“You feeling okay, Grandpa?”
He sank down into a chair, laid an arm on the table as if needing the support of a hard surface. “I’m fine. Just the usual aches and pains. They get better as the sun comes up. I’m like an old dog. I need the sun to warm me up and get me going. You’re smart to be a teacher instead of a rancher like the rest of us.”
“I’ll always be a cowgirl, Grandpa.”
“It’s in your blood. Just don’t let it break your bones.”
She held up the leg she’d fractured years ago when a horse bucked her. “Too late.”
He chuckled and then sighed and settled farther back into the chair, causing it to creak.
“Nobody else is up yet?” she asked, still stalling.
“Up and gone.”
She turned to look at him over her shoulder again. “Chase and Bobby?”
“They both took off early for home.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“Not more than an hour ago. I came down for coffee with them.”
“I guess they couldn’t sleep, either,” she said, but he didn’t reply. “What about Grandma?”
“She got up to see them off, then went back to bed.”
“Did I wake everybody up? Was it because I left?”
“Did you leave?”
She glanced back at him and saw his blue eyes had a twinkle in them.
Jody washed wet grounds off her fingers and then turned to face him.
“Grandpa, you don’t know, do you?”
He frowned a little. “Know what?”
“Something happened in Rose less than an hour ago.” She swallowed hard, forced herself to tamp down her emotions. “Somebody got killed. Shot.”
Hugh Senior’s jaw dropped and he leaned forward. “Who?”
“Valentine.”
“Oh, no.” He looked grieved to hear it. “Oh, that’s terrible. I’m so sorry to hear it. Did they arrest him, Jody?”
“Arrest him?”
“That …” Her grandfather wanted to say bastard or son of a bitch, she could tell, but he wouldn’t in front of her. “… murderer.”
“They haven’t caught him yet. Billy took her car and escaped.”
“Well, I guess this ends any of that stupid talk about how he didn’t kill your father.”
“Does it?”
“Of course!” He slapped the kitchen table so hard that it shook, and then he quoted what his daughter had said the night before at the dinner table. “That’s the kind of man he is.”
Jody didn’t join him for coffee.
She poured a cup for him and then dragged herself upstairs and fell asleep on top of her covers, so tired that not even confessions of love could keep her awake any longer.
JODY WOKE UP at two-thirty in the afternoon, stared at the passage of time on her clock with dismay, and hurried down the hall to shower. Once dressed, she clomped downstairs, intending to apologize for sleeping so late. One look at her grandmother’s face told her that Annabelle was worried about more serious matters than a lazy granddaughter.
Jody hurried over to give her a kiss on the cheek.
“Why’d you let me sleep so late?”
“I thought you needed it.”
“You know about Valentine?”
“Of course. That poor child.”
“Which one? Her or her son?”
“Both of them.”
“Have they caught him yet, Grandma?”
“Not yet. And people are scared to death. They’re locking their doors and loading their guns and just generally acting as if he’s going to break into houses and start shooting people. Personally, I think he’s a long way from here.” Annabelle looked her up and down. “You look nice and fresh. Now go back up and change into some old clothes, honey. Red hasn’t shown up yet today and we’re trying to catch up on his chores. I can’t imagine where that man has got to. Did you hear him say he was going anywhere today?”
It must be love, Jody thought, remembering his closed garage.
“Maybe Uncle Chase or Uncle Bobby sent him off on some errand and just forgot to tell you before they left.”
“That’s what I told Hugh. Go change clothes.”
“What are we doing?”
Her grandmother smiled at her. “Your favorite job.”
Jody groaned as she turned to go upstairs again.
“NOBODY EVER GOT close to her,” Annabelle remarked as she and Jody worked in the barn together in the mid-afternoon, after turning the horses out into their pasture.
Both of them had on long-sleeve shirts, rubber gloves, and jeans tucked down inside rubber boots so they could muck out the horse stalls, a daily chore that Red usually performed. As a teenager, Jody had learned a lesson about stubbornness when she insisted on wearing her leather boots to clean the stalls, and horse urine ate through the stitching on the soles.
Continuing her thoughts about Valentine Crosby’s quiet personality, Annabelle added, “I never heard of anybody being a close friend to her except maybe Byron at the grocery store.”
“Her son felt close to her,” Jody said, a little sharply.
“Oh, honey.” Annabelle was contrite. “I’m sure he did.”
They were removing twenty-four hours—and more, thanks to Red’s absence—of manure and laying in fresh straw bedding. They’d hauled the feed and water tubs out into the corridor, giving themselves room to work. Shooting Jody a curious look before returning her attention to her pitchfork, Annabelle plunged the five prongs into the horse’s bed and then lifted the manure and soiled straw into the metal wheelbarrow Red used for the job.
“Grandma, he told me he always hated his father.”
Annabelle put down her pitchfork again. “Collin said that?”
Jody nodded. “He said he used to watch his father all night when he was drunk, to make sure he didn’t hurt Valentine. He claims he was watching Billy all that night—the night everything happened—and so he knows his father didn’t do it. I said, maybe he fell asleep and just didn’t know it, but he swears he never did that, ever. Red says Billy was too drunk to go all that way in the storm and do all those things. Bailey says the same thing.”
“Good grief.” Annabelle sounded a little stunned. “When did you hear all this?”
“Yesterday,” Jody said, omitting the part about how some of these discussions had gone on around midnight and later.
“When did Collin tell you that? Was it when you ran into them at Bailey’s yesterday?”
“No. Later. Between then and when his mom was shot.”
She realized her grandmother was staring at her.
“I sneaked over there to get a look at their house, Grandma. Last night, after I left here. I never intended to talk to Collin, but he was sitting outside on the curb and he saw me and came over to talk to me.”
“He was just a little boy.”
“Red and Bailey weren’t.”
Nervously, she waited to hear what her grandmother would say to that, but when Annabelle spoke again, she changed the subject completely: “Your mother would never have done this job.”
Jody didn’t say anything at first, partly to adjust to the abrupt change of topic, but then she said, “That doesn’t make me better than her.”
“I think it does.”
Jody propped her shovel against a wall. “Uncle Chase thinks that if she’d had a chance to grow up more, she’d have been a better person.”
“He may be right.” Annabelle seemed about to add to that, but then closed her mouth.
“What?”
Her grandmother glanced up. “What do you mean, ‘what’?”
“You started to say something else. What was it?”
“Oh.” Annabelle stopped working again, too. “I started to say that if it had been your uncle Bobby who said that, I’d have put it down to the crush he had on her—”
“Uncle Bobby had a crush on my mom?”
“He did. I found a photo of her in one of hi
s jeans pockets shortly before she—disappeared—but it took me a while to put the clues together. I suspect grief over her was one of the reasons he took off for the Army. I think he had a huge crush on her. I don’t believe your uncle Chase did, so I’m more inclined to take his opinion on this matter.”
“I would have thought it would be the other way around.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because Uncle Chase is so handsome and women fall for him.”
“Well, maybe that’s why, since he had lots of other girls.”
“Poor Uncle Bobby.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have had a crush on his own sister-in-law!” Annabelle eased off a little on her indignant tone. “Not that he could help it. Your mom was just as pretty as you’ve always heard she was.”
“What? You did it again, Grandma. You started to say something and you stopped yourself. What is it?”
“Nothing. Really, it was nothing.”
“Please, Grandma. Please tell me whatever you were going to say.”
Annabelle started to push her hair off her face, but remembered she wore now-filthy gloves. She brought her hands back down to her sides. “I was just going to say—” She hesitated, and Jody could see that her grandmother really didn’t want to say whatever it was she was forcing her to say. “I was going to say that your mother was as pretty as she was dishonest.”
“What?”
“I know that’s a mean way to put it, and I’m sorry, but the truth is, she stole from us, honey. Little bits of cash from one of the ranch accounts. We found the evidence after she was gone. I’m pretty sure your father knew about it and he was worried about it. And about her. And I was worried about them, without knowing that was the cause of it. I hate the fact that she gave him any trouble or grief at all. I don’t think I’ve ever quite forgiven her for that. So I don’t know if your uncle Chase is right or not. Maybe she would have changed, maybe she would have grown up to be a nicer person. I want to think it’s true. I want you to think it’s both possible and true.”
They finished their dirty job in an uncomfortable silence.
At one point Annabelle said in a voice full of regret and a bit of accusation, “You wanted me to tell you.”
“I’m glad you did. Well, maybe not glad. You know.”
“You want the truth.”
Jody nodded, and then pretended it was straw dust that was making her take off one glove and raise her fingers to her eyes to wipe the tears away. Her grandmother, sniffing as if she, too, was affected by the dust, didn’t try to comfort her, but left her alone to absorb this new information that her beautiful mother—her spoiled and snobbish mother—had also been a petty thief.
Nothing more was said between them about Collin Crosby.
Jody spent the rest of the afternoon working near her grandmother, but thinking about him. Where was he now? What was he doing? How was he doing? Was there anything she could do to help him—
She shook her head, feeling heartsick for him, and lonely.
It was impossible. The violently intertwined lives of their families stood between them. Her own family, alone, was an obstacle bigger than the Testament Rocks, as hard and unyielding as stone when it came to the subject of Billy Crosby.
I should stop thinking about Collin and stay away from him, because that is the best and only way I can help him.
FOUR HOURS LATER Jody found out she wasn’t the only one who would determine when and how she could help Collin Crosby. When the ranch phone rang after supper and she went to answer it, she saw his name in the caller ID window. Quickly, she picked up the portable receiver, said, “Hold on,” and hurried out to the porch and then kept walking into the front yard, away from ears that might overhear her.
“Collin,” she said. “How—”
He didn’t give her a chance to ask anything.
“Jody, I need to tell you something that nobody else wants to hear.” There was no “Hello,” no “How are you?” and no news. He just launched right in as if he didn’t have much time, or thought that maybe she wouldn’t. She clung to the receiver, but she was really clinging to the sound of his voice, not knowing if and when she’d hear it again. “If you can’t talk, just listen. I don’t think Billy killed Mom. It took me about half an hour to get over the first shock and then I realized—where’d he get the gun? There was no gun in the house. He sure didn’t come out of prison with one. There wasn’t one in my car, there isn’t one in my mom’s car, and I swear to you there wasn’t one in the house.”
“Could he have hidden one away, years ago?”
“He could have, yes, but it’s not a big place and I’ve been over every inch of it doing things for Mom. Painting, fixing the roof, replacing insulation, taking down old cabinets and putting up new ones. I’ve looked in every nook and cranny of the basement and the attic, I swear, and there was no gun. Jody, the only way Billy could have gotten hold of a gun is if somebody came into the backyard and dropped one on his chest while he was in the hammock.”
“And that didn’t happen.”
“Right. That’s fantasy.”
“I don’t know what to say. Why would anybody want to kill your—Oh.”
It hit her, of course, that somebody would do exactly that if they wanted to frame Billy.
“Oh, God, Collin. I don’t know what to say.”
“It’s enough that you didn’t say bullshit.”
“I wouldn’t. I won’t. Where are you?”
“In the motel in Henderson, waiting to find out what happens next.”
“Do you know where your father is?”
“No. If I did, I’d tell them.”
“Even though you think he didn’t do it?”
“I’m afraid of what he will do if he’s as desperate and angry right now as I suspect he is. He doesn’t have any money. He doesn’t have anything except Mom’s car, and he can’t even refill the gas tank when it runs out, which it probably already has. He’s not a smart guy, Jody. He’s just a physically tough man who runs headlong into trouble, and he’ll probably keep doing that until it kills him. I don’t want it to kill anybody else first.”
“What can I do?”
He said nothing for a moment. “I probably shouldn’t even have called you. I must sound like I’m possessed and I suppose I have been, in a way, for years.”
“That’s okay,” she said gently. “We’re both a little crazy.”
“I called you because I just … needed to.” There was another pause, and then Collin said, “I meant what I said to you last night, Jody.” And then he said, “I’ve got another call coming in. I’d better take it in case it’s about Billy.” A quick goodbye and he was gone. Jody punched a button to see his phone number again and memorized it. Maybe she would never call him, but it made her feel better to think she could reach him.
Jody turned to find her grandfather striding toward her across the grass.
She held the phone against her chest, hoping he wouldn’t ask about the call.
But all he said was, “Would you run down to Red’s house for me, Jody? I’ve called a dozen times, I swear, and all I get is voice mail on his cell and his phone at the house. I’m getting pretty fed up that he hasn’t let us know where he is and what he’s up to. I called Chase and Bobby, and neither of them sent him out of town, so I don’t know what’s going on.”
“Sure, Grandpa.”
“I’ve got half a mind to go with you and give him what-for.”
“No, no, you stay here. I’ll do it.”
If anything could have struck Jody as funny right then, after her call from Collin, this situation would have. Yesterday she’d been trying to keep her family from walking in on her and Red; tonight she was trying to keep them from walking in on Red and some other woman. As she faced the embarrassing prospect of knocking on his door, she thought: Red? Whoever she is, buddy, she’d better be worth this.
IT WAS ONLY a couple of hundred yards to Red’s place, down an incline that put him ou
t of sight of the ranch house and gave both Red and the Linders some privacy from each other. When Jody was small, now and then her grandmother had sent her down to the mailbox at the front gate near the hired hand’s house just to let her run off some energy. Now she walked, not ran, in that direction, mentally working through a list of single women she knew in the county to try to predict who it was going to be. Thinking about Red’s new romance was easier than thinking about Collin’s phone call and all the things it might mean to her, to him, to her family, to a whole lot of people.
It was a beautiful evening on the ranch, fragrant and fresh.
The time was past twilight, with full night closing in.
She’d brought a flashlight with her to show her the way home, but she didn’t turn it on yet.
Red’s house came into view and she halted at the sight of it.
His truck was there and the garage door was still down.
She would just walk up, ring the bell like a proper visitor, and if his woman friend opened the door, she would ask with an innocent air, “Hi. Is Red home? May I speak to him, please?”
At the front door, she rang the doorbell and then knocked.
Nobody answered, though she could hear the television blaring from the bedroom. She rang again and knocked harder, giving them time to get dressed, if that was the problem. After waiting several more minutes with no results, Jody walked around the bushes at the side of Red’s house and went over to the garage. Red’s dog was pacing in front of the closed garage door.
She didn’t try to pet the stray that Red called Mangy Beast.
She looked like a blue heeler with a touch of husky in her, a gray and tan dog that he’d found by the side of the highway near the front gate. Red considered it a major miracle of his life that an actual hunting dog had materialized there, needing a home. She had acted liked a whipped cur for a long time before her curved, bushy tail began to wag when Red went out to feed her.
Mangy Beast wasn’t mean, but she wasn’t friendly, either.
The sturdy, muscular creature with the strange light eyes stood in front of the garage door, staring at her.
The Scent of Rain and Lightning Page 26