by Arlette Lees
“So, we’re back to square one.”
“Not exactly. A witness walking his dog the night of the shooting has come forward. He heard what he thought was a firecracker around midnight. He didn’t realize until later that it was a gunshot. He saw a tall man in dark clothes and a western hat drive away from the scene in a blue-and-white coupe. It backfired and drove off with smoke pouring out of the tailpipe.”
“Are Conover and Edwards still trying to implicate Mrs. Chase?”
“They’re looking for an easy solve, but unless they find an insurance policy, there’s nothing to go on. She wasn’t seeing anyone else. They were never heard arguing. From all accounts they were a happy, upwardly mobile young couple.”
“What did you find on Ivarene?”
“Someone got there before we did. There was no guest book, and all the porn reels the neighbors said were kept on a shelf in the den were gone. There’s a rumor from a semi-credible source that the sexual proclivities of Councilman Seaton’s fifteen-year-old daughter were memorialized on those films. She’s tan and blonde. Could be the girl Linda Kwan saw at the mine site.”
“How about a connection to the yellow Caddy?”
“We’ll look into it.”
Hallinan had the impression they weren’t going to look terribly hard.
“Now, get out of here,” said Stanek. “I don’t want to see you again until all of your moving parts have been repaired.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CROSSED DESTINIES
On her first night of freedom, Libra slept well in the new motor home. She drifted off to the hooting of owls and the haunting music of coyotes. Waking to a cold, ceramic blue sky and red-tailed hawks circling above the hills, she made coffee and dressed in a jeans outfit and tennis shoes, and walked down the bridle trail into a remote area of the park.
She sat on a stump and closed her eyes. The sun climbed the sky, backlighting her flaming red hair and melting tension from her shoulders. Far to the west she heard the snorting of horses and the baying of hounds. When she opened her eyes, she let out a startled gasp, jumped up, and spilled hot coffee on her foot.
A tattered little waif came out of the chaparral in a shredded nightgown and one muddy slipper. Her hair was tangled with burrs, her body covered with scratches and bruises. She looked like she’d been abused and abandoned.
“Judas Priest on roller skates!” said Libra, letting out a laughter-tinged sob of amazement. The child had her father’s unmistakable golden hair and big blue eyes.
“My god, what have they done to you?”
“I’m lost,” said the little girl, bursting into tears. “I want to go home.”
“Of course you do, Little Bean.” Little Bean. That’s what Libra’s mother had called her when she was small. It popped out of her mouth as if it had been waiting all these years to be said. “Mama Bear has been looking for you since the day you were born.”
“You have?” Daisy wasn’t sure what the lady meant, but she was too cold and hungry to care. She was just glad to be found.
“Of course I have,” she said, throwing her cup in the bushes and sweeping the child into her arms. Her body was like ice and she was ghostly pale. Her hair was damp, her nightgown wet, and her scalp crawling with ticks. She looked like an orphan from the pages of Oliver Twist.
As she walked up the path with the child’s tears falling on her shoulder, her weight felt natural and familiar in Libra’s arms. It filled an empty, lonely spot in her heart that nothing else in the world could fill. “These are the last tears you will ever have to cry,” she said.
Two hours later, bathed and fed, the ticks and burrs removed and her hair soft and clean and golden, the little girl who would answer to Bean slept in a clean t-shirt in a cozy bed in the back of the motor home.
Bear took the tattered nightgown and ruined slipper, walked half a mile down the path, and tossed them deep into the chaparral. Half an hour later the motor home was speeding east toward the Mojave Desert.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
LAST CHANCE CAFÉ
In Dry Rock, California, population fifty, Libra pulled into the dusty lot of The Last Chance Café. Last chance for food. Last chance for gas. Last chance to use a dirty restroom before you hit the Nevada state line.
The screen door slapped against the frame behind them as they stepped inside, Daisy in a cute sunsuit that was part of the wardrobe Libra bought her in Barstow. A swamp cooler in a side window sounded like wrenches being tossed in a cement mixer, and flies who couldn’t find cemetery plots on the flypaper hanging from the ceiling buzzed lazily around the room. An elderly waitress with a serious curvature of the spine and orange-dyed hair moved around the room filling coffee cups, and a Chinese cook with a waist-long queue flipped burgers on the grill.
Five or six customers sat around eating and chewing the fat. An old buzzard with a spotted hound at his feet sat his empty plate on the floor. The dog rose with a labored groan and licked it clean. The waitress, whose name tag read Millie, picked up the plate and carried it to the kitchen. It was blue, with a chipped edge, and Libra hoped it didn’t return bearing their food. She lifted Bean onto a stool at the counter and took the one to her right.
“What’ll it be?” said the waitress, returning from the kitchen and nodding toward the menu on the chalkboard. “The milkshake machine is broken, and we don’t serve the round steak until five.”
“How does a hamburger and coke sound?” Libra said to Bean.
“It sounds good “
“Millie,” said Libra, when their food arrived, “we’re looking for a town called Willow Shade, but I’m beginning to think it doesn’t exist.”
“It’s a ranch, not a town, which would make you Libra Gordy.”
Libra was astonished. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Steven Bannister called Zeke a couple weeks back. The good news was that he was on his deathbed. The bad news was that he was leaving you two thousand acres of sand, cactus, and rattlesnakes. The creek running through it is the only thing keeps it from being totally worthless.” She turned to the old man with the dog. “Zeke, get over here and meet your new boss. Zeke keeps the roofs from caving in and the cows from running off.”
Ezekiel walked over with his dog. He had long white hair pulled back in a rawhide tie. He wore overalls, cowboy boots, and a western hat with a rattlesnake band, the rattles and head intact, the fangs as sharp as hypodermic needles.
“You’re looking good,” said Ezekiel, shaking Libra’s hand. “Got your mother’s red hair. I haven’t seen you since the day she took off with Steven. You couldn’t have been more than six months old. I keep the snake population down on the place. Sell the skins. I been bit ten times and the snake died every time.” Libra thought it was probably an off-told tale, but everybody in the room laughed. Zeke looked over at the little girl sitting next to Libra. “Yours?”
“Yes, that’s Bean.”
“You like dogs, Bean?” he said.
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, this here is Ticky. He’s fifteen years old. That’s one hundred and five in dog years. You like my hat?” She nodded and he leaned over. She reached out and touched the snake’s nose. “Boo!” he said. Bean screamed and pulled her hand back, laughing. “I can see we’re going to get along just fine. I’ll let you girls eat your lunch in peace. Then you can follow me out to the ranch.”
As they tailed Zeke’s pickup through the desert, Bean tugged at Libra’s sleeve.
“When are you going to take me home? I don’t want to get in trouble.”
“Nobody will mind if you take a little vacation with Bear. If you like the ranch, we’ll drop those other people a line so they don’t worry.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
DARK DAYS
Winter wore on with no progress in the Gavin Chase homicide. Amanda often stood by the window looking at the rain, no longer sure what or who she was waiting for. At first she imagined Gavin coming through the door,
telling her he was alive, that it was all a mistake. As time passed she started thinking about Rusty Hallinan and how much she wanted to see him again. Maybe, if she wished hard enough, she could wish the wedding ring off his finger.
Hallinan heard from Tug less often now that the leads had dried up in the Daisy Adler case. Sigrid flew back to Sweden. Gifts appeared in Daisy’s room on her seventh birthday, Helen soldiering on, Nathan holed up in his den, missing appointments with celebrities until his patient load dwindled.
Hallinan and Dorothy were at an impasse. She kept Beezer. He held the papers hostage. The Devil Wore Spurs was a wrap and Monty signed on for his next role. During his recuperation from surgery, not a day went by that Hallinan didn’t think about Amanda. When the phone rang, he wanted it to be her, but it never was. His only regular visitor was Tyrisse, who came by with brandy and hero sandwiches and regaled him with her latest exploits. She kept the conversation upbeat, but under all the sass and brass, s/he feared Rex Storch like a child fears the bogeyman
On the other side of town, Crystal Monet lived in fear. The fact that she knew César had killed Gavin gave him a sadistic thrill, but she could also be his ticket to the gas chamber, which made him increasingly edgy. When he wasn’t with her, she was watched by Old Tom or one of the bouncers. She was sick, maybe dying, but not soon enough to please him.
PART TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
STARTING OVER
June, and the sun opened like a flower in a soft kiss of blue sky. In shorts, flip-flops, and a violet t-shirt with a pink heart on the front, Amanda moved the car close to the water spigot and went to work with her car wash kit.
She’d found a job typing and filing at a real estate brokerage on Wilshire Blvd. She faithfully paid her rent and bills, but couldn’t afford the BMW. The dealership refused to let her trade down to something affordable, so she stopped making payments and waited for it to be repossessed.
In the noonday heat the sudsy water was cool and refreshing as it ran down her arms and the front of her t-shirt. She had a honey-dipped tan and her hair, now summer-blonde, was caught in a heart-shaped barrette at the nape of her neck. After buffing the car to a mirror shine, she started on the interior. Amanda scooped everything from the glove compartment into a shoe box…mileage records…miscellaneous envelopes…matchbooks. She whisked a few pennies and a stray pearl earring from under the seat and added them to the other items. A shadow fell over her shoulder. Startled, she hit her head on the underside of the dash.
“A bit jumpy, are we?” Dack Traynor was watching her, a cigarette dangling from his mouth, the pack rolled into his sleeve.
“What are you doing here? You know Mr. Hornsby took out a restraining order.”
“I’m broke. Gail’s letting me crash on the couch. She feels guilty for kicking me to the curb.”
“I thought you were tending bar at The Monkey House.”
“The owner’s wife came on to me and got me fired.”
Same old Dack.
As if they were curious fingers, Dack’s eyes wandered slowly up and down Amanda’s body. He took in every curve and crevice beneath the wet t-shirt and shorts. It’s all he could do to keep his hands off of her. A pretty face too, with its little sunburned nose and luminous blue-green eyes, intelligent and wary. The fact she was hard to get, even with her husband gone, filled him with desire and resentment.
“Please go!” she said, turning away from him. She leaned down and whisked under the driver’s seat. Something flew out and landed at Dack’s feet. He bent over and picked up a pink business card. “Give that to me,” she said, leaning her elbow on the car seat. “I’m not throwing anything away until I have a chance to go through things.”
He looked at both sides of the card. “You sure you want it? Maybe your husband wasn’t the goody-two-shoes you thought he was.”
She stood up, her hand extended. The look on her face made him wonder what she was capable of. A slap in the face? A jab in the eye? A knee to the family jewels? “Give it to me, Dack, or I’ll tell Mr. Hornsby you’re here and he’ll have you arrested.”
“You’ll be s-o-r-r-y,” he said, placing the card in her hand. “Before you throw it out, drop it in my mail slot. I can use a little excitement in my life.” She tossed it in the shoe box and watched him strut away, leaving an unsettled feeling in the pit of her stomach.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
WILLOW SHADE
Summer came to Willow Shade, with its two old houses, weathered barns, and corrals. There was a rock garden with a buckboard displayed among the cactus, a wagon wheel, rusty license plates, antique whiskey bottles, and a steer skull. Bear and Bean lived in the four-room house, Ezekiel in the bunkhouse with the attached tool shed. The pale aqua skies were as high and wide as an ocean, and a carpet of red and yellow wild flowers rolled to the distant horizon.
On hot afternoons, Bean and Bear swam in the creek and picnicked along the bank. Bean wore jeans and little cowboy boots, beads and feathers woven into her braids. On her seventh birthday, Uncle Ezekiel bought her a pony to ride around the corral. To a child, a week is a month and a month is a year, and “those other people” in the pink house receded from memory like mist in a long-ago dream.
Bean loved to be in Bear’s comforting presence. On baking day Bear smelled like vanilla and sugar. When she fired up the wood stove on chilly mornings, smoke hung in her clothes. If her hands smelled like onions, there would be beef stew or chili for dinner. After dark, she read Bean adventure stories by Albert Peyson Terhune and James Oliver Curwood.
One evening Bear told Bean that she was her real mother. She took the photo of a handsome boy from her trunk and said he was her father who died before she was born. Bean didn’t look like Bear, but she was the image of the boy in the photograph. Bean didn’t know what to think. There were times she thought Bear might be confused, but she was confused sometimes too.
Early one morning Ezekiel trotted his mare up to the house. Rustlers had cut their wire fencing and made off with two calves. He’d have to drive all the way to Crazy Horse to file a report.
“Can I come along?” said Bean, still sleepy-eyed and in her pajamas.
“No, you sit here and eat your pancakes. It’s gonna be over a hunnerd out there. Tell you what, I’ll stop at the general store and bring you a bag of candy corn.”
* * * * * * *
A cloud of dust rolled over the roof of the Sheriff’s Office when Ezekiel pulled into the lot. The truck’s cab smelled like dog breath, the old man’s jeans sweat-glued to the seat.
Sheriff Akin was snoring in his chair, feet propped on his desk, his face directed toward the fan. He was jowly and fat-bellied and ornery with the heat. The Deputy turned from the front window. He was a tall, fit half-breed who’d changed his name from Many Scalps to Gray Stoneacre after a hero in a western novel. He hoped the change would garner votes when he ran against his boss in the next election.
“Sheriff, we got company,” said Stoneacre. He resisted the urge to sweep Akin’s feet to the floor. If things went his way on election day, he’d sweep him out the door. “Amos, wake up!”
“What?” The Sheriff opened his eyes.
“It’s Ezekiel Bridger, the rattlesnake man.”
Ezekiel came through the door with the hound at his heels, a blast of hot air lifting the edges of the wanted posters on the corkboard. Both man and dog looked done-in. Stoneacre brought the man a glass of ice water, and a bowl of water for his dog.
“Thank you,” said Ezekiel. “That’s right considerate of you,”
“Miserable day to be out in this heat, Mr. Bridger,” said Akin, hoping the visit wouldn’t required him to get out of his chair.
“Two more calves gone missing last night, Amos. It’s the second time in three months we been ripped off.”
“Probably coyotes, Ezekiel.”
“Not unless they drive a pickup truck.”
“I can take a report, but there ain’t much we can do about i
t, is there, Stoneacre? By now they’re across the border on some Mexican’s dinner plate.”
Stoneacre considered the question, although it wasn’t intended to elicit a response. “They leave any tire tracks, Mr. Bridger?”
“Yes indeed. There was a pickup and a horse trailer involved.”
“The molds I took last time are in the back. I’ll drive out tomorrow and see if we have a match. The stock may be across the border, but the thieves could be local boys.”
“Thank you, Deputy.” Brakes screeched and there was a tremendous thud. Ticky crawled under a chair.
“Holy shit! What the hell was that?” said Akin, swinging his legs to the floor and almost knocking the fan off the desk.
Stoneacre flew out the door, Akin close behind. A flatbed carrying hay bales lay on its side across both lanes of traffic. A horse was down and struggling to get to its feet, the leg of an unconscious boy pinned under him. The truck driver stumbled out of the cab and dropped wailing to his knees.”
“It’s the Regan boy!” Akin shouted to Ezekiel from the doorway. “Doc Jackson’s number is in the file.” After Ezekiel summoned the doctor, he dialed the large animal vet. The phone was still ringing when a shot rang out. He hung up the receiver and put his head in his hands, his heart ticking like a broken clock. When he looked up, the photo of a little girl looked back at him from one of the flyers on the board.
Daisy Marie Adler. DOB 3/7/50
Blonde Hair. Blue Eyes.
Missing From Los Angeles. 1/1/57
The child would now be seven. She could have been Bean’s identical twin or.…
A ripple of apprehension traveled up Ezekiel’s spine. Steven Bannister had never mentioned a granddaughter, but then he seldom talked about anything that wasn’t related to money. Once the unthinkable popped into the old man’s head, there was no getting rid of it. He went to the corkboard, picked out the tacks and pocketed the poster along with two others to make the object of his interest less obvious. He whistled for Ticky.