CHAPTER 25

MORNIN’,” said Gus Angstrom with what struck Rosemary as excessive cheeriness for six-thirty in the morning. “The coffee water is just about hot, and I can cook you something if you’ll tell me what.”

She shook her head, and perched on one of the stools. “I’ll be grateful for coffee. Then I’ll head home.”

“Sleep well?”

“I did. Much better than I would have in my own house. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The kettle sang; he picked it up and poured water into the top of the drip coffeemaker. “Two minutes max. Can I loan you a travel cup?”

“Absolutely.”

Tank spoke from outside, and Angstrom let him in. “No dog-food, I’m sorry to say, but I gave him most of a pint of cottage cheese for starters.”

“He thanks you, I thank you.” She got up to greet her friend, and pulled a paper towel from the roll on the counter to wipe his muzzle. Gus, meanwhile, rinsed a tall metal thermos cup with hot water before filling it with coffee.

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Neither, thanks, just the lid.” She went to get her jacket, and Tank’s leash, from the coat closet. When she returned to the kitchen, Gus was waiting for her, travel cup in his hand. “Rosemary, I don’t give orders to law-abiding civilians, particularly when they’re friends. But I need to ask you—”

She lifted both hands high in surrender. “Sheriff Angstrom, I hereby declare myself a noncombatant, or whatever the word is, and agree to leave all further investigating to you.”

His tight expression had relaxed into a grin. ”Whew. Lady, I promise to do my best.” He handed her the cup.

“And keep me informed?”

“You can count on it.”

THE late-October sky was clear and coldly blue, the surrounding mountains still snow-free but not, she’d bet, for long. “But I have a year’s supply of firewood, plenty of warm clothes, and many unread books,” she said to herself as she pulled up in front of her gate and got out to unlock it. The yard, and the house as well, looked peaceful. She got back into the truck to drive in and said, this time to Tank, “So we’ll have ourselves some breakfast, I’ll change clothes, and we’ll take off for a really long hike.”

She’d finished breakfast and was pulling on her hiking boots when an engine roared past on Willow Lane. Or not past; the roar was cut off as if its source might have stopped at her gate. Her locked gate, she reminded herself. Then the bell rang, and rang again; and a voice shouted: “Mrs. Mendes!”

Rosemary headed for the door as the voice called again: “Mrs. Mendes!”

“Come on, Tank.” She stepped out onto the porch, and recognized the big black truck idling in the road. Steve Runyon’s hand reached for the bell-pull again, and she called, ”Stop that! I hear you. And you’re upsetting my dog,” she added as Tank barked. “What do you want?”

“To talk to you, for just a minute. Please.”

She told Tank to sit, and moved forward to turn the lock and open the gate. Flushed face rigid with anger, Runyon looked even bigger than she’d remembered. Rosemary planted herself right there in the gateway and said, “Well?”

“Sorry, but a friend in town called me and… Look, what has your boyfriend told you is happening with Sammie Andre?”

“Boyfriend?” Were Gus’s neighbors nosier, and more gossipy, than he’d thought?

“Don’t be cute, lady. The sheriff, what’s his name? Angstrom.” He caught her expression and his shoulders slumped. “Sorry. Look, I don’t mean to be rude and your personal life is none of my business.

But I got word that Andre might be turned loose, and since you’re the complainant, I thought you might know about that.”

“I don’t have any current knowledge of her status. And why should you care?”

“Because I owe it to my cousin to see her sorry ass locked up for the rest of her unnatural life. At the very goddamned least. I also heard David Conroy might be financing her. Has Conroy tried to buy you off?”

With a second “Why?” on the tip of her tongue, Rosemary was caught off-guard by Runyon’s abrupt question. “I beg? ” She remembered Conroy’s “make it worth your while.” But that was none of this man’s business. “I’m not for sale.”

“Glad to hear it,” he said, and turned on his heel and trotted back to his truck.

“And where do you suppose he’s going now?” said Rosemary aloud; and Tank, who’d stayed sitting but had rumbled softly a time or two during the exchange, came forward to nudge her leg. “No, no, not your problem,” she told him. “Nor mine,” she added, her tone less certain. She turned back to the house, where the phone had been ringing for some time, but it had stopped.

“Rosemary?”

The voice from behind her jolted her for a moment. “Kim! Where did you come from?” She moved back to the gate to hold it wide. “Come in, come in. Where’s Tyler?”

“Oh, he’s at home asleep. Rosemary, I’m sorry Steve bothered you. Are you okay?”

Rosemary ushered her dog and her friend onto the porch and into the house. “Cold out there. Kim, I’m fine. Please sit down and tell me what Steve is up to. is he bothering you?”

Kim dropped onto the couch and rubbed her arms. “I forgot to put on a coat. He came by yesterday morning and said maybe it would be a good thing for him to play with Tyler, take him for a ride, like that. Poor little guy, he really misses having a man around, and Steve looks a little bit like Eddie. And sounds like him.”

“That was kind of Steve. What happened today?”

“He came again, real early, while I was giving Tyler breakfast; he didn’t sleep much last night. Tyler, I mean. So when he finished eating, I put him back in bed, and Steve opened a beer and then he got a phone call, something that really upset him.” Kim wrapped her arms around herself, still shivering. “Then he asked me about you, what you’d been doing. I said I didn’t know and it was none of his business, and he just glared at me, and then took off.

“And when I saw he’d stopped here, I figured I’d better come down and see what was happening, if you needed help.”

“I appreciate it, Kim. Do you know what else he’s been doing recently?”

“Mostly just making phone calls. He brought a six-pack with him yesterday, and after he’d played with Tyler he sat at the kitchen table with his cell phone and a beer for quite a while. I don’t know who he was calling, but I think he was asking questions about that Sammie Andre.”

And apparently got some answers. “This morning he asked me what Sheriff Angstrom was doing about Ms. Andre,” Rosemary said, “and I told him I don’t know. And I don’t.”

“Maybe Steve will go see the sheriff.” Kim sounded relieved at this possibility.

“If he does, Sheriff Angstrom will handle it. And I should tell you I promised the sheriff this morning that I would stay well out of this mess and leave it to him.”

“That sounds to me like a good idea.” Kim got to her feet, turned for the door, and turned back. “For one thing, you really don’t want to get in Steve’s way. He’s not a bad guy, exactly, but when he’s after something, he doesn’t much care who he runs over.”

When Kim had left, Rosemary stared absently at the closed door for a long moment before turning to the desk and the phone, to punch in the number that was becoming very familiar.

“Sheriff’s office, this is…” with a name Rosemary didn’t recognize and wouldn’t remember.

“This is Rosemary Mendes. May I please speak with Sheriff Angstrom?”

“I’m sorry, but the sheriff is in court this morning. May I take a message?”

“Please tell him…” She paused, and opted to stay with facts rather than more supposition. “Tell him that Steve Runyon came by my home a few minutes ago and expressed an interest in the case involving Ms. Andre. I suggested he see Sheriff Angstrom for information.”

“I’ll tell the sheriff. Thank you, Mrs. Mendes.”

“And that, I trust, is that,” said Rosemary as she hung up. “Come on, boyo, I promised you—us—a hike.”

A COUPLE of hours later Tank was sprawled on his bed, happily weary, but Rosemary had worn off only part of her uneasiness. The house was warm and quiet, unfinished tasks awaited her attention, and she hadn’t corresponded with either of her sons for days. She pulled her mind quickly back from that thought: best to let recent events settle into background and soften their sharper edges before venturing into that minefield. As in, “What’s been happening up there in the mountains, Wolf-Mama?”

“What you need is a job,” she muttered aloud. She had too much free time, time to fret and worry about problems that were mostly those of other people. Maybe at the Courier? No no! Not for prickly, authoritative Glenna Doty.

But perhaps Sue Harrison could use some cheap, willing help in her bookstore? Rosemary picked up the telephone, and promptly put it back as she realized that the numbers her fingers were about to punch in were those of the sheriff’s office.

Not your business you promised go find something sensible to do. She sat down at her computer intending to continue her search for cork floor tiles, but found herself instead typing in Google, and the Conroy family. And the photo of Brian D. Conroy and his chief of staff, Sammie Andre, in his office. He was an arrogant, difficult man, and he’d done a bad job of loving his child—maybe both his children—but she didn’t think he deserved another dreadful blow. Besides, her suspicions were probably wrong.

A small, already clean and neat house didn’t offer much in the way of challenge, except for the basement, which she wasn’t yet prepared to tackle. And what, she wondered, was Steve Runyon doing, and to whom, while she huddled here in a well-locked—cage? She shut down the computer, pulled on her jacket, collected her bag and keys, and headed for the door. “It might be a good idea to leave you here this time,” she said to Tank, who opened one eye but didn’t bother to raise his head. “Right. Stay and be good.”

She kept her eyes on the road and the speedometer and both hands on the wheel for the trip to town. Traffic seemed normal. She saw a USFS truck, a scatter of ordinary cars and pickups mostly staying within the speed limit, a CalTrans crew doing some road-shoulder maintenance. No Trinity County Sheriff’s Department or highway patrol vehicles, and only the occasional lumber truck since most of the drivers coming south with loads chose to swing off towards Lewiston rather than continuing into town. The small airport looked empty without September’s crowd of firefighting crews and helicopters.

There were a few early lunch-seekers at the deli on highway 3 and the eating places on Main Street. Rosemary turned right and drove slowly past the courthouse, which looked quiet. She spotted a sheriff’s department SUV—a Ford expedition, she’d learned those were—in the county parking lot across the small side street behind the building; probably it was Gus Angstrom’s. There was no big black pickup in the county lot, nor in the library lot just west of there. She drove on the short distance to the sheriff’s department and jail; Runyon’s truck wasn’t there, either. She wished she’d been smart enough, quick enough, to get him to say who had told him Andre was to be released. Surely not Gus?

As she’d learned from practice, the sheriff’s lot was a good place to turn around. She did that, re-entered Main Street cautiously, and drove back in the direction she’d come—and almost without intention, pulled to the curb across the street from the county lot.

She turned off her engine and sat there for a moment, trying to decide whether she should walk over to the courthouse to see what was happening, maybe have a word with Gus about Steve Runyon. But to get in, she’d probably be asked her reason for being there; and at the moment, she had no real answer. And she might have to see Sammie Andre again.

Alternatively, she could sit here and wait for Gus to finish his stint in court and offer to take him to lunch, where she could warn him about Steve and pester him with questions he probably wouldn’t feel free to answer. Like, did the Conroys have the clout to bring in Sacramento? Would they use their money and connections to hang Sammie Andre? Figuratively speaking, of course. Or alter-natively, to free her? And why hadn’t she, Rosemary, called her very own lawyer and friend to ask some of these questions?

She released her seat belt, lowered the window, and saw that people were beginning to trickle from the courthouse, probably bound for lunches of their own. Maybe, if she just waited here for another minute or two…

The rear door of the courthouse building was not directly in her line of vision, but just at that moment she saw sunlight glinting on Gus Angstrom’s fair hair as he came into view from that direction and headed across the side street toward the county parking lot. Fifteen or twenty feet behind him, a pair of green-uniformed men shepherded a slight, dark-haired woman who moved slowly, hands apparently bound in front of her, glancing around her as she walked: Sammie Andre. Two men in suits followed them: Andre’s lawyers? And another man—he looked in her direction and she recognized David Conroy—brought up the rear. It didn’t appear that Andre was being set free; maybe a sensible judge had refused bail.

A car passed on Main Street, and another, blocking her view. Rosemary stepped out of her truck and slung her bag over her shoulder, eyes on the procession. Angstrom had reached the Expedition and was opening the rear door when another vehicle—a big black pickup—pulled in from the west end of the lot and stopped, blocking that exit. He turned to look at the new arrival and Steve Runyon bounded out of the truck, yanking another, much smaller man with him.

Rosemary’s cry of warning as she ran across the street was swallowed in the din of Runyon’s yell, a shriek from Andre, and a yelp from the deputy to her left who was knocked sideways as Andre hit him and caromed off. In what seemed like slow motion, Andre’s arms came up with a pistol; she fired two shots toward Runyon and half turned to send another behind her. Voices shouted warnings or commands, Rosemary saw the smaller man crumple and Runyon lurch backwards, and then found herself face to face with Andre, who held the pistol in both hands as she pushed its barrel against Rosemary’s neck. Behind her, the pursuing Gus Angstrom came to a quick halt.

“Everybody stop right now or she’s dead! Hear me? She’s dead!” Andre yelled. “Move, bitch! Back the way you came,” she snapped to Rosemary, and then, over her shoulder, “Stay back!”

“Everybody! Stay where you are!” came Gus’s voice from behind them as they crossed the street.

“That green truck is yours, right?” Andre, of slight build but several inches taller than her captive, was behind her now with the pistol against the back of her neck.

“Yes.”

“Let’s walk around to the other side. Okay, unlock it.”

Rosemary dug carefully into her bag, pulled out her keys, and touched the “unlock” button.

“Give me the keys and open that door. Okay,” she said when Rosemary had obeyed, “now you get in and climb over the console and get behind the wheel. Very slowly. Fasten your seat belt. Now put both hands on the wheel, right at the top where I can see ’em.”

When Rosemary had complied, Andre stepped into the truck, dropped into the passenger seat, and with a quick backwards motion that Rosemary failed to anticipate in time, pulled the door shut and settled into place, handcuffs not interfering with her ability to train the pistol on her captive. Rosemary could see, to her left, the small, silent crowd standing along the edge of the parking lot and a new group of onlookers who had come from the courthouse to fill the narrow side street. “Wave to your buddies, so they’ll know better than to follow you,” said Andre, and dropped the keys on the console.

“I’ll let you put these in the ignition. You can get cute and drop them if you want, but you’ll be dead two seconds later.” Andre watched, and nodded. “Now start your engine, and pull out very slowly, very carefully. Good. Now straight ahead, then left onto Highway Three. Stay under the speed limits.”