Aaron Elkins - Make No Bones

Nellie blinked at him. “How on earth would I come to have any idea about that?”

Honeyman shrugged deferentially. “I only meant that you were there. He was one of your party. I just thought you might-”

“Farrell,” Nellie said, “if that question means what I think it means, you’re about twenty miles off base. Whoever murdered Chuck Salish, it wasn’t somebody from WAFA. We’re on your side, or have you forgotten?”

To his credit, Honeyman held his ground. “As far as you know, nobody in the group had any kind of grudge against him?”

“Nobody there even knew him before Albert showed up with him.” Nellie was staring hotly at Honeyman, his bearded chin thrust out. “Now listen, Farrell, this is a respected organization of certified forensic scientists, and I’m privileged to head the national organization. There isn’t a one of those people you’re asking me about who hasn’t had more experience working with law enforcement than you have, dammit, and I resent your implications.”

Honeyman shifted impassively into the stolid copspeak that policemen used at such times. “I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but I’d still like an answer to my question. To your knowledge, did any person there have a grudge against Mr. Salish?”

Gideon winced. It was probably the first time in Nellie’s life that anyone had talked to him in that particular tone.

“No,” Nellie said angrily, “nobody had a grudge against anybody.”

“I see. Everything was sweetness and light,” Honeyman said, continuing to show more backbone than Gideon had given him credit for.

Nellie scowled at him for a moment, then bent his head while he used a paper clip to jab ferociously at some clotted tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. “Yes,” he muttered, “that’s right.”

Gideon stared at him. Nellie Hobert, ordinarily about as devious as a duck, was holding something back; he was almost sure of it. There was nobody whose forthrightness Gideon trusted more than Nellie’s, and yet “Hell,” Nellie mumbled as he got the pipe going again,

“I’m sorry, Farrell. I apologize. It’s been quite a day.” “Nothing to apologize for, sir,” Honeyman said, still stiff. Nellie’s face split into its familiar Muppet grin. “Then stop calling me ‘sir,’ all right? It makes me nervous.” Honeyman relaxed and smiled back at him. “Me too.” “It’s just that I thought you were barking up the wrong tree, that’s all.”

“I probably was.” He looked at his watch. “Five o’clock. Look, I better get a deposition from you. Would this be a good time to come on back to the office?”

“I don’t see why not. I don’t have anything pressing until eight. I’ve promised to report to the membership on the skeletal analysis.” He smiled wryly. “It appears I’m going to have some interesting things to tell them.” He glanced at Honeyman. “You have no objection to my telling them about Chuck Salish?”

Honeyman hesitated, then shook his head. “Go ahead, they may as well know. Christ, an FBI agent! Dr. Oliver, you’re welcome to come on over to the office too. You might be able to add something.”

“I can’t see what,” Gideon said. “Besides, I promised my wife I’d have a before-dinner drink with her. I’m already late.”

“You’ll be at the evening session?” Nellie asked him.

“I wouldn’t miss it,” Gideon said. He got up and made his good-byes, but his smile felt strained.

What was going on with Nellie?

Boeuf Wellington, Whitebark Lodge’s dinner entree, sounded dangerously ambitious to Gideon and Julie (the previous two main courses having been Rhoda’s Meatloaf and Pineapple-Wiener Kabobs). It also failed to appeal to John, who was in the mood, as always, for a hamburger. Thus, with a little over an hour to spare before Nellie’s eight o’clock report, the three of them drove to Sisters for dinner.

“Place looks like Dodge City,” John observed as they pulled into a parking lot off Cascade Avenue.

He had a point. Ordinarily, when town fathers decide that their central area needs a face lift, they focus their resources on making it look bright and new. In Sisters they took a different approach; they made it look bright and old. Pokey tourist traffic and roaring logging trucks aside, driving down the main street of Sisters was like driving through a freshly painted Western movie set: wooden I880-style storefronts, overhanging balustered porches that made half the buildings look like bordellos, and plank boardwalks. All this in a town in which no building predated the twentieth century.

Surprisingly, it had worked. The town’s appearance, while undeniably cute, had managed to stay somewhere this side of cutesy. Perhaps it was the surrounding pine forests, perhaps the bare, lonely, upward sweep of the Three Sisters to the southeast. Or maybe it was the hard-to-miss presence of so many honest-to-God, red-suspendered, flannel-shirted, wire-whiskered loggers. On either side of the parking slot into which Gideon had pulled were battered pickup trucks with bumper stickers. The one of the left said: “Save a logger, eat an owl.” The one on the right announced: “I love spotted owl-fried.”

Whatever it was, the rugged Old West ambience clicked, and if the pre-1970 photographs in one of the shop windows were any guide, the new-old Sisters was a big improvement over the old-old Sisters.

John’s state of mind at dinner was greatly improved. Farrell Honeyman, pleading shortage of manpower, had formally requested his assistance on the case, calling Seattle while Nellie was still in his office. And Charlie Applewhite, John’s boss, had tentatively approved, at least until it was positively determined whether the murdered man was Special Agent Chuck Salish. If it was, and they had the killing of a federal agent on their hands, the FBI’s involvement would become much more than tentative.

“There’s one problem, though,” John told them. “Applewhite says that if it looks like it’s gonna take a lot of time, I better make my apologies on that lecture.”

Gideon studied him. “Gee,” he said, “I wonder if it’s going to take a lot of time.”

John peered gravely back. “Heaps,” he said, and all of them laughed.

They were in the Hotel Sisters Restaurant, located in a yellow frame building dating from almost as far back (1912) as it had been made to look. Getting into the spirit of things, they had passed up the dining room to eat in Bronco Billy’s Saloon, complete with a swinging-door entrance from the lobby, a dark, polished, authentically antique bar backed by a long mirror, and buffalo and deer heads mounted on the walls. The waitresses wore cowboy vests and bolo ties.

They had eaten lunch late and weren’t hungry enough for the dinner plates, so they asked for sandwich menus. All of the entries, in accordance with what seemed to be the custom in this part of Oregon, had Western appellations: the Lone Star, the Barnyard Bird, the Buckaroo. Even the hamburgers had names: the Brama Bull (“smothered in mushrooms and melted cheddar cheese”), the Bullrider (“smothered in barbecue sauce”).

John was having trouble finding what he wanted. “So what’s a plain hamburger?” he asked the waitress.

She pointed with her pencil at the bottom of the menu. “Right there, hon.”

“‘The Roper,’” John read aloud. “’Plain and simple, no bull. He looked up at her and laughed. “Okay, I’ll have a Roper. But with fries.”

“They all come with fries, honey.”

Gideon and Julie asked for Barnyard Birds-broiled chicken sandwiches with chili, jack cheese, and guacamole. The waitress jotted down their orders and brought back a plate of nachos and three mugs of the local Blue Heron beer.