Montana (10 page)

He said something to Riley, too quietly for Lola to catch. “What’s so funny?” Riley sounded aggrieved. “I had to work hard to get you into this lineup. Except for the dunk booth, you’ve got to do this stuff, whether you like it or not. It’s the only way you’ve got a prayer.”

The hearty good humor that had permeated Johnny’s voice during the meet-and-greet at the VFW was entirely gone. “Haven’t I done everything you told me? Just look at me. I’ve jammed my feet into these boots that squeeze my toes and make me feel like I’m tippy-toeing around in high heels. Put one of these ridiculous hats on my head.”

“Wait just a minute.” Riley’s voice climbed a quick octave. “I know you left here when you were just a little boy.”

“I didn’t leave,” Johnny said. “I was taken. Don’t forget that. I didn’t have a choice in the matter.”

“Whatever. Even though you went away, you’ve still got to look like this place. You’re the Indian candidate, not the city slicker from Chicago candidate. And you might be wearing boots, but I can tell you that every single person in the room noticed they were custom ostrich skin. You know I’m right.”

“Only because I say you are.” The Suburban beeped and blinked its lights. In her brief time in Magpie, Lola had noticed that she was seemingly alone in locking her car. Riley was right. Johnny’s background showed in all kinds of ways. Johnny spoke again. “Where’d that reporter go?”

Lola opened her mouth to announce herself, enjoying the thought of his discomfiture. But Johnny kept talking. “We no sooner get rid of one than another one shows up. Poking around, asking questions.”

Lola moved back by millimeters, keeping her feet hidden behind the truck’s tire. She stooped so that her head was below the window, pressed her ear against the dirt-caked metal as though listening through a wall. A car passed. The hiss of tires on pavement obscured Riley’s response. Johnny’s voice rose above it.

“If you’re so smart, what do we do about her? What if she starts asking the same questions the other one did?”

“You never told me what those were.”

Good boy, Lola thought, and waited for the answer.

“Never mind,” Johnny said, and Lola slumped against the truck. “I won’t make the same mistake of giving this one an interview. No matter what you say to them, they always come back wanting more. The quicker she’s gone, the better.”

“Maybe you should talk to her anyhow.” Riley’s voice was thin, as though strained through vocal cords tight with resentment. “You know what they say. Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”

The Suburban groaned as the two men clambered into it. Johnny’s voice came from the passenger side. “No,” he said, his tone as final as the slam of Riley’s door. “We’re not going to do that. Here’s some city advice for you, something you need to know if you mean to stay in this line of work. A reporter is never a friend. And the closer they get, the more they find out.”

“Y
OU ALL
right?”

Lola lifted her head, thinking Johnny had returned. She folded her fists against the impulse to strike him. Verle Duncan stood before her. Dust billowed in the wake of the departing Suburban. Lola blinked grit from her eyes. Her frustration escaped before she could stop herself.

“Do I look all right? My friend’s dead. Not just dead, but murdered, and nobody can tell me who did it.”

“Take a little ride with me.” Verle held his hat in his hand and he slapped it lightly against his thigh, once, then again, the motion soundless beneath the wind’s raucous gusts.

Lola drew back. “Where? Why?”

“My place. Come on out and have some lunch there. As to why, you’ve had a rough time of it ever since you got here. You look like you could use a break.” His eyes were bright, only a little pouchy, but Lola thought that it wouldn’t take many more years to turn Verle into an old man, the eyes frankly leaking, the body’s wiry frame bent in on itself. Yet he stood in the sun on a summer day, issuing an invitation to a woman nearly half his age as though he had every expectation of success. Lola wondered when men quit being so sure of themselves. Or if they ever did. She aimed a hard stare at him, hoping her demeanor masked her inner uncertainty. Her radar was all out of whack here. The sheriff hadn’t ruled Verle out as a suspect. But he hadn’t called him back in for more questioning, either. Verle’s smile told her to trust him. Conventional wisdom told her to trust no one. But conventional wisdom also had told her that a Kabul posting meant job security for the duration of the war. She settled for playing it safe, but keeping her options open.

“I just ate,” she said. “Maybe later.”

He looked neither surprised nor disappointed. “Just stop by. No need to call.”

Lola turned to go.

“Wait,” he said. “Let me tell you how to get there.”

“I don’t have anything to write with,” she lied.

He reached for her hand and eased her sleeve up her arm. “Now,” he said and pressed his forefinger into her palm at the base of her pinky. “This is where we are right now. Main Street, Magpie.” He drew his finger across her palm to the middle of her hand and stopped. “This here is Jolee’s store. Take the road out of town.” His finger trailed over her wrist, warm, persuasive. Her pulse throbbed against it. “Right about here, you’ll see the tree that’s the turnoff to Mary Alice’s. Keep going.” His finger stopped a little past her wrist. He traced a small circle on the delicate skin of her inner arm. “You’ll see a break in a grove of aspens to the left. There’s a bridge over the irrigation ditch. Take it.”

Lola’s forearm burned. She jerked it away. “What if you’re not there?”

The wind lofted his hair. Lola resisted an urge to comb it back into place with her fingers.

“If you’re coming,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

L
ola sped toward the sheriff’s office, trying to shake her arm free of the lingering sensation of Verle’s touch.

She repeated Johnny’s words to herself. “We no sooner get rid of one reporter than another shows up.” She passed the convenience store. The courthouse loomed.

Get rid of.

Suspicious, yes. But not conclusive enough to take to the sheriff. She needed more. Lola’s car slowed. Behind her, someone honked. She waved the car around her and did a U-turn in the middle of the main street and mulled her next move. She wished she hadn’t been so rude to Jan after the funeral. She’d need to go to the newspaper at some point and look through Mary Alice’s files. Now she’d have to wait a day or two, and hope that in the meantime Jan would write her behavior off to the shock of finding Mary Alice’s body. She passed the cafe. The busboy stepped from a side door. He swung his arms. Dirty water leapt from the basin in his hands. He’d told her she should talk to his uncle. Lola pointed the car toward the reservation. She could ask the uncle about Johnny, maybe find out something useful.

Hers was the only car on the reservation road, a black seam stitched across the rippling fabric of prairie. Parched sagebrush hills gave way to gold-tinged grasslands, a billowing sea parted by a fleet of glossy black cattle. Heads lifted as she passed. Puzzled protuberant eyes followed the movement of her car. A cottonwood towered by the side of the road and receded in the rearview mirror. Lola recognized the turnoff to Mary Alice’s house, almost insultingly unremarkable in the sunlight. A line of slender aspens shivered beside an irrigation ditch that traced the main road. Wind swept across the water, fragmenting the mirrored surface into clear sparkling shards. She saw the grove marking the turnoff Verle had described and resisted an impulse to pull in. Later, she told herself. Maybe. Another one of those meth billboards appeared, everyone in it, men and women alike, with waist-length black hair, probably meant to be Indians although the sign was so defaced with graffiti Lola couldn’t tell. She hoped some Indian kids had done the extraneous artwork. She thought the billboard offensive. In fact, the meth billboards were high on the growing list of things she disliked about Montana. She swerved to avoid one pothole and drove into another. The impact lifted her from the seat. She wrangled the steering wheel until the car was back in its own lane. Two white crosses marked a curve. Three more were spaced out along the straightaway, too far apart to attribute to a single crash. Bullet holes ventilated the speed-limit signs.

The empty road wrapped itself around a rise and without warning she was in a town. Concrete-block buildings painted once and never again housed a video store, a pizza shop and a laundry, all of which seemed closed, whether for the day or for good, Lola couldn’t tell. The houses were boxy prefabs that had started falling down the minute they went up. The wind blew hard. Plastic bags pirouetted above the street like kites. Young men standing at a corner turned impassive faces her way. A round brick citadel anchored the far end of the street. Its blinking dollar signs advertised a casino. A near-deserted parking lot negated the neon come-on. Lola turned around in the lot and headed back down the main street. She turned one corner and then another, finally encountering a long brick building whose paired American and tribal flags signaled an official capacity. The flags popped and cracked above her head, folding back on themselves, then standing out straight against the sky. Lola hesitated at the building’s door until a blast of wind propelled her into the vestibule. Papers levitated from a desk. Lola scooped them from the floor and handed them to a woman who took them without looking up from a fat textbook. She dropped the papers to one side without reshuffling them and wet her finger to turn a page. Lola saw the hieroglyphics of mathematical equations. She cleared her throat. The woman turned another page.

“I’m looking for Joshua’s uncle. Joshua who works at the cafe in Magpie. He sent me here.”

The woman picked up a pencil and filled in some numbers on the page. Then she folded down a corner and closed the book. “Joshua has a lot of uncles.”

Lola wondered if she’d made the drive for nothing. She’d have to go back to Magpie, talk to Joshua again and get his uncle’s name, something she could have done on her way out of town if she hadn’t been so distracted by the encounter with Verle.

“But you probably want to talk to Wilson. Right?”

“Right.” Lola had no earthly idea.

The woman lifted a receiver and pushed a couple of buttons on the phone. “Somebody here to see you. Don’t know. Whitelady.” She put the phone down and opened her textbook again.

The vestibule lacked chairs. Lola leaned against the wall, closed her eyes and tried to make her mind go blank. In Afghanistan, she’d spent hours that felt like entire weeks, waiting for interviews, permits, necessary papers. Pockets crackling with bribe money, American dollars only, please. At first she’d fidgeted mightily. Hoarded crossword puzzles from yellowing English-language newspapers, brought books, anything to pass the time. Her French housemates swore by a strategy that involved smoking copious quantities of hashish before heading off to the ministries, where they passed the time smiling vacantly, humming a little.

“You know, we were worried that wall might fall down. But with you here to hold it up, looks like we’ve got nothing to fear.” A man in a plaid snap-front shirt stood before Lola. Glasses thick to the point of opaque. She’d seen him at the funeral, sitting with Joshua and Frank.

“I’m Wilson Bird. I believe you’ve met my nephew. And now you’ve come to meet me.”

She extended a hand. He touched his fingertips to hers.

“Come on back.” He led her into a conference room of sorts, a couple of plastic tables placed end to end, islanded with a half-dozen cribbage sets made of wood, horn, stone, their polished surfaces reflecting her own wavering image.

Lola touched one, letting her fingers linger. “You’re
that
Wilson Bird. I remember now. The sheriff has one of these.”

“Pretty much everyone in the county has one of these.” Words dismissive, tone pleased.

“They’re beautiful. And I don’t even play cribbage.” The game, from what little she knew about it, involved cards. And patience. She was no good at one and entirely lacking in the other.

“If you’re going to spend any amount of time here, you might want to learn.”

“That’s why I came to see you. Because I don’t want to spend a minute more here than I need to. And because your nephew said I should talk with you about Mary Alice.”

He pulled out a chair for her. Waited until she had settled herself and then sat across from her. “That’s the thing about whitepeople. They’re always in a hurry.”

Lola bit back a response. He wanted her to wait, she’d wait. She sat back and let her gaze drift across walls of madhouse green. The single window might well have framed a painting, so devoid of activity was the street outside. A display case against a wall held a beaded dress. A map showed a ragged-edged territory checkerboarded in green with a single straight line cutting across its upper quadrant. The wind groaned outside.

“You know,” he said. “Mary Alice wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t what?”

“In a hurry.”

“It sounds like you spent a fair amount of time with her,” Lola parried. “There has to be a reason Joshua wanted me to talk to you.”