by Leigh Hearon
“That’s not what the sheriff says.”
One part of Annie’s brain wildly reminded her that she was now talking about the case, which she’d been firmly admonished not to do. But there was no chance of getting out of this conversation. She wondered why she felt so light-headed. Perhaps she’d imbibed a bit more tequila than she’d thought.
“Really? He didn’t say that to me.”
“Well, maybe you ought to talk to him again.”
Aha. This was Annie’s cue, the one she’d just learned.
“Sorry,” she said brightly. “No can do. But my attorney will be happy to talk to the sheriff.”
There was a brief silence. The leader appeared flummoxed, unsure of what to say next. Annie glanced around and weighed her options. She had none. All the convenient exit doors were blocked by the mob in front of her and other patrons.
“Let me tell you something, Annie.” The man made her name sound like a piece of disgusting garbage. “We’ve just about had it up to here with all you liberal dope-smoking freaks coming in here to ‘save’ our horses. You spread lies. You tell the media how bad we are, when all we’re doing is what we’ve been doing for the last hundred years. So why don’t you just pack up and go home where you can hug a tree or something? You’re not welcome here.”
Tinker stood up so fast her chair back clattered on the floor.
“Leave us alone, or we’re calling the police.”
The leader glanced at Tinker’s diminutive stature, shook his head in exaggerated disbelief, and turned to face his compatriots.
“Hear that, boys? If we don’t leave, she’s going to call the po-lice.”
The group laughed heartily.
“Why, there’s no need for that, little missy. We got the po-lice right here, don’t we, Ray?”
A man from the back slowly shouldered his way to the front. He didn’t look happy at being called out in front of the group.
“This here’s Ray Goddard,” the big man said. “One of Browning’s very own deputies. Ray, tell Miss Annie how we feel about her being in our town.”
Ray was young and lanky, and looked a bit green around the mouth. Annie suspected he resented being called out to confront her.
“May I see your identification, please?” Tinker’s question was politely stated, but with all the gravitas Annie knew she could muster.
Ray glared at the leader and dug his police identification out of his pocket.
Tinker and Annie both peered at it. It was Ray, all right, but he looked about sixteen years old. It must have been taken the day he’d graduated from the academy.
“Well, Ray, what do you have to say to Annie here?” Annie noticed the man appeared to enjoy goading the deputy as much as he did her.
“I know the sheriff has ordered you not to leave town,” he began, a little uncertainly.
“See?” Annie turned to the leader and gave what she hoped was a dazzling smile. “I couldn’t leave your charming city even if I wanted to!”
The group behind her shifted uneasily. Ray took a deep breath and spoke more forcefully. “But maybe you should take my friend’s advice and leave. It might be safer. You might still have a truck to drive out in.”
“That’s right,” the leader menacingly added. “Although she should be in jail right now for what she’s done.”
A Hispanic man in a white shirt and bow tie thrust his body into the mix.
“Señores! Señores! Stop badgering this young woman or I must ask you all to leave. Please! This is not good for the other patrons. Please, go to your tables and calm down.”
It was all the encouragement Ray needed. He turned his back on Annie and started to move through the crowd. The leader gave Annie and Tinker one last glare, then grudgingly joined the rest of the men, who had chosen to follow the deputy. Annie watched the group slowly make its way back to the bar area in the next room. To her surprise, the men didn’t stop but exited through the rear door. Annie fleetingly wondered whether they had paid their bar tabs before leaving.
* * *
Annie and her four new friends continued the party long after the sullen men had departed. The owner quickly brought over a fresh pitcher of margaritas and several delicious tapas.
“On the house,” he assured the women. “Men like that are not welcome in my restaurant.”
The conversation became more animated with every replenished glass. Tinker, despite her small stature, did a stunningly realistic rendition of the leader’s bombastic stance and coarse talk. Everyone thought the way Annie had stood up to him showed incredible courage, and Annie found herself getting more compliments than she’d ever received in her life. Maria was adamant about filing a complaint with the sheriff’s office about the unbecoming behavior of one of his deputies and would have queried all the patrons about what they’d seen and heard if the rest of the women hadn’t convinced her that the owner’s statement would do. At eleven o’clock, the ebullient group of women wandered out of the tapas bar and into the cool evening air.
As much as she tried to downplay the earlier ugly encounter, Annie knew that the threats that had been made against her tonight were real. She had no intention of letting down her guard as long as she was forced to stay in the vicinity. Giving in to heartfelt hugs from each of the women, she assured them all she would keep in touch, clasped the bag of tapas the owner had made up for her now very hungry dog, located her truck, and after carefully looking four ways, slowly made the drive from Loman back to Browning and her now-familiar motel.
* * *
Wolf had been granted the rare treat of consuming food inside the truck; it was so late that Annie didn’t want to deprive him any longer. So the matter of cleaning up after her blue heeler’s enthusiastic inhalation of yummy tapas made her unaware of what had happened in her absence. Wolf, who had jumped out upon their arrival, alerted her with his trademark growl that insinuated someone bad was in their territory.
She grabbed a flashlight out of her glove compartment and trained it on her dog. Wolf was standing at full alert in front of Jessica’s horse trailer. Annie slowly moved the light across the body of the vehicle. Someone—in fact, probably several people—had taken baseball bats to the windows and aluminum siding. The formerly gleaming panels were now crunched and distorted from repeated blows. Whoever had done the damage was vicious. Every double-paned window spanning the length of the trailer had been smashed. Every one of the tires had been flattened.
Annie ran to the rear. The doors were gaping open; the cable lock that had secured them had been jaggedly sawn off and flung inside. Annie didn’t want to look, but she forced herself to point the flashlight into the interior. It was strewn with garbage, obliterating all the clean shavings she’d scattered earlier. She nearly gagged from the stench.
Suddenly weary, Annie walked back to her truck and unlocked the toolbox bolted to the outside bed. She found a few bungee cords and another lock. Returning to the wreck of the trailer, she managed to secure the back doors, garbage still inside, so they could not be reopened. She then went to her truck to unbolt her trusty Winchester from the rifle stanchion inside the cab. The gun rack was empty. Damn! She’d forgotten—her Winchester was now in the hands of the sheriff’s office for testing. Had the goons known that when they’d decided to destroy the horses’ transport? Probably, if Ray Goddard was among them. Well, she had her own backup. She whistled for Wolf. He gave a small, inquisitive whine, but obediently trotted over to her side.
Cautiously, she approached the insubstantial door to her motel room. Shining a light on her lock, she could see no perceptible damage, but that hardly gave her confidence. It would be child’s play to jimmy the room lock without leaving any visible traces. But she couldn’t stand outside forever. She quickly turned her room key in the lock, flung open the door, and flipped on the lights. Nothing. Everything in the room appeared intact, and a quick search showed that nobody else was there. Whoever had wreaked such terrible destruction on the trailer had not penetrat
ed her temporary domicile. She should have been thankful for small blessings, but she was not. She was fuming.
It took Annie several hours to fall asleep that night, and when she did, she awakened at the slightest perceived noise. The images of the destroyed trailer kept flashing through her brain. The one that stood out among all others was that of the words scrawled in bright red paint along the side of the trailer: GO HOME.
At the moment, there was nothing Annie would have rather done.
CHAPTER 16
FRIDAY MORNING, AUGUST 12
The trailer looked even worse by light of day. Annie slowly walked around the circumference, feeling more disheartened at every turn. The brake lights had been pulverized. The slides on the windows were mangled and wouldn’t shut. The miscreants who’d done this hadn’t even spared the dome light inside the trailer.
There was no doubt in Annie’s mind who was responsible for this despicable act. The question was what to do about it. She hoped she could find a competent mechanic to examine the rig and determine the extent of the damage. At least then she’d know whether or not she could use it for transport, graffiti scrubbed off or not. But what was the point of reporting the vandalism to the police, when Annie was pretty sure Deputy Goddard had been part of the goon squad that had wielded the baseball bats so effectively? Would she simply be laughed out of the sheriff’s office?
It was a question for Alvin Gilmore. He needed to know about the incident, and, for once, Annie was glad to let someone else decide how best to proceed. She pulled out her cell and Alvin’s business card, punched in his number, and walked to the one side of the trailer the graffiti artists had missed.
“Are you all right?” was Alvin’s first question. He’d picked up on the first ring and listened without interruption as Annie had described in detail the events of the night before, starting with the threats at the bar.
“I’m fine,” she said, and heard a small sigh of relief on his end of the line. “But I wish I had my rifle right now. As you know, the sheriff removed it from my gun rack the day George Fullman was killed.”
“Did you give it voluntarily?”
Annie paused. “Frankly, I didn’t think I had much of a choice. But yes, I told him he could test it, and he gave me a receipt for it after he interrogated me.”
Alvin Gilman, Annie was pleased to note, did not correct her use of the verb “interrogate.”
“Well, you really didn’t have much of a choice. If you’d refused, the sheriff would have gotten a search warrant for it. So you did the right thing.”
“Now what should I do? Should I report the incident to the sheriff’s office? Or should I just lick my wounds and look for a good mechanic?”
Merely licking her wounds was precisely what Annie did not want to do, nor did she think she could stand to do so, even if Alvin suggested this.
“God, no. You need to report this. If you haven’t already, take detailed photos of all the damage. Talk to the night clerk and see if he or she heard anything. It would be awfully strange if they didn’t. Although if the motel staff claims they heard nothing, we can assume they’re either too scared to talk or have been paid off.”
How reassuring, Annie thought.
“But let me make the first move. Neither the sheriff nor the prosecutor returned my phone calls from yesterday, but I’ll make damn sure I get through this morning. Let me tell the sheriff first what’s happened and what I think about citizens in his county terrorizing out-of-town visitors and destroying their property. At the same time, I’ll try to get a bead on how seriously they actually consider you as a suspect and remind them they have no cause to keep you here. And I’ll try to get your gun back. You have a legitimate need for protection right now.”
“If Sheriff Mullin would just let me go home with the horses, it would solve a lot of problems.”
“Yours, maybe. Not his. He’s got two murders on his hands, and clearly doesn’t have a clue as to where to look next. But letting his deputy play the bully is unacceptable. You’ve got a good basis for a lawsuit.”
“I just want to go home. Preferably in the trailer I came with and an unscathed truck.”
“I assume you’ve got insurance. Have you reported it to your insurance company yet?”
“It’s not even mine. It belongs to my equine vet back in Suwana County. She is not going to be amused.”
“Tell her she can sue, too. Just take photos, don’t touch anything you don’t have to, and wait for my text.”
* * *
Annie set to work recording the damage. By now, she felt like a pro with the smartphone camera. To her secret pride, she’d also discovered the video record button and was able to take a short clip of the entire truck, both inside and out. Hannah would be so proud, she thought, as she zoomed in on the bags of garbage, now surrounded by swarms of hungry flies. Unfortunately, the steps to downloading the photos and video—not to mention the photos she’d taken at the feedlot two days earlier—still eluded her. She figured this task could wait until she had returned home and could summon the eight-year-old computing wizard to pay a call.
Alvin’s text arrived just as she’d documented the last smashed window:
Sheriff has been properly rebuked. Promises to release rifle when you file report. Won’t give test results, but you wouldn’t get it back if it wasn’t clean. I’m betting you’ll get clearance to leave by EOD. Myrna’s still a no-show and looking more viable every hour she’s gone. IMO you can be polite and wait for his OK or go, as long as he has your contact info. Stay tuned, and stay safe. Alvin. P.S. You might think about changing motels.
Annie snorted. She could move to the other motel on the opposite end of town, but what was the point? Her F-250 would stick out just as much there as it did here. And she really didn’t want to distance herself further from the feedlot. She’d been poised to rescue the horses ever since she’d arrived five long days ago, and as soon as she was given the okay by the almighty sheriff, she intended to be on the road.
Except now she had no way to transport the horses.
Telling Jessica that her new, beautiful horse trailer might be headed for the salvage yard was going to be tough. But at least the bad news could be delivered in an air-conditioned space. Wolf already was in her motel bedroom, tucked into a corner where he got the full strength of the portable unit.
“You always were a lot smarter than me,” she told her blue heeler. “Move over. I need to make another phone call.”
Jessica was surprisingly calm. “That’s why I pay hideously high insurance premiums,” she told Annie. “I’ll file the claim today. Have you, by chance, taken any photos?” Jessica knew Annie’s limited skill set with anything technical.
“Yes, but I have no idea how to get them out of my new phone.”
“Let me teach you.”
Annie was doubtful, but under Jessica’s patient tutelage, starting with a lesson on how to put the call on speaker, she managed to forward the most graphic photos and the video to Jessica’s email account.
“Okay, great, Annie,” Jessica said a few minutes later. “Looks like they’ve all come through. Let’s take a look at the damage.”
Annie silently waited as Jessica began to look at the attached photos. The fury she’d expected to hear coming from her vet from the beginning now exploded in full force.
“Jesus God, Annie! What kind of monsters do they breed over in Loman? I can’t believe what I’m seeing!”
“Actually, I’m in Browning, which is about fourteen miles away, but the emotional intelligence quotient is about the same, hovering somewhere between one and zero.”
“I’m assuming the boys at the bar are responsible?”
“Either they did the damage or paid someone else to do it. But the time line’s right. They slink out of the bar, I continue to party with my new friends and come back to the motel four hours later to find your lovely trailer smashed to smithereens.”
“Well, the real question is the structural da
mage. Did you look underneath the body?”
“I took a quick look and, aside from the flattened tires, didn’t notice anything out of whack. But I’ll need to take it to a mechanic to make sure.”
“Unbelievable. Make them scrub that tag off. Even if it’s headed to the junkyard, I don’t want it to exist any longer than necessary.”
“Will do. Do you have any preference where it’s hauled? Not that we may have much of a choice. There seems to be one of everything here. One grocery store, one gas station, one barista stand. Browning doesn’t seem to foster the kind of competition that we expect in America. There may be only one or two mechanics in the entire county. And, of course, we have to hope that they don’t mind working for tree-hugging freaks like us.”
Jessica sighed. “See what you can find, Annie. I’ll ask my insurance company if they’d prefer the trailer just be hauled to the shop of their choice. But that puts you in a bind. You need a trailer to haul. And why aren’t you back yet? Lisa phoned me a couple of days ago telling me you’d got involved in yet another murder and been detained. What’s the hang-up?”
“Oh, nothing much. I’m still a suspect and have been told to hang around until my name is cleared.”
“No, seriously. What’s taking you so long?”
“I am serious. In fact, as Dan would say, I have officially lawyered up.”
“Where’s Marcus?”
“Jessica, as you know, I am an independent woman who does not rely on the kindness of others. At least, I used to be that woman. Marcus, bless his heart, is responsible for getting me legal counsel and has promised to rescue me on Sunday.”
“Well, thank heaven for that. Do you think the second murder has anything to do with Tony’s death?”
“Sorry, Jessica, I wish I could tell you what I think, but I can’t. Lawyer’s orders. I’ll let you know if I find any reputable repair shops that can handle horse trailers. Text me the claim number when you get it. And by the way, my attorney said to tell you he thinks you have an excellent civil case.”