“You using these chairs?”
Loving looked up abruptly, as if he had been deep in some profound thought. “What? Oh, no. Help yourselves.”
The three men took the vacant seats and ordered drinks. One of them was older than the rest; flecks of gray were apparent in his hairline, particularly around the temples. The other two Loving guessed were in their early thirties, not much younger than Loving himself.
Loving didn’t push it. He spent the first ten minutes or so gazing off into space, paying no attention as the three buddies chatted among themselves. They didn’t introduce themselves, and he never caught their names, so he assigned names to them-Huey, Dewey, and Louie. Louie was the senior member of the troupe.
Only after a significant time had passed did Loving subtly turn his attention in their direction. He could tell their conversation (mostly about sports teams they wanted to win and women they’d like to boink) was running out of steam. These men probably came to this place every other night; they didn’t have much to say to one another anymore.
Loving inclined his head toward the man closest to him-Louie. “Any of you boys have a dog?”
They glanced among themselves, as if not sure which should answer first. One of the younger ones-Huey-nodded noncommittally. “Sure. Bird dog.”
“Irish setter,” offered Dewey.
The senior member of the team jumped in. “Three Rottweilers. Why?”
Loving shrugged. “Oh, no reason. Got me a damned fine dog. Great Dane I call Rex. Good as any person I’ve ever known. Better’n most. I’ve been on the road for three weeks now and-well, hell. I miss my dog.”
Huey smiled. “Oh, sure. That’s rough. Three weeks. Hell of a long time to be apart.”
“Got a wife?” Louie asked.
“Oh yeah,” Loving answered. “But I miss my dog.”
There were a few grins, and a few moments later, they were all laughing. Politics and women made for risky conversation starters, Loving thought. But dogs worked every time. “You boys from around here?”
Huey nodded. “Lived here all my life. You?”
Loving knew there was no point trying to bluff a man who’d lived in this tiny burg forever. “Nah. Just passing through.”
Huey nodded. Loving could sense the prickles of suspicion rising. “We don’t get that many strangers through here. ’Cept the ones we don’t want. What’s your line of work?”
“Trucker,” Loving grunted. He thought that would sound convincing; he’d done it for about five years, after all, before he met the Skipper. “Got a load of cranberries. Taking it to market in California.”
“Oh,” Huey said. Loving could sense him relaxing. Being a trucker was okay. Not as good as being a logger, but acceptable.
Huey glanced at his nearest buddy. “He’s a trucker.”
“I heard,” Dewey said. “I’m excited. Gonna be here long?”
“Nah. Just putting up for the night. I was going to drive straight through, but-I dunno. I got curious.”
“Curious?” Dewey said. “About Magic Valley?”
“Oh yeah. Been a lotta talk about this little town.”
He detected a narrowing in Louie’s eyes. “Talk? What kind of talk?”
“ ’Bout that dude who got himself killed.”
Huey nodded. “Dwayne.”
Loving acted surprised. “You knew him?”
“Oh, yeah. We all knew him.”
“Really? Damn.” Loving adjusted his chair slightly. “What happened to him?”
“Goddamn tree huggers, that’s what happened to him.”
“Tree huggers?” He knew the men were watching him, measuring his reaction.
“Eco-warriors, they call themselves. People who love Mother Nature but will shoot their fellow man dead in his tracks.”
“I hate that,” Loving said, careful not to overplay his hand. “People should come first, you know?”
“Yeah, I know.” Huey grimaced. “But the guy who plugged Dwayne, he didn’t know.”
“I heard the guy got burned up. Like, while he was still alive.”
Dewey nodded his head grimly. “Poor Dwayne. Poor, poor Dwayne.”
“Damn. That’s rough. The guy have a wife? Kids?”
“Yeah. He had a little boy. And … Lu Ann.” A look passed from Dewey to both of the other men.
“Lu Ann?” Loving tried not to seem too eager, even though he was finally moving the conversation to a topic the Skipper had particularly wanted him to investigate. “That his wife?”
Dewey nodded.
“Man, that’s sad. She must be pretty torn up.”
Another look passed among the three men. “You can check that out for yourself. She’s sitting in the booth behind you.”
Loving looked surprised, and the surprise was genuine. Subtly, trying not to attract attention, he turned till he faced the row of booths in the back.
He knew who they had to be talking about. She had long, wild auburn hair and was dressed in a tube top and tight white jeans. She wasn’t crying, but the man she was with nonetheless appeared to be offering his comfort.
“Shouldn’t she be, like … in mourning or something?” Loving asked.
“Lu Ann isn’t the mourning type,” Louie said-another curt pronouncement of wisdom from the senior team member. “As you can see, she has a busy social calendar.”
Loving looked away. “Even before her hubby got charbroiled?”
“Long before. It was what you’d call a troubled marriage. Because she was what you’d call trouble.”
She was what he’d call trailer trash, Loving thought. Or out here, maybe it should be treetop trash. “She have anyone special?”
Huey shrugged. “From time to time. Till the next one came along.”
Loving watched surreptitiously as Lu Ann’s escort’s hands groped for the most accommodating parts of her anatomy. “Who’s she with now?”
“Fella called Doug Curtis.”
“He a logger?”
“Yeah. Well, not exactly.” Huey corrected himself. “Used to log. Now I understand he works for a man called Slade.”
Is that a fact? Loving thought.
“Why are you so interested in Lu Ann, anyway?” Dewey asked. A sharp line formed across his forehead.
“Oh, I’m not really.” Loving turned quickly. Obviously, it was time to cool it. “Or maybe just a little. Like any other rubbernecker.”
“Dwayne’d been actin’ some kind of funny for several weeks, up until the burnin.’ That woman had him on the ropes.” Louie shook his head. “Well, less said about that the better.”
“Agreed,” Loving replied. He knew he couldn’t push any harder without arousing suspicions. “You boys ready for another round?”
A quick glance, a shrug, a why not?, and another round was ordered. And Loving knew that once he paid the tab, their newfound friendship would be sealed.
An hour and a half later, Loving was buying his sixth round, and everyone at the table was beginning to act more than a little toasted-including himself. Truth was, he didn’t drink that much anymore; he was getting too old for that nonsense, and besides, it was making him fat. He wasn’t used to this level of consumption and it was making him woozy.
“Whad I don’t unnerstand is how these tree huggers get away with it,” Loving said. The word slurring was a nice touch, he thought, and at the moment it didn’t require any acting. “I’d think you boys’d pound ’em into pulp.”
“They hide,” Huey said. He was leaning slant-wise on one elbow, commiserating. “They strike when no one’s lookin’, then run away and hide.”
“Buddow do they know where you are?”
“There’s a leak,” Louie said, making another of the portentous pronouncements of which he was so fond. “Everybody knows it. We just don’t know who it is.
“But when we find out,” Dewey growled, “pow!” He brought his hand and fist together and almost missed.
“Who d’ya suspect?” Loving asked.
“We jus’ don’t know. Gotta be one of us, a logger, someone in town. Bud damned if we know who.”
“I can’t believe any one of us would be talkin’ to those damn tree freaks,” Huey said, with ample revulsion plastered across his face. “I jus’ can’t believe it.”