“We’re only going to be a minute,” Donna said. “I’m a spokesmodel. I can’t go to work with some gross inky thing on the back of my hand.”
Finally the man let us through door, unstamped.
From the look of the high, vaulted ceiling of the big room, it could have once been a barn or a stable. Mrs. Boggs Bailey, alive and well, whooped it up at a crowded table down near the stage. She’d acquired a large cowboy hat and was sitting on the lap of a man less than half her age.
At other tables sat tourists in polo shirts, media people in rumpled suits, plus a few bedraggled protesters in anti-grape tee shirts.
But no Jonathan. Or Luci.
On the stage, a bearded man spoke into a microphone.
“And now, as a special treat tonight, we’ve got a lady who’s been crankin’ out cowboy poetry since most of us were sleepin’ in our Roy Rogers jammies. You’re on, Mitzi, darlin’—”
“Jesus,” Donna hissed in my ear. “I can’t take this. I don’t see Jonathan, but Walker Montgomery just showed up.” She turned and waved at Mr. Montgomery, standing in the doorway.
He displayed the same grin-and-bear-it faux smile he’d given the woman who stopped him in the lobby on that first night.
Donna lowered her voice. “He’s totally geezeroid, but maybe he could give my book to somebody important. I don’t suppose you thought of bringing in my manuscript?”
The woman’s sense of entitlement was epic.
“My manuscript,” Donna said again. “I suppose you just, like, left it in the car? What do you think I came in here for?”
“I don’t know, Donna, but I’m here to get Mrs. Boggs Bailey and take her home, since your ankle seems to be just fine.”
I had an urge to say something really unkind as I dug into my bag for Rick’s key, but I kept my temper.
“Lock the car and bring the key right back. We’re leaving as soon as Mitzi has finished her performance.”
Leaving. The words were out of my mouth before I realized I wasn’t at all sure where we should go. Would it be safe to go back to the Rancho? If Rick had done something to Luci in a fit of phone rage, or whatever it was that came over him, things could be dangerous back there.
I hated to face it, but I was going to have to ask Jonathan for help. At least he could get a hotel room for Mitzi until everything got sorted out at the Rancho.
Donna was impervious to my tone of disapproval. “That key chain is so cool. Is it Kate Spade?” She fingered the pink and green leather of the elegant little wallet-keychain I still adored although it was years old.
The bearded man on stage shouted, “Ladies and Gentlemen, our own Mitzi Boggs Bailey!” Someone helped the old woman onto the stage.
“Are you all right?” she asked, staring at his beard.
“I sure am, Mitzi.” The man handed her the microphone. “I’m just fine. And I bet all the folks out there are fine too.”
Mitzi took the mike and turned to address the crowd.
“Are you folks all right?”
The audience clapped and stomped. Mrs. Boggs Bailey took off the cowboy hat, fanned herself, and gave everybody a huge grin.
“I can’t remember how I got myself here tonight, folks. But I guess what I should do is tell you the real story of Bill Bailey and why that old cowboy never did come home. You may have heard a song or two about that old man, but I’m the one who can tell you the true story, on account of that outlaw was my own father-in-law…”
Mitzi Boggs Bailey plunked the cowboy hat back on, adjusted the mike stand, and for the next twenty minutes, that microphone, and the entire room, belonged to her.
Disease or injury might have destroyed her short-term memory, but her distant memory banks were perfectly intact. Without hesitating on a word, Mitzi Boggs Bailey recited, in rhyming iambic pentameter, the tallest tall tale of the Wild West I had ever heard. It was the sort of verse where “poem” rhymed with “roam” and the images were as predictable as the outcome of the story, but that, I realized, was the point.
This was an ancient folk-art form, and Mitzi Boggs Bailey the Poet was mistress of her craft.
By the time she finished and took her bows to a storm of applause, my eyes were moist with tears for this amazing woman—for her current triumph and her irretrievable loss.
Even Donna—hovering by the exit—applauded with what looked like enthusiasm. Walker Montgomery seemed less impressed. He had one gnarled hand clamped onto Donna’s shoulder while the other clutched the folder with her battered manuscript inside. Did he actually think it might be good?
As the applause died down, the bearded M.C. jumped back onto the stage, the house lights came up, and someone offered Mrs. Boggs Bailey a hand down. But as she started toward the audience, a look of terror crossed her face. She pointed in the direction of Donna and Walker Montgomery.
“Wacky,” she said. “It’s wacky.”
Her expression was one of pure terror.
Chapter 44—Joaquin
The M.C. took the mike from the terrified Mitzi Boggs Bailey and looked where she was pointing.
“What’s that, Mitzi? Is something out there wacky? Well, look who’s here! Not wacky: Walker. Folks, we got us a real cowboy star here tonight!”
He signaled the lighting man to shine the spot on Walker and Donna.
“There he is, folks, Walker Montgomery: the TV star. Otherwise known as Stetson McGee, The Brazos Kid. Anybody here remember that show? Or, for you youngsters under fifty—how about Thomas Colt, Eye On the Beach?”
Walker waved at the stage with the gold folder, but he did not move from Donna’s side, or release his grip on her. There was another round of applause.
Mrs. Boggs Bailey’s eyes darted around the room, as if she were looking for an escape route. Her eyes focused on me.
“Dr. Manners! Are you all right?” She made her unsteady way down from the stage. “Do you know what Jonathan Kahn said about you?”
I pushed toward her.
“You talked with Jonathan? Here? Tonight?”
“Jonathan Kahn is the one who brought me here, silly.”
I’d feel better once I found Jonathan. He might be a lot of things, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t a murderer.
Mrs. Boggs Bailey grabbed my arm and pulled me toward the door to the bar.
“Is Jonathan in there?” I followed through the crowded bar. “Where we going?”
“The biffy.” She pointed to the sign that said “GALS” at the far end of the room. “I gotta go like crazy.”
Not having much choice, I followed her from the dance hall through the crowd around the bar area and past some intense pool players. I searched for Jonathan but didn’t see him or any of his entourage. Mitzi must have been muddled about seeing him here. We finally reached a line of women waiting their turn to use the facilities.
I looked at my watch. It was after ten. Wherever Jonathan was, I’d have to sober him up. If only Plantagenet were here.
The women in the line crowded around Mrs. Boggs Bailey.
“You are poet!” said a European tourist wearing a white cowboy hat and a Disneyland tee shirt. “Please to autograph my hat?”
Mrs. Boggs Bailey was delighted to sign the hat, plus several cocktail napkins and a Chamber of Commerce tourist map of the wineries of the Santa Ynez Valley.
When the business in the GALS room was finished, Mrs. Boggs Bailey wanted to go back to the dance hall.
“What were you going to tell me?” I asked as she pushed through the crowd. “Do you remember? When you were up on the stage? About what Jonathan Kahn said? ”
“I was on the stage?” Her eyes were opaque in the dim light.
“Hey, Doctor,” said a voice behind us. It was the odiferous cowboy. “That hottie that was with you. Is she—really a she? Or is she, you know, like you?”
As much as I wanted to dispel the confusion of myself with Marva, I couldn’t ignore his bigotry.
“Like me?” I said. “You mean—she’s a fan of cowboy poetry?”
“Oh, I love cowboy poetry!” Mrs. Boggs Bailey beamed as she pulled me back to the door to the dance hall and displayed her stamped hand. “Come on; it’ll be fun.”
But as I tried to follow, a man at the door stopped me with a heavy hand on my arm. “Two-fifty cover,” he said.
“But I already paid.” I looked around for the burly man, but he’d disappeared.
“Nobody gets in without a stamp,” said the man.
I turned around to give the smelly cowboy my best smile.
“Donna, the hottie you were talking about. She’s in there. She has my wallet. Could you talk your friend into letting me get her?”
The cowboy laughed.
“Good one, Doctor, but I happen to know you’re lyin’. I saw her and him take off a few minutes ago.”
“Who? When?”
“Her and that old-time TV star. What’s his name? Mitzi, what was that old dude’s name? They took off right after your number. A couple of bats out of hell.”
Mrs. Boggs Bailey ignored us as she peered through the door to see what was happening on the stage.
“Walker Montgomery is his name,” I said. “And you must be mistaken, Donna wouldn’t have left. She has my car keys and my money. Mrs. Boggs Bailey, do you see them in there? Donna or Walker Montgomery?”
“I don’t know any Walker Montgomery,” said Mrs. Boggs Bailey.
The cowboy laughed. “Sure you do, Mitzi. You called to him from the stage. He used to be a big TV star.”
“That man is no TV star,” said Mrs. Boggs Bailey with a laugh. “That’s Joaquin.”
“Joaquin?” My mind was spinning. “Walker is—Joaquin? He’s the ghost? The headless ghost of the Rancho Grande?”
Mrs. Boggs Bailey gave me a look of amused scorn.
“Of course not, silly. Sometimes he pretends to be a ghost, to scare me—but he’s just Joaquin. Joaquin Montoya. He used to work on the ranch, in the old days. When I was a girl. Oh, I did have a crush on that boy. But you know, I don’t think he really liked girls, if you know what I mean. There was scuttlebutt around town that he was kinda light in his boots…”
Joaquin. The cowboy all those gay letters were addressed to—he was Walker Montgomery.
Chapter 45—An Old Friend
Joaquin Montoya, ghost and gay cowboy, was Walker Montgomery, gun-toting poster boy for right-wing machismo .
What a secret that man had been keeping.
Those letters could destroy Walker’s life, forged or not. Even a hint he was gay—no matter how bogus—would alienate his whole fan base.
Another example of “gerbilling.”
Random incidents started falling into place with obvious and terrifying logic.
Walker/Joaquin must have been searching the Rancho looking for those letters—disguising himself as a ghost. Scaring Mrs. Boggs Bailey.
And me, of course. He was my headless ghost—tall, with that big collar on his coat turned up. He must have thought the letters were in my cabin, although I couldn’t imagine why.
And then he’d driven off in his red Mustang, which looked orange under those lights.
Mrs. Boggs Bailey said he’d worked on the Rancho when she was a girl. So he’d know all the passageways and tunnels. That’s probably how he’d “flown out the window” with Luci.
If he knew Luci had those letters, he had a motive to take her. Even kill her. He’d been stalking her all day, somebody said. And I’d seen him be pretty fierce with her. He might have followed her up to her room after Plant’s presentation.
Those letters would have given him a motive to kill Ernesto, too, if he knew Ernesto was the forger.
I’d heard him threaten Toby myself—in that phone message:
“Toby Roarke, if you don’t have that stuff for me tonight, you are a dead man!”
That “stuff” wasn’t some ghostwritten memoir. It was the forged letters. Which had somehow traveled from Toby’s desk to Mrs. Boggs Bailey’s chifforobe, and then to me—and I’d stupidly given them to Luci in Donna’s folder.
Which meant Donna Carillos was off pitching her book to a murderer.
And it was my fault.
I needed to call the Sheriff’s department. And hope it wasn’t too late.
Mrs. Boggs Bailey pushed past the bouncer and made a bee-line for the cowboy with the lap. She seemed safe enough there. I needed to call Detective Fiscalini. Now.
I made my way back through the bar crowd and was relieved to spot an ancient pay phone in a dark corner near the entrance. But as I fought my way through the incoming patrons, I thought about the actual facts I had to substantiate my fears:
1) Luci Silverberg left the hotel without putting the cap on her nail polish.
2) Walker Montgomery used to be called “Joaquin,” owned a red Mustang, and used exaggerated language in a telephone message.
3) Alberto’s calligraphy pens went temporarily AWOL and came back again.
4) Ernesto Cervantes liked to copy old movie star’s autographs.
5) I’d seen some ersatz gay cowboy letters that had been stolen by an ersatz Manners Doctor.
They’d probably call the paramedics to pump me with Thorazine if I took that stuff to the sheriff.
No. The person I needed to talk with was Rick. I’d let him try to get through to Detective Fiscalini.
Was that safe? I still felt pinpricks of fear on my neck when I thought about that stomped cell phone.
But if Walker was the killer, Rick wasn’t. Simple as that. I could not see those two in league with each other. There had to be another explanation for the stomped cell phones.
Okay, I’d call Rick at the Rancho.
I finally made it to the phone, but when I picked up the receiver, I realized I had no credit cards on me—not even a couple of quarters.
I tried to fight the panic that rose in my throat as I realized how helpless Donna had left me. I pretended to study the ceiling, where matchbooks and business cards were glued among the bills. It was so low that I could almost reach a bill and pull it down. Would they miss just a dollar?
“Hello, Darlin!”
I cringed as a bear hug from behind nearly knocked me over. I could smell the familiar breath of a certain motorcycle rider.
“You need change for that, darlin’?” the biker said, dropping several coins into the slot. “Long distance or local?”
I gave him as grateful a smile as I could muster as I heard a dial tone buzz.
The biker planted a kiss on the back of my neck.
“Just calling the Rancho Grande,” I said as I dialed, trying to figure out how to dismiss him politely.
“You ain’t calling that TV dude you’ve been hanging with, are you?” he said. “I hate that guy.” He scrutinized my body, stopping to stare at my breasts. “What—doesn’t Mr. Obnoxious TV star like big tits? I didn’t know those were falsies before, but I kinda like you without ’em. Looks better with your shape. I’ve always been more of a leg man.”
I gave him a tight smile and pulled my jacket across my chest as I listened to the phone ring at the other end of the line. At least the call seemed to be going through.
The biker’s words finally filtered into my brain—the TV star he was talking about had to be Jonathan.
“The obnoxious TV star. Are you talking about Jonathan Kahn—the host of The Real Story?”
“That’s the one.” The biker grinned. “I’m glad he got eighty-sixed. If I was you, I wouldn’t put up with his crap no matter how much he paid, but that’s just me. I’m gonna get another beer. You want something?”
I shook my head. So Jonathan had been in here. With Marva, of all people—and they’d been asked to leave the bar. What was Marva up to? Did she know about Walker Montgomery and his ghost impersonations? She had to know Walker was the Joaquin of those letters. So she must be some kind of blackmailer, in competition with Luci
. Maybe she was blackmailing Jonathan, too. I held the phone to my ear, listening to it ring at the Hacienda. Why wasn’t anybody picking up?
“Well if it isn’t the Manners Doctor!”
I turned just as a camera flashed. A reporter. I recognized him from the crowd that had surrounded me at the Rancho last night. He gave me a mean grin.
A photo of the Manners Doctor at the Maverick Saloon would probably be a marketable commodity, given my current position in the news cycle. I tried to hide my face, but he moved in for a closer shot.
A voice finally came on the phone. Miguel.
After I’d outlined our situation, he shouted over loud noise in the lobby.
“Donna pretended her ankle was broken? Ambition can make her stupid.”
I thought I heard somebody screaming in the background. Miguel shouted in Spanish.
“Can you put Rick Zukowski on the phone?” I blocked my face with my purse as the reporter moved in on me. The camera kept flashing. The reporter asked something about my “secret life as a hooker.” I tried to shoo him away.
“Can’t you see the lady is making a phone call?” said a shrill voice. “You people make me barf. You’ve got real news going on here—hundreds of people protesting the destruction of our habitat—and what do you report? Some trash-TV guy’s ex-wife makes a phone call!” I recognized the Stomp out Grapes tee-shirt. He pushed the photographer aside and gave me a grin.
I’ve never been so happy to see blonde dreadlocks.
I strained to hear Miguel’s voice over the din.
“I cannot leave the desk. Some guests are still waiting for their rides. I will tell Alberto you have found Mrs. Boggs Bailey.” He lowered his voice to a whisper I could barely hear. What he said sounded like, “Santiago has gone crazy. He wants to kill himself. He has a knife.”
Someone in the background in the lobby shouted again.
I heard Rick’s voice from far away.
Then Alberto’s.
Then…dead air.
I clung to the phone, clicking the cradle. I finally got a dial tone and hung up, confused and defeated. Santiago had chosen a really bad moment for a nervous breakdown.
Behind me, the crowd was turning ugly. The protester and the reporter were exchanging unpleasant words.