already late.'
'You'll be at the evening session?” Nellie asked him.
'I wouldn't miss it,” Gideon said. He got up and made his good-byes, but his smile felt strained.
What was going on with Nellie?
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CHAPTER 9
* * * *
Boeuf Wellington, Whitebark Lodge's dinner entree, sounded dangerously ambitious to Gideon and Julie (the previous two main courses having been Rhoda's Meatloaf and Pineapple-Wiener Kabobs). It also failed to appeal to John, who was in the mood, as always, for a hamburger. Thus, with a little over an hour to spare before Nellie's eight o'clock report, the three of them drove to Sisters for dinner.
'Place looks like Dodge City,” John observed as they pulled into a parking lot off Cascade Avenue.
He had a point. Ordinarily, when town fathers decide that their central area needs a face lift, they focus their resources on making it look bright and new. In Sisters they took a different approach; they made it look bright and old. Pokey tourist traffic and roaring logging trucks aside, driving down the main street of Sisters was like driving through a freshly painted Western movie set: wooden I880—style storefronts, overhanging balustered porches that made half the buildings look like bordellos, and plank boardwalks. All this in a town in which no building predated the twentieth century.
Surprisingly, it had worked. The town's appearance, while undeniably cute, had managed to stay somewhere this side of cutesy. Perhaps it was the surrounding pine forests, perhaps the bare, lonely, upward sweep of the Three Sisters to the southeast. Or maybe it was the hard-to-miss presence of so many honest-to-God, red- suspendered, flannel-shirted, wire-whiskered loggers. On either side of the parking slot into which Gideon had pulled were battered pickup trucks with bumper stickers. The one of the left said: “Save a logger, eat an owl.” The one on the right announced: “I love spotted owl—fried.'
Whatever it was, the rugged Old West ambience clicked, and if the pre-1970 photographs in one of the shop windows were any guide, the new-old Sisters was a big improvement over the old-old Sisters.
John's state of mind at dinner was greatly improved. Farrell Honeyman, pleading shortage of manpower, had formally requested his assistance on the case, calling Seattle while Nellie was still in his office. And Charlie Applewhite, John's boss, had tentatively approved, at least until it was positively determined whether the murdered man was Special Agent Chuck Salish. If it was, and they had the killing of a federal agent on their hands, the FBI's involvement would become much more than tentative.
'There's one problem, though,” John told them. “Applewhite says that if it looks like it's gonna take a lot of time, I better make my apologies on that lecture.'
Gideon studied him. “Gee,” he said, “I wonder if it's going to take a lot of time.'
John peered gravely back. “Heaps,” he said, and all of them laughed.
They were in the Hotel Sisters Restaurant, located in a yellow frame building dating from almost as far back (1912) as it had been made to look. Getting into the spirit of things, they had passed up the dining room to eat in Bronco Billy's Saloon, complete with a swinging-door entrance from the lobby, a dark, polished, authentically antique bar backed by a long mirror, and buffalo and deer heads mounted on the walls. The waitresses wore cowboy vests and bolo ties.
They had eaten lunch late and weren't hungry enough for the dinner plates, so they asked for sandwich menus. All of the entries, in accordance with what seemed to be the custom in this part of Oregon, had Western appellations: the Lone Star, the Barnyard Bird, the Buckaroo. Even the hamburgers had names: the Brama Bull ('smothered in mushrooms and melted cheddar cheese'), the Bullrider ('smothered in barbecue sauce').
John was having trouble finding what he wanted. “So what's a plain hamburger?” he asked the waitress.
She pointed with her pencil at the bottom of the menu. “Right there, hon.'
''The Roper,'” John read aloud. “'Plain and simple, no bull.— He looked up at her and laughed. “Okay, I'll have a Roper. But with fries.'
'They all come with fries, honey.'
Gideon and Julie asked for Barnyard Birds—broiled chicken sandwiches with chili, jack cheese, and guacamole. The waitress jotted down their orders and brought back a plate of nachos and three mugs of the local Blue Heron beer.
'Gideon, how long will it take to prove whether that skeleton is Chuck Salish's or not?” Julie asked.
'That depends on what kind of file there is on him in the ME's office. If they already have dental records, medical records, photographs—'
'They do,” John said. “I talked to them on the phone.” “Well, then, I'd say it'll take Nellie all of five minutes.
This guy has a missing tooth and some fillings, so a look at Salish's dental charts should—'
'They don't have the dental charts,” John said. “I thought you said—'
'Everything but. They had them, because they're listed on the file contents sheet, but they're not in the file.” “What about dental x-rays?'
John shook his head. “There's nothing at all from his dentist. Everything else's still there.'
The three of them looked at each other. “You don't suppose they could have been accidentally lost?” Julie asked.
