Trouble at the Red Pueblo (8 page)

“So, for three weeks Matt has been courting a quarter million dollars.”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“And for those same three weeks, Austin has been courting Linda.”

LaJean shook her head. “Austin dropped out of sight.”

Spider’s brows arched. “He did? When?”

She opened the book and leafed through it. “The last day he was here was when we had the Lithuanian tour bus stop in. Yes. It was on August third, about a week and a half ago.”

“Was there some kind of squabble? He didn’t just quit coming without saying anything?”

“Afraid so.”

“Well, no wonder she’s trailing wet tissues everywhere.” Spider thought a moment. “There’s one more thing. You said everyone heard Matt and Linda break up. What was the problem?”

“I can only guess. Most of the conversation took place inside the dugout in what you might call civilized tones. But Mattie must have said something that set her off. She came busting out of the door, screaming at him.”

“What was she saying?”

“She was asking a question. ‘I betrayed you?’ Emphasis on the ‘you.’ Said it twice. Then she ripped off her apron and bandana and threw them on the ground and said she quit. He could consider that the beginning of her two weeks’ notice. And she said the ring was in the apron pocket.”

“And when was this, exactly?”

“Last Friday.” She closed the book and set it on the counter. “Does that complete your timeline?”

“Looks like it.” Spider picked up his hat and stood. “Thanks for spending the time with me. I think I’ll have a word with Linda now.”

“Linda just left. She drove off not two minutes ago.”

Spider looked out at the empty parking spot where the Kia had been sitting. “Shoot. Well, in that case, I’ll talk to Matt.”

LaJean stood, pushing herself up with her arms and slowly straightening. She picked up the guest book. “I hope you can get this all sorted out,” she said as she carried it back to its resting place.

“I hope so, too.” Spider held his hat up in salute and headed toward the door to the Heritage Yard.

Out in the yard, Spider found Matt putting his ax-making tools into a basket which he then stowed on a shelf under the rough-hewn workbench. The bench was on wheels and had handles like a wheelbarrow, and he began wheeling it toward the fence.

Spider put on his hat and angled over to open the gate.

“Thanks,” Matt said, passing through without looking up.

Closing the gate, Spider followed to the storage room and paused at the doorway. “You got a minute?” he asked.

Matt, inside, parked the workbench and put the basket of tools up on a shelf before he answered. “What for?”

“I’d like to ask you some questions.” Spider ignored Matt’s impatient gesture and stepped inside. “Just a couple. I’ve got the lay of the land from your dad and LaJean, but there are some things only you can tell me.”

Matt looked at the floor and rubbed his hands on his pants. “Like?”

“Like, what did you say to Linda last Friday about betrayal?”

Matt reached up to straighten the basket and then held onto the shelf, leaning his head against his arms.

Spider waited a moment and then said, “You haven’t been much help thus far, you know.”

Matt spoke, head still down, voice muffled. “I know. I’ve got myself into such a jam that it’s hard to talk about it. It’s like, if I don’t say it aloud, maybe it isn’t so. I knew I’d have to say it aloud to you.”

“I’m not here to judge, son. What kind of jam are you talking about?”

Matt cleared his throat, stood, and met Spider’s eyes. “For starters, I accused Linda of leaking the news about the Lincoln letter.”

“How did you frame the accusation? What did you say?”

“I said she had betrayed the museum.”

Spider grimaced. “That covers a whole range of things. Did she deny it?”

Matt blinked. His eyes shifted back and forth, as if he were working something out. “No. She didn’t deny it.”

“But she was angry?”

“She was angry about the time I spend with Tiffany, about the attention I pay her.”

“Without cause?”

Matt put his hands in his pockets and kicked at the caster on the workbench to straighten it. “No. She had cause, all right, but I couldn’t see it then. All I could see was that I had to spend time with Tiffany, be nice to her. I thought she was going to save us.”

Spider folded his arms and leaned against the wall. “Do you still think she’s going to save the museum?”

Matt looked past Spider at something in the distance. “I’ve begun to wonder what she would want from me in return.”

Spider followed his gaze to the landscape framed by the storeroom door, the brown mesas beyond the parking lot and the blue Kaibab plateau in the distance. “From what little I’ve seen, it’s obvious that she wants an exclusive arrangement. You’re probably the one to say whether or not that includes marriage.”

Matt looked as if he had bitten into something sour. “The woman never stops talking. I took her out to some cliff dwellings last Saturday, and she never shut up the whole time we were there. On the way back— and we saw some splendid things— her whole conversation was about a broken fingernail.”

Spider grunted sympathetically, and Matt continued, growing more exasperated with each point, ticking them off on his fingers. “She calls the Anasazi
Anna’s Nazi’s
. She can’t see any difference between their pottery and the Navajo’s, and she wants to get an electric Dremel tool to make the ax heads go faster.”

“Sounds like the opposite of Linda,” Spider said.

“Linda is like… like water to a thirsty man. You don’t have to talk to her, you know? When we’re out in the canyons, we can hike for hours without saying anything, but when we speak, we’re always on the same page. It’s like she knows what I’m thinking.”

Spider pushed away from the wall. “Except about Tiffany, I think. Why haven’t you told her what you just told me?”

“She probably wouldn’t listen. She’s leaving, you know. Going away.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. She left just now because she’s got a phone interview. Some other museum will snap her up.”

Spider stepped outside and blinked in the sunlight. He turned and spoke to Matt, still standing in the dimness of the storeroom. “Well, if she did spill the beans about the Lincoln letter— and we don’t know that she did— I’d better find out from her who—”

At that moment, the phone in Spider’s Levi’s pocket vibrated and startled him so that he actually jumped sideways. “Hey!” he shouted. He leaned over, searching for the cause, and felt the buzz against his leg again.

“What’s the matter?” Matt’s voice held concern.

Spider fished the phone out of his pocket, held it up to show Matt, and then moved back into the shade, so he could see the screen. “How do I answer the damn thing?” he muttered.

Matt’s hand appeared from over his shoulder and tapped an icon on the screen.

“Thanks.” Spider put the phone to his ear.

“Hello? Hello?” Laurie’s voice sounded tentative.

“Hello, Darlin’. What’s going on?”

“I’m at Jack’s office. He’s got the next couple hours off, and he wants us to come out to his place for lunch.”

Spider’s watch said it was half past noon. He looked around the yard and spied Karam and Isaac at the far side by the drill rig. Isaac was making large circular motions with his arms, and Karam was nodding, apparently understanding what Isaac was saying.

“Spider?” Laurie prompted.

“I’m here.” Spider wished he had some alternate lunch plans to offer, but he went with the best he could come up with and still be truthful. “I was going to ask Karam to have lunch with us.”

“Just a minute.” Laurie’s muffled voice sounded in the background, and then she spoke into the receiver. “Jack says to bring him, too.”

Spider gently scooted a beetle off the sidewalk with the toe of his boot. “All right.”

Laurie appeared not to notice the hesitation. “Great,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the hotel in ten minutes.”

JACK’S RANCH WAS
at the end of a gravel road that turned north off Highway 89 a few miles east of Kanab on the road to Page. Alfalfa, green and lush, spread out on either side as the Yugo rolled along, a plume of dust hanging in the still air behind them.

“Good looking feed,” Spider said, noting the wheeled piping system that irrigated the fields. “Where does he get his water?”

Laurie gazed at the green expanse. “I think he’s got a spring up at the head of this canyon, but I’m not sure.”

“It’d have to have a pretty good flow to take care of all this acreage.”

Karam spoke from the backseat. “Fredonia didn’t have a town water supply until 1935. Before then, the people caught rainwater from their roofs and stored it in underground water tanks. I can’t remember the name for them.”

“Cisterns,” Spider supplied.

Laurie turned around. “How do you know that, Karam?”

“Isaac told me. Tomorrow, he’s going to take me to look at some of the old houses that still have… cisterns.” He smiled. “Isaac said that when the water got low, sometimes water bugs would come out of the tap.”

Laurie grimaced. “Ugh.” She faced forward again as they rounded a curve and drove beyond a screen of poplars that hid Jack’s ranch. Seeing the house and outbuildings, she whistled under her breath. “Oh, wow.”

They passed under a stucco arch with a huge wooden sign spanning the width of the roadway hanging on it. The word
Braces
was carved into it with each letter charred black.

Spider snorted. “Braces? What kind of a name is that for a ranch?”

“It seems very strange.” Karam drew imaginary lines from his shoulders to his waist. “Is he talking about things to hold your pants up? Why would he put that over the gate?”

Laurie giggled. “Those are suspenders.”

Karam cocked his head. “Really?”

“We call them suspenders; people in England call them braces.” Spider traced a line across his bared teeth. “Braces go on your teeth to straighten them.”

Karam looked back at the sign. “That doesn’t make any more sense than suspenders.”

“He’s an orthodontist. Braces probably paid for his place,” Laurie suggested.

“He must have done a lot of them,” Karam said. “This is a very nice place.”

Spider slowed the car. “I thought he said it was a straw bale house.”

The house rambled in front of them in pueblo style with stucco cubes, cylinders and arches in single and double stories and vigas sticking out at intervals along the top of the flat roofline. A breezeway separated a three car garage from the house.

“It’s huge,” Laurie said. “It must be three times the size of our place.”

“And look at the outbuildings.” Spider pointed toward a tall structure in matching architecture set a ways off. It had barn doors with heavy wrought-iron hinges and, on either side, a wing with four horse stalls. “Even his barn is bigger than our house.”

The grounds were landscaped with native plants and rock, and a circular driveway made of pavers swept through it. Spider parked the Yugo beside a yellow Mustang with a vanity plate reading
BRACES
. “Figures,” he said under his breath.

They got out and stood beside a low, south-facing wall at the edge of the parking area. “This is really beautiful,” Laurie said. “Look at the view. I’ll bet you can see clear to the Grand Canyon.”

“Mighty fine,” Spider agreed. He took Laurie’s arm and headed toward the house. “Come on, Karam. I hope you like cowboy poetry.”

The house had a front veranda, shady and cool, behind a series of arches. They walked across to the massive front door, and when Spider pushed the doorbell, they heard a mellow four-note chime from the interior.

Immediately the door opened, and a short, plump twenty-something in knee-length athletic shorts and flip-flops opened the door. “Welcome,” she said, her huge smile doubling the value of the word. “I’m Amy, and I’m going to cook for you.”

“Hello, Amy. I’m Laurie. This is my husband, Spider. And this is our friend, Karam.”

Amy opened the door wide and stepped back. “Come on in. Jack’s out in the garden right now getting corn and cantaloupe. I’ll take you to the patio.”

Spider took off his hat as they passed through a high-ceilinged entryway to the living room where white plaster walls and windows that let in indirect sunlight gave the room an airy feel. Pausing to look around, he noted the peeled cedar beams, the rounded fireplace on a raised hearth, and the wide staircase and wrought iron banister. When Laurie tugged on his arm he whispered, “Is Amy Jack’s wife?”

She shook her head. “Cousin.”

“So, she’s your cousin, too?”

“No. Come on.”

They followed Amy’s stocky figure across the terra-cotta-tiled floor of the living room to a bank of glass-paned doors on the opposite wall. Amy opened one of them and let them pass through to a covered patio where a table was set for four.

“Didn’t Jack tell you we were bringing a guest?” Laurie asked.

Amy nodded. “I’ll be serving you, and then I’m going to eat in my room. I’m writing a symphony, and I take any moment I can to work on it.” She pulled out a chair. “If you’ll sit, I’ll bring you something cold to drink.”