Stranded

by Lorena McCourtney

  The retired police chief gave a generous wave. “Go ahead and have a look at their rig. I’m in no rush on those brakes. Help these good folks get on their way to Arizona before they get snowed in here.”

  “Thank you.” I felt guilty about my unkind attitude toward Ben Simpson’s curiosity, though I didn’t appreciate his spreading the word that we were headed to Arizona. I grudgingly offered a smidgen of further information. “We’re hoping to make it as far as Gallup today.” And desert warmth and sunshine by tomorrow.

  All Nick said was, “We’ll get right on it, then,” but something about his reserved tone made me suspect Gallup was not on our itinerary for today. Those noises I’d described had told him something.

  Okay, a day or two’s delay here in the snow wouldn’t hurt us. Desert sunshine would still be there when we arrived.

  The three of us stood at the window and watched while a younger, dark-haired guy got behind the wheel of the motor home to steer it while Nick used the red truck with its oversized bumper to push it into the shop.

  I decided to forestall more personal questions from Ben while we waited by asking my own. “So, tell us about Hello. For one thing, how did it get its name?”

  “Good question.” He looked pleased that I’d asked. “No one really knows. That’s why there’s this contest every summer. It’s called ‘Why Hello?’ and everyone submits these stories, three hundred words or less, about how the town maybe got its name. I won one year,” he added modestly. “Got an oil change here at Nick’s and a fancy dinner at the Café Russo, and a free carpet cleaning. Really tickled Edna.” He missed a beat in his garrulous chatter. “But she’s up there in High Cemetery now.”

  Abilene had been prowling the small room restlessly, and now she touched my arm lightly. “Do you think we have time for me to walk around and take a look at the town?”

  I was afraid she might have time to do a census count on Hello, but all I said was, “Sure. If you see a grocery store, get some plastic wrap, would you? We’re almost out. How’s your tooth?”

  Her tongue probed a molar on the right side. “Not bad.”

  Ben Simpson peered at Abilene’s jaw with interest. A man who was never bored, I guessed, and a little nosy about everything. I shouldn’t be critical of his curiosity, however, I reminded myself. My own “mutant curiosity gene,” as a friend once called it, was always primed for action.

  “We got a great dentist here in Hello,” Ben said. “Dr. Li. But his place is too far to walk. He’s out on the other side of town, out there in the Safeway shopping center.”

  Abilene zipped up her jacket and headed out the door. My next question to Ben wasn’t just to keep him from asking questions. I was really curious.

  “High Cemetery, that’s its name?”

  “No. It’s all the Hello City Cemetery, but, as you can see”—he waved toward town—“we’re kind of jammed in a narrow valley here. So when the cemetery started getting full, they started another section up higher on the hillside. So now we have Low Cemetery and High Cemetery.”

  “Nothing to do with, ummm, social status then?”

  “Well, most people would rather be buried in High Cemetery, all right. Low Cemetery has a lot of old miners and crooks who shot or stabbed each other back when this was a booming mining town. Some ladies of the night too. Though everyone knows some of the early-on respectable wives started out as ladies of the night.”

  I picked out one bit of information from that oversupply. “Hello isn’t a booming mining town now?”

  “There’s still a little mining going on, but it’s mostly gold panners workin’ the creeks in the summer. Everyone thought something big was going to happen out at the Lucky Queen. Would of been a real shot in the arm for Hello. But it’s probably not going to happen now, with ol’ Hiram dead. Tourists and antique shops and bed and breakfasts are about all that keep Hello going now. We don’t even have any big ski area right close by to bring people in.”

  “Any RV parks?”

  “Two over on the south side. But only one’s open this time of year. Lots busier in the summer here. You oughta come back then. Or if you want to stay for a while now you could see the Roaring ’20s Revue. The Ladies Historical Society puts it on every winter, and it’s pretty lively. I played the police chief in a skit last year. That guy who towed you in, Paul Newman, is usually the master of ceremonies.”

  With uncommunicative Paul as master of ceremonies, the Revue sounded about as lively as a sales pitch for funeral insurance.

  Ben Simpson looked me over with a critical eye. “Paul’s wife is in the chorus line. You might make it into the chorus line too if you hang around.”

  I was startled. Me, in a chorus line? “Aren’t the chorus-line ladies somewhat … ummm … younger?” To say nothing of taller and more shapely.

  “Some are even older.” He tilted his head as he inspected me further. “You’re kinda short, but they might put you on the end.”

  “It sounds like a lovely little town.” I felt rather bowled over by all the information, especially this assessment of my qualifications for chorus-line membership. It was, at the moment, more than enough to fill even my usually bottomless abyss of curiosity. And even more especially since what I really wanted to know about was the status of the motor home.

  “Yes, it is. A lovely little town.” A meaningful pause and a sideways glance. “Mostly.”

  Mostly. I could see that he was deliberately dangling that tantalizing tidbit, and my curiosity couldn’t let it go, of course. I bit and repeated the word. “Mostly?”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call murder ‘lovely.’”

  “There was a murder here in Hello?”

  “And an ugly one it was too.”

  “When was this?”

  “Oh, ’bout a month or so ago.”

  I thought he was going to say more, but just then a vehicle turned through the gate and pulled up in front of Nick’s Garage. Ben Simpson’s eyebrows shot up.

  “Well, well, isn’t this a coincidence? We’re talkin’ murder, and here comes the prime suspect now.”

  3

  The blue and white Ford Bronco had a dent in the hood, a crack across the passenger’s side of the windshield, and enough mud splatters to qualify as some avant-garde work of art. I expected a tough miner or cowboy type to emerge, but the person who stepped out was petite, blond, and female.

  “She’s a murder suspect?” I asked doubtfully. Although I knew I shouldn’t be doubtful on the basis of looks. Past experience has taught me that appearance has nothing to do with a capacity for murder.

  Ben nodded. “Right up there at the top of the list.”

  “For murdering whom?”

  “Her uncle, old Hiram McLeod himself. Hiram’s father and grandfather made a fortune with the Lucky Queen back in the early years. Smart about investing the money too, so even though the mine shut down years ago, Hiram was always one of the richest people in Hello. Though he was generous to a fault, you know? And all those wives must have been expensive.”

  I had a vision of generous old Hiram tossing hundred-dollar bills to strangers, with wives standing around like potted plants. Ben might be talkative, but he knew how to give just enough information to suck you in. No way I could not ask, “All those wives? As in polygamy?”

  “Oh no, marriages and divorces, just a lot of ’em. One wife died, I think. Anyway, there were eight of ’em altogether. Although there could have been more we never knew about, since Hiram spent some time away from Hello in his younger years.” Ben nodded as if he considered this a shrewd observation.

  “Maybe one of them murdered him,” I suggested.

  “Could be, I suppose.” A vague gesture of Ben’s hand dismissed ex-wives as suspects, however.

  “Was he married at the time of his death?”

  “No, but his fiancée is all broken up over it.”

  “Fiancée? He was planning to marry again?”

  “Some men don’t like being alone. Me
, I don’t mind. I’d never find another Edna.” He peered in the cat carrier. Koop hissed at him. He frowned. “Edna never cared for cats.”

  I didn’t mention it, but I knew right then that Ben was a smoker. Koop has this hissing-snarling-clawing phobia about smokers.

  “So no one thinks an ex-wife could have murdered him?”

  “It’s the niece who hit the jackpot with his death. Everyone knows she did it.”

  The young woman bypassed the office and headed for one of the big shop doors. She was wearing tight, light-blue jeans, heavy laced boots, a bulky blue jacket, and sunglasses. A purple knit stocking cap with a fuzzy knob on top covered part of her long blond hair.

  “Grandniece, actually,” Ben went on without any prompting from me. “Her grandma and ol’ Hiram were brother and sister. Well, half-brother and sister, technically. Hiram’s father never quite got the hang of being a one-woman man either. Hiram and the half-sister, Gypsy, fought like a couple of hungry bluejays, from what I’ve heard.”

  A grandma named Gypsy. Ancestors with too many wives. Murder. Not your run-of-the-mill niece.

  “And this woman’s name is … ?”

  “Kelli Keifer. She’s a lawyer.”

  A lawyer? I was surprised. Ski bunny would have been my guess. Then I reprimanded myself for jumping to conclusions based on appearance. “And she supposedly murdered her uncle because … ?”

  “To acquire his assets, of course.”

  “But if old Hiram and Kelli’s grandmother never got along, why would he leave his assets to Kelli?”

  “Mostly because he didn’t have anyone else to leave them to, I suppose. Though I guess he and Kelli got along okay.” The admission sounded reluctant. “But it was more a business than personal relationship. She was taking care of his legal and business affairs when it happened.” Ben nodded sagely, as if this were a significant point in Hiram’s death that canceled out the fact that the young woman and her uncle hadn’t exchanged gunshots at sunrise on Hello’s main drag.

  “Does this suspicion of her affect her local career as a lawyer?”

  “Would you want to entrust your legal affairs to a murderer? Although she wasn’t exactly Miss Popularity even before the murder.” Another sage nod.

  Kelli Keifer was beginning to sound like the underdog in all this, a lone woman with a whole town against her, apparently without proof, and I felt myself leaning toward her side. “Old Hiram didn’t have children of his own?”

  “Not unless one no one knows about suddenly turns up.”

  Ben Simpson was a good-hearted man, I was almost certain of that. He’d loved his Edna, and he’d willingly let me go ahead of him here at Nick’s. But I could also hear glee in his voice, as if he’d be delighted if some heretofore unknown heir suddenly appeared to set off fireworks.

  “Do you, like everyone else, think she did it?” I asked.

  The blunt question seemed to catch him off guard. He straightened his back and assumed a Retired Police Chief attitude. “Well, nobody knows for sure, of course. Innocent until proven guilty. I guess it isn’t a cut-and-dried case, because Kelli’s never actually been arrested. But everyone knows she did it,” he repeated with a dogged stubbornness that contradicted the “innocent until proven guilty” statement.

  Not me, I thought with my own stubbornness. I didn’t know Kelli Keifer had done it. “No one else had a motive?”

  “Like I said, ol’ Hiram was generous to a fault. Everyone appreciated that. He donated the land for High Cemetery, and for the town square downtown too. And personally paid for the statue in it and the street lighting around it. And last year he not only gave his entire library to the Ladies Historical Society, he donated enough money to add a wing to their building to put the books in.”

  “That’s very impressive,” I said, although I also thought it dodged the issue of other people with motives.

  “But there were people who didn’t appreciate all he did, I suppose,” Ben went on reluctantly. “Hiram was a shrewd businessman, and probably stepped on a few toes along the way. But in all these years, no one ever killed him. He was alive and kicking till Kelli came to town.”

  “You mean one day she arrived, and bingo! The next day he’s dead?”

  Ben frowned at what he apparently considered a flippant attitude on my part. “No, not that fast. She’s been here, oh, six months or so now.”

  “So maybe someone else used her presence to try to make it look as if she did it.”

  Ben gave me a cool stare. “You some kind of private eye or something?” he scoffed.

  Well, no. My only claim to detective knowledge is that I read a lot of mysteries. Plus the fact that my busy mutant curiosity gene has involved me in the solving of a few murders.

  Now I ignored Ben’s question and said, “Maybe she has a good alibi.”

  The door from the shop opened just in time for the young woman to hear my last word. It didn’t take diagrams for her to figure out what the topic of discussion was. Alibi isn’t a word that fits into most ordinary conversations.

  “Talking about me?” she inquired pleasantly. Though the pleasant tone was definitely laced with acid. She yanked off the sunglasses as if prepared to stare us down.

  The cold had pinked her cheeks, but I thought her eyes were probably that spectacular shade of blue no matter what the weather or temperature.

  Ben’s weathered face reddened with embarrassment and guilt. He plunked into a chair and suddenly became very busy looking for a page in the old Newsweek.

  I faced my guilt head-on. “We were gossiping,” I admitted to Kelli Keifer. “I’m sorry. Gossiping isn’t directly named as a no-no in the Ten Commandments, but I’m pretty sure it’s included as a footnote somewhere.”

  “That’s okay.” Her dismissive wave looked a little weary, but she smiled. “Everyone gossips. At least you’re honest about it. Gossip about me is currently the main pastime in Hello, but no one has ever actually admitted it before.” She gave Ben a baleful glance, then looked me up and down. “But I don’t think I know you.”

  “We’re just passing through. That’s my motor home out there in the shop. Are you having vehicle troubles too?”

  “I think something’s messed up with the carburetor on the Bronco, though it hasn’t actually conked out yet. But Nick doesn’t have time to look at it today. He’s coming in to check his appointment book for tomorrow.”

  She spotted Koop in the carrier and knelt down beside him. She touched the wire mesh, and he purred and rubbed the side of his big orange head against her fingertips. “Friendliest reception I’ve had in weeks,” she muttered as she stood up.

  Nick came in and pulled a spiral notebook out of a drawer. It looked as if it was written in grease by someone wearing mittens, but I was surprised he had an appointment book at all. He planted a finger on a space empty except for an oil spot. “Two o’clock tomorrow?”

  I couldn’t tell from his tone if he shared Ben Simpson’s opinion that Kelli Keifer was a murderer, but he didn’t sound what I’d consider small-town friendly.

  “I’ll be here. Thanks. Nice meeting you,” she added to me as she turned toward the door. She ignored Ben Simpson. “I hope there’s nothing too seriously wrong with your motor home.”

  “I don’t know.” I looked at Nick. “Is there?”

  Nick launched into an explanation about oil leaking out of the pan, which meant there was no oil in the system to lubricate the rods and cylinders and crankshaft. “So everything just seized up—”

  “Seized?” I repeated blankly.

  I guess he could see that my knowledge of engines rivals my understanding of the national debt. He started over. “Froze up, you might say. Though it has nothing to do with cold. It’s just that nothing in an engine can keep moving without oil to lubricate it. Everything just grinds to a stop.”

  Grinds. Yes, that was how the engine had sounded. “But where did the oil go? I had both the oil and filter changed a few days ago. I’m sure they put
in something like five quarts of it.”

  “The oil plug is missing. Could be whoever changed the oil didn’t get the plug screwed on tight after draining the old oil, and road vibration worked it loose after a while. When it fell out, oil would of drained out like pulling the plug on a bathtub. Must of left a big streak on the road back there somewhere. And it would’ve happened fast. The red light wouldn’t have been on more than a few minutes before everything froze up.”

  “So you can put more oil in, and then it will be okay?” I asked hopefully.

  Nick gave me a pitying look. “No, ma’am. I’m afraid not.”

  I jumped to the bottom line. Or maybe plummeted would be a better word. “So how long is this going to take to fix, and how much is it going to cost?”

  My bluntness got an equally blunt reply. “At least a week, maybe two. At least $3,500, maybe $4,000.”

  I gaped at him.

  “The engine is blown,” he said. “Shot. Kaput. Unrepairable. Those thunks and clunks you heard were the rods tearing up the cylinders because no oil was getting to them. You need a new engine.”

  “A new engine?” I repeated faintly.

  “I’ll have to order one, and I don’t know for sure how long it will take to get here. Or the exact cost.”

  There was something else Nick didn’t know. I did not have $4,000 jingling in my checking account. Not even $3,500.

  “Couldn’t you maybe get a used one … or something?”

  “Possible. But that means contacting wrecking yards everywhere from Denver to Albuquerque and Phoenix. Finding a good used one may take longer than ordering a new one. And you don’t really know what you’re getting.”

  “I see.”

  “I’m sorry. If I could repair this one, I would. But …” He lifted one shoulder regretfully. “I take Visa and MasterCard. Discover too, if that’s any help.”

  “I don’t use credit cards.” I’d heard too much about how traceable they were, and traceable was not what either Abilene or I could afford to be.