One Careless Moment (14 page)

The driver circles the motel parking lot twice before I see the green truck with the Forest Service decal. It's parked as far as possible away from the bar and I ask the driver to wait as I check the doors. Locked. Fortunately, the keys are under the gas-cap hinge — the universal Forest Service security precaution. I pay for the cab with the last of my American dollars, then start up the truck, which turns over nicely.

The trip to Del's Greenhouse seems shorter this time, maybe because I'm driving faster, maybe because I know it's the last trip and I want to get it over quickly — there won't be much to say. In the main building, Aunt Gertrude is minding the till. She looks at me over a set of half-glasses, smiles when she recognizes me.

“Mr. Cassel. How are you? Nasty bruise on your cheek there. What happened?”

“Long story, Gertie. Is Del in?”

“Oh, yes. She's been awaiting your arrival with great anticipation.”

Gertrude directs me to the house, a doublewide trailer behind the office. It's apparent most of Del's energy has gone into the business, not her home, which sits unskirted on pilings, plumbing and electrical wires visible beneath. I walk up steps slapped together with rough lumber, weathered grey. I'm about to knock, when I hear Del's voice.

“No!” she says loudly. “Forget it!”

Other voices, lower, barely discernable but, from their tone, trying to soothe. This goes on for a minute and I look around, feeling conspicuous, standing outside the door, but I'm not willing to walk in on an argument. What I have to tell her will be hard enough.

Del's voice, clearly irritated: “I'm going to have to ask you to leave.”

A pause, then a scrape of chairs. A woman's voice. “Well — really! We were just trying to help.”

“Call if you reconsider,” says a man's voice.

The voices are moving, approaching the door. I take a few steps back, so it looks like I just arrived. The trailer door opens. A man in a burgundy suit and a woman in a long dress emerge. They're an older couple, early fifties, his suit matching her hair. “She's just not listening to reason,” whispers the woman, a pale, freckled creature. They see me, both force a smile. The man is vaguely familiar; I've seen his rotund face somewhere before. We pass each other silently on the landing.

I wait a minute before pressing the buzzer.

“Look —” Del's voice floats to me as she approaches. “I told you —” She sees me at the door, looks startled. “Porter — your face. What happened?”

“Bit of an accident.” I try to smile reassuringly.

“Are you okay?”

“I'll be fine. Just a few bumps and bruises.”

She opens the door wider. “Please, come in.” There are nearly as many plants in her trailer as in her greenhouse. They crowd shelves, growing around books and appliances.

“So ... how are you holding up?”

She's a little distracted, frowning, looking around. “Well, you know, life goes on.”

“Yes.” I'm not sure how to begin.

“Have you had lunch?” she says. “I'll make you something.”

“No — you don't have to do that. I just dropped by for a minute —”

But she's gone, in the kitchen by the sounds of it. I hear cupboards open.

“I've got tons of stuff left from yesterday,” she calls. “I'll bring out a tray.”

I'm about to protest again when she comes around the corner holding a tray loaded with cheese, rolled cold cuts, veggies and dip. The instant oatmeal I had this morning has long since evaporated and I start to salivate in a way that would impress Pavlov. “Come into the kitchen,” she says. “I'll put on some coffee. Or do you like coffee? I could make tea. Or juice, or something.”

“Coffee's fine.”

I take off my boots, walk in damp socks to her kitchen table, where the deli tray sits, waiting to be desecrated. Del's at the counter, her back to me, furiously hand-grinding coffee beans. I quickly gobble a half-dozen slices of rolled ham before she turns. She pops open the grinder, spills coffee grounds all over the counter and swears. Wiping the mess together, she scoops it into a filter.

“I'm just a little tense,” she says over her shoulder. “If I slow down, I'll fall down.”

“I know the feeling,” I say, around a mouthful of cheese.

“It's been nuts. So, tell me about the accident.”

“Nothing special. Someone cut me off in a parking lot.” She starts the coffee machine, turns to face me, leaning against the counter. “Who were those people leaving just as I arrived?” I say quickly, before she can ask more questions about my supposed accident. “They weren't in a very good mood.”

“Oh — them.” Del waves an annoyed hand toward the door. “Parasites.”

“What did they want?”

“Everything,” she says bitterly. “That was Bob Capsan, big-time real estate developer. He's wanted this place ever since he moved here from Missoula, thinks it's a waste, putting a greenhouse here.” Del is still clearly agitated, talking with her hands like she's practising a new form of martial arts. “He wants to tear this all down, build a resort out here, a hotel or something.”

Bob Capsan — the face on the sign by the new subdivision at the edge of Carson Lake.

“Why would he want this place? His little subdivision by town isn't doing so good.”

“No wonder — you see the size of those lots? They're crammed together like teenagers in a sports car. And the old dump is right next door. But this place has a natural hot spring out back.”

“A hot spring?”

“Yeah.” She smiles, pleased by her ingenuity. “I use it to heat the place.”

“That must be quite a spring.”

“It's pretty handy. Without it, we'd never be able to afford the utility bills.”

“So he was offering to buy the place?”

“That was the idea. He tried once before, years ago, right after he moved here and found out about it, but BB literally chased him out of here. This piece of land has been in the family for a long time. I grew up listening to my dad talk about doing something with that hot spring. Then I took horticulture and it just seemed perfect. Grow plants year-round using the sun and the earth's own internal heat. BB was going to work here full time in a few more years, after we got the setup paid for. It was going to be his retirement project.”

She glances at the floor, her brow twitching. I give her a moment.

“Why would Capsan think you'd sell now?”

A bitter, crafty look comes over her. “Oh — he's a sneaky bastard. He knows this place is struggling and the only thing that's kept it going is BB's firefighting income. So he comes in, pretending he's doing me a big favour, buying me out. But he's just a vulture, circling, waiting for the movement to stop.” She's got a fiery look in her eye. “But he's going to be disappointed.”

I can't help making the connection. “Del, could he have had something to do with the fire?”

She scowls — the possibility never occurred to her. “What do you mean?”

“I'm just curious. What do you know about him?”

She shrugs. “Not much. He built a few subdivisions around Missoula, then moved here. I think he had a car dealership there too. But even if he started the fire for some reason, he couldn't have known it would kill my father. Could he?”

“No,” I say, thinking. “Probably not.”

It occurs to me as I drive back to town that I didn't accomplish anything I'd set out to do — I didn't tell Del that I was leaving, or that I was done with the investigation. Maybe it's the painkillers and muscle relaxants — I'm feeling a little woozy. Maybe it's Bob Capsan. Despite my assurances to Del, the situation has me wondering. I do have a few hours before I'm evicted.

It's a stunning summer afternoon as I drive the winding highway past the ranger station. The lake is a shimmering blue. Distant mountains look cut out of frosted glass. Achingly white cumulous boil upward in towers. If this continues, there may be lightning, although with the low cloud base it'll probably be accompanied by rain. The last thing we need is another fire. I pass a church, then a sewage lagoon at the edge of town, ringed by cattails. A sign by a narrow side road announces an acreage for sale only a few miles up from the highway. Perfect. I use the pay phone next to the back door of The Filling Station.

“Hello, is this Western Alliance Realty?”

“Yes, this is Western Alliance. Can I help you?”

“I'm interested in an acreage a few miles north of town. The sign for it is just past the church.”

“Oh, yes, it's a lovely place,” replies a woman, her voice coarse with the timbre of a smoker.

“I know this is short notice, but I'm just passing through and was hoping I might be able to take a quick look. Do you have any agents available at the moment?”

A ragged cough.“Pardon me ... we only have one agent and he's out at the moment.”

“What a shame. Oh well, that's all right. Maybe next time.”

“I can call him,” she says quickly. “He could meet you there in about twenty minutes.”

“I don't want to trouble him —”

“It's no trouble,” she says, a little desperately. “Really, it isn't.”

“Twenty minutes then? I'll meet him at the gate.”

The receptionist hangs up, sounding relieved. I get the impression sales aren't booming. From The Filling Station, I cut across the street to a small place along the boardwalk advertising thirty-two flavours of ice cream. In this weather, ice cream is about the only food I can stomach. Despite the looming clouds, it's deadly hot and the humidity is up. I buy a large vanilla, which immediately starts to melt, running down the cone and onto my hand as I walk across the street to my truck. I eat faster, drive to the real estate office fighting an ice cream headache. There's a car next to the little building, but it's not the car I saw at Del's Greenhouse, so I go in.

A door chime announces my arrival. A chubby, middle-aged woman looks up from behind her counter. Her hair is dark, returning from some strange shade of red to black, another failed experiment. Her glasses are heavily rimmed. Her eyes widen slightly, alarmed by my Frankenstein appearance, but she recovers quickly.

“Good afternoon. How can I help you?”

“I'm interested in acreages.”

She frowns. “Did you just call?”

Oops — should have picked something else. “No. Is an agent available?”

She smiles; things are certainly picking up this afternoon. “I'm sorry, but he's out.”

A bulletin board by the counter is papered with listings. I step over, pretend to be interested.

“We have a binder you could look through,” offers the receptionist.

“That would be lovely.”

She heaves an oversized binder from a shelf below the counter, leads me to a small room with a tiny table. Pictures on the wall are of immense log houses, set amid idyllic mountain scenes — I feel broke just looking at them. She sets the binder on the table, explaining that the listings are arranged by cost, starting with the more modest properties. Since I'm broke but not modest, I flip right to the back. The receptionist smiles again, asks if she can get me anything.

When she's finally gone I spend five minutes actually looking at the listings, while she gets comfortable up front. There's nothing cheap about getting back to the land around here — even the cheapest listings start in the low-to-mid six figures. Maybe that's why real estate isn't moving. I peer cautiously toward the front counter. The receptionist is busy flipping through a Glamour magazine. I slip into a short hall. Three doors. One leads to a toilet, one to a furnace room. The other is Capsan's office. I step inside, quietly close the door and start looking.

Listing books. Business books. Framed agent's licence on the wall. Pictures of chubby offspring. I'm opening file cabinets, rummaging in his desk, looking for whatever plans he might have drawn up for Del's land. Plans, and the detail of them, would be a good indication of his level of interest and, therefore, motivation. A chair scrapes floor and I hear footsteps: the receptionist coming to check on me. Thankfully, this building is old and the floor creaks — the creak stopping just up the hall. I step behind the door, barely make it into position when the handle turns and the door opens halfway. I'm sweating — she wouldn't do that unless she was suspicious. I hope she didn't recognize me when I came in; I've been on the news quite a bit lately. The door closes and the creak recedes to the front of the building. I wait a moment, then sneak into the short hall, making a lot of noise as though I'd just come out of the restroom.

“Find anything you like?” she asks, as I pause in front of the small hospitality room.

“There's a few.”

She's about to stand but I bring her the book, flip at random to several listings, have her make photocopies so it looks good. The agent should be back right away, she says, handing me a sheaf of papers. I tell her I'll do a drive-by, narrow it down before I come back. I'm just about out the door when she asks my name.

“Phil Stanton.”

“Thanks for coming in, Mr. Stanton.”

Outside, I drive away but circle back to within a block, then stand across the street in shadow and wait. I didn't find any plans involving a hot spring, but I did notice a scanner under his desk, turned on but the volume down. I'm not sure if they're legal here, but I'm pretty sure it would allow him to listen to the Forest Service frequency. He'd know that Brashaw's crew was on standby, to be dispatched to the next local fire, and he'd hear the dispatch call. He'd hear my call for a fire investigator, my caution to the crew leaders that the origin was marked with pink ribbon, and he'd know when Brashaw was on the ridge. It may just be a coincidence, but it's worth a harder look.

Capsan returns a half-hour later — he waited longer than I would have — and parks his big New Yorker in the gravel lot at the side of the building. He stalks to the front door, his expression tense and irritated — not the same cheerful face advertising the new Lazy Pine subdivision.

When he's inside, I cross the street.

The New Yorker isn't locked. There's a scanner in here too, under the dash. Nothing interesting in the glove box. The trunk, among other things, holds a bundle of fusees, which isn't uncommon. Lots of people carry them as emergency roadside flares. Not everyone has a scanner, however; fewer yet would benefit from Brashaw's death. I doubt Capsan knows anything about fire behaviour, which he'd need if he set the fire outside the dozerline with intent to kill Brashaw, but expertise can be bought. Maybe someone like Cooper, eyeing a promotion. He would have control over his men —

“Hey, what are you doing?!”

My senses are a bit dulled. Capsan is coming around the corner of the building. I do what any self-respecting investigator would do when caught conducting an illegal search.

I hide my face and run like hell.