by Dixie Cash
“How’d you know about that?” Edwina asked.
“Google.”
“We’re on Google?” Edwina said.
“Of course we’re on Google, Ed,” Debbie Sue said. “We’re licensed investigators.”
“You also stopped a horse thief who was taking stolen horses to slaughter in Fort Worth,” Avery said. “Are you aware that the horse slaughterhouses in Fort Worth have now been shut down?”
“I heard something about that,” Debbie Sue said. “That was good news. So now where are the unwanted old horses going?”
“It’s a sad story, really. People are just turning them loose.”
“Nooo,” Debbie Sue wailed, her brow tented.
Edwina’s head turned toward Debbie Sue. “You do not have room for any more horses. It’s bad enough you’re collecting dogs.”
Edwina’s remark was so emphatic, Avery wondered for a second how many horses Debbie Sue might have, but she didn’t let herself be diverted. She began to count off on her fingers. “You uncovered the truth behind a young woman’s death in Haskell.” She pressed finger number two. “Then there was that business in New York City, where you captured a serial killer.”
Debbie Sue’s brow raised and she sat back. “It wasn’t quite that simple. We don’t discuss it around here. I’m still trying to make my husband understand why I was standing outside on a hotel’s sixth-floor ledge with a bunch of pigeons.”
Uh-oh, Avery thought. Had she missed the real story? She widened her eyes. “Oohh. I must have missed that part. Maybe we should—”
“Debbie Sue’s husband’s a little narrow-minded about some things,” Edwina said. “He’s a Texas Ranger. My husband’s a Navy SEAL. Retired.”
“I see,” Avery replied, though she really didn’t see at all. If those two facts were true, what did they have to do with a sixth-floor ledge in New York City?
“You’re not wearing a wedding ring,” Edwina announced for all to hear.
Avery had no intention of discussing her personal life—her dull personal life—with strangers. She stole a glance around the room to see how many people might have heard Edwina’s declaration. “Uh, no. I’m strictly a career girl. But getting back to you two. I’d say you defy the stereotypical small town citizen.”
Debbie Sue propped her chin on her palm. “I never thought of it that way. Maybe the Chamber of Commerce should put us on a brochure, huh, Ed?”
“Yeah. If we had a Chamber of Commerce.” Edwina gave another roaring laugh. “All we’ve got is the Moose Lodge.”
Avery was starting to see the reason for her co-worker’s comments about Edwina. “Oh, that’s funny.”
Still laughing, she rummaged in her hobo bag and pulled out her camera. “I understand this café is where those famous Elvis Presley shoes are on display.” She looked around, but didn’t see any sign of shoes. “Where are they? I should get a picture of the two of you beside them.”
“They’re in the back room,” Debbie Sue said. “Safely locked inside a clear plastic case that you could probably bounce bullets off of. But just between you and me, they look just like any other old worn shoes.”
“Really?”
“Really,” Debbie Sue said. “I’ll show you where they are. Scoot out.”
Avery got to her feet and Debbie Sue followed.
“While we’re gone, Ed, why don’t you see if you can scrounge up a menu,” Debbie Sue said. “I didn’t have time for breakfast at home. I’m so hungry I could eat the dishes.”
“Menu? Hell, I didn’t know Hogg’s had menus.”
chapter ten
Just as Edwina began her quest for menus, the voice of Elvis came over the sound system again and she looked toward the front entrance. An older gentleman whose hair she regularly trimmed had just stepped through the door, his head ducked to make allowance for his six-foot-five frame.
“W. L.,” she said, walking over to meet him. “How’re you, hon?”
W. L. Crawford looked up, touched the brim of his Stetson and smiled. “Miss Edwina.”
“And how’s your family?”
“Staying out of trouble, but just barely.”
“Debbie Sue and I are meeting with a reporter from the Star-Telegram this morning. She’s here for the Elvis wingding. She’d probably be interested in hearing the latest on Caleb, sort of from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Would you like to join us?”
“The Star-Telegram, huh?” He switched his toothpick to the opposite side of his mouth. “Can’t do it, darlin’. I’m meetin’ an ol’ boy from the Dallas paper. Helluva way to start the day, ain’t it, talkin’ to newspaper people? Seems like that’s all I do since Caleb got famous. Don’t even have time to keep up with the cattle market.”
The Crawford family head now spent his hours buying and selling cattle at auction for his now-famous son’s newly acquired ranch. Cattle buyer was, in Edwina’s mind, an occupation that gave a more accurate definition to the term “stock trader.”
“I can think of worse things,” she told him. “Listen, you don’t tell that Dallas newspaper dude any secrets about me and I won’t tell this Fort Worth chick what I know about you.” She slapped his shoulder and laughed.
W. L. laughed, too, and gave her a wink. “My lips are sealed, darlin’.”
As the elder Crawford made his way to a booth, the front door opened again and a line of three men crossed the threshold, setting off another “Thank ya. Thank ya ver’ much.” Edwina knew two of them, but the last one was a stranger.
The guy looked around the room, then Edwina saw W. L. gesture to him. The stranger made a beeline to W. L.’s booth and they shook hands. Must be the Dallas reporter, Edwina thought. She sized the newcomer up. He didn’t do any harm to the tight jeans he wore. His face wouldn’t piss off anybody either. Edwina’s expert eye homed in on his left hand, noting that he wore no wedding band. Hmm. Any man as fine as he would certainly be wearing a ring if married, unless his wife was an idiot. He looked comfortable in these surroundings, like a local who had called Texas home all of his life—unlike the Fort Worth reporter in her drab suit and plain high heels.
Edwina felt sure the two reporters had to know each other. After all, they were in the same line of work in the same part of Texas. How could they not? Lord, didn’t she know people from as far away as Lubbock?
Inside Hogg’s back room, Debbie Sue saw the shoe display for the first time. Holy shit, besides filling the display case from wall to wall, Vic’s shoes looked as worn as Edwina had said they were and they definitely weren’t blue. No one in his right mind would believe these were Elvis’s famous shoes. She watched and waited for comment or questions as Avery circled the shoes, snapping pictures. “Were you an Elvis fan?” Debbie Sue asked her.
“No,” Avery answered. “I didn’t know much about him until I got this assignment.”
The reply surprised Debbie Sue. Elvis was still loved and revered in Texas. Radio stations still played his music regularly. A reporter should know about an icon who had instigated a revolution in American music, especially a reporter who lived in Texas. Didn’t reporters behave as if they knew everything about everything?
Just then, she recognized W. L. Crawford’s voice coming from the dining room. “I’m gonna leave you to take your pictures,” Debbie Sue said. “Someone I know just came in. And I need to grab some breakfast before the parade.”
“You go ahead,” Avery said. “I want to snap a few more pictures.”
Debbie Sue walked into the dining room and saw the bearlike, white-haired W. L. seated in a booth with a man she didn’t recognize. The stranger had wavy coal-black hair and sky-blue eyes.
W. L. got to his feet and greeted Debbie Sue with a backslapping hug. “I haven’t seen you in a while, W. L.,” Debbie Sue said. “I must have been out of the shop when you’ve come in for a haircut. How’ve you been?”
“Can’t complain. How’s that pretty mama of yours?”
“Still in Nashville writing songs.”<
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“I watched her on TV handing out that Horizon award. It’s nice seeing a local person with all those high hats. Next time you talk to her, you tell her and Doc Miller hello for me.” He stood back and looked her up and down. “Hey, now, just look at you. Dressed up for the parade, are you?”
“Yep. Rocket Man’s across the road waiting for me.”
“Debbie Sue, darlin’, you’ll have to pardon my bad manners.” W. L. stepped back and to the side. “Let me introduce you to Sam Carter.”
The black-haired guy half rose from his seat, smiling. “You’re part of the parade?”
Surely he didn’t think she dressed this way every day. Debbie Sue grinned. “You’re kidding me, right? And how long have you called Texas your home?”
“Not long, I admit,” he said, still smiling and sinking back to his seat. “I live in Dallas now, but I’m from South Dakota.”
“Cool. Back when I rodeo-ed, I ran into cowboys from South Dakota all the time.”
“You rodeo-ed?”
“For several years.”
“She’s a ProRodeo champion,” W. L. inserted, puffing out his thick chest as if he were Debbie Sue’s father. Debbie Sue didn’t mind. Her real father had walked out of her life when she was eight years old. As far as she was concerned, she had no father, so if a man as good as W. L. Crawford wanted to be proud of her, that was just fine.
“Yessir, besides being a solid citizen, Debbie Sue’s a pretty little gal that’s left a trail of broken hearts. My nephew Quint Matthews was one of her victims.”
“Quint Matthews is your nephew?” Sam Carter sat back in his seat and gave W. L. a look of awe. “Are we talking the Quint Matthews, PRCA bull-riding champion and best all-around cowboy for three years running? Breeder and owner of Double Trouble, the bull that has yet to be ridden in ProRodeo?”
Oh, shit. Did everyone in the whole damn world know Quint? The last thing Debbie Sue wanted to hear this morning was a conversation about her past with Quint.
W. L.’s mouth spread into an even wider grin. “That’s him,” he said to Sam Carter. “You know him?”
“Listen,” Debbie Sue said before the talk could go further. “I don’t think I broke Quint’s heart. And talk of old boyfriends is my cue to leave. Sam, it’s nice to meet you. Enjoy your stay in Salt Lick.” She said good-bye to W. L. Before returning to the booth, she stopped at the order counter and requested a short stack with bacon.
Back in the booth. Avery was seated across from Edwina. Debbie Sue had been so taken by her conversation with W. L., she hadn’t noticed when Avery returned from the back room.
“That man you were just talking to is local?” Avery said. “Is the guy who’s with him local, too?”
“Naw, I don’t know that guy. His name’s Sam something,” Debbie Sue answered. After hearing W. L. bring up Quint, she couldn’t even remember the new guy’s last name. “But you’re bound to know one of W. L.’s boys. Caleb Crawford?”
“Caleb Crawford.” A line formed between Avery’s perfectly arched brows. “Why does that name have a familiar ring?”
“Caleb Crawford?” Edwina said, eyes wide, a tone of indignation in her voice. In an exaggerated gesture, she opened her palms. “Dallas Cowboys’ Caleb Crawford? Hel-lo!”
Avery slapped her forehead with her palm. “Oh, my gosh. Of course. Caleb Crawford. He’s from here?”
“Born and bred,” Edwina said proudly, as if the football player were her own relation.
A waitress brought Debbie Sue’s breakfast order and she busied herself spreading butter and adding syrup to her pancakes. “Another one of W. L.’s boys graduates in May,” she said. “I’m guessing that Sam guy talking to W. L. is a college football scout.”
“You’d be guessing wrong,” Edwina said smugly. “That Sam Something’s a reporter from the Dallas Morning News.” She turned to Avery. “Don’t you know him?”
Avery leveled a hard look in the direction of the booth where the men sat. “No, but I think I might have seen him in the hotel lobby this morning. So he’s from the News, huh? Hmm, maybe that’s why he looks so familiar.”
“I think he’s single, too,” Edwina said lazily, crossing her arms on the tabletop.
“You have to get used to Ed, Avery,” Debbie Sue said, stuffing bites of pancake in her mouth. “She’s Salt Lick’s very own matchmaker. I think she’s either on a mission to make sure everyone’s as happy as she is with her honey Vic, or maybe she’s just keeping her skill at spotting eligible men well-oiled.”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Avery replied. “No matchmaking. I’m on assignment. I never mix business and pleasure, especially not with someone from the competition. And that reminds me, ladies, I need to get to work. I’m going to ask the waitress and the cook if they’ll pose for a couple more pictures with those shoes.”
She stood, straightened her jacket and dusted her shoulders with her fingers. She smoothed lap wrinkles from her skirt, then touched both sides of her hair to make sure no strands had come loose, touched both ear lobes to make sure her earrings were in place and dusted the front of her blouse with her fingertips. Then she re-adjusted her glasses, picked up her purse and camera and returned to the back room.
Debbie Sue knew her partner well. She could see Edwina fidgeting to say something. The lanky brunette barely waited until Avery was out of earshot. Leaning across the table, she whispered, “Did you see that routine with her clothes? That poor thing is wound tighter than a guitar string. She’d be a real looker if she loosened that hair some. It’s pulled so tight it’s got her eyes stretched. She can’t even blink.”
“I’ve never seen anyone so nervous,” Debbie Sue said, adding more syrup to her pancakes. “And I have to agree, she is a bit rigid.”
“Rigid. A board is rigid. She’s practically concrete. All I can say is, she got to Salt Lick, and to us, just in time.”
Before Debbie Sue could reply, Elvis’s voice sounded again.
“Thank ya. Thank ya ver’ much.”
All eyes turned toward the front door. Sheriff Billy Don Roberts strode into the room and made a beeline for the booth Debbie Sue and Edwina shared. The nitwit came to a screeching halt, yanked off his hat and fumbled to keep from dropping it. “Y’all got to come outside.”
Debbie Sue’s patience with Billy Don had expired yesterday with the RV owners’ false arrest. “Why?” she asked sharply.
“The world’s done come apart at the seams. Right here in Salt Lick, Texas. Things is fixin’ to completely come undone.”
He turned and loped across the room and back outside, leaving Debbie Sue and Edwina staring after him while Elvis thanked him very much.
Debbie Sue wasn’t worried about the world coming apart. After all, Cal Jensen, a plenty capable and qualified DPS trooper was somewhere in the vicinity. Still, she sent a dour look across the table at Edwina.
“What was that you said earlier, Oh Great One? ‘Dull as old barbed wire’?”
Edwina sighed and slid out of the booth. “Well, hell. Just ’cause old barbed wire’s dull doesn’t mean it can’t hook your skin.” She stood and shrugged into her coat sweater. “My crystal ball’s a little cloudy right this minute. Let’s go see what’s going on.”
Debbie Sue lifted her cup by the rim and gulped the remaining brew, wishing it were tequila instead of coffee. She had hoped at the very least, to get through the parade before all hell broke loose. She gave up that expectation. Now, after what Billy Don had just said, she only hoped Cal Jensen and a few more of Buddy’s DPS trooper friends were nearby.
Outside she saw what had sent Billy Don into hysterics. The quiet highway she had crossed barely an hour before was jammed with cars, trucks, motorcycles and RVs. There were even a couple of farm tractors. Her own pickup, with Rocket Man’s trailer hooked to it, was barely visible. Horns honked. Angry people yelled. Debbie Sue stared in disbelief. She thought the highway had been blocked off by the DPS. “Holy shit, Ed, where did all these people come from?”
>
“Judging from the license plates, I’d say America. I haven’t seen this many people on Main Street since that time the highway department shut down the interstate and rerouted traffic through here.”
Debbie Sue had hoped for a nice crowd to come and watch the parade. She never dreamed there would be so many vehicles there wouldn’t even be room for the parade itself. “At least all of that traffic was passing through. Looks to me like most of these people are looking for a place to park.”
Just then a woman’s shrill squeal pierced the air. “Look, kids! It’s a cowgirl. I told you we’d see one.”
Simultaneously, Debbie Sue and Edwina’s eyes swerved to their left. Debbie Sue cringed, as the chubby, vertically challenged woman started in their direction in a jiggling trot. Debbie Sue and Edwina exchanged horrified glances.
When the tourist neared, to Debbie Sue’s astonishment, she saw that the woman was wearing a black satin jacket with an enormous E embroidered on the right breast pocket. On the left, swooping script said, LONG LIVE THE KING. She was pulling—no, dragging—a pudgy boy and girl behind her.
“You said we’d see cowboys and Indians,” the boy whined. “I ain’t seen any cowboys and I don’t believe there’s any Indians, either. This place stinks. They ain’t even got any video games.”
The rotund little girl, who appeared to be younger than the boy, began to cry and whine, too. “I wanna go home. I hate this place. I wanna leave. Now!” She stomped her foot for emphasis.
Debbie Sue was a sucker for kids. She had been ever since she and Buddy had lost their little boy years back. “Hey, kids,” she said, “I’ve got to go check on my horse. He’ll be wondering where I am and all this racket is probably making him nervous. You want to walk across the road with me and make sure he’s got enough water? And I know lots of real cowboys. We might run into one.”
“You don’t have a horse,” the boy shouted. “And you’re not a real cowgirl! You want to steal us!” His voice rose to a yell. “Help! Mommy, she’s trying to steal us!”