A Question of Honor (3 page)

The interior echoed the exterior character of the building. Rough, oxidized plaster walls, a ceiling with massive beams made from stripped timber. Well-worn stones underfoot were faded and chipped from years of use. Straight ahead was a counter and beyond that, swinging doors leading to the kitchen.

Booths lined the wall to the right and across the front by the windows, separated only by a large Christmas tree, fully decorated in silver and gold. Wooden tables were arranged in the middle of the room to take advantage of the fireplace. A young girl with brilliant red hair was serving two men at the counter. She looked up as the door thudded shut. “Sit anywhere you’d like,” she said with a smile. “I’ll be right there.”

Christmas music with a definite Western twang played in the background, blending with the customers’ conversations. Faith chose a booth by one of the windows. She sank down onto the dark red vinyl bench seat, slipped off her jacket and thought about the sign for the Wolf Lake Inn. “As much or as little Peace and Quiet as you want.” She craved both the way a man lost in the desert craved water.

The girl from the counter came over to her and smiled. “Welcome to Willie G’s. What will you be having today?” Faith ordered coffee and a hamburger with fries, then sat back as the girl took off for the kitchen. When the hamburger and stack of fries, both large enough to feed a small nation, came, she knew that she’d made a decision. She was going to find Wolf Lake Inn and stay put for a few days if it looked okay. And she could sleep, really sleep, so she could think straight. She was afraid of making a mistake and being recognized.

She ate half of her food. Pushing aside the plate, she reached for her wallet. She needed to get going.

“Food no good, lady?”

The blunt question startled Faith, and she looked up to find an older man standing by the booth. He was in his middle to late sixties, with weathered skin and long white hair piled under a cook’s hairnet. Wearing a white T-shirt and white pants, both liberally stained by various foods, he frowned at her plate, his hawkish nose twitching. “No good?” he repeated as he met her gaze.

She shook her head. “Oh, no, it was very good. It’s just so much food, enough for two or three meals.”

He folded his arms on his chest as a smile softened his lined, angular face. “I understand. You’re a little bit of a thing. For a minute I thought old Willie G. had lost the magic touch.”

“What I could eat was great.” She couldn’t stop a yawn. “Sorry,” she said. “I’ve been driving forever and I’m really tired.”

“Where you heading for?”

She hesitated, wondering if he could help. “Albuquerque, but I saw a sign for The Wolf Lake Inn when I pulled in here. Do you know it?”

“You looking to stay there?”

“Maybe, as long as it’s peaceful and private, and not too fancy or expensive.”

“That about describes it,” Willie said

“Is it very far from here?”

“It’s about fifteen miles north, near the res.”

“The res?”

“Indian reservation.”

Faith hadn’t realized until that moment that he was very much a Native American. “You’re from there?”

He nodded. “Born and bred. Wolf Lake is a good place. Some tourist stuff, but nothing too crazy. It’s pretty quiet most times. Shoot, they got a police force of four, and their main job is giving out tickets for illegal parking to tourists who wander through. That tells you how safe it is.”

It didn’t sound as if any of the four policemen would be looking for a financier’s daughter or even know about her. “How do I get there?”

He gave her directions, telling her to watch out for the inn just before the general store on the main drag of the town on the north side. “It’s a two-storied adobe with a carved eagle above the entrance. It was the first hotel ever in town. Now it’s more like what do you call those places...oh, yeah, a bed-and-breakfast. Six, eight rooms, nice place.” He hesitated and then said, “For the sake of truth in advertising, I should tell you my niece runs the inn. Name’s Mallory Sanchez. You can tell her I sent you, if you want.” He smiled slyly at her. “Probably won’t help you, but who knows?”

She answered his smile. “Thank you so much, Mr....?”

“Name’s Willie G. Lots of Willies around, but only one Willie G. in these parts.”

The waitress called out to him, “Got two orders, Willie.”

He waved a hand at her but didn’t turn. “What’s your name?”

“Faith.”

“Safe journey, Faith,” he said, moving toward the kitchen.

After the waitress boxed Faith’s leftover food and took the money for the bill, Faith stepped out into air that was just plain cold. Light snow was falling, gradually turning the land a pale gray-white. Faith got in her car, went back to the frontage road and headed east for two miles, then spotted the turn Willie had told her about. She drove onto the narrow two-lane road that was all but deserted in the early evening.

As she drove, there were fewer and fewer houses and buildings. The road cut through a vast desert area, with lots of rocks and rough ground, etched in white. Shadows fell on the snow from the mesas and buttes that rose in erratic patterns.The country looked bleak.

She clicked on her headlights and kept going. Had Willie told her the right distance to Wolf Lake? She felt as if she’d been driving for a lot more time than it took to go fifteen miles. Relief came when she caught sight of a road sign: Wolf Lake—2 Miles. She sped up, anxious to get there before the dark descended completely.

She was so intent on her driving, she didn’t notice she wasn’t alone on the road until the jolting wail of a siren cut through the air. Flashing red and blue lights bounced around in the interior of her car. She reflexively glanced at the speedometer, actually happy to see she was speeding. Simple speeding, stupid of her to do it, but this was not about her fleeing Chicago, just her driving.

She took a shaky breath as she pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. It was okay, she told herself. She had the license her dad had given her. When she jumped at the flood of bright light from inside the police car, she admitted that no matter what logic told her, she was afraid.

CHAPTER THREE

J
OHN
MUTTERED
,
“Crazy people,” when the speeding car came to a full stop. “Thought we’d get this type on the weekend or closer to Christmas when the tourists come around to visit,” John grumbled. He tucked the cruiser in behind the compact car with an Illinois plate on it.

There was a single passenger from what Adam could see, a woman grimacing at the glaring light that John had switched on. She wasn’t moving at all.

John tipped open the onboard computer, brought it up and put in the license-plate number. A moment later, he was reading the screen. “Gerald Lewis Reich and Martha Reich, Chicago area. Looks like Martha is on her own. Car’s clean, and they’re clean. Not even a traffic ticket between them in the past five years.” He reached for the door handle. “Be right back,” he said and got out.

The wind was picking up, swirling the snow, and John ducked his head while he gripped his cap with his free hand. He got to the driver’s window as it slowly slid down and he leaned in to speak to the driver. A hand pushed some folded papers out toward John, who took them and stood to read. Then John turned his head as if he was trying to hit his left shoulder with his chin.

Adam knew John was in full uniform and his two-way radio was wired into the shoulder. He spoke into it, then went back to the car. He pushed the papers back to the driver, bent to say something, then jogged back to the cruiser. He slammed the door on the cold wind and snow outside. “Got a call,” he said. “It’s Amos Joe and Birdie. They’re at it again. Got to get there before someone does something stupid again.”

He punched the gas on the idling cruiser, veering out and around the car still ahead of them. Adam glanced at the driver, who still had the window partially down. He caught a glimpse of a shadowy shape before they raced past and down the highway. “What about the stop?” Adam asked, motioning behind them.

“She just bought the car and didn’t get it registered before she took off, so I let her go.”

Adam saw the way John was biting his lower lip and he knew there was more. “What else?”

John shook his head. “Just a hunch, that’s all.”

“Just a hunch?” he repeated to his friend. “A hunch about what?”

John frowned at the road ahead. “Actually, the thing is, I get a feeling she’s scared of something, and not just of a speeding ticket.” He shrugged on a gruff laugh. “If I had a dollar for every right hunch I had about people, I’d still be broke.”

Adam stared at the darkness outside. “I don’t know. Your hunches have worked out sometimes.”

“Dumb luck,” John muttered.

Maybe John was right about the woman, maybe something was going on, but it wasn’t something either man could do a thing about.

What they could do was help his brother.

“When did you see Jack last?”

John cleared his throat. “Out at your pa’s place.” He was referring to Adam’s grandfather’s ranch just north of their parents’ spread.

“Why there?”

“Don’t know. Maureen said he’d headed out there, so I followed.” Maureen Cane, Jack’s assistant in the law office, kept close track of her boss. “I caught up with him sitting on the porch of the old house.”

Adam thought maybe the old place gave his brother some comfort. That adobe had been the first thing his grandfather had built when he’d migrated from the high country on the res, down to the low country. Eventually, he brought his expanding family to the raw land that had been in the Wolf family for what seemed forever. Pa, as the boys called their grandfather, had been obsessed all his life about making something out of nothing for his family. He’d been told to stay with his people, to not go off on his own to mingle with others.

But Jackson Wolf, whom Jack had been named for, hadn’t listened. He’d followed his own vision. He’d gone down and worked hard and long, clearing first the homesite, building the sprawling adobe to house his seven children, then went on to clear pastures to graze cattle and sheep. When he’d finished, his family had a home with efficiently run land that extended over three hundred acres.

Adam’s mother, Lark, had loved it, and when she’d married Herbert Carson, an Irish banker from Boston, whom she’d met by chance in the town, there was no question that they would settle on Wolf land. And they did. They moved south of the original house, onto a piece of land that was three times as big and ended up being three times as fancy.

But the Carson boys had always been drawn to Pa’s land. Like metal to a magnet, when school let out and they were free for the summer, they were at the old ranch. They’d trail after their grandfather, working alongside him and listening to his stories about their ancestors and his plans for the land. He’d gone even farther and helped develop the town of Wolf Lake. He’d been there when the name of his people had been put on the town. He’d realized his dreams.

As the squad car drove through the persistent snow, Adam remembered an incident when he’d been around fourteen. The brothers had left Pa’s place and hiked up into the fringes of the high country. At sunset, they’d been sitting on a ledge that looked down on the reservation in one direction, the town in the other and the vast expanse of Wolf land far below. Off in the distance, the soaring mountains beyond the buttes and mesas stood starkly against the early-evening sky. A deep gouge that cut through them opened a way to the other side.

Jack had said something about the new grazing area Pa had cleared, that he’d hoped he’d go farther south. Land had always been Jack’s passion, the Wolf land. Gage had pointed to a site on the far end of town, to the start of construction for a fully equipped medical clinic that Moses’s father would run for years before his son pushed for a real hospital. Gage had said they needed to make it bigger, and they had done that years later, turning it from a clinic to a hospital.

But Adam had looked past the town and the res and over to the separation in the mountains. All he remembered feeling at that moment had been an overwhelming urge to head for the opening and keep going. He wasn’t sure where to, but he knew he wanted to go.

Like Pa, he’d wanted to break free.

“We should discuss our trip and have things organized when we talk to Jack,” John said, snapping Adam back to the present.

“Good idea. We can contact Moses tomorrow and see if he can get away. It’s been a long time since we all went up there together.”

John nodded. “Just have to convince Jack to come.”

Adam relished watching the town of Wolf Lake rapidly come into sight. The familiar shapes and layout welcomed him yet brought a sense of unease about what he’d find there. It didn’t make sense, and when John pulled into the trailer park to find Amos Joe and Birdie, he pushed it out of his mind completely.

* * *

F
AITH
SHIVERED
UNEXPECTEDLY
despite the warmth in the car, and for a moment, she felt light-headed. Slowing, she opened the window a crack, letting in frigid air and some errant snowflakes. The coolness on her face helped her to settle down a bit. Obviously she wasn’t meant for a life of crime. She’d barely been able to nod when the cop who had stopped her had let her off with a stern warning.
Slow down and enjoy the beautiful country,
he’d said.

She kept going, staying below the speed limit, and finally spotted the sign for Wolf Lake. A glow began to spread in the distance ahead. As she got closer, the glow gradually turned into a sprawling town that flowed away from the main highway. She caught the turnoff and found herself driving past small houses, then was jarred when she saw the police cruiser with its lights flashing, parked by some ancient trailers to one side of the road.

She drove past slowly, keeping her eyes on the road. The main street of Wolf Lake was an eclectic mixture of adobe structures, wood frames and brick buildings, all reflecting the reds and greens of Christmas lights. Decorations filled the windows of stores and homes and were strung over the street and outlined most roofs along the way. The whole thing was a merging of the Old West and Native American heritage, overlaid by tons of Christmas cheer. Raised wooden walkways that spoke of the past, when streets turned to mud and snakes could be anywhere, led the route.

Souvenir shops mingled with businesses that ranged from a grocer’s to a surveyor’s office, a potter’s store and a feed-and-tack barn set up in a huge wooden building fronted by haystacks. Native American influences were everywhere, and life-size carvings of wolves framed several doorways.

She spotted a few restaurants, then finally saw what she was looking for, The Wolf Lake Inn. It was what Willie G. had described, a well-kept two-story, flat-fronted adobe structure set well back from the street behind a low stone fence. A carving of an eagle in flight hung over the entrance, faded with age and layered with pure white snow. A red neon sign flashed
Vacancy
in one of the six arched windows on either side of a broad stoop and a heavy wooden front door.

Faith was excited as she pulled into one of the parking spots outside the fence. Only one other car was there, a blue van with a bumper sticker that read California or Bust. She got out, grabbed her purse and hurried to the door. There was a huge knocker fashioned like a wolf’s head, with its onyx eyes staring out at the night. She ignored it and pushed the door open. A low chime rang somewhere inside.

The front of the first floor was used for a large reception and sitting area, split by a staircase that led up to the second level. Dark wood and lovely furnishings made for a warm, cozy atmosphere. A huge Christmas tree stood to one side of the stairs, its lights twinkling with turquoise and silver decorations. Rugs in rich earth tones partially covered tiles that were worn and faded to a reddish-brown.

“Hello there,” a voice said, drawing Faith’s attention to the reception desk that ran along the left wall and was backed by an old-fashioned cubby for letters. A swinging door by the cubby was still moving as a lithe, black-haired lady came up behind the desk flashing a brilliant smile. Narrowed eyes assessed Faith. “So you did decide to come,” the woman said.

“I’m sorry?” Faith asked, approaching the desk.

“Willie G. said you might be coming by.” She held out her hand and introduced herself. “I’m Mallory Sanchez and I’m guessing you’re Faith.” Her black hair was straight and fell loosely to her waist. Chocolate-brown eyes were warm against a creamy tan, and jeans worn with a heavy red sweater showed off her slender frame. A pretty woman by any standards, and her smile made her even more attractive.

“Faith Arden,” Faith said, taking the woman’s hand when she offered it and met a surprisingly firm grip. “I didn’t expect Willie to call you about me.”

“He was calling about something else, a big Christmas party, actually, but mentioned you might be coming by. He said you’re looking for a place to rest.”

Faith felt uneasy at her words. The police stop had been bad enough. She didn’t want to be a topic of conversation for the town. “I need a room,” she said with more coolness than she intended.

“Well, of course you do,” Mallory said and spun an old registration book around to face her, then handed Faith a pen with a bobbing Santa head on the end of it. “Just put in your information, and let me see your identification.”

Faith handed the fake driver’s license to Mallory, who said, “The inn is peaceful and you can get a good rest here. No problem.”

“That’s great,” Faith murmured while she quickly signed her name, then stopped. She was drawing a blank for her address. What was wrong with her? She’d used that address in Rockford at every stop so far, but she couldn’t for the life of her recall it right then.

Mallory asked, “Is there a problem?”

“Oh, no, I’m just so tired,” she said and yawned without having to force it. Then the address came to her and she quickly wrote it on the ledger. “I’ve been driving forever.”

Mallory glanced at the information in the book, made a notation off her driver’s license, then handed it back to Faith. “I hope you didn’t drive all the way from Illinois nonstop?” She smiled at the absurdity of her question and didn’t wait for Faith to answer. “Do you want the first or second floor? Although, if you’re here to rest and take it easy, the second floor is probably your best bet. It’s more private, and there’s only one guest up there in a front room, a gentleman from Texas.”

“That sounds good, second floor, in the back?”

“We have a great room at the end of the hallway with its own bathroom. The other rooms up there have to share. It’s a bit more, of course, but it’s very nice.”

When she mentioned the daily rate, Faith was okay with it, and although she doubted she’d stay more than a few days, she asked about the weekly rate. The figure was 20 percent less than the daily. “I’ll take it for two nights,” Faith said and paid for the room. When Mallory argued she should see the room first, Faith wanted to say,
If it has a bed and a door to lock, I’m sold,
but instead said, “I’m sure it will be fine.”

Mallory selected one of the keys from the cubby and talked as she led the way to the staircase. “We have more choices if you need to change. We have two rooms down and four rooms up.” Faith followed her up the stairs onto a small landing that branched out in either direction. They went left and passed only one door as they walked toward the end of the corridor.

Mallory unlocked the door to Faith’s room, flipped on a light, then stepped aside for Faith to go in first. “If this doesn’t work for you, I have another that might do.”

Faith barely heard Mallory. The room was perfect. A huge poster bed fashioned out of what looked like stripped tree trunks stood by a window framed by lace curtains. The floor, worn wooden planks, was warmed by a braided rug in blues and lavenders that matched the bedding. An open door to the right exposed a small bathroom, and a closet on the opposite wall stood open and empty.

“What do you think?” Mallory asked as Faith went to the window and looked down at a garden area dominated by a leafless tree that was almost as tall as the building itself. Snow covered the ground and chairs were tipped up on three tables. It looked right. No one would be out there in this weather.