A Dead Man's Tale (19 page)

The Stakeout Commences

After a number of stops in sections of Granite Creek that he was more familiar with, Charlie Moon arrived in Samuel and Irene Reeds’ upscale neighborhood at about two hours before sundown. The tribal investigator made several passes of the residence at 1200 Shadowlane Avenue. When there was no traffic to see him enter the Reeds’ driveway, he made a quick turn. Using the remote-control device on the key ring provided by Sam Reed, he opened the door on the guest house garage, pulled his Expedition inside, and immediately lowered the segmented steel plates behind him.

After waiting for his pupils to dilate in the darkness in the windowless space, Moon climbed a steel stairway, where he used a shiny brass key to unlock the door to the guest quarters that served as the scientist-entrepreneur’s at-home office.

The first thing that caught his eye was a magnificent pool table positioned at the precise center of the parlor. Moon rubbed his fingers over the green felt.
I’d sure like to have one of these at the Columbine.
A softly cushioned leather couch long enough for Moon to sleep on dominated the windowless wall. An immaculate cherry desk facing the west wall was apparently where Reed conducted his lucrative business affairs. Moon continued his inspection until he was familiar with every detail in the room, including the thick woolen curtains that he would keep tightly closed so that light wouldn’t leak out and alert someone to the fact that he was staked out in the guest house. Someone such as Mrs. Irene Reed—or her boyfriend. Moon didn’t think there was much chance that Chico Perez would show up.
I expect that rascal’s in another state by now.

The kitchenette tucked away in a corner of the room did not escape the hungry man’s attention. The refrigerator was stocked with a variety of delicacies, including a three-pound plastic tub of Hoke’s Famous Barbecue (chopped beef brisket), a quart of Ben & Jerry’s chocolate ice cream, a half-gallon of cold-brewed coffee, mustard potato salad, coleslaw, thin-sliced deli ham and beef—and that was just for starters. But a snack would have to wait.

The tribal investigator entered the cozy bedroom. Unlike the spacious parlor, it was permeated with that crisp “new” scent of a space that has not been lived in. The sleeping quarters was furnished with a maple bedstead, a matching dresser and chest of drawers, a single leather armchair, and, most tantalizing of all to the rancher—a well-stocked bookcase. Dozens of volumes waited invitingly behind spotless glass doors. Charlie Moon yielded to the temptation and the avid reader was pleased with what he found there. Unless someone made an early move on Sam Reed, he had a lot of hours to while away in this place.

Charlie Moon approached a window that he knew would provide a view of the rear of the Reeds’ residence. He parted the heavy woolen curtains a finger’s width and eyed the back door, which Mrs. Reed had reported as the site of a break-in attempt. He reserved judgment about whether the lady had made an honest mistake—or (as Parris believed) was setting up an excuse to shoot her husband for a prowler. Moon needed an effective observation post, and this window would serve as the primary lookout. With that in mind, the bedroom lights would not be turned on for the three-day duration of the stakeout. To ensure that no error was made, Moon unscrewed every light bulb in the room from its socket and concealed them under the bed.

Checking out the full bath off the bedroom, the cash-poor rancher marveled at the hand-painted tiles that covered the floor, walls, and every square inch of the bathtub and shower stall. Moon recognized the work of the Angel Fire artist who had produced the tiles and knew what the talented lady charged for her work.
I could buy me a new F-350 pickup for what this job cost Sam Reed.
He also noticed that the wealthy man’s fixtures were Moen’s finest—and gold plated.
The upper 1 percent lives pretty high on the hog.

Satisfied with the guest house, he descended the stairway and exited the garage by a rear oak door that opened into a covering cluster of dwarf pines and juniper. The Ute ascended a thickly wooded ridge onto BLM land behind the Reeds’ ten acres. It took him about half an hour to locate an elevated spot that provided a suitable view. With patience and concentration his ancestors would have approved of, Charlie Moon studied every feature of the landscape until a three-dimensional map was engraved on his brain.

He waited.

A sweetly soft concert of twilight and moonshine was beginning to fill the evening with a pearly gray prelude tonight when—at the nearby call of a robin-size saw-whet owl—the tribal investigator got one of those inexplicable hunches. Without knowing
how
he knew, Charlie Moon was certain that Mrs. Reed was on her way home.
And she’s not a mile away.
The diminutive owl hooted again and he saw a pair of headlights top another ridge about five hundred yards to the north. Not quite a minute later, he watched Irene Reed’s Cadillac turn off Shadowlane and heard the big machine crunch its way along the graveled driveway. As the sleek automobile circled the guest house, it glowed pink in the silvery moonlight. The blushing Caddie slowed as the driver remotely opened the door on the garage attached to the residence and pulled inside. Moments after the door lowered behind the luxury automobile, lights began to go on inside the large brick dwelling.

Silently as a panther padding along a mossy forest floor, the Ute circled the Reeds’ home. After satisfying himself that all was well, the lawman returned to the guest house and made a fresh pot of coffee. Positioning himself at the bedroom window, where he could keep an eye on Mrs. Reed’s back door, it was inevitable that Moon would begin to muse about the man he was trying to keep alive until June 5. The scientist-turned-investor was more than merely interesting. Professor Reed was a curious contradiction. Practically an enigma.

Moon considered a for-example:
That morning in Scott’s office, Reed told us he had to hurry away to get a manicure.
And as it happened, Samuel Reed had apparently lied about having an appointment that no other self-respecting Granite Creek County man would have admitted to—not if you held the muzzle of a cocked and loaded .44 Colt revolver to his head. After Reed had admitted to his shameful intent, the man under the homburg had made a beeline to Leadville Lily’s seedy establishment. Charlie Moon knew this because he had followed Reed there. And whatever other unseemly activities the proprietor might occasionally engage in, Lily had her standards. She would never stoop to clipping a grown man’s fingernails. Moon couldn’t imagine a fellow like Sam Reed paying Miss Lily to decorate a patch of his skin. Which raised one of those questions that tends to nag at a fellow’s mind and keep him awake nights: why would Reed lie about getting a manicure and then slip off to a tattoo parlor?
Because he was up to no good.
Okay. But what particular category of “no good”? There were persistent rumors of drug dealing at Leadville Lily’s business establishment, but Scott Parris hadn’t been able to uncover any substantive evidence to lend credence to the gossip.
Which don’t prove Lily’s not dealing.
One thought daisy-chains to another.
So maybe Reed has a habit.
The simplest explanations were generally right on the mark.

Even so, Charlie Moon was entertaining another, more compelling notion:
From what I hear around town, Sam Reed’s one-man investment business is a lot more successful than the law of averages allows.
The Ute’s dark brow furrowed into a thoughtful frown.
So how does he manage that?
Again, the obvious explanation was that the dealer in real estate, stocks, and commodities benefited from insider information. But considering the range of Reed’s investments, that would require a sizable network of paid informers.
An operation like that would be extremely risky.
Sooner or later, Sam Reed would get nailed by the SEC.
Chances are, they’re already onto him, just biding their time until they’ve made a solid case.
The best evidence would be incriminating conversations between the investor and his informers. But Reed would know this, and a sensible felon would go to considerable lengths to conceal his communications from the feds.
Maybe he pays Lily to use her telephone.
Moon shook his head. Federal attorneys fairly salivate at the thought of recorded conversations, where voices and telephone numbers can be identified.
Reed might use Lily’s computer for sending and receiving coded e-mails.
Not exactly bulletproof, but solid evidence would be harder to come by.
And computer files are not the sort of proof that easily convinces a jury.

Moon sighed his way back to the simplest explanation:
I’m probably way off base. Chances are, Sam Reed went to Lily’s for the same reason most folks do—to get a tattoo.
The rancher grinned as he imagined the middle-aged married man with a coiled rattlesnake inscribed on his chest. The grin begot a barely audible chuckle.
Or maybe a girlfriend’s name on his arm
…But that didn’t make much sense.

Where on his body could a man hide an incriminating tattoo from his wife? Moon decided that a fellow’s options would be severely limited and did not bear thinking about. Realizing that his thoughts were meandering around aimlessly like a horse browsing on a sparse prairie, he decided to rein his ruminations in. And succeeded. More or less.

With the intention of distracting himself from pointless musings, Charlie Moon removed the small flashlight from his pocket and began to examine the contents of the bedroom bookcase. On each of the four shelves, the volumes (with one notable exception) were arranged so that the spines were perfectly aligned. It was apparent from the titles that Sam Reed had selected all the books himself; there was hardly anything here that was likely to suit a lady’s taste. The Indian cowboy was delighted to spot a copy of J. B. Gillett’s
Six Years with the Texas Rangers
. The ardent reader’s trusty right hand was reaching for that delightful treasure when his gaze was pulled to another volume. Yes, the one that protruded ever so slightly from the neatly arranged row on the top shelf. The volume by David Deutsch spoke to him.

No, really.

This is what it said:
You’ve already read that dusty old cowboy-and-Indians tale a half-dozen times, pardner. Have a gander at what’s between my covers—you’ll be mighty glad you did!

Whether or not he would (be mighty glad) remains to be seen, but such a beguiling invitation is utterly compelling. Abandoning the trusty Gillett, Charlie Moon’s fingers left a gap where
The Fabric of Reality
had resided. After retiring to the parlor, seating himself in a comfortable armchair, turning on a small floor lamp, and turning two or three pages, the reader was hooked. After a few more, Moon was mesmerized. This was (he thought) the sort of reading that would elbow insignificant thoughts out of a man’s mind.

Perhaps. It all depends on the man and the kind of mind he has—and which thoughts can properly be classified as insignificant.

As Charlie Moon read the last few lines of the second chapter, he was beginning to feel uneasy. Now perched on a spruce branch just outside the guest apartment, the lonely saw-whet owl screeched her shrill
whoop-whoop-whoop
at the Ute. The reader was assaulted by an unseemly thought. One of those unsettling notions that comes from nowhere, like summer thunder booming from a clear-as-crystal sky. He attempted to dismiss the absurdity but could not quite let go of it. The pesky thing was trying to take him somewhere. Mr. Moon could not see around the dark corner and didn’t want to go there. He turned off the lamp, opened the window curtains, and tried to concentrate on the foam of a moonshine-twilight concoction that was flowing lightly through the window glazing and washing over the carpet.

A wasted effort.

The sinister possibility tiptoed its way back into the tribal investigator’s deliberations. It was one of those highly unlikely what-ifs, which was less like a thought than an insistent whispering in Moon’s ear:
Here’s something to think about—what if Reed had his body tattooed so it could be positively identified?

Moon shook his head. There were all sorts of ways for an ME to identify corpses. Like fingerprints, dental records, and DNA.

Again, the whisper:
Forget about medical examiners. Someone might need to ID Sam Reed’s carcass without the aid of modern forensic technology
.

Moon’s brow furrowed.
Who?

That’s for me to know and you to figure out. Think about it.

The tribal investigator thought about it.
Reed’s wife?

As if by a flash of lightning at midnight, Moon’s mind’s eye was illuminated for an instant—then blinded by a still deeper darkness.

He didn’t like what he’d seen in that brilliant instant.
That’s plain crazy.

Indeed it was. At the very least.

The whisperer snickered.
But is it crazy enough to be true?

Moon stared at the book in his hand.
What if weird things like that really do happen from time to time?

The final whisper pierced his ear like an ice pick:
What if weird things like that are happening all the time?

The images conjured up by this sinister suggestion made Charlie Moon’s skin creep and crawl like a tribe of flesh-eating worms were wriggling under his epidermis and tucking napkins under their chins. Don’t start nit-picking. Imaginary worms can have chins if they want to.

And napkins, too.

The Ladies He Left at Home

Before departing for “three or four days,” Charlie Moon had directed Sarah Frank and Daisy Perika to call his mobile phone in case of emergency. The unspoken implication was as clear as the grim look on his craggy face—the tribal investigator had some unspecified but serious business to attend to; he would have no time for idle telephone chitchat.

With the most important man in their lives absent, these were lonely days on the Columbine. The younger and the elder dealt with the void Moon had left behind, each in a manner befitting her personality.

From first light until late at night when sleep finally would carry her away from her worries, Sarah mooned and fretted about her absent heartthrob. She also attended classes at Rocky Mountain Polytechnic, prepared meals for herself and Aunt Daisy, washed and dried dishes, got caught up on homework assignments, and generally kept busy and made herself useful. Whenever the young woman had a spare moment, she would pause and stare at a shadowy beamed ceiling or a turquoise-blue sky and wonder where the apple of her eye was
right this minute
, what Charlie was doing, and, most important—
does he ever think about me?

From time to time, when Charlie Moon wasn’t busy making sure that Samuel Reed lived to see the sun rise on the morning after his wife’s thirtieth birthday, he did think about the winsome Ute-Papago orphan.
I hope the kid’s doing all right.
And about his irascible aunt.
I hope Daisy’s behaving like a normal little old lady.
This was more like a private joke than a serious hope; Moon knew that he might as well wish for a patch of prickly-pear cactus to produce a crop of chocolate-coated strawberries.

Unlike the mooning teenager, Daisy Perika had a more pressing problem to solve. It had to do with her violent assault on Chico Perez, whom she firmly believed was dead. It wasn’t that she was haunted by regrets; quite the contrary. Not only had it been a matter of self-defense and preventing a future assault on Sarah—knocking the rascal’s head in with her walking stick had been a gratifying experience. But life was not all about having a good time, and when the fun was over, a person needed to settle down and consider the carnage from a sober point of view. Which was why Daisy had been thinking about what the consequences might be when Perez’s corpse was discovered. She had no doubt that when the lurid story hit the newspapers and TV, Miss Muntz would guess who’d done the deed.
Not that Millie would rat on me.
Not deliberately.
But that gabby white woman might let something slip.
And what if someone had seen Miss M.’s car in the neighborhood that night and told the police about it?
I bet there’s not another old Buick like that in the whole county.
Cops were like bulldogs; one way or another they’d worm the truth out of Millicent Muntz. Daisy sighed.
All I was trying to do was take his wallet back, but I don’t have a single witness to testify that I was fighting for my life. And now I’ve not only still got Chico Perez’s wallet, I’ve also got those other things.
Like so many wacky notions born in the heat of passion, taking the battle trophies had seemed like a fine idea at the time.
But if I get caught with any of it, I’m liable to get arrested.
She sighed.
Try to do the right thing and where does it get you?
In serious trouble, that’s where.
Life just isn’t fair.

After much soul-searching and worrying, the apprehensive old soul made up her mind to dispose of the physical evidence.
And the sooner the better.
But not tonight; the thing must be done properly.
I’ll need some time to figure out whether to bury the stuff.
Charlie Moon’s aunt concluded that she must do some serious thinking. Which ominous development was, in itself, sufficient to cause spirited mares to kick at their stalls, tough cowboys to tremble in their sleep, and old hounds to awaken with startled snorts.

All of which occurred (respectively) in the Columbine horse barn, beneath the roof of the forty-bed bunkhouse, and under the headquarters porch, where Sidewinder slept.