I took another breath. “I’ve got a headache.”
She opened the toolbox and pulled out a small plastic bottle of aspirin, uncapped the container and tapped six small orange tablets into my outstretched hand. “Children’s, so you’ll need three times as many.”
“You keep aspirin in your toolbox?”
“Plumbing gives me headaches.” She started to turn. “They’re chewable, but I’ll get you some water.”
“No need.” I popped the pills into my mouth and swallowed.
She made a face. “How can you do that?”
I half-smiled, which probably looked more like a smirk. “Practice. At a certain point in life, aspirin becomes a major food group.”
She carried the bottle over and sat on the corner of the bed; she was careful to avoid Dog. “You’re making everybody around here nervous.”
“Why’s that?”
A rounded shoulder shrugged. “You just are.” She flipped her hair. “Maybe it’s because they think you’re an insurance man.”
“Hmm…” I swallowed again, feeling the aspirins finally hit bottom. “Do I make you nervous?”
“No, but I don’t think you’re an insurance man.”
“What do you think I am?”
“A cop.”
I nodded. “And what does Benjamin think?”
“He thinks you’re a cop, too.”
I yawned and covered my face with my hand. “How do the two of you figure?”
She put the bottle of aspirin on the bed and reached out to take my hat from my knee. “When you’re a fugitive, you get a feeling for these things.” She examined the inside of the black fur felt: “7 ѕ-LONG OVAL. TEN X, H-BAR HATS, BILLINGS.” The mahogany eyes, young but deep-stained with experience, looked back up at me. “If you’re federal, and I’m hoping you’re not, you flew into Montana and bought a hat so that you could blend in-or you’re from the FBI field office in Billings or Cheyenne.”
I stared at her, the pain in my head resurging. “What, you taking a mail-order course in how to become a private investigator?”
“Almost two years of law enforcement classes at Sheridan College.” Both shoulders shrugged this time. “Ran out of money.” I sat there without saying anything. “You could be state, maybe an investigator from DCI, but they were already here.”
I nodded. “You and Benjamin have very active imaginations.”
“Or you could be local, but I doubt it-the sheriffs around here couldn’t find their butts with GPS.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, strictly Barney Fife.”
I smiled, this time with my whole mouth. “So, bringing the vast experience of two years of law enforcement education to bear-”
She placed my hat back on my knee and focused on my eyes. “Oops.. maybe you are local.”
I laughed. “So, did you know her-or him?”
“Both. I cleaned house for them for the better part of a year.”
“What were they like?”
“Night and day.” She leaned forward and rested her folded arms on her knees. “She was great. The house was always spotless when I got there, so I’d help her with whatever she needed help with, painting, planting-she had a greenhouse.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“She had orchids; I’ve never seen anybody around here with those.”
“What about him?”
She made a face. “Loudmouth. If you were around him, you got to hear about just how wonderful he was. No matter what you’d done, he’d done it better. No matter where you’d been, he’d been there. That kind of stuff.”
“I understand he had his fingers in a lot of pies?”
“He owned this place at one point-the motel and the bar. It got to where if you came in for a drink you’d have to listen to him, so people stopped coming. After he died, Pat opened it up again.”
“Who owned it before Barsad?”
“Pat.”
“Were they partners?”
She thought about it. “I’m not sure. Wade’s business dealings were always a little complex.”
“In what way?”
She shrugged. “Wade was involved in everything but had this habit of making lists and stuff on little pieces of paper he called kites.”
“Is that what you called him, Wade?”
She studied me. “Sounds like you already know a little about what he was like.”
“A little.”
“He came on to me one time at their house; I passed, but he got more persistent and I got out a digging trowel to convince him of my lack of interest.”
“Did it work?”
“For a while, but then you had to remind him; he was like that.”
“I heard a few gals weren’t exactly uninterested.”
She was silent for a moment. “A few.”
“Let’s say I was interested, just for argument’s sake; where would I find those women?”
She studied me more closely. “I’m not naming names because I’m not sure, but if I was so inclined I’d check the immediate vicinity of the ranch. Barsad wasn’t one to go out of his way to look for female companionship; looking the way he did, he didn’t have to.”
“Kind of like a journeyman outfielder-he’d catch it if it came near him, but he wasn’t going to stretch for it?”
“Exactly.” She smiled. “There’s an auction over at Bill Nolan’s tomorrow morning at ten-I’d imagine everybody’ll be there. Might be an opportunity to meet all the players.”
I leaned forward and rested my elbows on the armrests of the chair. “You still haven’t answered the big question. Did she kill him?”
She sighed deeply and stood, looking down at me. “Are you from around here?”
“Hereabouts.”
“There’s a myth about this place.”
I didn’t try to hide my confusion. “This town?”
“No.” She crossed to the dresser, fetched the toolbox, and stood there holding it between herself and Dog again. “More like the West, or maybe it’s the world.”
“Maybe it’s my head; I’m not following.”
“The myth is that you’re supposed to be independent-you know, cowboy-up and all that stuff?”
“Yep?”
“I don’t think they mean for that to apply to everybody, especially women.” She nudged toward the door, but Dog didn’t move. She gave me a side glance. “You wanna call him off?”
I made the same noise through my teeth, picked up the bottle of aspirin, and patted the swale of the bed; he was on it in an instant, wagging and smiling. “He was never on.” I extended the plastic bottle toward her. “You want your aspirin?”
She held the door, and I watched her think about what she was going to say and what she wasn’t; then she spoke again, her voice carrying with the soft buzz of the yellow bug fluorescents outside. “Definitely local, or Billings; how else could you have the dog? Either way, you’re a dark horse, that’s for sure.” She closed the door, and I listened to her footsteps in a pair of leather sandals as they became a diminishing echo on the wooden walkway.
In town seven hours, and I’d already been made by an associate degree.
October 20: seven days earlier, noon.
I had rested the DCI file on my desk.
“What the fuck are you looking for?”
“She was diagnosed with chronic insomnia.”
“So?” Vic came in and sat in the chair next to Saizarbitoria, who was eating his lunch on his lap. The Basquo was one of the newer additions to our little high-plains contingency and was still attempting to get over having one of his kidneys filleted only a couple of months ago.
I was easing the young man back, but the going was slow after his injury. I’d assigned him court duty and a number of other less strenuous jobs, but it seemed as if a certain light was missing from the Basquo’s eyes, as if the dark at his pupils was overtaking the spark that had lived there.
Sancho wiped some gourmet mayonnaise from the corner of his mouth with an index finger. His wife, Marie, packed his lunch every day and made what looked like incredible sandwiches. He took a sip of his Mountain Dew. “She was prescribed both Ambien and Lunesta.”
I returned to the faxed sheets in the report as Ruby appeared in the doorway. “Joe Meyer is on line one.”
We all looked at each other-it wasn’t every day you got a call from the state attorney general’s office, let alone from the ranking officer himself. I picked up the receiver and punched the button. “Hey, Joe-”