The Blight Way (12 page)

“What you want at the store?” Pap asked. “Probably cost twice what it would back in Blight.”

“Thought I might pick up a few snacks. Never can tell when we might get back to town.”

“You going up the Last Hope Road again? You and Susan already checked the mine out. Of course this time you might be able to keep your mind more on business.”

“It was strictly business the last time, you dirty old man. But the fact we didn't find anything doesn't mean there wasn't something there. Maybe I'll have Dave go up and look around.”

“Dave the Indian?”

“Yeah, Dave the Indian.”

A clean blue Mercury Sable was parked in front of the store. A person didn't see that many new Mercury Sables in Famine, but it was clean and that caught Tully's attention. He walked around the car, looking in the windows, and then he and Pap went into the store.

Tully said “Hi” to the girl at the cash register. She grinned at him. Movie star beautiful. Tully wondered if it was something in the water that made so many of the girls in Famine beautiful. Or maybe it was that it had been six weeks since Gail had bailed out on him. Tully walked over to the magazine and paperback racks. A well-dressed woman of thirty-something was thumbing through a Danielle Steel paperback, apparently to see if she had already read it. She didn't look like a local. She wore a tweed suit over a blue blouse, and her ash-blond hair had been coiffed by an expert, probably someone named Pierre or Maurice. Tully casually unbuttoned his suede jacket so that it revealed the sheriff's badge on his belt.

“Those any good?” he asked.

She glanced at him, took in the badge. “If you like romance,” she said.

“Matter of fact, I do,” he said. “Haven't read much about it, though. Maybe I should.”

“Probably wouldn't hurt,” the lady said, and went back to her book.

“That your Sable out front?”

“My what?”

“Your car? A Mercury Sable.”

“Oh, right. I hope it isn't illegally parked.”

“Shoot, up here you could park in the middle of the road and upside down, and it wouldn't be illegal. It's just that we folks here in Famine don't get a lot of tourists stopping by.”

She put the book back on the rack. Tully could tell he was starting to get on her nerves.

“Actually, I'm just passing through. I'm on my way down to Boise for a new job. Anything else on your mind, officer?”

“Nope. Except I guess you probably flew into Spokane International, where you rented the car.”

She slowly turned from the racks of books and looked steadily at him. “I guess maybe you're not one of those hick cops on the make that I took you for,” she said. “Yes, you got that exactly right. I did fly into Spokane International and rented the car.”

“Actually, I am pretty hicky,” Tully said, tugging on the corner of his mustache. “So how come you didn't just fly into Boise for your job?”

“I knew you were about to ask that. It's because I wanted to see Idaho, and I'm glad I did. It's beautiful.”

“Yep,” Tully said. “We got a whole lot of scenery here, more than we need. I'm real sorry to bother you, ma'am, but we've just had this sort of event here, and we kinda got to talk to anybody new that shows up.” It was his best imitation of a hick cop.

Her blue-green eyes seemed to freeze in her face. “What kind of event?”

“Oh, nothing a lady like yourself would be interested in.”

“Well, I can assure you, I don't know anything about any event in this town. But whatever it was, you're starting to make me very nervous.”

“Please don't let me upset you,” Tully said, raising his hands as if in surrender. “By the way, I think I'll try one of them Danielle Steels. Maybe it'll teach me something about dealing with pretty young women, maybe even some romance.”

She gave him a little smile. “I suspect you know more about romance than you're letting on.”

She's wrong about that, Tully thought. Just then Pap called to him and asked if he was done picking up snacks.

“That's my old father,” Tully said. “Got some dementia, you know. I take him out of the home about once a month.”

“I hope he doesn't think I'm one of your snacks,” the lady said.

“Hard to tell what that crazy old codger might think.”

“Well, it's been nice talking to you, but I've got to go.” The lady started to walk away.

“Could I ask you one more question?” Tully called out.

The lady stopped and turned. “What's that?”

“What kind of men do the ladies in these Danielle Steel novels go for?”

She thought for a moment. “The men are always handsome, rich and powerful.”

“Thanks,” Tully said. One out of three ain't bad, he thought. He picked up two of the Danielle Steels and carried them up to the cashier, grabbing some candy bars and corn chips on the way. He watched through the front window as the lady drove off in her clean Sable.

He put the candy bars on the counter and held up the Steel novels for the girl at the cash register to see. She smiled and gave him a questioning look.

“They're for my father over there,” he said, nodding toward Pap. “He loves these romance novels.”

“What?” Pap said. “What's for me?”

“Nothing,” Tully said. He shoved the books into the side pocket of his jacket.

Chapter 18

Tully and Pap got into the Explorer and Tully turned out onto the highway.

“Where we headed now?” Pap asked. “Back to Blight City or the Littlefield ranch?”

“Something I want to check at the Littlefield ranch,” Tully said. “Then I want to take a look at that skid trail where you found the ATV tracks.”

When they reached a point where they could see the Littlefield ranch from the highway, Tully pulled into a turnout. He took his binoculars from the glove compartment and trained them on the ranch buildings. He moved the binoculars methodically from building to building.

“What you looking for?” Pap asked.

“A clean blue Mercury Sable,” he said. “And I just found it. At least, the tail end of it, sticking out of a shed. Kincaid is closing the doors on it.”

“That the Sable belonged to the lady you hit on back at the General Store?”

“I didn't hit on her. But, yeah, that's her Sable. Told me she was just passing through on her way to a new job in Boise. She's apparently connected to someone at the Littlefield ranch.”

They drove back through Famine, on past the road to the Last Hope Mine and past the skid trail.

“I thought you wanted to take a look at the skid trail,” Pap said.

“I do. But if the Littlefield crowd are somehow involved in this, I'm pretty sure they didn't drive their ATVs down the highway to get back to the ranch. Somebody might have seen them. There's got to be a place right up here where they pulled a truck in.”

Then they saw it, a small picnic area alongside the river. The ice in the mud puddles of the entrance road had been broken and frozen again.

“Okay, this fits,” Tully said. “They come out of the skid trail, drive a short distance down the road, and into the picnic area. Then they load the ATVs onto a truck, throw a tarp over them and drive back to the Littlefield ranch.”

Pap said, “Or some farmhand could have forgot his lunch box and come in here with his truck to turn around.”

“That, too,” Tully said. “But there are ATV tracks all over. I prefer my version.”

“It's good, all right,” Pap said, “except we don't have the slightest bit of real evidence.”

“At least the Littlefield ranch has ATVs.”

“Every other person in this part of the county has an ATV.”

“Stop demolishing my theories. Next time I'll leave you home. But if they left one ATV behind for the guy who killed Holt, the others would have had to wait here for him. Or he would have had to drive the ATV home. In that case, someone might have seen him. It would be pretty odd to see some fellow driving an ATV down the road at, say, four o'clock in the morning.”

“Or they could have sent the truck back for him.”

“That, too.”

Tully turned around in the picnic area and drove back down the highway. Pap started making himself another cigarette.

They pulled off the highway onto a wide spot and then walked up the skid trail to where the ATVs had been parked. The skid trail didn't end at the mountain but continued on up the steep grade. Trees were now growing in parts of it, and the trail obviously hadn't been used since the days of horse logging. Tully walked carefully around the area where the ATVs had been parked. From the tracks, it was apparent the riders had turned them around, facing out down the trail.

“Looks as if they might have been prepared for a fast getaway,” Tully said.

“That's what I thought,” Pap said.

“So why would they have needed to make a fast getaway? It's the middle of night, they leave two dead guys in a car, one dead on a fence.”

“Maybe they knew the guys in the car was pretty heavy dudes,” Pap said. “Maybe they wasn't all that sure of themselves. Maybe they was a bunch of amateurs going up against some pros.”

“Interesting point. And if these dead guys were pros from L.A., I suspect other pros in L.A. are going to send someone up to find out what happened to them.”

“Whoever sent them up here, they already know what happened. Maybe they was the ambushers. Or they sent the ambushers.”

“Stop! You're giving me a headache!”

He and Pap were walking out of the skid trail when Tully spotted something. He squatted down for a closer look. It was an unburned kitchen match but with what looked like teeth marks in it.

“Who chews kitchen matches anymore?” he said to Pap.

“Nobody I know,” Pap said. “Don't even see kitchen matches around that much.”

“Well, somebody up this trail not long ago was chewing on a kitchen match.” Tully took out his handkerchief and carefully picked the match up by its head. Then he wrapped it loosely in the handkerchief and put it in his pocket.

“Don't mean whoever was chewing on the match was one of our killers, though,” Pap said. “Could have been anybody.”

“Would you shut up for once?” Tully said.

“Maybe after the county buys me lunch.”

“Dave's House of Fry okay?”

“Perfect.”

Tully's cell phone buzzed.

“My hunch was right,” Buck said. “They did stop at the motel. Someone come in and reserved a couple rooms for them for two nights. An old guy in overalls,
the manager said. Paid cash. Had on some stupid cap with earflaps. But that's all the description she could give. Three fellas in the Jeep stopped on their way through, maybe to use the bathroom. Weren't there more than fifteen minutes. The manager said she woke up and looked out the window. There were only three men, she said. The owners had left the cabins open, the keys on the tables inside. The men in the Jeep left the keys on the tables when they left and the cabins unlocked.”

“Get out there and look around the cabins,” Tully said. “Make sure they're secured when you leave.”

“I'm on my way.”

Tully slid the phone back in his jacket pocket and turned to Pap. “I've got to get myself some new people.”

Chapter 19

Pap was having the liver-and-onions with bacon. Tully had ordered another chicken-fried steak. When something is that good, you keep on ordering it. He had forgotten how big the steak was. It overlapped the sides of the plate.

Dave came over to their table and sat down. Deedee brought refills for Pap and Tully and poured a cup for Dave.

“You got the crime solved yet?” Dave said.

“Don't I wish,” Tully said.

“Bo lets it stretch out anymore, I'm gonna get sick of it,” Pap said. “Back in the old days we'd have had someone locked up by now.”

“And probably tried and hanged,” Tully said, cutting into his steak. “But I'd kind of like to get the guys who actually did it.”