"You say someone tried to kill you?"
Louise Crenshaw's question was couched in a dismissively sarcastic mode, derogatory but still slyly coy, almost like her old bitchy self.
"Come now, Mr. Beaumont. Surely your imagination is playing tricks on you. If you were female, I'd say you were overwrought, but men don't get overwrought. Or do they?"
"I'm not overwrought, as you call it. Somebody planted a damn rattlesnake in my cabin this afternoon. It's a wonder I didn't step on it in the dark."
Louise laughed then, uproariously, almost hysterically. Calvin Crenshaw hurried to his wife's side, a worried frown on his face.
"Come on inside, Louise. You really must sit down."
She pulled away from his grasp. "I'm all right, Calvin, but I want this man out of here. Now."
"We'll talk about this tomorrow," Calvin said to me, turning as if to take Louise back into the house.
"No, we won't," I insisted before he could hustle her inside. "We'll talk about it now! Tonight. Don't you understand? I'm telling you, somebody tried to kill me."
Calvin Crenshaw stubbornly shook his head. "Rattlesnakes are part of the natural order of things around here, Mr. Beaumont. They do turn up occasionally, especially when it rains."
"That's what I'm trying to tell you. Shorty says the snake isn't from around here, that it must be somebody's pet."
Louise came to life and spun around, her eyes wide. "Who says?"
"Shorty Rojas. He came to my cabin and caught the snake with a stick. It was in my closet."
Louise's face went suddenly slack. "You're right, Cal," she said weakly. "I want to go lie down, please."
"Sure, hon. Right away." Cal turned back to us. "Wait right here."
As gently as if she were a damaged porcelain doll, Calvin Crenshaw led his wife into the house, closing the door behind them. He was gone for several minutes. The longer he stayed away, the longer I had to wait, the more aggravated I became. When he finally returned to the door, though, I noticed a subtle change in the man. He was grim-faced but determined.
"Louise and I have talked it over. Our clients have had enough disturbances for one day. You're to go back to the ranch, Mr. Beaumont. Tomorrow we'll decide what's to be done."
My mouth must have dropped open half a foot. "Tomorrow? Are you crazy? I'm talking attempted murder here. Homicide. I'm not going back to that cabin, and I'm sure as hell not staying there until there's been a full police investigation."
"Then you won't be going back at all." Calvin Crenshaw spoke with a quiet assurance I had never seen in him before. "That being the case, Mr. Beaumont," Calvin continued, "I suggest you have Shorty here take you back to the ranch to pick up your belongings. If you hurry, you may be able to catch the Greyhound into Phoenix."
"Wait a minute. Pick up my belongings? Does that mean you're throwing me out?"
"If you're not prepared to do as you're told, Mr. Beaumont, you don't leave us any choice. We have a treatment center to run, and we must look to the welfare of all our clients."
"What the hell do you expect me to do? Forget that someone tried to kill me? Go back to my cabin and act like it never happened? You expect me to sleep there?"
Beside me on the porch, Shorty Rojas shifted uneasily, but Calvin Crenshaw gave him a warning head shake that stifled any objection Shorty might have had. I couldn't blame him. I had no doubt that if he had crossed this newly transformed Calvin Crenshaw, his job would be on the line.
"It's up to you, Mr. Beaumont," Calvin said, turning back to me, relaxing a little now that he felt he was once more in control. "If you go back to the ranch tonight, you're welcome to stay. If you leave Ironwood Ranch without permission, however, you won't be coming back."
Aggravation and mystification turned to rage. "That remains to be seen, Mr. Crenshaw," I replied, barely holding my temper in check. "I will be back, in the morning, along with someone from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department. If anybody goes near my cabin between now and then, you can tell them for me that they're running the risk of becoming prime suspects in a felony investigation."
"Good night, Mr. Beaumont," said an unperturbed Calvin Crenshaw, closing the door in my face as deliberately as if I'd been a pushy door-to-door salesman.
I turned to Shorty. "What the hell got into him?"
But Shorty Rojas didn't answer. He pulled his cowboy hat down low on his forehead and turned away from me, walking quickly back toward his pickup.
"Sorry about that, Mr. Beaumont," he said. "Come on. I'll drop you in town, then I'd better get home and see what the river's doing. It'll be cresting pretty soon now."
I stopped long enough to look back at the house just in time to see the living room and kitchen lights go out. The message was clear. Calvin Crenshaw was shutting the place down and going to bed. J. P. Beaumont and his problems weren't important enough for the Crenshaws to lose any part of their good night's sleep.
Deep in the interior of the house another light went off, a hall light this time, while behind me the engine of Shorty's pickup roared to life.
I stood there for a moment longer, angry and puzzled both. Before my very eyes, Calvin Crenshaw, the lamb, had turned into a lion. A tough-minded lion at that. I had been there, seen it happen, and yet I had no idea what had caused it. What the hell had I missed?
It had something to do with Louise Crenshaw, Joey Rothman, and me. Of that much I was certain, but I'd be damned if I had the foggiest idea what the connection was.
Joey Rothman wasn't talking, so Louise Crenshaw would have to. Whether she wanted to or not.
CHAPTER 8
Wickenburg, Arizona, a one-horse town with a non-snowbird stable population of about 4,500, is divided more or less in half by the usually dry bed of the Hassayampa River. On this dark October night, with the river half a mile wide and flowing bank to bank, the division was much more serious than usual.
As Shorty drove us down toward the town's single stoplight where two secondary highways intersect, it was clear there was some kind of major problem on the roadway. It looked for all the world like a big-city traffic jam, on a somewhat smaller scale than the ones we have in Seattle.
"Bridge must be closed," Shorty muttered, stopping the truck and getting out.
"Sounds like home," I said.
"I'll go check it out. Wanna come?"
"No thanks. I've had more than enough of the Hassayampa River for one day," I told him.
The trip downtown from Crenshaw's house had been a conversational wasteland. Shorty Rojas hadn't wanted to talk, and neither had I. As we drove, however, I made up my mind that I'd get to Phoenix that night, one way or the other, and enlist the help of my attorney, Ralph Ames, in doing whatever needed doing. After all, he was the one who was ultimately responsible for my being at Ironwood Ranch in the first place. It was only fair that he help me fix the problem.
Shorty came back to the pickup and wheeled it around in a sharp U-turn. "Water's scouring out the bridge supports," he said. "Probably be closed most of the night. The deputy says they've still got one or two rooms up at the Joshua Tree Motel over on Tegner. It's nothing fancy, but it'll be better'n nothin'."
"Any place at all will be fine," I said. "Thanks for all your help, Shorty. Not only for the ride tonight, but also for what you did with Jennifer this afternoon. Having her go along when you moved horses was just what the doctor ordered."
"Poor little tyke," Shorty agreed. "Felt real sorry for her. Dropped her off with her mother when I saw Mrs. Rothman packing the boy's things out of the cabin and loading them into the car. As I walked away, Jennifer was getting her ass chewed because her uniform was wet. That's one mean mama," he added.