Any Other Name: A Longmire Mystery (17 page)

There were no lights on, but I could see wet prints on the dark, hardwood floors where the two people had crossed to the left, past the registration desk to the stairs that led to the second floor. I stared longingly at the phone deck with its multiple lines and buttons and wondered if it was working, figuring that was my next move; I just had to work up the energy to get there.

There was a fireplace to my right and a doorway to a hall that turned left and disappeared into the bowels of the massive lodge. Every surface gleamed, even in the dark, and the sheets over the furniture looked like ghosts taking a leisurely rest before a haunting.

I staggered a little entering the place, stumbled into a large wingback chair, and just stood there looking at my blood dripping onto the floor and remembering what Lucian had said about moving to New Mexico and how it was a bad idea because you could bleed to death. I felt cold, and it seemed like the entire right side of my body was numb—that, and there was a ringing in my ears that I couldn’t seem to shake.

A voice called out to me from a distance, almost as if the person speaking might’ve been outside. “Oh my goodness; you scared me to death!”

Wheeling from the back of the chair, I crashed into the partially closed door, causing it to slam, and I raised my sidearm toward a brunette woman with deep-set eyes who was standing on the stair landing—she was holding a fully lit candelabra in one hand and a raccoon in the other.

I held the .45 on her and the raccoon until she raised her
eyebrows in an imperial fashion and spoke in an authoritarian voice. “Do you need help, young man?” I slumped there staring at her, and I assume she thought I was deaf because she sat the candelabra on the newel post and began signing to me with her free hand.

Entranced by those movements, I simply stood there looking at her but finally lowered my sidearm. “I’m sorry, I’m . . .” I tried to stand up straight, but my head ached and my neck hurt, so I just stayed there, leaning against the chair. “I’m chasing someone.”

She dropped her hand to pet the raccoon and glanced past me to look through the Venetian shades that were partially open. “In this weather, and with a gun?”

“Evidently, I am.”

“Then I can see why they are attempting to evade you.”

I swallowed, fighting the swells of confusion that kept lapping against my consciousness. “I’m a sheriff.”

She proceeded the rest of the way down the steps onto the Persian carpet. She was tall and wearing a cloche hat, with lips compressed in consternation. “You don’t look very well—are you ill?”

“No, I—”

“Perhaps you should come in and have a seat by the fire?”

“There isn’t any . . . ” I looked around and noticed something orange flickering off the heavy beveled glass of the French doors to my right, and I turned to see a robust stack of logs burning merrily away in the hearth.

“. . . Fire.”

She walked past me. “It gets cold in the winters after all the help has gone, so I’ve become quite proficient at making and tending the hearth.” She jostled the raccoon that had nuzzled her
armpit and grasped her wrist with its tiny paws. “Rebecca here gets cold, but I can’t imagine why, with the wonderful collegiate coat she’s got.”

I smiled, trying to be gregarious. “Spoiled.”

She laughed a wonderful laugh, like music from a bygone era. “Not spoiled—pampered.”

I wiped the cold sweat from my forehead with the back of my working hand. “You . . . you’re in charge of the place?”

“For quite some time now.” She gestured to me. “Come, sit.”

I shook my head and immediately felt even worse. “I really should be finding these people.” I took a deep breath. “Would you mind if I use your phone?”

“You’re welcome to it, if you can figure it out. I’ve never had any luck with the contraption.”

I nodded, smiled at her again, and turned toward the registration desk. “I’m not too good with . . .” The phone that had been there when I’d entered wasn’t there any longer; instead there was a patch panel attached to the wall and an old Roman-pillar-style phone with an earpiece hanging from it.

“. . . Phones.”

She extended a fingernail and aimed it toward the wall. “It has to do with the apparatus of plugs, but I didn’t ever have to do that type of thing myself, so I haven’t learned.” She grinned a vivacious smile. “Spoiled, I suppose you would say.”

“I need to find these people.”

“So you said.” She picked up the candelabra. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like something to eat first, especially since there’s someone in the dining room who is waiting to see you.”

“No, I . . . What?” Summoning my energies, I looked around and noticed that the sheets were no longer covering the furniture.

She breezed by me to the left, where wet boot prints led around the stairwell through a doorway. She turned, the light from the candles illuminating only one side of her lean and handsome face. “Shall we follow?”

I straightened, ignoring my arm, and raised the .45 up past my face. “Maybe you should let me go first?”

“As you wish.” I stumbled forward, catching myself on the doorjamb as she watched me, and I was entranced by the reflection of her eyes. “Young man?”

“Yep?”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No, ma’am, but I sure wish I had.”

She put the candelabra on the newel post again and crossed back to the desk, where she reached up and opened a recessed cabinet above her head.

“What are you doing?”

“Rebecca is very handy.” She looked at the critter, who had climbed into the cabinet near the ceiling. “The bottle, Rebecca, if you will.” A moment later the masked bandit reappeared with a small pint. “Thank you, dear.” She extended a hand and the raccoon climbed out and jumped into the safety of her arms.

She turned and walked back over, holding the bottle out to me.

“What’s this?”

“Medicine.” She gestured for me to take it. “At least that’s what the night watchman calls it.”

I stuffed my Colt under my arm and took it, the label aged yellow with a discolored ribbon and stamped seal wrapped near the cork. I read the label aloud. “
OLD TAYLOR, OVER 16 SUMMERS OLD
.” I tried to hand it back to her. “I don’t think I should have this.”

She fluttered a hand at me. “Nonsense, just a taste. I’ve been doing it for years.”

Sighing, I opened the bottle and took a swig—it was like a little spark at the back of my throat, flavorful and delicate with no aftertaste of the alcohol. “It’s good.” I took another.

She reached up and spirited it away; corking it as she crossed, she handed it back to the raccoon. “All the way in the back, Rebecca. We mustn’t let the night watchman know what we’ve been up to.”

I had to admit that the whiskey had helped. I nodded my thanks and started through the doorway, but the raccoon reached up and touched the saturated sleeve of my coat, first looking at it and then up at me with her little bandit face, the only sound the drip of something on the gleaming floor.

—

The Pheasant Room, at least that’s what the plaque above the door proudly proclaimed, was darkly paneled and appropriately full of pheasants, with a taxidermied bird forever captured in midflight adorning each panel above the mission-style windows that seemed to allow light in from the outside.

Maybe it was clearing up.

I stepped onto the wide-planked pine floor and glanced around the room at the dozen or so perfectly set tables—pristine, white tablecloths, sparkling silver, china adorned with those same pheasants, shining goblets, and fresh flowers in cut crystal vases finishing the arrangements.

Seemed a little over the top for a lodge that was closed up for the winter, but it surely was not my place to complain.

There was music playing from an old baby grand piano
tucked in the corner—I was a fan of boogie-woogie and knew it was Sophie Tucker, the last of the red-hot mamas—but there was
no one seated on the bench. The keys depressed and the song was unmistakable; I just wondered who was really playing and singing. I wandered over to the instrument and touched the keys with the barrel of my Colt, but the second the metal touched the ivory, the music stopped.

I stood there for a few seconds but then felt as though someone was seated at one of the dining room tables, so I turned very slowly and raised my .45, but lowered it to my side as I became aware that there was nothing there.

Taking a deep breath, I noticed that the tracks I had been following led past the sideboard behind me.

I stepped to my left but stumbled into one of the chairs and was suddenly overcome with a sense of fatigue and cold again. Standing there for a few minutes more, I decided I’d better get a move on and started to the left out of the dining room where I found myself once again in the front lobby which was now empty. I started up the steps—the creaking of the treads was obnoxiously loud, even with the carpet covering them, but I finally reached a small landing one flight up that overlooked the dining room where I’d just been.

There were two stairwells that led to the second floor, but with my head really swimming now, I took the nearest one. The hallway was tastefully appointed with period wallpaper and antique fixtures that glowed and flickered. Gaslights. Odd.

I slowly checked each door, starting with the nearest one, but they were all locked except the one on the far end. There were two letters on that door that read KC, and I carefully pushed it open to reveal a very nice room with a highboy, a four-poster bed, and a small writing desk. I glanced down at the desk and could
see a brass plaque that read
CALVIN COOLIDGE’S WRITING DESK, 1927, WHEN THE GAME LODGE WAS USED AS THE SUMMER WHITE HOUSE.

I wiped the sweat from my forehead and backed out of the room, checking the knobs on all the doors in the hallway again, but none of them moved. I decided, as tired as I was, to go downstairs and wait until I heard something.

They went up, they would eventually have to come down.

Using the banister the entire way, I stopped at the mezzanine to look into the dining room and this time I could see that there was a hulking figure seated at one of the tables; he turned his huge double head and looked up at me.

I was glad to see him.

—

I seated myself opposite him—well, more like I had my legs collapse beneath me, making me park my butt on the chair and rest the Colt in my lap, which I covered with a napkin to honor the formality evident in the dining room. Leaning back in the chair, I rested my numb arm on my lap—the thing felt like it weighed a ton—and could hear the dripping noise that sounded like Chinese water torture but more delicate.

“Virgil White Buffalo.”

He continued to smile, cocking his and the great bear’s head sideways to look at me, the familiar smell of campfire, sage, and cedar wafting off him as it usually did. “How are you, lawman?”

“Tired.”

His head and the one on the headdress straightened, and he leaned in, his face above mine with an expression of concern. “And hurt again, I see.”

I looked at him. “Seems like I always am when I see you.”

He placed an elbow on the table and tucked a fist under his
chin, the all-black eyes searing into me with a ferociously flashing intelligence. “Maybe that is when you need me.”

I searched the opening leading toward the reception area but couldn’t see the woman with the raccoon. “You bring friends with you from the Camp of the Dead?”

He grinned. “She is married to one of the great white fathers and talks a great deal, but her power is strong here.” He folded his arms on the table, and I was entranced by the intricate beadwork on his shirtsleeves. “There are many who wish to see you, but I bring only those who are necessary.”

“People say you don’t exist.”

He brushed my words away with a wave of one of his huge, scarred hands, the silver ring with the circling turquoise and coral wolves pacing around the wedding finger. “We are finite beings; how can we understand the infinite? It is enough for me that I have these opportunities to visit with you and perhaps assist you in the trials of this life.”

I tried to bring my hand up to check to see if that same ring that I’d taken from his hand in the Bighorns was still on the chain around my neck, but it wouldn’t work. “How did you get your ring back?”

He turned it on his finger in an absentminded manner, once again brushing away my words with a batting of his hand. “What are you going to do?”

“About what?”

“The ones you are hunting.”

I took a deep breath and tried to keep my head level. “Wait. Sometimes it’s the best thing you can do.”

“Who taught you that?”

I laughed. “My father; he was a very good hunter.”

His chin came forward in an attempt to catch my wandering attention. “He taught you lots of things?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Remember those things.” His eyes narrowed, and the blackness in them was boundless. “Above all else, you must remember the things your father taught you in the next few moments.” He reached across and straightened me on my chair. “But right now, tell me, in this life, lawman—at what places have you stood and seen the good?”

I smiled a sickly grin. “Too many to count.” I slouched toward the table again. “But you were right about the bad things, too . . .”

He studied me. “I am here to tell you they are not over.”

I suddenly felt the scouring wing tips all along the insides of my lungs. “What do you mean?”

“Prepare yourself.” He sighed deeply. “You will stand and see the bad. The dead will rise and the blind will see.”

There was a noise from the landing.

I looked up slowly and saw that Roberta Payne and the man, Deke, who was holding a hunting rifle loosely aimed at me and a handgun on her, were standing at the top of the stairs.

I coughed. “Roberta? Nice to meet you, ma’am. And Deke—Deke, that’s your name, right? Howdy.”

“You know, I’ve made a study of you.”

I did my best to adjust my eyes. “Is that so?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty careful about who I go up against—I like having an edge.” He gestured toward my arm. “For example, I know that you’re right-handed and that hand looks pretty useless.”