The Last Chance Cafe

by Linda Lael Miller

  She stretched, getting comfortable, thinking she might actually get some rest. She closed her eyes and, at that moment, somewhere in the chilly autumn night, the animal she’d heard earlier—Chance had said it was a cougar—gave a long, keening screech, as if in torment.

  Hallie’s stomach jumped, and her heart wedged itself into her throat. Too distraught to formulate a prayer of her own, she used the one that came to mind, the one Lou had taught her when she was small. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep . . .

  Doc Whitman, still a ladies’ man at seventy-something, with his shock of white hair, rangy frame, and eyes full of both humor and sorrow, drew his truck to a stop in front of Chance’s barn and got out. He was pulling a small horse trailer behind him, and from the sounds of things, the devil himself was tied up inside.

  “Mornin’,” the older man said, with a pull at the brim of his misshapen hat. Like Chance, Doc wasn’t inclined to spend good money on fancy headgear.

  Chance, who had just finished working a three-year-old filly in the round pen back of the barn, frowned. “Mornin’,” he answered, and if he sounded a little suspicious, well, he was just going by past experience.

  “I brought you a hard case,” Doc said, going back to unlatch the trailer and cautiously open the door.

  Chance approached reluctantly. “Mighty generous of you,” he said, with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

  Doc laughed, a raucous, guffaw of a sound, but the expression in his eyes was grim. Even bleak. “Stay back,” he said. “I tranquilized this poor critter, but she’s still ready to turn inside out.”

  “Let me get her,” Chance insisted, approaching.

  “You always were a smooth talker,” the vet said, in sporting acquiescence, and stepped back out of the way. The cold morning sunlight struck his oversize belt buckle, the one set with the biggest chunk of turquoise Chance had ever seen. Jessie had brought that buckle back from one of her gallery tours, though both she and the Doc thought nobody knew it.

  Chance peered into the trailer, saw a good-looking black mare with three white stockings. “Easy,” he said, and laid a light hand on her flank. In his mind, he saw energy coursing through her, and she calmed a little. He slipped in beside her, untied her lead rope, and eased her backward, out of the trailer. “One of these days,” he told Doc Whitman, “you’re going to get me killed.”

  Whitman rubbed his chin, admiring the animal. “She’s a beauty, isn’t she? Her registered name’s Winslow’s Risk of Flight, but she’s called Sugar.”

  Chance had to agree that Sugar was a fine specimen, but she’d been out to pasture for a while. Her coat was shaggy, and her hooves needed work. She’d thrown a shoe, too, but it was the shivering in her flanks and the frantic roll of her eyes that garnered his attention. “What happened to her?” He knew the Winslows; they had a ranch down near Carson City. They were absentee owners, richer than God, and Chance had never warmed up to them.

  For a moment, the doc looked as though he might break down and cry. “Cougar got her foal a few days ago. Dragged it off. She’s been in a state ever since, I’m told, though nobody called me until last night. The straight of it is, as far as I can tell, this horse is having a nervous breakdown.”

  Chance swallowed the bile that surged into the back of his throat at the images playing in his mind—he’d seen what a bear or a wildcat could do to another animal—took the mare’s halter in his left hand, and ran his right down the length of her neck. She shrieked as if she’d been branded, and reared. Easy, he said again, this time silently. He saw the scene, as if through her eyes, heard and felt the terror she’d known and, worse, the terror of her foal. “Jesus,” he breathed aloud.

  “You can see she put up a fight,” Doc said, coming closer now that Sugar was out of the confined space of the trailer. Chance had already noticed the deep, recently treated wounds on her chest and forelegs.

  “What do you want me to do?” he asked. He was a strong man, he’d had to be, but when it came to the suffering of animals or children, his heart turned to glass.

  “Bring her back,” the doctor answered. “She’s the daughter’s horse. The kid’s been through hell with lupus this past year, according to the caretaker over there at the Winslow place, and the loss of this animal might just finish her off. Guess she lives for visits to the ranch, and spends just about all her time with Sugar when she’s there.”

  “I’m a rancher, not a horse whisperer,” Chance reminded his old friend. “What makes you think I can help?”

  “I’ve seen you straighten out a lot of messed-up horses, that’s what,” Doc answered shortly.

  Chance did know horses. He’d lost both his parents when his dad’s small plane crashed, back when he was seventeen, raised himself after that, with considerable help from Jessie, and spent every spare moment either in the barn or out in the pasture, with the animals. That passion had saved his sanity more than once. Except for a few years at the University of Nevada, and some rodeoing, he’d rarely left home.

  When he didn’t speak, Doc took up the slack. “What do you hear from Jessie?” He and Jessie had been an item for as long as Chance could remember, and they seemed to believe it was a big secret from the rest of the world. Rumor had it they’d had some kind of falling out before she went to off to sell the latest batch of weavings.

  “She’s fine, as far as I know,” Chance said. He found himself leading Sugar slowly toward the barn; mentally he’d already assigned her a stall. He would put her next to Rookie, and catty-corner from Cocoa, the sweet-natured bay mare.

  “I hear you rounded up a house-sitter for her.”

  Sugar balked, and Chance paused to reason with her, stroke her neck again. Even though it was cold outside, she was sweating and radiating heat like an old stove burning dry wood.

  “Hallie O’Rourke,” he answered, in due time, and in a casual tone. Or so she says, he thought.

  “Madge told me she’s filling in at the Last Chance. Where’d she come from?”

  “Phoenix, I think,” Chance replied distractedly, concentrating on the silent exchange he was having with the horse, and then wished he hadn’t revealed even that small scrap of information. Doc Whitman was a good man, through and through, but he got around, being the only large-animal vet in the immediate area, and he was gossipy when the mood took him.

  “She tell you that?”

  Chance wooed Sugar through the doorway of the barn and down the aisle toward the stall he’d chosen. There was a long, hard haul ahead, when it came to reaching the mare, but he was committed now, just as Doc had probably figured he would be. He’d never been able to resist a woman in trouble, whether she had two legs or four. “No,” Chance answered, “she didn’t say.”

  “Then how do you know she’s from Phoenix?”

  “I don’t,” he said, opening the stall gate, stirring the fresh cedar shavings on the floor with his boots as he stepped inside, willing the horse to follow. He’d seen a Phoenix address on the truck title she’d shown him, and guessed the rest, but he wasn’t about to go into detail. Hallie was scared, scared half out of her mind, and she probably had good reason for it. Until he knew for certain what she was dealing with, he intended to keep speculation to a minimum.

  Doc leaned against the stall door, after Chance and the mare were inside, his woebegone, craggy face wearing a wry expression. “You’re taken with her, aren’t you? This woman from Phoenix?”

  “I’m not sure she’s from Phoenix,” Chance said, feeling a little testy. He unfastened the lead rope from Sugar’s halter and stepped back to give her a little space.

  “You mentioned the place yourself.” Doc could be like a dog with a bone, when he was in his nosy mode.

  “I was just guessing, that’s all.”

  Doc let the subject drop. “This is a valuable animal,” he said, assessing the mare with bleak admiration. “The Winslows will pay handsomely if you can bring her around so their girl can ride her again. They figure
they’ll have to put her down otherwise, and they’re probably right. I don’t need to tell you that an animal like this is unpredictable—which makes her dangerous.”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” Chance agreed. He didn’t feel very confident at the moment, but he kept that to himself, like he did most things.

  “Their lawyer will fax you a contract sometime today,” said Doc, sounding relieved.

  “You were pretty damn sure of yourself, weren’t you?”

  Doc chuckled, shook his head. “On the contrary, Chance, it was you I was sure of, not me.”

  Chance eased backward to the stall gate, never taking his eyes off the mare until he was clear. He wouldn’t be any good to anybody if he let himself get careless. He’d seen better horsemen than he killed or injured by tame animals as well as wild ones, in all sorts of circumstances, and he wasn’t going that route if he could help it. He planned to die an old man, warm in his bed, with a flock of grandchildren fighting over his estate. “You explained to these people, I trust,” he said, “that this is just a hobby with me, and I don’t offer any guarantees?”

  “They’re clear on that,” Doc agreed, more mildly now. He’d turned his attention to Rookie, the little Palomino colt, who was shaping up to be a real knot-head. He belonged to a lady judge down in Reno, and she’d gotten him from some kind of animal rescue outfit. He was moving along about as fast as your average glacier, when it came to recovery, and the judge called every day for a progress report. “How’s the lad here?”

  Chance sighed. Rookie was out of the corner, but he had his head down and his ears pinned back, ready to kick the living shit out of anybody fool enough to get close to him. “I was going to call you, and I forgot, what with everything that’s been going on lately,” he said, missing the light that flickered briefly in the doctor’s eyes. “I think this little fella’s problem might be something internal.”

  Doc resettled his hat. Sighed. “Besides his attitude, you mean?”

  “Yeah. You X-rayed him, didn’t you? Ran all the usual tests?”

  Doc just looked at him, eyebrows raised. An old-fashioned country practitioner with a steady, modest practice, he was as thorough as they came. Chance would have taken his veterinary trade elsewhere if he hadn’t been as good as he was, a lifetime of friendship notwithstanding, but he trusted Whitman with all his animals.

  Chance shook his head, studying the colt. He felt a headache taking shape at the base of his neck. He’d missed breakfast, and he had to stop by Jessie’s place, whether he was so inclined or not, to look in on the livestock over there. Her protests aside, Hallie O’Rourke didn’t know jack-shit about ranch life, and he wasn’t going to trust her with the whole responsibility until he was sure she could handle it. Whether she liked that arrangement or not, that was the way it was.

  Doc startled him out of his reflections with a hard slap on the back. “You get a halter on Sport, here,” he said, indicating the Palomino, “and I’ll give him another going over. Draw some blood, feel around a little.”

  They had their own private rodeo of sorts, Chance and the doc, but between them they managed to subdue Rookie, at least partially, so that he could be examined.

  At one point in the struggle, Doc laughed out loud. “You ever think about getting yourself a real job?” he joked.

  Chance chuckled, shook his head. “Nope,” he answered. “How about you?”

  Hallie looked around the barn, early that October morning, pitchfork in hand, pleased with herself. She’d fed the horses, loaded the inevitable manure into a wheelbarrow, and pitched it into the huge disposal bin behind Jessie’s barn, all without getting trampled, bitten or slobbered on. Kiera and Kiley, ready for a new day, looked on from the stacks of hay, the former kneeling, with four kittens in her lap, the latter perched on the edge of a bale, feet swinging. She beamed her approval, and Hallie felt ridiculously proud of her accomplishment. “Okay,” she said, hanging the pitchfork in its proper place, “I’ll just rinse out the wheelbarrow with the hose, and we’ll be done.”

  “Are we going to work at the café now?” Kiera asked, getting into the spirit of the “we” thing.

  Hallie consulted her watch, then shook her head, smiling. Things seemed a lot less hopeless than they had the night before. “Not yet. We’ve got a little time. I’ll get cleaned up, and we’ll have some breakfast, and run some errands in town. We’ll do lessons tonight.”

  “What kind of errands?” Kiley wanted to know.

  “The kind where I buy you a brand-new, never-been-read-before book,” Hallie replied, with a bit of a flourish. Not so long ago, she’d thought nothing of virtually cleaning out Toys “R” Us or FAO Schwarz, and now she was looking forward to buying her daughters one small gift, something they would share. It felt good, this new approach. The simpler and more down-to-earth their lives were, the better.

  Both twins hooted and clapped their hands. “Can we get Harry Potter?”

  “Maybe,” Hallie said, and turning, stopped short. The joy drained from her heart, and the smile fell from her lips.

  Jase Stratton had just pulled into the driveway, behind the wheel of his sheriff’s car. Even without the official rig, she would have known by the expression on his face that he’d come on business.

  Louis W. Waitlin, 58, died Tuesday of gunshot wounds. Waitlin, a Phoenix police officer with a twenty-year record of exemplary service to his credit . . . will be buried on Saturday, with full honors. . . . He is survived by his daughter, Helene Waitlin Royer, and two grandchildren. . . . In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Phoenix Police Department’s Victims’ Fund. . . .

  6

  S heriff Jase Stratton removed his hat as he walked toward Hallie, who stood still as a fence post in the doorway of the barn, watching, waiting. The moment seemed surreal, time out of time, as though it were happening in a void, or some kind of mystical tunnel. His smile was brief and grim, and it fell just short of his eyes. “Mornin’,” he said.

  Hallie heard the simple greeting through a pounding haze, and tried hard to hide the fact that she was rattled. Had Joel or the others set her up somehow, persuaded a fellow cop that she was the guilty party? She had no doubt that the men Lou had been pursuing were capable of that and a lot more.

  “Good morning,” she managed. The twins had drawn close to her sides; she was aware of them in every corner of her being, though she could see them only at the periphery of her vision.

  Jase was a fine-looking man, with dark hair and a powerful build. He stood now with his hat in his hand, his expression still solemn. The collar of his coat was crooked, and Hallie suppressed an oddly maternal urge to straighten it. “I was wondering,” he began gruffly, “if you and I could talk.” The poor man looked so extraordinarily uncomfortable that Hallie almost felt sorry for him. “There’s some news about the cougar problem.”

  Hallie felt a chill at the mention of the cat. She hadn’t encountered the creature face-to-face, thank God, but she’d heard it screaming in the night, and if she lived another hundred years, she would never forget that sound. She nodded, a little stiffly. “Would you like to come inside?”

  He shook his head. “It won’t take long,” he said, with a nervous glance at Kiera and Kiley. “I’m on duty,” he said. “And I don’t want to keep you from anything.”

  Inwardly, Hallie gave a deep sigh. He hadn’t come to take her into custody, then, send her back to Phoenix, where she’d be at the mercy of her ex-husband and a lot of other bad people. She relaxed, and he must have noticed, because after that he seemed a little more at ease, too. “What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

  “Call me Jase,” he urged, still twiddling with his hat.

  Kiera and Kiley were bored by then, and began chasing each other between ragged patches of dirty snow. The sun was bright, though there was a nip in the air, and the twins’ laughter was like music.

  “You’ll want to keep the kids close to the house when they’re playing. A family up
the road had a mountain lion come right into the yard yesterday, in the middle of the afternoon. Tried to attack their dog—chased him under the porch.”

  “My God,” Hallie breathed, laying a hand to her chest. She was a city girl, and knew next to nothing about cougars, but even she was aware that this was bold, even desperate behavior for a wild animal.

  “Luckily, Jim heard the carrying on and ran the cat off with a shotgun. The dog’s all right.” He paused, sighed. “The thing is, if that cat would come in that close to a house, he’d go after a human being the same way he did the dog. A foal was killed up at the Winslow ranch, too.”

  Hallie felt as though an arctic wind had spiraled down the center of her spine, like a miniature tornado, and she shivered violently, then automatically scanned the horizon, looking for any threat to her children.

  Jase sighed. “I wouldn’t have blamed Jim if he’d shot that critter on the spot,” he said. “He and Trisha have four kids to look out for, after all.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Hallie vowed to herself, to Jase, and to the universe, thinking of the rifle Chance had left the night before, wondering if she could actually fire a gun at a living creature, and deciding that she definitely could, if her children were threatened.

  “Good,” he said. He straightened his collar. Inside his vehicle, the police radio crackled. “I’d better get back to work.”

  “Thanks for stopping by,” she said.

  He nodded, got into his rig, and drove away.

  Half an hour later, Hallie stepped into Katie’s shop, called the Book Shelf, setting the bell over the door jingling. It was a cozy place, though small, with carpeted floors, several overstuffed sofas and chairs, and an old-fashioned wood-burning stove, where a cheerful fire crackled. There was a coffeepot on a table against one wall, surrounded by cups, spoons, napkins, and the like. A second pot was marked “hot water,” and a selection of teas awaited nearby. Katie had set out packets of cocoa and apple cider mix, as well, for the children.