Dead Dry

by Sarah Andrews

  “Yeah,” said Julia. “And if they’d kill Afton for those reasons, then they’d kill you as well.”

  “You have to be extra stupid to kill a cop,” Michele said.

  “Murder’s never smart,” I countered. “The people we’re dealing with use brute force where the smarts run out. And it seems that half of this county wanted Dr. McWain out of their lives.”

  Julia took a particularly long drag on her beer and said, “Developers don’t take kindly to hearing that they’re running out of water. What’s considered a well-founded opinion in the world of science and a fact in the world of engineering is seen as a threat to those who want to keep doing things the good ol’ use-it-and-abuse-it way. Try getting them interested in building your house out of straw bales or rammed-earth construction while you live without running water in a glorified tent, why don’t you?”

  “You’re talking about Dr. McWain,” Michele said.

  “Afton and I were divorced, but that doesn’t mean I disagreed with his science. And I was aware of whom he was dealing with. They hated him.”

  “Turn this case over to the feds, Michele,” I said. “The more I think about this, the more I think we’re over our heads here. I’m just one borrowed analyst borrowing an SEM. The FBI has a whole lab in Virginia and at least three geologist-forensic examiners on staff full time.”

  Michele ignored my entreaty. To Julia she said, “Tell us about these people I don’t want to mess with.”

  “Em just saw Upton in action. Johnson wants to cash in his ranch for a beachfront estate in Maui, and he ‘don’t take kindly to no hippy tellin’ him he cain’t do that.’ And Attabury? If he can’t develop Johnson’s ranch, he’s back to selling second-hand double-wides.”

  “And Gilda?” I prompted.

  “Gilda will be on the treadmill at the spa trying to get in shape for her next sugar daddy,” Julia said bitterly.

  Michele said, “Her next?”

  Julia snorted derisively. “You think I didn’t do a little research on her when I found out why Afton wasn’t coming home? She’s got a regular business going, that girl. She marries and divorces like some women change their shoes.”

  “But Afton didn’t marry her,” I pointed out.

  “Nobody ever said he was stupid,” said Julia. “Just horny, I guess.”

  I shifted uncomfortably at Julia’s bluntness. I was used to her, but Michele was not. I glanced at the detective out of the corner of my eye. She had her game face on.

  Julia muttered, “Hey, he was a good enough lay.”

  Michele said, “Tell me about the political end of things. Not all the county commissioners are all that fond of his citizens’ group’s proposed rezoning, and there’s that curious matter of his association with Senator White.”

  “Oh, that,” said Julia. “Yeah, White has to look after the business of getting reelected. She can’t sound too anti-development or she’ll be cutting off her revenue stream. And as for the county Mounties, not too many people are keen on changing the thirty-five-acre zoning to eighty, and Afton thought even that would result in mining.”

  Michele said, “Mining?”

  “Taking water out of the ground faster than it can recharge. That’s mining.” When Michele still looked puzzled, she said, “Think of water as a resource, which is exactly what it is. An Earth resource. Just like oil or gold or copper. If you take water away faster than it’s accumulating, that’s called mining.”

  Michele said, “What about the wells people drill? Doesn’t the state regulate that?”

  Julia shook her head. “Water rights are governed by the state, but for well permits you go to the county. And they don’t talk to each other a whole lot. Then you get a crooked county commissioner or two, or one that just can’t understand this kind of stuff or won’t take the trouble to learn it, and you’re back to square one. It’s as if people think it’s an act of God whether there’s water in their well or not.”

  I said, “That poor lady who gave us the ride into town sure got her education the hard way.” I relayed Mary Ann’s story to Michele, then asked Julia, “What do you think will become of her and her property?”

  “Heaven knows,” Julia answered. “She’s not an isolated case. Every last house out that way has the same problem, and what if the Johnson ranch is turned into a resort? The developers will drive a well clear down to the bottom of the aquifer and show that he can flow nine hundred gallons of water per minute into a community water line, but then he’ll be gone when the last buyer has moved in and the last drop of vintage water has been drunk.”

  Michele said, “Who was the Realtor when you two bought the ranch? And who’s carrying the mortgage?”

  Julia replied, “We bought it directly from the owner, Bart Johnson’s brother, and he carried the paper.”

  “Wouldn’t Bart’s brother have made more money selling it to a developer?” I asked.

  “Yeah, but he didn’t want it developed. He thought a crazy cuss like Afton would love it the way he had, and every last elk and deer and wild plum tree on it.”

  I asked, “Can this brother call in the note now that Afton’s dead?”

  Julia shook her head. “The heirs have the right to assume the mortgage.”

  “So that’s why Upton has his lawyerly hand on Gilda’s thigh. But how could she make the payments?”

  Julia grumbled, “Those boys would be only too pleased to help her out.”

  Michele was making notes. “Anything else we should know about these people?” she asked.

  Julia let out her breath like a tired horse. “Upton cooked that will. He had to.”

  “How do you know that for sure?”

  “Because it was part of the divorce decree that the kids inherit the ranch, or the value thereof. If it was to be sold, it was going to the Nature Conservancy or equivalent organization.”

  “Then Upton’s bluffing,” Michele said.

  “Or the glorious Gilda is bluffing Upton,” Julia replied.

  Michele leaned back and stretched, her lack of sleep beginning to show. She said, “I haven’t been able to locate Gilda. And the one I was looking for is still gone, too,” she added, giving it to me without names so she wouldn’t tip her hand to Julia. “And the others of interest are not answering phones. But at least now I know where to find Mr. Upton.”

  Julia stared into the neck of her beer bottle for several long moments, examining the suds that lingered in the bottom of the bottle. “I guess that’s all I’ve got for you,” she said. “I wanted to kick Afton’s ass through his eye sockets, but I didn’t want him dead.”

  “I believe you, for what that’s worth,” Michele said. She looked at her watch. “I’ll meet you back at the motel at five, and we’ll continue to check in before then.”

  “Continue?” I said. “I hadn’t heard from you all morning.”

  “Sorry.”

  Julia began to droop.

  Michele stuffed a last bite of burger into her mouth, dropped two twenties on the table, said, “Tip twenty percent and save me the receipt,” and stood up to leave.

  The waiter arrived. “Can I get you ladies anything else?” he inquired.

  Julia said, “You got any Guinness? In a glass?”

  “Sure.” He looked at me.

  I said, “We ought to get going. Get out there before it rains.”

  “Just one more,” said Julia.

  I waved my hand in a What-the-hell gesture. “Cup of coffee. Black.”

  The man picked up Michele’s plate and glass and left.

  I leaned back in exasperation. Up on Wildcat Mountain, Julia had been trying to hurry me, but now she seemed to be dragging her feet. I wondered if she was worried about her run-in with Todd Upton. If he pressed charges for assault, it could add serious complications if Gilda persisted in her claim against the ranch. I wondered if Julia was stalling, waiting until she saw Upton drive past the café, so that she would know that it was safe to go up toward the ranch.

/>   The waiter came back to the table with Julia’s beer and my coffee.

  Julia lifted the beer to her lips.

  The minutes ticked past. “We should get going,” I said.

  Julia stared at me over her glass with gimlet eyes. She said, “Three men walk into a bar, an Englishman, an Irishman, and a Scot. They each order a pint. Just as they are served, three flies fly up and one drops into the foam on each beer.”

  I said, “The Englishman pushes his beer away in disgust. The Irishman plucks the fly out of his beer and drinks it down. And the Scot—”

  “Grabs his fly by the wings, holds it above the glass, and cries, ‘Spit it out! Spit it out, ye thieving bastard!’ Okay, that’s an old one.”

  Julia glared at me. She was in a darkening mood, and short-sheeting her joke had been a strategic error.

  I had seen Julia in her moods before, but this one portended to be a corker. I wasn’t sure that I could stand it. My nerves had begun to fry from lack of sleep and too many heavy issues bearing down on me. I itched to complete my tasks and turn my nose toward the airport and Salt Lake City. I decided that I would stop in at the sheriff’s department offices in Castle Rock first and make damned sure they meant to back up Michele’s movements, and then I’d be off. I said, “You sure you want to drink that? It may be raining by the time you get onto the highway. We still have to change your tire and get your Jeep back onto the road. That’s going to take an hour at least.”

  “Then I’ll take the old road. Eighty-five is such a scenic drive next to the construction on I-25.”

  “That could be worse. Watch out as you go under the trestle up by Littleton. It floods.”

  Julia said, “Three Scottish lassies are walking home from a celebration. They come across a lad who has passed oot in the ditch.”

  I heaved a sigh. “Okay …”

  “The wind has blown leaves across the lad, so they canna tell who he is. You know what they do?”

  “I can only guess,” I said heavily.

  “The first lassie picks up a stick and raises the hem of the laddie’s kilt. And she says, ‘Ach, that’s not my husband!’”

  “Okay …”

  “Well, the second lassie, she then takes the stick, and does the same; lifts the laddie’s kilt. And she says, ‘Ye’re right, that isn’t yer husband.’”

  The irony of her tale was not lost on me. “That’s pretty good, Julia,” I said, wishing I had heard it on a kinder day.

  “And that’s not all! The third lassie, she takes the stick and raises yon kilt and says, ‘And neither is it any other lad from our village.’”

  I wondered how Julia could even tell a story like that after losing her husband to a woman like lassie number three and knowing that she had been lassie number two. I downed my coffee and took a squint at Julia’s beer. She appeared to be nursing it. “Bottoms up,” I said.

  She said, “A man walks into a bar with an octopus and says, ‘I’ll bet fifty quid this octopus can play any instrument in the house to virtuoso capacity.’ And first the saxophonist—”

  I cut her off. “And the octopus says about the bagpipe, ‘Play her, hell! Soon as I can get her knickers off, I’m gonna have me way with her.’ I told you that one, Julia.”

  “Okay, a lad from the regiment walks into the apothecary’s and says—”

  “We’re burning daylight, Julia.” Losing my last shred of patience, I said, “Besides, why are you still telling Scottish jokes? The man’s dead. As I recall, you’re of English extraction.”

  Julia stared into her beer. She said, “For all I know, he did figure out how to change his beneficiary.”

  “Afton?”

  Julia’s face crumpled with pain. Tears swam in her eyes.

  I said, “You still want him. After all this—”

  “I was always shooting myself in the foot around him,” she moaned. She put her head down on the table and bawled.

  I leaned back in my chair, resigning myself to a long conversation. “You’re being too hard on yourself. He was a difficult man.”

  “That’s what everyone says. And you’re right, he was difficult. Damn it, Em, I should have just had my little affair with him and skipped the marriage.”

  I didn’t want to hear about what went wrong in Julia McWain’s marriage. I wanted to think that getting married could be a solution, not the beginning of a problem.

  Julia took another long draft of her beer, set it down, and began to write on her cocktail napkin with her finger. “My friends kept telling me I was resisting change. ‘La, la, la, you’re resisting change,’ they’d say, ‘It’s time to move on. Let it go. It’s his karma to run after younger women. It’s his loss.’ Bunch of New Age la-la freaks. But she had something I didn’t, that’s what he said.”

  “What do you think, Gilda was a better woman to him?”

  “She’s prettier.”

  “You’ll find someone else,” I said, chagrined that I couldn’t come up with a less feeble platitude.

  “Easy for you to say. You just float through life.”

  “Float? I haven’t had a date in years.”

  This seemed to perk her up a bit. “None at all?”

  I said, “Well, there is this guy I know.”

  “Yeah? A guy guy, or … a guy.”

  “Well … a guy. I mean, he’s really, really attractive and all.”

  “Available?”

  “Yes.”

  “Interested?”

  “Maybe.”

  Julia put her bottle to her lips and aimed the bottom of it at me. She gave her eyebrows a quick pump. Lowered the bottle. “This is interesting. Em Hansen thinking about an attractive guy. I thought hell would freeze over first.”

  “Oh, come on, Julia. I’ve been involved with men before.”

  “Oh, sure. Once every decade, whether you need to or not. For five minutes, tops.”

  “Now, that’s not fair! There’ve been guys … I just haven’t brought them all around to meet you.”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, since I’ve been living in Salt Lake, for instance, there’ve been two worth mentioning.”

  “Mention, then.”

  “Well, there was this guy Ray. He was a cop. Really good looking, and a solid guy, really. Wanted me to marry him.”

  “And?”

  “Well, it didn’t work out.” I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Why not?”

  “Well, he’s a Mormon, so he needed me to join his church, see, and—”

  Julia cut me off with a snort that shot beer up her nose.

  She had stopped crying, so I kept going with the topic. I said, “Okay, but it was serious. I really felt something for him.”

  “Something. Were you in love with him?”

  “Oh, now, you’ve got to go and ask the difficult questions. I really, truly wanted him.”

  “You mean in bed.” She shook her head. “That’s sex. You’d know it if you were in love with him.” She thumped her chest. “That, you feel here, not the other place.” She shrugged. “Or at least, that’s what people tell me.”

  “Thanks for the anatomy lesson.”

  “Okay, you said there were two worth mentioning.”

  “The other was this guy Jack. Now, Jack was really something. Great in bed. Gorgeous. Funny. Full of shit, you know? With him I felt it both places.”

  “And what happened?”

  “Well, he went away. But I guess you could say I was really in love with Jack.”

  “Gonzo for Jack is what it sounds like. All pressy-body and no stickum.”

  “That I can’t argue. But for a while, it was really nice.” I glanced at the Budweiser clock above the bar.

  Julia said, “So tell me about this new guy. This guy.”

  “Well, this one is a really, truly nice guy. Wears well. Doesn’t push anything on me. He has a sense of humor, but he’s not just a joker. He can even cook, sort of. He’s smart and likes to go for hikes and—”

&n
bsp; “What’s he do?”

  “He’s a pilot.”

  “Oh, a flyboy. Nice. Military? They’ve got an Air National Guard in Utah, don’t they?”

  “He was military. Navy. Flew an EA-6 in Desert Storm, but now that he’s civilian, he’s designing a new twin-engine prop-drive aircraft. He’s got a jet-engine version of the same airframe on the drawing board. He’s got the prototype together, and he’s looking for investors to put it into production. Smart guy.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Fritz Calder.”

  “So then, here’s the twenty thousand dollar question: What do you need from Fritz?”

  “I … well, maybe that is the question. I can’t decide what I want with Fritz.”

  “Need, Em. My question was not what you want from him, but what you need.” Her eyes clouded and focused inward. “It’s so easy to want a man who can’t give you what you need. Especially if you don’t know what you want and need from yourself.”

  “Now you’ve truly lost me.”

  Julia stared into my eyes. “We go through the first half of our lives thinking that a man is the solution, but you know what? He’s really just a mirror. When you think you’re looking at the man, you’re only looking at your own needs and longing staring right back out at you.”

  This was Julia: Half crazy but still half wise. I tried on her idea. What did I see when I looked into Fritz’s eyes? And what did I want? I wanted a child, I knew that much, and if I didn’t get going, it was going to be too damned late. I wanted a man to be with and love forever, who could love me. A love that would fill me to the brim. A love that would make me nuts with pleasure.

  Julia said, “You’re as crazy as I am, Em.” She glanced out the window. The sky was beginning to spit the first big drops of the coming storm. She said, “I don’t know about you, but I gotta go.” She stood up abruptly. “Just remember to look into the mirror, Em. Next time you see this man, look straight into him and ask yourself not just what you see looking back at you, but who.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  FRITZ CALDER SAILED TOWARD THE TOWERING CLOUDS in the twin-engine aircraft he had designed, pushing it to its maximums, cursing the lack of a tailwind. Under the hush of his noise-canceling headphones, it was totally silent except for the gentle whine of the engines. His attention was fixed on the far horizon, but he glanced repeatedly at his instruments. The weather radar screen glowed with concentrations of orange and red shapes along a line that ran north and south over Colorado’s Front Range, directly across his path. In the distance the flickering lightning within the squall line bloomed with random strobes behind the cloud buildups. It reminded him of his months at sea in the Indian Ocean.