Crazy Mountain Kiss (24 page)

“My my, it took awhile but I do think the man is coming around to my charms.”

It wasn't that, but he left her with the victory.

L
ike many Montanans who live alone, Sean Stranahan did as much talking to his dog as to his fellow man. If Choti had had the faculty to understand English, she would have heard him say, “Jasper Fey, you son of a bitch,” as he gunned the motor and drove away from the library. By the time he idled down to cross the bridge over the East Fork of the Gallatin River, Choti would have known her master's mind to the following extent.

That Jasper Fey was the man with the code name Shirley, Sean had no doubt. Fey was short and powerfully built, as his profile for the club had advertised, with bowed legs and broad shoulders; for that matter, he also had worked in film. If he rolled up his sleeve, Sean knew it would reveal a tattoo similar to the one on Watt's arm, only with
Shirley
in the banner. Why Charles Watt had taken Fey's place for his assignation with Ariana puzzled Sean, but there was a more disturbing question, having to do with the scribble found in the cabin's guest log. “THE CLOWNS ARE HERE.” Could one of the men Cinderella was hiding from have been her stepfather?

“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Stranahan muttered. He told Choti to stay in the rig and prepared to do battle with the geese. This visit, he didn't bother knocking on the door of the house, but went around to the prefab building, scattering guinea fowl along the way. Under a low sky, the chimney puffed like a dragon.

He knocked, heard an unfamiliar voice say, “Come in,” and went in. The woman standing before a brick furnace acknowledged his
presence with upslanted eyes that had an obsidian, piercing quality, and were obscured several moments later when she brought her glasses to the bridge of her nose. She had pixie cut hair that was the dull, dry black of craft fur, wore heavy gloves and a canvas apron over khaki shorts and a T-shirt. She could not have been much taller than the iron pipe that she picked up from a rack of tools. For a second Sean braced himself—he had seen the rusted Suburban in the drive and knew the woman wielding the pipe was Eileen Barnes's lover, whose antipathy toward men Barnes had mentioned more than once. But the woman ignored Stranahan, and, turning her back to him, she extended one end of the pipe into a tunnel-shaped orifice in the furnace. The sleeves of her shirt were rolled up and the fine muscles of her shoulders squirmed as she dipped the pipe. Stranahan felt beads of sweat pop out on his forehead. It must have been a hundred degrees in the room.

“I know who you are,” she said, when he offered his name. Her voice had a low register and an unplaceable, eastern European flavor, neither of which were congruous with her appearance. “Eileen will be here in a few minutes, yes. In the meantime you can make yourself useful. Put on those glasses on the bench.” She waited until he had. “When I pull the pipe out of the glory hole, the end I'm holding will be hot, very hot. I want you to pick up that pail of water so I can dip it before the glassblowing commences.” Stranahan followed her orders as she extracted the pipe, which was pregnant with a blob of substance that resembled molten lava.

“This is silicon oxide,” she explained. “It's called the ‘gather' and is heated at two thousand degrees Fahrenheit. Hot, yes?”

She cooled the end of the pipe in the water and brought her lips to it. A translucent bubble shivered to life at the end of the pipe. As the bubble enlarged, she took the pipe from her lips and waved it across her body in perpendicular arcs. The bubble elongated like a balloon. Again she brought her lips to the pipe, blew, and then, as she started to swing the pipe, swiveled sharply. Stranahan, recoiling, found himself on his back, pinned against the floor by a searing heat. He
instinctively rolled his head to the side and heard a sizzling sound that, with horror, he realized was his hair singeing against his skull.

“You . . . fucking . . . pervert.”

The woman hovering over him took on a monstrous shape, her hair a lion's black mane, her face shrinking, the features pulling together until Sean was seeing the head of a cobra. The slit of her mouth appeared to breathe with the very fire that she held against his head. The chimera began to waver, the blob of molten glass blinding Stranahan. He felt a searing pain, as if the safety glasses were melting against his temple.

“I'll cook the tongue out of your mouth first.”

“Maria Teresa Vanaga!” The name was shouted.

The black mane shook. The heat still pulsed against Sean's head.

“Maria, don't.” The voice was stern, measured. At the periphery of his vision, Stranahan could see a rectangle of light at the door, could feel more than see another person's presence.

“I told you he wouldn't be satisfied just to look. I said he'd be back. Didn't I? His eyes don't deserve to see.” But even as the woman spoke, the heat was pulling away. A clang as the pipe was cast aside. Stranahan could see her clearly now, the reptilian intensity of her stare seeming to vibrate, then shrink away, leaving her face passive, her hair just hair. When she spoke next, it was a pleading in a much younger voice.

“Oh, I did wrong. I should have asked permission. But you wouldn't have said yes.”

“Maria, we've had this conversation before. Go to the house.”

As soon as the woman had gone, Stranahan stumbled out the door.

“There's mud in the tire ruts around back,” he heard Eileen Barnes say.

Stranahan dropped to his knees and dug, bringing a cool handful of muck to the side of his head. The relief was almost instantaneous. By the time Barnes knelt at his side, his heart rate had subsided and he could no longer feel the artery pulsing in his neck.

“It feels worse than it looks,” she said. “You lost some hair and got a bit of sunburn. We'll make a punk of you yet.”

“I didn't see that coming.”

“If it's a consolation, you're not the first to say that about Maria. Please don't press charges. You won't, will you? Maria's anger is not directed at you personally. She married a man from Latvia, where domestic violence toward women is common and condoned. He kicked her until she lost the child she was carrying, because that child was a girl. I don't want you to think—”

“I won't press charges.” Stranahan sat back, holding the mud to his temple. “I thought you were the submissive,” he said, and winced.

“I'm a dom by day, sub by night. It's not uncommon. A lot of career women who have responsibility can't just flip a switch at five o'clock. The only way to alleviate their stress is to submit. It's a form of release, letting someone else make the decisions. It's healthy, like meditation. A lot better than alcohol, which is the alternative. You can recharge the engines to face the next day.”

“Well thank God for that . . . I guess.” Stranahan's smile was thin, but he managed it.

“You were about a half minute from having your tongue burned out and already you can smile about it. Facing life with a sense of humor is an attractive quality in a man, or a woman. But why did you come without calling? Why are you here at all? I showed you the video, I told you all I know.”

“I'm here . . .
Amoretta
 . . . because you didn't.”

He watched her expression segue from concern to hostility to embarrassment, and finally to resignation. She sat heavily beside him.

“It means ‘little love.' But that's not why I chose it. My first lover said I smelled like almonds. I was her drink of Amoretto. I just changed the last letter.” She brought a forefinger to the center of her chest. “Me, the farm girl who wore husky jeans. I would have told you if I thought it meant anything, but our club has nothing to do with what you were asking about. How did you know?”

“That the Mile and a Half High Club was your project? Call it an
inspiration. You struck me as a leader, not a follower. I suspected. It was confirmed.”

“By who?”

“By someone who realizes truth can be important. I'm not interested in revealing your secret. I'm here because you've got mixed up in something that goes beyond matching sex partners. Why did Jasper Fey have someone stand in for him for his date with Ariana Dimitri?”

“So it was Book Girl who told you. I thought she was more trustworthy.”

“She was, she trusted you. But you set her up with a violent man, a man who probably raped a young woman. Last night, that man was murdered.”

Barnes's face sagged. “How was I to know that? I'm very conscientious about assignations. I thought Jasper would be a good fit. I didn't know he'd send someone else. There's no room for abusive people in our club.”

“You call her Book Girl, but you call him Jasper. Did you two know each other outside the club?”

“No. Well, yes. We met at a party. I'd been setting up assignations for a year or so, but location was always a problem until Jasper suggested the cabin. It was on forest land at the edge of his property and he knew the man who did the bookings. He'd reserve us the dates in advance, make sure we got Christmas and Valentine's Day, for special assignations. So the coordinates of the cabin and the geocache became an inside joke, because we always used the same place. Did he, Jasper . . . was he the one who killed that man?”

“No. We think we know who, but the name hasn't been released. I
will
tell you that it is related to Cinderella Huntington's death. Forgive me for asking an insulting question, but was she connected to your club in any way?”

“No. A thousand times no. Anybody who joins our club does so of free will. It's adults only. Book Girl's actually one of our younger members.”

“I had to ask.” He'd never glanced from her eyes and believed her.

“Is there anything else you need? I do want to help.”

“You have.” He got to his feet, still holding the mud against the side of his head. “I must look like a zombie,” he said.

“If you need to talk, I'll be here. But call first, okay?”

Stranahan lurched toward the Land Cruiser. “Tell Maria the lesson was very instructive.” He stopped. “Satisfy my curiosity, Eileen. Why did you start the club? I understand someone like Ari joining up, but you don't strike me as being quite so . . . hormonal.”

“Based on what, our long friendship?”

“Wasn't it you who said, ‘What's time?' That you can look into the eyes of someone you've just met and read a story that person has never shared before. Isn't that just another way of looking for love?”

“Then you've answered your question. I was looking for, at least, affection. People think sex is a crude form of introduction. But I'd sooner start a relationship based on human touch than join an online dating service, which is what passes for intimacy today. You're right. I was hoping affection would lead to love, though I'm skeptical of the word. I think recognition is what we're looking for, our reflection in someone's eyes, someone who gets us. It's why some of us are in the club. Not most, but some. You'd be welcome to join us.”

“I could be Scarface,” he said.

She didn't offer a comeback and he climbed into the rig, the first drops of the rain splatting against the window, their tears streaking the dusty glass. “Time to see the unhappy family,” he told Choti.

W
hat happened to your head?”

“I got too close to a glassblower's pipe. Is your husband home? There's something you need to sit down for.”

“Oh no.” She covered her mouth with her hand. “I . . . you found out.” Her jaw began to quiver. “What happened that—”

“Part of the puzzle, Etta. I found out only part of it.” He slapped his jacket against a rail to shake off the beads of rainwater.

“Jasper,” he heard her call into the dark of the house.

They sat on the sofa facing Charlie Russell's sunset, a foot of tension between their bodies as Stranahan told them straight out that Charles Watt had been murdered, that the mountain man who had harbored their daughter over the winter was suspected, and that his probable motive was to revenge Cinderella by killing the man who sexually molested her. He said the crime lab would provide a DNA comparison with tissue taken from the fetus. They would know for certain if Watt was the father in three days.

“Have they caught him, this so-called mountain man?” Jasper Fey's voice was controlled, but his face had undergone a remarkable transformation since Stranahan's arrival. His smiling mask, firmly in place for the handshake, had vanished as he stepped back to minimize the height differential, the blood boiling to the surface, reddening his skin. At the mention of Charles Watt, his visage had turned to one of stunned disbelief. Then—it could not have taken a second—the blood drained, leaving a map of broken capillaries to color the right
cheek. Stranahan had audited a class on reading faces at the police academy in Billings, and remembered that the reaction was a fight-or-flight response. When the body felt it was under threat or suffered great stress, the surface blood vessels constricted, reducing circulation to the skin as it pumped blood into the internal organs and heavy muscles, to prepare them for survival. Stranahan understood that Fey would be shocked to learn that his lifelong friend had violated his daughter, but even so, the reaction seemed extreme.

Fey broke the silence. “You think you know a person,” he said. He started to speak again and then didn't, just sat shaking his head.

“He's also your horsehair thief,” Stranahan said. “At least the horsehair was found in his house. And drug paraphernalia. We think he sold the hair to buy methamphetamine.”

“That bastard.” They were the first words Etta Huntington had uttered since sitting. “That fucking bastard. I wish I'd killed him myself.”

“Now Etta—”

“Fuck you, Jasper Fey. Fuck you. I told you a hundred times there was something about him . . .”

She turned to Sean. “You never knew who he really was,” she said. “He hid behind that leather face, give you a wink and that bullshit drawl, a fucking homily a minute. Sit through a dozen dinners but you didn't know him. But Jasper did. Drinking buddies, fighting buddies.
Whoring
buddies.” She exhaled the words. “Yeah, they had rodeo groupies. Little cokehead cowgirls.”

“Etta, the man saved my life.”

“I wish he hadn't.”

When Fey reached to touch her shoulder, she jumped to her feet. Her left hand grappled for a cup on the coffee table and she hurled it at the mantel. It bounced off the rock and fell to the Indian print rug, intact.

“Fucking worthless arm. I can't even break goddamned china.” She stalked to the front door and slammed it behind her.

Fey sat with his head bowed. When he looked up, the color had returned to his face but he seemed to be very far away.

“I want to be mad at you,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. “For bringing this calamity into my home I ought to just kick the shit out of you, but I'm all wrung out.”

“It isn't me who's brought the calamity. It's you and it's your old butt buddy. I know about the club, Jasper.”

Fey started to voice his objection, then just shook his head.

“What I don't know is why you had Charles Watt take your place. He was rough on that girl in the cabin. Or did you know that? But then why should he be any different with her than anyone else? Did he have some kind of hold over you, is that what it was, you paying him off in sex?”

“You don't know what you're talking about.” He was looking at the picture on the wall, narrowing his eyes, as if assessing it at auction. “Old Charlie sure knew a sunset.” He spoke softly, to himself, as if Stranahan wasn't in the room. “Back east, they have no idea.”

Finally he looked over. “I'd ask you not to tell Etta. The club doesn't have a damned thing to do with Cinderella and all it will do is disturb her to no purpose. I loved my daughter. Whatever happens, happens. I'll let God be the judge of me. But I loved her.” He looked at Stranahan. “Just get the hell out of my house before I shoot you for trespass.”

 • • • 

S
he was standing at the side of the road, her hair stringing in the rain. Stranahan was at least a quarter mile from the house and he had only been a few minutes behind her; she must have run the entire distance. He stopped and pushed open the door and she climbed in, bringing in the cold, pulling Choti onto her lap and hugging the dog until she whimpered.

He let out the clutch. “Where to?”

“Go to the stables.”

He started to turn the wheel, but she gripped his hand. “No, the second right.” A hundred yards farther down she had him turn onto
a two-track. She got the gate and they followed a road that headed north, then curled around to the back of the stables. “Park behind the tractor,” she told him. She stepped out of the Land Cruiser. “I want to show you—”

She stopped. There was silence. Choti cocked her ears.

“That's Jasper's truck. He knows I go riding, that it's how I deal with stress. If he tries to stop me—he won't, but if he does—don't get all protective or anything. I'm my own woman. I can handle him.” But the growl that drew even with the elevation of the stables began to fade.

“He's leaving,” she said. “Wherever he's off to, he won't be back until midnight anyway. He'll just drive and talk to that little mutt of his. I'd say he'd go all the way to Pony if he hadn't been kicked out of the bar. He'll probably end up at the Cottonwood, playing poker. No, that's only on Tuesdays.” She made a dismissive gesture. “Why am I even thinking about it? I don't care where he goes.”

“He seemed pretty upset about Charles Watt.”

“Yeah, more upset than hearing what he did to my daughter. That's Jasper all over.” She turned her head toward the mountain backdrop behind the property, the peaks drowned in clouds.

“It will be turning to snow in the high country,” she said. “We'll have to wear chaps.”

 • • • 

I
f words were silver and sentences gold, Stranahan was still a poor man at eight thousand feet. He told Etta as much when they stopped to let the horses blow, having been climbing for more than an hour.

“What's that mean?” It was only the second time she'd spoken since helping him with a stirrup adjustment at the stables.

“Something my mother used to say about my father. He never met a stranger, but at home he could go hours between words. She called him the ‘man of little comment.'”

Etta responded by clucking to her horse and another half hour passed and Stranahan was no richer.

The country they'd been climbing into was new country yet familiar, the trail following a creek bottom behind the stables into the upper acreage of the ranch, passing a graveyard of farm machinery, the rusty tines of a defunct rotary tiller looking like a dinosaur's spinal column, before entering Forest Service land and switchbacking up the sidewall of a canyon. Topping out, they stopped again, the ribs of the horses expanding like accordions as they blew great plumes of breath. A vista spread before them, its features blurred by the haze of snowfall, but showing peaks ahead and to the south. A dark crease marked the South Fork of the Shields River. Stranahan's eyes followed the crease to the feeder creek up which he and Martha had climbed to discover Bear Paw Bill's camp. Farther to the west was the bald ridge, at the foot of which, facing the valley, stood the cabin. Because the foothills fanned out between the ranch house and the cabin, the distance between the two points seemed considerable. But it was no more than a couple miles or so, at least as measured by the wing beats of an eagle.

Etta tied her horse to a stunted pine and shrugged into the straps of a daypack. From this point they followed a path made by mountain goats, where their hooves had chipped the rock a lighter color than the surrounding obsidian. To either side, the ridge fell away in a shoulder of scree, then into nothing at all. “Just keep your eyes on your boots,” Etta said. “This isn't as bad as it looks. If you fell here, you wouldn't die.”

“Oh? Which part of me wouldn't be dead?” Stranahan felt lightheaded and had the sensation that the ground was shifting under his feet.

He counted steps until they had crested out onto a windswept expanse of rock, from which they could look east all the way to the prairie. Directly in front and about six hundred feet below was a small lake, dropped like a pearl from heaven, with a thread of silver creek running from the outlet. Stranahan knew where they were now but decided to let Etta tell him her way, in her time. They switchbacked down to the shore, where they sat down after scraping the snow skiff
off a flat rock. Choti had negotiated the precipitous terrain without a whimper or false step and started chasing after a marmot that scolded from a rock. Sean called her back.

“I recognized this place when I saw the documentary,” Etta said. “Or at least I knew that I'd seen it before, but I didn't put it together with the lake until the night you found Bear Paw Bill. It's the closest lake to his camp; it wouldn't have taken them more than an hour to climb to the ridge behind us.”

Stranahan nodded. “Cindy must have shot the video from the headwall.” His eyes swept the semicircle of exposed rock that cupped the basin. The cliff faces were sheer, with a band of rock scree near the top, and pocked with caves. “Have you climbed up there?”

“No, it would be pretty hard with one arm. Anyway, I'm more interested in what she contemplated—I guess that's the word. I've never been on a vision quest, but I've read about them. They say that when you focus on country for a long time, it releases endorphins. You become euphoric. My feeling is that no matter what Charlie did to her, she found a kind of bliss looking down at this lake. I hope she thought of me when she was up here. I know in my heart she would have returned to me, that that's what she was doing when . . . when it happened. Now, at least, I've found a place to scatter her ashes.”

“Is that what's in your pack?”

“Yes. It's all that remains of her except what's in here.” She fingered a silver and turquoise locket from the front of her shirt. “I have the ashes of all my children in this locket.”

“Why did you bring me here, Etta?”

“Because I shared her star with you.” She was silent a beat. “People have always made up their minds before meeting me. It's been a curse, like the curse of being betrayed by your body when you think you're bringing life into the world. But at least I had Cinderella for a little while. I'm sure you were warned about me, the madwoman of the Crazies, the second coming of that particular legend. But I'm just a mother who lost her children. All I ever wanted to do was ride horses and be a mother. That's all I ever wanted to do.”

Stranahan didn't know what to say and they sat in silence, watching the riffles skate in the breeze. His sweat had dried and he buttoned his jacket.

“Would you mind terribly if I was alone?” Etta said. “I have some things to say to my daughter before I let her go.” She took a plastic bag out of her pack and walked the shoreline toward the outlet of the lake. Sean turned his head the other way to respect her privacy.

When she returned, Stranahan was examining the caves in the headwall with a pair of binoculars.

“What part of me would be alive if I fell trying to climb up there?” He said it to coax a smile, but she took the question seriously.

“Only your soul,” she said.