Dog and I followed the woman out the door and were surprised when she kept walking toward the Arrosa Elementary School across the street—at least I was surprised. The parking lot was vast enough to allow the buses to make a full circle but right now held only a solitary blue Volvo. Beyond was a chain-link fence and a playground with equipment painted red and white, the school colors. We followed her through a gate in the fence, across the playground, and entered a door in the large, older stone portion of the building, which was, it turned out, the gymnasium.
She stood alongside the gleaming wooden surface of the basketball court, and turned to look at me, a large canvas satchel hanging from her shoulder. “I’m Connie Holman.”
“The daughter.”
She nodded. “I know who you are.”
I studied her, clocking her age at late thirties. “Have we met?”
“No, but I’ve read about you in the newspapers, magazine articles, WyoFile . . . Sheriff Walt Longmire, they talk about you like you’re some inevitable form of justice.”
I smiled a tight smile and threw a thumb back toward the bar. “I stop for a beer and pizza every now and then.”
She glanced through the metal grating of the multipane window and looked out onto the playground and past. “I’m sorry, but I’m a teacher here and on the school board, and it isn’t good for me to be seen hanging around in bars.”
I smiled. “That’s okay. It’s not so good for my reputation either, but I do it anyway.”
She volleyed a smile back. “I’m not stalking you.”
“I don’t suppose that would be good for your reputation either.”
“We had an in-service here, and I talked to my mother on the phone; she said something about having hired you.”
“Uh huh.”
“To look into my father’s death?”
I walked to the window, and the clicking of Dog’s claws on the gleaming wood as he followed me echoed as I leaned against the massive stones and looked up at the hand-forged girders. “This is one heck of a building for an elementary school gymnasium.”
She glanced up, and I noticed she was thin and appeared to be stretched just a bit too far. “It was the old bus barn for the eastern part of the county.”
The girders looked to be about twenty feet from the ground. “Not much headroom.”
She shrugged. “Fortunately that’s not a problem with elementary school basketball—not many granny-shot three-pointers.” She swung the canvas satchel and hugged it to her chest, I guess to feel a little more secure, and then walked out onto the court. “I used to dance here when I was a kid.” She did a half twirl and looked back at me. “I teach here now. It’s actually the third evolution of the school; the first was an old one-room that got moved back up the valley.”
I nodded and reached down to pet Dog’s broad head. “Um, your mother didn’t actually hire me.”
“I figured that, seeing as how she doesn’t have any money. I guess I should’ve said, played on your good nature and foisted this situation upon you?”
“Well, it isn’t exactly that, either—she wasn’t the one doing the playing or the foisting.”
She shook her head and turned back toward the dying illumination of the day, albeit at four o’clock in the afternoon, which allowed me to enjoy the picture-perfect profile with the skin drawn tight across her face like some Degas painting. “Lucian Connally?”
“I don’t mind . . .” I wasn’t sure of what to say next, so I just let it trail off.
Her eyes stayed on the grime of the unwashed windows, and I have to admit that I wasn’t prepared for her next question. “Do you think those two had a thing?”
I waited a moment more before responding. “I really couldn’t say, and in all honesty it isn’t any of my business.”
“He was in the car when she broke her back.”
I sighed and nodded, dropping my head to look at the shiny, lacquered surface of the court, polished to within an inch of its grain. “Well, that was before my time.”
“Mine, too.” She looked up at me. “And hopefully before my father’s . . . Look, I’m really sorry my mother or Lucian dragged you into this, but there really isn’t anything to investigate.” She sighed. “My father was not a happy man, never was, and I think it was just a case of his unhappiness catching up with him.”
“So you think it was a suicide?”
She studied me. “You don’t?”
“Actually, I do.”
“Well, at least we agree on something.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, why was he so unhappy?”
“Are you just being nice or do you really want to know?”
I tilted my head, as if in thought. “It might be both; I’m kind of playing the niceness and foisting the need to know.”
She smiled but then cut it short as Dog misinterpreted and took a few steps toward her. “Is he friendly?”
“Overly.” She reached a hand down, and I watched as she petted him, scratching behind his ears. I leaned in a little. “I’m thinking that’s the reason your mother contacted Lucian, because she doesn’t understand why your father did it.”
“My father, Gerald Holman, never broke a law in his life; I mean it, never.” She stood back up straight and folded her arms, dropping her head in thought. “Can you imagine what it’s like, living with a man like that—let alone what he had to do to live with himself?”
“I understand he was a little inflexible.”
She walked a few steps farther onto the court and stopped, her feet naturally falling into fourth position. “I wasn’t allowed to speak to a boy on the phone until I was a senior in high school.”
“I bet you got good grades.”
She turned and looked at me, Dog beside her. “I’m just giving you formal notice that you don’t have to do this—that it’s not your problem anymore.”
“Giving me my walking papers?”
She shook her head. “I’m relieving you of the responsibility of the sad ending of a very unhappy man’s life.”
“Are you planning on having this same conversation with Lucian Connally?”
She smiled. “I was kind of hoping you’d save me from that.”
“I see.”
“Not knowing him very well, I was hoping I could just talk to you.”
“You’ve discussed this with your mother?”
The smile faltered. “Not at length; I thought I would speak with you first.”
I folded my arms, listening to the creaking of my sheepskin jacket sounding like bark tightening. “I’ll tell you what, you get her to tell either Lucian or me to drop it and we’ll call it off.”
She studied me and for the first time I noticed she had brown hair and chocolate eyes—not sweet chocolate, but the bitter kind that bakes. “Why can’t you just take my word on this?”
“Because we agreed to do this investigation with her. I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it works; she has to call it off.”
Her eyes flared a bit, and the chocolate bubbled. “Some kind of code you sheriffs have?”
I smiled back. “Something like that.”
“I’ll speak with her tonight.” She paused for a moment more and then walked past me to the door. “You might want to think about it . . . I’ve seen what those codes can lead to.”
—
“You want a cup of coffee?”
I glanced over at the brand-new urn at the bar-back of the Aces & Eights. “No thanks, but I wouldn’t mind a beer.”
His fans at the Campbell County Sheriff’s Office had dropped off the old sheriff, and I’d found him seated on a bar stool when I got back from Arrosa—I was going to have to find something to distract him as I investigated or every appliance on the high plains would be in peril.
“Hey, Haji.” He raised his voice to the Indian bartender who had replaced the morning Hispanic girl in an attempt to be heard over the small crowd that had filtered into the tiny bar, mostly workers from the nearby oil refineries, their companies seeking lodging wherever they could, the tang of petroleum and dirt strangely comforting. There were four of these men seated by the door, who were laughing loudly at a story one of them was telling.