Castle Rock (13 page)

All the cabins were generally the same, a square good-sized room with two double beds, a fireplace, TV, and several comfortable chairs. A little kitchenette was tucked in an alcove past the fireplace.

The room was cluttered, magazines spread over the coffee table, an open suitcase propped on one chair with a mound of clothing peeping over the sides. Soiled dishes, some with the sticky residue of ice cream, sat next to overflowing ashtrays and empty drink glasses.

Nothing different from a thousand motel rooms.

Serena opened the closet door, chattering all the while. “I'm pretty sure the fuse boxes are tucked back here somewhere. I'll be careful among your things.” Now she was out of Lou's view. Serena snapped on her flashlight, ran the beam over Lou's dresses, totally unsuitable clothing for a ranch vacation, and among his suits. He did at least have slacks and polo shirts to wear. The flashlight beam stopped, wavered, and held. Serena's heart thudded. The shiny leather of the holster glistened in the light, emphasizing the dark blue of the gun. Serena didn't have any idea what kind of firearm it was, but she knew it was a handgun, and it looked big and deadly. Then she dropped the beam to the floor and swept it back and forth. There, at the very back of the closet, just beneath the fuse box sat two walkie talkies. Serena stepped closer to them.

“Oh, Howard, I didn't know you were coming back this early. I'm not dressed yet.”

“Yeah.”

“Serena's fixing a fuse or something.”

Serena heard his explosive, “What?” and the heavy sound of his footsteps. Quickly, she stepped forward, opened the fuse box and flipped the switch that controlled the outside lighting to OFF.

“Here's the problem . . .”

The door was yanked wide. She looked around. “Oh, Mr. Minter, how are you? You did startle me. But I've found the problem,” and she reached up and flipped the switch to ON.

He looked at her, his heavy red face alert and suspicious.

Serena smiled. “Everything's fine now,” and she closed the fuse box door and started out.

For a moment, he stood unmoving, blocking the way, looming over her, then, slowly, he stepped back.

“I'm afraid the wiring is pretty old,” Serena said with a disarming smile. “We have lines hooked up to fuse boxes in the oddest places.”

“Yeah,” he said heavily, with no answering smile.

She stopped at the door to thank them again, then plunged out into the bright sunshine, grateful to be free of that dim, closed room and him. She had had a moment of real fear when he blocked her exit from the closet. She didn't breathe easily until she was out of sight of the Minters' cabin.

Serena felt just as she had the day several years ago when she rode up to a spring and disturbed a brown bear with her cub. The mother bear had turned toward her with the same malevolence that she had seen in Minter's eyes. Wild beasts are dangerous, dangerous and deadly, and Serena knew that reality as well as any rancher. You do not disturb dangerous animals. If it happens, you move slowly and carefully and quietly.

She didn't know exactly what her visit to the Minters' cabin proved. It made clear only one thing in her mind, Howard Minter wasn't a man to trifle with. Ordinary vacationers carried neither guns nor walkie talkies. That didn't mean she could definitely link him to smuggling or murder, but it made him a suspect.

Serena reached the point where the path diverged, the down trail leading back to the ranch, the up trail to Desperado Point and the professors' cabin.

She had checked on the Minters. Now was the time to check on the professors.

The ride up to the cabin was so much a part of a perfect summer morning that it made her suspicions seem incredible. But when she knocked on the cabin door, there wasn't any answer. Those hardworking professors weren't in.

Fishing her keys out of her pocket, Serena opened the door. She took a last long careful look then stepped inside. After a moment's thought, she left the door open behind her. If they should return unexpectedly, she could always use her fuse story again.

This cabin sparkled with cleanliness. No clutter marred the tables. Each bed was made with military precision. Serena walked over to the wooden table in the kitchenette. This was the only surface that would be suitable for spreading out a manuscript. It was clean and bare. She walked quickly around the room. Nothing on top of the bookcases, nothing on the low coffee table.

Did they bundle up the manuscript, carry it with them on their daily rides? Or was the manuscript as imaginary as their professorships?

Sunlight slanted through the two east windows, spilling cheerfully on the clean bare emptiness of the room. Suddenly the very bareness seemed sinister to Serena.

Who were these men and why had they come to Castle Rock?

She whirled around and hurried to the closet. A trunk absorbed most of the space in the narrow closet. There was nothing especially remarkable about the trunk except for the shiny new padlock through the hasps.

Serena stared at the padlocked trunk for a long time. It could, of course, hold the famous manuscript. It must certainly be a fantastic physics text to warrant such security.

She gave the lock a yank, not expecting anything. It didn't budge.

The rest of the closet didn't do much to allay her suspicions. The Levis and work shirts she would expect, but several pairs of hiking boots lined the closet floor. Hiking boots make all kind of sense in rattlesnake country, but weren't these men here to closet themselves in their cabin to revise a manuscript? Why should they need a couple of pair of hiking boots apiece?

Serena knelt, picked up one boot, and brushed powdery gray dust from it. She knew that kind of dust, fine silty gray dust that hung smokily in caves and inches deep in tumbledown ruins. When disturbed, the dust stirred and clung. Serena replaced the boot. She left the closet after a final look at the trunk.

As she closed the cabin door behind her and remounted Hurricane, she tried to assess her discoveries, but her mind was a whirl of conjecture.

After lunch, which the professors didn't attend, she settled down to work at repair jobs in the tack room. She was determined to be there when Morris and VanZandt returned.

Danny joined her about three.

She put down a halter she was working on. “Hi, Danny. Are you going to take Buster out for a ride?”

Danny nodded. “In a little while.” But he leaned against the workbench and made no move to get his saddle.

After a minute, Serena looked up. “Want me to help you saddle up?”

“No.”

Dark smudges under his eyes emphasized the paleness of his face. He was so little, Serena thought, to be alone.

“Oh Danny,” she said cheerfully, “I've been meaning to talk to you. Don't you think we should go ahead with the annual Fourth of July rodeo and barbecue?”

“Oh sure, Serena, sure. Hey, I'd forgotten about it.” A faint flush of excitement touched his cheeks. “Hey, do you think Joe will let me ride Buster in the calf roping?”

“Gee, I don't know,” she said slowly. She didn't want to discourage him but she felt sure he wasn't strong enough yet to try that event. “Is Buster really ready for it?”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, Buster's great.”

She was smiling by the time Danny finished. “Well, we'll see.”

“Aw, Serena, I can do it.”

Serena picked up another halter and reached for an awl. She knew Danny was watching her closely. She let him break the silence.

“Hey, Serena?”

“Yes.”

“You won't go away again, will you?” There was, toward the end of his sentence, a very tiny tremor in his voice.

“Of course not,” she said quickly, firmly. She looked directly in his eyes. “I promise you, Danny. I won't go away.”

“They can't make you leave again?”

Surprise must have shown in her face.

“I know what happened,” he said quickly. “I heard Julie telling you to go that morning.”

“Oh.” Serena didn't know what to say. She didn't want to drive a wedge between Danny and his cousin, but she couldn't lie.

He saved her the trouble of answering when he said angrily, “It's all Peter's fault.”

Serena laid down the awl. “Danny, what makes you say that?”

He looked at her uncertainly. “Do you like Peter?”

Serena avoided his eyes. “Actually, Danny, I don't know Peter very well. I met him last summer when he came here as a dude. Then he and Julie fell in love and were married in the fall.”

“You hung around with him a lot last summer.”

Childish eyes see so much.

Serena stared down at the halter, picked up the awl, and began to turn it against the leather strap. “Yes, I suppose that's true. Still, I don't feel like I know him very well.” And that, she thought, was a fair enough statement.

“He doesn't want you to stay at Castle Rock.”

“How do you know that?” Serena asked sharply.

“I heard him tell Julie to get rid of you. It was the night before she told you to get out of your room.”

Danny put it simply with a kind of brutal clarity. That was exactly what Julie had told her.

“Peter wanted me gone?”

Danny nodded. “He was talking to Julie under the magnolia tree. I was up pretty high and they didn't see me but I could hear them. He said . . .” Danny paused, and then his voice took on a deeper crisp tone, and Serena knew he was remembering Peter's very words, “‘We need to get rid of Serena. Then we can have the ranch to ourselves.'”

“I see.”

“Serena, what about me?” Danny's voice was suddenly young and thin and vulnerable again. “What were they going to do with me?”

“Oh Danny, you don't need to worry. You don't ever need to worry. If I left, Julie and Peter would take care of you. The ranch belongs to you. You don't ever have to worry about your place at Castle Rock.”

Danny's lower lip jutted out. “I don't want to stay with Peter and Julie. I don't like Peter.”

This wouldn't do. Julie was Danny's cousin and Peter was his cousin's husband. Serena managed a laugh. “Hey Danny, simmer down. You're borrowing trouble. Don't you remember how your Granddad always told us not to borrow trouble. Well, that's pretty good advice. Now, I can tell you've been sitting around with too much time to think and not enough good things to think about. And I'm up to my ears in work and need a deputy, so you are going to be my man. Seriously, Danny,” and she suddenly spoke as one adult to another, “I need your help with the Fourth rodeo. I want you to talk to Joe and tell him we need to bring in a bunch of wild horses. Why don't you organize that round-up, and I'll get in to Santa Fe to see about the fireworks and the prizes.”

After Danny left in high excitement to search for Joe Walkingstick, Serena stared thoughtfully out the door.

Peter wanted her off the ranch. Obviously Julie did what Peter wanted. That shouldn't surprise her, but somehow it did.

Why should Peter and Julie want to stay at Castle Rock? All Julie talked about was Cannes and St. Moritz and Acapulco. Peter had certainly never shown any great interest in the ranch. He did ride out fairly often, but he never asked about the herds or water or the outlook for beef prices.

It didn't make sense.

Especially not the fact that Peter wanted Serena off the ranch. Why? Did he want to take over the management? But that would just be a lot of hard work, and it wouldn't be possible to cheat Danny because the lawyer for the estate would keep a careful accounting of all monies. Besides, Peter and Julie apparently had a great deal of money because Peter didn't have to work.

Personal dislike? Somehow, Serena doubted it. She had never, she thought with grim honesty, affected Peter that powerfully, one way or the other.

But the fact that Peter was behind Julie's effort to rid the ranch of Serena seemed just another indication that nothing was normal at Castle Rock this summer.

Serena twisted the awl, making the final hole in the strap, then she lifted her head and listened. Hurrying, she hung up the repaired bridle and went to the door of the tack room.

The two professors, hot, dusty, and weary, were coming down the path, carrying their saddles. They smiled when they saw Serena. She smiled in return and held the door for them.

“It looks like you've had a hard ride.”

“Hot out there this afternoon,” Morris replied, his round face flushed and sweaty.

“Oh, did you ride out into the flats?”

Morris was swinging his saddle upon its hook. He paused and looked at VanZandt before answering, and Serena knew what flashed through both their minds. It wouldn't be hot riding the trails up into the mountains, but hardly anyone would pick a blazing afternoon to ride out into the scrub country.

“I suppose we're just out of shape,” VanZandt interposed smoothly. “Actually, we usually go up toward Lynx Lake, but it can take it out of old duffers like us.”

They didn't look like old duffers. They looked fit, tanned, and hardy.

“It's nice,” Serena observed mildly, “that you are able to take time away from your book and get out to ride.”

Morris looked at her sharply, but her face was bland and pleasant.

“I wish we could concentrate on the scenery,” Morris responded, “but we are really just a mobile work room. We do revisions as we ride.”

Serena just looked at him. She was, she thought irritably, not that damned dumb. Nobody, short of Einstein, could revise a physics text verbally. “Are you almost finished?”

“Oh no,” Morris said hastily, “we have a lot left to do.”

“It's really very exciting,” Serena said eagerly. “I would so much like to see some of the text.” She paused. “I enjoyed physics so much when I was in school.” Put that in your pipe, she thought with a spurt of pleasure.

There was a blank silence for a moment, then VanZandt said cheerfully, “We would love to show it off, but, unfortunately, there's a clause in our contract prohibiting us from showing it to anyone but the publisher. I suppose they're trying to make sure that we don't let portions get pirated.”