Leaning Land (13 page)

“Why not?”

“Because you’re a cop and he’s up to something. That whole family’s always up to something—they always got a guilty conscience, and with good reason. Indian Snopses, that’s what they are.”

Wager didn’t know what an Indian Snopses was, but he let it go. “Even if all I want is information about Rubin?”

“Anything you want, he won’t want to talk about it. He’s that suspicious of the law—especially a white lawman. Better let me see what I can find out.”

Wager nodded. “As soon as you can?”

“Do my best,” Ray said. “Old Luther was worried about you, too, at first.”

“Why’s that?”

“Probably his kids. He’s claimed that his three youngest kids are retarded. He gets some extra government money for them that way. Special education allowance.” He laughed. “That’s why I made sure he knew you were a state policeman, not a federal—he thinks you’ve got no jurisdiction on the reservation.”

“And they’re not retarded?”

Ray shook his head.

“Won’t that cause problems when they have to go to school?”

“Probably. But what the hell, the BIA teachers will treat them like they’re retarded anyway.”

“Does he need money that badly?”

“The tribe’s finances are pretty insecure now. What with the Many Coats running things their way, and the government talking about doing away with allotments and even selling off parts of the reservation, nobody knows what’s going to happen. It’s all part of the new sovereignty policy: Get rid of the reservation, give everything to the people who live there and let them make their way without any more government support. Here, it means turn everything over to the Many Coats family. And besides, Luther’s just a crazy Indian: He wants the money now, and tomorrow will take care of itself.”

Wager weighed the bitterness in the young man’s voice. “You use your Indian name, don’t you? Your last name?”

“Yeah. My name translates into ‘Eagle Son’ and that’s what my folks are still called: Joseph and LaDonna Eagle Son. I changed it back into Ute. I figured Carl Yastrzemski didn’t have to change his name, and there’s Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Kristi Yamaguchi. Even Cecil Traumerhauser.”

“Traumerhauser?”

“Kid I roomed with in college: Cecil Traumerhauser. His ancestors came over from Germany about the time mine were first meeting white men. Means ‘Dream House,’ but he didn’t change it into English. So I changed mine back to Qwana’tua. I figured if I’m Indian, I might as well be Indian.” He laughed again. “I guess I’m just as crazy as the rest of them.”

W
AGER FIGURED ON
two stops after he left Dark Mesa Village on his way to the Gypsum Motel and something to eat. One was directly on his route back—Egnarville and the small house of the widow Del Ponte. The other was south on Highway 666, a somewhat longer drive and a much longer shot. But it had to be done. Why? Well, given how little he’d found out so far, there wasn’t much else to do.

By the time he pulled into the unpaved driveway that looped in and out of the Del Ponte yard, the shadows of the cottonwood trees had begun to lengthen and point east toward the rampart of a high, pine-covered plateau and the distant snowy peaks behind it. Sharon Del Ponte heard the sound of Wager’s vehicle and came to the screen door. He climbed the two concrete-block steps to the wooden platform that served as an unroofed front porch.

“Sorry to bother you again, Mrs. Del Ponte.”

She didn’t seem disturbed to see him. “That’s all right. You like a cup of coffee?”

“No thanks. I won’t take much of your time. Do you happen to know where your husband kept his business records? Jobs bid, expenses, income, the kind of things he’d need to fill out on his tax forms each year?”

“His tax records? Well, yeah, I do remember him fussing over that last year. This year, I don’t know. He … he died before taxes were due. He always waited until the last minute.” She added, “But he didn’t fill out his own tax forms. He used the H & R Block people over in La Sal.”

“Did he have a log book or a driving record for daily entries? Something he could use for a running account?”

She frowned and absently stroked the small head that had appeared at her leg to stare from behind it at Wager. The child’s large and solemn eyes were almost green. “I haven’t seen it around here. He has a drawer where he keeps his business stuff, though. Let me go look.”

The small face stayed, hanging mostly out of sight to peek around the door frame. Wager smiled at it, but it only stared back in silence. He’d never had much of a way with babies and little kids; came from having none of his own, he supposed.

“Here’s all I could find. Will this help?” She handed him a wrinkled manila envelope that contained a clutch of loose receipts; most were monthly statements from Conoco; Mallard’s Garage in Lewis Corners had several: lube and maintenance receipts, brake repair for $473.62; vehicle insurance premiums, State Farm. Apparently it was the cache of bills that were routinely mailed to his home address or were one-time business expenses. “Did he keep any daily record of miles traveled? Or income?”

“He had a business account at La Sal bank.” Her eyes blinked as if masking something. “I had to close it out to pay the funeral bills. There wasn’t more than a couple thousand in it.”

“Any record of people paying into the account?”

“I don’t know. The bank statement doesn’t say who, just how much.”

“How about a mileage book or calendar with his appointments?”

She shrugged. “In the truck, maybe. It’s over at Lewis Corners, still. Harvey Mallard said he’d try to sell it for me.”

Wager nodded. Lewis Corners was the second place he had planned to stop.

“Do you know of any appointments your husband had just before he died? Anybody he planned to meet?”

“No. Like I told you this morning, we didn’t talk much about the business. That was all his.”

“Did your husband drink, Mrs. Del Ponte?”

“Drink? Whiskey? No—he was afraid of it. His daddy was a drinker. Said he had too much Indian in him to drink. He wouldn’t even drink beer, much.”

At the edge of hearing, a car sped down a dirt road. Wager couldn’t see it—it was maybe half a mile away—but he heard the rise and fall of its clattering tires over bumps and through gravel. “Did he ever say anything—anything at all—about some kind of big opportunity coming up soon?”

“Opportunity? What kind of opportunity?”

“I’m not sure. His brother, Luther, mentioned that he was excited about some deal that was supposed to happen soon.”

She stared at him, mouth sucked in so her lips made a tight line. “No. He didn’t tell me anything like that. He might have had something on his mind, but he wasn’t worried about anything. Just thinking.” She half apologized. “I didn’t remember that when you were here earlier. But now you mention it, I recall I wondered a little at the time.”

“Anything at all that he said?”

“Not to me. To Luther maybe, but not to me.” There was the faint aroma of bitterness in the words. “When we just got married, I used to tease him about not telling me anything about his business. He said that was the Indian in him—men’s business was men’s, and squaws didn’t need to know about it so after a while I stopped asking.” A deep breath. “What kind of deal did Luther say it was?”

“He didn’t know. Just that your husband mentioned it to him and some other people.” Wager waited, but she didn’t say anything more.

“I understand your uncle’s the sheriff.”

She nodded.

“How did he feel about you and Rubin getting married?”

“Feel? I don’t know. OK, I guess. He came to the wedding—gave us a nice wedding present. What do you mean, feel?”

“Did he object because Rubin was an Indian?”

“No! Where’d you get that idea? I never see much of him, but that’s because he’s so busy. But he never said anything against Rubin or did anything, either! Who gave you that idea?”

“I heard that he and the Constitutional Posse dislike Indians.”

“Well, I don’t know about the Posse—maybe so, maybe not. But not Uncle Malcolm. We have dinner—had dinner—together from time to time and he always got along well with Rubin, so I don’t know why anybody should tell you he didn’t.”

Wager studied the woman’s angry eyes. “Do you know Mr. Haydn well?”

“B.J.? I know him. Why? Is he the one told you Uncle Malcolm didn’t like Rubin?”

“I heard he made a pass at you.”

“I hope you also heard it didn’t get him anywhere!”

Wager nodded. “Did your husband know about it?”

“I didn’t tell him. It made me feel too … dirty.” Her head lifted. “Who told you?”

“One of the people I talked to. All he said was that Haydn made passes at every woman, you among them.”

“B.J. Haydn is a shit. When you talk to him next time, you tell him I said so.”

“If I do.” He told her that she could leave messages for him through Sheriff Spurlock’s office or at the Gypsum Motel if she remembered anything more. She nodded and stood watching through the screen door as Wager swung out of the driveway. The green-eyed child was back, clutching her leg.

Lewis Corners was just that: four corners formed where a gravel county road crossed the pavement of U.S.666. Wager must have passed it coming up from Cortez, but he didn’t remember it—that’s the kind of place it was. The only sign bearing a name was at the front of a rambling building and said MALLARD’S GARAGE. The building had grown this way and that over time. Apparently it had started out as a two-story log house, probably a ranch house, and then had a covered boardwalk added to its front when it became a store. Then, on one side, the store had been enlarged by a frame addition whose flat roof slanted from head high up to the eave of the old house. Behind the addition, an almost square column like the block house of a fort rose a couple of stories and bore a television antenna, and off that, in another direction, lay a large tin shed. An island of 1950s gas pumps sat out in front with sun-faded advertisements for Conoco’s hot brand, and—near the tin shed—stood one of those ancient gas pumps, empty now, the kind with the graduated glass cylinder at the top that let you see how many gallons drained into your tank. A dozen or so cargo trailers, some listing with age and inaction, and a few trucks were pulled into an irregular line in the stunted brush and weeds behind the tin building. Wager figured that the one with the fresh FOR SALE sign propped behind the windshield was Rubin’s.

“Yep. This is his.” Harvey Mallard, a man who looked like a bent straw, slapped a bony hand on the thick fender of a gray-and-white Kenmore tractor. Scrolled letters on the door spelled “Del Ponte Trucking Company. Egnarville, Colo.” and listed Rubin’s home telephone number. “Told Sharon I’d try and sell it for her. Told her I wouldn’t charge no commission—just advertising costs. She’s got a hard row, a widow with two little kids.”

Wager agreed. “Rubin didn’t leave any insurance?”

“Don’t know. But even if he did, Sharon’ll need all the money she can get. Hell of a thing, him dying like that.”

Wager watched the man climb up to unlock the driver’s door and search for the vehicle’s log book. “Why didn’t Rubin park his equipment at home? He had plenty of land for it.”

“This way saved time and fuel. It’s easier to park his rig here, just off the highway. One-eighty-one’s just a long, dead end road—don’t go anywhere but the reservation. I told him he could leave his rig here, seeing’s he was getting his fuel and repairs done here anyway.” He wagged a narrow, long-fingered hand at the other vehicles. “Couple of truckers around here do that. Some park the tractor and trailer, some just the trailer and drive the tractor home bobtail. Saved Rubin almost sixty miles round trip every day he drove his truck. Three, four, five times a week, that adds up. And it’s free parking—a service for my regular customers.”

“I understand he left his car here before he died.”

Mallard stopped rummaging around in the truck long enough to look over a narrow, curving shoulder and down at Wager. “You’re right, Officer. He sure did. After they found him, Sharon had to get that Herrera fella to give her a ride up here so she could drive it home.”

“Did you see him leave with anyone?”

“Can’t remember that I did.” The man, hand full of a thick booklet and some loose papers, relocked the door and swung down the mounting rungs to the ground. “Important, is it?”

“It is if someone killed him.”

He scratched at the white bristles of his chin with oil-grimed fingernails. “I hadn’t heard that’s what happened. Just that he died. Nobody said what of.”

“He might or might not have been killed. That’s what I’m trying to find out.” Wager was getting a little tired of saying that, but repetition went with the territory when you were investigating things.

“Well, now … well. That puts a somewhat different light on things, don’t it?”

“Why’s that?”

“Makes it a lot more important who he left here with, for one thing. I ain’t paid much attention, you know, to trying to remember all that kind of thing. Sheriff Spurlock just wanted to know if Rubin’s car or truck was here, which they both was, and that’s about all he asked me.” Absently, he held out the bundle to Wager. “I just can’t remember him leaving with nobody. Drove up and parked next to his tractor, messed around there a while, and when I noticed again, he was gone.” He explained, “I get busy in the garage, I can’t see much back here. I just don’t know.”

Wager nodded, his attention on the booklet and papers.

“That’s the vehicle maintenance log. I got to have that back, Officer. Somebody buys the tractor, they want to know how it’s been maintained, what parts been replaced, that kind of thing.”

“OK.” A narrow book with “1997” inked on the cover in ballpoint pen looked promising; it held standard forms for receipt of payment and a worn piece of carbon paper. A smaller spiral notebook, bound at the top, also had “1997” on the cover, and it looked like the daily log of jobs undertaken. “All right if I sit in my car and look through these?”

“Use my office if you want.”

“Thanks, the car’ll do.”

The maintenance log was a listing of mileages and dates and services performed. The loose papers were a variety of certifications and inspections that operators might have to produce: proof of insurance, safety and pollution inspections, a couple of weight verifications. He leafed through them quickly and then turned to the notebook, starting with the last entry, “Rocking W: twelve head, 29 March.” That date was after the date of his disappearance, the seventeenth; obviously, he wasn’t planning on dying before then, so that made suicide doubtful. The next two scheduled jobs were similar, the twenty-seventh and the twenty-sixth, also for moving cattle. Wager slid his finger up the sheet of lined paper. There was a note for “Haydn, 23-24,” and another for “Bar L Bar” on 22 March. On the seventeenth through the nineteenth of March, he was apparently scheduled for a run to Phoenix for the Lastwell Furniture Store in Grand Junction. That would be the job he was headed for when his wife waved good-bye for the last time. The next entry was 15 March: the Butte Springs Ranch. This entry was followed by three numbers—158—and, looking ahead, Wager noted that the rest of the earlier entries also had numbers behind them: mileages, he finally figured out. Which meant that those later jobs without mileage numbers behind them had not been completed. The run to Phoenix for the furniture store either had not been made or, for some reason, Rubin had not entered the miles traveled.