There were three rooms on the upper leveclass="underline" a small one for storage with a few windows that overlooked the alley in the back; another with a two-by-four table pushed against the wall; and the front room with a couple of windows overlooking the street. This was the room where Leo Gaskell had been living.
There was a ragged and torn polyester sleeping bag piled against one of the corners with a child’s bucking bronco blanket and a dirty pillow. The remains of downstairs’ repast lay on the floor nearby. There was a flashlight, which had been stolen from Northern Rockies Energy Exploration, and the coat I had seen him in last night. There was no Leo.
I coaxed the coat from its crumpled position with the barrel of the shotgun and flipped it open. It was a bloody mess. You could see where two of the pellets had done the most damage, one in the arm and the blood on the sleeping bag showed where the other had hit his foot. As bad as I was feeling this morning, somewhere out there, Leo Gaskell was feeling worse.
I nudged the jacket again and examined the inside pocket where two crystal-meth vials had exploded and thought that maybe Leo wasn’t feeling much of anything after all. I put my gloves on and fingered the shattered glass containers. A full 65 percent of the Wyoming division of criminal investigation’s cases concerned clandestine lab activity. It was a scourge. From Leo’s dental situation, I had assumed meth-mouth and was right.
“Espresso?” We all had our addictions. I sat against the wall and clicked the safety back on the shotgun before placing it in my lap. I took off my gloves. My fingers hurt. He sat beside me and sipped. “Well, at least we know where Leo has been keeping himself.”
“As the possible illegitimate grandson of Charlie Nurburn, I also ask myself where Leo’s daddy might be, if anywhere.”
“We are looking for a white male.”
“With an Indian mother; a half-breed.”
“Bicultural.”
I glanced over at him. “Are you aware of the damage you are causing with all this political correctness to the language of the mythic American West?”
“You bet’cher boots.” He studied the grim surroundings. “Age?”
“Ours, according to Doc Bloomfield. Anybody come to mind?”
“I always thought you might be a half-breed.”
I ignored him. “All right, he may have been here when I found Lana, but he’s definitely been here since.” I stretched my legs out. “I’m also wondering where Leo might have hidden an 18-wheel truck and a mobile home.” I took a sip, which tasted pretty good.
“And what is your answer?”
“Well, there’s too much activity at Four Brothers Ranch, and Vic and I were just there and didn’t see any evidence of Leo, but what about the 260 acres that Mari and Charlie lived on that is adjacent to the ranch? If I were looking for a place to hide something as big as a house, I’d go there.”
Ruby was talking on the phone with Dog’s head in her lap, and Lucian was asleep and snoring loudly on the wooden bench in the reception area with my. 45, cocked and locked, lying on his chest. “How do you get any work done around here with all the noise?”
Her head dropped, and she raised an eyebrow over a particularly cold blue eye. “I understand you went swimming last night?”
“Technically, I think it was struggling and sinking.”
She continued to shake her head. “You have Post-its, that woman from the state dropped off a love note and, lucky for you, Vic is delivering a summons to the bookstore for nonpayment on a newspaper ad. They don’t feel they should have to pay for an advertisement that misspelled the word literature.”
“I can see their point.”
“Saizarbitoria is in the basement. He said he was going to look through Mari Baroja’s effects. I think you should go see him first.”
I plucked my sidearm off Lucian’s chest as Henry and I went by.
When we got to the basement, Saizarbitoria was seated in the middle of the open floor with all of Mari Baroja’s correspondence carefully arranged around him in a semicircle. The whole side of his face was dark and bruised, and he was wearing slippers. He stood when we came in and stuck out his hand. “Thank you.”
I shook it. “You’re welcome.” I wasn’t as good as the Cheyenne, but I was learning. We looked around at the amount of paper stacked on the floor around us.
“She wrote poetry.”
“I’m sorry.” Some of the piles were close to a foot high.
He studied the letter in his hand. “No, it’s actually pretty good.” He pointed to one of the larger stacks. “This is personal communication.” He gestured to another pile. “Business correspondence, and this one is the poetry.” I looked around at the neatly ordered mess. “You don’t want to hear some of it?”
He was definitely spending too much time with Vic. “Maybe later.”
We sat down, and he carefully placed the poetry back in its place and looked at the largest pile in front of him. “She was a savvy businesswoman. She bought up all the surrounding leases adjacent to Four Brothers including Jolie Baroja’s, so she was not only getting the methane money from Four Brothers but also from about a quarter of the valley.”
“Maybe Lana should open up a chain of Basque bakeries?”
Saizarbitoria ignored us and went on. “Mrs. Baroja was probably one of the richest women in the state, but she lived like a pauper.” He glanced around and then back up to me. “I’ve been trying to establish some patterns, but it’s difficult.” He pulled a few bank statements out and a few letters from the personal pile. “She had established a trust fund for Father Baroja that he doesn’t seem to know anything about. I remember he said that they didn’t get along, but she must have felt sorry for him when his grip on reality began to slip. It isn’t administered in Wyoming but set up in…”
“Florida?”
His eyes widened. “How did you know that?”
“A little bird told me, a little southern bird.” I thought back to what Carol Baroja had said in the hospital waiting room when she tried to tie Lana with the ETA. I suspected that no money had gone to Father Baroja or the ETA. I figured that the money went to Carol Baroja’s private charity, herself, but didn’t think that that particular malfeasance had any relevance to the murders. “What about the personal stuff?”
He leaned in a little, and his voice dropped. “Mrs. Baroja may have had a long-term affair with Sheriff Connally.”
The Bear and I looked at each other and back to Saizarbitoria; it was Academy Award stuff but lost on the Basquo. “Ancient history. Anything else?”
He paused for a moment and then went on. “The relationship between her and her daughters was a little strained.”
“Uh huh.” I turned to the side and stretched my sore legs again: Indian style wasn’t working for me. “Any mention of Charlie Nurburn?”
“Old, numerous, and not kind.”
“Any mention of the financial relationship between Mari and him?”
“Some, early on, but he seems to be cut out of the picture by the early fifties.”
Henry and I looked at each other again, but he was quicker. “You can say that again.”
Saizarbitoria’s eyes were shifting back and forth between us. “Are you two going to keep looking at each other or are you going to let me in on this?”
“What’s the story on Leo Gaskell? You knew him in Rawlins, didn’t you?”
He grunted. “We were in the infirmary. He had sliced his hand open in a fight with some dealer from Cheyenne over what they were going to watch on television.” His eyes narrowed, and he was looking back into a place he wasn’t sure he wanted to go to again. “He was secured to a gurney but kept flexing his fingers, so I asked him if he was all right. He doesn’t even look at me and says, ‘I’m just wonderin’ how long you’d cry like a bitch if I was to get my hands around your throat.’ ”
I listened to the heat kick on in the jail and resisted the temptation to look at the Bear again. “All right, Troop. You in or out?”
He propped an elbow on his knee and placed the pointy end of his Vandyke in the palm of his hand. “You’re not going to tell me about Mari Baroja unless I stay?”