Chapter 2 #2
I ring the doorbell, trying to squelch every nerve.
When you’re a cop, you’re one of many. As a first-year PI, I feel alone.
Exposed—naked—without my uniform and my gun, which I’ve gotten into the habit of not carrying since I don’t really need it to follow around cheating spouses and unruly teenagers.
But now, I feel very unprotected and foolish that I’m not following Patrolman 101 basic rules.
I’m still waiting for someone when I hear a scuffle of a shoe. I turn to see Ridgeway come around the corner.
I take a big step back.
He’s carrying a rifle.
It’s not pointed at me, but still, it gives me a jolt. There’s something very creepy and incongruent about the whole look of an LA rich dude in a pink button-up sporting a rifle outside his multimillion-dollar abode on the eastern front.
“Hello.” I force a grin. “Is that necessary?” I gesture to the gun. My nerves tingle all over. All I’ve got is a Leatherman in my pocket. “I’m a PI,” I say. “And I don’t even carry.”
“Not sure where you’re from, but out here, never know what’s necessary and what’s not. Never know if you’re in need of self-protection. We have grizzlies around here, and you know we have a saying out here, right?”
“What’s that?”
“SSS.”
“SSS?”
“Shoot, shovel, and shut up.”
I nod. Lick my lips, which are suddenly very dry.
“Why are you here?” he asks.
“My name is Crosbie Mitchell,” I say. “And—”
“You a reporter?”
“No. Like I told your security guy, I’m a PI from the Flathead. I’d like to speak to you. I need to ask about a former employee of yours.”
He eyes me suspiciously.
“Graham Insurance hires me occasionally to check on certain claims, that’s all.”
Finally, he walks over to me.
I step back, way back, but all he does is open the front door. Motions for me to enter. As he holds it ajar, he eyes me up and down.
My pulse pounds in my neck.
He waits, the heat of the August afternoon prickling between us, even in the shade of his massive covered entryway. I pause, sweat sliding down my back. I’m not sure I want to go in.
But I’ve come this far, so I step inside, every muscle in my body on notice. I don’t plan on turning my back to this man, so I scoot over and make sure he goes in farther than me. I stay in the foyer as he enters the main room and, thank goodness, sets his rifle on a credenza by the wall.
The interior is immense. No surprise. Giant great room and a large kitchen.
Open floor plan. Humongous appliances. Blond cabinets.
A long rectangular gas fireplace sits in a slate wall.
Space-age lighting fixtures hover. A wide curving staircase climbs to the next floor.
The lack of a railing makes me unsteady on my feet, thinking how I’d feel with nowhere to put my hands.
The place is filled with art, mostly abstracts. But next to me on the wall is a whole lot of realism, a sketch of a naked woman standing with her arms above her head and her chest stuck out in case you’re unsure that she’s proud of her assets.
“I did that,” he says when he sees me eyeing it. “You like?”
His question is more than a little creepy.
“Nice,” I say. The woman’s precisely drawn nipples stare me down.
She lacks mystery and complexity. There’s another on the opposite wall of a young woman sitting with her legs splayed open, one hand on her breast, the other between her thighs and below her crotch like she’s posing for a soft-porn site.
“That one, too,” he says.
A maddening tangle of images fills my head about what he might have done to, or given, these young women so they’d pose for him.
My fingers curl into tight fists and I have to tell myself to relax.
“So,” I say as professionally as I can muster.
“Aaron Lasserio’s been working for the timber company in Columbia Falls.
He’s filed a claim, and the insurance company has hired me to check on his history. ”
It’s a hot lie, but I’m hoping it will become truth by the end of the week.
Even as I feel the rush of excitement over being my own boss, my confidence goes to quicksand as I wonder if pulling a stunt like this is really the best choice for my first serious case as a PI.
“Says he’s hurt his spine,” I add. “You know anything about that?”
“Why would I?”
“He used to work for you, no?”
“Yeah, but he didn’t get hurt while working for me.”
“But you still see him.”
Ridgeway looks down at me the way a shark might eye a smaller fish.
Cold, detached. Thankfully, the lustful appraisal has vanished, but this stare—with his lips thinning in irritation—isn’t a good one, either.
“I hardly know him,” he says. “And why the hell would you come all the way over here to ask about some guy getting hurt on the job?”
“Just for his history. His capabilities in the past compared to now. How many hay bales could he lift? Simple questions.” I rattle off a few more. Did he handle the horses? Did he stoop over fences all day, repairing them?
He holds up a hand. “I’m not the guy to talk to about what kind of a worker he was. If you want, you can talk to our head guy.”
“But you’re close to him, aren’t you?”
“Close?” He pulls his head back. “Hell no.”
“Oh.” I fake surprise. “I happened to see you at the café. Seemed like you two know one another pretty well.”
Ridgeway stares at me with disgust, like I just stole a puppy from a kid. “You stalking me?”
“Absolutely not. Small town. Only so many cafés. Very coincidental.”
“So you’re stalking Lasserio?”
“Well, that is what I’m paid to do.” I’m getting better at believing the lie myself. My words sound confident, but his gaze is now drenched in skepticism, as it should be. My relationship with the truth is a tenuous thing. Let’s say situational.
“You need to leave. I don’t have time for this.” Ridgeway starts toward me. I back up, but I’m in the foyer, so his coming toward me is his aim for the front door.
“There’s another thing I need to know.” I step forward again, toward him.
“Time’s up.”
“Clarissa Haynes.” I know better than to blurt her name out like this, but I may not get another chance to confront him. And when I say her name, I make sure I’m looking right at him to gauge his reaction.
He stops dead in his tracks. Something uncertain flutters across his face, just for a fraction of a second, before he shakes his head. “Who?”
“Surely you remember her. From Browning? She pressed you about the fragile habitat on your property.”
He goes back and grabs his rifle. My breath hitches at the not-so-subtle warning. He marches past me and opens the front door without saying a word.
I check my notebook. “On June 27?”
“News to me,” he says. “But clearly, this is all bullshit about Aaron’s so-called injuries.
” He motions with his head for me to leave and moves from cradling his rifle in both hands to laying the fore-end of the stock into the crook of his elbow without the muzzle pointing down as it should.
Like he’s about ready to lift it and aim. At me. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Rage pumps through me. Who the hell does he think he is?
Trying to frighten me like this? Packing a rifle around in his oversize house just to instill the fear of God into me?
“It’s a sad story,” I say, calling his bluff.
“Shortly after she came here, she drowned. She was a big deal on the rez. Her brother claims she chatted with you the week before she died.”
“She might be a big deal on the rez,” he says. “But not anywhere else.”
“Was a big deal.”
“Indians die every day from overdoses, car crashes, drunk driving. She was probably blotto, like the rest of ’em.”
My nostrils flare. My teeth grit. “Native American,” I say as calmly as I can, trying not to show the rage coiling inside me, wanting to strike. “And no alcohol in her system.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t buy into gossip, especially when you’re not even from around here.”
“I have more than one source that says Clarissa came here and spoke—”
“I don’t care about your sources.” His jaw goes hard as a rock. He grips his rifle tighter. His ice-blue eyes go dead with a clear message: Don’t fuck with me. “Look, Miss PI. I’m wealthy. And successful. That makes me a target. Got it? It’s the way of the world.”
“I understand that, but—”
“No.” He shakes his head in a way that makes me feel like a child. “We’re done.”
I stifle the urge to blurt out, You don’t get to call the shots, asshole. But of course he does. I’m on his property. And he’s holding a gun. I walk outside. I turn and flash a chipper smile. I know all I need to know.
Right before he shuts the door, I hear him mumble, “Fucking bitch.”
I resist firing something nasty back, but I got what I came for. He’s lying about not knowing Clarissa.
On the way back to my car, I’m snared in anger. Rage fills my head like the thrum of electrical wires, drowning out the tractor motor in the distance and the boisterously chirping crickets. Each footstep takes on more fury, like I might punch right through the ground.
SSS? What a jerk.
When I pass his truck, I pull out my Leatherman and squat next to his tire.
I try to calm myself, try to listen to the voice inside me saying, Do not do this. You can’t afford to do anything wrong anymore.
The air crackles with the dry heat from the ground. The sharp scent of cured rubber from Ridgeway’s new tires pierces my nose. I’m gripping my Leatherman so tightly, the knobs of my knuckles are white.
I know I’ll feel terrible later, but right now, I don’t care.
I slide the blade in, right between the treads.
It’s crude and minimal justice, but it’s more than most people get.