Outside of Jubilee Days, the annual town rodeo and drinking fest, Sally had never seen the restaurant side of the Wrangler Bar and Grill so crowded. The waitresses were running from table to table, filling up coffee cups, scribbling orders, running back to the kitchen to stack their hands and forearms with plates full of steak and eggs. Delice herself was carting dirty dishes, running tabs, circulating in the dining room to lay a hand on a shoulder here, join a conversation there. The distinction between the non- and smoking sections of the restaurant, a fairly flimsy fiction at best, had completely broken down with the onslaught of truckers and shit kickers, ranch folk come to town, townspeople stopping in for a bite before heading to work.
Yesterday, a catered vegan buffet. Today, mad cow malady and capacity crowds at Carnivore Central. Things were getting fairly weird in Laramie.
Delice motioned her to a vacant table in a corner of the one-time nonsmoking section. Sally headed over, stopping at the coffee station to snag a cup from a rack and pour herself the last tarry dregs from a near-empty pot. She grabbed a handful of little containers of creamer, sat down under a sign hand-lettered with a blue Magic Marker that said, THANK YOU, WRANGLE BAR AND GRILL, FOR BUYING MY 1124 LB. HEREFORD STEER! KITTY KLEINER, ALBANY COUNTY 4-H. Sally tore open one creamer packet after another and dumped them into her coffee. She downed a hot, bitter swallow and nearly snarled with angry satisfaction. Bad coffee, fake cream, cigarette smoke, and guys hollering at waitresses to ask if their pork chops would be ready before Jesus came back. Breakfast Wyoming style, with a vengeance.
“Pork chops for breakfast?” she asked, when Delice finally managed to join her, sitting down with a mug emblazoned with the motto, RODEO QUEENS RIDE DRAG. No steam rose from Delice’s half-full cup. Delice often left her coffee sitting around all morning, returning at intervals to take a sip more out of habit than desire. You had to hand it to a woman who could stomach Wrangler coffee at desk temperature.
“Of course pork chops,” said Delice. “Today’s special. Three eggs any style and a pair of chops with hash browns, toast, and coffee for three ninety-nine. Right after that news report about your friend Nina, I went down to the meat locker and pulled out three hundred pounds of prime pig. We generally sell a lot of bacon, of course, but I figured this occasion called for an extra little promotion. So far, nobody’s talking about mad pig disease.”
“Looks like a smart move,” said Sally.
“Not smart enough. We’re liable to run out by noon. I may have to send somebody down to the Lifeway to buy more.”
Sally looked around at women in jeans and flannel shirts clamping their jaws around cheeseburgers, men in feed caps attacking plates of fried eggs and T-bones, small children in large cowboy hats downing big glasses of milk. One little girl in a Barbie sweatshirt turned to her mother and wheedled a chicken-fried steak. “Doesn’t much look like anybody’s talking about mad cow disease either.”
“Course they are,” said Delice. “But they’re all saying the same thing. See Granny Solomon over there?” Delice indicated a woman with hair so silvery and tightly rolled, she might still be wearing curlers, sporting a pastel-pink jogging suit and Coke-bottle-lens glasses with frames to match. “She probably said it best. ‘Dear,’ she told me, ‘I hear tell that Cruz woman got the mad cow without ever having touched a bite of meat in the last fifteen years. I don’t know how she got it, but I got to figure if there’s one thing it didn’t come from, it’s good old grade-A Wyoming range beef. I’ll have the Wranglerette breakfast, over easy, with hamburger patties instead of sausage, please.’ ”
“This is absolutely amazing,” Sally observed.
“A self-selected crowd,” Delice said. “These are people who set their children to teething on beef jerky tough enough to break oil-well drill bits. They can look up at that poster on the wall and tell themselves that people might not trust a steak that’s been halfway across the country before it ever got to the feed lot in Omaha, or the slaughterhouse in Chicago, but they’re cow-country people eating what they grow, or, at any rate, chowing down on a piece of little Kitty Kleiner’s Four-H project. They figure Nina Cruz was some kind of Mexican communist chick who picked up some hideous parasite that red-blooded patriotic white folks are immune to, in some crazy place like California. If they’re scared, they deal with it by pretending they couldn’t give a rat’s bony ass.
“But trust me. There are plenty of people in this town freaking flipping out over this. I’m guessing they won’t be selling a lot of Steak Diane and Tournedos Ismail Bayeldi at the Yippie I O tonight. Even though their logic will basically suck.”
“What do you mean?” Sally asked.
“I mean to tell you that there isn’t much chance Nina Cruz picked up mad cow disease in the time she’s lived in Wyoming. First of all, by all reports, she was a strict vegetarian, right?”
“Not as strict as some,” Sally said, thinking of Kali and Lark. “But yeah, she wouldn’t touch meat of any kind, or eggs. She never made a big deal about being a vegan, so she might have eaten dairy products, but I’d guess she was more into soy,” Sally said.
“Maybe she had mad tofu disease. Boy, that’d be a kick in the pants for the folks out in La La Land, wouldn’t it?” Delice asked. “Because that’s where she had to have picked it up—or someplace, any place, except Wyoming. I’ve done a fair amount of reading on the subject, being in my line of work, and last night I checked things out with my friend at the Ag Research Station. Nina Cruz had only been here two years. The experts don’t know a whole lot about the disease, but all indications are that it has a hell of a long incubation period—probably not much less than five years, maybe as long as twenty. Nobody knows for sure, but they do feel pretty certain that you don’t eat bad meat one day and fetch up sick yourself a day or a week or even a few months after.”
“So what do you know about it?” Sally said, really getting into the spirit of the morning by polishing off her coffee and letting the waitress give her a refill as she took Sally’s order. “How does it work?”
“Normal proteins mutate into something called ‘prions,’ ” Delice explained. “The process will get started in a few cells and pretty soon triggers the same reaction in more, and after a while the animal is losing weight, and acting goofy. And then it’s dead, with a brain full of lesions. The European epidemic may have gotten going when they started using ground-up cattle parts—bonemeal, spinal cord, stuff like that—in supplements they fed to other cattle. Evidently, cannibalism isn’t good for cows or other living things.”
“Okay then,” came a voice from behind Sally. “I’ll stick to eggs, and maybe those pork chops since you’re pushin’ ’em.”
Sally twisted in her seat and beheld the placid countenance of Dickie Langham. He wasn’t quite smiling, squinting as he was against the smoke from a Marlboro clamped in his teeth, but as their eyes met, he grinned and sat down, pulled a round glass ashtray out of his jacket pocket, set it on their table, yanked a nearby chair over and sat down.
“Where’d you get that?” Delice asked, indicating the ashtray in which her brother’s half-smoked cigarette now rested.
“Table over there somewhere,” he said, gesturing toward the smoking section.
“This is the nonsmoking section,” Sally said primly.
“Guess I’ll have to prosecute myself,” said Dickie. “Might be a while before I come up for trial, though. One or two multiple murders, suicides, rapes, and meth-lab explosions to clear up first.”
“What about mad cow disease?” Sally asked, point-blank.
“What about a tidal wave?” Dickie replied. “From what I can understand, your chances of coming up against either in Laramie are about even.”
“I think the odds changed last night,” Sally observed.
“I don’t,” said Dickie, grinding out his cigarette butt and turning to Delice. “How about some coffee here, sister darlin’?”
“How about some inside dope?” Delice asked, somehow sending
a telepathic message to a waitress halfway across the dining room, who made a beeline to their table and topped off their cups, taking Dickie’s order for the special, with a couple extra eggs and double hash browns.
“You want information, you’ll have to apply to the medical examiner’s office. They seem to be leakin’ worse than a rubber on a fire hose.”
“Nice metaphor,” said Sally.
“Yeah. This investigation is bringing out the poet in me,” said Dickie, digging in his shirt pocket for his cigarettes, tapping out a Marlboro, lighting up.
Sally decided to ignore his testy remark about leaks, and see if she couldn’t get him to spew a bit himself. “So what’s the status of your investigation?”
Dickie sucked hard on his cigarette, expelled a stream of smoke. “You might as well hear it from me—it’ll be on the noon news, I reckon. We’re looking at the death of Nina Cruz as a homicide.”
No surprise there. “So what happened? What have you guys found out?” Sally was pushing. She didn’t really expect an answer.
She didn’t get one. Dickie sat smoking in silence. Meanwhile, something nagged at her, below the level of consciousness, a question, maybe even an answer of her own.
Sally’s breakfast arrived, quickly followed by Dickie’s meal extravaganza. She had a fast hallucination—the Formica table groaning and wailing under the guilty weight of so many animals fallen to human appetite. Such moments had turned many a sensitive soul onto the vegetarian path. But Sally, ever the expert self-justifier, decided to make sure that what was on her plate had not been sacrificed in vain. She picked up a piece of bacon and took a grateful bite.
By that time, Dickie had dispatched two eggs, an entire pork chop and half his toast. He swallowed coffee and took up his subject. “So you’re on your way to Shady Grove tomorrow to have a look at Nina’s papers,” he said.
“Does everybody in this town know everything I do?” Sally asked, slamming down her fork.
Delice sipped coffee and gave her the fish eye. “Think about it, Mustang. Only yesterday you were sitting in my bar with Cat Cruz, hammering out the details. Nice score in the will, by the way.”
“Okay, yeah,” she said. “If I’m going to write this book, I need to know what she’s got out there, and start figuring out where other stuff might be. I have to get my head around my sources.” She picked up her fork and punctured an egg yolk, glad to find it runny, and scooped up egg with rye toast.
Dickie’s breakfast was history. He lit another Marlboro, taking his time, framing his response. “I’d consider it a big favor if you’d make a point of letting me know when you find anything interesting in her papers.”
Sally chewed another bite of bacon. “Yeah, sure, of course. I mean, anything pertinent to the case, definitely. But you know, Dick, there’s liable to be lots of stuff that just isn’t relevant. I don’t want to waste your time with trivia.”
“Or risk having somebody in the sheriff’s office leaking stuff you want to save for the book, huh, Sally?” said Delice.
“I’m serious here, Mustang,” Dickie said. “Whatever strikes you as interesting, even if it seems completely unrelated to her death, I want to know about it. Let me be the judge.”
Sally was in a tight spot. “Come on, buddy,” she said, putting a hand on Dickie’s arm. “It’s not just that I want to get the scoop. There are confidentiality issues here, and, of course, since I am a card-carrying college professor, some question of academic freedom. I’m not going to stonewall you, or even try to keep the good stuff for myself, and I swear I’ll do everything I can to help you find the murderer—nobody wants that more than me. But this is a little delicate, don’t you see? I managed to get Cat to agree not to interfere with my research, but I do feel an obligation to her to treat this project with some sensitivity and discretion.”
Dickie looked down at her hand, set his cigarette in the ashtray, and patted her hand with his own. “Let me make myself really clear here, honey,” he said. “I’m a great believer in free speech and privacy and motherhood and the American Dream. But in case you missed what I said a minute ago, this is a homicide investigation. Somebody murdered Nina Cruz and, I’d speculate, strictly off the record, Jimbo Perrine, too. You’re about to start hanging out in a place where the murder-to-population ratio is probably higher than it is in New Orleans, and you’re going to be digging around in stuff that somebody very dangerous might not want you to see. Not to sound like somebody’s mother or something, but this is for your own good. If I start to get the slightest twinge of a feeling that you’re holding out on me, I’ll give Detective Atkins permission to do what he’s pushing me to do.”
“And that would be?” Sally asked.
“Get a court order and a wheelbarrow, and go out there and cart off her papers and her guitars and her shoes and any other damn thing we think of as material evidence. You’d never see so much as a grocery receipt.”
“What?” Sally exclaimed.
“Nice. Very nice. You’re one bad-ass cop when you wanna be, bro’,” said Delice.
Sally glared at Dickie. “I could get a lawyer and challenge the court order,” she said.
“You really want to go and do that? Go ahead. Sue me. Even if you could get the papers back, which is doubtful, they’d be fairly fucked up from our guys pawing through them. I’d hate for that to happen,” he said, picking up the cigarette, taking a last puff, and grinding it out.
Obviously, he could do what he wanted. The fact that he wasn’t seizing the papers already was, actually, a real concession to her. “I’m sorry. I really want to help. I’ll keep you posted on everything.”
“Thanks,” said Dickie. “And I’m not foolin’, Sally. I expect regular reports, and Xeroxes or originals of documents. And I want you communicating with Scotty, every day if necessary.”
“Oh rapture,” said Delice, rolling her eyes and pressing her hands to her heart.
“Oh shut up,” said Sally, pushing her plate away and laying her forehead on the table.
Chapter 15
The Hard Way
“Happy Halloween,” said Hawk, having emerged from his shower smelling great and looking strong and fresh and not at all goblinlike.
“Oh crap,” said Sally, “I forgot to buy candy for the trick-or-treaters.”
“No problem. I’ll pick some up at the Lifeway,” Hawk said, pouring himself a bowl of Cheerios.
“Get some chocolate,” Sally told him. “You always get stuff like Smarties and Atomic Fireballs and candy corn.”
“I get what I like,” Hawk answered. “I eat half of it anyhow.”
“Now that you mention it,” said Sally, “skip the chocolate. I don’t need to be eating up my weight in Nestle’s Crunch Bars.”
Hawk walked over to where she was making coffee, grabbed her by the hips and turned her around. “A few Crunch Bars always look good on you,” he said, pulling her against his hips and giving her a very attention-getting kiss.
“Thanks,” she said, a little breathlessly. “But seriously, no chocolate. I can just make myself sick on candy corn in about five minutes.”
“So you’ll be back from Albany in time for the trick-ortreaters?”
“No reason I wouldn’t,” she said. “I can only sit and stare at paper for so many hours.”
“You say that now,” said Hawk, looking up from his cereal bowl, raising an eyebrow, “but the way it’s been going lately, I have my doubts. You seem to be taking a perverse pleasure in putting yourself in harm’s way.”
He wasn’t wrong. In the past month, she’d perversely set out for Nina Cruz’s ranch, knowing that the weather might get ugly enough to keep her from getting home. She’d responded to the outbreak of lethal ruminant diseases by obstinately going down to the Wrangler and consuming as much animal protein as humanly possible. Now she was stubbornly arranging her schedule to spend days, perhaps months, in the vicinity of places where not one, but two people had been fatally shot, her intention being to
pore over the life’s records of one of the victims. Her agent had been enthusiastic about the project when she’d called, but had warned her that it sounded, well, rather dangerous.
Perverse was one way of putting it. Moronic was another.
Maybe it was hormones. They said lots of women heading out of their forties developed a penchant for taking crazy chances. She really ought to get out the blender and make one of those smoothies; maybe it would mellow her out.
Or maybe not. Sally frowned. She took the can of protein powder off the shelf, looked hard at the label, which was nothing more than a sheet of recycled paper with “Nutritional Supplement” printed in plain lettering on one side. She stuck a knife blade under the rim of the top and pried open the can.
Just powder, creamy white, looking a whole lot like the dry milk they used to buy in bulk back when she was in college, living dirt cheap in communal houses. But she remembered food co-op shelves stacked with bulk bins full of lots of stuff that looked like various shades of powders—yellowy brewer’s yeast, pale mung-bean flour, agar-agar, you name it. The stuff she was looking at might be pulverized soybeans, or it might be something else.
Closing the can and leaving it on the counter, she picked up the phone and called Delice.
“What was the name of your friend at the vet lab?” Sally asked the minute Delice answered.
“Why do you want to know?” Delice said.
“Thought I might give her a call,” Sally replied, evading.
“She won’t tell you anything, even if you say you’re my buddy. She’s a pro,” Delice told her.
Bye, Bye, Love Page 15