Chump Change (12 page)

We’d been in residence less than five minutes when the knock came, so I figured it had to be housekeeping with those feather pillows I’d asked for.

Wasn’t, though. Standing in the doorway was the guy who’d been arguing with Sarah Jane and Olley when we’d arrived at The Flying H. The Keeler Group guy.

He’d changed clothes since this morning. Nice blue blazer and gray slacks. Little pair of tasseled loafers with no dust on them. White mane perfect. All very
GQ
.

“What can I do for you?” I asked.

He stuck out a hand. Instead of taking it, I stuck my head out the door and looked around. Like I figured, Dexter and his ponytail were communing with the shrubbery to the left of the door. He eyed me like a pork chop.

“I’m Tyler Bain,”
GQ
man said, still proffering the hand.

“What can I do for you, Mr. Bain?”

He got my handshake message and stuck his hand back in his pocket.

“I thought we might talk a little business, Mr. Waterman.”

The fact that I hadn’t told anybody in this town my name made me a bit nervous. It meant that the affable Mr. Bain here had done a bit of research.

“I wasn’t aware we had any business, Mr. Bain.”

“From what I understand, Mr. Waterman, your daddy never missed an opportunity to do a little business.”

“So I’m told,” I said. “What can I do for you?” I asked again.

He put on a grin. “Direct and to the point. I like that in a man.”

“Always eager to please,” I said.

“How well do you know the Hardvigsens?”

“Never met either of them before this morning,” I said.

He didn’t believe me. I could tell. Which was interesting, all by itself. I was beginning to feel like I’d walked in on the last fifteen minutes of a movie.

He leaned back and took me in. “You don’t say,” he said.

“But I do.”

He barked out a short, insincere laugh. Apparently Dexter’d heard that laugh before. He sidled over to Bain’s elbow.

“Now . . . Mr. Waterman . . . you wouldn’t want me thinkin you were creepin in the side door here, now, would ya?”

“I wouldn’t?”

“
Cause . . . a whole buncha people . . . important people . . . people with influence . . . got a whole lotta time and money invested in putting this little town on the map. People who won’t want to hear that some carpetbagger thinks he’s gonna grab himself a last-minute piece of the pie.”

“Mr. Bain,” I said wearily. “It’s been a long day. If you’ve got something to say . . . say it. Otherwise, I’m going to find myself some dinner, watch a little tube, and pack it in for the night.”

“I hear the old man’s pretty bad.”

“The doctors seemed to have things under control.”

“Those two old coots can’t run that place anymore.”

“I’m betting they’re gonna die trying,” I said.

“They can’t make taxes this year. Had to let all their ranch hands go. It’s just a matter of time before they go belly-up.”

“And your point is . . . ?”

His eyes narrowed. “My point is . . . that sooner or later we’re gonna own that ranch, and sooner would work better than later, if you catch my drift.”

“Which has exactly what to do with me?”

“Let’s just say it’s a word to the wise.”

“Good night, Mr. Bain. Been a pleasure chatting with you.”

I gave him a smile and a nod and closed the door.

I heard Bain say something to Dexter about “that son of a bitch” as he stalked off.

When I turned back to the room, Keith had muted the TV and moved closer to the door. He was looking at me questioningly.

“We seem to have attracted some attention,” I said.

“How come?”

I shrugged. “No idea . . . but you know, kid, that’s pretty much par for the course. I mean . . . mostly you go into something like this blind. You just sorta bumble in and turn over rocks and kick down woodpiles and see what crawls out. And then sooner or later you piss somebody off.” I nodded toward the door. “Soon as we figure out what our friend there Mr. Bain is so paranoid about, we’ll have a much better idea what we’re dealing with here.”

“Does any of this get us any closer to knowing what happened to . . .” It was like he couldn’t say the name.

“Gordon Stanley and all that money?” I prompted.

“Yeah.”

“No,” I said quickly, and then immediately changed my mind. “Well, maybe,” I amended. “Doesn’t seem to be much going on around here that doesn’t involve that Keeler Group.” I nodded toward the door. “And I’m guessing that Mr. Bain and his pet gorilla there are the hatchet men for the organization. So, at least on that level, we’ve made some progress. They know we’re here. And we’re makin em nervous.”

Keith thought it over. “Interesting way to make a living,” he said finally.

I gingerly brought my hand to my face. “Yeah . . . if you don’t mind your nose looking like this.”

Personally, I’d rather have called room service and just vegged the night away, but there was no way I was gonna rain on Keith’s parade, so we drove across town to the Chat ’n’ Chew Cafe for dinner. Place wasn’t nearly as full as it had been at breakfast. Ginny and a young African American woman were girling the front of the house. Same two guys in back cooking. No Irene.

Ginny’d already made six or eight passes by our table, refreshing Keith’s water, bringing us a couple of bottles of her special hot sauce, checking on how his food was, that kind of thing.

Watching him watching her walk away kept reminding me of the proverbial waif at the bakery window. His eyes literally bobbed around in their sockets to the rhythm of her swinging hips, but at least he managed to keep his tongue from hanging out, which, as far as I was concerned, showed great restraint.

I’d inhaled a couple of green chile enchiladas and enough black beans and rice to feed a Pakistani village when Irene walked in the front door. She grabbed a chair from a nearby table, turned it backwards, and sat down with Keith and me.

“Hear you two were there when Olley Hardvigsen had his heart attack,” she said.

“Word gets around,” I said.

“Folks are sayin that Mr. Keith Taylor here saved the old man’s life. After that business with Boyd this morning, we’re thinking he might just be some kind of superhero.”

Keith did all
gosh
and
golly
and then quickly excused himself. We watched as he crossed the room to where Ginny and the other girl were staging a gigglefest.

“Trying to remember if I was ever quite that young,” I said wistfully.

“You still got lotsa boy left in you,” she said with a smile.

“It’s my immaturity that keeps me young,” I joked.

“I’m bettin you’ve used that line before,” she said.

“Twelve or thirteen thousand times,” I admitted.

We watched in silence as the young black woman went back into the kitchen, leaving Keith and Virginia to moon at each other.

“They look good together,” Irene said.

“They sure as hell think so.”

I drank the rest of my water. “You know Sarah Jane’s son?” I asked.

“Gordon?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure. Round here, everybody knows everybody.”

I made it a point to keep the question in the present tense. “What’s he like?”

She thought about it. “Just a big ol laid-back country boy,” she said. “Not a whole lot of ambition. Worked for the county until he won the lottery. You know about that, I expect. Lived by himself. From what I hear, he didn’t much get along with Olley. I heard he tried to give Sarah Jane some of the lottery money, but Olley wouldn’t take it. I heard they really had it out. Just about came to blows.” She shrugged. “Then Gordon left town and never came back.”

“That’s what Sarah Jane told me too.” I guess a bit of cynicism must have crept into my voice. People who do things for purely philosophical reasons have always been something of a mystery to me, cause when I tell myself I’m doing something on principle, it’s generally the self-defeating side of me doing it, and it just about always works out for the worst.

Irene read my mind.

“Olley’s a proud old man. Real set in his ways.”

“What about some guy named Tyler Bain?”

She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “He’s the troubleshooter for The Keeler Group. A real jerk, if you ask me. Him and that leg-breaker Indian of his.”

“Dexter?”

She leaned across the table. “They say he’s a Pawnee . . . supposedly killed half a dozen men. Maybe a couple of them with his bare hands.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

She eyed me closely. “You don’t seem like that scared you much.”

“
They
. . . say a lot of things.”

“Sometimes
they’re
right,” she cautioned.

We watched as the last pair of elderly diners paid the check and said their goodbyes. The door tinkled as they left. Irene pushed herself to her feet, walked over, and locked the door. Turned the
CLOSED
sign out.

“Let’s pack it in for the night,” she called to the crew. She looked over at her daughter, who was busy tracing designs on the back of Keith’s hand with her index finger. Keith looked like you could have shot him out of a cannon and he wouldn’t have noticed. Irene looked over at me with a wry smile, then turned back to her daughter.

“Don’t mean to interfere with your social life, honey,” she said, “. . . but let’s get er ready for the
A.M.
”

Took Ginny a full half minute to pry herself away from Keith. Irene emptied the till into a blue bank bag and then sat down across from me. I watched as she went through the day’s receipts and filled out a deposit slip. Looked like a pretty substantial wad to me.

“This place do pretty good?” I asked.

“Lets me play at ranchin. Keeps the rest of them in beans.”

We watched as Ginny cleaned and prepped the tables for breakfast. Keith moved from table to table with her, like they were joined at the hip. Wipe the table, put the salt and pepper, the ketchup, the mustard, and the Cholula sauce back in order, slide a couple of menus between the condiments and the wall, and on to the next.

“You know the cop from the other side of the river?” I asked.

Irene waved a disgusted hand. “Don’t get me started on that idiot.”

“How do you give somebody like that a badge?”

“His daddy’s a local mover and shaker. Big in the local real estate market. He’s the one got Rockland the deputy job.”

“Daddy part of The Keeler Group?”

“Daddy’s what passes for a gangster out here in the hinterlands,” she said. “The seed money for the casino project was his, and he’s the one come up with the dough when they had to build the road.”

“Road?”

“Nobody’d give em an easement into the property. Not the Nez Perce or the Coeur d’Alenes, not the Hardvigsens. None of em. Nez Perce lawyers whipped their asses in court. Made it so that if the project was going to get off the ground, they were going to have to build their own easement road, all the way from Clarkston. Better part of ten miles of four-lane blacktop. Cost em damn near a million dollars a mile, I hear.”

“Lotta dough.”

“Word was they weren’t going to be able to come up with the cash. From what anybody knew, The Keeler Group was at the end of their line of credit. Everybody figured the casino project was a goner. And then . . . out of the blue, they find another ten million bucks. Go figure.”

“When was this?”

She hesitated. Looked me over. “Year . . . year and a half ago,” she said finally.

The look in her eyes told me I’d asked one question too many. Irene was starting to wonder about me. She sat back and folded her arms over her chest.

“What was it you said you were doing here?” she asked.

“Don’t believe I did,” I said.

“You ask a lot of questions.”

“Just naturally curious, I guess.”

“Come to think of it . . . everything happened so fast this morning . . . I don’t believe I caught your name.”

I stuck out my hand. “Leo,” I said. “Leo Waterman.”

Her hand was quite a bit rougher than most women I know. “Where ya from?”

“Seattle,” I said.

“Leo . . .” she began. “Have you noticed that trouble seems to follow you around?”

“Me?”

She laughed out loud. Then leaned in close to me.

“If you’re planning on making trouble for The Keeler Group . . .”

I tried to look astonished, but she wasn’t going for it.

“. . . then you damn well better count me in, Leo Waterman.”

“Something about them you don’t like?”

“I don’t like one damn thing about them. I don’t like how they act like they’re better than everybody else. I don’t like the way they buzz all over town in those red pickup trucks of theirs. I don’t like the way they bully people. I don’t like their patronizing attitude.” She lowered her voice. “I heard Roland Moon’s trophy wife—that’s that idiot Rockland’s daddy—I heard that cow call the people of Lewiston . . .” She made quotation marks in the air. “She called us ‘the little people.’ Said that ‘the little people’ just needed to keep out of the way of progress.” She shook her head in anger and then waved a stiff finger in the air. “But you know what I like the least?”