The Lockwood Legacy - Books 1-6: Plus Bonus Short Stories

by Juliette Harper

  Mandy rested her head against Kate’s chest. “Sometimes I feel like I’m meeting myself coming and going these days,” she confessed. “I’m trying to be a good wife and a good mother, and well, just good enough period.”

  “You already are good enough, silly,” Kate said. “Sounds like to me the horses and the puppies are gonna be good for you, too.”

  Mandy groaned, delivering a half-hearted punch to Kate’s good shoulder. “So says you. You’re not going to be the one cleaning up messes in the house.”

  “You don’t believe Joe Bob about the dogs being housebroken?”

  Mandy looked up at her. “Seriously? You bought that?”

  Kate grinned. “Not one word of it.”

  “Me either,” Mandy said. She turned back to Cinder, who was now nuzzling her shirt. “Have you ridden these horses?”

  “Both of them,” Kate said. “You know I wouldn’t buy a horse I’ve never been on.”

  “They’re gentle?”

  “As gentle as Horsefly,” Kate said. “Besides, the girls won’t be riding them just yet. They need some time to get used to being in new surroundings. I’ll get Jenny and Dusty to work with them every day until the girls’ saddles are ready on Friday.”

  Mandy silently petted Cinder and then asked, “How long was it before I got over losing Mama?”

  “You tell me.”

  “Never,” Mandy answered softly.

  “Me either,” Kate said.

  “You were mad at her for a long time,” Mandy said in a small voice.

  “I was mad for a long time,” Kate said. “But that was to cover up how much I missed her. I didn’t have the kind of relationship with Mama that Jenny had. I was too busy trying to please Daddy. But Mama was gentle and steady. I always knew she was there, and then one day she wasn’t, and I had two girls of my own to raise, you and Jenny. I was 15 and just as scared as you are right now. Probably more. I didn’t have anyone to talk to or to help me. You have a good husband and all of us – even if we do think ‘helping’ is showing up with horses and puppies.”

  Mandy giggled. “Do you think those puppies could possibly be any cuter?”

  “I don’t see how,” Kate laughed.

  Glancing at her wristwatch, Mandy said, “Sissy and Missy will be getting off the school bus in about an hour. Can we put their horses in the barn so they won’t see them when they walk by here?”

  “Sure,” Kate said. “You take Cinder.”

  Together they led the roans into the barn, placing them in adjacent stalls. While Kate put feed out for the horses, Mandy filled their water buckets. Once the animals were settled, the sisters drove back to Mandy’s house, only to walk into the kitchen to find Joe Bob, Dusty, and Jenny down in the middle of the kitchen floor throwing a ball for the puppies.

  “Exactly who are these dogs supposed to keep entertained?” Mandy asked, arching her eyebrows.

  “All of us,” Joe Bob answered, pitching the ball at his wife.

  Catching the ball in mid-air ahead of an eagerly leaping little dog, Mandy looked down at the puppy, who came to rest standing on its hind legs, paws on her knee with an eager expression on its round little face. In spite of herself, she grinned and said, “Oh fine, but I better not catch you chewing on my furniture.”

  Mandy sent the ball flying across the kitchen tile and giggled as the puppy tore off in hot pursuit. The dog’s rear end slid precipitously left while its front legs pumped furiously forward. As she struggled to gain traction, her sister came barreling in from the left and executed a perfect t-bone that sent them both rolling in a happy, yelping heap.

  At just that moment the back door opened and Sissy and Missy stepped into the kitchen. Both girls squealed “Puppies!” and dove into the fray. The kitchen dissolved into laughing chaos. Kate stepped into the living room and pulled out her cell phone. When Jake answered she said, “You better get down to Mandy’s house.”

  “Why?” he said, sounding alarmed. “Is something wrong?”

  “We have puppies,” she said.

  “Oh my God, really!” he said enthusiastically. “Do they know about the horses yet?”

  “Not yet,” Kate answered, “and I don’t want you to miss it when they do. The whole family should be together.”

  “I’ll be right there,” he said. “When you can get two words in edgewise, ask Joe Bob about cooking out around the pool tonight.”

  “Oh, I think that will be a definite yes,” she said. “It’ll be good for everyone.”

  She clicked off the call and leaning against the doorframe, allowed herself to enjoy the melee of barking and laughing and talking. Sometimes, Kate felt like pinching herself. The whole family. Two years ago, what she was watching now wasn’t even in the realm of possibility. Life might not always be easy, but it was good. Very good.

  117

  The next morning, a little after dawn, Dusty and Jenny rode the roan yearlings away from the ranch house with the rising sun at their backs. The land flattened out to the west giving the young horses smoother ground to cross. Cinder and Shadow were proving to be surefooted and reliable, which allowed the two women to engage in easy conversation.

  Ostensibly, they were going to the southwest corner of the ranch to check the old windmill, but with almost no stock left on the Rocking L, it was a perfunctory chore at best. The excursion was really a further test of the new horses before Kate would agree to let Sissy and Missy take their first solo ride.

  Both girls had been to the end of the big pasture and back several times sitting in front of Dusty or Jenny in the saddle. When Kate still refused to let the twins ride alone, Dusty informed her pointedly, “You’re being an old woman. You bought the horses for the girls. Let them in the saddle.”

  “Fine,” Kate said. “You and Jenny give Cinder and Shadow a good long ride tomorrow morning to wear them down and when Sissy and Missy get in from school, the four of us will make a circle of the pasture.”

  Sissy and Missy, who were lurking in the shadows of the barn eavesdropping on the conversation, let out excited yelps and choruses of “thank you Aunt Katie” before running home to tell Mandy and Joe Bob the news.

  So now, Dusty and Jenny were keeping their part of the bargain and Sissy and Missy were no doubt counting the seconds until the final bell of their school day.

  “You reckon those kids will hear one thing the teacher says today?” Dusty asked Jenny as they moved along the tree line.

  “I doubt it,” Jenny said. “Mandy sent me a text message last night to tell me the girls basically fell asleep talking about getting to ride today.”

  “They’re going to make good horsewomen,” Dusty said. “Lots of little kids are scared the first time they’re around big animals, but Sissy and Missy are taking right to it. When I was that age, you couldn’t pry me off a horse.”

  “I think Kate was born in the saddle,” Jenny said. “And I really wasn’t much better.”

  “What about Mandy?”

  “She can ride as well as we can,” Jenny said, “but she doesn’t love it as much. I did hear her tell Joe Bob that she wanted to go out with the girls, though, maybe pack a picnic before the weather gets too cold.”

  “That would be good for all of them,” Dusty said. “Once I get in the saddle it just seems like everything I’m worried about goes away.”

  “Is that why you rodeoed?” Jenny asked curiously. “That’s an awful rough life to take up.”

  “It is,” Dusty agreed. “I guess I went out on the circuit after Daddy died because I didn’t really have anything else to do. He wanted to send me to college, but I wouldn’t go. I used what money I had to buy an old beat-up Winnebago. In those days I figured if I had a good barrel horse and money for gas and entry fees, I was all set.”

  “And when you weren’t in the arena?”

  “Beer and worthless men.”

  “Why’d you stop?”

  Dusty held the reins loosely in her hand and looked straight ahead with the thou
sand-yard stare Jenny had seen in so many old cowboys. “Because I looked in the mirror one morning and saw an awful hard-looking old gal staring back at me,” Dusty said finally. “That, and the fact I couldn’t have told you the name of the cowboy snoring in my bed to save my life pretty much did it for me.”

  When Jenny didn’t answer, Dusty asked, “Does that shock you?”

  “What?” Jenny said, snapping out of her reverie. “The nameless cowboy? Don’t be ridiculous. I hate that double standard.”

  “Hookers in the bedroom, ladies in the parlor,” Dusty chuckled. “I don’t think most men even realize what miserable hypocrites they can be when it comes to their attitude toward women.”

  “I know they don’t,” Jenny agreed. “And I was with one of the worst of them. Robert expected me to give him whatever he wanted, but he lost his mind if he even thought I was looking at someone else.”

  “That was the Marino guy that Katie shot?” Dusty asked.

  “Yes,” Jenny said. “And it should have been me that killed him. I had him in my sights once before and let Josh and Kate talk me out of pulling the trigger.”

  “How are you doing since you and Josh broke up?” Dusty asked.

  Jenny shook her head. “I don’t know,” she said. “But the more I hear about the way he’s acting now, the more I think I did the right thing. I can’t believe he’s hanging out at the Bucket getting drunk. I’m starting to think I never really knew one true thing about him, which scares the hell out of me considering I was with him for more than a year.”

  Dusty drew her horse up and turned toward Jenny, who reined to a stop as well. “I need to talk to you about something,” Dusty said. “And I’ll tell you right off, I have no idea what it means.”

  “Okay,” Jenny said, frowning. “What is it?”

  “Can you think of any reason why Josh would be eating supper with my brother at the cafe?”

  Jenny stared at Dusty as if she were struggling to come up with an answer to such an improbable question. Finally, she managed to ask, in a strangled voice "Josh and Rafe? Who told you that?”

  “When I was in town yesterday, I went up to the cafe for lunch,” Dusty said. “You know Mary Ellen, the waitress?”

  Jenny nodded.

  “Well, she was a year or two ahead of me and Katie in school. I was eating at the counter and we got to talking. Next thing I know, Mary Ellen leans in and says, real quiet like, ‘I don’t mean to gossip, but that uppity brother of yours was in here last week eating supper with Josh Baxter.’”

  “My God,” Jenny said. “I can’t believe that.”

  “You have to know that the whole town's talking about you and Josh breaking up,” Dusty said. “And everyone knows about Josh hitting the bottle. Mary Ellen thought it was worth telling me about seeing Josh and Rafe together. She thinks Rafe is up to no good, and I agree with her.”

  Jenny swore under her breath. “Bunch of damn busybodies,” she said. “I hate being fodder for local gossip.”

  “Honey,” Dusty said, “you’re a Lockwood. They’re gonna be talking about you one way or another. Hell, you ditched a Baxter. That feud goes back almost as far as the Hatfields and McCoys.”

  “And makes about as much sense, from what I can tell,” Jenny snapped.

  “It’s just a peril of small town life,” Dusty snorted. “They’re still talking about stuff I did and didn’t do twenty years ago. You can’t let it bother you.”

  “I know,” Jenny said irritably, “but I still don’t like it. And I really don’t like Josh and your brother being on friendly terms. As far as I know, Josh has never even spoken to Rafe on Main Street before, and he doesn’t bank with him, so I can’t imagine why in the world the two of them would be having supper together.”

  “Well,” Dusty said, “I’ll say this. Rafe never does anything unless there’s something in it for him.”

  “Did the two of them leave the cafe together?”

  “They did,” Dusty said. “Mary Ellen watched them drive off. Josh was following Rafe and they were headed in the direction of Rafe’s house.”

  “That could just have been a coincidence.”

  “Might have been,” Dusty agreed, “except Mary Ellen called her sister, who just happens to live right across the street from Rafe. Josh’s truck was parked in the driveway past 1 a.m. that night.”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “I swear to God, the CIA is missing a golden resource in this town. I don’t suppose the sister went over and listened in on the conversation by any chance?”

  Dusty chuckled. “If she could have figured out how to get away with it, I’m sure she would have, but, no.”

  Jenny took a minute to let the information sink in before asking, “Have you told Kate any of this?”

  “No,” Dusty said. “I wanted to run it by you first. Katie gets pretty protective where you and Mandy are concerned, and she hates Rafe with a purple passion. I didn’t want her getting madder than hell before it was absolutely necessary.”

  “Good call,” Jenny said. “And in case you’ve missed it, she’s pretty protective of you, too.”

  Dusty smiled and shook her head. “Damned if I’ve ever been able to figure out why,” she said. “But your sister would fight a circle saw for me. Thank God.”

  “She’s like that with the people she loves,” Jenny said. “We’re lucky to have her.”

  “So what do you think?” Dusty asked. “Do we have ourselves another problem here?”

  “I don’t know,” Jenny admitted. “But I’m pretty sure after that dressing down Katie gave Rafe in his office, he’d love to get himself some payback.”

  Dusty cleared her throat. “I, uh, hate to say it, but Josh said some pretty ugly things about Katie when we wouldn’t tell him where the two of you were last month.”

  “How ugly?”

  “Ugly enough that I thought Jake was gonna put him on his ass, and I was ready to help him do it,” Dusty said. “I got the distinct impression Josh doesn’t like women calling the shots. Including you.”

  Jenny threw her hands up. “Good God! Am I just completely blind? It would never even have crossed my mind that Josh would say one word against Katie. They worked together for months.”

  “I know,” Dusty said. “That’s part of what’s bothering me. Before Katie hired me to manage the ranch, there wasn’t one piece of Rocking L business Josh didn’t know about.”

  “And?”

  “I’m just saying he’s in possession of a lot of information about private Lockwood business,” Dusty said, nudging Shadow forward again.

  Jenny fell in beside her and said nothing for the next few minutes. She was clearly lost in thought and Dusty didn’t interrupt. Finally Jenny said, “The first time I ever saw Josh Baxter, he was trespassing on the Rocking L.”

  “Katie told me that story. According to her, Langston let him roam all over the place.”

  “That doesn’t sound like something Daddy would do, does it?” Jenny said.

  “Not the Langston I knew,” Dusty agreed. “How did Josh say that came about?”

  “He claimed Daddy was interested in his wildlife photos.”

  “I guess that’s possible.”

  Jenny chewed at her lip as if toying with an idea. “Possible,” she muttered, “but not very damned probable.”

  “Have you had a real good look at that picture Josh took of that heron?” Dusty asked. “The one hanging over Katie’s desk?”

  “I’ve seen it,” Jenny said. “What about it?”

  “Have you ever noticed that the back entrance to the cave is visible in the background?”

  At that Jenny reined up again, startling Cinder, who snorted at the abruptness of the action. “What are you talking about?”

  “I was looking at it the other day while Katie was talking on the phone with the horse man in Mason,” Dusty said. “I noticed that you can see the entrance to the cave behind the heron on the left.”

  Jenny’s face went deathly pale. �
��Oh my God,” she said, her eyes moving back and forth rapidly as if scanning her thoughts.

  “What?” Dusty asked.

  “The wandering around. Being up in Baxter’s Draw. Photographing things. What if Josh was spying on Daddy?”

  Dusty frowned. “If he’d been doing that, wouldn’t he have been taking pictures of Langston himself?” she asked.

  “Josh photographed the barn the day Daddy killed himself,” Jenny said. “He caught an image of Daddy’s Stetson in the barn window.”

  “Oh hell,” Dusty said.

  “Exactly,” Jenny said. “And he told the Texas Ranger investigating the case that he heard the pistol shot when Daddy killed himself.”

  Dusty’s eyes widened. “He heard a shot and he didn’t go check it out?”

  “No,” Jenny said. “He said, and I quote, ‘You hear gunfire out here all the time.’”

  “You do,” Dusty agreed, “during hunting season. Langston killed himself in the summer.”

  A terrible thought occurred to Jenny. If Josh was spying on Langston, there was only one person he could have been working for. “The windmill is gonna have to wait,” she said. “We’ve got to get back to the house. I need to talk to Katie.”

  “Okay,” Dusty said. “But what’s going on? What are you thinking?”

  “Back in the beginning, when this all started, we accepted everything Josh told us,” Jenny said. “Every single thing we know about the days leading up to Daddy’s death came straight from him.”

  Dusty let out a low whistle. “I don’t think I like the sound of that.”

  “I didn’t like it at the time,” Jenny said, “but everybody thought I was being overly suspicious.”

  “With everything that’s happened,” Dusty said, “sounds to me like you might have been right on track.”

  “Regardless,” Jenny said, “we need to ask the questions we should have been asking then, and the answers won’t be coming from Josh Baxter.”

  118

  Kate looked up from her desk at the sound of two sets of boots on the hardwood floor. “What are you two doing back so soon?” she asked as Jenny and Dusty came into the study. “Something wrong with the yearlings?”