Dakota (19 page)

“Who?”

“The girl who was killed.”

Ellen gave a little wave. She sniffed. “Oh. Her.” Lola wondered if Ellen would feel the same way after she’d been dancing a few months. Ellen scooped up the other two place settings. “You know what they say. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas. But I guess she won’t be getting up anymore.”

Lola balanced the bits of butter atop the roll and took a bite. The roll was stale. “I’ve got to ask. If that’s how you feel, why are you considering dancing?” Knowing the answer even as she asked. Ellen thought she’d be different. Every girl probably did, at least when she started. “And how come they’re all so upset?” Lola jerked her head toward the men in the room. Any direction would have worked. As usual, she and Ellen were the only women there.

“Because of the accident.”

Lola abandoned the roll. “It wasn’t an accident. Someone killed her.”

“Not her. Those other guys.”

Lola put her knife down very slowly. “What other guys?”

The ability to show off some exclusive knowledge seemed to restore Ellen’s good humor. “A wire line got away from a couple of guys out on a rig today. Killed them both. You want some more wine?”

Lola’s breath came fast. “What guys? What rig?” Knowing even as she spoke that it was useless. She didn’t really know either of their names, and she certainly didn’t know which rig they worked on.

Ellen lifted a shoulder that emerged pretty and bare from the thin stuff of her top. “Does it matter? Roughnecks come, roughnecks go. The only ones who stay are the ones who die here. Like those two.” She laughed at her own joke, then tried to cover the laugh with a cough as heads lifted around the room. She drifted away.

Lola called her back. “Check.” Her mouth was dry. She drank the remainder of her wine in a single swallow. She reminded herself that hundreds of roughnecks crowded Burnt Creek’s man camps and sardine-tin apartments. It seemed impossible that the two men who were her sole links to Judith could have vanished so decisively. “They’re in a bar,” she told herself, taking reassurance from the thought that had so angered her moments earlier. She laid some cash for the wine atop the check. She’d been glad of the appointment that kept her away from the sheriff’s house that evening. Now, despite her misgivings about Thor, she fumbled with her parka’s zippers and toggle fastenings and hurried from The Mint, hoping to catch the Breviks before they finished their own meal. If anyone could tell her who’d been killed, it would be the sheriff.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he Brevik home was dark and still when she arrived. Lola tried the door and laughed. Despite the couple’s bemoaning of the influx of bad characters into Burnt Creek, their door was unlocked—as, Lola suspected, were all the neighbors’ doors.

She made a quick check to be sure Thor and Charlotte really were gone, then let Bub follow her into the kitchen. Her missed dinner at The Mint had left her ravenous. She stood with Bub before the open refrigerator and selected pieces of cold chicken from a platter trussed up in layers of shrink wrap. She pulled bits of meat from the bone and fed them alternately to herself and Bub until each had eaten far more than necessary. She stooped and let him lick her greasy fingers, then rinsed her hands in the sink. A grinning pig of a cookie jar beckoned. Lola lifted the lid and jumped at the loud mechanical “oink.” She selected two oatmeal cookies from the neat stack and fed one to Bub and ate the other herself, breaking off a piece for Bub. “You’re lucky these aren’t chocolate chip,” she said. “Dogs can’t have chocolate.” He wagged his tail.

Lola wished he’d barked. The silence in the house was oppressive, nothing to distract her from her thoughts, which returned relentlessly to the sheriff. The discovery that Dawg was working off the books. The failure of the two men to show for dinner—and the fact that Thor and Charlotte were the only people who knew she’d planned to meet them. Unless the men had talked. “It’s entirely possible,” she told Bub, “there’s someone out there we haven’t even considered.” Bub ignored her and trained his eyes on the cookie jar, signaling as clearly as he was capable that another cookie was his highest priority. “Forget it,” she told him. She couldn’t do a damn thing about the chance that Ralph and Swanny might have been in touch with someone else who might have more information about Judith or the girls. But she could investigate Thor more thoroughly. She went into the living room and shoved heavy draperies aside. The sheriff’s house sat at the far end of a street that ended in prairie, the backyard an unbroken sweep of snow past the town’s boundaries. The street itself was empty, vehicles tucked into the relative warmth of garages. She knew their batteries would be plugged in for good measure. The house was too well insulated for Lola to hear an approaching vehicle, but with the drapes open, she’d see headlights well before anyone arrived. Thus reassured, Lola began a methodical search, Bub so close at her heels that she shooed him back a step or two. The sheriff and his wife slept on the main floor, in a cherrywood four-poster bed that sagged on one side. The dresser top was bare save for a set of perfume bottles on Charlotte’s side, and a small wooden box on her husband’s. Lola held the bottles to her nose and sniffed, transported in an instant from a bungalow on a frozen North Dakota prairie to childhood trips with her mother to the department store cathedrals of Baltimore, their glass-counter altars set as though for communion with mirrored golden trays of crystal vessels. She’d have known the scent without reading the label: Shalimar, the one her mother used for special occasions. The bottle was nearly full. She wondered when Charlotte had last lifted it to the nape of her neck, tilted her head this way and that, shivered in delight as the mist settled onto her skin. Had Thor given it to her as an obligatory Christmas or birthday or even—although Lola doubted this—an anniversary gift? Or, sadder but infinitely more possible, had Charlotte ordered it for herself, perhaps in a sporadic attempt to seduce Thor back into romance? Lola replaced the perfume bottle and lifted the lid of the wooden box, only to find pennies. She slid open drawers and saw clothing neatly sorted and folded, nothing like her own jumble. She fell to her knees and lifted the bed skirt. Nothing, not even dust bunnies. In the closet, Thor’s uniforms, starched and knife-creased, hung beside Charlotte’s pastel scrubs. Lola hadn’t noticed a dry cleaner in Burnt Creek’s small business district. She imagined Charlotte standing over an ironing board, steam rising, and dampening her face as she sprayed and pressed and otherwise took infinite care of the clothing worn by a man who seemed to have so little regard for her feelings. The fabric made disapproving shushing noises as Lola pushed the clothing aside to see if it concealed anything. It didn’t. The bathroom was more rewarding, if not in a particularly meaningful way. Disposable syringes filled a shelf in the medicine cabinet. Lola guessed that Charlotte had diabetes. Not surprising, she thought, given the woman’s weight and artery-clogging meals. She shook a bottle of blood-pressure medication—a few pills remained; it was time to renew—and paid closer attention to a prescription sleep aid. Charlotte’s name was on that one, too, but Lola thought of Thor’s frenetic talking and wondered if he had trouble winding down at night. Something flickered at the corner of her vision. Headlights.

She closed the medicine cabinet and ran to the living room and tugged the drapes shut, then hustled Bub into the mudroom, and sprinted up the stairs. She sat on the bed, then lay back and scuffled at the covers. She waited until she heard the front door open, then stood and moved slowly back downstairs, trying to make as much noise as possible on the carpeted steps. She turned the corner into the living room. Two haggard faces turned her way. “Sorry,” she said. “I finished up earlier than expected. I came home and took a nap.”

Charlotte pulled a chair away from the kitchen table and fell into it and let her head drop into her hands. Lola wasn’t sure if the groan came from Charlotte or the chair. “It’s been a hard day,” Charlotte said. “For me, for once. Thor’s not the only one who’s overworked.”

A small thrill shot through Lola at the barb. She’d thought of Charlotte as one of those beaten-down wives, too readily accepting of her husband’s criticism. Lola was glad to hear she could dish out some criticism of her own. She wanted, badly, to ask about the accident on the rig, but felt as though she were intruding on a private moment. Thor took a teapot from the stove and filled it with water. He twisted a knob on the stove and the scent of gas cut the air before the flame caught. “Anyone want tea? After the day we’ve all had, it might be better for us than coffee.”

Lola noted with increasing satisfaction that it was the first time she’d seen Thor lift a finger in the kitchen. Maybe Charlotte needed to have more bad days. Thor fussed with teabags while he spoke. “Lola, before I forget, I got a call from some girl at your newspaper.”

Some girl. Lola thought how Jan would bristle at the characterization. “What did she want?”

“She asked me some questions about that same girl you’ve been talking about. And some other girls, too.”

Dammit,
Lola thought. Until now, Thor hadn’t known the scope of the story. She’d hoped to find more about the other girls before she took her questions to Thor. “We like to be thorough. What did she want to know? You know—so we’re not doubleteaming each other.”

The sheriff dragged a hand across his eyes. “I can’t remember now. It was before the day went all to hell.”

“Let me help,” said Lola. She went through the cupboards and located the mugs and set three on the table. “I heard there was an accident,” she ventured.

“Bad,” Thor said. “Thought I’d seen everything ’til I saw this. Guys die in all sorts of inventive ways out on those rigs. Trucks run over them. Something sparks and there’s a fireball. I had to go out and pronounce the obvious.”

“Thor’s the coroner, too,” Charlotte said.

Her husband poured tea into her mug, Charlotte added sugar, then more, and stirred and stirred.

“I heard about it down at The Mint,” Lola said. She tried to recall the unfamiliar word. “Something about a wire. Were they electrocuted?”

Thor joined them at the table. “A wire line. It’s about as thick around as your thigh. Well, probably not yours. Maybe Charlotte’s.” Thor’s payback for Charlotte’s brief flash of defiance had begun, Lola assumed. She hoped Charlotte wouldn’t back down. Start with small things, she silently urged her. Maybe a scorch mark on one of those uniforms. But Charlotte, snapping her teabag in and out of the water, seemed oblivious to Lola’s attempts at telepathic sisterhood.

“The line goes down into the well,” Thor said. “There’s a safety mechanism to keep it there. But somehow this one got loose, whipped around. You can’t imagine the force of those things. The head punched right through one man’s chest and when his friend grabbed him, it went into the friend’s gut. Killed the first guy outright, but the second one, he died hard. He was still alive when I got there, but only for a few minutes. I had to walk around afterward, bagging little pieces of skin and guts.” He’d been staring into his tea while he talked but now he looked up. “Sorry.”

Lola battled twin surges of nausea and impatience. She didn’t know how to broach the subject of the victims’ identities. “How do you tell somebody’s family about something like that?”

Thor blew on his tea and took a swallow. A brown crust rimmed his fingernails. Lola’s stomach engaged in more antics. “First you got to find their families,” he said. “A lot of these boys don’t have much in the way of roots. Their crew boss is trying to scare up next-of-kin information for me. When he does, I’ll make those calls. I’ll spare them the details. Oh, I almost forgot.” Thor patted his pockets, starting with his pants and working his way up to his shirt, settling on the left chest. He unbuttoned the flap and withdrew a folded piece of paper. He smoothed the creases. It looked as though he’d Xeroxed two driver’s licenses. Lola took the paper from him and held it beneath the tinkling chandelier.

Thor had enlarged the images, badly blurring them. But the numbers and letters remained readable. Ralph Wayne Cooper. William Charles Swan. Lola skimmed past the names and fixed on the faces, the exuberant sideburns, the embarrassing teeth. “That’s them. The ones I was supposed to meet.” She knew the coincidence should have surprised her. It didn’t.

“I know.” The sheriff repeated his routine of checking his pockets. This time, he handed her something enclosed in a plastic baggie. Her own business card, blood smeared across its raised lettering. “This was in one of their pockets. I disremember which.”

Lola thought of the angry scratch across Swanny’s face. Maybe Judith had inflicted it. Maybe that had infuriated Swanny. Maybe Judith had fled into the frozen night, preferring the risk of an impersonal death in the snow than the certainty of one at his hands. Too many maybes. Now she’d never know for sure.

Lola gave Thor back the copies of the driver’s licenses. He studied them. “Seems strange doesn’t it, that they get killed on the very day they were supposed to meet you? And in one helluva bizarre accident. There’s no way that wire line should’ve gotten away like that. It’s almost like someone interfered with it. I might have a criminal investigation on my hands. If I were you, I’d watch your back. Good thing you’re leaving in the morning.”

Lola hadn’t said she was leaving. “I’m not sure I am,” she began. There was the matter of the other girls. Maylinn, she reminded herself. Annie. Carole. Nancy. All along she’d thought that maybe they’d followed Judith to the patch, drawn by the lure of easy money dancing. Of course there was the worse scenario, that none had gone willingly, and that they’d been pressed into far more unsavory service. But now, with so many deaths in such quick succession, the stakes had risen considerably. She’d relegated them to second-class status while she focused on Judith. But Judith was beyond help, and these girls were still alive. At least, she hoped they were. The tea burned acidic in her stomach.

“Of course you’re going home,” Thor said. “Everything happening here is going to keep me pretty busy for a while. I can’t be of much help to you, and for sure it’s not safe for you to be wandering around on your own.”