BIG HORN: A Jenn Herrington Wyoming Mystery (The Jenn Herrington Wyoming Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  She stopped short in the center of the eating area adjacent to the kitchen. A sour smell undercut with something sickeningly sweet burned her nasal passages. Trash was stacked to overflowing, with a Wyoming Whiskey bottle balanced on top. Detritus from a meal of chips and sandwiches littered the countertops. Dishes were piled like the leaning tower of Pisa in the sink. By the faucet, a rusted coffee can was heaped with rotten food. A piece of medical tape on its side announced in black all caps letters that it was COMPOST.

  But it wasn’t the filthiness that gave her pause. It was the black and white animal scurrying through the food and dishes on the counter.

  “Aaron . . .” Her voice quavered. She sucked in a whistling breath. And then she burst into tears. Sobs, really. Gasping, heaving sobs that bent her over on her knees.

  Her husband ran into the kitchen. “What is it?” He straightened her by her shoulders, his eyes boring into hers.

  She pointed at the counter. The little creature was standing on its back legs now, watching them. Through hiccups, she said, “Isn’t it the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen?”

  Aaron’s laughter scared the animal, and it squeaked at them and darted behind a standing mixer. “It’s a skunk, Jenny.”

  “I never thought I’d get this close to one.”

  “You’re almost close enough to get sprayed.”

  “I don’t c-c-c-care.” Watching Bambi as a little girl, Jennifer had fallen in love with Flower, and her heart had remained true. She inched into the kitchen. “Hey, there, little guy. Or are you a girl?” she cooed.

  “You know you’re probably the only person on the planet who’s fanatical about skunks, right?”

  Jennifer flapped her hand to shush him. “Come back, sweetie pie. Just let me get another look at you.”

  “It’s so rare they probably don’t even have a name for the disorder.”

  Jennifer sniffed. “They’re so little and misunderstood. Their spray is just a way to protect themselves. They do lots of good things, like eat mice and rats and spread seeds.”

  She heard George’s feet thumping on hardwood. At least, she hoped it was George, and not Hadley. But she didn’t tear her eyes away from the skunk.

  “That’s Jeremiah Johnson,” George said, sounding a little sloppier than a few minutes before. Glass clinked as he dropped something onto the trash mountain. “I found him as a baby in a live trap in my barn, dehydrated and starving. I bottle fed him until he recovered. After that, he didn’t want to leave. We’ve been together ever since. Jeremiah, come meet the nice guests.”

  The skunk waddled to George and climbed into his arms. Jennifer trilled.

  “Jeremiah’s stink maker was removed, so it’s safe to come close. He likes to get to know you before you handle him, though.”

  Don’t we all. “If you’re sure?” Jennifer was already halfway across the kitchen.

  Aaron shook his head, grinning. “You’re fulfilling a lifelong dream for her right now. A bucket list item.”

  George swayed like there was a stiff wind blowing through the kitchen. “See if he’ll sniff your hand.”

  Jennifer held her hand out, palm down. Jeremiah sniffed it, then skittered up George’s arm and perched on his shoulder like a parrot.

  “He’s adorable,” she said.

  “I don’t know what I’d do without my little buddy.” George set the skunk back on the counter.

  Jennifer shuddered. Animals, even tame skunks, didn’t belong on kitchen counters in her world. The lodge was a pigsty. Luckily, they weren’t staying long and didn’t have to eat here. She turned away from the mess.

  “Do you have any rubbing alcohol? My husband had an encounter with your cat.” Her voice was sticky sweet. As cute as Jeremiah was, the cat was a menace.

  Aaron gave Jennifer a look. He knew what it meant when a southern woman used a voice like that.

  George smiled. “Sorry about Katya. She thinks she’s our guard dog, since Liam doesn’t get around well anymore.”

  From the living room, the dog’s tail thumped so hard at the mention of its name that it sounded like a tribal drum.

  “Is Liam the incontinent dog?” she asked.

  George beamed. “That’s him. Isn’t he a peach?” He walked out of the kitchen and into the hall.

  Aaron and Jennifer followed him.

  “Bless his heart,” Jennifer said drily.

  “There’s rubbing alcohol and cotton balls in the hall bathroom closet.” George motioned through a doorway. He took a few more steps and pointed to another opening. Jennifer couldn’t see inside it. “This is your room. There was a famous mystery author staying in it last week. He rented the whole place so he could have peace and quiet to write in.”

  Aaron said, “Jennifer is something of a writer herself.”

  She frowned. “Am not.” An English major. A writer of trial briefs. An obsessive reader. But she’d given up dreams of pursuing writing along with eating bad carbs in her thirties. Both had been painful.

  Aaron’s eyes clouded. “But you’ve always wanted to write murder mysteries.”

  And now I just watch them on the Hallmark Channel. She shook her head no at him.

  Aaron seemed to cast off whatever negative feeling it was that had sprinted across his face. To George, he said, “Who stayed here, if you can tell us?”

  “The one who writes stories about that detective in LA named after some famous wacky artist.”

  Jennifer knew exactly who he meant, and she couldn’t help feeling a little excited.

  George continued. “One of many authors that have stayed here, actually. I’ve had Craig Johnson—back before he bought his spread west of here—Rita Mae Brown, and, oh, others. I remember names better earlier in the day when my brain is working.”

  When he isn’t pickled.

  “There’s a bathroom in here, but don’t use it. Come on. Let me walk you through your water situation.”

  “Wait. What? Don’t use the bathroom? Water situation?” Jennifer asked.

  “The septic tank corroded and collapsed, so we aren’t currently able to run any water. I’ve put some bottled waters in your room.”

  Jennifer couldn’t be understanding him correctly. “What does that mean—not able to run water?”

  He looked at her like maybe her question wasn’t very smart. “We can’t use the sinks, showers, or toilets until tomorrow.”

  Jennifer was too flabbergasted to respond. No running water? As in zero, zip, nada?

  Jeremiah galloped down the hall. George scooped the skunk off the floor and tucked him in his arm like a football. He opened a door. It led outside, and the three of them exited onto a back deck. On it sat a hard-plastic camp potty, about twelve inches tall and hardly bigger than Jennifer’s tush. Aaron will crush the thing. A roll of toilet paper sat on the deck beside it.

  George cleared his throat. “These are the temporary facilities.”

  Jennifer’s mouth dropped open. “It’s so . . . exposed.” No sheet or shower curtain or screen or anything.

  “Nobody back here but animals and the mountain.” George side stepped from the deck to a tree where a hose was attached to a pail hanging from a branch. “Here’s the shower. You turn it on over there.” He pointed to a faucet at the base of the house, about fifteen feet away. “The water comes through holes in the bottom of the bucket.”

  Jennifer was at a loss for words. With wide eyes, she turned to her husband and mouthed no, no, no.

  “Is it, um, heated?” Aaron asked.

  George was fiddling with the pail and didn’t look over at them. “The water? No, but the weather’s still nice out. If you’re quick about it, it shouldn’t be too bad.”

  Aaron avoided Jennifer’s eyes. “When will it be fixed?”

  “Black Bear Betty is working on it right now. Here she comes with the old septic tank.” George lifted a hand in greeting as a tractor motored into view. He teetered but remained upright.

  Black Bear Betty?

/>   A woman with a silver pixie cut and a face like a bulldog sat high on the big orange tractor, waving a cigar. Hunks of metal with holes like lattice filled the tractor’s bucket. Jennifer didn’t know much about septic tanks, but she did know they were meant to hold things inside, not sieve them to the outside. The septic tank in the bucket was holier than the threadbare underwear her grandma used to mend for her grandfather.

  Aaron’s eyes wandered around the property. “We’d sure love a tour, if you’ve got the time.” They might as well, since Jennifer didn’t want to start over on her hair and make-up now, thanks to the outdoor “shower,” which meant they’d no longer be running late.

  George said, “I’ve got nothing but time. Let me put the critter in the house first, though.”

  Maybe he should put the incontinent critter out. “Does Jeremiah have to go in?” Jennifer leaned toward the animal. This time the skunk let himself be petted. She was touching a skunk for the first time in her life. The trip was worth it if for this moment alone.

  “Only if we don’t want him to be fox food.”

  “Oh, no, Jeremiah can’t be fox food,” Jennifer agreed, nearly purring. She peered up at Aaron. “But we should take care of your wounds first.”

  “Let’s do the tour first,” he said.

  After putting Jeremiah away, George returned and led them across the property. The grass wasn’t like Southern grass. It grew in the spikey clumps that Jennifer had already encountered by the cattle drive and made her wish she’d worn boots. When they reached a red wooden barn, George removed an unsecured lock and slid open the hanging doors. It was dark inside, but Jennifer’s eyes adjusted quickly. The space was cram packed, except for a tractor-sized parking spot with wheel imprints in the dirt. Probably from the one Black Bear Betty was using, Jennifer decided. She browsed the rest of the mess. Discarded paraphernalia from the lodge. Gardening pots. Winter shovels. Vehicle maintenance items. A couple of snowmobiles, one of which seemed pretty mangled. A set of stairs in the back leading to a trap door in the ceiling. The biggest portion of the interior was taken up by a red tractor with four flat tires parked in front of an assembly line of logs. Limbless trees, rather—a forest of them—laid cross ways between wooden guides. Beside them was a row of bins filled with split logs ready for a fireplace, and a chain saw hanging from a hook on a post. The whole barn smelled like sawdust and petroleum products.

  Then Jennifer saw movement. A scrawny bearded man was sitting in a back corner, leaning against a giant backpack, whittling a stick with a black pocketknife.

  George noticed him at the same time. “Dammit, Will. You can’t stay here. I’m getting sick and tired of telling you.”

  Will’s clothes were grimy and frayed, and his age was hard to estimate under all the dirt and facial hair. “It’s a free country.”

  “Except for private property laws.”

  “And that’s how you treat someone who used to work for you and is down on his luck. Nice.”

  “There are plenty of places to camp free on government land.”

  Will closed his knife, stood, and stuffed it and a water bottle into the backpack. He didn’t zip it. Jennifer itched to pull it closed for him. “Not anywhere near here. Not with power and water.”

  “I’ll give you a ride up to Big Goose myself.”

  “Do you think I have a death wish? I’m not going up the mountain with a drunk like you. I’ll walk.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  Will hefted the backpack up and onto one shoulder. He worked his other arm through the strap, his back bowing under its weight. Without another word, he walked out of the barn, like a trekker in search of the Himalayas.

  Aaron and Jennifer exchanged a long look, eyebrows up.

  “This baby is my log splitter,” George said, patting the broken-down tractor, and moving on as if he hadn’t just evicted a squatter from his property.

  “It runs?” Aaron walked around it and inspected it with the look of someone who’d grown up fixing the things he’d broken or wrecked.

  “The engine does. She won’t go anywhere, but she can still power this.” George walked them around to the back of the tractor. A large piece of pointed metal protruded from its rear side.

  George picked up a chain saw and mimed cutting with it. “I cut the big logs into useable lengths.” He set the chain saw down and grabbed a pre-cut section of log. “Then I turn on the splitter.” He held the wood against the stationary point of the metal. A drill bit, Jennifer decided. That’s what it looked like. “It splits the log into pieces.” He set the big piece down and lifted two others of the same length, only split. “Like these. Then I toss them in the carrier.” He heaved them into the wheeled bin. “When I need firewood, I hook the other tractor to one of the bins, and I drive it over to the house.”

  “Wow, that’s a nifty system.” Aaron’s eyes were gleaming embers.

  George’s chest expanded a couple of inches.

  More like a great way to trigger a life insurance policy, especially for someone as obviously fond of Wyoming Whiskey as George. And how in the world can one person burn so much firewood, even in a lodge?

  “Of course, I still have the manual splitter, too.” He hefted a long-handled implement with an angled club at the end. It looked like it weighed as much as Jennifer.

  Jennifer was more interested in the bag of ancient golf clubs she’d spotted. She touched the bag. “Are these yours?”

  George barely glanced at them. “They belonged to the previous owner.”

  She pulled out a driver with a discolored metal shaft and scarred wooden head. Rolling her neck and shoulders, she settled into her stance, the old club as comfortable in her hands as if she’d held it a thousand times. Then she twisted into her backswing and unleashed like she was teeing off at Augusta.

  Aaron whistled as the club cut through the air with a swish. “Fore.”

  George ducked with his hands over his head. “Shit! What was that?”

  Aaron laughed. “A driver. Watch out for my wife. She’s lethal with one of those things.”

  George was still shaking his head as Jennifer slid the club back in the bag.

  After they finished with the barn, George led them to a stable that listed slightly downhill. A big, fenced vegetable garden ran along one side. A horned barn owl with a superior expression watched them from the open hay loft over the door. Jennifer stepped around a nasty pile of something below it that looked disturbingly like a regurgitated mouse.

  George showed them stalls for horses and kennels for smaller animals. “Everything comes inside during the worst of the winter. But you’d be surprised how infrequently that is. The animals adapt. Especially the horses. I’d never been much of a horse person until I married. Shelly talked me into them, and before you knew it, we had four. I built this cedar tack room myself.”

  The workmanship was beautiful. The room was empty. Jennifer hadn’t seen any horses outside, either.

  “Where are the horses?”

  “Sold ‘em.” His tone cut off the possibility of further discussion on the topic.

  Next, he took them toward a cavernous metal building. They passed a section of fence on the way that looked like it had been built the day before.

  It was quite a paradox to Jennifer how decrepit the stable was compared to the five tight strands of barbed wire strung between upright green metal posts. “New fence?”

  “Nearly. I had a fellow running cattle here this summer. He put it in.”

  “It looks expensive,” Aaron said.

  George grinned crookedly. “Fences around here need to be horse high, pig tight, and bull strong.”

  Aaron nodded like George had just explained a revolutionary theory on quantum physics. “Exactly.”

  They entered the metal building. Inside were stacks of new lumber next to an assortment of woodworking tools.

  “I’ve been meaning to finish out my shop, but I haven’t got around to it. It has electric, heat, and water, thou
gh, and that’s really all I need.”

  Aaron walked the concrete floors high on the balls of his feet, a bounce to his step. “Don’t you love it, Jennifer?”

  “It’s peachy,” she said. It was bittersweet to see her husband like this. He’s been unhappy, she realized. She smiled at him, too late, and he didn’t see it.

  The last place George took them was a cottage. Rundown didn’t begin to cover it. The wooden siding hadn’t seen a paintbrush in far too long. A board on the little porch was broken. One of the front windows had been replaced with plywood.

  But what drew Jennifer’s full attention was a piece of plain printer paper plastered to the door with multiple layers of clear tape. The word KILLER marched across the page in precise capital letters.

  George scowled and tried to loosen the tape with his fingernails. It didn’t go well, and Jennifer pitched in.

  Aaron’s voice sounded concerned. “Do you know who left this here?”

  George snorted. “Yes. My wife’s ex-husband. The crazy SOB’s been harassing me.” He nodded. “You met him earlier. Hadley.” The Gordon Gekko guy. He dropped his voice. “I’ll show him harassment. You’d think he’d find a better way to spend his time than driving out here a couple of times a week.” He peeled the last of the tape away. “He divorced her, you know, but he never loved my Shelly more than when she married me, especially after she died. He blames me for her death.” He opened the door and muttered, “Not half as much as I blame myself, though.”

  Again, Aaron and Jennifer shared a significant look.

  Aaron cleared his throat. “Do you live in the cottage?”

  “It’s where I sleep. I miss Shelly less out here,” George said.

  Jennifer peeked around his shoulder. Inside a dark, messy room, another Wyoming Whiskey bottle sat on a coffee table beside a tin cup.