“Where the rustling in Cottonwood County started,” Diana said.
Tom dropped his head slowly in confirmation as he kept talking. “Badger and this buddy were talking the day York was shot and the other bartender says York was a regular there. Had two, three guys he drank with. Not one of them somebody Badger’s buddy said he’d introduce to his worst enemy.”
I perked up. “Where is this place? What are the names of these guys York drank with? Does the buddy know where they work? Live?”
“Before you go charging off,” Tom said, “none of us goes tonight. It’s late. And we have to wait for the Pickled Cow to—”
“The what?”
Tom correctly deduced I’d heard the name of the bar. “—open tomorrow. Even then, it’s a long shot. York’s group wasn’t the kind to pay with credit cards or otherwise be free with their names. The bartender didn’t even know the name York and he thought Fur-Man was a nickname. He only put it together with news of the shooting because he’d seen him driving a Lukasik Ranch vehicle.
“Better to wait. Bartender’s talked to Big Horn deputies and if some of York’s group comes in, he’ll call and let them know.”
“Then he calls Badger,” said Optimist Mike. “And we hear through Tom.”
“I dig. Tom waits for a phone call,” Jennifer said with a bit of attitude. “What are the rest of you going to do?”
Easy choice for the top of my wish list. “Try to get Gable Lukasik off by himself so I can pump him about his father.”
“Nice,” Diana said, but she didn’t truly disapprove.
“Anything from your kids?”
“My entire crop from dinner with them is that Asheleigh’s cute and she and Gable are really, really serious.”
I twisted my mouth. “After Gable, I don’t care how long a shot it is, I’ll follow up with Badger’s bartender friend—”
“Not alone,” the guys chorused.
“—because we can’t wait around for—”
“I’m going with you,” Mike said. “Or I go alone.”
“I’m going.” I didn’t mind his coming. A second pair of ears did help, but the first pair of ears would be mine. “Tom? What do you plan to do?”
“You mean besides trying to talk James into talking Shelton into letting us back in to talk to Hiram again?”
* * * *
I couldn’t sleep.
My reason said Tom wasn’t a serious suspect. Something else wouldn’t let me sleep.
Why this hadn’t happened last night, I couldn’t imagine. Unless it had something to do with his being in the house. If the sheriff’s department had decided to take him in… Well, at least I’d have known right away.
To keep my mind off visions of Thomas David Burrell’s possible arrest — unlikely arrest — I searched for an instance when I’d felt like this. Examining those memories, I realized I usually combatted concern with reason, fear with action.
Then my memory produced a previous instance.
Before my wedding to Wes, my ex for the past year-and-a-half, I had fretted about the weather. We had contingencies in place. Even better, every forecast from every source — and I checked them all — predicted fine weather. Still, I fretted, and worried, and couldn’t sleep.
The weather was perfect.
The wedding was perfect.
I’d wasted all that effort worrying about the wedding. I should have worried about the marriage.
DAY THREE
Chapter Thirty-Five
The phone woke me.
Never my favorite thing — being awakened, especially by the phone. I grabbed it off the bedside table and glared impartially at the time and the notification that Mike Paycik was the caller.
“What? It’s seven-thirty-eight in the morning and you guys left six hours ago. This better be good.”
“Aunt Gee’s back from her convention.”
* * * *
I curled into the passenger seat of Mike’s posh SUV, huddled around the warmth of the half-consumed Hamburger Heaven coffee he’d handed to me as soon as I got in.
Mike glanced in the rearview mirror, to where Jennifer slept in the back seat. He’d informed me that she hadn’t hesitated or complained when he called her. Just said she’d be out in front of her parents’ house waiting when he came by.
Diana had passed up this morning jaunt in favor of breakfast with her kids, then reporting for work on time.
Tom said he needed to get some things done early today. The subtext being that he intended to slip in ranch work before Tamantha got home and gave him hell for not keeping his nose to the investigative grindstone.
Mike turned toward me, and grinned.
“It’s going to be a sunny, warm day. Could hit ninety, Warren said.”
He referred to Warren Fisk, the station’s weatherman. Warren didn’t have as much success fighting off Thurston’s constant efforts to trim weather and sports as Mike did, so the weather report often came across as telegraphic headlines. Mike might be reporting Warren’s forecast literally: Warm, sunny day. Could hit ninety. Back to you, Thurston.
“Tell me when it gets there. In the meantime, it’s cold. And it can’t be called sunny, because the sun’s barely up.”
“Been up for hours. Ranchers have been up even longer. Nothing like seeing the sun come up over a growing herd of your own cattle on your own land.”
“Maybe if you stay up all night to watch the sun rise, because otherwise you need to go to bed right after the Five O’clock news to get enough sleep. Have you thought about that when you wax lyrical about running your own cattle? Because you can’t do that if you’re the hot-shot sports guy who does the Ten O’clock — or Eleven O’clock broadcast if you’re on one of the coasts. Not to mention your cattle will be a long way away from Chicago or D.C. or wherever you end up.”
“I might not.”
I nodded. “Well, you don’t have to. You can go on owning the ranch, leasing out the land.”
“I meant I might not move up in sports broadcasting.”
“Oh, yes, you are.”
“I could stay here and—”
“No.”
He blinked as if I’d slapped him. Then his grin flashed. “You’re not the boss of me.”
“I’m not, but your talent and ambition are. You’re having a career, Paycik.”
“Ranching’s a career, too.”
Not one you’ve been pursuing.
I didn’t say it. Not sure I’d fully recognized the truth of that until this second. But even as I did, I knew he had to recognize it for himself.
“You feel like ranching has had a hold on you?”
“That’s exactly it. It grabbed onto me young.”
“Right, Methuselah.” I downshifted on the sarcasm to add, “Tom was telling me yesterday that the ranching bug can hit people harder, depending on the circumstances.”
“He should know,” he said with passable lightness.
“Must have been tough going through losing your family ranch the way you did. Was your grandmother—” I searched for a less harsh way of asking. “—still tending the roses when that happened?”
“No. She’d died a couple years before. Grandpa used to go sit on the porch and listen to the records they used to dance to.”
This wasn’t a good time to deeply probe his feelings about his family or how those and other elements factored into this future. Not with Jennifer possibly waking any second. Not with me struggling with my daily morning fog.
He slanted a look toward me. Started to say something, then stopped. After another moment, he opened his mouth again.
“Do you want to hear about Aunt Gee getting back early from her convention?”
I sipped more liquid warmth from the Hamburger Heaven cup. “Yes. Yes, I do.”
* * * *
On our arrival, Gisella Decker ushered us into her kitchen and informed us we were hungry.
She’s the only person I’ve ever known who can cook and still have he
r kitchen clean enough that at any point in the process a tech team could move in and make semi-conductors.
We’d already eaten fluffy scrambled eggs, with biscuits fresh from the oven. Then batches of waffles, which Mike consumed nearly as quickly as Gee and the waffle maker produced them, with minimal help from Jennifer and none from me.
Oh, okay. I had a couple.
Now Gee had started something that required vigorous chopping.
“Are we ever going to ask about the murder,” Jennifer leaned in and whispered to Mike and me.
He tried to shush her with his mouth full of waffle and syrup. Not successfully.
Jennifer sat up and said loudly, “Was the convention fun?”
“It was highly educational, as it always is. We are in sessions all day, learning — or teaching — specific methods, updates in technology, and wellness for ourselves and co-workers among many topics. But perhaps the most beneficial aspect is touring nearby ECC — that’s Emergency Communication Centers — to glean ideas from how others organize and operate their centers to carry back to our home organizations.
“One we saw this year has a structure that I found most interesting. They share space with traffic management and the emergency operations group, in addition to being back-up for other jurisdictions. As soon as I’ve developed a detailed plan, I shall strongly recommend that Cottonwood County establish similar approaches.”
Her eyes gleamed with anticipation.
Forget strong recommendation, this was as good as done. And Gisella Decker would be in charge of it before anyone knew what hit them.
“Sounds like a great plan, Aunt Gee,” Mike said.
“I had intended to gather more detailed information on their process, but of course, I changed my reservations to return as soon as possible after I heard the news,” Gisella Decker said.
“Why? Why come back early?” Jennifer asked with the lack of fear of the young.
Gee didn’t even turn from chopping cooked chicken breasts.
“To assist the investigators, of course.”
Mike, Jennifer, and I looked at each other.
Again, Jennifer voiced the question. “The sheriff’s department or us?”
“I shall share all the appropriate information I possess with the authorities.”
“What about us?”
This time only Mike and I exchanged a look — one that shared the same thought. We weren’t ever coming to ask Gee for information again without Jennifer along.
Not only were her direct questions getting answers, but Gee hadn’t even turned around from her chopping.
“That will depend on what the authorities say.”
Those who didn’t know Gisella Decker might interpret that as meaning she would follow the authorities’ instructions about whether to share her information beyond them. More likely, it meant she would decide what to share with us based on whether the authorities — in other words, Shelton and Sheriff Conrad — investigated as thoroughly and as quickly as she wanted them to.
Jennifer the Intrepid said, “The sheriff’s department hasn’t shown any interest in Furman York’s past.”
Gee stopped chopping and turned toward us, raised knife in hand.
“What have they shown an interest in?”
When the tip of the wicked looking knife pointed toward me, I obeyed its order and said, “Hiram Poppinger and Tom Burrell.”
She gave a kind of growl that would have sent me running if I’d been Shelton or Conrad. I might run anyway.
“Why?” she demanded.
The other two looked at me.
Gee returned to her chopping while I explained about Hiram finding the body.
Then Tom’s conflict with York, what we — and Tom — thought York had been up to, and the timing. By the end of relating all that pointed at Tom, I had to admit it wasn’t entirely unreasonable for the sheriff’s department to look at him.
“Though they should be running that arm of the enquiry strictly to eliminate him.” Unsure if those words fit with what I’d said aloud or only with what I’d been thinking, I quickly added, “We’re examining the past. Whether the solution lies there or not, it seems likely Furman York’s character is important. So that’s where we’re starting.”
“Yes.” Her voice rang like a deep bell foretelling doom. “I am aware you spent considerable time visiting next door.”
Mike tried to look innocent, but shifted in his chair, picked up his glass of milk, put it down, and adjusted it precisely in the center of its coaster.
“Mike insisted Mrs. Parens was the best source for the history of what had happened that I didn’t know anything about,” I said. “Diana agreed.”
As long as I was getting payback, might as well get two for the price of one, since they both withheld information from me.
Over her shoulder, Gee looked down her nose at Mike. “Did they?” Then she turned to me, knife still in hand. “So, now you’ve come to me to fill in what shreds of information you believe Emmaline Parens might have unintentionally omitted.”
Uh-oh. I might have unleashed a tiger. Before she struck, I took a gamble.
“Not at all. I doubt Mrs. Parens would unintentionally omit anything she thought we might benefit from knowing unless she considered it gossip.”
I gambled by making an appeal to the mutual respect and honesty that stood shoulder to shoulder with their rivalry. It was a calculated gamble.
“But each of you,” I continued, “has an individual perspective on events — individual, yet equally perceptive — so we get the most well-rounded and complete picture by hearing from you both.”
“Humph.”
It was a complicated humph. It said she knew soft-soap when she heard it. But it also said that, whether by accident or design, I’d hit a truth.
I concentrated on making my face convey By design, by respectful and appreciative design.
“I will tell you one thing that Emmaline Parens never would. If I could murder, Furman York would have died many years ago.”
“You? We weren’t— You aren’t—”
Mike rescued me from shocked incomplete sentences. “We’d never consider you, Aunt Gee.”
“You should. You should look at everyone with a murder. But you will find — if you check thoroughly, as the sheriff’s department should and shall — that I was far away from the grazing association lands where he finally met his end and I was in the company of many disinterested people who will attest to that.”
Gee’s gaze met mine and my shock slid away.
That was contradictory, because what I saw in her eyes made what she’d said about Mrs. P click.
Not that she couldn’t tell us that if Gisella Decker could murder Furman York would have died many years ago, but that she never would tell us.
So Mrs. P knew it to be true. How could she know that unless she’d been witness to Gee’s desire to murder York and her inability to do it?
I doubted I’d ever know for sure.
For once, I accepted not knowing. I accepted that what Gisella Decker had felt — felt now — and what Emmaline Parens had passed through with her in the heat of its origins was for them alone.
I cleared my throat. “Take us through your knowing Leah Pedroke, Gee. Please.”
She turned, transferred the last of the chopped chicken to a large bowl. She washed the cutting board and knife, then got out a bunch of celery. Whack. She and her knife cleanly removed the base in one stroke.
As she washed the ribs of celery, she began to speak.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Gee’s account followed the skeleton of Mrs. Parens’ story, without including any emotion. No mention of her husband’s recent death. Factual account of the oil boom in O’Hara Hill. Leasing a room to Leah Pedroke as a business arrangement. Her renter’s failure to return on schedule. The search for the young woman relayed in police report dryness.
Except she never faced us.
Mike shook his head slightly. He
was concerned.
His aunt would resist mightily being yanked out of automaton mode and Gisella Decker with her heels dug in would not be budged.
On the other hand, perhaps she could be lured with a carrot to where she could not be driven.
A carrot in the form of professional shop talk.
“Once the sheriff’s department arrived that night, did they conduct the investigation well?”
“With Jimmie Careb as sheriff?” she asked with characteristic — and relieving — tartness. “No. Started off okay with the first officer on scene. He was an old-timer. Hadn’t moved with the times, but he had common sense, experience, and worked hard. Then Jimmie Careb showed up, throwing his weight around when it dawned on him there’d be reporters on hand.”
“What kind of sheriff was he?”
“He set up to talk to reporters right where Leah was killed before they finished searching the area. Didn’t have the science we have now, but a simple search? You want to know what kind of sheriff he was? Taught Robert Widcuff everything he thought he knew.”
“That’s an indictment if I ever heard one.”
“Jimmie Careb should have been indicted. He was the mold, Robert Widcuff merely the knockoff copy.”
“Yet you still chose to sign up as a dispatcher with the sheriff’s department under him. I’d have thought you’d stay as far away from that operation as possible.”
She turned, leaving the knife behind this time. Her hands on her substantial hips proved nearly as intimidating. “When there’s something wrong, you can run the other direction for fear of the spray getting on you, or you can dig in and try to make it right. Like those stables that guy cleaned as one of his miracles.”
I wrestled with that a moment. “The Labors of Hercules? The Augean stables?”
“Did it in a day, right?”
“I think so. He rerouted a couple rivers. He needed to because the livestock was supposed to be divine and thus produce prodigious amounts of, uh, dung.” Now that had stuck in my memory.
She snorted. “Don’t care whether they were divine or not, I’ve seen cattle dung and it’s nothing compared to what was in that sheriff’s department then. Took me — and others, including you and Mike and the others at the end with Widcuff — to clean it out, but it’s cleaned out now. That’s what counts.”
Reaction Shot (Caught Dead in Wyoming, Book 9) Page 21