Chapter Eight

 

 

The Reed Ranch, Wyoming

 

“You couldn’t do better than this?” Howie asked Eileen, gesturing at Joe.

“He cleans up real nice,” Eileen drawled. Joe, still muzzy-headed from his nap and the pills, was trying to get through his head that Howie Magnus was in front of him. He’d had Howie’s poster on his wall when he was just hitting his teens, and knew every song on Howie’s Black Magic collection by heart. He bet he could still sing every verse.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. Howie grinned at him, remarkable blue eyes sparkling in his weathered face. He looked smaller and older than his posters and his albums, all but the eyes. The eyes were exactly Howie.

“You just drove into a prize shitstorm, fella,” he said. “You show him the skull yet, Eileen?”

“Not yet,” Eileen said. “I thought I’d let him get settled in before we started all of that.”

“Is this about the missing guy?” Joe asked. Getting his bruised head around the sight of Howie Magnus was like swallowing one of ’Berto’s horse pills. ’Berto’s horse pills weren’t helping his brainpower, for that matter. Still, there was enough wattage for him to realize there was a lot going on, none of it good.

“Yes,” Eileen said crisply. She was dressed in light khaki pants and a white cotton T-shirt. She wore a light blue button-up shirt, open, over her T-shirt, which Joe appreciated. She looked delicious. If he saw her nipples through the thinness of that old T-shirt he’d go absolutely crazy. He hadn’t seen her for nearly a week, after all, and there was nothing bruised below his waist.

Then again, he knew why she was wearing two shirts on such a hot day. The second shirt hid her holster at her waist. Joe was confident she had her other friend, her revolver, fastened to her ankle. Eileen was carrying her weapons at her own parents’ home. This had to mean trouble.

“Where’s Lucy?” he asked.

“Getting Hank dressed after his nap,” Eileen said. “Dinner in about fifteen minutes, and you’re going to meet more people. Every one you meet was here when Dr. McBride was killed, except for Lucy and Hank and me.”

“Hank, right,” Joe said. The little baby, the boy who’d been inside Lucy when she and Joe and Eileen had saved the world from nuclear war. He surely wasn’t tracking that well, because it suddenly occurred to him that Eileen had just told him that the missing archeologist was now the dead archeologist.

“I think I’ll get this fella a cup of joe,” Howie said, rising to his feet with compact grace. “He looks a bit stoned from his meds. I’m going to get a cup for me, too, even if it is before dinner. I think I’ll be drinking coffee tonight instead of whiskey with my cigars. Story time should be interesting. Tonight looks like your night to tell all, Mr. Tanner.”

“You won’t be disappointed,” Joe said.

“Thanks, Howie.” Eileen said. “Joe takes cream only, just like me. Bring a cup for me, would you?”

“Of course,” Howie said, disappearing through the doorway to the kitchen. Joe sat looking at the empty doorway. Howie Magnus was getting him a cup of coffee. He imagined Sully doing lazy flips and turns, wings outstretched, her laser lance in one relaxed hand, watching him and laughing, and he felt so dizzy for a moment he had to shut his eyes.

“Joe, you need to rest,” Eileen said anxiously. She touched his hand and he took it, holding the warm length of it in his own.

“I’m all right,” he said. “No more pain pills, after this one. It’s aspirin or nothing, from now on. I hate the way they make me feel.”

“No fractures, no bleeding?”

“Nothing but a concussion, and that’s going away,” Joe said. “Now tell me, what happened? The guy that’s dead, he was murdered?”

“He was murdered,” Eileen said, still holding his hand. “We found him by the old chicken coop. He was attacked near the archeological dig, and whoever did it left him for dead. He wasn’t. He got up and made it almost the whole way here before he collapsed and died. Before he died he hid a few things, which Lucy and Hank and I found.”

“What things?”

“Here’s coffee,” Howie said, coming through the doorway with a wooden tray. “I added a cup for Lucy, she’s in the kitchen with Hank. She’ll be along in a minute.”

“What about Mark and Nolan?” Eileen asked.

“They’re setting up some targets for shooting practice tomorrow,” Howie said, setting the tray down on the coffee table and taking his own black coffee from the tray. He sat down and sipped, eyebrows raised over the rim of the cup. “Your dad is directing, they’re setting up. Jimmy is taking a shower. I excused myself because I’m old and tired.”

Eileen laughed and Joe surprised himself by laughing with her.

“Okay, I wanted to meet Eileen’s boyfriend. I took a quick shower and hustled down here. I was thinking she’d called up her muscle-bound buddy to help her out when she wrestles the bad guy into handcuffs, but you don’t look like a cop.”

“I’m not,” Joe said.

“Hey, Joe,” Lucy said, coming through the door with a small boy on her hip. Joe hadn’t seen Lucy face-to-face since she was pregnant, over two years ago now. He hadn’t really seen her that afternoon when he’d driven in; he was too busy trying to keep his brains from leaking out of his ears.

Lucy was just beautiful, he thought, and he’d thought that when she was bulging with pregnancy. She had a glorious mane of dark hair and a lovely face and eyes. Best of all, she was Lucy, personality blazing like a bonfire. She was thinner now but still rounded in a way the fashion magazines frowned upon but Joe did not. He found himself grinning like a happy pup.

The little boy in her arms, with curly dark hair and dark eyes, must be her son Hank. He looked unsmiling at Joe and Joe smiled at him. Hank hid his face in Lucy’s neck as she leaned over and gave Joe a big kiss. Joe was probably a nightmare to a small boy; bruised, one eye bloodshot, white bandage covering his stitches. At least he’d showered and shaved, so he looked a tiny bit more presentable.

“Hi, Lucy,” Joe said. “Hello, Hank. I’m sorry I look so awful. I’ll be all better soon.”

Hank kept his head in Lucy’s neck and she shrugged. She walked around the couch and took a seat on the other side of Joe with Hank clinging to her like a little barnacle. She took the coffee Howie had brought in and sipped it, then relaxed into the couch.

“He’ll get over it,” she said. “How far did Eileen get? Did she get to the skull?”

“What skull?”

“I’ll have Dad get it out tonight,” Eileen said. She handed a cup of coffee to Joe and he took a hot mouthful that cannoned down his throat and lit him up like a light bulb. The mere smell was enough to revive him, earthy and sweet and bitter at the same time. “It’s a crystal skull, Joe, along with a crown of rubies and emeralds in about two pounds of gold. That’s not all.”

“Oh,” Joe said. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say. He drank more coffee.

“It’s Aztec, or so the archeologists think,” Lucy continued, her barnacle son now peeking with one bright eye from her chest. He saw Joe’s glance and hid his face again, but Joe could see him smiling. “They have the skeleton that wore it down at the buffalo jump, along with a few more artifacts. A jaguar medallion that’s surrounded by skulls, worked in turquoise and maybe emeralds.”

“Emerald eyes,” Howie said, his own glittering like jewels.

“I didn’t know you’d been down there,” Eileen said smoothly.

“I haven’t,” Howie said. “I’m a shameless snoop. I heard you and your mom talking about it in the kitchen.”

“Howie wouldn’t be welcome at the dig,” Lucy said. “There’s the anthropologist, Beryl Penrose, and the other archeologist, Jorie Rothman. They don’t like the hunters and the hunters don’t like them—”

“On the contrary,” Howie protested. “I think Mark and Nolan would both like to become extremely friendly with Jorie.”

“So friendly she’d walk funny for days,” Lucy said dryly.

“Jorie is pretty?” Joe guessed.

“You have no idea,” Lucy looked past Joe at Eileen and they both smothered smiles in their coffee cups.

“So that’s the situation. Howie is the head of a group of hunters who are scouting out my parents’ ranch. Beryl and Jorie worked with Dr. McBride. Anyone could have killed him, and as Nolan puts it so well, anyone in a dark alley would be happy to kill Dr. McBride for what he was carrying.”

“Which you now have,” Joe said. Howie looked at Joe over the top of his coffee mug, his eyes suddenly interested. He looked at Eileen and nodded.

“Looks like you picked a smart one,” he said. “I’ll have to check back later on the looks when he heals up.”

There was a bobbing motion at the door. Zilla came through the door and around the couch. Hank released his mother and squealed with joy. Zilla bounced ecstatically up and down on her one front leg and Hank slid to the floor so he could throw his chubby arms around the little dog.

“Zilla’s amazing, even by cattle dog standards. She’s fetching us for supper, that’s why my mom sent her in,” Eileen explained to Joe.

Joe had no desire for food, but he knew he had to eat. He stood carefully and slowly, like an old man. Eileen took his arm and made it appear as though he were escorting her, not taking half his weight as he negotiated his way carefully from the room. Howie and Lucy, along with Zilla and a joyful Hank, went ahead. This gave Joe enough of a chance to steal a kiss, his first one, from his future wife.

The kiss was long and deep and wet enough to make him want to forgo supper and head directly upstairs. Eileen grinned at him.

“Down, boy,” she said. “Separate bedrooms in this house, you know. We’re not married yet.”

“Oh, that’s right,” he groaned.

“Old-fashioned they are, but there’s lots of woods around here,” Eileen teased. Then her smile fell away from her face and Joe knew what she was thinking. He was thinking the same thing. There would be no trysts in the woods with a blanket and a picnic basket. There were monsters out there. Murderers.

“I’m sorry—” he started, and she put a finger to his lips.

“Kiss me again,” she said. “Forget everything, for right now. Kiss me again.”

 

Colorado Springs, Colorado

 

“Los Angeles,” Ken said. “Why do you want me to stay here while you’re there?”

“Research,” Rene said tersely, folding shirts carefully and packing them into his suitcase. “Wyoming. Find out everything about it. Tell me when Hulett was founded and who founded it. Find out why they named it such a silly name. How many people live there, how long it’s going to take to get there from here, where are the gas stations and the police stations and the speed limits. I need to know everything. Find out about Lucy Giometti. What her neighborhood is like, where she works, everything.”

“I can do better work at my home in Newark,” Ken began, but Rene was already shaking his head.

“I also need to know about Detective Eileen Reed, and that means you stay here. I need to know about the Colorado Springs police. Who is her partner, what does she do, every bit of publicity on her cases. When I get back we’ll need to leave so make sure the Lexus has an oil change and is clean. Go buy some new music and enjoy yourself. Eat that damned fast food I refuse to look upon.”

Ken laughed. He was a good man, Ken, solid and smart and dependable, despite a regrettable taste for fast food. Rene was going to need him badly in the days to come, when he’d gotten through with his business in Los Angeles.

“Is there going to be a problem, not killing Joe Tanner on the first try?” Ken asked. He was sprawled on a comfortable couch in the living room. They were in a Residence Inn close to the Colorado Springs airport, a place where business types spent days or weeks or months. Their long stay would draw no interest from the innkeepers, unlike a more transitory place. Best of all, Ken was free to fill the living room with his elaborate music sound system and his computers. Rene would return in a few days. Another day to recuperate and then it would be off to Wyoming and a nice little murder spree.

“No. If we fail again, then perhaps. But we won’t fail again.” Rene folded a tie in precise thirds and laid it gently in his suitcase. He didn’t tell Ken that the contractor, in this case, was actually Rene himself. Some things Ken didn’t need to know. Rene’s laptop was packed. After his plane took off he would play dozens of games of Free Cell, the computer solitaire game. Free Cell was his way of meditating, of solving problems in the back of his brain while the front of his brain was involved with queens and jacks and red eights.

“Not a chance,” Ken said. He put his hands behind his neck and stretched out on the couch. He was probably already dreaming of the enormous greasy bucket of fried chicken and some low sort of beer to go with it that he would buy after Rene left. Rene could hardly keep himself from shuddering. “I’ll have a Ph.D. in Wyoming trivia by the time you get back, boss,” Ken said confidently. “And I’ll know everything about our little pussycat Eileen and her matron-of-honor girlfriend Lucy.”

“Eileen will be a pussycat when she’s dead,” Rene said. “Until she is, she’s dangerous. Don’t forget that.”

“Okay,” Ken said, unfazed at the rebuke. “I won’t. I’ll drive you to the airport.”

Rene took his briefcase and his bag and left the suite, Ken following behind. The sun was heading towards the range of mountains that lay to the west of Colorado Springs. The day was hot and still. Puffy white clouds floated across the sky. Rene set his bag in the back of the Lexus. Good weather lay ahead. Rene took it as the best kind of omen.