Die For Me

by Jack Lynch

  I went over and tapped the little call bell on the counter.

  A bouncing young woman in her early 20s came out of the office wearing denim pants, a pale yellow shirt and a friendly grin. She had dark eyes, dark hair cinched into a pony tail and a dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks.

  “Hi, there,” she greeted me. “I don’t know if we’ve got a horse big enough to carry you, but you’ve just about got the pick of the accommodations.”

  “I’m not staying over this time,” I told her, opening my wallet. “I’m working.” I showed her the photo of my state license and put one of my business cards on the desktop. I also took out the latest list of names Barry Smith had given me.

  “I’m helping the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department on this one. I’d like to know if some of the names on this list were staying here at the same time, a weekend last December, I believe it was.” I folded the list of victims and contacts down the middle, turning the side listing survivors toward her.

  The girl’s smile faded. She looked at me, lowered her eyes to glance briefly at the list, then looked back at me. She remained polite enough, but now assumed the stance of a seasoned innkeeper.

  “You’ve got to be kidding. You, a private detective, expect to waltz in here and go through the guest register? I mean we don’t demand marriage licenses of the guests. As long as they behave themselves in public and, as they used to say, don’t scare the horses, we pretty much mind our own business.”

  “It’s not what you think. This isn’t any sort of divorce matter. This involves a number of violent deaths. Truly.”

  She glanced at the list again, seemed to waver, then got another grip on herself. “Oh, come on. You can tell me any story you want. I still don’t know what you’re up to. You come back with a sheriff’s deputy, I’ll help you any way I can.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Susan.”

  “Susan, if I get in touch with the people I’m working with, sheriff’s people in Santa Rosa, if I get them on the phone would you give them the information?”

  “Probably not. It isn’t the sort of information we give out over the phone.”

  I thought a moment. “Okay, let’s try it this way. Among those names on the list, I know that the Whitleys and the woman named Karen Ellis were here the same weekend. Would you tell me if you remember any of the other names on that list? The Ellis woman runs a modeling agency in San Francisco. She’s flamboyant enough so you’d probably remember her. If you could recognize just one other name it might help tremendously.”

  “I wasn’t here last December.”

  I went back outside and leaned against the car. I couldn’t blame her. It just went to show how spoiled a person could become after traveling for a couple of days with authentic lawmen who can flash a badge and demand an answer.

  I glanced across the meadow to where two men were up banging hammers on the roof of the building under construction. Then I straightened and looked around some more, wondering where they kept the horses. I didn’t have the country background that Rachel did, but it seemed to me that an outfit calling itself the Horse Around Ranch should have horses. I strolled across the meadow.

  The two men on the roof were shirtless beneath bib overalls. One wore a cowboy hat, the other had a bandanna wrapped around his head, like country music singer Willie Nelson. He even looked a bit like Willie Nelson, an older fellow with nut brown skin and a grey stubble on his chin. That’s probably why he wore the bandanna.

  I was standing a little ways off from the structure. When Willie glanced up and saw me I waved at him. He nodded his head in turn, then paused. He said something to his partner, who also stopped banging nails.

  “Howdy,” called the man in the bandanna.

  “Hi. You the owner, or manager here?”

  “Naw. We’re just hired help. Carpenters, this week.”

  It was a more than adequate description of the marginal, many-faceted work lives of the men living along the Northern California coast.

  “What is it you’re building?”

  “Stables.”

  “Expanding?”

  “Nope. Replacing.”

  I nodded my head. “I was wondering where they kept the horses.”

  The man in the bandanna pointed off to the north. “They been keeping them on the neighbor’s property.”

  “What happened to the old stables?”

  “They burned.”

  I nodded again, looked around and shrugged. “Well, much obliged.”

  Willie gave me a wave of his hammer arm and the two men resumed pounding. I had taken a dozen or more paces back toward my car when I stopped. The old stables had burned. Horses and fire. That didn’t sound too pleasant. I didn’t think it had anything to do with what I was working on, but if I didn’t go back and ask right then I knew I would wake up sometime in the middle of the night kicking myself.

  I retraced my steps and waited. It was the younger, skinny man in the cowboy hat who noticed me this time and said something to his partner. Both men gave their hammers another rest.

  “Sorry to bother you again.”

  The man in the bandanna dismissed it with a wave.

  “You said the old stables burned. When was that, do you know?”

  “Yeah, it was last December.”

  “Would you know what part of the week it happened?”

  “It was a Saturday night. I was in bed, drunk and asleep when the fire horn started blowing. Had a helluva time getting up and out to here, not that it did much good anyway.”

  “I’d like to hear about it,” I called up to him. “It’s not idle curiosity. I have a reason for asking, and the girl back at the lodge said she wasn’t working here then.”

  The two men on the roof consulted. One of them glanced at his watch. They stood up and swung down through an opening between the rafters to a stepladder set up between ceiling joists. When the man with the bandanna joined me a moment later he shook hands and said his name was Virgil.

  “So what caused the fire?” I asked.

  “Well, it was just one of those God-awful things that happen,” Virgil said. “They apparently had a short in some equipment in the rear of the horse stalls. It ignited some straw. Poof!”

  “Did they get all the horses out?”

  “Not all of them. And a couple of people died too.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “The couple who ran the stable, Jim and Polly Stuart, had a young boy staying with them that weekend. When they heard the horses screaming all three of them ran out to open up the stalls. Turns out the kid was trailing the other two and Jim and Polly didn’t realize the boy had followed them inside the stable. Morgan horses they were, damn fine animals, but they were panicked. One of ’em apparently clobbered the kid in its rush to get away from the flames. Don’t know how much you know about horses, but even the gentlest of critters is apt to go crazy around fire.”

  “I’ve heard that.”

  “Well, by the time Jim and Polly realized the boy must have gone into the stable and was still there, it was awful smoky. Jim went in searching for him, but the smoke got Jim before he could bring out the boy. They both died in there. I got there not too long after. Glad I was still half drunk. Three of the horses never made it, either. It was a sorry damn night.”

  “Did it take long to put out the fire?”

  Virgil made a sound of disgust. “They’d shut off the water lines out to the barn and stable area. They do that sometimes when water’s low and they have a lot of people staying here. They figure that’s what shorted out the stable pump as well. It had an automatic setting on it to pump water into the troughs when they got down to a certain level. Somebody fouled up somewhere. When they shut off the water lines out here they shoulda’ shut off the pump as well. They didn’t. Anyways, by the time we got somebody back at the lodge to restore the water to the stable area it was too late to save much of the place.”

  “You wouldn’t know whic
h weekend in December it happened?”

  “It was the weekend before Christmas. One helluva Christmas present for somebody, wouldn’t you say?”

  I thanked him and headed back to the main lodge. I paused again at the bottom of the stairs and looked at the sign urging the guests to conserve water. To save some of it for the horses. I wondered if the sign had been there in December. I climbed the stairs and entered the lodge.

  This time the manager of the place was in the back office. Susan called him out to the counter when she saw me coming again. Her boss was a dark-haired, middle-aged man named York. This time I told them about the list of names I carried, that they were the closest known survivors of the victims they had found at Jack London State Park.

  “I don’t blame you for being cautious,” I told them. “But I’ve just talked to one of the men out building the new stables. He told me about the fire you had last December. I think there’s a connection in all of this. Would you at least take a look yourselves at the names of the people who were registered here that weekend of the fire? Check the names against this list. See if some of the same people weren’t here then.”

  Susan and the manager took the list into the back office. I heard whispering, then an exclamation from the girl. The manager came out a moment later and handed back the list with a grave expression. The girl Susan was watching from the office doorway, great agitation in her expression.

  “Do they match?” I asked.

  “Some of them,” said York. “I’ll tell you what. I want to help you if your story’s legit. I know the deputies who work this area. You call the people you work with in Santa Rosa. Tell them to get any of the regular deputies out here to phone me and vouch for you.”

  York let me use the office phone. I managed to reach Barry Smith again. “I might have something major for you in about ten minutes,” I told the sergeant. “But first I have to convince a couple of people that I am working with you on this.” I explained what York wanted. Smith said he would have the message relayed immediately.

  I went back out and hung around the counter area. York stayed back in the office. Susan came out hesitantly to wait with me, looking at me, weighing me.

  “This is honest Injun time?” she asked.

  “It is.”

  “You’ve been up there where all that is going on? The park?”

  “I have.”

  “God. Not nice, huh?”

  “Not nice at all. The same as that fire last December couldn’t have been very nice.”

  York was getting a little antsy, waiting. He came out of the office and leaned his elbows on the counter.

  “Were you here at the time of the fire?” I asked him.

  “I sure was.”

  “How did it happen? I understand the water to the area was shut off, but the electric pump in the stable itself was left on.”

  York nodded. “Our regular handyman had gone east for Christmas. We had a temporary fellow helping out. We hadn’t expected that mild weather back then and the influx of guests. The new man just didn’t know about the pump, and apparently he hadn’t told the people up at the stable he was shutting off the water to up there.”

  “I saw the sign outside. Do you stress water conservation?”

  “Always. We’re having additional storage facilities built next month. But until then we just try to get people to cooperate. We have signs in the rooms and cabins. But it’s hard to get people paying for a weekend’s lodging to take those things seriously. So for now, when the water gets low we have to divert it to this end of the property.”

  The phone in the office began ringing. York went quickly back to answer it. I could hear him clearly.

  “Yep! Yep! Got it. Thanks, Dan.”

  I realized the manager must have had the registration cards all pulled and ready for me. He brought them back out and put them down on the counter. “These are the people who were registered here that weekend. Several of them match that list of yours.”

  I went through them quickly. The Whitleys were there and Karen Ellis, and a Mrs. D. Holmes, in a room adjoining one where her friend Lillian Calione was registered. There were other names there that matched the list I carried, including Danny McGuire, the Santa Rosa fireman, and his wife, and then I saw a name that nearly made me drop the rest of the batch on the floor.

  Also registered there that weekend was Maribeth Robbins.

  I put down the cards, my heart beginning to thump. If the pattern held, that meant it wasn’t Maribeth herself whose death she sensed. It meant the person closest to her. It meant Bobbie.

  TWENTY-TWO

  York let me use the phone in his office. I dialed Maribeth’s number but there was no answer. I called Smith and told him what I’d learned.

  “Son of a bitch,” he said. “You were right after all.”

  “But I don’t really get it.”

  “Somebody out for revenge,” Smith said. “But instead of going after the target, you go after somebody very close to them. If you kill the target, the target’s pain ends. If you kill somebody very close to them, the memory lingers on.”

  “A grim theory.”

  “But one that’s right, I’ll bet my job on it. Give me the background.”

  I repeated the story the ranch people had told me, about the fire and the mix-up on the water system. The sergeant then seemed to close up inside himself. He just asked questions. He didn’t tell me where they were leading him. Then he told me to put the manager on the phone.

  From York’s end of the conversation I knew Smith was asking him about the people who had been out at the stable the night of the fire, and about the couple who tended the horses and the boy who had been visiting them.

  “Polly just went away, after Jim’s funeral,” York told him. “I don’t think she knew what she was going to do…Oh, gosh, I can’t remember. It was Jim’s nephew, I know. Up visiting from the Bay Area somewhere…No, I sure don’t. I’ll ask my wife when she gets back. Maybe she’ll remember.”

  York listened for a moment. “Sure, I’ll be here the rest of the day. A Detective who? Thurber? Okay, I’ll be waiting for him…Sure, hold on a minute.”

  York began to read information off the registration cards from the weekend of the fire. I went back out to the lobby and crossed to the pay phone near the front door and tried phoning Maribeth again. There still was no answer.

  I replaced the receiver and stood staring out one of the big windows next to the front door, across the distant meadow to where the two men were back working on the roof of the new stable. There still were gaping holes in this thing I couldn’t comprehend. Where would somebody get all the information that would be necessary to plan the killing that had occurred? There were other questions, but that was a major one. But then I thought again. I’d been a newspaper reporter. If it had been important enough, could I have dug up the names of people closest to those who had been registered there the weekend of the fire? I knew I could have.

  I went back to the check-in counter and waited for York to finish his conversation with Smith. Susan came over with a sheepish smile.

  “Sorry I didn’t believe you at first.”

  “You had no reason to.”

  “What will you do now?”

  “I have another question for the boss.”

  When the manager got off the phone and came back out of the office I asked it. “Have you had anybody else come in and ask to see the registration cards for that weekend of the fire?”

  He didn’t have to think about it. “Yes, an insurance fellow. Said he was doing a report on the fire. He said they learn what to guard against in the future that way. They can circulate preventive measures. Save lives. Cut down losses.”

  “And he wanted the registration information. Did you give it to him?”

  “Sure. Oh, he was here for half a day, it seemed, asking all sorts of questions. He certainly was thorough. Said he was going to interview all the guests who were here that weekend. Find out how effective our no
tices about water conservation were. He seemed to have a real itch about our water system.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, it was the cause of the fire, of course. Not enough water. The lack of communication to do with the diversion of it.”

  “Did he seem interested in the temporary man who diverted the water?”

  “Yes, he was very interested, but I finally convinced him the poor fellow just didn’t know about the pump up there. I felt like I was a defense lawyer. Then he asked me a bunch of questions about the guests here. He asked me if we would have had to divert the water if everybody had made an effort to conserve it. But how do you answer a question like that? We don’t keep cameras in all the bathrooms and showers around here.”

  “Did he show you any sort of identification?”

  “He must have. I know he had a business card. Why?”

  “I’m not sure. Did you save the card?”

  “No. I don’t even know if he left one.”

  “Do you remember the name of the insurance company?”

  “He wasn’t with any one particular company. It was some sort of association of companies, as I recall it. But no, I don’t remember the name of it.”

  “And when was all this?”

  York turned to a big wall calendar behind the registration desk. He stared at it a moment then turned with a shake of his head. “I can’t remember. It was some weeks after the fire. Maybe the early part of February. Maybe later. I remember we were having a lot of rain then.”

  “Can you describe him?”

  The little manager shrugged. “That’s been a while, my friend. He was well dressed. He had a medium build. He wasn’t as tall as you are. In his thirties. Had a bandage on one cheek. I remember that most of all.”

  “What about his hair? Color of his eyes?”

  York shook his head. “Can’t help you there.”

  “Well thanks for trying. Be sure to tell Detective Thurber about this insurance man when he gets here. Maybe by then you’ll remember more about him.”