by Liz Adair
“You think so?”
“Yep. Jack has the land, and land is always the prize. Usually the owner has a precarious financial footing.”
Laurie shook her head. “I wouldn’t know about that, but I think you need to stop him before he can do anything to Amy or Jack.”
“I’m doing my best. Oh, and I stopped to talk to Linda on the way home, too.”
“What did she have to say?”
“She said jealousy was like lye, eating away at everything it touched.”
Her eyes twinkled. “It looks like you were having philosophical, jealousy-type discussions with everyone. What else did Linda say?”
Spider rubbed his jaw. “You know, I’ve been thinking about what she said. I don’t think she knew much about the second lawsuit, the one about the cache being returned.”
Laurie stared into the darkness beyond Spider’s shoulder as she processed that. “Let’s see. BMW Blonde came on site first. Then Austin Lee came and started making time with Linda, who didn’t like the fact that Matt was hanging on every word BMW Blonde said. Relations got strained, especially after they got word about the Goodman lawsuit. Only by then Linda and Matt weren’t spending any time together. She might have known they were worried about money because of a second lawsuit, but she might not have known particulars?”
“I think that’s right. We can run that by Matt and Neva tomorrow when we get back, but Linda didn’t know what Matt meant when he accused her of betraying the museum.”
“But did she? Betray the museum?”
Spider grimaced. “She did and she didn’t. She was bragging about the museum’s importance and said there was something valuable found with the cache that wasn’t on display. Then when she was with Austin one time, she let slip that she was researching Oscar Goodman. I don’t think he knew about the Lincoln letter, just that there was something valuable— a reason to sue.”
“I’ll bet she was sick when she realized what she had done.”
“Yeah.”
The waitress arrived with their dinners, and the rest of their conversation was confined to family matters. For long stretches of time they didn’t talk, sitting in easy companionship. When dinner was over, they wandered back to the hotel arm in arm, squeezing through the lobby entrance together and hurrying to catch the elevator before the doors slid closed.
“Want something sweet when we get back to the room?” she asked.
“You’re a tease,” he said, pulling her close and kissing her.
“I was talking about cookies.” Laurie laughed and straightened his Stetson which had been knocked askew.
The door opened, revealing Daisuke Ito and his two friends. Spider disengaged and bowed to the young Japanese. “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” they said in unison, smiling as they returned the bow.
Spider let Laurie get off and followed, holding the door momentarily, so the young men could enter. Just as the door was closing, he heard Daisuke call out, “Happy trails.”
“I met him this morning,” Spider explained as he walked Laurie to their room.
It took him three tries to get the lock to read the key card, but the light finally flashed green, and he pushed the door open. Laurie reached to turn on the light, but he covered her hand. “Leave it,” he said.
She turned and put one arm around his neck. Her other hand slid into his breast pocket and pulled out his cell phone. Using her thumb, she pushed the button sequence to turn it off and set it on the desk. “Now,” she whispered. “I believe we were talking about something sweet?”
SPIDER AND LAURIE drove to the restaurant the next morning, figuring to head out of town from there. On the way, they noticed a crew blocking off Main Street on each side of the highway and another crew unloading a truck.
“Looks like they’re setting up booths for Western Legends,” Laurie said.
Spider drove slowly, observing the activity. “So what exactly is this celebration about?”
“They used to make a lot of movies here. Westerns, mostly. Some of the old movie stars come back each year.”
“Huh. I suppose there’ll be some cowboy poetry?”
Laurie chuckled. “Tomorrow night. After that there’s music. Jack and I are singing at eight o’clock.”
“You are? Great. I’ll come and listen to you.” Spider pulled in the parking lot behind the restaurant, and they went in the back entrance. Karam had been watching the front door from a booth in the dining room, so they surprised him. He stood as they reached his table, a broad smile on his face.
“Laurie! I am so glad to see you. Did you enjoy your ride?”
“Hello, Karam. Yes I did.” She slid into the bench opposite and made room for Spider.
When they were all seated, Karam opened a folder. “I have begun work on the Goodman line. I need a little more time on that. It would be good to have the address of Alyssa Goodman, so I make sure I am dealing with the right person on this end. However, I have found the Civil War soldier. The preliminary work I have done looks promising.”
“Promising how?”
“He had no issue. No children.”
“Wow,” Laurie said. “That looks more than promising.”
Karam smiled. “If I am correct, it is. As I said, I want to start from this end, from the woman who is bringing suit.” He picked up a paper and set it in front of Laurie and Spider. “If I have not missed something, and if her line goes through somebody else, I will give you a copy of what I have discovered, along with this.”
Spider looked at the page. “What is it?”
“My credentials,” Karam said.
“Great suffering zot.” Spider scanned the listing. Karam had a bachelor’s degree, two masters’ and a doctorate. The list of cases on which he had been expert witness covered half the page. Spider looked up and said, “You better not let people know you’ll work for a day’s use of a Yugo.”
“I don’t know,” Laurie said. “There aren’t many who can offer that.”
Spider tapped the paper. “If you are right, then the suit is full of holes. Right? It won’t hold water.”
Karam’s brow furrowed. “Holes? Water? What are you talking about?”
Laurie interpreted. “It means the suit has no merit. Is that what you’re saying?”
Karam nodded. “I will give you a correct pedigree chart for Alyssa Goodman and for the soldier Oscar Goodman. That and my credentials should put an end to it.”
Laurie reached across the table to give Karam’s hand a quick squeeze. “You’ve saved the Red Pueblo!”
Karam’s face was serious. “Not yet. I would not usually say anything without double checking, but I got excited about the other thing and called you too soon.”
“What other thing?” Laurie looked from Spider to Karam.
“Karam doesn’t think Tiffany is the real deal,” Spider said. “He doesn’t think she has the money she says she has.”
Laurie’s eyes got big. “Really?”
“I now know for certain she has not.” Karam drew another sheet out of the folder and slid it across the table. “Until recently, she had been working as a caregiver to an elderly gentleman in Modesto, California. The name of the man and his address are in the report. He died two months ago, and the family claims she took off with his car.”
Karam paused to check his notes. “She tells people she’s staying here with an old high school classmate. That much is true. Most of the rest is fabrication. She is divorced, but her former husband did not have a software company. He was, and is, a truck driver. For the divorce, they split their assets, and her half came to $3,412.52. You will find information about Wendell Wendt, the former husband, in my report as well as a copy of the divorce papers.”
Laurie leaned back into the corner. “So she’s not going to save the museum?”
Spider picked up the list of Karam’s credentials. “Maybe she doesn’t have to. With this suit going away, they may not need the donation.”
Karam held out his hand. “If you will let me have those papers back, I will give them to you in a folder when I finish. You will get me Alyssa Goodman’s address?” He straightened the edges of the papers and put them in his folder.
“I’ll call Martin and Neva, but I’ll wait ‘til after nine, so as not to wake them,” Laurie said. “I’ll let you know as soon as I do.”
“Please, not a word to them about the Goodman issue. I do not want them to get their hopes up before I am certain. On the matter of Tiffany, go ahead and tell them.” Karam stood. “I must get back to work.”
“You’re not going to have breakfast with us?” Laurie asked.
Karam shook his head. “I ate at six. Will I see you either this evening or tomorrow?”
“We’ll call on our way back,” Laurie said. “Let’s have dinner together.”
Karam’s teeth shone white as he smiled. “I look forward to it.” He waved the folder as a good-bye gesture but stopped and took out his phone. “What was that about holy water?”
Spider laughed. “Not holy water. If something is full of holes or won’t hold water, it means it isn’t based on fact. It’s fraudulent.”
“Got it. Thanks.” Karam tucked his folder under his arm and slowly walked away, both thumbs working as he recorded the idiom.
Moments later the waitress appeared. “I didn’t want to interrupt your meeting. Are you ready to look at a menu, or do you want ham and eggs over easy again this morning?”
“You remembered.” Spider smiled up at her. “I’ll go with that, and my wife will have oatmeal and whole wheat toast.” He glanced at Laurie for confirmation.
“And orange juice,” Laurie added. “Milk for him.”
“Been married a long time?” The waitress stuck her pencil behind her ear.
“A few years.” Laurie watched her close her book and walk purposefully toward the kitchen. “Does it show?” she asked Spider.
His eyes twinkled. “Didn’t last night.”
Laurie blushed. “Shh.” Squeezing his leg under the table, she said, “Look at the video monitor.” She pointed to a flat-screen above the booth on the opposite wall that showed a group riding horses through country where the red rock had been carved into fantastic shapes by wind and rain. “This country is so unbelievably beautiful,” Laurie said. “We were out in stuff like that yesterday.”
They watched the changing images with little conversation, even after the waitress brought their orders. “I don’t know,” Spider said as he finished his breakfast and fished his wallet out of his back pocket. “Don’t you feel a little bit disloyal to Lincoln County, raving about how beautiful Kane County is?”
She shook her head as she took the last bite of toast. “It was your folks who settled there, not mine.”
Spider paid the tab, and they got in the pickup and headed to Fredonia, turning west toward St. George on the south end of town. As they crossed over Kanab Creek Bridge, Spider said, “Maybe you should make that call to Martin now because we’ll lose cell coverage in a few miles.”
Laurie pulled out her phone and dialed. Apparently Neva answered, because the conversation proceeded along feminine lines. Laurie said they had some information, but they had to go to St. George today. Spider would come by tomorrow and talk to them about it. What time should he come? She looked up at him and said, “Four o’clock?” and when Spider nodded, relayed confirmation.
“We need some information about the Goodman lawsuit,” Laurie said to Neva. “What’s the address of Alyssa Goodman, the gal who is suing the museum?” She wrote down what Neva told her and then asked how Martin was doing.
After finding out Martin was perking along pretty well, Laurie dialed Karam and read the address to him. She listened a moment and said, “Oh no! So does that mean you can’t work this morning? Okay, I won’t keep you. Bye.”
“He’s lost his Internet,” she told Spider. “The front desk says some guy on a backhoe dug up a cable. They hope to have it repaired later today.” She put her phone away. “So, where are we going?”
“It’s a place called the V Bar Ranch in Mesquite.” Spider pointed to a folder on the seat between them. “You read the file last night.”
“I remember. Dorcas. What’s her story?”
“You know as much as I do. That’s what we’re going to find out. She’s young, twenty-five or so. Linda’s age.”
“Or Amy’s. Or Mary Defrain’s.”
“Yeah. In the file there’s a copy of an unlimited power of attorney she gave to our friend Austin.”
“That’s like letting the fox in the henhouse.”
“Yeah. I couldn’t find out from the file what he did with it, but I’ll bet he’s ended up with the ranch.”
“How long will it take us to get there?”
“From here? Couple hours or so.”
Laurie reached behind the seat and found a travel pillow. “I didn’t get much sleep the last two nights. Do you mind if I take a nap?” She put the pillow against the doorpost and leaned her head on it.
Spider patted her leg. “You go on ahead.” He smiled over at her as she tucked her hand under her cheek and closed her eyes.
As he continued west across the Arizona Strip, red cliffs marched on his right, and desert landscape gradually fell away on his left until it reached the blue Kaibab Plateau thirty miles away. The fenced rangeland reminded him of his place in Lincoln County, and his idle mind wandered to something his son Bobby had said to him after the funeral on Tuesday. Was that just three days ago?
It was an offhand remark, made as he held his baby son, Spider’s grandson, and said good-bye. Bobby had said he’d like to move back to Lincoln County. Because of the nature of his job with the software company, he could live anywhere he wanted and telecommute. He said he’d like his children to grow up there on the ranch.
Spider hadn’t had a chance to give the matter much thought. In the flurry of traveling to Kanab and subsequent events, he hadn’t even mentioned it to Laurie yet. He glanced at her, but she was apparently asleep.
All the way across the strip, dropping down into Hurricane and on through St. George, he planned the infrastructure upgrade that would have to be done for another house on the property, beginning with a two-inch water line from the artesian well. He didn’t come back to the issue of Austin Lee until he was going through the vertical-walled canyon made by the Virgin River twenty miles beyond St. George.
A few miles out of Mesquite, he pulled off the road at a no-services exit and punched in the address of the V-Bar Ranch. What lowdown Austin Lee scheme would he discover there? And what could you do about someone who did bad things but skated within the law?
If Karam was right, they had stopped Austin on this gambit as far as the Red Pueblo was concerned, but what was to prevent him from finding a new way to get Martin’s land? Then there was the worrisome detail of his hanging around Amy. And what other worrisome details were hanging out there, ready to bite them? Someone needed to stop this predator, for sure.
Laurie sat up. She blinked, stretched, and dropped her pillow behind the seat. “Are we there yet?” she asked.
Spider chuckled as he pulled onto the freeway. “Are you up for the day?”
She yawned. “I think so.”
“I just pulled off to set up the GPS. It says we turn off at the next exit.”
The ranch proved to be three miles off the freeway. Half a mile past a new golf course, a gravel road to the ranch branched off the blacktop, crossed a cattle guard and wound another quarter mile to a weathered frame house and outbuildings.
Laurie looked around as they drove in. “Lincoln County looks pretty lush compared to this.”
“See it through ol’ Austin’s eyes. Add a sprinkling system, some houses around the back side of that golf course, maybe some palm trees. It’ll look pretty nice.”
“Look at the house,” Laurie said. “I don’t think anyone is home. In fact, the place looks unlived-in.”
“Shoot. I hope we ha
ven’t come too late.”
At that moment, a three-legged dog came running from behind the house, barking furiously. The dog was followed by a tall, big-boned woman in Levi’s and worn cowboy boots. She stood, hands on hips, pulling her beat-up straw hat down to keep the sun out of her eyes as she watched them. Spider stopped the pickup in front of the house and turned off the engine.
SPIDER EXAMINED THE red hair curling under the hat brim and the freckled face. “Does she look like she’d be named Dorcas?” he asked.
Laurie opened the door, slid to the ground, and walked to where the woman stood. “Hi. Would you be Dorcas Coleman?”
“I go by Dorrie.” She had on leather work gloves and kept one hand on the dog’s head.
“I’m Laurie Latham, and this is my husband Spider.” She pointed to Spider, just getting out of the pickup.
Spider touched the brim of his hat. “Howdy. We live over in Lincoln County. We’ve come by to…” He trailed off when Laurie claimed Dorrie’s attention by kneeling down and calling the dog to her.
“I ain’t never seen anything like that,” Dorrie said. “She don’t usually take to strangers.”
Laurie rubbed the dog behind the ears. “What’s her name?”
“Trey.”
Laurie smiled. “For three. I see. Was she born like this?”
Dorrie nodded. “The people who owned her were going to put her down, but I could see she was something special, and I talked them out of it. I went there intending to get a cattle dog, but instead I got a friend.”
Laurie looked at the empty pasture beyond the house. “How many head do you have?”
Dorrie looked away and waited so long to answer that Spider thought she might not have heard the question. When she finally faced them again, her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. She flapped her arms against her side as if in frustration and turned away once more. “I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at them. “I don’t mean to act like a baby.” She sniffed. “Truth is, I don’t own the ranch anymore.”