“Yes,” I said. “We’ve got a flat. Could you give us a lift into Castle Rock perchance? Are you going that far?”
“I’m sure we could,” said Lavender Hair. “Hop in.” She concentrated on the task of pushing another button that unlocked the back doors of her car.
I turned to Julia. “C’mon, pardner, we got us a ride.”
Julia locked the doors to the Jeep and followed me. She already had her valuables in the little pack that was cinched around her waist. She followed me to the Cadillac and lowered herself painfully into the leather seat beside me. When the door shut and the full force of the air-conditioning hit me, it almost gave me a brain freeze.
“Thanks for picking us up,” I said. “I’m Em Hansen, and this is Julia McWain.”
Both women swiveled their heads to look at Julia. The woman who was driving turned quickly back to her concentration on the road ahead of her, but the other continued to goggle at Julia with frank interest. “You aren’t related to the late Dr. Afton McWain, are you?”
Julia managed to keep a calm face. “He was my husband until six months ago, when the divorce became final.”
“Oh …” said Blue Hair, making a knowing song of that one syllable. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss anyway. It happens I once met your husband, dear. He was a fine man and very helpful to his neighbors.”
Julia said nothing.
Lavender Hair said, “He was a geologist, wasn’t he? And I notice that you are dressed for the wilds, too.”
Julia said, “Yes, you can see by my outfit that I am a geologist.” She folded her arms tightly across herself and stared out the side window.
I wracked my brain for a jolly topic to which I could change the subject, but Blue Hair spoke again before I could. She said, “Dr. McWain tried to explain to my dear, departed Henry where the water in our well was going.”
Julia let out one of her sighs. “Yes, my former husband was a very smart, very knowledgeable man. You would be best served to believe him.”
Lavender Hair said, “We haven’t introduced ourselves. I’m Rita Mae Jones and this is my sister, Mary Ann Nettleton.”
Mary Ann said, “How rude of us! How do you do. A Helga Olsen came by to talk to us about Dr. McWain’s work. She was telling us about a development that’s been proposed up here, that involves Dr. McWain’s ranch.”
Julia said, “Don’t you worry your heads about that. My children are the heirs to that ranch, and as long as I am the trustee of that estate, I’m not giving in to any bullyboy tactics.”
That got my attention. “What tactics are those, Julia?”
“There have been veiled threats. Suggestions that Afton might encounter some of the same problems the lady had who wouldn’t give an easement to that project just south of here.”
“Which were?” asked Rita Mae.
“She found her prize horses shot. One of them at point-blank range, through the anus.” As if she’d just been discussing something no more distracting than a new hairstyle, Julia suddenly leaned forward, staring at something beside the road in front of us. “Hey, stop here. I just thought of something.”
I swiveled my eyes to see what she was looking at, and then I recognized it: It was the landmark for the turn that led up toward the McWain ranch. Our friendly neighborhood Rhodesian ridgeback came barreling down the hill toward us, barking his fool head off in his enthusiasm for this pinnacle moment of his day.
Rita Mae said, “Here?”
“Yes. By that turn there.”
Rita Mae stopped the car but let it idle in the middle of the road. “Is that animal quite sane?” she inquired.
Julia said, “Ol’ Barker? I wouldn’t presume to pet him, but he’s not angling for an early grave. He stays on his side of the fence.”
Rita Mae sat twisted as far as her unathletic, past-seventy torso could go, looking at Julia with one eye. “What’ll it be, Mrs. McWain?”
“I was just thinking where the spare tire to that Jeep is. It’s up at the ranch, right up that track.”
Rita Mae stared up the twin ruts. “I’m sure I can’t drive this car up there, but how far is it? We can wait a short while if that would help.”
Mary Ann added, “Even if you and Dr. McWain have had your parting of the ways, he helped my Henry, and I am glad to help you.”
Rita Mae said, “That’s the spirit, Mary Ann.”
Julia said, “I have an even better solution. If you go just a few hundred yards farther along, there’s the turn to the Johnson Ranch. It’s graded. That driveway parallels mine—or should I say, Afton’s—and that would put me within tire-rolling distance.”
I said, “You’re not rolling that tire with your knee all bunged up. I’ll go get it.”
Julia said quickly, “No, I can get Bart to drive me across over the connecting road.” She pushed the button to lower her window and shouted, “Leave it, Barker!”
The dog stopped barking immediately and began wagging its tail. His big, pink tongue hung out around a happy-dog smile.
Rita Mae gave the steering wheel a pat. “I like a woman who can handle herself in a predicament,” she said. She put the car back in D for DRIVE and drove.
As we neared the gate that led up to Bart Johnson’s ranch house, a bank of red soil caught my eye. “What’s that red clay horizon there?” I asked Julia.
“Paleosol,” she said. “It outcrops all across this area. Why?”
I was grinning like a fool for no good reason. If that was the red clay I’d picked off of Afton’s boots, it meant nothing whatsoever, because it only meant that he’d brought it with him from home. But it also meant that I could grab my sample, see if it truly matched the sheriff’s evidence, and be done, truly done with this case. The more I heard about people shooting horses, the better that sounded to me.
By the time Bart Johnson’s ranch house came into view, I had formulated a plan. We would retrieve Julia’s spare tire and put it on the Jeep. Then, if the rain held off and Julia’s knee recovered enough that she could drive home on her own, I could drive my rental car back out along this road and collect the samples, meet Michele for lunch, and be on my way to the airport and home by mid-afternoon.
Bart Johnson himself came out of the ranch house to greet us. He strolled around to the right front door, which was closest to his approach, nearest Mary Ann, who lowered her window to greet him. “Ladies,” he said, tagging the bill of his King Ropes ball cap with an arthritic finger. He wasn’t dressed for town today, so the Abercrombie & Fitch rig had been closeted in favor of a canvas shirt and a good old pair of Wrangler jeans.
Julia lowered her window, too. “Hi, Bart,” she said.
Bart did a stiff demi-plié so that he could see her. “Julia. This is a surprise.” His face was as stiff as his legs and hands. Bending was sufficiently difficult for him that he quickly straightened up again before he could notice me.
Julia said, “I have a favor to ask, Bart. I had a flat out on the road just now and … well, it’s one of those messy little things that didn’t get settled in the divorce: the spare tire to our … my Jeep is in the barn up at the ranch, or was last time I was there. I was wondering if you could run me over there to get it. This Cadillac is hardly the vehicle for the job, as I can see that Afton left the road ungraded until the last.”
Bart put his gnarled hands on his hips. “Well, I’d like to help you, but, uh …”
I heard a crunching of the gravel beyond Bart Johnson. Someone else was walking toward the car from the house; in fact, two people. Johnson’s son Zachary spoke first. He said, “Hullo, Julia.”
Right behind him was the weasel-faced Todd Upton. “Why, it’s Mrs. Nettleton,” he said affably enough, but then added, “and Julia,” his voice curling around a hard edge. “Sorry, Julia. You can’t go there.”
“And why not?” asked Julia, hotly.
Upton folded his arms across his chest. “Because the estate’s been sealed until we can look after certain legal business.”
>
Julia was out of that car like lightning and shoved her face right into the sneering face of the lawyer. “You sniveling, flesh-eating monster, how dare you speak to me like that? That trollop is not the legal heir to that ranch and you know it! My children are the heirs! It’s explicitly spelled out in the divorce decree! You have no right to seal the estate!”
Upton was impassive. He spoke to her as calmly as if she were standing ten feet away from him and reciting nursery rhymes. “I’m so sorry to hear that your late ex-husband didn’t take the time to inform you of his change of beneficiary.”
Julia hauled off and slugged him. It was a roundhouse right, and a good one, and Julia is a woman of sufficient size that it had to hurt.
But Upton barely recoiled. He said, “Bart, you’re a witness to that. And I’m sorry you ladies in the car had also to observe the behavior of a woman who can’t control her impulses. Now, Julia, if you don’t find your own way down the road and out of Douglas County right this minute, I’m going to press charges for assault.”
Julia began to shake from head to foot, and I saw her begin to wind up for another go at Upton. I jumped out of the car and caught her around the waist with both arms before she could claw his eyes out and hauled her backward toward the car. It was a job stuffing her back inside, and my eardrums were ringing for ten minutes afterward, so loud were her epithets. But the thing I pondered most, as Rita Mae turned the car and sent it hurtling down the path again like she was born to motocross, was the look on Todd Upton’s face when he saw me coming out of the car: His eyes widened not only with surprise but also fear.
TWENTY-FOUR
RAY RAYMOND HAD BEEN NURSING A BAD FEELING IN the pit of his stomach all morning, a sense of being pushed or crowded. By noon, it was beginning to tear at him, driving him to take action. He stalked through the police station in search of Eddie and found him in the locker room where he was putting on his uniform over black Jockey shorts and a black T-shirt that read 82ND AIRBORNE DIVISION and DEATH FROM ABOVE. Between the two lines of print a white skull bulged over Eddie’s gut. The slogan sliced into Ray’s consciousness, making a new cut along a well-worn path that always left him uncertain of his stature as a man. He had never served in the armed forces.
Eddie looked up from the bench where he was sitting. “Ray. Wassup?”
“I was wondering if your rumor mill had anything new on … Michele.”
Eddie raised an eyebrow in appraisal. “Giving her some thought, are you?”
“No, I am … You got anything or not?”
“Don’t get testy, man. Yeah, she went back to Colorado.”
Ray waited, his jaws tight. When Eddie offered nothing further, he said, “And Em?”
“Yeah, Em’s with her.” He studied Ray with the eyes of a feral dog, evaluating his reaction.
Ray forced himself to breathe.
Eddie said, “They got backup there. It ain’t like Colorado’s got no boys in blue.”
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this one.”
“Welcome to criminal justice, Ray. We don’t put people in jail because they’re behavin’ like model citizens.”
Eddie’s words were lost on Ray. He was already heading out the door, trying to think of a plan, searching mentally for the shortest route to his goal.
Eddie called after him. “Let Fritz take care of this, why don’t you?”
Ray stopped. “And where might I find him?”
“At his house, most likely. I just played a game of tennis with him. If you hurry—” Eddie let his sentence hang. The door had swung shut behind his departing comrade.
Ray hurried into a squad car and drove quickly up the hill to the east, into the Avenues, where he’d seen the man named Fritz running. Time seemed to turn to jelly, impeding his progress. As he came down the block toward his house, Ray spotted Fritz coming out the door carrying a boxy black attaché, his hair still wet from his post-exercise shower. He was dressed in a pilot’s uniform—all sharp creases and epaulets and aviator-framed sunglasses—and it gave him an air of crisp command that had lain hidden under his workout sweats.
Ray parked the police cruiser behind Fritz’s SUV and got out. Then, having gotten this far, he couldn’t get his mouth to work. His old reticence locked his jaws together, and he could not speak.
The pilot calmly put his case into his vehicle, then took off his sunglasses and turned to look at Ray. And waited for him to say something, the glasses dangling loosely in his left hand. In his gaze Ray found neither a challenge nor a welcome, but simply a quiet, alert openness.
“We haven’t met, formally,” Ray said.
Fritz extended a hand. “Fritz Calder. You’re Ray …”
“Tom Raymond. Ray is a nickname.”
“What can I do for you, Ray?” Now Fritz hooked his sunglasses into an epaulet and put his hands in his pockets, assuming a posture that spoke of elaborate ease.
Ray found this intimidating but knew that coming up to the man in his cruiser would provoke a move like this if the man was worth anything. Ray glanced at the pavement a moment to clear his head. “I’m worried about Em,” he said.
“Now you have my undivided attention,” Fritz said. “Is there news from inside the law enforcement community you need me to know?”
Ray met his gaze. “Yes. You know she’s in Colorado.”
“She was last Friday and Saturday, yes.”
“She’s there again now.”
Fritz’s eyelids flared wide and then tightened. “When did she go?”
“Last night. I can see you share my concern for her. She—”
“She flew commercially?”
“By public carrier? Yes. No, she didn’t fly herself, if that’s what you mean.”
“She’s with Michele?”
Ray let out his breath and only then realized that he’d been holding it. He needed to communicate the precise nature of his concern but could not isolate it from the chaos that suffused his being. Something was wrong, very wrong, that was all he knew for certain. “Michele is good, but she’s green, and departmental politics are going against her. Hopefully they’ve made contact with the sheriff on the Colorado end, but knowing Em—”
Fritz’s face had gone dark with anxiety.
Ray simultaneously relaxed and tensed. It was good that this man understood this complicated woman, but having his own anxiety mirrored back only increased it. “And you heard what I had to say about the nature of the case when I came to get her Friday morning.”
“You said it was bad.”
“It is. Whoever murdered Afton McWain was both violent and ruthless. And smart. The killer had thought it through. He took pains to confuse the identification and … well, it was ugly.”
“How ugly, Ray? Come on, tell me.”
Ray threw caution to the winds. “The FBI’s already been alerted to the case because it’s connected to some possible money-laundering schemes that could go straight to a drug cartel. The Feds say these guys hire professional hits when someone gets in their way.”
Fritz now stood ramrod straight. “I’m on my way to Denver right now, if I can get through. The weather’s bad. My client is a nervous flier, so he may scrub.” He glanced at his black bag. “But if he doesn’t go, that doesn’t mean I can’t. I’ll find her.”
Ray said, “May I offer you some advice?”
“Certainly.”
Ray weighed his words. “Em is a …”
“Difficult woman. But a fine one. In her case, difficult is a pleasure.”
Ray gave him the slight smile of sad agreement. “I couldn’t have said it better. So you understand.”
“If I challenge her, it can go the wrong way.”
“You got it.”
Suddenly Fritz laughed, a short, joyous burst. “Officer Raymond, sir, you and I might just become the best of friends.”
Ray grinned as he tasted a swift, sweet moment of relief. “That’s Detective Raymond, and I read you loud and clear and copy that.�
�
TWENTY-FIVE
MARY ANN NETTLETON TOLD US THE SAD STORY OF her water well as her sister drove us to town and dropped us at the motel. Once there, I phoned around and found a cheap spare that would fit on the Jeep. Thus armed, I picked up my rental car and all but dragged Julia back toward Sedalia.
Julia insisted on stopping at a place called Bud’s to get cheeseburgers. As a first bit of luck since leaving Salt Lake City the night before, I finally reached Michele just as she was heading out to the ranch and got her to join us.
I regaled Michele with the various upsets of our morning, emphasizing the confrontation with Johnson and Upton, while Julia swigged a beer and piled fresh cubes of ice into the plastic Ziploc bag the clerk at the hotel had supplied for chilling her injured knee. Michele took detailed notes. “Upton threatened to press charges against Julia for assault,” I said, “but I think he was just trying to get us to leave. Fast. He wanted us out of there in a big way, but I can’t believe it’s because he’s afraid of a punch in the nose. He didn’t even flinch until he saw me. What is there about me that scares him when Julia McWain in full fury doesn’t even make him blink?”
Julia winced as she rearranged her leg. “Hey, he’s a congenital idiot. I’m glad we caught you before you drove up there, Michele. You shouldn’t be going up there alone, and especially not now with this storm about to break.”
“Why shouldn’t I be going up there alone?”
“Because whoever killed Afton isn’t working alone.”
“‘Isn’t working’?” Michele said. “You don’t mean, ‘didn’t work’?”
I said, “Julia’s right. I don’t think it’s safe to think the last drop of blood has been shed over this business. The one you like best for the killing isn’t even here, but the shit’s still hitting the fan. Every last one on your hot list had a reason to commit murder, if he or she is that brave or that stupid.”
Dead Dry Page 23
