The Clincher

by Lisa Preston

  Thank the stars he was giving out free advice. I’d have never seen my way to paying money to hear him jabber. I’d thought at first he was talking about the geese wandering around, then realized he was talking about my loose dog. Figures a guy like Junior wouldn’t understand a working dog could be a friend, too.

  He rocked on his toes, bulging his shoulders like anger burned under his skin. One fist gripped a medium paper grocery bag and a jacket I thought I recognized from somewhere. The jacket was way too small for him at any rate and I’d no clue what was in the bag.

  “So,” I said, clearing my throat, “nice of you to stop by. I’ve got stuff to do and I’m sure you’re a busy fella—”

  “Busy.” He snorted and moved the stuff he was carrying to one armpit, freeing both his hands. The thing in the bag was hard, a big thick tube, like a can on steroids. “Yeah, you think I’m busy? You’re busy.”

  Well, sure, I’m busy. I could list up to twelve and a half things I’d have rather been doing. Talking to him wasn’t even in the top twelve thousand. And Junior seemed unsettled no end, edgy, like he wanted a tense chat.

  And I remembered that Patsy-Lynn had an edgy, wanting-to-hang-around type attitude the last time I saw her.

  Right before she died.

  Right before someone killed her.

  Notions glimmered. The credit card receipts hadn’t panned out. The sheriff’s man probably hadn’t pressed the Harpers for them until after the funeral so the old man had the weekend to figure out that his son’s alibi didn’t hold up. It would have been mighty handy if my brain would fire off a little faster in the future.

  I started getting a true hankering for a future of my own.

  Harper Junior seemed to get a hankering to chat about the past. He gave a sharp little headshake. “You know football?”

  When they started having Monday night football on Thursdays as well, that was when I’d had enough. And I don’t even try to wrap my mind around this idea of fantasy football. I shook my head.

  He draped the jacket—Patsy-Lynn’s barn coat, I realized—over one of the dinette chairs. My heart started to go pitter-pat.

  “No,” I said.

  Junior spoke through his teeth, saliva flicking off his lips, looking agitated, like he was dying to make me understand something. “I was great.”

  Mmm. Many, many fresh-mouthed replies leaped to mind, but I kept my lips locked, good as gold. Mmmphh.

  “Lots of guys did it.” Junior shrugged. “Some of it’s legal. And the rest . . .”

  So he knew I knew. And I barely knew.

  Thinking hard, I tried to figure out what exactly I thought I knew.

  Nichol said people had to know a dealer to get steroids, or they had to steal them or buy them out of the country. Junior didn’t know a dealer around here, I decided. He was the dealer.

  Of one thing I was dead sure. Junior was at the Flying Cross when Patsy-Lynn died.

  I saw Patsy-Lynn’s jacket again and felt sick enough to puke on my boots.

  Twisting my ponytail, trying to think what best to do under Junior’s pure annoyance that looked ready to foam, I didn’t stare right at him but didn’t quite look away. Seemed like he was a pot getting ready to boil over.

  Spit burbled at one corner of his mouth as he demanded, “What did she tell you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me,” he sneered.

  Sure, but so what? Hearing and understanding, not the same thing. And he must have decided I wasn’t a good enough actress to play dumb because he elaborated.

  “That day. You know. Look, she told me you were coming back, just went to get some more supplies, shoes or something. And she said she’d told you about, you know, me helping the stud.”

  Six shades of stupid, that’s how I felt. All kinds of bad. Shame, really, when I thought about how Patsy-Lynn had wanted me to hang out. She’d wanted me to be there when Junior came home. She knew he was going coming back. She was nervous about being alone with him. And I’d left her. She’d known he was doping her horse and maybe she was scared of his rages.

  And when he got there—right after I left—the poor woman had bluffed that I was coming back. I’d left Patsy-Lynn on her own when she was scared and needing someone in her corner.

  The thing of it is, is I am someone who swore: I will never leave someone who needs me. Never again.

  Of course, I hadn’t wanted anyone to need me. Nobody at all.

  But Patsy-Lynn had needed someone and I’d gone about my afternoon.

  Sick to my stomach, I wrenched with worry. What had I done by failing to do?

  I saw my guilt plain, plenty of it. I saw Guy’s kitchen, clean and tidy. Beyond the scrubbed surface were beautiful condiments pushed back on the counters, above was the rack I’d built. Those spices and things meant something to Guy, he produced with them. He had oils and about twelve different kinds of salt, and cardamom whole in pods. They were things folks used with horses, too. They were pretty, before and after Guy used them in the kitchen.

  Was I seeing this sight for the last time?

  “You’re a little busybody,” Junior said, his voice full of hate. “You’re a little bitch.”

  Well, he was a bully and I don’t cotton to being bullied. What was he going to say next, that I was fat? I cocked a leg back, making ready to groove his gonads with my boot toe.

  Junior shoved me down so hard and fast my wind went out and my teeth deepened themselves into my jawbones when I smacked my chin on my knees. Charley chuffed in the corner, scaring his geese, which made him go back to tending them.

  If someone who was already strong abused a drug that exaggerated his strength, impaired his judgment and his ability to control aggression, how many bad things could happen? He could scare the hooey out of a little girl who stole a stud fee. He could dose and overdose a studhorse with steroids to make more muscles.

  He could kill his stepmother if she objected—maybe not on purpose, just in a fit of ’roid rage, but that didn’t change her being dead.

  And he could decide it was a good idea to get a ride to Vine Maple Lane and pull out a pistol.

  Junior leveled the gun right between the points in my T-shirt as I stood up.

  I hate the way a gal’s body wants to tell the world when she’s excited. I swallowed, trying not to look like I was gulping.

  “Tell me if you’re going to kill me. I won’t be mad, just tell me.”

  “Mr. Harper,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “You’ll address me as Mr. Harper.”

  Like cold hell I will. I was stirring up a good growl when I came to my senses. I swear, sometimes Red’s planet tries to order me around. I don’t want to die. Mostly I don’t, anyways.

  Got-a-Gun-I’m-a-Big-Man seemed to want me to say something.

  I made it meek and squeaked a little, “Mr. Harper,” like an apology. Was I supposed to curtsy, too?

  But this was my home. Mine and Guy’s. I could have had a decent life here. Could have had.

  Truth was, a part of me was ready to die, had been for nigh a decade.

  Junior took a hard step toward me. I let him close the distance without flinching, playing chicken. Clearly, I was supposed to cower, give ground, back up.

  Oh, his anger spiked in a hurry. He lunged, grabbing at my waist with one hand for the do-all in its scabbard on my belt. Quick as a snake, he had my tool in his own pocket. He waved the gun toward the table and I took a seat like I’m the kind of gal that hops to whenever a guy points. Next he’d be wanting me on my knees, scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush and I’d tell him to take a flying leap from—

  Whoa, Red’s planet must be sending me orders. I needed to stick my head in a bucket to block the signals, but there was no bucket handy at the dining table.

  Guy’s fancy tape measure was there, next to a pile of cooking magazines and his bottles of vitamins. I let my hands rest near it. I reckoned I could stomach whatever was going to happen, but it’d
be nice if someone else knew what Junior had done.

  It would have been good, I realized in a flood, if someone other than my folks knew what I had done.

  Guy was the person I wanted to tell.

  But I had to pick between clearing things up about me or about Patsy-Lynn.

  One smart, good thing waited for me to do it. And I owed her.

  Here I come, Smart Good Thing.

  When I fidgeted one hand on Guy’s fancy tape measure gadget, Junior didn’t get much madder, so I did it, pressed the record button on the tape measure, and cut to the chase.

  “But why’d you kill Patsy-Lynn, Mr. Harper?”

  Junior did throat clearing that would send most dogs running for cover and didn’t help my nerves one lick. Then he allowed, “It just happened. I didn’t mean to hurt her, but she made me so mad.”

  I looked at the tape measure and wondered if it had recorded what he finally said or if it had run out of recording space back when he was working his tonsils and sinuses.

  “Put that down,” he ordered.

  Of course, I obeyed. And when he cocked his wrist toward the door, using the pistol to tell me what to do, I headed outside without a word, still wondering what was in his paper bag.

  * * *

  So this was how things were going to end for me? Turning Over a New Leaf aside, this wasn’t my plan. My plan was I’d make it on my own, be nice, be good and responsible and try not to muck up anyone else’s life, ever again. What was this now, payback?

  This would not be a good time to bawl, but I sure felt put upon.

  Outside, he motioned me to Ol’ Blue. “Let’s take a ride,” he said, his voice so low and measured I started to sweat.

  Really, really bad, I didn’t want to take a ride. And it made me wonder how he’d gotten there in the first place, being as there was no other vehicle in the driveway. I wondered really, really hard if I’d done that stupid tape measure thing right.

  Charley knew I was scared and he gave little growls as he followed us toward Ol’ Blue, but all Junior had to do was cock an arm back like he was throwing a rock. Charley kept his distance. And Red, he’s not the kind of friend who goes to bat on this kind of a problem—someone taking me for a one-way ride. I’d never had this kind of problem before.

  That silly tape recorder measuring gadget was right in the middle of the table. Guy would have to see it. He’d press the button. He’d hear Junior confess to killing Patsy-Lynn. And then Guy would call out the cavalry or some such.

  Wouldn’t he?

  Or maybe Guy would record that he wanted to cut a board about two feet long for a lid on the goose pen and my last evidence would vanish.

  Chapter 26

  RED MET MY GAZE, A HORSE question on his face. I had no answer to think back at him. It had taken so long to track him down, to recover the horse of my ten-year-old’s heart. The journey had taken me here, to Cowdry, here to Vine Maple Lane. With my ponytail screwed around one thumb, I didn’t think any better. I twisted it the other way, but still couldn’t wring a worthwhile thought out of my muddled mind.

  “Quit fucking around like that,” Junior snarled.

  My hands dropped to my sides. Mama never put it to me that way. Maybe if she had, I wouldn’t have this little hair-twisty habit thing going on.

  He was still staring at me, breathing hard, looking like he wanted to hurt something.

  “Okay,” I said, real ready to not play with my hair anymore.

  “Okay, what?” His voice was full of suggestion in the most school-me way imaginable.

  Oh, it hurt. But he had all the marbles, so to speak, even if he didn’t seem to have his own. “Okay, Mr. Harper.”

  He looked mighty well pleased with that comment. “Get in the truck and start it up.” He motioned with his pistol then gave me a look, like an answer was needed.

  “Okay, Mr. Harper.” I hated this form of Simon Says. I climbed in behind the wheel and turned my key enough to get the glow plugs to start warming.

  “I said start it up,” Junior snarled.

  His agitation was a bulging thing. I didn’t need him any more menacing. I said very softly, “It’s a diesel. I can’t start it yet, got to wait for the glow plugs.”

  By then the batteries had done their job and I was able to comply with Junior’s demand just as his tiny brain realized I wasn’t being a mule on sheer principle.

  And then he did the strangest bit, he set his paper bag in his lap and pulled a little plastic baggie out of his pocket. There was a bloody hanky in it that he shook right into Ol’ Blue’s glove box. From an inside pocket, he flicked out a baggie of greenbacks, twenties, I think. He stuffed the cash in my glove box, too.

  The grin he gave me was not of this species.

  “Where to?” I asked with a good gulp. Then I added the Mr. Harper title to keep his Lordship happy. And while I was wondering, what’s with the “Mr. Harper” crap, I shook with the sudden realization that Guy might play the recording on his fancy measuring tape and think I was talking to the real Mr. Harper, this idiot’s old man, which would leave things boned but good.

  Junior cleared his throat again, looking straight ahead. Twilight was dropping and it made him look creepier. “What’s going to happen is, you’re going to write a note explaining everything. Once we get to where we’re going, you’re going to do that.”

  As interesting as this bit of news was, I couldn’t manage to get excited, being as I didn’t know what he was talking about. I kept thinking about how Mr. Harper—the real Mr. Harper—seemed to think his son was okay enough even though it seemed he knew the boy was a cantle short of a decent saddle. He wouldn’t break with this no-good stinker he’d spawned. Maybe if he had, his wife would be alive and I wouldn’t be heading for the hills with the world’s biggest chunk of walking human beef who bore the world’s biggest idiocy and inferiority complexes, with both meters pegged.

  I drove Ol’ Blue down Vine Maple Lane and took a right when His Excellency ordered me to.

  No doubt about it, I figured, Old Man Harper should have gotten shed of this kid of his long ago. He knew, part of him knew anyways, that his kid was trouble.

  Once, I’d started to tell my mama that you couldn’t break with your own child, but I realized how stupid I, of all people on the planet, would sound saying such a thing. After all, just because I was now a decade past being thirteen when Jesse, the seventeen-

  year-old liar who was my supposed boyfriend . . . And my folks, well, ten years and change didn’t make that friendless situation set any better with me.

  Just where did my so-called friends think I was that near-year that my daddy told everyone I was with my mama and my mama told everyone I was with my daddy?

  Anyways, it’d need more than a decade for forgetting.

  On the highway, Junior kept the gun pointing at my ribs then had me drive the gravel road into the Forest Service land where I’d been earlier, this time taking the first spur road, the one that goes up Dry Valley.

  He graduated to pointing the gun at my head, maybe just because there was no traffic. With no one to witness his assault on me, Junior could get away with it. Just like a bully.

  He looked like a man with a plan and I realized one thing I should have asked Dixon Talbot that morning was where he’d picked Junior up. I bet it was around here. Maybe Talbot had been going up to the Buckeye ranch, snooping around for a job, then on his way down the forest land, he came across Junior, afoot.

  If Junior had been slipping off this trailhead—definitely the road less traveled—it made all the difference. I knew where I was going now.

  The road got narrower and rougher. When I saw the stranded Suzuki Samurai, I slowed Ol’ Blue. Junior picked up my appointment book and his paper bag, then motioned with the pistol that I should stop the truck. I wanted to burst out of Ol’ Blue, make a run for it.

  My eyes went to the Solquists’ mare, Misty, thirty feet away. She whinnied at our arrival, mournful, no longer the indignan
t screams I’d heard before.

  Junior ignored her, looked at the flat left front tire on the Suzuki.

  Misty was tied to an old high line that ran between two trees. She stood in the remains of a beat-up bale of timothy that was trampled into the mud of a little spring feeding Grass Creek.

  Junior grabbed my mecate reins off the truck floor, and a tiny speck of hope fired up within me. Even though we’d driven twenty-­odd miles to get here, we were probably only five miles straight south of his daddy’s fancy house, even closer to the old Harper cottage out back of their main outfit. This old dirt trail probably ran straight to that cottage. Ol’ Blue wouldn’t fit any farther down, but the track looked to be drivable with the Samurai.

  Things might be okay. Maybe Junior just wanted help moving the horse or needed a lift because of his flat. I could see how he mistook the Solquists’ mare for Liberty in the dark, one little gunmetal gray Arab mare for another. Misty was chunky, but not pregnant. I figured Junior had put the plywood over the cattle guard at the end of the Solquists’ driveway and just led Misty from the vehicle, tied her to the bumper or led her from the window as he drove right down the Flying Cross driveway past the old cottage and beyond, straight to this hideaway camp.

  It didn’t use up too much of my imagination to picture Junior getting a flat tire then hiking out the short way to the forest road. Then Dixon Talbot had chanced upon him and given him a lift.

  Junior grabbed my day planner off the dash, killed Ol’ Blue’s ignition, then turned on my headlights, which I hate, because hey, my truck batteries—

  “Get out.”

  Get out is what I did. It was better in the early evening air, looking at a pretty little horse, not cooped up in my truck’s cab with a whackjob and his pistol. He threw his paper bag at me. I wasn’t sure whether to duck or catch, but I caught it and found a can of flat tire fixer. Apparently I had chores to do.

  I attached the nozzle to the left front tire stem of his Suzuki, pumping it up with the can’s compressed air and sealant. The moon would be full, but it had not yet risen above the dying day, so the headlights helped. Junior just grunted while I fixed his flat tire. The man was built to have servants.