I retrieved my pictures, then pointed my Bronco south and west, toward Eatonville, and made the small town around noon, under very dark, rain-heavy skies.
A coffee shop waitress gave me uncertain directions to the address I’d written down, but after backtracking a few miles and a few wrong turns, I eventually found the farm.
It was on about five acres of cleared land divided by an unpaved road that ran up a hill to where a tiny trailer was parked. Two larger buildings stood back from the trailer, and along with a tractor and two pickups — a rust-finished old Chevy and a newer Ford Ranger — there were the rusted remains littered here and there of other unidentifiable pieces of machinery. A few cattle stood chewing in the field to one side of the drive, and on the other, a dirty white horse was doing the same.
A large mailbox that dangled from a post at the edge of the road had the name DORIN on it, so I turned in. When I got about halfway up the hill, a man emerged from one of the larger buildings and looked me over as I parked, got out, and approached him.
“Mr. Dorin?”
“Uh-huh.”
“My name is Virginiak, and I’m looking for Carole, your ex-wife.”
“That right?” he said with little interest.
Dorin was a big man. Very big. Six-seven, maybe six-eight, three-hundredish, big-chested, with a ponderous beer gut that hung over the top of his dirty blue jeans.
“I was told you might know where I could find her.”
“Oh, yeah?” he replied with even less interest.
He had a big head, topped by sparse, curly brown hair, and his pug-nosed, thin-lipped, wind-burned face, with a couple of squinty, dark eyes peering at me, passed along an unfriendly message.
“Can’t help you,” he told me.
I nodded, but stayed put, watching him look me over, until he finally sneered, turned away, and walked toward the tractor.
I strolled behind him as he climbed onto a wheel, bent down over the engine, and began removing a fan-belt nut.
I said, “Her agent, Jess Collier, says she hasn’t been in touch with Carole for three months.”
“No kidding,” he said.
I watched him slowly work the nut loose, and when he’d finished, he looked at me and asked, “What’s Carole to you?”
“I’m a friend of hers,” I replied. “We were stationed in Germany together.”
He gave me a blank look. “Well, I can’t help you, you know,” he said. He started pulling at the old belt.
The dirty white horse had drifted nosily over to watch us.
“Last month,” I said, “you delivered some paintings of hers to Wellman’s Gallery in Seattle.”
He worked the belt free, tossed it away, and began fitting the new belt over the shafts’ wheels.
“Collier wonders how you came to have them,” I told him.
He snorted.
“She’s thought about notifying the police.”
“That bitch,” he muttered, struggling with the belt. “She never liked me.”
He got the new belt in place, then began replacing the wheel lock, giving me a tired look. “I got work to do,” he said with infinite weariness. “So, why don’t you take a hike?”
I stared at him.
“Okay?” he added.
I said, “How did you get those paintings, Phil?”
He sighed, shook his head, and finished screwing down the wheel lock. “Man don’t hear so good.”
“How did you get those paintings, Phil?”
He paused in his work and blinked at me. “You want trouble?”
I didn’t, but I could have handled some from him. I didn’t like the man. I didn’t say that, though. I just waited.
He stared at me a moment, then climbed up into the tractor saddle and started the engine. The horse, which had wandered close, now pranced quickly away.
I stood by the tractor.
Dorin ran the tractor a moment, then killed the engine and came down, looking at me and saying, “Still here?”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Instead he started up the hill toward the trailer. I followed him.
Halfway there, he looked back at me, grunted, then walked on. I kept pace. A few yards short of the trailer, he stopped, turned, and pointed the wrench he still held toward the highway.
“Get out!” he told me. “I want you off my property — now!”
I looked toward the highway, then back at him. “Where’s Carole?” I asked.
He blinked. I smiled at him.
“I said,” he huffed, with labored breath, “get off my property!”
I stood where I was, watching him.
He brought the wrench he was holding up to his chest and tapped himself gently, saying, “Or maybe you end up with a permanent disability.”
I kept smiling. “Knock it off, Phil.”
He blinked again. “Are you hard of hearing or something? I told you to get the hell off my property!”
I waited.
He raised the wrench slightly. “So help me...”
“That’s enough,” I said.
“I’m warning you...”
“Enough!”
But he drew the wrench back anyway, so I grabbed it out of his hand and pushed him hard away from me, then threw the tool — as violently as I could — against the wall of the trailer, where it slammed so heavily something inside crashed.
Dorin stepped back, looking wild eyed. A man his size wasn’t used to being physically challenged by another, and it amazed him.
“I said, that’s enough,” I reminded him.
“Who the hell do you think you are...”
“Shut up,” I told him, taking a step toward him.
His face had a lot of anger in it then, but all he did was breathe deep and scowl.
“Now,” I said. “I’ll ask you again...”
“I don’t know where the hell she is, okay?”
“So how did you come to have those paintings?”
“I took them as payment,” he snapped.
“Payment for what?”
He took a few more settling-down breaths. “Part of our divorce settlement, okay?”
I watched his eyes and knew he was lying. “When was this, Phil?”
“I don’t know,” he complained. “Around the first of the month, I think.”
“So, she came here to give you the paintings?”
“Right.”
“Even though she had to take a restraining order out on you last year?”
He snorted.
“Didn’t she?”
He flicked his hand as if to wave the past away. “That was different.”
“Was it?”
“She was giving me a hard time, all right?”
I waited.
“She wanted a divorce,” he told me. “So fine. The hell with her, but then she gets this wise-ass lawyer, wants me to sell the farm, give her half — and I said the hell with that.”
“And?”
He smiled a little evil at me. “So I went up to Seattle to see her. Straighten her out a little, that’s all.”
“How did you manage that?”
He shrugged.
“You bring a wrench with you?”
His smile got a bit more evil in it. “I didn’t need no wrench,” he told me. “I know how to straighten women out, they get out of line.” He tried looking cocky. “Wasn’t the first time,” he added.
Right, I thought.
“Know what I mean?”
I knew. I also knew that if I hit him, I’d hit him very hard, and despite his size and height advantage, I’d only have to hit him once, but I’d be wrong no matter how right it would feel.
So I satisfied myself with coming up close, looking up into his face, putting my finger on his chest, and saying, “She better be all right, Phil.”
He looked down at me and saw something in my face that kept him quiet.
“Understand me, Phil?”
I was done talking myself, so I just stood there looking at him a moment, wondering about people and the people they marry, then I turned away and walked back to my truck.
The nosy horse trotted up beside me as I neared the road, probably wanting to make friends, but he got a look at my face, saw the same thing in it that Dorin had seen, and changed his mind.
The drive to Ashford took me back through Eatonville, over an ever-narrowing stretch of highway that finally widened and became bordered by a handful of houses, a coffee shop, grocery store, and a touristy looking thing called the Ashford Trading Post — Hair Care, Guns and Ammo Boutique.