The Royal Wulff Murders (20 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

A
t a little past four, Stranahan swung the Land Cruiser into the dirt ruts that ran alongside the Madison River at Three Dollar Bridge. Usually there was a rusted tin box with a slot to put your money in, but this time the landowner had appointed an attendant, a wizened old stork in faded overalls whose tollbooth was a folding chair under a sun umbrella. Stranahan stuffed three ones into the coffee cup the man proffered, the two exchanged howdees, and that was the extent of the conversation.

Back at the truck, Stranahan pulled the Winston from its sock. Not the rod Sam had found in the river, but its twin, the one that had belonged to Vareda’s father. She had pressed it on him, along with her father’s two fly boxes and his net, in the parking lot at the Law and Justice Center in Bridger earlier that afternoon. A sheriff’s deputy named Huntsinger had informed them that Martha Ettinger was out of town, but agreed to take a statement from Vareda concerning her brother’s death and accompany her to the morgue to formally identify the body. Stranahan had volunteered to cancel his appointment with Summersby—they were to meet at his “bungalow” on the Madison at 7 p.m. to discuss his paintings—but Vareda insisted there was no need for him to hold her hand. She’d arranged for a room at the Cottonwood Inn and needed some time to herself. He could call her there in the morning. Was that all right? The tone of her voice was matter of fact—she had been reserved from the moment they
climbed into their cars and caravanned back from Georgetown Lake. For Stranahan, the distance between them came as something of a relief. In a legal sense he was off the hook the moment the door to the sheriff’s office shut behind her, and as he headed down the bank to try his luck with the Winston, his step was lighter than it had been for some time.

A few hundred yards below the bridge, the Madison necked down, then foamed and eddied in a pinball course among the boulders. Stranahan caught a couple Montana bonefish, as locals called the ubiquitous whitefish, then sat down on a rock and idly fished through his vest pockets for the fly boxes Vareda had given him. Opening another man’s fly boxes was like leafing through a stranger’s bookshelves, looking for clues to character. If a fisherman’s flies lined up like obedient soldiers, chances were he had a mannered disposition. If they stuck up askew, hurriedly replaced as the angler sought and discarded the weapons in his arsenal, then he might be charitably called a spontaneous person, creative, given to inspiration—to put it succinctly, a mess. Stranahan tried to keep some order in his own boxes, but by the end of a fishing trip the streamer flies that imitated small baitfish would be fornicating with the smaller nymphs, curls of leader would be protruding from the lips of the dries, marabous would be kinked and matted. He opened the larger of the two boxes and was heartened to see that Vareda’s father was a brother in arms. The fly box held a chaotic mix of streamers and nymphs, many of the bead-head variety, and was studded with weighted stone fly patterns that would drop to the streambed like anvils. Stranahan avoided such heavy artillery when possible, but it was a workingman’s fly box that pretty much covered the bases.

The second box, a vintage Wheatley crafted in England, held terrestrials on one side, with the hooks held in clips. On the other side, peeking at him from under clear plastic compartment lids, were the delicate dry flies—Trudes, Adams, Wulffs, PMDs, mayfly
cripples, and a smattering of less identifiable patterns. Stranahan glanced over them once, then looked more closely. On each dry fly, buried among the hackle fibers, was the odd strand or two of golden pheasant tippet. Pheasant tippet adds a barring effect that can simulate the mottled appearance of many insects. But on dry flies, which trout see as fractured shadows against the glare of the sun, the addition of a few fibers of tippet was superfluous. It was a signature of the tier rather than a nod to the quarry. Well, he thought, it matched the personality of the man. Vareda’s father liked to leave his mark, whether it was on the trout he caught or the flies that hooked them.

Stranahan felt a faint tremor in the earth behind him. A Black Angus steer dance-stepped a few yards away, its eyes weeping a viscous fluid that had attracted a swarm of gnats. The steer was so close Stranahan could feel the heat radiating from its barrel body. How long had it been there? He snapped the Wheatley shut and splashed water on his face. It was time to drive upriver and pay Summersby a visit.

T
he sun was into its decline by the time Stranahan turned off 87 onto the gravel track that accessed the summer homes on the river. A quarter mile in he pulled into the sagebrush to let a white Cherokee pass, registered the county plates, and an instant later recognized the face behind the dusty windshield.

The Cherokee idled to a stop. The window powered down and Stranahan greeted Martha Ettinger’s question-mark gaze with a sheepish smile.

“Evening, Sheriff.”

“If it isn’t Mr. Stranahan,” she said. “I must be missing something, because for the life of me I don’t know what you’re doing here.”

Stranahan told her about Summersby, Vareda Beaudreux, the fish hatchery, the words tumbling out in a rush. The deputy in the
passenger seat listened with a toothpick bobbing between his teeth. Ettinger waited, her impassive face streaked with dried sweat.

“It just gets curiouser and curiouser,” she said when he’d finished. “This sister happens to show up when her brother, if it
is
her brother, winds up dead. I think you could have told me earlier about that.”

“I found out last night.”

“So you say. Well,” she pressed her lips together, “she’s staying at the inn. Hmm. Why don’t the two of you come to my office tomorrow morning, eight o’clock sharp. I’d like to see Miss Beaudreux in the flesh; she must be something to look at for a grown man to act such a fool.”

“I’ll do that.” Stranahan swallowed. “Uh, Sheriff? Did the man Sam found have dyed blond hair?”

Ettinger looked at him. “I’m not even going to ask how you know that.”

A
few minutes later, Stranahan pulled up to a riverside mansion constructed with enough timber to put a herd of elk out of a home. Summersby stood outside the door, arms akimbo.

“Hey, what’s this?” he said in a booming voice. “You’re already wadered up. Have you been fishing without me?”

Stranahan pumped the offered hand and allowed that he had fished a few miles down the river earlier in the afternoon.

“Figured you’d get a head start, huh? Caddis flies should be coming off soon.” With an “I’ll just be a second,” Summersby disappeared back into the house.

Stranahan shut up the Land Cruiser, twiddled his thumbs for ten minutes, and decided to be his own man. He walked past the house and down the bank. He started false casting before he got to the water, dropped a caddis imitation into a slick behind an exposed rock, and was releasing the trout that took the fly as Summersby walked heavily up behind him.

“As your host, I’m obliged to grant you the first fish,” he said. “But not the second.”

Stranahan smiled, then flicked his fly back out and caught another fish. A small brown that he skittered in and released to its mother, which he caught behind a lichen-patched rock on his third cast.

Summersby had yet to take his fly off the keeper ring on his rod.

“I see this is going to be an education,” he said.

Summersby wasn’t a bad fisherman. Stranahan coached him into one trout, but damn, the man made four false casts before he ever let his fly settle.

“I know, I’m slow,” Summersby said, noting Stranahan’s frustration. “But you get older, you don’t see as well, even with glasses. I’m not as sure on my feet as you are. And hell, I catch a fish, I’m ready for a pipe.” With that he drew a briar out of his jacket, loaded it, and struck a match. His eyes crinkled as he drew down the flame.

Stranahan had one of those moments when the veneer cracks and you suddenly see behind the bluster of personality. Summersby wasn’t patronizing. His use of Stranahan’s last name, his affected intimacy, it was done in the old-school manner of Catskill anglers circled before a hearth. Successful businessmen who were equally adept at chairing a board meeting, hailing a midtown cab, or casting a hexagonal sliver of bamboo. The kind of men who enjoyed a boasting rivalry and shared a tin cup of Kentucky’s best afterward. Stranahan had underestimated him. He’d been so intent on preserving pride in the face of money that it was he who had been guilty of patronizing Summersby.

“Let’s go set our feet up on the porch rail,” Summersby said. “Talk about the fine arts before the neighbors arrive. Hell, you scared every fish half to death with that magic wand of yours, anyway.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

“I
suppose a man could get used to this. I mean, if he had to,” Stranahan said. He leaned back in a willow-framed rocking chair and noted that indeed his boots were tipped on the porch rail. Below the deck, in the bright reflections of the backwaters, he could see a haze of evening caddis flies, the quick circles of trout.

The door of the back porch opened as a compact woman with loosely blown curls and a welcoming smile walked out. She was pushing a bar cart that clacked across the slatted floorboards.

“Hi, I’m Ann,” she said.

“My superior half,” nodded Summersby.

Stranahan took the woman’s hand, said his name, and was drawn into a hug. She was so much shorter that her arms encircled his waist.

“Don’t mind me,” she said when she released him. “You just looked like you needed a hug.” Impulsively, she hugged him a second time, adopting him into her family just like that. There was the faint scent of rose water. Stranahan saw her as a certain kind of churchwoman he had grown up around, supportive, never an unkind word. He noticed the way Summersby’s eyes brightened and felt a flush of jealousy at the couple’s happiness.

“You men have things to talk about, so I’m going to go back to the kitchen. I love your painting, Sean,” she said.

“Thanks, that’s nice to hear.”

Stranahan heard Summersby’s voice.

“Johnny Walker Black okay with you?”

Stranahan was still looking toward the door where Ann had gone back into the house. He said, “I sat in a hotel bar with a woman drinking Scotch on the rocks, a long time ago now, but it always brings it back.” He was thinking of Katherine O’Reilly in Boston.

Summersby leaned an elbow on the rail. He tipped his drink.

“Well, here’s to Scotch-drinking women,” he said.

Stranahan turned to look at the river. He said, “She gave me a shove, made me quit my work in Boston and go back to painting. If it wasn’t for her, who knows where I’d be?”

“See, that’s the difference between an artist and a capitalist,” Summersby said. “You taste your whiskey and conjure up beautiful women; I drink mine and”—he drank—“I see cylinders of peat and purple heather highlands.”

Stranahan smiled.

“Which is a way of saying I’ve fished in some far-flung places,” Summersby said. “Tierra del Fuego for sea trout, Atlantic salmon in Iceland, Scotland’s River Dee, that’s where Prince Charles fishes. Balmoral Castle is on the Dee. That river is as beautiful as the day it was made. They say every rock has its personal valet.”

He went on: “The Kispiox for steelhead. In British Columbia. Where else? Christmas Island—bonefish. Key West—tarpon. When I was younger, I organized a trek up the Ganges to fish for mahseer. The monsoon came early, never caught a mahseer. But how many men can say they’ve fly-fished India?

“I’m telling you this because in my dotage I like to bring those places back to me, surround myself with them, as it were. All my life I’ve been mesmerized by water, that’s something I’m sure you understand. Unlike you, I can’t just shut my eyes and picture the river in my mind. I need visual stimulation. That’s where you come in, or where I hope you will. You’re more of a landscape artist than a fishing painter. Correct me if I’m wrong.

“See, I didn’t think so. I don’t want renditions of photographs. If I liked that kind of thing, I’d rather have the actual photographs. I don’t want soft-focus sentimentality, either. On the phone I made you an offer, and that offer stands. Paintings of blue-ribbon trout streams, the Madison right off this porch, the Big Hole at Maiden Rock, West Fork of the Bitterroot, and so forth”—he waved a hand—“two thousand apiece. All expenses—gas, meals, motels, you keep track. And I want you to drive to BC and paint the Kispiox. My only stipulation is that you have the paintings ready before I come back next year. I realize June is a long time to wait for money, so I’ll pay you for the first six now, front a couple grand for expenses. We’ll settle up later. That sound okay?”

“Better than okay,” Sean said.

“Then if I like what I see,” he paused, “well… the world.” He chuckled. “I’ve always wanted to say that.” He flung his arms in an expansive gesture—“the world. But I’m serious. Same job description, higher pay, of course. You’ll have to update your passport.

“Mind you,” Summersby added, “I don’t need to see sketches first, anything of that nature. I trust your judgment. Only thing I ask is that the paintings fit the wall space. I’ll show you around and we can iron out the details—verticals, horizontals, medium, that kind of thing.”

He stuck out his hand. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Stranahan said.

Summersby poured another finger of whiskey and the two men clinked glasses.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

S
lightly drunk on Scotch and the prospect of enough money to move out of his office and wash in a shower instead of the copper trickle from the cultural center’s bathroom spigots, Stranahan greeted each dinner guest with a hearty jocularity that really wasn’t his nature.

The Sinclairs were the first to arrive. Tony, the husband, had a firm handshake and an air of being the voice of better judgment in any room he entered. Stranahan liked the man despite misgivings—Sinclair lived in the house upriver where Sean had seen light shining from what he thought were binoculars on the day he met Sheriff Ettinger—and immediately fell into a conversation with Sinclair that started out about fishing, segued into Montana’s environmental politics and the uproar over wolf reintroduction, then found its way back to higher ground as they debated fly patterns and presentations. He found his eyes darting past Sinclair’s shoulder to his wife, Eva, whose sign language was answered in tentative hand movements from Summersby’s wife. Summersby had mentioned that Ann was learning to sign. He’d said if there was a neighbor who spoke Pekingese, Ann would have booked a tutor. This far off the track a woman needed her friends.