Authors: Sarah Andrews

Dead Dry (20 page)

BOOK: Dead Dry

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“Why?”

“Because she hitchhiked over here to identify the body, when she wasn’t even next of kin. He figured that was a big performance to make it look like she was deeply aggrieved and show everyone how long it takes to hitchhike back and forth. Sort of like doing it with the judges watching.”

“There’s some merit in that argument. It did seem odd to me that she came over here.”

“Yeah. But now that she’s presented her alibi, my boss thinks McWain got mugged and dumped.”

“That seems pretty far-fetched. And it still doesn’t explain why he arrived in Salt Lake City ahead of the conference.”

“So what do you think?” Michele asked. “Would there be someone at that conference in Snowbird who’s got a gripe?”

I said, “That’s a long shot. The opportunity might be there, but there would be no motive. Intellectually, scientists have rivalries all over the place, but they don’t go around killing each other over them. That would end the game; it’s much more fun to keep it going. And besides, you know the old saw that murder is usually about money or sex. Well, science doesn’t pay well, and it sure isn’t sexy. And speaking of sex, McWain was only boffing Gilda—or have you checked out that angle?—and he wasn’t in contention for jobs that have a price tag to them anymore. He’d left the oil patch. He’d left the profession entirely, until he dove back in on his quest to save the aquifers. But that presents the motive: People like Attabury and Entwhistle or his neighbor Johnson would not want someone as persuasive as Afton McWain campaigning against them.”

“Campaigning. An interesting choice of words,” Michele commented. “That reminds me to look into the political arm of this situation. What was that state senator’s name?”

“White. Good idea, because these people who did not appear to be surprised by news of Afton’s death and who had a reason to want him quiet, each have an alibi. Maybe they know someone else who did it. Some other Realtor who had a piece of the action, or something like that. Man, this is frustrating!”

Michele said, “Welcome to my world. They all feel like this if they hang on more than forty-eight hours.”

“Why forty-eight?”

“Because the crimes you solve faster than that are the easy, obvious ones. There’s an adage that if it goes on for more than two days it’s going to be a difficult one because someone’s actually done a halfway decent job of covering his tracks.” She sighed. She sounded tired. “Do you have anything else for me? Anything at all?”

“No.”

“Have you talked to Julia again?”

I said, “You don’t have to ask me three different times in three different ways. I have nothing else. Zip. I’m done.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

I didn’t even argue this time. I knew she was right.

EIGHTEEN

AFTER THEIR EVENING MEAL, RITA MAE SAT AT HER sister Mary Ann’s dining table with a pad of paper, making notes. Across the table lay sheets of paper that she had pulled from Henry Nettleton’s file labeled MCWAIN. She took a sip of tea and cleared her throat. “It’s a mess, but I think I understand it now,” she said. “I’m glad Henry held on to this.” She held up a sheet of notes entitled CITIZENS’ GROUP, and pointed at the telephone number that Henry had underlined three times. “That woman we telephoned will be along shortly now.”

Mary Ann looked up from the sock she was knitting. She had been knitting all day and knitting with a fury she had not previously brought to that activity. The yarn was wrapped so tightly around her aging fingers that it was polishing her thin skin to a shine. “All right, I’m ready to hear it.”

“This man McWain, he did a lot of research,” Rita Mae began. “There’s all this science he did, for instance. It took me a while to understand any of it, but it seems that the water
comes out of the rock, not an underground river as the well drillers told you.”

“Out of rock? How can that be?”

Rita Mae looked at her sister over the tops of her reading glasses. She loved Mary Ann and knew her to be highly competent at the tasks she liked to do, but it had always been clear that other jobs were best left to someone who had other talents. It took all kinds to make a world, and Mary Ann was simply not the analytical type. “Just take that on faith,” she said. “The thing is, some kinds of rock can hold more water than others.”

Mary Ann set down her knitting and held her hands together to make a cup. She looked up at Rita Mae with a pathetic glimmering of hope in her eyes.

Rita Mae said, “No, Mary Ann. Think of it like a sort of sponge. Like in your kitchen here, some materials will soak up the water and then let you wring it out more easily than others.”

The dawning of comprehension softened the lines on Mary Ann’s forehead. “You mean the way a good cotton terry makes a better towel than polyester.”

Rita Mae said, “Something like that, Mary Ann. But for the moment, think of it like a nice, big bucket. You stick your straw in there and have yourself a drink. You can drink for quite a while before the water runs out. And then maybe there’s a tiny little trickle of water coming back in from somewhere—drip by drip—but if you’re drinking from that straw and your neighbor’s got a straw going, too, and his neighbor … well, you see, it’s just coming out faster than it’s going in, and you’re out of water.”

“So you’re saying we can’t share like our dear father taught us to.”

“I’m saying there are more people in this world than there used to be, so there’s not enough to go around.”

Mary Ann said, “That’s frightening, Rita Mae. I don’t like thinking about that.”

“I understand, Mary Ann, but this time you don’t have a
choice. You can refuse to think about it, but the facts don’t change.” She cocked an ear to the sound of a car approaching in the driveway. “Ah. That will be her now.”

The doorbell rang, and Mary Ann got up to answer it.

At the door was a woman carrying a well-worn accordion file tied up with black ribon. “I’m Helga Olsen,” she announced. “I’m so glad to meet you at last.”

“Come in, Mrs. Olsen. This is my sister, Rita Mae Jones.”

When they were all settled at the kitchen table with fresh cups of tea, and Mary Ann had once again resumed her frantic knitting, Mrs. Olsen opened her file and began to take out papers. “As you may know, a group of us have formed a citizens’ alliance to stop development in this area. Now, I know that sounds like, ‘I’ve got mine, now the rest of you stay away,’ because few of us grew up here, but I see it differently. We have our investments to protect, and we also prefer that anyone who might be thinking of moving in here not get swindled by purchasing a house that’s going to run out of water in jig time.”

Helga extracted a stack of newspaper clippings and laid them out on the table. “These articles may have a lot of unfamiliar words in them, but the thrust of the matter is clear enough: Colorado doesn’t have enough water for all the people who are being born here, let alone the people who are moving in from other places. In the northern and western parts of Colorado, the water supply is pulled from the rivers mostly, but down here in the southeast, most of it has to come out of the ground. And there just isn’t enough water in the ground, so municipalities like Denver and surrounding cities have begun buying up the water rights from the farmers.” She pointed at a sidebar that summarized the facts. “Thousands of acres per year—even tens of thousands—are being pulled out of production so the water can be piped to the cities.”

Mary Ann said, “Well then, our municipality should be looking after this!”

“No, dear, you don’t live in a municipality. You are on a private well. You’re out here on thirty-five acres, and you have to find your own water.”

Mary Ann’s knitting needles clacked faster and faster. “You’re telling me that this is widely known. That there have been articles published in … in a newspaper or something and that people know this and they didn’t tell Henry or me.”

“That appears to be the fact.”

“What newspaper was that article in?”

Rita Mae looked at the margins of the papers. “It’s
The Denver Post,
sister. And this one’s in your local paper here in Castle Rock.” She tipped her head forward and studied Helga Olsen over the tops of her glasses. “Now, I imagine that if it was in that paper, it would have been the talk of this whole county.”

Helga opened another section of her accordion file. “And here’s a whole packet of articles about a development some people from out of state wanted to put in just south of here, that would have pulled the water out of our ground even faster. Luckily, we’ve put a stop to that one, for the time being. But there’s one more thing you need to know, Mary Ann.”

“What’s that? I can barely stand this!”

Helga turned another page in the sheaf of notes. “This is a photocopy of the permit to drill a well on your property.”

Mary Ann’s face knit with angry confusion. “I don’t understand. What are you trying to tell me? Do I need a permit to drill my new well? Or does it already exist?”

Helga shook her head. “You do need a permit, but this is not it. This is the permit for your existing well, drilled one month before you purchased this property. And this …” She turned the next page. “This is the permit for the original well drilled on this property two years before that, when the house was built.”

“I’ve got two wells? Where’s the other one?”

Helga turned a sad face toward her neighbor. “No, dear, you have just the one. It appears that the first one is just a hole in the ground, and it’s dead dry.” She tapped that page. “The people who first lived in this house ran out of water, too. They knew there was almost none left, so they drilled themselves another well and quick sold the property to you.”

“Then … I have to drill deeper yet?”

“No, it looks like you’re already clear to the bottom of the aquifer. You see, the water here is all but gone. Each new well is lucky if it hits a tiny part of the rock that just didn’t get drained yet, and those wells don’t make water but a little while. But Mr. Attabury’s company wants to build more houses out here anyway.”

Mary Ann thrust the knitting down into her lap. “The nerve of these men! This is fraud!”

“Yes, it is. Your Realtor knew all about it, and so did the banker who made your loan.”

“Mr. Entwhistle! Why ever would he engage in something like this? He could lose his bank!”

Helga opened her hands palms up. “There’s an old saying about bankers, my dear: ‘If you owe the bank a hundred dollars, you’ve got a problem. If you owe the bank a million dollars, the
bank
has a problem.’” She tapped one of the papers in her file. “Entwhistle’s bank has loaned money to finance most of the homes in this valley, and it has a great deal more money out to Hugo Attabury’s even bigger plans.”

Mary Ann shook her head. “This can’t be. I can’t believe these men would purposefully set out to steal from people.”

Helga leaned back in her chair. “I don’t suppose they woke up one morning and said, ‘Let’s find someone to fleece.’ I think they got in the habit of making money in a certain way, just as we’re in the habit of getting water out a faucet. It’s hard to stop doing something you’ve always done, even when it becomes obvious that it doesn’t work
anymore. The kindest thing I can say about these men is that they aren’t yet ready to notice that they are doing something wrong.”

Rita Mae said, “Henry’s notes from his conversations with Dr. McWain suggest that the land along these creeks used to be cattle ranches.”

“That’s correct,” said Helga. “Developers have been buying up and subdividing the old ranches all around here. They built your house. Attabury wanted the ranch that Afton McWain bought, but the man who owned it didn’t want it subdivided, so he sold it to Afton instead. Bart Johnson is ready to go in with them on their grand scheme, but they need an easement across Afton’s ranch to meet the county code.” She rapped a knuckle on a list of figures. “But I can’t see anyone investing money if they hear about the problem with the water.”

Mary Ann let out an angry snort. “
We
invested.”

“I know, dear.”

Rita Mae said, “We’ll have Mr. Upton refer us to a good lawyer.”

Helga did not mince words. “Todd Upton knows all about this situation.”

Rita Mae said, “But he sounded so surprised when he met with us!”

“He even came to his office on a Sunday,” Mary Ann added. “He opened the office himself. His secretary wasn’t even there.”

Helga said, “Well now, he wouldn’t want to meet on a day when there would be witnesses to your conversation, would he? Some people think the world exists for them to make a living, and I do believe your Mr. Upton is one of them. And then there’s the man who supplies the cement for the foundations, and the owner of the lumberyard, and so on and so forth. It’s not news to a one of them that these wells are going dry. Just ask the well drillers! They all play poker together. None of them wanted you to know you
were buying a pig in a poke. They’re all making too much money drilling new wells.”

Tears swam in Mary Ann’s eyes. “Then how … you mean …”

Helga said, “People don’t like knowing that the comfortable life they’ve been living can’t go on like it’s been going.” She gestured around the kitchen, at the dishwasher, at the clothes washer, at the sink. “These houses are built for a water-consuming lifestyle, so we’re just going to have to change how we do things.”

“What can we do?”

Rita Mae noted this small change in her sister’s attitude: She had said “we.” She no longer saw herself alone.

Helga said, “We can vote. We can hold our elected officials accountable and work to get more balanced policies in place that don’t just follow the election campaign fund money, and think a little smaller than we have. And we can vote with every penny we spend. We can spend our money with people who supply products and services that will help us conserve, and we don’t have to buy from people who encourage a throw-away lifestyle. For instance, we can think locally. All those outlet stores down by the freeway don’t have their hearts and minds on local lifestyles, now do they? Decisions about what is sold in those stores are made in corporate offices in some other state, and the goods are manufactured on another continent. They sure aren’t worrying themselves about what is happening here. They don’t even know.”

Rita Mae said, “Aren’t you getting a bit off the point? They’re just shops, after all.”

Helga said, “I look at them as symptoms of the disease. We’ve all gotten so used to looking at
price
that we no longer know how to look at
cost.
When we build a house this way just because it’s how we’ve always done it, we set ourselves up for just the sort of financial disaster your sister is now facing.”

Rita Mae said, “But how is Mary Ann supposed to live out here with no water?”

Helga sighed heavily. “It’s going to be tough, but we’ve set up a course at the community center that could help, if you’re interested. We bring in specialists each week to teach us how to conserve, and we have a geologist who teaches us about our Earth systems, so we don’t stay so ignorant. It’s an interesting topic, once you get started.”

Mary Ann turned her face to look out the window at the marvelous, open landscape that Henry had so loved. The setting sun was picking out each rock and shrub with rosy light, but the very sight of it sickened her now. Her voice quavered as she said, “So what you’re saying is that even if I can find a way to pay for a new well, and even if it happens to have water in it, it’s only a matter of time before the new well will go dry, too. And that means that if I drill the well just to put the house on the market, I’ll be passing the fraud right along to the next poor person.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I can’t do that.”

Rita Mae studied the way the light played across her sister’s face. “Of course not, dear. You’re not that kind of person.”

BOOK: Dead Dry

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