“Sometimes,” he informed her primly, “our memory can be affected by our sympathies. For the record, I am noting in my report that you were hostile during this interview. Indeed, I have to wonder just whose side you are on.”
“I have no interest in your report. As for my hostility, it is in direct response to your own, Mr. Ulrick. I don’t let others push me around. And as to choosing sides—I’m not aware that this is a baseball game. Let me repeat, Loudon gave me
nothing
and did not tell
me anything specific about his purpose in going to Billings.”
Ulrick opened his mouth to get in another lick. But Constance didn’t give him the chance.
“Now gentlemen, if you will excuse me—this experience has already cost me my vehicle and a day of my time. Unless you plan to place me under arrest, I consider this interview terminated.”
Ulrick obviously resented her assertive manner. But Mumford, forcing back an amused smile, took his companion by the elbow and nudged him toward the door.
Ulrick, however, was not quite finished. He paused to look back at her from the doorway.
“I take it you’re returning to Mystery?”
“Yes, this morning. Why do you ask?”
“Because later on we may have more questions for you.”
“What questions that you haven’t already asked?”
His lips—the color of raw liver—pursed into an even deeper smirk.
“Frankly, that’s our concern, not yours.”
He shut the door, leaving her speechless with anger.
Constance had very little appetite, especially given the foul mood Ulrick had brought on. But she’d had almost nothing to eat since noon yesterday and knew she should try to eat before she drove back to Mystery Valley.
The nearby diner served up a “genuine Western breakfast” special of hot buckwheat cakes, soda biscuits, and sausage gravy—nearly a ton of food, she
estimated in dismay when the waitress set down a platter the size of an aircraft carrier’s deck.
She gave it a valiant effort, but had to give up after a few bites and settle for two cups of strong black coffee. She walked back to the motel and picked up her rental car keys at the front desk.
“It’s the white Ford Taurus right out front,” said the young Hispanic woman who had relieved Old Methuselah.
Constance used the three-hour drive back to the valley to mull everything that had happened since last evening, turning each detail over with the fingers of her mind and scrutinizing every facet.
She was not the type who scared easily, and Roger Ulrick’s threats about revoking her real-estate license angered her more than they intimidated her. He obviously considered himself pretty high and mighty. And maybe he was. But if she needed it,
she
had an “ace” to play, too—a crusty ace by the name of Hazel McCallum.
The Matriarch of Mystery was also in the thick of Montana politics—one of the quiet power brokers behind the noisy political scene. She was the direct descendent of Jake McCallum, one of the state’s earliest pioneers. Thus, she could dial the governor’s personal telephone number day or night and be assured of his undivided attention. If Ulrick wanted to play chicken, Constance was sure she could make him blink first.
Gradually her mood softened. It was the gorgeous morning that had a calming effect on her. White-gauze clouds dotted the sky, and even well before noon the winter morning felt like spring. Although the surrounding fields were still winter brown, it was
easy to imagine them brilliant with blue columbine and red Indian Paintbrush flowers.
Every now and then her eyes flicked to the rear-view mirror. A gray sedan had been behind her for some time now, making no attempt to pass. She thought little of it—the road curved through hill country with few good opportunities to pass.
When she figured that her cell phone was in range for clear conversation, she gave Hazel a call.
“Lazy M ranch,” Hazel’s deep, throaty voice answered cheerfully. “Chief cook and bottle washer speaking.”
“Hi, Hazel, it’s Connie.”
“Morning, hon. How you doing?”
“You won’t believe how I’m doing.”
Briefly, Constance recounted the main points of her adventure since calling Hazel yesterday. While she spoke, her eyes cut to the rearview mirror. The gray sedan was still behind her.
“Well, sakes and saints!” Hazel marveled when Constance fell silent. “That Quinn Loudon story was just on the news again this morning. But you weren’t mentioned. Matter fact, they said nothing about his taking a hostage.”
“Thank God.”
She didn’t need to tell Hazel the other big reason why she was so grateful—it had been humiliating enough when her former fiancé was arrested. She didn’t need to be publicly linked with yet another criminal.
“Evidently Loudon’s still on the dodge,” Hazel added. “Or so the newscaster reported. And to think he’s in your Jeep. Do you have theft insurance?”
“Mm-hmm,” she replied absently, feeling a bit
guilty—she hadn’t even thought about that. She had worried more about Quinn Loudon than her stolen car. As much as she despised Ulrick, she had to admit he was right. She definitely was “sympathetic” toward Loudon.
She frowned slightly when she checked the mirror again. The gray car stayed well back even though she’d slowed slightly, and on a straight stretch of road where it could easily pass.
“The state trooper told me, last night, that the Feds would be impounding Loudon’s car and searching the Hupenbecker cabin immediately. I better drive up there later today—I’ve got the only key, which means they probably broke the lock. I’ll take a new one up there. No telling what kind of condition they left the place in.”
“Hon? Would you mind picking me up before you go? I haven’t been up there since God was a boy. With the weather like this, it’d be nice to see the old creek and Jake’s bridge.”
“Would I mind? I’d love to have you along,” Constance told her frankly. “Actually, I’m not too eager to go up there alone.”
“I don’t wonder, poor thing. Just stop by when you’re ready. My afternoon is open.”
Constance turned the phone off and put it back inside her purse. Two cars and a pickup passed her from behind. But the gray car held its precise distance behind her.
“Hon,
let
them follow us,” Hazel scoffed.
Constance wheeled the Ford through the stone gateposts of the Lazy M’s long gravel drive.
“Those Feds think they’re such a fox-eared tribe,”
Hazel went on. “City whippersnappers, that’s all they are. They can’t get their cappuccino and croissants up in the mountains. They’ll soon get bored with us rural hicks and give it up.”
Despite her nervous apprehension, Constance had to smile at Hazel’s let-the-devil-take-’em attitude. Very few things could put a ripple in Hazel’s calm veneer.
“I don’t see the gray car now anyway,” Constance remarked. “Maybe they gave up when I went home.”
When she glanced in the rearview mirror to check for the sedan, she winced at her reflection.
“I still look like I just rolled out of bed,” she carped. “And I’ve been up for seven hours.”
Hazel gave a skeptical snort. “Connie Adams, are you fishing for compliments? A paid-off mortgage doesn’t look as pretty as you! All
you
have to do to look good is run a comb through your hair. Good looks are a gift of nature when you’re young—they’re a carefully constructed illusion for an old roadster like me.”
“Now who’s fishing?” Constance teased. “If you’re an ‘old roadster,’ Hazel, then you must be a Bentley.”
The two friends shared a laugh. The spry seventy-five-year-old coquettishly patted her silver chignon. “I
am
quite devastating, aren’t I?”
The afternoon had turned into a beauty, a brilliant ball of sun stuck high in the sky as if pegged there. Hazel’s Lazy M cattle ranch occupied the exact center of verdant Mystery Valley, several thousand choice acres of lush pasture criss-crossed by creeks and runoff streams.
“This Quinn Loudon fellow,” Hazel remarked,
“has evidently dropped off the face of the earth. I caught the latest news just before you came over. They flashed a photo of him on the screen. You didn’t tell me he was such a looker.”
“We weren’t exactly on a date,” Constance quipped wryly. But her face sobered when she added, “So he’s still missing?”
“Connie, he must be running like a river when the snow melts. He’s still at large in spite of a three-state dragnet. Even the Royal Mounties have been alerted in Alberta and Saskatchewan. I’d say he must be a resourceful young man. That, or else maybe he’s bled to death somewhere.”
At these last words, a jolt of dread shot through Constance. Something in her face must have given away her concern—she could feel Hazel’s shrewd gaze studying her.
“From everything you’ve told me,” Hazel added, “this young man doesn’t sound like an out-and-out criminal. He puts me in mind of those wild young fools folks around here used to call ‘harum-scarum’—more wild and reckless than criminal. The way A. J. Clayburn used to be before I got him and—”
Hazel caught herself just in time. “I mean, before Jacquelyn Rousseaux tamed him and got him good and married.”
Any other time Constance might have grinned at Hazel’s slip. For some time she had suspected the crafty old dame of secretly engineering the marriage of rodeo star A.J. and
Mystery Gazette
reporter Jacquelyn.
But for some reason, Hazel’s comment about “harum-scarum” men made her recall her careless
remark to Loudon, the one about how his “true colors” were showing.
“It’s the strangest thing,” she confessed to Hazel. “I mean, Quinn Loudon wronged
me.
My God, he even stole my Jeep! Yet…somehow I feel that it’s just the opposite. That somehow
I
was unfair to him.”
“Face it, girl,” Hazel assured her. “We both know that men are good at sailing under false colors. Look how Doug Huntington bamboozled both of us. I dang near ordered you to go out with him, remember? Still…now and again one comes along with a good reason for being tricky.”
Hazel’s tone, for that final remark, made Constance give her a searching look. Hazel’s brisk and cheerful eagerness to face the future could inspire others half her age. But there was also a shrewd nature lurking behind her homespun manner and weather-lined face. She could be crafty, sly, or manipulative as any given situation demanded.
However, the wily widow dropped the topic of Quinn Loudon and poked her head out the window to breathe deeply of the fragrant air.
“Look at those dogwood trees!” she said enthusiastically. “Weather’s tricked them. They’re swollen with new sap. My soul alive, you couldn’t put a price on a day like this.”
They entered the town limits of Mystery. With a year-round population of 4,000—swelling to almost twice that by late summer—Mystery was only a fifteen-minute drive due east from the Lazy M. The two blocks comprising the old downtown area still included plenty of its original red-brick buildings with black iron shutters—nothing fancy, just practical and sturdy. But the ornate, nineteenth century opera house
with its scrollwork dome had once put the community a cut above plain old saloon towns. So had the stately old courthouse, now the community center and the only gray masonry building in town.
“There’s Paul Robeck,” Hazel remarked, waving at a tall, well-dressed man coming out of Omensetter’s Pharmacy. “I buy all my insurance through him. I can’t believe he’s still single. Handsome, steady, good sense of humor.”
She sent Constance a sly sideways glance. “He manages to work your name into every conversation we have, too. I keep telling him, land sakes, Paul, just give the gal a call.”
“He has. Several times, actually.”
“And…?”
“Oh, Hazel, it’s just not a good time for me to start…socializing with men. Ginny and I have both been busy with—”
“Oh, bosh,” Hazel cut in. “Admit it. You’re still man-spooked by that experience with Doug.”
“Maybe,” Constance admitted reluctantly.
“Sweet love, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Why don’t
you
call Paul?”
“Paul’s a nice guy and all that. But frankly, he just doesn’t do it for me.”
“‘Do it?’ You mean he’s not quite as sexy and exciting as, say, Quinn Loudon?”
“Hazel! You of all people should know I have no interest in being a gangster’s moll.”
“Would there be interest if Loudon wasn’t a gangster?”
“That’s sort of like asking what happened before once upon a time. Who knows?”
Her companion met that evasive comment with a mysterious little smile.
By now they had entered the scalloped foothills, and Hazel fell silent, enjoying the sun-luscious day and the magnificent view. The temperature dropped somewhat as they climbed higher, but nothing dramatic.
At one point near the end of the winding ascent up Old Mill Road, they rounded a tight bend and glimpsed a gorge below with white water frothing down it. Both women were almost reluctant when the road finally dead-ended at the Hupenbecker cabin.
“Just like I thought,” Constance said, nodding toward the cabin. “Front door standing wide open and the lock broken. Good thing I brought another.”
Before they went inside, the two friends walked around back so Hazel could visit the creek and the old stone bridge. It had rained earlier, up here in the mountains, and mud daubers were still active in the puddles.
“They towed Loudon’s car out, I see,” Constance pointed out. “My God, the tow truck completely tore up the ground.”
But the nastiest surprise was reserved for when the two women poked their heads inside the cabin. The place had been so thoroughly “searched” it was actually damaged. Several floorboards had been pried up and carelessly tossed aside.
“Those idiotic goons,” Constance fumed. “I’ll be sending them a bill. That is, if I can figure out whom to send it to.”
Hazel’s reaction was more speculative than angry.
“In my long experience with the state troopers and county cops,” she told Constance, “they’ve been
quite professional and do everything according to Hoyle. This wasn’t their work.”
“Probably federal agents,” Constance suggested. “I assume that’s who was following me, too. The guy with Ulrick was FBI.”