I stopped and looked back at her. “Nope.”
“Well then, fuck you, and the horse you rode in on.” The whir of the electric window going up was the only other sound.
I shook my head and climbed back in the Bullet, unhitching the mic from the dash and changing the frequency to that of Campbell County. “Dispatch, this is Walt Longmire, I need a 10-14 on a black Cadillac Escalade, plate number 17—”
Static. “Who is this again?”
I keyed the mic. “Walt Longmire, I’m the sheriff of Absaroka County.”
Static. “Where?”
“Absaroka County, just to the west of you.”
Static. “And how can I help you, Sheriff?”
I read her the plate number along with the woman’s name. “Tommi, that’s Tommi with an i Sandburg of Gillette; I’ve got her stopped for a traffic infraction, and I’m writing her up.”
There was a longer pause this time.
Static. “I’m transferring you to the sheriff’s office.”
I keyed the mic again. “I thought this was the sheriff’s office.”
Static. “I mean the sheriff’s office, the office of the sheriff, himself.”
With a sinking feeling, I went ahead and asked. “Why is that?”
Static. “Because she’s his sister.”
4
“She’s quite the charmer.”
Static. “Isn’t she though? She was worse when she had all her teeth.”
I keyed the mic while looking at the smiling face on her ID. “She has teeth on her license.”
Static. “Fake, some boyfriend or another knocked out the others.”
“I’m giving her a ticket on general principles.”
Static. “Okay.”
“No argument?”
Static. “Well, she won’t pay it, and I’m the one that’s going to get the screaming hissy fit . . .” The airwaves over northern Wyoming went silent.
“You mind telling me why you didn’t say that your sister owned the strip club on the edge of town?”
Static. “Didn’t seem pertinent to the investigation; I thought you were working on Gerald Holman’s suicide, not the case of the supposedly missing dancer—”
“Jone Urrecha.”
There was a pause. Static. “You think there might be a connection?”
“It was the last case he was working on.”
Static. “You want me to lean on my sister?”
“It might be helpful.”
Static. “Take your time writing her up, and I’ll call her on her cell phone and make up some bullshit about you being some kind of special investigator for the state.”
“Roger that.”
I took awhile writing the ticket by noting in great detail the conversation between us, practicing my cursive handwriting with special attention to the curlicues, dots, and assorted design factors, which were being eroded by the digital age. After a few minutes, Tommi Sandburg exited her vehicle, slammed the door, and crossed in front of mine, still puffing a cigarillo as she yanked open my passenger-side door.
“Not in here.”
She stared at me, plucked the fresh one from her mouth, and made a show of dropping it from shoulder height onto the gravel; then she stamped it out with a full twist, the cigar being what I was pretty sure she wanted to be my head. Tommi with an i then climbed in my truck and closed the door behind her. “Well, you’re a big fucking deal, aren’t you?”
I paused writing her ticket. “It’s on all my business cards.”
“I find it hard to believe that you have business cards.”
“I made that part up.”
She glanced back at Dog, having edged away from the diminutive woman to go behind me; say what you will about canine intelligence, he knew when he was out of his weight class, teeth or no teeth. “This your girlfriend?”
I ignored her and got to the pointed end of the stick as I continued writing. “Jone Urrecha.”
“Gone.”
“Where?”
Absently, she pulled another cigarillo from the pocket of what looked to be a very expensive leather jacket, and tapped the end on my dash. “God, I wish I knew; that sister of hers is driving me up a wall.” She pulled a Zippo from the same pocket and started to light up.
I stopped writing and looked at her.
With a long sigh, she repocketed the combustibles, turned in the seat to look at me, and nodded her head toward the winking sign down the road. “You know how many girls I go through on a yearly basis?”
I aimed the point of the flashlight pen above the ticket docket. “How many girls do you go through on a yearly basis?”
She stared at me with hazel death rays. “A shit ton.”
“Define ‘shit ton.’”
“Shit as in lousy, ton as in a bunch.”
For absolutely no reason, I was beginning to like her.
She slumped in her seat and studied the 870 Wingmaster locked to the transmission hump of my truck and then turned her attention to the barren hills a couple of hundred yards up the road. “I mean, it ain’t exactly the Folies Bergère around here—you know what I mean?”
I didn’t say anything.
“We’re on the circuit between Rapid City and Billings; I mean how are you gonna keep a naked girl down on the farm once she’s seen those two cities of light?” She scratched her head. “The usual tenure is about six weeks or so, but she lasted longer than most—all of the summer and through the fall.” She thought about it. “Smart kid, smart enough to not be doing this stuff, but I get ’em now and then—the ones that are having money problems, substance problems, personal problems . . .”
I watched as she extended a hand toward Dog as a peace offering. “Which one was she?”
Dog sniffed her hand and then turned and looked out the window. “Not very friendly, is she?”
“He.”
She examined Dog a little closer. “Jone never said, and when they don’t say and you can’t see any evidence of the other two, it’s usually personal problems.”
“Who did she spend her time with?”
“Nobody. She was a loner.”
I started writing again.
She watched me and then spoke up. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Every time you lie to me, I get the urge to finish writing this ticket.”
“Who says I’m lying?”
“Just about everybody I’ve already talked to today.”
She fumed for a while and then threaded her fingers into her hair, and I noticed her whole scalp moved, confirming my thought that it was a wig. “She used to pal around with Thor.”
“The bouncer?”
“I think they used to run up and down the road and shit.”
I stopped writing. “Any business on the side?”
She huffed again and then answered. “If there was, it wasn’t through me—that shit leads to trouble, so I discourage it.” She shrugged. “Which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, but if it does it’s not on my time or my books. Look, I’m no saint, but I try to keep the girls safe; it’s in my interest, you know?” She tugged at the front of the hair, straightening it not unlike the way I straightened my hat. “Sometimes they’ve just had enough and they move on.”
This was squaring with everything everybody was saying. “No contact then—no idea where she might’ve gone?”
“Nope. I still owe her a hundred and sixty-three dollars, so if you hear from her, let me know, will you?”
I thought about it as I studied the sign down the road and could see another coal train heading our way. “Don’t you find it funny that a person with financial troubles would light out overnight without waiting for the money owed to them?”
“Honey, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a funny business.”
> “I’m getting that. What about Gerald Holman?”
“Who?”
I started writing again.
She stretched a leg out and bumped my knee with a gold boot. “C’mon, I honestly don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.”
“The sheriff’s investigator who came around asking about Jone, the one who killed himself.”
“Oh, him.” She nodded. “Thor talked to him once, I guess. I wasn’t there.” She studied me. “Are you thinking . . . ?”
I ripped the blue warning ticket from the docket and handed it to her as the train sounded its air horns while passing through the crossing. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a funny business, too.”
—
The bartender at the Sixteen Tons had never seen anybody eat one of the pickled eggs from the bar in the three years he’d owned the place, and neither the postmaster nor the BNSF high-line driver said they’d ever seen anybody eat one in the thirty years before that.
“Slow movers, huh?”
The thickset railroad employee with the shaved head and tattoos nodded. “You could say that.”
I glanced at the bartender. “What else have you got?”
“Frozen pizza.”
I studied the off-color ivory orbs floating in the reddish liquid. “I’ll go with the pizza.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the illuminated Olympia clock on the wall. “Happy Hour, you wanna beer?”
“Rainier.”
The cheery man glanced down at Dog—the monster was lying next to my feet. “Something for your dog?”
“No thank you, he just had a ham.”
He extended a hand. “Neil Pilano.”
“Walt Longmire. Nice to meet you, Neil.” We shook. “So, you live around here?”
“I live over on South Douglas Highway.” He glanced down at Dog. “What’s his name?”
“Dog.”
“Easy to remember.”
The high-line driver stretched a hand out as he finished his beer. “Greg Fry.”
“Good to meet you, Fry; you work the spur into Arrosa?”
He adjusted his American flag do-rag. “For a while now. You want a tour of the Black Diamond Mine sometime, just mention my name.”
I watched as he walked out the door; the bartender searched through the coolers for my beverage of choice, and the postmaster moved down to the stool next to me. “You gave Tommi Sandburg a ticket?”
“A warning; her brother seemed to think she’d bite me if I gave her a real ticket.”
“That or fall down out there on the road and start biting herself—she’s had a rough life.” He sipped his beer and nodded. “About a half-dozen marriages and counting.”
The bartender sat a bottle of Rainier in front of me and lowered a plastic bowl of water down to Dog, who immediately stood and began lapping it up.
“The ham must’ve been salty.” I turned back to the postmaster and took a sip of my beer. “Anyone next in the lineup?”
“Me, I hope.”
I swallowed carefully, so as not to spray the beer all over the bar. “You’re a very lucky man.”
“I know. Crazy, huh?”
“Have you ever been married before?”
“A short period of time back, but I don’t think either one of us took it very seriously—like my great grandfather used to say, nobody misses a slice off an already-cut cake.”
I sat my beer back on a coaster that advertised Dirty Shirley’s down the road and spread my fingers across the smooth wooden surface of the bar. “I think Tommi might be the kind that counts her slices.”
He nodded as he sipped his Coors. “You could be right.” He smiled to himself and, looking for a ring, studied my hand. “You married?”
“Widowed.”
“Kids?”
“One, a daughter in Philadelphia getting ready to have one of her own—due at the end of the week. That’s where I’m supposed to be, but instead I’m here.”
He lifted his bottle. “That’s the way most folks feel about Arrosa.”
I lifted my own, and we toasted.
“Any word on Jone?”
“Nothing yet.”
He eyed me through his funky glasses. “Any, you know, leads? From her mail maybe?”
“Leads?”
He lowered his beer and looked thoughtful. “Isn’t that what you guys call ’em, leads?”
“Sometimes.” I sat my Rainier back down. “No, just the usual junk forwarded from her previous address in Boise and some new stuff. But you must’ve noticed that.”
The postman shook his head, the ponytail wagging back and forth. “Nope, I just sort ’em—I don’t read ’em.”
I thought about it. “No personal correspondence, nothing.”
“Kids these days, they text, tweet, or use e-mail.” He pointed to the USPS patch on his shoulder. “That’s why we’re going out of business.”
“You’d think there would be something, though. Weeks of mail and not a single letter . . . Not even a postcard.”
A youngish woman came through the door and looked around, pausing for a moment and then walking straight to me. Careful to avoid Dog, she stood a few steps away in her business suit, long wool coat, and sensible shoes. “Are you Walt Longmire?”
I glanced around the almost empty bar for comic effect, a move which was lost on everybody except Dog. “I am.”
“Can I speak with you?”
“Sure.”
She glanced around, perhaps for her own comic effect, and jiggled her car keys. “Somewhere else?”
I pointed toward the back. “I just ordered a pizza.”
“This won’t take long.”
I stood and raised my voice so the bartender could hear me. “Mr. Pilano, have you already put that pizza in?”
A voice came back. “Just now.”
“Can you take it out and put it back in when I return?”
His head appeared in the swinging doorway. “No problem.”
Dog and I followed the woman out the door and were surprised when she kept walking toward the Arrosa Elementary School across the street—at least I was surprised. The parking lot was vast enough to allow the buses to make a full circle but right now held only a solitary blue Volvo. Beyond was a chain-link fence and a playground with equipment painted red and white, the school colors. We followed her through a gate in the fence, across the playground, and entered a door in the large, older stone portion of the building, which was, it turned out, the gymnasium.
She stood alongside the gleaming wooden surface of the basketball court, and turned to look at me, a large canvas satchel hanging from her shoulder. “I’m Connie Holman.”
“The daughter.”
She nodded. “I know who you are.”
I studied her, clocking her age at late thirties. “Have we met?”
“No, but I’ve read about you in the newspapers, magazine articles, WyoFile . . . Sheriff Walt Longmire, they talk about you like you’re some inevitable form of justice.”
I smiled a tight smile and threw a thumb back toward the bar. “I stop for a beer and pizza every now and then.”
She glanced through the metal grating of the multipane window and looked out onto the playground and past. “I’m sorry, but I’m a teacher here and on the school board, and it isn’t good for me to be seen hanging around in bars.”
I smiled. “That’s okay. It’s not so good for my reputation either, but I do it anyway.”
She volleyed a smile back. “I’m not stalking you.”
“I don’t suppose that would be good for your reputation either.”
“We had an in-service here, and I talked to my mother on the phone; she said something about having hired you.”
“Uh huh.”
�
�To look into my father’s death?”
I walked to the window, and the clicking of Dog’s claws on the gleaming wood as he followed me echoed as I leaned against the massive stones and looked up at the hand-forged girders. “This is one heck of a building for an elementary school gymnasium.”
She glanced up, and I noticed she was thin and appeared to be stretched just a bit too far. “It was the old bus barn for the eastern part of the county.”
The girders looked to be about twenty feet from the ground. “Not much headroom.”
She shrugged. “Fortunately that’s not a problem with elementary school basketball—not many granny-shot three-pointers.” She swung the canvas satchel and hugged it to her chest, I guess to feel a little more secure, and then walked out onto the court. “I used to dance here when I was a kid.” She did a half twirl and looked back at me. “I teach here now. It’s actually the third evolution of the school; the first was an old one-room that got moved back up the valley.”
I nodded and reached down to pet Dog’s broad head. “Um, your mother didn’t actually hire me.”
“I figured that, seeing as how she doesn’t have any money. I guess I should’ve said, played on your good nature and foisted this situation upon you?”
“Well, it isn’t exactly that, either—she wasn’t the one doing the playing or the foisting.”
She shook her head and turned back toward the dying illumination of the day, albeit at four o’clock in the afternoon, which allowed me to enjoy the picture-perfect profile with the skin drawn tight across her face like some Degas painting. “Lucian Connally?”
“I don’t mind . . .” I wasn’t sure of what to say next, so I just let it trail off.
Her eyes stayed on the grime of the unwashed windows, and I have to admit that I wasn’t prepared for her next question. “Do you think those two had a thing?”
I waited a moment more before responding. “I really couldn’t say, and in all honesty it isn’t any of my business.”
“He was in the car when she broke her back.”
I sighed and nodded, dropping my head to look at the shiny, lacquered surface of the court, polished to within an inch of its grain. “Well, that was before my time.”
“Mine, too.” She looked up at me. “And hopefully before my father’s . . . Look, I’m really sorry my mother or Lucian dragged you into this, but there really isn’t anything to investigate.” She sighed. “My father was not a happy man, never was, and I think it was just a case of his unhappiness catching up with him.”
Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery Page 7