CUTTER'S GROVE Page 20

  “God, yes,” Beth answers.

  We spot a tavern within easy walking distance of the movie theatre. We leave the Jeep where it is and trudge over to the place. It’s like a million other small town taverns. There’s a neon Kokanee sign in the window and a dozen or so couples are sitting at a smattering of tables. Three or four biker types are perched on stools at the bar listening to Calvin Broadus - better known as Snoop Dogg - telling how he done grows da best weed on da west coast. Maybe I should call Snoop, put him in touch with Herb and Arliss.

  Beth and I get a table. I catch the waitress’s eye and hold up two fingers. Ten seconds later she’s dropping two little round paper coasters on our table, followed by two tall glasses of ice cold beer. Beth and I tap glasses. Taking a long pull on the frosty brew, I can’t remember the last time anything tasted quite so good.

  We’re about half done when a voice over my shoulder says, “Excuse me. Mr. Tunney, isn’t it?”

  I turn to see the lawyer Deborah hired to represent Harold. “Yes,” I say. “You’re…”

  “Leonard Fosberg. Harold Miller’s attorney.”

  “Sure. Mr. Fosberg. How are you? This is Beth Wunderlich.”

  “A pleasure,” Fosberg says, nodding his head at Beth.

  “Would you like to join us?” I ask.

  “No, no,” he says, “I don’t want to interrupt your evening. I just thought you’d be interested to know we got the results of Harold’s tests today. I spoke with Deborah late this afternoon to let her know and she was making arrangements to get over to see him. As we expected, Harold has been found incompetent to stand trial.”

  “That’s a relief,” I say. “What will happen next?”

  “He’s at a psychiatric facility in Bakersfield for the time being. I’m not sure just exactly where he’ll be sent from there yet. His guilt or innocence stills needs to be determined, of course, before it's decided what treatment, if any, he'll require.”

  “Do you have any idea how long that'll take?”

  “It’s hard to say, Mr. Tunney. The wheels of justice sometimes turn at a sluggish pace I'm afraid. We'll do everything we can to speed the process along.”

  Fosberg seems genuinely concerned. Maybe Deborah picked a good one after all. “I’m sure Harold’s in good hands, Mr. Fosberg.”

  The lawyer nods his head. “Well, I’d best be off. You folks enjoy your evening.”

  “We will. And thanks.”

  When we’re alone, Beth says, “I hope, however it turns out, that Harold is able to find some peace after this is all over.”

  “Me too.”

  “You know,” she says thoughtfully, “as you were talking to Mr. Fosberg it occurred to me just how difficult it will be to maneuver Arliss into overhearing a conversation at exactly the right moment.”

  “Mmm.”

  “I think it might play out a lot better, have a better chance of succeeding, if we worked on it together.”

  “Maybe. Got anything in mind?”

  She spends the next few minutes outlining an idea. When she’s through she says, “What do you think?”

  I look at her thoughtfully for a few seconds. “I think if Columbo ain’t careful, Nancy Drew is gonna take over the detective division.”

  42

  One big advantage to Beth’s plan is we don’t have to wait for another poker night to put it into action.

  Friday is two days away; that’s when we’ll go to work. In the meantime, I have to get Sonny on side. The plan calls for me and Beth, with Sonny in tow, to spend the evening at the hotel. Barring an emergency of monumental proportions that’s where Arliss will be. He and most of the Circle H crew spend Friday night there pretty much without exception. Sonny, on the other hand, seldom sets foot in the place on the one night of the week when it’s busy. The trick will be in getting him away from his television for a night out. I can only hope the Dodgers aren’t playing.

  He comes into the shop just before noon the next day. “How’s it goin’, Lucas?”

  “Not so worse, Sonny. You?”

  “Good, good.”

  “Say, Sonny, you doing anything special tomorrow night?”

  “Nope,” he says. “I had a date lined up with Halle Berry but she called to say she hadda cancel. Why?”

  “Just wondering if you might do me a little favour. If you’re not too broke up about Halle cancelling and all.”

  “Nah, broads er a dime a dozen. Name it.”

  “Beth has been after me to take her out dancing at the hotel. Thing is, I hate dancing. I was hoping maybe you’d come along and keep her occupied at least part of the time for me.”

  I’ve given him a perfect excuse to get the girl of his dreams in his arms. He’s so enamored with her, he can’t even pretend to give the offer any thought. “Glad to help out,” he says, beaming lasciviously from ear to ear.

  “Terrific.”

  He’s hardly able to contain his excitement. “Think I’ll go shine up my boots,” he says, practically skipping as he leaves the shop.

  First problem solved. Now, as long as Arliss doesn’t decide to alter his Friday night routine, we’re in business.

  ****

  Sonny, Beth, and I get to the hotel early. There aren’t more than ten other people in the place when we arrive. We get a table well back from the dance floor - one with a good view of the room. Four local boys who make up the band are setting up their gear and tuning their instruments. Big Joe has three gals come in to waitress for him on Friday nights; one of them, a buxom lady with bleached hair and a short, leather skirt, serves us.

  “When does the action get started?” I ask her.

  “Pretty soon,” she says. “The Circle H boys oughta be showing up any time now. Then things’ll start hopping.”

  The band suddenly comes alive with a spirited little number Waylon Jennings made into a hit back in the seventies. Something about a good hearted woman being in love with a good-timin’ man. Beth gives me a look that I could interpret a couple of ways. Hmm. The band is surprisingly good. Certainly on a par with anything I’ve heard on the radio since I’ve been in this part of the world. Two couples are instantly out on the dance floor, two-stepping like pros.

  “Wanna give it a try, Beth?” Sonny asks.

  “Sure,” she says.

  Sonny leads Beth onto the floor and I watch, amused, as they put on a show. For a guy his age, and suffering with the bad back he has, Sonny can still strut his stuff pretty well and he clearly enjoys what he’s doing. He looks a little bizarre - dressed in freshly laundered pants, a dress shirt, and polished boots, with the inevitable Dodgers cap firmly in place, backwards of course, as is his custom. But that’s Sonny. Nobody pays him any mind.

  When the music stops, they stay on the floor. They dance two more and, by the time they return to the table, the place is starting to fill up. I spot Arliss with a group of cowboys on the other side of the room. He doesn’t look very happy despite the fact there are three very attractive young ladies practically draping themselves all over him. I give Beth an eye signal to let her know Arliss has arrived.

  We wait till Arliss gets onto the dance floor and then Beth and I take a turn at it. We maneuver it so that we’re close to him and his partner when the song ends.

  “How’re you doing, Arliss?” I say.

  “Hey, Lucas,” he says, evidently a little surprised to see me. “Didn’t know you were a country western fan.”

  “Oh, yeah,” I say. “From way back.”

  “Hi, Beth,” he says.

  “Hi, Arliss. We must have a dance before the night is over.” The look she gives him is flirtatious, an obvious come on.

  “You bet,” he says.

  “Don’t forget now,” she says as we head back to our seats.

  It’s about an hour later when Arliss sidles over to our table. He’s sweating pretty good and obviously feeling no pain. “Ready for that dance you promised me?” he says to Beth.

  “Sure am, cowboy.” They h
ead off, leaving Sonny and me to nurse our beers. I’m sitting with my back to the dance floor while Sonny’s attention is riveted on the dancers. I wait exactly thirty seconds after the music ends and then lean over to Sonny. “Meant to tell you … I had a real interesting conversation with Bonnie Alvarro the other day.”

  “Oh, yeah?” he says.

  “Yeah. You’ll never guess what she had to say.”

  “What?”

  “Well, keep this just between us, okay? But she tells me when Anne Marie disappeared she was wearing her grandmother’s bracelet. Bloody thing was an heirloom, worth twenty or thirty thousand bucks apparently.”

  “Holy shit,” Sonny says. “You kiddin’?”

  “No, I’m not. Apparently Anne Marie was allowed to wear it around the house once in awhile and Bonnie figures she must have had it on the day she went missing because the bracelet disappeared at the same time. She’s really upset about it. Afraid to even mention it to Paco, so don’t say anything.”

  Sonny is just about to respond when Beth appears. “Hi, guys,” she says.

  She drops into her chair like she’s totally exhausted. Arliss is at her side. “Thanks for the dance, Beth,” he says.

  “It was fun, Arliss. Let’s do it again before the night’s over.”

  “Sure,” he says. He waves goodbye and heads back to his friends.

  Beth looks at me with a smug smile. I interpret it to mean, ‘it worked.’

  Later, back at Beth’s place, we’re talking over the results of our labors. “So, you’re convinced he heard?” I say.

  “I’m sure of it,” Beth answers. “The timing was perfect. I pretended to twist my ankle when I was right behind you and Sonny. I grabbed onto Arliss' arm and he helped me straighten up just as you were getting to the good stuff. I don’t think he could possibly have missed it.”

  “He hid it pretty well if he did. He didn’t act like he’d heard anything out of the ordinary.”

  “Take my word for it, sweets. He heard.”

  “Then the question now is: when will he move on it?”

  “The only thing we can count on for certain,” Beth says, “is that he’ll wait till it’s dark to do anything.”

  I acknowledge the obvious with a nod. “The problem is, of course, it gets dark every night. And we have no way of knowing which night he’ll pick.”

  Logic tells us, however, it’ll be sooner rather than later.

  43

  The following night Beth and I are at my place, formulating plans. We have little choice but to work on the assumption that Arliss might act in response to our little con immediately. It being a Saturday, he won’t be missed around the ranch or be expected to get up early tomorrow, so we figure it’s most likely the opportune time for him to do something.

  “How do you want to handle this?” Beth asks.

  “I could park the Jeep in the low hills overlooking the spot I had my encounter,” I say. “From there I’d be well hidden and still have a good view of the open desert. We’re assuming, of course, that he buried Anne Marie not far from where the Jeep ran out of gas.”

  “I guess it’s logical,” Beth allows, “but there’s certainly no guarantee that’s where she is.” It’s pretty clear that, although Beth is a willing and enthusiastic collaborator in this scheme, she’s still far from convinced that all this ghost story stuff has any merit.

  “You’re right, of course, but it’s all we’ve got. We couldn’t possibly follow him without being spotted. And we’d never get a second shot at him if he figured there was any possibility we were on to him.”

  “So, it’s a night in the desert?”

  “For me, yeah.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Beth says.

  “There’s no reason for you to do that, babe. If he does show up, one of us is as good as two.”

  “Uh uh. I want to be with you.”

  “You’ve got to get up early for work. Spending all night in the Jeep isn’t going to be the most comfortable way to spend a night.”

  “I can handle it," she assures me. "Have you got a gun, by the way?”

  A gun? “No. Why, you think I need one?”

  She gives me a withering look. “Lucas, think for a minute. If you’re actually right about this, Arliss has kidnapped and murdered a little girl. Do you honestly think he’ll hesitate to kill someone who’s trying to turn him in?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that, I guess.”

  “I’ve got a gun,” Beth says.

  “You have?”

  “Yeah. Everybody from Texas has a gun. It's a state law or something. I’ve had it for years. And I know how to use it, too.”

  “All right then, I’ll take yours.”

  “Have you ever fired a semi-automatic pistol?”

  “No.”

  “I’m coming with you. End of discussion.”

  “So now you’re Annie Oakley?”

  “You got it, sweets.”

  We stash enough food and drinks in the Jeep to sustain us for far longer than we actually intend to be out in the desert. Beth insists we err on the side of oversupply rather than chance hunger or thirst. We’ve got blankets, pillows, and flashlights. Beth’s handgun, a 9 mm Glock, and a box of cartridges round out our store of supplies.

  Venturing out at twilight, we drive to the hills overlooking the vast stretch of wasteland where the events that have played such a significant role in my life over the past several months occurred. I pull the Jeep off the road a couple of hundred yards and maneuver it so that it’s well hidden from view of any traffic, whether coming from the open desert or descending into it. We slide back our seats and settle in, preparing ourselves for a long wait.

  “Are you nervous?” Beth asks.

  “A little I guess. Mostly hopeful, but a little nervous, yeah.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I am too.”

  “So what do you do when you’re nervous?” I ask.

  “I usually talk too much,” she says.

  “Talking is good. So let's talk.”

  She looks at me expectantly. “Okay,” she says. “What do you want to talk about?”

  “Let me see,” I say, feigning deep thought. “Oh, I know. How about what you intend to do about your husband?”

  This is definitely not what she was anticipating. “I thought I had already done what needed doing in that regard,” she says, somewhat sheepishly.

  “Not unless you intend to stay married to him, you haven’t.”

  She takes a deep breath and then let’s it out slowly. “I can’t deal with him yet, Lucas. I know I’ve got to someday but ... not yet. I just couldn’t face him. I mean it.”

  “Sooner or later you’ve got to.”

  “I know. I will.”

  “Okay.” But in view of her obvious lack of enthusiasm, I won’t hold my breath while I wait.

  “What about you?” she asks. “Do you have any regrets about leaving the life you had in Seattle?”

  The answer billows out of me without hesitation or conscious thought. “No,” I say, “none. Actually, I’m grateful I found out what kind of woman Karen was before it was too late. If I hadn’t been laid off from my job that day we’d be married now. I’d have undoubtedly come to realize at some point that I was married to a skanky tramp, but maybe not till after we had children. What the world doesn’t need is another broken family - unhappy, traumatized kids being fought over by angry, disillusioned parents.”

  “You’re right about that,” Beth says. “I’m just thankful I didn’t have kids to deal with in my marriage. If there were, I might still be in Dallas, firmly entrenched in the marriage from hell.”

  “Yeah.”

  She looks at me wistfully. “When I have kids I want it to be with the man I truly love and who feels the same way about me.”

  The conversation is taking a direction that makes me just a teensy bit uneasy. As usual when faced with difficult circumstances, I can think of nothing even remotely judicious to say. Ul
timately, I decide the best thing I can do is to say nothing at all.

  She lets a minute go by. Then: “Think I’ll ever find that guy?” she asks.

  “You never know,” I answer. Silver-tongued devil.

  That earns me another, “Hmmph.”

  We pass three hours with idle chatter. Then, around midnight - just about the time our eyelids are beginning to get heavy - the sky is illuminated by a brilliant display of lightning. Within a second or two a great booming thunderclap rattles the Jeep and a few large drops of rain splatter against the windshield. Soon after that the sky opens up and we’re deluged by pounding rain of an intensity I’ve never seen before - not even in Seattle where I’m sure it rains more than any other place in the western world.

  The sound of the pelting downpour on the Jeep’s roof is almost deafening. Beth snuggles closer to me. We pull a blanket over us and huddle together, each of us grateful for the others proximity. I imagine how miserable this mission would have been if I’d had to undertake it on my own.

  Thirty minutes later, although desperately trying to stay awake, I’m lulled into sleep by the orchestral harmony of natures performance.

  “Lucas. Lucas, wake up.” I’m jolted back to wakefulness by Beth shaking my shoulder.

  “What … what is it?” I stammer, fighting to shake off the remnants of slumber.

  “Look,” she says, pointing past my face out the driver’s side window.

  I rub my eyes and squint through rivulets of rain cascading down my window, into the murky blackness beyond our cozy little nest. The rain hasn’t eased much, if at all - visibility is significantly reduced as a result - but I see a vehicle’s headlights tracking past us down the hill onto the valley floor. About half a mile away the brake lights come on briefly. Then the driver makes a hard left and heads off the road, into the desert.