Page 27 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

Hiram Poppinger could not be induced to explain more lucidly. I promised myself I’d share this pain with the others as soon as possible, then asked a few more questions, with even less gain.

Unless you counted that Frank Jardos was an all right guy, if you had to have somebody around.

That he talked about his Army days, but not so much it would drive you ’round the bend.

That he hadn’t been himself after his wife died, but it wasn’t reasonable — of me, he made clear — to expect somebody to be anything else and besides that, he was better and better as time went by, so what the hell was I getting at.

Back in Tom’s truck and with Yvette waving us off cheerily, while Hiram was already nowhere in sight, I puffed out a breath. “That man is exhausting. I’d rather interview most politicians than him.”

“Most?”

“Yeah. There are others I wouldn’t want to be in the same county with, much less interview them. So, yeah, I’d take Hiram over them. But it’s such a low bar it’s basically slithering across the dirt.”

He chuckled.

Then he cut me a look. “Why’d you ask him about where the vets might be?”

“You mean because you probably have a good idea where they are, so why not just ask you? Because I wanted to hear what he said.”

“Not much.”

“No. Not much. So, where are they?”

“Near the Circle B. I’ll take you out there tomorrow morning with Shadow. Should give me time to connect with them. Still, no guarantee they’ll meet you, much less answer your questions.”

“Maybe they’ll talk to Shadow,” I half-heartedly grumbled.

* * * *

Tom dropped me off in the station’s parking lot.

I went inside for a pit stop and to check in with Audrey.

“Oh, Elizabeth. I wanted to ask you. What do you think? Put this Congress story at the top of B Block or toward the end of A Block. It is a big story, but you know some of the repeat complainers want to pretend there’s nothing outside the borders of Cottonwood County, so they’ll be on the phone screaming about it.

But the top of the B Block . . . how many people miss that?

This isn’t a story they should miss, whether the complainers recognize it or not.

You’re right, it needs to go in A Block. ”

“Happy to help.”

No sarcasm there, because it did help her to have a sounding board. Soon she wouldn’t need to say it aloud.

I made a phone call, received the okay to visit I’d requested, grabbed a package of cookies from my desk, and hit the road again, heading north toward the other town in Cottonwood County, O’Hara Hill.

It’s the home of the sheriff’s department’s substation, one of the county’s best restaurants, and two of its strongest personalities — Mike’s Aunt Gee and Emmaline Parens.

As fate would have it, they lived next door to each other.

Or maybe living next door to each other contributed to those strong personalities. Like a carbon steel blade continuously whetted against a stone.

Which of them was blade and which stone I couldn’t begin to guess. Maybe they traded off.

On the way, I called the group to share my conversations and frustration. Voice only, since I was driving.

I shared the non-answers from Ned Irvin and minimal encounters with Kam Droemi and Miles Stevens.

“I know Kam. When I was a kid—” I wished Jennifer wouldn’t do that. She was still a kid to me. “—she was an instructor at the first computer program I took. Pretty sure it was a junior college project for her.”

“She’s a computer whiz?” I asked.

“Not unless you consider teaching basics to little kids a whiz. I never considered it before, but she was more interested in another instructor than the kids.”

Mike asked, “How long did it take you to know more than she did?”

She tipped her head. “Mmm. Two, maybe three weeks. That’s why Mom and Dad gave me my first computer. What else, Elizabeth?”

I skipped the Haber House lunch, figuring Mike would tell them what he wanted them to know about discussions with Orson Jardine, and my personal conversations with Mom and Tom.

That brought us to Hiram.

When I finished, Mike said, “You called us for this?”

“Why should I suffer alone? But I’m not done. Poppinger seemed to think Frank Jardos using Denver Airport could have contributed to his disappearance and/or demise.”

Diana echoed my initial reaction to this theory with a Huh?

Mike said, “Is this about the gargoyle?”

“The gargoyle’s just making fun of it,” Jennifer said.

“Fun of what?” I demanded.

“IYKYK.”

Diana jumped on Jennifer’s response. “I know that one — if you know, you know — but how is that connected to the Denver Airport and a gargoyle?”

“I know what it means, too,” I said. “It’s related to all those theories like that the earth is flat, or the sun is hollow, or the moon is a projection—”

“I never got that one,” Mike said. “If it’s a projection, how come it shows up in paintings from long before projections ever existed, not to mention references and legends in all sorts of ancient civilizations?”

“That’s the only one you don’t get?” I asked.

Diana chuckled.

“All right, all right, I especially don’t get that one. Never understood the stuff about the Denver airport, either.”

“What stuff? That’s what I want to know. I’ll humbly acknowledge this hole in my regional lore if you please tell me what Hiram Poppinger was talking about.”

“That might be a task beyond any of us.” Diana ruined her solemn delivery with another chuckle.

“How much time do you have?” Mike asked. “It started with construction of the airport, which had setbacks and delays. Because that never happens, right? But some people said it was to make sure people worked over different periods so no one knew everything about what was being built.

“There are theories about the runways forming a swastika — but only if you ignore about half of them. And the story that the coordinates for its location were in a broadcast in Close Encounters of the Third Kind, except those coordinates are someplace else in Colorado. Plus, the one about inscriptions on the floor of the terminals being in a cabal’s secret language, when they’re in Navajo. ”

“All this just scratches the surface,” Jennifer said as an aside.

“The runways are important,” Mike continued, “because there are supposed to be really long secret ones under the regular ones that can be uncovered for huge planes to land when the need arises to rush the Satanic elites—”

“I had a feeling they’d show up in this,” I groaned.

“—to their underground bunkers. That need will arise when the elites spark the apocalypse. Jennifer, what did I forget?”

“Not just bunkers.” She didn’t miss a beat. “Those elites will go down into a six-story underground city with all the comforts of home. Unless the area underground is, instead, used to imprison those who tried to rebel against the rule—”

“Gotta have a Plan B,” Mike said.

“—of the Satanic elites. Plus, there’s the part about saying they built a ninety-mile drivable tunnel to NORAD at Cheyenne Mountain.”

“That would be impressive,” I said.

“Then there’s the art, from the blue horse out front to murals. It’s weird. Totally weird.” A short but emphatic art review by Jennifer.

“Is that where this gargoyle Mike mentioned comes in?”

“Oh, there’s not just one. There are two permanent ones in the baggage area with sculptures of suitcases as their bases. They’re supposed to bring good luck for getting your luggage. But—”

“They’re called Notre Denver, after the ones at Notre Dame in Paris,” he inserted, showing a disturbing level of knowledge about gargoyles.

“—the talking gargoyle Mike brings up all the time was supposed to be temporary. It was pretty popular,” Jennifer ended. “Most people want it back.”

“Not Hiram Poppinger, not considering what he told Elizabeth about Jardos using the airport being dangerous,” Diana said. “And it didn’t seem like he was talking about safety records.”

“Definitely not,” I confirmed.

“But that doesn’t tell us anything,” Jennifer complained. “It’s not like Jardos was killed or snatched out of Denver airport or any airport.”

“I wouldn’t say it doesn’t tell us anything,” I objected. “It tells us Hiram is prone to believing conspiracy theories, which means he is not a credible witness—”

“Like I said, nothing. We already knew he wasn’t credible.”

“—and that Jardos was not prone to believing conspiracy theories, which makes what we’re told about what he’s said more credible.”

After a beat of silence, Diana said, “Credible about what? Frank Jardos isn’t giving us any information.”

So much for my trying to find a bright side.

We agreed to a video call at lunchtime the next day.

“What are you going to do next?” Mike asked.

“Mrs. P.”

I explained about reading the manuscript, though Mike and Jennifer expressed skepticism that it would help.

Diana said nothing, but I suspected she agreed.

If it came to that, so did I.

But the less you have, the wider you cast your net. Sometimes back a century-plus.