The Ties That Bind (14 page)

Chris chuckled. "It works both ways. You realize that if I think you're straying into research land too much and not running the right plays with Sage, I'm going to tell you."

"You're such a jock," I muttered.

"Oh, like you didn't play high school sports." She jabbed me in the ribs and I poked her in the stomach again. We both started laughing.

"You okay?" she asked after a bit.

"Yeah." We both knew I wasn't, but that for the moment, it would have to do.

"All right." She reached for the door.

"Thanks." I said.

"
De nada
. I love you,
chica
. You coming in?"

"In a minute. And I love you right back, Detective Goddess."

Chris squeezed my shoulder before she went inside. She could read my moods better than I could, sometimes, and she knew when I needed a little bit of alone time. Like now. The door clicked as she pulled it closed. I stood at the top of the steps and stared out into the dark, glancing toward the bush where I thought I'd seen movement a few nights before. A car drove past, blocking my view momentarily.

I heard Dayna and Kara talking and Chris responded to a joke that made Kara laugh and I thought about family. Chris and I were lucky in that our families of origin were supportive, for the most part, of each of us and the paths our lives had taken. The dynamics of Sage's family were very different than mine, because of Bill's alcoholism. I knew a little something about addiction and how it poisoned friends and family because Melissa's younger sister Megan had battled it from a young age. Their father, too, was an alcoholic though he'd replaced booze with Jesus. Melissa still attended Al-Anon meetings and she went to therapy regularly, sometimes with Megan when the latter was in town from school in Oregon, where she'd moved after the neo-Nazi fiasco. Both of them worked hard on undoing years of damage and I admired them for it. I shoved my hands into the pockets of my shorts and looked up at the sky, seeing a few stars even with Albuquerque's light pollution.

Sage had her own way of dealing with things. She'd tried therapy off and on but hadn't connected with any of the counselors on a level she needed. She had mentioned a few months ago that she was thinking about trying again because she felt that some dark things weren't moving through. I hoped that day came sooner rather than later.

For his part, River was very protective of his sister, and much more engaged with her than their mom, who had become more a friend than a relative through the years. Sage told me stories sometimes about their lives in northern Wyoming, and how she hated when her dad came home from the rigs, tired and angry and usually half-drunk. Better he was completely drunk, she'd say, and passed out in his truck out front after a bender, because then he'd leave the family alone.

Sage stood up to his bullying when he tried pushing River and Janet around, which she believed kept her safe in the bedroom she shared with her brother. And when River hit his puberty growth spurt, he assumed the protector role, using his increasing physical size and strength as a buffer between Bill's drunken rages and the women in his household. River never said anything to Janet about his resentment, but Sage knew he sometimes blamed their mother for allowing this big, messed-up man into their house, into their lives, and into the widening cracks in the family.

But she also knew that Janet was socking money away, hiding it somewhere, skimming it off her father's paycheck, stealing it from his pockets when he sprawled, passed out, on the beaten-down couch in their hardscrabble cabin. And she knew that Janet was arranging a place for the three of them to live in town, that she was looking for a job. She'd finally told a few people what was going on, including a local rancher lawyer, who took pity on this ragtag band of pioneers and ended up helping them for free.

Sage told River these things when she turned fifteen, she said to me one night a couple months after we first met. And she said it was another year before Janet had everything in place and when Bill came home one spring day from a three-month stint working a rig outside Billings, Janet met him at the door with his hunting rifle. She told him she was done and she didn't care what he did with his sorry-ass cabin, but she was taking what she wanted, taking the kids, and filing for divorce. If he knew what was good for him, he'd sign all the papers and he wouldn't fight for custody. Sage and River watched these proceedings from behind her. It had come to that, and Sage remembered feeling numb but lighter, somehow. But she also said that sometimes, the past has a funny way of catching up with you.

"Honey?"

I turned at the sound of her voice and smiled. "What's up?"

She joined me, shutting the door behind her. I slid my arms around her waist and felt her snuggle against me. "River's coming down."

"When?"

"He's leaving tomorrow morning. He'll get here late tomorrow night." She put her head on my shoulder.

I brushed my lips against her forehead. "I'll tell Kara and see what she wants to do. Maybe get a hotel room or something. Or maybe she'll want to go back to Tucson for a while."

"No."

I pulled away so I could look at Sage. "Where's River going to sleep?"

"One of the couches. But he'll bring an inflatable mattress or that damn cot so he can sleep out in the mud room. He's Mr. 'I hate civilization.' Remember?" Her voice held a trace of laughter. "Besides, I already made it very clear to Kara that she's welcome to stay as long as she wants, and not to feel uncomfortable in the midst of this because she's family and she's always welcome to share the love
and
the pain."

"What'd she say to that?"

"She said she was going to ask me and you anyway if it was okay for her to stay and let her be helpful."

I snapped my mouth shut, trying to keep my jaw from falling off my face.

"Yes, your sister said that. And your response will be?"

"'Thank you'," I recited like I was in grade school. "'Thank you, Kara, for helping out. It's great that you're here'."

"Very good. Tell her that as soon as you have a chance. She needs to hear it from you because, after all, I'm just the cool girlfriend."

"You're the
very
cool girlfriend," I said.

"So are you." She kissed me before taking my hand and pulling me toward the front door. "Nothing more we can do tonight. So let's finish this pizza party and have some dessert."

Chapter Eight

"I'LL CALL YOU if I'm going to stay in Santa Fe."

I looked up from my monitor, not sure what Kara was talking about. She was standing in the study's doorway, looking at me.

"Did you hear anything I said?" she asked, but without the irritation she usually expressed with me.

I sighed. "I'm sorry."

She walked over to me and gave me a quick hug. "It's okay. You've got a lot on your mind."

"Santa Fe," I started.
Her date with Shoshana.
"Oh. Yeah. But that's this evening, isn't it?"

"I'm going to do some sight-seeing. Part of finding myself and all that."

I managed a smile. "Sounds good. And you'll call if you're staying there tonight. Gotcha."

She stood looking at me, worried, like Chris had regarded me the night before. "Kase, I won't go if you want me to stick around the house with you today."

I brushed her off. "Nah, it's fine. Go have fun."

Kara didn't move. "I know how you get."

"What does that mean?" I winced the moment I said it. "Shit. That sounded pissy. Sorry."

"It means that you tend to bottle things up and you don't ask for help. You go into your head--and that can be a hell of a bad neighborhood--and you put up your analytical walls."

I clenched my teeth then forced myself to relax.
New leaf
. "You're right. And Chris lectured me, too. I'm working on it." I smiled. "Right now, it's okay. But I'll tell you if it's not."

"Promise?" She crossed her arms.

"Scout's honor." I gave her the Boy Scout salute and tried to look earnest.

She giggled. "Just call if you need to. Or if you want to."

"Will do. Hope you have a good time."

She turned to leave.

"Hey--"

She stopped in the doorway, waiting.

"Thanks for sticking around. And you look nice." She did. She wore loose tan linen trousers, an olive v-neck tank, and leather huarache sandals.

She held my gaze for a long moment before replying. "You're welcome. See you later."

I listened until I heard the security door close and then I turned my attention back to the monitor. I typed "Ridge Star Drilling" into Google and waited to see what popped up. Not much.
Let's see...
date of incorporation in 1999.
Hmm
. I clicked on a few other sites and found an innocuous-looking legal document outlining a lawsuit against Ridge Star for the death of a worker in 2000. I bookmarked it and continued my search and found two other references to deaths at Ridge Star, men killed while on the job. One died when a load of pipe shifted off a hauling truck and crushed him and the other fell headfirst forty feet off a grated walkway onto a concrete platform. One of the men was Navajo. I wrote that down. I found some complaints about safety violations and wrote each incident down.

An hour later, I sat back, tugging on my chin. I'd gotten a crash course in the New Mexico oil and gas industry. The state was the third-leading producer of natural gas in the country. So production was up in the last two years, a combination of an increase in wells drilled and the discovery of more potential underground rock reservoirs of naturally occurring hydrocarbon-based gas. And the San Juan Basin--the northwestern corner of New Mexico--accounted for some sixty-seven percent of natural gas production in the state, Farmington a hub city for all this activity.

None of this was new to the state's history. Since the 1920s people had been sucking oil and gas out of the ground here. Oil peaked in the 1960s but since the late 1980s-early 1990s, gas production increased, especially in the San Juan Basin. And like any kind of boom, an influx of industry requires an equal influx of workers, which can often lead to tensions with older, more traditional industries and long-time residents.

Okay...so what?
I tried a couple more searches and uncovered an article that documented some of the safety violations and subsequent injuries and deaths on oil and gas rigs in western states. New Mexico figured prominently in these and the list included three separate incidents within four months on Ridge Star equipment over the past year. That seemed high, even for this industry. So Bill basically stumbled upon the obvious. I stood, frustrated, and went into the kitchen for the last bit of coffee, by now the consistency of Rio Grande mud. I poured it into my cup anyway and added more halfand-half.

Bill had been a long-time, old-school roughneck. He knew drilling and he knew all its attendant effects. He was part of the whole male-centered transient culture that defined the job. He'd no doubt seen a few grisly injuries and a death or two. This was a hardened man who'd lived a hard life, some of which he'd brought on himself. So why the hell would he freak at what was going on at Ridge Star, if something were, in fact, going on? Why wouldn't he just move on to another rig?

I took a sip from my cup, staring at the sink. Something about this wasn't adding up. Why would Bill give a shit about safety violations, working in an unsafe industry most of his adult life? What did he
really
know? I needed to see the letter he'd sent to River. I headed back to the office just as the home phone rang. We kept it in the kitchen, so I had to backtrack. I checked the caller ID on the handset but I didn't recognize the number, though it had the New Mexico area code. I answered.

"Hello?"

"Hi," said a male voice with a slight drawl I guessed was Texan. "This is Ward Lindstrom, calling from Farmington. I'm trying to reach Sage Crandall."

I set my coffee on the counter. "She's not available at the moment, but I'm her partner. Can I help you in some way?"

Long pause. Probably absorbing what "partner" meant. I took the phone into the office and picked up a pen on my desk. I pulled my legal pad closer.

"I'm the attorney handling her father's will." he said it tentatively, though I didn't hear any underlying revulsion at the lesbian connection.

Will? What the--?
"I see. Can I have a number where you can be reached? I'll have her give you a call as soon as she can."

"That's mighty helpful." He sounded relieved and provided the number. I wrote as he spoke and repeated it back to him.

"That's my cell. I'm available any time."

"Great. I'll let her know."

"Thanks. Bye, now." And he hung up. I took the phone back into the kitchen and set it on its base. A will. This should be interesting. I retrieved my cell phone from the dining room table and called Sage.

I RETURNED FROM UNM around 4.30, having completed my campus errands like checking in with the department secretary, slogging through my academic snail mail, and then working out. As I was trying to unlock the security door, my cell phone rang. dropped my gym bag on the floor of the porch and pulled my phone off the belt. Sage.

"Hey, sexy."

She giggled. "Hi. What are you doing?"

"Trying to open the front door but I'll wait on that. Did you get my message?"

"I called him."

I set my school bag beside my gym bag and leaned against the wall next to the front door. "So what's the deal?"

She took a deep breath and exhaled. "Well, this guy is Dad's lawyer. At least where the will's concerned. River and I are named in it."

Damn. You may already have won a trip to Farmington.
"Did he tell you specifics?"

"Some. I asked whether Dad had left any instructions about what to do with his body."

"And?"

"He did. I almost lost my shit, I was so surprised," she said wryly. "He wants to be cremated and he wants Tonya to take his ashes to some place he picked out with her."