Carnosaur Crimes (11 page)

Something clawed at her shoulders. She was being sucked down, down, down. Into the darkness and mud. No use. She couldn't fight anymore. She curled into a fetal position and sank like a stone.

“Ansel,” listen to me. Open your eyes. Right now.” Something shook her violently. “Listen to me. You're all right. Open your eyes.”

Her eyelids fluttered, than popped open. Reid was staring into her face only inches away, his gaze focused despite his grim expression. He'd turned her around in the front seat and was holding her shoulders with both hands. She was back in the car. A wave of hot shame enveloped her. How could she let him see her like this. He'd think she was crazy and would never believe anything she said to him again.

“Calm down,” he instructed softly. “It was just a flashback. Everything's all right. I'm sorry. I didn't realize about the wipers.”

She fell against him, weeping her heart out with embarrassment, disgust, and anger. It seemed the only thing to do. Her father had explained to him several months before what had happened to her as a child, and he had the good manners not to push her away. In fact, he held her quietly in his strong, capable arms as she sobbed all over his carefully pressed suit and hiccupped against his shiny badge for several minutes.

“I'm taking you home,” Reid stated. I'll drive your truck and leave my car here. A deputy can pick it up.”

She pulled away from him, swiping at her puffy, red eyes. She couldn't look him in the eyes. “You must think I'm some helpless female. Well, I'm not.”

He peered at her critically. “You, helpless? Never. Just indisposed.”

“God dammit. Don't patronize me. I'm fine,” she protested, sniffling again uncontrollably.

Reid didn't release his hold on her. “Now you've done it. That's lie number three,” he said not unkindly. “Give me your truck keys.”

Chapter 15

“You can't get rich if you look over your relatives properly.”

Navajo

“God Almighty, I pray that Cullen's not dead.”

Chase Phoenix sipped his scotch and stared blankly across the Sarsparilla wood dining table. Pearl cast a worried glance at Ansel, her short gray-blonde hair shining beneath the Kokopelli-style swag lamp above them. Ansel lifted her eyebrows, relaying her own feelings of anxiety to her mother-in-law.

Reid had taken her home. A sheriff's deputy was already there to drive him back to the station, and they parted after she promised to tell him when Outerbridge made contact with her. She'd caught a couple hours of sleep to re-group her emotions before driving to the Arrowhead in time for an evening meal. She was exhausted, but knew that Flynn's disappearance would play havoc with her father's worries. Tonight she wanted to be there for him.

As things stood now, Chase had barely touched his supper: a quick fare of Son-of-a-gun stew made from sweetbreads, vegetables, Mexican beans, and calf meat with sour-dough biscuits and salad on the side. Even Pearl's offer of a slice of contest-winning, sweet potato pie for dessert had been rejected by him. This was a sure sign that, between the drought and his friend's vanishing, he felt his luck was running kind of muddy.

“We're all praying that Cul's all right,” Pearl said. “Let's not get spooked. There could be ordinary explanations why he's out of touch.”

“Tell that to Katherine,” Chase replied, referring to Cullen's wife of twenty-six years. “She must be suffering aplenty. Cul's been gone about twenty-four hours now.”

Pearl fixed him with a curious gaze. “I told you I talked to Katherine this afternoon and offered to stop by, remember? She's holding up all right. Shea and Erin, are staying with her tonight along with the grandkids.”

“I forgot,” Chase admitted.

“You're tired. You've been doing chores from dawn until dusk. Counting some sheep tonight will make everything look better in the morning.”

“That's right, Daddy. Cullen will turn up,” Ansel reassured, though she had her doubts. If they knew what she knew about fossil poachers, they'd be mortified.

“Can't convince me of good news with neither shut eye nor blather,” Chase pronounced. “I've got the willies tonight, ladies. And we all know what that means.”

“Lordy, here comes that old tale about your mother being a Blue Child,” Pearl groused. “You're just a superstitious old cowpoke, Chase.” She rose and started clearing dishes.

Ansel said nothing. There was no doubt that her grandmother, Renee Phoenix, had been born with uncanny intuitive gifts. Some family members said she had been a Blue Child, not a baby tangled up in her own umbilical cord as the name suggested, but one with a special connection to unseen forces from the misty beyond. A lot of people had called Renee a psychic. Others had labeled her a specialist in synchronicity, always guessing right with the odds in her favor. Personally, she had no recollection of grandma Renee, who died a year before her mother and father met.

“My mother knew things before they happened,” Chase insisted. “and I've got a little of her juice in me, Pearl. I don't get the willies that often but when I do, somebody's going to get hurt. Can't say who or how or when, but it happens every time. Sarcee knows, don't you, darlin'?”

Ansel nodded. “I've seen him get the willies three times. Once before one of our cowhands got drunk and died when he drove off the road straight into a John Deere Harvester sitting in a wheat field. And another time he knew somebody was in trouble before Howdy Adams's wife committed suicide. She threw herself in front of a locomotive on a Great Northern spur line. Daddy also felt the willies when something was wrong with my mother. He was at a stockman's conference in Jordan and left right away. Wasn't until he got to the ranch that he knew for sure what had happened.”

Ansel stopped there. A stiff silence invaded the room. Nobody really wanted to go into Mary's sudden and protracted diabetic coma and eventual death. It had devastated her father and changed her life as a little girl forever.

“Let the sheriff's department do their job,” Pearl urged Chase. “Don't borrow trouble you'll loan to your stomach. You'll get an ulcer.” She hustled toward the kitchen, her hands stacked with plates and serving dishes.

“I know something bad has happened just as sure as I'm sitting here trying to deny it to myself,” Chase mumbled.

“I wish you'd foretold me that you weren't going to eat a lick of supper,” Pearl scolded over her shoulder. “I wouldn't have cooked all this food. It's a good thing Ansel came over.”

When she was gone, Chase swallowed down his drink and watched as Ansel stood and collected the remaining odds and ends left on the table.

After several moments of silence, he said,”How are you doing? You look tired.”

“I am. Long day.”

“Are you still working on that Argentina book?”

Ansel shrugged. “Should be. Seems like everything else keeps getting in the way.” She had no intentions of telling him about her experiences with the FBI, the BLM, and Dorbandt. His blood pressure would spike for sure. “For example, tomorrow morning I'm going to Permelia's to discuss her book cover.”

A slight smile crinkled the corner's of Chase's mouth. “Good luck with Starr. That dog makes more noise than a jackass in a tin shed. With all the barking, you'll probably only hear a hundred words for every thousand-count Permelia throws at you. Maybe that's a blessing. She wheedled down my sale price on two stud bulls using tongue oil alone. She's a regular word bandit.”

Ansel laughed as she walked to the kitchen. “I have my own selfish reasons for helping her. I want to see her Barnum Brown memorabilia and her dinosaur fossils.”

As she set the plates on a tiled island counter inside the spacious kitchen, Pearl peered at her. She stood at the double porcelain sink rinsing dishes beneath the tap. “Ansel, I'm worried about your father,” she whispered. “He's not acting like himself.”

Pearl's expression was pensive. Deep furrows raked across her brow, and her blue eyes were intense with unspoken emotion. She'd stopped in mid-swipe and water from a soapy plate dribbled down to her elbow. She didn't even notice.

“What do you mean?”

“He's been moping around hardly speaking and he's distracted. I talk but he's not listening. He's also having trouble sleeping. Been using over-the-counter sleeping pills for two weeks now, and they don't help at all. He's bushed, that's true. The ranch work is busting him good, but that's not all it is.”

Ansel looked at the open kitchen door and moved closer to Pearl. “He's real worried about the Arrowhead. He told me the ranch is working in the red. That's never happened before.”

Pearl turned back to rinsing the soapy dish. “The ranch is a major problem,” she agreed. “But there's something else going on.”

“What?”

“I don't think he's feeling well.” To her right, the dishwasher door beneath the counter was open. She dropped the plate into a rack slot. “It's more than just aches and pains for his age. I catch him wincing like he's in serious discomfort when he thinks I'm not looking.”

“Did you ask him about it?”

Pearl nodded. “Several times. He just smiles and makes light of it in his customary way. Says he's fine, and I'm a mama cow trying to give milk to a bull. You know him. His damn pride won't let him complain.”

Ansel pursed her lips at this disturbing news, then crossed her arms. “I'll talk to Daddy. Maybe I can pry some information out of him.”

“Good. I feel better now. I just had to tell you. The ranch will survive. I can't let something happen to Chase,” Pearl confided. “I don't know what I'd do. Somebody's got to talk some sense into him and find out what's wrong.”

Footsteps resounded on the oak-slat flooring outside the kitchen and Chase popped through the door, hands ladled into his jean pockets. “Sarcee, I forgot to talk to you about that attorney referral you wanted. Got a minute?”

Just what she wanted. The perfect chance to corral her father and pounce on him about his health. “Sure.”

Pearl wiped her hands on a dishtowel and turned around. “Maybe you two will re-consider having some pie afterwards,” she suggested with a grin. “I'll leave it out just in case.”

Ansel and her father walked through an opposite kitchen door and directly into a hallway in the east wing of the four-thousand square foot, spruce log home. A quick jaunt to the right and they reached a heavy cedar door. Ansel walked first into the study with its floor-to-ceiling bookcases, an antique redwood desk, plenty of cushioned chairs, and a fireplace. Chase gestured her toward another archway on their left which led into a smaller room containing a luncheon nook and a solid wall of casement windows. A single folder lay on the wooden table.

Ansel took a seat in one of four leather chairs, glad that it was night and she could see no further outside than the white light cast by decorative patio lamps. The wall before her faced the south pasture where horses grazed. The stock pond where she had almost died was out there, too. Today of all days, she certainly didn't need to view it.

Chase sat across from her, back to the windows, and grabbed the file. “You know that the Arrowhead covers fifteen-thousand deeded acres, plus another twelve thousand BLM lease parcels that I use for grazing land,” he began, opening the folder. “The lawyer I've used to handle my Bureau affairs for the last five years is Noah Zollie. He's in Billings.”

She took the sheet of paper he passed to her. It was an advertisement for law services with Zollie's letterhead on top. “I was hoping for someone local.”

“He's one of the best in the state. I don't like messing around with fly-by-night lawyers when I'm courting the Bureau of Land Management,” Chase explained. “Too many things can go wrong. You going to tell me why you need a land trust attorney?”

“I'm looking for basic information about the way BLM land leases operate on paper.”

Chase eyed her carefully. “I can tell you that.”

Ansel folded the letter. “There are all sorts of land agreements between private, state, and federal groups. I need a complete overview. It's just research work. I'm not getting personally involved in anything.”

Chase closed the folder and leaned back in his chair. “I'm going to guess it has something to do with the Big Toe fossil robbery. Am I right?”

She tried to keep her game face on, smile plastered across her lower jaw like a stiff rubber mask. Maybe he was a bit psychic. “Lucky guess. Okay, I'm trying find out how to prevent the BLM from revoking the museum land lease and removing the fossil tracks to a federal repository. They've threatened to do that. I'm just fishing. What can that hurt?”

“Nothing,” Chase conceded. “To tell the truth, I never liked the way the BLM moved in on Chester's land after he died. His kin never had enough time to arrange for personal loans that would pay off the back revenues he owed under the terms of his Conservation Reserve Program contract with the government. The whole deal stank. I'd like to see things set right.”

“I think the Bureau was always more interested in the fossil tracks that flash flood exposed before Chester's death than getting their money back,” Ansel declared. “The fact that the town council approached them with the idea of leasing the farmhouse and some of the property to start the museum was just icing on the cake.”

“Well, Noah's the man to call if you want to plumb your angles,” Chase insisted. He pushed back his chair and slowly stood up, a slight stoop to his stance.

As she rose, Ansel noticed his gritted teeth. “Are you all right, Daddy?”

He smiled, leathery, tanned face suddenly vibrant. “I'm a little off my feed, but it's nothing a few good bucketfuls of rain won't cure. Things will change for the better. They always do.”

When he came around the table, Ansel walked over to him. “Pearl says you're in pain, but won't admit it. I want to know the truth.”

The annoyance on Chase's face shadowed his grin in an instant. “I know she means well, but she's fretting over nothing. I'm fine. I wish everyone would leave it be.”

Ansel realized she'd get nothing out of him by direct questioning. Making him angry wouldn't help. She stood on her booted tiptoes and kissed him on the cheek. “I'm glad to hear it. There's a beautiful moon out tonight. Do you want to walk me up the hill? I'd like to see momma's grave.”

Her mother was buried in a small family cemetery which began in 1878 and contained many Phoenix ancestors, some of whom originally immigrated to America from Germain-en-Laye, France. At the top of a low ridge overlooking the Missouri River was a white marble tomb with a six foot tall Indian Angel carved in her mother's likeness on top.

Chase's face relaxed as he chuckled. “You're about as subtle as an Arkansas toothpick,” he said, referring to another name for a Bowie knife. “Trying to scare a confession out of me?”

“Not at all. I've got to leave early in the morning. This will be my only chance to go.”

“All right, we'll go see Mary. Then we'll make Pearl happy by having some pie.”

“I love you, Daddy,” Ansel said.

“And I love you, Sarcee.”