Mesa sat next to Kathy while Chance walked over to the mantel, pausing for a moment to look at the photos before turning around. “Mesa told me about how you wrote to Lowell. You know, he kept your last letter with him. I saw it next to the bed where he slept at the Swoboda’s house.”
Mesa was surprised to hear Chance talking with such sentiment about the ex-convict. Maybe he felt like Austin was the one victim in this strange story that had no voice. Could he tell Kathy wanted to hear more?
“He must have really cared about you,” Chance said, much to Mesa’s amazement. She had rarely heard him talk so directly about another man’s emotions. Mesa looked at Kathy, wondering if she would break down again.
“It’s obvious you’re upset about what happened,” Chance said, leaning on the mantel’s edge with one arm. “But I have to admit, I’m also curious how your brother has reacted to all this.”
Kathy’s back stiffened and she sat up straight, pushing away from the back of the sofa.
“Did he know Lowell Austin was coming to town?” Chance’s tone had changed. “I bet he would have been worried. I would have been anxious if I found out Mesa had been in communication with the man who had killed our father.”
Kathy looked at her watch. “My brother has his own problems.”
Chance picked up the photo of Kathy with her children and her brother. “Is this him? What’s his name?”
“Garrett Birch,” she said.
“Did he meet Lowell too?” Chance asked. “What did he say when he saw your father’s killer sitting at your dining room table?”
“He never even got past the hall way,” Kathy said, her tone defensive. “He just dropped his duffle bag, gave me a quick hug, and said he’d be back later. He didn’t even say hello to the kids.”
“So he never met Austin,” Chance said.
“Not as far as I know,” Kathy said.
“Did your brother come back to the house?”
“He came in late. I heard the front door close around 2 a.m.”
“So, did you see him Sunday?” Chance asked.
Mesa was surprised at the increasingly intimidating tone in Chance’s voice.
Kathy rubbed her hands together, clearly anxious. “I saw him for a few minutes. We were on our way out the door to Georgetown Sunday morning. I invited him to come along but he said he was going to look up an old girlfriend.”
“He didn’t say anything about going flying?” Chance asked.
“No, not at all. What are you trying to say?” Kathy said. “You think he had something to do with Lowell’s death? How could that be possible?”
“Seems like the two of you had ample time to set a plan in motion.”
Kathy stood up. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. I have no idea how Lowell got in that airplane and as far as I know, Garrett had nothing to do with it either. Now you’d better leave. I have to go.”
“Do you have any idea where Garrett is now?” Chance said. “Maybe I should talk to him directly.”
“I think he’s left town. I told you, he’s got his own problems with the Army to sort out.”
“Who’s the girlfriend? Maybe I’ll talk to her.”
Mesa could tell Chance wasn’t going to let up. She was beginning to feel sorry for Kathy.
“Tessa Revelle. She’s an old friend of mine. We used to work together at the Broadway Café before I had kids. She was with Garrett Monday at the Labor Day picnic in Stodden Park. Ask your sister. She met him. He’s still trying to adjust to being home, but he certainly didn’t act like he’d killed anybody.”
Mesa nodded enthusiastically, as if to support Kathy’s claims. Whatever scenario Chance was dreaming up, it seemed too complicated to include Garrett Birch. He looked most like a candidate for a PTSD evaluation.
“And since then, you haven’t heard from him?”
She shook her head. “Look, I’ve got to go. I will talk to the detective. Tell Irita, all right?”
* * *
Mesa buckled her seat belt while Chance started the Land Rover. “What got you so riled up? I told you she didn’t have anything to do with Austin’s death,” she said as Chance made a U-turn on Gold Street and headed back toward the Messenger office. “You went after Kathy like she and her brother had some big plan. Where did you get that theory all of a sudden? You really think that Garrett Birch and his sister planned to kill Austin? He can’t fly an airplane, and he’s practically a transient. According to Irita, he’s been back in the country less than a month.”
Chance lingered at the stop sign at the corner of Excelsior and Gold. “Those photos on her mantel, the one with her brother and her two kids? That’s who I saw talking to Hardy last night at Shoestring Annie’s.”
Mesa felt her breath catch but she didn’t want to let on her anxiety to Chance. Had she totally misjudged Hardy, yet again? Methodically she tried to re-evaluate everything Hardy had said in the past 48 hours, unsure what was important at this point, and what she should say to Chance. “What’s that prove? Hardy talks to everybody,” was the best she could muster.
Chance nodded slowly. “I started thinking last night about how Hardy showed up out of nowhere on Tuesday.”
“He got hurt down in Moab, so he came back to Butte a few months early,” Mesa said. That made perfect sense to her, but she added for emphasis, “His dad’s been sick.”
“So how come he’s driving one of his dad’s trucks everywhere? I saw it at the Copper Baron. Where’s his precious, shiny Dodge Dakota Sport four-wheel Quad cab pickup? You seen it?”
Mesa didn’t like the tone in Chance’s voice, plus, this insinuation hit home. Hardy was obsessed about the silver pickup when he had bought it four years ago. She had ridden in it to Big Sky with him that Christmas. He called it his entertainment center on wheels, and loved telling people it was so fancy he could live in it. She knew that on occasion he even kept a mattress in the back. “What are you saying? Maybe it’s in the shop. Knowing Hardy, he probably doesn’t want to pay for his own gas.”
“This morning I went back to look at the photos the sheriff’s office took of the plane’s cabin,” Chance said. “I didn’t put it together when I first saw them. There were a couple of potato chip bags, a plastic Mountain Dew bottle, and an empty Oberto beef jerky wrapper on the floor.”
Mesa felt a chill go down her back—Hardy ate jerky all the time, and if he wasn’t drinking beer, it was Mountain Dew. “Come on, Chance, half the guys in Butte are jerky junkies. It’s nothing but pure coincidence.”
“When I left Shoestring Annie’s last night, I saw Garrett Birch standing with a group of guys that included Kevin Murphy. What if Garrett Birch hired Hardy to take Lowell Austin up in that plane? What if Kevin Murphy saw him with Hardy and put it all together? Maybe Hardy and Garrett decided they needed to shut Kevin up. Maybe they stuck around until last call, jumped Kevin, and then left him in the street, hoping he would get run over.”
“Hardy couldn’t have done something like that,” Mesa said. Hardy was a lover, not a fighter. And Chance almost never got so wound up, especially with somebody who was a good friend. “Chance, you know him better than that. Where’s your loyalty?”
Chance stared hard at his sister. She knew that look. More than once, he had told her how stupid she could be about guys. A car pulled up behind Chance, so he had to move on. He turned toward Park Street. “How can you be so sure about Hardy?”
“Because,” Mesa said, wishing she didn’t have to admit it to Chance, “He was with me last night.”
Chapter 19
“Tessa Revelle?” Irita said to Erin as they stood with Chance and Mesa in her office conferring about the whereabouts of one of Butte’s own. “I know she doesn’t work up at the Broadway Café anymore. I think maybe she went back to school.”
Chance had looked up Tessa’s address in the Butte phone book. All it said was “south of Butte.” No one answered the phone when he called. “Up at Tech?” Chance asked.
r /> “Let me call Connor, my brother,” Erin offered. “He and Tessa’s brother, Bart, used to play hockey together.”
Chance followed Erin toward the newsroom but turned toward Mesa just before he left her office. “If you hear from Hardy, tell him I want to talk to him. And if he doesn’t want to talk to me, tell him he can talk to Rollie Solheim.”
Mesa sunk back into her chair and let out a long, slow breath. Irita came over and leaned on the corner of the desk. “What was that all about? I haven’t seen him this serious since your grandmother had her heart attack.”
“Kevin Murphy ended up in the hospital last night,” Mesa said.
“I heard,” Irita said. “Not like it’s the first time.”
“I know,” Mesa said, “but Chance thinks it has to do with this plane business. He has it in his head that Hardy Jacobs and Kathy’s brother, Garrett, beat Kevin up. Apparently, Chance saw Garrett talking to Hardy at Shoestring Annie’s last night.”
“Holy shit,” Irita said in a whisper. “I thought Garrett had left town. At least that’s what Kathy said.”
“Maybe she’s trying to protect him,” Mesa said. She knew that would be her instinct if she thought Chance were in trouble with the law, which of course she couldn’t imagine. “Kathy said Garrett showed up at her house on Saturday night but didn’t stick around. She says he never even saw Austin, not that Chance believes her.”
“It would certainly be a weird set of circumstances,” Irita said. “I don’t know Garret that well. He’s hard to read. I don’t think he ever said more than two words at one time to me. Not that I’d give him a chance, the way I jabber.
“He’s always seemed like the somber, brooding type—not mean but always keeping to himself. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lot of torment underneath. Can’t see him wanting to spend ten minutes with Hardy Jacobs though. They’re oil and water. How would they even meet?”
“Hardy told Chance they had worked together at Big Sky,” Mesa said. “Maybe before Garrett got called up?”
Irita shrugged. “Garrett drove for UPS in Billings before he went off to Kandahar for fun and games. Maybe he delivered to Big Sky?”
Mesa doubted it. The ski resort was more than three hours from Billings. And even though people liked to say that Montana was just one big city connected by really long streets, she seriously doubted UPS looked at it that way. She picked up her cell phone. “Maybe I better ask Hardy myself.”
* * *
Chance pulled into the parking lot next to the World Museum of Mining, where Tessa Revelle worked three days a week. Erin had needed exactly two phone calls to get the particulars on Tessa. Now that was investigative journalism at work as far as Chance was concerned.
Built on the site of the Orphan Girl Mine, the museum actually spanned several acres designed to replicate an 1880s mining town—the Butte version of a theme park, as yet without the rides. Some of the buildings, the church, and school had actually been saved from Meaderville, when the mostly Italian neighborhood in Butte had been cannibalized to make way for the Berkeley Pit operation.
Chance looked at the mine head-frame, an iron silhouette against the already snow-capped Anaconda Pintler Mountains to the west. A sudden gust of cold wind came up, blowing dust everywhere, a reminder of the long winter to come. He hurried into the museum gift shop.
When he saw Tessa Revelle behind the cash register, he remembered why her name had sounded familiar. She had once graced the arm of Mattie Gronauer, Mr. Hockey Puck, back in their high school days. At least she had had the good sense to dump him quicker than most.
Tessa was a good-looking blonde whose smooth complexion and pink cheeks preserved her youth, though she had graduated from high school a few years behind Chance. She often wore a pouty expression that made her look permanently disappointed. Nevertheless, hers was a welcoming smile when she greeted Chance by name.
“I heard you were back in school,” Chance said and picked at a box of tiny bottles near the cash register, each supposedly with a flake of real gold in it.
Tessa smiled and said, “Finally decided to get an accounting degree. It’s boring but I’ll get a decent job. This is just part-time.”
“Kind of quiet,” Chance said, looking around at the empty gift shop with a feigned grimace.
Tessa smiled. “My dad helped put this place together when I was a kid. I guess I have a soft place in my heart for it. It’s starting to slow down now that Labor Day’s past, but sometimes volunteers come in and talk about the old times, which is cool.
Chance stooped to look at a shelf of kids’ toys—a miniature miner’s lamp, a plastic rock hammer—while Tessa talked. She seemed so gentle. He wondered if she had any idea what Garrett Birch was capable of, if in fact Chance was right about Kathy’s brother.
“What brings you to the Museum? Is there something you’re looking for?” she asked with a shy smile. “Can I help you find something?”
Chance stood up and shook his head. “To be honest, Tessa, I’m looking for Garrett Birch. I heard he was staying with you.”
“I see,” Tessa said and nodded, the hint of the pout returning. She turned to a pile of invoices next to the cash register and began to sort them.
“I know this might seem out of the ordinary but I know his sister is worried about him. We were thinking maybe you could help her get in touch with him.”
“He doesn’t have a cell phone. But I guess you could try calling him at my house, but usually he won’t answer the phone. If he’s still there.”
“Did he say he was leaving?” Chance said, uneasy about the possibility that he might lose the opportunity to talk to Garrett at all.
“He’s been talking about leaving for a couple days now, but he was still here this morning.” She shrugged. “I didn’t know you and Garrett knew each other.”
“We don’t,” Chance admitted. “I just met his sister today, as a matter of fact. She’s really worried about him,” he added, hoping Tessa might offer some information about Garrett. “The Army called Kathy looking for him. Did you know he was coming to town?”
Tessa shook her head, one eyebrow slightly raised. “He called me Sunday afternoon,” she said, “and asked if he could stay at my place for a couple of days.” She began to leaf through a box of maps of the mines on the hill and attach price stickers to them while she talked.
“We dated for a while back when his sister and I worked together. He used to drive over from Billings now and then to visit her.” She paused, and then added, “I hadn’t seen him since he left with the Guard. I was kind of surprised when he wanted to crash at my house, but I don’t mind. He’s a nice guy.”
“Afghanistan must be some experience,” Chance said. Had that been where Garrett could have learned how to kill Lowell Austin the way that Adrienne had described?
“He doesn’t really talk about it, except he said he needed to be around someone who understood how he can be at times.”
“How’s that?” Chance asked.
“Sad, mostly,” she said kind of absently, as if she were taking stock of Garrett for the first time. “He’s been staying in my spare bedroom for the past couple of days. He helped me replace a switch on my furnace, but besides that, I’ve hardly talked to him.”
“When did you meet up with him?” Chance asked.
“On Monday. I picked him up at his sister’s house. Then we went over to the Labor Day Picnic to hook up with Kathy and the kids.”
“Garrett didn’t have his own car?” Chance asked. That meant he could have driven Kathy’s SUV on Sunday morning, then somehow got back to the airport on Monday morning and driven it back about the time Jake Brinig had left the airport. His sister would never even have known he used it.
“I didn’t ask. He just said he needed a ride so I gave him one.”
“So you guys aren’t . . .?” Here he motioned with his hands in an awkward sort of way, trying to indicate a stronger connection.
“No, we’re frie
nds. That’s it,” Tessa said, “He’s kind of a loner.” She chuckled. “Maybe that’s why we clicked originally. People say that about me sometimes, living in a cabin out of town by myself.”
“Garrett and I got thrown together, you might say. Whenever his sister would have people over, it always seemed like Garrett and I would be the ones without dates.” She stopped again, embarrassed perhaps that she had revealed as much as she did. “There’s really a good guy behind that long face.”
“How do you mean?” Chance said, trying not to sound too eager.
“People mistake him being quiet for not caring about things.” She paused, as if searching for words that had once been applied to her, “like he’s hard-hearted. That’s not true. I know he worries about his sister’s kids, being without a father. He says that’s part of what made him the way he is.”
* * *
Mesa called Yukon Glass and talked to Ronnie Jacobs, who told her his brother had gone out to the parking lot at Wal-Mart. The owner of a gigantic RV wanted someone to check on a crack in its windshield. Hardy had a cell phone, Ronnie added, though what good it did, he didn’t know since Hardy intentionally kept it off most of the time. He used it when he wanted to make a call. There was nothing else scheduled for him. They weren’t sure when he would be back, but would tell him to call.
Mesa looked at her watch. She could wait and see if he showed up at Pork Chop John’s. She decided instead to drive to the big box superstore, which sat all too grandly at the end of a long string of car dealerships, and across from Mountain View Cemetery at the south end of town. Usually the RVs, which Wal-Mart so graciously permitted to park in its lot overnight, clustered near the street.
When Mesa pulled in to the far entrance of the parking lot, she saw Hardy. He was shaking hands with a portly gray-haired man who wore what looked like a pair of suit pants that had been converted into Bermuda shorts and a pair of clean, white tennis shoes. She was in luck. It looked like Hardy was just finishing up.
Mesa parked between two pickups away from the nest of RVs. Walking over to the Yukon Glass pickup, she reminded herself to ask Hardy about his traveling entertainment center, not that he would need it for work. She leaned on the front fender of the truck and tried to look nonchalant until Hardy noticed her. She didn’t want to seem overly interested in anything in particular. He came around from the rear and looked surprised to see her.