Junkyard Dogs Read Free Page B

her ankles and shifted from one booted foot to the other. “I’ve got an appointment to go over and look at it again tonight. I guess there’s a bunch of people interested.”
    “Would you like me to go with you?”
    She raised an exquisite eyebrow. “Why in the This Old House hell would I want you to do that?”
    She had a point; my home skills were just short of negligible—I’d only gotten around to having the Mexican tile in my six-year-old log cabin installed this past fall. “It’s a guy thing; even if you don’t know anything about cars, you open the hood and look at the engine.”
    “Seven-thirty. Then I’ll let you take me out to dinner.”
    I took the weight off my sore foot and looked down at my boots, which were covered with buckled galoshes. “That’s a nice part of town. The houses around there usually go in a hurry. What do they want for it?”
    “One-seventy-one, but I think I can get it for one-sixty-two. Alphonse says he’ll front me the down, and then I can just pay him back when I can, sans interest.”
    Alphonse was Vic’s uncle who had a pizza parlor in Philadelphia and, other than Vic’s mother, Lena, the only non-cop Moretti. “How’s the rest of the family feel about this?”
    “They don’t know about it.” As a general rule, the machinations of the Moretti family made the Borgias’ seem like Blondie and Dagwood.
    Her shoulder bumped into my arm as she changed the subject. “So, your daughter and my brother are getting married this summer?”
    I took a deep breath with a quick exhale. “All I know is what I get from the answering machine at home.”
    “At least you’ve got a home.” She shifted her weight again, this time in not-so-simple dissatisfaction. “Mom says the end of July.”
    I shrugged. “Mom would know.” I thought about Vic’s mother, and the brief time I’d spent in Philly almost a year ago. “Did she mention whether they were thinking of doing it here or in Philadelphia?”
    She looked up at me. “There was supposedly talk about some special place on the Rez—Crazy something . . .”
    I thought about it. “Crazy Head Springs?”
    “That’s it.”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “Why uh-oh?”
    “It’s where I once helped raise the powwow totem; it’s a sacred place for the Cheyenne but controversial. Crazy Head was a Crow chief, but part of the break-off Kicks-in-the-Belly band.”
    “Like Virgil?”
    “Yep, like Virgil.” Virgil had been one of our holding cell lodgers who, after having been released, had gone MIA. “The Cheyenne don’t like the idea of a Crow chief being exalted on their reservation. Henry took Cady along with us when she was seven, and she’s always said she wanted to be married there.”
    Vic shook her head. “We’ll see if it lasts till the summer.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    Her eyes met mine, but she diverted again. “So, has the Basquo talked to you?”
    I started to yawn and covered my mouth with my hand. “About what?”
    “Quitting.”
    I stopped in mid-yawn. “What?”
    I studied her a moment more, but my eyes were drawn to an approaching lab coat flapping toward us from the hallway. I swiveled my head to meet Isaac Bloomfield, surgeon and all-around Durant Memorial physician-in-charge. As a member of the lost tribe, who must’ve really been lost when he settled in Wyoming, Isaac Bloomfield had set up practice in Absaroka County more than a half century ago. He had been one of the three living inmates of Dora-Mittelbau’s Nordhausen when Allied troops had liberated the Nazi Vernichtungslager . “How’s the patient?”
    “Well, that’s the first time we’ve ever had that happen.” He looked up at me through the thick lenses of his glasses, which magnified the multiple layers of skin around his eyes. “His hair has grown through his long underwear.”
    Vic made an unflattering noise through her nose.
    “Probably more than we needed to know, Doc.”
    He adjusted his glasses and motioned with his