Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) (3 page)

Instead of attacking, his geese and ducks scattered as Ben went from the muddy driveway to the concrete sidewalk.
 
He guessed they knew that he would make one of them into Sunday dinner if they didn’t shut up.

3

As soon as Ben got in the front door of his single-level ranch house, he took off his rubber boots and lined them up with others similarly on display, much like he had done in the military.
 
Then he looked at the redhead’s high heels and she took those off as well.
 
Once she did, Ben realized that the woman was no more than five four at most.

He took off his jacket and flipped it onto a hook and waited for the attorney to remove her long coat.
 
Underneath that the Portland lawyer wore a conservative gray suit—a short jacket and a tight skirt.
 
She was well proportioned, Ben thought.

“I’ve gotta get out of these wet jeans,” Ben said.
 
“You can take a seat in the living room.”

She nodded.
 
“Thank you.”

He started toward his bedroom and stopped.
 
“Do you drink coffee?”

“I’m from Oregon.
 
So, yeah.”

“Good.
 
You’ll find a clean pot on the stove.
 
I ground some Costa Rican this morning.
 
It’s in the fridge.”

She went without complaint and Ben went into his bedroom off the living room.
 
From there he could still see her across the living room and to the kitchen.
 
He quickly changed his pants, clipping his gun to his web belt.
 
He went nowhere without his 9mm Glock.

“How much do you put in the percolator?” she asked.
 
“I haven’t seen one of these for years.”

He paused and glanced out at her in the distance.
 
“You can’t make it too strong,” he said.

He looked in his mirror and saw that he was starting to look a bit ragged.
 
He didn’t get many people stopping by his place, so he had no real reason to consider his own appearance.
 
Having been in the military, one would think he would keep his hair cut short.
 
But during his AFOSI years, he had often let his hair grow long to fit in to the local communities—from stateside bases to overseas locales.
 
Now his hair was longer than it had ever been, curled up where it touched his strong shoulders.
 
His dark hair was now speckled with silver.
 
He scratched the three-day old beard on his face—a condition of his bachelorhood and his rebellious indifference.

He left his bedroom, wandered through his living room and into his kitchen.
 
By now the coffee pot was heating up on the propane stove.

She glanced at Ben from top to bottom.
 
“Do you always carry a gun?”

“Do you always carry a purse?” he asked.

“Not in my house.”

Good point, he thought.
 
“I come and go a lot.
 
I don’t want to have to look around for it.”
 
He hesitated and saw that she was still not convinced.
 
“When someone carries a gun for more than twenty years, it’s hard to break that habit.”

The coffee pot started shaking now with full percolation, so Ben shut off the stove and moved the pot to a cold burner.
 
Then he found two mugs and poured them both near the top.
 
“If you want milk, I have unpasteurized whole milk in the fridge.
 
If you want sugar, I’ll lose all respect for you.”

“Black is fine,” she said, taking the cup from Ben.

The two of them sat at a table in a small alcove off the kitchen.
 
Instinctively, he waited for her to start talking.
 
He had always been one of the least demonstrative interrogators—letting the suspects find enough rope to hang themselves.
 
The only reason he let her into his house was because she had mentioned an old friend, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Keyes.
 
Ben was intrigued.

“You must be wondering why I’m here,” she said.

Ben sipped his coffee, but he kept his eyes on her, discovering her interesting features.
 
Her nose was small and turned up like a Norwegian ski jump.
 
Now he wondered if the red hair was real.
 
Especially with the dark brown eyes.

She continued.
 
“Colonel Keyes hired me to find you.”

Letting out a breath of air as he shook his head, Ben said, “He could have simply asked an old Air Force friend for my official address.”

“The only thing the Air Force has on you is a bank account linked to a P.O. Box in Junction City,” she said.

He smiled and shrugged.
 
“The only reason I have any bank account is to receive my Air Force retirement check by direct deposit.”
 
Technically, he had taken out that P.O. Box for the same reason.
 
At the time of his retirement, the Air Force needed a forwarding address.
 
Just in case World War III broke out and they needed to recall his ass out of retirement.

The lawyer glanced about the kitchen and into the living room.
 
Then she said, “You have an interesting place.”

“You mean clean?” he asked.

Her face turned nearly as red as her hair.
 
“No.
 
Well, ranch houses can be more lived in.
 
I grew up on a small ranch near Sisters.”

“That’s dust versus mud, though.”

“True.
 
It was always hard to keep the dust from overcoming everything.
 
But we tried.”

“But?”

She hesitated, considering her words like a good lawyer.
 
“As I sat in my car waiting for you to get here, I noticed a few things.”

Here it came, he thought.
 
Judgment time.

“There are no telephone lines or power lines to your house.”

This was entirely true.
 
“You caught me.
 
I’m not beholding to the big power companies or the communications conglomerates.
 
What’s your point?”

Now she stopped long enough to take a drink of coffee.
 
Then she said, “You’re completely off the grid.”

“Brilliant observation counselor.
 
Would you like a gold star?”

“But this house is older.
 
Did it used to have power?”

“Not exactly,” Ben said.
 
“This house is actually older than it looks.
 
It was built almost a hundred years ago by my grandfather.
 
Back then it was more of a weekend retreat and a place to run cattle.
 
They also used it to hunt elk out back on horses.
 
My father inherited it and used a generator to power the place.
 
I still have a generator backup, but most of my power comes from newer technology.”

“I saw the solar panels,” she said.
 
“But this isn’t a great place to grab the sun.”

“I upgraded the panels recently.
 
They work with very little sunlight.
 
But I don’t need much power.
 
It’s mostly to run a few lights and to power my refrigerator and freezer.”
 
He hesitated long enough to formulate an opinion on the structure of her strong jaw line.
 
Either she talked a lot, or she chewed a bunch of gum.
 
Or maybe she was naturally blessed with a single chin.
 
“Can you get to the point?
 
I’ve got shit to do around here.”

“I’m sorry.
 
As I said, Colonel Keyes hired me to find you.
 
His son has a problem.”

The good colonel had two kids, a son and a daughter.
 
The girl was in her third year at Oregon State, an ROTC candidate.
 
The son, as far as Ben could remember, was a major fuckup.
 
“Bobby Keyes?
 
Who did he kill?”

“What?
 
No one, as far as we know.
 
But he’s missing.”

Something wasn’t adding up.
 
“Why in the hell does Bull Keyes need my help finding his son?
 
The Bull was one of the best investigators in the OSI.”

“That’s what he said about you,” she said.
 
“In fact, he said you were the best he had ever worked with.”

“Still, why not do it himself?”

The lawyer hesitated again by drinking down the last of her coffee.
 
“This is really good.”

“I know a stall tactic when I see one,” Ben said.
 
He got up and went to the stove, bringing back the pot of coffee.
 
He topped off her mug and set the pot on the thick wooden table.
 
Then he sat down again and waited for her to answer him.

“Colonel Keyes had a stroke recently,” she finally said.
 
“He’s confined to a VA nursing home.”

“The Dalles or Lebanon?”

“Lebanon.”

“That’s a nice place,” Ben said.
 
“Was the stroke that bad?”

“He’s in a wheel chair in the rehab section.
 
So he hopes to get out and back to his home in Portland.”

Ben knew that the colonel and his wife had divorced years ago.
 
She had been out of the picture since the two kids were in their early teens.
 
The Bull had raised them as best he could on his own.
 
But long deployments and command authority had probably not been easy on the kids.

“I see,” Ben said.
 
“But you found me, so you should be able to find the Bull’s snot-nosed kid.”

“Bobby is twenty-five,” she said.
 
“And the only reason I found you is because the colonel knew you had grown up in this area.
 
I spent the last two days talking with anyone who would speak with me.
 
This is a tight-lipped community.”

“We like our privacy.
 
You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.”

“I got a few guns pulled on me.”