Designer Detective (A Fiona Marlowe Mystery) (27 page)

“We
haven’t known each other that long. This is get-to-know-each-other time. I sure
am glad I impressed you. I thought I never would.”

She
laughed. “Would you like to walk me home and sing another song?”

“You
bet.”

They
said good night to Opal and everyone they saw on their way to the door. Where
did all these people come from? Looking out from Opal’s front porch there
wasn’t a house in sight.

Some of
the men clapped Jake on the back.

“Way to
go, Jake,” said one.

“Lucky
man,” said another.

She got
the feeling they thought something was going on between them. What was going on
anyway? She wished she didn’t feel so conflicted.

“What’s
this about ghosts?” asked Jake when they had cleared the house and were on the
dusty, dirt track that led to her fashionable address.

“Rosemary
and Esme swear the bunk house is haunted.”

“Don’t
listen to them. That was years ago. Opal had the place exorcised so there shouldn’t
be any problem. She called in the Catholic priest in town who performed the ceremony.”

“You’re
kidding,” she said, stopping to look at him.

“No,
I’m not kidding. She really did and after that there weren’t any more problems
with ghost sightings.”

“That’s
a relief. I’m not partial to ghosts.” Exorcism was extreme in her book, but if
it did the job, who was she to object?

“Do you
know Hank
Little
?” she asked as they resumed their
trek.

“They
told you about Hank
Little
?”

The
path took an uphill turn and with the evening of dancing her new Tony Llama boots
started to pinch. How did anyone ever find these things comfortable?

“They
did,” she said, trying not to limp.

“You don’t
want to mess with that fellow. He’s a smooth talker and mean. I wouldn’t trust
him.”

“His
wives shouldn’t have either.”

Jake
stopped and turned to her. “Stay away from him, okay? If he crosses your path,
run the other way.”

He
looked so serious that she had to agree. “Sure, I’ll stay away from him.”

“Good. Anyway,
how’ve you been?”

“Decent.
I’ve been decent. It’s been a while, hasn’t it?”

“Too long.
Why didn’t you come when you said you were going
to?”

She
lifted one shoulder. “Things got busy. I went out to Australia for vacation
like I said I would.”

“You
didn’t take me.”

“No. I
needed time to think after the fiasco back in Virginia. You made your feelings
clear. I wasn’t sure about mine.”

“But
you came. I’m glad you did. It’s good to see you.”

She
studied his face. The planes of it were stark and strong. It wasn’t that she
didn’t find Jake attractive, it was more she didn’t know what she wanted. “It’s
good to see you, too. I wasn’t sure I’d come. But work slowed down so I thought
now was the time to get the job done for Opal. I’ll admit I was curious about
life here. It’s different.”

He
nodded. “It sure is.”

“You
look like you belong here.”

“I do.
You might come to like it.”

She
looked up at the sorry looking bunk house. “I don’t know. My new home is not
what I had envisioned.”

“Opal embellishes
things sometimes. She wanted you out here bad. Keeps talking about how nice the
house will look after you get it fancied up.”

She put
her arm through his, and they resumed their walk.

“I’ll
give this a try. It is 180 degrees from what I’m used to. I’ve been a city
dweller most of my life.”

They reached the sagging front porch of her new
home that looked like a cigar box that’d been in the sun too long.

“Going
to invite me in for coffee?” Jake asked.

She
smiled. “Sure, if you sing me that song. There’s no place to sit outside of two
straight back chairs that might give you splinters.”

Jake followed
her in. “I can handle that.”

She’d hired
Opal’s girl, Queenie, to clean the place since cleaning was not Fiona’s strong
suit. Cobwebs and dirty windows disappeared with a little scrubbing but the
windows remained cloudy and pitted from the endless grit the wind brought along.
The board walls were gray with age. No amount of scrubbing was going to change
that. She could see daylight through the cracks in the boards. How did cowboys
live here with ghosts to boot? She was still worried about those ghosts.

Jake
carried the two chairs out to the porch. She poured water from a pitcher into a
pan and turned on the gas burner to heat the water. There was no inside running
water. She got water from an outside pump. This was way beyond rustic. Why
hadn’t she quizzed Opal on the amenities of the old bunk house? She should have
asked more questions before accepting the bribe in return for an alibi. But
then things were moving pretty fast at the time with the police asking
questions, and there was little time to think.

She
joined Jake on the porch. A line of vehicle lights winked off and on along the dusty
road leaving Opal’s house. The party had finally broken up.

Jake broke
the still of the evening first. “I’m glad the Lodge family disaster is over.”

“Let’s not think about it. I want to think
about designing my new home and Opal’s. That’s all I want to think about.”

“Right.
Though, you
know, I heard they found a guy in the desert to the east of here in an old
rusted car, nothing but bones. The police don’t know if it was murder or
suicide.”

“Really?” she said, trying to keep the
excitement from her voice.

Jake started laughing.

She recovered her senses. “I’m not interested
in the least.”

“Of
course you are.”

“You
are not going to tempt me. This is a spooky place. I’ve heard more about
murders, ghosts and dead bodies in one day than I have heard my whole life.”

“You’re
getting it all in one dose.”

“What happened
to the skeleton in the desert?”

“The
investigation continues.” He laughed. “See, you can’t help yourself. Detective
Marlowe rides again. Do you want to take a drive tomorrow to see where they
found the skeleton? I’ll take time off and show you some of the country.”

“How long will it take?” She had already learned
this was an important question in a county of ten thousand square miles and less
than seven thousand people.

“Several hours round trip.
We could take a picnic lunch and
make a day of it.”

She
went inside to finish making coffee while she thought it over. She was anxious
to start work on the bunk house. Contractors were coming Monday to work on the
plumbing and wiring for electricity. A carpenter was to start work on shoring
up the walls, installing insulation, and transforming the interior with dry
wall. Was she crazy to try to save this old place? But tomorrow she had nothing
planned, and it would be fun to see some of the country, which was beautiful if
you liked sagebrush and red brown rim rock.

She put
coffee singles in two mugs with hot water and carried the mugs outside. They
sat in the still night under starry skies.

“This
is pretty country,” she said.

“The
best,” said Jake.

“Okay,
I’ll go.
Now how about that song?”

* * * * *

A loose
shutter banged against the bunk house. For an hour Fiona had been listening to
that banging shutter and something else. She tried to distinguish between the
sound of the wind, and the sound that woke her up. Sleep was impossible. What
was that sound? All she could think of were ghosts. There were no shadows in
the room.
Only blackness.
She was having trouble
getting used to the blackness of the night here. No horns honked, no lights
glared outside, no hum of the city.
Nothing but black.
And the wind.
Maybe she should go back to her nice,
safe condominium in Northern Virginia.

There
it was.
A low moan.
Her eyes searched each of the east
facing windows that looked out over hay fields, herds of cattle, and rim rock. She
saw only stars.
A strange sight.
 
Stars.
In her warm
bedroom back home, she saw the lights of the nation’s capital reflected on the
walls. She wasn’t used to cold summer nights, the wind, the stars,
the
dust. She wasn’t used to any of this.

She
eased up on one elbow and listened. Something was moaning. Did ghosts moan?
They did in Walt Disney movies. Was it a wolf? No, Jake said there weren’t any
wolves in this part of the country. Maybe they had moved in unannounced. Coyotes
yipped and barked, day or night. But this didn’t sound like a healthy coyote.
This sounded like something in distress, hopefully not a ghost in distress.

She was
reluctant to leave the relative security and warmth of the cot Opal had lent
her. It was a hard bed but she preferred it to a softer one in Opal’s house
because she wanted to be in her own place. She needed furniture in this hollow,
empty space, which would make the place much more inviting.

The moaning
took on a deeper timbre. Maybe it was a hurt varmint. She considered
telephoning for help. Jake would come. She held up her watch. The digital glow
read 3:30 A.M. She hated to wake up anyone after that party. Maybe the sound
would go away. She lay back and pulled the down comforter over her head, hoping
sleep would come. It didn’t. The moaning continued. She turned on the
flashlight Jake had given her, the only light near the bed. Maybe the light
would make the moaning stop. It didn’t. She wondered if light went straight
through ghosts.

What
finally motivated her to rise and pull on the sweater she’d thrown on the bed
for warmth was insatiable curiosity and, some would say, lack of common sense.
The bare wood floor was cold, and she slid her feet into the sandals by the
bed. The moaning seemed to be coming from the other side of the front door.
Some animal must be injured and had crawled up on the porch to get out of the
wind. Or maybe it was a person. She hoped it wasn’t Hank Little come to murder
another woman. Maybe he only murdered wives. In that case she should be okay.

If she
opened the door the culprit might be right there. What if it were something
dangerous? She didn’t know all of the animals that lived here, but she was sure
they were dangerous. Probably more dangerous if wounded. Jake said there were
badgers. She didn’t know what a badger looked like or how big it was but it
sounded ugly and dangerous.

Undecided,
she watched the door, listening. The moan had a whine to it. Maybe it was a
dog. There were dogs over at the main house. If it were a hurt dog, should she let
it in out of the wind and cold?

She
trained the flash light on the door and tip-toed across the floor, stopping at
the window by the door. In a flash of courage she trained the flashlight on the
porch floor outside the door. She saw nothing but black, but the moaning
stopped and didn’t start again. That was a relief.

She
turned to go back to bed. The moan started again. Sound reverberated in odd
ways here. The source could be out in the cow pasture or half-way across the
valley.
If she didn’t check this out, she’d
never get any sleep. Garnering her scanty courage, she cracked the door enough
to shine the light through. The wind blasted into the narrow opening. She
squinted into darkness.

Nothing.
There was nothing. She opened the door a hair
further, enough to flash the light around on the porch.
Nothing.
The sound had stopped. She was not about to search outside on a night like
this. The wind honed a cold edge to the night. She closed the door. There was
no lock. She propped one of chairs under the door knob, a trick she’d learned
from TV. They did not teach that maneuver in design school. Under the
circumstances that was
the best she could do.

Crawling
under the warm down quilt, she pulled it over her head. She’d never thought to
make a fire in the rusty woodstove. The evening had been pleasant. But the wind
had come up, and now it was cold enough to see her breath. She checked her
watch again. 4:00 A.M. The sky in the east had a light tinge to it. She curled
up in a ball and wished for sleep.

An unholy
pounding woke her. Given the paucity of sleep she had gotten, she was in a
wicked mood, and worse, it was freezing in the bunk house. She wrapped the
comforter around her unhappy body and padded to the door. Of course, she had to
struggle to get the chair out of the way.

She
yanked open the door and squinted into bright light. “What?”

Jake stood
in full buckaroo regalia. “You aren’t ready. We’re going sightseeing today. Did
you forget?”

“I had
a rough night.” She related the story. “It must have been a ghost. There was
nothing, and then it stopped.”

“You
should have taken me up on my offer of sharing my warm bed in the big house,”
he said with a grin.

She
ignored him. She wasn’t in the mood. “It’s freezing in here.”

“You should
have started a fire.”

“There’s
no wood, and I don’t know how anyway. Are you being annoying because it’s in
your DNA or because you enjoy making my life a misery?”

“You’re
in a temper. Get your stuff. I’ll take you down to the big house for a shower
and a decent breakfast. Then we’ll get on the road. You don’t have to be some
kind of heroine, staying up here at night. Opal has plenty of extra beds.” He paused
then said softly. “And there’s always mine.”

“I
appreciate the offer, but I’m trying to get the feel for the house so I can
make a proper living space out of it.”

“Right.”