Trouble at the Red Pueblo (18 page)

“He’s lost his Internet,” she told Spider. “The front desk says some guy on a backhoe dug up a cable. They hope to have it repaired later today.” She put her phone away. “So, where are we going?”

“It’s a place called the
V
Bar Ranch in Mesquite.” Spider pointed to a folder on the seat between them. “You read the file last night.”

“I remember. Dorcas. What’s her story?”

“You know as much as I do. That’s what we’re going to find out. She’s young, twenty-five or so. Linda’s age.”

“Or Amy’s. Or Mary Defrain’s.”

“Yeah. In the file there’s a copy of an unlimited power of attorney she gave to our friend Austin.”

“That’s like letting the fox in the henhouse.”

“Yeah. I couldn’t find out from the file what he did with it, but I’ll bet he’s ended up with the ranch.”

“How long will it take us to get there?”

“From here? Couple hours or so.”

Laurie reached behind the seat and found a travel pillow. “I didn’t get much sleep the last two nights. Do you mind if I take a nap?” She put the pillow against the doorpost and leaned her head on it.

Spider patted her leg. “You go on ahead.” He smiled over at her as she tucked her hand under her cheek and closed her eyes.

As he continued west across the Arizona Strip, red cliffs marched on his right, and desert landscape gradually fell away on his left until it reached the blue Kaibab Plateau thirty miles away. The fenced rangeland reminded him of his place in Lincoln County, and his idle mind wandered to something his son Bobby had said to him after the funeral on Tuesday. Was that just three days ago?

It was an offhand remark, made as he held his baby son, Spider’s grandson, and said good-bye. Bobby had said he’d like to move back to Lincoln County. Because of the nature of his job with the software company, he could live anywhere he wanted and telecommute. He said he’d like his children to grow up there on the ranch.

Spider hadn’t had a chance to give the matter much thought. In the flurry of traveling to Kanab and subsequent events, he hadn’t even mentioned it to Laurie yet. He glanced at her, but she was apparently asleep.

All the way across the strip, dropping down into Hurricane and on through St. George, he planned the infrastructure upgrade that would have to be done for another house on the property, beginning with a two-inch water line from the artesian well. He didn’t come back to the issue of Austin Lee until he was going through the vertical-walled canyon made by the Virgin River twenty miles beyond St. George.

A few miles out of Mesquite, he pulled off the road at a no-services exit and punched in the address of the V-Bar Ranch. What lowdown Austin Lee scheme would he discover there? And what could you do about someone who did bad things but skated within the law?

If Karam was right, they had stopped Austin on this gambit as far as the Red Pueblo was concerned, but what was to prevent him from finding a new way to get Martin’s land? Then there was the worrisome detail of his hanging around Amy. And what other worrisome details were hanging out there, ready to bite them? Someone needed to stop this predator, for sure.

Laurie sat up. She blinked, stretched, and dropped her pillow behind the seat. “Are we there yet?” she asked.

Spider chuckled as he pulled onto the freeway. “Are you up for the day?”

She yawned. “I think so.”

“I just pulled off to set up the GPS. It says we turn off at the next exit.”

The ranch proved to be three miles off the freeway. Half a mile past a new golf course, a gravel road to the ranch branched off the blacktop, crossed a cattle guard and wound another quarter mile to a weathered frame house and outbuildings.

Laurie looked around as they drove in. “Lincoln County looks pretty lush compared to this.”

“See it through ol’ Austin’s eyes. Add a sprinkling system, some houses around the back side of that golf course, maybe some palm trees. It’ll look pretty nice.”

“Look at the house,” Laurie said. “I don’t think anyone is home. In fact, the place looks unlived-in.”

“Shoot. I hope we haven’t come too late.”

At that moment, a three-legged dog came running from behind the house, barking furiously. The dog was followed by a tall, big-boned woman in Levi’s and worn cowboy boots. She stood, hands on hips, pulling her beat-up straw hat down to keep the sun out of her eyes as she watched them. Spider stopped the pickup in front of the house and turned off the engine.

SPIDER EXAMINED THE
red hair curling under the hat brim and the freckled face. “Does she look like she’d be named Dorcas?” he asked.

Laurie opened the door, slid to the ground, and walked to where the woman stood. “Hi. Would you be Dorcas Coleman?”

“I go by Dorrie.” She had on leather work gloves and kept one hand on the dog’s head.

“I’m Laurie Latham, and this is my husband Spider.” She pointed to Spider, just getting out of the pickup.

Spider touched the brim of his hat. “Howdy. We live over in Lincoln County. We’ve come by to…” He trailed off when Laurie claimed Dorrie’s attention by kneeling down and calling the dog to her.

“I ain’t never seen anything like that,” Dorrie said. “She don’t usually take to strangers.”

Laurie rubbed the dog behind the ears. “What’s her name?”

“Trey.”

Laurie smiled. “For three. I see. Was she born like this?”

Dorrie nodded. “The people who owned her were going to put her down, but I could see she was something special, and I talked them out of it. I went there intending to get a cattle dog, but instead I got a friend.”

Laurie looked at the empty pasture beyond the house. “How many head do you have?”

Dorrie looked away and waited so long to answer that Spider thought she might not have heard the question. When she finally faced them again, her eyes were shiny with unshed tears. She flapped her arms against her side as if in frustration and turned away once more. “I’m sorry,” she said, not looking at them. “I don’t mean to act like a baby.” She sniffed. “Truth is, I don’t own the ranch anymore.”

She sniffed again, and Spider dragged out the fresh handkerchief he had stuck in his pocket that morning. He held it in front of Dorrie where she could see it without looking at him, and she took it with murmured thanks.

She pulled off one of her gloves and stuck it in her back pocket before blowing her nose. “Truth is, I didn’t expect to still be here. I put the last of my things in my pickup this morning. I was going to load my horse and leave, but when I hooked up the trailer, something was wrong. I ain’t got no lights.”

“I could take a look-see, if you’d like,” Spider offered. “Where’s the trailer?”

She gestured behind her. “Back by the stable.”

“Let me get my tools.” He walked to his truck, got his gloves and toolbox from behind the seat, and he and Laurie followed Dorrie around the house. In back he found a machine shed, a four-stall stable, and three corrals. The largest of the three held a palomino mare, standing ears pricked forward.

Spider walked toward the trailer parked near the gate. He knelt down and pulled the trailer electrical harness out of the receptacle on the pickup and used his test light to make sure there was power in the hookup. There was, so he turned his attention to the trailer, tracing wires and methodically ruling out problems. It took him fifteen minutes, but he finally found a broken wire at the back of the trailer. He fixed the connection, bound it up with electrical tape, and went to find Dorrie and his wife.

They were in the corral. Laurie was bent over with the palomino’s hoof between her knees. The two women had their heads together as Laurie traced the edge of the shoe. As he set his toolbox on the top rail, she looked up. “Guess what? Dorrie has Taffy’s sister.”

The information took a minute to sink in. He leaned his arms on the railing. “How did you find that out?”

Laurie put down the hoof and straightened up, a big smile on her face. “Dorrie showed me how Goldie would come at a whistle, and I saw her throwing out her hoof the way Taffy does.”

“There’s not one in a hunnerd would ‘a noticed that,” Dorrie said. “You got to have a good eye.”

Laurie patted the palomino’s neck. “Or a horse with the same condition.”

Spider frowned. “Having the same condition doesn’t mean this is Taffy’s sister.”

“No, but when I saw it, I asked where she got Goldie.”

Dorrie broke in. “Ain’t no big coincidence that we both went to Sunrise Ranch when we were looking for a good horse. They’re the biggest horse breeder around. Closer to us, but Lincoln County’s just a hunnerd miles away.”

Laurie picked up the thread. “Remember when the owner told us that Taffy was the second foal with this condition?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, Goldie was the first.”

“Huh.” Spider eyed the palomino. “Sounds like something that belongs in Ripley’s Believe it or Not.”

“I was just telling her about the farrier Jack uses. Dorrie’s got someone that’s pretty good, but Jack’s guy custom orders shoes that he’s able to modify more easily.”

Spider picked up his toolbox. “Did you tell Dorrie why we’re here?”

Dorrie looked from Laurie to Spider, the smile no longer lighting her face. “No. She didn’t.”

Spider looked around for some shade. Three cottonwoods towered over a stock tank, casting a large shadow that promised to be a few degrees cooler. “Let me put away my tools, and then let’s sit over there and talk. You’ve got lights now, by the way.”

As he walked away, Spider heard Dorrie asking Laurie, “What’s this about?”

When he returned, he found them sitting on the wide edge of the huge concrete watering tank, deep in conversation. He hunkered down in front of them, forearm on one knee, and waited for Laurie to finish telling Dorrie how they were called to help out the museum in Fredonia.

Dorrie again looked from one to the other. “But what’s that got to do with me?”

“The lawsuits that have been crippling the museum are bogus,” Laurie said. “They’re made-up, all because someone wants land that the museum owner has. This person is trying to get the museum director in a bad financial position, so he has to sell his land quickly. This person can then pick it up for a song.”

Dorrie pushed her heel into the wet earth in front of her. “That sounds a little farfetched, and I still don’t see why you’re here talking to me.”

Spider spoke without thinking. “The person behind the lawsuits was Austin Lee.”

Dorrie’s freckles stood out as her face went pale. Her eyes and mouth got a bluish tinge around them, and she looked shrunken and defenseless all of a sudden. Spider was immediately sorry he had spoken without preparing her.

Laurie moved closer and put an arm around Dorrie. “Are you all right?” When Dorrie nodded, she went on. “We’ve found that he’s left a trail of broken hearts behind him. He’s used the same tactic each time, which is to ingratiate himself with a woman, get her to trust him, maybe fall in love with him, and then use her to get what he wants, which is usually prime real estate at a bargain price.”

Dorrie closed her eyes, folded her arms and hunched over. Her breathing became shallow.

“Go get a water bottle,” Laurie whispered to Spider.

He got up and trotted back to the pickup, glad Laurie was there to troubleshoot. Give him a car chase or a fistfight. That was easier than watching a good woman go through something like this.

When he returned, Laurie was rinsing his handkerchief in the stock tank. “Can you tell us when you met Austin?” she asked as she bathed Dorrie’s brow and the back of her neck. “Tell us how it happened.”

Dorrie leaned forward and put elbows on her knees and her face in her hands. “It was over a year ago. He drove in one day saying he was lost.”

There was a long pause. Neither Spider nor Laurie prompted her to go on.

Finally Dorrie spoke. “I was the one that was lost, from the moment I saw him.” She gave a great, ragged sigh and sat up. “He came back to see me again and again. We rode all over the ranch. He went with me to see my dad at the old folks’ home.” She laughed, a short, mirthless sound. “He helped me make decisions, and when dad died, he said he’d probate the will for free, since he was a lawyer.”

Spider spoke gently. “Did he ask you to sign a power of attorney, so he could do the probate?”

Dorrie nodded. “He said it would be so much easier.”

“Then what did he do?” Laurie rubbed Dorrie’s broad back.

“As soon as probate was over, he sold the ranch for me.”

Spider didn’t know whether to give her a break or forge on, but he figured it was like taking off a Band-aid. Better to get it over. “Did he sell it to a company called Texas Capital Investments?”

Dorrie nodded. “How did you know?”

Spider’s mouth felt dry. “What did you get for the ranch?”

“A hunnerd thousand dollars.”

Spider heard Laurie’s intake of breath, and he asked, “For how many acres?”

Dorrie stared at Spider as if that was something he should know. “It’s a section— 640 acres.”

“With good water?” Laurie sounded like she was afraid to hear the answer.

“We’ve got a spring right about the middle. Sweetest water you’ll find.”