I STOOD OUTSIDE in the new day. Not a cloud in a bright blue sky. I don’t know how clouds disappear so fast, but I knew it had rained because I remember being soaked, and twenty or thirty drowned worms were on the ground within ten feet of me.
Harper stood beside me, taking the fresh air deep into her lungs. She was back in her tank top and running skirt, looking good, hair brushed, eyes clear and bright.
“Nice,” she said. “I could live here. If they had a mall somewhere nearby.”
“If they had a mall, it wouldn’t be nice, or maybe you never read Catch-22, city girl.”
“I have, actually. It was pretty gross and not all that funny like some people said. Okay, no mall. What about a Costco? I buy a lot of clothes at Costco. And chia seeds.”
“Still no.”
The truck was a sorry sight, tilted onto its empty rim, canted like a torpedoed PT boat.
The 76 station was open. The door to its single bay was rolled up and an OPEN sign glowed in a grimy window.
Harper followed me over. A grizzled guy in his sixties was standing in the empty bay, smoking the last inch of a Marlboro, staring outside as the day warmed up. He gave Harper’s outfit an appreciative look, then lifted an eyebrow at me.
“Morning,” I said.
He nodded. “That your rig behind Double-O’s place?”
“Yep. It’s a rental. A real beauty, too.”
“Be even better if they’d given you four tires. Bet you got a sweet deal on that.”
“I did. Can you patch a leak?”
“Plug one, if it ain’t too bad. I can’t take a tire off its rim. Machine’s broke. I’m expectin’ a part in a couple of days. If you bring me a tire, I’ll have a look at it. I’m Arlo. What’s your names?”
“I’m Mo—John. This’s Angel.”
He gave her an even longer look this time, then he nodded. “Bring me that tire. Let’s see what’cha got.”
Harper accompanied me to the truck. I lifted the spare out and hauled it over to Arlo. He flicked his cigarette into a puddle where it hissed and died.
“This here tire’s pretty much new,” he said.
“And flat,” I replied. “It’s the spare.”
He considered that. “You got here sometime last night on three tires?”
“More like two and a half.”
“Better you than me.” He put air in the spare, listened for a leak, then set it in a puddle, rolled it a bit, watched it blow bubbles the size of spider farts. He held it up, located the bubbles on the tread and gave it a closer look.
“It’ll plug,” he said. Which took about three minutes, then he waited a few more for the plug to dry and inflated the tire to 35 psi.
“Can you put a new valve stem on the other one?” I asked him. “Got damaged somehow.” Like with a serrated knife blade.
“Nope. Don’t keep any QuikStems in the shop and I can’t take a tire off a rim. But that plug’ll get you to Ely if you’re headed that way—Tonopah if you’re going west. I wouldn’t want to drive all the way to Florida on a plugged tire, but that’s just me.”
I paid Arlo, put the tire on the truck myself, drove it over to the open bay and got air in the left front tire, then Harper and I went back to the house.
Upstairs in the kitchen, she phoned the repair shop in Goldfield to check on her Corolla. The mechanic told her nothing had changed and it would be at least another two or three days before it would be ready—more likely three than two.
She poked out her cheek with her tongue and thought for a moment, then looked at me. “Could you stand to have me around a couple more days? You said I might be able to help you find what’s-’is-name, the stoner twerp.”
“Well said. The twerp is Elrood. And yes, I’ll survive since we’ll be in separate rooms if I don’t catch up to him today in Ely.”
“Why separate? I mean, after last night, why bother?”
“Because that’s how people do these things when the world doesn’t gang up on them.”
Her face fell. “I’m sorry you feel ganged up on.”
“A poor choice of words. I take it back. I’m prone to that so you might want to get used to it.”
“So the deal is, separate rooms if I come with? If you don’t find Elrood right away, that is.”
“That’s right.”
“And ‘separate’ wasn’t just another abysmal choice of words on your part?”
“Not this time.”
“Fine. If we must. But it seems so unnecessary. It’s not as if I would try anything, Mort. Or you.”
“Got it. Ready to hit the road?”
She sighed. “Sure. Let’s go.”
Fifteen minutes later we were a mile out of Grange—after I’d left sixty dollars on the dresser in Bobbie’s room and we’d said our heartfelt thank-yous and goodbyes to Olivia. I’d also returned Harper’s gun and bullets to her. And I’d reloaded my Ruger. A rock the size of a softball is as good a weapon as a gun without bullets.
“Um,” Harper said, breaking five minutes of silence except for the hum of tires on pavement.
I smiled. “Um?”
“I, uh, had a thought.”
“Let’s hear it.”
She looked over at me. “Not sure I should say this. I probably shouldn’t but I want to. I mean, it’s in my head and I’d like to get it out and be done with it.”
“Go ahead. I’m as tough as scrap iron.”
“Really?”
“No, but I can fake it. What’s up?”
She pursed her lips. “You’re a nice guy, Mort. Really nice. The past twelve hours—jeez, has it only been that long? It’s been fun. Oh, hell. What I mean is, it’s been sexy, risqué, and I liked it.” She gave me an uneasy look. “I hope that’s okay. Don’t think I mean anything by that. It’s been fun and unexpected, but I’m glad neither of us tried to turn it into anything more than that.”
Whew. “I don’t know what to say, Harp.”
“You don’t have to say anything. I wanted you to know that this was, well, enjoyable? I think that’s the right word. Feels like it. At any rate, I’m glad you’re the one who came along when you did, not some … some creep.”
I still didn’t know what to say. This felt like an area where a person could easily insert a size twelve boot in his size ten mouth. A person very much like me.
“One other thing,” she said, looking into my eyes. “And don’t worry, it’s safe. It has to do with my marriage, which ended four years ago.”
“Sounds safe.”
She smiled. “It is. Quite a few women need a sense of danger to get, you know, worked up. I’m not like that. At least not now, not that I’ve been very worked up since you and I met. It’s just that it occurred to me that back when I met my husband, I was into that enticing sense of danger. It felt masculine and erotic. But no more. I grew up.”
“Good to know. I think.” Not that I knew what to think about her saying she hadn’t been very worked up. She had snuck the word very in there, probably inadvertently, but it was a nuance I didn’t want to explore or even mention.
She looked at my expression and sighed. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.”
I reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m glad you did. Now let’s see about finding Elrood.”
“Crap. Now I’m embarrassed.”
Sixty miles from Grange to Ely. We had thirty more to go when Harper said, “You and Lucy haven’t been married a full year yet? You must’ve gotten a divorce too, at some time in your life.”
“You oughta be a detective. It’s a good profession. No grading papers, keep your own hours, stop daydreaming about pepper-spraying kids.”
She smiled. “You did, didn’t you? Got divorced before you met Lucy. Was it messy?”
“Nope. We’re still good friends.”
“That sounds like you. So what went wrong?”
“Does it matter?”
She shrugged. “No. But here we are. We could get to know each other better as long as I don’t have a car and we might hang out for a few more days. Especially after, well … last night. I mean, if that’s okay.”
“It’s a lot better than the alternative.”
She gave me a perplexed look. “Which is?”
“You being a mystery.”
“I am?”
“On several levels, Harp.”
“Name one.”
“A tan, but no tan lines. Not that I noticed.”
She smiled. “Yeah, right.”
“Did I mention that I’m a private investigator?”
“I think so. Do you recall my telling you last night that I would tell you why I wasn’t the least bit embarrassed to be around you without clothes?”
“Vaguely. Next time we stop for gas I’ll check my notes and get back to you on that.”
She smiled. “I’m a member of the Desert Sun Naturist Park. Twenty-five miles southwest of Vegas.”
“Huh. That sounds like a nudist camp.”
“Wow, now there’s a term I haven’t heard in a while. Desert Sun isn’t big, isn’t well known, and it’s couples and single women only. It doesn’t take single guys, for obvious reasons.”
“Which explains why you don’t embarrass easily.”
“Or at all, Mort. When I’m undressed.”
“Yeah, that—and the absence of tan lines. How long have you been going there? I’ve never heard of the place.”
“Pretty much since my divorce. Desert Sun is a well-kept secret. They get new people by recommendations and interviews with people who came as guests of members. First time I went was as a guest of a science teacher at my high school, Karen No-last-name.”
“No last name. Discreet, except for me being a hotshot world-renowned gumshoe. How many Karens are science teachers at your school, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Oop.”
“That’s right. But don’t worry, her secret is safe with me.”
“I hope so. Anyway, in the past four years I’ve gotten pretty good at tossing horseshoes.”
“Nude horseshoe tossing. I’m impressed.”
“It’s better for tanning than nude chess. There’s two guys in their sixties who play chess while their wives hang out around the pool and sunbathe. The guys butts are fish-belly white.”
“Nude chess, white butts. The things I’m learning.”
She grinned. “Uh-huh. Anyway, you were about to tell me about your divorce.”
“I was? Since when?”
“It was in the works, until you sidetracked it.”
I shrugged. “Hard to say why we got divorced. I was working for the IRS, which is like being given a daily dose of slow-acting poison that seeps in and turns you into a soulless thug. It might’ve been that.”
“The IRS sounds like a wonderful career choice.”
“I was stressed, unhappy, a little overweight. Not the best husband material at the time.”
“You are now—just sayin’. What’s your ex’s name?”
“In high school it was Dallas Frick. Dallas Angel now. She kept the name.”
“Yeah, I would’ve too.”
I didn’t respond to that since it might be like sticking my hand in a bear trap. But maybe not.
“My divorce was messy,” Harper said. She glanced at me. “The sex was great at first. Very hot—for the reason I mentioned earlier. Then it sort of cooled off. Brad and I had been married three and a half years when he first hit me. He lost about thirty thousand dollars in an investment deal he told me was a lock, easy money, then suddenly it wasn’t and he lost all but a thousand of it.
“He was pissed off, hungry, and I didn’t have dinner ready on time, so he hit me, as if that would help. He was also drunk, which to me was—is—no excuse. At all. He was apologetic the next morning, classic abuser behavior, but I told him I’d give him that one freebie hit and if it ever happened again, he was going to be so damn sorry and I was going to be gone forever.”
“Then, of course, he hit you again.”
“Yes. But I was prepared for the possibility since I am nobody’s punching bag, and I mean nobody’s. I’m also a lot stronger than I look.”
“You look plenty strong to me, miss pole vaulter.”
“Thanks. That next day I got a pair of his nylon socks and wrapped two pounds of wet sand in layers of plastic wrap to keep it wet. I formed it into a kind of tube shape that fit into the end of one sock. Then I put the other sock over that, tied the two open ends in a knot so the whole thing was really strong and I could swing it, hard.
“A month or so later he was late paying a credit card that cost us almost forty dollars in a late payment fee. He got drunk at a bar and came home ranting about how that big investment was partly my idea because I didn’t say no, so losing that thirty thousand was also my fault—except I didn’t know he had invested anything at the time since he never told me. I didn’t know anything about investing in general, except to put money in the bank and get six cents’ worth of interest every month.
“So that night he came at me again, which was such a stupid stereotypical situation, so trite—being the abused wifey, I mean. He punched me and I fell down, but I got up and ran into the bedroom, slammed the door and got the sock out from under our mattress. I waited beside the door against a wall, and when he came in I swung the sock at the back of his head which knocked him the fuck out—pretty much like he had run full tilt into a brick wall. It surprised me, how well it worked. First time I’ve ever seen anyone knocked out so completely like that, like totally gone.
“I dragged him into the dining room and sat him up in a heavy wooden chair and cable-tied his ankles to the legs. Not just cable-tied, but totally cable-tied. I put six or eight zip ties on each ankle and tied a rope around his waist and around the back of the chair before he came to.”
“You left his arms free?”
“Yes, but I kept the sock ready, and he wasn’t about to get up and chase me. Anyway, he yelled bloody murder when he woke up and found himself trapped in the chair. He told me he’d kill me as soon as he got loose.
“I told him killing me wasn’t going to be easy because he was never going to see me again, except in a lawyer’s office or in court. He kept yelling while I was packing up my clothes and other stuff, and he was trying to untie the rope around his waist, reaching around behind him to get at the knot, so I said, ‘Brad, sit still and shut up or I swear to God I will knock you the hell out again.’
“Dumbass kept yelling and cursing and he almost had the rope off, so I smacked the back of his head again with the sock, not all that hard, really, but that was that. I loaded up my car and got out. But before I took off, I retied the rope around his waist. I left a knife on the table beside him so he could cut the rope and the cable ties when he woke up. Or slit his wrists. Whatever he wanted to do.”
“Remind me never to piss you off.”
“Good plan, except you’re nothing like Brad. Anyway, all that happened in Vegas during Christmas break which was good timing. I drove to Ely, to my aunt’s place, which is where we’re going now. I mean, we’ll look for this Elrood guy you’re after, but I’ll also introduce you to Aunt Ellen. She’s my mother’s younger sister, younger by two years. She’s divorced, so she’s a member of the club. Divorce is pretty much a national pastime used to alleviate boredom or prevent assault.”
“You didn’t go see your mother after leaving hubby Brad tied to a chair?” I said. “And unconscious.” Which, I didn’t tell her, could’ve turned out badly if he had died like that. But she was an English teacher, not a paramedic.
Harper shrugged. “No. Mom lived in Carson City back then—and now. Ely was closer than Carson and, I have to say, friendlier. Anyway, that was my actual divorce. All the nauseating legal crapola came later.”
“No trouble with Brad since?”
“Some ugly words over a big conference table in my lawyer’s office. And he got a warning about coming by my apartment in Vegas one night, which violated a restraining order. He’s not totally psychotic or anything. He’s just a dumbass with limited self-control that I shouldn’t have married in the first place, but there was that stupid danger thing at the time. I know a lot better now. Anyway, that’s enough about my loser marriage, Mort. What about us?”
I frowned. “Us? What about us?”
“Don’t look at me that way. I mean, you’re looking for this guy, and we’ll need a place to stay in Ely unless you find him in like twenty minutes and head back to Reno and … and then I don’t know. I guess that’ll be that, but until you find him do we really have to stay in separate rooms?”
“Last night wasn’t unpleasant, Harp. Not at all. But it happened because it was necessary.”
“I get it. I got it last night. You’re married. Last thing I would ever do is get in the way of that or be a problem or anything. I like Lucy, Mort, even if I haven’t met her yet. You and she and her mother of all things are going to ride bicycles around San Francisco naked, and it looks like I’m going too, so it’s not like you and I are completely done with that, in case you forgot.”
“Jeez. Lucy’s mother. I might have to be sick that day, but thanks for the reminder.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome.” She turned toward me. “Lucy wanted you to describe Holiday, the girl you rode with in San Francisco a year or so ago. Now’s a good time.”
“You sure?”
“Of course. Why not? Let’s hear it.”
I shrugged. “Holiday was twenty-five years old, five-six, very pretty. And, best guess, thirty-seven, twenty-five, thirty-six.”
“Thirty-seven, huh?”
“I didn’t use a tape measure so I could be wrong. And she’s a civil engineer who can drive you batshit with math. You should see her T-shirts.”
“Packed solid, huh?”
“Nope. Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. Most of them have obscure mathematical formulas on them, and math jokes so incomprehensible they aren’t funny, except to her.”
“So she’s a gorgeous nerd.”
“Of the first order on both counts.”
Harper didn’t say anything for a minute. Then, “I’m five three and a half. Thirty-three and a half, twenty-four, thirty-three. And trust me, I really need both of those half inches, which is why I mention them.”
“Useful, if something weird happens and I have to buy you clothes. Which could happen.”
She smiled. “Think so?”
“Unless we catch up to your suitcase.”
“It’s a sports bag, says REEBOK on the side. If what I’m wearing bothers you, I can buy more clothes in Ely.”
“What you’ve got on doesn’t bother me a bit, Harp.”
She canted her head. “Good to know.” She turned sideways in her seat. “Tell me what Lucy did—what was it she said? In a Mustang convertible an hour after you two met. She said it was interesting and for you to tell me.”
“We were on U.S. 95, south of Tonopah. The top was down in the car and she took off her tank top and sat up on the back of the seat in the wind at fifty miles an hour.”
“Topless? No bra?”
“Yup. Like you, she almost never wears one.”
“Cool. Only an hour after you two met, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“Jeez. And you were freaking out with me at Olivia’s. That is so wrong, Mort.”
“I wasn’t freaking out.”
“Yes, you were, but only because you’re married. I get it.” She settled back in her seat. We rode without talking for a while, then she made a half groan, half laugh, so low I almost didn’t hear it.
“What?” I asked.
She shook her head. “Nothing. I was thinking about your ex dumping the name Frick and keeping Angel, which got me thinking about names in general, that’s all.”
“Names?”
“When you teach high school, you become more aware of names and how they would work if you were a teacher. Frick wouldn’t be a great name, especially for a woman. My name, Leeman, doesn’t automatically and effortlessly lend itself to abuse, so I’m safe. Angel would be interesting, but it’d be better for a woman than a guy. Mr. Angel? I don’t know about that.” She smiled. “You probably shouldn’t go into teaching.”
“I’ll take it off my bucket list.”
“Good idea. But the reason I made a kind of uck sound a moment ago is there’s a woman English teacher I met in another high school who married a guy with the last name of Wetmore. She’s pretty and only twenty-four years old, which makes it even worse.”
I thought about that, then said, “Bloody hell.”
“You got it. I asked her how that was going and she said ‘don’t ask.’ She didn’t look happy. I would change my name legally or take up accounting or something.”
Mrs. Wetmore. Damn. Sometimes life gets you with a claw and rips out your carotid.
Eighteen miles later, we arrived in Ely.