‘Like Charlie Barger Barger?’
‘Yup.’
‘How does a doctor wind up with a brewery?’ said Ren.
‘It started out as his father’s. Charlie’s father, Emil, set up one of the first breweries in town. Have you been to Big Mountain Brewery?’
‘Yup.’
‘They still sell Lime Beer there. It’s a Barger beer – Emil backward. I’m guessing he was kind of a dork. But the beer is good.’
‘Oh, so it’s not because it tastes of lime,’ said Ren.
‘No, but Big Mountain Brewery gets a kick out of confusing the customers.’
‘So BMB used to be owned by Emil Barger?’
‘Kind of,’ said Mike. ‘Emil Barger started brewing his own beer in his garage when he retired. This was the late seventies. Anyway, he can’t help himself and, within a year, he had bought that place off McCullough Gulch Road. I guess you’d call it a micro-brewery. Two years on, it’s huge, it’s the Barger Brewery, supplying to a lot of the bars around town, and people are loving it. Emil passes away, leaves the brewery to Charlie who, sadly, runs it into the ground. The brand was bought out and it became Big Mountain Brewery. Charlie got to hang on to the building and land. BMB, as you know, has premises just on the edge of town.’
‘Jesus,’ said Ren, ‘his father’s got the Midas touch, Charlie’s got the everything-he-touches-turns-to-shit thing. The guy in the Welcome Center told me about the Bargers owning half of Breck. And I’m guessing that’s not the case any more.’
‘I don’t know, Ren … I’d rather not … Charlie’s a friend.’
‘I understand that. And I don’t want you to betray anything or anyone. But it’s in plain sight that his house is run down and his daughter has a touch of the meth face.’
Mike looked at her.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Ren. ‘I shouldn’t have said it that way. But there is a sadness about that house.’ A terrible, cloying, sadness.
Mike let out a breath. ‘OK – Shannon Barger is a meth addict. And Charlie’s in debt. He has been bailing that little bitch – God forgive me – out since she was sixteen years old.’
‘Sixteen? How old is she now?’
‘Twenty-five.’
‘Oh my God, I thought she was, like, over forty.’
He nodded. ‘It’s very sad. She’s been to rehab a dozen times.’
‘And he’s a doctor,’ said Ren. ‘That’s gotta hurt.’
‘And the son of a very successful man, a war hero, an athlete, one of the founding fathers here … He owns nothing of what his father built up, and everyone knows it. Apart from the house –’
‘That used to be the Cheapshot Inn –’
‘Yup, which obviously didn’t go too well.’
‘No.’
‘He told me he’s thinking of starting the brewery again,’ said Mike. ‘Of making money that way.’
‘Getting into brewing?’ said Ren. ‘That will cost him money. Why doesn’t he just sell the land? That would probably cover his debts. I mean, I don’t know how much they are, but … none of his idea makes any sense.’
‘Charlie is far from dumb,’ said Mike. ‘He is an outstanding doctor, researcher, biochemist … His mind is just not big business.’
‘Yeah, but you hire in the guys to take care of that,’ said Ren.
‘He tried that,’ said Mike. ‘But when the boss is away …’
‘Well, wouldn’t you learn from experience? I mean –’
‘Ren – Charlie saved my son’s life,’ said Mike.
‘Oh,’ said Ren. ‘I’m sorry. I had no idea.’
‘I know,’ said Mike. ‘I just wanted to let you know I’ll fight you to the death to defend him.’ He was smiling as he said it.
‘That’s about done it for me,’ said Ren, smiling back. ‘Is your son doing OK?’
‘He is. Thank you. One hundred per cent OK.’
‘Saving children’s lives versus getting people shitfaced,’ said Ren. ‘You can’t argue with that.’
Even though I would love to keep talking about Charlie Barger, because something is not right with this picture.
Mike looked at her as if he could read her mind.
Ren went back to the inn and sat on the sofa in her room, speeding through the menus in the Gourmet Cabby guide. She went from pizza to salmon to burritos to sushi and back to salmon. When she placed her order, the guy at the other end of the phone said, ‘Hey, Ren. Room number nine, right?’
‘Hello, yes. Thanks.’
They had all her details. Grim. The whole of Breckenridge was going out to party and she was having a thing with Gourmet Cabby. When the food came an hour later, she went downstairs to pick it up. The other guests were drinking wine, watching TV, reading books.
‘Hey,’ she said.
‘What’s up?’ said one cute snowboarder.
‘Not much,’ said Ren, hovering, wanting to stay and talk, but finishing with a ‘Have a good one’ and going back upstairs.
Five hours later, through the window in the darkness, a snowplow moved like a Transformer toward her, mounting inclines, the cab rotating on its tracks, casting golden light across the snow. She couldn’t take her eyes off it as it moved past the church and turned back her way. She sat with a stack of notes and a bottle of water on the table in front of her. Two empty boxes of Mike & Ikes were on the floor at her feet. In the window and by her bed, church candles flickered, the flames coming to life a second time in mirrors and glass.
Her eyes started to close, her neck slowly falling toward the pillow at her back. No, no no. Do. Not. Stop. She sat up. She had Jean’s phone records and bank records in front of her – everything marked with arrows and question marks and Post-Its. Colin Grabien had already been through them; he had good radar and fresh eyes. Ren had too. And if there was anything new in them, her eyes were blind to it.
She had stacks of witness statements. She had maps. She had photos. She had multicolored pens. She had sketch pads. If she hadn’t spent so much time organizing it all, she would have swept the whole lot on to the floor. Instead, without even realizing it was happening, she picked up a coffee mug and pitched it across the room.
‘What is important in all this shit?’ she shouted.
The mug bounced off the wall in one piece, leaving no mark. She shook her head slowly.
I can’t do anything right. Shut up. I can’t. Shut up.
The next morning, Ren parked outside Caroline Quaintance’s house and sat staring down at the photo of Billy Waites and his intense, intelligent – lying? – eyes.
He could have any woman he wanted. Why did he pick me? She glanced over at the house. When maybe tall, athletic twenty-seven-year-olds were his thing.
She breathed through an irritating stab of jealousy and got out of the car. She jogged across the street to the house and rang the doorbell. Caroline came out, struggling