Wrecked (Josie Gray Mysteries #3)(40)
“You go ahead,” Josie said. “I’ll meet you back at the station.”
“I’ll wait.”
“No, go on. I’m not hungry.”
Otto sighed. “The Big Bend Sentinel called. I’ve got a meeting with one of their reporters, along with Dave from Marfa Public Radio this evening to brief them on the investigation. I’m ready to go public that we suspect this is a kidnapping but aren’t ready to release details at this time. Agreed?”
“Absolutely.” Josie saw no benefit at this point to keeping the local citizens in the dark.
“I was going to fill you in on the FBI update at lunch too. Agent Haskins checked in. Asked if you’d had any additional contact.”
“Did he have any new information?” she asked.
“We’re dealing with a highly organized, well-established group. Most likely a cartel.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Josie. He’s as frustrated as we are.”
“Doubtful.”
He sighed heavily now, aggravated by her. “You have to eat.”
“Not at the Tamale. I can’t take the gossip,” she said. “I have a stop I need to make. I’ll try and make it back into the office before I go home. My meeting with the negotiator is at four and it’s already after one.”
Otto neglected to tell her that the two agents had stopped by the office to question him about Josie’s possible role in Dillon’s disappearance and Christina’s death. It had been a difficult conversation. They had grilled Otto on Josie’s relationship with Dillon and Christina, her alibi, her reputation as chief, her ability to respond objectively throughout the kidnapping negotiation, her relationship with various members of the community, and so on. Otto presented the facts openly and honestly. They cleared her as a suspect, but the conversation was mentally exhausting. It saddened him, the idea that his friend who valued integrity and loyalty to the point of putting her own life in harm’s way could be considered, even for a moment, a murderer.
TWELVE
True individualists like Macon Drench were hard to come by. In 1976, after he and his wife had made their fortune in the oil business in Houston, Drench had purchased Artemis, then a ghost town, and sunk twenty million into its infrastructure. Artemis had once been an army settlement built to protect a now defunct weapons factory on the outskirts of the county. Two thousand factory workers were carted in each day by train, so when the cold war ended and the plant shut down, the town basically shut down as well, until Macon revived it. Josie had always imagined the building process must have felt a little like playing Monopoly on a grand scale.
Josie considered herself fortunate to have gotten to know Macon over the past few years. When his old childhood friend Red Goff was killed, Josie had interviewed Macon on several occasions and had since been to his house for a few social functions. He and his wife now spent their money on charitable projects. There was no doubt Drench had money, but everyone with a problem knew it. Josie never imagined she would be the one knocking on his door, but she had no other options. He was the only friend she knew with enough money to play hardball with the cartel. The visit shamed her, but she had no other choice.
Josie’s aversion to asking for help was rooted in her childhood experiences. Before her father died, they had lived in the suburbs on a block with fifty other nearly identical ranch homes. At impromptu block parties on the weekends, the men grilled, the women mixed cocktails and side dishes, and the kids played outside until the party broke up around midnight. It had been an ideal childhood, Josie’s mom would say a perfect marriage, up until the day her father died.
Within six months of her father’s death, her mother had sold the house and moved into an apartment. Her mother never explained the finances, and Josie had never asked about them. She was certain there had been insurance money: her mom had never worked. Josie often wondered if she had sold the house to keep from having to work. It wasn’t long after the move that other men entered their lives, usually short term, some to solve a financial need or fix whatever problem she encountered: a leaky faucet, a clogged drain, a piece of furniture that needed moving. Josie had watched her mother “turn on the charm” to get what she needed, what she wanted. As a child, without the maturity to understand her mother’s motives, she had seen it as pure manipulation. Josie remembered telling her girlfriends in high school, I will never ask a man to solve my problems. I don’t care what happens. I will take care of myself. It was a core value she had shaped her life around. Now, as she pulled down the lane to Drench’s ranch, she felt as if she were selling her soul.
*
The Drench ranch was located north of town, beyond the mud flats, a dried-up lake bed that filled with rain during the fall monsoon season for a short time, then drained into a muddy pit that eventually drew four-wheeled vehicles into an annual unregulated teenage party in the mud that inevitably led to police calls and a few trips to the emergency room. Beyond the flats was the Chinati Mountain range. Drench’s place nestled into a stretch of the range that he had named Big Rig after the oil platform that raked in his millions. The home was made of three glass-and-steel boxes stacked atop each other at odd angles and tucked into the jagged coffee-colored edges of the mountain. As monstrous as the home was, it somehow naturally blended in with its surroundings.