Crazy Mountain Kiss (10 page)

The woman, Donna, didn't seem to listen. For some time she had been staring off to the west, where the cone of Hollowtop Mountain carried striations of snow under a gray sky.

“Tell him,” she said presently. She turned to her husband and raised her chin. “He's gonna find out. Just tell him.”

The man shook his head. “We can't have something like that getting around.”

“It is around, Clyde. Ask any one of those kids in there. Mr. Stranahan, I don't know if you're being disingenuous or you're as nice as you seem . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Stranahan let the silence settle like a cloud about them. An organ started playing in the church and it would be only minutes now, he thought, before the mourners would be trickling out the door.

“I guess it really doesn't matter what you are,” she said, her voice almost a whisper. “It's not going to change anything. Landon loved that girl, but not in the way that you think. He was gay. He told us last year. Oh, I'm not saying I didn't have my suspicions.”

“Did Etta Huntington know that?”

“If you're asking did I tell her, I didn't. Not because I was ashamed, just because it was none of her business.”

“Cinderella had a crush on your son. Did Landon speak of it?”

Clyde Anker was working the muscles in his face. “I think we talked enough. I don't aim to be standing here when they come out for that potluck.”

“Then I'm going to ask you to go wait in the truck,” his wife said without looking over at him. “I'll be there directly.”

He started to say something, then walked away without a word.

“I'd apologize for my husband's behavior, but I'm about all apologized out. Landon never said anything about Cindy pining for him, but it doesn't surprise me. I'm going to give you the phone number to the house. Anything you want to know, you call that number. I'd hire you myself if I had Etta's money.”

She said goodbye and Stranahan found himself in the awkward position of interrogator at a memorial. He made a number of acquaintances, telling people to call if they thought they could be of help. Many had already said what they had to say at the time of the disappearance, and others had been interviewed by Harold Little Feather within the last few days. Stranahan was going through motions.

At one point he found himself in conversation with a high school girl named Celeste, who claimed to have been Landon Anker's closest friend and whose left upper arm was tattooed with the words
Made in Montana
in a dripping heart and her right with
Laid in North Dakota
inside a cracked egg. She explained that she'd been conceived in Billings and born in Bismarck, adding that it had been a “fucked-up” time in her life. “Not being born—I mean, when I got the tats,” she clarified. He asked her about Landon, when she'd found out he was gay.

“When I put his hand on my ass at the Sweet Pea Festival. Most guys, you do that when you're rubbing belly buttons, they've got timber hard enough to chainsaw. I told him that's okay, we could just be friends. We were up all night talking; he told me I was the first person he ever came out to.”

Stranahan asked if she was jealous of Cinderella. She said no, not jealous. Well, maybe. The girl had stripped for him, after all.

“Yeah, starkers,” she said. She told Stranahan that one of the nights he was lying in wait for the horsehair thief, Cindy had come into the stables wearing a bathrobe with nothing underneath. She'd taken it off and spread it out on some straw. She started kissing him, and when he said he didn't think of her that way, she started to cry. He'd spent an hour trying to talk her down and worrying that the horse trainer or somebody else might walk in on them.

“So yeah, I was pissed. She put him in that position.”

Stranahan excused himself when he saw Etta Huntington standing alone. She gestured with a glass of white wine as he walked up.

“I thought it went well,” she said with understated sarcasm. “Only one person made a scene and I didn't drop my arm on the floor.”

“Did your husband tell you he cold-cocked a man in the bar?”

She made a dismissive snort. “Try to find someone he hasn't by now.” She pointed her chin back toward the door of the church. “He said he was going to the bathroom to soak his handkerchief in cold water because his face is burning. I'd hope he was arrested if it wasn't for drawing attention from Cindy.”

“He said he was protecting your honor.”

“Yeah, that's a good one.”

“Somebody else told me about Anker sleeping in your stable to catch a horsehair thief. Wouldn't it be hard to drive in without someone noticing?”

“Not really, not after dark. You've seen the stables; they're a couple hundred yards below the house. But what's hard to believe is how he cut off so much hair without the horses raising a ruckus. When a horse squeals with his mouth shut, the sound carries. That's why Harold thought it was an inside job.”

“But no one was ever suspected?”

“No. Our manager and trainer have been with us for ages. It would have to have been someone who used to work at the ranch.”

“Could you get me a list?”

“Earl Hightower could.” She looked nervously past Stranahan. “Jasper's coming.”

“Does that mean it's time for me to leave?”

“If you don't mind. I didn't expect to see him here at all, but now that he is, I have to at least try to keep a civil face. He'll be back on the set in a few days; we can talk all you want then.”

“I'd like to ask him about Cinderella.”

“Good luck with that. He's not so wild about my hiring you, as you might guess. But it's my money and she was my daughter.”

“Try to convince him.”

Sean could see the nervous jumping of her eyes. “Just go. I'll call you.”

When Stranahan got to his rig, he found the girl who claimed to be Landon's friend sitting on the grass, smoking a cigarette. When she looked up, Sean saw that her eyes were shiny. “I didn't want you to leave thinking I was mad at Cindy or something,” she said. “She was a nice girl. It's just that I was in love with him for who he was, not for somebody I wanted him to be. I mean, I'd have married him as is and just bought batteries for my vibrator. I'd have given up other guys.”

Stranahan thumbed a card out of his wallet and she caught it as it fluttered down.

“Call me if you think of anything that could help,” he said, and left her sitting on the grass, contemplating the sacrifices of love.

Y
ou dating somebody with a Bozeman prefix now?” Martha Ettinger turned Sean's wrist over to examine the numbers on the back of his hand.

“Our lady of the cabin did that.”

“Uh-huh.” She leaned back in her office chair and laced her fingers behind her head.

“What did you expect, that she'd be a wallflower?”

“She isn't a Ginny Gin Jenny, is she?” Ginny Gin Jenny, a.k.a. Virginia Jenkins, a.k.a. the Elk Camp Madam, held the record for arrests for soliciting in Hyalite County, but had never done time because her clientele, whom she serviced in wall tents and camper trucks during hunting season, was rumored to include the current mayor, as well as officers in the police and fire departments. No one in the DA's office seemed eager to follow up on her arrests.

“No, she's strictly an amateur enthusiast,” Sean said. He conveyed the gist of his interview with Ariana Dimitri.

Martha rolled her eyes. “She might as well hang a target around her neck with a bull's-eye.”

“I told her. But she looks at it as an extreme sport, like parasailing off mountains. Anything for the thrill.”

“Humpff. So how does this tie in with Cinderella Huntington?”

“Maybe it doesn't. According to Ari—”

“So it's Ari?”

“—Ariana. According to
her,
the Santa hat was in the geocache
when she arrived at the cabin. She left it hanging on the wall. You could call the parties that came after, see if they remember seeing it.”

“I can do that. How did the memorial go? “

“I made the acquaintance of Jasper Fey.”

He related the circumstances of their meeting as Ettinger harrumphed. She placed her palms flat on her desk.

“While you were eating deviled eggs and throwing your coffee, Harold dropped this on the desk.” She tapped a forefinger on a file folder. “Fifty-two interviews, headwaters of the Shields right on down to the Yellowstone.” She flipped her fingers in a dismissive gesture. “‘We have some interesting individuals residing in our county.' That was the whole of Harold's summation. Nothing remotely relatable. You know, I misjudged the fallout on this. I thought there'd be a flurry of interest and then it would go away and we'd be left with Loretta Huntington's grief, which would be tough enough to deal with. But I guess girls don't die in chimneys every day. If I put my phone in my pocket on vibrate, I could have orgasms all day long just from journalist calls. What? Why are you laughing?”

Stranahan shook his head. “This is what I miss about you. The only other person who makes me laugh like this is Sam.”

“Glad to be of service. So why are you here? Don't you have any other sexy librarians waiting to put their number on your hand?”

“I thought I'd take a peek at the cabin's guestbook. It's in evidence, right?”

Ettinger nodded. “I leafed through it.”

“Did anything stand out?”

“I didn't put on my deerstalker cap, but no. I'll have somebody walk it up. You can examine it in my presence. All I'm doing for the next couple hours is filling out evaluation forms. Be happy yours isn't on the list.”

When the book came up, Ettinger signed for it and provided Stranahan with a legal pad and a pair of latex gloves. She shrugged. “Safe than sorry,” she said.

The first entry was dated three winters in the wind and Stranahan
turned pages until he found the December 1 entry of the prior calendar year, when the rental season opened. Like most of the cabins, it opened just as elk and deer season closed. The Forest Service didn't want to chance liability suits with hunters carrying firearms into the cabins. There were the expected smiley faces and a smattering of childish artwork. One entry brought a smile to Sean's lips, a pencil sketch of dancing mice to accompany complaints about said mice, with a note to stock more Victor traps. A curl of something that looked like a dried-up mouse tail was taped to the sketch.

An hour passed. Stranahan looked up to see Martha shaking her head.

“I just terminated someone's employment.”

“Was it an easy decision?”

“No.” She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes and blew out a breath. “Well?”

“A couple things.”

Martha walked around her desk to peer over Stranahan's shoulder. He tapped his pencil eraser on an entry marked December 3:

About midnight Chester went bonkers and woke us up. He was growling like I'd never heard before, I mean like a wolf. Hal went outside, the idiot, and said he smelled something really rank and in the morning there were big tracks in the snow where the kids went sledding. Like somebody wearing snowshoes, but it was powder so I can't say. Al thought a bear, but aren't the bears supposed to be hibernating by now, I mean global warming hasn't made that much of an impact yet, has it? Other than that it was the peace and quiet we needed. Just a million stars and perfect snow. We skinned up to the pass and just floated back to the cabin.
Whooooosh
.

“I read a story about how some of the grizzlies don't even go into hibernation,” Sean said. “They just scavenge food and steal from wolf kills.”

Martha shook her head. “I don't see what this has to do with anything.”

Stranahan turned to the next page he'd bookmarked. It was another entry about a dog getting his back hair up after dark.

Martha shrugged. “It's Montana. Things go bump in the night.”

Stranahan turned to the entry for January 12. The words were neatly printed and small, the hand masculine.

The previous occupants did
not
clean up after. The pots were
disgusting
. I had to melt a ton of snow to get enough water to clean them. Shame on you. Other than that beautiful as ever, every pleasure life has to offer, indoor and out. Even a ghost.

And
no
xxxxxx-ing men!

“This was written by the couple in the video Ari gave me,” Sean said. “The one that was in the geocache when she skied in. They're lesbians, hence ‘no fucking men.'”

“Men are equal-opportunity assholes. They don't just piss off gay women. But how can you be sure it's their entry?”

“It's the date on the recording.”

“Have you seen it?”

He nodded.

“Is there any reason I need to look at it?” Her voice said she'd rather not.

“No. They did what two women do, I guess. I'm not an expert.”

“You're thinking because it mentions a ghost that it means something?”

“It's the third entry that mentions something big and scary in the nighttime.”

“People have imaginations.”

Stranahan wasn't going to win the point and leafed to the last page bookmarked. It was an early January entry from two years before, exactly halfway through the journal.

Perfect weather (smiley face). Perfect people (smiley face). The dog threw up on my sleeping bag (frowny face). I had an epiphany. God
is
the mountain. The mountain
is
God. Perfect! Perfect! Perfect! (three smiley faces)

“See it? It's scrawled over the other writing, but the pen was almost out of ink. It says—”

“I see it. ‘THE CLOWNS ARE HERE.'”

“It could be a cry for help. Whoever wrote it felt panicked, grabbed the closest pen, and wrote over the top of the entry.”

“Why not tear out a blank page and leave it where it could be spotted?”

“The same reason
she
didn't change pens. There wasn't time. And the page is smeared by soot, or what looks like it.”

“I'll bite. Assume it's Cinderella Huntington.”

Stranahan nodded. “She's dirty from climbing down the chimney, she sees something that scares the hell out of her, she looks frantically around for a place to leave a message and finds the logbook on the table. Now watch.” Stranahan shut the journal. Then carelessly flipped it open. It opened to the same page. “It's where the seam is, you can see the binding cord. If you found the book closed and flipped it open, it's going to open to this page. I'll bet if you go back to the cabin, you'll find a pen on the table where the guestbook was and it will be almost out of purple ink. Maybe you could lift her prints off it.”

“Doubtful. Only if she was the last to handle it. So, she tries to hide by climbing into the chimney?”

“The fibers tell us she went down the chimney, but they also suggest she climbed up. In her panic she tries to climb too fast, brings her leg up past her hip, and gets stuck. She dies.”

Martha made a face.
I don't agree. I don't disagree.
“Where's the camera card the librarian gave you?”

“It's in the glove compartment. I'll get it. While I'm gone, could you call the Forest Service and get the name and address on the reservation? I'd like to hear about this ‘ghost.'”

“I'll remind you I'm the sheriff,” Martha said.

“And coffee for the road.”

“Maybe I just thought I was the sheriff,” she said under her breath.

 • • • 

T
he sign at the turnoff read
WILLOW CREEK POTTERY—EILEEN BA
RNES, MASTER POTTER A
ND GLASSBLOWER
. Stranahan clattered across a one-lane bridge over the East Fork of the Gallatin River, swollen with mid-elevation snowmelt, then had to slow for several peahens to cross the road. The lone cock turned its butt to the Land Cruiser, flaring his tail like a psychedelic turkey. Stranahan idled up to a clapboard house with peeling white paint. A Datsun pickup caked with mayfly carcasses sat in the drive.

No answer at his knock, he went around back to check the outbuildings. A broken-backed barn with a bird coop constructed of sagging chicken wire had a red arrow painted on its side, and Stranahan, following in the direction it pointed, saw a prefab shed, billowing white smoke. Three domestic geese announced his arrival by honking like train whistles.

“Wait outside.” The voice came from the shed.

Stranahan pushed at the muscular neck of the largest goose, whose bulbous orange bill was poised to snap at his crotch. The goose bit at his hand.

“They're like horses, you've got to show them who's boss.” The woman who emerged from the shed had a welcoming voice that belied the stern countenance of her face. “Are you here for the majolica fish? Hal said his brother was picking it up.” Stranahan said he wasn't and she seemed to ponder his answer. Her hair was short and layered, with pink stripes. She was the butch-looking straw blonde he'd seen in the video.

“I guess I should have known. You get to know a little about genetic phenotypes after raising exotics half your life. No, you're not Hal's brother at all.”

Stranahan introduced himself. The handshake and the smile
didn't have the effect they'd had on Ariana; the hazel eyes were guarded as he explained his reason for coming. The potter's arms crossed defensively, thick hands cupping her elbows. Stranahan expected her to tell him to get off her property any second. But she listened, a look of chagrin crossing her face as he wound down.

“This is about the girl who died in the chimney,” she said. “The coincidence struck me as soon as I heard it on the radio. I'm embarrassed you saw that video. It makes me feel like I'm standing here naked. How did you get the card?”

Stranahan didn't say, and after a short silence she spoke for him. “It was Book Girl, wasn't it? Either her or the guy she met. They were up next in the classifieds. I ought to be peeved, but I guess I can't blame someone for cooperating. I understand you have to explore all avenues.”

“We think Cinderella Huntington could have become scared by something and tried to crawl up the chimney. Several renters wrote about their dogs barking and finding big tracks in the snow. Your entry mentioned a ghost. I'm following up.”

The woman nodded. “Maria was the author of that little diatribe. I'll bet you thought it was me, me being the stereotype. You're probably a little confused, her acting as the dominant.”

“I don't know much about gay women.”

“Dominant-submissive doesn't have anything to do with sexual orientation.” She hesitated. “Imagine what it was like growing up in this valley in the seventies, your father's life perspective gained from the seat of a tractor. Here he is, a single-parent farmer with a daughter who bats cleanup on the Little League team.”

“It must have been hard on him.”

“Not as hard as it was on me. I played with boys but I wanted to be with girls. It made me feel ashamed. Montana was different then. Everybody chewed tobacco, the times passing them right by while they put up their boots and tipped their hats and talked about weather and wheat stem sawfly. Boys looked at me like I was misshapen and said horrible things, these being the same boys who wouldn't turn
down a shorn ewe. Now it's different, we're a purple state now, all so enlightened.” The last sentence came out bitter.

“Now who's doing the stereotyping.”

“I am. But not without reason. You said your name was Stranahan. Aren't you the guy who found the man with the trout fly in his lip a few years ago? That guy who got stuck with a knife?”

“I actually didn't find him, I just got the knife.” He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it over his left shoulder, where the scar showed white against his skin.

“And you're still asking for trouble.”

“It seems to find me.”

She nodded. “I might have something for you.”

She led him to the house and told him to wait on the stoop. Inside, Stranahan heard xylophone tones as a computer booted up. A few minutes passed and she called him in. A video was paused on a laptop on the kitchen table. The screen showed a corner of a cabin porch with a pine pillar and, beyond, the snowy darkness.