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

by Sue Hardesty

  In disgust Loni backed away, pulling the drunk with her as she jerked him over to Lola to fingerprint him. Swaying, the drunk leaned over and promptly threw up all over Lola.

  “Shit!” Lola froze, staring in disgust at the yellow goo all over her purple shirt. Angry at Loni, she spat. “Look what you did!”

  “Me? How'd I do that?”

  “You kept jerking him around until he threw up on me. That's what!”

  “Sorry. I've got a stack of T's in my locker.” Loni offered. “Might be a bit big. What size are you? A six?”

  Lola patted Loni’s cheek. “How sweet. I haven’t seen Size Six since I was ten years old.”

  Backing off from her smell, Loni laughed. “I'll be right back.”

  “Wait,” Lola stopped Loni. “Forget the shirt. Throw this asshole in the drunk tank, and I'll get to him later.” She turned to Junior. “You! Wipe the drool off your mouth and clean this up. The bucket and mop are in the closet. I'm going home.”

  * * *

  On her way to the ranch Loni stopped to shop for whatever she thought her grandparents might need for the next week. Including Charmin toilet paper and saddle soap. Pat even wrapped a thick steak for Bahb. “From all of us here at the store,” he said. “Help Bob to get better.” She even stopped at the bakery to pick up a loaf of bread along with a lemon meringue pie, her granddad's favorite pie. Dirk Flavo waited on her. “Hey, Dirk. Thought you drove the grocery truck that comes in on Thursdays? Aren't you here a little early in the week? Your Aunt Mabel sick?”

  “No, just taking a few days off, helping out my aunt and uncle. I'm thinking of moving here.”

  “You do realize the town is less than 5,000? And that probably includes a few rattlesnakes and Gila Monsters.”

  Dirk shrugged.

  “As long as you don't mind bars and churches for your only entertainment, then you're good.”

  Loni grabbed the bread and pie. She briefly wondered about Dirk as she headed toward her grandparents' ranch. At the old barbed-wire gate, she stopped her truck to make out the faded words “Wagner Ranch” in her headlights. The rust-streaked sign was wired between tall, badly bleached and rotted weather-beaten posts. She was home, the desert was always home, and she knew she wouldn't leave again.

  As she wound around a crescent-shaped black volcanic hill, the ghosting form of the ranch house tucked up inside the crescent came into view. No matter where she'd been, it was always the same every time she drove through that gate. This was still the only place she ever felt safe.

  A scattering of lights brightened in the quickening evening. Nothing matched in the collection of buildings spreading the landscape before her. There was even a Papago sandwich house from the O’odham nation that Bahb said was built in the early 1900s. She remembered wishing there was also a Hogan because her grandpa was half Navajo as well as half Papago.

  Three of the four cabins on the far side of the ranch house were occupied. A young Pima woman and her five children were staying in Pike Cabin that Loni had named from its high peaked roof. When she was young, Loni had given names to all the buildings on the ranch. The Boulder Cabin was made from ten-inch-round river rock because, when she was little, the rocks seemed huge. An old Pima couple, Zago and Aja Gott, lived there. They stopped to visit several years ago and never left. Russell, his wife, and her three children lived in the rusty-colored house. Years ago somebody had used up left-over red barn paint on the wooden cabin, and it faded.

  The last quarter of a mile to the house was surrounded by alfalfa pasture land. It had been part of a homestead belonging to her dad’s father, Ben Wagner. After Loni's mother died, Loni’s grandparents left the reservation to move to the ranch and take care of the newborn. Loni's dad disappeared to work in the salt mines where he died in a cave-in.

  The old salt cedars and eucalyptus trees grew taller as Loni neared the circular drive in front of the main house. As always, she admired the Spanish ranchero style with the walled court around the front and kitchen side of the house. On the other side, bunk beds ran the length of a screened-in porch added sometime after World War II. That's where most of the people on the ranch slept in the summer. More salt cedars sheltered the sleeping porch in a fluffy line of dark-green needles, providing dense shade against the relentless sun and allowing any breeze at night. The oasis often gave her an escape from the summer heat.

  The old Samson windmill beside the barn slowly turned in the almost cool October breeze. Loni parked and looked around, checking the corrals, fences, and gates about the barn for any necessary repairs. Climbing out of her truck, she turned and studied the old house made from twelve-inch adobe bricks in the late 1800s but still standing strong.

  Loni grabbed the three sacks of groceries and took the long way around the house to the back door. When she stepped into the kitchen, she grinned at the huge black cooking wood stove standing several inches out from the sunshine-yellow plastered wall across from the door. Even after Loni had bought her grandma a new electric stove, Shiichoo refused to get rid of the wood stove. Dim flickering lights on the huge wagon-wheel light fixture above the kitchen table illuminated the room.

  Loni slid the sacks onto the end of the wooden countertop surrounding the corner sink and snuck up to her grandma who was singing to herself as she washed dishes. Grabbing her around the waist, Loni swung her in a circle, soapy water splashing everywhere.

  “Child!” her grandma flared. Apache ramrod straight, Shiichoo stood her ground. “You clean it up!” No longer as gaunt and rope-thin like she was when Loni came home last winter, she looked fine in her colorful long dress.

  Laughing, Loni grabbed paper towels and wiped up the sudsy mess. Finding herself near the huge wood cook stove as she finished, Loni felt the stove to see if it was cool. She knew that Shiichoo wasn’t totally happy with the new electric stove that Loni brought home and would still sneak a small fire for her morning coffee.

  “Willie got the painting done this morning. Your granddad's been waiting for you to put everything back on the walls.” Shiichoo said.

  “Wait, wait, Shiichoo!” Loni balked. “Don't I even get a hug back?”

  Her smile melted Loni, and they clung to each other for a long minute. Letting go, her grandma turned away with tears in her eyes and quickly flipped the Indian bread in a skillet on the electric stove as Loni hurried from her own tears to put groceries away stopping occasionally to smell a large black pot simmering on the stove next to the skillet. To distract herself, she started naming the ingredients she could smell. “Oh, yeah. Green chilies, oregano, jalapeno . . .”

  “Child!” her grandma interrupted her. “I know what's in it!”

  Loni wandered into the living room looking for Bahb and weaved through Russell's family as she heard voices from her grandparent's bedroom. Russell was arguing with Bahb who wanted out of bed. Loni stopped to hug Russell’s wife and got a hug that almost broke her back. “Damn Lil, I forget how strong you are!”

  Covering her mouth so her missing teeth didn't show, Lil grinned. “You forgot I made living on the reservation as woodchopper.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Loni grinned back, reminded of the time Lil beat up a girl so bad for flirting with Russell that the police threw her in jail. Russell nearly went crazy. Loni was nine when Russell got her out. They came to live on the ranch and never left. Lil was famous for her temper, but she was short and round and, like Russell was fond of saying, easy to outrun.

  Loni unwound herself from Lil's hug and walked into her granddad's bedroom. “Take me to the couch,” Bahb insisted.

  “You need to stay in bed!” Shiichoo insisted as she hustled in from the kitchen.

  “No. I need to watch Loni put things back. Make sure she don’t mess up.”

  Loni smiled to herself, knowing he was still on happy pills and having a good time. “Let him come, Shiichoo. We can put him back to bed later.”

  Loni watched Russell carry her granddad to the couch. He was a big man, Navajo strong and beauti
ful. He spoke perfect English and said he had been a college professor. When Loni's studies got beyond her grandma, Loni would get help from Russell. Shiichoo told her he married a white woman, but they fought so violently that one day he locked her in a closet, hopped a freight train, and wandered south until he met Lil and her three children. He had an outstanding athletic citation framed on his wall that Lil thought was his divorce papers. “Didn’t you have an older son?” Loni asked him one day.

  “I did. Paid for his seminar education. I went to hear his first sermon and realized he had become a Jehovah Witness so I left.” Loni remembered Russell's sad face and bitter smile as he looked at her. “Better he stayed Indian.” Another time after he had struggled to teach her geometry, she asked him why he didn't teach anymore. “You're so good at it,” she told him.

  He quietly answered, “The white man's cruelty was too much.”

  Bahb watched from the couch while Loni hauled a ladder into the living room to hang the blankets back up. The biggest room in the house, it showed the desert stretching to the horizon through a picture window beside the front door. The opposite wall was almost filled with a huge fireplace, and across from the two doors leading into bedrooms was a wide archway that opened onto the dining room. Indian rugs covered the gleaming wooden floor. Loni worked her way around to the fireplace and picked up her grandpa's Talking Calendar stick.

  “Be careful of that, child!” Shiichoo scolded.

  Loni held it tenderly in her hands. Made from a saguaro cactus rib and painted with soot and red clay, it was about three feet long and etched with small notches, dots, V-shaped cuts, and straight, deep lines. Cracks showed the stick’s age that was shiny from many years of handling. Loni remembered reaching up on the wall to feel the carved marks along it when she was little. She would sit with Bahb after supper as he held the stick and told her of all the battles of his ancestors and other important events represented by each line. Loni carefully carried the stick and laid it on his chest. “Bahb, why don’t you read me your talking stick as I hang pictures? I forgot some of it.”

  “Can’t,” Bahb reminded Loni. “You know I can't tell stories during the day.” He held the talking stick in his arms until he drifted off to sleep as Loni quietly worked around him.

  Bored with watching Loni and Willie move furniture around to Shiichoo's directions, the children left to play out in the shade of the eucalyptus trees. In the kitchen, the adults filled up with iced tea and Shiichoo’s fine fruit tamales. An hour later after they thoroughly heckled Loni about her sloppy work, they decided Bahb was good and dribbled out the door.

  “Don't forget the cactus fruit for the wine when you leave,” Her grandma reminded Loni as she cleaned up.

  “As soon as I feed the horses and Stonewall.” Coco led Loni through the corrals to find Paint, Roanie, and Stonewall. Her cell phone rang as she slid the halter to a gunnysack feeder filled with rolled oats over Roanie's ears. Paint nuzzled Loni's arm while she searched for her phone, making Loni jump around to escape the horse's busy nose. Stonewall impatiently pushed his refrigerator-sized head against her as Loni dodged his searching wet tongue and snorts. When she got the phone open, she heard James' bellowing voice even before she got the phone to her ear. She nearly lost the phone when Paint nudged her again and sent her reeling several steps before she gained her balance.

  “Damnit, Loni! You got my sunglasses.”

  Slipping Paint's feeder on, she answered James. “You're the one who left them in the car,” Loni shot back.

  “Did you have to take my car out to the ranch?”

  “What do you mean mine? It's a police car, for Christ's sake. The car belongs to the department, not you.”

  “Mine, do you hear me! Mine, mine, mine!” James yelled.

  “Thought you were flying to Phoenix today. What do you need a car for anyway?”

  “So you want to wreck mine now?”

  “You could drive my truck.”

  “No, no, no! And hell no!” James screamed into the phone.

  Loni was tired of James' tirade. “Buy a new pair of sunglasses.”

  “You're kidding me?” James squealed into her ear. “Those are Ray-Ban's.”

  “Hell, James. Come and get them if you want them so bad.” She hung up.

  Loni had removed the gunnysack feeders and was talking to Stonewall when James came stomping around the barn. “You locked the goddamn car. Give me the keys.”

  “Say please.”

  “Fuck you, Loni. Give me the goddamn keys.”

  Grinning, Loni tossed the keys to him. “Lordy, Loni. How are you? Had a good day? Why, yes, James. It was very rewarding. How was yours? Fine, fine, fine.”

  “Oh, shut up.” James said when suddenly Stonewall shook his huge head, flapping his ears, forcing James to jump back.”Jesus, those ears are bigger than a dinner plate!”

  Loni laughed at James's huge blue eyes. “You think those are big? Look at his hoofs.”

  “Bye.” James said as he turned and hurried back around the barn. A minute later Loni heard his car start up and leave.

  Loni pulled the empty bags from the animals and walked into the old barn, hanging the bags on a hook. She made her way through tractors, a small plow, and old worn-out machinery covered with years of dust. In the corner was one of Daniel's old cars he tinkered with while they were in high school. Bet he forgot it was still here. She walked past a bench filled with tools that ran several feet down one wall. At the end was a small door leading down into a four-by-four cellar room, dug in the early 1900s. Somebody told her that people hid from Indian raids there. She had laughed about Indians hiding from Indians until somebody reminded her that this place was originally her white grandparents Wagner's' home.

  Twelve-inch shelves along one wall still held some of her grandma's large jars. Wine fermented in three of them while the others sat empty. On another wall were ten pound bags of saguaro fruit they had harvested last summer. Loni remembered reaching up with her long extension rod to yank the fruit off the tips of the saguaro arms with the pole’s hook. Timing was all. She had to run like hell to dodge the falling fruit that came down like bullets covered with long, sharp needles. The wine made a really sweet smell as it boiled down to syrup.

  Loni grabbed a twenty-pound gunny sack and hauled it back to the kitchen, dropping it in the sink. Voices drifted out of the living room as she hollered goodbye and slipped back through the back door. Driving for home, she recalled the warm images of her granddad singing of clouds and rain and wind while he sipped his wine. Her rambling thoughts pushed away the evil of the past year.

  CHAPTER 8

  “ALL RISE!”

  The side door to the courtroom opened, and Judge Sal Suttig walked in. Loni felt the energy as everyone focused on the figure in the black flowing robe. She was jaw-jarring, totally butch handsome with olive Mediterranean skin and sprayed, poofed-up, slicked-back black hair so that looked like a helmet. The tall, graceful woman walked up the three steps and to her throne-like chair. Her outrageous antics were known across the southern half of the state, and her court was part of the town's entertainment. The long benches rescued from the Catholic Church after it was destroyed in a freak summer tornado were always full when she presided. Glancing around, the judge zeroed in on Janet Jace. “Oh, my god!” The judge said in her booming voice. “Janet, what the hell are you doing here?”

  “Hello, Judge Suttig. I'm defending my client.” Glancing back at Loni's surprised exclamation, Janet gave her a small smirk before she turned back to the judge.

  The prosecuting attorney hopped one step over to the other table and whispered to Janet. “It's Judge Sal.”

  “Sorry,” Janet whispered back. “I didn't know.”

  Janet jumped when the judge bellowed. “Why don't you both shut up and sit down!”

  Judge Sal glared at the people snickering, and the court became deathly quiet. Nobody wanted to be thrown out. Asking the prisoner to rise again, she continued to stare at h
im. “Chas! Read the charges,” she ordered the gray-headed man standing beside her bench.

  “Second Degree Robbery, Your Honor.”

  “What's your name, kid?”

  “You know my name, Judge. I been before you before.”

  Sighing, the judge circled her finger at him. “It's for the record, Ronnie. Just tell the court.”

  “Ronnie Dobbs, Judge Sal.”

  The judge glared. “Don't call me Judge Sal, Ronnie.”

  “Ain't that your name?”

  The crowd tittered. Judge Sal banged her mallet and leaned into the desk, peering over her glasses. “Listen to me good, Ronnie. You call me 'Your Honor.' Understood?”

  Ronnie ducked his head. “Yes, Your Honor.”

  “Your dad here, Ronnie?”

  “No, ma’am. Said he got a lawyer for me and I didn't need him.”

  “Your Honor,” the judge corrected. “You saying he wasn't with you?”

  “No, Your Honor.”

  “How old are you now?”

  “Turned eighteen last month on the second, Your Honor.”

  Judge Sal stared at Ronnie in surprise. "You committed a robbery on your birthday?"

  "Yes, Your Honor."

  “What? You didn't have enough sense...” The judge paused. “What did you rob?”

  “A service station, Your Honor. Enough sense for what?”

  “Don’t ask questions! You didn't have enough sense to rob a service station the day before you turned eighteen?”

  “Didn't need money then, Your Honor.”

  “What changed?”

  “Wanted to get a woman in Mexico for my birthday,” Ronnie said defensively. “Guess I shoulda filled up with gas before I robbed it.”

  “Sorry?” The judge looked confused.

  “That's how I got caught. I ran outta gas just outta town. Tried to outrun her, but she caught up when the car quit and arrested me.”

  Judge Sal spit out a few swear words. “You mean to tell me you robbed a service station, and then you got in a chase, but you got caught because you ran out of gas on the day you turned eighteen and were old enough to be tried as an adult? That about right?”