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“Ms. Greta Lundstrum, please,” she said to a man working at the reception desk.

“She’s in a meeting right now. Can you tell me what this is in reference to?” he said.

Through a glass partition in back, Temple could see a thick-bodied woman in a gray business suit, talking from behind her desk to a man who stood in her cubicle doorway. “It involves a criminal investigation. Would you ask her to come out here?” Temple said.

The man at the reception desk looked over his shoulder. “Oh, I see she’s out of the meeting. Just a moment, please,” he said.

“Right,” Temple said.

The receptionist went to the cubicle in back, and the woman in the gray suit gave Temple a look, then nodded to the receptionist. But she didn’t get up from her chair. Instead, she seemed to make a point of looking at some documents on her desktop. Temple walked back toward the cubicle.

“Just a minute, ma’am,” the receptionist said.

Temple brushed past him and entered the cubicle without knocking. “You’re Greta Lundstrum?” she asked.

“Yes, what do—”

“I’m a private investigator. You know a sheriff’s detective by the name of Darrel McComb?” Temple said, opening her badge and ID holder.

“No, I don’t think so. Who did you say you work for?”

“Billy Bob Holland. You were at Senator Romulus Finley’s home Tuesday evening?”

“How did you know that?”

“You were being surveilled by a sheriff’s detective. Who were the two men with you?”

“That’s none of your concern, madam. What do you mean ‘surveilled’?”

Greta Lundstrum had thick hair, wide-set green eyes, and a broad face. Temple removed a small notebook form her shirt pocket and wrote in it. “Nice place you have here. You know a man named Wyatt Dixon?”

“I never heard of him. Answer my question, please.”

“A sheriff’s detective and an ex-convict by the name of Wyatt Dixon were watching you while you stood in Romulus Finley’s backyard. You never heard of Wyatt Dixon?”

“I told you.”

Temple made another entry in her notebook. “That’s strange. He used to live at that white supremacist compound not far from here. He went to prison for murder. There was a great deal of publicity about the case and also about the white supremacist compound. But you never heard of him?”

“If I can assist you in some meaningful way, I will. But you’re being both rude and intrusive. I think our conversation here is concluded.”

“Ms. Lundstrum, Wyatt Dixon buries people alive. I know because I was one of his victims. You want to be cute, that’s fine. But if I were you, I’d give some thought to who my real friends are.”

Greta Lundstrum looked momentarily into space, then picked up the telephone receiver and punched in three numbers on the key pad. “This is Blue Mountain Security. We have a trespasser here,” she said.

THE NEXT MORNING, Temple used a friend at San Antonio P.D. to run Greta Lundstrum through the NCIC computer. Then she went to work on the Internet.

“Lundstrum was a security consultant in Maryland and Virginia. Divorced twice, no children, no police record of any kind. Her second husband ran a martial arts school. Greta came out to Montana seven years ago and settled in the Bitterroots,” Temple said.

“A dead end?” I said.

“I think she lied about not knowing Wyatt Dixon. The question is why.”

“Sometimes people don’t want to tell strangers they know bad guys. As soon as they make that admission, they’re asked what the bad guy is like, or how it is they came to have a relationship with him.”

“When they lie, it’s to cover their butts,” she replied.

LUCAS’S BAND PLAYED three nights a week at a busthead nightclub just off the Flathead Indian Reservation. That afternoon he arrived early at the club to set up the band’s equipment. While he wound new strings on his acoustical Martin, tuning them simultaneously with a plectrum, ping-ping-ping, at the back of the club, a young Indian woman and her boyfriend stood at the bar, knocking back shots with beer chasers. Both of the Indians were drunk, kissing each other wetly on the face, hardly aware of their surroundings.


Tags: James Lee Burke Billy Bob Holland Mystery