“Hour and a half, about, if you pedal to the metal,” she answered, making my change. She gave me a serious look-see. “Do I know you? You look kinda familiar.”
“I’ve never been here in my life.” Not a lie. I didn’t want to be identified, too much hassle, and it could mess up whatever help I might be able to give Nora.
“You’re not with the DEA?” she persisted.
“No. Do I look like I am?”
“They’re about the only outsiders been around here, last bunch of months. Swarming the place. Looking for who did that murder. That drug kingpin. You seen it on TV? It was big news.”
“I’m just passing through,” I lied. I wasn’t ready for anyone other than Nora to know I was coming. “Did the DEA catch who committed the murder?”
“Get serious.” Her look at me said,
How feeble are you, anyway?
“When was the last time the DEA caught anything except a cold?”
She wasn’t a fan of the bureaucracy, obviously. “I don’t know,” I told her. “I don’t keep up on those things.”
“Check out the
Enquirer
,” she advised me, pointing to the newsrack next to the register. The featured papers were the
Enquirer,
the
Globe,
the
Star,
and for serious newsies,
USA Today.
“It’s a rag, they all are,” she allowed, “but they get the scoop more often than not, and they don’t wallow in their own pretentious bullshit, like those pathetic talking heads on CNBC.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” She placed my snacks in a plastic carry-bag. “So who does the
Enquirer
say did it?”
“They don’t. Ain’t spicy enough.”
Well, I thought, I’ve got a captive audience here in front of me—might as well try my luck, see if I could get a finger on the local pulse. “Who do you think did it? You must hear talk.”
“Do I look like Sherlock Holmes?” she parried. She didn’t know me, my agenda, if I had one, despite my lame disclaimer to be “just passing through.” “The man who got himself murdered was a drug lord, so he’d have made plenty of enemies.” She hesitated, then said, “I’ll bet you this—if they ever do find out, which is not likely, given the quality of law enforcement these days in general—I’ll lay odds it won’t be one of the usual suspects.”
Dusk. The faded wooden guide-sign at the Blue River city-limit line informed me that this was the Muir County seat, that the population as of the latest census was 2,225: There were the standard civic organizations: Lions Club, Masonic Lodge, Knights of Columbus, a handful of lesser ones. A few churches were advertised, some establishment, some fundamentalist. The elevation was six thousand six hundred feet. It had been close to or over six thousand feet from shortly after I’d passed through Susanville. I could feel it in my lungs, the sparseness of the air.
Off to my right, looming over the small buildings of the town, a mountain range, nameless to me, was glimmering orange and violet in the fading sunlight. It looked fairly close, but it could have been a hundred miles away, distances are deceiving in vast landscapes such as this. A thin scattering of gnarly trees clung stubbornly to the side. A light covering of snow mantled it haphazardly in spots, where the sun never reached. Not a skier’s or climber’s mountain. Rocky, inhospitable. This entire region was a mighty force of nature, a raw, enormous gut of country. One of those places that isn’t that different from when the first white settlers moved through it a hundred and fifty years ago. They rode horses, I was driving a car, but in both cases the land ruled. I knew it could overwhelm you in a heartbeat if you turned your back on it.
The courthouse shared space in the same building with the various county agencies. It was a squat concrete structure, located a block from the center of town, built in the boring one-size-fits-all mold from the fifties. Business was finished for the day, so plenty of parking spaces were available. In small towns like this they roll the sidewalks up early. I parked in front and went inside.
Quiet. I looked up the number of the prosecutor’s office on the information board. First floor, the far end of the hall. I walked toward it.
Halfway there, a door opened. Nora had heard me, my footsteps echoing faintly in the empty corridor. I knew she had been awaiting my arrival, getting antsy as the day slipped away, and now there she was. It hit me that she had seen me out her window, my headlights as I pulled up. Watching for me.
The light from inside the office was behind her—she was in silhouette. Standing there motionless, erect, looking at me. Even from a distance it felt as if she wanted to come toward me; but she didn’t. She held herself in check, waiting for me to reach her.
It had been almost twenty years. We hugged awkwardly, trying to fit our bodies together without being sloppy. Then we stepped back and looked at each other.
She spoke first—she was more nervous than I was. “You look good, Luke. You look … you haven’t changed much at all.”
“You’re too kind.” I smiled. “Full of it, but that’s okay. I’ll take it. You look good yourself, Nora.”
“Thanks.” Her eyes were on my face. Looking for…? Now she smiled back; a shy smile. “It’s been a long time since a man said something nice about my looks. The men around here, they don’t look at women like me as…”
“As?”
“Women.” She shrugged. “It’s the culture. For me, that’s good. I wouldn’t want…” She tailed off again.
To get involved with a man here: I read her mind. She could feel it—the vibe was oscillating like a tuning fork. “How did we get on this track?” she asked, backing up a step.
“We’re not on any track,” I said to put her at ease.
She nodded. “Good.”
Her office was standard government issue. At least she had a corner, windows on two walls. One view was of the street, the other of a parking lot. She grabbed her purse and an old leather briefcase from her desk.
“I got a room for you at the Holiday Express. It’s the best motel in town.” Another smile, this one not awkward. “Also the only motel in town. And it’s Western, sort of. Game trophies on the coffee-shop walls. Stagecoach wheels, too. Except they’re plastic. The wheels, not the heads.” As we went back into the corridor, she said, “You’re registered under my office. I didn’t want anyone to know you were coming. On the off chance somebody might recognize your name and make some kind of connection.”
“How likely is that?” I asked, surprised.
“The feds might. They’re lurking around, although officially they aren’t here anymore. You have been in the media, even up here.”
“It’s not like we’re in Fiji, Nora.”
“Fiji. God—that would be heaven.”
We were outside, in the darkness of early evening. “Is this yours?” she asked, spotting the Avis sticker on my rental windshield. Off my nod: “I drive an Explorer. I’ll pull around, follow me to the motel. We’ll get you checked in, then we’ll have dinner, and I’ll give you my spiel.”
At the motel I didn’t have to sign in or leave a credit-card imprint—I was handed a key and told to enjoy my stay. Nora waited outside; it wouldn’t do to have her standing there next to a strange man, even if this was official business. Although I had a feeling that if it hadn’t been me, but just some regular guy she hadn’t known in another life, it wouldn’t have been the same. But maybe I was wrong.
The motel was one-story stucco, a horseshoe around a swimming pool that was empty, fenced off with a lock and chain. Nora waited in the doorway while I tossed my bag onto the bed. I travel light; I had a sports coat in the car in case, but I wouldn’t need it. We weren’t going to be doing anything that required me to dress up. I already knew that if Nora could help it, I was going to be invisible.
I got into her car. “Are you hungry?” she asked, starting the car.
“I could eat. Where’re we going?”
“My house. There aren’t any good restaurants around here, nothing even halfway decent. Like Burger King is Epicurean. And we can talk without worrying about being eavesdropped on. Is that okay?”
“That’s fine,” I said nonchalantly. Inside, though, I was a tad concerned. The way she had registered me at the motel, now this. She was more than a little paranoid. Was it this situation, or who she was? I hoped the former, which made sense, the feds can do that to you. Otherwise, it could be a long, uncomfortable night.
“I’m a good cook.”
“In that case, I’m famished.”
She didn’t live in town. “It isn’t far. Dinner won’t be long, I came home at lunchtime and got most of it ready.”
We drove in silence. I looked over at her, checking her out in the low light from the instrument panel. She was dressed professionally, off-white blouse, navy skirt and matching jacket, low heels, hose. I would have recognized her on the street, I was fairly sure of that, but she had changed. She’d been a thin, athletic woman—now she was heavier, mostly from the waist down. When men gain weight it’s the gut; women do it on their thighs and behind. It wasn’t unattractive on Nora, just spread out. Lines spidered her eyes, her temples. No makeup, not even lipstick. She had been pretty in a Nordic, Liv Ullmannesque kind of way, and she still was. But twenty years had gone by, almost half our lifetimes. She had gone through some damn hard times, all the sadness with Dennis, of which I could only imagine.
It was her eyes that gave her away—even when she smiled, as she’d done a couple times so far, her eyes didn’t. They held the truth of what was going on inside.
Her house was set well back from the road, fifty yards. She had five acres, she told me, with a stream running along the property line.
It was new, but old-looking, done mission-style. I followed her inside.
“Very nice,” I complimented her, looking around. The place surprised and impressed me, both architecturally and in its furnishings. I mentally calculated what a setup like this would cost in Santa Barbara. Over a million. In Montecito, two million, maybe more, with five acres.
“You live well, lady.”
She smiled. “It’s much cheaper here than where you live, I’m sure. And what else am I going to spend my money on? I’m not saving up to put my kids through college. My parents helped,” she confided. “I’m their only child. Plus I made good money the years I was working in Denver.”
I was quite impressed.
“You’ll have to come back during the day, when you can see the outside,” she said, kicking her shoes off on her way through the living room to the kitchen, tossing her purse and briefcase onto the couch. “It’s the best feature of this place.”
“Sure,” I said, “okay.” How long was I going to be here? I thought. And how much was going to be done outside the office?
I smelled dinner cooking. A rich, full-bodied smell. I wondered how often she cooked dinner, living alone as she did. I didn’t know that for a fact, but I figured she would have told me if she was living with someone, a roommate or someone more intimate.
“You’re not a vegetarian, I hope.”
“I eat everything without discrimination,” I assured her. Dinner was meat of some kind. I was hungrier than I’d realized, smelling it. Except for the snacks I’d bought back at the filling station, I hadn’t eaten since leaving home early in the morning.
“Around here there’s no such thing as a vegetarian, except way back in the mountains, what’s left of the old communes from the sixties. And they cheat, when it’s full winter and freezing out.”
She lifted the lid off a large iron pot, checked inside: “Almost ready.”
She got down a bottle of wine from a cupboard. “If you eat meat, you drink red wine. Make yourself useful.” She handed me the bottle and a corkscrew. “I’ll be a minute. Glasses are in the dining-room breakfront.”
Grabbing her shoes off the floor, she headed down a hallway toward what I assumed was her bedroom.
“Okay if I call home?” I asked after her. I needed to check in with Riva, let her know I’d arrived safe and sound. Ever since my sojourn into the desert I did this religiously whenever I traveled. And I wanted to hear my son’s voice.
“Mi casa es su casa.”
An unseen door closed.
I popped the cork on the wine, a decent Napa cabernet. Pouring two glasses, I took a sip, a second because it tasted good and I’d been on the road all day, dialed my number.
Riva picked up on the second ring. “It’s me,” I told her.
“Oh good. I was beginning to wonder.”
“The drive took longer than I expected. This is big country.”
“And you’re a big man, so it should be a good fit.”
“Something like that.” I took my motel key out of my pocket, read the phone number off to her, along with the room number. “We’re going to have dinner, then Nora will start filling me in. Whatever it is she wants to talk about.” In the background I could hear my son. It sounded like he was beating on his high chair with a spoon, or a hammer. Maybe he’ll be a drummer. “How’s the heir?”
“Kicking ass, of course. Here.”
The phone was silent for a moment, then Buck’s little voice came across the line. “Daddy? Where are you, Daddy? When are you coming home, Daddy?”
“I’m on business, honey. I’ll be home real soon. Maybe tomorrow, or the next day.” God, do I love that voice.
“When are you coming home, Daddy?”
“As soon as I can. What did you do today? Did you go to Mrs. Ferguson’s and play with Jesse?” Mrs. Ferguson is the day-care lady he spends a couple mornings a week with, so Riva can do the rest of her life. Jesse’s his best friend, another boy his age.
I listened to my voice as I talked to him. My voice was slower, more deliberate. I try not to talk young, but it’s hard not to. It feels easier to talk on his frequency.
“When are you coming home, Daddy?” He had that fixed in his head, and that was all he wanted or cared to ask.
“As soon as I can,” I repeated. “Let me talk to Mommy now, honey. I’ll see you soon. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Daddy. When are you coming home?”
“It’s me.” Riva was back on the line. “So to answer his question…”
“Day after tomorrow. Unless we talk out whatever has to be said tonight and that’s it, but I don’t expect that.” I changed the subject. “Anything happening I need to know?”
“Nope, all quiet on the western front. Where’re you eating dinner?” she asked, making conversation, not wanting me to hang up yet.