“Anything but.” As she slid back the door of the glass case and extracted a plate of the delicate pastries, I reassessed my thinking about Lana Baroja. There was something old world about her, a practical quality that superceded the popular beauty of the day and drew its warmth from the earth rather than the air. She turned back around from the opposite counter and placed a small waxed bag in front of me. I looked at it. “It’s a gift.”
“For what?”
“Caring about my grandmother.”
I nodded. “Thank you.” I studied the little sack and thought about Mari Baroja. “Did she bake?”
“Yes.” She looked at the little white bag, and it was obvious to both of us that it was symbolic of something important and tactile that was being passed between us: it was a contract. “Whenever we visited from Colorado Springs she would bake things with me.” The dark eyes came up. “I guess that’s how I got started.”
“Your father was at the Academy?”
She brought her palms up from the counter. “Air force.”
“He died in Vietnam?”
“Yes. I didn’t get much of a chance to know him. Did you?”
I thought of the sad-eyed young man. “No, but I know a guy a lot like him. How about your mother?”
She stared at me for a second. “She’s still in Colorado Springs; her, a mean little shih tzu, and Jesus.”
I nodded. “I see.”
“What did Dr. Bloomfield say?”
I leaned a hip of my own against the counter. “He said that your grandmother had heart complications due to a chronic condition, and the medical examiner from Billings seems to concur with the prognosis so far.”
“So far?”
I started for the door; things had gone so well I didn’t want to spoil them. “We should have a death certificate by the end of the day.”
“It really isn’t fair, you know?” I stopped with my hand resting on the brass handle. She still leaned against the counter with her arms folded, staring at the worn surface. “Just when you get to the point where you can enjoy them, they’re gone.”
I thought about it. “It’s that way sometimes with children, too.”
She continued to stare at the wood and extended a finger to trace the grain. “I wouldn’t know.”
I paused for a moment more. “On the subject of family, what can you tell me about your grandfather?”
The finger stopped. “He was a prick, and he’s dead.”
I was relieved but tried to hide it. “He’s dead? Do you know how he died?”
The dark eyes looked straight at me and blinked only once. “Surely you know. Lucian Connally killed him.”
4
I told the ladies at vehicle registration to punch up Charlie Nurburn on the DMV computer and show me what they had or I was going to set fire to the place.
It didn’t take long for them to tell me zip, so I asked them how far back the data went. They asked me how far back I wanted to go. The ladies at vehicle registration were like that. After all the years of abuse at the hands of the local citizenry, they had developed the finely honed tact and manners of Russian wolfhounds. I asked for the forties, and they came forth grudgingly with nothing. I asked for the fifties, and they eventually showed me that Charlie had registered a 1950 Kaiser but had failed to pay taxes or registration a year later. He had also failed to have his driver’s license renewed. There were no further records to date. I asked them what a Kaiser looked like. They said it looked a lot like a Frazer. I asked them what a Frazer looked like. They said it looked like a Hudson. Before I left, I reminded them about the fire. They asked me when the fire was going to start so they could be sure to call the county commissioners and get them in the courthouse for a meeting. I told them I was going across the hall to the county clerk’s office. They said that was a good place to start a fire, that there was enough blue hair over there to burn down the whole damn county.
I walked across the hall and once again put forth the human query of Charlie Nurburn. Wyoming has no income tax, so I asked for anything the ladies there might have concerning Charlie’s birth, life, marriage, children, or death, not necessarily in that order. They were nicer than the ladies over in vehicle registration and came back with more. There were three birth certificates for his children, David in ’47 and the twins in ’48, a death certificate for the sad-eyed young lieutenant, circa 1972, and a marriage certificate dated 1946. Nothing else. No death certificate for Charlie Nurburn, so I copied down his social security number and warned them about the impending fire. They didn’t seem to care either way.
I walked down the hall past the stairs that led to the courtroom above but got corralled by Vern Selby. He wanted to talk about the outstanding warrants we had on people who had neglected to show up for jury duty, which told me that we might not have reached our quorum for the afternoon. He leaned an elbow on the newel post like Clifton Webb in repose and twisted the end of his mustache; it was officially winter because the judge had grown his matinee-idol lip warmer. He didn’t seem pleased. “ We only had seven jurors today.”
“Maybe you need to get more entertainment values involved, you know, bang the gavel more?”
He studied me a while longer. “I knew you were the wrong person to talk to about such things.”
I shrugged and headed for the assessor’s office but stopped after a step. “Vern, do you remember a Charlie Nurburn from the southern part of the county, married to Mari Baroja?” I was saving the lawyers as a final connection.
“Related to Kay Baroja-Lofton over in Sheridan and Carol Baroja-Calloway in Miami?”
I should have known. I noticed he didn’t mention Lana; her not being a lawyer probably dropped her down to the level of the rest of us mere mortals. “He was the father, of those two and another one.”
“David Nurburn?”
“Yes.” So Lana’s father had kept his father’s name, but she hadn’t. Interesting.
“I believe he was about the same age as my William, and you, come to think of it.” The judge contemplated the acoustical tiles in the ceiling for a moment. I wondered how he could play with his mustache that much and still leave it intact. “I don’t seem to recall the father.”
“He wasn’t on the scene for long.”
“Ah,” he smiled. “But I remember her.” I was a little taken aback by the smile. “She used to come to town on Thursday afternoons, park her car in the exact same spot. I used to watch her from the windows of my office as she walked up Main Street.”
The image of his honor hanging out the second-story window of the courthouse and watching Mari Baroja sashay down the sidewalk was almost too much. “Jeez, Vern. You’re a pervert.”
He looked at me and shook his head. “She was a beautiful woman and very hard not to look at.” He took his elbow from the post and patted it in thanks for supporting him. Even inanimate objects were good for votes in Vern’s book. “In any case, I’m not the one you should be talking to. Lucian used to have lunch with her every Thursday, like clockwork.” He stepped down to my level, turned the corner, and carefully put on his coat and muffler. “At least I assume it was lunch
…”
I stood there for a moment, getting my bearings, until I became aware that the judge had stopped, turned, and was looking at me. “How is she?”
“Dead.”
He continued adjusting his coat. “I suspected as much; too bad, really.” He misunderstood my staring at him. “One hates to see that much beauty go out of the world these days.” The next thing I knew, he was standing next to me with his gloved hand on my arm. “Walter, are you all right?” I mumbled something, and he nodded. “Let’s see about getting some more jurors, shall we?”
After the stun had worked its way off, I went into the assessor’s office and asked Lois Kolinsky if she had anything on Charlie Nurburn. She looked up with her little Mrs. Santa Claus glasses and asked me who was asking, and I remembered to tell her about the fire. She snickered and looked for the ledgers as I stood there thinking.