MacAvity's Burning. Dan H. McLachlan
this year.”
Charlie nodded. “Any clues what might be causing it?”
Smoke shook his head. “No. But a few things have happened that no one has an explanation for.”
We waited for Smoke to continue. He sat back in his chair and held his chin for a moment rubbing his thumb along his jaw.
“For instance, last fall two white Dodge eight seater vans pulled up beside the ball field and about ten people got out, half of them women, and nonchalantly scattered throughout the town like tourist or sightseers.”
“So weren’t they?” Charlie said.
“Well, maybe. But they took way too many pictures. Particularly of the church, MacAvity’s, and the boarded up school. Butte and I were sitting out on his sidewalk bench taking in the sun and he told me they looked like a pack of over-washed barracuda looking to score a feeding frenzy.”
Now Charlie leaned back in his chair. I wondered mildly if I should join in and lean back in mine as well.
“They ever come back?”
Smoke looked at me.
“Remember how we’ve been getting the random visitor to the pub all last winter?”
I sat back.
“And this summer. Yeah, I do,” I said. “Men. And like you said, clean cut. Like car salesmen or real estate agents.”
“Do you think they’re land speculators,” Charlie asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Doesn’t seem like it. But I don’t know.”
Charlie looked at Smoke who just shrugged.
He sighed and laced his hands on the table.
“OK. Well that’s something, at least.”
He hesitated.
“But the reason I wanted you two to come in to see me, and actually I wish MacAvity and Hammersmith could have been here too, is that Ryback has had a tendency in the past to take the law into its own hands from time to time,” he said.
Hearing this statement made Smoke’s eyes grow dangerously hard.
“You trying to say we’re vigilantes or militia, Charlie?”
Charlie didn’t flinch.
“You know damn well what I’m saying, Smoke, and I was there with you on that Magruder thing, and I suspect you guys were what brought Clifford Spreiter, that millionaire fuck to justice, and I took the heat for both of those events and damn near lost my job and was put in jail for them, too.”
He glared back at Smoke.
“The only thing you two old shits did right was putting the professor behind bars. Or don’t you remember?”
Smoke sighed. “All right. Cool your jets, Charlie. I remember.”
Charlie said nothing.
Smoke glanced at me then turned back to Charlie.
“What is it you do want us to do then?”
Charlie almost smiled.
“I want you two to help me find out who’s responsible for what happened last night without killing them. Can you do that?”
“Dammit Dad, you never let us have any fun,” I said.
“Oh, and get Hammersmith and Butte on our page too,” Charlie added. “I think Butte, particularly, is interested in finding out if the fire was hot enough to breach that concrete arsenal he has in the Pub’s basement that no one is suppose to know anything about. And I think he’d like to go blow up whoever torched his place.”
Smoke got up to leave. He reached across the table and he and Charlie shook hands. I did the same and followed Smoke back out into the noon heat and his pickup. The sun was not reflecting off the Jimmy’s hood, I noticed.
I didn’t point that fact out to Smoke.
Chapter Four
As we crested back over Cup Hand, Smoke took the east fork off the Ryback road. I figured rightly he was taking us to Hammersmith and Ruthie’s farm where Butte and Shiela had spent the night.
Good idea.
We’d driven in silence, and Smoke, lost in his own thoughts, had driven unusually close to the speed limit. For some reason, that was more unsettling than having Charlie ask us for our help. It was more like Charlie to tell us we were meddling old shits whom he’d like to lock up in an institution for Idaho’s criminally insane old geezers. I had a feeling if we were to jump sideways, Charlie’s request would reveal itself as a dire warning, a suggestion that perhaps he was wagging his tail but bearing his teeth.
We rounded the pine covered knoll that marked the west side of Hammersmith’s cozy meadow. His 1930s bungalow with its sweeping porch came into view, and Smoke parked haphazardly in the mowed field. In front was a white Ford Expedition I didn’t recognize. There were no logos on its doors, but a radio whip stuck from the center of its white roof.
“Looks like there’s a meeting of minds going on,” Smoke mumbled.
“Fed?” I said.
“Nope. Look at the plates. He’s a Stater.”
Smoke killed the engine and sat looking at the front of the house.
“You know,” he flipped his half finished cigarillo out the window, “I have a feeling the people who killed Donny didn’t consider killing him the main objective.”
He turned and looked at me.
I shook my head slightly. “And the pub? Burning it to the ground was not the main objective?”
“Nope.”
He pushed open the door and got out as smoothly as an overflowing tub and started off for the house.
I fell in behind. In his usual way, he simply opened the heavy front door and walked inside without even tapping a heads-up on the window.
I loved the Hammersmith house. Hard wood floors with Persian and Southwest rugs; richly varnished dark oak trim and built-in cabinets with glass doors; light tan plaster walls hung with framed landscapes, and heavy Stickley mission style arts-and-craft leather covered furniture that surrounded a large low round coffee table, and a rock fireplace that dominated the inside wall.
And sitting around the table looking up at us were MacAvity, Hammersmith and a man in his sixties sporting the whitest head of hair pulled back into a thick ponytail I’d ever seen. He was trim and muscular with very pale eyes the color of opals, and a face tanned and wrinkled from a life outdoors.
Hammersmith got to his feet.
“Well, Rob, these are the two we were just discussing.”
The head of hair got to his feet as we came over. I could see he was wearing round toed cowboy boots like Charlie wore. Working boots. He gave us a faint smile and looked us over.
“This is Smoke Something-Or-Other,”Hammersmith gestured, “and this is our lazy retired journalist from the Confluence Tribune, Paul Melton.” He turned. “This is Fire Marshal Robbins Bruun--here to pay a visit.”
We shook hands. Bruun’s shake was muscular but gentlemanly. However, I could imagine it being folded up into a fist the density of a splitting maul.
Smoke and I eased into the couch facing the fireplace across the coffee table and waited. I could hear Shiela and Ruthie talking quietly in the kitchen off to my left through an arched doorway.
MacAvity started off.
“Robbins, here, is more than the Idaho Fire Marshal. He was part of Special Ops in the first Gulf War, then went to the University of California, Davis, for his Masters in Forensic Science, and studied