Montana (31 page)

“Don’t know. He just took off in some sort of snit. But don’t worry. I’ve already got it started. Eggs over easy. Toast no butter, bacon and hash browns burnt unto crispy.”

Lola turned her plate and carved away at the bun from another angle. “Something’s been worrying me. What if they catch him in Canada?”

He hooked his fork in the remainder of the bun. “What if they do?”

“Canada doesn’t have the death penalty. They don’t like extraditing people in murder cases. How are you going to get him here to try him for killing Mary Alice?”

He slid the plate to one side to make room for the breakfast Nell sat before him. “For one thing, we don’t have a murder case yet. We either need to catch Johnny and get him to fess up, or get hold of one of his partners and sweat it out of him. He had to have help. But I’m not worried about getting him back to Magpie.”

“How’s that?”

“The heroin. One thing I’ve found out, talking to the other sheriffs, is that it’s been popping up all over Montana, mainly along the I-90 corridor—Missoula, Bozeman, Billings—and then down onto I-25 through Wyoming to Denver. Same old routes meth took. But you can make a lot more money off heroin than meth. Canada would be happy to send him back here on a drug charge and let us pay the costs of prosecuting him. Once we get him here, we can start working on the Mary Alice piece of things. It could take some time before we track down both him and his partners and get this whole thing nailed down. You need to prepare yourself for that.”

A hay truck filled the cafe window, churning up dust that rose and blended with the smoke. The lettering on the cab—Two Medicine Ranch—reminded Lola of something else. She pushed his hand away from his plate.

“Pay attention. I know where to look. Two Medicine.”

“The river?”

“The campaign. Not the campaign itself, but the interest group. TMResources. I always figured the TM stood for Two Medicine. Remember Mary Alice’s note?
Camping on the Two Medicine.
There was no reason for her to be that specific. If you can find out who’s behind the group, I’ll bet that’ll lead you to his partners. I’ve already checked it, but those groups don’t have to list their donors. When you think about it, they’re great vehicles for laundering a lot of cash. You’re an officer of the law, though. You can probably get the names. Start there.”

“Good idea.” He looked at his watch. “When are you out of here?”

“I’m on the five-thirty flight.”

“What are you going to do with the rest of your day?”

“I’ve got a couple of things left to do at the cabin. Speaking of tying up loose ends—” She handed him a document. “It’s a bill of sale. For the horse. Mary Alice’s parents gave me power of attorney. So if you give me a dollar and sign here, that horse is yours.” She’d fill in some zeroes behind the $1 on the copy she’d send to Mary Alice’s parents, withdrawing a thousand dollars from her fast-dwindling savings account, and mail the money along with the document. To Charlie, she said, “I figure now we’re even, after that knock on the head I gave you.”

He borrowed a pen from Nell and scrawled his name. “It’s going to take me months to get that horse back to the condition Mary Alice had him in. That is, if you haven’t ruined him completely.” Grinning down at the tabletop like a ten-year-old boy.

The dog was going to live with Jolee. “What with all the goings-on around here lately, looks like a watchdog would be in order,” she’d scowled when Lola offered. “Aw, honey,” she said a moment later. “He’s just a dog.”

Lola had already delivered Mary Alice’s kitchen table to Jan.

“Shouldn’t you have this?” Jan had asked.

“I travel light. It won’t fit in the overhead bin.” Lola found herself talking to the top of Jan’s head as the younger woman surprised her with a quick hug. Even as Lola’s arms rose to return it, Jan ducked away.

“I still think you’re a bitch.”

Lola grinned. “Look who’s talking.”

When Lola had finally sold her paper on the story, Jan had insisted on an agreement that it would run the same day in the
Express.
“With my name on top of that one.”

“Fair enough,” Lola agreed. She’d even turned down the paltry freelance fee offered by the
Express
in exchange for free real estate ads for Mary Alice’s place, one less thing for Mary Alice’s parents to worry about. She folded back the newspaper to the classifieds and showed it to Charlie, a handsome display with a large photo of the cabin, Bub striking an uncharacteristically well-behaved pose on the porch.

“I’ll bet her parents would rent it to you,” Charlie suggested. “The
Express
has been down a writer ever since it lost Mary Alice. You could stay. I say this knowing it’s to my detriment. If you stuck around I’d probably have to hire a deputy just to handle all the extra crime you seem to attract.” He paid close attention to his plate as he spoke, polishing its already spotless surface with the final piece of toast.

Lola thought of how she’d inadvertently insulted his Indian-ness during that first interview. The wine bottle smashed against his head. The damage to his office. Not to mention the stolen cribbage peg. She decided not to call Charlie’s attention to the utter faux pas of suggesting that someone with her experience would consider even for a second the possibility of working in a suburban newspaper bureau in Baltimore, let alone in a backwater like Magpie. She simply said nothing at all, and they finished their first and only meal together in a silence that left her feeling small and ashamed.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

S
pot was at the corral gate, working at the latch with his teeth, when Lola drove into the clearing.

At the sight of the car, he trotted to the far side of the corral and affected not to notice her. He whinnied, as though just realizing she’d arrived, when the car’s automatic lock sounded its beep. “Just you wait,” Lola called to him. “Your life of leisure is about to come to an end. And I know for a fact Charlie’s stopping by the hardware store to get a new latch for his corral.”

She reminded herself how much easier things would be when she no longer had to worry about feeding, cleaning, exercising and otherwise spending surprising amounts of time on two creatures whose sole purpose appeared to be to undermine her sanity. Bub chose that moment to lean against her. She worked her fingers along his spine. He arched his back and groaned. “It’ll be so much better with Jolee,” she told him. She wondered if he believed it any more than she did.

L
OLA SAVED
the coffeepot and the telephone for last. She wrapped the glass pot in layers of old
Express
es and sat it in the bottom of a cardboard box. She squeezed the phone jack and pulled it from its wall connector. Then thought about how Verle had chided her for slipping from his bed without saying goodbye. He was from a generation that set store by formalities. He’d been kind to her, and then some. A call seemed the least she could do. She plugged the phone back in and dialed. One of Verle’s workers—Carlos? Eduardo? She couldn’t keep them all straight—sounded rushed, impatient. “You wait,” he said. She heard heavy sliding sounds, as though things were being dragged across a floor. Verle picked up. “Verle here.”

“It’s Lola. What’d you buy this time? Another sofa?” she teased.

“Hold on.” He must have covered the receiver with his hand because his next words were muffled, indistinct.
“Silencio! Hey, hey. Cuidado con eso.”
The noises ceased. “Lola. I wasn’t expecting your call. Looked for you last night. Thought maybe you’d stop by. I wanted your opinion on a new desk. It’s supposed to have sat in Wyatt Earp’s office, maybe even while he was there, although I doubt that. Either way, it’s a beautiful thing. Maybe you’ll come see it tonight?”

Lola squeezed the phone against her neck and fitted the rest of the coffeemaker into the box as she spoke. She glossed quickly over the fact that she wouldn’t be stopping by—“I’ve got to be out of the cabin in a couple of hours to make my plane. Maybe sooner, depending on how bad the smoke is”—and got quickly to the why. “Charlie’s pretty sure they’ll pick him up within the next few days. He’s going to keep me updated. I’m hoping he’s in custody by the time I get to Kabul.”

“Well, now. Charlie got his man after all. That is a surprising thing. Sounds like he couldn’t have done it without you. Congratulations.”

“It’s a bit of a problem, actually,” Lola admitted. “If there’s a trial, I’ll have to come back and testify. I’m his main witness. But that shouldn’t be for months and months. He says that’ll give him time to hit up the state for plane fare to get me back here.”

Verle’s voice brightened considerably. “But you’ll be back. Lola, you just made my day. You travel safely now. Until next time.”

Lola unplugged the phone with a bit of a flourish, twirling the cord lasso-like before winding it around the phone and putting all of it into the box with the coffeemaker. She crumpled some more newspapers around everything and folded down the flaps on the box and drew a tape gun across them with a ragged tearing sound and then dropped the gun to the floor. Bub promptly retrieved it. “Thanks,” said Lola, “but I’m done with that.” She picked up a marker and printed Mary Alice’s parents’ name and address on a label in large block letters, then peeled the protective paper from the adhesive and smoothed the label onto the box. She lifted the box, gauging its weight, and wished she’d accepted Mary Alice’s parents’ offer to reimburse her for shipping costs.

The wind sideswiped her as she stepped off the porch and sent her staggering. She caught her balance and looked up the hill into a swirling wall of smoke. The fire was within two miles of the cabin, according to Charlie. “Any closer and I’d be issuing an evacuation order,” he’d said. Lola sat the box on the porch with the others that Charlie had promised to pick up when he came for Spot, and went back into the bedroom. Her remaining cash lay in neat stacks atop the bare mattress, along with the note from Mary Alice. Charlie had made her a copy.

Camping on the Two Medicine.

She ran her fingers over the words. “You did it, Mary Alice,” she whispered. “You led us to him. He’s not going to get away with it.”

She went back to the kitchen and opened the cupboard before remembering that she’d packed all the glasses. She drank directly from the faucet. The grizzly bear fetish she’d pinched from Verle’s house stood on the counter. Twice, she’d tossed the bear into the trash, along with the paperweight and the cribbage peg, thinking it was time to end a pointless habit. But twice, she’d beheld the bear’s turquoise stare from the depths of the can and retrieved it. Now, she picked it up and put it in her pocket. Its weight dragged at the fabric.

She walked through the cabin for a final check, trailing her hands along the peeled logs, so much warmer and more welcoming than the rough whitewashed surfaces of the Kabul house that had never, as long as she’d lived there, seemed like adequate protection against the turmoil just beyond the high, double-barred courtyard gate. In just a short time, the cabin had come to feel more like home than the Kabul house ever had. “Go figure,” she said to Bub, who’d returned to her side. She wondered yet again how long it would take her to stop looking around for him once she was back in Kabul. “You’re just a dog,” she reminded him.

She went into the bathroom and opened the medicine cabinet to ensure that it was, indeed, empty. She closed it and examined her reflection in the mirror, willing away the twin vertical lines beginning to segment her face between mouth and chin, their horizontal counterparts running in triplicate across her forehead. She tugged at her hair. Maybe it was time to let it grow out, brush disguising curls across her brow in what Mary Alice used to call the poor woman’s facelift. She turned to go, and saw the radio hanging from the shower head. She never had gotten around to buying batteries for it, and she’d forgotten to box it with the rest of Mary Alice’s things.

“Too late,” she told Bub. She picked it up and lobbed it underhand through the door toward the trash can. He leapt for it as she threw, messing with her aim. The radio bounced off the lip of the can and slammed against the floor, the impact popping apart its hard plastic shell.

“Hell,” said Lola.

She crossed the living room to pick it up. In the next moment, she was on the floor, the radio still in pieces around her, staring at the objects in her palm. They must have been in the radio the whole time, wedged into the battery compartment—Mary Alice’s flash drives.