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Authors: Sarah Andrews

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BOOK: Dead Dry
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Julia rolled over clutching her knee in a tight embrace, her face twisted with pain. “Oh, no …” she moaned.
I said, “Can you get up?”
“I—I don’t know.” Gingerly, she extended her leg and set a hand down to brace herself.
I bent to help her. “Should I go for help?”
“No. I can make it, and we shouldn’t stay.” She grabbed my hands and hoisted herself up. She grimaced in pain, but her leg held her weight well enough to hobble along. “So much for hurrying,” she said. “But we’re almost to the Jeep.”
The Jeep was an older, red, practicality-only model with MCWAIN GEOLOGICAL CONSULTING emblazoned on both front doors. I said, “I’ll drive.”
“No, I can drive.”
“Bullshit, you’ll drive.”
“Okay, I’ll give you the keys if we can just get us the hell away from that storm,” she said.
“Okay, okay!” I loaded her into the passenger’s seat and climbed in behind the steering wheel. I steered the Jeep down the hill, balancing haste with caution as I retraced our route down the track to the road we had come in on.
Before turning onto the highway, I tried Michele’s number again. This time I had no signal.
“Who do you keep trying to call?” Julia asked.
“I’m trying to reach the sheriff’s detective so she can meet us for lunch,” I explained. “She can meet us in Sedalia at that roadhouse there. The jalapeño burgers looked mighty good.”
“No!” she said.
I gave her a quizzical look.
She said, “Those burgers are to die for, but tell her Castle Rock.”
“Why? Sedalia’s closer. We need to get some ice on that knee of yours.”
Julia’s agitation was increasing. “Do you remember the Big Thompson flood?”
We had reached a junction among dirt trails. I waited while several mountain bikers passed, all pedaling madly away from the mountains ahead of the storm, then followed them. “How could I forget?” I said. “I was only about ten years old when it happened, but it was all anyone talked about for weeks. Over a hundred people died.”
“One hundred forty-four,” Julia said. “Do you remember what set it off?”
“Well, rain, but—” I bumped over a sharp rock that was sticking up in the middle of the dirt track. “Oops! Sorry about your tires.”
“Watch it!” Julia said. “It was not just your ordinary rain. It was about this time of year. I’ve seen pictures, and it was a cloud that looked just like that,” she said, jabbing a finger toward the heavens.
“You’re right,” I said. “A front stalled out along the Front Range. My dad was down in Denver that day. He said you could see the thunderheads from Pueblo clear up past Fort Collins. And they were tens of thousands of feet tall.”
“Yes. Cumulonimbus usually don’t grow that tall. They develop the classic anvil head as the winds aloft whip them sideways.
And
those winds usually push the storm along.
The day of the Big Thompson flood, they sat still and grew higher and higher, just like these are doing.”
I said, “They were forty thousand feet tall over Big Thompson Canyon, and when they finally ripped loose and rained, they dropped six inches in an hour, something astronomical like that. And they hit a watershed that fed into a tight drainage, and that tight drainage had—”
“—Big Thompson Reservoir in it, which had a dirt dam, and that dam was hit by all that water arriving so quickly, and it failed,” Julia said. “And it came down the canyon like the fury of hell.”
I glanced at Julia, who knew all about fury. “I remember the stories. People didn’t know to climb to safety. They saw that the creek was rising and tried to outrun the flood by getting in their cars and driving down-canyon.”
“Bits of them were found clear out to Loveland,” Julia said. “One guy had gotten his family into the car and ran back up to get one more thing out of their vacation cottage. The wall of water came through and swept away the car, killing his wife and all the kids. And it took away their little signs that hung one underneath another, one for each name, leaving just his at the top.”
I could only imagine what that story meant to her now. “You’re right,” I said. “This is bad.” I opened my cell phone again. It was showing a signal but there were no missed messages from Michele. A heavy feeling settled into the pit of my stomach.
I came to the end of the dirt track that led down from the mountain and turned onto a well-graded, gravel road that led out past several new thirty-five-acre homesteads that, given the lack of water in that aquifer, probably shouldn’t have been there. I had driven a quarter mile down this road when we heard a
thud
and the vehicle lurched. Gripping the steering wheel tightly, I piloted the Jeep successfully to the edge of the road and got out to see what I could see.
Julia lumbered out the opposite side, leaning against the vehicle to spare her hurt knee. “Damn!” I heard her yell and saw the vehicle shake slightly as she kicked what was left of the tire on that quarter.
I came around to take a look. The tire was not only punctured, it was ruined, a tatter of thin rubberized shreds. “Where’s the spare?” I asked. “Is it underneath that gear box in the back?”
Julia stood beside the offending mass of rubber, one hand against her face, the other arm wrapped tightly across her chest. Her shoulders shook spasmodically. She was crying.
I put an arm around her. “What is it, Jules?”
“The spare,” she whimpered.
“What about it?”
“I don’t have one.”
My last shred of sympathy for Julia snapped like an old rubber band. “This isn’t like you, Julia! First you blast your knee and now you’re out doing fieldwork without a spare! What were you thinking?”
“I’m sorry!” she blubbered. “It’s—it’s up at the ranch.”
“Well, now, that’s a good place for it!”
Julia leaned against the Jeep and sobbed. “It’s—Afton used to drive this Jeep, remember? And I drove the sedan, but this is what we always used in the field. It was on the books as part of the business. When we went through that financial bloodbath we called a divorce, I got the business and he got the ranch, and … well, he’d taken the spare out to make room while he carried some part for the wind generator up to the ranch, and he never put it back.”
“Fine way to be ecologically responsible,” I said sourly. “Use your wife’s vehicle to make yourself vehicularly independent, if that’s a word. All right, how far is it to the ranch?”
Julia looked up at the clouds with growing agitation. “You’re not going to make it. Or you’d get there and be
soaked to the skin coming back, and rolling a spare tire at least a mile even if you go straight across the hills there.”
“Let’s call a wrecker.” I pulled out my cell phone. It read NO SERVICE. I bowed my head, wishing the rain would start and cool my overheated brain. “Okay then,” I said, “what do you suggest we do?”
Julia looked past me at the road. “There’s a car coming,” she said. “Surely it will be someone who can help us.”
 
 
MARY ANN NETTLETON LOOKED OUT THE WINDOW AT the coming storm. “I don’t like the look of those clouds,” she told her sister.
Rita Mae said, “Well, you wanted water.”
“I want water in my well and I want this drought to break, but I don’t want to be washed away by a flash flood.”
“Do you think there’s any worry of that?”
Mary Ann lifted her chin with determination to look at things in their best light. “That was the one thing Henry did tell me. He said that Dr. McWain told him that the dry wash beside the house is a place to stay out of if it got to raining hard. And he said those boulders out there might be troublesome, too.” She pointed at one of the garage-sized rocks that nature had left perched on the mesa above the house. “They seemed so picturesque when we were looking at the place.”
“Then let’s drive into town,” said Rita Mae. “I don’t think you can take a whole lot more of this, and neither can I. We can have lunch, or even pack a bag and go up to my house in Denver. Take a nice, long bath. Relax.”
“I’ll go to lunch,” said Mary Ann, “but then I need to
come back here. I’ll admit that this place has stopped being my dream home and become a nightmare, but still, it’s all I’ve got, and I think Henry would have stayed, so I will, too. I’m going to join Helga Olsen’s citizens’ action group, Rita Mae. I’m going to join it and fight so no one else gets hurt like I did. And I’m going to sign up for that course at the community center. I want to know more about this world, and I want to be able to live in it without being such a sitting duck.”
Rita Mae hurried off to the guest room to do her hair, then joined her sister in the master suite to help her decide what to wear. That was always the thin spot with Mary Ann, getting her set to be anywhere. She was brilliant as a homemaker, but as a citizen of the world, she was a flop. But maybe this catastrophe with her water supply was a cloud with a silver lining, just the thing to propel Mary Ann out into greater service. As she thought about it, she realized that Mary Ann would indeed be an asset to that group, bringing her fastidious organizational skills, her unflagging ability to stay on track, and her devotion to form.
Half an hour later, they were loaded into Rita Mae’s Cadillac Coupe de Ville and rolling down the driveway toward the road. With satisfaction, Rita Mae noted that Mary Ann did not even look back, and when Rita Mae looked into the rear-view mirror, she was glad she hadn’t because the clouds had taken on an ominous darkness. Maybe she’d be able to get her away to Denver after all, if only overnight.
At the end of the lane that serviced the development, Rita Mae turned out onto the narrow blacktopped road that led to the county road. Three-quarters of a mile along that road, they came across two women standing beside the road next to an old red Jeep. “I wonder what they’re doing there,” she told her sister.
Mary Ann looked up over the dashboard at the scene that had attracted Rita Mae’s attention. “It’s one of those
sport-utility vehicles. Maybe they are preparing to drive it off-road.”
Rita Mae said, “They aren’t going anywhere with only three tires.”
“Oh. Well, I hope the poor dears have Triple A.”
Just then, one of the women turned toward the approaching Cadillac and waved at them with both hands, the universal “Please stop” signal.
Rita Mae said, “I don’t like to leave them out here to get rained on, but I wonder why they’re dressed like that? Do you think it’s all right to stop?” She glanced sideways to see if her sister was up to meeting these total strangers. What she saw surprised her.
Mary Ann was sitting up straight and smiling for the first time all day. “These women look like rugged individuals, and there’s nothing wrong with that,” said Mary Ann Nettleton. “Let’s help them. It will be an adventure.”
 
 
I TURNED TO SEE A CADILLAC COMING DOWN THE ROAD toward us. Julia waved frantically and it pulled to a stop. There were two older women aboard, each neatly coifed and dressed like they were on their way to a party. The one in the passenger seat was wide-eyed with excitement. She had rinsed her hair a fetching shade of blue. The one behind the wheel was a bit huskier in build. Her hair was rinsed lavender. The one with the blue hair ran the little motor that opened her window and tipped her head toward the fresh air. “Are you two young ladies having a little trouble?” she inquired.
“Yes,” I said. “We’ve got a flat. Could you give us a lift into Castle Rock perchance? Are you going that far?”
“I’m sure we could,” said Lavender Hair. “Hop in.” She concentrated on the task of pushing another button that unlocked the back doors of her car.
I turned to Julia. “C’mon, pardner, we got us a ride.”
Julia locked the doors to the Jeep and followed me. She already had her valuables in the little pack that was cinched around her waist. She followed me to the Cadillac and lowered
herself painfully into the leather seat beside me. When the door shut and the full force of the air-conditioning hit me, it almost gave me a brain freeze.
“Thanks for picking us up,” I said. “I’m Em Hansen, and this is Julia McWain.”
Both women swiveled their heads to look at Julia. The woman who was driving turned quickly back to her concentration on the road ahead of her, but the other continued to goggle at Julia with frank interest. “You aren’t related to the late Dr.
Afton
McWain, are you?”
Julia managed to keep a calm face. “He was my husband until six months ago, when the divorce became final.”
“Oh …” said Blue Hair, making a knowing song of that one syllable. “Well, I’m sorry for your loss anyway. It happens I once met your husband, dear. He was a fine man and very helpful to his neighbors.”
Julia said nothing.
Lavender Hair said, “He was a geologist, wasn’t he? And I notice that you are dressed for the wilds, too.”
Julia said, “Yes, you can see by my outfit that I am a geologist.” She folded her arms tightly across herself and stared out the side window.
I wracked my brain for a jolly topic to which I could change the subject, but Blue Hair spoke again before I could. She said, “Dr. McWain tried to explain to my dear, departed Henry where the water in our well was going.”
Julia let out one of her sighs. “Yes, my former husband was a very smart, very knowledgeable man. You would be best served to believe him.”
Lavender Hair said, “We haven’t introduced ourselves. I’m Rita Mae Jones and this is my sister, Mary Ann Nettleton.”
Mary Ann said, “How rude of us! How do you do. A Helga Olsen came by to talk to us about Dr. McWain’s work. She was telling us about a development that’s been proposed up here, that involves Dr. McWain’s ranch.”
Julia said, “Don’t you worry your heads about that. My
children are the heirs to that ranch, and as long as I am the trustee of that estate, I’m not giving in to any bullyboy tactics.”
That got my attention. “What tactics are those, Julia?”
“There have been veiled threats. Suggestions that Afton might encounter some of the same problems the lady had who wouldn’t give an easement to that project just south of here.”
“Which were?” asked Rita Mae.
“She found her prize horses shot. One of them at point-blank range, through the anus.” As if she’d just been discussing something no more distracting than a new hairstyle, Julia suddenly leaned forward, staring at something beside the road in front of us. “Hey, stop here. I just thought of something.”
I swiveled my eyes to see what she was looking at, and then I recognized it: It was the landmark for the turn that led up toward the McWain ranch. Our friendly neighborhood Rhodesian ridgeback came barreling down the hill toward us, barking his fool head off in his enthusiasm for this pinnacle moment of his day.
Rita Mae said,
“Here?”
“Yes. By that turn there.”
Rita Mae stopped the car but let it idle in the middle of the road. “Is that animal quite sane?” she inquired.
Julia said, “Ol’ Barker? I wouldn’t presume to pet him, but he’s not angling for an early grave. He stays on his side of the fence.”
Rita Mae sat twisted as far as her unathletic, past-seventy torso could go, looking at Julia with one eye. “What’ll it be, Mrs. McWain?”
“I was just thinking where the spare tire to that Jeep is. It’s up at the ranch, right up that track.”
Rita Mae stared up the twin ruts. “I’m sure I can’t drive this car up there, but how far is it? We can wait a short while if that would help.”
Mary Ann added, “Even if you and Dr. McWain have
had your parting of the ways, he helped my Henry, and I am glad to help you.”
Rita Mae said, “That’s the spirit, Mary Ann.”
Julia said, “I have an even better solution. If you go just a few hundred yards farther along, there’s the turn to the Johnson Ranch. It’s graded. That driveway parallels mine—or should I say, Afton’s—and that would put me within tire-rolling distance.”
I said, “You’re not rolling that tire with your knee all bunged up. I’ll go get it.”
Julia said quickly, “No, I can get Bart to drive me across over the connecting road.” She pushed the button to lower her window and shouted, “Leave it, Barker!”
The dog stopped barking immediately and began wagging its tail. His big, pink tongue hung out around a happy-dog smile.
Rita Mae gave the steering wheel a pat. “I like a woman who can handle herself in a predicament,” she said. She put the car back in D for DRIVE and drove.
As we neared the gate that led up to Bart Johnson’s ranch house, a bank of red soil caught my eye. “What’s that red clay horizon there?” I asked Julia.
“Paleosol,” she said. “It outcrops all across this area. Why?”
I was grinning like a fool for no good reason. If that was the red clay I’d picked off of Afton’s boots, it meant nothing whatsoever, because it only meant that he’d brought it with him from home. But it also meant that I could grab my sample, see if it truly matched the sheriff’s evidence, and be done, truly done with this case. The more I heard about people shooting horses, the better that sounded to me.
By the time Bart Johnson’s ranch house came into view, I had formulated a plan. We would retrieve Julia’s spare tire and put it on the Jeep. Then, if the rain held off and Julia’s knee recovered enough that she could drive home on her own, I could drive my rental car back out along this
road and collect the samples, meet Michele for lunch, and be on my way to the airport and home by mid-afternoon.
Bart Johnson himself came out of the ranch house to greet us. He strolled around to the right front door, which was closest to his approach, nearest Mary Ann, who lowered her window to greet him. “Ladies,” he said, tagging the bill of his King Ropes ball cap with an arthritic finger. He wasn’t dressed for town today, so the Abercrombie & Fitch rig had been closeted in favor of a canvas shirt and a good old pair of Wrangler jeans.
Julia lowered her window, too. “Hi, Bart,” she said.
Bart did a stiff demi-plié so that he could see her. “Julia. This is a surprise.” His face was as stiff as his legs and hands. Bending was sufficiently difficult for him that he quickly straightened up again before he could notice me.
Julia said, “I have a favor to ask, Bart. I had a flat out on the road just now and … well, it’s one of those messy little things that didn’t get settled in the divorce: the spare tire to our … my Jeep is in the barn up at the ranch, or was last time I was there. I was wondering if you could run me over there to get it. This Cadillac is hardly the vehicle for the job, as I can see that Afton left the road ungraded until the last.”
Bart put his gnarled hands on his hips. “Well, I’d like to help you, but, uh …”
I heard a crunching of the gravel beyond Bart Johnson. Someone else was walking toward the car from the house; in fact, two people. Johnson’s son Zachary spoke first. He said, “Hullo, Julia.”
Right behind him was the weasel-faced Todd Upton. “Why, it’s Mrs. Nettleton,” he said affably enough, but then added, “and Julia,” his voice curling around a hard edge. “Sorry, Julia. You can’t go there.”
“And why not?” asked Julia, hotly.
Upton folded his arms across his chest. “Because the estate’s been sealed until we can look after certain legal business.”
Julia was out of that car like lightning and shoved her
face right into the sneering face of the lawyer. “You sniveling, flesh-eating monster, how dare you speak to me like that? That trollop is not the legal heir to that ranch and you know it! My children are the heirs! It’s explicitly spelled out in the divorce decree! You have no right to seal the estate!”
Upton was impassive. He spoke to her as calmly as if she were standing ten feet away from him and reciting nursery rhymes. “I’m so sorry to hear that your late
ex
-husband didn’t take the time to inform you of his change of beneficiary.”
Julia hauled off and slugged him. It was a roundhouse right, and a good one, and Julia is a woman of sufficient size that it had to hurt.
But Upton barely recoiled. He said, “Bart, you’re a witness to that. And I’m sorry you
ladies
in the car had also to observe the behavior of a woman who can’t control her impulses. Now, Julia, if you don’t find your own way down the road and out of Douglas County right this minute, I’m going to press charges for assault.”
Julia began to shake from head to foot, and I saw her begin to wind up for another go at Upton. I jumped out of the car and caught her around the waist with both arms before she could claw his eyes out and hauled her backward toward the car. It was a job stuffing her back inside, and my eardrums were ringing for ten minutes afterward, so loud were her epithets. But the thing I pondered most, as Rita Mae turned the car and sent it hurtling down the path again like she was born to motocross, was the look on Todd Upton’s face when he saw me coming out of the car: His eyes widened not only with surprise but also fear.
BOOK: Dead Dry
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