ranch, with their wives if they’re married.
A little town of our own, sort of.”
“Cowboys,” Toby said in the awed tone of voice with which he had spoken
of the private graveyard and of the prospect of having a pony. Montana
was proving to be as exotic to him as any distant planet in the comic
books and science fiction movies he liked. “Real cowboys.”
Carolyn Youngblood greeted them at the door and warmly welcomed them.
To be the mother of Paul’s children, she must have been his age, fifty,
but she looked and acted younger. She wore tight jeans and a
decoratively stitched red-and-white Western shirt, revealing the lean,
limber figure of an athletic thirty-year-old.
Her snowy hair–cut short in an easy-care gamine style–wasn’t brittle,
as white hair often was, but thick and soft and lustrous. Her face was
far less lined than Paul’s, and her skin was silk-smooth. Heather
decided that if this was what life in the ranch country of Montana
could do for a woman, she could overcome any aversion to the
unnervingly large open spaces, to the immensity of the night, to the
spookiness of the woods, and even to the novel experience of having
four corpses interred in a far corner of her backyard.
After dinner, when Jack and Paul were alone for a few minutes in the
study, each of them with a glass of port, looking at the many framed
photographs of prize-winning horses that nearly covered one of the
knottypine walls, the attorney suddenly changed the subject from
equestrian bloodlines and quarter-horse champions to Quatermass
Ranch.
“I’m sure you folks are going to be happy there, Jack.”
“I think so too.”
“It’s a great place for a boy like Toby to grow up.”
“A dog, a pony–it’s like a dream come true for him.”
“Beautiful land.”
“So peaceful compared to L.A. Hell, there’s no comparison.” Paul
opened his mouth to say something, hesitated, and looked instead at the
horse photo with which he’d inoken off his colorful account of
Ponderosa Pines’ racng triumphs. When the attorney did speak, Jack had
the feeling that what he said was not what he had been out to say
before the hesitation. “And though we aren’t spitting-distance
neighbors, Jack, I hope we’ll be close in other ways, get to know each
other well.”
“I’d like that.” The attorney hesitated again, sipping from his glass
of port to cover his indecision.
After tasting his own port, Jack said, “Something wrong, Paul?”
“No, not wrong … just … What makes you say that?”
“I was a cop for a long time. I have a sort of sixth sense about
people holding back something.”
“Guess you do. You’ll probably be a good businessman when you decide
what it is you want to get into.”
“So what’s up?” Sighing, Paul sat on a corner of his large desk.
“Didn’t even know if I should mention this, cause I don’t want you to
be concerned about it, don’t think there’s really any reason to be.”
“Yes?”
“It was a heart attack killed Ed Fernandez, like I told you. Massive
heart attack took him down as sudden and complete as a bullet in the
head. Coroner couldn’t find anything else, only the heart.”
“Coroner? Are you saying an autopsy was performed?”
“Yeah, sure was,” Paul said, and sipped his port. Jack was certain
that in Montana, as in California, autopsies were not performed every
time someone died especially not when the decedent was a man of Eduardo
Fernandez’s age and all but certain to have expired of natural
causes.
The old man would have been cut open only under special circumstances,
primarily if visible trauma indicated the possibility of death at the
hands of another. “But you said the coroner couldn’t find anything but
a damaged heart, no wounds.”
Staring at the glimmering surface of the port in his glass, the
attorney said, “Ed’s body was found across the tbreshold between his
kitchen and the back porch, lying on his right side, blocking the door
open. He was clutching a shotgun with both hands.”
“Ah. Could be suspicious enough circumstances to justify an autopsy.
Or it could be he was just going out to do some hunting.”