He distrusted her innocence. “No. White like you,” he said, trying to restrain his annoyance.
“What’s his name? You been in touch, know where he lives exactly?”
“Not exactly.”
She tilted her head, looking up at him with opaque pale eyes, same color as a blued gun barrel, he thought. She continued, full of attitude: “But twenty years pass, you think, hell, he probably hasn’t moved in all those years. I’ll just look up my old buddy an see how the fish’er jumpin’, is that it? What’s his name? You didn’t say.”
“Jeeze, Lisle. What’s your britches in a hitch for?” asked Emil plaintively.
Yeah, Lisle, Tyree asked himself, his interest in her sharpening with each passing second. “My friend’s mother died. And he didn’t come to the funeral, her only child. Didn’t seem natural. Wonderful woman, awfully good to me over the years, and she mentioned he was still here shortly before she died. That’s what brought me. I’d been working hard, had some time off coming to me. Thought, well, I’d see what was up with him and get some R and R same time.” Don’t explain so much, he reminded himself. Too much detail could trap a man like a web of steel. He shrugged. “No big deal if he’s not here anymore.” He gazed around the green mountains surrounding the dusty town and said, “Beautiful,” his voice quiet with appreciation. Sunset had begun, streaks of brilliant coral and mauve tinting the rows of small shops and even his new friends’ faces a reddish gold. He figured the time to be about eight or eight-thirty. Darkness might not come until nine-thirty or after, this late in the summer. He sighed inwardly. He was tired, but no rest waited for him tonight.
“Whatcha do for a livin’, Mr. Tyree?” asked a new voice softly. “In Chicago?”
He looked down at the area near his right elbow. A pixie stood there in baggy overalls, yellow work boots, and a white sleeveless man’s ribbed undershirt.
“Hey, Tyree, this’s one o’ our Master Wilderness Guides. Miss Amy Bearclaw.” Emil’s voice lifted with pride.
The dusky-skinned pixie smiled, but like Mrs. Lisle Barstow, her greenish eyes had a metallic glint. With the experience of a lifetime of observation, he saw she was the product of some sort of mixed marriage. Bearclaw? Sounded Indian. Her dark hair was cut like a boy’s, and she obviously ignored makeup, but nothing could make this little woman look like a boy.
“Master Wilderness Guide?” he repeated.
She nodded. “My pa and I have an exclusive contract with Pinebrook, because we’re the best. And the hotel believes in maintaining the highest standards.”
Obviously she had no objection to self-promotion, thought Tyree, amused. “Do you ever take on outsiders, people not guests at the resort? I wouldn’t mind a tour of a mountain or two. Maybe a river ride.”
Her eyelashes lowered to half-mast as she considered him. “Your city ways shine through you like a lamp, although you’d be good in a light, I’d bet.”
“It’s been said,” he agreed, wondering why she didn’t talk as much like a hick as the others in the group. “Fights happen in a city. In the country, too?”
She ignored this query, her expression labeling it stupid, as it was, he admitted to himself, and asked him if he’d had his dinner.
“At the diner,” said Mrs. Barstow. He looked at her. “I saw you in the window,” she said, shrugging.
“The pie was fantastic,” he said.
“That was the banana cream, right?” asked Emil with authority.
Tyree nodded, beginning to feel hemmed in.
The pixie said, “My mom made it. She bakes for the hotel, too. And grows vegetables so they can offer organic dishes. You couldn’ta liked anything else there, though. Somebody big as you needs to eat. Want to come home with me for dinner?”
Dazed, Tyree threw all plans to the wind and just nodded yes. The pixie wheeled to tromp down the middle of the street. Automatically, he hastened to follow. She would’ve made a natural military drill sergeant, was his first thought. It took a stunned second before he remembered his manners and turned to wave good-bye to Emil and the others. Frankie boomed out. “Ho, what’s up?” but also waved good-bye. Mrs. Barstow just turned and strode away, pulling her daughter along by her plump arm as if otherwise the girl might run off. To Tyree’s amusement, all moved to the middle of the deserted street before taking to their individual directions.
Dinner took on dimensions he hadn’t expected, but by now he’d learned not to let anything surprise him. This place was too far beyond his experience.
Mrs. Bearclaw was a beautiful woman, slender and graceful and tall, her hair silky and pale and twisted back out of her face. And she was blind. Probably not completely, he judged, Legally blind. Although he’d offered to help, at Amy’s command he instead sat quietly on a small painted wooden chair in the kitchen and watched as Mrs. Bearclaw kept track of several operations going on simultaneously on a modern commercial stove with three ovens that took up at least half the space in the kitchen. The smells seductively drove away all memory of the diner’s meatloaf. As if drawn home by the aromas, Mr. Bearclaw soon arrived, a small lanky man with ropy muscles, obviously Amy’s father and the source of her miniature dusky version of her mother’s beauty. They shook hands, and he was invited to call Amy’s father David, her mother Lydia. When the food finally reached the table, Amy nodded he could start eating.
He tried to restrain himself, knowing a belly too full of food would work against him that night, but Lydia Bearclaw’s talents overcame him. When he finally sat back with a sated sigh, Lydia spoke. In a cultured East Coast voice, she asked who he was after.
Tyree lowered his head and shook it. “Is every person in this Hollow psychic?”
Amy tilted back on the hind two legs of her wooden chair, thumbs hooked in her overalls pockets. She grinned. “You think we’re so danged dumb we ain’t never ran up against bounty hunters before?”
“Don’t say ain’t,” reproved her mother.
Amy ignored her. “Look around. Are we overflowing with cops, DEA? Feds? We got no sheriff, even. Half the world has tried to hide here: Colombian drug dealers, punks from Atlanta, kneecap men from New Orleans. I mean, we’re so nowheres, we’re ripe for disappearances — or so these types think before they get to know the locals. Besides, it’s pretty here. People like it.”
Tyree stared at her.
As if patiently explaining the obvious to a halfwit, Amy finished, “You saw our town’s population numbers if you was at the Mobil. You know how in each other’s pockets neighbors get in a place this size? Nothin’ else to do.” She held up her hands as if to say, Well duh!
She finished, “So who you after?”
He stared at her father, who just shrugged, then her mother. Lydia sat quietly, sipping her coffee.
Tyree squirmed, which is what he suspected Amy had intended him to do. “What’s with the jump in population, then? From 112 to 427 in the last year. Or did I read it wrong?”
David Bearclaw nodded, his mouth screwed tight as if suppressing anger. “You read right. The hotel. Sells plots now, fancy houses all squashed together like fleas, in sections tucked between the three golf courses they got. Word is they’re building another golf course just for the residents. Pools, all that.”
Tyree asked, “Vacation homes or permanent?”
David eyed him. “What’s the difference?”
“Permanent means schools,” said Tyree. “Post offices, restaurants, sewers, service roads. And eventually some type of industry to employ them. Lotta extras come with permanent residents. Money for the Hollow, though.” He lifted an eyebrow in question.
David shook his head. “Don’t need, don’t want that kind of prosperity.”
Tyree frowned. “You got no police at all?”
Amy grinned. “Didn’t say that. We got Kizzy.”
David said quietly, “My mother. One of the remaining full-blooded Cherokees from the Trail of Tears. Descended from those who hid so the soldiers missed them in the roundup.”