Cantina Valley (A Ben Adler Mystery Book 1) Read online

He parked his truck next to the BMW and he tried to see who was inside, but the windows were tinted too dark to make out the driver. His ducks and geese were making a fuss with the new car. Ben guessed they didn’t like fine German autos.

  Getting out, he unzipped his rain jacket and tucked it behind his gun before approaching the driver’s side of the car like he had been taught as an Air Force security policeman. He waved and yelled at his geese to shut up. Once they saw who fed them, they did just that.

  The window slid down smoothly and he saw a pretty redhead behind the wheel, which quickly brought Ben relief.

  “Do you have shit for brains?” Ben asked the woman.

  She reacted with shock. Then she recovered and said, “I don’t think so.”

  Ben pointed toward his front gate down the hill. “You didn’t see my sign to keep the hell out?”

  “Yes, but. . .”

  “When you open a gate on a ranch, you close the damn thing after you go through. I’ve got alpacas, sheep and cattle grazing around here.”

  “And foul. I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think...”

  “Oh, I know that,” Ben said.

  She continued, “I didn’t see any animals.”

  “It’s November and the rains have started,” Ben explained. “Most of them have enough sense to get the hell out of this crap and into their shelter.” Except for the ducks and geese and sometimes the chickens and turkeys.

  “But you’re out in the rain,” she said with a smirk.

  Ben looked up to the sky. “This isn’t bad.” He cast his gaze upon the woman again and said, “What do you want?”

  “I’m Maggi McGuffin, an attorney from Portland,” she said.

  He pointed back to his gate again. “Get the hell out.”

  “I was told you could be an ornery bastard. I thought the colonel was kidding. Now I know he was understating your condition. You might be certifiable.”

  “I’m certain of one thing,” Ben said. “I don’t put up with idiots from Portland. Especially lawyers.”

  “I’m not here as a lawyer,” she said. “Well, that’s not entirely true. I do represent the colonel on a number of matters.”

  That was the second time she mentioned a colonel. “Am I supposed to know this colonel?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Walter Keyes,” she said.

  Yeah, Ben knew this man. After four years as a security policeman, Ben had cross-trained into the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. AFOSI investigated everything in the Air Force from drug crimes to murder. They also worked counter espionage. Lt. Col Keyes had been Ben’s last boss before both of them retired. The main thing they both had in common was the fact that they were both native Oregonians.

  “What’s the Bull up to?” Ben asked. Everyone called the man Bull Keyes, even the enlisted special agents like Ben, who had retired as a senior master sergeant.

  She wiped the rain from the black leather door and said, “Can we talk inside?”

  Glancing about his yard, Ben turned back to the redhead and shifted his head toward his house. “All right. But stay close to me. I don’t want you to be attacked by my critters. That’s fair warning that even a lawyer could understand.”

  The lawyer raised her window and then got out of her fancy car, her six-inch heels sinking into the muck of his driveway.

  Ben held out his hand to her, and she grasped on like she was dangling from a cliff. “Like I said, stay close.”

  Instead of attacking, his geese and ducks scattered as Ben went from the muddy driveway to the concrete sidewalk. He guessed they knew that he would make one of them into Sunday dinner if they didn’t shut up.

  3

  As soon as Ben got in the front door of his single-level ranch house, he took off his rubber boots and lined them up with others similarly on display, much like he had done in the military. Then he looked at the redhead’s high heels and she took those off as well. Once she did, Ben realized that the woman was no more than five four at most.

  He took off his jacket and flipped it onto a hook and waited for the attorney to remove her long coat. Underneath that the Portland lawyer wore a conservative gray suit—a short jacket and a tight skirt. She was well proportioned, Ben thought.

  “I’ve gotta get out of these wet jeans,” Ben said. “You can take a seat in the living room.”

  She nodded. “Thank you.”

  He started toward his bedroom and stopped. “Do you drink coffee?”

  “I’m from Oregon. So, yeah.”

  “Good. You’ll find a clean pot on the stove. I ground some Costa Rican this morning. It’s in the fridge.”

  She went without complaint and Ben went into his bedroom off the living room. From there he could still see her across the living room and to the kitchen. He quickly changed his pants, clipping his gun to his web belt. He went nowhere without his 9mm Glock.

  “How much do you put in the percolator?” she asked. “I haven’t seen one of these for years.”

  He paused and glanced out at her in the distance. “You can’t make it too strong,” he said.

  He looked in his mirror and saw that he was starting to look a bit ragged. He didn’t get many people stopping by his place, so he had no real reason to consider his own appearance. Having been in the military, one would think he would keep his hair cut short. But during his AFOSI years, he had often let his hair grow long to fit in to the local communities—from stateside bases to overseas locales. Now his hair was longer than it had ever been, curled up where it touched his strong shoulders. His dark hair was now speckled with silver. He scratched the three-day old beard on his face—a condition of his bachelorhood and his rebellious indifference.

  He left his bedroom, wandered through his living room and into his kitchen. By now the coffee pot was heating up on the propane stove.

  She glanced at Ben from top to bottom. “Do you always carry a gun?”

  “Do you always carry a purse?” he asked.

  “Not in my house.”

  Good point, he thought. “I come and go a lot. I don’t want to have to look around for it.” He hesitated and saw that she was still not convinced. “When someone carries a gun for more than twenty years, it’s hard to break that habit.”

  The coffee pot started shaking now with full percolation, so Ben shut off the stove and moved the pot to a cold burner. Then he found two mugs and poured them both near the top. “If you want milk, I have unpasteurized whole milk in the fridge. If you want sugar, I’ll lose all respect for you.”

  “Black is fine,” she said, taking the cup from Ben.

  The two of them sat at a table in a small alcove off the kitchen. Instinctively, he waited for her to start talking. He had always been one of the least demonstrative interrogators—letting the suspects find enough rope to hang themselves. The only reason he let her into his house was because she had mentioned an old friend, Lieutenant Colonel Walter Keyes. Ben was intrigued.

  “You must be wondering why I’m here,” she said.

  Ben sipped his coffee, but he kept his eyes on her, discovering her interesting features. Her nose was small and turned up like a Norwegian ski jump. Now he wondered if the red hair was real. Especially with the dark brown eyes.

  She continued. “Colonel Keyes hired me to find you.”

  Letting out a breath of air as he shook his head, Ben said, “He could have simply asked an old Air Force friend for my official address.”

  “The only thing the Air Force has on you is a bank account linked to a P.O. Box in Junction City,” she said.

  He smiled and shrugged. “The only reason I have any bank account is to receive my Air Force retirement check by direct deposit.” Technically, he had taken out that P.O. Box for the same reason. At the time of his retirement, the Air Force needed a forwarding address. Just in case World War III broke out and they needed to recall his ass out of retirement.

  The lawyer glanced about the kitchen and into the living room. Then she said, “You have
an interesting place.”

  “You mean clean?” he asked.

  Her face turned nearly as red as her hair. “No. Well, ranch houses can be more lived in. I grew up on a small ranch near Sisters.”

  “That’s dust versus mud, though.”

  “True. It was always hard to keep the dust from overcoming everything. But we tried.”

  “But?”

  She hesitated, considering her words like a good lawyer. “As I sat in my car waiting for you to get here, I noticed a few things.”

  Here it came, he thought. Judgment time.

  “There are no telephone lines or power lines to your house.”

  This was entirely true. “You caught me. I’m not beholding to the big power companies or the communications conglomerates. What’s your point?”

  Now she stopped long enough to take a drink of coffee. Then she said, “You’re completely off the grid.”

  “Brilliant observation counselor. Would you like a gold star?”

  “But this house is older. Did it used to have power?”

  “Not exactly,” Ben said. “This house is actually older than it looks. It was built almost a hundred years ago by my grandfather. Back then it was more of a weekend retreat and a place to run cattle. They also used it to hunt elk out back on horses. My father inherited it and used a generator to power the place. I still have a generator backup, but most of my power comes from newer technology.”

  “I saw the solar panels,” she said. “But this isn’t a great place to grab the sun.”

  “I upgraded the panels recently. They work with very little sunlight. But I don’t need much power. It’s mostly to run a few lights and to power my refrigerator and freezer.” He hesitated long enough to formulate an opinion on the structure of her strong jaw line. Either she talked a lot, or she chewed a bunch of gum. Or maybe she was naturally blessed with a single chin. “Can you get to the point? I’ve got shit to do around here.”

  “I’m sorry. As I said, Colonel Keyes hired me to find you. His son has a problem.”

  The good colonel had two kids, a son and a daughter. The girl was in her third year at Oregon State, an ROTC candidate. The son, as far as Ben could remember, was a major fuckup. “Bobby Keyes? Who did he kill?”

  “What? No one, as far as we know. But he’s missing.”

  Something wasn’t adding up. “Why in the hell does Bull Keyes need my help finding his son? The Bull was one of the best investigators in the OSI.”

  “That’s what he said about you,” she said. “In fact, he said you were the best he had ever worked with.”

  “Still, why not do it himself?”

  The lawyer hesitated again by drinking down the last of her coffee. “This is really good.”

  “I know a stall tactic when I see one,” Ben said. He got up and went to the stove, bringing back the pot of coffee. He topped off her mug and set the pot on the thick wooden table. Then he sat down again and waited for her to answer him.

  “Colonel Keyes had a stroke recently,” she finally said. “He’s confined to a VA nursing home.”

  “The Dalles or Lebanon?”

  “Lebanon.”

  “That’s a nice place,” Ben said. “Was the stroke that bad?”

  “He’s in a wheel chair in the rehab section. So he hopes to get out and back to his home in Portland.”

  Ben knew that the colonel and his wife had divorced years ago. She had been out of the picture since the two kids were in their early teens. The Bull had raised them as best he could on his own. But long deployments and command authority had probably not been easy on the kids.

  “I see,” Ben said. “But you found me, so you should be able to find the Bull’s snot-nosed kid.”

  “Bobby is twenty-five,” she said. “And the only reason I found you is because the colonel knew you had grown up in this area. I spent the last two days talking with anyone who would speak with me. This is a tight-lipped community.”

  “We like our privacy. You’re lucky you didn’t get shot.”

  “I got a few guns pulled on me.”

  Ben smiled. “Hippies or mushroom pickers?”

  “Neither. One was a religious fanatic and the other a guy named Marlon. He’s the one I finally convinced to give me your location.”

  “That bastard. I’ll have a talk with him.” Marlon was generally harmless, if not a little delusional. He was their resident Bigfoot hunter. But she was lying. Marlon never used guns. The man was a former professor and didn’t even own a firearm.

  The two of them simply stared at each other for a moment. He guessed she was trying to figure out how he had gotten the four-inch scar along his jaw line. “A guy pulled a knife on me in Spain.”

  “What?”

  “You were wondering how I got this scar,” he said. “You’ve been staring at it.”

  “How?”

  “People wonder. Anyway, it’s a long story. The guy pulled a knife and I pulled a gun. I guess it’s not that long.” He checked out her slack jaw now, which exposed her near-perfect teeth. She had one canine that protruded a bit farther out than the other. So her parents had probably not been able to afford braces.

  “You’re an interesting man,” she said.

  “Who did you expect to find in an off-the-grid home in Western Oregon? A toothless redneck?”

  “I. . .had no expectations.”

  That was the second lie she had said to him. But he would let it go. “Back to Bull Keyes. Why did he really recommend me for this job?”

  “I’m telling you the truth. The colonel said you were his best investigator.”

  “What else did he say?”

  Now she looked up and to her right, as if asking for God’s help with this answer. Finally, she said, “He said you could be very intense.”

  That was kind of the Bull. But did he really put it that way or was she just cleaning up the language of Bull Keyes? “He didn’t talk about Iraq?”

  She shifted nervously in her chair. Then she reluctantly said, “He mentioned something about nearly losing your soul there. But he didn’t give details.”

  The Bull was being kind. Yeah, Ben had nearly lost his shit in Iraq while interrogating insurgents. If he didn’t get the answers he needed fast, his fellow comrades would lose their lives. So, yeah, Ben had gotten a little intense under those circumstances. He would have to live with the consequences of his actions. But he lost no sleep over any of it.

  “I don’t know how I can help the colonel,” Ben said. “I don’t own a computer or even a cell phone. I no longer have access to computer databases.”

  She looked at him like she was viewing a unicorn. “Seriously? How do you live?”

  “Look around. I don’t even own a TV. My only access to the outside world is a seldom-used shortwave radio. Outside those doors I actually talk with my neighbors. You probably have hundreds of social media friends, but can’t name the people next door in your condo unit.”

  “How do you know I live in a condo?” she wanted to know.

  “You have no ring, so I’m guessing you have no spouse. Although as an attorney you could afford to pay for a gardener or at least someone to mow your lawn, I’m guessing, since you said you grew up on a ranch in Central Oregon, that you really don’t want to get your hands dirty. Living in the Portland area, that means living in a condo or townhome. They’re easier to deal with. Good for cats.”

  “Who says I have cats?”

  “Your gray wool suit has short black hair on it. From a cat.”

  “It could be a dog,” she reasoned.

  “Your purse has a couple of cat scratches on it. I’m guessing that’s from a new kitten.”

  She shook her head. “The colonel was right about you.”

  “Perhaps. But I also know that Bobby Keyes died months ago, just as I was about to retire from the Air Force. Overdose of heroin in Eugene. So, why are you really here? And how do you know Colonel Bull Keyes?”

  The attorney’s disposition quic
kly changed from a stoic figure of rigidity, to a hundred and five pounds of crying and sobbing hair and flesh in a gray wool suit. Ben pulled his chair up next to her and put the woman’s long red head against his chest to comfort her.

  4

  Once Maggi McGuffin, the Portland lawyer, stopped crying, Ben found a bottle of Dominican rum and two small glasses. He poured a glass for each of them and took a seat again across from her.

  “Sip that,” he instructed. “It’s been aged at least ten years.”

  She had recovered somewhat by now. Maggi brushed her long hair behind her ears and sipped at her rum. “This is good.”

  “It’s all right. I prefer Central American rum.” He thought for a moment to gauge her level of recovery. “Now, can you tell me your real reason for being here?”

  “I met Colonel Keyes at the VA nursing home while visiting my father, who is there on a more permanent basis. Anyway, we talked for a long time one day. He told me about you.”

  “Your brother is missing.”

  She gave him a dumbfounded look. “How in the hell do you know this?”

  “A guess. The crying. It’s obviously personal for you. A younger brother?”

  “He’s thirty. A former Army soldier.”

  Ben sipped his rum and licked a little left over on his upper lip. Then he said, “What makes you think I can find him if you can’t?”

  “It wasn’t just a coincidence that your name came up with Colonel Keyes,” Maggi said. “When I mentioned where I thought my brother was, the Colonel made the connection to you.”

  He was getting frustrated with her not getting to the point. He guessed she was trying to lay the foundation for something unpalatable. “Go ahead,” Ben said.

  “It’s been over a month since I’ve heard from my brother Tavis.”

  Ben had no siblings, but he guessed that wasn’t a long time. “That’s not long.”

  “It is for Tavis,” she assured him. “We used to be in contact daily, either by text or email. We talked once a week by phone. Even when he was deployed overseas, I never went more than two weeks without some contact.”

  Interesting. When Ben was in the Air Force, he might not have contacted his parents for six months. Of course that was back when the homestead still had a land line. Now, even if he had a cell phone, there would be no signal.