by Lisa Preston
A closed mouth is a good thing for me to wear.
He rubbed his mouth. “Ah, Ri—” Then Yates cut himself off to clear his throat.
Sounded like he said ‘Ree’ and I was a step behind, distracted.
“Pardon?” I said.
“Rielle liked to explore.”
“She went by Rielle?”
Yates gave a sad smile. “Arielle. Rielle. Ree. ReeRee. She used to call herself Elle when she was younger, before we were together.”
I had a pretty good idea of whose knife was in Ol’ Blue. Not exactly a case-cracker that I could establish hanky panky between Arielle and Cameron though. I felt bad for this stranger in front of me whose girlfriend had played around on him, who’d learned of her cheating after she disappeared and the deputies searched her cell phone records.
But what if he was a pretty good actor?
“Um, Mr. Yates, I’m going to be late for my next appointment and there’s no good cell—”
“No cell service out here. Yeah, I know. You can use my phone. We still have a landline.”
“We?” I grabbed my appointment book and followed him toward the house. I should have thought to ask Donna for the use of her landline.
“Me. Just me now. Me and her cat. Our cat.”
Sounded lonely.
We edged around his electric car and its tattered Sanders promotional material over the car’s right hip. Centered, where a trailer hitch would never be, peeled the remains of an even more faded sticker. I didn’t expect to see a rifle over the mantle.
There wasn’t.
Inside, the house was cleaner than mine. A better-mannered cat than Spooky prowled up, purring, but not pushing.
“The phone’s in here.”
I followed him into a den. The paneled walls smelled of cedar and were covered with Thespian awards.
“Nice.” I reached for the phone, flipping through my appointment book to tell my client Leigh Ann that I’d be late, first time ever.
Yates waved at the wall. “Those are from my Ashland days. We used to create magic on the stage. Now I want to create energy.”
“Wind farming,” I said, distracted. I have clients, the Quistlands. Green as trees. They’re good folk, real good. Horses are barefoot and well-cared for, ridden bitless and treeless. I left a message for Leigh Ann, picturing her standing in a barn aisle, holding a horse that needed to be reshod. I closed my appointment book and stared at the broad table under the phone. There was a map of the lease land. The flyer that had been posted around town. The article in The Western. A Sheriff’s card with a case number on it. A sheet of paper with notes about “find my phone” and “Biff C” and “expand search grid?”
“Biff C?” The room was warm enough, but a cool draft wanted to give me the chills. Maybe I’d worked up enough of a sweat lugging feed for Donna that my clothes were moist against my skin and now I wasn’t moving enough to stay warm.
“I don’t want to tell you what that means.” Yates folded his arms and looked at the floor. Nice floor, like bamboo or something special.
“I know a guy named Biff.” Truth is, I can hardly tell the three guys that Guy plays poker with apart, but I know Biff is one of them. Maybe the little one.
Yates rubbed his watery eyes. “I looked all through Rielle’s stuff in the days after she didn’t come back. And we searched her phone. It was tough.”
“We?”
“The sheriff’s department and me. They had some good ideas on finding her, I thought. Her phone pinged to the trail around Keeper Lake, which is an awfully long walk, even for Arielle—”
“TrailTime,” I snapped my fingers with the thought. What was it Guy had said about that app he uses to track runs? And Keeper Lake. And Biff.
“What’s that?” Yates looked mystified.
“TrailTime? Did Arielle use a tracking thingy called TrailTime? Like, from an app on her phone?”
He started to speak, started to lose it, cleared his throat and tried again. “I tried to find her by doing the Find My Phone thing. The other stuff I mentioned about her phone, well, I’d rather . . . it’s personal.”
“I’m truly sorry for your loss. I never knew her, but I sure am sorry.” I shoved my hands in my front pockets.
“Thanks.”
There was something metal, weird, small in my right pocket. I wiggled my fingers and remembered having that shell casing in my hand when I started helping Donna move feed. I must have pocketed it without thinking. I turned to go and saw the wall by the door for the first time. Covered in pistols, blackpowder guns, more modern-looking shooters, too. I faced Yates again, pulling my fingers free, leaving that shell casing where it was. “You shoot with the Outfitter group?”
“What’s that?”
But halfway through my explanation about the Outfitters, Yates shook his head. “I don’t shoot at all. Those are all replicas. Non-firing. I just like old guns. They’re a clever invention, mechanically. Like locks or clocks or, I suppose, bicycles. Things with levers or gears, these old inventions, they’ve always impressed me.”
There’s such a thing as too much speculation. I thanked Yates and drove away thinking in too many directions.
Soon as I got close enough to town for cell reception, I reached my client and rescheduled, squeezing her into a slot later in the day at her best convenience, not liking the hole I now had in my time. Gave me spare hours to wonder.
* * *
Would Stan Yates go out to the shallow grave where his girlfriend’s body had been recovered on the federal land and grieve? Donna wouldn’t, said she wouldn’t be exercising her demons. But there, at the high school track was Melinda Kellan exercising. With my apparent demon, my husband-to-be. My god—my flipping—supposed soon-to-be spouse. Mine.
I pulled Ol’ Blue up on that high school parking lot like a woman ready to chase some sniffing witch off my patch. I’m pretty sure that’s not what I’m all about though, so I don’t know where that came from. I mean, if Guy doesn’t want me or if he wants to be the dallying kind then he can just take his bad self and—
The voice of a fellow behind me sounded off. “Hey, Brainy!”
In as bad a mood as I’d been in for six months, I was more than ready to take someone’s head off. I whirled and paused, saw the lime green El Camino and the skinny little guy in running clothes.
“Biff.” I studied him, choosing where to begin. He’s built like a ten-year-old boy, but not as tall. Pretty sure he’s shorter than me. Guy says he’s speedy as heck. The shaved head probably makes him aerodynamic. And I can’t tell what he means by that stupid nickname he’s tried to hang on me.
“So, Biff . . .”
“Brainy?”
“Arielle Blake.”
“She’s dead.”
“Yeah. Guy wanted you to check—”
Biff unzipped his sweatshirt pocket and pulled out his big, important-looking phone—definitely not a pay-as-you-go model from Walmart, like mine. “What was that all about?” He started swiping away at the screen. “That was, like, a year and a half ago? I don’t use TrailTime as much as Guy.”
“Did you delete a map on TrailTime from when you and Guy searched for Arielle Blake?”
Biff shook his head, still staring at his phone. “Didn’t make one to delete. Still got my pics from that day. See?”
His screen showed the glorified pond called Keeper Lake, and the typical sage scrub beyond that mixed with the pines. We’re right on the edge here in Butte County, with the land half wanting to be like the wetter hemlock, fir, spruce, and cedars of the moist low lands and half high desert, with a few pines and a lot of scraggly brush. A person can ride over a ridge and be in a new climate.
“Hey, what’s that on the water?” I squinted at the phone’s picture.
Biff set two fingers together on the screen and moved them apart, zooming in on the image.
I can’t do that on my phone. I don’t even use it as a camera.
Anyways, it was trash flo
ating on the lake, black plastic something. Why in heck do people litter? With Keeper Lake being close enough to the Country Store, it’s sometimes one of those areas where dumpers drop their unwanted sofas and fridges and cars and scrap material.
“Why in heck,” I asked, “did you and Guy get asked to search around Keeper Lake?”
He shrugged.
“You sure you didn’t know her?”
He shook his head, stamping his feet, stretching, then sprinting off, his sneakers slapping the track in a crunch of the red cinders. The same sound played out toward me as Guy and Melinda Kellan finished their lap.
“Hey, sweetie!” Guy hustled his darned self up, grinning like a fool, arms spread in a hug or surrender or something.
Huh.
“I saw you driving by and I thought, ‘ooh, I wish she’d pull in and let me smooch her,’ and here now, you’ve made my day.” He kissed me like he meant it.
With his slick arms still around me, I couldn’t see Melinda as this was going on, but I wondered if she was now green from envy or from nausea at how sweet he was or what. She’d started out red and sweaty, like Guy, I’d marked that much.
He still had his arms and perspiring pits on me as he asked what I was up to.
I wiggled free. “Thought I’d stop in at Darby’s, you know?”
He shook his head, not knowing much about my mind.
I swallowed a sigh. “Getting that tractor tire of Donna’s fixed at Darby’s.”
“Ah,” he allowed, his gaze wandering back to the red gravel track that circled the football field.
“And you?” I brought back a little of my earlier bristle—a shame to waste it—and gave him a good stern looking-at. “What were you up to?”
“Well,” Guy stammered a little, like this question was too easy or too hard but not just right, “sprints. Of course.”
Of course. Several times a week, Guy runs around the high school track to make himself beet-faced and sweaty and whatnot. Studying him as he studied the lanes was like watching a colt eyeball a big, beckoning pasture from the confines of a box stall in a barn. Guy loves to run. My everything relaxed. Maybe it was the high school itself what brought out in me a petty and jealous little teenybopper. If anything, Melinda was looking a little shy and embarrassed, standing before me and my man.
“It’s my first time,” she said.
First time, what? Acting pleasant? I gave her my grim grin and waited for words.
“I’ve got to get faster,” Melinda said, like a wistful kid wanting the Easter Bunny and chocolate eggs. “I can jog two hours straight, but I’m not as quick a sprinter as I should be. I’ve got a schedule for track workouts I downloaded off the ’net, but the idea of going and running around a track, ugh. It was easier with someone else here.”
Guy nodded at her and I could tell there’d been a short talk on this notion before I chanced upon them. They talked now like they were finishing a conversation about 10k trail races. Guy warned, “They’ll dairy-queen you for course-cutting.”
“What?” Melinda asked.
“DQ,” Guy said. “They’ll disqualify you.
To me, DQ means a dressage queen, a hifalutin rider who makes it all about herself.
Guy went on. “We’ll burn our legs again in a couple of days. Biff will probably join us. Maybe sixteen reps of quarters with a recovery interval after each sprint?”
Melinda gave the up half of a nod, her chin staying high like someone who was in over her head, but trying not to let on. “That’s what it takes.”
“Yeah, just keep running sprints.” Guy watched Biff fly around the track.
For sure and for certain, Guy had no interest in Melinda, even if she was taking a shine to my own personal fella. I had no worries, right? Guy had himself a fine woman, one not living with her folks at this age, one who could take care of herself and had a handle on life. That would be me. Maybe Biff would be a good match for Melinda. He had a job in computers or construction or something and I’d no idea his living situation.
Struck, I asked Guy, “You’d already asked Biff about the deleted TrailTime map?”
“Yeah, it wasn’t him.”
Chapter 18
GUY NODDED AND SHOOK HIS HEAD. “Yeah, it wasn’t his entry in the database. He’d carried his cell that day and shot some pictures around the lake, but he wasn’t using the TrailTime app when we were out.”
“But you’re sure you remember another TrailTime track in that area?”
Biff could be lying to me and Guy. Guy would never suspect a thing.
“I’m sure. TrailTime sends little alerts to your account. Teasers about how another trail user beat your PR—”
“Your PR?” I asked.
“Personal Record. I remember Biff and I were both carrying our phones that day—I remember I had activated TrailTime to track what we did that day we were looking for Arielle Blake. Next time I logged onto TrailTime, it had a notice that someone else had the record for a segment on the trail along the west side of the lake. But later, I checked, and there was no other trail user segment.”
Biff came puffing up, shaking out his legs from another sprint lap. Guy explained it all to him again.
Biff said, “Bet they have it on their server. If it’s that important to you, Brainy.” He touched his watch and took off in another all-out effort around the track.
I don’t know anything about computer servers. Just knew I was missing something. Again. “I’m going to Darby’s, tend to Donna’s tractor tire.”
Melinda dawdled instead of clearing the track, hanging around Guy and me like part of her thinks she’s our buddy or something. Guy got his water bottle from the ground. Its white plastic blended with the chalk line in a middle lane so I hadn’t noticed it, but I think I caught most everything else. Melinda’s toes crunched gravel as she spun to jabber at me.
“Darby, that dude with the tool and tire shop is in the Outfitters group, isn’t he,” she said. She had quite a habit of saying her questions, not asking, then acting like she knew the answer but she was letting you take a quiz for extra credit. She started looking impatient with me, a lot in a Guy-kind of way. “The Outfitters group. That guy Darby’s in it with the Pritchards, yeah?”
I nodded. The Outfitters group. Those people have been happening in Butte County since I don’t know when. They shoot arrows at targets, cook in Dutch ovens and consider their time well spent. The Outfitters are the sort that find a lot to love in the past and go pretending they’re living like a bunch of prairie peasants. Except, some of them get to the so-called camp site in motor homes with TVs, fridges, hot showers, and microwave ovens.
The old days don’t appeal to me at all. Back then, Melinda and me would both be birthing babies and hoeing corn ’til our hands bled, while we wore long skirts just to prove ourselves women. I wanted no part of the past. Figures that some guys think olden times were all wonderful.
“I’d kind of like to tag along to Darby’s,” Melinda said. Still shooting for Busybody Award, as she got into her car and fired up.
What the heck? I made a face that only Guy caught. He grabbed me in a goodbye hug and smooch, whispering in my ear. “She’s trying to befriend you.”
I pushed away, aghast. “Why?”
He laughed and looked right into my eyes, palms on my shoulders. “She thinks you’re cool. And she’s right.”
Melinda didn’t quite tailgate me, but we did pull into Darby’s Tool ’n’ Tire like we were together. I’d ditch her as soon as I went on my shoeing calls.
* * *
Darby Ernst has a catch-all corner in the back of his service station. He’ll special order anything for anyone and a lot of folks use him as a bulletin board besides. Somehow, he always knows who’s got what for sale. Looking for a bumper-pull two-horse trailer? Drop in on Darby and he’ll tell you the Sennets are thinking of upgrading to a three-horse slant, might part with theirs, which has been kept under a roof the five years the Sennets had it. Want to buy some
thing you saw online, but freak at putting a credit card across the Internet? Tell Darby what it is you’re after and he’ll have it here in a week. And tools? Oh, Darby can do tools, antique, super specialty, shoeing tools. That’s how Darby and me got to be chums. He got me an old Heller Brothers hammer that I since took to using as my primary driving hammer. It feels right in my hand and I like the idea that someone drove nails in a century ago with it. This hammer will always have more experience than me.
But Darby, Darby’s a different duck. He looks like he gets his hair cut during Machete Night at a drunken barbers’ hootenanny.
“Rainy,” he said with a nod sent my way. He gave Melinda Kellan a plain nod and I liked a lot that he knew me best. She’d likely not bought any tools from him and maybe committed the sacrilege of getting her car serviced at the chain gas station on the south end of town. Well, okay, I tend to service Ol’ Blue my own self, but I did buy the fuel filter from Darby last winter when mine iced up. Besides, he was getting to Donna Chevigny’s tractor tire then and there, had it on a steel worktable next to the semi-automatic tire changer, working a plug into the hole. I nodded. It made a cheaper fix than busting the tire off the rim and replacing it.
Feeling like I had something on the offer, I whistled up words without thinking too hard. Melinda folded her arms across her middlin’ chest and kept quiet, hung back. She didn’t even know where I was headed. Well, neither did he, so I moved along.
“Hey,” I said to Darby, “some of you Outfitters folks take pretty long rides out into the federal land, that part back of the forest where the grazing lease is, right?”
“Could be. Why?”
“Just wondered. Someone said Loretta Pritchard rides out there. She invited me to go ride sometime.” I could almost feel that aluminum shoe’s shape in my hand, the shoe I had in my glove box. I could see Mac telling me it was probably Loretta Pritchard’s Paso’s shoe.
He nodded. “Yeah, Loretta. I remember her gone a good long while from the Outfitters camp one time. We worried for her ’cause there was talk of cougars ’round some of that country.”
“Cougars?” I shot a look to Melinda but her expression wasn’t exactly of the readable variety. “Which time?”