by Robert Greer
“And I’ll dig up what I can on Stafford,” said Julie. “Should be easy. When you’re worth a hundred million, gossip abounds.”
Suddenly both women’s eyes were locked on CJ. “I’m just an antiques dealer, here for the beer and chips,” CJ said defensively.
“Well, Mr. Antiques Dealer, do you think I can talk you into going to see Jacob Covington’s niece?” asked Flora Jean. “Hell, you and Billy could do a little fishin’ up on the Laramie or the North Platte, snag yourselves some fat little spring runoff trout, and then run by and have a talk with the lady at her ranch.”
“We could,” said CJ, feeling both enticed and squeezed. Peddling antiques was fun—and he enjoyed it—but there just wasn’t enough day-to-day excitement. The excitement for him when it came to antiques and collectibles, he now realized, had always been not selling but rather chasing down a find. The Del Mora case had him suddenly feeling whole and necessary again.
“Think it over,” said Flora Jean, recognizing that the gears in CJ’s head were churning. “There has to be some way you can drive up to Wyoming for a little information-gatherin’ and a fishin’ trip without going back on your word to Mavis.”
CJ didn’t answer. He was too busy trying to figure out how to broach the subject with Mavis.
An hour later, having left CJ to ponder her offer and giving Julie the green light to initiate a Stafford probe, Flora Jean sat at her office desk, phone in hand, trying to schedule a meeting with Arthur Vannick. She’d easily been able to schedule a meeting with the retired librarian, Theodore Counts, by telling him that she was interested in transcontinental railroad lore from the perspective of a school librarian with regional expertise, but getting an audience with Vannick was proving difficult. She’d been transferred to his appointment secretary, who’d placed her on hold, where for the past five minutes she’d been forced to listen repeatedly to a twenty-second promotion for Vannick’s security-systems business. Frustrated, she held for another minute and listened to Vannick’s promo one last time before shaking her head in disgust and slamming down the phone. Adjusting the half-dozen African bracelets that encircled her lower right arm, she was about to go get a cup of coffee to soothe her frustration when the phone rang.
“Floyd & Benson’s Bail Bonds,” Flora Jean answered robotically.
“It’s Julie.”
“What’s up, sugar? You got gas from all the guac and chips?”
Julie’s tone was all business. “Nope. This is more serious.”
Looking perplexed, Flora Jean said, “Sing your song, sugar.”
“Okay, but answer me straight. Why all the pushing and shoving to get CJ back into the game that just about finished him?”
Flora Jean took a long, deep breath. She’d sensed Julie’s discomfort near the end of their lunch. “’Cause the man’s dyin’. Inside and out. You can see it in his eyes!”
“Maybe so. But you’re about to make him go back on one hell of a promise with that trip to Wyoming. Come on, Flora Jean, there has to be another reason you’re pushing so hard.”
“I’m not forcin’ him to do nothin’, Julie. Just suggestin’. I’ve got my reasons.”
“Mind sharing them with me?”
Flora Jean gnawed at her lower lip, uncertain how to respond. She didn’t want to break a confidence, but there was no way she could continue to lie to Julie.
“Flora Jean? Come on.” The insistent tone of a criminal defense attorney was evident in Julie’s tone.
“I’m thinkin’,” said Flora Jean. She rose from her seat and, phone in hand, headed across the room to get her cup of coffee. On her way she glanced back toward her desk—the same desk CJ had worked at for years. She eyed the back wall and the rows of photographs of the hundreds of bond skippers he had apprehended over the years and thought about how CJ had plucked her from a dead-end pool of secretarial temps, taught her the bail-bonding business, supplied her with cases she could handle on her own, and, in the end, pretty much dropped a business that made money—albeit not a lot of money—into her lap. Unable to stonewall any longer, she said, “CJ’s got money woes, Julie, and he ain’t about to tell nobody about ’em, not even us.”
“He’s always had money problems.”
“Not like this. I got it straight from the horse’s mouth. That guy he rents Ike’s Spot from, the guy in the other half of that duplex, Lenny McCabe, says CJ’s upside down in his rent. Claims CJ ain’t paid him a dime in two months. Told me CJ gambled the last seventeen hundred dollars he had on earth on them books that were stolen. CJ dropped way too much into them lease-hold improvements when he fixed up the damn place. Fancy lit-up display counters, floor-to-ceilin’ shelves, havin’ McCabe prop up that lean-to of a garage behind the place for the Bel Air. I think CJ thought he had more money to play around with from sellin’ me the business than he actually did.”
“But he’s got money coming in. You pay him rent on your office space in the Victorian. I drew up the papers. And I know what he’s paying to lease Ike’s Spot. It should be close to a wash.”
“I know all that, sugar. But like I said, the money I’m payin’ him every month don’t begin to cover the cost of all them improvements he made in the space he’s leasin’ and the rent to boot. Bottom line is, the man ain’t makin’ no sales.”
“Why hasn’t he said something?”
“Come on, sugar, you know CJ. He ain’t never goin’ to say no thin’, ever. That’s why I was pushin’ so hard for him to go take that trip to Wyoming. Take himself a couple of days off and on top of it earn a little pay.”
“But he’d lose that much in sales being out of the store.”
There was a lengthy pause before Flora Jean finally responded: “Mavis might mind the place.”
“You told Mavis about CJ’s money problems?”
“The whole nine yards. I had to do somethin’.”
“I sure hope CJ never finds out.”
“You and me both,” Flora Jean said softly.
Julie let out a sigh. “Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first …”
“What?”
“Nothing,” said Julie. “Let me think about calling Mavis.”
“What are you gonna tell her?”
“I’ll ask her to give CJ some operating room. To let him have enough space to do a little of what he’s best at—investigating. A trip to Wyoming to talk to that niece of Covington’s isn’t a bounty-hunting or bail-bonding job. All he’s doing is gathering facts. It should be safe enough.”
“What if Mavis ain’t okay with that?”
“She’ll be okay with it.”
“You sure?”
“As sure as I am that CJ Floyd’s the main reason I have a law degree.”
“Then go for it. ’Cause I ain’t sure I’ve got the strength to face the man if he ever finds out I told Mavis he was up against it financially.”
“Come on, Flora Jean. You’re an ex-marine,” Julie said, anticipating Flora Jean’s standard once-a-marine-always-a-marine response.
“And CJ manned a .50-caliber machine gun on the back of a gunboat during a war that was one hell of a lot worse than mine. Go on. Talk to Mavis and help me dig myself outta this hole I got myself in.”
“Just remember exactly who the me in this is if things start to go south on us,” said Julie, pondering how to broach the subject with Mavis.
Flora Jean nodded without answering as Julie carefully cradled the phone.
CHAPTER 10
CJ’s mind was made up: he was going to take a trip to Wyoming. With one foot up on his desk, he continued blowing smoke rings skyward, reminding himself that now all he had to do was explain his decision to Mavis.
It had been easier than he’d thought to locate Amanda Hunter, Jacob Covington’s twice-removed niece. When you are looking for a woman in her midforties who’s been a Cheyenne Frontier Days rodeo queen, and who owns and operates a seven-thousand-acre cattle ranch, fingers start to point you in the right direction pretty quickly. The Wyoming State Lives
tock Board and the State Stock Growers Association not only provided CJ with the phone number to Hunter’s Triangle Bar Ranch, they practically gave him directions on how to get there. Wyoming, open space and friendly and populated by just over five-hundred-thousand residents, still had what in the past thirty years Colorado had forever lost.
CJ called Billy DeLong from Ike’s Spot just before three o’clock, laid out the Luis Del Mora story for him, and asked the wiry cowboy with one glass eye if he was up for a road trip.
After some arm-twisting, Billy agreed to meet CJ that evening in Cheyenne, where they would coordinate a visit to the Triangle Bar Ranch the next morning, a visit that CJ admitted hesitantly he hadn’t quite set up. Telling Billy he’d call him back if things didn’t pan out, CJ hung up to call Amanda Hunter.
CJ’s phone conversation with Amanda Hunter was disjointed and a hard sell. It took five minutes for the person who answered the phone to locate Hunter, and several more minutes of introduction and explanation before Hunter, a woman with a sexy, gravelly voice, consented to listen to what CJ had to say. After ten more minutes of conversation, Hunter finally agreed to meet CJ the next morning at the ranch. “Seven a.m. sharp,” she said. “I’ll be repairing one of our windmills.” She gave CJ directions to the ranch’s Laramie Mountains foothills entrance, fired off directions to where she’d be, “smack in the middle of our Casement pasture,” and then, surprising CJ with her candor, added, “I’ve been concerned for years that one of these days it would come down to this.” When CJ pushed her for an explanation, she said matter-of-factly, “Down to somebody getting killed over my Uncle Jake’s hobby. We’ll talk about it tomorrow,” she said, abruptly ending the conversation.
Should be an interesting visit, CJ thought, stubbing out the cheroot he’d smoked down to a nub and swinging a boot onto the edge of his desktop. He ran through a checklist of the things he needed to do before heading for Wyoming, a list that included calling Billy back to tell him things were a go and that he’d hook up with him in Cheyenne that evening, asking Lenny McCabe to cover Ike’s Spot for him the next day, checking in with Flora Jean and Julie to let them know what was up and see how they’d fared with their own assignments, and finally and most importantly calling Mavis.
A half hour later, he’d made every phone call but one. He finished stowing his fishing gear in the back of his aging Jeep, the Bel Air’s road-trip surrogate that Rosie Weeks kept running for him, sighed, and slipped his cell phone off his belt. He punched in the number to Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen to let Mavis know he’d be by her house a little past five. He wasn’t sure how he would explain that he’d gotten himself entangled in the web of a murder investigation, but as the phone rang, echoing loudly in his ear, he knew he’d better come up with one hell of a story.
Mavis Sundee lived in a beautifully restored turn-of-the-century Queen Anne in Denver’s Curtis Park neighborhood, where housing prices were rising daily and longtime Curtis Park residents, like their Five Points neighbors, were getting the kind of money they’d once only dreamed of for homes only blocks from downtown and running for cover.
CJ had a thousand-dollar smile on his face as he mounted the front steps to the Queen Anne, a smile bolstered by the fact that just before he’d headed out to see Mavis, a customer had walked into Ike’s Spot, nosed through a stack of 1940s Life magazines sealed in Ziploc bags, and bought a dozen magazines along with a $300 Plow Boy tobacco canister, circa 1944. Five hundred dollars wealthier than he’d been a half hour earlier and feeling flush, CJ rang Mavis’s doorbell with his smile locked on high beam.
Mavis answered the door seconds later. She was dressed in loose-fitting chinos and a blaze-orange blouse. Her close-cropped, curly jet-black hair framed an oval cocoa-brown face devoid of wrinkles. Sometimes when they were making love, CJ would teasingly ask her how she’d managed, at forty-six, to retain her youthful good looks. Her answer was always the same: “Good genes, baby, good genes.” She locked a hand in CJ’s, guided him over the threshold, and kissed him softly on the lips. “You’re looking awfully happy. Didn’t realize my kisses were that powerful.”
“I am, and they are,” said CJ, running a hand across Mavis’s derriere.
“Come on, CJ. You’re barely in the house.” She removed his hand, slapped it, and, recupping it in hers, led CJ through the first-floor living room, down a hallway plastered with family photos, and into the sun room off the kitchen. “Park it,” she said with a wink.
CJ took a seat at a ceramic-topped table, sensing as he did that Mavis, always even-keeled, seemed more bubbly than usual.
“Beer, wine, coffee?” she asked, slipping behind a half wall that separated the sunroom from the kitchen and stepping over to a below-the-counter refrigerator.
“You.”
“What’s with this one-track sex-video mind of yours, CJ Floyd?”
CJ grinned. “Just wound up over a sale.” He hoped the good news would pave the way for the less palatable news to follow.
“Great. What sold?”
“A whole stack of vintage magazines and a hefty-priced tobacco canister.”
“Reason enough to celebrate. You pick the libation,” Mavis said, swinging open the refrigerator door.
The look on CJ’s face was suddenly serious. “Coke.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah.”
Mavis slipped two Cokes out of the refrigerator, walked back over to the table, and pulled up a chair. “You’re traveling light,” she said, popping the tabs on the sodas and handing one to CJ.
“I got a problem, Mae,” he said, calling Mavis by her middle name, a coded distress signal they’d shared for more than four decades and one that always served as a prelude to any discussion of serious matters.
Mavis’s eyes widened and her voice dropped an octave, “Have you got a number?”
CJ, who during his bail-bonding and bounty-hunting days had ranked bond-skip cases on a scale of one to ten, realized where Mavis was headed with the question. Cases garnering a ten represented worst-case scenarios—life-threatening treks that could cost CJ a portion of, or sometimes all, the bond assurance money he’d put up, saddle him with sleepless nights, and quite possibly put him in a face-off with a family member of the bond skipper, the skipper himself, a lover, the bond skipper’s victim, or a cop. “A one, maybe a two at best,” he said hesitantly.
Remaining silent, Mavis twisted her engagement ring around on her finger. There was no hint in her expression that she’d already talked to Julie.
“Flora Jean asked me to help her with a case. All I have to do is gather a little information for her up in Wyoming,” he said, hoping Mavis wouldn’t press him for details.
“Information about what?” The words came out rapid-fire, as if they were one.
“Info about those books I bought that were stolen.”
“Then it’s about a murder.” Mavis strained to maintain her composure.
CJ shook his head in protest. “No, I’m just going to talk to a woman who’s a relative of someone who’s mentioned in one of the books. She runs a ranch an hour or so northwest of Cheyenne. Billy’s going with me. He’s driving over from Baggs to meet me in Cheyenne this evening.”
Eyes narrowed, Mavis asked, “How did Flora Jean get involved?”
“I gave her name to the mother of that kid who was killed. Since I was the last one to see her son alive, the kid’s mother came by Ike’s the other day to find out if there was any way I could help her find out who killed her son. I put her in touch with Flora Jean.”
“You’re heading down a road you promised to never travel again.” Mavis’s words traveled across the table with force.
CJ reached out, clasped Mavis’s right hand, and began toying with her engagement ring. “It is an overnight trip, Mavis. I’ll ask the woman a few questions first thing tomorrow morning and be done by nine. After that Billy and I will spend a few hours fishing, and I’ll be home in time for the six o’clock news.”
Ma
vis’s response was silence.
CJ released her hand, sat back in his chair, and forced back a sigh. His next words came out slowly as, hanging his head, CJ came as close to admitting defeat as he’d ever come in his life. “I’m up against it financially, Mavis. I need the money Flora Jean’s gonna pay me.”
Mavis swallowed hard, feeling partially responsible for CJ’s plight. She was the one who’d demanded that he make a choice between the kind of disjointed, precarious life he’d been living and her. Suddenly she remembered something Flora Jean had told her one night almost nine months earlier during the agonizing time that Flora Jean and CJ had alternated staying with her after Celeste Deepstream had beaten and kidnapped her and imprisoned her in an iron lung on the top of a mountain in a remote cabin in the New Mexico mountains. It was the same thing Julie Madrid had called to remind her of in a slightly different way just thirty minutes earlier. But it was Flora Jean’s words that kept cycling through her head: You’re comin’ off a bad time right now, sugar, but it won’t stay that way forever. You got me here to ease the hurt, and you got your man. And although you may not think so right now, you gonna pretty much need him the way he’s always been. Trust me, CJ ain’t the kind that can spend the rest of his life peddlin’ antiques.
Recognizing that CJ was in pain—hurting down deep from trying to please her—suffering as a result of forcing himself to try to change who he was, she slipped her hand into his. “Who’ll cover the store?” she asked softly, a clear hint of acquiescence in her tone.
“Lenny,” CJ said, surprised by Mavis’s response. “He knows my inventory, my reserve prices, and he’s my landlord to boot. He can handle things for one day. And Dittier and Morgan will be out back for security,” CJ added, euphoric that for some inexplicable reason Mavis had bought in to his plans. Realizing from the sudden frown on Mavis’s face that he shouldn’t have mentioned the issue of security, he mouthed an inaudible Damn.
“Security?” said Mavis, looking confused.
“Yeah, but it’s nothing. Dittier and Morgan thought they heard somebody rummaging around in the alley behind the store the other night. They probably heard a raccoon or some wino looking for a spot to bed down,” said CJ, knowing that Dittier had found two fresh sets of human footprints in the alley.
