Wait for Signs: Twelve Longmire Stories by Craig Johnson

the law, even if it was the law with a bourbon in his hand. “You bet.”
    “What happened?”
    “Oh, Bill Miller—before you were born—worked for me and slept in the building since they were just getting ready to lay the hardwood dance floor the next morning. Hell of a carpenter, but the man drank—built the Peters Dance Hall, Hotel Ladore, and the American Legion, too. Anyway, Bill said he’d gotten up to go take a whiz and then had gone back to sleep—man slept like a log—woke up an hour later ’cause he said angels were talkin’ to him, and the whole place was on fire. It was an honest-to-God miracle he didn’t get burned up alive. It was so late and took so long for the fire department to get out there . . .” His voice trailed off. “Ninety thousand shingles, seventy thousand feet of lumber, twenty thousand dollars. That was a lot of money back then.”
    “That’s a lot of money now.” I thought about it. “I think I’m starting to remember the story . . . Didn’t they arrest a fellow?”
    “George Miller, Bill’s brother. They found the oilcan that smelled like kerosene that Otto Hanck, the Mennonite tinsmith from over on Klondike, had made for him. Even had his initials on it—GM. Otto never would say the name of the man who bought the can, but since Miller had a competing dance hall over in Story and was the brother of my handyman, it was pretty much an open and shut case.”
    “Yep, but didn’t the dance hall over in Story burn down the next week?”
    There was a shadow of discomfort that played across the old man’s eyes. “That it did. There’s a photograph of that right over there.”
    We readjusted ourselves and looked at another picture. “Hmm.”
    Buddy pointed to another photo. “And there was one that burned up in Big Horn the week after that.”
    I swallowed a little more Pappy’s to prod my memory. “I’m trying to remember about George Miller . . .”
    Bud provided the answer. “Moved away after he got out of Rawlins. Idaho, I think.”
    “What about the brother, Bill?”
    “Drank himself to death.”
    I moved on to the next photograph, but my mind stayed snagged on the one I’d left behind. “Do you think Bill was an accomplice?”
    “Nah, he didn’t have the nerve for that kind of thing. He was quite a bit older than his brother, fought in the Great War, although I don’t know what was so great about it. He got mustard gassed, and I don’t think he ever got over it.” The ex-mayor raised his hand and shook it as if palsied. “Had the shakes, bad.People used to joke that the reason he was such a good carpenter was because he was a natural at sanding.”
    I nodded and looked at the next photo down the line and what looked like a celebration of some kind, a fishing derby, maybe, with a few individuals that I recognized this time. “Robert Taylor.”
    “The actor, sure. You remember him being around here, don’t you?”
    I laughed to myself. He was young in the photograph, and the matinee smile was there, the one that had gotten him the record twenty-four-year contract at MGM. “I remember when he used to come down off the mountain in that Cadillac of his with the steer horns and terrorize every stationary object in town. I actually met him one weekend when I was still in school.”
    Bud leaned in closer and raised his glasses again, and I started wondering why he wore the things. “Yep, that one was taken when they opened the lodge on the peninsula out at Lake DeSmet.” He dropped the glasses and leaned in even further. “Well, speak of the devil.” He turned to me and pointed at the photo to a rail-thin man in the back row. “Bill Miller.” He laughed and shook his bald head. “No surprise; he must’ve helped to build that place, too. Hell of a carpenter. You know, now that I think of it, that place partially burnt down, too.”
    I left my gaze on the doomed man but couldn’t help but notice the pretty girl in the hat beside him. With his