Free Trouble at the Red Pueblo by Liz Adair

went with the best he could come up with and still be truthful. “I was going to ask Karam to have lunch with us.”
    “Just a minute.” Laurie’s muffled voice sounded in the background, and then she spoke into the receiver. “Jack says to bring him, too.”
    Spider gently scooted a beetle off the sidewalk with the toe of his boot. “All right.”
    Laurie appeared not to notice the hesitation. “Great,” she said. “I’ll meet you at the hotel in ten minutes.”

JACK’S RANCH WAS at the end of a gravel road that turned north off Highway 89 a few miles east of Kanab on the road to Page. Alfalfa, green and lush, spread out on either side as the Yugo rolled along, a plume of dust hanging in the still air behind them.
    “Good looking feed,” Spider said, noting the wheeled piping system that irrigated the fields. “Where does he get his water?”
    Laurie gazed at the green expanse. “I think he’s got a spring up at the head of this canyon, but I’m not sure.”
    “It’d have to have a pretty good flow to take care of all this acreage.”
    Karam spoke from the backseat. “Fredonia didn’t have a town water supply until 1935. Before then, the people caught rainwater from their roofs and stored it in underground water tanks. I can’t remember the name for them.”
    “Cisterns,” Spider supplied.
    Laurie turned around. “How do you know that, Karam?”
    “Isaac told me. Tomorrow, he’s going to take me to look at some of the old houses that still have… cisterns.” He smiled. “Isaac said that when the water got low, sometimes water bugs would come out of the tap.”
    Laurie grimaced. “Ugh.” She faced forward again as they rounded a curve and drove beyond a screen of poplars that hid Jack’s ranch. Seeing the house and outbuildings, she whistled under her breath. “Oh, wow.”
    They passed under a stucco arch with a huge wooden sign spanning the width of the roadway hanging on it. The word Braces was carved into it with each letter charred black.
    Spider snorted. “Braces? What kind of a name is that for a ranch?”
    “It seems very strange.” Karam drew imaginary lines from his shoulders to his waist. “Is he talking about things to hold your pants up? Why would he put that over the gate?”
    Laurie giggled. “Those are suspenders.”
    Karam cocked his head. “Really?”
    “We call them suspenders; people in England call them braces.” Spider traced a line across his bared teeth. “Braces go on your teeth to straighten them.”
    Karam looked back at the sign. “That doesn’t make any more sense than suspenders.”
    “He’s an orthodontist. Braces probably paid for his place,” Laurie suggested.
    “He must have done a lot of them,” Karam said. “This is a very nice place.”
    Spider slowed the car. “I thought he said it was a straw bale house.”
    The house rambled in front of them in pueblo style with stucco cubes, cylinders and arches in single and double stories and vigas sticking out at intervals along the top of the flat roofline. A breezeway separated a three car garage from the house.
    “It’s huge,” Laurie said. “It must be three times the size of our place.”
    “And look at the outbuildings.” Spider pointed toward a tall structure in matching architecture set a ways off. It had barn doors with heavy wrought-iron hinges and, on either side, a wing with four horse stalls. “Even his barn is bigger than our house.”
    The grounds were landscaped with native plants and rock, and a circular driveway made of pavers swept through it. Spider parked the Yugo beside a yellow Mustang with a vanity plate reading BRACES . “Figures,” he said under his breath.
    They got out and stood beside a low, south-facing wall at the edge of the parking area. “This is really beautiful,” Laurie said. “Look at the view. I’ll bet you can see clear to the Grand Canyon.”
    “Mighty fine,” Spider agreed. He took Laurie’s arm and headed toward the house. “Come on, Karam.