In Open Spaces (25 page)

“There’s been a murder.”

“What?”

“Yeah. Up in Alzada.”

“Oh, christ. You scared the hell out of me. I thought you meant here.”

The man shook his head. “Oh, Jesus. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Yeah. Of course you would assume…”

“I’m sorry, but do I know you?” I asked.

Just then, Muriel appeared from the dining room. I didn’t recognize her for a brief moment. She wore a fashionable navy-blue dress, with a string of pearls dotting her neckline. And her hair had been cut short and curled. It was a dramatic change from the young girl who usually wore nothing but cotton print dresses, with her hair in a bun.

“Blake!” She looked pleased.

“Muriel, what are you doing here?”

“Well, we weren’t planning to get here until Tuesday. But we were in Billings, and we heard about the murder. So we drove right up.”

“What murder? Who got murdered?”

By now, others had begun drifting into the living room—Rita, Mom, Bob, until the whole family had filtered in from various rooms in the house. They all looked concerned, even scared.

“Somebody shot Harold Baldwin,” Mom said.

“Really?” Everybody was looking at me, so I realized I was the last to learn this bit of news. “When?”

“Last night,” Muriel said.

“Do they know who did it?” I asked.

Nobody answered, but several shook their heads. And then everyone dropped their eyes to their shoes.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I never did figure out just who you are.” I addressed the stranger. “Since Muriel keeps saying ‘we,’ I assume you’re with her.”

“Oh my goodness,” Muriel said, stepping forward. “You didn’t meet Stan?”

“It’s my fault,” Stan said. “I was so anxious to tell Blake here about the big news, I didn’t think to introduce myself.” He stepped forward to shake my hand. “I’ve heard so much about all of you that it’s easy to forget that we’ve never met. Stan Grant.” He reached out his hand, and we shook.

“We’re engaged,” Muriel said.

“Engaged?” I couldn’t hide my surprise, as we’d heard nothing about a suitor of any kind, much less a fiancé. “Wow. Well, congratulations.”

“Thanks,” Stan said. “Thanks a lot.”

“Well, dinner’s ready,” Helen announced.

“Yes. Let’s eat,” Muriel said.

We sat up to a table of fried chicken, cooked carrots, potatoes, and pan-stirred gravy. We learned that Stan was an executive for the Amalgamated Copper Company in Butte, and that he and Muriel had met several months before when Stan’s car broke down in Spearfish. Muriel explained that she hadn’t mentioned Stan sooner because she didn’t expect anything to develop with Stan living five hundred miles away. But after traveling to see her several times, Stan had proposed. They were to be married in the spring.

I managed to extract this information despite a nervous energy, a palpable feeling that everyone else had something else on their minds.

“So they haven’t caught the guy who shot Harold?” I asked.

“They don’t have any idea who did it,” Muriel said. “It could be a woman, you know.”

“It probably was a woman,” Dad said, prompting an elbow from Mom.

“No witnesses,” said Stan.

“Did you guys come through Alzada?” Bob asked.

“No!” Muriel said. “Stan wanted to. But I was too scared. My lord, there’s a killer out there.”

“I bet no one’s leaving their houses up that way,” I said.

“No doubt,” Dad seconded.

The discussion continued, spirited and laced with an element of fear. And as speculation bounced around the table, I was struck by two things. First was that Stan seemed to be as charming and likable as he first appeared. He had an unusual but infectious laugh—a singular explosion of joy, a “Ha” that economically conveyed as much delight as most people express in a good long belly laugh. My first impression was of a man who was hard not to like. But despite his natural manner, and the good feeling that both his presence and the news of their impending marriage brought to our table, there appeared to be two people in the room who were not happy. Both Mom and Rita were conspicuously silent in the midst of the banter. But Stan did not know them well enough to notice.

“Mrs. Arbuckle, this is a fine, fine meal,” he declared.

Mom nodded—a single, curt bob of her head.

“We don’t expect anything less from Mom,” Muriel said. “She’s a victim of her own standards.”

“Oh, stop this nonsense,” Mom insisted. “This certainly isn’t anything special. And I didn’t do it alone.”

We who knew her were prepared to close the subject. But not Stan.

“Mrs. Arbuckle, your humility is admirable, but not necessary. I’m used to my mother’s cooking, which I won’t comment on because she’s not here to defend herself.”

We all chuckled, and I even caught a hint of a smile on Mom’s face.

It actually wasn’t hard for me to imagine the source of Mom’s displeasure, although Stan remained blissfully unaware of it for the rest of the evening. Muriel represented the last hope for Mom’s dream of a college graduate in the family. It now appeared she was going to come up just short. I’m sure the suddenness of the announcement was a big concern as well. It was clear that Stan had at least ten years on Muriel.

But for Rita to appear so distant, even depressed, was very unusual. I made several attempts to catch her eye, to question with a look whether she was okay. But she did not look my way.

“Now what exactly is it that you do at the mine, Stan?” Helen put a napkin to the corner of her mouth.

“I’m the business manager.” He finished swallowing before he continued. “It sounds important, but all I really do is take care of the books.”

“Now who’s being humble?” Muriel softly slapped Stan’s upper arm. “Stan started out as a clerk, and worked his way up. He’s very good at what he does.”

Stan tilted his head and smiled shyly. “Well, I also had an advantage. My father has been with the mine pretty much from the start. He’s helped me a lot.”

Muriel again jumped in. “But Stan works very hard.” Then to him: “You didn’t just have this position handed to you because of your father. You always make it sound that way.”

Stan looked as though he needed to be rescued.

“Well, I don’t think anyone here knows enough about mining to even ask an intelligent question about it,” I said.

“I could say the same for ranching,” Stan added.

“It doesn’t seem that anyone knows enough about ranching these days,” Mom said with a trace of anger. “It doesn’t matter what you know when there’s no water.” Although she still sounded angry, I knew it was a good sign that Mom had voluntarily joined in on the conversation.

Stan nodded thoughtfully. “It’s tough. We get more people coming through looking for work than I can ever remember.”

I nodded. “I know what you mean. We have two or three guys stopping in every week, offering to work for pennies.”

Stan turned to me, surprised. “Really? Out here?”

This brought a smile to everyone’s face, except Rita’s.

Stan emitted one of his “Ha” s. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

“It does seem strange, I know,” I assured him. “So far from everything.”

Stan nodded. “It’s got to break sometime soon.”

If only he’d been right.

It seems that the laws of nature work against those of us who play cards so that we rarely end up gathered in numbers divisible by four. This was one of those rare occasions, and it was clear to all present that we had no choice but to take advantage of the opportunity. With Stan being a numbers man, I was a little surprised and disappointed that he wasn’t as adept at cards as he was at turning a charming phrase. But the latter skill adds as much to a card game, if not more, than talent, and by the end of the evening, my stomach hurt from laughing, and my tongue was sore from too much coffee and cigarettes. Even Mom was loose after a few games. Stan also broke out a bottle that he had brought along to celebrate their announcement.

But Rita, who was my partner for most of the night, stared at her cards with wide-open, blank eyes. She constantly had to be reminded when it was her turn to bid, or to play a card. Even after downing several drinks, something she rarely did, Rita remained quiet.

Around eleven o’clock, when the black and red cards began to blur together, we stood and straightened our stiff knees, groaning, sticking our chests out and stretching our arms.

“Hey,” Dad said, suddenly looking up at me. “I didn’t think to ask…did you and Art get anything?”

“Yeah. An antelope. An old buck.”

Dad nodded. “Did you go up there?”

I shook my head. “Yeah. Boy.” I just continued shaking my head,
and everyone dropped their eyes to the floor, understanding the state of the situation. “It was bad,” I said.

A long pause followed.

“So…” Stan looked around. “Where do you want me to sleep? In the barn?”

Mom smiled, the skin around her eyes pinching. “All right. If that suits you.”

“Hey, as long as there’s a sheep out there that I can use for a pillow.”

When Mom chuckled at his joke, it was clear that a remarkable transformation had taken place. I caught myself smiling broadly.

“More than a pleasure,” Stan said as he shook my hand.

“For us all,” I replied. “I look forward to more nights like this.”

He nodded. “I’ll need some time to practice my five hundred,” he said, referring to our card game.

I carried Teddy out into the clear, clean night, my spirits buoyed by good company and a few glasses of expensive whiskey. A full, white moon dominated the sky. The light was so bright that it shone off the big weathered house, which was still unpainted, making the weathered gray siding also appear white. We walked along the path, just wider than a shoe, Rita in front, Teddy and I just behind, and George in the rear. The crickets called. As ridiculous as it seemed at the time, I couldn’t help but think as we walked the hundred yards from one house to the other that someone had killed a man just fifteen miles from where we were walking. Someone who was still out there somewhere. I kept my ears alert. I also noticed that Rita was walking very unsteadily.

“How about that Stan?” I said to her, hoping to break through her mood. “He’s something else, huh?”

“Yeah.” She answered without enthusiasm. “He’s great.”

We continued wordlessly on to the house as I wondered about the source of Rita’s surliness. Once inside, I sat quietly in the living room,
smoking a cigarette, while Rita put the boys to bed. We generally sat and talked for a while before bed, and I hoped that she wouldn’t sneak off to her room without following that ritual.

She did come out, settling into her rocking chair, picking up the socks she was knitting for one of the boys. She held the socks closer to her face than usual, and her eyes were unfocused.

“You okay?” I asked.

She nodded.

“You sure?”

Again she nodded. But in the next moment, she aimed one of those unfocused eyes toward me, winking through a narrow opening.

“What if it’s him, Blake?”

I blinked. “What if it’s who?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“What if it’s Jack?”

A slight, confused grin came to my face. “You mean the murder? You couldn’t be serious.”

Rita looked up with defiance. “Why not?”

“Oh, come on, Rita. Jack’s not a murderer.”

“No?”

I paused, thinking about what I was saying, realizing that I really didn’t know, that it wasn’t out of the question.

“I need another drink,” Rita said, lifting herself to her feet.

“Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

Rita stopped and turned, frowning at me. “Blake.”

“I’m sorry. Actually, maybe I’ll join you.”

I watched Rita teeter toward the kitchen. “I didn’t know you had anything around here.”

She smiled over her shoulder. “Yeah, well…you don’t know everything, you know.”

I smiled.

Rita came back with a bottle and two glasses. She set one on the table next to me and poured, spilling a little. Then she returned to her
chair and poured herself a glass. She drank a healthy amount, then turned to me.

“I think it’s him, Blake.”

I sighed, shaking my head, studying Rita. “You don’t really think that.”

Rita nodded. “I do, Blake. I really do.”

She was actually too insistent somehow, as if she was exaggerating in order to convince me, or herself.

“I just don’t think it could possibly be him, Rita. I mean, this is a very different thing than…than…”

“Than George.”

“Exactly.”

Rita drank more. “How? How’s it different?”

“Well,” I said. “I guess I always figured that whatever happened between George and Jack, if anything did happen…well, I just figured it was an accident. Either that, or a fight. I figured maybe they got into an argument, and that Jack…well, that maybe things got out of hand.” I took a drink. “That’s how I always pictured it.”

Rita drained her glass, to my mild alarm, and refilled it. “But what if that isn’t the way it happened, Blake? What if it was uglier than that? Did anyone check George’s body? Did anyone look at it?”

I lowered my head. Of course all of this had occurred to me before. Of course I’d wondered about it. Nobody had checked the body. As far as I knew. But I was hesitant to tell Rita this. Instead, I decided to probe her a little more, for her own ideas about Jack.