Death Without Company (20 page)

“Uh, that would be me.”

She turned to regard me as the very red, full lips kicked to one side in painful annoyance. “I just flew through a blizzard to get up here at your request, Mr. Longmire. The least you could have done was to meet me at the airport.” I looked up at the stone-faced Indian behind her as she stared at the ceiling and expulsed a strong gust of dissatisfaction. “Do you mind if we head back to your office to get me up to speed on things?”

If the Barojas had looked a little closer, they might have seen that the paper she was holding was an airline itinerary. When we got to the steps leading to the parking lot, she paused and cut loose with a toothsome grin. “Hello, Daddy.”

9

“You identified yourself as division of criminal investigation.”

She sat in the chair opposite my desk with her expensive Italian boots curled around its front legs, something she had done with her feet since first grade. “No, I didn’t. I simply stated division of criminal investigation, period, and then said I was looking for you.” She smiled and sipped the coffee Ruby had given her as she studied the Will.

I looked over at Henry who was sitting in the other chair and at Ruby, hovering in the doorway; neither of them was going to be of any help.

She glanced up but not at me. “Ruby, can you believe he hasn’t said a word to me about how good I look?”

Ruby shook her head. “Shameful. Honey, you look great.”

“Thank you.” She flicked her eyes at me before returning to the document.

The phone rang, and Ruby disappeared after giving me a warning look. I glanced back at my daughter. “You can get into a lot of trouble . . .”

“You can get into a lot of trouble manhandling lawyers, but you don’t see me dressing you down, do you?” She took another sip of her coffee, careful not to muss her lipstick. “Can you believe that woman was actually going to grab the Will out of Dad’s pocket?” She turned. “For a professional, that seems like suspicious behavior, if you ask me.”

I sighed and looked at my nameplate on the door, desperately trying to convince myself that I was there, even though no one seemed to be hearing me. “Does that Will say what I think it does?”

She cocked her head to one side and placed the Denver Broncos coffee cup on my desk. “The Testatrix, Mari Baroja, has bequeathed specifically a very large portion of tangible personal wealth and property to the beneficiary hereafter known as Lana Baroja.” The lips pursed again. “Your little baker with the broken head is now a multimillionaire.”

“What about the twins?”

Her mouth kicked to the side again. “Well, they didn’t get chicken feed, but in comparison . . .” She looked up. “They got chicken feed.”

“They’ll contest it.”

“They can try. It’s not my field of expertise, but it looks like a good Will, a Revocable Living Trust with Mari as the Trustee and all properties placed in the Trust. Lana is the appointed Successor Trustee with very specific duties in how the inheritance should be divided. I guess with this amount of money, Ms. Baroja was trying to avoid probate.” She flipped through the pages. “It’s been transposed from the handwritten original, but that’s included.” She turned the pages around and showed me. “Mari Baroja had beautiful handwriting.”

“Who attested it?”

“Two people, which is pretty much standard.” She searched through the signing portions of the document. “Kyle . . . I can’t make this out.”

“Straub?”

“That’s it.”

“Her lawyer. Who’s the other one?”

She smiled. “Uncle Lucian.”

I was getting ready to take my hat off but froze as Henry and I looked at each other. “Does it make any difference if she was married and then divorced from one of the witnesses?”

She continued to scan the papers in her lap. “The Baroja woman was married to this Straub character?” Neither Henry nor I said anything and, after a moment, she looked up, her eyes wide. “No way. Uncle Lucian?”

I went ahead and tossed my hat on my desk. “I’ll give you the details later. If it was annulled, does it make any difference?”

She shrugged. “Not if the annulment was legal; if it wasn’t, it would still be an abandoned marriage and any subsequent marriage would undercut any previous claim.” She looked back at the figures on the papers. “He should have stayed married to her.”

“I don’t believe he had much choice in the matter.” I stayed quiet for a moment.

“It all keeps pointing back to the daughters, doesn’t it?” I listened to the phone ring in the other room and hoped it was Vic. Cady watched me and anticipated my next question. “Are you wondering who gets the money if the little baker should meet with unforeseen circumstance?”

“It was on my mind.”

She looked back at the Will. “The sisters.”

Henry shifted his weight in the chair and looked at me. “Are there other family members?”

“Well, there’s the priest who is Mari Baroja’s cousin.”

“Mari Baroja’s father had three brothers, and they only had one other child among them?” He studied me. “For a very Catholic family that strikes me as unusual.” He waited for a moment. “How about Charlie Nurburn?”

“Who is Charlie Nurburn?” She had been watching us like a tennis match.

“It’s a long story.”

“I believe he is just the sort that might have angry little bastards strung all up and down the Powder River.”

I looked back at my daughter. “Stepchildren?”

“Nope, not unless adopted and stated in the Will.”

Ruby appeared in the doorway. “Vic, line two.” She disappeared.

I punched the conference button. “Absaroka County Sheriff ’s Department, Sheriff Walt Longmire speaking. How can I help you?” I thought I’d give Sancho’s methods a try.

“What the fuck?”

I guess it lost something in the translation. “What’ve you got for me?”

“We have a problem.”

I stared at the phone. “You mean besides the murder and the two attempted murders?”

“The can of Metamucil is missing.”

I continued to stare at the little red light on the phone. “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“No, I’m not kidding, and they’re having a shit hemorrhage over here. You’d think that somebody stole one of the Dead Sea Scrolls or something.”

“What the hell happened to it?”

“Jennifer Felson saw it yesterday. Jesus, Walt, it’s a can of Metamucil. I can’t believe our case is hinging on this.”

I started wondering what, exactly, our case was hinging on. “I guess I need to come over to the old folks home?”

The line went dead, so I punched the button and looked at my daughter. Just shy of six feet, most of it leg, she ate like a tiger shark but never broke over 135 pounds. “I bet you’re hungry?”

“Famished.” She smiled, but it faded quickly. “I’d rather not eat at the home.”

I looked over at Henry. “Do you mind?”

He glanced at her and then back to me. “Dinner with beautiful learned counsel?” He sighed. “I suppose not.”

I helped her with her coat and looked down at her. “You’ve only been here for a few hours, and I’m already pawning you off.” She put her arms around me and rested her head on my chest as I breathed in the scent of her hair.

“Daddy, I know what I’m going to get you for Christmas.”

“What?”

She looked up at me through mascaraed lashes. “A razor.”

I remembered all the hours we’d spent napping when she was a baby, her tiny body only covering a quarter of my chest; how she didn’t speak for the first year and a half of her life, and how it seemed that she had been trying to catch up ever since.

She pulled back and smiled as I lowered a fuzzy cheek for a soft kiss. “I love you.”

“I love you, too. It’s wonderful to have you home.” I let her go and watched as she swirled around the corner toward Ruby. Henry turned back after she was gone, and I reached for my hat. “How in the world did you get Cady a flight up from Denver?”

“Omar’s Lear. He says the labor is gratis but that you owe him for the fuel. Merry Christmas.” He took a deep breath. “I suppose the Bee is the only place open?”

“Lucky Dorothy, getting to see you twice in one day. What an embarrassment of riches.”

 
 
It took me a little more than five minutes to get over to the den of iniquity. I had stopped off and bought a six-pack as a peace offering for Lucian; I figured I was going to run into him before too long, and it was better to be wrong with beer than just wrong.

I sat there in the parking lot of the home watching the ever-present Wyoming wind kick at the ridges of the drifts like a gale cutting the tops off waves. I sat there on my heated seat with the defrosters on high and stared at my mountains. I had liked California; it was a beautiful place, but my spirit developed a restlessness there that I couldn’t seem to shake. I had liked Vietnam, except that native peoples were shooting at you all the time, kind of like Wyoming in the 1870s.

I gazed at the mountains and allowed my eyes to relax into the monochromatic landscape where the earth blended with the sky. There was a faint glow separating the two firmaments near Black Tooth, and it was almost like the moon had gotten hung up on the crumbling granite incisor.

I sighed, switched off the ignition, stuffed the keys in my coat pocket, and began the trudge into the home. When I got inside, the place was in turmoil with the soothing strains of Dean Martin’s “Silver Bells” in the background. Vic was talking with Jennifer Felson, who always seemed on the verge of tears. I figured it was time to do a little social damage control.

I collapsed in a seat after I sat the brown paper bag of beer under the chair closest to me. “I didn’t bring the rubber hoses, do you think we can find some here?” Jennifer smiled but still clutched a tattered Kleenex in her lap with shaking hands as her eyes continued to fill. “You know, they got Capone with a can of Metamucil.” I studied the wall, trying to give Jennifer a little room. “You saw the container yesterday?” She nodded. “Who’s been in contact with it since then?”

She slumped into her chair and sobbed. “The entire staff, anybody.”

I looked over at Vic, who seemed to be on her very last nerve. “You can check with the others?” She nodded but didn’t say anything, which was probably for the best, and went back to her reports.

I watched Jennifer for a moment, letting her purge the ducts. “Now, Joe Lesky would have worked last night. Who worked today?”

“Shelly Gatton.”

“Is she already gone?”

Vic interrupted. “Louis called her, and she’s on her way in. Joe Lesky didn’t answer his phone, but Louis said that that’s not unusual since he sleeps through the afternoon and might not get the message until he gets up to come here.”

After Jennifer had gone, I leaned against the back of my chair and perused the AARP posters. I figured I’d let Vic start, just to see if her line of thought was the same as mine.

“This makes no fucking sense.”

I threw my arm over the back of the chair Jennifer had occupied. “Why would anybody go to the trouble of taking the can?” I didn’t really feel like getting up from my chair. “I guess I better go by Lucian’s and take my beating. I haven’t even told him that Mari was poisoned.” I stood up and tried to think of the last time I’d taken my coat off.

“You look like shit.”

I adjusted my hat, just this side of jaunty. “’At’s when I do my best work, when people are underestimating me. Check the supply closet, if you haven’t already; maybe the Metamucil is there. You can take a statement from Shelly Gatton and from Joe Lesky when they get here?”

“Yeah.” She changed the subject. “Cady make it in?”

I nodded. “So you were in on it?”

She was already back to her reports. “Everybody was in on it.”

I picked up my beer and left. Some detective.

 
 
The door was closed to Room 32 when I got there, and no light was showing from under the sill. I checked my pocket watch, but it was too early for bed. I went ahead and knocked.

Nothing, so I knocked again.

Somebody moved in the room. “I got a gun.”

“Me too.” I tried the knob, but the door was locked. In fifteen years of visiting him, he had never locked the door. “Lucian, what are you doing in there?”

No answer. I leaned against the wall and gauged how much energy it would take to kick the door in. I was tired and didn’t feel like kicking in doors, so I went down to the end of the hall and got a passkey. Dean had moved on to “Winter Wonderland,” his voice gliding like a sleigh on cream cheese. Jennifer wanted to accompany me, but I wanted Lucian alone.

“Lucian, I’m unlocking the door and coming in.”

It took a moment for him to respond. “Go to hell.”

He said he had a gun, and I believed him. I unlocked and stood just to the side in case he was drunk enough to shoot. I brushed my fingertips across the door as the slab of light from the hallway bolted across the sand-colored carpet. The first thing to hit me was the smell. At some time during his vigilance, he must have soiled himself, and that smell overrode the tang of his unwashed body, the high heat of the room, and the bourbon. He was seated in a cowhide high-back chair with a 10-gauge sawed-off coach gun across his lap. Both hammers were pulled. “Lucian?”

“Go away.”

The empty bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s Family Reserve was on the floor next to his artificial leg. He was wearing his tattered, checked bathrobe, his Stetson, and one cowboy boot. There were no lights on, and the chair had been pulled against the wall. “What’re you up to, Lucian?” I put the beer down by the door, which I closed, and crossed to stand in front of the brindle sofa against the other wall. I took my jacket off and tossed it behind me. “It’s hot in here.”

“Wha . . . ?”

“It’s hot. You mind if I open the outside door?” He watched me, then took his fingers from the shotgun long enough to gesture toward the sliding glass. I slid the heavy, double-paned glass back about a foot and took a deep breath. The miniature multicolored lights blinked around Lucian’s patio, flashing blue, green, red, and yellow across the icicles on the canopy and across the dimpled surface of snow that had dumped into the small bowl at the back of the building. There was a claptrap Datsun pickup parked in the closest spot of the elevated parking area. The motor was running, but there wasn’t anybody in it. Probably somebody warming his truck up for the cold ride home. I went back and sat on the sofa opposite Lucian and picked up the empty bourbon bottle. “You been drinking?”