A Confusion of Bears: Another Geezer Western Mystery

Also by T.C. McKeon, Carla's Song (2014)

©T.C. McKeon and ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ISBN: 978-1-6822257-1-4

Chapters

Patio Bear

Nathan and Gilda

Bear Tracks

Conundrum

Fraud Artist

Victoria Scott

Cretaceous Revealed, Somewhat

Arcadian Kinnessen

Lureen and Lana Meet Kinnessen

Killing a Bear

Onlooker

Luther Cretaceous Invites Victoria to Lunch

Looking for Evidence

Subterfuge

Following the Track

Humiliation

Melanie

Troubling Discoveries

Artistry

Mysteries Deepen

The Conundrum Meeting

Jud Considers a Contract

Lana and Lureen Decide to Go Home

The Situation Worsens, a Bad Message

Jud and Melanie Make Love

Victoria’s Staff Departs

Jud Moves toward a Decision

In the Hospital and a Contract

Evidence

More Evidence

Tattooed Lady and Flight

Bahnhof

Ursula

Spiritual Sister

Rock Climbing

Lana and Lureen Confront Victoria

Kinnessen Cabin Confrontation

Victoria Begins to Recover

Hot Springs

John Mangram

Victoria Contacts Jud

Climbing Friends

At the Cabin

Jordan Receives New Information

Adam and Eve

Jud’s Cabin

Country Store

Dinner with Nathan and Gilda

Counter Surveillance

Telephone Calls

Lureen Returns

The Trap

Interrogation

Melancholy

The Death of Kinnessen

Suspicions

Lureen Reports

Salome

A Little S&M

John Mangram’s Den

Connecting Dots

Wanda Calls

Melancholia Redux

Victoria Clears Her Head

Mining Claims

Claim Jumping

Lorelei Finds Rasputin and Ursula Pays a Call

Lorelei Reports Once Again

The Yaak

Libby

Back to the Yaak

Rasputin’s Story

Melanie Leaves

Diving for Death

Ursula and Dieter

Cretaceous

The Other Side of the Mountain Was All that He Could See

Bad Dreams

Coffee Klatch

The Whole Story

The Last Bear

Patio Bear

When Jordan Cutler opened the curtains to her dining room in the morning, she was startled to find a bear on the adjoining patio. She felt no particular threat, since the patio’s security doors barred the bear from entry. It seemed unaware of her presence, however, as it nosed past the barbecue and sniffed some of the plants ringing the space. It sauntered, as bears do, following scents rather than sight. Jud Phoenix had left her a shotgun, a well-worn Montgomery Ward make, when he sold her the house. She had it in a closet nearby, but it never occurred to her that she might have to use it to defend her property and herself from a bear. He thought she ought to have something, isolated as the house was from other houses on her road, and it appeared oiled and ready, with ammunition, on the day the sale closed. She had no idea where he obtained it, but then firearms are everywhere in Montana. She thought the weapon an unusual housewarming gift, though not beyond expectations for Jud, but nothing more.

The bear continued to work its way along the patio, finally descending off its edge and then coursing its way along the path to the spring about fifty yards away. The spring lent charm to her property. It spilled into a small, man-made pond. The water trickled from the pond down a shallow ravine, carefully managed to avoid erosion. The sound of the water from the edge of her patio had been a selling point when she bought the place, but then Jud had sold it to her at a very forgiving price. It came almost as a gift.

The house, built by his deceased friend Jodi, came to him as an inheritance, an uncomfortable one Jordan surmised. He sold it to her, she thought, as some kind of act of contrition or redemption, trying to make the best of an acquisition that clearly made him unhappy somehow. At the same time, the house came as consolation for her part in the fight at Coalbad. She didn’t think she would ever know why inheriting the house from Jodi made him uncomfortable, or even if he knew exactly why he felt the way he did. She tried not to think much about the fight at Coalbad. It seemed best to keep that part of her life as far and deep as possible from consciousness.

The fight at Coalbad that took down the great Harrison Bank money-laundering scheme had occurred one year ago, though in her mind each month since seemed like a year. Jordan had followed Jud Phoenix directly into the fight. She had fired at members of the Towne gang along with him, a thing so preposterous now that she still didn’t comprehend how she had managed to go there and do that. But it had happened and even now brought her some bad dreams and depression. She had wagered her whole career, indeed her whole life, on a minute decision to go with him after the kidnappers of Milton, Jud’s bodyguard and companion. She had been so outraged she had made a very rash decision.

Well, it came out all right in the end. They survived and beat the odds. They were regarded, finally, as heroes in the old Western sense. Her career didn’t tank, it flourished. When she looked in the mirror, though, she did not see the hardened, battled-tested gunfighter. She saw her vulnerability, an image bolstered by her dreams and occasional waves of guilt and fear. She continued therapy, nearly mandated by Jud, and immersed herself in her growing legal practice,

The bear had passed within ten feet of her. She saw a mid-sized black bear, but of a brown phase, maybe 200 pounds. Its fur looked thick and dense, its condition healthy. In the ravine below the house choke-cherries grow, a great favorite of Montana bears. It ultimately came up from the river bottom, some five miles to the east. She knew bear populations had expanded over the prior years, but it had not occurred to her to expect one this far east of the mountains. Well, she now had been alerted, and would take precautions, and would spread the word down-canyon from her property. She decided it was a good reason for living where she did. Who wants to live without bears?

Nathan and Gilda

Nathan Phoenix-Polter sat at a picnic table in a campground close to the Shawangunks or Gunks in New York State, a popular hangout for rock climbers. He had climbed in the morning, but being seriously out-of-shape, let his two companions climb a more difficult set of pitches without him. He needed rest and they didn’t need him to impede their progress up the chosen pitches. He had eaten lunch, but now sat in the warm sun working on a unique translation. He had just returned within the past two weeks from England after two years at Oxford. He had studied classics, particularly ancient Greek. Back home in the U.S., he needed to decide what he would do next.

While making that decision, the first of its kind in his young life, he lived with his parents, Martin Polter and Rachael Phoenix, both academics. They teased him a bit about not being on his own, but he knew his parents were very proud of his academic achievements to date despite their esoteric bent, and indulged him at this time of decision. They were academics, college professors. His mother was a poet and playwright. They understood esoteric. He felt no pressure, therefore, in mulling the decision. So he sat at his picnic table, mulling the lesser task of transitions to and fro from ancient languages to modern English. He also mulled over a trip to the West. He was also Jud Phoenix’s nephew.

He first noticed the woman climbing with friends on a pitch not far from the one he and his friends chose first, a fairly short pitch, top-roped, allowing Nathan particularly to get used to being on rock once again. She was a small woman, probably best described as wiry, but a very strong climber. She impressed him with her strength and agility, as she did almost everybody else who was climbing that day.

Now she approached him at his table and he began to realize that she was very attractive, a flashing smile, long black hair braided now for the purpose of climbing, somewhat aquiline features, tan skin and warm dark eyes. It struck him as she approached, that he might have found that face looking out at him from an old painting or mosaic, if he had but searched around the ancient Mediterranean for that face, a face as ancient and beautiful as his studies were to him. He felt a pang as the real, live being approached him, an ancient echo in climbing tights, shoes and tee shirt on this bright, warm day. He fell in love, but did not know quite how to let her know. His tongue felt useless, his language proficiencies failed.

She stopped at his table, flashed another smile, and asked the typical climber’s question, Have you climbed here before?

The last time was about three years ago. I just got back in the country.

I thought I recognized you. You were climbing with …

This was another, old college friend of Nathan’s, but one long gone from the vicinity of the Gunks. Did you know him?

She smiled again. Yes, we sort of went together for a short time.

Nathan was not sure how to interpret this statement. I haven’t seen him or climbed with him for a long time.

My name is Gilda Milkowski. She sat and held out her hand, which he happily shook.

I’m Nathan Phoenix-Polter. And so began an afternoon with the prospect of lasting a lifetime. They sat and talked, neither inclined back to the cliffs. She asked him what he was doing. He revealed that he was translating his mother’s most recent book of poetry into ancient Greek, a sort of reverse translation, from the familiar English to the wholly inarticulate ancient language, which scholars can read but nobody remembers how to speak. He explained it as a kind of joke, which his mother might appreciate, but few others ever would. Its esoteric quality embarrassed him a bit; he felt he might be viewed as a boring intellectual. He didn’t want to be viewed as a boring intellectual, though being viewed as an interesting intellectual might be OK. He felt a burning need to be OK in her eyes at that moment.

She revealed that she had just completed her doctorate in physical therapy, and that she was in the midst of deciding where she might begin her career. She worried, looking at Nathan and hearing his concerns, that she might be viewed as too shallow in the eyes of this classics scholar to whom she felt a deep attraction. She loved her profession, its intimate knowledge of how the human body functions, and its ills that might be at least partially fixed with her skills; but felt its practicality might not resonate with this man.

They talked the rest of the afternoon away about anything and everything, neither wanting to surrender the moments to anything else. Neither should have worried about what the other thought or felt. Within two weeks they were a couple. And shortly after that, both started toward Montana and Jud Phoenix’s cabin, together, neither sure of where they might ultimately end up, but both pretty sure that they would end up there together.

Bear Tracks

Jud Phoenix stepped out on the open porch of his fishing cabin, put on his waders, boots and vest, his rod already and almost permanently assembled while he stayed and fished there. The creek, a small spring creek, his portion, flowed about 100 yards from his front door. He’d had dumb luck when he was still young, and could barely afford anything to buy this property: before real estate booms, before fly-fishing became chic, before his own investment prudence set in. He added land as it became available, again before prices became so dear even he might have been priced out. He had some irrigated land in the river bottom and some pasturage as a result. These he leased to neighbors for shares in produce, cows or hay. When he was young and less affluent, the leases offset some of the expenses. Now they remained pleasant connections with his neighbors, who made their livings on cows and hay. They also gave him what he had really wanted most – space – and solitude.

He set out midmorning to the spring creek. In the mountains fishing does not have to start at dawn. Many insects become active later than just at sunrise. He anticipated rising fish, some of which he knew most intimately. In the confines of a spring-fed creek, the fish lie in obvious places. They frequently come to the fly more than once. He could see the river bottom a quarter-mile away, but kept to the smaller stream for the morning. He did not move as well as he once did, and this morning he had a shorter time to fish. Victoria, his girlfriend from Chicago, attended a conference at the Conundrum Mountain Resort about an hour and a half away. After fishing a little, he intended to drive there to join her. She had reserved time to spend with him at his cabin after the conference, the first time ever for such a visit. He couldn’t have been happier.

He fished a couple of pools upstream, cast to rising fish, and caught a couple; not big fish, but good fish under the circumstance. He could see a tractor a couple of fields down valley harrowing cut hay. The first hay crop had just reached maturity and cutting had started. He heard the sounds of cattle being moved over a ridge, up the valley, but could not yet see the herd or the riders, his nearest neighbors likely. Blue skies reigned.

He moved upstream from the second pool. A riffle between it and the third pool upstream divided into two parts with a small island in the middle. On one side, a trickle of water bounded the island, while most of the stream flowed around the other side. He wanted to cross the creek to fish the next pool from the other side, and the riffle divided by the little island created a ready place to ford. Jud carefully let himself down the bank, using his wading staff, a now regular part of his gear. As he stepped into the very shallow trickle, he noticed an impression in the mud of the bank a couple of feet upstream from his ford. He recognized a very large track, that of a very large bear at the muddy edge.

After looking around a little nervously, he examined the track. A grizzly bear foot¸ the long claws etched in mud clearly identified it. A small puddle of water collected in the back of the track, the weight of the bear concentrated on the back of the paw as the bear lifted itself out of the creek onto the higher bank. The bear had forded where Jud intended to ford, but crossing in the opposite direction. Jud couldn’t be sure, but the bear passed through his place probably during the night or very early morning before Jud had started fishing.

The prospect finished his morning fishing. He stepped out of the water and back on the trail beside the creek. Slowly, because he didn’t really go quickly anywhere anymore, he walked up hill from his creek. Not far above him a fence crossed roughly parallel to the creek. It existed to keep cows out of the creek bottom. No cows grazed in that upper pasture at that moment, so the nearest gate had not been latched. He could see it stood ajar from its usual rest. He approached and found sign that the bear had indeed used it. Jud’s tracking skills had diminished from the time he had hunted these mountains as a young man, but he thought he could still read a track made by a heavy animal. He went back to the cabin.

Black bears commonly ranged up and down the river valley. Everybody took them for granted and maintained bear-proof garbage cans and bins to limit damage. Sometimes Montana Fish and Game brought traps to take them out of the valley. A grizzly is a different and more serious proposition. Jud had never heard of a grizzly in the valley during the time he had owned his property. How long had it been since the last one had been sighted? Maybe 100 years? He called the closest office of Fish and Game and reported his sighting. He called neighbors to both report what he had found and to see if anybody had a similar experience. He learned his experience was unique, so far. Nobody, though, seemed surprised. Grizzly range had expanded in recent years.

Since he had to go to Conundrum Mountain, Jud did little more than make sure all doors and shutters were secure. His sister Rachael’s son, Nathan, was expected while Jud would be at Conundrum. Jud looked forward to Nathan’s visit, a second reason to be very happy, and Jud left two bear messages for Nathan, a handwritten note and an e-mail message.

Jud found a can of bear spray to put into his vehicle, and left another one anchoring the note for Nathan, then secured his firearms in their accustomed place in his vehicle. He wondered what to tell Victoria, for whom bears loomed as a danger. Like most city people, she viewed bears from the vantage of childhood fairy tale stories. He had gently calmed her fears in advance, but a grizzly was something else again. His back tingled at the thought of it, for even experienced outdoors people, who don’t panic over such matters, think of grizzly bears as dangerous.

Conundrum

Jud reached the resort just in time to check-in, clean up a little, and go to the rather elaborate opening reception that preceded the coming array of medical meetings and events during the next days in the main exhibition hall. Victoria was a prominent doctor in Chicago. She had rented a condominium unit for the meeting, two bedrooms, dining area, kitchen and two bathrooms. Though not super luxurious, it met expectations for décor and appointments. It also faced out on the swimming pool, which this particular set of condominiums surrounded. The pool looked big enough to do laps, in which he intended to swim during their stay.

The young man who attended him when he checked-in looked approvingly at his rods, perhaps less so at the visible rifle rack in the SUV. Jud did not inquire into the maybe disapproval of the rifle, but thought it likely the young man saw its pedestrian quality. Now the rods received much more approving attention, being top of the line. He knew one thing for sure, the young man considered himself a sportsman.

He walked to the reception, leaving his cane behind. He found a well-stocked buffet and an open bar just inside the entrance to the large room. A pharmaceutical company appeared to be the chief sponsor of the event. He acquired a glass of substantially good white wine and nibbled some of the lighter offerings since he felt a little hungry after his drive, and then began looking for Victoria and her group. She had brought her chief nurse, Lureen, and physician’s assistant, Lana, with her as a treat to them. Neither had been this far West in their lives. They wanted a Western experience, which could be interpreted in a number of ways since each was a young, attractive, single woman.

He found them first, together in light summary dresses appropriate to the occasion, nobody with them, which puzzled him a little bit. Where were those cowboy/doctors who they should have attracted? But it was early in the meeting. He hoped they were not yet too disappointed, but approached them to break up their isolation a little, though he really wanted to find Victoria. They seemed happy to see him.

How is Montana treating the two of you?

We saw a bear, exclaimed Lureen!

This morning while we walked to the first meeting, said Lana.

Both had stated back in Chicago that seeing a bear, but not too close, was one of their trip objectives, a bucket list sort of thing. One objective then achieved.

He was raiding the garbage. Lana wrinkled her nose in disgust. Her Chicago image of bears was far grander, far more threatening, far more a creature of wilderness.

And he was very small. Lureen’s voice suggested disappointment. The reality of Western bears in resorts took the edge off their discovery.

Jud laughed. Welcome to the real West.

We weren’t a bit scared, Lureen affirmed.

At this point Jud spotted Victoria in animated conversation with a small group near the second buffet table. She wore the usual spectacular summer dress he had come to expect, the product of some new Chicago designer he guessed. He could not keep up with her fashion finds, except to admire them. She had an unerring sense of what to wear no matter the occasion or the location. He waved to the girls and proceeded toward her group. She soon saw him and waved animatedly.

She stood in a small group of people, one of whom was the largest man in the room. He stood at least 6 foot, 6 inches tall with the bulk of a professional lineman in the NFL, but older and gone to seed. He wore a semi-long beard that brushed around a large mouth and broad, short nose. His wide-set eyes squinted below bushy eyebrows. He had shaved his head, so that no hint of hairline remained. He wore loose linen trousers over clearly expensive sandals and a floral patterned shirt of silk, a lot of silk considering his size.

He loomed over Victoria, standing right beside her, though Victoria is a tall woman. As Jud came within sight, this large man leaned over her, talking to her with some animation. He caught sight of Jud, and took the opportunity to put his arm around her waist and nuzzle her neck, smiling and saying something that Jud could not hear.

She broke off to greet Jud, throwing her arms around him, looking a bit embarrassed as she did so. A small hint of triumph and challenge flickered across the big man’s face, a sneer perhaps? Jud sensed that the man knew who Jud was, used the moment as confrontation, and did not really welcome Jud’s presence. But the big man recovered his civility with a fixed smile, which broke through the beard and moustache as a kind of reluctant gap. The eyes remained intense, never broke ranks with intensity, as far as Jud could tell, at any time.

Victoria held Jud, putting her face in his neck, lingering in a way he had never experienced before this time. Oh! I am so glad to see you. She seemed not to want to let go. The other members of her group, all doctors other than the big man, looked away, not quite knowing how to react themselves. He knew a couple of them as Chicago doctors, but one only well enough to remember by name, Hugh Bingaman, whose wife Jud could see approaching them with a drink in each hand. He and Victoria saw the Bingaman’s occasionally at the opera.

Introduce me to Mr. Jud Phoenix, the big man said.

Victoria raised her head from Jud’s neck and shoulder, took a breath, and straightened, turning back to the group of people surrounding them. Luther Cretaceous, meet Jud Phoenix.

Luther Cretaceous put out his very big hand and grasped Jud Phoenix’s large hand, for Jud’s was bigger than average. Jud took care not to wince, maintaining pressure against the aggressive handshake. He managed it, but barely. Cretaceous let go, kept smiling, the eyes intense, eye brows wrinkled, still unfriendly.

Mr. Cretaceous, Jud replied. He knew the name from somewhere, and then remembered. Luther Cretaceous ran California hedge funds, which famously made money by shorting various investments. He had made an enormous fortune on one bet a couple of years back, shorting exotic real estate derivatives, as one of the few either sagacious or crazy enough to believe that the real estate markets would tank. They did. Cretaceous and his investors made a lot of money. The real puzzle was his presence here at this meeting, a medical convention having nothing obvious to do with investments, particularly the kind that may be shorted profitably from either the sell or buy side.

You have quite a reputation here, Mr. Phoenix, as the gunfighter who took Harrison down.

Jud winced a little at the