The Crack in the Lens (9 page)

Or, Lottie Gives Us a Lot to Chew on, but It Doesn’t Go Down Easy

Gustav thanked Bob and Lottie for their willingness to help.

I cursed them.

Silently, of course, and with feelings that went so far beyond mixed you could call them scrambled.

Did I want my brother to find Adeline’s killer? Certainly, yes.

Did I want him settling down to
raise goats
? Dear Lord, no.

If this selfishness in any way betrayed itself upon my face, no one seemed to notice. Old Red and his friends just huddled in closer around the ranch house’s rickety table while I rode out a churning in my gut that was only half due to hunger.

“Why come back now?” Bob asked. “After all these years?”

“I’ve picked up a trick or two lately,” Gustav said. “Had a few experiences along the lawman line.”

Usually here he’d evangelize a bit on behalf of his hero. Yet he made no mention of Mr. Holmes—and, what’s more, he shot me a glare that warned against jumping in with any embellishments of my own.

“Before that,” he went on, “it didn’t even occur to me that I
could
do anything about Adeline. Now…well, I still don’t know if I can, but at least I know how to try.”

“You said we’re the last people you can turn to for help,” Lottie said. “Who else have you talked to?”

Old Red’s eyes met mine again, though this time he wasn’t gagging me but whipping the gag off.

“Brother,” he said.

As is his way, he was leaving tale-telling to me. Though it made me feel like a phonograph machine for him to crank up and switch off as he pleased, I obliged.

It took me fifteen minutes to talk it all through: our first run-in with Ragsdale and Bock; Milford Bales’s words of warning; the solitary nugget we were able to mine from Big Bess (that another chippie from the old days, Squirrel Tooth Annie, still worked at the Phoenix); the trap Stonewall and his bosses had sprung on us; the breakfast we’d (unintentionally) bought for Ike Rucker; Suicide’s help getting us to the Lucky Two; and my brother’s inexplicable interest in raising stock animals that smelled like outhouses with mange.

Actually, I kept that last item to myself, more or less, merely concluding with “And then we followed our noses here.”

“It’s too bad it was Big Bess you bumped into instead of Squirrel Tooth,” Lottie said when I was through, her face puckering with disgust. “I could’ve told you that fat bitch was trouble.”

Bob placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder, a gesture that said either a comforting “There, there, dear” or a more reproachful “Your petticoats are showing.”

“Well, you won’t get another shot at Squirrel Tooth now, that’s for sure,” Bob said to Old Red. “You were lucky to get away from the Phoenix once. You set foot within a mile of that place again, Stonewall’ll squash you flat.”

Lottie reached up and patted her husband’s fingers. She looked calm now, her expression smoothed like wrinkled bedsheets flattened by a gliding palm.

Bob took his hand away.

“So,” Lottie said to Gustav, “what do we do?”

“Well, the first step’s easy enough: You talk, I listen. Nobody’s given me any straight answers yet about the night Adeline died. I need you to lay it all out for me. Every detail, best as you can remember.”

Lottie nodded, then took in a couple deep breaths as if preparing for some great exertion. A load to lift, a row to hoe—or something long buried to dig up.

“It was a Tuesday night,” she said. “Slow, like always. You and Bob wouldn’t be back till Saturday with the rest of the Lucky Seven boys, so me and Adeline were bored outta our skulls. Then Gil Bock called Adeline over and sent her upstairs alone, and we all knew what that meant. She was gettin’ dressed for a house call. Sure enough, when she came down again, she was all prettied up proper for a trip to the Star. She gave me a smile and a wave, and she and Stonewall headed out the door. That was the last time I—”

“Hold on,” Old Red said. “Stonewall went with her?”

“Oh, yeah. He always came along when we got sent out. He was our ‘escort.’ Or guard, more like. Made sure no one gave us any trouble…and we didn’t do any business on the sly.” Lottie squirmed in her seat. “Adeline…she…”

“I know,” my brother said brusquely. “Adeline never passed up a chance to turn an extra buck. It was the only way to build up her nest egg. She told me. It didn’t bother me none.”

A quaver in those last words gave the lie to them, but none of us was going to call Gustav on it. Lottie just tried to forge on. She didn’t get far.

“Well, Stonewall did what he could to keep us gals from puttin’ out on the side…unless it was…”

Lottie’s mouth hung open for a moment, as if the words she was trying to say had stolen her breath away.

“Unless it was what?” Gustav prodded her.

“You gotta understand, Gus,” Bob said gently. “We couldn’t tell you before.”

“Couldn’t tell me
what
, dammit?”

“That Stonewall was doin’ Adeline every chance he got!”

The words exploded out of Lottie with a force that hit my brother like a cannonball. He seemed to be thrown against the back of his chair, and as Lottie went on he slumped down limply, pale and silent.

“He made all of us give him freebies, but Adeline…he had a special hankerin’ for her. He didn’t like it when you started hangin’ around, but there was nothing he could do about it. Ragsdale and Bock wouldn’t have tolerated it. You were a steady-payin’ customer, and that was that. Stonewall could take it out on Adeline, though. Scare her, play with her rough, anything he wanted so long as it didn’t leave a mark. Bringin’ pain to that girl got to be like a second job for him, and he worked it hard.”

My brother’s eyes had taken on the glazed, distant quality that so often comes over them when a thought grabs hold. But there was something different about it this time—a blankness, an emptiness. Wheels weren’t turning behind those eyes. They were stuck on one awful thought, bogged down like a chuck wagon in mud.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t
she
tell me?”

“Adeline was afraid for you, Gus—afraid of what Stonewall would do if you two tangled,” Lottie said. “She made me swear not to say a word.”

“But after she was dead—?”

“That would’ve been the worst time to tell you,” Bob said. “You were drinkin’, actin’ crazy right up to the time you left San Marcos. No good would’ve come of it. Just bad.”

“It makes it all so simple,” Old Red said. “It was him. Stonewall. He wanted Adeline’s money or he wanted
her
or both, and she said no. So he killed her.”

Bob shook his head. “I don’t think so, Gus. Lottie and me have talked this through again and again, and it just don’t figure thataway. Stonewall wouldn’t risk crossin’ Ragsdale and Bock, for one thing. They’re bread and butter to him. And if he’d known Adeline had a stash to steal, he could’ve got it without killin’ her. Bullyin’ women’s what he does best.”

“He never bragged on doin’ it, neither,” Lottie said. “And if he
had
done it, you can bet he wouldn’t have been shy about it. The things he used to say to us…”

She wrapped her arms around herself as if to stifle a shiver.

“Well, Stonewall had to say
something
about how Adeline died,” Gustav said. “That night, at least.”

Lottie nodded. “Yeah. He did. Came back about an hour after he and Adeline left and went straight to Ragsdale and Bock. They did some whisperin’ behind the bar, then Stonewall ran out again with Bock at his heels. They were back around dawn, and that’s when they finally told us…after the last customer cleared out. Adeline was dead. She’d slipped around behind the Star, probably to do some off-the-books business, and someone knifed her.”

“They said she was killed
outside
the hotel?” Old Red said. “Not inside? By some out-of-towner guest?”

“That’s right.”

My brother glanced my way.

“Funny Big Bess didn’t remember that,” I said.

“Yeah. Funny.” Gustav turned back to Lottie. “Seems like they swept things up pretty fast after that. By the time I got to town, Adeline was already underground.”

“For good reason,” Lottie said, and her arms coiled even tighter around her sides, as if she was trying to keep something from busting out—a sob or a scream or her breakfast. “Adeline wasn’t just knifed, Gus. She was cut all to pieces. ‘Butchered like a hog,’ that’s how Stonewall put it. They had to clean it up fast, cuz when a person’s done like that—even a whore—it sets folks to talkin’. So Ragsdale and Bock had her boxed up and buried the same day. No service, nothing.”

Lottie’s face hardened, her sadness baked away by a rage still blazing inside her after all these years.

“I saw the blood, though. The next time I had to pay a call at the Star. The stain around back…I don’t know if they ever bothered scrubbin’ it away. Ragsdale and Bock probably didn’t want it gone. It’d make a good warning to the rest of us.”

“My God,” Old Red muttered.

He’d gone so slumpy it looked like he was melting.

“Butchered like a hog,” he said, and he closed his eyes.

“So,” I said softly, carrying on when it became plain my brother couldn’t, “Ragsdale and Bock were able to keep the law out of it?”

Bob shook his head. “They didn’t have to bother. Kaz Cerny, the old town marshal—the one before Milford Bales—he was worse than Ike Rucker. Practically lived at the Golden Eagle. And the county sheriff serves as county coroner, too. So there was an inquest, but Rucker was runnin’ it and Cerny did most of the talkin’. Which wasn’t much. The whole thing didn’t last five minutes. ‘Murdered by party unknown’ and then
whack
—a bang of the gavel and it was off to the Eagle for an afternoon quickie.”

“I had to do Rucker once after that,” Lottie said. “Took all I had in me not to rip the bastard’s balls off and stuff ’em down his throat.”

Bob winced. I fidgeted and looked away. Old Red blinked and sat up straight again as if waking from a dream.

“How long were you at the Eagle after Adeline died?” he asked Lottie.

“A while.”

“I got her outta there quick as I could,” Bob threw in. “Never was as good at pinchin’ pennies as you, but five or six months of scrimpin’, and we was out here with our goats. We ain’t laid eyes on Ragsdale or Bock or any of that ever since.”

My brother nodded slowly. “For that I’m glad,” he said. “So that’s it, then? The whole of what y’all know about Adeline?”

“I wish it was more,” Lottie said.

“Well, there might be other ways y’all can help.” Gustav took a sudden interest in a knot in the tabletop, tracing over it with his forefinger a few times before speaking again. “Could you come up to town tomorrow night? Meet us at the springs around sundown, say?”

Bob turned to Lottie.

“We could maybe get Frank Kurtz to look after the place while—”

“Yes,” Lottie said to Old Red.

“Good.” My brother peered past her at the stove and did his feeble best to brighten. “Now what say we dig into that stew, huh? I’m hungry enough to eat a horse.”

How about a goat?
I almost asked. I managed to restrain myself.

As we ate, Bob lightened the mood with tales of Gustav’s days on the Lucky Seven: his feuds with the foreman, his feats of derring-do (including saving Suicide when he was thrown from a saddled bull), how he came to be called “Gloomy Gus” (guess). There was no mention of San Marcos or the Star or Adeline, though. The very things Old Red was no doubt brooding on anyway.

By the time I was setting aside my spoon and patting my bulging belly (goats tasting a hell of a lot better than they smell), the light streaming in the windows had gone early-evening gray. It was time for us to go, Gustav announced. Despite Bob’s insistence that we stay the night, he couldn’t be swayed—our ponies were due back at the livery that night.

The real reason to go I could see in Old Red’s eyes. The wheels were turning again. Spinning so fast, in fact, his pupils were practically spiraling like pinwheels.

He didn’t say a word as we saddled our horses. Nor did Lottie, who’d come out to the corral with us. When at last we were mounted and ready to ride, she stepped up to Gustav and leaned against his leg, hands on his thigh.

“I’m glad you came back, Gus.”

“I just hope you still feel that way when this is all over.”

Lottie held my brother’s gaze, her body so still it seemed to have roots right down into the ground. “I will.”

Then she let go and stepped back.

Old Red tipped his hat to her, I did the same, and with a final “Good night!” we were off.

We had to move fast to make the most of what light we had left, which meant my brother was spared my many questions and protestations. (I mean, really…
goat ranching
?) When darkness finally fell and we did slow down, all our attention was on keeping to the trail that took us past the Lucky Seven and the other spreads south of town.

We’d been ambling along a good half hour in total silence when Gustav snapped up tall in his saddle, his gaze sweeping the pitch-black woodland to our right. I followed his line of sight and caught a dull gleam in the darkness.

Then the gleam moved, and there was much rustling of brush as something big came toward us out of the thicket.

Something
s
, actually: three mounted men riding abreast.

They were wearing gunnysack masks.

“Stop right there,” one of them said, voice deep and rough, “or I’ll blow you outta your damn saddles.”

The gleam, I now saw, was moonlight reflecting off the twin barrels of his sawed-off shotgun.