Wide Open (6 page)

“Good Lord,” Cass said when she set it on the kitchen table. She had to pick up her coffee mug to make room. “Who on earth sent that?”

Hallie dug through the colored cellophane wrapping and the oranges, apples, nuts, and chocolate until she found a small envelope, which she opened. The card had a company logo on it. “Uku-Weber,” she said. “Who the hell
is
that?”

Cass said, “Uku-Weber. That’s why Dell came back. Didn’t she tell you?”

Sammy Sue and Pat looked at each other. Tel cleared his throat. “It’s a pretty solid deal,” he said. He squeezed Pat’s shoulder as she settled back into the chair next to his. “New kind of windmills. Super efficient at a third the size. Head of the company’s a young fellow, made his start-up money out in Colorado. They’ve got a setup out north for demonstrations, and the stuff they’ve got in prototype is pretty damned amazing. Pat and I, we’re thinking about investing.”

While Tel talked, Hallie flipped open the card that had come with the basket. Inside was a handwritten note.

Most of it was standard stuff: “heartfelt condolences … deepest sympathies … couldn’t be sorrier for your loss.” At the end, set off from the rest and written with a slightly different pen,

Dell was one of my dearest friends and a valued, valued employee. Without her, neither Uku-Weber nor I would be who we are. Words cannot express my sorrow.

I regret that I cannot attend her funeral. As this is also true for some of my staff, I have scheduled a private memorial the day following. She was loved by all, and I know that they each want a brief moment to remember her and what she has meant to them. Please attend if you are able.

Sincerely,

Martin Weber

“Wait,” Hallie said. “Martin Weber is Uku-Weber?”

“Yup,” Cass said. “He came back with Dell about a year ago. Said he was starting a company and he wanted to do it here. Said there would be jobs. Which,” she added, “they’re mostly construction jobs so far, but the building isn’t finished yet.”

“But—,” Hallie began, then stopped. Wasn’t he that guy? The one from that four-years-gone summer? The guy who’d liked her gun, which had been a joke between them, the three or four times they’d gone out before Hallie left for the army. Because he’d meant
I like you—
at least, that’s what Hallie’d figured at the time. Martin Weber. Who’d been from Rapid City, and Dell knew him only because he’d gone out with Hallie.

Martin Weber. He’d been a smart guy; she remembered that about him. Kind of charming, though not exactly her type. She wondered if he’d been Dell’s type, if that’s why she’d gone to work with him. That was another thing she’d probably never know.

7

By the time everyone finally left, it was almost four o’clock.

Hallie sat down at the kitchen table, pulled out the phone book, and called Uku-Weber. The woman who answered the phone told her to talk to Martin, though she had no idea when he’d be in or how to get in touch with him.

“What do you do there?” Hallie asked.

“What do
I
do?” the woman, who’d identified herself as Miss Roche, asked.

“As a company,” Hallie said. “What is it that you do? You must do something.”

“Uku-Weber is a research and development company.” Miss Roche sounded like she was reading it off a brochure. “When we are fully operational, we will be at the cutting edge of research into weather prediction and control.”

“What does that mean?”

“What does it mean?”

“What was Dell’s job?” Hallie asked. “And do
not
repeat my question back to me.”

“What—?” There was a moment of silence. “Really,” Miss Roche finally said, “you need to speak to Mr. Weber.”

She called the sheriff’s office. They told her what the Boy Deputy had told her: that it was an ongoing investigation.

“I thought it was suicide,” she said to the woman who’d answered the phone. She could hear clacking in the background—was she knitting?

“Yes, well, I can’t really say.” The woman, who Hallie assumed was the dispatcher, had a clipped quick voice that ended on an up-tone, so that everything she said sounded like an order in the form of a question. “That would be for the sheriff to say,” she added.

“Can I speak to the sheriff?” Hallie asked.

“He’s not in right now.”

“Can you leave a message?” Hallie’s own words became more and more precise the longer they spoke.

“Yes,” the woman said, “but I don’t know when he’ll be back. He’s up to Brookings for the day.”

“Thank you.” Hallie slammed the phone back into its cradle.
For nothing,
she added under her breath.

She called Lorie.

“I can’t really talk right now,” Lorie said.

“Was she at work on Monday?” Hallie asked.

“Dell?”

“Yes, Dell. Who the hell else would I be asking about?”

“Hallie…” Lorie’s voice was low. “Do you really think this is … productive? Shouldn’t you be helping your dad or … or, I don’t know, coming to terms?”

“What?”

“What?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Just…” Hallie heard voices, someone murmuring right up near the phone, maddeningly, because she couldn’t make out what they were saying. “Take care,” Lorie said, and disconnected.

Hallie rubbed her forehead. She wished fewer people would tell her to take care and just goddamned answer her questions.

Her father came in, letting the kitchen door slam behind him like a thunder clap.

“Everybody gone?” he said.

Hallie didn’t remember whether she was supposed to answer questions like that or let them hang in the air between them, because it was pretty obvious that everyone was gone.

“Yeah, Dad, they’re gone,” she said.

Her father blew out a breath and looked around anyway, like there might still be someone lurking in a corner. Then he and Hallie stared at each other for a long minute, like,
What the hell do we do now?

“You want something to eat?” her father said.

“I’ve been eating all day,” Hallie said.

“Hmmph.” Her father crossed to the sink, washed his hands, then rummaged in the refrigerator for a beer. He crossed back to the door, stopped as if he knew he should do something, but wasn’t sure what. “I’m going out to the tractor shed,” he finally said. “Work on the Allis. You—” Hallie figured he didn’t know how to finish that sentence.
You okay? You want to come? You want—
Because what they both wanted—Dell back—they were never going to have.

“I’m going out,” she said. Decided just like that and realized that, yeah, she had to get out of here.

She wasn’t going to—couldn’t—spend the night sitting around, staring at doors or walls or the ceiling, waiting for morning and Dell’s funeral. Her old pickup truck was outside all gassed up and ready to go. Her father had put in a new battery, changed the oil, and bought new tires, too, which had made her look at him, because he hadn’t known when she’d be home again.

“What?” he’d said. “You’d do it for me.”

She’d grinned at him, though it was bittersweet. “Join the army and let’s find out.”

Right now she was more than grateful, because she needed to be out, to talk to people about Dell and what she’d been doing since she got back. And a Friday night in Taylor County? She knew exactly where to go for that.

She went upstairs after her father left and took a quick shower, toweled her hair dry, and combed it out with her fingers.

From the closet, she dug out a pair of black jeans that had been new four years ago. They hung loose on her hips, and she snugged them up a bit with a narrow leather belt. She put on a dark red shirt with silver buttons—blood red, she thought, which almost made her take it off, but then she figured what the hell and tucked it into her jeans. She took a pair of Wolverine work boots she’d never actually worn for work out of the back of the closet and pulled them on.

She picked up a small nylon zippered bag that she’d put on her dresser when she unpacked her duffel. She opened it, and out of the tangled mix of cheap earrings, an old watch with a broken strap, and a silver necklace her mother had given her when she was ten, she extracted a simple bracelet made of lapis lazuli and braided leather. Eddie Serrano had given it to her two weeks before he died to pay off a bet.

“Don’t think this means we’re going steady or anything,” he’d said. “’Cuz I got a gal back home.”

It had made Hallie laugh because Eddie talked about Estelle constantly. He always referred to her as “my gal back home,” like he was in World War II, though she was in a master’s program at NYU, majoring in nineteenth-century American literature.

“Where am I going to wear this?” she’d asked.

He’d bumped her shoulder with his arm. “Ah, you know,” he’d said. “We’ll be going back pretty soon. Wear it to celebrate.”

So she put it on, for Eddie, because he hadn’t made it to the celebration.

She tucked forty dollars and her driver’s license in her back pocket and headed downstairs.

Her father was waiting for her in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen. He tossed something at her. She had to back up a half step to catch it.

It was a cell phone.

“It was hers.” Her father cleared his throat. “I thought … I haven’t shut it off or anything. You need one. You’re not going to be here that long. And … ah, shit, just take it.” Like she was arguing with him.

He went on into the kitchen. Hallie turned the cell phone over in her hands. Nothing special about it, probably the free one that came with service. She flipped it open, turned it on, and scrolled to the address book.

Nothing.

No names, no phone numbers, like Dell had never even used it.

Her father was at the kitchen sink, wiping his hands on an old kitchen towel that used to be blue but had faded to a random gray from countless washings. It was almost completely threadbare in spots, and there was an old burn streak along the edge from some ancient kitchen disaster. It still did its job, though, drying wet hands and dishes, and her father never got rid of anything as long as it had some use in it.

“Don’t be—,” he began, and stopped. Then, “Be careful.”

“I’m always careful,” she said.

He laughed.

*   *   *

The Bobtail Inn—
TRUCKS PARK AROUND BACK
—was five miles from the nearest town. Nothing but an open-span pole building surrounded by the biggest gravel parking lot in three counties. It was a little before eight when Hallie pulled up, and the lot was already half-full. Half a dozen young men in cowboy hats and Wranglers were leaning on pickup trucks near the north entrance. They each had a longneck in their hands, and when one of them threw his head back and laughed, his neck showed tan against the bright white of his shirt.

It was so familiar, laughter pouring out open doors, tires crunching on gravel, boys in precision-ironed shirts, girls in denim miniskirts and cowboy boots. Nothing would ever be the way it was. But this place? This was a place Hallie understood.

Dell and Eddie flanked her as she crossed the lot, close enough that she could feel them both. She’d called Brett and Lorie on the way, and though they wouldn’t be here yet, she wasn’t waiting, wanted that first cool gulp of beer right from the bottle.

She wasn’t more than two steps inside when someone grabbed her arm and yanked her sideways.

“Hallie Michaels.”

Pete Bolluyt snagged her right up tight against him, his hand gripping her elbow hard enough to bruise. “Imagine running into you here,” he said. His voice like molasses, all slow drawl, but the iron grip on her elbow told Hallie he was wound tight as a coil of barbed wire underneath. But then, he always was, even back in high school, like he was always waiting for something that never came.

He wore a big black cowboy hat, a black and silver shirt, and the biggest damn belt buckle—

“Let go of me, Pete,” she said.

“Or—?” He grinned at her.

She looked him in the eye and stomped on his instep as hard as she could. A muscle ticced under his left eye. He let go of her arm.

She took a step back.

He looked the same and yet, different, a glittery … something in his eyes that Hallie didn’t remember from before. His face had thinned down, cheekbones sharp and prominent.

Hallie noticed these things only peripherally. What had captured her attention, drawn it like a missile sensing heat, was Pete’s belt buckle, which had exactly—exactly—the same symbol etched in silver that Hallie had seen at the base of Dell’s neck. Hallie’s breath caught in her throat.

“Heard you been asking questions,” Pete said.

“What?” Hallie pulled her attention from the buckle—what was that symbol?

“Asking questions—about Dell, about her death, about the company,” Pete said.

“‘The Company’? What is that, like a cult?”

“You be careful what you ask,” he said. His voice softened when he said it, and for that one moment, she couldn’t tell if he was threatening or warning her.

Hallie took another step back. People squeezed past her; it was crowded now, but Hallie held her ground. She wanted to see Pete’s face when she talked to him, not some random spot on his shirt halfway between his nose and his crotch.

“You hear me?” he said.

Maybe it would be smart to be subtle, for once.

“What’s that thing on your belt buckle, Pete?”

Maybe not.

Pete’s hand slapped over the buckle, like he’d been caught in the open. His jaw worked for a moment; then he said, “You don’t live here anymore, Hallie. And you don’t know what you’re messing with.”

“She was my sister, Pete.”

“I mean it, Hallie.”

“So do I.”

They stared at each other for a minute, like a standoff. Hallie said, “I thought you loved her.”

For a swift second, there was a look on his face, vulnerable and open. Then it was gone, and there was no mistaking the fury that replaced it. “You bitch,” he said.