“Ms. Kincaid?” The reception clerk who approached me was a rosy young brunette whose name badge said she was from Austria. The lodge had quite an international staff these days. “You are Ms. Kincaid? I was told, ‘tall with red hair, but not the TV star.’ ”
I sighed. “That would be me.”
“Gut. You are using the Paliere suite this week?”
“Yes. In fact, I’m holding a meeting there early tomorrow. Would you make a note to just send people up?”
“Very well. But now I have a message for you. Urgent.”
The square of paper she handed me bore a misspelling of my name, with a question mark in parentheses, but there was no question about the urgency.
“Call Julie Nothstine,” it read. A phone number followed, and two more words, heavily underlined. “Very important.”
Chapter Twelve
JULIE NOTHSTINE WAS A CAT LADY. NOT THAT I HAVE ANYTHING against cat ladies. But I have to admit, when the trailer’s screen door swung open and I took in the lopsided coil of gray hair, the Coke-bottle glasses and cardigan sweater, backed up by six or seven felines draped over the furniture and braiding themselves around her ankles, well, certain stereotypes came to mind.
“Ms. Nothstine?” I inquired, with the courtesy due to age and possible loopiness.
“Doctor Nothstine.” Her voice was low, with a warm, rich timbre like a cello, surprising in someone so small and so apparently frail. “I didn’t get a PhD all the way back in 1959 just to be called Mizz now. You took your time getting here.”
“Sorry,” I said meekly, and followed her inside the large but dilapidated mobile home, obviously immobile for years. “I had to go pick up my car.”
Why am I apologizing? She was the one who had issued the urgent but cryptic summons for me to come see her. I had caught Sam in the parking lot and hitched a ride back to B.J.’s, though I hadn’t been able to reach B.J. herself at the nursery. Gone out for a couple of hours, her assistant told me, so I left a message saying not to wait dinner, in case I was late getting back.
I’d called Eddie, too, to explain my temporary job with Paliere Productions. He was not pleased.
“You’re working for him?” he had sputtered. “Are you out of your mind?”
“I’ll explain later. But it’ll do us some good, you’ll see. Right now I’ve got to hit the road.”
The long and winding road. Julie Nothstine’s place turned out to be halfway to Hailey on an unsigned and deeply dusty track through miles of hot, unstirring pine trees. By the time I reached her door, the afternoon felt close to its conclusion, and I felt like four of the Seven Dwarfs: Sleepy, Dopey, Hungry, and their new pal, Dehydrated.
So, no more apologies. I cut to the chase. “Dr. Nothstine, you said you had something to tell me about my cousin.”
I expected to be urged to call her Julie, but apparently that privilege was reserved for old friends like Sam Kane.
“Your cousin, yes. I suppose condolences are in order.” She peered at me warily. Magnified by the glasses, her eyes were a bleached-out blue, with wide black pupils and a narrow black ring around the iris. The bull’s-eye effect was disconcerting. “You don’t seem very bereaved.”
“That’s because I’m not.” What the hell, I could be blunt, too. “Brian and I weren’t close.”
“And yet he carried your...keychain, was it? I spoke with Al Soriano earlier, and he told me.” She shuffled into the narrow living room, lined with bookcases on all sides, and tossed a couple of cats off the threadbare, claw-marked sofa. “Sit. Drink?”
The cats seemed used to this treatment. One of them disappeared under a chair and the other, sporting a black-and-white tuxedo coat and a spray of white whiskers, betook himself to the windowsill with a great show of dignity. He stared at me hypnotically, and I found myself staring back.
“I said, would you like a drink?”
“Um, some water would be good, thank you.”
This earned me another suspicious look. “Mormon?”
“Me? No. No, I’m just thirsty.”
There are plenty of Mormons in Idaho, of course, so I suppose the question was logical, if impolite. Dr. Nothstine made her way into the kitchen and returned with a small bottle of spring water in one hand and a tall glass of ice and fizzing liquid in the other. She tossed me the bottle, then settled onto the sofa beside me.
“I can’t seem to get warm these days,” she said, but it was an observation, not a complaint. “And yet I still appreciate my gin and tonic.”
She sipped her drink with relish, and took a moment to size me up over the rim. I returned the favor, and it was then that the shuffling-plus-tossing business began to make sense. Julie Nothstine wasn’t entirely frail; in fact, her hands and shoulders looked quite sinewy and strong. But one leg was twisted, and below the cuffs of her slacks her bare ankles were seamed with scars.
“Rock-climbing accident,” she said, noting my gaze. “Ten years ago. I still lift weights, but I can’t walk worth a damn. I use a cane when I go out.”
So much for stereotypes. I had no idea what to say in reply, but she didn’t give me a chance to say it.
“This keychain of yours,” she said briskly, now that hospitality had been dispensed with. “Is it true that Thiel always carried it with him?”
“Well, maybe not always.” I swigged gratefully at my water. This could get complicated. “How did you hear about it?”
“I keep in touch with the boys, especially Al,” she said. “Though I suppose I shouldn’t call them that; there have been women smoke jumpers for, oh, twenty years now. Good ones, too. They have to be, don’t they? No separate physical requirements for females, you know.” She looked at me wryly. “I don’t suppose you could carry a hundred pounds for three miles. In any case, Al dropped off my groceries, and he told me you had come to Ketchum for Tracy’s wedding. Was it valuable?”
“Was what valuable?”
“The keychain! Was it worth stealing?”
My hostess didn’t suffer fools gladly, and I was beginning to feel like one. But I was also beginning to see where this was going.
“Are you saying that some of Brian’s belongings were stolen?” I had an unpleasant vision of B.J.’s necklace displayed in a pawnshop window—and Matt discovering it there.
“I’m saying nothing of the sort. Not officially.” Dr. Nothstine set down her drink and removed her glasses to squeeze the bridge of her long, narrow nose between thumb and forefinger. “Miss Kincaid... Carnegie is rather a silly name, isn’t it? Miss Kincaid, what I’m about to tell you is under investigation by the National Interagency Fire Center, but it is not public knowledge yet, for reasons that will quickly be obvious. This conversation is absolutely confidential, is that clear?”
“Of course, but—ow!” From the tall bookcase behind me, yet another cat had plummeted onto my lap like a cougar onto an unwary lamb. I yelped, half rising, and received an affronted glare from a pair of lime-green eyes before the cat launched itself away again.
“None of this is clear!” I was feeling just a tad affronted myself. “Dr. Nothstine, would you please tell me what’s going on? You obviously have something to say about my cousin, and I wish you would say it.”
So she did. “The evidence suggests that Brian Thiel’s death was not accidental.”
“What?”
As I sat gaping, she went on in a detached, lecturing way, without much interest in my reaction.
“I was unable to visit the scene in person, but I did examine the photographs, and it is quite improbable that the mishap with the letdown line caused his death. Brian fell, yes, but it appears that he was able to break his fall and reach the ground alive.”
“What? How do you know?”
“I don’t know,” she said reprovingly. “Only an eyewitness could make that claim. I am convinced, however, by the facedown position of the body and by the appearance of the largest wound, that death was caused by a single blow to the back of the head and not by
a fall to the ground.”
“But...but if the fall didn’t kill him—”
“Exactly. If Brian Thiel’s fall was not fatal, the question becomes what happened to him after he fell, and who else was present? Who tampered with the body before the initiation of standard accident reporting procedures? I presented all of these questions to the official investigators.”
“And what did they say?”
She sniffed. “They refused to listen! ‘Accidental death’ was a much easier and more acceptable conclusion. They shut me out of any further discussion, and they have made it clear that they don’t wish to hear from me again. But you see, the fact that this keychain is missing is a very strong argument in my favor. Please describe it for me, and be precise.”
“Wait just a minute, please.” I was still catching up. “What exactly do you mean, tampered with the body?”
She paused judiciously, then went on, “Not so much the body itself, as the burned-over ground around it, which looked quite disturbed, and Thiel’s equipment, specifically his PG bag. The bag had been unclipped from his harness, but none of the other jumpers recall having done so. Or admits to having done so. Now, if you can say for a certainty that Thiel always carried this family memento with him, and we can determine that it was not recovered, then theft is a possibility. Theft, and possibly homicide. Are you sure you won’t have a drink? You look pale.”
I accepted the drink—she made a mean gin and tonic— and then the phone rang, which bought me a little time to think. As the good doctor shuffled into the kitchen to answer it, I absently stroked the bookcase cat, a heavy marmalade beast who had returned to my lap and was now purring like an outboard motor with his lime-green eyes squeezed shut.
I had plenty to think about. Maybe Dr. Nothstine was loopy after all. I hoped she was. But what if she wasn’t? If Brian’s death wasn’t accidental... Why not use the word? If Brian was murdered, then one of the smoke jumpers murdered him.
But which one? The Tyke had jumped along with Brian, with Danny Kane and Todd Gibson coming soon after. Todd supposedly found the body first, but in the smoke and rough ground, one of the others could have arrived before him. Or did Todd himself report the “accident” after arranging the scene to his own advantage?
Motive was the other big question. Brian was new to this crew, but he must have trained with Todd and the other Neds for weeks. Was that time enough to provoke a comrade to murder? My cousin was no Boy Scout, as B.J. could attest, but that was quite a feat, even for him. Unless the comrade in question had a murderous bent to start with. And if that was the case, we had a dangerous individual among us.
Mentally, I reviewed each of the personalities: Danny’s moodiness, the Tyke’s hostility, and Todd’s...well, I hadn’t noticed much about Todd Gibson except for his remarkable show of strength at the Talent Show. Any one of them could be the guilty party. For that matter, more than one. But what could Brian have done to turn a comrade in to a killer?
I must have stroked too hard, because the cat gave a sharp little yowl and hopped to the floor. I barely noticed. Here we all were, socializing with these three, inviting them to weddings—putting one of them in the wedding party!—when one or more of them might be homicidal.
You can’t lock people up on so little evidence, of course, but I was sure as hell going to steer clear of all three. No dark alleys, and no one-on-one meetings without witnesses around. But then, what about my responsibility to Tracy and her guests? If I kept silent, would I be endangering them?
“How very nice of you,” I heard Dr. Nothstine saying into the phone. “Danny Kane offered to bring it tomorrow but... Well, if you really don’t mind. I can drive, you know, but it’s quite tiring, so that would be most helpful. Good-bye.”
She hung up and rejoined me on the couch, moving so slowly that I had time to make my decision.
“Dr. Nothstine, I have something absolutely confidential to tell you. There is no keychain. I invented it.”
“Why on earth—?”
I rushed on before I lost my nerve. “But there is a necklace. You see, I have this friend...”
I related B.J.’s story, minus the specifics of what she was doing with Brian that night. Dr. Nothstine listened intently, nodding from time to time, and then sliced right to the heart of the matter.
“You wish to suppress any mention of this necklace, for your friend’s sake.”
“Exactly.”
“And yet, if its absence might help to make the case that this is a suspicious death—”
“But it doesn’t, don’t you see? We don’t know for sure that Brian had the necklace with him when he jumped at Boot Creek. He told B.J. he wouldn’t leave it at his apartment, but it could be somewhere else, like in his car.”
“Thiel sold his car last month,” she said. “That came up in the investigation. But he had a locker at the jump base, and it still contains some personal effects, to be shipped to the family once his landlord gathers the rest of his belongings. I saw it being padlocked.”
“Really. I don’t suppose they’d let me open it in private?”
“No, I don’t suppose they would.”
I sighed. B.J.’s necklace had shrunk in importance, but it was still important to her, and I didn’t dare draw attention to it by asking someone in authority to look for it in the locker. And besides, maybe Brian’s things would hold a clue to his murder.
If it really was murder. The jury was still out on the loopiness verdict, after all, and Dr. Nothstine’s next remarks didn’t help.
“But it’s a combination padlock,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper. “An old one that’s been in the office for years. And I know the combination.” She was leaning close to me, her blue eyes bulging, and when someone knocked on the front door she didn’t blink. “That’s him! This should be most interesting.”
She levered herself up and trundled away, leaving me with goose bumps. They got bumpier once she opened the door to her new visitor.
At first all I could see was a pair of man’s legs, extending below an enormous sack of cat food. But when Dr. Nothstine directed the legs into the kitchen, and the man bent to set down the sack, I saw the familiar burly shoulders and blond crew cut that belonged to Todd Gibson.
Chapter Thirteen
THE MESSAGE I’D LEFT FOR B.J. WAS GO AHEAD WITHOUT ME, I can eat later. It should have been Go ahead without me, I’m having roasted garlic fettuccine with a possible murderer. “Most interesting” was putting it mildly.
Todd was clearly startled to see me, but Dr. Nothstine rode right over his discomfort—and mine—by making much of his kindness in bringing the cat food, and insisting that we both stay for dinner.
“It’s tiresome, always cooking for one,” she said, slamming pans around in her shipshape little kitchen. “No, Todd, I do not need any assistance. Make yourself a drink and sit down there with Carnegie.”
The young smoke jumper complied reluctantly and perched on the edge of the sofa cushion, rattling the ice in his glass and looking anywhere but at me. I bent down and busied myself inviting the marmalade cat to return to my lap, all the while speculating furiously.
Was Todd merely doing a good deed in coming here? It seemed unlikely. Al Soriano probably told the other jumpers I was asking about Brian’s belongings, and probably mentioned Julie Nothstine as someone who could help. Did that mention prompt this sudden desire to visit an old woman living alone on a back road out in the woods? If Odd Todd was up to no good, he wouldn’t even need a dark alley.
My cell phone’s in my tote bag in the car, I thought with a prickle of tension. Should I go out and get it? That might tip him o f. Besides, there’s a phone right here in the living room. Calm down. Act natural.
The cat cold-shouldered my advances in favor of scaling the bookcases again, so I sat up and said brightly, “It’s nice of you guys to help out Dr. Nothstine. I guess she goes way back with the smoke jumpers, huh?”
“Yeah.” Long pause. More rattling ice.
“It must be exciting, starting your first season.”
The look on his big, square face darkened, and I winced. Todd’s first season as a smoke jumper had started with a death, and if he wasn’t the killer, then he was grieving a comrade. So much for small talk.
I was groping for a more diplomatic remark when the marmalade cougar made another leap, this time plunging claws first from a high shelf onto Todd’s left shoulder.
“God dammit!”
Todd sprang to his feet and ripped the cat away from him. His face was almost purple, and when he raised one arm as if to strike the animal, I cried out in alarm. He stopped, but didn’t turn to face me, and then the silent tension was broken by the sound of Dr. Nothstine’s voice.
“Dinner is served!” she called. “I hope you both like garlic.”
We did, and we liked the red wine she served even better. By the second glass I had relaxed a little, and Todd was positively animated. He focused mainly on “Dr. J.,” as he called her, which befit her special status as a friend and confidante to the Ketchum smoke jumpers. But that gave me a chance to observe him closely, and to decide that my sense of him from the night before, of a small boy allowed into the charmed circle of the bigger kids, still rang true. But even small boys can be cruel.
Todd didn’t swagger, as Brian would have done, because his admiration was all for his compatriots, not for himself. My unease about his show of temper faded a little as he told story after idolizing story about the other jumpers, their close calls and practical jokes and, most of all, their toughness.
Dr. Nothstine had stories to tell as well. She spoke of legendary jumpers from the past, men with nicknames like Paperlegs and Shish Kebab and Catfish, who had survived horrendous injuries and epic fires and parties of mythic proportion.
Todd drank in every word, his eyes shining. To him, every injury was heroic, every prank was sidesplitting, every beer bash a fabulous bacchanal. And most of all, every wildfire contained a victory for the warriors of fire. Todd Gibson might be a cat-hater, but he was head over heels in love with smoke jumping.
Death Takes a Honeymoon Page 11