Assumption

~ ~ ~

The sheriff thought it was a good thing that Ogden had sent the woman to his mother’s house. Ogden listened to the list of details about the house that told no one anything: fingerprints known and unknown, an unflushed toilet, the fact that the old woman had been strangled, her windpipe crushed. One didn’t need a coroner to determine that.

“The toilet seat was up,” Ogden added. “So there was a man there, but we knew that.”

There was something in the fat man’s voice that puzzled Ogden, namely, the mere fact that he was telling Ogden all of this. “What is it, Bucky?”

“You didn’t happen to glance at the young Ms. Bickers’s ID, did you?”

“I didn’t think to.” Ogden felt stupid.

“It wouldn’t have occurred to me either, but try to get a look at it, okay?”

“Of course.”

Ogden went back to Mrs. Bickers’s address book. The two Bickerses who weren’t scratched out were a John and a Howard, but beside their names was neatly written deceased. The Bickers who had been crossed out was a Jennifer with an Arizona phone number. The book was stiff and felt unused, so Ogden thought that Jenny’s Santa Fe number might be written someplace else. He turned to the listing under Mrs. Bickers’s maiden name. Lester G. Robbins. He dialed the Arizona number. The phone rang without answer. On a back page he found the name Jenny written many times with various numbers — Arizona, Utah, and numbers without area codes.

Ogden finished his looking and rifling through the dead woman’s desk and panties and felt strangely dirty and weird for his effort. He tried to leave out what he thought Jenny would need to sort out her mother’s affairs. From what he could tell, Mrs. Bickers had died without owing too much money. There were a few outstanding medical bills, a power bill, all overdue by only days. Her bank statement showed a balance of thirteen hundred dollars.

Ogden locked up the house and went to his rig where he called in to Felton and told him he was going to grab a bite.

“You mean you’re going to be 10-7,” Felton said.

“I guess so.”

“Actually that would be a 10-7-B,” Felton crackled. “Or a 10–48.”

“What about a size 10 up your ass?”

“No time. No time for lunch either, cowboy. You gotta go out County 8 and check on a vandalized car. Mouth of Niebla Canyon.”

“Roger that.”

He drove out on Highway 8 as instructed and saw a couple of hikers waving, trying to flag him down at the little store about a mile away from the Niebla trailhead. They were neat-looking young men with expensive boots, daypacks, and Nalgene bottles on their belts. They walked toward him as he got out.

“You the guys who called?” Ogden asked.

“It’s our car,” one of them said. “It’s up there.” He pointed up the dirt road.

“Get in,” Ogden said.

They did.

“Either of you hurt?” Ogden asked.

“Just our car.”

“They really trashed it, man.”

“We’ve had some complaints up here recently,” Ogden said. He cranked up the heat a bit.

He drove them up the washboard and rutted road to the trailhead. He whistled as he looked at the smashed windshield. “You came back to find it like this, eh?”

They got out and approached the school-bus yellow Nissan Pathfinder.

“We never even got going,” one of them said.

“We got about a quarter mile up the trail and heard the glass being smashed,” said the second. “It was scary. We didn’t know if we should run back or not.”

“We ran anyway,” the first said. “Nobody was here when we got back.”

“That’s probably a good thing,” Ogden said.

“Then we had to hoof it all the way down there to the pay phone. I couldn’t get a signal on my cell.”

“Mobile phones don’t work up here. Hardly in town either, for that matter.” Ogden looked again at the car. “You remember pissing anybody off?”

“Nah, man.”

“Anything missing? The CD player, cash, anything?”

“Nothing.”

“You got about a quarter mile up, you say?” Ogden asked.

“Maybe a little more.”

Ogden shook his head. He reached into the vehicle and popped the hood. He walked to the front and looked at the engine. It looked fine, all in place.

“I can drive you back to town, but I’d be nervous about leaving the car here if I was you.”

“You think we should wait here for a tow truck?”

“Or you could kick out the rest of that windshield and drive it to town. You’ll be cold as hell.”

“Yeah.”

“I say we just drive it and get the fucking hell out of here,” the other said.

Ogden looked at the damage again. “I can fill out a report for you to sign right now. You know, for insurance. That way you won’t have to come into the station.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, thanks.”

Snow started to fall.

Ogden’s mother was holding the curtain aside and looking out the window when he drove up. She opened the door and stepped away to allow him in.

“It’s cold out there,” she said.

“It is that. How’s your visitor?”

“She’s doing fine considering all that’s happened. Poor thing. I simply can’t imagine.”

“Thanks for letting her stay here,” he said. He looked around for Jenny.

“You were right to suggest she stay here. Imagine losing your mother and having to sleep in some depressing motel. She’s been napping. And she’s lovely. Don’t you think she’s lovely?”

“I hadn’t noticed, Ma.”

“You’re a liar.”

Jenny Bickers came out of the guest bedroom, what had actually been Ogden’s bedroom. “Hello, Officer Walker,” she said.

“It’s Deputy,” Ogden said. “Seeing as you’re sleeping in my room, I think you can call me Ogden.”

“Okay, Ogden.”

“How are you, Jenny?” Eva asked. “Would you like some nice hot tea? Ogden, come sit down with us and have some tea. It’s the kind you like.”

“No, I’d better get going.”

“Pishposh,” his mother said.

“Okay. Just a cup and then I have to go.”

Ogden still felt grimy from his day. “Sorry I’m so filthy.” He looked at Jenny’s eyes. They were tired. “I think I’m finished at your mother’s house. I’ll have to get the okay from the sheriff, but I think you can get in there tomorrow.”

“Did you find anything?”

“No, I didn’t.”

Eva’s old cat walked across the room and rubbed against Ogden’s leg. He reached down and scratched his back. “Hey, Moose.” His father had given the cat that name almost fifteen years ago, a kitten as big as a Labrador puppy. “You’re feeding him too much.”

“I can’t control what he eats when he’s cruising.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t let him out so much.”

“Hey, I just let the guy enjoy what’s left of his life,” the old woman said.

Ogden thought about Moose out there prowling yards in the night and then he thought about Mrs. Bickers’s cat. He looked at Jenny. “Do you like cats?”

“I love cats,” Jenny said. Then, “Excuse me.” She left the table and walked into the bathroom.

“Poor thing,” Eva said. She shook her head and then looked at her son. “Why do you have to run off?”

“I’m filthy.”

“You can shower here. You’ve got clothes here, too.”

“I have to go,” he said.

“She needs people around her,” Eva said.

Ogden shook his finger. “Ma, you don’t know this woman. You don’t know what she needs. You hear me? Now, she’s got to make arrangements for her mother’s funeral and sort through—

Eva stopped him. “Already started.” Eva got up to see to the whistling kettle.

“What?”

“I got her in touch with Fonda today and we’re taking care of it. I know everybody here. I can get everything for a reasonable price.”

“Good Lord.”

Jenny came out of the bathroom. Mother and son shut up. Jenny sat. “Am I in the way?” she asked.

“Don’t be silly,” Eva said.

Jenny looked at Ogden.

“Don’t be silly,” he said. While they sat and talked about weather, Ogden wondered how he might get a look at the woman’s driver’s license. “What was your mother like?”

“Ogden,” Eva said.

“I don’t mind. I’d like to talk about her.” Jenny sipped her tea. “My mother was independent, ornery, and secretive.”

“Sounds familiar,” Ogden said.

“At least that’s what I imagine she was like,” Jenny said. “Sadly, I didn’t know her that well. I was raised by my grandmother.” She smiled at some memory. “My grandmother, she was from Kansas, she was a wonderful woman. She never said a negative thing about my mother, though I’m sure there was plenty negative to say. That stuff comes out, you know. Emma Bickers was a lousy mother and apparently an even worse judge of men.”

Ogden glanced up at the clock hanging slightly crooked on the wall behind Jenny.

“She was married to my father for a couple of years and then he left. I don’t know anything about him. My grandmother refused to acknowledge his existence. Then my mother left me with her. My mother lived in Seattle, Portland, Butte, and then here. She never remarried, but always moved because of a man. That’s what I got from my grandmother. She always blamed it on the men.”

“It’s always the men,” Eva said.

Jenny pulled her hair from her face and stared down into her tea cup. “I was trying to get to know her these last few months. I had only seen her three times since I moved to New Mexico. You probably knew her better than I did.”

“I doubt that,” Ogden said.

“Did you like her?” Jenny asked Ogden.

“Yes,” he lied.

“She was a fine person, I’m sure,” Eva said.

Ogden stood, looked at his watch. “Okay, I’ve been dirty long enough. If you ladies will excuse me?”

Ogden got up after a restive night and drank orange juice from the carton. He looked out his window at the landscape. He deeply loved the place, the mountains, the desert, the rivers, the fish, but he felt like a failure remaining there. It had been different for his father, he thought. The man had come there from someplace and carved out a life. He’d worked house construction and driven cats and plows in the winter and seemed happy with that, while instilling in his son the notion that there was more out there.

He dressed and drove toward town. He decided he would go over a few things at Mrs. Bickers’s house with Jenny and then ask her to sign a receipt and claim to need her driver’s license number on it. The sky was clear and cerulean and he felt lighter.

He arrived at the station to find Jenny waiting.

“You’re up early,” Ogden said.

Felton watched the two of them from his desk.

Ogden saw that Paz wasn’t in yet. “Well, let’s go have breakfast and then we can go to the house.” He felt himself intentionally say the house instead of your mother’s house and wondered what difference that sort of thing made.

Felton cleared his throat. “So, you’ll be 10—?”

“I’ll be at breakfast,” Ogden said.

Ogden drove them to the bowling alley that served the best Mexican food in town and breakfast all day. They sat in a booth. There were a few other people eating and one lone fat man bowling at the far end. A lot of folks didn’t go to the bowling alley, because it was a bowling alley. It was what it was; that was all you could ask of anyplace or anything, Ogden thought.

They ordered.

Ogden got right into it. “Did your mother have anything of value that you know about? You know, like gold bricks between her mattress and box springs, diamonds in ice trays. That sort of thing.”

Jenny shook her head. “Never saw anything.” She looked over the lanes. “You know, I don’t think my mother was ever really happy to see me. It was as if she worked to tolerate me.” She glanced at Ogden and then back at the fat man down the way. “She just didn’t feel like a mother to me. You probably don’t know what I mean. She wasn’t anything like your mother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You have your mother. I had my grandmother.”

The food came.

“Looks good,” Jenny said. They’d both ordered simple bacon, eggs, and toast. “I love breakfast.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“Do you think she knew her killer?” Jenny asked.

Ogden felt like a phony, a fraud. Who was he to be playing investigator? He was just supposed to go through the woman’s papers. “I don’t know.”

They sat without talking for a while and Ogden realized that he had nearly inhaled his food. He set his fork down. “I guess I was hungry,” he said.

“I guess I wasn’t,” she said. She pushed at her eggs and then ate a bit of toast.

“Robbins was your mother’s maiden name?”

Jenny nodded.

“Who is Lester G. Robbins?”

Jenny thought. “Lester?”

“The name was in your mother’s address book.”

“Where does he live?” she asked.

The waitress came and poured Ogden more coffee.

“Where does he live?” she asked again.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Just a name in her book.”

It was nearly nine when they walked into the house. Ogden paused before closing the door just to look at how bright and clear the day was. The snow on the street had already become slushy, but the yards were still beautiful. Most of it would be gone by late afternoon. “It never lasts long,” he said.

Jenny looked at him.

“The snow. Around here, it falls and then the sun takes care of it pretty quickly.”

Jenny sat at the desk and looked at the pile of papers. “Where do I start?”

“I’ve been through it all,” he said. “I do have a couple of questions. I didn’t find any insurance policies. Do you know if she had any?”

“I don’t know.”

“And you’re the only child?”

Jenny looked as if she was contemplating being offended by the question. “As far as I know.”

“Then I guess you’re the new owner of a parcel of land ‘herein referred to as the southeast quarter of section 22, southwest quarter of Section 23, T16R71W in Plata County.’ ”

“Oh yeah?”

“Nearly a hundred acres as far as I can see from the deed.” Ogden handed the paper to her. “Can’t say I know where it is, from that description.’ ”

“I guess that’s a good thing,” she said.

“Maybe it’s a pretty place. Maybe there’s a house on it.” While she studied the document, Ogden slipped the address book into his jacket pocket. “I’ll get some wood for the fire while you look.” He walked through the house to the back and out the kitchen door. Ogden had had little interest in the old woman when she’d been alive, so he was amused at how much her death was affecting him. Perhaps it was as simple as a mystery to pass the time in a boring, sleepy village. Maybe it was some kind of sublimation for a stalled life, a life he was not pursuing. Or perhaps he just wanted to catch and stop a killer. Anyway, he thought he needed the address book.

He took the wood back in and got the fire going. He sat on the sofa and glanced through a People magazine while Jenny sifted through the papers. He looked around the house at the tacky pictures on the walls, the assortment of knickknacks. Then it hit him. Everything in this house could be bought at the local roadside gift shops. He walked around the front rooms. Several cheap ceramic storytellers were scattered about. A couple of bad landscape paintings of the gorge and the mountains were on the walls. A couple of saddle blankets were tossed over the backs of chairs. There was nothing that made him think of the Pacific Northwest or Montana or any other place where the old woman had supposedly lived. He noticed a photo on the table on the other side of the room and went to it. There was the old lady, not much younger, recognizable, standing with a man of about fifty in front of a landscape that could have been local terrain, but also parts of California, Arizona, or Utah.

“Excuse me,” Ogden said. “Do you know this man?”

Jenny walked over to the picture, leaning close to Ogden for a good look. He could smell her shampoo or some fragrance and he didn’t like that he liked it.

“He’s a big guy,” Ogden said.

“I’ve never seen him,” Jenny said.

He took the picture from the wall and took off the back of the frame. There was nothing written there, so he put the disassembled mess on the table. “You can go on back to the papers,” he said. “I’m going to look around again.”

He looked through all the drawers in the bedroom, the kitchen cabinets, and the refrigerator again. He found so much nothing that it left his head spinning. He returned to the front room and fell with a thud onto the sofa.

“Anything?” Jenny asked.

Ogden shook his head.

“At least she didn’t leave a lot of bills to be paid,” Jenny said.

The phone rang. Ogden answered. It was Felton, saying that the sheriff wanted Ogden up on Plata Ridge right away.

“What’s up?” Ogden asked.

“We got us some more bodies.”