b
Mallomar’s Gulfstream landed in the Montrose airport seconds before the full force of the storm hit. In the attaché case he carried were divorce papers—still warm and chemically fragrant from his lawyers’ Xerox machine. Jaw-clenched, he climbed into his Mercedes AMG and shot off on the seventy-five-mile drive to the ranch, blowing through through every single traffic light.
Buster had spent the entire night driving, thinking about what he was going to do with Mrs. Mallomar. He dreaded facing Mrs. Mallomar but knew he had to do it. Almost out of gas, he pulled the ’61 Apache up to the Big Dog corral. Rain was blowing sideways, lightning and thunder were letting loose on El Diente, making the horses froggy. Always cognizant of his duties, Buster put the animals in the barn then trudged into the house.
All the lights in the house were off—a flickering candelabra on the dining table the only source of illumination. The French doors leading to the patio were open, and the wind blew the drapes like ghosts in a silent movie. The table had been laid with a black tablecloth, two little red plates, and enameled chopsticks.
“Where’ve you been, Clem?”
Buster startled, as she appeared seemingly from nowhere, wearing her little black NVA pajama bottoms with her gauzy blouse.
Buster quickly averted his eyes from Mrs. Mallomar’s chest, so as not to distract from what he had come to say. He, instead, looked to the coffee table where he found a curious white lump residing in the middle of it.
“Ain’t that one of our salt licks?”
“Interesting look, isn’t it?”
“Think it should be on that table, ma’am? Cows been lickin’ at it.”
Buster had, in fact, placed a dozen salt licks around the pasture. The cows could not resist them, and the salt made them want to drink water. The extra water weight translated to higher unit price at slaughter time.
“I think it’s beautiful. Have you ever seen Henry Moore’s, Seated Woman: Thin Neck?” she said, turning its tongue-sanded modern aspects in the candlelight.
“Don’t know as ah’ve had. Jes think Mr. Mallomar may not like that bein’ here.”
“And…what would he think about you being here?” She laughed when Buster’s face dropped. There was something unsettlingly buoyant about Mrs. Mallomar tonight. What was it? “Appetizer?” She held up a lacquered plate containing four spring rolls that she had hand-rolled with translucent rice paper to a suggestive length of eight inches. “It’s Japanese night, in case you didn’t catch that.” Uncharacteristically, Buster did not take the food.
“That’s a first.”
“There’s somethin’ preyin’ on me, ma’am ah gotta talk to you ’bout.”
“Oh, please. Can we not have a conversation like that, tonight?”
Suddenly a gust of wind came up and pushed in the big Great Room’s windows, then sucked them out with such force that the roof groaned like a dying man.
“Wow! Where in God’s name did that come from?”
“Ma’am, you and me caint be havin’ ree-lay-shuns no more.”
A clap of thunder rolled out across the mesa.
“If this will ease your mind, we’re not having relations. We’re just screwing.”
“Well, ah don’t think we should be doin’ that there neither.”
“Why not?”
“It ain’t raht.”
“It’s been right by me. Surprisingly so.”
Buster turned and walked out the French doors. “Now where’re you going?”
Buster had said what he had to say. In the barn, he once again began to pack his tack. His plan was to wait there until Mr. Mallomar returned. He was even hoping Mr. Mallomar would punch him in the nose. Buster backed his truck through the paddock doors and started to load up. Already, he was starting to feel loose in his joints again, the promise of returning to an uncomplicated life.
“Don’t leave.”
Mrs. Mallomar was standing in the doorway, wringing wet.
“Ah’m sorry, ma’am. Ah have to.”
“My husband will want to know why you left. What am I going to tell him?”
“Don’t you worry ’bout that, ma’am. Ah’ll be tellin’ him.”
The thought of that did little to calm her.
“What do you mean? What are you going to tell him?”
“The truth.”
“Okay. I understand how you’re feeling right now. But could you come inside for a moment? There’s something I need to tell you before you ride off on your fucking high horse.” Reluctantly, Buster let her take his hand and lead him back to the house.
Mallomar was hoping to catch them in the act when he got home. He fumbled around in the glove compartment until he found what he was looking for—the instructions for his phone. Specifically, what he wanted to know was how its eight-megapixel camera worked. He’d get a nice snapshot of them to staple to the divorce papers. But when he walked in the front door, he got the shock of his life.
“What in hell’s going on here?”
The living room was filled, wall-to-wall, with cattle. They had followed the scent of the salt lick from the pasture and had come through the French doors. Once out of the rain, they decided to stay. There was a great deal of bellowing and jostling going on. One steer was pushing his brisket against one of the hollow wooden pillars that hid the steel weight-bearing supports holding up the second floor. The resultant noise from the cracking wood cast doubt on whether or not the brackets that attached to it were made to take a lateral six hundred pound body slam. Mallomar pushed his way through the stubborn animals to the stairway, trying not to look at what they had done to his one-hundred-thousand-dollar Persian rug.
Inside the house, Mallomar climbed to his wife’s room and dramatically flung the door open. Finding no one there, he stepped back on the balcony and looked down just in time to see Buster and his wife come through the French doors, hand in hand. The smartphone that he was holding suddenly didn’t seem enough. He went to find the gun that he had purchased at his own hardware store.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
One Last Ride
Jimmy had ridden the mesa many times in the rain and lightning. It was one of her favorite things—even though a person on horseback is the highest object above the flat ground and subject to a better-than-average chance of being electrocuted. No matter. She loved—if one were so bold as to identify hers as a feminine attribute—the way the rain released the fragrance of the dry sagebrush and the way it mingled with leather and wet horse. She would miss that. And when there was a nearby hit of lightning, it excited her—the stream of maverick electrons seemingly passing through her navel and tingling all the way to her groin. She would miss that, too. But no use getting sentimental when there was still work to do.
The rain on the Lame Horse Mesa road had turned the finely grained dirt as slick and slippery as the woman’s wrestling match that Jimmy had once attended with a bunch of cowboys in Laramie, Wyoming. Nicker was having a hard time of it as he worked his way up the mile and a half road to the Mallomar house, his hooves clumped with mud. Jimmy rode, slumped forward holding the pommel for dear life. She was feverish and twice had to lean over the saddle to throw up. Up ahead, she could see a halo through the rain.
“Thar it is, Nicker. We’ll show’m who’s the Big Dog around here!” She gave her horse one last gentle nudge in the ribs, but the horse just stood in the road, frozen like a statue. “C’mon, boy,” she urged with another poke of her spurs. “Just a couple more and we can both go back to bed.” But the horse stood still and took uneven shuddering breaths. “Not used to the action anymore, huh?” She clucked, scolding good-naturedly. “Giddyap.” Nicker knelt down on both front legs. “You want me to get off, is that it? Don’t have the gumption for it anymore? Well, that’s some gratitude for ya, after all these years! Lemme walk a mile in the cold rain?” Breathlessly
, Jimmy swung her leg over the saddle and jumped off. “All right then, dammit! Why don’t you go the hell home and read the goddamn newspaper?” The horse gave one long sigh and keeled over onto his side. The evening’s excitement had been apparently been too much for the heart of the twenty-six year-old horse.
“Damn you to hell!” Jimmy was screaming over the pouring rain. “Get up!” The horse’s breathing grew faint. Jimmy suddenly became scared and fell to her knees. “Oh, no! You ain’t gonna die on me, are ya? Please don’t!” Jimmy took off her hat, shielding the horse’s face from the rain. She gently caressed his muzzle. “You’re the best damn horse ah ever had. There, ah said it. Satisfied? Now, come on now…Git up!”
The horse’s breath grew even shallower. Jimmy lay down in the mud beside him. “Nicker, ah done a terrible thing! A terrible thing! Ah was allus meant to tell ya…” she began with a lump in her throat. “Yor real name was Ranger.” She waited for a grateful acknowledgement, but Ranger would ride to the sound of Jimmy’s dynamite no more. Jimmy just sat there for a moment in disbelief. Finally, she cleared her throat and struggled to her feet. “Ah ’spect ah’ll be joinin’ ya shortly. Lissen fer ma whistle.” Then Jimmy pulled her hat back down on her head and started slogging up the road—for the first time in her life, on foot.
Up at the reservoir, the water level had risen two feet. The levee would have been safe for another three feet if it hadn’t been infested with muskrats—the result of Mrs. Mallomar’s orders. By one-thirty that morning, the rising water began to pour into the tunnels that they had honeycombed across the width and length of the levee. By two o’clock, a tiny hole, no larger than a fist, had broken through, jeopardizing the levee’s structural integrity. By 2:30, large portions of the levee had collapsed. It was set to go. The muskrats climbed out of the levee and scampered off to save their own skins.
In a cedar chest under the stairs, beneath a pile of antique Pendleton blankets—that he had bragged to everybody that they were better than the new ones that they make—Mallomar had stashed his loaded pistol—the same gun the police would later find after a more thorough search of the demolished house. Mallomar, gun in hand, crept down the stairs. Buster and Dana, the cattle herd between them, waited for him to say something.
“I guess nobody took the cattle out for a walk,” he finally said.
The last fifty yards of road to the front door of the Big Dog Lodge had been steeply graded to allow drainage. If that wasn’t enough of an obstacle, the situation was exacerbated by a new development for Jimmy. Her tank had just run out of oxygen. Incredulous, she ripped the mask from her mouth and gulped for air like a landed catfish. The front door was just there, but she couldn’t get her legs to obey. Lack of oxygen was shutting down her whole system. Soporifically, she stared down at her blue fingers, her numb and useless toes. Red, muddy water was pushing against her shins. Something must have happened to the reservoir up above. Was anything going to go her way tonight? Using every last bit of her strength, she pulled herself up on a boulder to get out of the way of the water. Then she heard a gunshot. There was a horrendous crashing sound, and a wall of mud and rocks came crashing through the house. The roof fell like someone kicking the legs out from under a chair.
From her safe perch on the boulder, Jimmy’s figured out her escape plan and prepared her alibis. Her ranch was a good mile away. Walking was out of the question. Jimmy had no choice but to crawl like the wounded animal she was. Slowly, excruciatingly, she eased herself down from the rock and onto her stomach. She grabbed one tuft of grass at a time, pulling herself along. But now providence stepped in to deal a joker in the form of a cud chewing, wide-eyed steer that had escaped the house before the roof came down. It was following her along—not wanting to be alone after what it had just been through.
“What’re you starin’ at, you stupid sonofabitch?” Jimmy hissed. Then she got an idea. “Come over here, sweetheart,” she said in a kindly voice that even surprised her. The steer played coy for another fifteen feet until it found a clump of cheatgrass to rip out. Jimmy took the opportunity to drag herself over and grip its shit-covered tail. After that massive oxygen-expending effort, she took a moment to rest and pant. Then she reached into her holster for one of the Colts and fired off a single round singeing the steer’s rump. With a terrified bellow, the steer took off on a flight-for-life, dragging Jimmy over the mesa in a random zigzag pattern that ten cartridges later, brought her within ten feet of her front door.
PART THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Back to the Morning Of
Mrs. Poult had been knocking on Sheriff Dudival’s door and getting no answer. Quietly, she opened the door to find him asleep at his desk. He was holding a tin pie plate that Buster had tapped out for him when he was a boy living with the Dominguez family. Buster had created a square-jawed profile of the sheriff with Vanadium’s Main Street as the backdrop. She smiled and cocked her head sweetly, “Darling…I mean, Sheriff Dudival…” She rolled her eyes at herself. The sheriff stirred and gave a start seeing her there.
“What is it?”
Mrs. Poult winced at his brusqueness then recovered to make her report. Due to the Lame Horse Mesa’s power outage last night, dispatch had only moments ago received reports of two massive explosions. One was called in by a neighbor of Cord Travesty’s. The other was from a client of Cookie Dominguez’s who, seeing firsthand the aftermath of the munitions and chemicals detonating at the meth trailer, clawed at his own face in horror a la the Münch painting. According to the First Responders, all of the residents were either dead or missing. Sheriff Dudival, hearing this news, wearily got up from his desk, went over to the office sink and washed his face and brushed his teeth. No use rushing. He seemed to know that, most likely, they were all dead.
“Careful when you go out the door,” warned Mrs. Poult.
“Why?”
The sheriff opened the jail’s door to the momentary blinding sunlight. At least fifty people from the media were waiting for him, microphones shoved in his face.
“Sheriff Dudival!”
“Have they found the body?”
“Was sex the motive?”
“Were they running away together?”
Sheriff Dudival fumbled for his sunglasses. He wasn’t used to this.
“I have nothing to say to you people.”
b
Arriving at the corporate headquarters of Busy Bee America, Inc., Sheriff Dudival was able to determine a simple explanation for what was, to any trained criminologist, a murder scene. Cookie’s death was the result of an occupational hazard—meth labs were notorious for their combustible instability. A lightning strike could have easily triggered the explosion in evidence before him. Sheriff Dudival motioned for an impromptu crew of orange-suited prisoners that had been waiting for his arrival to assemble. Each was equipped with rubber gloves and a black plastic highway department litterbag. County Health dictated that coroners make “best efforts” to gather body parts; in this case, the Busy Bees were scattered as far as two hundred yards from their notorious crank hive.
“Don’t bother with any piece smaller than this.” Sheriff Dudival leaned over to harvest a severed hand with three fingers that was nestled in nearby sagebrush. He knew whom it belonged to, and he also knew who had blown off the missing digits. In the past, that kind of thing had been jocular coffee conversation between him and Jimmy. Dudival then had the men stretch crime scene tape around the perimeter and placed a deputy there to keep anybody out who might get it in their head to drop by for a leftover snort.
Dudival’s next stop on the mesa was the Cord Travesty property. Travesty’s board-and-batten house was laid out in a perfect daisy pattern emanating from Cord’s antique brass bed. It was here that Destiny Stumplehorst gave Sheriff Dudival her surreal deposition. Unlike the Dominguez explosion, the Travesty crime scene was harder to explain. The purported phone call carr
ying the sound of Destiny’s mare being the reason for her leaving the house before the explosion—the very large horsefly in the ointment. There seemed to be foul play.
“Do you think you could be mistaken about your horse?”
“No, Sheriff. I’m sure it was her.” Sheriff Dudival accepted her adamancy then slowly walked around the bed. He couldn’t help himself from tucking in the corners of the bedcover, military-style.
“Destiny, if I were to take you down to the clinic for a blood draw right now…would there possibly be any traces of something that might—how should I put this—color your testimony that you heard your horse whinny to you on a cell phone?” He already knew the answer to that one. “Cord is gone. We can’t change that. But you gotta live here. You understand what I’m saying, hon?”
“You want me to drop that part of my testimony.”
“I’m not asking you to do anything. That would be conspiracy.”
“Right.” She looked into Sheriff Dudival’s eyes and finally understood what he meant. Dudival had deftly steered the debutante onto the dance floor of her first crime cotillion and had managed not to step on her feet.
“Well, I do recall something…now that I’m thinkin’ back on it.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, somethin’ in the middle of the night woke me up.”
“Some thunder or lightning, perhaps?”
“Yeah, and I just happened to look out the window, and I saw my horse. So I put on my clothes and went and got her.”
“And when you took her home, did you see anyone around the house or anything suspicious in nature?”
Improbable Fortunes Page 30
