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RAINBOW HORSES

A mystery

By Jerrie Hurd

Seven horses guard the seven directions . . .

         The YELLOW horse guards the West

         Where sunsets gather, and dust devils dance.

Riding the yellow horse requires skill.

It is quick as lightning, fickle as luck.

PART 1

Sheriff Samantha (Sam) Nielsen was driving along the bottom of a deep canyon on a narrow dirt road, listening to her dead husband’s music when seven wild horses crashed through the brush and jumped in front of her. Her first thought was to wonder if her husband had been distracted like that—off on a wave of song—when he drove into a concrete barrier dividing one of Los Angeles’ many freeways. Her second thought was that she might also die.

She swerved, barely missing a big gray—the stallion. With him were five or six duns and a black colt, or, maybe, two colts. She couldn’t be sure. The swerve had sent her patrol car into a skid. Steering furiously, she fought to keep herself from going into the storm-swollen stream on her right. It didn’t help that on her left were huge boulders. Even worse, the morning light skimming the canyon’s uneven ridge had created alternating patches of bright sunlight and deep shadow, both equally blinding. Most of the time, she had no idea how close she was to the edge of the water or anything else. Finally, her vehicle fishtailed and banged to a halt against one of the big rocks.

The horses, unhurt, ran along the road ahead of her to where the stream widened. Then they splashed into the water, churning up enough spray to sprinkle the sunshine with rainbow. That unexpected beauty took what breath she had left.

Local indigenous believed that White Bead Woman, a goddess, made the horse. It was to be the medicine animal that completed the world. Knowing that, White Bead Woman took great care with her work. She used red stone for the heart, small cloud for the mane, and black cloud for the tail. She caught distant thunder for the hooves . . .

Sam shook her head. She couldn’t recall when she’d first heard that myth. What was it about horses? Every Native American she knew believed horses were magical. And they weren’t alone. The Greeks claimed their god Poseidon created the horse, and, to this day, the white-capped breakers that roll in from the sea are known as “the white horses.” In Ireland, O’Donohue’s legendary white horses supposedly reappeared every seventh year to carry the hero over the lakes of Killarney—an event accompanied by hordes of fairies and unearthly music. Not to be forgotten, were horned unicorns, winged Pegasus, and the Biblical Horsemen of the Apocalypse who supposedly rode steeds of white, red, black, and pale.

Personally, she preferred her patrol car—a mostly white SUV. When it didn’t run right, she could get it fixed at the local garage. At least that’s what she liked to tell herself in her down-to-earth role as the Sheriff of Drinkwater County. She lied. Even in her practical-sheriff moments, she understood the fascination. Riding a horse across an open expanse was like sliding along the seam between heaven and earth. Nothing quite like it.

She shook her head. Spin a story. Say a prayer. Sing a chant. Take what comfort you can. One moment you are on the rough road to somewhere. The next moment, wild horses jump in front of you. Or people die—her husband—without rhyme or reason. Unless, of course, you choose to believe the made-up stories. In the case of her husband’s death, some of those made-up stories were being whispered behind her back.

She sat a moment longer, watching the horses, reminding herself that she’d already survived an end-of-the-world-as-she-knew-it crisis. She could do it again if she had to. On the other side of the stream, the horses fanned out. Then disappeared, one by one, around a turn in the canyon. At that same moment, her husband’s music rose on a swell of percussion that hinted at horses’ hooves. Then just when it should have crested, the music slipped into an achingly beautiful lyrical melody.

Perfect, she breathed.

The music wasn’t real. It was something only she heard, like a catchy jingle you can’t stop humming only fuller, richer. Her dead husband had composed enough music for enough movies that she could recall bits that fit almost any circumstance. And, since she spent a lot of hours alone, driving the backcountry of Drinkwater, she’d gotten into the habit of indulging herself with the remembered bits of his music that she could hold onto. And, yes, there had been moments in her grief when she was tempted to follow the music into oblivion . . . but the music wouldn’t go there. The music was his. He was the dreamer—the one who lived light, always laughing, never caring for tomorrow. She was the one who moved in to make sure he remembered to eat regularly and pay his bills. When she gave birth to their daughter, he asked her to marry him, an act so responsible, so completely out of character, she’d laughed, thinking he couldn’t be serious. She didn’t trust happiness. She was always waiting for the crash.

This one wasn’t too bad. She rubbed a sore spot where her shoulder knocked against her side door. His crash had left her in far worse shape. If not for their daughter . . . she paused to reshape that thought. For their daughter’s sake, she’d figured out a new life. She was the Sheriff of Drinkwater County, Idaho. In fact, she’d been the sheriff long enough to be up for re-election in a few weeks. Hard to believe.

It was her job that had brought her out here, all by herself, driving this rough, rock-strewn canyon. Rain, not horses, was the usual worry. If she got caught in a flash flood, she’d have no place to run. For that reason, she hadn’t been entirely inattentive. Even as she listened to the music, she’d kept an eye on the weather and rising stream as well as the road. In the catalog of possible catastrophes, she hadn’t given wild horses a thought.

She rotated her arm. It was sore but not injured. Airbags might have helped, but, out here, in the middle of America’s nowhere, everybody disabled their airbags. In a place where the nearest tow truck was half-a-day away, deployed airbags only complicated getting back on the road, which was what she needed to do.

She opened the door and climbed out to assess the damage. She noted a new dent in the bumper and a crease along the back rear panel. Neither were the first scars her official ride had acquired in the line of duty. Then she climbed onto the dented bumper to check her antennae. She had three. None picked up anything down in this canyon. Likewise, her cell phone had been out of service for at least an hour. She was “down a dirt highway,” the local expression for being out of contact and miles and miles from anywhere.

When her husband crashed, she packed a few mementos and brought her daughter back to this place she called “home.” Never mind that home happened to be one of the most desolate places in America—desolate and dying. It was one of the ironies of the Twenty-First Century that the wide-open spaces of the American West were not disappearing. They were growing. Huge areas outside cities like Denver, Santa Fe, Boise, and Phoenix were losing population at the rate of two per cent a year. At that rate, in a few decades, there would be nothing left in a county like Drinkwater but ghost towns and state highways. Even in Idaho, most people had never heard of Drinkwater County. That was remarkable considering her county—the jurisdiction she sheriffed—was larger than the state of Massachusetts.

To make a long story short, there weren’t many jobs in a place like Drinkwater. The old sheriff was retiring; she ran for the office and won. The night she won, she celebrated at the Stagecoach Saloon, a local hang-out. She was happy and confused and not sure she was up to the job. Worse, her husband’s epic themes kept playing over and over in the back of her head. She knew the idea of her becoming the Sheriff of Drinkwater County would have amused him, but she didn’t need his epic, over-sized music playing over and over, like a joke, or a bad recording. She was tempted to step outside the Stagecoach Saloon and shout at him—wherever he was—and tell him to stop it. Truth be told, she was never quite sure if she remembered his music, or he haunted her with it.

The afternoon when she first met him, he talked about opera. He never asked if she liked opera; he assumed everyone did. Later, when her love for him deepened, she realized that loving opera wasn’t about “being sophisticated” it was about understanding human emotions in a way she only wished she could master. She fell for him completely the moment she realized that he was listening to her as carefully as he listened to opera. She’d never experienced anything like that.

When Sam was sure everything was ok up on top of her car, she jumped down and looked underneath, checking for leaks. She didn’t see any. So far, so good, she told herself. She really-really didn’t want to get stranded down in this canyon. If that happened, she’d have to walk for miles or figure out how to climb one of the steep canyon walls before she could call for help. And then it would be hours before help came.

She turned her head, catching the sound of an approaching vehicle, normally a good sign. However, in this case, she had recognized that particular low, diesel rumble echoing off the canyon walls. Only one rancher on this end of Drinkwater County made that much noise, and she wasn’t necessarily referring to his loud, oversized pickup truck.

On a good day, Sam managed to make-nice to Bill Willoughby. She wasn’t sure this was a good enough day. On the other hand, she didn’t really have a choice. She was the sheriff. He was one of Drinkwater’s three county commissioners. That meant he voted on her budget. More like, he seemed to think counting pennies was a good use of her time. More like, she knew Willoughby’s money issues had nothing to do with her budget. He wasn’t sure she was up to the job. Had never thought so. He and everybody else in Drinkwater knew that she’d been elected mostly because she was a third generation “Nielsen woman.” The real question was whether she was enough of a “Nielsen woman” to match her mother and grandmother’s reputations. Willoughby doubted it. To be fair, there were days when she doubted it. The difference was that Bill Willoughby didn’t pain himself to pretend otherwise. Maybe that made him honest. Maybe wild horses never looked back—another local myth.

Sam started her engine and pulled forward, away from the rock. Her trusty, official ride seemed to be running fine. Having established that fact, she was tempted to put it in gear and keep going, but good sense got the better of her. She cut the engine and waited.

 When he arrived, Willoughby immediately rolled down his side window and shouted, “Good thing I came along.”

Sam was leaning against her car. She slapped the hood, saying, “No problem. Everything’s fine.”

“What happened?”

“I spooked some horses. Or they spooked me. While trying not to hit them, I fishtailed, but there’s no real damage.”

He climbed out of his pickup truck and circled her patrol car. An older lanky rancher, Willoughby had worked around trucks and cattle all his life, for that reason, he clearly thought it was up to him to decide the depth of the damage. He noted the scratches and the new dent. Then he dropped to his hands and knees and looked under for leaks. Checking for leaks wasn’t a bad thing. She’d done it herself, but, Willoughby, she realized, was mostly showing off for his passenger, a younger man who had also stepped out of Willoughby’s pickup truck to take a look at the situation. He was taller and thinner than Willoughby. He was also wearing brand-new, high-end outdoor clothing like he thought he was on an expedition. In other words, he was too fancy to be local.

“You’re a long way from your ranch. What brings you out here?” she asked Willoughby, a routine question.

“Him,” he answered, gesturing over his shoulder at his passenger while he hopped up top to check her antennae. “Meet Miles Gurwitz. I’m giving him the grand tour. It’s been a while since a production company took any interest in our part of the world, but his uncle is thinking of producing a series here. This one would feature a ranch family at the turn of the century—the turn of the last century. Plans are to mostly shoot it in Drinkwater.”

Sam had recognized Miles the moment she saw him. She knew the Gurwitz family, mostly by reputation. They were old Hollywood, dating way-back to when Hollywood was “Hollywood”—a term not much in current use. Her dead husband had introduced her to Miles and his uncle, a big producer, at a party, maybe, a year before he died. “The whole family are cheats and crooks,” her husband had added as an aside. “The uncle still owes me for something I did for him two years ago.”

No reason, Miles would remember her. Her California life had been so different and so seemingly long ago, she wasn’t sure that she would recognize herself from back then. She was, however, quite certain that nobody seriously wanted to make another series set in Drinkwater, never mind that its vast, wide-open spaces were sometimes referred to as “The American Serengeti.” Everything western, from clothes to rodeos, wasn’t the current style. As proof, Willoughby’s passenger was dressed outdoors-sporty, not cowboy.

Miles Gurwitz cleared his throat. “Sorry about the crash.”

Sam was momentarily startled wondering which “crash” he meant. Her husband’s or . . .?

Then, gesturing towards Willoughby, Miles added, “He scared the horses and made them run because I’d never seen wild horses before, except in documentaries. And they were amazing, but, again, sorry if we made you crash into that rock.”

Sam thought that’s exactly what Willoughby would do, while trying to impress someone from “Hollywood.”

“Do you see wild horses often?” the younger Gurwitz continued.

 “Not spooked like that,” she said, tossing the words in Willoughby’s direction.

Willoughby offered no response. After checking her antennae, he’d lifted the hood of her car and was looking around under there. She wasn’t sure what he expected to find.

When she turned back, she caught Miles giving her a quick once-over.

“Sorry,” he said. “I was expecting someone . . ..”

“Different,” she said, finishing his sentence. His reaction wasn’t the first. Sam was short, slight (she preferred “wiry,”), blond, and blue-eyed—not the usual sheriff-stereotype.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean . . ..” He stopped and shook his head.

Sam sifted her attention to him: What was he doing here? His uncle and the last film crew who used Drinkwater as a location had left in a hurry--and never came back, not even to finish the made-for-television movie they were shooting. There had been an investigation, a possible murder.

“I’m sure you’re very good at what you do,” Miles continued. “It’s that I’m a little overwhelmed by this place.” He made a wide gesture. “It’s nothing like what I expected.” He paused as if searching for the right word. “Everything here is so-so unordinary.”

Unordinary? She wanted to laugh. He was from Los Angeles where the air was solid, and the earth moved.

Miles drew a deep breath. He knew he was making a fool of himself, but she’d thrown him off his usual steady demeanor. Willoughby wasn’t hard to figure. The old guy’s view of the world was decades out-of-date and clearly didn’t include lady sheriffs. Miles sensed instantly that she bothered him. Willoughby wasn’t sure how to act around her, which was the real reason he was spending so much time checking out her car. That’s not to say Miles couldn’t appreciate the old guy’s dilemma. His own stereotype of a gun-toting lawwoman was a lot more butch. Not that he was inclined to underestimate her. She was clearly all business. She’d tucked her hair under a baseball cap. Her uniform, a tan shirt with a couple of official insignias stitched on the sleeve, was tucked into blue jeans and sinched with a well-worn utility belt. Everything about her was no-nonsense, and yet . . ..

Miles looked away, trying not to stare. Willoughby was boring. Sheriff Sam Nielsen, on the other hand, was someone he thought he’d like to know, not because she’d caught his attention but because she’d caught his interest, which was a whole different thing.

While Willoughby continued checking out her car, Miles tried again. “Who else do you think I should talk to about doing a series here? Besides Bill Willoughby, of course.”

She took a moment. “What are you really doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“A new western series doesn’t fit the current vibe. So, what’s up?”

That directness caught him off guard. And then, because he didn’t have an answer, he tried to laugh it off. “Wow, that’s a sheriff question if I ever heard one.”

“When something doesn’t make sense, it’s my job to ask.”

He knew what she meant. He’d asked himself the same question: what was he doing here? But then he’d shrugged it off because his uncle was said to have a sixth sense when it came to shifting trends. Maybe America was ready to revisit stories of the American frontier. That, however, wasn’t something he wanted to share. So, he shrugged. “To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what this is all about. My uncle asked me to come here and talk to him (he nodded in Willoughby’s direction) about the possibility of doing a series. So here I’m here checking it out. Whether or not anything develops from the discussion is another question.”

“So, you’re saying that you got on a plane and flew to this remote corner of Idaho, to check on something, and you aren’t not sure why?” she continued.

He nodded. “There was also a helicopter flight from Boise. I don’t enjoy helicopter flights.” He gestured again towards Willoughby. “But my uncle seems to think he might be onto something.”

She clearly didn’t believe him. So, he hurriedly added, “And I’m hoping my uncle will finance my next film. My last two movies lost money, and so . . ..” He stopped. He was saying too much and making things worse. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“You don’t need to say anything,” Willoughby grumbled. “Our sheriff has more important things to worry about, like finding the cattle rustlers who are stealing my cows.”

“Cattle Rustlers? You still have cattle rustlers here?” Miles now asked.

Sam gave Willoughby a quick glance, and then turned to Miles. “No like in the old movies, but, yes, we have modern-day cattle rustlers.”

That, however, was the wrong thing to say. It set Willoughby off. He slammed the hood of her car shut. “If you ask me, everything that’s wrong with the whole damned country is related to our current lack of westerns movies, and I’m not talking about ranch family sagas,” Willoughby complained in a voice loud enough to be a shout. “I’m talking about the kind of big screen drama that once defined America. Heroic stories with good guys and bad guys. You know, the kind of movie where when things go wrong somebody does something about it. That’s the kind of movie I challenged his uncle to make—to have the courage to make—bucking the trends and everything. You never know when something old will become new again, I say. And it’s about time, too.”

Sam glanced at Miles to see how he was taking in Willoughby’s rant. He seemed puzzled. Her dead husband had warned her that the whole Gurwitz family were “cheats and crooks,” but Miles wasn’t acting like one. Rather than being puzzled, a true con artist would have quickly zeroed in on his mark’s hopes and dreams—something Willoughby had just spilled in vivid detail.

So, what was Miles doing here?

Meanwhile, Willoughby pushed his hat back, cowboy style, as if daring anyone to disagree with him.

And Sam was willing to give Willoughby credit for trying. Everyone in Drinkwater was grasping at straws—hoping for an act of Congress, if not an act of God, to save this place from becoming just another forgotten patch of dust. Trying to enlist “Hollywood” was, at least, original.

“So, what about my missing cows?” Willoughby asked her directly.

“I am looking into it. I have two deputies out checking notebooks.”

“Yeah, well, nobody’s checked my notebook,” he complained.

“You’re a busy man. Makes you hard to find,” she said putting out her hand.

He pulled a notebook from his shirt pocket and handed it to her. She flipped it open and began paging through it.”

“Notebooks? Checking notebooks?” Miles asked.

“Cowboy CCTV,” Willoughby growled, “only older, better.”

Sam was expecting Willoughby to explain more. When he didn’t, she looked up and caught Miles’ confused expression.

“More than a hundred years ago,” she began, “when catching cattle rustlers was largely left to local vigilantes, the ranchers around here began keeping notebooks. They wrote down everything and everyone they saw while making their usual rounds—that included neighbors, friends, and family as well as strangers.  Once a month, they met, drank beer, and mapped out all the comings and goings of the whole area using those notebook entries. If something looked odd, or someone seemed to be in a place they had no business being, they assumed that person was up to no good and checked it out—meaning that person had better have a good explanation, especially if somebody’s cows had gone missing recently. In short, the local people in Drinkwater County still make regular entries in their notebooks. Only now it’s mostly my deputies who collect and cross-reference the entries, and usually only when there’s a problem, like someone’s cows have gone missing. Some things haven’t changed.”

Miles seemed to consider that a moment. “OK, so, you’re saying that out here, in the middle of nowhere, multiple people are making a record of every place I’ve been?”

Her dead husband’s warning, repeated like a musical refrain--they’re all cheats and crooks. Sam gave Miles a quick glance. “Is that going to be a problem?”

He shook his head. At the same time, he couldn’t help wondering if she was ever NOT the sheriff of Drinkwater County. And then he watched while she paged through Willoughby’s notebook, occasionally stopping to study a certain entry. When she’d finished, she handed the notebook back to Willoughby. Then she asked if he’d found anything of concern under the hood of her car.

Willoughby shook his head.

It was time to go.

Miles expressed the usual “glad to meet you” and got back into Willoughby’s truck. Willoughby started the engine and announced that they’ve seen enough of Drinkwater’s canyons. He had other things to show Miles—more interesting places. With that, he turned his truck around and started back the way they’d come.

Miles shrugged. He was along for the ride, never mind that he had yet to figure out why. And something else is troubling him—the sheriff.

Something about her was familiar. Miles had taught himself to remember the people he’d met. He made it a point to file that information in the back of his head along with when and where he’d met them and who else that person might know. In his industry, networking was key to getting projects green-lighted, and he liked to believe he was good at it—the networking part. Which was why he couldn’t shake the gnawing feeling that he knew Sam. He’d met her somewhere, he was sure of it, but he couldn’t remember when or where. The feeling was naggingly annoying.

“Has she been the sheriff long?” he asked Willoughby.

Willoughby chuckled. “I’d say not much longer.”

“Oh-h-h,” Miles said and then not knowing exactly how to respond, he let that information settle a moment.

“I’m backing someone else in the upcoming election,” Willoughby continued. “Someone who knows more about being a sheriff. She’s not fit for the job, never was.”

“Then how did she get elected?”

“Family.”

Miles knew about family. Family was the reason he was here. “Her family has some clout, I take it?”

“Among other things, she’s the daughter of Congressman Jay Evers.”

“Evers . . . isn’t that’s the long-time Idaho Republican?”

“Yeah, that’s him. Solid guy.”

“So, what? He encouraged her, endorsed her, campaigned for her?”

“No, not exactly,” Willoughby said. “It’s more like she thought she could run for sheriff because politics runs in her blood or something.” Willoughby paused. “Also, her grandmother owns the biggest ranch in the county. Biggest, not the best. The movies that your uncle and your father filmed here, were all shot on my ranch. It’s more scenic. Her grandmother supplied some of the horses for the project. She’s also one of the Drinkwater County Commissioners. You’ll need her to approve permits and stuff. But that’s not a problem. Everybody’s going to be behind this new project. Trust me about that. Things around here could use a boost.”

No doubt, Miles thought. The whole place had a worn feeling—almost a worn-out feeling. That included Willoughby. He was a big man, tall, broad-shouldered but not fleshy. Comfortable, Miles thought. Willoughby’s clothes were worn to a comfortable stage. He moved the same way, comfortably cowboy-slow. He seemed to know where he was going, he just wasn’t in any hurry to get there. Miles figured Willoughby could handle himself in most situations as long as they weren’t too far from the ranch, so to speak. That said, calling Morrie Gurwitz, Miles’ uncle, was a long-long way from the ranch. So, what, Miles wondered, had Willoughby said to his uncle. What was it about this old cowboy that had caught Uncle Morrie’s interest? What was going on between the two of them?

That’s when the old cowboy shifted to a lower gear and started up a steep incline, climbing out of the canyon. “I’ll admit she catches the eye,” Willoughby continued, “but you don’t want to get involved.”

“With the sheriff?”

“Yeah, I saw you looking her over. I don’t suppose you heard what happened to her husband?”

“Her husband?”

“He drove himself into a wall.”

“A wall?”

“One of those concrete highway barriers. That was, maybe, five years ago, now,” Willoughby paused and then added. “Nielsen women have that effect on their men.”

Miles couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Are you saying that the women in her family drive men crazy?”

“More like not one of them can keep a man around for long. Something always happens.”

Miles couldn’t help himself; he chuckled in disbelief.  

Willoughby didn’t seem to notice the amusement. He was busy changing gears, negotiating another stretch of steep road.

While he was busy doing that, Miles studied his side mirror, watching the dust roil out from under Willoughby’s truck, forming a cloud that followed them. “What did she do before she became the sheriff,” he asked when the ride had settled into a straight stretch.

“Don’t know. She was living in California, married someone down there. He died when he drove into a highway barrier, like I said.”

California!! Miles allowed himself an inward smile. His instincts were true. He had met her someplace. Now, he just needed to figure out when and where.

         After Willoughby drove away, Sam sat in her car thinking about Miles Gurwitz and the checkered history of made-in-Drinkwater movies. The longer she thought, the worse it got, meaning she couldn’t come up with a good reason why Miles Gurwitz was hanging out with Willoughby, talking about filming something here again. That didn’t make sense.

The uncle, Morrie Gurwitz, was the old sheriff’s Big Fish.

         Every law officer, who had been on the job for a while, had a Big Fish—the one that always got away. The old sheriff, known locally as “Sheriff Leo” died six days after Sam was elected. He’d retired for health reasons but hadn’t shared the seriousness of his failing health with anyone but his wife. As a result, Sam never had a chance to talk to him about Morrie Gurwitz, but she’d read the old files. Sheriff Leo had suspected the older Gurwitz of a multitude of crimes that his money and privilege made difficult to prosecute. It was the small crimes that Sheriff Leo particularly hated—the unpaid bills, both large and small, that his production company always left behind. In a place to Drinkwater, that calculated carelessness, could bankrupt local businesses and ruin lives.

Sheriff Leo had also investigated Morrie Gurwitz for murder. More like he had pursued the older Gurwitz with a passion that verged on sanity. A young woman, a lead actor, had died on the set of the last movie made in Drinkwater under suspicious circumstances. According to his files, Sheriff Leo was sure Morrie Gurwitz had killed her, but he could never gather enough evidence to warrant an arrest much less get someone interested in prosecuting the case. That was a long time ago—thirty years almost. In all that time, no one from Morrie Gurwitz’s family or his production company had ever returned to Drinkwater. What changed? Why had Morrie Gurwitz sent his nephew back to the scene-of-the-crime, so to speak?

Sam sat, for a long time, chasing those thoughts round and round. When she finally realized she wasn’t getting anywhere, she started her car’s engine and began the long climb out of the canyon. But, of course, she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

When she read Sheriff Leo’s file, she’d noticed the coffee-stained and dog-eared edges. Clearly, he’d been over and over the details of that case for years. It was the one file that was still in the top drawer of his desk when she took over. Sam had left it there. As far as she knew, it was still there, under the files and things that Sam currently thought were important.

She hadn’t read Sheriff Leo’s file in a long time and never expected to re-open the investigation. She wasn’t sure that was even possible, but . . ..

She shook her head. That wasn’t going to happen. It wasn’t possible. It had been too long, and she didn’t have the time or the resources. Besides, she had her own Big Fish. Hers was the billionaire who’d built a hunting lodge in Drinkwater so that he and his business cronies could hunt big horn sheep. Never mind that Drinkwater’s big horn sheep were endangered. That, of course, was a problem only if you didn’t money and/or clout. If some bigwig from Saudia Arabia or Japan or Singapore wanted a hunting trophy for his walls, Keith Monson made it happen. And if she or one of her deputies tried to stop them, they produced phony diplomatic papers and/or forged hunting permits.

In the grand scheme of things, Sam thought murder was worse than illegal hunting. That said, she suspected her Big Fish was involved in something bigger than Morrie Gurwitz could imagine. Her Big Fish was building a power plant on the Snake River—a huge one from the looks of it. Question was why? Why build a power plant in a place where there was no obvious need for more power.

What crime does one commit using a power plant?

And what made her think her Big Fish’s power plant was part of a crime? Because it made no sense, and she knew from experience that when things don’t make sense, something is wrong.

No matter how she thought about it, or how long she thought about it, she always came to the same conclusion. She couldn’t take up Sheriff Leo’s old case. She was underfunded, understaffed, and a nobody—a small-time sheriff who likely wouldn’t be re-elected in another month. But, of course, the moment she remembered the worn edges of Sheriff Leo’s old file, she also knew she couldn’t let this slide.

As soon as she was “up top” the local jargon for driving across the upper plateau where her communication devices worked again, Sam radioed her dispatcher, Debra Ruth.

“What’s up?” Debra Ruth asked in a voice that was pitched too high. She sounded like a schoolgirl. Also like a schoolgirl, Debra Ruth refused to answer with “Drinkwater Sheriff’s Office” because that sounded unfriendly.

Sam had spent the better part of four years trying to instill a sense of professional pride into her team. Debra Ruth was a lost cause. Besides answering every call like a teenager, she was constantly making excuses about why she couldn’t wear the Department uniform. It didn’t fit, it was made of scratchy material, she was allergic to the fibers—more like it was too plain for her. Debra Ruth had never met a color she didn’t like. Her skirts and shirts were a cacophony of plaids, stripes, and bright hues. So was her hair. That said, everyone, who knew her, liked Debra Ruth. They shared gossip with her, confided in her, asked her for advice, some even shared medical concerns and family secrets. Since becoming her boss, Sam had come to understand that in a short-handed, under-funded, backcountry sheriff’s office, Debra Ruth and her gossip network were worth at least two regular deputies—something her dispatcher also understood, although she pretended to be humble about it. Oh, and she knew her way around computers, which added to her indispensability. So, if Debra Ruth wanted to answer every call with “What’s up,” Sam was willing to live with that quirk.

“What are you hearing about the Californian Bill Willoughby is showing around?” Sam asked.

“I hear he’s a hunk.” Her dispatcher returned.

Sam allowed herself an inward smile because that was soooo Debra Ruth. “He’s not too bad,” she offered.

“So, you’ve seen him?” Debra Ruth replied with a sudden edge of interest.

Her dispatcher was always looking for the “gorgeous guy” who would sweep her off her feet. Sometimes Sam thought it would help if she wasn’t quite so eager. In this case, Sam took a moment before saying, “Yes, I saw him.  Willoughby is showing him off—when he’s not complaining about his lost cows, of course. What are folks saying? Any ideas about what he’s doing here?”

“Nah, most people think Willoughby is just being Willoughby. I mean, when doesn’t Willoughby have some overly grand idea that he’s chasing?”

“True,” Sam offered, but she continued to be worried. When something seemed wrong, it usually was.

“Oh,” Debra Ruth came back, “You’ve been out of radio range so long I almost forgot to ask: where are you going today?”

“Accra, Ghana.”

“Never heard of it.”

“It’s big city in Africa.”

“If you say so . . .”

Sam drew a deep breath. By now half of Drinkwater knew that she randomly picked a place to go every morning from a scrapbook of post cards and travel brochures she’d collected when she was in her teens and thought any place would be better than Drinkwater. It was the kind of wishful thinking most people outgrew, but she was still half serious. One day, she was going to honor her teenage self and go see the world, but right now she had a daughter to raise and a job to do—a job that had suddenly become complicated by Miles Gurwitz and an old murder.

She paused that thought: If she wasn’t re-elected, in another month, none of this would be her problem. In that case, maybe she could go to Accra.”

That’s when one of her deputies came on the radio saying that he’d asked around and hadn’t found anyone who had seen any signs of cattle rustling. Then another deputy, the one everybody called “Tractor,” because he liked to tinker with old farm machinery, came on the radio, saying the same thing.

“Willoughby’s neighbors all agree that he is missing some cows—more than a few—but they haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary. They honestly don’t know what’s going on. Most don’t even have an opinion,” Tractor added.

“Yeah,” the first deputy, Paul, agreed. “Right now, everybody’s more interested in why Willoughby is hanging out with that guy from California.”

“Everybody?” Sam asked, wondering why she was the last to know about Willoughby and his new friend from California. “How long has Miles Gurwitz been in Drinkwater?”

Debra Ruth answered, “I hear he arrived late yesterday, and Willoughby has been driving him around Drinkwater since early this morning.”

“And everybody already knows about him?” Sam repeated.

“Yeah, that’s the big buzz,” Tractor agreed. “People are wondering what’s going on.”

“What do you think is going on?” Sam asked.

The radio went silent for a couple of beats.

“Nobody thinks they’re going to start filming a new series here,” Debra Ruth offered.

“Yeah, there was some bad karma left over from that last movie. Somebody died while they were filming it,” Paul added. “A young woman, I think.”

“Ok, yeah, I heard something like that, too,” Tractor broke in. “The old sheriff tried to investigate but nothing came of it.”

“Why?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know. Ask Henry, he might remember.”

Henry was the deputy who’d been on the job the longest. He had worked for the old sheriff for years, always covering the same beat—the most remote part of the county. He was a true loner but a good law officer, mostly because he didn’t put up with nonsense from anyone. “When did Henry last check-in,” Sam asked Debra Ruth.

“Couple of hours ago,” her dispatcher answered.

Although he denied it, everybody knew that Henry turned his radio off when there was too much chatter. He didn’t like being annoyed with exactly this kind of chit-chat. Sam made a mental note to check with him in an hour or so. Meanwhile, she asked, “What do you think is going on?”

“Most likely it’s another one of Willoughby’s schemes,” Tractor said. “Or a con job.”

“Yeah, it’s a con job,” the other deputy agreed.  “Has to be, what else?”

That had been Sam’s first thought—a con job. But that didn’t make sense. By Drinkwater standards, Willoughby was a big man, but when it came to making a movie, he wasn’t worth conning. Like most ranchers, his accounts ran in the red every month except the one month each year when he took his cows to market. So, why would Miles Gurwitz, of the famous or infamous Gurwitz family, think hanging out with Willoughby was worthwhile? He could run the slickest con in the world and not come up with enough cash to make his next movie. The money just wasn’t there.

If Willoughby was being conned, was it her job to save him from his own stupidity? She mulled that idea for a long moment, but didn’t seriously think Willoughby was being conned. Her instincts told her this bigger than a con. And since she was the sheriff of Drinkwater, at least until the next election, and she wasn’t going to Accra, Ghana, today, she needed to figure out what was going on. Problem was, she knew how to buy a plane ticket to Accra, even though it was half-a-world away. She even knew that the flight would likely connect through Washington Dulles airport. On the other hand, she had no idea how to expose a thirty-year-old murder—one that had eluded the old sheriff when the evidence was fresh. 

While Sam was worrying about an old murder, cattle rustlers, and getting re-elected, Eric Mitchell, the local junk dealer, was sitting on the bleachers behind the Drinkwater County School watching Sam’s daughter, Amy, play softball while he ate his lunch. Amy was supposed to be covering center field, but he saw her take out her phone and send a message—the modern equivalent of passing notes in school. There was no texting when he was going to that same school years ago. He never passed notes either. Mostly a loner, he’d never really hung out with anyone. Only person he ever cared about was Sam. Back then, some of his school mates had teased him about being, her “groupie,” always hanging around hoping to get her attention, but never quite succeeding. . ..

Eric’s father was foreman of the Nielsen ranch, so sometimes when they were away from school, hanging out at the ranch with nothing else to do, Sam talked to him. He lived for those moments.

“You like the word ‘groupie?’” he asked his lunch companion.

“A baby frog,” she said.

“Groupie, not guppy,” he repeated with a shake of his head. Most of the time, it was hard to get Mrs. Roser to understand much, but, in her day, she had been all proper English and multiplication tables.

“Baby frogs don’t look like frogs. They are a surprise when they grow up,” she continued.

He shook his head. There had been a time when he was completely intimidated by Mrs. Roser. That was in the fourth grade, when she was his teacher. Now, long retired, she mostly wandered around town, often walking in circles, forgetting where she was. He understood the confusion. Smelling Sam’s daughter had done the same thing to the order of his memories. He was leaving the Bone Dry Café—the only decent eating place in town—when Amy and a couple of her friends came in. The entrance was narrow. She brushed against him, and that’s when he realized she smelled just like Sam when Sam was her age. The scent had left him feeling dizzy. After that, it had become a regular thing for him to watch her play softball during her noon recess.

He set his lunch box on the bleacher next to him, opened it, and took out a sandwich. Peanut Butter. He liked peanut butter. As a kid he’d traded for peanut butter whenever his father made tuna fish. He never had a mother, at least not one he remembered, and his father only knew how to make two kinds of sandwiches—peanut butter and tuna fish. Eric would have been happy if his father hadn’t been even that versatile. Peanut butter was all he needed.

Amy’s hair was long, the way Sam’s used to be. Sam was the sheriff now. When she spoke to him, it was in her sheriff voice. Always keeping her distance. Like she’d never really come back from California. He didn’t like that.

“Same lunch?” Mrs. Roser asked.

He nodded and spread a napkin over the lap of his former teacher. Then he handed her half of his sandwich. He didn’t like Sam’s sheriff voice.

“Roast beef?” Mrs. Roser muttered.

He paid her no attention because this was how their lunches always went.

“Bacon and lettuce and tomato?” she continued.

He opened a carton of milk for her.

“Liverwurst and chopped onion?”

Eric wasn’t crazy. He knew he couldn’t show up day after day at the schoolyard to watch Amy without an excuse. He knew what that would look like. That’s why he invited Mrs. Roser to sit with him and share his lunch. She never had other plans.

Drinkwater was not the place to be if you had plans. He’d found that out the hard way. Nothing changed here, at least nothing changed for the better. The old school needed paint. Otherwise, it was the same as when he and Sam went there—twelve grades and a library under one roof. Students from outlying areas boarded during the week with town families. The others rode school buses. He couldn’t count the hours he’d spent on a school bus. Sam sat in the back talking with her friends or doing her homework. He sat in the front by himself. They talked when it was time to walk the long lane leading to the ranch—half a mile each way, each day.

High school football games were still the biggest social event in Drinkwater County. Home games filled the bleachers, where he was sitting now. More than filled the bleachers. Some folks brought extra lawn chairs. Girls’ softball, on the other hand, was a recess activity. Nobody watched that. Nobody cared. Eric hoped anyone seeing him with Mrs. Roser would think he was doing a good thing—a gesture of kindness towards his old teacher. Otherwise of no note.

“Corn beef on rye?” Mrs. Roser asked.

He shook his head.

“Ham and cheese?” she went on.

He didn’t care what he ate. The important thing was that for forty minutes every day, he was a groupie again. He had a focus. He knew every move Sam’s daughter made. His reward for that careful attention was getting to smell her when she ran past on her way back to her classroom. Sometimes, as an extra bonus, she flipped her hair over her shoulder, a gesture so reminiscent of her mother at that age, it almost made time stop.

“You always wanted that one, didn’t you?” Mrs. Roser said, her voice taking a different tone.

“Which one?”

“She had one of those longish names. It’ll come to me. I just need a minute.”

It would take more than a minute, Eric knew. He nudged her hand—the one holding the sandwich—to remind her to eat. She took a bite.

“This isn’t egg salad.”

He shook his head again.

“I like egg salad. I never liked any of those Nielsen women,” she rambled on.

“Why’s that?” he asked. Mrs. Roser could have moments of clarity, but they quickly passed.

“They don’t need anybody, do they? Didn’t need you, did she? Too bad. I always thought those Nielsen women could use a spring tonic every season of the year. Then maybe they’d shit like the rest of us.”

Eric shot her a glance. He’d never heard her say “shit.” He’d also never heard her express an opinion on the Nielsen women of Drinkwater, Idaho, although he would have been more surprised if she didn’t have one. Nielsen Women were Drinkwater’s version of celebrity. Maddy, Sam’s grandmother, was a county commissioner and owned the biggest ranch around, Xan, (short for Alexandra) Sam’s mother, was the famous western artist who painted huge, colorful canvases and signed them with an “X.” Sam was the sheriff. And Amy, her daughter, had just made an out, putting her team in position to win the game. In other words, they were not the kind who went unnoticed.

“Mrs. Roser, you surprise me,” he said. “A spring tonic every season?”

 She nodded. “There’s a rumor about the sheriff’s husband. They say he drove himself into that concrete wall.”

Sam’s husband’s death had been ruled an accident, Eric knew, because he’d bothered to look it up. Of course, rumor never needed fact, especially in small towns.

“Who told you that lie about the sheriff’s husband,” he asked Mrs. Roser

She paused and stared at him for a moment. Then blankness overtook her gaze. “Left-over lamb and mint jelly,” she answered. “That makes a good sandwich.”

On those long walks down the lane to and from the ranch, Eric had shared his childhood secrets with Sam, including his elaborate strategies for finding his missing mother. Then one night, his father showed him her death certificate. She’d been dead all the time that he was making those plans, all the time that he’d spent thinking and dreaming about her. That was the same night . . ..

“Pastrami on rye,” Mrs. Roser continued.

“Too salty,” he answered.

“Cucumber with the crusts cut off,” Mrs. Roser said.

“Too fancy.”

“Chicken salad,” she suggested.

“Not for me.”

The night he learned the truth about his mother was the night Sam finally helped him, not with his mother, but with his father. Because she helped him, he suddenly believed that Sam cared about him. She cared about what might happen to him. That was when he decided that she loved him. Why else would she have done what she did? From that moment on, he was sure that when they grew up, they were going to get married and  . . ..

“Sweet pickle on brown bread,” Mrs. Roser continued.

Instead, Sam went away. And when she came back, she wasn’t the same. Worse, people were saying bad things about her husband and how he died. They were saying she was like all the other Nielsen women of Drinkwater, who didn’t seem to need men in their lives. He didn’t know what to think. Her sheriff voice made him cringe like when his father was telling him that he was no good and was about to hit him—again.

He looked up and saw Amy running, her hair blowing behind her. He swallowed hard. Amy was more like Sam than Sam. He wasn’t sure what that meant exactly. He wasn’t sure of anything anymore. That’s why he came here almost every noon to watch and think and wait while he figured it out.

“Many, many kinds of sandwiches,” Mrs. Roser said.

“I know,” he said, while again nudging her arm, “but you need to eat this one. It’s almost time to go. Noon recess is over.”

As soon as Sam got back in town—Drinkwater City, population 550, known locally as “the other D.C.”—she drove straight to Gus Beesley’s Texaco. Gus-Gus, the owner’s son, was minding the front office. He was selling a can of oil to the captain of the high school football team. She’d spotted the football captain’s motorcycle parked outside. In a glance, Sam recognized a familiar mini drama. Being captain of the local team and riding a motorcycle, meant the kid leaning against the counter was acting like he owned the place. Meanwhile, Gus-Gus, who was the captain’s same age and whose father actually owned the service station, was nervously counting change. Football, especially in a small town like Drinkwater, was the drama that defined young lives, until high school was over. She wanted to tell both of them to chill, but she didn’t.

“Is your dad in?” she asked Gus-Gus. He wordlessly pointed towards the back.

Gus, the father, was a large man who always wore the same style green coveralls, stretched over his widening paunch. When she found him, he was putting new tires on an old pickup truck. He paused long enough to finish chewing a couple of Tums before asking, “What can I do for you?”

“I slammed into a big rock. I’m hoping you can fix the dent because I don’t really have the budget for a whole new back panel.”

He wiped his hands and followed her outside. Like Willoughby, he walked around her vehicle and looked underneath for leaks. He straightened up, chewed more Tums, and said, “I can smooth out the dent and match the paint, but . . ..”

She stopped him before he could continue. “I know, I know, the old sheriff, the one who was the sheriff of Drinkwater for thirty-six years, wouldn’t have bothered,” she said. “I’m a little tired of hearing how far he could stretch a dollar, mostly by ignoring anything that wasn’t falling apart.”

Gus paused before adding, “I was going to say that it might take me a week to get the paint.”

“Sorry, but I know that’s what people are saying.”

Gus shrugged. “Most folks are too worried about their own problems to care one way or another, you know.”

“Sorry, I happened to see Bill Willoughby this morning,” she added. “Put me in a mood.”

Gus let a smile slide across his face. “I hear he’s giving some Californian the grand tour of our hidden paradise.”

“And I thought we weren’t sharing that secret with outsiders,” she told him.

He tossed his empty Tums bottle into a trash barrel at the side of his garage. “What secret?”

“That this is a paradise,” she said.

“It ain’t,” he told her. “That’s why Willoughby is running all over the place, working way too hard trying to make Drinkwater seem like something it ain’t.”

“Yeah, but what do you think is really going on?” she asked.

“No idea, but I hope he fails. We don’t need the trouble of another film crew stirring things up.”

Sam was about to ask him if he remembered anything about a young woman dying during that last movie made in Drinkwater, but that’s when she heard Gus-Gus, the son, yell from the front office, “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

Sam turned and saw Mrs. Roser, her old fourth-grade teacher. She was shuffling past the gas pumps, breathing hard, her hands waving in a fit of frustration.

Gus-Gus was following behind, trying to get her to stop. “You need to go back that other way,” he said, but she wasn’t listening.

“Every lunchtime, it’s little girl sandwiches,” Mrs. Roser said, grabbing Sam’s arm. “Never ham and cheese. No bacon and tomato. He won’t try egg salad.”

Sam looked from Gus to Gus-Gus wondering what they were making of this. Gus-Gus rolled his eyes and headed back to the office. Gus shrugged. Then, because he could never let anything go without a comment, Gus added, “If you ask me, that’s the one person around here with no worries. Must be nice when you can’t remember enough to worry.”

That was no help. Sam turned to Mrs. Roser. “Who won’t try egg salad?”

“Yes, yes,” she said with renewed enthusiasm. “You got to guess his name, or he gets your first born. That’s how the story goes. Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin,” she began to chant, the tone of her voice rising with each repeat. “Rumpelstiltskin. Rumpelstiltskin, Rumpelstiltskin . . .”

At the same time, her dead husband’s music (the tunes that occupied the back of her head) suddenly became discordant and loud. When his music was melodic, it was easier to ignore. His real talent (the thing that had made him perfect for scoring films) was his range. He could go from something symphonic to something that sounded like a late-night bar band with an ease that startled. She just didn’t need any of that right now.

Mrs. Roser suddenly stopped talking and sat down on a pile of old tires that Gus had stacked near the front of his garage. She fussed with some strings on the frayed edge of her shirt and swung her feet back and forth like a child.

Sam squatted next to her. “Tell me again who won’t try egg salad?” But Mrs. Roser had stopped paying attention. She swung her feet and began singing while she twisted and tied the loose ends of her shirt. “Fairytales can come true. It can happen to you,” she sang softly as though Gus was right and she hadn’t a care in the world, which wasn’t true. She no had family and fewer and fewer lucid moments.

Meanwhile the tune in the back of Sam’s head had become a medley, picking up phrases from Mrs. Roser’s song and then blending them into other tunes, which only confused things. In moments like this, Sam wondered if, like Mrs. Roser, her husband was trying to tell her something.

One night, years ago, they were having dinner at a nice restaurant, when he spotted the director of Whispers in Berlin sitting across the room. He’d been trying to get a meeting with her for months. He got up, paid the piano player to take a break, sat down, and started playing the piano himself.

         At first, no one noticed, except Sam, and she was feeling increasingly embarrassed. Then the room began to hush because he wasn’t playing the usual schmaltzy standards. It was as if he and his music was weaving a story, only there wasn’t really a story to tell in the middle of that restaurant. It was more like, listening to him, you thought you remembered a story. She looked around, seemingly that was what everyone was doing—listening and trying to remember. He held the room, like that, for ten minutes, no more. Then he walked over to the director and put his card on her table.

         “What do you think about when you play like that?” she’d asked him, when he returned to their table.

         “Us,” he’d answered.

         He could be full of bullshit—something she needed to remember when she couldn’t make sense of why he was haunting her now.

         Gus broke the silence. “The time’s coming,” he added, “when she’s going to have to go into a home where someone can really take care of her.”

         “A place where nobody knows her, you mean.”

         “Yeah, but . . .” Gus started to say.

         Sam stopped him with a gesture. He was right, but that was not the problem of the moment. Sam sat on the pile of tires next to the woman who had taught the multiplication table to almost every adult in Drinkwater. “What’s eight times eight?” she asked.

         Mrs. Rose brightened. “Sixty-four.”

         “Nine times nine?”

         “Eight-one.”

         “What’s wrong?” Sam asked.

         “Peanut butter every day,” she said. “I don’t like eating peanut butter sandwiches every day.”

Seven horses guard the seven directions . . .

The RED horse guards the East,

the direction of the rising sun and morning breezes.

It is said that the red horse is a sturdy mount

Who makes all roads seem possible

But riding the red horse is sometimes long and dusty.

Part 2

         It was late in the afternoon when Sam got back to her office. As soon she came through the door, Debra Ruth looked up from the dispatch desk and announced in her usual high-pitched tones, “Eric Mitchell is up to his old tricks again.”

         Same-old, same-old, Sam thought, a reaction that covered both Eric Mitchell’s behavior and Debra Ruth’s current hair color—yellow with streaks of pink. Last week, it had been mostly blue.

“Is he breaking the law?” Sam asked—always her first question when it came to Eric Mitchell. Lots of people had issues with the local junk dealer, but he was usually careful to stay within legal limits. In fact, he could be quite clever about how far he could go without breaking the law, something that never failed to annoy his usual distractors.

         “This time the State Highway Department is doing the complaining,” Debra Ruth continued. “Someone from their Boise office called about an hour ago.”

         “The State Highway Department?”

         “It’s that wall of old washers, rusty dryers, and discarded refrigerators that he’s been piling up around his place,” Debra Ruth continued. “He keeps trying to stack them like blocks. Only they were never meant to stacked like blocks, so they keep falling, this way and that way, and now some of them have fallen onto the highway.”

         Sam filled her thermos from the water cooler. Nothing like a long, dusty ride and a list of unsolvable problems to make her thirsty. The current problem wasn’t entirely Eric’s fault. The Drinkwater City Council (mainly three widows, long-time friends, in their seventies who also ran the library and the historical museum) had decided that Eric Mitchell’s junkyard was an eyesore and possibly the reason no tourists stopped in Drinkwater City, even though there was a newly furnished pioneer museum with photos and artifacts dating back to Drinkwater’s silver mining heyday. Their solution was to pass an ordinance requiring an eight-foot fence around any property deemed “unsightly.” They meant Eric’s junkyard. Eric, of course, knew that’s what they meant, and true to his character, he had decided to comply by building his newly required fence out of the very junk the “city sisters” hated. Sam might have been willing to give him points for ingenuity, except that his so-called fence, had become a source of increasing complaints from at least half of Drinkwater City’s residents because his washers and dryers had a tendency to crumple and crash at odd hours of the day and night, disturbing everyone’s sleep, including hers, because she was the first person everyone called when they had a problem—any problem—in the middle of the night.

         “You’d think he would give up,” Debra Ruth went on. “When he can see that something is NOT working . . ..”

         Sam knew that Eric never gave up. She remembered an afternoon when he was seven and she was six years old. They were crossing a ditch on their way to catch the water skippers that danced on the surface of the ranch pond. The ditch had more water than usual that day. She managed to jump over and stay dry. He was older and not very nimble. When he jumped, he didn’t quite make it and got his feet wet.

         Catching water skippers was a favorite activity. He was carrying the tin cans they used to scoop them up. She was dragging the larger tub they used to re-float the bugs, the better to watch them skip and slide around on the water’s the surface. When she and Eric gently rocked the tub, the bugs whirled like dancers. They were both proud of the way they could make them dance like that. If you weren’t careful, the bugs drowned rather than danced, but they’d gotten very good at handling the tub just right. They’d even gotten good at returning the bugs to the pond when they were finished. She wanted to get on with that activity. She knew he did, too, but he wouldn’t. He jumped the ditch again and again and again, falling short every time, but refusing to give up. His shoes got heavy with mud, which didn’t help. His legs got weak with fatigue, also not helpful, but still . . .

         Finally, she sat down next to the tub and started throwing pebbles at him out of annoyance. Still, he wouldn’t stop trying to jump the ditch and land exactly the way he thought he should—the way he had other times when the ditch wasn’t so full.

         Debra Ruth continued, “His so-called fence fell onto the highway, this morning, and the State Highway Department says it’s blocking traffic. They want it cleared off,” she added, finally coming around to where she began.

         “Traffic?” Sam asked. “The State of Idaho Department of Highways thinks we need to be concerned about blocking traffic?”

         Debra Ruth shrugged. “They claim they’ve already had five complaints. I’m guessing the calls started before the last dryer hit the ground. People are that upset. Anyway, I went over to his junk yard earlier today hoping to talk to him, but his ‘Antique Emporium’ was closed. Someone thought they saw him over at the school. When the weather is nice, I hear that he often sits on the bleachers and shares his lunch with Mrs. Roser.”

         “Peanut butter,” Sam said.

         “Peanut? What?”

         Sam was suddenly making sense of Mrs. Roser’s earlier agitation, but didn’t bother to explain. “Are you sure that Eric eats his lunch with Mrs. Roser?”

         Debra Ruth nodded. “That’s what I hear.”

         Sam paused. That made no sense. When he was in the fourth grade, Eric hated Mrs. Roser because she called her student’s parents whenever there was even a slight problem. For Sam and most of her other students, that resulted in a stern “talking to.” In Eric’s case, his dad beat him. Either Mrs. Roser didn’t know, or she didn’t care that his dad could get violent for reasons a lot less serious than getting a call from his son’s teacher.

Sam wanted to believe that Mrs. Roser hadn’t known about Eric’s dad. She was like that—always a little out-of-touch. She lived in a world of multiplication tables and fairytales. Sam’s grandmother, on the other hand, knew exactly how cruel her foreman could be. But when Sam tried to get her to do something about the beatings, she took a practical approach. She explained to Sam, in grown-up terms, that if she got involved, her foreman would likely quit and take his kid (meaning Eric) someplace else where the beatings would continue. Most kids, she believed, survived bad parents. Eric just needed to toughen up. That’s when Sam figured out that sweet old ladies like Mrs. Roser and tough old biddies like her grandmother were all the same—useless, when it came to solving complicated things. Now that she was the adult, and Eric was still a problem, she couldn’t help feeling humbled by the fact that she didn’t know what to do about him either.

         “I’ve never seen them eating lunch together,” Debra Ruth continued, “but that’s what I hear—that he shares his lunch with her most days.”

         “But why do they sit on the school bleachers to eat their lunch?”

         Debra Ruth shrugged. “Maybe because the ‘city sisters’ banned him from using the city park.”

Drinkwater’s “city park” was a patch of grass with two weather-worn picnic tables. “Of course, that’s why,” she muttered.

         Debra Ruth nodded and then returned to original problem, “The official who called from the State Highway Department said he didn’t have anyone that he could send all the way out here. He said that the department didn’t want to make a big deal out of it. They just wanted the junk pushed out of the way.”

         Sam glanced around the office. “Where’s Mike?” She meant the deputy she’d left on local duty.

         “He had to go to Homestead. The county ambulance is in the shop for repairs.”

         “Again?”

         Debra Ruth shrugged.

         Homestead was the largest of Drinkwater County’s municipalities. Located on the northwest side of the county, it occupied an area on both sides of the closest bridge over the Snake River. The next bridge was fifty miles away. With a population of about five thousand people, the county’s only ambulance was stationed at the fire station there. Problem was, the ambulance was old, and when it was in the shop, which was often, someone with a siren was expected to go there—and be on call—just in case someone needed a fast ride to a Boise hospital. Never mind that Sam didn’t have an extra car or an extra deputy even on slow days.

         “The old sheriff tried billing the county commissioners for overtime,” Debra Ruth offered. “He called it ‘medical overtime.’”

         “Did that work?”

         “No.”

         “Got any other ideas?”

         Debra Ruth shrugged again. “Talk to your grandmother? Maybe she can persuade the other two county commissioners that it’s time to buy a new ambulance.”

         Sam gave half a laugh. Her grandmother wasn’t the easiest person to talk to on any subject. They both knew that.

         “Might be worth a try,” Debra Ruth added with a sly grin. “Oh, and I’ve been checking on Willoughby’s fancy sidekick. I know Tractor and Paul think he’s running a con, but he seems legit. He has made two movies. His uncle is a big-time producer. His father used to be. He’s also single, never married, and not rumored to be gay.”

         Sam gave her a quick look.

         “You can’t fault a girl for considering the possibility,” Debra Ruth returned.

         Sam shook her head, “He won’t be around long. As soon as he realizes he’s wasting his time with Willoughby . . ..” Sam paused and thought: Maybe, she was making something out of nothing. There was no reason why Miles Gurwitz would hang around Drinkwater for more than a day or two . . ..

         Nevertheless, Sam went into her office and rummaged in her top drawer until she found Sheriff Leo’s old file.

An hour later, she closed the file and, realizing there was no one else, she assigned herself the task of talking to Eric Mitchell. Keeping the peace was a big part of her job, she reminded herself, and there was not going to be any peace until Eric stopped his current nonsense. Sometimes she wondered if he did annoying things hoping that she would come over to his junkyard to talk. Another part of her believed that Eric needed to be left alone to do his thing—which was buying and selling junk. In a place like Drinkwater, that was a good business. Ranching was iffy. The hay farmers who grew alfalfa on irrigated land, next to the river, did a little better, than the ranchers, but nobody in Drinkwater County was getting rich. She paused. There was, of course, one big exception—the billionaire Keith Monson who grew up here, left, made his fortune, and then returned to build a fancy hunting lodge in Drinkwater, but even he didn’t make any money in Drinkwater. He used his hunting lodge to entertain investors.

         “Maybe Eric will listen to reason this time,” Sam said as she started for the door.

         “Yeah, right,” Debra Ruth said. “According to him, nothing in the new city law says he can’t build a fence with old appliances, and unless somebody decides to buy him some expensive fencing materials, he intends to keep-on building his city-required fence with what he has on hand.”

         Sam nodded, “Sounds like the junkman we all know and love.”

         “Not sure about the ‘know and love’ part,” Debra Ruth added.

On her way out, Sam patted the stuffed wolverine sitting on the counter next to Debra Ruth’s desk. Nobody remembered where that scruffy bit of taxidermy had come from, or why it was supposed to be lucky, but its back had been worn smooth from years of similar gestures.

“Oh, and keep checking on Miles Gurwitz,” Sam added. “I’m interested in everything you can find on him, except his marital status.”

         “I’m on it,” Debra Ruth returned.

         Meanwhile, having bounced over miles and miles of dusty roads and gotten nowhere, Miles Gurwitz was losing patience. In his growing boredom, he started to wonder if Bill Willoughby was a little crazy. Then, as the day wore on, he’d shifted to thinking that Willoughby was more of a dinosaur than a crazy person. Then, being increasingly bored, he started musing about the fact that there was the universal gesture for a crazy person—twirling a finger near your head. That led him to wonder why there wasn’t a similar universally understood gesture for a person who was a dinosaur. Miles was certain he’d met more dinosaurs than crazy people, meaning he seriously thought the world really needed a dinosaur-gesture. Those musings, however, didn’t solve his boredom or his central problem. Why had his uncle sent him here? His uncle had been focused on something Willoughby said—obsessed almost. He had insisted that Miles check it out, immediately. Miles had other plans, but anything his uncle considered this important . . ..

His uncle’s only instruction was for Miles to go to Drinkwater and find out what Willoughby “had on his mind.” But if his uncle had had more than a two-minute conversation with Willoughby—the old dinosaur—he would have known that there was nothing useful on Willoughby’s mind. So, what was going on?

         Meanwhile, Willoughby droned on. “You ever notice how foreign newspapers portray America?”

         Miles shook his head.

         “As a cowboy. Think about it. Political cartoonists, the world over, draw America as a cowboy striding across the world. Now, what happens, when we stop being the world’s cowboy? We’re nothing. Nobody. We have lost our national identity.”

         Miles wondered if he could invent a gesture that meant “dinosaur.” Maybe a tiny fist next to one’s forehead suggesting a small brain.

         Meanwhile, Willoughby continued with enough feeling that his voice had become uncomfortably loud. “And that’s why we’ve got to get back to telling the American saga,” he said. “Your uncle understands. As soon as I told him what was at stake, he understood immediately.”

         Mile sat up straighter. “What did you tell my uncle?”

         “That he needed to get on what he left finished here.”

         “What does that mean?”

         Willoughby chuckled. “Telling the American story. That’s what he was doing here and needs to do again. I used to tell people with great pride that I ran my cattle across three thousand acres and every television screen in the world. We need to get back to the good old days. We’ve neglected America’s mythology too long. Our sheriff for example. Folks tried something new; they elected a woman sheriff. Now, come election-time, we’re going to quit that nonsense and get back to doing business the way business needs to be done. Your uncle understands. As soon as I told him that our lady-sheriff wouldn’t be a problem but that he needed to get back here and fix the mess, he understood.”

         “The mess,” Miles repeated.

         “America is in a mess,” Willoughby repeated. “Somebody needs to do something.”

         Miles was having trouble making sense of Willoughby’s longer ramble, but his comment about the sheriff caught his attention. “What will the sheriff do if she’s not re-elected? Go back to California?”

         “I don’t know. Don’t care.”

         “Does she have family in California?”

Willoughby shook his head. “I don’t think so. She went to school there and got herself married to somebody musical—the father of her little girl.”

         “A musician?”

         “No, he wasn’t in a band or anything like that. He wrote music, you know, the kind that plays in the background of movies and lets you know when things are going to get scary or exciting.”

         And that’s when Miles knew when and where he’d met Samantha Nielsen.

         Among the items for sale at Eric’s Antique Emporium (Sam wasn’t sure why he’d decided on such a fancy name) were binoculars. Eric had big ones and little ones. Some were painted camouflage colors. Some were plain black. The ones with expensive lenses had been traded or left behind by birders. Eric, she knew, was particularly proud of one binocular that dated to World War II. She knew about his collection because he kept them on a shelf near the front window and used them to watch people. Eric kept track of everyone and everything that went on in Drinkwater City. That meant, he knew she was coming as soon as she turned the corner onto Main Street.

         And right on cue (meaning anytime she was around Eric), the music that played in her head, suddenly cranked up in volume. Her dead husband tended to overreact to things, she remembered. In this case, she was doing her job, just checking on the junk dealer who was annoying the citizens of Drinkwater—no big deal, but the music playing in her head had taken on the sonic textures of a darker theme. She paused waiting for her head to clear. She didn’t need this distraction. The music also paused, but not before hovering in a moment of musical suspense.

         Eric wasn’t helpful either. When she entered the front door, a bell rang, and he looked up from an old book, as if he’d been reading, not watching her come down the street. He feigned surprise—a reaction not unlike the music’s moment of suspense. Eric was clearly waiting to see what she would do.

         She hated playing these games but said nothing. Instead, she looked around. Not, much had changed. Besides, the collection of binoculars, the front part of Eric’s store was filled with fancy dishes, copper-bottomed pots and sets of old silverware. She suspected that he surrounded himself with those “mom things” (his term) because he’d never had a mom. As a kid, he used to invent stories about his mother. She made the best chocolate chip cookies, so she was working in a chocolate chip cookie factory making cookies and more cookies. That’s why she hadn’t come to get him and taken him away with her. She was too busy making cookies. Or she was a famous actress, who was too busy being a mom on television to worry about him, but as soon as her series was finished, she would remember him and be sorry she ever left him with his mean dad. Now, as an adult, when Sam glanced around Eric’s store, she was filled with a sense of sadness. Very few people were interested in the delicate glassware and crocheted doilies Eric had on display here. She doubted he sold much from the front of his store. That was not true of the bigger pieces of furniture that he kept in the back and the car parts and old tractors and other farm equipment that he kept outside under open sheds. Bottom line: he was doing well by Drinkwater standards. She wished that was enough. She wished he could be satisfied with that success and forget his annoying nonsense.

         “Looking for anything in particular,” he asked her.

         “Peace and quiet,” she answered.

         “Not my specialty.”

         “Exactly,” Sam added. “And what’s with you and Mrs. Roser?”

Maybe it was her imagination, but she thought that question caused him to stiffen a little. “What do you mean?” he asked.

         “I hear you eat lunch with her.”

         He nodded. “Sometimes.”

         “I thought the church ladies were making her food—regular cooked meals.”

         “They do, but she forgets to warm them, so I share my sandwich with her. No big deal.”

         “Except that she hates peanut butter.”

         Eric chuckled. “Yeah, she complains sometimes, but she eats my sandwiches because she doesn’t have to warm them up. That’s the nice thing about peanut butter. It’s the original fast food.”

         “Not the reason I’m here, you know.”

         He shrugged. “Let me guess, the old hags who run city council are complaining again. If they’d eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, maybe it would sweeten them up. I have to say, it’s done wonders for Mrs. Roser. She didn’t like me much when I was a kid.” He paused and seemed to think a moment before continuing. “Nah, when I think about it, the old hags are beyond peanut butter and jelly. Nothing is going to sweeten them.”

         He wasn’t wrong, which meant Sam had to struggle to keep from smiling. Eric didn’t need encouragement, and she didn’t want him to misinterpret the situation. Meanwhile her dead husband’s music had started up again—on a discordant note.

“The State Highway Department thinks you’re blocking traffic,” she told him.

         “Traffic?” he laughed. “That’s funny.”

“If they have to send somebody out from the Boise office, they’ll issue you a ticket with a hefty fine.”

She wasn’t sure why she mentioned the fine. The threat of a fine wouldn’t stop him. He was a genius at calling someone’s bluff. He knew how things worked. If the highway department issued a fine, they would expect her to enforce it. So, she expected him to ask what part of his collection she was going to confiscate in order to collect that fine—effectively calling her bluff.

Instead, he changed the subject.

         “I think we should take Amy up to see the old water hole,” he said.

         That stopped her. Even the music stopped. “Nobody goes up there, anymore,” she answered. “Not since . . .” She was referring to a kid, fifteen years old, who had died up there five years ago—a year before she became sheriff.

He wasn’t having it. “Don’t be stupid. The local kids go up there all the time. In fact, they like to scare themselves listening for his ghost. Some of the older ones claim that they’ve seen him and he’s still wet—dripping water. Or that’s what they like to tell the newbies—the younger kids. I’m thinking, maybe, we should prepare Amy for that inevitable initiation—so she won’t be too scared.”

“That’s not what we’re talking about, right now,” Sam said.

“Yeah, but I’m thinking that teaching Amy to be safe might be more important. Sooner or later, someone will invite her to go up there. She needs to be prepared.”

Sam struggled to keep her tone even. He did this to her. He always turned things around so that they ended up talking about what he wanted to talk about.

“You can’t keep building your so-called fence of old appliances,” she continued. “You’re risking a fine and if you get fined and don’t pay the fine, I will arrest you. That’s the law. That’s my job. And, make no mistake, I will put you in my lock-up. That’s also my job.”

“For a little while.”

“What does that mean?”

He shrugged.

“You don’t think I’m going to be sheriff for much longer.”

“Let’s just say you’re going to need more than my vote.”

         Meanwhile, Miles and Bill Willoughby were approaching Drinkwater City where Miles had left his borrowed car. Willoughby was still not making sense, but Miles had decided to let the older man go on and on. He hoped that sooner or later something in Willoughby’s endless ramble would coalesce. So far, that hadn’t happened.

         As a mental exercise, he wondered if he could make a documentary out of this. From his film-school days, he knew that one of the challenges of shooting a documentary was figuring out the story and then breaking it into individual shots. You had to decide how much of the story should be included in each shot. From what viewpoint? And why?  Problem was, he hadn’t figured out the story behind this or the viewpoint.

         His father and his uncle were once business partners. That was long ago. Now they hardly spoke, even at family gatherings. Maybe, sending Miles to Drinkwater was his uncle’s way of getting back at his brother—Miles’ father. From that point of view, it seemed unlikely that his uncle would help finance Miles’ next movie, no matter how this turned out.

Or, maybe, this was a test. From that point of view, Miles needed to prove he was more serious than his father, who had left the movie industry to sell cars—fancy high-end ones—but selling cars, even fancy ones, wasn’t the same as making movies. Everybody knew that, even his father knew that.

Or, maybe . . . or, maybe, . . .

         Willoughby finally said something that caught Miles’ attention.

         “Before starting a big project here, I think it would be good for your uncle to patch up things with your daddy. They were a team. Your daddy was the idea man. Your uncle did whatever was needed to get the job done. I’m sure you must know what I mean.”

         Miles had no idea what Willoughby meant. Miles was a toddler when the two of them stopped having anything to do with one another. He’d grown up never really knowing his uncle because his father adamantly insisted that he couldn’t be trusted. But then, of course, when he started making movies himself . . ..

         Willoughby continued. “Your uncle was rock solid, but I liked your daddy, too. He used to sit at my kitchen table to do his rewrites. Never saw a man so intent. The rest of us would be drinking whiskey. He’d be drinking coffee and writing, writing, writing, sometimes until the wee hours of the morning. He used to drink so much coffee, without getting up, I swore he had to be pissing the words onto the page.”

         That was news to Miles. His father bought a car dealership after the partnership with his brother broke up. Occasionally he’d do a rewrite for someone he knew—an old friend from his movie making days, but only as a favor.

“My father sells cars, now,” Miles told Willoughby.

         “Yeah, I heard that. Too bad. That man knew how to spin a yarn. On paper, that is. He wasn’t too good on a barstool. He couldn’t tell a funny story to save himself. It was like he couldn’t make up his mind about the ending. He’d revise it halfway through the punch line. That doesn’t work with jokes.”

         That was a trait Miles recognized.

         “Your uncle never let anything get in his way. He did what had to be done to get it done, if you know what I mean,” Willoughby added. “I haven’t seen him in a long time, and we’re all get older, but I’m betting he hasn’t changed that much. Morrie Gurwitz got the job done. Count on it.” Willoughby paused. “Bank on it,” he added.

         “And you admire that?”

         “Sure do. I liked your daddy, but he was a word man, meaning he chose his words carefully. Give me a man who skips the nonsense and does what’s needed.”

         Miles drew a deep breath and reminded himself that Willoughby had called in a thirty-year-old favor from a big movie producer—Miles’ uncle. Nobody in the industry remembered anything that happened thirty days ago. What wasn’t hot was forgot. So, what did this crazy old dinosaur have on his uncle?

A few minutes later, after Willoughby dropped Miles off near the center of Drinkwater City, Miles pulled out his phone and thought about calling his father. He wanted to ask him if he remembered Willoughby. Just ask. That ought to be easy enough, but his father didn’t know that Miles was in Drinkwater, Idaho. The fact that Miles was working with his uncle’s production company had already caused a rift, but how else was someone named “Gurwitz” supposed to get a foothold in the industry? Everyone else would want to know why Miles wasn’t working with his uncle.

Miles wondered if he could make up a story about how he just happened to meet Willoughby, but that, of course, didn’t sound likely.

         Phone in hand, still debating his options, Miles looked up and saw the sheriff coming out of the building across the street. The sign overhead read, “Antiques Emporium.” To one side, there were several rusty appliances jumbled on the ground as if they’d fallen off a truck or something. That seemed odd, but not as interesting as the sheriff’s seeming indecision. He watched her pause, just outside the door, and look back, almost as if she’d forgotten something or was thinking about going back inside.

 A moment later, she turned, saw him, and crossed the street, coming in his direction. 

         “This is not the best view of our fair town—known locally, with some humor, as ‘the other D.C.—the one without the politicians,’” she told him.

         He nodded, still trying to get a read on her.

         “Are you leaving?” she asked.

         “Just for today. I’m meeting Willoughby in the morning for the rest of the tour.”

         “Drinkwater’s a big place.”

         He nodded again, “That’s what I’m discovering.”

She knew better than to air her grievances to a stranger—especially when the stranger hadn’t done anything wrong, as far as she knew, but talking to Eric Mitchell always left her on edge, and here was Miles, casually leaning against a car that he’d obviously borrowed from Keith Monson’s hunting lodge. And that rubbed an even bigger irritation.

“On your way to the place where you’re staying tonight, you might want to pause at Willow Creek Bridge and look up. Sometimes you can see big horn sheep from there. That is, if your host and his friends haven’t hunted them to extinction already.”

         “I don’t understand.”

         She pointed to the logo on the car. “Monson’s hunting lodge is where Keith Monson’s friends and business acquaintances stay when they want to add a big horn sheep to their trophy collections. Never mind that big horn sheep are on the endangered list. Last time it was Japanese hunters. When one of my deputies stopped them, he was informed—we were all informed—that they had diplomatic immunity.”

         “Monson is a diplomat?”

         “You don’t know him?”

         Miles shook his head. “My uncle does.”

“He’s a billionaire and too smart to risk getting caught himself. He arranges those hunting trips. He doesn’t go on them. So, the best I can do is arrest his guides or his helicopter pilots, but nothing ever sticks. He’s my Big Fish—the one that always gets away.” She paused. “Sorry, I needed to get that off my chest. I don’t want to ruin your evening. I’m sure staying at Monson’s hunting lodge is quite nice, but . . ..”  

         “Like I said, my uncle made the arrangements. I was told there were no commercial accommodations anywhere in Drinkwater—no motels, no hotels.”

         “We have a few cabins that rent on Airbnb. We also have an old, partially restored hotel, located in the middle of a ghost town, that opens for six weeks every spring and again every fall for birders. Interesting place, but it wouldn’t rate many stars, except for the food. Nevertheless, I’m told that birders from all over the world brag about having stayed there.”

         That’s when he said, “I’m sorry about your husband. He was a big name in the industry. I didn’t know him well, but I liked him.”

         That caught her off guard. She took a moment before saying, “I didn’t think you recognized me.”

         “I didn’t, at first, but then Willoughby got around to mentioning that you’d spent time in California and your husband did something with music.” He shook his head. “Something with music . . . wow, if Willoughby only knew.”

         It had been such a long time since anyone had talked to her about him. The music she had suppressed while talking to Eric, suddenly erupted in the back of her head, joyfully this time, as if singing out the fact that he had been damned good at what he did. She allowed herself a little laugh. “My grandmother also describes him as ‘musical.’ Sometimes she adds that he didn’t play in a band, that he was a different kind of ‘musical.’ She doesn’t really get it. Almost no one here does.”

         “Worlds apart,” he said.

         Worlds apart, she thought. That aptly expressed the chasm between her present and her past. She was a little surprised that Miles had intuited it so quickly. Maybe, she’d misjudged him.

“Thank you for that,” she said. “And please forgive my snarky commentary on your host and his hunting guests. No reason you shouldn’t enjoy your stay while you’re here.”

He laughed. “Enjoy myself? I just spent a whole day riding around with Bill Willoughby.”

Then she laughed, too. It was like she couldn’t help herself. Also, the music playing in her head wanted to be happy. She was getting a different sense of Miles Gurwitz than when they’d first met. That didn’t mean she wasn’t still suspicious of him and why he was here.

He hesitated. There was nothing better than sharing a laugh, but . . .. “Can I ask you something?”

         She nodded.

         “Did something happen during the shooting of the last movie my uncle made here?”

         “Like what?”

         “I don’t know, but my father has barely spoken with him since then.”

         “Then I’d say something must have happened.”

         “Yeah, right, only nobody’s talking about it, except Willoughby, and he isn’t making a lot of sense.” Miles shook his head.

         Rule number one, Sam reminded herself: never tell a suspect what you know. Wait for them to tell you what they know.

         “And you can’t ask your uncle?” she asked him.

“No,” he said.

“Why? she asked.

“Because I don’t know what to ask, and I’m feeling a little wary . . ..” He shook his head. “Sorry, I don’t mean to bore you with my problems. I’ll work it out eventually.”

         She wasn’t bored. It was more like she was beginning to think he might be genuinely confused. On the other hand, he was the nephew of someone who was friends with Keith Monson. He was staying at Keith Monson’s twelve thousand square foot hunting lodge, riding around in Monson’s car, catching rides on Monson’s helicopter. None of that made Sam feel sympatric to him or his problem. Not to mention the fact that the old sheriff believed his uncle had been involved in a murder and her dead husband had warned her against his whole family.

         Maybe Sheriff Leo was wrong about the murder. Maybe she had better things to do than worry about something that happened so long ago. She felt certain her grandmother would shrug it off as “ancient history.” Her daughter, Amy, would call it “rearview,” her generation’s jargon for the same thing. Problem was, her instincts told her that this, whatever it was, wasn’t going to stay in anyone’s rearview.

         After she had excused herself again, and wished him “a pleasant evening,” Miles watched as she walked away. It was obvious she didn’t like Keith Monson. And she didn’t have much use for Bill Willoughby. He couldn’t tell what she thought about him, but he sensed a hesitancy. Then he wondered why he cared about what she thought. Maybe he didn’t want Willoughby to be his only point-of-contact in this “worlds apart” place. He stopped and glanced at the phone he was still holding in his hand. He wanted to, he needed to, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to dial his father’s number.

         On her way back to the office, Sam decided to check in with Grams at the Stagecoach Saloon. Late afternoon, Maddy could usually be found at a round table near the center of the room, nursing a whiskey and “holding court,” which was how Sam’s mother described Maddy’s afternoon routine.

Sam had her own routine. She never entered the Stagecoach Saloon, without glancing over her right shoulder to see if the old newspaper article was still framed and hanging in its usual place next to the front door. Then she glanced over her left shoulder to make sure the oil painting of a reclining nude, scantily draped in red velvet, was still hanging over the bar. If either ever went missing, Sam expected that her world would slip a notch. They were the anchors left over from her childhood. When she was too young to be permitted inside a bar, her mother used to stand her, next to the front door facing that news clipping and tell her to read it while she “took care of business,” meaning talk to Grams about something important enough that it couldn’t wait. Sam had pretended to read the newspaper while surreptitiously sneaking glimpses of the nude. At the time, she’d never seen a woman quite that full-figured or rosy colored.

The saloon was famed for being a stop on one of the longest running stage lines in America. The clipping recounted the last time one of the stagecoaches on that line was robbed—something that had happened ten miles south of town. The old newspaper story included a photo of three men hanging from a tree. They were the robbers who were caught and hung the same day. As a kid, Sam thought the nude above the bar was “nicer” than that newspaper photo. She was still of that opinion.

Today, having glanced at the newspaper and the nude, Sam made her way to her gram’s table and pulled up a chair. The older woman was wearing her usual, black-rimmed glasses perched near the end of her nose. She was going over some paperwork with her accountant, who happened to also be the local auctioneer. They both looked up as Sam sat down. Maddy Nielsen was the eldest Nielsen woman, the most senior county commissioner, and the biggest rancher in Drinkwater. It was no exaggeration to say that Drinkwater was her stage, which was polite language for the fact that Maddy was known for firm opinions, a loud voice, and making a scene whenever her loud voice and/or her firm opinions weren’t enough to win the argument. No doubt that explained why the auctioneer/accountant quickly found an excuse to leave. While he was gathering his papers, Maddy pointed to her half full glass of whiskey, her way of offering Sam a drink. Sam shook her head. Being the sheriff in a place like Drinkwater meant she was almost always on duty. Besides the drive home was long.

“And, so,” Grams began, “where in the world are you going today?”

         “Accra, Ghana.”

         “Never heard of the place.”

Grams didn’t have much use for Sam’s rituals: always checking the nude over the bar or picking a place to go every morning that wasn’t Drinkwater.

“In my opinion, you need to pay more attention to what’s happening right here, right now” the older woman continued.

Sam shrugged. Being blunt was also part of Maddy’s personae.

“You should be working this room, trying to get yourself re-elected,” Grams continued.

         Sam threw a quick glance around the room. It was still early enough that there weren’t a lot of people. Then she got down to business. “Drinkwater needs a new ambulance.”

         “Can’t afford one.”

         “Maybe the county can’t afford to keep fixing the old one. It’s in the shop again, and I can’t afford to have one of my deputies tied up . . .”

Grams waved to someone who had just came in. She nodded to a couple of the others who happened to look up. As Sam watched, she wondered if Maddy was right. Maybe Sam needing to work harder at getting re-elected. Gram was never, not working a room, which probably explained why she had been a county commissioner longer than most people could remember. That, however, was not a trait that Sam had inherited from her.

“Is needing a new ambulance the main reason you stopped by?” Grams asked when she turned back to Sam.

“It’s a serious, ongoing concern . . .”

“And, what else?”

         Sam drew a deep breath. “And what do you know about the Californian, Willoughby is showing around?”

         “I heard his name is Gurwitz?”

         Sam nodded.

         “Is he related to the Gurwitz brothers who were making movies here thirty years ago?”

         Sam nodded again.

“I hear the brothers haven’t spoken much since that last movie. In fact, I heard that one brother prefers to sell cars.”

“Why’s that?” Sam asked.

         Maddy shrugged. “Families, you know. It happens.”

         Sam nodded. “Yes, but what’s Willoughby up to?”

         “No idea. Bill Willoughby and I talk business, not pleasantries. We would likely get along even better if we never talked at all, but since we need to conduct a certain amount of county business together . . ..” Maddy shook her head. “He’ll get around to telling me what’s going on, sooner or later. Can’t help himself. He needs to talk.”

         “And when he does,” Sam said.

         “I’ll let you know what he says, on one condition.”

         “What’s that?’

         “You got to shake hands with three people on your way out and ask them for their vote.”

         No surprise, Grams always won in the end.

         “And don’t go telling them how you wish you were in some weird place like Accra, Babbly-whatever,” Grams added. “That just makes you sound discontented being here.”

         And somehow, Grams always made Sam feel like an errant teenager. So, playing the part, Sam stood up, finished Grams’ drink, and shook five hands, on her way out the door.

Half an hour later, Sam turned off the highway next to a plain silver mailbox lettered with a fancy “NR” the Nielsen cattle brand. She slowed, stopped, opened a red metal gate, pulled forward, stopped again, and closed the gate. Then she continued down a dirt road for another half mile. At the top of a little hill, the ranch dogs, three of them, were waiting for her. They knew the sound of her car and had come running up the hill to greet her. Sam stopped, leaned over and opened the passenger-side door. They jumped in, ready to ride the rest of the way with her to the “home place,” the name almost all ranchers gave the house, barns, and outbuildings where they lived and worked. Grams’ home place had an older two-story house, a big barn, a couple of smaller barns, and a row of sheds where the equipment was stored. There was also a double wide trailer house, where the current foreman and his family lived.

Sam parked behind the house and let the dogs out. When she turned around, Amy was coming through the back door. “Hey, she-sheriff,” she said.

“Hey, what’s up,” Sam returned.

 “We’re having broccoli,” Amy answered, pulling a face.

“And what else?” Sam asked. Ethel, their live-in housekeeper, was a plain but good cook who often fixed Amy special things but always insisted on a green vegetable at dinnertime.

“Doesn’t matter,” Amy said.  “One taste of broccoli and everything else will taste like broccoli.”

“What can I say? Sometimes the world gives us broccoli.”

“And sometimes you sound like Grams.”

“Can I agree with Grams and still be the she-sheriff?” Sam asked.

Amy paused as if giving that some thought. “She-sheriff “was a term Amy had invented because she thought it sounded like a superhero.

“What if I eat your broccoli and well as mine?” Sam asked.

“All of it?”

“As much as I can.”

Amy’s whole face turned into a wide grin. “You are the she-sheriff.”

Sam caught her daughter’s face, kissed her forehead, and told her she’d be in shortly. “First I’m going to check on Nana Xan.”

“She’s painting purple ponies today,” Amy said.

“Sounds about right.”

  “Where did you find these weird relatives?” Amy asked.

“Every family is weird. Ours just happens to also be interesting,” Sam answered, knowing that Amy loved both her nanas.

“That’s what you always say,” Amy added, turning back to the house. “And remember you’re eating ALL my broccoli.”

Sam crossed the hardpan between the house and the barn. When she opened the barn’s side door, she was greeted with the smell of paint and old wood. Sam’s mother was the famous western painter known as “Xan,” who signed her oversized canvases with a simple X. Earlier she was married to Idaho Congressman Jay Evers. Her marriage ended when her larger-than-life personality and equally oversized canvases no longer fit the “other D.C.’s” expectations for a congressman’s wife. Sam was a baby when Xan came home, put skylights in the big barn, and continued to paint her animal-filled, whimsical sagebrush scenes. It took twenty years before the art world discovered her.

Drinkwater still had no idea. Around here she was Maddy’s strange daughter, Alexandra, who spent too much time painting oddly colored animals in a barn that hadn’t seen livestock in decades. Livestock was something the locals understood. If Xan had been training horses or raising prize bulls. . ..

Inside the barn, Sam immediately spotted the purple ponies Amy had mentioned. There were also some polka dot squirrels near one corner of her mother’s current canvas. Her mother, however, was finished for the day. She was busy cleaning her brushes. Because she did huge paintings, some of her brushes were as big as brooms, making the task of cleaning them a messy undertaking. Xan was standing at an oversized sink, wearing a huge apron, splattered with old and new paint. The apron, however, didn’t protect her face, hair, and arms.

Sam knew that when her mother finished cleaning the brushes, she would hang the apron on the back wall. Then she would clean the worst of the paint off herself, using a shower at the back of the barn before going into the house for a second shower. In other words, this was not a good time to talk.

For that reason, Sam sat on the arm of an old paint-speckled couch and waited. She also studied her mother’s current painting. The ponies were purple but included shades of blue and gray. Since Sam’s last visit, her mother had added some stars to the belly of the bluest of the purple horses—the one that seemed to fly across the upper corner of the canvas.

“If you’ve come to tell me that you’re leaving, just go,” Xan said.

Sam switched her attention to her mother. “Why do you always think I’m leaving?”

“Aren’t you’re always leaving—Zanzibar, Timbuktu, Goa. Where is it today.”

“Accra, but I never actually go anyplace.”

“You did once,” she answered.

“Yes, but California isn’t exactly foreign territory.”

“But you never really came back, did you?” Xan said.

Sam looked around at her mother. “What are we talking about?”

“I know a distant look, when I see one,” Xan answered.

“A distant look?”

“Sometimes, it’s like you’re listening to a drumbeat that no one else hears.”

Sam’s heart skipped a beat. So did the music. For a moment, she didn’t know what to say. She was tempted to try to explain about how her dead husband’s music haunted her. Her mother, more than anyone else, might understand. But this didn’t seem like the right time. So, she got down to business. “Do you remember when they used to make movies in Drinkwater?”

“That was a long time ago. I was young, and you were a baby. You learned to walk in this barn, watching me paint.”

“I know, but I’m hearing that something happened while they were making the last movie—something bad.”

“And you don’t know better than to listen to local gossip?”

Her mother was referring to the gossip that swirled around the Nielsen Women of Drinkwater County. Locals seemed to like to speculate about why none of the “Nielsen Women” seemed able to settle down to a regular life—home, husband, growing a garden.

When Grams was younger, she couldn’t marry and still run her ranch. Back then, banks didn’t do business with married woman only with their husbands. One “I do” and you didn’t run the ranch you’d inherited, no matter what it said on the deed. The fact that Maddy had enjoyed a couple of flings, one that took her all the way to Argentina on the arm of a hacienda owner, (whom she never married) only fueled the talk.

Xan was faulted for not staying married. The man she married had won election to Congress. According to the local gossip, any women in her right mind should have loved being the wife of a congressman. And the local wagging tongues hadn’t been any kinder to Sam. She was faulted, somehow, for not keeping her husband alive. If he’d been home with her instead of working day and night on his last project, maybe he wouldn’t have driven himself into that concrete barrier. Sam had learned to live with that talk. Xan hated it. Maddy mostly ignored it.

Sam said, “As the sheriff, sometimes I need to pay attention to the gossip because . . ..”

Her mother gave her a conversation stopping look.

Sam waited a minute and then tried again. “I hear that someone died on the set,” Sam told her mother. “Sheriff Leo thought she’d been murdered.”

“Sheriff Leo was forever accusing the brothers of all kinds of things—mostly because they never paid their bills. I imagine he would have loved to find them guilty of something bigger.”

“Mostly, he was looking at the older brother.”

“How do you know that?”
        “I read the file.”

Her mother stopped what she was doing and stared at Sam. “Why? Don’t you have regular business that needs tending, especially with the election coming up?” Her mother shook her head. “I know you’ve always had a secret desire to leave this place, but Amy likes it here.”

And so, Sam stopped talking. It was true that years ago, leaving Drinkwater was what she wanted, but now . . .  Sam paused that thought long enough to wonder if losing the election would be freeing . . .

After dinner, it was a regular thing for Sam and Amy to climb the hill behind the ranch house, wrap themselves in a blanket and listen to the coyotes sing. Of course, the coyotes didn’t sing every night and almost never in some seasons of the year, but she and Amy always left the house feeling hopeful, thinking—maybe tonight.

When they first returned to the ranch, after her daddy died, Amy was afraid of everything. Nighttime was darker than in California, and there were strange sounds, the coyotes being the loudest.  So, Sam had coaxed her daughter out into the dark and sat with her, telling her coyote stories, while they waited and listened whenever the coyotes sang. That had worked almost too well. Now Amy not only wanted to listen to the coyotes almost every night, but she’d come to consider herself as an expert on coyotes, having read all the books in the local library and googled everything on the Internet. Lately she’d started collecting books about the mythical Old Man Coyote—the old trickster of native lore.

Tonight, they were lucky. They’d barely had time to settle under their blanket with the ranch dogs, who always came along, when they heard the first yips.

“There they are,” Amy whispered. Sam nodded thinking this was one of the things they’d miss, if they left Drinkwater.

“They’re really singing tonight,” Amy added.

“Sing” was how most people described this nighttime chorus of yips, barks, and other doglike noises. Once they really got going, the sounds could seem truly songlike rising and falling in definite rhythms and patterns, loud and soft. If they were communicating with a nearby pack, the songs from the two packs could take on a call and response characteristic.

The ranch dogs listened, sometimes intently, but rarely tried to join in. Tonight, however, Sam noticed, that the dogs seemed more agitated than usual. They were quiet, but they kept squirming and sticking their noses out from under the blanket, sniffing the air. Most nights, they knew the routine and simply crawled under the blanket, where it was warm, and quickly fell asleep.

“What’s with the dogs,” Amy asked after a short while.

“I don’t know. Maybe they feel like singing along tonight.”

 “Why do you hum some of daddy’s songs,” Amy asked.

Sam was startled. “I don’t, do I?”

Amy shrugged. “Not always, like the coyotes, but sometimes.”

“And you recognize them as daddy’s songs?’

Amy nodded. “He used to sing them to me. I don’t remember him so much anymore, but I remember the songs.”

“That’s why I hum them,” Sam said. “I’m remembering.”

“I read a new Coyote story,” Amy said in her next breath.

“Can’t wait to hear it.”

“Everybody knows that Old Man Coyote wasn’t always a trickster with special, magical powers. When he was a coyote pup, he wasn’t even one of the brave animals.”

Sam nodded. “Go on.”

“That’s why he was always slinking through the grass, looking over his shoulder, seeing shadows everywhere but they were mostly his own shadow. One day, young Coyote thought that it wasn’t fun, being scared all the time, so he decided to make friends with his own shadow. Turns out his shadow was funny and pretty good at dancing in the moonlight. And once he figured that out, his shadow got more friendly and gave him some strong spirit medicine. That’s how he came to be known as Coyote, the Trickster Dog. Then, one day, Coyote and his shadow thought they were so clever that they told themselves they could fool the monster that lived in the lake. They made this big plan and worked it all out. Coyote and his shadow got the lake monster to come up into the moonlight, but then they told the monster a joke and made him look foolish. So foolish that he blushed and when he blushed, his face got hot, so he jumped back in the lake to cool off and disappeared, never to be seen again. Coyote and his shadow bragged to all the other animals about how they’d fooled the monster in the lake because together they were soooooo clever and . . .”

Sometime during the story, Sam sensed that they weren’t alone, which, no doubt, was why the dogs had been agitated earlier, although now, warm under the blanket they were sleeping.

Sam asked her daughter. “Where’s the flashlight.”

Amy shoved it onto Sam’s lap. “There’s more to the story.”

Sam hesitated. If she pretended everything was OK, maybe she could gather the blankets and get Amy back to the house without frightening her, but if she did that, she would never want to bring her daughter here again. She would always be worried, listening to the darkness, and wondering. That, angered Sam. This was their safe place. This was the place where she’d taught Amy not to be scared. 

Sam yelled. “Who’s there?” and immediately she felt Amy stiffen beside her.

“What’s wrong, Mom?”

Sam didn’t say. She was listening. The dogs were awake now, sniffing the air. She flipped on the flashlight and slowly swept the darkness.

“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” Eric Mitchell answered. “I was on my way home when I heard voices. That was a nice story.”

“I didn’t finish it,” Amy said.

“I know,” he answered, “I was enjoying it. I wanted to hear the end before . . .”

He looked at Sam.

“Before what?” Amy asked.

“Before I asked a question.”

“What question?” Amy asked.

“Well, seeing as how your story is about monsters and water, I wanted to ask if you and your mom would like to go up to the swimming hole with me some afternoon?’

Sam was seething. It was just like him not to take “no” for an answer. Eric never, never gave up. Once he got an idea in his head . . .

“And I have a coyote story of my own,” he said as he came closer and squatted next to the blanket.

The dogs growled softly.

The music in Sam’s head flared to full volume—the kind of music that brings the audience to the edge of their seats.

Eric glanced at the dogs, as if assessing the seriousness of their growls. Then he directed himself at Amy. “My story happened long ago. It’s about my father and those coyotes that you hear singing every night.”

“They don’t sing every night,” Amy told him. “Just some nights.”

Eric gestured toward the dark. “Yes, but even when you can’t hear them singing, they’re out there. Trust me. They’re always out there. Sometimes they sing and sometimes they listen. Depends on their mood, I guess.” At the same time, Eric fingered a piece of twine, working it round and round.

He continued. “Most ranchers hate coyotes. It was my father, when he was the foreman here, who quit putting traps out for them.”

He glanced at Sam, as if hoping she’d confirm that fact.

Sam was giving him no encouragement.

“Coyotes are territorial,” he said, turning back to Amy “If you happen to have a bunch that don’t bother the cattle much, my father thought they were worth keeping. If nothing else, they drive off the other kind, the real marauders.” He paused. “And that’s my story of how coyotes came to sing from the ridges above this place. Unlike some other ranches,” he added.

“That’s not a real Coyote story,” Amy told him.

“It a true story.”

“That’s exactly why it’s not a real Coyote story,” Amy insisted.

Now he glanced at Sam.

She said nothing. He was on his own. Her daughter considered herself an expert on Coyote stories and would, no doubt, set him straight, whether he liked it or not.

         “There are real coyotes, and there is Old Man Coyote,” Amy was already explaining. “Real coyote stories are not about real coyotes. They are about the trickster coyotes of Indian lore and how that old, wise dog made the world and then messed it up again. Old Man Coyote messes up a lot. No problem. Sometimes he messes up so badly that he dies in the middle of an adventure, but even that doesn’t stop him. He just jumps over his own poo, because his stuff is magical, and brings himself back to life. Then off he goes again. It’s like the Indians had cartoons before television.”

         Eric nodded. “But it’s OK to know about the real animals, too. Isn’t it?”

         “I suppose if you’re into nature shows, I’m not.” Amy said.

         Sam nudged her daughter. “Past your bedtime. Say ‘good night’ and take the dogs.”

         “Oh, don’t send her away,” he protested. “We haven’t decided when we’re going to go swimming.”

         Amy hesitated.

         He turned to her. “Maybe your mother hasn’t told you about the old swimming hole, but I’ll bet you already know about it, right.”

         Amy glanced at her mother.

         “The kids at school talk about it, right?” he asked.

         “The older kids,” Amy said.

         “Yeah, it was like that when your mom and I were kids. It was like this big secret that the older kids didn’t want to share, but I know where it is and everything. So does your mom. Ask her.”

         Amy glanced at Sam.

         “Take the dogs and go to the house,” Sam said. “Mr. Mitchell will be leaving soon, as well.”

         This time, Amy didn’t object. She tucked her book under her arm and called the dogs. “Night-night,” she called over her shoulder.

         “Night-night,” Sam answered.

         Several moments later, when she was gone, Sam turned on Eric, “What are you doing here?”

         “You know what I’m doing here. It’s my father’s birthday. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter, Halloween  . . .. I make all the holidays special by dancing on his grave. Better than cake. Better than chocolate. Oh, and by the way, I found my mother.”

         “Your mother? How? She’s dead.”

         “Actually, I found my grandmother and my mother’s grave.”

         “You have a grandmother?”

         “Most people do,” he added. “Anyway, remember when they built the new courthouse and threw out a bunch of old files?”

         She nodded although the music in her head was loud enough, she was finding it hard to remember anything. How was she supposed to function with her dead husband’s music continually roaring in her head? Didn’t he realize she had things, serious things, to focus on?

         Eric Mitchell continued, “Seems the old sheriff found my grandmother first. He had her name and address and everything. He even went to Nebraska to see her. That’s where she was—where she is. Nebraska.”

         “What happened?

         “She told him what she told me.”

         “You’ve seen her?”

         “For a whole two minutes. She wouldn’t let me past the screen door. Told me to get off her porch and then slammed the door. She said she didn’t want no ‘brats’ hanging round. Said my mother never wanted me either. So, I stopped off at the cemetery, found her grave, spit on it, and came back here.”

         Sam didn’t know what to say. As kids it never occurred to either of them that his mother didn’t want him. They had told themselves that she was afraid to come and get him because of his father, but she wanted him. She’s always wanted him. They were sure of that. She was his mother. They told themselves that if they could figure out where she was, Eric could run away and go live with her. Then his life would be better—all ice cream and kisses. Or, at least, he would be safer—no beatings. Sam shook her head. “I’m sorry, when did this happen?”

         “Four and a half years ago.”

         “And you’re just telling me now?”

         “We don’t talk much anymore.”

         “Whose fault is that?”

         “Yours. You’re too busy telling me to clean up my trash and stuff.”

         “I am the sheriff.”

         “And you talk like a sheriff—always you’re talking like a sheriff.” He shrugged. “You’re talking like a sheriff right now.”

         Sam remembered that when they were kids, he used to accuse her of not trying hard enough—not coming up with enough ideas or something. He was desperate, and she didn’t know what to do for him. She’d never known what to do. His problems were the kind that no one, especially another kid could solve. The night his father died, she thought, finally, only to have the problem morph into something else, an obsession about her and how they would get married and live their lives together.

         “I’m not Old Man Coyote,” she told him. “I can’t jump over my own magical shit and make everything turn out the way you want it to be. You know that don’t you?”

         He laughed. “Amy’s a lot like you.”

         “So, I’ve been told.”

         He shrugged.

         “And we’re not ever, I mean never-never taking Amy up to the old swimming hole. You need to get that idea out of your head. Do you understand?”

         He shrugged again. “My old man used to tell me I was just like my mother—totally worthless. Now I’m dancing on his grave every chance I get. So, see, things do turn out ok eventually.”

SYNOPSIS: RAINBOW HORSES—a mystery novel by Jerrie Hurd

Sheriff Samantha (Sam) Nielsen is up for reelection and rumor says she won’t win. Rumor is notably reliable in Drinkwater County, Idaho, located in a remote semi-arid area known as the American Serengeti. When her husband died in a freak accident, Sam left California and came home to Drinkwater and then ran for sheriff on a dare, but she’s come to like her job and would like to continue. Her jurisdiction covers an area larger than the state of Massachusetts with a dwindling population of 60,000, not counting the ultra-rich who jet in to fly fish and illegally hunt curly horned mountain sheep.

Rainbow Horses (the first of a series of novels) opens when Sam meets the nephew of a big movie producer who claims to be scouting locations for his uncle’s next film. The lead actress on the last movie made in Drinkwater, thirty years ago, died mysteriously. For that reason and the fact that westerns, as a genre, don’t make current box office, Sam can’t believe anyone wants to start making movies in Drinkwater again.

Meanwhile, she’s trying to catch some modern-day cattle rustlers who are stealing both cows and some of the wild horses that Sam’s mother, a famous western artist, is trying to protect.

Even more worrying, she suspects that the local junk dealer, a disturbed young man who Sam knows well because they grew up together, might be stalking her ten-year-old daughter.

Then there’s her Big Fish (every law officer has a big fish—the one that always gets away). Her Big Fish is a billionaire who owns a fancy hunting lodge in Drinkwater and is building a new power plant nearby. The question is: why? Idaho is already selling excess power to Nevada. And the air pollution from that power plant will destroy Drinkwater’s air quality and its famous mirage. “Why is he building that power plant?” she keeps asking herself and anyone else who will listen to her. “What is he up to?”

In the end, saves her daughter in a life-threatening climax that also reveals an underground water reservoir—water that her Big Fish intends to pump to California, using the power from the plant he’s building. His project is temporarily halted once the scheme is exposed. That, however, means that Sam is suddenly on his radar. Sam’s Big Fish, and his schemes flow through all the novels.

She also exposes the cattle rustlers and saves the wild horses, but only by crossing into Nevada, where her authority means nothing. She relies on her wits instead.

And she solves the thirty-year-old murder mystery.  But, is it enough evidence to convict the murderer? This case and her ongoing love relationship with the movie producer’s nephew runs through all the novels.

And she wins reelection.