Cowboy Secrets

by Alice Sharpe

  “What’s the plan, boss?” he asked as they neared their destination.

  “We look for a bunch of old cars. Camila says the sister’s husband owned a wrecking yard before he ran his motorcycle into the side of a semitruck.”

  They drove until they hit the beginning of the city and then they were downtown. “We must have come too far,” Sierra said.

  “Look up auto-wrecking places on your cell.”

  “I did. There’s nothing listed back the way we came. But Camila said it was before the town. We have to go back.”

  He turned around and they retraced their route. When they figured they were too far away, they turned again. “It must be off the road,” Pike said. “Look for anything suspicious.”

  Five miles back toward Victorville, Sierra suddenly said, “What was that? Turn around, go back.”

  He did as she asked and pulled over on a dirt road to find a sculpture he’d been mildly aware of the other two times they’d passed it by. Up close and standing still, he could now see it had been created by welding together old car parts. It was hard to tell what it was supposed to be, but a plastic sign from the hardware store tacked onto the base said Closed. Pike lifted the corner of the sign and discovered it covered another one: Mac’s Place.

  “Doesn’t sound much like an auto-wrecking yard,” he said.

  “This has to be it. Camila said the sister’s husband died about two years ago. I guess she closed the place down. We’ll see if she can tell us anything about Raoul.”

  They drove for a half mile before coming across a tall chain-link fence surrounding a scattering of abandoned cars that quickly turned into a sea of windshields twinkling in the sunlight. At the hub of this chaos sat a faded aqua double-wide trailer backed by a series of sheds, barns and workshops. Everything had a deserted air except for the trailer, from which they could hear the muted sound of music when they stepped out of the car.

  It was much cooler here than in LA—probably no more than forty degrees. Access to the double-wide was by way of a ramp. Their knocks went unanswered until the shrill bark of a dog heralded the sudden opening of the door by a woman in a wheelchair. A small terrier darted out and ran around their legs while the woman spoke, but who could hear a word she said? She adroitly wheeled herself back into the room and switched off a CD player. The sudden silence was pierced only by the yapping dog.

  “Olive, shush,” the woman said.

  The dog immediately stopped barking, trotted back inside the trailer and jumped onto the woman’s lap. Dog and owner looked a lot alike: both smallish, both dark blond and both sporting dark, soulful eyes.

  “Are you an auto-wrecking business?” Sierra asked.

  “Used to be, kind of. Only if Mac had heard you call this place that, he would have had issues. He thought of it more as a reclamation center for dead cars. Anyway, didn’t you see the sign? Don’t tell me it blew away again. I’m not open.”

  “Your sign is there but we’re not here to ask about cars,” Sierra replied. She introduced herself and Pike.

  “I’m Polly MacArthur,” the woman said. “What can I do for you?”

  “We’re here because we’re trying to get a lead on the whereabouts of a man named Raoul Ruiz. We heard your brother, Shorts, knows him.”

  “Listen,” she said, “ever since my Mac skid his bike under that truck and put me in this chair for the rest of my life, Shorts, aka Dwayne, has been conning me for drug money. This last time he came, he was with a guy I didn’t know. Dwayne said he’d conned this man for a ride because his truck was dead in the water. Big surprise. It hasn’t run good since Mac is no longer around to tinker on it. Anyway, this time Dwayne didn’t ask for cash.”

  “He just came for a visit?”

  “Hell, no,” she said with a laugh. “Dwayne isn’t exactly a conversationalist. He told me he knew this dude who’s rebuilding a 1968 Mustang. He said he remembered Mac had an old wrecked one out on the lot somewhere. He wanted to go take parts off the car and sell them to his pal. Maybe he was embarrassed to beg money off his crippled sister with another guy sitting a few yards away, I don’t know. What I do know is it’s by far the most enterprising idea Dwayne’s ever had, so I said sure, why not, knock yourself out.”

  “Did you get a good look at this other man?”

  “No. He never got out of the car. He kept his face averted, but I could tell he was listening to our conversation.”

  “Did you notice any tattoos?” Sierra asked, thinking back to the photo Camila had showed them. Raoul Ruiz had several tattoos.

  She thought for a second. “Yeah, now that you mention it. He had his arm outside the car and he was wearing a tank. There was a sun, I think. You know, a circle with flames shooting out. I couldn’t see what was in the middle.”

  “When were your brother and this other man here?”

  “About five days ago.”

  “Have you heard from your brother since then?”

  “No, but I don’t expect to. He’ll come around again when he runs low on money.”

  “So they took the parts and left?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did your brother mention a car trip he and the other guy might take?”

  “Those two on a trip together? That just defies imagination, sorry.”

  “Okay. How long were they out in the yard?”

  “Must have been about thirty minutes. I didn’t even know they’d left until Olive barked and I opened a window to see the blue car taking off down the road, kicking up a cloud of dust in its wake. They didn’t even stop at the house.”

  “Did you expect them to?” Pike asked.

  “It would have been a decent thing to do,” she said. “I guess Dwayne got what he was after, but they left without returning the key or locking the gate behind them.”

  “Could you tell what kind of car it was?”

  She laughed. “You aren’t married to a guy like Mac for twelve years without picking up on stuff like that. It was a sky-blue Chevy Volt, this year’s model or last.”

  “Did they walk out on the lot or drive?” Sierra asked.

  “They drove. There are almost five acres crammed with old wrecks. Nobody goes out there anymore but I figure the roads must be in pretty good shape.”

  “May we drive out there, too?” Sierra asked.

  Polly tilted her head and regarded them for a second. “Is Dwayne in trouble?”

  “I don’t know,” Sierra said. “He’s simply our only link to Raoul Ruiz and we need to ask him a few questions concerning a third man named Danny Cooke. And yes, Raoul had access to a blue Chevy Volt.”

  “The Cooke name is familiar for some reason,” Polly said.

  “He’s a penny-ante drug dealer.”

  “Figures. Sure, go ahead. Like I said, the gate is unlocked.”

  Chapter Seven

  “Talk about a needle in a haystack,” Pike said as they drove along a road that threaded its way between two rows of every kind of abandoned, rusted, wrecked vehicle known to man, then doubled back and started again going the other direction in a series of parallel tracks.

  “Well, I know what a Mustang looks like,” she said. “My dad used to drive one.”

  “Do you really think they were looking for car parts out here?” Pike asked.

  “No. What I think they were doing is stowing Danny Cooke’s body in one of these cars and then continuing their trip to who knows where.”

  “But which car?”

  “The police will have to go through them all,” she said. “They can use a cadaver dog. Anyway, we don’t have time. We need to be back at the airport by what time?”

  “Check-in is at five. We can’t leave this place any later than about twelve thirty. We still have to drop by Mona’s house to pick up the bags she
promised to pack with Tess’s things.” At least he hoped she’d actually done it. He made a mental note to call her to make sure.

  “We also have to deliver the guy in the alley’s weapons to Detective Hatch and try to explain what might have happened to Danny,” Sierra said.

  The weed-infested road looped through the aisles of cars like a line at a Disneyland attraction. They reached the far end of it, admired a cactus standing on the other side of the seven-foot chain-link fence topped with a row of razor wire and turned around. On the way back Pike suddenly stopped the car. “There’s a Mustang,” he said, gesturing at a pale green rusted-out coupe that hadn’t been visible going the other direction.

  He opened the rental door and got out. Tess did the same. “What are you doing?”

  “There are actually four or five Mustangs in various states of disrepair,” he said, surveying the aged metal hulks in front of him. A couple barely looked like cars. “I don’t get the feeling Shorts and Raoul are the smartest guys in the world. What if they actually used the Mustang as the dump site?” He started making his way through the car parts to get to the first almost-complete car that was missing all its doors, its engine hood and both fenders. He scanned it quickly and shook his head.

  Moving along, he paused and sniffed the air. “Sierra, do you smell something terrible?”

  She joined him. “I know that smell. That’s rotting flesh.”

  “It’s not that strong. Could be a coyote or a stray dog,” he said.

  They both stared at the green Mustang. Someone had put a rusted wheel rim off a big truck on top of the trunk sometime in the past. As Pike lifted it off, he heard Sierra warn him not to, but it was too late. With the weight removed, the trunk sprang open. Both he and Sierra recoiled at once but not before the horrible image of a dead man wearing red shorts burned itself into their eyeballs. Pike caught the glistening human-sized shape of black plastic wrapped with duct tape underneath the dead man.

  Holding his breath, he closed the trunk and replaced the rim. He grabbed Sierra as he backed away. The trunk was sealed again, but the putrid odor hung heavy in the dry air, and they drove away with the smell of death in their nostrils.

  * * *

  SEVEN HOURS LATER, they boarded their plane. Pike had upgraded their tickets to first class and they sank into recliner-like comfort. He was thrilled when the sheriff had allowed them to return to Idaho after an afternoon of answering questions and explaining what they’d seen and who they’d talked to within the past twenty-four hours.

  Poor Polly MacArthur had been called upon to identify her brother’s remains. “Looks like Dwayne helped Ruiz move Cooke’s body to the wreck, then Ruiz knocked him out,” Sheriff Keith Rogers told them. He sounded like he was fresh from Texas. “The ME says it appears he was shot at close range with a foam rubber cushion of some kind buffering the sound. Danny Cooke was wrapped in the plastic, his empty wallet thrown in for good measure. We’re searching the country for Raoul Ruiz and the blue Chevy. I talked to Detective Hatch in LA like you asked me to. He said to tell you your sister needs to come back ASAP and tell her story in her own words.”

  “Ruiz probably ditched the Chevy knowing Polly MacArthur could identify it,” Sierra said.

  “Probably.”

  “Oh, and Polly mentioned a tattoo on Ruiz’s arm.”

  “Yeah, she told me about it,” he said, checking his notes. “Ruiz is a wanna-be member of a gang called Border Brothers. It consists of undocumented immigrants, usually from the same area of Mexico. The tattoo is a sun with an Aztec god in the middle and an acronym... Anyway, he was actually born in LA, so I’m supposing he got the tat as a sign of solidarity. Most likely it differed slightly when viewed up close and personal.”

  “Wasn’t it kind of risky leaving Dwayne’s rotting corpse in his own sister’s backyard, so to say?” Pike asked.

  “She hasn’t been out there since her husband’s death,” the sheriff replied. “It’s cool enough to keep the smell down for a while.”

  They landed after an uneventful flight during which they held hands and attempted to let go of the day’s anxieties. Upon landing, they were greeted by blowing snow as they crossed the parking lot to Pike’s SUV.

  Two and a half hours later, they rattled over the cattle guard onto Hastings land, but it was a distinctly muted sound. Pike pointed out tracks of another vehicle that were quickly being covered by the falling snow. Someone else in the family must be out and about. Pike was glad he’d put studded snow tires on his vehicle.

  As always, he felt the pull of this ranch deep in his soul, and to be coming home with Sierra by his side seemed to fill crevices he hadn’t even known existed. Another cautionary warning flashed in his brain, but he stuffed it into a corner with all the rest.

  “Do you think the advance documentary crew is still here?” Sierra asked. They had just passed the road to Pike’s barn and the desire to veer off in that direction was impossible to deny. He hadn’t made love to her since that morning and all he truly wanted in his heart of hearts was to take her into his bed in his own house. He wanted memories of her there, visions he could call on when the day came for her to leave.

  But his priority right now had to center on Tess. He’d called his father and told him of their grisly discovery and asked that Tess not be told until he and Sierra were there to do it, but until then, not to let her out of their sight. She had to know the facts because they would soon be public knowledge and she had to be prepared. There was a cold-blooded killer on the run, a man who had murdered a friend he’d enlisted to help him get rid of the body of his drug dealer. Would a man like that leave an eyewitness like Tess alive to talk about him? As far as Pike could see, Dwayne’s sister was lucky Raoul hadn’t decided to eliminate her, as well. The fact that he hadn’t shown his face probably saved her life.

  “Hey, over there,” Sierra said gently as she tapped his thigh. “I lost you.”

  “Sorry, I was thinking,” he admitted. “But in answer to your question, I doubt the crew will still be here. A storm like this will be around for a few days. We’re likely to lose power. I imagine they hightailed it out before it hit.”

  However, the LOGO van was still parked by the main house. The snow was deeper down in this little valley by the river, and the landscape had turned white. After just two days in seventy-degree weather, the twenty degrees they faced getting out of the SUV felt like a walk-in freezer.

  Though it was almost midnight, they found Grace in the kitchen, sitting at the counter working a crossword puzzle, and she looked up when they entered. Disappointment flashed across her face and the pit of Pike’s stomach fell. “What’s wrong?” he said.

  “I was hoping you were your father.”

  “Why? Where’s Dad?”

  “He and your brothers rode out to find those television people, who went to shoot pictures of the falling snow before dinner and never came back.”

  “What? In a storm?”

  “We couldn’t talk them out of it. They saddled up and rode off like they were the characters in an old Western. Your dad has been gone for hours now.”

  “Did you call him?” Pike said as he took out his cell.”

  “Of course. We’ve been in sporadic communication, but you know what reception is like out here—iffy at best. Last I heard they were going to go film some cattle hunkering down for the storm because Frankie said that’s what the cameraman wanted to shoot. But who knows where they are now. I’m sure they’re fine—”

  Pike’s phone rang and that startled all of them. He glanced at the screen and answered. “Frankie?”

  His brother’s voice was broken. Mountains, weather, valleys and inadequate cell towers all contributed to communication issues they were used to, but this was especially frustrating. “Speak up,” Pike said and listened. The only words he was pretty sure he caught before
the connection died were injury and tree.

  He related this information and then Grace’s phone rang. “It’s Harry,” she announced and answered immediately. Her smile turned into a frown as she clicked off the phone. “The call was dropped,” she said and immediately started texting him.

  “I’m going after them,” Pike said.

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?” Grace asked, but he could tell by the way her eyes lit that she was yearning for him to do just that.

  “I heard the word tree and the only tree around here those documentary people were interested in was the hanging tree. And I’m pretty sure I heard injury. I’m going to hook the trailer up to the biggest snowmobile and head out. Grace, could you get the emergency medical kit and maybe heat up a couple thermoses of something hot to drink?”

  “Of course,” she said and hurried out of the kitchen to get the kit.

  Pike turned to Sierra. “I hate to leave you.”

  “I understand, it’s okay. I wonder where Tess is.”

  “Grace will know.” He took her hands and kissed her fingers. “I’ll be back in a few hours. You can sleep here or go back to my place.”

  “I’ll stay here,” she said. “Tess said she’d wait up.”

  “Okay.”

  There was more he wanted to say because she had made him into a giant sap in the last three days. Instead he stared into her green eyes. “You’re going to tell her what we found?”

  She nodded. “She has to know. There are plans to make.”

  “Give her a while to digest everything first, okay?” he said.