The Boogens Page 8

  “Mark! Over here!”

  Trish was holding up her hand and smiling at him from a booth about twenty feet away. Mark grinned and threaded his way past a serving cart, then slid into the booth beside her. She was wearing a silky black skirt and a low-cut peasant blouse that left very little to the imagination. Mark gave her a quick, discreet glance as he sat down.

  Jessica had two empty cocktail glasses in front of her, and Trish was sipping from a big mug of beer. Roger seemed to be drinking water.

  “Thank God,” Jessica said as quickly as he sat down. “Now we’ve got a man who’ll drink with us.” She glanced at Roger with a look of disgust. “This dummy’s driving back to Denver tonight.”

  “Really?” Mark said. “Why?”

  “Because,” Roger said with mock solemnity, “I have a high sense of responsibility. When I make a commitment to my employer, neither rain, nor sleet, nor hail, nor dark of night shall stay this courier from his appointed rounds.”

  “Oh, frogshit,” Jessica groaned.

  Roger gave her a look of distaste. “Frogshit? Really, Jess, you’d better lay off those martinis.”

  “Hmph,” Jessica snorted. “After staring at the four walls of a haunted house all day, how else am I going to have any fun?”

  The waitress came and Mark ordered a beer. “And one more martini,” Jessica said. “A double.”

  Roger groaned and looked at the ceiling while the girl picked up Jessica’s empty glasses.

  “You got a tummyache, Roger?” Jessica asked sweetly.

  “No, but you’re going to have a wonderful headache, dear heart.”

  “Good. Then I won’t have to get up and stare at the rain all day tomorrow.”

  Trish finally managed to squeeze in a word. “Did you find your friend?” she asked Mark.

  He shook his head. “Nobody has seen him, heard of him or even knows he exists.” He told them about his visit to the sheriff’s office and his thorough canvassing of Pineglen. “You didn’t find any notes after I left, did you?” he asked. “Or any other clues to the great disappearing act?”

  Trish shook her head. “Nothing.”

  Mark felt a little embarrassed, as if he had dampened their party. “Did your dog ever show up?”

  “No,” Jessica said. “He must still be out in the forest. And the squirrels and chipmunks around here are going to be damned sorry about that.”

  “Maybe Tippy and Ken ran off together,” Roger suggested. “Has your friend got any kinky habits?”

  Mark laughed. “Not that I know of.”

  “Well,” Roger said, “consider this. You’re hitching a ride and you get picked up by Bo Derek, and she wants you to come home and help her move some furniture around. Are you going to refuse? Or even take thirty seconds to call anybody? Much less another guy?”

  Mark shrugged. Short of Ken having fallen down a hole somewhere, that was about the only possibility he could imagine. And Ken did spend a lot of time chasing a variety of girls.

  The waitress arrived with the drinks and took their dinner orders.

  “Another possibility,” Roger said after the girl was gone, “is the CIA. They needed a fearless undercover agent to infiltrate the highest echelons of the KGB, and Ken happened to be the spitting image of Russia’s most deadly spy. In such circumstances, of course, Ken must disappear without a trace. The only thing he can leave behind is his Massey-Ferguson hat, because the Russians all know that the Massey-Ferguson Company is a front for the CIA.”

  Mark laughed and downed half his beer, feeling a little more relaxed. The chances were a thousand to one in favor of Ken popping up sooner or later; no doubt he would have a story as preposterous as any of those Roger was suggesting. And considering the woman sitting next to him, he was not that unhappy about his fishing trip being scrubbed.

  They drank two bottles of wine with dinner and talked about music, movies and the best places to go in Denver. With some prodding from Trish, Mark told about his two jobs and his hopes of going back to school full time and getting his engineering degree by the end of next summer. Then he planned to go to California and seek his fortune.

  “I think that’s great, Mark,” Jessica said, a little fuzzily. “And I think we should go dancing to celebrate your new career.”

  “I’m for that,” Trish said. “How about that country-western place we saw on the way into town?”

  “Yeah,” Jessica said and grabbed Roger’s arm. “The sign said they’ve got a live band. It’ll be great fun! Shit-kicking music, cowboys—whaddya say, podner?”

  Roger grimaced and glanced at Mark. “She thinks Willie Nelson is sexy.”

  “I don’t think he’s sexy,” Jessica said. “I know he’s sexy. What do you say, Trish?”

  Trish smiled. “Sexy.”

  “How about it, Mark?” Jessica asked. “Beer and boogie?”

  “Sounds great.”

  “Roger?”

  Roger shook his head. “You know I can’t, Jess. I gotta be at work by seven in the morning, and it’s a three-and-a-half-hour drive down.”

  “Oh, come on,” Jessica urged. “You’re not really going to drive it tonight, are you?”

  “I’m gonna go back to the house, catch a few hours’ sleep and start out.”

  “Just come with us for a little while.”

  “No way, Jess. If I stay up and party, they’ll find me at the bottom of some canyon tomorrow morning. Forget it.”

  “I think he’s right,” Mark said. “That road is dangerous. I sure wouldn’t drive it without any sleep.”

  “See,” Roger said.

  Jessica sighed with irritation and pulled away from Roger. “Jeez, I love the way you men stick together. It really is a sexist world.”

  “Go have fun,” Roger said. “I’m not stopping you. Mark, you can take them over there and get ’em home, can’t you?”

  Mark shrugged, uncertain if he was adding to the friction. Not knowing Roger and Jessica that well, he wasn’t even sure there was any friction. “Sure,” he said.

  Jessica drank the last of her wine and smiled coldly. “Okay, Roger. But you’re going to be damned sorry when I come home with some handsome rhinestone cowboy. Let’s go.”

  Roger yawned and slid out of the booth. “I’m consumed with jealousy,” he said. “Just don’t let the guy bring his goddamned horse.”

  Trish laughed and took Mark’s arm, suggesting the spat was no more serious than any of Roger and Jessica’s usual bantering.

  “Well, of course we don’t know for sure the skeletons belong to Hitchings and Thomas,” Sheriff Tolivar said. “A lot of men have died in those mine shafts up there. And it wouldn’t surprise me none if some of them didn’t have wooden legs.”

  “This wasn’t a wooden leg, Sheriff,” Chris said. “It was stainless steel, the kind that wasn’t developed until after World War II.”

  Tolivar nodded. “Well, you got a point there.”

  They were sitting in the front parlor of the Summit Hotel, with Tolivar holding the orange backpack in his hands, slowly turning it over and looking inside as if he had never seen such a thing before.

  Brian and Chris had gotten to his office a little after five and found the door locked with a little clock in the window, indicating he would be back at eight. Brian had left a note saying they would be at the Summit Hotel and it was urgent that he contact them. Tolivar had finally shown up at ten-thirty, not looking too happy about the summons.

  “And this backpack was layin’ there by the skeletons?” he asked.

  “No,” Brian said, “it was in a different part of the mine. Chris found it in a large stope that was partially filled with water.”

  “It would have been a little east of where the skeletons were,” Chris said. “And about a hundred feet deeper. The skeletons were in the main shaft, on the other side of the cave-in.”

  Tolivar nodded and glanced at each of them. “You went past that cave-in?”

  “It was only blocking ten or fiftee
n feet of the shaft,” Brian said. “We dug a crawl hole through it.”

  “You dug a crawl hole all by yourself, Mr. Lockett?”

  Brian hesitated. “Yes,” he said. When they left the mine and drove down the mountain, Tim had asked them to drop him off about a mile from town. He said people would probably be mad at him if they knew he was working in the Hatcher mine. So there was no use in getting them all upset.

  “That’s a pretty dangerous thing to do, Mr. Lockett. How far past the cave-in did you go?”

  Chris gave the man a cold smile. “Isn’t this all beside the point, Sheriff? It’s obvious that two men died in that mine, and they were probably the two men who came here in 1954. It seems to me your principal interest should be in finding out how they died and who that backpack belonged to.”

  Tolivar nodded and hefted the backpack a couple of times. “You know those two men were only here a month or so back in fifty-four. Then they headed out for Arizona. That’s where they found their truck. Down by the Superstition Mountains.”

  Brian sighed. “That’s what Mr. Blanchard told us, Sheriff, but it seems pretty obvious that they didn’t go to Arizona. Why don’t you have the coroner come up and look at those skeletons? I’m sure he can make a positive identification from their teeth.”

  Tolivar gave him a narrow look. “Don’t get excited, Mr. Lockett. I know my business. I’ll have the coroner up here soon enough. In the meantime, it might be a good idea if you just stay out of that mine.”

  Chris straightened. “Why?” she demanded.

  “For one thing, it’s dangerous. For another, I don’t want any evidence disturbed up there. If those two skeletons turn out to be Hitchings and Thomas, it’s mighty peculiar to find them in that mine. And your findin’ this backpack up there raises some questions too.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  “I’m not sure, Mr. Lockett. But it’s clear enough there’s been some people in that mine who weren’t supposed to be there.”

  Brian shook his head. “Well, I’m sorry, Sheriff, but we have work to do in that mine. The mine belongs to the Loomis Company, and if you want to stop us from entering it, I’m afraid you’re going to have to get a court order.”

  Tolivar looked at each of them, then chewed the inside of his mouth for a minute, as if uncertain about the legalities of the situation. “Just what is it you’re lookin’ for in that mine, Mr. Lockett?”

  “That should be obvious. We’re looking for anything that’s worth digging out of there.”

  Tolivar gave a derisive snort. “Man like Loomis buys up a hundred old mines, thinkin’ nobody was smart enough to take out all the gold and silver in the last hundred years. There ain’t nothin’ in that mine.”

  Brian smiled. “That remains to be seen.”

  “Yeah, I guess it does,” Tolivar said wearily. He pulled himself up with a squeaking of leather and the tinkling of keys. “Well, I’ll probably be up there in the mornin’ with the coroner.”

  He walked out of the parlor carrying the backpack. He stopped for a minute at the counter and said something to the room clerk. The kid shook his head, and Tolivar disappeared in the direction of the front door.

  “Well, he’s not exactly Sherlock Holmes,” Chris said. “I have a feeling he thinks we’re imposing on him.”

  Brian smiled and rose. “I want to try to get hold of Alan Freedman again.”

  “Good idea,” Chris said. She got up and they headed for the stairs. Brian had called his office and his partner’s house four times since they had gotten back to the hotel. There had been no answer at either place.

  “Do you mind if I come in?” Chris asked when they reached Brian’s room.

  “Of course not.” He pushed the door open for her.

  She smiled and crossed slowly to the window. “Your room is much nicer than mine. You have a spittoon.”

  Brian laughed and closed the door. “I’ll loan you mine for the night.”

  She looked out the window for a minute, then turned around. “You wouldn’t happen to have anything to drink, would you?”

  “A little scotch.”

  “That would be wonderful.” She dropped into a chair, stretched her legs out and laughed. “This is a first for me.”

  “How so?” Brian asked as he unwrapped two glasses in the bathroom.

  “It’s the first time I’ve ever asked a man if I could come into his room and then asked him if I could have a drink. My eighty-five-year-old grandmother would be shocked.”

  Brian smiled and poured an inch of scotch into each glass. “Your eighty-five-year-old grandmother probably isn’t as beautiful as you are.”

  Chris raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “Why, Mr. Lockett, I was beginning to wonder if you even noticed I was a woman.”

  Brian glanced at her. Until now he had been under the impression that she was all business and didn’t want to complicate her job with any socializing. In the back of his mind there was also the thought that a woman as beautiful as she was probably had her choice of Houston oil millionaires. He added a little water to the drinks and carried them out to the bedroom. “As I recall, you mentioned something about being a female when we were driving up from the airport yesterday. And then I noticed you wore a skirt at dinner tonight.”

  She nodded. “So I did.”

  He handed her a glass and lifted his own for a toast. “To your extreme femaleness,” he said.

  She smiled and drank. “Thank you.”

  Brian remembered his earlier feeling of awkwardness over the fact that she was a client and thus not fair game. Now he knew better. He gazed silently at her, feeling his temperature inching upward. “I’d better make that phone call,” he said.

  The phone rang only once before Alan answered. He’d taken his wife and kids out to dinner, he said, explaining his absence. “I’m afraid I haven’t got much to tell you, Brian. A missing persons report was filed in Summit, Colorado, and apparently the sheriff up there made a search of the Hatcher mine and the surrounding area. Then, about two weeks later, the Arizona police reported finding the kids’ truck in the Superstition Mountains. They spent about ten days searching the mountains, but they didn’t come up with anything, not even an old campfire or any camping equipment that might have given them some clue as to where the kids had gone.”

  “How about the assay offices?”

  “I checked all the offices close to Summit, and none of them had any record of Hitchings or Thomas bringing in any ore. Sounds to me like they were just skylarking and wandered off into those Arizona mountains, not realizing how deadly that country is. So I doubt if they did much work in the Hatcher mine.”

  “What did the report from the sheriff in Summit say?”

  “Not much. And some people up there said they saw Hitchings and Thomas leave town in their truck. One of them said Hitchings told him they were going down to find the Lost Dutchman mine.”

  “Who said that?”

  “A man named Charlie Lucas. He runs a general store up there. Or at least he did in 1954.”

  “Lucas? Are you sure?”

  “Yeah. Why?”

  “Nothing,” Brian said. “Maybe just a coincidence. Who was the sheriff at the time?”

  “A man named Raymond Tolivar.”

  “Huh,” Brian grunted. “Do you have any idea where Hitchings and Thomas got the money to buy the Hatcher mine?”

  “I don’t know for sure. But I gather the Hitchings family was loaded with money. A big New York law firm. They hired a private detective to look for the kids and I guess he spent a couple of months roaming around the Superstition Mountains. He didn’t come up with anything.” Alan was silent for a minute. “So what’s new up there?”

  “Nothing,” Brian said. “I’ll fill you in later. Go on back to bed.”

  “Thanks, pal. You’re all heart. Talk to you later.”

  “Hmph,” Brian grunted after he hung up.

  “What was that about Tim Lucas?” Chris asked.


  “Nothing about Tim. But a man named Charlie Lucas, who ran the general store here in 1954, reported that the Hitchings kid told him they were going down to Arizona to find the Lost Dutchman mine.”

  “Tim’s father?”

  “Could be.”

  Chris frowned at the carpet and shook her head. “This is all getting very strange. And I get an eerie feeling every time I go in that mine. Like there’s something evil in there.” She shrugged and laughed. “That’s silly, I suppose, but I saw some more strange animals around that lake today. Do you suppose there might be some radioactive material down there? Uranium or something that’s causing all kinds of genetic mutations?”

  Brian came over and sat in the other chair. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “Today everybody’s frightened about our scientists fooling around with DNA and creating monsters. But too much radiation can do the same thing. Especially with species that reproduce so rapidly.”

  “True,” Brian said. “But I doubt if that has anything to do with those two skeletons.”

  “Do you suppose Sheriff Tolivar knows something about them? He seemed awfully uneasy about the whole thing.”

  Brian shrugged. “I think he might have been uneasy because he filed a report saying he had searched the mine, and Hitchings and Thomas weren’t in it. If those skeletons turn out to be Hitchings and Thomas, it won’t look so good on his record,”

  Chris dropped her head back on the chair and closed her eyes. “You know something? I’m getting tired of thinking about the Hatcher mine. And I’m being paid to work on it only eight hours a day. I’d rather think about something else for a while.”

  “Like what?”

  She smiled. “Like when you discovered I was a female.”

  Brian rose and put his drink on the table. He leaned forward to kiss her. “The precise moment was when you came out of that tunnel at the airport. I saw the most provocatively female female I had ever seen in my life. I figured that woman was headed for a mountaintop or a stream somewhere to model for some kind of perfume commercial. I, on the other hand, was going to be stuck with a middle-aged female engineer who chewed tobacco and armwrestled lumberjacks.”