Listen to the Silence

by Marcia Muller

  While he checked the load, I reached up, popped the cover from the cab light, and unscrewed the bulb. If we’d driven into a trap, we wouldn’t make easy targets.

  We slipped from the truck, Hy holding the .45 in both hands and sweeping the surrounding area. I ran in a crouch to the house and leaned against the wall, listening. Nothing but the distant howl of a coyote. After a moment Hy followed.

  I went to the door and tried the knob; it turned, and I threw it open. Dark and silent in there. The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. The air inside was warm from being pent-up in the heat of the day; nothing moved or breathed, but a strong, familiar odor came to me. “Whiskey,” I said. “Bourbon.”

  “Maybe he’s passed out.”

  “Then he must’ve started early. We were supposed to be here at nine, and we’re only thirty minutes late.”

  “Well, let’s go inside, check it out.” When I frowned at him, Hy added, “The man asked us here so he could show us the house. He wasn’t around, the door was open, so we took a look without him.”

  I nodded, reached inside, found a light switch. It turned on an overhead fixture covered by a bamboo shade. The room was about nine-by-twelve, sparsely furnished with a pair of low chairs that looked like old car seats. A black-and-gold Formica breakfast bar separated it from a galley kitchen. A half-full tumbler of amber liquid sat on it, and a denim jacket was draped over its end. I started inside, but Hy moved past me, checking out the room and disappearing into a short hallway that opened to the rear of the structure. When he came back he stuck the .45 in his belt and said, “Nobody. Bedrooms aren’t even furnished.”

  I went to the bar and smelled the glass. Bourbon, but not enough to cause such a strong odor. Then I spotted the quart bottle lying on the matted blue shag carpet; the liquor had soaked into its tangled fibers.

  “So what’s happened to Jimmy, McCone?” Hy said.

  “We were late, he started drinking, and then wandered off to answer a call of nature?”

  “Maybe. Toilet’s busted into two pieces.”

  “But why didn’t he pick up his bottle before so much spilled? Or come back when he heard us drive in? Sound carries out here in the country.”

  “Yeah.”

  I went over and checked the jacket’s pockets. Nothing but a handful of crumpled receipts and papers. I smoothed the pieces of paper out: two shopping lists and a single phone number in the 408 area code, all scribbled in what looked to be Jimmy’s hand.

  Monterey was in the 408 area. Quickly I ran Austin’s home and office numbers through my memory. No, it was neither of them. I pulled my cellular from my bag and punched in the number. No service. Cell sites were few and far between here.

  I motioned to Hy and we went outside to take a look around.

  From the rust on the shed’s cabin and padlock, no one had entered it for years. I found a corner where the ivy had forced the metal apart, pried it, and used my flashlight to look inside. A tractor-type mower, some tools, a few gallon cans of paint. Hy was inside Jimmy’s truck when I returned.

  “His insurance card’s expired, and he eats a lot of Dove Bars,” he called. “Engine’s cooling, but I’d say it’s been driven within the last hour. I don’t know about you, McCone, but the situation here doesn’t look good to me.”

  “To you and me, it doesn’t. But if we report it to the sheriff’s department, they’ll see it differently. Jimmy’s an adult, and he’s got a reputation around here—probably not a good one. They’ll tell us he got drunk and went off someplace; they’ll say we should wait till he turns up at the café tomorrow morning, hungover and more abrasive than ever.”

  “So I guess we’ll go back to town and do just that.”

  A message for Hy had been slipped under our cabin door: “Call Gage Renshaw.”

  Gage Renshaw: my old nemesis, who once had hired me to find Hy so he could kill him. Now his partner, along with Dan Kessell, in the international security firm. The relationship among the three of them—four, if you counted me—would never be easy, but over the years we’d developed a workable arrangement. RKI often sent business my way, and Hy’s association with them allowed him to draw a percentage of the firm’s considerable profits for very little work, while utilizing their resources for his human-rights projects. But when they did need his services, the price was potentially high; the situations at which he excelled were always dangerous.

  For a moment after he showed me the message slip I stood by the cabin door. Then, when he went to return the call, I escaped to the bathroom, where I splashed cold water on my face and tried to adapt to this shift in plans. I came back as Hy hung up the phone; his body was tensed, brow furrowed in concentration. Already he’d moved far from this room—and from me.

  “Pete Silvado’s gonna have to get used to a woman driving that truck,” he said when he noticed me. “CEO of one of our big multinationals was snatched this afternoon. Gage is sending one of our planes to pick me up at Newell, over by Tule Lake.”

  I wanted to ask where the CEO had been snatched, where Hy was going, but I knew better. Chances were that he himself didn’t know as yet. Gage and Dan passed on sensitive information only if and when a person needed to know—even if that person was their partner and best troubleshooter.

  I asked, “How long do we have?”

  “Couple of hours.”

  Not long enough to say all the things we needed to say, should this job go wrong in some horrible way. Except that we never did put those things into words—our way of wrapping ourselves in the illusion of normalcy.

  I smiled at him. “That’s time enough.”

  Sunday

  SEPTEMBER 17

  7:21 A.M.

  The phone woke me, but when I fumbled the receiver to my ear, I heard only a dial tone. As soon as I replaced it, the ringing sounded again and I identified it for what it was: the call of a mockingbird, probably perched in the leathery-leaved manzanita bushes that crowded up against the cabin walls. Now it segued into more of its repertoire, the shrill whistle Mr. Easley used to call his little terrier.

  The bed felt empty and cold without Hy there, more so because I still carried the tactile memory of his hands and body on mine. I reached tentatively outside the covers, found the air was frigid; I’d neglected to turn up the heat when I returned late last night from dropping him at Newell. After lying there for around ten minutes more, I rushed to make coffee and get into the shower. Then I dressed except for my shoes, grabbed a cup and took it back to bed to sip while I made my morning calls.

  First the Cattleman’s Cafe. Angela, the waitress, answered. When I asked for Jimmy, she said, “He ain’t here, and I’m havin’ a devil of a time findin’ a replacement cook to help me get the breakfasts out. Who’s this?”

  “Sharon… Ripinsky. He was supposed to show my husband and me a house last night. His truck was there, but we didn’t see him.”

  “Oh, shit. What’s he got himself into now?”

  “To tell you the truth, we were kind of worried. That remark he made about him or a couple of other people getting whacked—”

  “That was just some of Jimmy’s bullshit. Ain’t nobody gonna whack him, except for his bad cookin’.” Someone called out in the background. “Hold your horses, Al.” To me she added, “This was the house off County Road Thirty?”

  “Right.”

  “Well, one of the fellas who’s in here now lives out that way. I’ll ask him to swing by. Jimmy likes his sauce and he likes to wander. Ten to one he got drunk, forgot all about you folks, and took a stroll. I hope to Christ he isn’t laying around in a ditch someplace.”

  Which was more or less what I’d predicted the sheriff’s deputies would have said, had we reported him missing.

  After I hung up, I went over the events of the night before and remembered the 408 area code number on the piece of paper I’d found in Jimmy’s jacket. My cell phone didn’t work here in Sage Rock, either, but it displayed the 408 number, the last one I’d dialed. I
called it again on the cabin’s phone and got a recording that said Agribusiness’s hours were from nine to five, Monday through Friday. The firm’s name sounded vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t place it.

  It was too early to call most people on a Sunday, but at least one individual on my mental list was used to me bothering him at odd hours. I dialed Mick’s condo, heard Keim groan at the sound of my voice.

  “It’s her,” she said to my nephew.

  “Okay, that’s it!” he exclaimed. “Let’s order the T-shirts tomorrow. What d’you think? Ten dozen?”

  “Try a hundred dozen.” Keim’s voice was muffled now, as if she’d handed him the receiver and put a pillow over her head.

  “Where the hell are you?” Mick growled at me. “Some time warp?”

  “Nope. Those checks I asked you to run—”

  “Sorry, I was working overtime on that case Ted assigned to me. One of Glenn Solomon’s. He—Glenn—is upset you’re not handling it personally.”

  “When you talk to him, tell him I’ll take him to lunch and explain when I get back. But those checks for me—can you run them today?”

  “Sure, if you want Sweet Charlotte here to kill me. We’ve got plans.”

  “Tell her I’ll make it up to the two of you—dinner at whatever the new hot spot is.”

  “Deal.” An appeal to Mick was sure to succeed if it involved food.

  “Run them after you make a couple of more-important checks. I’ll give you the details on those.”

  “But you won’t tell me why you need them done.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Mom called. I had to learn from her that you’re adopted. You could’ve let me in on the secret yourself.”

  “I’m sorry. I should have, but I thought you had enough to handle, what with Pa dying.”

  “And I thought you’d agreed a long time ago to treat me like a grownup.”

  “I said I was sorry.”

  “Well, you’d better be. And you’d better tell me the whole story when you get back to town. Now what about these checks?”

  “I need more information on Jimmy D. Bearpaw. Exactly who he is. What’s his role in the Modoc Tribal Council? Does he have a criminal record? Where was he born? If not in Modoc County, when did he come here? And anything else you can turn up.”

  “Check.”

  “Next I need information on a town up here that turned into a ghost town in the fifties: Cinder Cone. Who lived there, when they left, who the land belonged to before it was bought by the Department of the Interior.”

  “I’ll see what I can find, call you back this afternoon.”

  “Thanks, Mick.”

  It was an hour later in Boise. I called the Blackhawk house, got Robin. “You still in Modoc County?” she asked.

  “Yes. How’s Saskia?”

  “Better. She’s having moments of lucidity, and last night she recognized me. When’re you coming back?”

  “As soon as I can. Is Darcy okay?”

  “Darce is… Darce.”

  Which meant he was still obsessing. “Have the police made any headway on the case?”

  “Not that they’re willing to discuss with me.”

  “Maybe I should talk with them. I speak their language.”

  “Well, if you do, call Detective Castner. Willson doesn’t like private investigators, but he’s impressed with you because you were written up in People.”

  The average American constantly amazes me: you can do a thousand good deeds, plus discover the cure for cancer, but nobody’s impressed unless you get your face in a magazine or on TV.

  “I’ll try that. Robin, does the name Cinder Cone mean anything to you?”

  “No. What is it?”

  “Just a town. When Saskia’s able to answer questions, you might ask her about it.”

  “Why don’t you come ask her yourself? She’s going to want to see you.”

  “And I want to see her. Let me wrap up things here, and I’ll be there.”

  I ended the call, tried Detective Castner, left a message. Then I took another cup of coffee out onto the porch to sit in the warming sun. A woodpecker was tapping industriously at a nearby ponderosa pine; I wondered how such a small bird could make so much of a racket. The tree’s butterscotch scent put me in mind of food—

  The phone rang. I went inside and picked up. Uncle Jim. “You’ve been chatting up a storm this morning,” he said.

  “And you must’ve remembered something about that town.”

  “You bet I have: an argument between Fenella and Katie. I’m getting old for sure, otherwise I’d’ve remembered right off the bat. It was the only time I ever heard them fight.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Was the year Kennedy was shot. August or September. I’d stopped by the house to see Andy. He was in the garage, as usual, and to get there I had to pass under the kitchen window. Fenella and Katie were in there, talking loud. Katie was telling Fenella it wasn’t right to take the money, even if it was for somebody else. And Fenella said yes, it was right, considering what the girl had gone through.”

  “What girl?”

  “Neither of them named her. Anyway, Katie told Fenella, ‘It’s never right, not under those circumstances.’ And Fenella really got mad then. She said, ‘If you’d been at Cinder Cone, you’d think differently.’ But when Katie asked her what Cinder Cone was, Fenella got quiet, told her to forget she ever mentioned it. Your mother said Fenella was keeping too many secrets, and she and Andy were sick and tired of it. Then Fenella stormed out of the house and didn’t come back till Thanksgiving, when your folks gave her a very chilly reception.” He paused. “Sharon, whatever this town was to Fenella, it’s important. Like I said, it was the one and only time I heard her and Katie go at it that way.”

  It wasn’t right to take the money, even if it was for somebody else.

  I remembered the deposits into Fenella’s bank account and the checks in the same amount written to Saskia Hunter. Checks whose dates roughly coincided with the start of a new college semester. My aunt had put my birth mother through school—using someone else’s money.

  If you’d been at Cinder Cone, you’d think differently.

  Something bad had happened in that little town—something involving Fenella and Saskia.

  Katie said, “It’s never right, not under those circumstances.”

  Not right under what circumstances?

  Blackmail?

  Fenella was blackmailing someone over what happened at Cinder Cone?

  Who?

  But Fenella, a blackmailer? Saskia, a willing recipient of the proceeds? No, it wasn’t right.

  If you’d been at Cinder Cone, you’d think differently.

  Maybe I would.

  9:47 A.M.

  The Modoc Tribal Council’s storefront was open, and a youngish man in a cowboy hat with a long feather plume and a silver band was hunched over a laptop at the desk. When I asked for Jordan Stump, he said, “Not here today. He had to drive his granddaughter and her kids to Alturas.”

  So she’d decided to leave her abusive husband after all.

  “I’m Carleton Westley,” the man added. “Can I help you with something?”

  I explained that Stump had volunteered to ask about my relatives, and Carleton Westley said, “Oh, yeah, he left a note for you.” He rummaged through the papers on the desk and held it out to me.

  As I’d expected, the note said no one knew of any Tendoys in the area. I pocketed it and got down to the real reason I was there. “Do you know Jimmy D. Bearpaw?”

  “Sure, everybody does. You looking for him?”

  “Yes. He was supposed to show my husband and me his house off County Road Thirty last night, but he never turned up. Have you seen him?”

  “Not since the last time I had lunch at the café, maybe two days ago.”

  “We’re kind of worried about him.”

  “How come? Jimmy ain’t terribly reliable; he probably forgot.”<
br />
  “That’s what Angela said, but yesterday Jimmy was talking about some woman lawyer who almost got killed. He said he, you, and Jordan Stump might be next.”

  “Oh, horseshit! Excuse me, ma’am. But what does he think? Some developer in a suit’s gonna show up here and take us all out with an Uzi? That was an accident, what happened to Mrs. Blackhawk.”

  “Maybe not.”

  Westley frowned at me. “Don’t tell me you’re like Jimmy, seeing a conspiracy behind every tree.”

  I shrugged.

  “Jimmy’s problem is he gets too many channels on his satellite dish. Did Jordan look scared? Do I? Hell, no. We’re not important enough to kill. If that developer’s got a murderous side, he’ll go after our backers—if he can even find out who they are. And I don’t see how that’s possible, since we can’t. Besides, you know what? We’re gonna lose the friggin’ suit. Modocs always get the short end of the stick.”

  “Whose idea was it to sue?”

  Carleton Westley pushed back his chair and propped imitation snakeskin boots on the corner of the desk. “Jimmy’s, of course. Like everything else.”

  “What else?”

  “Well, who’d you think was behind the Modocs coming back here? Jimmy. Who sent the letters asking people like Jordan and me to move all the way from Oklahoma? Jimmy. You know why I came?”

  “Why?”

  “Because Jimmy said land was cheap here. I thought I’d buy me a ranch, raise some cattle. The tribal council promised to help out with loans, that kind of thing.” His mouth twisted in disgust.

  “So what happened?”

  “Until he put the rest of us to work, the tribal council was Jimmy D. Period. He don’t know nothing about loans. Plus this is California. Land’s cheap here in the north counties compared to other parts of the state, but it’s still way too expensive. So now I’m doing the same thing I did in Oklahoma, which is pretty much anything anybody’ll hire me for. This month it’s driving the tow truck for Vern’s Garage.”

  “You going to stay?”

  “Who knows? Being here on my ancestors’ land kind of appeals to me, even though I don’t know much about the Modocs yet. For a while I thought things’d get better after that resort went in—that it’d create jobs for us. But then Jimmy had to go and decide to sue the developer. We’re gonna lose, and not a single Modoc’ll ever be hired there.”