Chapter 27

Later, Friday week, Hairy was in town to pick up his pickup ... and I related the events of the past week. Done, I looked at him.

“Good Lord, Karen. That’s the stuff of fiction.”

“There’s more.” I said.

A burned out car with a female body was found in the river. Three days later a wealthy ... exceedingly wealthy ... family lost their eldest son to an accident on the Red Grade Road above Big Horn. Rumor had it that he was so drugged up that neither he nor his high school buddy were in control when the vehicle sailed off the road.

(Careful examination of Google Maps reveal that RED GRADE road is much altered in the nearly half century since the events mentioned took place. Perhaps it was the loss of such an illustrious scion of a famous family that prompted the Forest Service to smooth out the wrinkles. My most recent Red Grade experience would have been 1978 when I was helping a church brother cut fence poles. Fully loaded and beyond, we coasted the last uphill grade and reached the crest, he stopped on the edge and looking down, I could see where the road finally straightened out ... it looked to be directly below and straight down. He said, “Is your soul right with God, brother?” I nodded. “Good,” he said. “I don’t have any brakes.” I didn’t have time to get out.)

Pretty wild doings for such a small town.

Meantime, remembering that fences can be hundreds of miles long and neighbors hundreds of miles apart, a scene is brewing in a den.

“But, Daddy, you said you’d handle it.”

“I think, when it comes to handling a matter, some countries have vastly more experience ... and far less conscience in doing so.”

“But Daddy ... who shall escort me to the Prom?” She loved her older brother ... more than her daddy suspected. He had promised, cross my heart and hope to die, to escort her to her Junior Prom.

“We’ll work something out.”

“Thank you, Daddy.”

The bubbly teen kissed her father on his forehead ... leaving a bright red lipstick imprint on a rapidly balding pate.

His phone rang. This in itself was miraculous. Miles of the phone company lines had been down for weeks.

The bounteous blonde stopped and turned in time to see her father turn sheet white, clutching at his chest.

“Daddy?”

He dropped the phone.

“Daddy?”

She picked up the phone and held it to her ear. A miswired handset sent a jolt of 220 current melting the phone and removing the contents of her head.

That should make her prom date obvious.

Over the next two years family members suffered from a unique series of accidents. A brand new 26 foot Grady O’Day sank on Canyon Ferry Lake in Montana.

The cockpit drain plugs were found on the dock at the Marina.

The second son died while skiing ... impaled on broken pine branch.

He was on a closed slope far more difficult than his skill level.

A snowmobile ski broke on landing, sending the young widowed trophy wife careening into the Middle Fork of the Flathead River. Her dead-mans disconnect wrist cable failed to disengage and the charging snowmobile dragged her under the ice.

Her speed was estimated at more than 80 miles per hour.

Like accidents neatly removed grandparents, brothers, sisters and their offspring until there was no one to attend the final funeral. The backhoe operator threw a single black glove on the coffin before covering the grave. The following Saturday he flew to LaGuardi and thence to Madrid.

“Your Excellence, it is done,” he said.

The Duchess Casilda Ghisla Guerrero-Burgos y Fernández de Córdoba smiled and resumed sipping her coffee as she turned the pages of artists renderings of fashion for the new season.

What to wear ... what to wear? ... each season was such a worry.

Daddy had been right ... when it came to “handling” matters, he was a rank amateur.

While in the middle of the murder and mayhem, funds from suddenly free offshore accounts found their several ways into numbered offshore accounts set up for Annalise, Karen and el Patrón ... the amount and even the numbers of which they had no knowledge.