The Cowboy's Shadow Part 11

A FUTURE FOR ARGENTIA in bold red letters edged in black. BE PART OF IT. A photograph of Fellows Canyon filled the lower half of the sheet, but doctored on a computer to include a line of buildings that looked like a movie set for a western town. Behind the false fronts, in terraces up the hill, row upon row of doors. A hotel.

Hole-in-Rock Resort Casino. A high-end destination resort for those seeking privacy and desert solitude, combined with the fabled pleasures of the Old West.

Fabled pleasures of the Old West. Code words for drinking, gambling and whoring.

Hole-in-Rock would service men and women who wanted plusher accommodations than a truck camper for their adulteries.

At the bottom of the picture, phone and FAX numbers for investment information.

"Uncertain? Talk to a man or woman from your own community who has already invested, who knows the potential of Hole-in-Rock Resort Casino." Dan wiped his way down the glossy counter. Whit folded the brochure and stuffed it in his hip pocket.

"How's it going?" he asked when Dan came close enough to justify conversation.

"Not as slow as I thought it would be, with the Pollux shutting down." He appraised the crowd. "But the salvage crew has only three, four months they tell me, and then they'll be outa here." He gritted his teeth and shook his head.

"That's when it'll get bad."

"I need some information," Whit said, lowering his voice. Dan wiped a part of the counter he had already polished to a high gleam. "Moira Chase." One corner of Dan's mouth turned up. "I gather she picks up men on the road south, when she jogs in the morning."

"You gather?" Dan asked, suggestive, but at least he kept his voice down.

"I've pretty solid proof she picks up men. I need to know where she takes them for the main event."

"Wish I knew," Dan said, with a wistfulness that might conceal thoughts of carnal relations, or maybe blackmail. "Hey," he yelled, and the chatter died.

"Anyone know Moira's boinking hide-away?" Whit examined the cracks in the plank floor, but failed to spot one big enough for a man two inches over six feet.

"She likes men with campers," said a disgruntled voice. "And I ain't got one."

"More than campers," another said. "I fixed mine up soft and tried to get her in, but she gave me the finger. She asked me where I'd hid my million. Whit, Moira would rip those shiny pants, she'd be so anxious to get them off for you.

She'd get down in the ditch for you, with the sticker bushes and broken bottles."

Money, Whit thought. More important to Moira than the camper. He took another swallow of beer, didn't like the taste. He threw a five on the counter. Behind him the door whooshed, swinging against the stream of air from the cooler. A whistle, a hoot of appreciation, told him a woman had entered Whiskey Dan's.

He turned, slid off the stool, took a long stride to put himself between Ky and the leering drinkers. She opened her mouth to say something. "Let's get out of here," he said. She stumbled on the threshold, thrusting a paper into his hands before they had cleared the door. He read it by the lurid dance of neon.

"He could ruin me," she said. Her voice trembled with tension and fear.

"How? You haven't done anything."

"Who will the administration believe, me or an M.D.? He could say I practiced medicine without a license. That I discouraged people from seeking medical advice. Anything, he doesn't need facts. He can make up a story. I think I'd better go home."

"No. We're not done yet."

"Whit, he could do me in. Forever!"

"Move out to the ranch," Whit said, desperation rising like the smoke in the saloon. "He'll think you've left town. Ky, you can't abandon me now. We haven't found the place where Rod got hantavirus." We've only started learning to make love, he wanted to add, but instead he read the note again. "Chase can't do anything. You can show this note to the people at the school, prove that he threatened you. By next week we'll have the lab report, and it'll say that Rod died of hantavirus."

"Chase will deny he sent this note. It's not signed. He probably got his nurse or receptionist to write it, so it's not in his handwriting."

"One more day to visit the ranches out east," Whit said, an arm around her back to persuade her. Remind her of the pa.s.sion that would ride with them. "Tomorrow early. No, we'll leave right now, sleep in the truck so by dawn we'll be at the first ranch."

A long silence. He tightened his arm. "I'll have to go to the house, get some things. Tell Glenda."

"Where's your car?"

"At Glenda's. I walked down here." He pulled her along beside him, almost lifted her up the high reach to the cab.

"We'll be gone all day tomorrow, tomorrow night you drive out to the ranch and put your car in the barn. You can stay with me until we get the lab report. Once we have that, Chase will be forced to admit there's hantavirus around." Silence.

"You can help me with interior decorating. I've got to decide where the bronc buster should go," he said, hoping for a lighter mood. She did not respond, except by fastening her seat belt. The one nearest the door.

For the second night running she slept in his arms, half upright in the cab of the truck, wrapped in the old gray blanket he kept behind the seat. The moon danced in the branches of the spindly trees of the rest area. Whit jerked awake, out a dream that disappeared the moment he opened his eyes. Except that part of it had been the moon tangled in the branches of the elm tree.

He moved as little as possible so he did not wake Kyla. He had dragged her into this, now he must get her out. The note from Chase made no sense. The doctor would have to be pretty stupid to write a threat on the back of his own prescription form. Chase must understand that in Rod's case, the diagnosis would be official. Either hantavirus or not.

So that left someone who had easy access to Chase's office. The receptionist, the nurse. Both women's livelihood depended on Chase, who's practice would decline with the closing of the Pollux Mine. And how many patients would switch from Chase to Dr. Temple when they found out Chase had made a bad mistake in diagnosis, if he and Kyla discovered where Carl had caught hantavirus?

Whoever had sent the note had known exactly where to find Ky. The nurse had come to town less than two weeks ago. Very unlikely that she would know Kyla Rogers was Glenda Fetterman's sister, or even where the Fetterman's lived. The receptionist?

Moira Chase?

Did Moira know the Fettermans? Yes. He had seen Glenda Fetterman and Moira Chase standing side by side, selling pie and ice cream to benefit the charities of the women's club. Moira knew Glenda through the women's club. She had most probably been at her house for meetings. Moira had written and delivered the note in a frantic effort to keep her husband's practice viable. To keep the stream of custom-made jogging shoes and diamond rings flowing, while she satisfied her -- Suffering horned toads! Maybe Moira had offered him s.e.x in return for keeping quiet. A good time in the sack would buy his silence about the cause of Rod's death.

Whit tapped his tongue behind his upper teeth as a subst.i.tute for a thoughtful hum. It would be interesting to know if Moira had offered Dr. Temple a piece of her action, trying to bribe him to write something other than hantavirus on Rod's death certificate. Temple, not bad looking, in his thirties, but married with a family. No married man...yes, some married men would. Some married women.

That reminded him of Ky's remark last evening.You want me to be the Moira Chase of San Francisco ? She had grown up in a traditional family, mom, dad, kids, all living in one house. What would she have thought of the Whitaker household before his parents retired? The house in Argentia, the condo near the university in Sacramento, the plane from the Castor Mine shuttling his mother home after her last cla.s.s on Friday, back again on Monday, her shopping bag heavy with essays and exams to grade?Every weekend's a honeymoon, Dad had told him once, after Whit had complained that kids teased him about his irregular family life.

He hadn't understood then, but he did now.

Whit woke with the sun in his eyes. Woke gladly, because he had dreamed he was in the tree house, making love to Ky, and Jenny floated overhead, watching every move, and keening in a disembodied wail.You promised.

He would hide the photographs of Jenny. Push them to the bottom of his sock drawer. Not really a memory, for he and Jenny had never made love in that room, in that house. He made more plans for the days Ky would be with him, more excuses, rationalized, and despised himself for his weakness.

Kyla adjusted the binoculars. The sun heated the black tubes until they were uncomfortably hot to the touch. A decrepit house came into focus, the ridge pole bending in the middle, threatening to collapse in the next strong wind. The barn looked in better shape, in fact a light colored plank showed where it had recently been repaired.

"The doors of the barn are closed tight," she reported to Whit.

"Let's look for prints," he said.

They followed tire tracks into a corral between the house and barn. The remains of a light fixture rattled atop a tall pole. Hooves had stirred the ground to a powder, cattle, horses, here and there the prints of a deer. A broad dent that looked like the prints of an overgrown house cat.

"Bobcat," Whit said. "Animals come right through here, heading for the water." A hundred feet behind the barn a new windmill creaked, lifting water into stone tanks. "They've wiped out Rod's footprints, if he left any."

Kyla examined the wooden latch that fastened the door at the corner of the barn.

Heaped with dust. But that could be the deposit of a single windy day, and Rod might have been here three or four weeks ago. A hasp and rusty lock secured the double doors, wide and tall enough to admit a loaded hay wagon.

"I don't think this place would have impressed Rod after he'd seen Malaspina,"

she said. "Do we know, did he come here before or after visiting Malaspina?"

"I have no way of knowing. He didn't write dates."

Three ranches this morning, and to Kyla, none fit the profile. The first had had no standing buildings at all, and at the second the owners, an elderly couple, invited them in, fed them cookies and iced tea, and showed them pictures of their great- grandchildren and the condo they had purchased only two blocks from the kids. Yes, Rod had looked at the ranch. Yes, he had nosed into every nook and cranny. He'd told them about his sister in Reno, and his fear that this place might be too far from her, because his sister lived alone and he liked to keep an eye on her.

Whit nodded coolly, but Kyla noticed his chest heaving with imprisoned laughter.

The man showed off the pump house, the coop where a dozen chickens roosted out of the heat, the garage -- all clean enough to dine in. The equipment sheds -- ditto.

"What now?" Kyla asked after Whit started the truck.

"I'm ready for lunch," Whit said. He looked at his watch. "It's half an hour back to Tonapah."

"Same place as breakfast?" she asked. "That was good."

"You were starved this morning, and would have described toasted lizard as novelle cuisine. The coffee was terrible."

She stared sightlessly at the little valley and the ridge beyond. Whit gunned the engine, spinning the wheels on the uphill.We're spinning our wheels . Only three ranches left. That didn't count Penny Springs, of course. Maybe one of the pot growers would be rushed to the hospital, deadly sick with hantavirus, and solve the puzzle for them. Although those men had no reason to nose around the old outbuildings. Their irrigation system would be built of new, totally reliable parts. And with their crop in the ground and under cover, they would spend their time watching for strangers wandering the back roads.

Whit turned onto a paved road, smooth enough that she could read. She opened the folder on the seat between them, extracted the ranch lists.

"Whit, the three ranches farther east, the checks beside them are in blue ink, not black. Done with a different pen. Rod visited them all on one trip."

He nodded. Quiet, thinking about the significance of blue ink versus black. Or was he daydreaming about tonight, when most certainly she would sleep at the ranch. Tomorrow she must spend the day with Glenda. After all, she had come to Nevada to visit her sister. The day after that she would drive home. She had told the temp agency she would be available a week from Monday, but they might have something a few days early. She would call them from Glenda's tomorrow.

Whit? No reason they couldn't get together occasionally. Maybe he'd visit her in the Bay Area.

Straight ahead a plane lifted into the air, reminding her of Jake flying over their trysting place. She stole a look at Whit; he winked. Sharing the same thoughts, and that seemed a bit too intimate for a summer fling. She pretended to be enthralled by the landscape until he pulled up in front of the cafe.

Whit picked up the folder. Beneath it, half concealed in the break of the seat cushions, lay a wrinkled brochure. She fished it out and offered it to him.

"Something important?" He shook his head, but stuck the brochure in the folder.

After the waitress brought water and took their orders, Whit opened the folder and smoothed the flimsy sheets from the catalog. "Do you have the feeling we're on a wild goose chase?" he asked.

"Rather," she said as neutrally as possible. Quitting had to be Whit's decision.

"He told Mr. and Mrs. Foster their place was too far from Reno. Why would he go a hundred miles farther east, toward the Duckwater Range?"

"Curiosity? A fun drive on a fine spring day? When he carried a blue ball-point pen, instead of a black one."

Whit moved the paper directly under the hanging lamp. "Look through the calendar," he said suddenly. "For blue ink."

Rod's thin calendar advertised the local grocery. It contained only a single picture for the whole year, a multi-p.r.o.nged buck standing on a rock, rather like the final scene ofBambi. Nothing but black ink in June, she flipped to May. The first weekend of the month.

"What does GBNP mean. It's written in blue ball-point pen, across both Sat.u.r.day and Sunday, with two exclamation points on Sat.u.r.day and three on Sunday."

"GBNP?" He frowned and turned the misted water gla.s.s, making a pattern of circles on the tabletop.

"Whatever, he had Moira along," Kyla said. "Why else the exclamation points?"

"He took Moira to see three ranches in central and eastern Nevada," Whit mused.

"I wonder if Doc Chase was out of town that weekend?"

"Obviously," Kyla said dryly.

"GBNP?" Whit grinned slyly. "I can come up with all sorts of phrases to describe a wild weekend, but none fit for your ears."

"Tell me. You were wrong about Judith. You're wrong about me."

He leaned across the table. "Good balling p.u.s.s.y."

"You left out the N."

"Naked."

"Great big naked p.r.i.c.k," Kyla whispered, and to her delight Whit's cheekbones flushed pink beneath his tan. She coolly lifted the wrinkled brochure. "Was this Rod's?"

"No. Found it at Whiskey Dan's. Some local businessmen expect to save their necks by building a fancy resort in Fellows Canyon. They claim it will prevent Argentia from becoming a ghost town. But they must be having trouble coming up with the financing, to go to the expense of spreading this brochure around the Great Basin." His mouth dropped open, he shoved at the table and the water gla.s.ses trembled. "Great Basin National Park!"

"What?"

"GBNP! Rod went to Lehman Caves. He told me, weeks ago. The official name's Great Basin National Park. There're summer homes up there. Maybe he rented a place that had been closed -- " He shook his head. "No, Moira's healthy as a horse."

The waitress thudded the sandwiches in front of them.

"Not worth the time and gas," Whit muttered, gesturing with a long French fry.

"Tell you what. Let's forget about Rod and hantavirus for the afternoon. Have you ever been to the fossil beds? Sea-going dinosaurs." Kyla shook her head because her mouth was full of hamburger and green chilies. "Just eighty, hundred miles out of our way, and only fifty or so of that's dirt."

Only in the Great Basin, Kyla thought, was a hundred miles on secondary roads considered a side-trip. Her hips were sore, bouncing on the hard bench seat. But in a few days she would be back in San Francisco, everything in walking distance, her legs enjoying the daily exercise, her -- Her face warmed when she considered that another activity might account for her aching hips.

Kyla followed Whit's taillights down the twelve miles of gravel. He blinked his lights to warn her they had reached the gate. By the time she turned the corner he held it open.

The truck swung under the trees, floodlights blinked on. Motion sensitive lights, or perhaps he had a remote switch in his truck. No lights in the house, but one window in the apartment complex glowed. A rectangle of brighter light joined it as a door swung open. Kyla pulled her car beside the truck and climbed out.

"Boss?" Two men scurried from the open door, the two cowboys Whit had talked to on the day of the barbecue. "You heard?"

"Heard what?"