Max looked smugly embarrassed and laughed.

Max ordered the smoked quail with browned huckleberry sauce. Sam had venison marsala. Ukiah ordered the salmon topped with huckleberry puree, the soup along with the salad, and asked for a second round of the bread.

The waitress clucked, "Growing boys," and went off for the bread.

Sam took out her notebook. "If I ever disappear, I hope I'd leave more of a trace. Today almost inspires me to dye my hair purple or green."

"At one time, Alicia dyed her hair purple," Ukiah said.

"Too bad she stopped," Sam murmured. "At most of the places I checked, no one remembered Alicia or Rose."

Max considered Sam. "Green would be fetching on you."

"Brat." The corners of her mouth turned up into a Mona Lisa smile. "Kentucky Fried Chicken is a few blocks down from the coin laundry. As I hoped, Alicia stopped there while doing laundry. Andy Henry on the counter remembers her, but they talked about nothing more than chicken and the weather."

"What's this Henry like?" Max asked.

"He's extremely short with huge feet. Looks like Mickey Mouse," Sam said. "So desperate for a woman to notice him that he'll remember any one that does."

"Well, that doesn't match up with any of our kidnappers," Ukiah said.

"I solved our mystery location." Sam tapped her list. Alicia had written Big Sink for the total of Wednesday, August 18. "I called Eastern Oregon University at La Grande and questioned one of their geology professors. The 'big sink' turns out to be a weird local geological thing that I hadn't heard of before.

The 'sink' is an area south of Jubilee Lake, which looks like a large piece of earth sank into the ground. The girls got directions at the Chevron service station last week on how to get to Jubilee Lake. The attendant was fairly sure it was Wednesday morning, and that they were going to drive out immediately. But it's just a big hole in the ground, with a weird magnetic thing so compasses don't always work correctly."

"They don't?" Max asked.

Sam shrugged. "Harold Grantz, that's the professor, thinks there might be a large iron deposit, like a meteorite hit there at some point. He gave me directions: Forest Road 63, three miles south of the lake.

Park and hike."

"That last bit gets somewhat vague," Max said. "So they spent that day out in the middle of nowhere."

"Well, Jubilee Lake is a popular spot," Sam said. "It's well-stocked with rainbow trout, has a boat ramp, campground, picnic tables, and a footpath. They could have spent part of the day there and met up with someone."

Max winced. "But the population isn't constant, so we probably won't find witnesses to any meeting."

"At least it was only last week," Ukiah said. "There might be someone still at the campground that saw them."

"We better hit it tomorrow, then," Max said.

"What about where Alicia was camped?" Sam asked."I talked to the FBI about that." Max earned a surprised look from Ukiah. "Since this is now a kidnapping, and we might not be here for the full course of the investigation, I thought that we should work with them as much as possible."

Max gave Ukiah an "I'm handling it" look in return as he spoke. Better Max than him. Ukiah supposed it was for the best-if they walked too meekly, the FBI might think they were up to something.

As his Mom Lara often said of his baby sister, those who are quiet are often into the worst trouble.

"So, did they say anything?" Sam clearly thought this was a waste of time.

Max leaned back from his quail. "Not much, just that the search efforts, and especially the shooting, spooked away everyone at the girls' campground. The FBI has a list of who was there, and is trying to find them for questioning now." He glanced to Ukiah. "How did you do, kid?"

"The Underground Tour seems to be a bust," Ukiah said. "The tour guide remembers her, but only vaguely. The Trading Shop is closed."

"Oh, yes; it's Saturday," Sam said. "They're at flea markets on Saturdays."

That mystery solved. "But the woman at the bead shop remembered her, and that took me out to the cultural institute with Cassidy Kicking Deer." Ukiah was unsure how much he should say in front of Sam. It was going to be tricky to dance all around the truth. "They have a photograph of the lost Kicking Deer boy. Alicia apparently saw how much it looked like me. She took it down and found the name in the back."

"Which is?" Max asked.

"Magic Boy. It also listed date of death, but Cassidy says that there isn't a death record on file."

"Obits. Wasn't there a comment on Ukiah obits?" Max took out the daily planner and flipped through. "Here. Ukiah history: obits."

"This is the kid that disappeared in 1933, right?" Sam got nods from both Max and Ukiah. "You look that much like him?"

"Not now." Ukiah tried not to squirm in his seat. "The photograph taken when I was found does.

Cassidy was the one that figured out that Alicia could have seen the picture and made the connection."

"So, your family has this weird genetic weakness for disappearing into the wilderness and running with a pack of wolves?" Sam asked.

"Well, yes," Ukiah said unhappily.

Sam shook her head. "It's amazing you keep finding girls to overlook that little oddity and produce the next generation to get lost all over again."

Max coughed. "Alicia asked the post office clerk if they knew anyone by the name of Kicking Deer." He consulted his PDA. "He told her that Elaine Kicking Deer works at the Watering Hole on Fridays and Saturdays."

"She's a waitress," Sam said. "The Watering Hole is across town."

"Being tonight is Saturday," Max said, "it would be best if we work the crowd, see if anyone saw or talked to Alicia."

"The crowd there tends to be a little rough around the edge," Sam said. "They drink to get drunk."

"Then we definitely all should hit this one," Max said. "In case one of us needs backup."

CHAPTER TWELVE.

The Watering Hole, Pendleton, Oregon.

Saturday, August 28, 2004.

The Watering Hole was a sprawling set of buildings down by the shallow Umatilla River. The ceilings were low, smoke from a dozen different brands of cigarettes hazed the air, the rooms were dark, and the darkness was cut mostly by the neon lights of beer logos. The jukebox played at deafening levels.

Max and Ukiah had trawled through bars like this in Pittsburgh, usually smaller in size, looking for skips.

Most of the crowd was just the poorer ranks of good average people. Mixed in was a rougher crowd.

Unfortunately, it was difficult to tell the good from bad. It amazed Ukiah sometimes that the rougher-looking of two men might be the hardworking father of four just looking for a drink or two before heading home. What gathered them together in a room so dark that it was hard to see who you were with, with noise so loud that you had to shout to be heard?

They found Elaine Kicking Deer weaving through a crowd of mostly men, doing an amazing balancing act with glasses filled with alcohol. She was remarkably blond and blue-eyed, although dusky-skinned, and had a look around her eyes that said that she had some ethnic blood. She nodded to Sam, and eyed Ukiah with interest.

"So this is him? The incredible stud muffin, Wolf Boy?"

"Me?" Ukiah pressed a startled hand to his chest.

"Stud muffin?" Sam echoed uneasily.

Elaine laughed, deftly avoiding an already staggering patron to keep her drinks intact. "I would think by now, Sammie, you would know how small a town this is."

Sam threw a glance at Ukiah that almost seemed angry, then grew puzzled at whatever she saw on his face. "So?"

Elaine only laughed more, delivering the drinks around a crowded booth, nodding as the customers asked for nachos, wings, and a drink for a late arrival. The private investigators hung back, letting her work.

"What have you heard about my partner?" Max asked.

"A hell of lot more than about you," Elaine said to Max, heading for the bar. "Between my family and the men in town, you'd think only one man flew in from Pittsburgh, not three."

"What men?" Sam asked.

"Ricky Barkley, for one," Elaine said.

This was a new name for Ukiah, and apparently an unexpected one for Sam. She looked even more puzzled.

"What is this Barkley saying?" Mix asked.

Elaine held up a finger, leaned across the bar, and repeated the drink order from the table. "He's here somewhere. Ask him yourself. I've got work to do."

"We want to ask you questions about Alicia Kraynak." Ukiah pushed the conversation back to Alicia. "We've been told that she came to talk to you last week."

"Yeah, she was here," Elaine shouted over the din. "Look, let me get these orders in, and I'll be back out to talk to you."Elaine vanished into the kitchen, already calling out food orders.

Max leaned in close to Sam to ask, "Who is Ricky Barkley? Do you see him?"

Sam scanned the room. "If he's here, he's in one of the other rooms. He's a jerk. He went to school with my ex. Then again, almost everyone has some connection to Peter. He works the night shift at the flour mill and lives up on South Nye, just down from the Red Lion. I served him papers once on a bad debt.

I haven't seen him in months."

"Any idea how he would know Ukiah?"

Sam shook her head. Elaine came sailing out of the kitchen, holding aloft a tray of food in her left hand, and three plates stacked up her right arm. She delivered the food to a table on the other side of the bar from the booth, taking in new requests as she placed dishes in front of seated people. She came to drop drink orders at the bar, then turned back to them.

"Okay, the girl was here last Saturday night. She'd been out to the Tamastslikt and saw the photo of Magic Boy. I told my mother that was a bad idea and that Pap-pap shouldn't have loaned it out."

"And Alicia told you about Ukiah."

"Yeah, but I didn't believe her," Elaine said. "Magic Boy's been missing for like eighty years, and most of us didn't believe those family legends. Jared is one of the biggest unbelievers, so if stud muffin here"-she patted Ukiah on the arm-"has him convinced, that's good enough for me. I told Alicia, though, that there was no way he could be Magic Boy."

"What did she tell you?" Ukiah asked.

"She had a few beers, waiting for me to have time to talk, and she got a little sloshed. She told me how cute you are and how she had a huge crush on you and how some old Chinese-Hawaiian-White-Russian bitch snatched you out of the cradle when she had the decency to leave you there."

Max burst out laughing.

"Indigo isn't old," Ukiah protested. "She's twenty-six."

"Yeah, that's the name. Indigo. It didn't sound Chinese to me." Elaine gathered up drinks, preparing to move off. "And I didn't want to touch the White Russian bit with a ten-foot pole. Talk about old grudges."

"Did she talk to anyone else?" Ukiah asked.

"I don't know," Elaine said. "One of the other girls had called in sick and I barely had time to sneeze. Lot of the same people are here tonight. Maybe someone else noticed her talking to someone."

"Is it always this crowded?" Max asked.

Sam was shaking her head, even as Elaine said, "No, things are building up for the roundup."

With that Elaine hurried off again.

Max caught the look on Ukiah's face and laughed again. "Kid, you're fated to be thought of as much younger than you really are."

"Well, it's starting to really suck," Ukiah said. "What did she mean about White Russian?"

"Milk, vodka, and Kahlua," Sam said with a grin.

Max threw Sam an amused warning look that said "cute, but don't confuse the boy." "White Russians are a political party, like Republicans. Kraynak's grandfather went afoul of them in Czechoslovakia during the Russian civil war. I'm not sure if I followed the whole mess, but it's the reason the Kraynaks are in Pennsylvania instead of the old country."

"Chinese, Hawaiian, Russian? That's one mutt puppy you date," Sam said. "She's probably pretty,though. It's like God is trying to tell us something when the most beautiful people in the world are racially mixed."

"Like yourself," Max quipped, and then seemed to regret it. "Let's split up. If we descend in a herd, we'll spook people."

So they scattered, hoping to find anyone that saw Alicia the week before. More people were drifting in through the front door, making the place even more crowded as the private investigators drifted apart. Ukiah had worked his way into another room, flashing Alicia's photograph and getting no answers.

"Did you see this woman last week?" he asked a tall, dark-haired man with a scar running up from his eye like an exclamation point.

"Hey!" The man grabbed Ukiah by the front of his shirt, and shoved Ukiah sideways into a knot of men and women; who parted and regrouped to surround Ukiah and his captor. "This is the guy, Peter!"

Peter Talbot perched on a bar stool, flanked close by the watching locals, like a king and his court.

"What the hell are you talking about, Ricky?"

"Sam's Harley was parked outside of the Red Lion all night, and then she came out with this guy."

Ricky was heavily muscled and putting it to use to hold Ukiah still. "Sam and him were all lovey-dovey and kissy-face in the parking lot."