Skeleton Canyon (28 page)

As soon as Sheriff Brady stopped long enough to think about it, she had to agree.

“I guess I’d better go on over to the ranch and have a chat with Mr. Hastings,” Ernie said a moment later.

“Alone? Where’s Detective Carbajal?”

“He left a few minutes ago. I had him take Nacio back over to the hospital. He was here with us when we found the pearl. I had planned to take him out to the Peloncillos this afternoon and have him show us where he and Brianna usually camped. Considering yesterday’s storm, there’s probably not much to find, but I wanted to give it a try. The problem is, as soon as he saw the pearl, the guy fell to pieces. He even blacked out for a while. It may have just been the heat, but with his ribs the way they are, I didn’t want to take any chances. I told Jaime to take him over to the hospital and to stay with him there. If he comes around later on, Jaime will take his statement.”

“If Detective Carbajal’s not there with you,” Joanna said, “who’s going to be your backup when you go see A l l Hastings?”

“I’ll call in and have Dispatch send me out a deputy,” Ernie replied.

“No,” Joanna said, standing up and reaching for her purse. “Don’t do that. I can be there in ten minutes flat. Alf Hastings is a worm. There’s nothing that’ll give me greater pleasure than seeing his face when he realizes we’ve dug him out of the dirt.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to fix it?” Angie Kellogg’s lower lip trembled as she asked the question. Hurt by Dennis Hacker’s derisive laughter, Angie had come back to Bisbee intent on simply packing up and leaving town. That plan had been derailed twice over. For one thing, Angie’s Omega had been washed down Brewery Gulch, drowned and smashed almost beyond recognition. But that misfortune had brought into focus the other thing that made the thought of leaving town almost impossible. For the first time in her life Angie Kellogg had friends, real friends—Jeff Daniels and Marianne Maculyea, for example.

Al the moment, Jeff—with the twin girls strapped into car seats in the backseat of the VW—was giving Angie a ride to work after viewing the crushed remains of the Omega in the fenced backyard of Jeff’s new business venture, Jeff’s Auto Rehab.

For years Jeff Daniels had played the role of stay-at-home spouse, backstopping his minister wife’s career. Their recent adoption of twins, Ruth and Esther, had thrown a severe financial wrench into the works, especially in view of the fact limit Esther had a heart condition that would eventually require surgical correction.

With money perpetually tight, Jeff had always kept the family’s two aging vehicles—a ‘63 VW and an even older International—in pristine driving condition. Over time, his reputation for taking meticulous care in restoring vintage automobiles had spread. Working more as a hobbyist than anything else, he had restored several antique autos. The twins’ arrival from China, complicated by Esther’s ongoing medical difficulties, hail brought home the necessity for Jeff Daniels to give up his house-husband status and look for work outside the home. Torn between the need for an additional paycheck and the difficulty of finding and paying for child care, Jeff had opted for opening a business of his own.

Within days of making that decision, the opportunity to rent a defunct gas station had fallen into his lap. Its location, hall a mile up Tombstone Canyon from the parsonage, was ideal, and the bargain basement rent had seemed an answer to a prayer.

Jeff had begun the process by remodeling the office area into a combination nursery/playroom for the girls. Only then had he turned his hand toward the actual work space. Now, several months later, having found a number of clients with, as Jeff said, more money than sense, he was hard at work restoring several old cars, including a venerable Reo that belonged to a retired three-star general from Fort Huachuca.

Angie Kellogg’s battered Omega had been towed to the fenced lot behind Jeff’s garage, where it was parked next to the ‘52 DeSoto that was scheduled for Jeff’s ministrations once he finished work on the Reo.

^“
Yes, we will,” Jeff told Angie reassuringly. “I’ve already made a list of the parts we’ll need. If we’re lucky, I’ll be able to find most of them in wrecking yards up in Tucson or Phoenix. Once we get the parts assembled, it’s just a matter of putting the pieces together, priming, and painting.”

“Will it be very expensive?” Angie had already discovered the sad reality that the physical damage to her vehicle wasn’t going to be covered by her insurance policy.

“If you’re worried about how much it’s going to cost,” Jeff said, “you could always come help me and do some of the work yourself.”

“Me?” Angie asked in surprise. “Work on a car?” “Why not?”

“I never have. I don’t know anything about it.”

“You can learn. It doesn’t take a genius to do priming and painting. Besides, as I recall, you didn’t know all that much about bartending when Bobo Jenkins hired you to work at the Blue Moon.,’

“No,” Angie agreed after a moment’s consideration. “I guess I didn’t,”

“Speaking of which,” Jeff said, pulling up in front of the Blue Moon, “here we are. Right on time, too. Now, do you want either Marianne or me to come get you when your  shift ends?”

“No, thanks,” Angie said. “I’ll be off early tonight. I can walk hack up the canyon to your place. It’s not that far. And it’s a whole lot less than the four miles out to Galena.”

“Well, okay,” Jeff said reluctantly. “But if you change your mind, the offer still stands.”

Angie’s eyes filled with tears. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You already did,” Jeff said.

As Angie moved to open her door, a howl of protest erupted from the backseat. “Me go, too! Me go, too,” Ruth screeched, holding out her pudgy little arms, begging to be picked up anal Liken along. Angie Kellogg was Ruth Maculyea-Daniels’s all-time favorite baby-sitter. Angie’s leaving always provoked a noisy squawk of objection.

Angie leaned into the backseat and blew the girls a pair of kisses. “You can’t come, Ruth,” she said. “Not right now. I have to go to work. I’ll see you tonight.”

“Read me a story?”

“Right,” Angie said with her first smile of the day. “When I get there, I’ll read you a story.”

As she opened the door to the Blue Moon, she heard the phone ring. Behind the bar, Bobo Jenkins looked at his watch.

“It’s for you,” he said without bothering to pick up the receiver. “It’s a good thing you’re on time. This guy’s been driving me crazy all morning.”

“What guy?” Angie asked.

“You tell me,” Bobo replied. “Just answer the phone.”

“Angie?”

Dennis Hacker’s clipped English accent was instantly recognizable. “Angie,” he repeated. “Are you all right? I’ve been worried sick. I’ve been dialing your home number all night and all morning, too. Where have you been?”

Angie’s initial pleasure at hearing his voice turned almost immediately to anger as she remembered his hurtful laughter once again. “I can’t talk right now,” she said. “It’s time for my shift to start.”

“But first you have to let me explain,” Dennis said. “You must let me tell you what it was that set me to laughing.”

“There’s nothing to explain,” Angie returned coldly.

“But there is. It’s because of my great-grandmother, you see. I wanted to tell you about her in person, but I’m meeting with members of the Peloncillo Ranchers’ Association later on this afternoon. It’s taken weeks to put the meeting together, so I can’t leave for Bisbee until it’s over—sometime between four and five. What time do you get off work?”

“I don’t see what your great-grandmother has to do with me—” Angie began her objection with every intention of hanging up, but Dennis Hacker didn’t let her.

“Wait, please,” he interrupted. “You don’t understand, Angie. Great-grandmother Hacker has everything to do with you. That’s what’s so funny. She was a working girl, too. From Nome. If it hadn’t been for her kindness, my great-grandfather would have died during the winter of 1898. He was terribly sick with pneumonia, so sick that he let the fire go out in his cabin. That’s when the frostbite got him and he lost all those toes. For some reason, Caroline took pity on him. She nursed him back to health as much as possible. Eventually, his father relented and brought him back home to England to finish his recovery. As soon as he was well, he sent for her, brought Caroline to England, and married her.

“She was a runaway—a jilted bride from a good San Francisco family who had turned to prostitution as an alternative to going back home. Her upbringing in the States was such that no one in England ever knew about her real background, except for my grandmother, who still has the letters the two of them wrote back and forth.

“I just found out about all this a few weeks ago when I went home because my grandmother was so sick. She had me take the letters out of her strongbox and let me read them. I’m sure she thought she was dying and if she didn’t tell me then, she wouldn’t have another chance.”

Angie was listening, trying to make sense of the words while Dennis Hacker hurried on. “The letters probably ought to be in a museum somewhere, but I have them with me. I want to show them to you. Can I come see you tonight? After you get off work?”

“I don
^’
t know,” Angie said dubiously. “Really, I ...”

“Listen, Angie. What I’m trying to tell you is that if a working girl from Nome was the apple of my great-granddad’s eye, then you’re good enough for me. Much too good, most likely. End of story.”

Blushing furiously, Angie looked up and down the bar. Everyone in the room was staring at her. The place was deathly quiet as all the weekday morning regulars waited to see what would happen.

“You don’t mean that,” Angie objected. “You barely know me.”

“Just try me,” Dennis Hacker returned. “I think you’ll be surprised.”

“I’ve got to hang up now,” Angie said.

“Can I see you tonight? We’ll have dinner together. We can talk.”

“I don’t think so,” Angie said.

“Can I call you, then, after the meeting? I don’t know what time I’ll get away from there, but maybe you’ll change your mind by then and agree to see me.”

“I’ll be working,” she objected. “It’ll probably be busy.”

“I won’t take long,” Dennis pleaded. “I promise. Now tell me what time you get off so I don’t miss you.”

Taking a deep breath, Angie relented. “Six,” she said.

“Good. I’ll be sure to call before then.”

Angie put down the phone. At the far end of the bar, Archie

McBride and Willy Haskins exchanged knowing smirks. Archie McBride shook his grizzled head and raised his nearly empty glass. “Damn those Boy Scouts anyway!” he said.

Mrs. Vorevkin led Ernie and Joanna through the house and showed them into a darkened study. David O’Brien was seated at a desk with only a single small reading lamp lighting the curtain-shrouded room.

“Why are you bringing them in here?” he demanded irritably of his housekeeper. “I thought I told you all inquiries were lo he directed to Katherine.”

“Mrs. O’Brien isn’t here right now,” Olga said. “She had to go uptown to the mortuary, remember?”

“Oh, all right,” O’Brien responded. “Come on in, then. What is it you want?
^”

Maybe it was only a trick of the dimmed lights, but the man hunched behind the desk seemed far less formidable than the arrogant swimmer Joanna had met on Saturday. Events in the two intervening days had taken their toll. By late Monday morning, all of David O’Brien’s seventy-odd years showed in the sun-etched lines of his craggy face. Even his peevish verbal response to Mrs. Vorevkin lacked some of his previous stridency.

“We asked to speak directly with you,” Joanna put in.

“I suppose it’s just as well you’re here.” O’Brien sighed. “I uniderstand there have been deputies out front by the gate most of the morning, Sheriff Brady. What’s going on? Brianna’s been dead for days. Isn’t it a little late for you to come prowling around now?”

“We’re investigating another case,” Joanna said. “An assault. In fact, we’re actually looking for Alf Hastings. We’d like to him some questions about the incident.”

“What incident is that?” O’Brien asked. “And what do you wont with Alf?”

“Has Mr. Hastings told you anything about what happened outside the entrance to your ranch on Saturday night?”

As they spoke, David O’Brien began sounding more and more like his old self—condescension, arrogance, and all. “You mean the one with the wetback he found sneaking around outside the gate? Fending off interlopers who are trying to gain access to my property is Alf’s job. Of course he told me about it. He gave me a full report.”

“Did he tell you this alleged wetback’s name?”

“His name?”

“Ignacio Ybarra.”

At once the fight went back out of David O’Brien. “Him?” he asked hoarsely. “Brianna’s boyfriend?”

Joanna nodded.

“What was he doing here?”

“He claims he was looking for your daughter,” Joanna said, “She wasn’t where he expected to find her. He was worried about her.”

“And I suppose you believe that?” David O’Brien asked.

“Until we hear Mr. Hastings’s version of what went on, I don’t know what to believe,” Joanna told him.

“In any case, you won’t be able to talk to Alf today. He’s out of town. Today’s his day off. He asked for tomorrow off as well. He said he had some pressing business out of town. He left the ranch early this morning. I don’t expect him back before tomorrow night.”

“You don’t know where he was going?”

O’Brien shook his head. “I have no idea. What my employees do on their own time is none of my business.”

“Would his wife know?”

“Maggie? Maybe.”

“Where would we find her?” Joanna asked.

“If she’s home, she’s most likely down in the workers’ compound. First trailer on the right-hand side of the road.”

“We’ll go see her, then,” Joanna said.

“Suit yourself,” O’Brien said with a wave of his hand. Dismissed, Ernie turned and left the room while Joanna hovered in the doorway. Thinking both his visitors had left the room, David O’Brien hunched back over his desk and buried his face in his hands. His shoulders heaved. A strangled sob escaped his lips. Joanna didn’t like the man, but she couldn’t help being moved by such abject despair.