Blue Lonesome by Bill Pronzini

ago. A few months.”
    She stood stiff-backed and flat-footed now. A film of moisture like a pale mustache had grown on her wide upper lip. “What’s your name? Who are you?”
    “Jim Messenger. I’m not anybody, just a man who’s interested in Anna and her past.”
    “Everybody’s somebody.”
    “And you? Who’re you?”
    “That any of your business?”
    “Are you Dacy Burgess?”
    “She sent you here, is that it?”
    “Please,” Messenger said. “Are you Anna’s sister?”
    “All right, I’m Dacy Burgess. Anna send you or didn’t she?”
    “No, no one sent me. She’s … I’m sorry, I wish I didn’t have to tell you this, but Anna’s dead.”
    “… Say that again.”
    “Your sister’s dead, Mrs. Burgess. She committed suicide three weeks ago in San Francisco.”
    She stared at him without moving. There was no expression on her brown face; no hint of what she was thinking or feeling. All she did was stand there, still and straight, her mouth parted slightly and the film of sweat beginning to break and slide down around its corners from her upper lip.
    “I’m sorry, Mrs. Burgess, truly sorry. I—”
    She turned on her heel, in a kind of jerky about-face, and hurried away from him.
    He was startled enough to stand rooted, with more words caught tight in his throat. She didn’t look back; walked faster, until she was almost running as she passed the patch of prickly pear. His motor responses finally sent him in pursuit. He tried to run himself, but his sore knee twinged and threatened to buckle the leg on him; all he could manage was an awkward hobble. By the time he came around to the front of the house she was all the way uphill at the gate.
    “Mrs. Burgess, wait. …”
    If she heard him, she gave no indication of it. She climbed quickly over the gate, disappeared from his view until he’d hobbled to the top of the rise. Parked fifty yards downhill was an open-sided, canvas-topped Jeep; she was just sliding in under the wheel. The engine roared, hammering echoes across the desert wastes. She reversed into a skidding half-turn that boiled up dust like pallid smoke. He heard the gears grind as she shifted into low, then the Jeep bucked ahead and was gone into an expanding funnel of dust.
    He didn’t think about pursuing her; he just did it. The powdery grit was like an abrasive in his already dry mouth and throat, making him cough steadily as he started the Subaru and turned it around. The hanging dust half obscured the track’s surface all the way to the valley road. He couldn’t do much more than crawl along. From the intersection the Jeep’s dust trail extended in caterpillarlike segments west toward the burnt hills. Heading home, he thought.
    It took him more than ten minutes to reach her ranch, which put him at least that many minutes behind her. The fine white powder was settling in the ranch yard and he had a good look at the place as he drove through the open gate, past another warning sign: PRIVATE PROPERTY. KEEP OUT.
    The Burgess ranch was a little larger than Anna’s, its buildings set against the fold where two naked hills came together. The spring that had dictated its location must have been a fairly large one; there were twice as many trees here, cottonwoods and tamarisks, and grassy spots and a vegetable garden that looked as if it got enough water. The house was of wood and native stone, with a broad chimney at one end and a covered porch along the front. The sun struck fiery glints from a squat silver Airstream house trailer set on blocks at an angle between the house and barn—an arrangement, planned or accidental, like the three points in an isosceles triangle. In a pole-fence corral adjacent to the barn, three lean horses stood languidly in the barn’s shade. Beyond was a pasture that contained cattle pens. And behind the house, chickens scratched inside a coop’s wire run and more sun glints came off windmill blades and a galvanized water tank like the one on