Dangerous Refuge

chapter Two



Tanner Davis had been driving since morning.

The news of Lorne’s death had been both surprising and inevitable. He was, after all, eighty-six and counting. The surprise came because it was always that way with death. Young or old, dirt farmer or descendant of great wealth, no one expected to die. Someday, sure, everyone dies. But today?

Even after years as a Los Angeles cop—the last twelve of them as a homicide detective—Tanner didn’t take death for granted.

He looked into the rearview mirror. Cobalt-blue eyes looked back. Hard eyes. Cop’s eyes. He didn’t have to see the rest of the package—black hair, dark stubble, angular lines, flat mouth—to know that he wouldn’t make a convincing Santa Claus. He’d never looked pretty, and years as an L.A. cop hadn’t added any warm-and-fuzzy charm to him.

A road sign told him that Refuge was the home of nine churches and four civic groups. If memory served, there were more than twice as many bars.

The sun was already behind the Sierras and the valley was filled with the radiant not-quite twilight he had loved in his youth. He drove through the center of town, a collection of low brick buildings where merchants served a mostly local clientele. Refuge was close enough to Carson City that people who were on their way to or from the state capital weren’t likely to stop. Refuge had never been a destination for anyone but the ranchers who settled the south end of the valley and the merchants, preachers, and pimps who served them.

He turned his Ford—a former police car—up Emery, past single farmhouses where lights were coming on and barns were set in acres of ragged green grass, fenced by barbed wire or wood corrals. From the top of telephone poles, hawks and small falcons watched for a last chance at a warm meal before real darkness came. Without even thinking about it, he knew the birds’ names and hunting habits, legacy of summers at Lorne’s old house near Glory Springs.

Some of the ranches and farms sported signs on the fences promoting future development, something newer, bigger, better than the way of life that had settled in for more than a hundred-year stay. The smell of wet graze and pastureland flowed through the open window across his face. The water’s scent had a subtle mineral tang beneath it. Drinkable, but hard as the rocks it flowed through.

The jagged blue-black line of the Sierra Nevada Mountains loomed large as Emery cut into Ridgeline. For all that he could see, the valley might well have been lost in time. Only the addition of satellite dishes, both large and small, and slightly more modern pickup trucks, disturbed the illusion of having stepped back into the world of his childhood memories.

There were a few more houses than there had been, but nothing like the sprawl of L.A. Most of the newer construction was for people who wanted a ski or gambling getaway but didn’t want to pay city prices. The rest was sage and pasture, willows and pines.

If it hadn’t been for the slightly drunken telephone/electric power poles strung at the edge of the fence, he would have missed the dirt road leading to the ranch. He had been expecting a Keep Out sign and a cable across the road, enforcing Lorne’s privacy, but the cable lay tangled under sagebrush at the edge of the dirt.

By the time the lumpy, rutted road climbed through a notch in the flank of the first ridge of mountains, only the sky was light. The small valley itself was dark. Lorne’s house was darker.

Tanner parked the car and threw the door open. Taking a powerful flashlight from the backseat, he switched on the beam and started raking the area with harsh, slanting light. Every small dip and flattened weed leaped out into stark relief.

There was a scattering of different tire and boot tracks in the dry dirt of the front yard, but the tracks were too wind-scrubbed to be of any use for identity. A few yards out, he could see an area where the grass had been tamped down, but the patch wasn’t much bigger than Lorne himself would have taken up had he fallen there.

Looks like the EMTs didn’t bother trying to resuscitate him.

Nor was there enough trampling to indicate the kind of thorough search a crime scene generated.

Hell, the house hasn’t even been secured with yellow tape.

Tanner listened to his own thoughts and laughed roughly. This isn’t a crime scene. This is just where an old rancher had a heart attack. People die all the time and there isn’t a crime behind it.

But it was hard to shake old habits, even if he had been assigned to the morgue lately, trying to match bodies with missing people or felons.

Lorne’s old F-150 was still parked near the back of the house. Still the same dirty green color, same Nevada plates that were old enough to show more metal than paint, same internal combustion workhorse waiting for the day to begin. The truck had outlasted Lorne, because the man had taken care of it. No shine or polish, but Tanner knew that everything necessary would be good to go.

He switched off the powerful light and stood quietly, waiting for his eyes to adjust. Other than his own slow breathing, the only thing he heard was a sigh of wind and the distant yodel of a coyote. He knew that there were quail roosting in the bushes near the pump shed, hawks in the big pines across the north pasture, bobcats, bears, and occasional mountain lions prowling the shadows everywhere for the first meal of the night, but the animals were as silent as darkness itself.

The front door wasn’t locked. The key hung on a nail just inside the door, where his uncle had kept it. The back door—most often used—hadn’t had an external lock, only a bar on the inside.

Tanner pocketed the key, turned on the light, and stepped inside. The place smelled dusty. Familiar. His uncle had been tidy enough, but not much for the finer points of housekeeping. Dusting was done maybe once a month in summer and rarely in winter. The house was like Lorne’s truck, ranch, and life. No decoration. Nothing extra. Everything in the one-story house was functional, not fussy. There were old furnishings, but not an antique among them.

Slowly he wandered through the small house. A pair of crusted, hard-used boots resting on a slat bench in the small mudroom near the back door caught his attention. The nail for the truck keys was empty.

Bet they’re in a personal-effects box at the local sheriff’s office.

Lorne’s everyday boots listed sideways, waiting to be worn from the back porch to the barn or pastures, through muck and mud. Tanner didn’t know why the boots caught his attention until he remembered what the lawyer had said. Lorne had died fully clothed, apparently headed toward the corral.

If he was doing chores, why was he wearing good boots? Why not the everyday work boots?

A homicide cop’s instincts never turned off, even when he didn’t need them. File away everything. The little things all point to big things. That was fine when he was trying to figure out the murder of a Jane Doe. Not so helpful when he was supposed to be taking care of personal business.

Tanner turned away and nearly knocked a beaten-up felt Stetson off its hook. Next to it hung a hat that looked new. Creamy white, untouched by dirt, crisp as a fresh dollar bill.

He should have been wearing one hat or the other. He never went out bareheaded.

Puzzled, Tanner really looked around him, rather than sleepwalking through a past he had never asked for. Immediately he saw the dusty red light blinking on Lorne’s answering machine.

At least he finally caught up with the twentieth century, if not the twenty-first. Wonder if he had a cell phone, too.

Even as the thought came, he shook his head. There was old school and then there was Lorne.

Tanner crossed the room and grabbed a pencil out of the chipped cup next to the phone. The pencil was gnawed at the eraser end. In his mind he could see his uncle literally chewing out his frustration with whatever conversation he was forced to have by phone. With the eraser stub Tanner pressed the play button on the answering machine.

The system was so outdated that there was no chirpy mechanical voice telling him the date and time of the call. The tape was worn almost through. It hissed and jerked as it worked its way between the spools.

The first message on the phone was from a man.

“Lorne? It’s Dr. Warren. Look, about Dingo. He’s pretty sick. From the signs, internal bleeding and the like, I’m pretty sure that he got into some rat poison, strychnine most likely. He’s touch and go. I’m keeping the dog until he’s stable, because I’m not sure I cleaned him out in time. Call me when you can.”

Tanner shook his head. It hadn’t been a good few days for his uncle or Dingo. He’d have to call the vet tomorrow. Stupid dog letting its nose get it into trouble. Stupid people putting out poison, too.

The next voice on the tape wasn’t a man’s.

“Are you there, Lorne? It’s Shaye. I’m back from the retreat. Pick up the phone, please.”

The words stopped, waiting.

Automatically Tanner categorized the voice he had heard—female, young, but not at all childish. A woman. The kind of natural huskiness that made a man think of tangled sheets and bone-deep satisfaction.

The voice came back. Obviously the woman had decided Lorne was screening calls.

“I know why you’re so angry, but it was a mistake. Kimberli brought the wrong contract. You know what a disaster she can be. Paperwork is her enemy. Talk to me, let me explain.”

There was a plea in her voice. Not the slick oil of a follow-up sales call, but a voice with emotion in it. Tanner had heard enough liars to know when someone was telling the truth.

Unless she was a sociopath. They didn’t have human emotions, but the smart ones learned to mimic what they didn’t understand. They hid their inhumanity behind manners and pretend emotions, actors on a lifetime stage.

“I had to go out of town on a Conservancy retreat. The kind with no phones. I didn’t know what happened until I got back and Kimberli’s message was waiting for me. And your message. We need to talk. Please, please, give me a chance to explain. I’ll bring out the right contract and show you. It was just a stupid mistake.”

Urgency and a hurt the caller didn’t bother to hide.

Probably real, he decided.

Probably.

It would be something to check on. He scribbled her name and a shorthand description of his own reactions to the message on the yellow tablet Lorne always kept by the phone. The phone itself was too old to have a call log, much less caller ID.

Tanner tapped the pencil on the countertop several times. The local officials obviously were going with a natural death, because any investigator worth the name would have checked the phone to see who had called Lorne lately, and when. But the messages hadn’t been touched until Tanner came. Neither had the house.

His glance fell on a stack of mail on the worn linoleum countertop. Postmarks were all within the last week or so. Lots of local advertising aimed at the small rancher—feed sales, pump and irrigation sales and repairs, grocery deals, veterinarians. Only one piece of mail had attracted Lorne’s attention. He had ripped it in half and tossed the pieces aside.

Just like the old days. Piss him off and he let you know it.

Tanner stirred the torn, creamy paper with the eraser of the pencil. Whatever it had been, his uncle hadn’t even bothered to open it before he tore it apart. Curious, Tanner started to tease out the halves of the letter with the eraser, careful not to contaminate the paper with his fingerprints. Then he realized what he was doing and made a disgusted sound.

This isn’t a crime scene and you aren’t a homicide detective right now. Get. Over. It.

But he wanted to be. Babysitting stiffs in the morgue and matching them to active cases had almost been enough to drive him away from the job.

Almost.

Yet a deep-down stubborn part of him still believed in leaving the world a better place than he’d found it. Being a cop was the most direct way he knew to do that.

Cursing softly, he assembled the heavy paper. To his eye, the heavy gold embossing on both envelope and letterhead were overkill.

The words invited Lorne and a guest of his choice to be honored by the Conservancy at the Crystal Room of the Tahoe Sky Casino in South Lake Tahoe.

Funny place to throw a local party. But then, the Refuge Grange Hall is as worn out as Lorne’s everyday boots.

Maybe that’s why he tore up the letter. He hated fancy things.

The invitation looked like it had cost fifty bucks to print. The embossing had the look and feel of real gold. Showy. Not Lorne at all.

Just like he wouldn’t have left his hat behind, even if all he was going to do was walk around the yard.

The metallic printing on the invitation glowed and shimmered, bright as nuggets in a streambed.

The gold.

Tanner tossed the pencil back into the cup and walked quickly toward the fireplace in the front room. The chimney and hearth had been built with local cobblestones smoothed by the stream that raced down from the mountains and across the Davis land. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and all the rest of his ancestors, Lorne hadn’t trusted banks. If the family had any extra cash, it went into a homemade safe in the form of gold coins.

Silently he counted stones upward from the left-hand side, starting where hearth met chimney. As he reached for the fifth cobble, he hesitated.

Not. A. Crime. Scene.

He began working the rock free, knowing there was a small hidey-hole behind. When he had turned fourteen, he had been told about it—and the gold coins inside. It was a Davis family coming-of-age rite.

Abruptly the stone came out. Nothing but black dust and darkness filled the opening behind.

Tanner’s first thought was robbery followed by murder. He told himself again that it wasn’t a crime scene.

Times have been real hard on small ranchers. Lorne probably traded in the gold to keep himself in beans and bread, and pay taxes, and keep the horses in winter hay.

He left the stone on the mantelpiece, a reminder to check the area again later. Then he went through the small house, looking with a cop’s eyes. No signs of a search. Nothing out of place. No clothes scattered around. Old wicker basket holding dirty laundry. No notes or doctor’s appointment slips or reminders of any kind.

No signs of anything but an old man living alone, keeping up the ranch for a family he hated and a tomorrow he wouldn’t see.

When Tanner was satisfied that nothing was out of place, he stripped the double bed and put fresh sheets on from the extras kept in a steamer trunk in the corner of the room. He was too old to sleep in the barn like he had when he was a kid. He started to kick off his shoes, then realized he wasn’t fooling anybody, most of all himself.

He couldn’t sleep here.

Too many memories. Too many regrets.

Too many questions.

Telling himself he shouldn’t even as he punched in the numbers on his cell phone, he waited for it to ring.

Nothing happened.

No cell, idiot.

Then he froze. The sound outside was familiar and wrong. Someone was driving up the dirt road toward the house.

Now what? Isn’t being stuck in Refuge again bad enough?

The sound came closer.

His car was still out front, pinging and hot from the drive to the ranch. No way to hide it, or himself. Whoever was coming now was either a close friend of Lorne’s who could barge in at any time or someone who had heard about the owner’s death and wanted to give the place a quick toss.

He snapped the light off and waited.

There was a crunch of dirt and gravel as the car stopped on the far side of Tanner’s car.

“Hello?” called a woman’s voice. “Anyone home? Dingo? Here, boy. C’mon, I’ve got treats for you.”

He recognized the voice. No male under eighty was likely to forget that husky sigh of tangled sheets and sex. It was the woman on the answering machine.

Hand on the doorknob, he waited, wondering if she was a thief, a murderer, a neighbor—or all three.