Dakota (22 page)

Something rustled on the stairs.

“Bub!” She whirled.

Charlotte loomed behind her, all pink robe and fuzzy bunny slippers and butcher knife raised high in her manicured hand.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

F
ootsteps pounded up the stairs. Thor rounded the landing, stark naked, his business flapping and bouncing as he took the steps two at a time. Lola’s attention shifted to the service weapon he wielded. A scream died in her throat.

“What’s going on here?” He swung in a semicircle, eyes darting to all corners of the narrow hallway outside the room. The gun moved with him. Lola flattened herself against the wall as the gun brushed past her. “Did somebody break in?”

Charlotte found her voice first. “Just Lola, apparently.”

Thor lowered the gun. It dangled from his fingers, hanging at thigh level, drawing Lola’s eyes in an unfortunate direction. Thor appeared to have awoken abruptly. She glanced away, only to realize Charlotte had caught her looking. “I didn’t exactly break in,” she began. “Look, we can talk about this downstairs? After you’ve had time to—”

“Time to what?” Charlotte’s voice could have cut glass.

“Dress.”

Charlotte squeezed past Lola, climbed to the stop of the steps, and kicked open the bathroom door. She grabbed a towel and tossed it to Thor. “Here. You appear to have embarrassed our guest. Or excited her. I’m not sure which.”

Thor flipped the towel around his waist and held it loosely at his hip. It drooped, barely covering him. A trail of blond hairs curled toward it. “What do you mean, Lola broke in?”

Charlotte folded her arms across her chest, the knife blade winking with the motion. “I heard something. You were dead to the world and I knew—at least I thought I did—that it was way too early for Lola to be up. So I went to check. Grabbed the knife on my way through the kitchen.”

Thor’s face was all hard suspicion. “Why didn’t you just wake me up?”

Charlotte’s expression mirrored his own. “Because you’ve had such a terrible few days. You need all the sleep you can get. Besides, I was sure I was imagining things. Until I got up here and saw her in her hat and coat. Were you on your way in or out? And where were you heading, anyway? Or, where had you been?”

Lola had been thinking about the answer to that very question ever since Charlotte had appeared behind her—or at least, ever since Charlotte had lowered her knife and Thor his gun. “The dog,” she said. Like his wife, Thor folded his arms. The towel fell to the floor. He kicked at it. Lola, her embarrassment relegated to secondary status, blurted out the only excuse she’d been able to come up with. “I couldn’t sleep. So I went downstairs for a snack. I was going to share it with him. He’s pretty spoiled.”

“Yes,” Charlotte agreed. “He is.”

Lola tried to detect a softening in her words and settled on the fact that Charlotte had responded at all. “But when I let him out, he took off after something. I was scared. It’s so cold. So I bundled up and went looking for him. But I can’t find him.” At least the hitch in her voice was real.

“Poor thing.” Charlotte handed the knife to her husband and put her arm around Lola, who slumped into the welcome solace of her embrace. “Thor, either put some clothes on or go back to bed. I’m going to get Lola warmed up and fed, and then we’re going to help her find her dog.”

B
UT WHEN
Thor came down to another of Charlotte’s gargantuan breakfasts, dressed—to Lola’s great relief—in his uniform, albeit one free of scorch marks, he advised against any such thing. “We’ll find your dog. But best you stick to your plan to go straight home. We’ve hit a rough patch here, what with that girl getting killed, and I don’t see things getting better anytime soon.”

“And those guys,” Lola reminded him.

“What guys?”

“The ones killed on the rig.”

Thor waved a bacon strip. “The way these things usually turn out, it’ll be an accident. Thank the good Lord. I don’t have time for another investigation right now. As to your dog—”

Lola leaned across the table. The sweetness of the syrup-drenched pancakes clashed with the salty tears at the back of her throat. “You have to understand. I just can’t leave here without him. He was my best friend’s dog.” And now
he’s
my best friend, she added silently.

Charlotte poured more coffee. “We’ll find him, sweetheart. And we’ll take good care of him until we can get him back to you. Do you two have enough food?”

“He’s got a collar, right? Tags?” Thor said. “Is your number on it?”

“Of course.” Charlie’s number was on the tags, too, but Lola decided not to give Thor another opportunity to bring up her connection with Charlie.

“He won’t be gone long. Someone will find him. Purebred border collie like that, they’ll either call you, or let me know. When he turns up, we’ll send him back to you with Dawg. He picks up extra money driving truck. Makes that Seattle run all the time. Say we find your dog today—the way Dawg drives, I’d lay odds he’d get him back to Magpie before you even get home.”

Lola slid a piece of pancake through a puddle of syrup. “Are you sure?” She herself was not sure at all. But she didn’t want to insult Charlotte and Thor.

“Positive.” He turned what was likely his final smile upon her. Lola wondered how old she’d have to be before she developed some immunity to the charms of handsome men. She’d found reassurance in Charlie’s homeliness, pushing away the notion that maybe she thought him more likely to stay with her solely through lack of options. Apparently, given that there might be a Charlie Junior out there somewhere, that wasn’t the case at all.

Charlotte busied herself at the counter, assembling food in plastic containers. She wore an old-fashioned bib apron, triple-pocketed and ruffled, over her scrubs. “I don’t want you eating road food. That stuff will kill you, or at least give you indigestion so bad you’ll wish you were dead. I’ve got an apple and banana in here for your fruit”—Lola had not thought fruit existed in the Brevik household—“and a piece of spice cake. And I’ll make you a chicken sandwich. White meat or dark?”

“Dark. Really, you don’t have to make my lunch.” Even to herself, Lola’s protest sounded insincere. At least, she thought, she felt guilty about the way Charlotte tended to her, while Thor appeared entirely unaware of the effort his wife expended on his behalf.

Charlotte, ever attentive, reinforced that guilt. “You’ll call us when you get there safe?”

“She won’t need to do that,” Thor said. “That sheriff of hers will call. Used to be I only talked with Charlie Laurendeau at those sheriffs’ meetings we have once a year. I’ve heard from him more this week than I have in the whole time I’ve known him.”

“He’s not
my
sheriff—oh, never mind.”

Charlotte put the lunch containers in a paper grocery sack and handed Lola the Thermos. “I just filled it. That looks like a good Thermos. It should get you through at least the first half of the trip.” She stood on the back step, coatless, arms crossed, as Thor handed Lola her bags, and then unplugged the battery cord and tucked the plug into the truck’s grille. Lola started toward the truck, and then stopped. She wondered what Charlotte’s life would be like when she left. She felt around in her pockets until she found a business card. She gave Charlotte a quick hug, slipping the card into Charlotte’s apron as she did so. She pressed her cheek to Charlotte’s, inhaling for the last time the teasing scent she’d never been able to define. “You can call me anytime.” Charlotte dropped her arms and stepped back. Lola wondered if she should have said anything at all.

Lola climbed into the truck. Thor joined Charlotte on the step. “Come back in the spring,” Thor suggested.

“I know. Ireland. The lupine.” She raised her hand in farewell and drove away from their house without looking back.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

L
ola headed east on Burnt Creek’s main street, tailgating a tripletrailer semi, eager to put the town in her rear-view mirror and to floor it on the highway until mountains rose ahead.

The semi’s lights flashed red, and Lola tapped her own brakes, impatient at the delay. A dog trotted across the street, weaving adeptly between the trucks. There was no mistaking it for Bub—it was brown, and loped easily on all four legs—but Lola’s throat constricted with new tears. She yanked at the wheel, turning onto a side street, and then another, her eyes scanning the sidewalks, the narrow spaces between buildings, looking for a spot where a black-and-white dog might curl up in hopes of warmth, of food, of his owner come to retrieve him. She started with the north-south streets, driving from one border of Burnt Creek to the other, then repeated the tedious process with the east-west grid. The sun inched upward, teasing with its false prospect of warmth. She took a second pass at the main drag, but thought she saw Dawg’s distinctive swagger heading down the street ahead of her, and hastily backed up and chose a different street. Thor and Charlotte believed her to be well on her way by now. It wouldn’t do for them to think she didn’t trust them enough to find the dog. Lola cruised Burnt Creek’s neighborhoods, street after street of small frame houses, many porches stacked high with cordwood, that hinted at the quiet community Burnt Creek must have been when those homes sheltered normal families instead of renting out every spare bedroom and pullout sofa and even floor space—extra for carpeted—to roughnecks and greenhorns. Her phone sounded, interrupting her reverie. Lola looked at the number. Jan.

“I’m on my way back,” she snapped into the phone. “I didn’t get anything. I’m sure those girls are here, but I haven’t got one good goddamned idea where. I busted my butt and ended up with squat and I’ve lost Bub besides.” She pressed her lips together, too late. The admission of defeat had already escaped. But Jan didn’t appear to have heard anything she said.

“Lola.” Her voice sounded small, far away. “Lola.”

Lola thought maybe the connection was bad. She shook her phone and checked the bars. They were full. She shouted into it anyway. “I’m right here.”

“Tina’s gone.”

Lola turned back onto the main street, into the path of an oncoming tanker. Its horn blasted so loud she dropped the phone. She waved an apologetic hand and pulled to the side of the street and felt around on the floor for her phone. “Lola,” Jan babbled from somewhere beneath the seat. “Did you hear me? She’s gone.”

Lola retrieved the phone and pressed it to her ear. Its surface was gritty. “I heard you. What do you mean, gone?”

“I mean she didn’t show up at work yesterday. We thought she was out on an assignment, but then the person she was supposed to interview called the paper, wondering where she was. Finch took the call and told the person that Tina was probably just running on Indian time and forgot about it. He didn’t think to tell either me or Jorkki about the call. So hours and hours went by before Jorkki got all twitchy about her missing her deadline and Finch finally said something, and by then her mother was calling—”

“God. Just like those other girls.”

Jan’s voice regained some of its old confidence. “Not just like them. Those girls had been in trouble for years. But this is Tina. Basketball star-honor-roll Tina. I doubt that girl has had as much as a sip of beer in her whole life. Charlie and all the tribal cops are shaking every tree and bush in the county, chatting up everyone who’s ever so much as said hello to her, to see if anyone’s seen her in the past day.”

“The past
day
? Just how long has she been gone?” Lola tried to keep her own voice calm, despite her rising fear.

“Her interview was set for three thirty yesterday. She left school at three and seems to have just dropped off the face of the earth. She was safe enough on the reservation, but coming down here to Magpie to work, with all these strangers driving through here on their way to and from the patch—” Jan’s voice trailed off.

Lola looked at her watch. Noon. She knew—and she knew that Jan did, too—that the first twenty-four hours after a person disappeared were crucial. After that, the chances of finding anyone alive plummeted. Tina had already been gone nearly that long. “I’m on my way back.” She cleared her throat and tried to speak with assurance. “I’m positive that by the time I get back, you’ll have found her. Maybe winter got to her. Maybe she just took off for Great Falls or Missoula, just to see some bright lights and people on the streets.” Knowing even as she spoke that her words were preposterous. For all the reservation’s problems, Tina loved the sheltering arms of extended family, of its leisurely rhythms, of being on sure footing within its borders. She had a lock on a full scholarship to the state university in Missoula four hours away, but had spoken often of her trepidation of dealing with an allwhite world, and a crowded, bustling one at that.

Jan put Lola’s thoughts into words. “You’re an idiot. Just come on home.”

“On my way,” Lola repeated. “Wait—did you get my text about all these people dying out here? Not just dying, but getting killed? Did you ever talk to Charlie about it?”

“I tried. But I only got as far as saying ‘I just got a text from Lola’ and before I could say anything else, he gave me an earful about how he didn’t want to hear your name again in polite company. What’s with you two?”