by Paul Moomaw
“Sit,” he said. The sky beyond the window was just short of perfect, a deepening cobalt blue with icy clouds that spoke of winter coming. Marks turned from the window and settled into a chair, not commenting on or appearing to notice the view. He lifted his right hand with his left and placed it on the desk, then twined his fingers together. He shifted his gaze from Arceneaux to his hands and back to Arceneaux again.
“I had polio when I was a boy,” he said. “It affected my right leg, too, but God allowed me to overcome that.”
“But he kept the arm for a souvenir?”
“I do not question his actions.” Marks shifted slightly in his chair and stared at Arceneaux, his eyes becoming even narrower than they had been. “And I didn’t come here to discuss God.”
“Point,” Arceneaux said. “Down to business, then.”
“I got your name from Larry French,” Marks said. “He is the public defender representing my brother. He said you probably won’t charge much, because you need the work.”
“I charge a hundred an hour,” Arceneaux said. Actually he usually charged less, because he did, indeed need the work; but he decided he could make an exception in this case.
Marks frowned and stared at his hands, as if he were computing costs. Then he looked at Arceneaux again.
“I assume you offer a complete accounting of expenses,” he said.
“Of course,” Arceneaux replied.
Marks paused again. “Mister French also told me that you used to be an attorney, but that you lost your license. What did you do to deserve that?”
I didn’t do a damn thing to deserve it, Arceneaux thought. “I was defending a man who molested a neighbor girl,” he said. “I found out his daughter was the one who had blown the whistle on him, and I didn’t tell him because he had a history of violence and assault. The ethics board called it withholding information from a client, and suspended my license for three years. That was two years ago.”
Marks sat silently, digesting the information. At length he nodded abruptly. “Very well,” he said. “My brother needs help.” He paused, as if he expected a response. “His name is Arden,” he continued finally. “Arden Marks.” He paused again. Arceneaux wondered if his nose quivered when he saw a woman he liked.
“My brother is in jail,” Marks said.
“It happens.”
“They say he murdered his wife and another person.”
“Who says?”
“The sheriff. The county attorney. Those people.” Marks spoke the last words with a tone of contempt, then fell silent and stared in the direction of his shoes.
“Did he?” Arceneaux asked.
Marks looked up quickly and shook his head as if to clear it. “Did he what . . . oh . . . no . . . of course not.” He paused again. “I don’t think so, anyway.”
“You don’t think so.”
Marks shook his head again, this time more emphatically.
“Arden is a hard man, but he wouldn’t kill, especially not Samantha, no matter how far she fell.” He glanced at his shoes again, then back at Arceneaux. “Samantha was Arden’s wife.”
“The one everybody says he killed,” Arceneaux said. “The one who was a fallen woman.”
“Fallen from a state of grace to a state of sin,” Marks said. “And now, I suppose, fallen all the way to Hell.” His weasel mouth stretched into a tiny smile.
“You don’t sound too sad about that,” Arceneaux said.
Marks straightened his thin frame and took a deep breath.
“I said my brother is a hard man, and he is. But he also is a forgiving man. He would have taken her back, even after she shamed and disgraced him, and made a public fool of him.” He turned his eyes on Arceneaux. They had a look that said someone else was hiding behind them, peering out—someone Arceneaux would just as soon not meet.
“I am not so forgiving,” Marks said. “She got what she deserved. She was an evil woman, clothed in a veil of innocence. She spit on the face of God, and she has been punished.” He leaned forward, extended his good hand, and pointed a skinny finger, its nail bitten to the quick, at Arceneaux.
“His enemies shall lick the dust,” he said. He leaned back into the chair, hard enough to make it squeak, and lowered his hand to the desk, where it grasped and massaged its crippled mate again.
“But your brother didn’t do it,” Arceneaux said. “At least you don’t think so.”
“He wouldn’t.”
“So what do you want from me?”
“Find someone else for them to hang.”
“Does it matter who?”
Marks stared at Arceneaux again. The presence that had peered out from behind his eyes was gone, replaced by a cold fury that was more unsettling.
“I want to be honest with you, Mr. Arceneaux,” he said. “As long as it isn’t my brother, I don’t care who they hang.”
Arceneaux got up and went to his liquor cabinet. He pulled out a bottle of brandy and a speckled plastic tumbler. “Want some?”
Marks shook his head and looked away.
“Where did these murders happen?” Arceneaux asked.
“Don’t you read the newspaper?”
“Don’t read newspapers, don’t watch TV, don’t listen to gossip. I guess I’m a funny kind of private eye.”
Marks shrugged. “Your private habits don’t matter. Samantha was killed at the Double Pine Guest Ranch, outside of Darby. A man was also killed. My brother is accused of killing both of them.”
Arceneaux knew the place, a spread of luxury cabins hidden in the woods, clustered around an overdone lodge with a cavernous restaurant and walls full of stuffed animals, where people came from all over the world and spent too much money for an ersatz rustic experience and complete privacy. He had been there once, courtesy of a woman travel agent who had wangled a cheap deal for a lost weekend.
“Samantha worked there,” Marks said. “Among other things.” Arceneaux liked him less and less.
“You live around there?” he asked.
“In Woodvale.”
Oh, shit, Arceneaux thought. No wonder you talk like a preacher. Woodvale was a small, fundamentalist religious community tucked into the foothills of the Sapphire Mountains, the low, rolling range that formed the eastern boundary of the Bitterroot Valley. Everybody in western Montana seemed to know at least one scurrilous rumor about the place and the off-beat practices of the people who lived there.
“I’ll have to think about it,” he said. He poured brandy into the glass, tossed it off, and poured again. “Sure you don’t want some?” he asked, because he wanted to piss Marks off, make him sweat a little with righteous indignation. Then it occurred to him that Marks was the kind of man who wouldn’t sweat in Hell. He shrugged and sat down again, and Marks rose from his chair at the same time. He fumbled in his suit coat and retrieved a folded check. He tossed it onto the desk.
“The check is for one thousand dollars,” he said. “If that isn’t enough, we can get more.”
“We?”
“A lot of people love my brother,” Marks said, and scowled. “Frankly, I think this is a waste of time and money, but none of the money is mine. Other people dug up the cash. I took on the job of finding you.” The edge in his voice made it clear he found the task distasteful. “I will leave the check with you while you decide. If you don’t want the job, I will take the check back. If I haven’t heard from you in a week, I will stop payment.”
“Pretty trusting of you.”
“I put my trust in my Maker,” Marks said, “and I post-dated the check for eight days from now.” He paused, then extended his left hand. Arceneaux shook it awkwardly with his own right hand.
“I’ll let myself out,” Marks said, and walked quickly to the door, his eagerness to end the encounter clear in his posture.
Arceneaux watched him go. Part of him said he should have refused the job, should have told Marks that private detectives don’t solve murders. Cops do that, or, more frequently, the i
dentity of the killer is so obvious that no one needs to solve anything. Private eyes follow wandering husbands, and check out pilfering employees. On the other hand, a thousand dollars would come in handy, even if he had doubts about being able to earn it. He shook his head and sighed. White man’s money. Clarence could never have hired him. Most of his childhood friends could not.
“Goddam white people,” he muttered. Maybe Clarence was right. Maybe he was an apple; but what the hell was wrong with trying to make something of yourself, especially if the alternative was to be like Clarence? The other man’s drunken grin appeared before his mind’s eyes.
“Goddam Indians,” he said to the grin, willing it to wink out, like the Cheshire cat’s smile.
The clock on the wall chimed softly, reminding him it was time to wind it. He pulled a brass key from his desk drawer and cranked the weights up. Then he poured more brandy and sipped at it as he gazed out the window. His own reflection was a dark silhouette surrounded by the glow of the day’s end.
“Goddam half breeds,” he said to the window, and drained the brandy. The afternoon sun had caught the ice crystals in the clouds and made them blaze, but it was a cold fire.
Chapter 3
Arceneaux climbed the stairs to Tina Tanner’s third-floor apartment, his arms wrapped around a minikeg of Bayern Amber from the Iron Horse brewery across the street. Tina had two rooms, a bath, and a tiny kitchen that the renovators of the old apartment building must have thought no one would ever use. The building was supposed to be for residents with disabilities. Arceneaux couldn’t see that Tina had any, but she would dispute that, pointing to her weakness for drawing to inside straights.
The door was ajar, and Arceneaux walked through. He carried the beer to the kitchen, where he knew Tina would already have filled the sink with ice, then returned to the living room. Tina sat at the window, chin cupped in her hands, gazing down at the Montana Rail Link switch yard, where a mixed train of lumber and nondescript box cars rumbled east.
“Is that the only floor show this evening?” Arceneaux asked.
Tina smiled. “Sometimes I like to watch them leave, and pretend I’m going with them.” She rose and stretched. “Never really would, of course. I have my fantasies, but I’m a coward at heart.” She crossed her hands melodramatically across her chest and made a face, then reached the left hand toward Arceneaux, fingers extended. This day the fingernails were a pale yellow.
“Nice, huh? she said. “It’s called Autumn Aspen. I thought I should do something to honor the season, falling leaves, elk, all that stuff, even if I am mostly into my own personal winter.”
“You’ll always be a hottie in my eyes,” Arceneaux said.
Tina laughed. “I’d blush if I had enough blood left in this old body,” she said. She walked into the kitchen, Arceneaux on her heels, and started breaking eggs into a pan. She added margarine, nodded as the eggs started sizzling.
“I always used to cook with butter. Then they started yelling about cholesterol and I switched to margarine. Now they say I should have stuck with butter. What I should have done is listened to Julia Child, is what,” she said. She began to chop sausage and toss it after the eggs. She waved vaguely toward the kitchen cupboards. “Vegetable’s in there. You got your choice of canned spinach, and that’s it. And don’t make faces at me. There’s nothing wrong with canned vegetables. I grew up on them, and look at me.”
“I won’t touch that one,” Arceneaux said, and grabbed the spinach.
“Pot’s on the stove,” Tina said. Arceneaux nodded. He opened the can, poured the contents into the cheap, Ecoware sauce pan, and turned on the burner.
“It’s a shame you left the Ox when you did the other day,” Tina said.
“Part of me isn’t sure I want to go back,” Arceneaux said.
“Sure you will. And I doubt you’ll see that Hannigan guy again. Edward hung him out to dry.”
“What happened?”
“I had no idea our dealer was such a mechanic. He set Hannigan up four or five hands in a row. We could all tell he was doing it, but we couldn’t see how. I think by the end Hannigan knew, too. He left in kind of a huff. That was after Edward dealt him a full house, kings over queens, and then shuffled off four aces to me.” She laughed and pulled the pot of spinach off the burner. “You don’t want to overcook this.”
When the meal was ready they settled at the window table and ate in silence at first. Then Tina asked, “You ever been married, Sam? I would guess you have, good-looking guy like you, but it occurs to me that’s just one of a lot of things I don’t know about you.”
“Mystery man, that’s me.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
Arceneaux nodded. “I was married for a while,” he said. “It didn’t last.”
“Divorce?”
“Yeah.”
“Did you have any kids?” Tina asked.
“I’ve got a son.”
“What’s his name?”
“Josh.”
“That’s a nice name. How old is he?”
“Nine,” Arceneaux said. “Almost, anyway.” He shoveled more sausage into his mouth.
“What’s he like?” Tina asked.
Arceneaux shrugged. “He’s a kid, you know? That’s what he’s like. A kid.”
“I bet he looks like you.”
“I don’t know. I never really thought about it.”
“Jesus, Sam,” Tina said in exasperation. “This is like pulling teeth. Most dads I know love to talk about their kids, even when they’re divorced.”
“It’s complicated,” Arceneaux said. “I don’t see him a lot, and I don’t feel real great about that.”
“Well, why the hell don’t you see him more, then?” Tina asked, and Arceneaux responded by taking another bite of sausage.
They ate in silence for a while, then Tina reached across the table and wrapped her bony hand around Arceneaux’s big one. “Sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t butt into other people’s business.”
“I guess I can forgive you as long as you feed me elk sausage.” He finished off his plate and took both of their glasses into the kitchen for a refill of Amber.
“I was married one time,” Tina said, as he returned with the ale. “That didn’t work out, either.” She stood up, went to a closet, and opened the door. She reached up to the closet shelf and pulled down a framed picture. “I still got this. It reminds me that I used to be young, and why never to get married again.” She placed the picture on the table. It showed a young woman and a man who looked slightly older. The woman, clearly Tina even after all the years, wore an old-fashioned dress and covered her hair with an odd, ruffled cap. Arceneaux shook his head in admiration and whistled.
“You really were a dish, weren’t you?”
Tina gave him a pleased smile. “I wasn’t bad,” she said. “That was my husband, Loris Canby. I was seventeen, and he was a holy hunk. All holy God this, and holy God that, and rippling muscles. I couldn’t resist the combination, and I moved right in to be a good, Christian housewife. I scrubbed toilets and sang hymns with the best of them for three, four years.” She laughed. “I scrubbed while he went out praying over the brethren. When he decided to move the prettiest one into the house I threw the mop at him and moved out.” She pointed to a large, antique rocking chair that stood in a corner of the room. “That’s my only other souvenir from those days. It was my husband’s. It has a false bottom, where he used to hide his dirty magazines.” She shook her head and laughed. “I’m glad I’ll never be that young again.” She sighed softly, and a shadow crossed her eyes momentarily. “Sometimes I think it could have been nice to have kids,” she said. She looked at Arceneaux intently. “I guess that’s why I think you ought to make an effort to see that boy of yours. You need to teach him to fish, and whittle, and all those things. That’s what daddies are for.”
“You live in Missoula when you were married?” Arceneaux asked, mostly to change the subject.
Ti
na shook her head. “Woodvale,” she said.
“Son of a bitch,” Arceneaux said. “One of the things I was going to tell you is that I’ve moved into the big time, private eye-wise. I got hired to get a guy off on a murder charge, and he’s from Woodvale.”
Tina’s eyes got bigger. “You must mean Arden Marks,” she said.
Arceneaux nodded. “You bet.”
“I used to know Arden, when I lived there. Him and his brother, Elbert. Knew them both. Elbert gave me the creeps, but Arden seemed okay. He was a lot younger, maybe eight, nine years old, when I moved to Woodvale. His daddy was kind of a bastard, used to beat on Arden a lot. Arden took it until just before I left. He must have been twelve or so by then, and big for his age. One day his dad started chasing him down the street for some sin he had committed, and Arden grabbed a piece of stove wood and knocked him down with it.”
“He’s accused of murdering his wife,” Arceneaux said.
Tina nodded slowly. “I supposed he carried around enough anger to do that, but he always struck me as basically good hearted. Big and dumb. Especially big. Even as a teenager he must have stood around six foot four.” She smiled. “I don’t know what he’s like these days, but when he was a kid, he sure had a yen to travel. I had an old stack of National Geographic magazines, and he would spend hours reading them, looking at the pictures, talking about what it must be like to go to some of those places. He was a dreamer. I think that’s one of the things his father tried to beat out of him.”
“Elbert says Arden is a hard man, but not a bad one,” Arceneaux said.
“I could easier see Elbert killing someone,” Tina said. “As long as he could figure out a sneaky way to do it. He was always kind of a slime ball. He’s five, six years older than Arden. When they were little, he would help his daddy punish Arden, chase after him and hold him down until the old man got there to beat him up. Then, after Arden cleaned the old guy’s clock, Elbert couldn’t try hard enough to kiss his brother’s ass.”