Frogskin and Muttonfat (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book Two)

by Carol Caverly

  I wondered if it was a real apology, or if he’d just changed camps, ready with Florie to shift all blame on the Kid.

  “All of us were upset, Rocky.”

  “Florie’s right, though. This could really ruin us, particularly with people like Hildy Gilstrom bad-mouthing us to all the tourists. She’ll love this turn of events,” he said bitterly.

  “What’s her problem?”

  “She’s got a bug up her butt about most everything. Her father used to be a big man in this town. Used to own this building. Not in the glory days when it was the fanciest whorehouse north of Denver—that’s what we’re trying to restore it to look like. Hildy’s father owned it much later. Not that there weren’t prostitutes here then, too, but it was a sleazier business then, undercover. Anyway, Hildy’s father came on hard times and sold the place, which was fine for Hildy then. She didn’t want that kind of thing, a whorehouse, in the family. But now that Florie and I bought the place—hell, they were going to tear it down and build a gas station here five years ago—and began making a success of it, you’d think we’d stolen her birthright.”

  “Does she still have an interest in it? Did you buy it from her?”

  “No. It’s been through a dozen owners since her daddy sold it.”

  “Doesn’t seem very reasonable.”

  “Reason doesn’t have any meaning to Hildy Gilstrom. I’d like to wring her neck.”

  I let that one alone.

  “And now she’s all hot under the collar because Florie’s grandfather’s here. Says it’s our fault for bringing a criminal element into town. As if we had any choice in the matter.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “Hell, no. He just showed up one day about two weeks ago. Sicker than hell, too. Had to get a doctor and everything. Bronchitis. He’s not an easy patient. He had some wild idea about going out to the ranch to live. We couldn’t let him do that. Nobody’s lived out there for a couple of years, not since Florie’s mom died. The old house has gone to ruin. No water, no electricity, no nothing. Florie’s mom had a nice trailer out there for years, but we hauled that to town and sold it after she died. There’s nothing out there for him.”

  “Was Florie’s mother Corcoran’s daughter?” I asked.

  “Yeah. She wanted us to take over the ranch. We tried it a while, but neither Florie or I liked it much. Damn hard work. Florie’s mom helped us buy this place. We would’ve sold the ranch when she died, if we could’ve. Man, we could use the money; this place sucks up dough like a vacuum cleaner. But the Kid wouldn’t hear of it, ornery old coot.”

  “Does he own the ranch?”

  “It belongs half to Florie and half to the Kid. Neither one can sell without the other’s permission.” He threw some scraps of paper in the wastebasket. “Here,” he said, handing me a key. “To Madame Juju. Again, I can’t tell you how sorry I am for all that’s happened. You know, we’d really appreciate it if you’d stick around here. I mean, keep your room at Racy Ladies for as long as you’re in town. It would sure help us out. Kind of show people that the place is still okay regardless of…”

  “I’m not sure what my plans are going to be.”

  “We’d let you have Juju for no cost to make up for bad experiences.” Nothing like a free room for an enticement.

  “Well, for right now that’s fine with me. What do the police say? Are they going to release those two rooms to you? And I wonder when I’m going to get the rest of my things back.”

  “Yeah, Dwayne said we could have Hard-Nosed Lu back tomorrow. I’m not even thinking about renting Mavis again for a long time. Don’t think it would set well with folks. We’ll just close it up for now.”

  “Sounds like a good idea. On second thought, Rocky, why don’t you let me have all the keys to Madam Juju? I think I’d feel a lot better.”

  He handed over another key.

  “And the third?”

  “I gave that to Max last night.”

  “Oh, of course,” I said, feeling stupid for not thinking of it. I bet he’d even left it in the room and I hadn’t noticed. I hadn’t bothered with a key this morning, forgetting again that the door didn’t lock automatically behind me. Well, I’d get it in a minute. First I’d have another cup of coffee and one of those rolls.

  I picked a particularly luscious-looking roll dotted with pieces of apricot and took it and another cup of steaming coffee to a table and sat down. I’ve always found that the third cup of coffee is the best. The first two are necessities, but the third is to be savored and enjoyed. If the situation had been different I would have leaned back, smacked my lips and uttered a contented “Ah.”

  I happened to glance up and saw Kid Corcoran standing in the doorway.

  “You got a car?” he asked without preamble.

  Fifteen

  The lightness took over. Sheila Rides Horse rose from the chair with the gauzy airiness of a dragonfly and darted from her room. Delighted, she soared, caught by the wind until the earth snatched her feet, pulling her to the ground. Walk, she was told. She must walk. Plodding steadily across the light sandy soil, she lengthened her stride, aware that she was not alone. Two figures walked ahead of her, one on the right, the other on the left. She knew they would not turn around that she would not see their faces.

  For now she kept her eyes forward taking her time, not wanting to get lost in this other world. She observed the landscape, mentally recording the occasional cactus, the scattered boulders jutting up from the stark terrain, and the pointed mountains in the distance. Confident that a part of her inner mind remained alert and aware, she let her eyes drift to the figures accompanying her. Sheila knew who walked on her left. She recognized the nun’s habit of Sister Fortunata even though she wore a hood rather than a cowl. A dove fluttered, hovered and sometimes rode on the nun’s shoulder. A bobcat paced protectively beside her. Sheila felt warm and comforted, honored by her presence.

  An old man walked abreast of the nun on Sheila’s right, dressed in a loin cloth and leggings. Dark, weathered skin clung loosely to the lean bones of his back. He limped arthritically on bowed legs. An Indian shaman of some kind, Sheila thought, or maybe a chief. She shrugged. What did she know of Indians? Not much.

  An eagle wheeled over the old man’s head and behind him a silver and green snake slithered majestically, carrying its head unnaturally high like a sentinel. Scenery began to pass by as if she were on a train. Great stone cathedrals, crumbling grave yards, monuments topped with angels sped by on one side, burial platforms, tepees, hogans and medicine wheels on the other.

  The shaman spoke. “You belong to us, daughter. You are welcome.”

  “You didn’t want me,” Sheila answered angrily. “You threw me away.”

  “Don’t deny us. We will give you strength.”

  “I don’t know who I am.”

  The eagle swooped low, his feathers changing into iridescent darkness as he landed on her shoulder.

  “You are Crow,” the shaman said.

  Sister’s familiar voice floated on the air. “Your soul is divided. Accept them, Sheila, or you will lose a part of yourself. Look to the distance.” She pointed ahead where the passing panoramas met in the distance and became one. “You will need us both if—”

  A thunderous cry rang out, hammering her eardrums. Sheila dropped to her knees in agony, covering her ears. The nun and shaman disappeared replaced by a gigantic man running toward her, brandishing a broad sword. Bellowing with rage, he whipped the weapon in wide arcs of destruction. Sheila struggled to her feet; terror clutched her belly. She tried to run. The sword whistled past her ear.

  “No, “she screamed “not here!” Stumbling back, she bumped into her chair and sat with enough force to knock it over backward tumbling her across the floor of her room. She lay there, breathing hard letting the adrenaline drain away.

  She crawled to the bed her hair and face dripping with sweat. Her body shook with the unnatural chill of fear. She pulled the star quilt up to her chin.
Her cards were still on the table, but she didn’t need them to tell her what the vision meant.

  Sister Fortunata had always urged Sheila to make peace with her background, but Sheila wasn’t interested in the past or a mother who had dumped her as a naked newborn with nothing other than a name and no clues as to where she had come from. The orphanage, the sisters, were good enough for her. She had been nurtured and loved.

  Out of love, Sheila had made a few attempts to appease Sister. Making her Indian dress had been one of those attempts. But as she got older, she found she didn’t need Indianness to survive or even to succeed. She scorned the culture freaks who insisted her only worth was in being as Indian as possible. She remembered someone once asking her what tribe she belonged to, and she had answered “South Dakota Catholic.”

  But Sheila knew that none of this was the true meaning of the vision, either.

  The message was of an imminent crossing-over. Sister Fortunata, and the shaman, wanted to ease her coming passage over to the other side.

  Sixteen

  The Kid wore the same khaki pants, or another pair just like them, and a white T-shirt, no oxygen. Probably been out smoking.

  “Care to join me for a cup of coffee?” I asked, temporarily ignoring his question about a car.

  He hesitated a moment, then, doing a fair job of masking his impatience, went to the sideboard, poured himself a cup of coffee, and joined me at the table. Good thing. I wasn’t about to commit myself to any chauffeuring until we’d had some conversation.

  I wondered how much he knew about last night’s events, and figured there was only one way to find out: I said, “You look like you got a good night’s sleep.” And he did. He looked refreshed and much more vigorous than he had last night. “Did you manage to sleep through all the ruckus?”

  “Most of it. Too bad about the girl.”

  He eyed me with an unblinking stare that seemed like a challenge of some kind.

  “Yes. It was pretty horrible. I can’t imagine who, or why anyone would want to kill her.”

  He shrugged. “Probably in the wrong place at the wrong time.” He took a couple slurps of coffee, then said, bleakly, “They’re gonna pin it on me. You can bet on it.”

  “Have the police talked to you?”

  “Yeah, they been here, bright and early.”

  “What did they say? What makes you think they’re going to pin it on you?”

  “An ex-con is easy game. They’ll be back, you’ll see.”

  “It won’t be that bad. I told them you couldn’t have done it because I saw you downstairs at a crucial time. And they checked your room. They know you were asleep.”

  “That won’t matter to them.” He shook his head at my naivety. “You got a car?” he asked again.

  “Yes. Why?”

  “I want to go out to the old place before they come and get me. Out in the country; it was my folks’ homestead. I was born and raised there.”

  “Where is it? How far out?”

  “‘Bout thirty miles out Donkey Creek Road.”

  Which, of course, told me nothing. “How long does it take?”

  “Twenty, thirty minutes is all.” He had the dignity not to beg. But I could tell how badly he wanted me to say yes. His hands worked nervously, one gripping the other with enough tension to whiten the knuckles and pop the tendons on the age-spotted backs.

  He caught me looking at them and reached for his coffee mug, cradling it in both hands. A pretty cool customer, I thought. “I saw you leave the fairgrounds with Phoebe yesterday. I thought she might have taken you to the country.”

  “She gave me a ride to the rodeo and back is all. And a run by the store for smokes. I asked her to take me to the country, but she wouldn’t do it,” he said querulously.

  “What was she like? I really didn’t know her very well.”

  “Oh, I dunno,” he said, staring down at his coffee. I suspected he didn’t spend much time thinking about other people’s personalities. “Young, pushy.”

  “You’d met her before, though, hadn’t you? When she interviewed you in California.”

  “Yeah, asking all the same questions again. Gets kind of tiresome.”

  I’d assumed the important info Phoebe wanted to tell me was something she’d gleaned from the Kid, but maybe not. I didn’t want to blatantly pump him, mainly because I didn’t think he’d fall for it.

  “I guess I can check with Florie, and see if it’s okay to go out there.”

  “I ain’t no ten-year-old kid needs to get permission.”

  Whoops. “I’m not worried about permission as much as by your health. You sure you’re up to it?”

  “Wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t,” he said with some belligerence.

  “Well then, why not? We can talk on the way and I’ll get my interview at the same time. But I can’t be gone for very long. Okay?”

  He nodded.

  I drained my coffee cup and said, “I’ll go get my things and meet you out front.” I needed to change my shoes, having learned the hard way from my first trip that the Wyoming countryside was no place for sandals. I’d also need to get something to write on. My notebook and tape recorder were in my briefcase and still in the hands of the police. But my camera should be in the suitcase.

  I grabbed another sweet roll and went upstairs. The doors to Mavis and Hard-Nosed Lu were shut, and presumably locked, with a couple of strips of yellow police tape strung across them. I felt an odd sense of removal, finding it hard to recall the horrors of last night with any sense of reality, more like a hazily remembered nightmare.

  I halfway hoped Florie might be cleaning rooms upstairs. If so, I would have told her I was taking the Kid out. As it was, I didn’t feel like running back downstairs to hunt her up; besides, I was willing to take the Kid’s word for it that he could stand the trip.

  My only real concern was the chance of missing Max. So I left him a note telling him where I’d gone and propped it on the dresser. I looked briefly for the room key, but it wasn’t on the dresser or nightstand and I couldn’t imagine where else Max would have left it. He must have taken it with him. It didn’t matter, I had two more.

  I put on some Keds and grabbed my string bag from the plastic sack and a few other things I might need. I didn’t want to bother reorganizing the whole mess right now. I got the camera from my suitcase, the notepad from the nightstand and threw them in the purse, too.

  In the process I saw the notes I’d made that morning, recalling Phoebe’s last words to me, and stopped to re-read them. They didn’t seem nearly so profound as they had earlier, nor could I imagine they’d convince Dwayne that she was trying to warn me about something. Oh well, I thought grimly, you had to have been there.

  It would be nice if people who were going to run around warning you of things could be a bit more concrete. Something a little better than “Be careful,” or “He’s a man with dark hair.” Phoebe had mentioned the Kid’s name, which might be damning in Dwayne’s eye, but I still felt I should tell the police about it. They could do what they wanted with the info. I was sure Florie would find much more damaging things to throw against the old man.

  No matter what else the Kid might be mixed up in, at least I felt comfortable in my own mind that he couldn’t have killed Phoebe. That’s all I cared about now.

  The Kid was waiting in the vestibule, and I was relieved to see that he had his oxygen carrier with him and a light jacket over his arm. I resisted taking his arm to help him down the steps and he managed very well on his own, though he did stop for a brief coughing spell at the curb and spat into the gutter.

  “Which way do we go?” I asked, pulling away from the curb.

  “S’pose we could swing by the nursing home for a minute first?”

  Here we go, I thought. First change of plans. I should have expected it. But the nursing home, of all places? Why did he want to go there? Oh, well. “I don’t know why not. Which way?”

  “To the left.”

 
He directed me to a low, sprawling brick building. One end was a clinic and small hospital, and the other, with nicely kept grounds and rows of wind-weary geraniums, was a nursing home. Not beautiful by any means, but then nothing could really make amends for the unfortunate name scrawled over the arched entrance gate: Evening Repose. That would take the heart out of the most chipper.

  Riddled with curiosity, I bided my time, knowing full well that sooner or later I’d lose my couth and be as nosy as the next guy.

  We stepped into a broad foyer decorated with furniture, which looked like it was never sat upon, pictures on the wall, and lots of potted plants, but the brave attempt at homeyness wouldn’t have a fooled a six-year-old that this was a place for anything other than the sick and dying.

  The Kid paused, sniffing the air like a wary wolf. His lip curled with distaste as he glanced nervously around before going any farther.

  “Put this back in the car, would you?” he said, handing me his oxygen carrier and hose, as if fearing he might be caught and caged if he looked too much like “one of them.”

  He stood, clutching his wadded-up jacket as I left. He nodded curtly to a dark-haired lady at a desk and headed down a corridor. When I returned he was nowhere to be seen. Not surprising, of course, but I was bursting with curiosity as to what he was doing, or who he might be visiting.

  I lurked in the foyer. Straight ahead was a dining facility flanked by two wide corridors, and to my right a common area with a large TV. Two elderly men, who appeared to be comatose, sat slumped in chairs in front of the screen. I wondered how long they had been there, if anyone ever came to check on them. A livelier group, two in wheelchairs, clustered around a table in the corner, playing cards. A small woman moving turtle-paced towards them with the help of a walker cast me a shy smile of welcome that tugged at my heart.

  The dark-haired lady dressed in a trim summer suit paused by a door marked Office, smiled and asked if she could help me find somebody.

  “I’m here with Web Corcoran.”