“Yes.”
“Will she be there today?”
“It’s a Sunday, so I’m not sure. Cady…”
“I’ll take care of it, Dad.” She sipped her juice, and I took the time to study her, for the first time noticing the preperfection of her tan-not hiding the faintly visible Cheyenne turtle tattoo at her shoulder-her nails, and even the golden streaks in her otherwise auburn hair. Thank goodness she’d gained some weight back after the accident, and the rehab in the gym had transmogrified into a twice a day regimen. I was pretty sure my daughter was in the best shape she’d ever been in her life.
“You’re beautiful.”
Cady turned to flick her eyes at me. “Thanks, Dad.” She looked embarrassed and quickly changed the subject. “Where is the list?”
“What?”
“The list you mentioned in the car; there’s a list of questions that need answers?”
My voice fell. “Oh, hell.”
“What?”
“I left it with Lolo Long’s mother at Health Services.”
She sighed. “Where’s that?”
“Where we just left, Lame Deer.”
“Then we have to go back.”
Lena returned, sorted through the drinks, and took a Diet Coke for herself. “Thirty-seven rooms at the Super 8, all twenty at the Fort Union, and eight rooms available, including the suites, at the Lakeview B amp;B.” Turning, she looked at the ten units of the Western 8 Motel and spread her arms like Moses discovering the promised land. “And rooms to spare.” She chugged her pop and redeposited the bottle in the holder.
Cady looked at Lena. “I think we’re going to want to go take a look at the rooms in Colstrip, and I want to talk to that librarian.” She turned to Henry. “We need a car.”
He spread his own arms. “Yours to command.”
“Do you still have that shitty truck?”
He reacted as if he’d been smacked. “I do.”
“Good, run us over to Lame Deer, drop us off, and then go get Rezdawg.” She ran her hands along the glossy flanks of the Thunderbird’s fins and grinned. “We’re taking Lola.”
We dropped the ladies off in downtown Lame Deer, where they were first going to attempt to take on Arbutis Little Bird. Then they would meet us at Health Services where they would abscond with Henry’s pride and joy for a jaunt up to Colstrip to check out the lodgings.
I wished them luck in all of this, especially with the conversation with Lonnie’s sister, and accompanied Henry so that I could drive the Thunderbird back to Lame Deer. I’d turned on the radio in Lola and was trying to drive the wedding complications from my mind by listening to Nate Small Song firing up the afternoon drive with, of all things, Gene Autry’s Sioux City Sue. “Is this what they usually play on KRZZ?”
“The old people are the ones at home in the afternoons, so they play the classics; drumming and traditional in the mornings with a little rock thrown in, Cheyenne language programs around noon, then old cowboy and big band music for the shut-ins.”
He waited a while before he spoke again, lazily drifting the big, square bird down BIA 4. “You do not think Clarence did it?”
“Well, evidently he hired Artie.”
The Cheyenne Nation made a face.
“What?”
He considered his words and pushed his sunglasses up on his nose. “It takes a special kind of person to do this type of thing-to take money to kill a woman and child.”
“You don’t think Artie’s capable?”
He adjusted the sun visor. “Capable, yes-willing, no.”
“Have you ever met him?”
“I have.” He settled in his seat. He smiled, and I figured I was going to get the story. “I met him when I was fifteen. It was during Crow Fair, and I was doing a little teenage teepee creeping. There was a girl I was infatuated with and she had some brothers. We stayed out a little late and when we got back the brothers were waiting for us; I fought all three, one at a time-Crow tradition. The Crow are good that way-the Lakota would wait with a half-dozen guys and they would all jump on you.”
“What happened?”
He shrugged. “They went and got a friend, and it was Artie. I was pretty beat up, and I remember when I saw him that I thought this was probably going to be a good fight.” He stretched his jaw muscles at the thought of it. “You remember when we used to play ball?”
We seemed to have changed conversations, but I answered. “Yep.”
“You were a lineman so you know better than me, but do you remember lining up across from those guys who didn’t have any imagination, nothing to distract them from the job at hand?”
I laughed and thought about Lolo Long’s prejudice against imagination. “My father used to call it constructive stupidity; I got accused of it a lot in my teenage years.”
He nodded. “Artie was like that, no imagination, utterly focused. I think he might never have outgrown that behavior.”
“Who won?”
His face hardened as he thought. “It was kind of a draw.”
We drove past the dirt road cutoff and the rumpled hills leading to the Painted Warrior’s multicolored face, and my mind began playing the scenarios over in my head. If Clarence had been there, why did he hire Artie to do the deed? Why wouldn’t he have been as far away from the actual killing as possible? Maybe they were both there-Clarence to get them to the cliff and Artie to push them over.
“So, you don’t think either one of them did it?”
He smiled. “No, I do not think Artie did, and you do not think Clarence did.”
“So, who did?”
“Someone who is highly motivated.” He shifted in the seat and looked at me. “For the sake of your familial life, I am advising you to drop this.”
We drove on, but my mind raced ahead. “We saw her die.”
“Yes.”
I nodded my head and turned my face back to the window. “It’s not my case.”
“No.”
“We’ve got a wedding to help organize.”
“Yes.”
I turned the radio back up, and we drove in silence, until the words tumbled from my mouth. “But I’d like to hear those tapes. Would you like to hear those tapes?”
“Yes.”
“I think we can arrange that, don’t you?” I nodded my head some more. “I mean, it can’t hurt to just listen to them. Right?”
“Yes.”
I paused and then glanced at him. “Yes it can’t hurt, or yes it can?”
He seemed to be considering the possibilities for a long time, and it was only when I was ready to ask again that he turned to look at me. “Yes.”
I refused to drive Rezdawg but was happy enough to mosey along behind the patched-together vehicle in Lola. We parked in the lot at Health Services, and I noticed Henry nudged the three-quarter-ton’s tire against one of the concrete curbs so that we wouldn’t have a repeat demolition derby.
When we got inside, Hazel Long was once again at her station. The chief was nowhere to be seen, but her younger brother, Barrett, was, and considering how much his sister did not like the Cheyenne Nation, I was surprised by the smile with which he greeted Henry. “The Bear!”
His mother shushed him, but he stepped up to Henry and pumped his arm like a derrick. “My man.” He smiled at me. “This your cowboy sidekick?”
I took off my sunglasses, seeing no reason to stay incognito. “That’s me.”
He placed a hand on the Cheyenne Nation’s shoulder. “You ever hear about the U.S. Army Recruitment Expeditionary Basketball Tournament in Billings? It was a three-man and we were a man short, so the Bear here steps up in street shoes and scores nine three-pointers to win the tourney.” He shook his right hand as if it were on fire. “Buuuuurn.”
“Is your sister around?”
“Nope, she’s out shakin’ the bushes for Artie Small Song.” He glanced back to Henry. “Hey, did you really punch a truck driver?”
I noticed the Bear had left his Wayf
arers on-obviously he was still attempting anonymity.
I leaned against the counter. “Mrs. Long.”
“Hazel.”
I nodded. “About the list of drugs from the bracelet?”
“That’s going to take a while; that patient file would be in the physical archives, and I haven’t had a chance to get down there.”
“Well, when you come up with that information you can give it to your daughter.” I leaned in closer. “Hazel, did you by any chance save that list I had you copy down concerning my daughter’s wedding?”
She looked surprised. “I gave it to her.”
“Cady was already here?”
“They’re still here. She said she wanted to see your dog, and I let them into Adrian’s room.”
I glanced at Henry. “I’ll be right back.”
I gently pushed open the door and could see Lena Moretti standing on one side of the crib and my daughter sitting in a chair with Dog’s head in her lap, the baby clutching her forefinger as he slept.
Once again, she had tears in her eyes, and I watched as the trunk of her body shuddered with her breath. She looked up at me. “He’s so small.”
I joined them at the foot of the crib. “They start out that way.”
Her eyes were drawn back to the sleeping child. “He’s all right?”
“That’s what the doctors say. A few bumps and scrapes, but evidently she was able to protect him from the bulk of the impact.” I leaned over and looked down at the lone survivor.
“She died.”
“Yep.”
“But there’s a father?”
“Yes, but he’s been implicated. The FBI says they have tapes of him negotiating with another man about killing both mother and child.”
Lena Moretti’s voice sighed from the other side of the crib. “My God.”
“It’s all pretty sordid.” I dropped my voice when I saw Adrian roll his head to one side. “We should probably get out of here.”
Cady stood and then whispered. “What about Dog?”
“He doesn’t really want to leave; he’s the one that found him.” The two women joined me at the foot of the crib. “We saw them fall and got to the woman, Audrey, as quickly as we could, but Adrian here had rolled down the hill bundled up in a blanket and Dog found him.”
I moved them toward the door, but Cady balked. “Wait a minute, did you say you saw them fall? You mean you were actually there?”
I cracked open the door, but she still didn’t move. “We were researching another area for the wedding and happened to be below when they fell. I even had Henry’s camera, which reminds me…”
Lena looked up. “What?”
“Nothing.” I scooted the two of them out. “How did the meeting with Arbutis Little Bird go?”
“Umm,” Cady answered, preoccupied. “She’ll be there tomorrow morning, and we’ll meet with her then.”
“Well, Lonnie says to bring a gun.”
Henry met us at the counter, and we moved as a group to the parking lot, where he dangled the keys above Cady’s hand. He dropped, she caught, and we started moving to our neutral vehicles.
“Daddy?”
“Yep.”
She steered me aside, placing her arm through mine and walking me away from both Henry and Lena. “What if I had something that would solve this woman’s murder and I didn’t use it. That’d be pretty bad, wouldn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
Unwilling to look me in the eye, she lowered her head, and I stood there staring at the strands of gold, auburn, and strawberry blonde, a combination that became more evident in the summertime. Her voice echoed against my chest. “What if I knew a way to make sure whoever killed Audrey Last Bull would be brought to justice?”
“I’d say that there’s no such thing as a sure thing.”
The eyes came up slow but sharp. “I would.”
She rose up on tiptoes and kissed the grizzle on my chin, then pirouetted away with the keys dangling between her fingers. “Lena and I will spend the night up in Colstrip, but we’ll meet you for lunch, here, tomorrow at noon.”
I watched her sashay over to the Thunderbird, and the two of them climbed in, fired Lola up, and roared away like a high plains Thelma and Louise.
As I stood there watching them turn left and head north, the Cheyenne Nation rejoined me. “So, what just happened?”
I breathed a soft laugh. “Unless I’m mistaken, we just got put back on the case.”
Henry drove us over to the Law Enforcement Center, but the place was vacant and the door was locked. Lolo Long’s cell number was listed on the door as one of the emergency contact numbers, but I figured we’d just go do a little snooping on our own.
“What makes you think he is with Inez Two Two?”
“Inez’s mother told me that Clarence was having an affair with her daughter a while back, and if Clarence is involved, then she might be a good place to start looking for him. If she doesn’t know where he is, then she might have other ideas where we could look.”
The Bear drove down Main Street and took a right toward the high school gym, which remained open on Saturdays and Sundays in conjunction with the Boys and Girls Club. We parked the ugliest truck on the high plains next to the outside basketball courts with their chain nets and cratered asphalt and walked in down the hall to the unlocked doors of the gym. I could see why the Bear had had no doubts as to Inez’s whereabouts-the place was packed with young people. “So this is the place to see and be seen?”
The Cheyenne Nation snatched a worn ball from the rack just as a fat man with a whistle was about to yell at him.
“ Ha-ho, Monty. Wassup?”
“Hey, you lookin’ for a date, bad man?”
They shook hands and clutched each other’s arms. Fortunately, Henry played youth basketball with Monty Farris, the coach, so there had been no trouble when the Bear asked if we could use one of the smaller, more private, half-court gyms to discuss things with the young woman.
“You realize, of course, that without jurisdiction she can just tell us to go jump in a lake.”
Henry dribbled the ball and flipped it spinning in his hands, shrugged, and then began dribbling to the outside reaches of three-point land.
After about five minutes, a heavyset young woman opened the door and looked at us; she wore an oversized letterman’s jacket despite the season, and a black straw cowboy hat decorated with a gold concho, the stampede strings slung to the back.
“Howdy.”
She had the look of a whitetail that had just discovered two mountain lions at the watering hole.
I slipped off my own hat and stuck out my hand. “I’m Sheriff Longmire, and this is my friend, Henry Standing Bear.”
She took my hand with a great deal of trepidation and allowed the door to slip shut behind her, the sudden sound in the empty gymnasium causing her to jump. I gestured toward one of the fold-out wooden bleachers. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
She did, and I took the one beside her.
I waited a moment, but she just watched the Bear as he dribbled and strolled the arc. “I don’t know where he is.”
I waited a good long time and placed my hat on the bleachers brim up; I needed all the luck I could get. “And who’s that?”
That got a glance. “Clarence.”
Henry twirled the ball in his hands. “We understand you know him pretty well.”
She glanced at him, and her voice became flirty. “I know you.”
“Yes, but not in the same sense.” The Bear’s face remained immobile as he turned and effortlessly sank a thirty-footer. She looked at him and smiled as he retrieved the ball and dribbled back toward center court.
I shook my head at his prowess. “Can I ask you some questions, Inez?”
She took off her hat, which she placed brim down; evidently she didn’t need any luck.
“When is the last time you saw Mr. Last Bull?”
She sniffed and took a pack of cigarette
s from the pocket of her coat. “Can I smoke?”
I looked around the school property for emphasis. “I don’t think so.”
She stuffed the pack back in her jacket. “About a week ago.”
I paused again. “Before the accident.”
“Yeah.”
“And where did you see him?”
The shrug was one I remembered my daughter perfecting at that age. “Where we always meet, at the Buffalo.”
“The White Buffalo convenience store?”
She watched Henry some more and then spoke. “Yeah.”
“Did you arrange a meeting there, or did you just run into each other?”
“Just ran… what you said.”
I nodded and thought about what kind of chance Inez Two Two had in this world and was not overcome with confidence. The Reservation schools were consistently ranked as the worst in the state. The pay scale for teachers wasn’t bad, but the turnover rate was horrific and truancy was rampant; the student dropout point was around sixth grade and wasn’t improving.
“I didn’t know he had a kid.” She continued to watch the Bear. “He told me he couldn’t have kids.” She called out. “I bet you can’t do that again.”
The Cheyenne Nation shrugged, turned from the top of the key, and drained another twenty-five-footer.
Even I was impressed. I looked back at her. “Inez, I doubt that anybody would blame you for the responsibility of that relationship. Clarence is a grown man, and I think it would’ve been his responsibility to know how old you were.”
“I liked his Jeep.”
Henry bounced the ball off the wall and slowly dribbled toward us.
“His car was cool.” There was a trace of a sneer in the next part. “So we took a ride. That’s how it all started.”
I thought about it. “Did he ever take you to the cliffs at Painted Warrior?”
“Yeah, it was one of his favorite places.” She made a face. “Or used to be.”
Henry arrived and stood there flexing his fingers into the ball.
“What were some of his other favorite places?”
She thought about it. “He used to work for one of those Amish guys who’d fallen out with the others and lived down near Birney. The guy did handmade boots and had a cabin on the Tongue River near his place.” The shrug again. “Clarence promised me a pair of boots, but I never got them.”
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