by Bart Paul
“Yeah. That’d be whoever killed her. You going to check the cabin? Probably some planted there too.”
“We are,” she said. “What I’d like to know is how you figured out it was no accident before I told you. I sure wish I knew what you scamps were up to. You’re the most unparanoid man I know, but you’re walking around with a loaded firearm before lunch and won’t say why.”
I just kind of shrugged like I did that sort of thing every day.
“So you’re not going to let me know where Callie was going?” she asked.
“Girl didn’t tell me her deep thoughts.”
“Fair enough,” she said. “Have Les come in to see me when he straightens up. He’ll tell me what I need to know. He never could keep a secret.”
“Yes ma’am.”
She finally smiled a bit at that, which was a relief. She got back in the truck, started the engine, and rolled down the window.
“And when you see Harvey, ask him to have Albert come see me too.”
“Albert?”
“The department got a cockamamie e-mail from some guy in Florida,” she said, “the son of that flyer who disappeared before Christmas. This guy said one of his employees just found a record of a phone call from some drunken guy named Albert from our area code.”
“Well that’s just a few thousand square miles.”
“I know,” she said. “But this guy thinks his dad survived and said that this ‘Albert’ was talking crazy and claimed to have seen him alive back then. He says he’s contacted every law enforcement agency on the map.”
“So how many drunken Alberts in our area code, you figure?”
She kind of laughed. “Maybe a few. The e-mail said this Albert told them he gave somebody who fits the missing guy’s profile a ride out from Sonora Junction by Little Meadows pack station up to State Line about the time the plane went down.”
“So why tell me?”
“’Cause you work with him?” She gave me a look fit for idiots, which I deserved. “Just have him come see me, okay?”
“So when did you get this e-mail?”
She got that big sister look then. “I don’t know,” she said, “yesterday. It’s been a busy twenty-four hours. What does it matter?”
“I don’t mean to tell you your business, but you may want to check with Mammoth, Bishop, Markleeville, maybe down to Barstow and all them to see if they got the same e-mail like the guy said.”
She started looking pissed again. “So you don’t want to tell me my business,” she said.
“Just do it for shits and grins, Sarah.”
“Fine,” she said. “Now what is going on?”
“Well. From what she told us, Callie may have contacted that same Florida guy herself.” I figured I’d tell her at least that much. If the deputies were out at the house at the lake, they probably heard the phone message and saw her note. “About that plane.”
Sarah just shook her head. Both hands were squeezing the steering wheel, which was better than having them wringing my neck, which she looked halfway ready to do.
“Have Albert see me,” she said. “Tomorrow when I’m back in the office. Not that he’d remember a phone call he made eight months ago. He usually can’t remember where he parked his car.”
“Maybe he’s having flashbacks.”
She looked me over to see if I was kidding. When she saw I wasn’t, she kind of softened up.
“When you’ve got your story straight and are ready to talk about what Callie knew about that stupid plane or whatever she was cooking up, you’d best come see me, too. Don’t you go having flashbacks on me, Tommy.”
“What happened in Iraq stays in Iraq.”
She reached out the window and squeezed my arm. “You let me know if you want any company when you sack out that colt. Dad is sure grateful you’re back safe. He always said you put the best start on a horse of anybody around.” She rolled up the window, fired up the air conditioning, and drove off into the aspen. I picked up the rifle and went back to stringing electrical like a crazy person.
Chapter Eight
About four I put Lester down for a nap like some puppy and told him I had to run into town. He still wasn’t really talking, just trying to maintain. When I was crossing the cattle guard on the point of the hill, I saw Harvey’s truck heading up the mountain. I pulled over and waited for him there on a straight stretch of the washboard road in the sagebrush with the whole valley down the slope on my left and fresh mule ear growing along the edge of the road. It was coming on summer alright.
“Well this is a helluva note,” he said when he’d pulled up opposite and lit a smoke. “How’s Les?”
“Hungover.”
“Just as well.” He took off his hat and scratched his head. “May wants you boys to come up for supper if you can. Keep his mind off things.” I could see about six head of horses in the truck. One of them kicked the slats and Harvey yelled a warning, like they could hear it.
“If you can drag Lester with you now, I’ll try to make it, but I was going to run up to Dave Cathcart’s in Rickey Junction before dark to talk to him about that colt. If Sarah’s off duty, she’ll be cooking for her dad.” Lies just poured out of me now.
Harvey got that twinkle in his eye. “You’d like to get something cooking with old Sarah,” he said.
“Yeah, well, wouldn’t we all. What are you up to?”
“Dropping a few more head out on your meadow for the week. No wonder that goddamn Power Line Creek outfit always goes broke feeding hay twice a day with no pasture. I oughtta have my head examined.”
Harv put his hat on and put the truck in gear. “I dropped Albert off this morning to pick up his Firebird,” he said. “You see him in town, point him back up the hill before he gets a snootful.”
“You got it.”
“Too damn bad about the girl,” he said.
We drove off in opposite directions. When I got to the paved road, I turned right toward the lake, not left to town. I slowed down when I got close to the house, peering up into the aspen with the lake just sparkling on my left. I could see a sheriff ’s SUV parked up on the drive above the house. There were two new deputies I didn’t know very well joking and goofing around by the vehicle. If they’d found any meth planted in the house, it didn’t seem to make a hell of an impression. I drove on down the road and stopped at the resort store to pick up a sixpack of Coors to freshen Lester’s stash. The deputies were still bullshitting in the aspens when I drove back down the road.
When I got to town about fifteen minutes later, I parked behind the Sierra Peaks. The spot where Albert’s Firebird had rested for a week or two was empty, just a smear of motor oil and another of power steering fluid on the dirt like always. Automotive maintenance was never high on Albert’s list. I went into the bar to cut for his sign. I wanted to talk to him before Sarah got to him.
“Hey, hon,” Judy Burmeister said. The old blond was tending bar with one customer. She seemed pretty down.
“Don’t suppose you seen Albert Coffey?”
“Oh yeah,” she said. “Hours ago. Albert was getting lucky for a change.”
“Some gal from the Frémont Lake Rez?”
“No,” she said. “More like the Jimmy Buffet song. She was a beauty, a Mexican cutie.”
I already seemed to know where this was going. “What’d she look like?”
“A flirty thirty,” she said. “Pouty with a cute haircut and bangs and lots of cleavage. He didn’t stand a chance.”
“Albert’s fifty-nine, for god’s sake, and tends to drool by the third beer.”
“Oh, don’t I know it,” she said. “But a fat disability check makes ’em all Brad Pitt to us, hon.” She set down a draft without me asking.
“Maybe they’re across the street,” she said, nodding toward the front door. There were two more bars in town, one in the old Mansion House Hotel and one at the Hunter’s Lodge.
“Albert’s car is gone.”
“Well,�
�� she said. “The babe told him she was down from State Line Lodge.”
“How about that.”
“When you see Les,” she said, “you give him my love, okay? We’re all just as sorry as can be about Callie.”
She started to tear up. I downed a courtesy swallow of the draft, left some cash and went outside into the sun. I cruised around town but didn’t see the Firebird, but then I didn’t expect to. I stopped at the NAPA behind the Mark Twain Café and bought a couple of big switches I’d need to finish the yard lights, then I headed north on the Reno Highway and was winding through the pines along the West Frémont in no time. I pulled over where the Nissan went into the river and got out. The tire tracks Sarah told me about were easy to read once you knew what to look for. I popped one of Lester’s Coors and stood there in the middle of the road with the rush of that cold river and the afternoon breeze just ruffling every living thing and the vanilla smell of the Jeffrey pine and Steller’s jays buzzing around overhead. I walked along the pavement studying stuff and trying to figure what I’d find if I took the time to drive up to State Line. The cheap diesel over in Nevada would make it worth my while, but I’d have to be paying Harvey pretty soon if I didn’t quit this foolishness and get back to work. I could see the big rock in the middle of the water where the Nissan came to rest on its side and where Callie drowned with a broken neck and just enough time and consciousness to figure that nothing she’d dreamed about was ever going to happen. I didn’t have to think about how scared she was to die. A bit of broken taillight sat on the asphalt. I poked it with my boot toe but let it lie.
After a few minutes I piled back into the Dodge and headed north. The canyon opened up at the Indian curio shop at the edge of Shoshone Valley with the highway sticking to the mountain edge and pastureland spreading off to the right. At Rickey Junction, I had to slow down for the high school and could see Dave Cathcart’s barn across a horse pasture, but cottonwoods hid the house. I caught a glimpse of Sarah’s rig parked next to the barn as I cruised by. In a few more miles when the road climbed above the irrigation reservoir, I could look north and see the neon of the State Line Lodge and its Legal Limit Casino in the distance, just over the border in Nevada.
When I pulled into the casino parking lot, a fire truck was pulling out. Another was parked across the lot in front of the guest rooms with personnel in their fireproof canvas pants with tee shirts in the heat. It looked like they’d had a little workout. Water was all over the pavement around the truck and two cruisers from Douglas County, Nevada, were parked alongside. People from the lodge stood around gawking. It was easy to spot Albert’s old Firebird. Two deputies were standing next to it, and one was writing in a notebook. I got out and went into the Legal Limit.
Those old casinos all have the same sour beer and cigarette smell in the middle of the day, even when there’s no customers except at the bar and no smoking inside anymore. A couple of tourists from California were playing slots, but the joint was pretty dead and I was the only big hat in the place. That made the change girl in shorts and boots who was old enough to be my mother glance over at me, then glance away. She sat on a stool staring out the glass doors to the cops outside. I walked over and stared out the doors with her. I didn’t see any cuties, Mexican or otherwise, but the woman I was looking for was probably a Cuban anyway.
“You have a fire?”
“Yeah,” the change girl said. “Some Indian was cooking up some meth in one of the rooms and set the drapes and one of the trees on fire.”
“He’s dead, I suppose.”
She gave me a funny look when I said that.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “He’s dead alright.”
I went outside. The deputies had the Firebird’s doors and trunk open and were poking around inside the car. The paint was in bad shape, and the big orange bird on the hood was looking pretty shabby. There was no ambulance, so Albert’s body must have been long gone. I just tried to look like a curious old waddie to see what they were finding in his car, but the closest deputy gave me one of those can-I-help-you-sir looks that says move-along-asshole, so I got in the Dodge and drove over to the pumps to fill up with that good cheap diesel. It was getting on toward dusk, and the lights were already on over the pumps. A guy about ten years older than me watched me fuel up from the parking lot, standing close enough to the Firebird to see what the deputies were finding. They didn’t tell him to move along, and he wasn’t taking any hints. He wore a Hawaiian shirt and baggy pants and Mexican looking boots with silver tips, but he was no Mexican either. He smiled and waved just cocky as hell when he caught me watching him. His hair looked oily and slicked back in the yard lights. Even without the stupid hat I recognized him from the computer videos. He sure as hell recognized me. I finished pumping my diesel. When I looked up again the guy was gone. I drove back south to Piute Meadows slow and cautious with my eyes on my rearview mirrors. I figured I was too late for supper with Harvey and May. I didn’t want to have to tell them about Albert anyway. I’d let the law do that. With him dead, I sure as hell would be doing more shoeing up there this summer, unless I quit paying attention and ended up the same way.
It was full dark when I got back to town and turned right into the meadows heading home. Course I knew I wasn’t going any such place. I was even lying to myself now. Pretty soon I cruised real slow along the lake, looking up to see if there were any cars parked at the cabin. It was dark and the driveway was empty. I pulled over a few hundred yards past it and parked the truck off the pavement in a little opening in the pines. A person couldn’t see it from the house at all. Then I walked back through the trees and slipped into the kitchen from the side door off the deck. I turned on a low lamp in the living room and started taking inventory. Callie’s note about meeting GQ at State Line was gone from the refrigerator. Whether the deputies or someone else had walked off with it was anybody’s guess. I played the answering machine. The message from the lady lawyer was erased, but Lester’s was still there. That probably meant it wasn’t the deputies who did the erasing.
I went upstairs to the room Callie used. It had the usual girl mess of open drawers, curling irons and underpants on the floor, but nothing more than that. I was scanning the dressertop for any notes or hints when I saw headlights flicker down in the living room. I scooted down the stairs and made it out the kitchen to the side deck about the time I heard a car door close above me on the drive. I was on the opposite side of the house from the wooden steps that came down from the drive to the living room door. Other than the one lamp, I hadn’t left anything that would say I was there. I backed down the deck far enough to see that the car up above was a silver Infiniti. I could hear footsteps coming down the stairs. The wood creaked like hell. A light switched on from the other side of the house, and from the dark I could see a woman swing open the door. She was a good forty feet away, but I could see her walk in, not cautious or scared but like she owned the place. She came to the middle of the room and opened the double glass doors to the front balcony and stepped out like she was enjoying the view of the lake down below. She came back in and walked in my direction, glancing around, picking up bits of stuff. She finally parked at the table where the phone sat. She thumbed through a note pad and punched the answering machine and listened to Lester calling Callie all whiney from the Sierra Peaks the night before. The woman cocked her head like she was trying to remember something and played the message again from the top so she could hear Callie’s voice on the greeting. She didn’t hear me slip into the kitchen and stop about eight feet from her.
“Help you with something?”
She turned around cool as can be but didn’t get up.
“I didn’t think anyone was here,” she said.
“That’s kind of obvious.”
She stood up and stuck out her hand. She wasn’t much older than me and wore high-end hiking clothes. “I’m Nora Ross. I’m an attorney.”
“The L.A. lawyer who called Callie yesterday. Heard your message.”
“Is Ms. Dean home?” she asked. She smiled a real pretty smile “She’s expecting me.” When I didn’t answer right off, she lost the smile.
“She has made some troubling demands on my office,” she said, hard as nails. “I suggest she see me without delay.”
“Callie’s dead. Died last night about two hours after you talked to her.”
If she was shocked, she didn’t let on. “What happened?”
“Car wreck. Went off the road when she was on her way to meet your Jerry Q. about half an hour north of here.”
“That’s awful,” she said. “But he’s not my Gerald Q.”
“You’re the lawyer for the missing guy’s wife, right?”
“My firm is her attorney of record,” she said. “I’m just an associate.” She sat back down. “I have a condo down in Mammoth, so the firm thought I was the obvious choice to come up here because I know the country.”
She kind of looked me up and down then—the packer boots, the knife and stone on the belt of the Wranglers, the shirt with the horseshoe-nail tears at the cuffs, the neck rag, the sunburn, the puffy eyes from no sleep, the skinned knuckles, and the big hat, and maybe figured she didn’t know the same country I did. I hung my hat on a chair.
“Anyway,” she said, “the firm felt I could at least find due north on a map.”
“Fair enough.”
“The crash,” she said. “It was an accident, right?”
“Don’t think so. She was heading to meet this clown up at State Line. She left us a note about it right over there on the refrigerator, but somebody’s lifted it. Then less than twenty four-hours later an old packer named Albert Coffey gets burned to death at State Line supposedly cooking some meth.”