during the Fourth of July celebration.”
“It isn’t?”
“I went back through ten years of newspapers. This was way before we got here. Three times somebody came to the paper to report that somebody they knew had gone missing. They were sure it was foul play. You know, that the person hadn’t just wandered away. The paper always ran the items in the ‘Odds’N’Ends’ column.”
“Why not in the ‘Law News’ section?”
“I’m not sure. But it was strange.”
Charlie thought a moment. “You know, before young Tom became sheriff and you folks took over the newspaper, Tillman decided what got in the paper and what didn’t. Fellow that owned the newspaper was scared to death of making old Tillman mad at him.”
“That makes me curious.”
“Yeah? About what?”
“Well,” she said, “if old man Tillman didn’t want the full story in the paper, maybe he had something to do with those disappearances himself.”
Fargo wanted to clean up and put on some fresh clothes. Hauling a dead person around left its traces on a fella.
He was just about to enter his room when he heard a quiet voice behind him say, “I was just about to clean up your room. My name is Maria Veldez.”
The Mexican chambermaid he’d seen earlier. Couldn’t have been more than five foot three, couldn’t have weighed more than one hundred pounds, but her body was full and well-rounded and her face was beautiful.
“Well, don’t let me stop you,” Fargo said.
He used his key, opened the door, and allowed her to enter first.
“I was just going to change clothes,” he said. He’d become almost painfully aware of her charms, couldn’t think of much else, in fact. “You turn around and do your work. And I’ll grab me a fresh shirt and pants.”
She smiled. “This hotel is full of old men. I see them half-naked all the time. Big bellies and breasts like women and chins that nearly touch their chests.” She sent him an openly admiring glance. “I wish I could see men like you walking around half-naked.” She giggled sweetly. “Then I would have a good reason to come to work every day.”
Fargo might not have been a deep thinker or particularly learned man but he sure as hell knew when a lady was expressing interest in his body.
He walked over to her and slid his arms over her shoulders and brought her to him. “I’ll take my shirt off if you’ll do the same.”
She made a cute little face. Put a finger to her chin as if she were pondering philosophical problems. “Let me see. I’ll have to think about that.” Then she slid her arms around his waist and said, “OK, you talked me into it.”
They were on the bed less than a minute later, as he teased the both of them by rubbing his rod against the soft sweet entrance to her sex. In moments they were both jerking and bucking, eager to get past this first stage. She eased him over on his back and licked her lips to the tip of his rigid manhood, flicking the head with her tongue, and then seeming to take the enormity of it completely inside her mouth.
He wondered if he could hold out. She was bringing him the sort of pleasure that blinded a man, made him one big erection, his entire body, his entire mind. Her tongue wrapped itself around his rod until—just at the moment he thought he could hold out no longer—she rolled over and guided him inside her.
The passion was reckless, two people flinging themselves at each other in a kind of carnal madness, him thrusting faster and deeper, faster and deeper, his hands clenching on her buttocks making her cry out each time he did so. Her breasts were wonderfully swollen with his tongue and her own desire.
“Now, Fargo! Now!” she whispered.
And he was glad to comply, sending his searing semen rich and deep into her.
Spent, they lay in each other’s arms in the drifting ecstasy that always follows a good round of sex. Finally, he said, “Now, that’s what I call getting my room cleaned.”
“Yes,” she smiled, “I’ll have to remember your room number next time I’m in the mood to do a little cleaning myself.”
Fargo was in need of a drink so he pushed through the bat-wings of a place called Curly’s.
He wasn’t surprised to find Deputy Sheriff Larson sitting at a table by himself with a fifth of whiskey in front of him. Fargo ordered a beer at the bar, and when he turned to look for somewhere to sit—not hard since the place was empty except for three old guys playing a card game Fargo had never heard of—Larson waved him over.
What the hell, Fargo thought.
The old farts gave him the once-over. One of them apparently knew who he was because he whispered through a set of store-boughts the word “Fargo.” Notoriety, he thought. All he wanted was a fishing pole, a fishing hole, and some sleep.
“I thought we might as well be friendly,” Larson said when Fargo reached his table.
“Now why would you think a thing like that?”
Larson shrugged bony shoulders. Fargo had the impression that Larson was probably one of those bony gents who could be pretty tough when he needed to be.
“We’re both working for the same thing, Mr. Fargo.”
“Oh? What would that be?” Fargo had yet to sit down. He glanced around the saloon. It was new enough that the long pine bar still smelled of sawn lumber. The floor was dirt. But at least Curly’s didn’t smell of the usual vomit, blood, beer, and urine. But give it a year. It would have a scent like an old latrine.
Larson smiled. “Why, law and order, Mr. Fargo, law and order.”
“Would that be law and order or Noah Tillman’s law and order?”
This time, Larson laughed. “They couldn’t be the same thing?”
“Probably not.”
He flipped a chair around and sat with its back facing Larson.
“Tell me about Skeleton Key.”
Larson shook his head as if he’d just heard a very sad tale. “So they’ve already gotten to you, huh, Mr. Fargo?”
“Who’s ‘they?’ ”
“ ‘They’ are the ones who practice granny medicine and believe that half the women in town are secret witches.”
“So there’s nothing to it?”
“Is there anything to a witch on a broomstick flying across the moon?”
Fargo sipped his beer. On a boiling day like this one, beer was equal to the elixir of the gods. “Then why all this interest?”
“Because it’s another way to get at Noah Tillman. Another rumor to ruin his reputation with.”
“Then people don’t really believe anything’s going on out at Skeleton Key?”
“Some do. The ones I talked about. The ones who believe—as my mother did—that if you wrapped a rattlesnake around your throat, it’d heal your swollen tonsils. Fortunately, Papa would never let her try that particular medicine out on us kids.”
“How about the other people?”
“Businessmen, mostly,” Larson said. “There’s no doubt that Noah runs this town. Hell, he should. He built it. If he hadn’t been successful, nobody would ever have come here. You realize that?”
“I suppose that’s right.”
“But people get tired of being grateful. And they get tired of always having to kowtow to the most powerful man in the area. It’s like the dukes and earls in England. Eventually, the serfs revolted.”
“Anybody around here revolting yet?”
Larson poured himself a clean shot of whiskey—good bonded whiskey—and knocked it back without hesitation. “That’s enough. The wife tells me two drinks a day and by God you don’t want to go up against my wife.
