Crazy Mountain Kiss (7 page)

“Sure, Martha,” he said. “Around.”

A
t first glance the arm looked real. The skin tone was too light for a perfect match with the tanned left arm, but the raised veins were a realistic touch and the casually bent wrist showing the back of the hand, the fingers in relaxed contraction, would have passed muster in a dark room. They nearly did in the gloom of the glassed-in sunroom of the ranch house at the Bar-4.

“After the accident,” Loretta Huntington said, as she handed Stranahan a squat glass and settled herself in a wicker chair, “I instinctively sat on the right side of people, so that my left arm, my natural arm, was closest to them. You want to hide your injury, it's a self-defense response. But you learn very quickly that you need the good hand to do things, pick up your drink”—she sipped from the drink that had been sitting on the coffee table making a wet ring on the wood, one of many—“anyway, with one thing or another your hand keeps bumping into them. So I've had to become comfortable with people sitting to my right, with this useless appendage in full sight between us.”

“I'm on your left,” Stranahan said.

“So you are. Are you going to be one of those people who are always correcting what others say? I hate those people.” She drank. “Anyway”—her hand waved the glass—“I have grown to despise it. I only answered the door this way so your first impression wasn't a shock. As we will be working closely together, I'll remove it if you don't mind.”

The artificial forearm fitted over the stump of arm just below the
elbow with a sort of compression sock. She took it off and scratched at the puckered skin on the stump with the fingers of her left hand.

“It has mechanical knuckles so you can position the fingers.” She demonstrated, holding the arm close to Sean and folding all but the middle finger down. She placed the arm on the sill of a casement window that looked down the Shields River Valley, the outstretched digit jutting from the skyline into purpling, gold-limned clouds.

“This is all I have to say to God,” she said, dropping back into the chair. “Are you a religious man, Mr. Stranahan?”

“I am on a trout stream.”

“That's a cop-out. I was raised a Catholic, but my belief system is pagan. I like to think it's the influence of the Cherokee blood on my mother's side. Here's to you, Mom, wherever you are.” She picked up the drink and swallowed. Stranahan sipped from his. It was scotch on the rocks. She was one of those people who when they offer a drink don't offer a choice because they only drink scotch.

“If you're wondering what number I'm on, it's four. It seems the appropriate dosage. Did you know that you are a good-looking man? No? Well, you are. You have kissable lips. I ought to know about that, before the accident I made a lot of money kissing men. It could be my epitaph. ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly—She Kissed Them All.' And you shave. That's a plus. Kissing scenes, even if you like the guy and you decide to just go for it, get old by about the fifth take. You spend all morning kissing for eight seconds onscreen. Your lips get chapped and they have to keep stopping the shoot to apply makeup to cover the stubble burn. It hurts when you smile for a week after. My husband, that is my first husband, Scott, would want to have sex and I'd lay down the rules like a prostitute. ‘Honey, you can have me any way you want, but if you want to kiss me, we're going to have dinner at Chico.' I don't know why I'm telling you this.”

“Because you're drunk, Ms. Huntington.”

She drew her head back and for just a moment a smile played at her lips. Loretta Huntington, even with her expression dulled by alcohol, was one of the most striking women Stranahan had ever seen.
Her hair was a rich dark chestnut, what horse people called liver chestnut, long and falling over her shoulders. Her eyebrows, a shade darker, were dead straight over almond-shaped eyes. High cheekbones, a bold, slightly crooked nose. You would not call her beautiful in any conventional meaning of the word. Rather, she was a predatory bird with the bird's aloof posture, her head not turning so much as jerking from one position to another, now to Stranahan, now to dismiss him and look toward the silver winding of the river. All her movements were those of the hunter. The pools of her irises were steadily hunting, green and as sharp as a cat's eyes, but impenetrable—the windless surface of a lake. They reminded him of something else, too. What was it?

“I am indeed,” she said. “How refreshing to entertain a straight-talking man.”

“Ms. Huntington—”

“Etta.”

“Etta, I came here because you asked me to. You seemed to be very anxious that I come tonight. I drove fifty miles and so far you haven't mentioned your daughter's name.”

“Cinderella turned into a pumpkin, don't you know? All her horses changed back into mice.”

Stranahan stood up. “I'll come back at a better time. Thanks for the scotch.”

The hand that stopped him, the blood and muscle hand, closed over his forearm like a vise. “Don't . . . you . . . dare.” Her voice spit venom.

He looked down at her, feeling slightly absurd. He was acutely aware of the power in her grip, the fact that she had once made a living with a lariat in her hands.

“Oh, sit down,” she said. “What are you going to do, walk away from my money?”

“I came here for your daughter.”

“Yeah, right,” she said, under her breath. “You who knew her so well.” For a long moment her eyes focused on his, then the pools of
still water began to waver. Her chest heaved and she raised the stump of her arm to wipe angrily at the tears tracking down her right cheekbone. Stranahan saw the gesture as intimate, the revealing of her arm more so than the tears. When she released him from her grip, Stranahan tentatively touched her left shoulder, not knowing if she was seeking his comfort. She took his hand in hers and rubbed her thumb into the tissues of his palm. The pad of her thumb was rough.

She seemed to sense his reaction. “They called me Hundred Grit Huntington because my skin was so rough. But isn't it funny, I keep people to the left of me and I only cry with my right eye, so nobody can see.”

“What should I call you?”

“Etta.”

“Etta, what can you tell me that might help my investigation? Sheriff Ettinger mentioned that you suspected Cinderella of running away with Landon Anker, the young man your husband hired.”

“I would prefer you not to refer to Jasper as my husband. When he is in town we share a roof, but we do not sit together at a dinner table. I have been trying to forgive him for hiring that boy, I could have told him he would take advantage, but forgiveness is not in my nature.”

She gripped Stranahan's hand harder still. “Here's all you need to know about Jasper Fey. When the sheriff asked me to identify the belt buckle on a body found in a chimney, mind you, in a fucking chimney, he was the first call I made. He is her stepfather, after all. I reached him on the set. He said it was only a matter of time before the body surfaced and I should view it as a relief. But she had been alive all winter, didn't he want to know what had happened to her? You know what he did? He
thought
about it. Then, this is what he said, the exact words. ‘That's all behind us now, dust in the wind.' What the fuck is that supposed to mean? I told him I wanted to hold a memorial service, but he saw any more grieving as redundant, a sign of weakness. What a silver-tongued, self-aggrandizing bastard he's become. ‘Mama, don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys.' I should have taken that one to heart. I only married two of them. The service
is tomorrow. My sister's coming all the way from Sweden. Guess who
won't
be there?”

She reached for her drink, frowning at the empty glass. She caught Stranahan's eyes and lifted her head to gesture toward the door through which they had entered the sunroom. “The bottl'ze in the kishen, I mean kitchen.” It was the first time he'd heard her slur her words.

“I'll make us some coffee.” He held up a hand. “I know, how dare I? But either we drink coffee and discuss your daughter or this time I really will leave. Cream, sugar?”

She glared at him, then the opaque pools lost focus. “Black. You'll find it on the counter. Knock yourself out.”

He left her sitting in minor defeat, the hawk with her primary feathers ruffled. He found the coffee and a French press. While he waited for water to boil, he heard the door open and she walked past him, holding her body carefully erect. He could hear water running in the pipes. A minute later, her voice: “Bring the coffee into the saddle room.”

The request had come from a hall that led into a bunkhouse. Like the rest of the house, as much as he'd seen of it, the room was straight out of
Western Living,
the walls and peaked ceiling constructed of blond logs joined by cream chinking. The floorboards were rough wood twelve-by-twos laid on a diagonal, the walls hung with copper wall sconces that illuminated an ornate pool table with feet carved like cat's paws. A stained glass lighting fixture over the pool table reflected on a display case on one wall. The case was stacked five shelves deep with rodeo trophies and belt buckles. Cowboy hats hung on the squared posts of the bunk beds, ropes from wall pegs. An open steamer chest was stacked with expensive-looking wool blankets.

“I'm in here.”

Stranahan walked past the pool table, which was racked for nine-ball. He absently rolled the cue toward a corner pocket. “You have tight pockets,” he said, entering the saddle room.

She was hoisting a cardboard filing box onto a corner table. “I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. I was talking about the pool table.”

“That's a game I haven't touched since the accident. This is my lair.”

Etta Huntington's saddle room was decidedly a work space, with track lighting and drop cloths covering the floor. An intricately tooled saddle rode the back of a sawhorse. Another saddle, half finished, rested on a bench dominated by a massive, bolted-in vise. The bench was strewn with odd-looking punches and awls. There were spools of rawhide thread and silver lace, racks draped with sheepskins, the pungent scent of chrome-tanned leather.

“A hand-tooled Huntington roping saddle,” Etta was saying, “like that one in progress, double rigged, is worth eight thousand dollars.
If
I ever finish it.” Her back was to Stranahan, her broad shoulders tapering to a wasp waist. She was looking out a picture window, the intermittent thread of the river faded to pewter. “I used to love last light,” she said. She spoke without turning her head. “The doctors assure me I'm a good candidate for one of those bionic arms you control by telepathic impulse. So I could do leatherwork again. Or flip steaks on the grill or pick up runaway lobsters. Strangle someone. You know, stuff normal people do.” She waved her good arm dismissively. “Jasper wanted to hire somebody to carry on the business because it was lucrative, but I have my integrity. I won't be a ‘designed by'—if I put my name on a saddle, I'll damned well make it.”

She took the cup of coffee from Stranahan's hand. “That's too hot,” she said, blowing the steam off. As she stood close to him, her green eyes made a frank assessment. She was wearing a pearl snap shirt with piping in the outline of stallions facing each other, one rearing from each swell of breast. Her mouth parted and she breathed in, then slowly, audibly let the breath out. She was only a couple inches shorter than Stranahan and her animal vitality was palpable.

“My mother used to say she could read my heart rate just by
watching my veins jump. It makes some people uncomfortable, standing this close to me. Do I disturb you, Sean?”

Stranahan wasn't going to play the game. He lifted his chin to indicate the table. “What's in the box?”

“That's Cindy. School projects, letters, photos. It's what's left of her. Besides the rodeo trophies. You'd need a U-Haul to fit them in. I put it together for Harold with the girl's last name, the Indian detective. He returned it a few months ago.”

“Little Feather.”

She sipped at the coffee. “Now there's . . . well, he's a man, that's all.” She stared at the ceiling. “That same spider's been there all spring.” She shook her head. “I had most of the papers copied to turn over to Bullock and Bullock, the detective firm. That was a waste of money. I still have a stack of their reports somewhere, every nickel accounted for. If all I wanted was paperwork I could have hired a secretary. Anyway, you can go through the box. There's a disk I put together of Cindy riding, different rodeos. Nothing seems to have the slightest bearing on why she disappeared. But you're the one gets to the bottom of the dark river. Just come back to me with something I don't know.”

“Nothing I do will bring her back.”

“I'm acutely aware of that.”

“There's also the possibility that I'll discover something that points a finger. You can develop an obsession about bringing someone to justice with no realistic chance of it happening. They go on living while your life dies inside you. It's like a cancer. I've seen it before.”

“And how is that worse than what I have now, the not knowing? Sometimes I wish the detective had been right, that she'd died when she went missing.”

“Is that what Harold said?”

She shook her head. She struck Stranahan as being sober now; it was a remarkable transformation. “No, Mr. Bullock the elder. He said only hippies and the homeless disappear, that when someone is
missing who has people who are looking out for their welfare, who care about them, they pick up an electronic trail or find receipts or someone talks, that if they don't surface in a few days it means they're dead.” Her voice was matter-of-fact, but her eyes were wavering. “He thought . . . when they got the flat, somebody picked them up and killed them. Like a serial killer. But he was wrong. She didn't die, she was alive up until last month. I have to know what happened.”