Buffalo Bill's Defunct (9781564747112) (33 page)

“Will you tell me when your men have left the site? I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

The subdued contractor assured Rob that he would call.

When Rob hung up, he was sweating. The phone rang again. Earl, reporting in, happy as a clam. Not only had he verified a high level of DDT in Meg’s garage, but Thayer had found a key buried a couple of feet down in the dirt behind the garage. It opened the back door lock. Thayer was real sorry he hadn’t found it the first time he searched. He hadn’t thought he’d have to dig that deep.

Rob congratulated his sergeant and asked to speak to Meg, but Earl said she had gone off somewhere in her car.

M
EG did not enjoy being patronized by Earl Minetti. When the DDT test kit arrived at ten-thirty, courtesy of FedEx, he took it and the receipt and told her to get lost. He was politer than that, but Meg grasped his meaning.

Paranoia raised its ugly head. Was Minetti’s attitude a message from Rob? Meg considered phoning in a protest, but Rob had said he was going to ask for a search warrant that morning. Getting a warrant probably took time. She would wait and protest over a glass of Scotch. Let Minetti do the test and get his hands dirty.

Meanwhile, it was time to leave the house, time to escape. She was unlocking the Accord for a run to the grocery store when she spotted Towser with Tom Brandstetter in tow. She waited on the sidewalk, greeted Towser, submitted to having her hand licked, and asked Tom how his mother was.

“Uh, fine.” Tom looked sleepy.

Towser bounced.

“Full of piss and vinegar, isn’t he?”

“Piss, anyway.” Tom looked at her from shy dark eyes.

Meg laughed. “Want to go for a ride?”

“Sure. Can Towser come, too?”

“Well…”

“I’ll go get his car rug to protect the back seat. He likes riding around.”

“He may, but does he restrain himself? I want to drive out to Tyee Lake.” Until she said it, she didn’t know that was what she wanted. Rob had promised her a trip to Tyee Lake. “I’ve never been there, but I understand the road winds. I don’t want Towser to jump me while I’m driving.”

“He’d never do that, Meg.” Tom sounded so earnest Meg half believed him. “And there’s a place by the lake where I could let him have a run.”

“A field with an eight-foot-high chain-link fence?”

Tom laughed. “You’re a funny lady. Naw, it’s just an area they were thinking about turning into a park.” His face darkened. “That was two years ago. Some dumbshit contractor’s probably built condos on it since I was up there last time.”

“No leash law at the lake?”

“It’s unincorporated.”

“Let’s go look it over. Is there a café out there?”

He made a face. “Greasy spoon.”

“I don’t feel up to making a picnic. Besides, it’s cold. Let’s drive up, give Towser a run, and choke down a hamburger.”

“I guess I could do that.” His mouth quirked.

Meg smiled at him. She thought his sense of humor was going to save his life. “Go get his majesty’s rug while I find my rain jacket.” And the cell phone. Meg never drove farther than the grocery store without her cell phone, the better to summon AAA when the car broke down.

“Sun’s shining.”

“If there is one thing I’ve learned about the weather around here, it’s that rain is coming. Ten minutes?”

“Okay.” Tom trotted off with Towser at his heels.

River Road made Meg glad she wasn’t driving a twenty-five-foot moving van. The road—a county highway—followed the Kapuya, a jolly little river that twindled its way downhill and turned at every obstacle in its course. A few miles out of Klalo, on Beaver Creek, they passed a big campground that must have been the site of William Meek’s death. Meg shivered.

The basalt cliffs along the river were brilliant with fall leaves in bronze and red and the intense yellow of maples, but Meg had no time to appreciate their beauty. She clung to the wheel and navigated the eighty-five-degree curves at twenty-five miles an hour. In one brief straight stretch, a pickup full of hunters passed her doing fifty. The hoot of its horn faded around the next bend.

“Want me to drive?” Tom offered.

“Shhh. I’m concentrating.”

In the back seat Towser gave a happy little yip.

“What?”

“He saw a deer,” Tom explained. “He’s got great eyesight. He’s a sight hound.”

“A sight hound?”

“He’s bred to hunt by sighting his prey instead of tracing a scent. So he yipped when he saw the deer.”

Jesus, what if a deer ran across the road? Meg gritted her teeth and clung to the wheel. Basalt gave way to glacial boulders and crumbling hills of gravel thick with trees. The road wound. Just as she thought things were going to get better, Tom said, “That’s the turnoff.”

“Up there?” A narrower road headed up a bluff. Signaling, she turned left under the nose of an affronted log truck. The car shifted down and labored up the switchbacks. They came out at last on what Tom said was prairie.

Meg didn’t know from prairies. Scrubby conifers dotted pastures thick with grass. There were driveways and mailboxes, five or six at a time. She saw houses. Most were double-wide mobile homes, but some more ambitious structures had been built in a style she recognized as Displaced Californian. The road wandered but the curves were gentler. She spotted horses, and in one high-fenced pasture, a herd of llamas.

Latouche County was very large and mostly empty. She wondered how so few deputies could keep track of so many square miles. The Forces of Evil (name your brand) could hide an army between Klalo and Tyee Lake.

The road began to climb again into real forest, following the course of a stream that shouted prime trout fishing. The trees at the very top had a dusting of snow. Every once in awhile a narrow road led off into the dark woods. Fir, Meg thought. Maybe spruce. Something with short needles. The undergrowth flared red.

“I’m glad you’re with me,” she murmured.

Tom said, “Hey.”

“Otherwise I’d never find my way home.”

Tom laughed. Towser gave a happy snort. He was behaving well, but the car was going to smell doggy.

The approach to Tyee Lake was heralded first by a sign with an arrow that said three miles, then by gated entrances to what had to be elaborate compounds. A heavy dump truck full of debris pulled out from the open gate of the third driveway on the right. A parade of pickups and small cars full of men in hard hats followed the truck.

Meg waited.

“That’s the road to Vance Tichnor’s lodge,” Tom said.

“How do you know?”

“Sign says Tichnor’s Lodge.”

“Ah.” Meg followed the last of the pickups in stately procession along the road to the lake.

After a mile or so, the dense forest opened and she saw patches of green lawn in front of modern houses with lots of glass, heavy stone chimneys, and three-car garages. Most had roofs of tile or enameled metal on which leaves and drifts of brown needles had accumulated. She turned a last corner and there it was, Tyee Lake.

Blue, blue water in a deep green setting. Wooden piers stuck out into the lake. Most of the boats were small and battened down for the winter. Patches of reed and narrow stony beaches ringed the shore. Two rowboats drifted in mid-lake, so still their occupants’ fishing rods cast straight-line shadows on the water. She could barely make out houses on the opposite shore, the lake was so wide. Meg gave a sigh of pure bliss.

Rob had spent one miserable summer here as a child, yet he still came back. He had brought his daughter back. Meg could see why.

“So where’s this park area?”

“Keep driving,” Tom said. “Over there, beyond the Tenas Klootchman Café.”

“Our greasy spoon?”

“That’s it. The name’s Chinook jargon. You can park in that lot on the lake side and I’ll let Towser loose for a run.”

“Won’t he eat the ducks?”

“No, or if he does it will be a merciful death. He’s really quick.”

Meg glanced at Tom. He gave her a wide grin. She parked with care, thinking, insofar as she was thinking at all, that Tom Brandstetter would grow up to be a charming man when he got past the nose stud.

As long as Meg didn’t have to control Towser, it was fun to see him greet the wilderness. He bounced off toward the lake with Tom in tow. Meg stood on the gravel and watched. Then she surveyed the “park.”

Someone had mowed the weeds, and a weather-beaten picnic table slumped by the water. The parking lot had been graveled, but the paths were strictly grass and mud. Meg picked her way to the table and sat down. Towser and Tom had disappeared into a clump of trees to her left. To her right, a man rowed a boat out from a dock with slow, elegant strokes. He wore a red-and-black plaid shirt and his boat was a faded red. If she had been a painter she would have reached for her brushes.

She wondered which of the houses along the shore was Rob’s cabin. The Guthrie cabin. Not that elaborate place with the cantilevered deck. Not the two-story gray job with the long narrow windows, nor the misplaced Colonial with its smug backside to the lake. The next house, small with unpainted cedar shakes, was possible. She thought it was old enough. Someone had painted the shutters dark green. It fronted the lake, and she thought she saw the curve of a canoe peeking around the far corner.

At that point, Tom returned with Towser still on the leash, so she asked where the cabin was.

Tom pointed in the other direction. “That one. About halfway along beyond the A-frame with the big lawn.”

“Ah. Time for lunch?”

“Sure. I’ll put Towser in the car and let him off the leash after we’ve eaten, okay?”

Meg handed him the keys.

The greasy spoon did a not-bad hamburger and outstanding real potato french fries with the skin on. The coffee was horrible. Tom drank a root beer. She asked him about his culinary ambitions, and he was still talking when they went back outside.

It was only half past one. The sky had clouded over, turning the water gray. A sharp little wind blew from the southwest. At least, Meg thought so. She had lost her sense of direction on the drive up. Tom released Towser, and the ridgeback took off along the lake in great leaping bounds, woofing for joy. Ducks scattered.

Meg locked the Accord and watched for a while, smiling, then drifted back to her table. Tom followed the dog with the leash in his hand, but he was in no hurry. Neither was Meg. She decided to take a long look at Rob’s cabin.

It was far off for good observation, but it looked snug, small and snug. White clapboard siding, silvery cedar shakes on the roof, a chimney. A screened porch faced the water. A propane tank crouched below one window. There was a small, square dock suitable for swimming or tying up canoes. Something, perhaps a wind vane, whirled atop one of the piers. Rob’s cabin was dwarfed by the A-frame and the vast three-story palace beyond it. Once upon a time the cabin had stood by itself and looked almost like a house.

It was beginning to snow. A few flakes drifted on the rising wind. Meg forgot the cabin. Snow! Enchanted, she watched for a good five minutes as the tiny white flakes whirled and thickened. Her cheeks burned with cold. Then she remembered the road back. Good God. She stood. “Tom!”

“Meg?” said a voice behind her.

She turned.

Carol Tichnor stood on the grass, hands in the pockets of her inappropriate camel’s-hair coat. She had tucked an Hermès scarf into the neck and she was wearing white wool pants. Wind ruffled her hair. Her eyes glittered.

Meg stared. “Hi. Did you drive out to see your brother?”

“You have to help me.” Carol spoke in a low intense voice as if she were afraid of being overheard, which was foolish because the nearest person was Tom at the far end of the park with the bouncing ridgeback. Tom had found a stick. He threw it in Meg’s direction and Towser leapt after it.

“Tom, we have to go,” Meg called. She turned to Carol. “Help you? I don’t understand.”

“I want your car.” Same low, intense tone.

Meg gaped. “Something wrong with your BMW?”

“Give me your keys.”

“You have to be kidding.” She took a step past Carol in the direction of the parking lot and fingered the keys in her jacket. The BMW sat on the far side of her Accord.

“No. I’m not kidding.” Carol pulled a small handgun from the right pocket of her coat. She had turned to follow Meg, her back to the lake.

Meg froze in place. “Are you out of your mind? Put that thing away.”

“I need your car. They have Vance’s road blocked off. Three patrol cars, at least. I drove past them. The cops have to know my car. So I need yours. Give me the keys.”

“In your dreams.” Meg backed away, stumbling slightly on the rough grass surface.

“The keys.” Carol jabbed the barrel of the gun toward Meg’s car.

“Look, Carol, at worst you’re an accessory—”

Carol gave a snort of derisive laughter. “Ms. Detective. I killed that Indian. He was in the garage, harassing Vance, making accusations. I was bringing Vance the crowbar from his van. I just raised it up and hit the Indian on the head. Hard. It was like he was a snake or something. I couldn’t stop hitting him. I killed him, and Rob Neill knows. You were there. You heard him. He said I panicked. I didn’t panic, not then. Then I was cool. Afterwards, we, Vance and I, we both panicked.”