Dead Cold Mysteries Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (A Dead Cold Box Set), Blake Banner [classic children's novels txt] 📗

“I think I know why you won’t tell me your theory.”

“Assuming I have a theory.”

“You have. I think you are vain. Like the song, you know? I bet you think this song is aboutcha, dontcha?” She laughed out loud. “You can’t bear the thought that you might tell me your theory…”

“Assuming I have a theory.”

“…and it might be wrong. Go on. Admit it.”

“I have a certain intellectual vanity…”

She mimicked my voice. “I have a certain intellectual vanity…” She burst out laughing again. “You’re cool, Stone. I’ll let you off. But when you start all that ‘Ha! It is as I suspected!’ bullshit, you’ll know that I know that you didn’t know…”

We had reached her door, and her eyes were bright in the starlight. I smiled. “Good try. But I repeat: I have no theory. I know. I know almost everything. And with a little luck, I will confirm it tomorrow. And then, Miss Cocky Pants, you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face.”

I opened my door and stepped in.

“Good night, Dehan.”

As I closed the door, I heard her parting words.

“I still say you’re vain.”

Twenty

I lay for a long while that night, staring at the ceiling and running over her theory. It was good. It made a lot of sense. It was elegant and simple. I weighed it against my own conclusions. Was she right? Was it vanity? Or something else?

We started out early, as the sun was rising in the east and before the heat started sapping the life out of everything it touched. We drove west toward Amarillo for about an hour and a half, staring at the endless expanses of dry flatness. Dehan was looking like she was trying hard to hold on to her patience. I didn’t let that distract me. I was trying to imagine what had been going through Mick and Maria’s minds as they drove along this road ten years ago.

Finally she couldn’t keep her mouth shut any longer, and she said, “This is route 66…”

I smiled. “That’s where we get our kicks, Dehan.”

“It’s I-40, and it leads to Los Angeles.”

“You want to go to California, hang out with the beautiful people?” She didn’t answer. She just looked at me through her shades and waited. “You think we should go south, toward Mexico?”

She cocked her head on one side and did something that was never intended to be a smile.

We had reached the turnoff for the 207 down to Claude. I pulled off right, then followed the loop over the bridge, and then we were driving dead south. The landscape was still about as flat and featureless as you could get without sandpapering it.

“Stone…” She was sounding now like it wasn’t really amusing anymore. She gestured at the thousands of square miles of emptiness. “The only thing you could hide out here is corn, or dirt—flat dirt! Come on! Give it up! How can you hide a red Mustang in this, for crying out loud?”

I scratched my chin. She said, “Listen to me. The car is in Mexico!”

We drove in to Claude and out the other end again, and everything was still flat when we got there. After another five or six miles, little had changed, except that we had gone over a small rise, once. Then I said, “When you look around you, you’d think that this endless, featureless landscape would go on forever. But here is the advantage of being a little studious and using your imagination, not to mention maps…”

She raised an eyebrow at me. I pointed up ahead. “See where the road bears right up ahead?” She glanced, curious in spite of herself. “See what happens when we get there.”

We got there and she shrugged. “So the road bent. I agree, out here that is like a major event. But…”

“Climb off…”

“What?”

“Your high horse. Climb off it. Look again.” I slowed right down and pointed left. “See the land over there? Flat, featureless, and fertile. Now look over on your right. The earth is turning gray. It’s scrubland, small gnarled bushes. Now, as we proceed further round the bend, what do you notice…?”

She was frowning. “Okay… The landscape is changing. We have a deep valley opening up here on the right. But I don’t see…”

“Oh, little grasshopper!” I said, “You see, but you do not imagine!”

“Give me strength…”

I pointed up ahead again. “Now, you see up there? The road turns left. Let’s see what happens there…”

She stared at me a while. The expression in her eyes was hidden by her large, reflective aviators. She said, “Is it like this in your head all the time?”

“You should join me. It’s fun.” We turned the bend, and I exclaimed, “Oh, by golly, by gum! What have we here?” I did a fair imitation of a Texan and said, “Ah do believe, Detective Dee-han, that we are in a canyon!”

Before us, the interminable flatness had been suddenly replaced by a vast sweep of deep valleys and rolling hills. The earth began to turn now from gray to red, as though it had been rusted through the millennia. An abundance of bushes and small trees dotted the landscape among rough, hardy shrubs. The road continued to bend and curve as it descended.

“We are now entering, Detective Carmen Dehan, the Palo Duro Canyon, said to be the second largest in the U.S.A. At the bottom, in about five minutes, we shall find the Prairie Dog Town Fork of the Red River, and then we shall begin to climb up, onto the far side of the canyon.”

“Shall we?”

“Indeed.”

The river was less impressive than its name. It was more like a very large trickle of mud. We crossed it via a concrete bridge and slowly began to climb up the far side.