Marjorie Thelen: High Desert Detective

He nodded. “It sure is.”

“You look like you belong here.”

“I do. You might come to like it.”

She looked up at the sorry looking bunk house. “I don’t know. My new home is not what I had envisioned.”

“Opal embellishes things sometimes. She wanted you out here bad. Keeps talking about how nice the house will look after you get it fancied up.”

She put her arm through his, and they resumed their walk.

“I’ll give this a try. It is 180 degrees from what I’m used to. I’ve been a city dweller most of my life.”

They reached the sagging front porch of her new home that looked like a cigar box that’d been in the sun too long.

“Going to invite me in for coffee?” Jake asked.

She smiled. “Sure, if you sing me that song. There’s no place to sit outside of two straight back chairs that might give you splinters.”

Jake followed her in. “I can handle that.”

She’d hired Opal’s girl, Queenie, to clean the place since cleaning was not Fiona’s strong suit. Cobwebs and dirty windows disappeared with a little scrubbing but the windows remained cloudy and pitted from the endless grit the wind brought along. The board walls were gray with age. No amount of scrubbing was going to change that. She could see daylight through the cracks in the boards. How did cowboys live here with ghosts to boot? She was still worried about those ghosts.

Jake carried the two chairs out to the porch. She poured water from a pitcher into a pan and turned on the gas burner to heat the water. There was no inside running water. She got water from an outside pump. This was way beyond rustic. Why hadn’t she quizzed Opal on the amenities of the old bunk house? She should have asked more questions before accepting the bribe in return for an alibi. But then things were moving pretty fast at the time with the police asking questions, and there was little time to think.

She joined Jake on the porch. A line of vehicle lights winked off and on along the dusty road leaving Opal’s house. The party had finally broken up.

Jake broke the still of the evening first. “I’m glad the Lodge family disaster is over.”

“Let’s not think about it. I want to think about designing my new home and Opal’s. That’s all I want to think about.”

“Right. Though, you know, I heard they found a guy in the desert to the east of here in an old rusted car, nothing but bones. The police don’t know if it was murder or suicide.”

“Really?” she said, trying to keep the excitement from her voice.

Jake started laughing.

She recovered her senses. “I’m not interested in the least.”

“Of course you are.”

“You are not going to tempt me. This is a spooky place. I’ve heard more about murders, ghosts and dead bodies in one day than I have heard my whole life.”

“You’re getting it all in one dose.”

“What happened to the skeleton in the desert?”

“The investigation continues.” He laughed. “See, you can’t help yourself. Detective Marlowe rides again. Do you want to take a drive tomorrow to see where they found the skeleton? I’ll take time off and show you some of the country.”

“How long will it take?” She had already learned this was an important question in a county of ten thousand square miles and less than seven thousand people.

“Several hours round trip. We could take a picnic lunch and make a day of it.”

She went inside to finish making coffee while she thought it over. She was anxious to start work on the bunk house. Contractors were coming Monday to work on the plumbing and wiring for electricity. A carpenter was to start work on shoring up the walls, installing insulation, and transforming the interior with dry wall. Was she crazy to try to save this old place? But tomorrow she had nothing planned, and it would be fun to see some of the country, which was beautiful if you liked sagebrush and red brown rim rock.

She put coffee singles in two mugs with hot water and carried the mugs outside. They sat in the still night under starry skies.

“This is pretty country,” she said.

“The best,” said Jake.

“Okay, I’ll go. Now how about that song?”

A loose shutter banged against the bunk house. For an hour Fiona had been listening to that banging shutter and something else. She tried to distinguish between the sound of the wind, and the sound that woke her up. Sleep was impossible. What was that sound? All she could think of were ghosts. There were no shadows in the room. Only blackness. She was having trouble getting used to the blackness of the night here. No horns honked, no lights glared outside, no hum of the city. Nothing but black. And the wind. Maybe she should go back to her nice, safe condominium in Northern Virginia.

There it was. A low moan. Her eyes searched each of the east facing windows that looked out over hay fields, herds of cattle, and rim rock. She saw only stars. A strange sight. Stars. In her warm bedroom back home, she saw the lights of the nation’s capital reflected on the walls. She wasn’t used to cold summer nights, the wind, the stars, the dust. She wasn’t used to any of this.

She eased up on one elbow and listened. Something was moaning. Did ghosts moan? They did in Walt Disney movies. Was it a wolf? No, Jake said there weren’t any wolves in this part of the country. Maybe they had moved in unannounced. Coyotes yipped and barked, day or night. But this didn’t sound like a healthy coyote. This sounded like something in distress, hopefully not a ghost in distress.

She was reluctant to leave the relative security and warmth of the cot Opal had lent her. It was a hard bed but she preferred it to a softer one in Opal’s house because she wanted to be in her own place. She needed furniture in this hollow, empty space, which would make the place much more inviting.

The moaning took on a deeper timbre. Maybe it was a hurt varmint. She considered telephoning for help. Jake would come. She held up her watch. The digital glow read 3:30 A.M. She hated to wake up anyone after that party. Maybe the sound would go away. She lay back and pulled the down comforter over her head, hoping sleep would come. It didn’t. The moaning continued. She turned on the flashlight Jake had given her, the only light near the bed. Maybe the light would make the moaning stop. It didn’t. She wondered if light went straight through ghosts.

What finally motivated her to rise and pull on the sweater she’d thrown on the bed for warmth was insatiable curiosity and, some would say, lack of common sense. The bare wood floor was cold, and she slid her feet into the sandals by the bed. The moaning seemed to be coming from the other side of the front door. Some animal must be injured and had crawled up on the porch to get out of the wind. Or maybe it was a person. She hoped it wasn’t Hank Little come to murder another woman. Maybe he only murdered wives. In that case she should be okay.

If she opened the door the culprit might be right there. What if it were something dangerous? She didn’t know all of the animals that lived here, but she was sure they were dangerous. Probably more dangerous if wounded. Jake said there were badgers. She didn’t know what a badger looked like or how big it was but it sounded ugly and dangerous.

Undecided, she watched the door, listening. The moan had a whine to it. Maybe it was a dog. There were dogs over at the main house. If it were a hurt dog, should she let it in out of the wind and cold?

She trained the flash light on the door and tip-toed across the floor, stopping at the window by the door. In a flash of courage she trained the flashlight on the porch floor outside the door. She saw nothing but black, but the moaning stopped and didn’t start again. That was a relief.