“Well, thank Christ for that and the fact that they don’t have those damn Christmas carols playing.” He took a nip and cast a glittering gimlet of a dark eye toward the trio. “Do me a favor?”
“What’s that?”
“Shoot me.”
I smiled. “No.”
“It’s all I want for the holidays, a bullet in the back of my head.” He studied the board and massaged the stump where his leg used to be. “Lousy thirty-seven-cent cartridge . . .”
“Lucian.” The Dixieland trio had coaxed a few couples out onto the open area at the end of the table near the Christmas tree. It appeared as if everyone was having a good time—all but one. “If you don’t like the communal area, then you shouldn’t have set fire to your room.”
“I didn’t set fire to my damned room.” He took another sip to combat the general festive spirit. “Jesus H. Christ—didn’t even have that damn thing plugged in. They bring us those fire hazards on that windy side of the building, but they already keep the place so hot you can barely breathe.” His eyes came back to mine. “You ever see me plug in that space heater?”
It was true, I hadn’t. “Maybe one of the attendants did it.”
“Those minimum-wage morons couldn’t stick a plug up their ass with both hands.”
He grew quiet, and I grew worried. His eyes were on the chessboard, but I knew that wasn’t what he was seeing. “Lucian.”
Even his voice was distracted. “What?”
“Are you all right?” He didn’t answer at first, and I took advantage of the situation to give him a good going-over. His hair was like wire and still the silver it had been for decades, cut in the same manner it had been since he had flown a B-25 Mitchell off the deck of the USS Hornet all those years ago. The hard times had not diminished him but had worn him like a good piece of leather. His dark eyes were still bright as searchlights, and the wrinkles around them were like fissures in granite. Maybe it was a reminder of my own mortality, but I hated to think of him as old.
He set the searchlights on me, and his words were heavy and low-pitched. “I think I’m slippin’ a little.” I stared at him. “I swear I don’t remember plugging that thing in or turning it on.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing and looked around the room just to make sure my eyes wouldn’t water. To my surprise, Genevieve McNeil was motioning to me. I excused myself from my old boss and slid down the bench a few seats, careful to remove my hat. “Mrs. McNeil, Mrs. Percy, how are you ladies?”
Genevieve cast a cold and forbidding eye on me, her feathered cloche balanced on her narrow head, the veil patchworking her gray hair. “Should you be drinking on duty, Sheriff?”
I sat my tumbler on the table. “I’m not on duty, Mrs. McNeil.”
The feather on her hat wobbled along with her head, but her eyes stayed steady. It was easy to see that she had been an exuberant daughter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Movement. “And what if you are called to duty, Mr. Longmire?”
“I won’t be.” I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. “We’re perfectly safe, Mrs. McNeil.”
“You’d be a pretty judge of that with that friend of yours setting fire to the place only last night.” She huffed a breath and glanced at Elaine Percy, sitting next to her, who smiled at me and shrugged.
My attention went back to Genevieve. “I think he only singed the curtains in his room.”
She shared another glance with Mrs. Percy. “Drinking, no doubt. You realize he’s the only resident with liquor in his room?”
Officially chastised, I placed my hat back on my head and stood. “You ladies have a Happy New Year.” I edged my way back toward the chessboard with my bourbon. I was sure that if I had left it on the table, Mrs. McNeil would have quickly watered the plants with it.
Bud Elkins, enjoying a break from his bartending duties and taking advantage of my indecision, threw a hand up to call my attention to another photo on the wall beside the entryway.
I joined him, as I could see that Lucian hadn’t moved and was still pondering the small wooden pieces along with his own faculties. Elkins raised a narrow forefinger and pointed at a picture of a sprawling, low-slung building. I shifted and looked at it. “Where’s that?”
The ex-mayor shifted with me and smiled. “That was my first dance hall, north of town.” He sighed deeply. “Burned down and never got open. Long before your time—back in the dirty thirties.”
“After Prohibition?”
He nodded his head, aware that he was talking to the law, even if it was the law with a bourbon in his hand. “You bet.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, Bill Miller—before you were born—worked for me and slept in the building since they were just getting ready to lay the hardwood dance floor the next morning. Hell of a carpenter, but the man drank—built the Peters Dance Hall, Hotel Ladore, and the American Legion, too. Anyway, Bill said he’d gotten up to go take a whiz and then had gone back to sleep—man slept like a log—woke up an hour later ’cause he said angels were talkin’ to him, and the whole place was on fire. It was an honest-to-God miracle he didn’t get burned up alive. It was so late and took so long for the fire department to get out there . . .” His voice trailed off. “Ninety thousand shingles, seventy thousand feet of lumber, twenty thousand dollars. That was a lot of money back then.”
“That’s a lot of money now.” I thought about it. “I think I’m starting to remember the story . . . Didn’t they arrest a fellow?”
“George Miller, Bill’s brother. They found the oilcan that smelled like kerosene that Otto Hanck, the Mennonite tinsmith from over on Klondike, had made for him. Even had his initials on it—GM. Otto never would say the name of the man who bought the can, but since Miller had a competing dance hall over in Story and was the brother of my handyman, it was pretty much an open and shut case.”
“Yep, but didn’t the dance hall over in Story burn down the next week?”
There was a shadow of discomfort that played across the old man’s eyes. “That it did. There’s a photograph of that right over there.”
We readjusted ourselves and looked at another picture. “Hmm.”
Buddy pointed to another photo. “And there was one that burned up in Big Horn the week after that.”
I swallowed a little more Pappy’s to prod my memory. “I’m trying to remember about George Miller . . .”
Bud provided the answer. “Moved away after he got out of Rawlins. Idaho, I think.”
“What about the brother, Bill?”
“Drank himself to death.”
I moved on to the next photograph, but my mind stayed snagged on the one I’d left behind. “Do you think Bill was an accomplice?”
“Nah, he didn’t have the nerve for that kind of thing. He was quite a bit older than his brother, fought in the Great War, although I don’t know what was so great about it. He got mustard gassed, and I don’t think he ever got over it.” The ex-mayor raised his hand and shook it as if palsied. “Had the shakes, bad. People used to joke that the reason he was such a good carpenter was because he was a natural at sanding.”
I nodded and looked at the next photo down the line and what looked like a celebration of some kind, a fishing derby, maybe, with a few individuals that I recognized this time. “Robert Taylor.”
“The actor, sure. You remember him being around here, don’t you?”
I laughed to myself. He was young in the photograph, and the matinee smile was there, the one that had gotten him the record twenty-four-year contract at MGM. “I remember when he used to come down off the mountain in that Cadillac of his with the steer horns and terrorize every stationary object in town. I actually met him one weekend when I was still in school.”
Bud leaned in closer and raised his glasses again, and I started wondering why he wore the things. “Yep, that one was taken when the
y opened the lodge on the peninsula out at Lake DeSmet.” He dropped the glasses and leaned in even further. “Well, speak of the devil.” He turned to me and pointed at the photo to a rail-thin man in the back row. “Bill Miller.” He laughed and shook his bald head. “No surprise; he must’ve helped to build that place, too. Hell of a carpenter. You know, now that I think of it, that place partially burnt down, too.”
I left my gaze on the doomed man but couldn’t help but notice the pretty girl in the hat beside him. With his eye to the gentler sex, Buddy knew where mine had come to rest. He grinned. “I bet you can’t guess who that gal is.”
I studied the photo—the woman did look vaguely and freshly familiar. “I’m not . . .”
“Genevieve McNeil.”
I could feel my eyes widen as I stared at the photo. Something struck me, and I moved back to the photograph of the burned dance hall and the small crowd out front, then I moved and studied the photo before that one and the photo before that.
I looked back over my shoulder past Lucian and the chessboard to where Mrs. McNeil sat with her flock of cronies. After a second, she glanced up to see me looking at her. I swiveled my head to reexamine the third photo and then turned to look at her again, and she wore an expression that I had grown accustomed to seeing in the business of enforcing the law.
I turned back to the ex-mayor. “Genevieve McNeil was married to Bill Miller?”
Distracted by the few residents lining up at the broom closet for holiday cheer, he responded absentmindedly. “About ten years. She finally left him and married a man named McNeil, and it wasn’t too long after that that Bill died.”
I glanced back again, but Genevieve had returned to conversing with her friends and was now ignoring me. I noticed Lucian waving to get my attention and apologized to Bud for taking him away from his duties as bartender. He laughed, thumped my back with the flat of his bony hand, and returned to the makeshift bar as I ambled back to the chessboard.
“You gonna play chess or gallivant all night?”
I sat and reached down to pet Dog, who was snoring. I played at examining the board and threw out a question. “Hey, Lucian, do you remember when the Antelope Bar on Main Street burned down back in the late seventies?”
He snorted. “When that dumbass in the slurry bomber missed the whole damn thing? Christ, I coulda’ hit that building from five thousand feet with a sack of potatoes. Yeah, I remember. Why?”
“Do you recall who the primary witness was?”
Annoyed, he looked up from the board. “The fire?”
“Yep.”
He grunted a dismissal. “No.”
“Wasn’t it Genevieve McNeil?”
He thought about it with his lips pressed together and his heavy eyebrows crouched over his dark eyes. “Mighta’ been the old she-buzzard, hell, I don’t know—but then, it seems I don’t know much lately.”
* * *
That match and the next one were mine, but then he got focused and beat me three in a row.
It was approaching midnight, and Lucian understood my preference for being home in my cabin on New Year’s Eve in case Cady decided to call from Philadelphia. Dog joined me in standing as I picked up my coat. I glanced around the room, but Genevieve had disappeared. “You want me to walk you to your room? I know you don’t want to be in here at midnight.”
He looked up, half startled. “What, you gonna give me a kiss—or are you afraid I can’t find it? Besides, they got it locked.”
I pulled out my pocket watch to check and make sure I had plenty of time to get home. “C’mon.” Dog followed us as we made our way down the hallway toward room 32, and I looked over my shoulder to make sure that none of the staff was following. Giving his only leg a rest and pulling his briarwood pipe and beaded tobacco pouch from the pocket of his wool vest, the old sheriff leaned against the wall and watched me.
I pulled a credit card from my wallet and slipped it between the facing and the door, about where the catch mechanism was, but it only went halfway.
Lucian cleared his throat and lit his pipe. “They turned ’em so you can’t do that anymore.”
“Hmm . . .” I put the card back in my wallet. “I guess we have to go back to the old standby.” I gripped the knob in both hands, placed a shoulder against the jamb in order to force it away from the catch, and pushed. There was a slight cracking noise, and the door came open. I reached around, unlocked it, and held my arm out to motion Lucian inside.
He glanced at the lock plate and the small area of splintered wood. “You messed up my damn door, not that I ever lock the thing anyway.”
I stood in there with Dog; the room smelled a little like burnt chemicals, probably from the flame retardant in the curtains that had caught fire. I looked around and noticed that they hadn’t given him the option of another space heater. “You don’t ever lock your door?”
“No; why the hell would I do that in here?”
I thought about it. “Well, I’m going to head out.” He stood in the middle of the room. “You all right?”
He glanced up and then his eyes went back to where I assumed the space heater had been. “Yep.”
I stood there for a bit, then gave up the ghost and pulled the knob. I was about to walk away when I noticed the door across the hallway open about two inches; when I stopped, it quickly closed.
I weighed my options for a while, banking my hunches, then stepped across the carpeted floor and gently knocked.
The door immediately opened about six inches. “Not ringing in, Mrs. McNeil?”
Her face stiffened, and she took a moment to respond. “I’ve done a few more of them than you, Mr. Longmire.”
“Mrs. McNeil?”
“Yes?”
I glanced down at Dog as he sat on my foot. “I need you to do me a favor.”
“And what would that be?”
I looked at her. “No more fires.”
She stood there with her mouth opened, and now I was sure; I had nothing, but I was sure. She flinched and, with a fluttering movement, began closing the door, but I caught it in one hand and held it open. “You burned down Elkins’s Dance Hall before it could open. There’s no way the tinsmith Otto Hanck would’ve gone to the trouble of painting a man’s initials on an oilcan, but he would’ve for a woman. I knew the Hanck family and they were very religious, but Otto wasn’t specifically lying when he told authorities that he’d never tell them the name of the man who bought the oilcan. Your ex-husband Bill Miller was noted to be a heavy sleeper, but you woke him before the fire you set got out of hand.”
She didn’t move, but her eyes dropped to look at Dog.
“I figure you set the chain of events in motion that burned down all those dance halls, pitting the owners against each other—or you did it yourself. Then you set fire to the DeSmet Lodge, but that one didn’t go all the way. Is that when Bill found out?”
She didn’t answer but continued looking at Dog, who wagged in response.
“That’s when you left him, right?” I let out with a deep sigh and was sure she could smell the bourbon on my breath. “Then there was the Antelope Bar on Main Street where you were the primary witness along with a few others for cover. I could go on, but all I’ve got to go on is hearsay, half-century-old evidence, and you in your hats in the photographs of every burned-down drinking establishment in the county for the last seventy years.” I paused and let the weight of my next words take hold. “But the incident that concerns me is the one in room 32 across the hall here.” I leaned down with my face very close to hers and could smell the old feathers of her hat and maybe even a little smoke—but maybe that was my imagination. “I don’t know when you went into Lucian’s room and plugged in that space heater and draped the curtain over it, but I bet I can find out.”
Her baleful, beady eyes came up and met mine.
“Don’t
test me on this, Genevieve. If you do, I’ll send you down to Lusk to the women’s prison for whatever’s left of your miserable life.”
I lowered my hand and stood there, not feeling so good about bullying a ninety-year-old woman. I probably didn’t need that last part, but I wanted her scared enough to not try it again. She lowered her eyes and closed the door, and I looked at the painted surface. I could hear nothing but I was sure she was still standing on the other side, although the rules had changed now that she knew she was being watched.
After a moment, I turned to find Lucian standing in his own open doorway. “What the hell’s going on out here?”
I smiled at the old sheriff. “Nothing.” I stepped over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “Just so you know—you’re not losing your faculties.”
He looked puzzled for a moment, and then the dark eyes sharpened. “And what makes you so sure of that?”
I glanced behind me at the room across the hall and then back to him, knowing full well he’d figure it out. “A little bird told me.”
UNBALANCED
She was waiting on the bench outside the Conoco service station/museum/post office in Garryowen, Montana, and the only parts of her clothing that were showing beneath the heavy blanket she’d wrapped around herself were black combat boots cuffed with a pair of mismatched green socks. When I first saw her, it was close to eleven at night, and if you’d tapped the frozen Mail Pouch thermometer above her head, it would’ve told you that it was twelve degrees below zero.
The Little Big Horn country is a beautiful swale echoing the shape of the Bighorn Mountains and the rolling hills of the Mission Buttes, a place of change that defies definition. Just when you think you know it, it teaches you a lesson—just ask George Armstrong Custer and the Seventh Cavalry.
I was making the airport run to pick up Cady, who had missed her connection from Philadelphia in Denver and was now scheduled to come into Billings just before midnight. The Greatest Legal Mind of Our Time had been extraordinarily upset but calmed down when I’d told her we’d stay in town that night and do some Christmas shopping the next day before heading back home. I hadn’t told her we were staying at the Dude Rancher Lodge. A pet-friendly motor hotel that was assembled back in ’49 out of salvaged bricks from the old St. Vincent’s Hospital, the Dude Rancher was a Longmire family tradition. I loved the cozy feeling of the weeping mortar courtyard, the kitschy ranch-brand carpets, and the delicious home-cooked meals in the Stirrup Coffee Shop.
Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories Page 5