Death Without Company by Craig Johnson

quality that superceded the popular beauty of the day and drew its warmth from the earth rather than the air. She turned back around from the opposite counter and placed a small waxed bag in front of me. I looked at it. “It’s a gift.”
    “For what?”
    “Caring about my grandmother.”
    I nodded. “Thank you.” I studied the little sack and thought about Mari Baroja. “Did she bake?”
    “Yes.” She looked at the little white bag, and it was obvious to both of us that it was symbolic of something important and tactile that was being passed between us: it was a contract. “Whenever we visited from Colorado Springs she would bake things with me.” The dark eyes came up. “I guess that’s how I got started.”
    “Your father was at the Academy?”
    She brought her palms up from the counter. “Air force.”
    “He died in Vietnam?”
    “Yes. I didn’t get much of a chance to know him. Did you?”
    I thought of the sad-eyed young man. “No, but I know a guy a lot like him. How about your mother?”
    She stared at me for a second. “She’s still in Colorado Springs; her, a mean little shih tzu, and Jesus.”
    I nodded. “I see.”
    “What did Dr. Bloomfield say?”
    I leaned a hip of my own against the counter. “He said that your grandmother had heart complications due to a chronic condition, and the medical examiner from Billings seems to concur with the prognosis so far.”
    “So far?”
    I started for the door; things had gone so well I didn’t want to spoil them. “We should have a death certificate by the end of the day.”
    “It really isn’t fair, you know?” I stopped with my hand resting on the brass handle. She still leaned against the counter with her arms folded, staring at the worn surface. “Just when you get to the point where you can enjoy them, they’re gone.”
    I thought about it. “It’s that way sometimes with children, too.”
    She continued to stare at the wood and extended a finger to trace the grain. “I wouldn’t know.”
    I paused for a moment more. “On the subject of family, what can you tell me about your grandfather?”
    The finger stopped. “He was a prick, and he’s dead.”
    I was relieved but tried to hide it. “He’s dead? Do you know how he died?”
    The dark eyes looked straight at me and blinked only once. “Surely you know. Lucian Connally killed him.”

4
    I told the ladies at vehicle registration to punch up Charlie Nurburn on the DMV computer and show me what they had or I was going to set fire to the place.
    It didn’t take long for them to tell me zip, so I asked them how far back the data went. They asked me how far back I wanted to go. The ladies at vehicle registration were like that. After all the years of abuse at the hands of the local citizenry, they had developed the finely honed tact and manners of Russian wolfhounds. I asked for the forties, and they came forth grudgingly with nothing. I asked for the fifties, and they eventually showed me that Charlie had registered a 1950 Kaiser but had failed to pay taxes or registration a year later. He had also failed to have his driver’s license renewed. There were no further records to date. I asked them what a Kaiser looked like. They said it looked a lot like a Frazer. I asked them what a Frazer looked like. They said it looked like a Hudson. Before I left, I reminded them about the fire. They asked me when the fire was going to start so they could be sure to call the county commissioners and get them in the courthouse for a meeting. I told them I was going across the hall to the county clerk’s office. They said that was a good place to start a fire, that there was enough blue hair over there to burn down the whole damn county.
    I walked across the hall and once again put forth the human query of Charlie Nurburn. Wyoming has no income tax, so I asked for anything the ladies there might have concerning Charlie’s birth, life, marriage, children, or death, not necessarily in that order.