Minor in possession

CHAPTER 7

Shorty Rojas seemed a little surprised when I turned up on his doorstep wearing nothing but a towel and an off-the-shoulder smile. Unperturbed by my tale of the snake, he gave me a bathrobe and a pair of rubber thongs. The robe, a shocking pink chenille, evidently belonged to Dolores and came close to wrapping around me twice. The thongs, blue rubber dime store jobs, were definitely Shorty's. They were wide enough for my feet, but my heels hung off the back end by a good inch and a half.

I wanted him to exhibit some visible reaction when I told him about the snake. I wanted him to act like it was something out of the ordinary, for him to be more upset, but Shorty Rojas wasn't the excitable type.

"Happens every time we have a flood," he said with a shrug. "Them snakes hole up in the bank along the river. When high water gets to 'em, they go looking for someplace warm and dry. What'd you do, leave your door open? Hang on a minute. I'll go get my snake stick and a burlap bag."

He pulled a much-used Stetson down from a hook on the wall near the door and shoved it on his head.

"You mean this kind of thing happens often?" I asked.

Shorty didn't answer. When he returned to the door, instead of packing a gun, which was what I wanted and expected, he was carrying a gunnysack and a stick the size of a cane with a leather noose hanging off the bottom end.

"What the hell are you going to do with that thing?" I demanded.

Shorty looked down at the stick. A leather thong ran up one side of the stick. He slipped it up and down, tightening and loosening the noose. "I'm gonna catch me a snake," he said impassively. "Take it back outside where it belongs and let it loose."

"You mean you're not going to kill it?"

"No, I'm not going to kill it." He sounded offended, not only by the question but by the implied stupidity behind it. "If every snake in this danged world disappeared off the face of the earth tomorrow, we'd all be overrun with varmints in two shakes of a lamb's tail."

With a derisive snort and a shake of his head, Shorty Rojas headed up the trail. Chastened, I followed meekly behind.

"Where is it?" he asked over his shoulder as we trudged along.

"I never turned on the lights so I didn't actually see it," I admitted, "but it's somewhere right near the door. At least that's what it sounded like when I left."

"If the snake's by the door, how'd you get out without getting bit?"

"I climbed out the bathroom window."

He stopped in the glow of a yard light and looked up at me, consternation written on his face. "Out the window, no shit? Musta been a tight fit."

"I broke out the glass."

"I see," he said, and continued on.

Feeling like a cowardly jackass, I stayed outside, hovering nervously on the rim of the porch while Shorty cracked open the door, switched on the light, and peered inside.

"See him?" I asked.

"Nope. Not yet. Probably slipped under a bed or into the closet, looking for someplace to hide, I reckon. You stay outside," Shorty added. "I've got boots on. You don't."

Carefully he slipped inside the cabin, easing the door shut behind him. I stood outside, gazing forlornly in at the window while he searched the cabin for the snake. For several anxious minutes I was afraid he wouldn't find the snake at all, that people hearing the story would assume I had made the whole thing up in a fit of alcohol-withdrawal-induced paranoia.

But then, much to my relief, I saw Shorty struggling with the stick inside the closet. A few minutes later he returned to the door and opened it. Behind Shorty, I saw the empty snake stick leaning against the wall beside the open closet door. In one triumphant hand Shorty held a writhing burlap bag.

I recoiled from the bag in alarm. "Don't worry," Shorty said reassuringly. "It can't hurt you now. Come on in and get some clothes on." Holding the bag well away from his body, he tied the neck of it in a solid knot, shaking it once to be sure it would hold.

Gingerly I stepped in over the threshold, warily watching the bag, but also looking around the room for any further sign of danger. "What if there's another one?" I asked. "Is that possible?"

"I suppose," Shorty replied. "Possible, but not likely, especially since this one here's a pet."

"A pet?" I couldn't believe my ears. "Are you kidding? I thought you said it came from the riverbank."

"Not this one. It's somebody's pet snake all right, one that got loose somehow. And not very long ago, either, from the looks of it."

"How the hell do you know that? What's he doing, wearing a dog tag?"

I had given up all hope of taking of shower. Instead, I went to the closet to get some clothes, pulling everything to one side and examining every corner of the closet before I took down my shirt and trousers. In the process I noticed that all of Joey Rothman's belongings had been removed, not only from the closet but from the rest of the cabin as well. It was as though someone had come through the place and erased every trace of his occupancy.

Shorty set the wriggling bag down near the door and walked into the bathroom, where he examined the broken window. "How come you didn't take the glass out?" he asked.

"Pardon me?"

"The glass, come you broke it? Those panes just sit in the frame, you know. They lift right out."

"You could have fooled me," I told him with a nervous laugh. "I must not have been thinking too straight. That snake scared the living shit right out of me."

Shorty retrieved his stick from beside the closet and set it near the bag while the snake rattled ominoulsy. Even muffled by the burlap bag, the sound was enough to make my skin crawl. But Shorty didn't seem remotely disturbed. If any thing, he seemed to be struggling to suppress a grin.

"What the hell's so damned funny?" I demanded.

"Him too," Shorty answered, allowing himself a discreet smile.

"What do you mean?"

"Look over there," he said, pointing. "See that mess there under the corner of the bed?"

I looked where he pointed and was rewarded with the sight of a small, stomach-turning mass of white fur and tiny tails.

"What the hell is that?"

"Snake's dinner-dead white mice," Shorty answered. "He scared you, but you musta scared him pretty good too. He barfed his guts out. You ever see any white mice in the wild, by the way?"

"You're saying I scared him?"

The idea of the snake being frightened of me was so laughable that I felt an almost hysterical chuckle welling in my throat. But Shorty Rojas wasn't laughing.

"You bet. Coiling up and striking is hard work for snakes. Bothers 'em. Upsets their digestive tracts, especially if they've just been fed."

I wondered suddenly if Shorty was having a bit of old-fashioned cowboy fun with a tenderfoot city-slicker from Seattle, but there was no hint of amusement about him as he spoke. The smile no longer flickered around the corners of his mouth. The twinkle was gone from his eyes. He seemed dead serious.

"How do you happen to know so much about snakes?" I asked.

"My cousin's kid, Jaime. He went to the university and works in Tucson now at a place called the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum. He claims snakes are more scared of people than we are of them. He says that after a captive snake gets fed, it needs to be left alone and quiet until it has a chance to digest the meal, twenty-four hours or so anyway."

Shorty was quiet. The snake rattled one more time as if to remind us that it was still present. Hurriedly, I pulled on a pair of socks and stuffed my feet into my other pair of shoes. I glanced in his direction and found Shorty staring at the lumpy burlap bag, regarding it with a puzzled expression on his face.

"Even without the mice, I would have known," he said.

"What do you mean?" I was back at the closet pulling out a sports jacket. I was cold, much colder than the temperature in the room warranted.

"It's the wrong kind of snake," he answered. "We have diamondbacks around here, and some Mohave rattlers. Even a few speckled, but this here's charcoal gray with no markings whatsoever. I'd say it's an Arizona black from up around the Mogollon Rim. I can't remember seeing one of them around here before, not ever."

"If it's somebody's goddamned pet snake, what the hell was it doing in my cabin?"

For the first time the full implication of the snake being a "pet snake" hit me. If somebody had planted it in my room, then that somebody had tried to kill me with it as sure as I was standing there. Assault with a deadly weapon. A living deadly weapon.

I turned on my heel and stalked out the door, not even thinking now about the snake in the burlap bag as I walked by it. Someone had just tried to murder me. I wanted to know who the hell that person was.

"Where are you going?" Shorty asked, following me out onto the small porch.

"To call the sheriff. If somebody's trying to knock me off, I want a detective down here on the double, taking prints and finding out what the hell is going on."

"There's already been so much trouble today, with the boy and the flood-" Shorty began, but I cut him off.

"The flood's one thing, but believe me, Joey Rothman's murder and this snake are connected. Whoever killed Joey just tried to get me as well. I'm calling the sheriff."

With that, I left Shorty there on the porch and bounded up the trail. At the door to the dining room I almost collided with people coming out. Not bothering to apologize, I stormed past them. Halfway down the administrative wing's hall I ran full tilt into Lucy Washington, who was coming from the opposite direction.

"What's got into you now?" she demanded, stopping in her tracks and barring my way with both hands on her hips. Her full lips ironed themselves into a cold, thin line. She was still packing a grudge from our previous encounter.

"To see Mrs. Crenshaw," I answered.

"Like hell you are. She's not here and neither is the mister. What do you want?"

"To call the sheriff's department."

She bared her teeth in a forced smile. "Oh, do tell. We're not going to go through all that again, are we, Mr. Beaumont?"

"We sure as hell are," I muttered.

Instead of backing away from me, Lucy Washington stepped forward until the top of her head almost touched my chin. There was no getting past her on either side. Lucy Washington was almost as wide as she was tall. Her ample breadth filled up the hallway.

"Now you listen to me, and you listen good. Mr. and Mrs. Crenshaw gave orders that they are not to be disturbed. Period. By you or anybody else. And if you pull the kind of stunt you did last night, if you go near a telephone without permission, I'm calling the cops myself. I'll have you ass thrown in jail. Understand?"

I tried to be reasonable. "Look," I said "Somebody put a snake in my room, a rattlesnake. Shorty Rojas just now got it out."

Santa Lucia smiled. "Sure he did, and Jesus Christ himself is out in the kitchen helping Dolores Rojas wash all the dishes."

Out of nowhere, Kelly appeared at my elbow. She was evidently ready to let bygones be bygones.

"Daddy, where were you? We got you a plateful of food, but if you don't come right now, there won't be time enough to eat before we have to leave for Wickenburg."

"That's right," Lucy Washington said, flashing me another smile, square-toothed and insincere. "You just do that, Mr. Beaumont. You go have yourself some dinner with your family and get yourself all calmed down. You'll feel better once you have something to eat."

"What's the matter, Daddy?" Kelly asked. "This has been such a terrible day already, how could anything else go wrong?"

Santa Lucia had me right where she wanted me and she knew it. I wasn't about to say anything more about the snake in front of Kelly or Karen or Scott. It would have scared them to death.

"Nothing's the matter, honey," Lucy said. "You take your daddy along with you, feed him his supper, and take him to the meeting. If I happen to talk to either Mr. or Mrs. Crenshaw, I'll let them know you want to talk to them. They might call in."

Provoked but letting it pass, I turned and marched away with Kelly following close at my heels. Karen and Scott were still waiting at a table near the center of the almost deserted room. A plate full of cold roast beef and mashed potatoes sat at a clean place setting next to Scott. I wasn't hungry, and I didn't want to have to sit down and make some kind of phoney excuse or polite conversation. It was far easier to avoid the situation entirely.

Halfway across the room I stopped abruptly and turned around, catching Kelly by surprise. "I've got to go see somebody, Kelly. Thanks for getting my food, but I just can't eat right now. I'm not hungry."

Hurt, she looked up into my eyes. "You can't? Daddy, tell me. What's the matter?"

"Nothing," I said. "Everything's fine."

Unfortunately, I've always been a terrible liar. Kelly knew it, saw through what I said, but I hurried away before she had a chance to call me on it. Once outside the ranch house, I half walked half ran back down the muddy path to Shorty's mobile home. He was standing outside, hat pulled low on his forehead, smoking a cigarette, and peering through the inky darkness in the direction of the roiling flood.

"Still hasn't crested," he said, looking up as I stopped next to him. "But I think we're going to be fine. Those sandbags will do the trick."

"I didn't come to talk about the flood, Shorty. Where do the Crenshaws live?" I asked.

"In town. Why?"

"That damn nurse again, Lucy Washington. She won't let me near a phone to call the sheriff. What about you? Would you let me use yours?"

"Would if I could," Shorty replied, "but the phones are out of order. Have been for a while. Half an hour or more. I tried calling Jaime just as soon as I got back from your cabin. I wanted to ask him what to do with your friend."

"What do you mean what to do with it?"

Shorty tossed his cigarette. "Hell, man, if I turn it loose here, the damn thing will die. It's probably never lived in the wild. Besides, it doesn't belong here. This isn't its territory. I thought maybe Jaime could keep it in the museum, but I couldn't reach him. Incidentally, you want to see him? Not Jaime, the snake, I mean. I put him in one of Dolores' big gallon jars."

I didn't much want to see the snake, and yet I did, too. Shorty led me inside. On the floor just inside the door sat a commercial mustard jar with the snake coiled up in the bottom. A series of air holes had been punched into the jar's lid. The snake must have been at least three and a half to four feet long. Folded back upon itself to accommodate the shape of the jar, its exact size was difficult to discern. It was a deep charcoal gray, black almost, with no markings of any kind. The rattles, somewhat lighter in color, stood upright almost like an antenna in the center of the coil. The snake regarded me malevolently while its wicked-looking forked tongue flickered in and out.

An involuntary shudder shook me, bringing me back to the problem at hand. "I've got to talk to the Crenshaws," I said. "Would you take me to their place?"

Shorty glanced at his watch. "You're not going to the meeting? The vans will be leaving in a few minutes."

"Goddamnit, Shorty. Person or persons unknown tried to kill me this afternoon. It's about time someone at Ironwood Ranch took that news seriously. I sure as hell do."

I doubt Shorty Rojas had ever quite come to grips with the essential differences between wrangling horses for a dude ranch and doing the same thing for a rehab joint. He hailed from a simpler, less complicated time long before the red-taped vagaries of the Louise Crenshaws and Lucy Washingtons of the world reigned supreme. People were people to Shorty Rojas, regardless of whether they were dudes or drunks.

I'm sure he shouldn't have, but when I asked him for a ride, he looked at me appraisingly, then shrugged. "Don't suppose it'll hurt nothin' if I take you there. When you finish, I can still drop you off at the meeting later."

I followed Shorty outside to an elderly Ford pickup parked ten yards up the hill. "Get in," he said. "She ain't pretty, but she'll get us there."

The pickup fired up after only one try. It slipped and slid some in the muddy track. As we started up the hill, an unopened can of Coors rolled out from under the seat and banged against the side of my shoe. When I reached down to pick it up, it was icy cold.

"Sorry about that," Shorty said sheepishly as I handed it back to him and he returned it to its place under the seat. "I like to have a cool one of an evening."

"No problem," I returned.

We sailed out of the parking lot just as people were beginning to climb into vans for the ride to the meetings in town.

The Crenshaws' house was located near the outskirts of Wickenburg, on a high bluff overlooking the highway. When we pulled up in front, Shorty stopped the pickup and turned off the engine. "Wait here," he said, climbing out of the truck and starting up the walk. There was no porch light shining on the flagstone patio, but there were lights on inside the house. The porch light came on moments after Shorty rang the bell.

Calvin was the one who came to the door, stepping back in surprise when he saw who it was. They talked for a few moments before Shorty motioned for me to get out of the truck and come to the door.

"Mr. Beaumont, what are you doing here?" Calvin Crenshaw demanded when I stepped into the light.

"Who is it, Cal?" Louise Crenshaw called from out of sight somewhere inside the house.

"It's nothing, hon. I'll handle it," he said, moving as if to close the door behind him before Louise got a look at who it was.

"Please," he began hurriedly, "my wife has been through too much already today. She can't handle any more…" But he was too late. Louise Crenshaw appeared in the lighted doorway before he managed to pull the door shut behind him.

At least someone who resembled Louise Crenshaw stood there. She wore a long blue robe and held a glass in one hand. I thought at first it might be Louise's much older sister, or maybe even her mother, but then I realized that for the first time I was seeing the real Louise Crenshaw, one washed clean of all her war paint. Her sallow face looked like a death mask, a pale reflection of the woman I'd argued with early that morning.

As soon as she recognized me, however, the look of cold fury that further disfigured her face left her identity unmistakable. It was Louise Crenshaw, all right. The one and only.

"What are you doing here?" she inquired imperiously.

"Somebody tried to kill me today," I answered reasonably enough, I thought, considering the circumstances. "In my cabin. Naturally, Lucy Washington wouldn't let me report it without your permission, so I'm here to find out what you intend to do about it. In case you haven't noticed, the phones aren't working."

"You say someone tried to kill you?"

Louise Crenshaw's question was couched in a dismissively sarcastic mode, derogatory but still slyly coy, almost like her old bitchy self.

"Come now, Mr. Beaumont. Surely your imagination is playing tricks on you. If you were female, I'd say you were overwrought, but men don't get overwrought. Or do they?"

"I'm not overwrought, as you call it. Somebody planted a damn rattlesnake in my cabin this afternoon. It's a wonder I didn't step on it in the dark."

Louise laughed then, uproariously, almost hysterically. Calvin Crenshaw hurried to his wife's side, a worried frown on his face.

"Come on inside, Louise. You really must sit down."

She pulled away from his grasp. "I'm all right, Calvin, but I want this man out of here. Now."

"We'll talk about this tomorrow," Calvin said to me, turning as if to take Louise back into the house.

"No, we won't," I insisted before he could hustle her inside. "We'll talk about it now! Tonight. Don't you understand? I'm telling you, somebody tried to kill me."

Calvin Crenshaw stubbornly shook his head. "Rattlesnakes are part of the natural order of things around here, Mr. Beaumont. They do turn up occasionally, especially when it rains."

"That's what I'm trying to tell you. Shorty says the snake isn't from around here, that it must be somebody's pet."

Louise came to life and spun around, her eyes wide. "Who says?"

"Shorty Rojas. He came to my cabin and caught the snake with a stick. It was in my closet."

Louise's face went suddenly slack. "You're right, Cal," she said weakly. "I want to go lie down, please."

"Sure, hon. Right away." Cal turned back to us. "Wait right here."

As gently as if she were a damaged porcelain doll, Calvin Crenshaw led his wife into the house, closing the door behind them. He was gone for several minutes. The longer he stayed away, the longer I had to wait, the more aggravated I became. When he finally returned to the door, though, I noticed a subtle change in the man. He was grim-faced but determined.

"Louise and I have talked it over. Our clients have had enough disturbances for one day. You're to go back to the ranch, Mr. Beaumont. Tomorrow we'll decide what's to be done."

My mouth must have dropped open half a foot. "Tomorrow? Are you crazy? I'm talking attempted murder here. Homicide. I'm not going back to that cabin, and I'm sure as hell not staying there until there's been a full police investigation."

"Then you won't be going back at all." Calvin Crenshaw spoke with a quiet assurance I had never seen in him before. "That being the case, Mr. Beaumont," Calvin continued, "I suggest you have Shorty here take you back to the ranch to pick up your belongings. If you hurry, you may be able to catch the Greyhound into Phoenix."

"Wait a minute. Pick up my belongings? Does that mean you're throwing me out?"

"If you're not prepared to do as you're told, Mr. Beaumont, you don't leave us any choice. We have a treatment center to run, and we must look to the welfare of all our clients."

"What the hell do you expect me to do? Forget that someone tried to kill me? Go back to my cabin and act like it never happened? You expect me to sleep there?"

Beside me on the porch, Shorty Rojas shifted uneasily, but Calvin Crenshaw gave him a warning head shake that stifled any objection Shorty might have had. I couldn't blame him. I had no doubt that if he had crossed this newly transformed Calvin Crenshaw, his job would be on the line.

"It's up to you, Mr. Beaumont," Calvin said, turning back to me, relaxing a little now that he felt he was once more in control. "If you go back to the ranch tonight, you're welcome to stay. If you leave Ironwood Ranch without permission, however, you won't be coming back."

Aggravation and mystification turned to rage. "That remains to be seen, Mr. Crenshaw," I replied, barely holding my temper in check. "I will be back, in the morning, along with someone from the Yavapai County Sheriff's Department. If anybody goes near my cabin between now and then, you can tell them for me that they're running the risk of becoming prime suspects in a felony investigation."

"Good night, Mr. Beaumont," said an unperturbed Calvin Crenshaw, closing the door in my face as deliberately as if I'd been a pushy door-to-door salesman.

I turned to Shorty. "What the hell got into him?"

But Shorty Rojas didn't answer. He pulled his cowboy hat down low on his forehead and turned away from me, walking quickly back toward his pickup.

"Sorry about that, Mr. Beaumont," he said. "Come on. I'll drop you in town, then I'd better get home and see what the river's doing. It'll be cresting pretty soon now."

I stopped long enough to look back at the house just in time to see the living room and kitchen lights go out. The message was clear. Calvin Crenshaw was shutting the place down and going to bed. J. P. Beaumont and his problems weren't important enough for the Crenshaws to lose any part of their good night's sleep.

Deep in the interior of the house another light went off, a hall light this time, while behind me the engine of Shorty's pickup roared to life.

I stood there for a moment longer, angry and puzzled both. Before my very eyes, Calvin Crenshaw, the lamb, had turned into a lion. A tough-minded lion at that. I had been there, seen it happen, and yet I had no idea what had caused it. What the hell had I missed?

It had something to do with Louise Crenshaw, Joey Rothman, and me. Of that much I was certain, but I'd be damned if I had the foggiest idea what the connection was.

Joey Rothman wasn't talking, so Louise Crenshaw would have to. Whether she wanted to or not.