Bad Company (9 page)

“Some kind of public event commemorating what happened to Monette, but not disrupting this week.”

All kinds of pictures came into Sally’s mind, many absurd, some obscene, some downright horrifying. None remotely tourist-friendly. “I’m waiting.”

“The Jubilee Days parade,” said Delice. “A float in memory of Monette, and in favor of the community taking care of its girls. Banners, stuff like that. We can put it all together in the parking lot behind the bar. Anybody who wants to can march along. Hell, this is supposed to be the Equality State, right? It could be a celebration of being a Wyoming woman, and a kind of ‘I’m entitled to make my own rules’ deal at the same time. Accentuate the positive, and make everybody see what’s at stake.”

Sally looked at Hawk, who looked back. “Damn,” he said. “I like that.”

So did Sally. “It’s good. It gives us until Saturday, and between now and then, we can work on the design, and all kinds of people will see it getting built.”

“And they can help out if they feel like it,” said Delice, pouring herself a shot of Cuervo Gold, downing it without benefit of salt or lime. “It was Brit’s idea. She and Maude Stark are already signing up volunteers. I’ve talked to a few people about it tonight, myself.”

If building a float satisfied Maude, it was one more point for Brit being a genius. “Count me in,” said Sally.

Suddenly Delice’s bar-owner radar pricked up. Out on the dance floor a stocky young cowboy in a mattress-striped shirt and a black hat was just about to take a swing at a tall, blond man. A little redhead was hanging on to the cowboy’s arm, her face an obvious plea to cool down. In a wink Delice was stepping between them, swinging a bank deposit bag of rolls of quarters in one hand.

“Remind me not to mess with Delice,” Hawk told Sally. “Ever.”

The cowboy backed away and stomped off to sulk at a table, the girl following with outstretched hands, mouth moving. Men fighting, women supplicating. Just another night in the barroom. And now Dwayne Langham had gone over to tap the blond man on the arm. They turned and walked toward the bar.

Sally might have known. Marsh Carhart, making a move on somebody maybe thirty years younger than he was. At least he’d nearly gotten his ass kicked this time. Maybe the next tavern keeper wouldn’t be quite as efficient as Delice.

Maybe the cowboy and the three friends he was sitting with would be waiting in the parking lot when Marsh went home.

Carhart had his hands on Delice’s shoulders, approaching the bar. “I swear,” he was telling her, “all I did was ask that girl to dance.” He smiled his most ingratiating, boyish smile. “Thanks for rescuing me, lady. I love a woman who runs with the wolves. Wanna buy me a drink?”

Maybe Delice would disembowel him.

“Amazing coincidence,” said Delice, peeling his hands off her shoulders. “We sell drinks. What’ll you have?”

“Stoli on the rocks with a twist,” he told her, looking over his shoulder at the cowboy, still glowering away. “Around here, looks like a man has to keep his strength up.”

Delice looked Carhart up and down, plainly assessing his state of inebriation, and evidently decided he was good for one more. “Yeah. I’ll let you know when I think you’re strong enough. That’s four bucks.”

“Some trouble around here?” said Dickie Langham, casting a sideways glance at the cowboy and the redhead as he stepped up to the bar.

“Nothing an experienced barkeep can’t handle. The cowpoke over there didn’t like the idea of his date dancing with somebody else.” Delice set a Coca-Cola in front of her brother. Dickie, in his sheriff’s khakis, had come in with Scotty Atkins, who was wearing the prepster plainclothes he’d had on at the Lifeway that morning. Atkins ordered a club soda.

“On the meter?” Sally asked him.

“Longish day,” said Scotty.

Sally wanted information. “Doing what?” she asked.

He regarded her over his club soda, pale eyes narrowed. “Our job.”

Dickie threw her a bone. “As it happens, Scotty and I and the county coroner spent a good hunk of the day over in Cheyenne. In our line of work, we often enjoy passing a few hours watching an autopsy.”

“So what did you learn?”

“Sheriff . . .” said Atkins.

“What the hell, Scotty—I’m not going to give away any trade secrets. We’ll get the preliminary report by Friday, but won’t have the results of the tricky lab stuff for a couple of weeks anyway. And by then, well . . .”

“It could be too late,” Sally filled in. “The killer could be long gone. So how do you guys go about solving something like this?”

“We hope the bad guy dropped his wallet, so we can go return it to him,” Atkins said sourly, scowling into his drink. “Christ, I wish this was a scotch.”

“Be my guest,” said Dickie. “I won’t tell your boss.”

“I don’t want to dull my razor-sharp powers of observation,” Atkins told him.

“So there’s no physical evidence?” Sally asked.

Scotty whistled. “Boy, you sure sound like you know what you’re talking about, Sally.”

“Not really, but just from what I could see, there was plenty of litter around. And,” she swallowed, looking down, “Monette’s body was in such horrible shape.”

Atkins patted her hand. “Let’s put it this way. I didn’t see anything today I feel like talking about with a nice lady like you.”

“I’m not that nice,” Sally told him, looking up.

“No? Hmm,” said Atkins, catching her eyes and making them go very wide.

“Nice fake, Scotty,” Hawk said, softly. “You managed to distract her. But risky. Guys get shot for trying that twice.”

“Hawk’s a crazy man,” Delice explained to Scotty.

“He’d die for love,” Dickie added.

Hoo boy. Sally was getting a glimpse of what Char-lene, the Lifeway checker, had been talking about. This guy Scotty had the flat-out je ne sais quoi. The hell with that. “So you guys went from the morgue to the bars?” she resumed.

“In my experience, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference,” Dickie said.

“Yeah. We’ve been making the rounds. You know, you meet so many interesting people in bars,” Atkins answered.

Sally wasn’t sure if he was making fun of her celebrated sordid past. “I understand that Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt met in a bar,” she said.

Atkins shocked her by laughing out loud. “At least it wasn’t the morgue,” he said.

“So come on, did you guys find out anything useful?” She really wasn’t giving up.

Dickie acted like he hadn’t heard the question. He’d spent years bartending right in front of bands whose idea of amplified sound was to attempt to deafen everybody in the place, so he had the perfect excuse. The best ears of Sally’s generation were two-thirds impaired.

Scotty Atkins, politely curbing the je ne sais quoi, gave her his best nonanswer. “We’ve got a lot of questions, and a lot of asking to do. It’s sort of like being a historian, only the people are alive.”

“Not all of ’em,” Hawk put in, and Scotty nodded thoughtfully, draining his club soda.

“That’s not very informative.” Sally stated the obvious. “I know you can’t say much, you guys, but seriously, I want to help.”

This time Scotty did the deaf boy thing, and it was Dickie’s turn to answer. “You’re a helpful sort of person,” said Dickie, smiling faintly at her. “But leave the driving to us.”

Sally decided on a strategic retreat. She could hassle Dickie anytime, and maybe work on Scotty sometime when Hawk wasn’t around. So they all looked around for a new subject, and found it just down the bar. Marsh Carhart was still hustling Delice. “Who’s your friend, little brother?” Dickie asked Dwayne.

Carhart stuck out his hand and gave Dickie a big smile, aimed mostly at his badge. “You must be Sheriff Langham,” he said.

“What was your first clue?” Dickie inquired.

“Hello, Marsh,” said Sally.

And now he turned and looked at her, squinting. “Do I know you?” he asked.

“Sally Alder,” she said.

“Remember me?”

Carhart took a sip of his drink and the boyishness fled from his face. Busted. “Sally . . . Mustang Sally? Jesus. I’d never have recognized you. What happened—did you have a face lift or something?”

So much for winsome charm. Sally, Dickie, Delice, and Hawk exchanged glances. “Am I crazy, or does everybody in this place sooner or later want to take a swing at this guy?” Hawk asked.

“This is Dr. Marsh Carhart,” said Sally, “world-famous author of
Man, the Rapist
. Maybe you saw him on
Sally Jessy,
telling all the girls not to wear short skirts or they’d be asking for it.”

“Call me Marsh,” he said, “and it wasn’t
Sally Jessy,
it was
20/20.”

“Man, the Rapist
?” Hawk said. “And all this time I’d believed all those ecstatic women who were yelling, ‘It’s you, only you, oh my God, yes yes yes!’ And they were nothing more than robots, programmed to serve the master race. I’ll never live it down.”

“What the hell are you doing in Laramie, Sally?” Carhart asked, pointedly ignoring Hawk.

“I teach at UW,” she told him.

“A Berkeley Ph.D. and that’s the best you could do? I thought you were at UCLA,” he said.

“I decided I could do better,” she replied.

But Carhart was distracted. A very young-looking cocktail waitress had come up to the bar to place an order. She stood between the rails of the server station, rattling off a long list of drinks to Delice, and Carhart was fully engaged with gulping his vodka and ogling the waitress’s butt.

“I’d consider relocating my eyeballs back into my head if I were you,” Scotty Atkins told him.

Carhart favored Scotty with a condescending stare. “What are you, her bodyguard?”

“Nope,” said Scotty. “But you could be her daddy.”

“Maybe her granddaddy,” said Hawk.

Even Dwayne snickered.

“What are you guys?” Carhart shouted, “the Wyoming sex police?”

“I think he’s strong enough,” Sally told Delice. This was the charisma that was going to get Molly Wood to roll over? Maybe some people found the combination of arrogance, ignorance, and Stolichnaya alluring. Maybe Carhart had a multiple personality.

And maybe he was drunk enough to play loose with information. “So I hear you’re giving rape a rest, doing ecological stuff. Working for Dwayne here on the Wood’s Hole land swap,” she told him. The whole deal creeped her out. His involvement was just one more reason to be suspicious.

“No,” he said, “I work for myself. I do independent consulting, evaluating environmentally sensitive areas. I’m doing a study of a parcel up in the Laramie Range, at Mr. and Mrs. Langham’s request. When I work on cases where private property transfers are involved, I focus on the science and stay away from the transaction part.”

Not drunk enough, damn it. The bureaucratic squirm language must come naturally.

“You wouldn’t want even an appearance of conflict of interest, of course,” Hawk said genially, his words for Carhart but his eyes on Sally’s.

“Are you an attorney?” Carhart asked.

“Nope,” said Hawk. “I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I’m just a longtime friend of the land.”

“It’s a friendly town,” said Sally, smiling at Hawk.

It seemed likely to get even more sociable. Sally and Hawk drove home in their separate vehicles. She pulled the Mustang into the garage, and he parked the truck in the driveway just behind her. Before she knew it, he’d pulled her out of the car and wrapped her up and was kissing her lips off.

“I can’t help it. I’ve been thinking about this all day,” he said finally, close to her ear, in a voice that clenched several of her intimate muscles and melted several others. “Feel like being love slave to the master race tonight?”

“If you beg me,” she replied against his neck, using her tongue and what was left of her lips in the way of persuasion.

When they finally managed to leave the garage, they saw that their front door was standing wide open. She hadn’t bothered to lock up after she’d stopped off to get her guitar. Nobody did; after all, this was Laramie. But she hadn’t left the door open.

An uninvited visitor. They checked the stereo and television, which were still there. Hawk’s laptop computer was still on his desk, undisturbed. No robbery.

Then Sally went into the bedroom. Somebody had dumped out her underwear drawer and taken a knife to her nightgowns and her fanciest lingerie. Shredded silk and lace littered the bedroom floor. And presumably the same somebody had taken Sally’s reddest lipstick and written a message on the mirror in the bathroom.

IT WASN’T GOD WHO MADE HONKY-TONK ANGELS.

Very original, thought Sally. Then the trembling began.

Chapter 8
Studs and Duds

All those mothers who reminded their daughters to wear clean underwear in case they were ever in a car accident would have appreciated Sally’s distress at having Dickie Langham and Scotty Atkins come into her bedroom and examine her shredded undergarments. The sight of Atkins putting on rubber gloves and picking up the tatters of what had once been a fetching cherry-red silk teddy trimmed with cream lace nearly did her in, and that was before the crime scene deputies showed up.

Dickie had tried to convince Sally to talk to the department’s victim counselor, but she had refused. She couldn’t explain quite why, but she didn’t want to make a big deal of this. It was embarrassing to have a bunch of cops pawing through your lingerie, and of course somebody else had been doing the same at some point between the late afternoon, when she’d stopped by with Mr. Skittles, and about midnight, when she and Hawk had come home. But Sally hadn’t been physically present. The intruder had slashed up half a dozen garments and stomped all over the rest, but she could go to a store and buy new underwear. Nothing was missing.

It had been a long, insane day. Two days, come to think of it. Yesterday a body, today this. Maybe she was just too done in to know how scared she ought to be. Too numb. Or maybe it was just that she refused to put what had happened to her side by side with what had been done to Monette Bandy.

She did take the opportunity to tell Dickie and Scotty about the conversation she’d overheard at the Lifeway, between Adolph and Eddie, the produce clerks. And she told them about her and Delice’s encounter with Bone Bandy. They both took notes.

“So what do you make of the message on the mirror?” Atkins asked her.

“I don’t know. It’s got to be some kind of reference to Monette, right? She spent plenty of time in the dives trying to pick up guys—hell, she even treated the Lifeway like a singles bar. What else could it be?”

Atkins looked up from his little spiral notebook, narrow-eyed. “I’d say the most obvious interpretation is that it refers specifically to you.”

“We’ll check it out,” said Dickie. “There might be a connection.”

Scotty added matter-of-factly, “In the last two days you’ve found a body, talked with maybe a couple dozen people about the death, been seen and heard talking about it in several places. We didn’t release the information that you and Joe—you call him Hawk?—found the body. But in a town like this, with a crime like this, rumors tend to spread, and that Dunwoodie case last year does make you something of a public figure. Not to mention the fact that you’re well known for your, er, colorful past.”

“I was a professional,” Sally objected. “I got paid to hang out in the honky-tonks.”

“As you like,” Atkins allowed. “It’s also possible that whoever killed Monette was still around when you two showed up. There are plenty of ways in and out of the Devil’s Playground.”

Sally was beginning to feel like she’d found too many ways in, and not enough out.

“Or”—Atkins looked straight into her eyes—“it’s conceivable that there’s somebody who’s got a slightly larger problem with women he thinks aren’t behaving properly.”

“Great. So you’re saying there’s no telling who it was.”

“We’re saying,” Dickie said, “that we’ll find out. Trust us. And keep a low profile for a few days, if that’s possible.”

Her first act of keeping a low profile was to refrain from telling her friend Dickie and his ace detective that she was not simply exhausted, but also as angry as she’d ever been. A sex maniac in Sally’s own house? Maybe the same guy who’d savaged and killed Monette? Maybe getting ready to terrorize or hurt more women? Wasted and scared, yes, but infuriated too.

“If you don’t mind,” Dickie said, “I think we won’t release the details of this particular home invasion. We’ll put it in the
Boomerang
as a reported prowler at this address.”

“That suits me,” said Sally. “I’ll just tell anybody who asks that somebody came in while we weren’t home, and made a little mess, but they must have gotten spooked and split before they could take anything.” Yeah. Like she was going to feel like having a hundred conversations about this nightmare.

Scotty Atkins looked like he was using the last ounce of alertness left in a tired body. He took out a business card and wrote a number on the back. “My home and work numbers. You call me anytime,” he said, putting the card into Sally’s hand. “Anything you think of, anything that makes you edgy.”

“Edgy?” said Hawk, putting an arm around Sally. “You’ll be on the phone day and night.”

Atkins looked at them both, smiled a little. “I suspect edgy works for you, Joe—er, Hawk.”

Hawk had no comment.

“And if either of you two get the urge to try to conduct your own investigation,” Atkins said, with an edge of his own. “Don’t.”

“Ditto don’t,” said Dickie. “I meant that, Mustang, Hawk. I know you’re pissed. But seriously, don’t put yourself in the line of fire.” Dickie went with tough love. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with here. If we’ve got some guy who thinks it’s his job to purify the town of honky-tonk angels, Laramie could look like Waco before he’s through.”

It was nearly two in the morning by the time they’d finished, leaving behind the residue of black fingerprint powder along with the mess and the obscene aftertaste of violation. Hawk insisted that Sally go out into the living room and sit on the couch while he cleaned up the bedroom and bathroom. He asked what of her underwear she wanted to save, and she told him to throw away everything that had been in the drawer. All of it.

She’d have to go down to the mall in Fort Collins to buy new bras. Laramie was not exactly the bra capital of the West. The thought made her giggle, and then guffaw. Before long she was in full-fledged hysterics. Hawk emerged with the broom and took a bulging black garbage bag out to the trash, and returned to sit with her, arm around her, until she’d cried herself out.

“You need to sleep, Sal,” he said. “It’s all too much.” He led her into the bedroom, neat and tidy now, the empty bureau drawer back in place, and offered to loan her a T-shirt to sleep in. She took the T-shirt, but slept only fitfully. They lay curled up together, Hawk cradling her with his body, and he felt warm and good and safe. But she was way too wired to relax.

By six
A.M.
the birds were singing and Sally had just about had it with insomnia. Maybe if she got up and worked out, she could come back and catch an hour or two of rest before she had to go out to Wood’s Hole with Delice. She knew she was too fatigued to go for a run, but she had a free pass to try out Iron Man and Woman, a new upscale gym that had opened up on Second Street, downtown. She could spend half an hour on an exercise bike, then flog some machines, pretending to be a buff yuppie.

Good thing she kept her exercise bras in a different drawer.

Iron Man and Woman wasn’t really Sally’s type of gym. Of course, there’d never been an athletic club that wasn’t in the business of cashing in on human narcissism, but in some places the clientele seemed to take vanity to the next level. This was the kind of facility where the tanning beds did a big business, and pumped young men fondled their own muscles when they got done with a set of biceps curls. There was a glass wall between the crowded weight room and a large aerobic studio, where a couple of dozen people were punching and grunting their way through a kickboxing workout led by a woman about half the size of an Olympic gymnast.

Morning in America, thought Sally. Amber waves of grain and wet spandex.

Up a flight of stairs, even more fitness freaks were flailing away on treadmills and elliptical trainers, Nordic ski machines, and rowing contraptions. All the stationary cycles were in use, so she got on a stair climber and began trudging up the hill to nowhere, feeling like the women on the bikes behind her were evaluating every spare ounce on her thighs. In the effort to block out their critical thought waves, Sally turned on her Walkman, closed her eyes, and stepped harder. Soon she was working on a nice little fantasy about going to Carolina with Mr. James Taylor.

Three minutes later she opened her eyes to find Nattie Langham pumping along on the machine next to her.

She had to hand it to Nattie. Not even seven in the morning, and her makeup was perfect. Sally had dressed in her usual hideous workout ensemble of black tights and ancient faded T-shirt (this one commemorating Los Lasers, a great, long-gone bar band) but Nattie was sporting the latest high-tech synthetic shorts and stretch top. You never knew when you’d run into somebody who’d buy real estate only from a perfectly groomed saleswoman.

Seeing that Sally had come out of her trance, Nattie swung her attention away from a television that was silently broadcasting a Janet Jackson music video. “Jesus, Mustang, what happened to you? You look like you’ve been rode hard and put up wet,” Nattie shouted, looking shocked at the sight of her.

Actually, underneath the powder and paint, Nattie didn’t look so great herself. But Sally was too weary for a war of words. She took off her headphones. “Tough day yesterday.”

“Yeah, me too,” said Nattie. As usual, she was more interested in her own life than anyone else’s, but Sally was, for once, glad of it. The less said about Sally’s previous day, the better. “By the time I got done answering my voice mail it was after ten and I’d had it. I was supposed to meet Dwayne and our ecologist guy at the Wrangler, but I decided Dwayne could entertain him for one night. Not that it’s much of a chore.”

Maybe it was a good thing that Nattie had showed up this morning. The mixed music tape she’d brought had moved from Mr. Taylor to Janis Joplin, and it was too early for “Piece of My Heart.” Sally was in the mood for a little sparring. “I’ve known Marsh Carhart for years. I acknowledge that it’s possible that you could consider him good-looking, but he’s so frigging conceited that I’m completely mystified that anyone, anywhere, could find him even excusable.” Even you, Nattie, Sally added silently.

“I don’t know. Arrogance isn’t that bad in a man,” said Nattie. “In Marsh’s case, it’s made him very rich. He’s head of one of the biggest environmental consulting firms in the country, and a lot of people think he’s a visionary. Maybe arrogance is just another word for self-confidence.”

“And maybe it’s just not giving a damn about anybody except yourself. Visionary—jeez.”

“Hey, I heard he bought Microsoft the day they went public,” Nattie told her. “Tell me that’s not visionary.”

“It’s good, but it’s not exactly being the Dalai Lama. You always did have a weakness for greedheads with big egos, Nattie,” Sally said, legs pounding faster, working up a nice sweat.

“What about you?” Nattie shot back. “I wasn’t the only one boinking Sam Branch back in the day,” she pointed out.

“Fair enough,” said Sally, “but at least I haven’t done him since Carter was president. Goes to show it’s possible to learn something in this life.” If lifelong learning could be measured in terms of the men Sally Alder had stopped sleeping with, they ought to give her another Ph.D. But then, complicated as they were, the old days had in some ways been simpler. “You’ve got to admit, Nat, we did have the luxury of making mistakes in those days. No AIDS, for example. Seemed like the summer of love went on for eight or nine years.”

“Or at least the golden age of sex,” Nattie said, sighing a little.

“Golden age? Probably just because we were too loaded half the time to care whether the guys were studs or duds,” Sally admitted. “Remember that little assistant football coach with the Napoleon complex? That night I walked into the Alibi bar and found you making out with him I nearly busted a gut. He was so short that you practically had to kneel on the floor to sit on his lap.”

“Yeah, well, he might have been short, but he was built,” Nattie shot back. “Jesus, but he had a wicked temper on him. You wouldn’t have known it, watching him glad-handing around town, schmoozing up the boosters and all, but he couldn’t handle his liquor. I stopped going out with him when he came into the Gallery one night when I was tending bar, and he was already shit-faced. When I spilled a little of his shot he busted the glass and tried to cut me. I hate to think what would have happened if he’d gotten that mad sometime when we were alone.” A shiver ran through her, and Nattie stepped faster at the thought.

Sally considered Nattie’s story. “You know, we were pretty lucky—Delice, you, me, Mary even. We let ourselves get in some damn dangerous situations. One night when I was playing a rodeo in Rawlins, I had a couple bourbons too many and ended up in a trailer with a cowboy. We were messing around, and two of his buddies came in for a piece of the action. Lucky for me, they were drunker than I was and I got out of there. Could have been a really ugly scene.” She blew out a big breath, pushing the machine harder.

“We used to have a saying,” Nattie recalled. “If you mess with the bull, you get the horns. It’s a miracle none of us were gored to death.”

“What about Tanya Nagy? I mean, there were plenty of lowlifes to choose from, but why run away with a textbook hard case like Bone Bandy?” Sally shook her head, baffled and sorry, sweat streaming into her eyes, sliding off the tip of her nose.

“Who knows?” Nattie shrugged. “Maybe she thought he was Clint Eastwood. Maybe he had a lot of cocaine. Maybe he’s hung like a giraffe.”

“My money’s on the dope,” Sally decided. Cocaine had never been her own drug of choice—it made her jittery. But in the seventies it had been everywhere. People who should have known much better, Dickie Langham, for instance, had succumbed.

“Probably dope,” Nattie agreed. “Tanya was really into freebasing.”

Freebasing: the coke-smoking technique that had turned David Crosby into an animal and blasted Ricky Nelson into the next garden party.

“Remember those freight yard hobo guys, Shannon and Jackstraw? The ones who showed up in town one winter, and crashed in that abandoned hotel behind the Ivinson Street Senior Center, down by the tracks?” Nattie asked.

“Yeah. They tore up the original oak floor to start a fire and smoked out about fifty old people having a hot lunch.”