Montana (15 page)

The motel had its own newspaper box. Lola stepped outside and fed it two quarters and extracted the day’s flimsy offering. Mary Alice was still front page news, although the
Express
had gone with a different photo for its most recent story. In it, Mary Alice was in working mode at what the caption told Lola was a powwow, her head bent over a notebook, interviewing Wilson. He wore a warbonnet, its feathers standing up straight around his head like a crown, at odds with his clunky glasses, their frames thick and black as the headline above the photo: “Questions Remain in Reporter’s Death.”

“Here we are sitting on our butts with no answers,” Lola said to Bub, who deigned to return to the room only when she shook a generous amount of kibble onto a page of the newspaper. “Mary Alice would not be happy with us. Not one bit.” The dog crunched at his breakfast with one anxious eye on the door. Lola used up the rest of the soap on her hands. She wrote an apologetic note to the housekeeping staff, laid a ten dollar bill atop the television, rolled up her sleeping bag and stuffed it, along with her toiletries and sleeping pills, into her duffel and bundled Bub into the car. They headed through the softening darkness to the convenience store where a neon sign blinked its red and yellow greeting. “Open. Open. Open.” Jolee stood motionless behind the register. Lola wondered when the woman slept.

“Figured you’d show up here again eventually,” Jolee said by way of greeting. “Saw you at the funeral with Verle, but couldn’t get through the crowd in time to pay my respects.”

“I wasn’t
with
Verle at the funeral. Is this coffee fresh?” She selected the largest cup and poured without waiting for an answer, then paced the store, gulping coffee with each step, returning occasionally with an armful of dimly remembered implements that she deposited on the counter before attacking the next aisle. Floor cleaner. Sponges. Bleach. Rubber gloves. Trash bags. Detergent. Soap. She ran a hand through her hair, and grabbed a bottle of shampoo, then looked for scissors. The store had only the kind for school kids, too small for her hands, with blunt, rounded edges. She took them anyway.

She turned to the food section. What did people put in their refrigerators? She hadn’t had a refrigerator in years, hadn’t cooked for herself in longer than that. Milk seemed like a start. Bread. Peanut butter. Jelly. Cereal. Ramen noodles. Student food, the kind requiring as little thought as possible. She got the biggest can of coffee the store offered and started to walk away, and returned for a second can. Through the window, she saw Bub in frantic motion inside the car, leaping from back seat to front and then back again. She went back into the aisles. Dog food. A box of bone-shaped biscuits. On the way to the register, she passed a small selection of wine. The stuff in the bottles looked pink and poisonous, nothing like the elixir with which Verle had plied her. But alcohol might make her food choices more palatable. She tucked a bottle under each arm, then picked up the dog food and treats and sat it all beside the heap at the cash register. Jolee’s hand hovered over the keys.

“That gonna hold you?”

Lola ignored the sarcasm. She pointed to a display of what appeared to be small fire extinguishers next to the cash register. A cub-size cardboard grizzly bear loomed above them. “What are those?” she asked.

“Bear spray. A grizzly bear tries to eat you, you squirt this stuff in the air. Wind blows the wrong way, well, the bear has himself a nice spicy meal.”

Lola moved a can from the top of the display to the top of her pile. “Now I’m done,” she said.

Jolee’s hand remained suspended in air. “You know you could get this stuff for half what you’re paying if you went to the grocery. They open at six.”

“I want it now.”

“Suits me. Seeing as you’re my biggest sale all month, I won’t charge you for the refills.” The register began a series of steady beeps.

“What refills?”

“The coffee. You drank the whole pot.” Jolee detached a filmy plastic bag from the metal hooks by the register and began filling it. “Looks like you’re planning on staying awhile. You must of got one of those rooms with a little fridge. That’s handy.”

Lola hadn’t known that some of the rooms at the motel came with refrigerators. “Yes,” she said. “It’s handy.” She reached into her pocket for cash and came out with her panties.

“You’ll want to wash those in Woolite,” said Jolee, her eyebrows in frantic motion. “Want me to add it on?”

“Never mind,” Lola muttered, and located her cash. She strung the bags along each arm, bumped the store door open with her hip, and loaded everything into the car’s back seat. She retrieved the box of dog treats and pried open the lid, Bub’s tail a blur. She turned the car onto the main drag, and gunned it out of town, the sky pinking prettily to the east, mountains still a black curtain to the west as she barreled straight at them, ignoring the speed limit signs, heading toward Mary Alice’s.

T
HE SUN
was reduced to alpenglow by the time Lola peeled the rubber gloves from her hands. They smelled of bleach and spoiled milk. She’d stacked a dozen trash bags out on the porch, full of the sharp puzzle pieces of broken china, fruit going malleable and foul, and the bruised and shredded remains of what Lola guessed had been a welcoming bouquet of late-blooming lilacs. She righted a living room chair. A softball, its surface blindingly bright, thudded to the floor and rolled away. Lola thought about Mary Alice buying the ball, waiting to surprise her by suggesting they toss it around, persisting despite Lola’s longstanding derision for her friend’s inability to catch. Or throw, or hit. Lola held the ball in her hand and pressed her fingertips against the stitches and reminded herself that she didn’t cry. Not given the fact that she’d just allowed herself to enjoy a night with Verle while Mary Alice’s killer mocked her with another day of freedom.

The damage to the cabin wasn’t as bad as she’d feared. The sofa cushions were upended, but not gutted; likewise with the mattress. And despite the mess on the floor, the contents of several cabinets remained undisturbed. Lola explored everything as she cleaned, hoping to find Mary Alice’s flash drives. She went through each and every one of the files that had been dumped from the cabinet beside Mary Alice’s desk; probed the inner pockets in long-unworn blazers, slid her fingers into the toes of balled-together socks and between the lining and the leather skin of handbags. She picked up the books from the floor and flipped through them one by one, then ran her hands across the tops of the bookcases. She poked around behind the fridge and along the bottoms of drawers for the telltale slickness of duct tape, walked the floors in search of a loose board. She emptied a bag of rice and another of cornmeal into bowls and sifted the contents through her fingers. She shook out the folded sheets and towels in the linen closet, even removed Bub’s collar and turned it in her hands, wondering if maybe a hiding place had been stitched into it. Nothing.

She went back into the bathroom with the schoolroom scissors she’d bought and sat the trash can in the sink. Standing in front of the mirror, she pulled hanks of hair straight and snipped off anything past three fingers laid against her scalp. Longer, and her hair corkscrewed into unmanageable curls, utterly impractical. She put the trash can back on the floor and wiped stray clippings from the sink with toilet paper. She unhooked a waterproof radio from its spot on the shower head and brought it into the kitchen, seeking distraction to still her buzzing thoughts. But nothing happened when she twisted the knobs. She made a mental note to buy batteries the next time she went to town.

What if Mary Alice’s killer hadn’t been looking for anything all, she thought as she dragged a mop across the floor, leaving inexpert streaks. Verle’s theory of vagrants or kids, the sorts of people who might have trashed the cabin just for the hell of it, seemed more and more likely. Except for the note, she reminded herself. And the phone call. Impossible to shake the sense that the mess in the cabin was just a diversion. The mop’s movements slowed. Bub rushed in from somewhere and marked up the floor with paw prints and ran out again. Lola shook the mop after him. “Don’t you ever get tired?” she called. The dog that had seemed so friendly initially now challenged her at every turn, dancing away when she tried to pet him, stealing the sponges and towels as she cleaned. She heard a thump from the living room and turned just in time to see the dog disappearing into the bedroom with the softball in his mouth.

“Put that down!” She brandished the mop at him as he emerged from the bedroom at a full run, whipping past her in palpable triumph. Lola looked around the kitchen for something that wouldn’t do too much damage and grabbed a packet of ramen noodles and hurled them his way on his next victory lap. The cellophane-wrapped square caught him in the face, startling him into dropping the ball. He pivoted and dove for it, but Lola already had it safely in her hand, holding it high as he flung himself against her, barking his frustration. She pulled a chair up to the refrigerator and climbed onto it, kicking at the dog to keep him from joining her there.

“You’re persistent,” she told him as she opened the cabinet above the refrigerator. “Which is the nicest way possible of saying you’re a royal pain.” Apparently the killer had overlooked the cabinet—she’d found a bottle of Jameson’s in there, no doubt awaiting the traditional wee drop upon her arrival—and it seemed a safe enough place to stash the softball. She slid her hands around the cabinet’s interior as she had done before, hoping maybe she’d missed the flash drives on her first foray. But she felt nothing more than the bottle and the same stack of papers that had been there before. She’d glanced through them quickly. Bills, all with Mary Alice’s handwritten notations as to the dates she paid them. She put the ball on top of them and started to climb down. Then she stopped. She’d been working all day. Maybe a wee drop was in order. She grabbed the bottle and, for good measure, the papers, and sat them on the table as she poured a spoonful of whiskey into a china teacup, the sole surviving piece of Mary Alice’s grandmother’s collection. The dog fell at her feet with a dramatic groan. A ploy for a treat, Lola thought.

“Not a chance,” she told him. “You’ve done nothing today but get in my way.” She settled herself at the table, took a sip from the cup and gave the papers a more thorough examination. Maybe Mary Alice had debts she didn’t know about. The whiskey warmed her in an entirely different way from the previous night’s wine, no low seductive embers but an instant flare. A single card about the size of a paperback cover slipped from the stack of envelopes in her hand. Lola whooped and jumped to her feet. The chair fell over. The dog scrambled to safety.

She called him back. “Look at this,” she commanded, waving the card in his face. “Just look. I don’t know what it means yet, but it’s something.” The dog hovered warily in the doorway. “This calls for a celebration.” She held the bottle above the teacup, heedless of the lengthy gurgle. She drank and coughed and drank again. She screwed the cap back on the bottle and replaced it in the high cupboard. She braced her back against the cabinets and slid down onto a tile floor still warm from the day’s sunshine and studied the campaign postcard.

“Changing the color of politics in Montana,” it proclaimed. “Working in harmony with farmers and ranchers and developers, too. . . . Responsible development means more jobs for Montanans.” It never mentioned a candidate by name. It didn’t have to. Lola had just heard Johnny Running Wolf utter some of those same words at the pancake breakfast.

She turned it over. There was a phone number on the back, written in Mary Alice’s large, looping hand. She didn’t recognize the 403 area code, but so many strange new codes had proliferated in her years overseas that she no longer could match the numbers with their locations. Earlier in the day, she had thrilled to the miracle of a dial tone after she’d reassembled Mary Alice’s landline. She looked at the clock—nearly ten—and tried to fashion an excuse for calling Johnny Running Wolf so late at night. But the phone went to voicemail on the fourth ring. She’d expected Johnny’s hearty delivery but instead heard a wholly unfamiliar voice, at once drawling and curt.

“Gallagher. Leave a message.”

Lola couldn’t remember being introduced to anyone with that name in Magpie. She answered the message in kind. “Lola Wicks. Call me.” She read the number from Mary Alice’s phone into the receiver and hung up.

She called Bub and opened the door to let him out one last time before he went to sleep. The horse whickered, a comforting sound in the near-dark. Lola looked around the kitchen, searching for an apple she knew wasn’t there. She hadn’t bought a single piece of fruit at the convenience store. Verle had fed his horses sugar packets. She opened and closed the cupboard doors until she found a cookie sheet, then poured onto it what little of the sugar remained in Mary Alice’s canister. She carried the tray across the yard to the corral. The horse’s pale rump caught the moonlight. Lola put the cookie sheet on the ground and pushed it beneath the fence with her foot and moved quickly back. The horse shied away from the unfamiliar object, then approached it in tentative steps and pauses. His nostrils flared. He bent his head to the tray, rolling his eyes once toward Lola before giving himself fully to the task at hand. Lola found it oddly reassuring that he appeared as wary of her as she was of him. “Tomorrow,” she promised him, “we’ll start to get to know each other.”