Bus Stop at the Last Chance (Loni Wagner Western Mystery Book 2)

by Sue Hardesty

  Janet said curtly, “My favorite movie.”

  “Justice freak, are you?”

  “You're in law. Aren't you for justice?”

  Loni snorted. “Sorry, but I really don't believe there's such a thing. I think it's a word we made up to explain our crappy behavior.” She turned a corner onto the main thoroughfare and ignored Janet's dirty look. “A Civil War deserter who ripped off a bank founded the town. Or so the story goes. When he got to the river, he decided it was too deep to cross and too damn hot to go any further. The river's got so many dams on it now it's dried up.”

  They passed several bars, the grocery store, and the bakery before they reached the lopsided courthouse. It squatted splat in the middle of a town block, looking like a square peg somebody had tried to pound into a round hole. Over the last century, the original building expanded to city and state police departments, a small courtroom and judge’s chamber, a jail in the second story, and a half-basement for storage with unsolved case files crammed into it. The police department used the north entrance, and everybody else used the south entrance to get to court.

  Loni drove into the parking lot that ran along a wall and parked nearest to the police station door. Coco dashed out of the truck and explored as Loni rang the dispatcher to release the door and let them in. The woman followed Loni up to the main counter. Relieved to see Lola wasn’t there, Loni waited for Harris Harris’s eyes to stop bugging out of his flaming red round face before she introduced Janet to the evening dispatcher.

  “Your first and last names are actually the same?”

  “My mom loved redundancy,” he shyly stuttered with his head ducked down. “Can I help you, ma'am?”

  Loni studied the room through Janet’s eyes. Cheap forest green dividers stretched around the bull pen to the left of the counter in a failed attempt for privacy. The green gave off the aura, and sometimes the smell, of dying plants. Loni had heard somewhere that the color was supposed to be calming, but she hated the ugly institutional vomit-green paint. The garish fluorescent lights hanging by chains from the ceiling made it even worse.

  The faded ragged ribbon tied to the cooler vent in the ceiling barely fluttered in the stifling air, and the moisture in the air turned everything into a wet mess. Wanted posters, yellowed with age, lined the wall above four-tier filing cabinets behind Harris. In the center of this wall the door to the property room stood open.

  Janet finished making arrangements to meet her client and turned to Loni. “How about that hotel now?”

  “Sure. Just go back out where we came in and walk across the street. It's two buildings down on your left. Unless you want to climb back into my truck.”

  Janet said coolly, “No thanks, I'll walk. What about my luggage?”

  “Hang on a minute, and I'll be right behind you.

  “Please. I need to get out of these clothes fast.”

  Loni turned back to Harris. “Tell Lola about Ms. Jace, would you, Harris? Maybe she can help Manny.”

  “Why don't you tell her yourself?”

  “She's not speaking to me,” Loni ruefully admitted.

  “Again? What'd you do this time?”

  Loni shrugged and ran her hand along the cool wood as she walked the eight foot length of the counter, feeling the nicks and chips dug into the dark surface throughout the years. Reaching the end, she sauntered out the door after Janet, listening to the quick clicks of the other woman's heels.

  Loni left the hotel, Janet, and her luggage behind, and drove back to the hangar. The minute Loni jumped down from her truck, Daniel followed her into the office, bombarding her with questions about Janet and how she was going to get Ronnie Dobbs off.

  Loni sank back into the same hole in the couch. Annoyed, she looked up at him and said, “Shit if I know, Daniel.” Daniel kept poking her with his finger, and she knocked it away in frustration. “Uncle Herm. Help me out here.”

  Her uncle laughed at her and said, “Looks to me whatever stupid that lawyer drank sure was effective. She got took with that case.”

  “Maybe not, Uncle Herm. You forget how erratic Judge Sal is.” Loni reminded him. “She could win.”

  “Gads!” Daniel slapped his head in horror, mocking Loni as he clutched for her. “It's Judge Sal!”

  Pushing Daniel away, Loni ran up the stairs and slammed the door to her apartment. Grateful for the silence, she stood in front of her cooler several minutes before she collapsed on the bed. Her lack of sleep was catching up with her.

  Hours later, Loni woke up, groggy from sleeping. She had almost forgotten about the call she had to make. Shaking the sleep out of her eyes, Loni searched for the number of James's friend in Tucson. She opened her cell phone. Hope he’s open to an outsider looking over his shoulder.

  “Harry here. Shout back.”

  The slow Western drawl of his deep voice required a few seconds for Loni to understand his words. “Hello?” She squeaked, sounding like a wuss.

  “Hey there, little lady. What you need?”

  “How do you know I’m a little lady?”

  “It’s my polite-to-callers day.”

  “Oh.” Loni nodded her head at the phone before she realized he couldn't see her. “I mean hello. You got a call from James Wagner? Told you I’d be calling you?”

  “Yep. Said you were his cousin. That about right?”

  “Well, today it is. I can't guarantee what he’ll say tomorrow.”

  “He said you were a real pain in his backside, but you promised to be nice to me.”

  “Seeing as I'm the one doing the asking, I'll do my best.”

  Harry’s loud laugh bounced against Loni’s ear. “James said you wanted to see what we got on Manny Sanchez. It’s a done deal, you know. Caught the little son-of-a-bitch rifling around in her house. Word was she was going back to her husband and he was pissed.”

  “I heard that, too. My problem is Manny is brother to one of our own. The dispatcher here.”

  “Listen. I understand if you have to make your people happy. Come on up, and I’ll show you what I can.”

  “Hey, thanks.” Loni sighed in relief. “When can I come?”

  “Depends. What do you want to see?”

  “For starters, where you found her.”

  “For starters, huh.” Harry laughed again as Loni jerked the phone away from her ear to avoid the harsh sound. “What then?”

  “I don’t know yet. Seems like a good place to start is all.”

  “I can't meet you before next Thursday. That okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Harry laughed again, and Loni wished she could quit saying whatever he thought was so funny. “You know a bar called The Watering Hole down your way on Old 85?”

  “Sure.”

  “Meet you there around 7 am.”

  “Why so early?”

  “I hate heat.” The line went dead.

  Still grinning, Loni closed her phone and climbed back in bed.

  An hour later she was still wide awake. Sitting up she grabbed her laptop and wrote to Sandi.

  FROM: Loni Wagner

  TO: Sandi@gmailyahoo.com

  DATE: July 12

  SUBJECT: Still here

  I spent some time trying to get End of Life Directives from my grandparents. I think I'm growing up. I am finally beginning to appreciate and understand how they left everybody they knew to live in a white man's world and raise somebody who came home every day from school angry and miserable. They sacrificed a lot to raise me. Maybe it's just as well I didn't know about their pain. I'm not sure I could have survived both mine and theirs during those years. I'm having a hard time with it now. They spent their lives away from friends and family to take care of me and the ranch. I'm really trying now to give something back. The difference in how we all grew up in the same general area is amazing.

  Please take care of you and yours.

  Love, Loni

  Still wide awake, Loni picked one of her grandfather Wagner’s stories to read to Coco
. Opening the notebook, she was delighted to find another one of the same kind of ink drawings she had found on the water tanks across the years. The story was titled Written in my old line shack, the warming, drying spring of 1978. “You ready, Coco?” Loni climbed in the bed next to Coco and began reading.

  “I can’t remember how long it took to gather cows to bring into the farm to put on irrigated pasture. I must have been all of six so you know Krissa, the old buggy mare made me a good saddle horse. The last time I was at Winter’s Well to stay, Roach Richards lived there and ran cows. The cook sure didn’t use a recipe book that called for a clean dish.

  “Poor old Krissa pulled the buggy to school lots of years and to Sunday school, also the literary meetings. She was later killed by lightening way back among the big sage brush. She couldn’t run fast enouff to scatter her shit but she always got you there.

  “I saw all of the old Winter headquarters cleared away to make room for progress. To prove it was progress, now the mortgage holders have it all. Back then we called the old mother cows mortgage lifters but waited a whole year for the calf crop.

  “Due to the long dry hot summers, the grass and browse became sparse. If there had been lots of late spring rains the old cows mite carry thru. If not they had to be brot into pastures. If you left them out there and they did survive, there’d be no calf crop. Since the brahma crossbred they survive much better.

  “The winning of the west was a reality for very few. For some it was a glamorous dream that enchanted them as much a state of mind with a fast horse, a long rope, and a runnin iron. Tho more was won by another kind that stood on their own.

  “Being a kid and full of you know what, I admired cowboys that stood around with one leg of their levis stuffed in their boot and their hats cocked on one side of their heads. They talked of makin money pickin up wild cows from the desert. So I made a big circle one morning early and cut for sign. I brot on home two long ears, put them in the pasture at home. I had no brand at the time as I hadn’t planned on doing any stealing of calves. So pa asked me the next morning where I got them and who from. So proudly I answered they didn’t belong to anyone but were mine now. He told me short and to the point to take them back where I got them and said he hoped that at least someday I’d understand. If you didn’t earn it, it wasn’t worth haven. I did I’m proud to say.

  “I recollect plainly in the early twenties a land and cattle baron had a small time one horse operator arrested for stealing his calves. Judge Harvey listened for a while to the pros and cons. He said he’d have to dismiss the case as all that the stealee knew about stealing and rustling the stealor had taught him. He said he could tell by the method he had used.”

  Grinning at her grandfather's images, Loni snuggled Coco as her thoughts drifted to Lola. Still stinging from Lola’s rejection, her thoughts drifted to Maria. She ached from missing her, missing the feel of soft skin intertwining over and around her so she couldn’t tell where Maria began and she left off. She missed the whispers of love in the night. Loni folded up into the fetal position and started crying.

  CHAPTER 6

  LONI ROLLED AND TOSSED, watching the clock hands barely moving. By one o'clock in the morning, she decided she wasn’t going to sleep anyway so she might as well get up and drive to the ranch. She’d rather be there when she got out of bed to get a good hot breakfast. The dark of night lulled her on the ride over to the ranch, and she was drained out when she pulled up in front of the house. She sneaked into the house, pushed Coco upstairs, and stripped her clothes off. Falling into bed, she was asleep almost before her head hit the pillow.

  Shiichoo knocked on her door before the rooster crowed. Blinking awake, Loni turned on the light by her bed and lay on her back rubbing her eyes to stay awake.

  “You up?”

  Loni rubbed the wet out of her eyes and groaned, pretending to complain, “Damn, Shiichoo. What if I don't want to get up?”

  “Watch that mouth, child. Can't help it if you get to bed three hours before it's time to get up.”

  Struggling to work her way to sitting up, Loni gratefully took the cup of coffee her grandma handed her and sipped it as she stared at the cup until the letters came into focus: “To err is human; to forgive is not my policy.” Loni snorted. It was a cup she had given Shiichoo years ago.

  “How come it never takes long to stay all night at your house?” Loni moaned. Her grandma's laughter faded away as Loni waited to wake up. Nothing had changed in the room. It was like being in a time warp. Slanted walls followed the peaked roof, leaving just ten feet of walking space in the forty-foot-square room. The water stains running down the slanted walls from past storms reminded her of all the times she forgot to close the skylight windows.

  Tattered and yellowed posters stapled between the skylights were left over from her high school years. Her favorite was Urshel Taylor’s painting called “The Real Ira Hayes.” Dressed like an Indian warrior, the World War II hero stood behind four Marines as they pushed up the American flag on Iwo Jima. Her grandma had asked, “That thing legal?”

  “Of course!”

  Snorting, Shiichoo had walked out the door. “I like mine better.”

  Still smiling, Loni thought about the copy of Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph hanging down stairs on the living room wall. Same five Marines, but Ira Hayes was wearing his marine uniform.

  Her mind reviewed all the things that hadn't changed. Her horse Roanie was still there even though he was much older and slower. But then, so was she. Loni smiled wryly as she remembered how crippled she got last July when she rode him to trail the rustlers. She could barely walk for a week. Her memories moved to gentle, patient Stonewall, the ranch’s Brahma bull and the favorite ride for children on the ranch. She loved watching them climb on and hang onto the yellow bull's hump as he switched his tail and flapped his plate-sized ears.

  Dragging herself out of bed, Loni crept down the stairs to the bathroom, hearing something else from long ago, her granddad chanting. His beautiful high voice sent shivers through her as she stopped to listen to the background of ringing as he tapped a beat with a spoon against his coffee cup. The beat changed when he started singing a “get up in the morning” song with enough sound effects to wake the Bantam rooster. As always, Loni’s eyes teared from his love and warmth.

  The caffeine jolt moved Loni down the hall to the bathroom. Closing the door, she inspected the tired room. Everything she saw was faded and peeling. Vacated blobs of red and white striped wallpaper around the wash bowl revealed the original pink paint beneath it. While she peed, she reached with closed eyes for the toilet paper which wasn't there. She opened her eyes and finally found it on a shelf behind her, stacked so high that when she pulled a roll out, the rest toppled all over the floor. Exasperated, she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling only to find Geronimo's stoic portrait looking down at her. Crap.

  She stood, staring around at the rust stains streaking the washbowl, toilet bowl, and bathtub before she retrieved the rolls. Pushing aside the yellowed, cracked shower curtain, she turned the water to cold, and stepped in, wondering if the cracks she felt on the bottom of her feet were leaking, dry-rotting everything underneath. Better fix it, she decided, as soon as she had time. The sour-smelling, discolored lukewarm water was as cold as it was going to get. Reflecting on all the times she cleaned dead birds and insects out of the water tank, maybe she should ask when the water tank was last cleaned. Or maybe not. She didn't stay in the tub long. The air was so dry that there was no need for a towel. By the time she started dressing, her body was already dry.

  Images of the disgusting things that had crawled into the water tank made dressing difficult. First she put her pants on backwards. Then she forgot about socks. It was a minute before she figured out why her boots wouldn't pull on. Her gun belt felt heavier than usual as she hooked it on her shoulder. One last look around and she knew where the next repair work would be happening.

  Breakfast was already on the
table when Loni followed her granddad’s singing into the kitchen. The new song about lost love was so sad that Loni briefly froze before she quietly hung her gun holster on the hat rack at the back door. At the table, she played with her fork and looked at her granddad’s brown smooth face.

  “What’s that song’s name? I don't remember it.” Loni asked.

  “Old song I learned as a child. Something like ‘I'm sad your dog ate my cat.’”

  Loni looked at Bahb waiting for that small wry grin on his bronze face. “Come on! You didn't even have cats.”

  “Bobcat. I found a baby.”

  “You made a pet out of it?”

  “Easy to pet if you don't mind bites and scratches. Hard to catch though.”

  Loni grinned. “That's because it thought you were going to eat it.”

  That small grin was back on Bahb's face. “Probably.”

  “Eat!” her grandma demanded. “And no talk about eating dead dogs and cats at the table.”

  “Which reminds me,” Loni said, looking up at her grandma. “Heard Janey Henry had her baby.”

  “A little girl. So?

  Loni grinned. “Heard all she craved was road kill.”

  “Enough! Eat!”

  Loni ducked her head and stuffed her mouth a few minutes, loving her grandma's egg and prickly pear scramble. “Bahb? You hear Old Man Wampas died?”

  “Yi.”

  “They found him sitting against a tree, glasses in his hand, looking like he peacefully went to sleep.”

  “Yi. Death should be easy.” Bahb ate a few bites, smiling at a memory. “He was a second World War German prisoner of war who stayed. I remember he started all his sentences with ‘Dot Damn!'”