Chapter Seven
After he paid the bill, they stepped outside the café. The morning air had a bite to it although the sky was a cloudless blue overhead. He was glad he’d grabbed his sheepskin-lined leather coat before he’d left home. Plowed dirty snow melted in the gutters from the last storm. Christmas wasn’t that far off. There was no way Butte wouldn’t have a white Christmas.
“What do you know about Butte?” C.J. asked as she started to walk up the steep sidewalk.
He shook his head as he followed her, wondering why she’d called him. Was she going to help him find out the truth? Or was she just stringing him along?
“What most Montanans know, I guess. It’s an old copper mining boomtown and we’re standing on what became known as the Richest Hill on Earth,” he said. “It is now home to the Berkeley Pit, the most costly of the largest Superfund sites and a huge hole full of deadly water.”
He saw that she didn’t like him talking negatively about her hometown and realized he would have taken exception if she’d said anything negative about Whitehorse, too.
“Why are you asking me about Butte? What does this have to do with Hank or—”
“Butte was one of the largest and most notorious copper boomtowns in the West with hundreds of saloons and a famous red-light district.”
Butte hadn’t lived down its reputation as a rough, wide-open town. He’d heard stories about the city’s famous red-light and saloon district called the Copper Block on Mercury Street. Many of the buildings that had once housed the elegant bordellos still stood.
“The first mines here were gold and silver—and underground,” she continued. “They say there is a network of old mine tunnels like a honeycomb under the city.”
“Where are you going with this, C.J.?”
“Hank loved this town and he knew it like the back of his hand.”
Boone often wondered how many people actually knew the back of their hand well, but he didn’t say so. “Your point?”
“He believed in helping people. Often those people couldn’t pay for his services, but that never stopped him. You’ve seen his office. He wouldn’t have been interested in your family kidnapping case. It wasn’t something he would have taken on.”
“Then how do you explain the fact that he knew about the ribbon?”
“Maybe the attorney told him. Look, there was only one sheet of paper in the file. Hank might have been curious given the latest information that’s come out about the kidnapping. But he wouldn’t have pursued it. Which means if not an older case, then one of his more recent ones has to be what got him killed. I need to investigate those. I’m sure you have better things to do—”
He didn’t believe her. All his instincts told him that she wanted him to believe Hank hadn’t known anything about the kidnapping. She was scared that he had. And maybe even more afraid because he hadn’t told her.
So she was going to chase a few of Hank’s last cases? He’d seen her take three files last night. “Fine, but you aren’t getting rid of me, because once you exhaust your theory, we’re going to get serious and find out what Hank knew about the McGraw kidnapping and Jesse Rose.”
“Fine, suit yourself. I’m going to visit Mabel Cross and see if her brooch has turned up.”
Boone shook his head. “Seriously?”
“As Hank used to say, there are no unimportant cases.” She headed for her VW van. He cursed under his breath, but followed and climbed in the passenger side. She was wasting her time and his. But he needed her help and antagonizing her wasn’t going to get him anywhere, he told himself as he climbed into the passenger seat of her van.
“So we’re going to pay a visit to these people?” he asked, picking up the three case files she’d taken from Hank’s office last night as she slid behind the wheel. “Tell me we aren’t going underground.” He didn’t want to admit that one of his fears was being trapped underground. The idea of some old mine shaft turned his blood to ice.
She laughed. “I’m afraid we are. So to speak,” C.J. said and started the engine.
The buildings they passed were old, most of them made of brick or stone with lots of gingerbread ornamentation. He recalled that German bricklayers had rushed to Butte during its heyday from the late 1800s to the early 1920s.
Nothing about Butte, Montana, let you forget it had been a famous mining town—and still was, he thought as they passed streets with names like Granite, Quartz, Aluminum, Copper—and Caledonia.
As she drove C.J. waved or nodded to people they passed. He couldn’t tell if she was just friendly or knew everyone in town. On Iron Street, she pulled to the curb, cut the engine and climbed out. As she headed for an old pink-and-purple Victorian, he decided he might as well go with her.
Glancing around the neighborhood, he took in the historical homes and tried to imagine this city back in 1920. From photos he’d seen, the streets had swarmed with elegantly dressed residents. Quite a contrast to the homeless he’d seen now in doorways.
C.J. was already to the door and had knocked by the time he climbed the steps to the porch. The door opened and he looked up to find an elderly woman leaning on a cane. “Mrs. Cross,” C.J. said. “I’m Hank Knight’s associate.”
“Hank.” The woman’s free hand went to her mouth. “So tragic. If you’re here about his funeral—”
“No, I’m inquiring about your brooch. I wanted to be sure Hank had found it before—”
“Oh yes, dear,” she said and touched an ugly lion studded with rhinestones pinned to her sweater. “Silly me. I feel so badly now to have thought my niece or my daughter’s husband might have taken it and all the time it was on this sweater in the closet. I told Hank. I suppose he didn’t get a chance to tell you before... He was so loved.” She sniffed. “You’ll be at his funeral, I assume.”
“Of course. I’m just glad you found your brooch.” C.J. turned and headed for the van.
Boone wanted to point out what a waste of time that had been, but one look at her face when she climbed behind the wheel and he bit his tongue. “When is the funeral?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.” She started the van, biting at her lower lip as if to stanch the tears that brimmed in her eyes.
As she pulled out on the street, he saw her glance in the rearview mirror and then make a quick turn down a side street. “So do we check on these other two cases?” he asked picking up the file folders.
“I already called Fred Hanson this morning. Hank got the neighbor to admit he did it and pay restitution.”
Boone couldn’t help being impressed. Who had this Hank Knight been to have such a devoted following, including C.J. herself?
“I also drove by the Turner house earlier this morning.”
“The cheating husband case,” he said.
“The husband’s clothing was in the yard.”
“Another case solved by Hank Knight. So are you ready to accept that he might have been involved in my family’s case?”
She said nothing. On Mercury Street, she stopped in front of a large redbrick building and, cutting the engine, climbed out.
“The Dumas Brothel?” he asked, seeing the visitor sign in the window as he hurried after her.
“One of Hank’s best friends works here,” she said as she opened the door and stepped in.
He followed, wondering if she wasn’t leading him on a wild-goose chase this morning, hoping he’d give up and leave town.
It was cool and dimly lit inside the brothel museum. The older woman who appeared took one look at C.J. and disappeared into the back. Surely C.J. didn’t plan on taking him on a tour.
But before he could ask, she turned and went to the front window. He could see her pain just below the surface and reminded himself that her partner had been killed only days ago. He didn’t kid himself when it came to her priorities. She was looking for Hank’s murderer—not Jesse Rose.
But if he was right, then it would lead them to the same place.
As he studied her, he couldn’t help but wonder what she would do when she found the murderer.
An elderly man came into the room and C.J. turned and said, “Can we go out the back?”
Without a word, the man led them through the building and the next thing Boone knew, he was standing in a narrow alley surrounded by tall old brick buildings.
“What was that all about?” he demanded. He had expected her to at least ask the man about her partner or his death.
“Someone’s following us,” she said as she led him into another building, this one apparently abandoned. A few moments later, they spilled out into a dark narrow alley. “This way.”
Boone followed her through the alley between two towering old brick buildings before she dropped down some short stairs and ducked into a doorway. He stopped to look back and saw no one.
“Come on,” she called impatiently to him.
He hurried down the steps as she opened a door with a key and he followed her inside another musty building. “Calamity—”
“C.J.,” she snapped over her shoulder as she took a set of stairs that led upward. Only a little light filtered through the warbled old dust-coated windows as they climbed.
Four floors up, she stopped. He noticed that she wasn’t even breathing hard although she’d scaled the stairs two at a time as if they really were being chased. Now, though, she moved across the landing to a door marked Fourth Floor. Motioning for him to be quiet, she opened it a crack and looked out.
Boone couldn’t help but think she was putting him on. All this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Was it really necessary?
She motioned for him to follow her as she finally pushed open the door and headed down the long hallway, stopping short at the last door. From her bag, she pulled out a set of keys, pushed one into the lock and then seemed to hesitate.
“What?” he whispered, even though all the doors along the hallway were closed and he could hear nothing but the beat of his own heart.
C.J. shook her head, turned the key and pushed open the door. It didn’t connect until that moment where they were and why she’d been hesitant to enter.
Past her he could see what appeared by the decor to be a man’s apartment. There was a photo on one wall of a middle-aged Hank Knight and C.J. when she was about eight and had pigtails. Both Hank and C.J. were smiling at the camera. “You haven’t been here since he was killed.”
“No.” She stepped in and, after a furtive glance down the hall, he followed, closing and locking the door behind them.