“It is,” Claire said.
“He wanted to be here,” Orin said. “He just had some business in town he had to take care of.”
“When will he be back?”
“Not till Monday.”
“Could I catch up to him in Reserve?”
“Could, but I don’t know where he’ll be. Have you ever seen a working ranch?” Orin asked. “It would be our pleasure to show you around.”
“I’m afraid I don’t have time,” Claire said. “I need to get back to Albuquerque.”
“It’s a great way of life we have here.”
“I’m sure it is.”
“There are people out there who are trying to take it away from us. They want to bring the wolves back, and if they do, it’ll be devastating to our cattle. That guy who’s working at the Lovells now is an environmentalist and a wolf lover. He’s talkin’ Mariah into letting the federal government put holding pens for the wolves there. One of those wolves gets loose, hell, it’ll be heading right for us.”
Karen patted the golden retriever. “Our dogs won’t be safe, our cattle won’t be safe, and when we have kids they won’t be safe, either.”
Claire was tired of listening to ranchers whine about the big, bad wolf. The area had plenty of predators—foxes, coyotes, black bear, bobcats, mountain lions. She didn’t believe that wolf reintroduction would change the balance of power much; man would always be at the top of the food chain in the Blue. She glanced at the rifles that were suspended over the fireplace. They were the levelers that would keep man on top, bullets being far more effective than teeth and claws.
“If we owned the Lovell ranch, we’d get back the BLM leases Burke gave up and use the land for what it was intended for—grazing cattle,” Karen added.
Claire thought that if the land was intended for anything, it would be predators not cattle—the predators had been there first—but that was an old issue and Karen had just raised a new one. “Even if Burke’s ranch were to be sold,” she said, “it’s worth over two million dollars.” The question that hung in the air was, how could a young couple like the Stoners afford it?
“A rancher’s life is dangerous,” Orin replied. “You’re working with powerful machinery and animals all the time. There’s always the possibility you’re gonna get injured or killed. My daddy held a lot of insurance.”
“He provided for us,” Karen said.
“You’re thinking of buying Burke’s ranch?” Claire asked, trying to hide the dismay she felt.
“We got the down payment from the insurance. We talked to the bank, and they’re willing to finance the rest.”
“That’s a little premature, isn’t it? The will hasn’t even been probated yet.”
“Samantha and James said they’d sell to us if they get the property,” Karen replied. “They won’t want to be managing a ranch from Santa Fe and Phoenix. We don’t need that big old house. We’d let Corinne go on living there as long as she wants to. She’s not doin’ too well since her daddy died. We’d check in on her. We’d look after her. Jed and Kass both agree that Burke didn’t have his faculties when he signed that will.”
“He sure as hell wouldn’t have mentioned The Nature Conservancy if he did,” added Orin.
Karen straightened the barrettes that held her hair in place. “You’re the only one left who thinks he knew what he was doin’,” she said to Claire.
“You’ve got credibility. If you were to testify that Burke was incompetent, you would sway any judge,” Orin said.
“I won’t do that,” Claire replied.
Orin leaned against the back of the sofa, put his boots up on the wagon wheel table, and folded his arms across his chest. “Why not?”
Claire sat up even straighter in her chair. “I don’t believe he was incompetent. I believe the will reflects Burke’s wishes.”
“You’re sure about that?” Orin’s eyes remained focused on Claire.
“Isn’t the issue what Burke wanted? I believe he wanted Mariah to have the ranch and that he wanted it to be a nature preserve.” Orin’s cold blue eyes responded that the issue for him was what he wanted. Lean and hard as Orin was, he was a spoiled rancher’s son accustomed to getting his way, and not intending to stop now. Claire felt chilled, as if a vulture had flown between her and the sun.
“I guess we got nothin’ more to talk about.” Orin unfolded his arms and put his feet on the floor.
“I guess not,” Claire replied. The Stoners got off the sofa, and they walked down the hallway with the dog padding along behind them. As they passed the open door of the room the Stoners used for an office, Claire noticed that they had a PC and that it was turned on.
Driving up the winding dirt road that led out of the Blue, Claire understood that a process which began when Benjamin deWitt left his ranch to the outsider, Burke Lovell, would culminate if Mariah took title and allowed the federal government to use the property as a staging area for the reintroduction of the Mexican gray wolf. The Blue would change, whether people here liked it or not.
Claire passed the Silver Spur Saloon on her way through Reserve, a rambling barn of a place. It was four o’clock in the afternoon and already the parking lot was filling up. She could have used a drink after her visit to the Stoners, but she wasn’t a woman to drink alone in a bar. Nevertheless, she pulled into the parking lot. It occurred to her that if Jed had gone into Reserve, he could be sitting on a bar stool or at least the bartender might know where he was.
Claire had never been a woman whose looks stopped conversation when she walked into a bar, so she was surprised by the ripple of silence that followed her entrance. She attributed it to being a stranger, and sat down on an empty stool, trying to blend into the crowd while Shania Twain sang and the conversation started up again.
“Help you?” the bartender asked. She was a middle-aged woman with cheeks that had weathered into corrugated cardboard, a determined jaw, and a mouth painted don’t-mess-with-me red. She looked like she could handle herself in a roomful of cowboys.
“I’m looking for Jed Acker, who used to work for Burke Lovell.” A quick glance around the room had assured Claire that Jed wasn’t present.
“He’s workin’ for the Stoners now.”
“So I hear.”
“When he comes to town he stops in for a quick one, but I haven’t seen him recently. Anybody here seen Jed?” she yelled.
No one had, or if they had, they weren’t willing to admit it. “Get you a drink?”
“I’d like a real ginger ale if you have it.” Ginger ale was Claire’s favorite drink, and there weren’t many places that served it anymore. Some restaurants made a manufactured version with Sprite and Coke, but she didn’t consider that drinkable.
“Coming up,” the bartender said.
When the drink arrived, Claire handed the bartender her business card. “If Jed shows up, would you tell him I’d like to talk to him?”
The frame of the mirror was stuffed full of business cards, and the bartender stuck Claire’s into the crack between the mirror and the wood. “Sure,” she said, moving on to the next customer, too busy to ask why Claire wanted to talk to Jed.
******
Claire drove as far as Datil that night, watching the horizon take on the blue-green glow of a Maxfield Parrish painting. What seemed surreal in a work of art became all too real out here. Venus appeared in the west followed one by one by the stars. Claire checked into a motel in Datil and in the morning went looking for Ben deWitt’s sister, Bobbye Johnson. Datil was on the high Plains of San Agustin. Even for the west, the space was enormous—miles upon miles of tumbleweed, sage, and grazing cattle interrupted occasionally by a ranch house wrapped in a circle of wind-bent trees. Out here it was easy to feel like a particle of dust in an infinite universe. Claire enjoyed the experience of driving through the Plains of San Agustin but she never wanted to linger; the space overwhelmed her.
The county clerk, Janet Randall, had given good directions, with none of
the superfluous details that can be confusing. Claire turned down one dirt road, then another, and easily found the mailbox with the Johnson name on it and the white trailer that Bobbye called home. There were no other buildings in sight. A large Chevy sedan was parked in front of the trailer.
A dog began to bark the minute Claire closed the door of her truck. It had the high-strung yap of a small breed that compensates in noise and aggression for what it lacks in size. “Be quiet, Buddy,” she heard a woman’s voice yell from inside the trailer. The woman opened the door, enveloped in a cloud of smoke and holding a cigarette in one hand. The dog at her heels was a small yellow mutt that paid no attention to its mistress’s commands. The woman was about five feet tall with gray hair chopped into a ragged page boy and a face weathered like old wood. Claire placed her in her mid-seventies, old for a smoker.
“I’m looking for Bobbye Johnson.”
“You found her.”
Claire introduced herself and handed Bobbye her card. “A librarian. I guess it will be safe to let you in.” Bobbye chuckled.
Claire dreaded entering a trailer filled with smoke, but she followed Bobbye inside. The interior of the trailer was surprisingly spacious and neat. Lace curtains on the windows framed the vast view. There was plenty of shelf space for books, but Claire didn’t see any. All she saw shelved here was a collection of salt and pepper shakers. An overflowing ashtray sat on a Formica-topped table. Bobbye emptied it into the trash before sitting down and motioning Claire to join her.
“What can I do for you?” she asked.
“I’ve been trying to find a copy of your brother’s history of the Blue.”
“Why?”
“There was a copy in the collection Burke Lovell left to the library. It got stolen from my truck along with some other books. I’ve been trying to replace it, but I can’t find one anywhere.”
“I gave mine to the library in Reserve years ago.”
“I looked. It’s not there,” Claire said.
Bobbye took a kitchen match from a box that was on the table and lit another cigarette. The dog barked when she struck the match. “Quiet, Buddy,” she said. “My sister, Ellen, held on to hers. I thought I’d find it in her things after she died, but I didn’t.”
“What happened to your sister?”
Bobbye exhaled. “She had a violent death. You could say she was murdered.”
“Murdered? How?”
“Her house in Globe was gettin’ robbed, and she walked in on the robbers. They shot her three times with a thirty-eight. Wanted to make sure she was good and dead, I guess. My sister was a gentle person. She wouldn’ta hurt a soul. I keep a gun in my purse and another one under my pillow. Anybody who tries to harm me won’t live long enough to regret it, but Ellen, she never kept a weapon. She trusted people. That was her mistake.”
“When did the robbery happen?”
“About a month ago.”
“Were the robbers caught?”
“No.”
“How do you know there was more than one?”
“The police in Globe decided that on account of the prints they left and the trouble they caused. The house was a wreck. Her books and clothes were emptied all over the floor. You would have thought they were lookin’ for drugs, exceptin’ that Ellen was too old for the kind of drugs they wanted. All Ellen had was hormones and her blood pressure medicine.”
“What did they take?” Claire asked.
“A TV, a VCR, costume jewelry, cash. The usual stuff. Ellen didn’t have anything very valuable. It did seem strange that her copy of Ben’s book was missing. My sister loved books. It wouldn’t have been like her to get rid of it. But she mighta lent it to somebody and forgot to get it back. I didn’t think too much about it, to tell you the truth, until you showed up. You think it was stolen from her house?”
“It’s possible.”
“Why would anybody steal Ben’s book?”
Claire remembered the copies of The Banditti of the Plains that were either bought up or stolen by the cattlemen in Wyoming. “There may be some information in it someone wants to suppress.”
Bobbye was skeptical. “What could that be? Burke brought me a copy when it came out. I never actually read it, but as far as I know, all it said was who settled where when and who married who. Ben read all the time, so he thought he could be a writer, but he drank too much. All he had in him was that one book. Killed himself with all his drinking. I thought he might have found happiness and love near the end, but it didn’t work out. Nothin’ in Ben’s life ever worked out. As soon as it seemed like it was going to, he’d wreck it. Our mother loved that boy too much. He was her only son and all he ever did was disappoint.”
“He did have that beautiful property that he passed on to Burke.”
“Oh, it’s beautiful, all right, but it always was an unhappy place. It’s where I was raised, but I’d never want to live there again; there’s too much contention in the Blue. Disagree with anybody down there, and you’ll get shot for your trouble. It didn’t bother me none that the ranch went to Burke. He deserved it; he was always bailing Ben out. I hated the way Ben lived—the gambling, the drinking, the women. By the time he died, we were barely speaking, so he had no reason to leave the place to me. I’d rather be up here in my trailer than down there in that huge house anyway. Here I’ve got space and sunshine all around me.” She looked out the window at the distant blue mountains and the view that went on forever. “I don’t like ownin’ anything I’ve got to protect. It’s too damn much trouble. I don’t even lock my doors. I keep a gun to protect Buddy and me, but if anybody wants my stuff they’re welcome to it.”
“Has anyone ever tried to rob you?”
“Naah. There’s nothing to steal. You know, though, I did come home once right after Ellen died feeling things weren’t right. Nothing was missing, and I figured I was just made nervous by what happened to Ellen. You think I should be worried?” She put another cigarette in her mouth and let it dangle from her lip while she pulled a match from the box. Buddy sat up to watch and his claws scraped the floor.
Claire stared out the window at the faraway mountains. There was plenty to worry about if someone was willing to kill in order to obtain a copy of Benjamin deWitt’s History of the Blue. Too many coincidences had become, in her mind, an enemy action. But the thieves resembled the clouds that cast their shadows on the distant mountains and moved on. She suspected they’d already been here, hadn’t found what they wanted, and gone elsewhere. But where? Did they know about Anthony Barbour? It hadn’t been hard for her to discover he had a copy. “I suspect they’ve gone elsewhere, but it might be wise to start locking your door,” she said.
Bobbye struck her match, and Buddy barked on cue. “What difference would it make out here? Someone could load the trailer on a flatbed and move it down the road before anybody would notice.”
“At least when you came home, you’d know whether anybody had been inside. You’d be less likely to walk in on a robbery in progress.”
“You know what? If it comes right down to it, I’d rather die that way…” She cocked her fingers into the shape of a revolver and sited down the barrel. “Than this.” She lifted her cigarette and watched the rising smoke.
Chapter Fourteen
ON THE DRIVE BACK TO ALBUQUERQUE, Claire thought about all she’d discovered on her trip. She intended to pass the information on to Rachel as soon as she reached the office on Monday, but she was left with the rest of Sunday to think about it. When she got home, Nemesis greeted her at the door, rubbed against her legs, and meowed to go out.
“In a minute,” Claire said.
She understood the feeling Bobbye Johnson had when she came home and sensed things weren’t right. Claire had once heard it described as the sensation that everything in your house has been removed and replaced by its exact replica. She didn’t think it was possible to get into her house without jimmying a lock or breaking a window. Before she opened the door, she circled the hous
e and saw no sign of forced entry. Nevertheless, once she was inside, Claire examined all the rooms, searching for anything out of order.
“Has anybody been in here?” she asked Nemesis. Even if he could speak, would he know or care? Nemesis was not a guard cat. All that mattered to him was getting fed and petted—going in, going out.
Everything was in place. Even the air seemed undisturbed. If people were robbing and killing for The History of the Blue, it made no sense to break into this house, since Claire’s copy had already been stolen. Still knowing there was someone capable of such acts made her nervous. She thought about calling John Harlan and asking him to meet her somewhere for dinner. His clearheaded cynicism could drive out the cobwebs of suspicion. If she went out, however, she’d have to come home again after dark.
She checked the call screening box. Several calls from Unavailable, one from Madelyn. The light blinked once on the answering machine. Claire pushed the button and heard Madelyn say, “Just checking to see how you were.”
She called Madelyn back and left a message on her machine saying she was fine, then she logged onto the computer and found the usual collection of e-mail flotsam: easy money, sleazy sex. No messages about books. She logged off the computer and called Anthony Barbour to find him on the road again.
“It’s Claire, Anthony,” she said to his machine. “Please call me as soon as you can. It’s very important.”
Would that work? Did Anthony ever call into his machine? Where in the world was he?
Yielding to Nemesis’s pleas, she took him out, standing still and watching while he ran around the yard sniffing out the trail of a mouse or a squirrel. She knew that if he ever caught one, he’d toy with it or bite off its head. Nemesis wasn’t a guard cat, but he was a hunter. She placed him in the middle of the food chain, predator and prey. If she weren’t so damn protective, she’d go inside and let him kill or be killed. At this time of year when the sun was low in the sky, it entered her eyes at an angle that was almost painful. She had to put her hand beside her face and shade her eyes to see Nemesis. The phone rang. She might have gone in to answer it, but she stayed outside and watched her cat. When he got tired and hungry, they went back in.
The Stolen Blue Page 17
