Bye, Bye, Love

by Virginia Swift

  This party had been going on, in one form or another, for maybe twenty-five years. Sally had attended her first one in the late seventies, when revelers’ creativity with costumes was generally enhanced by generous application of mood-altering substances. She had been blown away by the costumes, ranging from a person encased inside a gigantic papier-mâché mountain, to three women in matching pink evening gowns with shoes dyed to match, black bouffant wigs, and every inch of skin covered with brown makeup, a minstrel-show rendition of the Supremes that would never pass muster during these more sensitive days.

  The psychedelic drug use had tapered off, and the costumes had become both more politically correct, and more risqué, although variations on planetary-science themes remained a constant. Last year she’d noted two people dressed as a stalactite and a stalagmite, a group of nine with huge papier-mâché heads depicting the planets of the solar system, a woman wearing nothing but a scattering of pebbles over the strategic spots, and a man encased in a seven-foot-tall erect penis costume. A hell of a lot of work went into these things.

  Sally and Hawk weren’t among those who went for either the labor-intensive production or the edge of respectability. Hawk was going as—what else?—a mad scientist. He had a white lab coat, an Einstein wig, and Groucho Marx glasses he’d adapted with lenses from an old pair of his own prescription specs. Pretty basic: The glasses were a nice touch.

  Over the years, Sally had tried various approaches to Halloween costumes. She’d cross-dressed (once, memorably, as Bruce Springsteen), made political statements (an American flag-covered jumpsuit and death’s-head makeup), even gone for inanimate objects. Once long ago, she and a friend had covered themselves with green makeup, worn green-dyed tights and T-shirts and garbage-bag tunics, tied their hair on top of their heads and stuck in dozens of plastic fern fronds. Pretending to be house plants, sitting quietly in corners, turned out to be a good strategy for people getting a serious buzz off some rather fresh psilocybin mushrooms.

  But tonight, she was relying on her longtime passion for vintage clothing, indulged at flea markets and boutiques and junk stores and the Salvation Army over years and years. Back in Berkeley, there’d been a great vintage shop that took trade-ins. She’d swapped a fur-trimmed Cossack coat and hat she’d found at the Alameda flea market for a skin-tight, strapless black evening gown and a pair of black satin opera gloves, à la Rita Hayworth in Gilda. Back in the day, she’d had to lie down to be zipped into the dress, but the stitching in the seams had proven equal to an evening’s wear, if she didn’t take deep breaths. She’d tried it on the week before, discovered, to her delight, that she could still squeeze into it, and that it even fit a little less snug up top. She hoped that wouldn’t be a problem. When a reporter had asked Rita what held her famous gown up, she’d said, “Two things.”

  Happily, the bodice of Sally’s dress was made in the manner of what they used to call a “merry widow.” It had enough boning from waist to chest to hold up a small office building, let alone a couple of things that were acceptable, but not getting any younger.

  She looked in the mirror: all in all, not half bad. Her hair was long and she’d put a few waves in with a curling iron. Red lipstick. High-heeled sandals and the dress. Add the gloves and it might be, well, kind of middle-aged dynamite.

  Hawk hadn’t seen this getup, and Sally was really looking forward to his reaction. She’d postponed putting on the gloves until the last minute, because it was such a production, rolling them up, pushing down fingers one by one, and easing them on until they stretched from fingertip to the middle of the upper part of her arms. Once they were on, they stayed on pretty much for the duration. She was glad he’d made dinner. She didn’t think she’d be able to cope with chips and salsa in her satin opera gloves, and anything more substantial might prove too much for side seams that had aged another couple of decades.

  He emerged from the bathroom, showered and dressed but without the wig and the Groucho glasses, walking up behind her just as she was straightening the second glove. She heard a distinct gasp, then a faint moan. “You’re trying to kill me, right?” he whispered.

  She looked over her shoulder at him, feeling pretty damned sultry and wondering whether she ought to give him a few bars of “Put the Blame on Mame.”

  The doorbell rang. It had been half an hour since the last trick-or-treater, but as long as they were still home, even the laggards deserved a treat. “I’ll get it,” she said, taking a moment to stop and give him a kiss. “You finish getting dressed.”

  She sashayed over to the door, walking carefully in her ankle-breaker shoes. But when she opened it, there was nobody there. She looked around, puzzled, then worried that pranksters had come around to engage in some petty vandalism. Usually, that meant a broken pumpkin, but the jack-o’-lantern Hawk had carved was still glowing and grinning.

  Then she spotted something. About halfway down the front walk lay a white object. She walked down the front steps and along the walk, then leaned over to pick up a small plastic bag, half full of some kind of white powder.

  She was standing there, holding the bag in her gloved hand and trying to figure out what was going on, when Hawk came out of the house. He stopped five paces from her.

  “Don’t even think about opening that, Sally,” he said, deadly calm.

  She stared at him.

  “Put it back down on the ground.”

  She put the bag down.

  “Have you touched that thing with both hands?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “Just the right. Or maybe not, maybe both. I’m not sure.”

  Hawk took a breath. “Okay. Keep your glove on the left hand and take off the right one, and throw it on the ground.”

  “It’ll take a while,” she said, beginning to shiver in the cold night air.

  “Fine. Take your time. I’m going to call nine-one-one. By the time I come back, I can help you take off the other glove.”

  “Hawk-k,” she said, teeth chattering as she began to work at the glove. “Can you at least bring a j-jacket or something to cover my sh-shoulders?”

  He ran into the house, returning with a plaid Pendleton couch throw, and draped it carefully over her shoulders, making sure not to touch the gloves. Then he went to make the call.

  Chapter 17

  The Ornery Hagbody

  It was amazing what one little packet of white powder could crank up. Within fifteen minutes, three police cars, a fire engine full of EMTs, the hazardous-materials team, and a beige Dodge sedan with WYOMING STATE VETERINARY LABORATORY stenciled on the side had rushed to the scene. Sally, by that time, was half frozen and fully terrified, her fabulous opera gloves crumpled on the sidewalk next to the scary little package.

  Technicians wearing moon suits used tongs to put the packet in another bag and seal it, wipe down the sidewalk, and swab the wipe on a test strip. She couldn’t see their faces, but she had the impression that they didn’t like what the test strip showed. She kept telling herself that it was probably some stupid prank, a Baggie full of talcum powder or baking soda. Hell, ten years ago, anybody finding a bag of white powder would have been thinking: cocaine. And then thinking either, I must report this to the authorities! or, conversely, Yippee!

  But that was before September 11, and some guy at The Sun opening an envelope and dying three days later.

  The country had been nervous as hell for years, and it had been a damned strange fall in Laramie, what with murders and mad cow disease. And now, judging by the emergency-response team, everybody in Laramie was braced for a bout of bioterrorism.

  Sally had been hustled off to Ivinson Memorial, had the Gilda dress cut off her, had her blood taken and her nose swabbed. She’d been hosed down and decontaminated, examined by a bored resident in the ER, and then again by somebody wearing jeans and cowboy boots who introduced himself as both a veterinarian and an MD. Nobody saw any symptoms of anything except slightly lowered body temperature (not surprising, since she’d been st
anding around scantily clad in the freezing cold), and they sent her home with two months’ supply of Cipro and stern orders to call if she started feeling sick.

  By now, a day and a half later, she’d endured a good twenty hours of the mightiest brain-splitting headache she’d ever had. So of course, she’d called. A side effect of the Cipro, the nurse at the hospital said. The nausea wasn’t unusual either, given the headache. It should go away in a day or two. Thanks a bunch.

  Thus, she wasn’t in the greatest frame of mind when Scotty Atkins and Dickie Langham showed up at the house for a conversation. Sally was stretched out on the living room couch, a cold washcloth over her eyes. Scotty and Hawk sat in the chairs, while Dickie hunkered down on the coffee table, holding her hand.

  “We took the sample out to the vet lab in West Laramie for analysis, and their tests confirmed the field test,” Dickie told her. “The powder tested negative for anthrax. That’s the good news. The bad news, of course, is that somebody played a very ugly trick on you and is obviously trying to intimidate you. By the way, even if it had been anthrax, there was no risk of cutaneous infection since you didn’t open the envelope, and you were wearing those gloves.”

  “Oh goodie,” Sally managed. “Lucky me.”

  “I called the doctor,” Hawk said. “He says you should continue the Cipro for ten days, but you don’t need to go the whole course.”

  “Great. Only eight more days of feeling like my skull is getting jack-hammered.”

  “Beats the hell out of being dead,” Scotty observed.

  Sally took the washcloth off her eyes long enough to crane her neck to glare at him, then put it back and laid her head back down.

  “I’d tend to agree,” Hawk said, his voice tightening on “agree.” The man was angry, and working hard to keep it together.

  Sally was trying different breathing patterns—shallow, deep, alternating—searching for one that minimized the headache. Didn’t seem to make a difference. “So who do you think brought me that little trick-or-treat package?” she asked them, breathing shallow and regular.

  “We’re working on it,” Scotty said shortly. “We’ll let you know when we find out.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Hawk spoke, very calmly, a bad sign. “I would be interested in any theories either of you might have,” he said.

  “Hawk, I doubt we’ve come up with anything you wouldn’t think of yourself,” said Dickie. “Of course, this latest unpleasantness may or may not be connected to the Cruz murder.”

  “But if it isn’t,” said Sally, ignoring her head, “trying to figure it out is needle-and-haystack stuff. A student who didn’t like the C-minus that was actually a charitable gift on my part? Somebody I pissed off when they thought I took their parking place at the Lifeway? Too many possibilities. Plus you guys have already made a point of trying to warn me off the biography project, and more generally told me to stay away from Stone Jackson and everybody who has anything to do with the Wild West. So you might as well start out by assuming my surprise package and Nina’s death are related.”

  “Elementary, Dr. Alder,” Scotty said, making her chuckle despite the pain.

  “Which brings up one reason we’re here,” Dickie said gently, rubbing the back of Sally’s hand. “We’ve got a court order to seize the contents of Nina Cruz’s office as evidence in the case.”

  “No!” Sally sat bolt upright. “You can’t do that! I’m just getting started!”

  “You’re off the case, Professor. This is police business,” Scotty told her.

  “Listen to me carefully here, Mustang,” Dickie crooned, taking her hand again. “This has gotten seriously dangerous. Whoever we’re dealing with here likes all kinds of weapons, and doesn’t seem squeamish about using them. Guns, biologicals, terror, and who knows what’s next. Whether you admit it or not, you’re known to be a little too smart and get a little too nosy. Two people have already died. I’m getting you the hell out of the line of fire.”

  “So you’re treating Jimbo Perrine’s death as related?” Hawk asked, a step ahead of Sally.

  Scotty began, “We’re not—”

  “Do the math,” Dickie said. “Two shootings in the vicinity of Albany, Wyoming, a town with a population less than your average Burger King. Both shot with hunting rifles. Of course we’re treating them as related. It’s driving us fucking crazy.”

  “Rifles?” said Sally, forcing down the pain and trying to follow every word. “Then your ballistics stuff shows that it wasn’t the same gun?”

  Scotty said, “Sheriff—”

  “For Christ’s sake, Scotty, it’ll be in the Boomerang by tomorrow. Yeah, that’s right. But you know how it is with guns in Wyoming. It’s not a question of whether somebody has one, it’s a question of how many they have.”

  Sally gave it a try. “Couldn’t you guys just give me a week to scan some stuff, so I can get a jump on this project?” she pleaded, putting the washcloth on the coffee table and batting her eyes at Dickie, each bat producing a tiny pulse of pain.

  “You’ve gotta be kidding,” said Scotty. “She’s kidding, right?” he asked Hawk.

  “You know her.”

  “Forget about it,” said Dickie. “Teach your classes. Run your center. Do your job while we do ours.”

  She looked at Hawk, who looked back with love and determination, and a ghost of the anger, in his eyes. “Enough’s enough,” he said. “For the moment. I still think you should write the biography. After they’ve caught the killer. The papers and other stuff will still be there when it’s all over.”

  Sally snorted (a mistake—her head registered the snort at 5.6 on the Richter scale). “Yeah, they’ll be there, in God only knows what shape. You might as well shred ’em right now.”

  Scotty smiled at her. He found the strangest things funny. “We’ll do what we can to uphold your high scholarly standards. I’ll be handling the examination of Cruz’s papers myself. I’ll even make the concession of doing an official inventory out there.”

  Sally was aware that the inventory was probably standard procedure, and not a concession on his part, but she didn’t have the strength to fight about it. She sighed. “Okay, guess I don’t have a choice.”

  No one bothered to reply.

  It occurred to her that she should probably tell them about the can of nutritional supplement she’d taken to the vet lab. But it was clear they’d grown weary of her amateur detecting, and she didn’t feel like raising the alarm about another batch of white stuff that was probably nothing more lethal than what it claimed to be.

  Sally wasn’t really holding out on them because she was pissed off that they were seizing Nina’s papers.

  “I’ve got a question,” Hawk said. “What do you guys think about Sally going ahead and doing the benefit?”

  Scotty gave an automatic response. “Bad idea.”

  Dickie pondered. “That’s a complicated question. On the one hand, the less you, and for that matter, my brother, have to do with the Wild West Foundation, and anything associated with Nina Cruz, the more comfortable I feel. On the other hand, this is, after all, your chance to sing with Thomas Jackson. I’m not real thrilled about spending the next forty years listening to you tell me how I fucked up your one pass at canoodling with Darlin’ Tommy.

  “Then again, Dwayne’s having some second thoughts. And so are the other Millionaires. I wouldn’t be surprised if the other performers pulled out. The mention of anthrax tends to make people hesitant.”

  The phone rang. Hawk answered, put his hand over the receiver. “It’s your boyfriend,” he said, bringing her the cordless telephone.

  “Very funny,” Sally mouthed, though her head felt instantly a little better. She accepted the phone, still reclining on the couch.

  “I heard about Halloween,” said Stone. “I feel like it’s my fault for getting you into all this.”

  “I’ll be all right,” she said. “It was just talcum powder. And even if it had been something bad
, I was wearing opera gloves.”

  “You go to a lot of opera in Laramie?” Stone asked.

  “More than you do in Cody,” she answered.

  “Maybe that’s why I don’t have opera gloves,” he said.

  “What’s going on with the gig?” Sally asked.

  “Well, we’ve had some cancellations. But nothing disastrous. Emmylou’s more determined than ever to do her bit. David and Graham will be here too—David says he’s living on a loaned liver, so he’s got nothing to lose. We’re still on.”

  “How about Cat?” Sally asked. “She might pull the plug for other reasons.”

  “Talked to her last night. She said she meant to go ahead, and hoped you wouldn’t have a problem with it. Said she was planning to give you a call. She’s sorry she didn’t get a chance to say good-bye when you were out at Shady Grove.”

  “No big deal,” said Sally. “She was on the phone.”

  “I think she’s spent the last few days with her ear glued to a phone, trying to figure out what the hell’s up with the Wild West. As far as she can tell, this outfit hasn’t taken on a single project yet. All they’ve done so far is flap their jaws and cut paychecks. Cat’s let them know they’re history after the benefit. She’ll be taking over project planning and management and putting in her own team.”

  “I bet they aren’t real happy about that,” Sally said.

  “Cat’s taking the position that she’s giving them more than their two weeks’ notice.”

  Sally thought a minute. “Good grief. The gig’s only three weeks away.”

  “Yep,” said Stone. “You’d better get better quick. I’d like to come down there and rehearse with the band this weekend.”

  “Thomas, I’m not sure that the Millionaires are going to stay on board,” Sally said.

  “Remind them that a portion of the proceeds will go to Perrine’s widow,” said Stone. “But if you can’t convince them to play, you and I could just do a couple of duets.”