On my drive back to the ranch, I didn’t dwell on the facts that Lark had confided to me. She’d insisted on buying another round before we’d left Zelda’s at twelve-thirty, and even though I’d left most of my wine in the glass and was under the legal limit, I needed to pay close attention to my driving. High-desert people are generally hard-living folks, but it seemed to me that Lark, a law-enforcement officer and supposedly happy woman, had been pushing the envelope with her three double shots of bourbon.
The country around Tufa Lake is largely devoid of traffic at that time of night, and no wildlife sprang into my headlights, so I arrived home unscathed. There was a message on the machine from Hy: “Just wanted to let you know my ETA tomorrow-four p.m. See you then.” Pause. “Does your absence indicate you’ve been ‘sucked in’ by the Perez murder?”
Damn! He knew me all too well.
But sucked in I was-and with official sanction. I curled up in the armchair in the living room and listened to the tape I’d made of Kristen Lark’s confidences.
Haley and Rich Three Wings ran off nine years ago, ended up in Reno. He dealt blackjack at Harrah’s, she worked someplace as a waitress, but pretty quick she started turning tricks on the side…
Around three years after they got to Reno, this high roller came to the casino. Hayley was waitressing there by then, and next thing she ran off with the guy, leaving Rich with only his old car and the clothes on his back…
No, we haven’t found out who the high roller was. Rich claims he doesn’t know. We’ve got an inquiry in to the casino, though…
That’s another thing we don’t know-where she was during the period between when she left Reno and three years ago when she turned up in Vegas. Living off the high roller, no doubt, but it didn’t last…
In Vegas, she worked cocktails in a casino-the Lucky Sevens. Kind of downscale and dingy, LVPD says. So she went out on the streets again, got busted a few times, but always brought in a high-powered attorney who got the charges dropped…
How could she afford the lawyer? Damned if we know…
Name’s Brower. Frank Brower. With a big firm that’s rumored to be connected-Brower, Price and Coleman. Of course, everybody in Vegas is rumored to be connected…
No, we haven’t been able to get hold of him. He’s on a cruise, or some damn thing…
Yeah, we checked out the address on Hayley’s driver’s license. A mail drop. We’ve got no idea where she was living in Vegas…
Apparently nobody here knew she was back in town, except for that insurance agent you told me about. And Boz Sheppard. And maybe Amy. We’ve questioned everybody, including Rich Three Wings and her high-school boyfriend, Tom Mathers…
Here’s something: you might take another crack at Three Wings. I mean, he might open up more to you…
I turned off the recorder. When, I wondered, would people stop assuming that because you’re Indian, other Indians will feel a natural connection with you? There are hundreds of tribes in this country; historically some have been mortal enemies, and today they’re squabbling over gaming rights. It’s like saying any American ethnic group-be it blacks, Chinese, Italians, Irish, Japanese, or Germans-is drawn together because of its background. Ridiculous. The Scotch-Irish family who adopted me at birth frequently fought like they were out to kill each other. Still do, sometimes.
But what the hell, in the morning I’d take a crack at Rich Three Wings. Tom Mathers, too.
It was the least I could do for the sake of the Perez family, I told myself.
Well, yes, for their sake, but also for my own. Cases change both the investigated and the investigator. Maybe one last effort would show me the way to the new life I was reaching for. It wouldn’t be any worse than dreaming of trying to climb out of a deep, dark pit.
Elk Lake was a small, placid body of water surrounded by forest, some twenty miles southwest of Vernon. Dirt roads led into clearings where rustic cabins stood. Many of them had cutesy names: Gone Fishin’, Bide a Wee Longer, My Lady and the Lake. Rich Three Wings’ had no such sign and was one of the shabbier: warped shingles, sagging roofbeam, rusted stovepipe. A large prefab garage sat next to it, and an old International Harvester truck was pulled close to its side. From the rear I could hear the sound of someone chopping wood.
I rounded the cabin, and a spectacular view of the lake opened up: close to shore waterfowl swam and dove for food, far out two fishermen floated in their rowboat, the opposite shore was rimmed by tall pines. The scene was so peaceful that it stood out in sharp contrast to the man wielding the axe.
Wide-shouldered and narrow-waisted, he was without a shirt on this chilly day, and the muscles in his back were strong and sculpted. He attacked the log as if it were an enemy, with hard, rhythmic strokes and frequent animal-like grunts. He didn’t hear me approach until I was halfway to him, and then he whirled, axe upheld. I stopped, braced to run.
“Rich Three Wings?” I asked.
“Yeah. Who’re you?” His face was beaded with sweat, his long black hair trapped in a damp red bandana.
I introduced myself, taking out one of my business cards. He lowered the axe and leaned it against a larger log. At that I covered the rest of the distance between us and handed the card to him.
“I’m working in cooperation with the sheriff’s department on the Hayley Perez case,” I added.
He looked at the card, then crushed it in his large fist. His face twitched, as if he felt a sudden pain.
He asked, “They send you on account of you’re Indian too?”
“That was the general idea.”
“And you don’t like it.”
“I hate it. And so do you.”
He studied me for a moment, then nodded, having made a judgment. “Come inside, we’ll drink some coffee.” When I hesitated, he added, “I’m harmless. I didn’t kill Hayley and I’m sure as hell not gonna do anything to you.”
No, he wasn’t. That much I sensed. As to whether he’d killed his ex-wife I couldn’t hazard a guess yet.
I followed him to the cabin and into a spotlessly neat room with beautifully hewn wooden furnishings and woven rugs like the ones we had at the ranch. Rich Three Wings noticed my surprise and said, “Appearances can be deceiving, huh?”
“I’ll say. This is beautiful.”
“Thanks. Have a seat.” He motioned at a small table that gleamed with polish and shrugged into a sweatshirt that was draped on a chair. “How do you like your coffee?”
“Black.”
“Me too.” He went through a doorway, returned with two pottery mugs. “This place, I inherited it from my grandfather, who was a real traditional guy. Material possessions didn’t mean a thing to him.”
“Sounds like my… father.” I still couldn’t call Elwood Farmer my father without hesitation. “He’s an artist and lives very simply on the Flathead rez in Montana.”
“You born there?”
“No. It’s complicated. This furniture…” I motioned around us.
“I made it. I’ve got a shop in the garage. And the rugs-my girlfriend weaves them. Between the two of us we do pretty well, sell on the Internet and a few shops down in Sacramento and the city.”
“It’s lovely.”
“But that’s not what you came here to talk about. Your card says investigative services, and the county sent you.”
“I’m a friend of the Perez family, but the deputy in charge of the case said it was okay to talk with you.”
“How’re you their friend? I haven’t seen you around.”
I explained my relationship with Ramon and Sara.
“Ripinsky’s wife. I’ll be damned. He was my hero, back when I was in high school. Real rabble-rouser, but the good kind. If it hadn’t been for him, Tufa Lake’d be nothing but mud and crumbling towers by now.” He paused. “So what d’you want to know about Hayley?”
“Why don’t you give me a chronology of your relationship with her.”
“Okay. She was in high school. Dating this asshole, Tom Mathers. I’d come back from a stint in the army; I’m six years older than her. I’d seen her around while I was growing up, but didn’t pay her much notice. Then we met at a party. Mathers passed out in the bathroom, so I took her home. She told me how much she hated it here, one thing led to another, and a few weeks later we were on the road to Reno to get married.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. Crappy little wedding chapel, plastic flowers, JP and his wife were both weird. That kind of start, it’s natural the wedding vows didn’t take. Plus we didn’t have much money and fought about it all the time. Three years later she split and I decided to come home. I couldn’t take the crap I had to deal with at the casino and this place was waiting for me.”
“Kristen Lark told me Hayley was hooking.”
“Yeah, she was. I should’ve realized it, but I didn’t-not till it was too late.”
“I understand she took off with a high roller, but you don’t know his name.”
“I just told Lark that to keep the guy from getting in trouble. I mean, he couldn’t’ve cared enough about Hayley to follow her here and kill her. His name was Jack Buckle. From someplace in the Pacific Northwest. I should’ve guessed what was going on with them, but I never thought… well, Hayley was not in this guy’s class at all.”
“How so?”
“He was rich, smart, and seemed educated. Hayley was just a small-town slut. I know that now, but at the time I was blind in love with her. But a lot of these rich guys, they either don’t care or don’t look farther than the end of their dicks.”
“Did you hear from her again?”
“Only through the divorce papers six months later. By then I’d come back here, started woodworking. After that I never gave a thought to Hayley.” He paused. “Well, that’s not true. I thought about her some, sure. I hated her for what she did to me, but when I met Cammie-my weaver girlfriend-and things started working out with us, I cooled down.”
“You didn’t look so cooled down when I got here earlier.”
He clasped his hands around the coffee mug, looked into its depths. “Yeah, well, when somebody you once loved is murdered-no matter how much bad they did to you-you get angry. I take my anger out on logs, not people.”
“And you didn’t know Hayley was back in Vernon?”
“No way. I’m pretty isolated out here. I make a point of going to town only when I need to. Maybe Cammie knew; she lives in Vernon, spends the weekends here, working on her loom in the shop. But if she did, she didn’t tell me.”
“I’d like to talk to Cammie.”
“I’m sure she won’t mind. She works part time at the flower shop in town. In fact, she should be there this morning.”
There was only one flower shop in Vernon-Petals, on the main street two doors down from Hobo’s. When I walked in I breathed deeply of the fresh and fragrant scents; although a bell rang as I passed through the door, no one appeared, so I studied the simple arrangements in the cold case. Roses, carnations, the usual types. Not much variety, but they probably had little call for anything out of the ordinary.
As I was examining a shelf of houseplants, a woman came through a curtained doorway. She was around thirty, blonde, wearing red-rimmed glasses and a sweater to match. Dimples flashed when she smiled.
“Help you?”
“Are you Cammie?”
“That’s right. Cammie Charles. And you are?”
I gave my name, handed her my card, and said, “I just had coffee with Rich Three Wings. He said you might be able to help me out.”
“Sure. What d’you need?”
“Information. I’m cooperating with the sheriff’s department on the Hayley Perez case.”
A shadow crept into her gray eyes. “Poor woman. Rich was really upset when he heard she’d been murdered. I mean, they’d had some bad times, but she was his first love.”
“He didn’t know she was in town. Did you?”
Her gaze slid away from mine, down to an open book of FTD offerings. “Yeah, I did. Bud Smith mentioned it to me when we ran into each other on the street. I figured it was best not to tell Richie.”
“Why?”
“Selfishness, mainly. I didn’t want him to see her and maybe get involved again. She was so pretty…”
“You knew her, then?”
“No. I’m not from around here. I came up from the Bay Area for a vacation, met Richie, and never left. But Hayley came into the shop a couple of weeks ago-the day after Bud was here-to order a funeral arrangement to be sent FTD. I recognized her name from her credit card. She’s not as pretty as the picture of her I found in a box at Richie’s place, but still…”
“You have a record of that sale?”
“Somewhere. Is it important?”
“Might be.”
“Okay.” She rummaged in a drawer under the counter for an order book and paged through it. “Here it is-Jack Buckle, address in Olympia, Washington.”
Jack Buckle sounded very much alive when I called the phone number from the flower shop’s order form. Amused, too.
“Hayley’s idea of a joke,” he told me. “She’s sent me a funeral arrangement each year on the anniversary of the death of our relationship. I pass them on to the local cemetery.”
“So you broke up on October…?”
“October nineteenth, three years and some months after she came up here with me.”
“And you’ve received an arrangement every year since?”
“The first arrived five days after the split. But why does your flower shop need that kind of information?”
I hadn’t told him I was a flower shop employee, had just given him my name. Now I explained myself.
“Hayley’s dead? Murdered?” He sounded genuinely shocked.
“Yes, Mr. Buckle. I’m sorry.”
“… Poor kid. She was a whore, and greedy like they all are, but she didn’t deserve that.”
“Tell me more about her.”
“Let’s see… I was in Reno for an annual high-stakes poker game at a friend’s home. Hayley was serving catered food from the casino to us. Pretty little thing, and afterwards I asked her to come back to my hotel with me. In the course of things she told me that she was with this guy who abused her, that she hated Reno and wanted to get out. So I said, why didn’t she come along home with me? When I took her to their apartment she packed her stuff in fifteen minutes. I brought her back here to Olympia and we had fun till the fun ended.”
“And why did it end?”
“Like I said, whores are greedy. She behaved for a couple of years, acted like a lady even, but I caught her sneaking cash from my wallet. As if I wasn’t footing the bill for everything and also generous with an allowance. Finally, my maid told me Hayley’d been going through my home office, probably looking for the combination to the safe, and practicing signing my signature so she could forge checks.”
“So you threw her out.”
“No, ma’am. I politely told her to leave and asked her where she wanted to go. To tell the truth, I felt sorry for the kid; she’d had a miserable upbringing. I didn’t want to throw her onto the streets with nothing. She said she guessed she’d go to Vegas. So I bought her a plane ticket and gave her a little money to tide her over till she found a job-or another man. She must’ve done all right on one front or the other, because this year’s funeral arrangement was an expensive one.”
“Do you know an attorney in Vegas, Frank Brower, of Brower, Price and Coleman?”
“I’ve heard of him, but I’ve never made his acquaintance.”
“He got Hayley off on a few charges of prostitution.”
“Hard to imagine how she could afford that firm. They’re corporate lawyers for some of the bigger casinos.”
“One other question, Mr. Buckle, and then I won’t take up more of your time: what is it you do for a living?”
“I’m chief counsel for the Northwest Council of God.”
“The…?”
“Northwest Council of God.”
“… Oh.”
He laughed. “I said chief counsel, Ms. McCone. I’m not a member, and I don’t abide by their beliefs, nor do they expect me to. They simply want good legal representation and they pay me a significant retainer.”
“I see.” The pragmatic approach to faith, or lack thereof. “The Mono County Sheriff’s Department will be in touch with you shortly.”
“I’ll cooperate in any way I can.”
Immediately after I ended my call to Jack Buckle, my phone rang. Lark.
“We’ve designated the cabin at Willow Grove as a possible homicide scene,” she said. “We’re asking local pilots to help us out with an air search for a body tomorrow. Would you be willing to join in?”
I wanted to tell her she’d do better with cadaver dogs. It was unlikely a killer would have placed Amy’s body out in the open where anyone could see it, and to a pilot flying at legal altitude over that thickly wooded terrain, a concealed corpse would be damned near impossible to spot.
But to keep on her good side I said, “Sure. Hy’s coming up this afternoon: we’ll both join in. One more thing: this Tom Mathers-I’d like to talk with him.”
“No problem. He’s at Tom’s Wilderness Supplies and Vacations, about five miles out on the Rattlesnake Ranch Cutoff.”
The terrain off Rattlesnake Ranch Cutoff was barren, like Mineral County over in Nevada. A few volcanically created formations stood out in the distance, but otherwise the land was flat and covered by coarse grass and sagebrush. Tom’s Wilderness Supplies and Vacations, an orange-and-purple-trimmed stucco building with racks of rowboats and canoes at the back of the parking lot, was a bright, if gaudy, spot in the surrounding bleakness. A pair of dune buggies were pulled close to the building on the other side from the parking lot.
The building’s interior was fairly large and crammed with all sorts of outdoors gear: backpacks, tents, stoves and lanterns, life jackets, fishing equipment, heavy-duty clothing-if you needed it, it was there. Tom Mathers was also a weapons dealer: guns gleamed in locked cases, in others knives glittered evilly under the fluorescent lights.
Guns I know, understand, and respect for their lethal potential. Knives scare the hell out of me.
The man behind the counter was in his mid-to-late twenties: sandy-haired, sun-freckled and -tanned, with wide shoulders and biceps that bulged beneath his T-shirt. A bodybuilder, I guessed, as well as an outdoorsman. A cheerful one, too: he smiled as if his best friend had just walked in.
“What can I do you for?”
“Are you Tom Mathers?”
“The one and only.”
I went through my friend-of-the-Perez-family, cooperating-with-the-sheriff’s-department routine. Mathers’ smile faded and he shook his head.
“Hayley. What a shame.”
“Do you have any idea who might have killed her?”
Something moved deep in his eyes. He looked down at the knives in the case between us. “No idea at all. Everybody loved Hayley.”
Bad body language; I didn’t believe him. “Tell me about you and her.”
“We went together all through high school. She never even looked at another guy. I thought we’d get married, have kids. Then this older guy shows up at a party, and a week later she’s gone.”
“I understand she left the party with him because you were passed out in the bathroom.”
He shrugged. “That was no reason to run off with him. We partied pretty hard in those days. But she knew I would’ve straightened up. I mean, I’ve got a great business here, I’m married, own a house on the property.” He jerked his thumb, indicating the house was behind the building. “No complaints from the wife, either-”
“A wife who was second choice and you’re never going to let me forget it,” a voice said from behind me.
I turned. A woman with long reddish-blonde hair had come inside. She was trim and well muscled, wearing only a short-sleeved T-shirt and running shorts. Not pretty, as Hayley Perez had been, but strong-featured. Her mouth was bracketed with lines of disappointment-and she must have been all of twenty-five.
No complaints from the wife. Right.
“T.C.,” her husband said, “this is a private conversation.”
“Not if you’re talking about me.” She came over and extended her hand to me. “T.C. Mathers.”
“Sharon McCone.”
Tom Mathers said, “Ms. McCone’s cooperating with the sheriff on Hayley Perez’s murder.”
T.C. rolled her eyes. “The sainted Hayley Perez. What I wonder is why somebody didn’t shoot her years ago.”
Tom’s face reddened. “Theresa!”
She winked at me. “When he gets mad, he always calls me by my given name. Knows I hate it. When he’s really mad, he calls me Theresa Christina. Gets to me because it reminds me of my goddamn reactionary Christian parents who saddled me with it.”
I was not at all pleased that I’d walked into this situation. I looked at my watch. Nearing two-thirty, I hadn’t had a bite to eat all day, and Hy’s ETA was four.
I said, “I’d like to talk with both of you again, but there’s someplace I have to be soon. May I call you here or at home?”
“We’re in the book. Call or drop in. Just keep following the driveway to the house.” Tom Mathers was trying to regain his former composure, but his stance radiated fury at his wife.
“I’ll be in touch,” I said, and walked away from their domestic conflict.
In town I bought a sandwich and a Coke before I made the drive to Tufa Tower Airport at the northwest end of the lake. It wasn’t much: a single runway, a dozen or so planes in tie-downs, a hangar that hadn’t housed a resident mechanic in years, and a shack where the manager-a garrulous septuagenarian named Amos Hinsdale-monitored the UNICOM and hoped that some fool would come in and rent one of his two dreadful planes. Normally I tolerated Amos, but today I wasn’t in the mood for one of his monologues about the good old days when flying took a real man’s skill. Forget Amelia Earhart; forget the Powder Puff Derby participants and the women who ferried planes for the military during World War II. Forget the fact that many women, including myself, frequently flew into Tufa Tower. In Amos’ mind, aviation was a man’s world-although he also thought that the current crop of male pilots, who used up-to-date computerized equipment, were “a bunch of sissies.”
I parked behind the hangar where I couldn’t be seen from the shack and ate my late lunch. Thought about the case-my absolute last one-and where it was going, where it might lead me. I came to no conclusions about either.
After half an hour I began watching the hills to the north. Hy’s and my beautiful red-and-blue Cessna 170B appeared above them; soon I heard the drone of its engine. The wings dipped from side to side, then he executed a barrel roll-showing off, knowing I was waiting for him. Afterward he angled into the pattern, took the downwind leg, and turned for final. I was at our designated tie-down when he taxied over.
He shut down the engine and got out. As always, I felt a rush of pleasure.
This man is my husband; we’ll be together the rest of our lives.
Silly thought, because we’d already spent years together before we impulsively flew to Nevada and were married by a judge in Carson City. But those years hadn’t been easy. Neither had the past one. I’d had many moments of doubt, and a recent serious crisis that I wasn’t sure the union could survive. But through it all, he’d been steady and true and honest. No more doubts. Not now, not ever.
I ran over, threw my arms around him. Kissed him and held on tight. When I stepped back he smiled, even white teeth showing under his swooping mustache. He wasn’t classically handsome, with a hawk-like nose and strong, rough-hewn features. His unruly dark-blond hair was now laced with gray. But his loose stride and long, lean body drew the attention of women as he walked through a room. And he possessed one of the finest asses I’d ever seen.
He raised an eyebrow at me and said, “Jesus, McCone, you must’ve missed me.”
“Let’s tie down this plane and I’ll take you home and show you how much.”
“Now, that’ll be pure heaven.”
That night I did not dream of being trapped in a pit.