Deadly Odds

by Jean Chapman

  ‘Sure, they hope for “the lot” but …’ Cannon began.

  ‘No, no,’ Charlie would not let him denigrate Austin’s work, ‘that’s the best double whammy – or is it a triple whammy? – I’ve ever heard of. That’s near genius.’

  ‘It’s skating on very thin ice,’ Cannon said.

  ‘It’s putting your head on the line big time,’ Charlie agreed, ‘and you’ve undertaken to do what?’

  ‘To keep Babs safe, out of the way, well, and you, come to that.’

  ‘I can look after myself,’ he said darkly,’ and Babs … I’d stop at nothing to keep her safe.’

  Cannon glanced quickly at the farrier, who was built like a blacksmith should be, but was so sensitive to other’s needs – was Babs taking Tilly Anders’ place in his affections? The man had had little repayment for his long devotion to that lady vet.

  ‘But we came with her to recover her son,’ Charlie confirmed, ‘so what’s the first step?’

  ‘We move to the ranch tomorrow,’ Cannon confirmed.

  ‘On the same highway as—’

  ‘You must not go off anywhere without discussing it first.’ Cannon’s voice held a hard ring of authority. ‘We have to play this all very, very, carefully.’

  The two had agreed that, for the time being, it would achieve nothing but add anguish for Babs to reveal that Jonathan was anywhere but with his father.

  That evening during the chat, the reminiscences, the regrets and the hopes for the future, Cannon watched Lucas as he came and went. The more he watched, the more he wanted to talk to him in private. Lucas was a man with something on his mind.

  Cannon and Charlie had been given spacious bedrooms at the back of the single-storey ranch house and while he made a pretence of going to bed, he was not many minutes in his room before he was finding his way back to the porch where Lucas was still putting things to rights, straightening chairs, picking up glasses from side tables.

  ‘You forgotten something, Mr Cannon?’ he asked without looking up.

  ‘I think you’re a man with something on your mind,’ he said with quiet directness, ‘want to tell me?’

  ‘The kitchen’s this way,’ Lucas said, giving him a quick appreciative glance, ‘we can talk better there.’

  Cannon was pleased to see that the room he led him to was not a vast area trying to be all things, but a proper old-fashioned comfortable kitchen with a large canopied stove, serious work surfaces, a couple of old cretonne-covered easy chairs, and on a dog bed between the chairs, a middle-sized hound, which rose slowly, arched its back, stretched, then came towards Cannon.

  ‘Lola’s O.K,’ Lucas reassured him, ‘she’ll know you mean no harm.’

  Cannon extended a hand for the bitch to smell, thinking it was a curious animal, brindle with sandy red spots and eyes that reminded him of cracked old glass marbles shot through with blue and grey.

  Lola wagged her tail and resumed her seat on the bed, looking ready to watch and listen to all that passed.

  ‘She knows who’s friendly, dogs pick up the vibes,’ Lucas said, gesturing for him to make himself at home. ‘A drink, Mr Cannon? I allow myself a bourbon when the family have all retired.’

  Cannon nodded, Lucas would feel more at ease if both had a drink in their hands.

  ‘You’ve been with this family a long time,’ Cannon began.

  ‘Twenty years and more.’

  ‘Part of the family you could say.’

  ‘I’m devoted to them,’ he said, ‘I just remember Miss Babs before she went away,’ he said and his voice took on a sterner note as he added, ‘and I feel that you and Mr Charlie are not telling all you know.’

  ‘Tell me why you think that,’ Cannon said.

  ‘Cos of what I’ve heard in town.’

  Cannon waited, neither questioning, nor showing any impatience, the method usually paid off with what he privately termed “good sincere folk”.

  Lucas took a swig of his whiskey. ‘Some evenings I go into town, my mother still lives there in the family home, and I have friends. We meet up and have a few,’ he raised his glass, ‘together. I was in town a couple of nights ago, in our usual bar, when I overheard a man on the next table, a guy who I know lives and works over at Palm Spring Ranch, trying to pull off a posh English accent. The others on the table were scoffing at him, saying no one really talked like that, and a bit of an argument broke out. They’d all drunk too much. Someone asked if the man was a friend of the boss, a visitor. He was told if he was, he was having to stay longer than he wanted to, and he was not allowed to go anywhere on his own, not even to the john.’

  The only sound in the kitchen now was the low hum of a fridge and the sound of the stove cooling down, as Lucas went on in a low voice. ‘Neither of you looked at Miss Babs much this evening. Mr Brown frowned nearly all the time, like he was concentrating on not saying the wrong thing. This, and Valdes English “visitor”, made me wonder what you both knew, what you were hiding from the family.’

  Cannon instinctively glanced towards the door as he decided it would be policy to take this man into their confidence.

  ‘No one is there, the dog will tell us,’ Lucas reassured him.

  ‘Jonathan Beale is in the hands of Zach Valdes. He was snatched as part of a revenge tactic after …’ He paused, unsure how much Lucas might know of the gang warfare in the area.

  ‘The Harvester,’ Lucas supplied, adding, ‘his father was called the Al Capone of Kentucky. No one stopped Valdes Senior either, as many families, mine included, know to their cost.’

  ‘The police have plans …’ Cannon began.

  ‘Plans!’ Lucas laughed ironically. ‘They’ve had plans for years! What they need is an army – tanks – to penetrate Valdes’ security, and then…’ his voice fell to grim certainty, ‘and then there’d be no hope for Jonathan Beale if anything’s tried. He’d be the first to go. All my father did was warn off one of Valdes men, trying to time one of Mr Beale’s horses on our gallops. This time of year it was, leading up to Kentucky Derby. My father never reached home that night, and we never saw …’

  ‘Saw justice done,’ Cannon said quietly.

  ‘No.’ Lucas shook his head, put his bourbon on the floor between his feet. ‘We never saw my father again, either. One man came forward, thought he had seen him with one of Valdes’ men in a truck going towards Pine Wood but it was never proved, there was no trace – and he was never found.’

  Cannon knew at that moment he could not just sit tight at this ranch and let things happen. ‘How well do you know Pine Wood Ranch, the whole estate, the ranch, the homesteads?’ he asked.

  ‘Well enough,’ Lucas answered briefly.

  ‘Could a man get in and have a look round, where an army couldn’t?’

  Lucas looked at him quizzically, then grinned, a great white-toothed grin of relief. ‘This man could,’ he said, and indicating Lola, ‘and this dog could.’

  ‘What about two men and a dog?’

  CHAPTER 19

  Sixty miles in America was, it seemed to Cannon, hardly regarded as a journey. The roads were straight, the miles swept quickly by. With Lucas driving, he could look around in the fading light. He thought it all looked like the hillier parts of the English countryside only on a grand scale. He had tentatively asked about the wildlife. Lucas had laughed.

  ‘There’s snakes, but the most dangerous thing we’ll encounter will be our kind – men.’

  ‘Here’s where we take to the back roads, the Valdes land is some fifteen miles ahead,’ Lucas went on as he took a right-hand turn Cannon had not even noticed. This soon became little more than a track.

  ‘Hang on,’ Lucas said, ‘it gets a bit rough hereabouts. Hunters use this way, but when they’re some ten miles in, they go to the right to the hills, we’ll park just beyond there and walk left. We’ll be on Valdes land from that point.’ He paused. ‘You know I could still go on my own from there, take the dog, and you wait with the jeep.’

  ‘N
o way, my friend,’ Cannon stated. ‘We’re in this together.’

  He had heard from Jane how important Lucas was to White Picket Ranch. Lucas could not absent himself from the household at any time without explanation. Other staff drove in daily, Lucas was, as Jane Beale told him, ‘an extension to the family’.

  Cannon had also realized just how forceful Jane Beale was, could see how when she was a girl she had triggered such a violent response from Spracks. Two innocent American girls – and how he had made them pay! He had crippled Jane and lured Babs into a kind of captivity, a sexual slavery that had ended in motherhood, as it usually did for such girls. Whatever else, Jane had regained all her spirit. It had been Jane who had more or less called a meeting earlier that day.

  ‘There’s an atmosphere,’ she had declared. ‘Something’s going on! And I think it’s something to do with Babs’s son, this nephew of mine I have never seen.’ She had then looked directly and expectantly at Cannon.

  ‘I am not a policeman, have not been for some years,’ he had said after a long pause, every eye in the room on him, ‘but I am working with one particular brave, clever policeman, an old colleague, and his life and many others could be forfeit if I misjudge this.’

  Tom Beale had cleared his throat and caught Babs’s hand as she had started forward. Jane had lifted her chin challengingly, realigned her wheelchair and said, ‘Right, let’s have it, the truth, everything. I reckon we’ll have dealt with worse.’

  By no means sure that was true, Cannon had told all he knew of Jonathan’s possible whereabouts. Lucas had told of the gossip heard in a Louisville bar.

  ‘Lucas thinks the man he overheard lives in at the main Valdes bunkhouse, so it’s possible they are holding Jonathan there.’

  ‘And tonight we go to check,’ Lucas had said, ‘we’ll take my dog Lola, she’ll keep us safe.’

  Charlie had been subdued, looking from one to the other, and Cannon was pleased when Babs asked, ‘And you will leave Charlie here with us? We need one of you to stay.’

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Jane endorsed.

  Charlie and Tom Beale had come out to see them off, take their hands. Cannon remembered the anxiety and the goodwill in those handshakes as Lucas doused the headlights and drove slowly, turning into a denser patch of trees on their left and killed the engine.

  ‘There’ll be a fitful moon,’ Lucas said quietly once he had slung a small haversack on his back, put Lola on her leash and supplied Cannon with a walking pole. ‘If anything does go wrong and you have to find your way back here alone, look to the skyline, up to the ridge of hills on your right, then pan slowly down to a dark patch of fir trees, there are three huge clumps spaced down those hills, they show up well when your eyes are accustomed to the night. The third one is right there.’ Lucas’s hand and arm went in front of his face to point some fifty metres in front of where they were parked.

  ‘OK’

  ‘You follow me,’ Lucas said, ‘tread in my footsteps as best you can. The dog will keep us away from anything in the woods that’s dangerous.’

  ‘Good!’

  ‘I used to come hunting out here with my father,’ Lucas went on, ‘later on my own, and after my father disappeared I came, like this at night, and searched. Nearly got caught but my pa’s old dog, Lola’s grandfather, slipped his collar, bounded forward, was shot dead. He saved me, but after that I’ve kept away.’

  ‘Until now.’

  ‘The family’s future is at stake,’ he said gruffly, ‘they’ve had enough tragedies in their lives too. But now we have a fair trek, and it’s better we do not talk.’

  They were immediately in the woods, the trees very tall, the season making their leaves spread and burgeon. The moon did no more than filter down, touching an ankle-high mist with a strange blue fluorescent light. Cannon had the sensation that he was walking under water, for as they moved, the blue mist rose around them. It was strange, eerie, and as his eyes got used to the azure gloom, it looked as if the woods went on forever.

  He was brought back from this almost dreamlike state as Lucas, who he had been slavishly following, suddenly stepped aside, pulled sideways by the dog, and as he belatedly followed suit, Cannon caught a glimpse of a long monster, dark chevrons marking its pale length. Then he heard the warning of a rattle, like loud, belligerent, rasping birdsong. The moon disappeared behind a bank of cloud – and he walked into Lucas’s back.

  Lucas now took his sleeve and manoeuvred him until they stood side by side, and Cannon saw they had arrived at some habitation. The square lights of windows shone through bushes set along the edge of paths around a long wooden building, with several smaller buildings spaced around. This had to be the bunkhouse. This was where they left random wildness, for a more dangerous place, where man dictated the order of things.

  They drew very slowly nearer, then all three froze as a row of outside lights flared, illuminating a path from the main building towards a number of what looked like mini ranch houses, each with a front porch. Cannon sensed these were a surprise to Lucas, new. Then he caught a glimpse of someone as they moved on the porch nearest to where they stood, caught a whiff of cigarette smoke – then watched as action triggered reaction.

  A man, bare chested, shirt flowing loose, came out of the main building, calling back to others inside. The woman who had been smoking outside now moved inside, lights came on, and they saw her move across the room. She was in a light pink dressing gown.

  They watched as the man came along the path, swayed across the porch, through the door and into the room. Immediately there were raised voices – and raised arms, the woman to defend herself – the man to bring his forearm savagely across the woman’s face, knocking her down, out of their sight. He stood over her, seemed to spurn her with his foot. Then she reappeared, hand over her nose, a dark splatter down her pale gown. She turned and ran for the door. He lurched after her, but she was quicker, across the porch and out onto the grass. He started after her, and she ran, looking back more than where she was going.

  The dog moved aside as she came straight for them. The man got to the porch steps, half fell down them, as Cannon caught her in his arms, covered her mouth and whispered in her ear, ‘Keep quiet, you’re safe.’

  The man had recovered his footing and was shouting, ’Aarh! Yer not worth the trouble, you’ll crawl back when you’re hungry.’

  Only when he had gone back inside did the woman struggle, but then Lucas’s bulk loomed into her view, and she must have felt she had jumped from frying pan into the fire. Cannon felt her try to gasp beneath his hand, then she went limp in his arms and he had trouble stopping her from falling to the ground.

  In a second, Lucas was scooping her up and carrying her back the way they had come. Cannon took charge of the dog, and followed.

  They had not gone far when Lucas took a sharp turn away from the direction that led to the parking area, and soon they were labouring uphill. Cannon heard him say, ‘You’re all right, missy, be still,’ as they reached rocks and Lucas led the way between them until it seemed they were in the middle of a sizeable outcrop.

  Here Lucas stopped and lowered her to her feet. ‘We mean you no harm,’ he said quietly.

  She sank to the ground with a sob. ‘It’s what you all say,’ she muttered.

  ‘I’ve a light,’ he said and pulled the small haversack from his shoulders. He produced a small hooded lantern, then, seeing the blood smeared across her face, fumbled to unwrap something in the bag, after a few seconds producing a cloth.

  The woman’s hand trembled as she took it, put it to her face. Lucas and Cannon squatted down, so for the first time she saw their faces, and the dog settled next to her.

  ‘A friendly dog?’ she questioned, but it was Lucas she stared at.

  ‘We mean you no harm,’ Cannon said, ‘and if you are here against your will …’

  She made no response to the unspoken offer, asking her own question, ‘Why are you here?’

  ‘Because we are looking f
or a young Englishman,’ Lucas told her and related his experience in the Louisville bar.

  ‘I know,’ she said, ‘I was there.’

  ‘Mr Cannon offered to help her out if she was being kept against her will, but it’s not quite like that,’ Lucas reported to the family gathering some hours later.

  Cannon felt no one had actually been to bed; fresh coffee had been on the stove and Babs, Jane and their grandfather assembled in the kitchen when they had arrived back in the early hours of the morning.

  ‘If she’s not a prisoner, she’s being kept there by something!’ Babs declared, at once passionately identifying with another young woman’s problems.

  ‘She told us they get taken out, bought nice things, but they never have any money,’ Lucas explained, ‘payment in kind, they say, the men—’

  ‘But she was being knocked about, abused,’ Babs interrupted, ‘and you took her back?!’

  ‘The woman has a sister there,’ Cannon stated.

  ‘In the same situation?’ Tom Beale asked sharply.

  ‘In one of the other bungalows,’ Cannon went on. ‘They were more or less picked out of the gutter when they were fifteen and sixteen. They’d lost both parents in a factory accident, were sleeping rough and Leah was trying to hold down a waitress’s job,’ he paused, ‘but Leah will try to help us if we can get her and her sister out.’

  ‘If she helps us find my great grandson, I’ll find work and homes for the two of them here,’ Tom Beale promised.

  ‘Yes, fine talk,’ the outspoken Jane declared, ‘but how is this all going to come about?’

  ‘All the girls from the bungalows are taken out, to bars, the races. They’re bought fabulous hats and dresses each year for Kentucky Derby Day,’ Lucas told them, ‘the men like to show them off …’

  ‘But if one of them steps out of line,’ Cannon added quietly, ‘it may be the last thing she does.’