by Robert Greer
For now she would remain a flat board in darkness, a loose piece of scaffolding that no one could see, and she’d do what she’d come to do without altering her plan. Confident that she’d seen enough for one evening, she scooted along the catwalk and descended the ladder, wondering whether the woman who’d rushed from the building next to Floyd’s was still crying and whether, like her, the woman would be seared inside and guilt-ridden forever because she hadn’t done all she could for her loved one.
CJ smiled at Morgan and Dittier’s inventiveness. After losing their home on the back porch of Ike’s Spot, they’d set up new digs in the back of his garage without missing a beat. “You’re back off the streets, for now at least. Bunk here as long as you like,” said CJ, shaking his head in amazement at the garage’s cluttered transformation. “It’s not as stylish as what you had, but it’s livable.”
“It’ll work, won’t it, Dittier?” said Morgan.
Reading Morgan’s lips, Dittier shot Morgan an affirmative thumbs-up grin.
“Dittier looks like he just ate the canary,” said CJ, turning to leave.
“Nope,” said Morgan, mussing what was left of the skinny rodeo clown’s thinning hair. “He’s just happy to have a place to call home. And so am I. Thanks,” Morgan called out to a retreating CJ.
A late-evening, misty mountain chill filled the Queen City’s air as Oliver Lyman, cell phone clutched in his right hand, headed for his car with a bucket of chicken tucked under his other arm. Three eager undergrads from his honors elective in American history were waiting for Lyman and the chicken back at the Metro State campus, and experience had taught him that the bucket’s contents would be devoured in no time. Teaching had its drawbacks, but it also had perks. The money stank, but the youthful energy of a college campus clearly made up for it, and soon the money, or lack of it, wouldn’t matter. Soon the only thing that would matter would be enjoying a way of life he’d worked for years to carve out for himself. He’d done his time in the academic trenches, twenty-five years, and in all that time he’d been patient, less than controversial, and compliant. And now, after all that time, after all the boring faculty dinners, the kissing up to petty administrators, and the traveling to meaningless conferences, he’d have his big score.
He reached his car, looked back toward the glow from the brightly lit KFC bucket in the mist, opened the door, and placed the bucket of chicken on the front seat. He flipped his cell phone open, punched in a phone number, and shut the car door before uncapping the bucket, extracting a chicken wing, and taking a bite. “I’m still waiting on my money,” he said into the phone the instant he heard the familiar voice on the other end.
“Are you eating something?”
“Chicken.”
“Didn’t your mother tell you it’s impolite to talk with food in your mouth?”
“I never had a mother. Just like I don’t have my money. I’m getting tired of waiting.”
“No need to wait much longer. Your ship came in today.”
“You’ve said that before,” Lyman protested.
“And I was wrong. Today I’m right.”
“That would be a change.”
“Don’t press it, Professor. I could change my mind.” The high-pitched response brimmed with irritation.
“You wouldn’t chance it.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“Don’t cross me.” Lyman took another bite of chicken. “I delivered on my part of the deal.”
“Not exactly.”
“So there were some glitches. You got the photo.”
“That I did.”
“So cough up my money!”
“You’ll get it tonight. Same place as before.”
“Good. And then we’re done,” said Lyman.
“Done.”
“Don’t short-change me,” warned Lyman. “I’ve documented everything, and I’ve got myself a hole card just in case.”
“I’m not stupid, Professor.”
“Didn’t think so. How about meeting in fifteen minutes?”
“Works for me.”
“How big a wad is forty thousand dollars?”
“Big enough to fill a tote bag.”
“I like that,” said Lyman. “Sounds so life-expanding.”
“Save the philosophy session for class, and be there in fifteen minutes.”
“I’ll be there,” said Lyman, taking a final bite of chicken and tossing the bone out the window. “And I intend to count every dollar before leaving.”
“Your call.”
“It’s been my call from the beginning, or have you forgotten who hooked this up? I’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Lyman closed his cell phone, opened the car’s glove compartment, slipped out a four-inch-long hunting knife, which he placed on the seat next to him, and wiggled the toes of his right foot, making certain his insurance policy was right where he’d put it two hours earlier. Moments later he was heading south on Speer Boulevard, cruising along at nearly double the thirty-miles-per-hour speed limit, oblivious to the meeting with his students—that, after all, could wait.
CHAPTER 19
Arthur Vannick browsed the Silverthorne Outlet Mall for close to half an hour after his meeting with Counts, ending his shopping trek with a fish sandwich and fries at an empty Burger King before topping off his gas tank and heading back for Denver. Scoring less than $30,000 on a million-dollar gambit was a bad return, and having to share half the money with a self-hating black man was even worse, he kept reminding himself all the way home to the Queen City.
Once home his thoughts turned to where things might have gone wrong in his quest to find the missing daguerreotype. All the thefts of books from the Stafford library had gone like clockwork, so he couldn’t help but wonder if Counts wasn’t lying to him, and whether he’d already found and disposed of the daguerreotype. Counts, after all, had been bold enough to flash a gun at him up in Silverthorne. Could be he’d had the balls to use the gun on Del Mora. He’d give it some thought while he went about finding out about the antiques dealer Counts had now mentioned twice, CJ Floyd.
“Bad choice,” said Flora Jean, standing in the middle of her office and shaking her head at CJ. “Whattaya plan to do when Sergeant Commons gets wind of the fact that you took all your stuff outta Ike’s? Sure as hell, he ain’t gonna like it.”
“I’ll tell him I was robbed,” CJ said with a smile.
“Come off it, CJ. The man ain’t stupid.”
“Screw him. It’s my stuff. It’s not material to the Del Mora murder, and Commons has already sifted through it twice. Worst comes to worst, I’ll plead ignorance.”
Flora Jean grinned. “You been talkin’ to Julie?”
“Who else? She said that if Commons presses the issue, the most any judge would do would be to give me a lecture about not interfering with an ongoing police investigation, slap me with a trespassing charge, and fine me a couple of hundred bucks.”
“Speakin’ of your own personal Clarence Darrow in a skirt, she dropped some books off for you yesterday just as I was gettin’ ready to leave for the day. They’re over on the table next to the coffee bar.”
“Great,” said CJ, walking over to the coffee alcove. “I called her after I talked to Paul Grimes. Asked her to dig up everything she could on Howard Stafford and to find me some books on the 1869 laying-of-the-rails ceremony.”
“Well, she did. And I took a look through ’em, hopin’ to give myself a history lesson worth a million bucks.”
CJ hefted the books one by one, scanning the titles. Building the Pacific Railway; Nothing Like It in the World; Iron Horses to Promontory; and Westward to Promontory. “Wonder where she found these?”
“From a book store that specializes in railroad history over on South Broadway,” she said. “And she said for me to tell you that you owe her fifty-five bucks.”
CJ smiled, aware that when he offered to reimburse his former secretary, whom he’d extracted from a physically abusive marri
age by jamming her then-husband’s head down a toilet and threatening to fracture his skull or worse the next time he bothered her, Julie would refuse the money.
CJ opened the second-largest of the three books, Iron Horses to Promontory, thumbed through the table of contents, and flipped to page fifty-five. “Here’s what all the fuss is about,” he said, walking back to Flora Jean and pointing to Andrew Russell’s famous laying-of-the-rails photograph.
“Who are all the men millin’ around the tracks and hangin’ off them two train engines?” Flora Jean asked, studying the photo.
“A mix of everyday workers and the two chief engineers of the project, the caption says.”
“Not a woman among them or a black face either,” protested Flora Jean.
“It was 1869, Flora Jean.”
“So history turns out to be a bunch of scraggly-lookin’ white boys puffin’ and posturin’ for the camera, lookin’ for all the world like they just hit the Lotto. A million bucks for a photo of that. Shit, looks pretty much like a picture of one of them University of Colorado fraternity parties to me.”
“It’s not the people in the photo that make it valuable. What makes it valuable, according to what Billy DeLong’s told me, is the fact that there were so few real-time photos actually taken of such a historic event.” CJ set down the open book, picked up a smaller green book, Building the Pacific Railway, scanned the table of contents, and flipped to the C. R. Savage photo. “Pretty much the same,” he said, comparing the two photographs. “And I’m betting the third photograph, the one by Hart, is probably identical. Looks like I’ll have to do some reading. Did Julie have any insights?”
“Not really. The only thing she said as she was leavin’ was, ‘And they think we have robber barons now.’”
Looking pensive, CJ closed the books and set them aside. “So much for our history lesson. How about filling me in on what you came up with on Counts and Vannick?”
“No need to read up on those two. They’re pretty much open books. Counts is a pompous Oreo. How he ended up with an office in a library in the middle of Five Points is beyond me.”
“Contacts, I’d wager,” said CJ.
“Or havin’ dirt on somebody.”
“Umm, maybe. Did it seem to you like Counts had what it would take to kill someone?”
“Couldn’t tell. He was too busy blowin’ smoke and oglin’ my chest.”
“Looks like we’ll have to do a little more serious checking on Brother Counts,” said CJ.
“Where you gonna look?”
“I’ve got sources.”
“Willis?” Flora Jean said knowingly.
“Who else?” said CJ, aware that if anyone could come up with the goods on a bombastic wannabe-white windbag like Counts, it would be Mavis Sundee’s seventy-nine-year-old civil rights-pioneering father, Willis. “What did you dig up on Vannick?”
“Not much other than the fact that he tried a little brush-back move on me with his car, and he claims to be connected.”
“To what? A firehose?”
“Nope. Intimates that he’s a wiseguy. Had me shakin’ in my boots,” Flora Jean said sarcastically.
“I’ll do some checking on him too.”
“I’d be a little more careful with Vannick, CJ. Wiseguy or not, he sure ain’t no Counts. He’s the kind that would kill you if he had to, or at least hire it out.”
“I’ll remember that when I talk to Mario Satoni. I’m waiting to hear back from him about who’s out there doing freelance bombing these days.”
“Good place to start,” said Flora Jean. She’d never been told the whole story of CJ’s Uncle Ike’s link to Denver’s community of wiseguys, but she knew that connection and CJ’s and Mario’s passion for collecting antiques and Western memorabilia had made them friends over the years. “Think Mario still has his finger on the pulse of things?”
“Not like he used to, but he’ll be able to point me in the right direction on Vannick, and he’ll have inside dope on who’s the setup man to talk to if you’re planning a store bombing.”
“And if you find out anything, you’re gonna let the cops handle it, right?”
“Damn, Flora Jean. You’re starting to sound like Mavis.”
“I’m tryin’ to sound like somebody who don’t want you gettin’ your head blown off. You know as well as I do that Celeste Deepstream’s more than likely the brains behind that bombing. Ain’t you had enough of playin’ cat-and-mouse with that nutcase?”
“She likes me.”
Flora Jean flashed CJ a no-nonsense scowl. “Can it, CJ. You ain’t jokin’ with the boys down at Rosie’s. She’ll kill you if she gets the chance. Call the cops.”
“No need. Commons knows the whole Celeste Deepstream story, even warned me to keep my head down, as if he really gives a shit. What’s he gonna do, really?” CJ shrugged. “He’s just a homicide cop who happened to stumble into my feud with a psychopath.”
“Then call in somebody else.”
“I did. I talked to Danny Kearnes about keeping an eye on Mavis.”
“Danny’s still wet behind the ears, CJ. He’s only been on the force eight months.”
“You got somebody better?”
“No.” Eyeing CJ pensively, she asked, “You armed?”
CJ nodded.
“Guess your good sense is finally showin’ through, sugar. So now that I know you ain’t lookin’ to end up a self-sacrifice, where do we head next with the Del Mora murder?”
CJ stroked his chin thoughtfully. “I think we’ve got the Denver scene pretty much handled for now, but there’s still a Wyoming connection. I’m just not sure how that Sheets woman I told you about and that ranch lady Billy has a sweet tooth for, Amanda Hunter, fit in except for the fact that Sheets has a loose connection to your Metro State professor, Lyman.”
“Lyman I can check on, but I thought you said Billy gave Amanda Hunter a clean bill of health.”
“He did—I didn’t. She seemed a little too blasé about that break-in at her place, and for my money she didn’t seem concerned enough about somebody calling to ask about her uncle’s daguerreotypes a few months back.”
“Think she’s hiding something?”
“I don’t know, but I did find out something about her that she didn’t tell either me or Billy when we were there. Julie dug it up when she did a Google search on her. Called and told me first thing this morning. Turns out the woman’s a lot more than your basic cowgirl. She’s got a master’s degree in fine arts from the University of Arizona. Wanta take a stab at what her area of expertise happens to be?”
“Got me.”
“She’s a sculptor who minored in photography.”
“Sounds like maybe she didn’t tell you everything. But why would she steal from herself? You said she has a safe full of daguerreotypes.”
“But not the all-important missing one. Maybe she needed to kill someone to get it back. I’ll call Billy and tell him to put a little pressure on her. In the meantime, why don’t you do a double-check on Lyman, and when you do, ask him about Sheets?”
“Will do.” Flora Jean looked noticeably perturbed. “But before I hit the streets, I need to remind you of somethin’, CJ Floyd.”
“Shoot.”
“I know this Del Mora thing has your juices flowin’, sugar. It’s stamped all over your face. And believe me, I need every drop of expertise I can get. But Theresa Del Mora hired me to find out who killed her son, and bottom line is, in the end I’m the one who’s gotta deliver.”
The room fell silent until CJ finally cleared his throat. “Sorry. Guess I just found myself back on my old beat and liking it. I know it’s your show. It’s just that right now I’ve got no antiques business, no bail-bonding business, and not a damn place to go.”
“Wrong! What you’ve got, CJ Floyd, is me, and Mavis, and Julie, and Billy, and Rosie, and half-a-dozen other people who care about you that you ain’t even stopped to count. You just gotta figure out how to prioritize things s
o they’re workin’ in your favor.” Flora Jean dropped a comforting arm over CJ’s shoulders. “So we do what you just laid out, only a little slower, ’cause Alden’s up from Colorado Springs and we’re barbecuing this afternoon.”
Aware that Alden Grace, Flora Jean’s long-standing love interest, could turn the normally “once a marine, always a marine” Flora Jean into a pool of feminine softness, CJ grinned and said, “No room for guests?”
Flora Jean winked. “It ain’t that kind of barbecue, sugar.”
“Then get to Lyman when you can, and tell the general I said I still don’t see a ring on your finger.”
“Believe me, there’d be one there if he had his way. I’m the one who’s skittish, you know that. We’re salt and pepper, remember?”
“What did you just tell me?” CJ said pointedly, well aware that as the daughter of an East St. Louis, Illinois, prostitute, Flora Jean had watched her mother sell herself to men with drugs, money, or power until the day she’d died of tuberculosis. He understood Flora Jean’s fear of relationships, especially one that involved her falling in love with a powerful white man.
“That you need to prioritize things so they work in your favor,” Flora Jean said sheepishly.
“It works both ways, Ms. Benson.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Do that, and while you’re at it, give Alden my best.”
“Will do.” Flora Jean walked over to her desk, opened a drawer, and took out an envelope. “Theresa Del Mora dropped off another check first thing this morning. Figured I better pay you before you got antsy.” She handed the envelope to CJ. “I told her that sooner or later I’d have to talk to her boss. She seemed upset.”
