by Sylvia Nobel
But what if Jesse was lying? It was interesting to know that Dr. Orcutt had given the Pickrells Audrey’s phone number and it would have been simple enough for Jesse to call and masquerade as Dr. Orcutt’s nurse. She’d made no bones about her resentment and could have easily arranged for our near-accident. But what about the static on the phone line? That was an unexplained coincidence.
Dodging a series of mammoth potholes in the poorly maintained road, I decided that one thing about Jesse was consistent. At least she’d stayed in character. I didn’t know what to make of Haston’s performance. When one considered his enraged state of mind just two nights ago, he’d seemed suspiciously conciliatory today, almost too willing to release the reins of the company to his cousin. My gut feeling told me that if Audrey’s plans included signing any kind of partnership agreement with him, she’d best read the fine print with care.
It was a relief when the teeth-jarring road leveled out into a wide parking area, but I was puzzled to see Haston seated behind the wheel of his truck, and the smashingly-gorgeous Duncan Claypool holding the passenger door for Audrey.
I rolled up beside them, cranked the window down and stopped. “You’re not leaving already?”
“Sorry, Kendall,” Audrey said in a faint voice as I stepped out. “I’m just too tired to walk anymore after...well, you know. Haston says he has to meet someone, so Duncan is going to drive me back to the house,” she added shyly, her wan face coloring slightly.
Oh? So it was Duncan already. Skepticism gnawed at me as I watched him help her into the cab. Was he genuinely interested in her or just feathering his own nest? “I’d like to stay and snap a few pictures and then I’m going to stop by Toomey’s garage before I come back.”
“Oh, that’s right. What if you need to leave your car there? How will you get back?”
I grinned. “If push comes to shove, I’ll walk. It’s not that far.”
Haston put the truck in gear, then leaned out the window as I removed my jacket and shouldered the camera. “If you follow this road around the other side of the hill, you’ll come to another gate. There’s enough room to walk around it and maybe a quarter of a mile further, you’ll see the original entrance to the Defiance. Beyond that, you’ll find the Destiny and Pipe dream shafts.”
“Thanks.
He started to pull away again, then braked and backed up. “By the way, Harmon Stubbs won’t be here for another thirty minutes, so you’ll be on your own.”
“Who?”
“The watchman.”
I frowned. “I thought D.J. was the watchman.”
“Well, he can’t be here twenty-four hours a day,” he snapped in a tone of peevish condescension. “They trade off on night shift, of course.”
Of course. That way you can have D.J. spy on us while he’s not on duty here, I mused cynically, forcing a smile. “I’ll be fine, see you later.”
After the roar of his truck faded in the distance, I turned to study my surroundings. So, this was it. The famed Defiance Mine. A sad air of neglect permeated the whole place and except for the soft chattering of birds and the faint whistling of the wind through the giant head frame spiring into the cobalt sky, no sound disturbed the solitude.
Great atmosphere. A little spooky, but great. And an excellent picture, I thought, leaning back against the car while aiming the camera lens at my target. The fact that the towering structure now served as a perch for a flock of mourning doves seemed ironic as I remembered the unsettling sign someone had posted at the gate earlier.
Calling upon the little information I’d had time to garner from the mining book and combining that with Whitey’s colorful stories of the past, I could only imagine what it must have been like to work a claim on this lonesome windswept hilltop.
Defiance. Destiny. Pipe Dream. Romantic names that conjured up visions of long ago. I had to hand it to Seth Morgan. It must have taken some kind of spunk to stake out this barren tract of land and persevere during all those years of backbreaking isolation.
For a while, I wandered among the empty sun-faded hoist shacks and deserted boarded up buildings, stopping to peer through a weed-choked chain-link fence at rows of giant trucks and other pieces of mining equipment standing idle. I tried to imagine the place in its heyday. What should have been a noisy, bustling enterprise, filled with grimy-faced men valiantly braving danger to extract precious metals from the bowels of the earth, now lingered in silent ghostly remembrance.
Given the circumstances surrounding the origins of the town, I thought how bizarre it was that Grady Morgan’s foolhardy decision had only served to reemphasize the word folly. Was his daughter strong enough to shoulder the magnitude of obstacles and restore the Defiance to its former glory? Only time would tell. Facing the savage glare of the afternoon sun, I swatted at a cloud of pesky gnats that followed me like a second shadow and set out along the road climbing the hill. Even though my street shoes were comfortable, negotiating the sharp stones and slippery gravel proved daunting. I wished I’d had the foresight to throw a pair of sneakers in the car.
I had to clamber over a boulder to bypass the second gate, warning in bold black: TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED! And, after hiking for fifteen minutes, I stopped to catch my breath and take in the panoramic view below. Away to the south, gray clouds were gathering like a fleet of battleships around the summit of Thunder Peak, standing in silent vigil over the hazy San Pedro Valley. The warm wind lifted the hair back from my face and I wondered if the rain would make it across the parched desert floor. Most likely we’d experience another of what I had dubbed, “fake-out” storms that came rushing in with the enthusiasm of a used car salesman, all wind and bluster, and then, like yesterday, fizzle to nothing, leaving one with vague feelings of discontent.
I snapped a few more photos, zeroing in on the piles of rusty mine tailings and discarded heaps of machinery resting beside leach ponds covered with a scummy yellow slime.
Even though Mother Nature had done her best to soften the man-made scars by dusting the treeless hills with brilliant patches of yellow and purple wildflowers, I could understand how the blemished landscape would provide the ammunition sought by the environmentalists who held the mine responsible for permanent destruction of the area.
Rounding the bend I drew in an awed breath when I came face to face with the black mouth of the old mine yawning before me. Signs, posted prominently against aging timbers read, DANGEROUS CONDITIONS KEEP OUT! No need to worry I thought with a grim shudder, as the childhood memory of my brother Patrick locking me in the tiny airless closet leaped to mind. To this day, I had not forgotten the gut-chilling terror. The struggle to free myself from the wool coats that seemed to close around my face. Suffocating me. The subsequent case of claustrophobia it had engendered, made the chances of me ever wanting to venture into that black void slim to none.
Totally absorbed in fiddling with the shutter speed, F stop, and finding the right angle for my picture, I didn’t pay too much attention to the rustling sound coming from the bushes behind me, but I came close to dropping the camera when a low chuckle reached my ears. I whirled around staring wide-eyed into the thick foliage while a parade of goose bumps skated down my spine. A second chuckle prompted me to quaver, “Is someone there?”
Nerve-wracking seconds passed. When no one answered, a horrifying succession of possibilities flitted though my mind. Kidnap. Rape. Murder!
Panic grabbed me. Frantically, I looked around for some kind of weapon. Seizing a sharp rock, I was poised to do battle when a ground squirrel suddenly skittered from the underbrush, skipped across the road and dove into a nearby hole.
When my thundering heartbeat finally tapered off, the giddy rush of relief left my legs feeling boneless. After willing my paralyzed lungs to inhale, I gave into an idiotic desire to giggle. “A squirrel, for heaven’s sake.”
Heatedly, I admonished myself for overreacting, but was nonetheless acutely aware of how vulnerable I was—a woman alone in the middle of nowh
ere. And I couldn’t stop myself from dredging up the discomfiting image of Archie Lawton’s leering face. And what if that chuckling sound hadn’t been the squirrel? That sobering thought propelled my inert legs into action and I quickly retraced my steps.
I was just beginning to relax when the uneasiness returned full force. Above the hilltop, a flock of vultures circled liked an ominous black wreath. Uh oh. These crafty scavengers came on duty for only one reason.
Two of them suddenly broke ranks and spiraled towards the clearing where I’d left the car. A tangible sense of fear clawed at me as I broke into a run. When I rounded the corner, the pair of giant birds flapped away from my car and then I noticed the indefinable lump. “What the hell...”
With each step my apprehension expanded to horror as the gruesome sight materialized before me. Splayed out and gutted, the carcass of a large gray jackrabbit adorned the hood.
“How sick,” I cried aloud in disgust, my stomach rolling with nausea. But even worse, was the ominous message ENDANGERED SPECIES! scrawled across my windshield in the dead animal’s blood.
Chapter 13
Anger replaced my disgust and I was trying to decide how to deal with the hideous mess when a battered pickup—a stranger to paint and sputtering as if it were on its last sparkplug, rattled through the gate and shuddered to a stop near one of the ramshackle buildings.
A fiftyish, sinewy-looking man, whom I assumed was Harmon Stubbs, stepped out, all the while keeping me locked in his quizzical gaze. Slapping his thigh, he whistled to the fuzzy black and white dog hopping around in the truck bed, and then approached me warily. “You mind tellin’ me...”
But the words faltered and his eyes practically bugged out when he spotted my ghastly hood ornament. “Shitfire! What in blazes is going on here, lady?”
I started to explain but got no further than Haston’s name when, with blinding speed, the dog rushed past him, leaped up, snatched the remains of the rabbit in his teeth and bounded away.
“Jigger, stop it. Give!” he shouted, gesturing wildly with his tattered hat to no avail as the dog ran in circles, refusing to surrender his prize. The man finally grabbed a stick and hurled it at the poor beast, bellowing, “Stupid-assed dog.”
“Let him have the thing,” I said. “I certainly don’t want it.”
He heaved a sigh of annoyance. “I don’t guess it will hurt him none. It didn’t smell putrid or nothing, so it must be a fresh kill.”
“That’s comforting.”
While Jigger retired to a bush to gnaw on his catch, I confirmed the man’s identity, explained who I was and why I was there. “Mr. Stubbs, did you notice anyone on the mine road as you came in? Any other vehicles?”
“Nope. Can’t say as I did,” he mused, rubbing the back of his neck with one gnarled hand as he squinted at the message on the windshield. “But it appears you must’ve riled somebody up pretty good for ‘em to pull a stunt like this.”
“I don’t think the message is intended for me. It was meant to intimidate Miss Morgan.”
Nodding sagely, Harmon Stubbs fished a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, pounded one out and lit it. The relentless wind grabbed the smoke and blew it back in his eyes. “If I was a betting man, I’d wager most likely it was the same person that hung that sign on the gate. And I’ll tell you something else. I’ve about had it up to here with these meddlesome tree huggers. You know who the endangered species are around these parts?” He poked a thumb against his chest. “We are. People. Not birds, not red squirrels, not mountain lions.
Because of their pea-brained shenanigans, I lost my house and had to put my ol’ lady to work just to make ends meet. And I’m not the only one. I can’t count the number of folks who’ve had to pack up their families and leave their homes to look for jobs someplace else. If those troublemakers would just leave well enough alone, this town just might have a fighting chance to get back to normal.”
His impassioned plea echoed the sentiments of all the men I’d met at the Muleskinner yesterday. “I sympathize with your plight, Mr. Stubbs, but right now, as you can see, I’ve got a bit of a problem too. You wouldn’t happen to have some rags or something I could use to clean my windshield?”
“Yep. Got some stuff in the truck.” He pulled a pair of grimy work gloves from his back pocket, slid them on, and when he pulled something that looked suspiciously like an eyeball from beneath one wiper blade and flung it behind him, my stomach rose in revolt again. I had to swallow hard and breathe deeply before saying, “It’s hard to believe anyone who claims to love and respect animals could do such a cruel thing.”
“Who else around these parts would be harping about such nonsense? You tell Miss Morgan to hang in there and not let these people bully her.”
I agreed to convey his sentiments and while he trotted back to his truck to get the cleaning materials, I visualized Audrey’s reaction to this gruesome scene. She would have been hysterical. Exactly what the perpetrator wanted. And yet I would have to tell her.
Taken collectively, the bizarre sequence of events that had transpired since our arrival left little doubt that Grady’s tormentor had Audrey in her sights. Mentally, I added this latest incident to the list of other things I intended to discuss with the deputy sheriff tomorrow.
“Good thing D.J. ain’t here today,” Harmon remarked a moment later, grimacing slightly as he poured water from a jug onto a handful of paper towels and began to sop up the bloody mess.
“Why is that?”
“Most likely he’s gonna be between a sharp rock and that hard place, seeing how he’s working for Miss Morgan and at the same time, making goo-goo eyes at Bitsy Bigelow.”
“Who’s she?”
He paused and used his forearm to wipe perspiration from his brow. “Nice gal. Waits tables down at the Huddle Cafe.”
“I don’t get the connection.”
“Ever since coming back to town last spring, she’s been working hand in hand with Willow and her bunch.”
“Really? In what capacity?”
“Oh, you know,” he replied, wadding up a clump of soggy towels, “helping ‘em make up fliers and signs, going to them protest marches and such. Kind of being her right hand man...or woman, so to speak.”
Well, that was interesting. Apparently D.J. was making a career of playing both ends against the middle. Underneath his mellow demeanor lurked a man of subterfuge. “So, doesn’t that cause a little friction between them? I mean, to Bitsy, isn’t that like he’s working for the enemy?”
“Oh, that ain’t the only thing that gets her goat,” he added with a raspy chuckle. “Her no-account husband was a drunken skunk, so she ain’t too wild about D.J. hanging around the Mule.”
“Really? Does he have a drinking problem?”
He dismissed my question with a hasty wave. “Oh, hell. He hoists a few brews just like the rest of us. If you ask me, I’d say the real drawback is she don’t like him consorting with the likes of Archie and his ex-con buddies.” An alarm bell sounded in my head. “Archie Lawton?”
His face registered mild surprise. “Yeah. You know him?”
“Oh, yes. Charming gentleman. And wonderful tattoos.”
Harmon’s slack-jawed look of disbelief made it hard to keep a straight face and when it finally dawned on him that I was kidding he let out a braying guffaw. “You had me going there for a minute.”
I grinned in return, trying to ignore the sound of Jigger’s teeth crunching the rabbit bones while I tried to think of a reasonable scenario for D.J. to align himself with a disreputable character like Archie. Somehow I didn’t think Audrey would care for this new information any more than I did, and she might want to re-evaluate the need to have him in her employ. “So, what kind of a guy would you say he is?”
“Who?”
“D.J..”
“Seems nice enough.”
“So, why do you think he associates with a low-life like Archie Lawton?”
He arched one salt and peppe
r eyebrow at me. “Couldn’t tell you for sure, but one thing’s certain. At least them two being buds pretty much stopped all them crazy rumors about him.”
“What rumors?” My mind whipsawed with possibilities and I thought Harmon Stubbs looked decidedly uncomfortable as he squashed the butt of the cigarette beneath the toe of his boot before answering. “I got to admit, the first couple of times he come into the Mule, some of us had our doubts about him.”
“What do you mean?”
I could tell he was making a concentrated effort to avoid eye contact with me.
“We ah...pondered the notion that he might be...kind of a twinkie.”
“A what?”
His crinkled face reddened. “You know, a little bit swishy.”
I gawked. “You think D.J. is gay?”
“Naw, not no more. For one thing, Archie and his gang sure as hell wouldn’t hang around with no fruit and now that he’s dating Bitsy, well, he seems real different.”
“In what way?”
He hesitated, apparently searching for the right words. “Well, he spruced himself up, lost some weight, and just looks...well, a lot tougher.”
“Tougher. You mean like he’s working out?”
His shrug was noncommittal. “He ought to lose that ponytail. It makes him look like one of them damn hippies.” After refusing my half-hearted offer to help him clean up the remains of the rabbit, saying a ‘classy lady like myself shouldn’t have to fuss with such a durn mess’ he returned to his truck for more paper towels.
At least it was a nice afternoon to be stranded, I thought, eyeing the row of vultures perched on the head frame, still hoping for a meal. While a silken breeze softened the sting of harsh sunlight, I stood there slapping at bugs and trying to sort through everything I’d learned.
So far, everyone else I’d met in this polarized community appeared to be firmly rooted in separate camps. So how was it D.J. had managed to pull off such a unique balancing act, working for Grady, spying for Jesse and Haston and yet, linked to Willow Windsong because of his ties to Bitsy?