a TV celebrity here in Timbergate.

  I used the most obvious search terms to get started: Female talk show hosts in Paris. Nothing helpful there. I refined the search to French television talk shows. I scanned the hits until I saw something in French: Blanche Montague tragédie. I clicked that link and found myself at the Blanche Montague fan club home page. Also in French. I clicked on the English language version.

  As far as I could tell, this woman’s show had been as popular in France as Oprah’s had been in America, and she had been just as politically active on the world stage if not more. Her show frequently featured blistering denunciations of the world’s most wretched offenses against women: female circumcision in Sudan, brutal Hudood laws in Pakistan, and unconscionably negligent maternity care in remote Ethiopian villages.

  I left the Blanche Montague site long enough to look up the Hudood reference. It seems in Pakistan a woman who reports a rape must provide four male witnesses to the crime or risk being whipped and imprisoned for adultery. A horrific predicament in a country where a woman is raped every two hours. I shuddered, recalling my near rape at the hands of Tango and his accomplice. I couldn’t imagine going through that nightmare as a Pakistani woman, knowing how much worse my fate would be if I reported it.

  My esteem for the late Blanche Montague grew with every word I read. Her fan club considered her a martyr, slain for her campaign to eradicate these atrocities against women. A series of photos showed her to be a striking brunette with sensual features and a radiant smile. Her eyes were large and dark; her straight nose had the flared nostrils of a supermodel.

  Was Blanche Montague the late wife of Jared Quinn? Puzzled, I scrolled down the page. One small photo captured her standing on a portable ramp of stairs framed by the open hatch of an airplane. A tall man with dark hair stood next to her. Both were waving to the camera. The caption read:

  Talk show personality Blanche Montague and American relief worker Jared Quinn, one week before Montague’s fateful trip to Ethiopia.

  So there it was. I checked the date of her death. Five years ago. How long had Quinn been employed at Timbergate? What had brought him from Paris to a small rural hospital in the far reaches of northern California?

  A patron came in, so I bookmarked the fan club home page. I helped the young male nurse find and print several articles on wound care, which put me past quitting time. I still had errands to run before going home. Jack’s king snake needed dinner, so I called the nearest pet store to check on their supply of feeder mice. They were well stocked and open until seven.

  First, I wanted to squeeze in a second visit to Milton Palmer’s hospital room. Two days had passed since Penny Palmer and I interrupted Marco Bueller’s devious visit to her father. With any luck, Palmer would be off the heavy meds this time—and alone.

  I closed the library and headed for the third floor of the main tower, arriving just as the dinner trays were being served. Feeding time in the hospital always smelled like meatloaf no matter what was hidden under the domed covers that kept the meals warm and soggy.

  Milton Palmer’s room had no guard at the entrance. None of the surgical floor nurses so much as glanced at me, so I walked right in. Palmer had the TV tuned to our local station. His five o’clock news slot was in full swing with his female co-anchor running the show. Palm
er turned when he realized I was in the room. The white bandages on his head reflected soft blue light from the TV screen.

  “Who are you?”

  “I work here,” I said, “in the library. I came to see you two nights ago, but you weren’t ready for visitors.”

  “Oh.” He turned the volume down. “I don’t remember. The medications, you know.”

  “Yes, but you seem much better today.”

  “I am, thanks. Why are you here?”

  “Routine. I try to visit patients. Let them know we have services available in the library other than our book delivery.”

  His eyes widened. “The rather colorful woman with the cart? She belongs to you?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “She left some things for me. They’re on my bedside table.”

  I glanced at the titles: Valley of the Dolls, War and Peace, 100 Ways to Win at Bingo.

  “Looks like she’s using the shotgun approach. I’ll take those back. Is there anything I can bring you? That is, if you’re going to be staying with us for a while.”

  “Another day or so, they tell me.” He shifted his rump in the bed. “Can you bring me something on dissecting cellulitis of the scalp? It seems that’s my diagnosis. It’s a disease of unknown cause, they say, but still, I’d like to read up on it.”

  “I’ll search our databases and print out what I find.”

  “Will the cart woman be delivering it?”

  “I’ll deliver it myself.”

  “I’d appreciate that.”

  A silent moment followed, with Palmer expecting me to depart. For lack of a better segue, I asked if he was expecting any visitors.

  “My daughter. She’ll be here soon.”

  A moment later, Penny walked into the room arm in arm with Arnie Palmer, who was wearing a dress.

  “Dad, look who’s—” When she saw me, she broke off and clamped her mouth shut.