I watched as she extended a hand toward Dog as a peace offering. “Which one was she?”
Dog sniffed her hand and then turned and looked out the window. “Not very friendly, is she?”
“He.”
She examined Dog a little closer. “Jone never said, and when they don’t say and you can’t see any evidence of the other two, it’s usually personal problems.”
“Who did she spend her time with?”
“Nobody. She was a loner.”
I started writing again.
She watched me and then spoke up. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Every time you lie to me, I get the urge to finish writing this ticket.”
“Who says I’m lying?”
“Just about everybody I’ve already talked to today.”
She fumed for a while and then threaded her fingers into her hair, and I noticed her whole scalp moved, confirming my thought that it was a wig. “She used to pal around with Thor.”
“The bouncer?”
“I think they used to run up and down the road and shit.”
I stopped writing. “Any business on the side?”
She huffed again and then answered. “If there was, it wasn’t through me—that shit leads to trouble, so I discourage it.” She shrugged. “Which doesn’t mean that it doesn’t happen, but if it does it’s not on my time or my books. Look, I’m no saint, but I try to keep the girls safe; it’s in my interest, you know?” She tugged at the front of the hair, straightening it not unlike the way I straightened my hat. “Sometimes they’ve just had enough and they move on.”
This was squaring with everything everybody was saying. “No contact then—no idea where she might’ve gone?”
“Nope. I still owe her a hundred and sixty-three dollars, so if you hear from her, let me know, will you?”
I thought about it as I studied the sign down the road and could see another coal train heading our way. “Don’t you find it funny that a person with financial troubles would light out overnight without waiting for the money owed to them?”
“Honey, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a funny business.”
“I’m getting that. What about Gerald Holman?”
“Who?”
I started writing again.
She stretched a leg out and bumped my knee with a gold boot. “C’mon, I honestly don’t know who the hell you’re talking about.”
“The sheriff’s investigator who came around asking about Jone, the one who killed himself.”
“Oh, him.” She nodded. “Thor talked to him once, I guess. I wasn’t there.” She studied me. “Are you thinking . . . ?”
I ripped the blue warning ticket from the docket and handed it to her as the train sounded its air horns while passing through the crossing. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m in a funny business, too.”
—
The bartender at the Sixteen Tons had never seen anybody eat one of the pickled eggs from the bar in the three years he’d owned the place, and neither the postmaster nor the BNSF high-line driver said they’d ever seen anybody eat one in the thirty years before that.
“Slow movers, huh?”
The thickset railroad employee with the shaved head and tattoos nodded. “You could say that.”
I glanced at the bartender. “What else have you got?”
“Frozen pizza.”
I studied the off-color ivory orbs floating in the reddish liquid. “I’ll go with the pizza.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the illuminated Olympia clock on the wall. “Happy Hour, you wanna beer?”
“Rainier.”
The cheery man glanced down at Dog—the monster was lying next to my feet. “Something for your dog?”
“No thank you, he just had a ham.”
He extended a hand. “Neil Pilano.”
“Walt Longmire. Nice to meet you, Neil.” We shook. “So, you live around here?”
“I live over on South Douglas Highway.” He glanced down at Dog. “What’s his name?”
“Dog.”
“Easy to remember.”
The high-line driver stretched a hand out as he finished his beer. “Greg Fry.”
“Good to meet you, Fry; you work the spur into Arrosa?”
He adjusted his American flag do-rag. “For a while now. You want a tour of the Black Diamond Mine sometime, just mention my name.”
I watched as he walked out the door; the bartender searched through the coolers for my beverage of choice, and the postmaster moved down to the stool next to me. “You gave Tommi Sandburg a ticket?”
“A warning; her brother seemed to think she’d bite me if I gave her a real ticket.”
“That or fall down out there on the road and start biting herself—she’s had a rough life.” He sipped his beer and nodded. “About a half-dozen marriages and counting.”
The bartender sat a bottle of Rainier in front of me and lowered a plastic bowl of water down to Dog, who immediately stood and began lapping it up.
“The ham must’ve been salty.” I turned back to the postmaster and took a sip of my beer. “Anyone next in the lineup?”
“Me, I hope.”
I swallowed carefully, so as not to spray the beer all over the bar. “You’re a very lucky man.”
“I know. Crazy, huh?”
“Have you ever been married before?”
“A short period of time back, but I don’t think either one of us took it very seriously—like my great grandfather used to say, nobody misses a slice off an already-cut cake.”
I sat my beer back on a coaster that advertised Dirty Shirley’s down the road and spread my fingers across the smooth wooden surface of the bar. “I think Tommi might be the kind that counts her slices.”
He nodded as he sipped his Coors. “You could be right.” He smiled to himself and, looking for a ring, studied my hand. “You married?”
“Widowed.”
“Kids?”
“One, a daughter in Philadelphia getting ready to have one of her own—due at the end of the week. That’s where I’m supposed to be, but instead I’m here.”
He lifted his bottle. “That’s the way most folks feel about Arrosa.”
I lifted my own, and we toasted.
“Any word on Jone?”
“Nothing yet.”
He eyed me through his funky glasses. “Any, you know, leads? From her mail maybe?”
“Leads?”
He lowered his beer and looked thoughtful. “Isn’t that what you guys call ’em, leads?”
“Sometimes.” I sat my Rainier back down. “No, just the usual junk forwarded from her previous address in Boise and some new stuff. But you must’ve noticed that.”
The postman shook his head, the ponytail wagging back and forth. “Nope, I just sort ’em—I don’t read ’em.”
I thought about it. “No personal correspondence, nothing.”
“Kids these days, they text, tweet, or use e-mail.” He pointed to the USPS patch on his shoulder. “That’s why we’re going out of business.”
“You’d think there would be something, though. Weeks of mail and not a single letter . . . Not even a postcard.”
A youngish woman came through the door and looked around, pausing for a moment and then walking straight to me. Careful to avoid Dog, she stood a few steps away in her business suit, long wool coat, and sensible shoes. “Are you Walt Longmire?”
I glanced around the almost empty bar for comic effect, a move which was lost on everybody except Dog. “I am.”
“Can I speak with you?”
“Sure.”
She glanced around, perhaps for her own comic effect, and jiggled her car keys. “Somewhere else?”
I pointed toward the back. “I just ordered a pizza.”
“This won’t take long.”
I stood and raised my voice so the bartender could hear me. “Mr. Pilano, have you already put that pizza in?”
A voice came back. “Just now.”
“Can you take it out and put it back in when I return?”
His head appeared in the swinging doorway. “No problem.”