I lowered my voice in an attempt to get her to lower hers. “They do for medical services involving recalcitrant, uninsured junkmen but not for the sheriff department’s payroll.”
Her voice became more conversational. “I want to buy a house.”
I nodded and then smiled just to let her know that she shouldn’t take her current annual wage personally. “Then you should work hard and save your money.”
“Fuck you.”
“It’s amazing the respect I seem to command from my staff, isn’t it?”
Janine, who sat behind the desk, was my dispatcher Ruby’s granddaughter. She looked up at us from her paperback, nodded, and scratched under her chin with the large, pink eraser of her pencil. “Amazing.”
Vic leaned her back against the counter and crossed her legs at the ankles. “I’m not kidding, at least about the house. I’m tired of living in a place with wheels on it.”
Ever since arriving in county, Vic had occupied a single-wide by the highway, and I’d often wondered why she hadn’t taken up a more permanent residence. Perhaps my latest re-election and promise to abdicate to her in two years was having an effect. “Where is this house you want?”
“Over on Kisling. It’s a little Craftsman place.”
I looked past her. “The one with the red door?”
She didn’t say anything for a moment. “Okay, who died there?”
I shrugged. “Nobody. I just drove by yesterday and saw a for sale sign. Do you know that the Jacobites in Scotland painted their doors red in support of the Forty-Five Rebellion and Bonnie Prince Charlie?”
“Do you know I don’t give a bonnie big shit?”
Janine snickered.
Vic uncrossed her ankles and shifted from one booted foot to the other. “I’ve got an appointment to go over and look at it again tonight. I guess there’s a bunch of people interested.”
“Would you like me to go with you?”
She raised an exquisite eyebrow. “Why in the This Old House hell would I want you to do that?”
She had a point; my home skills were just short of negligible—I’d only gotten around to having the Mexican tile in my six-year-old log cabin installed this past fall. “It’s a guy thing; even if you don’t know anything about cars, you open the hood and look at the engine.”
“Seven-thirty. Then I’ll let you take me out to dinner.”
I took the weight off my sore foot and looked down at my boots, which were covered with buckled galoshes. “That’s a nice part of town. The houses around there usually go in a hurry. What do they want for it?”
“One-seventy-one, but I think I can get it for one-sixty-two. Alphonse says he’ll front me the down, and then I can just pay him back when I can, sans interest.”
Alphonse was Vic’s uncle who had a pizza parlor in Philadelphia and, other than Vic’s mother, Lena, the only non-cop Moretti. “How’s the rest of the family feel about this?”
“They don’t know about it.” As a general rule, the machinations of the Moretti family made the Borgias’ seem like Blondie and Dagwood.
Her shoulder bumped into my arm as she changed the subject. “So, your daughter and my brother are getting married this summer?”
I took a deep breath with a quick exhale. “All I know is what I get from the answering machine at home.”
“At least you’ve got a home.” She shifted her weight again, this time in not-so-simple dissatisfaction. “Mom says the end of July.”
I shrugged. “Mom would know.” I thought about Vic’s mother, and the brief time I’d spent in Philly almost a year ago. “Did she mention whether they were thinking of doing it here or in Philadelphia?”
She looked up at me. “There was supposedly talk about some special place on the Rez—Crazy something . . .”
I thought about it. “Crazy Head Springs?”
“That’s it.”
“Uh-oh.”
“Why uh-oh?”
“It’s where I once helped raise the powwow totem; it’s a sacred place for the Cheyenne but controversial. Crazy Head was a Crow chief, but part of the break-off Kicks-in-the-Belly band.”
“Like Virgil?”
“Yep, like Virgil.” Virgil had been one of our holding cell lodgers who, after having been released, had gone MIA. “The Cheyenne don’t like the idea of a Crow chief being exalted on their reservation. Henry took Cady along with us when she was seven, and she’s always said she wanted to be married there.”
Vic shook her head. “We’ll see if it lasts till the summer.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Her eyes met mine, but she diverted again. “So, has the Basquo talked to you?”
I started to yawn and covered my mouth with my hand. “About what?”
“Quitting.”
I stopped in mid-yawn. “What?”
I studied her a moment more, but my eyes were drawn to an approaching lab coat flapping toward us from the hallway. I swiveled my head to meet Isaac Bloomfield, surgeon and all-around Durant Memorial physician-in-charge. As a member of the lost tribe, who must’ve really been lost when he settled in Wyoming, Isaac Bloomfield had set up practice in Absaroka County more than a half century ago. He had been one of the three living inmates of Dora-Mittelbau’s Nordhausen when Allied troops had liberated the Nazi Vernichtungslager. “How’s the patient?”
“Well, that’s the first time we’ve ever had that happen.” He looked up at me through the thick lenses of his glasses, which magnified the multiple layers of skin around his eyes. “His hair has grown through his long underwear.”
Vic made an unflattering noise through her nose.
“Probably more than we needed to know, Doc.”
He adjusted his glasses and motioned with his almost bald head toward the double doors of the ER. “Walter, I need you to come with me.” He glanced back as Vic started to follow. “Alone.”
I turned to her as I followed the thin man into the inner sanctums of Durant Memorial. “Stay here. I want to know more about the house and the wedding. And Sancho.”
She stuffed her hands in the pockets of her duty jacket and called after me. “I’ve got that appointment at seven-thirty.”
The Doc walked me into the first examination room and closed the door. I glanced around and noticed we were the only ones there; that’s why I’m a sheriff, because I notice things like that. “Where’s the patient?”
He placed the edge of the clipboard on the counter next to a sink and studied me. “In the next room.”
“Please tell me he didn’t just have a heart attack.” I thought about it. “You know the family has a history.”
“Yes, but the patient in question suffers primarily from diabetes, not heart disease.”
“All right, then.” I looked at him. “What’s up, Doc?”
I stood there in his disapproving silence. He slowly brought his gaze up. “You’ve had a rough year. A very rough year.” He peered at me and tapped the examination bench. “Climb up here.”
“Isaac, I don’t have time . . .”
He patted the clipboard. “Neither do I. I have every intention of retiring soon and handing the responsibility for this place over to the new young man we’ve hired.”
“Who?”
He ignored me and patted his clipboard again. “These are the mandatory examination papers for the county health plan and, if you do not sit down, I will have them cancel the coverage.”
I took a deep breath and looked at him; he was studying the contents of the folder that contained a running documentary of my physical misadventures. The Doc usually dragged me in for the health insurance examination whenever he felt it was high time and long enough.
Bushwhacked.
“Ruby called you, didn’t she?” He didn’t say anything, so I sighed, stepped up, and sat.
He placed the file on the gurney beside me, reached out and thumbed both sides of my knee, pressing up on the cap through my jeans. “How’s the knee?”
I winced. “All right, till you started monkeying around with it.”