Roped (Gail McCarthy Mysteries)

by Laura Crum

  "He's the little bay I was heeling on today. You'll like him. He's a real sweetheart. Dad raised him. He's by Smoke and out of Dad's best mare. Say you'll come, Gail."

  Why not? It was better than sitting around waiting for Lonny to call.

  "All right," I said. "What time?"

  "Eight o'clock." Lisa gave me a brief young-Lisa smile. "See you then." And she pulled out of my driveway.

  I walked slowly to my front door. Time was, I would have heard the welcome jingle of Blue's collar on the other side as I put the key in the lock. No more. Blue was gone. I still couldn't get used to it. Without Blue, the house didn't feel like home.

  Unlocking the door, I let myself inside. Everything looked neat and clean-too neat and clean. I'd scrubbed my humble cabin to within an inch of its life yesterday. My friend Denise Hennessy, a realtor, was showing it to prospective buyers this weekend.

  It wasn't that I disliked the little house. It was just that the steep, shady quarter of an acre it was located on was no place to keep horses or have a garden-two things I was set on doing. It was my good luck that real estate prices in Santa Cruz County had risen so spectacularly during the four years I'd owned the house that the property was now worth double what I'd paid for it. My profit would be enough (I hoped) for a sizable down payment on a bigger place.

  Walking to the table, I picked up the note Denise had left me: "I showed it to three parties today. One of them, a single woman, a high school teacher, seemed very interested. It looks good. Will be in touch."

  Well, well, well. I surveyed the house with the eyes of a stranger, wondering if this schoolteacher would be moved to make an offer. Short sandy beige carpet set off the curved shapes of my few pieces of antique furniture and harmonized gently with the soft-white walls and oiled wood window and door trim. Both living room and kitchen were tiny (the bathroom was even more so) but cozy and comfortable-looking, and that was all there was to the upper story.

  Sighing, I set my hands and feet on the rungs of the ladder that was my stairway and lowered myself through a hole in the kitchen floor. Since the house was built on a steep bank on the edge of Soquel Creek, it had two levels. The upper story was at street level, and the smaller, basementlike lower story was at creek level, more or less. Very much creek level in a wet winter, I'd found. Someone had had the bright idea of connecting the two stories with a ladder. It was space-efficient but could be a little awkward.

  Down below was my bedroom. I could hear the murmur of the creek outside in the darkness through an open window as I began undressing for bed. Would someone else be undressing here in a month or so? And where would I be?

  I felt lost and disoriented at the thought, and very alone. Everything was changing. Blue was gone; my house was soon to be gone; Lonny was perhaps going.

  You've got your job, I reminded myself, and your horses-you'll be fine. You're used to being alone. So how come it felt so shitty right now?

  A loud meow broke into my wallow in self-pity, and a fluffy grayish tabby cat with white paws and chest and a lynxlike face jumped through the open window and onto the bed. "Hello, Bonner," I said.

  I rubbed the cat's head and scratched the base of his tail; he arched his back and purred, and I felt suddenly better. As I pulled the covers over me, the cat settled down by my side, a warm, steady weight, purring contentedly. "Who needs a man?" I told him.

  I'll get another dog, I added to myself, as soon as I get moved. One of Lisa's puppies maybe. And I'll have the horses with me. On these comforting thoughts, I fell asleep, Glen and his stalker the last thing on my mind, happily unaware of what the coming days would bring.

  TEN

  I pulled up at Lisa's front gate at eight o'clock the next morning. Joey and Rita barked vociferously on the other side of the picket fence, and I regarded them with even more interest than I had the day before.

  Joe was a "blue" heeler, like my old dog, Blue, a color that was really more of a mottled gray. He had the same square, sturdy frame, the same bobbed tail, and would be about the same weight-thirty pounds, more or less. The Harlequin-esque appearance his half-mask gave him was immediately engaging, at least to someone who likes Queenslands.

  Rita was smaller and shyer; when I opened the gate and let myself in the yard, she kept her distance, barking and occasionally aiming fake snaps in the direction of my heels. I could bite you, she was telling me, don't do anything wrong.

  I walked steadily to the front porch, the dogs accompanying me, still barking, but in an accepting rather than an angry tone. Lisa opened the door and smiled at me. "They like you," she said.

  "I like Queenslands. They probably know it. I think I do want a pup," I added.

  "Good. I'll save the pick of the litter for you. Come on in and have a cup of coffee."

  I followed Lisa into the house, and the big orange cat appeared from nowhere and began weaving between my legs.

  "Hi, Zip," I said. He stood up on his back legs and put his front paws on my thigh, just like a dog, and I scratched his wide head.

  Lisa handed me a cup of coffee, and I sat down in a fat, comfortable chair. Lisa settled herself on the couch with a cup of her own. The red dog jumped up next to her and put her head on Lisa's lap. To my surprise, the blue dog marched over and parked himself against my feet. He gave me a glance over his shoulder that said, as plain as words, "Don't go thinking you can pet me; I just happen to want to sit here, that's all."

  "So, what's the program?" I asked Lisa.

  "Oh, Dad will be by here when he's ready to start. We're shipping all the steers at the end of the week, so the whole ranch has to be gathered. The feed's gone. It wasn't a very good year, and this hot spell really finished it off"

  I nodded. It was already warm at eight o'clock; we weren't done with the hot weather yet.

  "Anyway, we're just gonna gather the home pasture today. With four of us, it'll be easy. We'll be done by lunch." Lisa sounded businesslike and carefree; the scared, dependent mood of last night vanished as if it had never been.

  "What about your stalker?" I asked her. "Any new thoughts?"

  "No. But things seem a lot better in the morning."

  "They always do."

  We smiled at each other. Suddenly both dogs lifted their heads and pricked their ears forward. The red dog woofed softly from her seat on the couch. Before they could do anything else, Lisa said firmly, "Don't bark. If you bark, you've had it."

  They both gave her disappointed looks, but they were quiet. Lisa and I looked out the window. A dark green pickup appeared over the hill and drove down into the little valley, going fast.

  "Tim's up early," Lisa commented. "For him, anyway."

  Tim braked and slid the truck up to the gate. The pickup had a number 6 with a circle around it painted on both doors with white paint. Tim got out and started toward the front porch.

  Whatever he'd been up to last night, it was clear it hadn't turned out too well. He had a black eye and a fat lip, his face looked puffy and bruised, and he was limping.

  Lisa got up and opened the door for him. "So what happened to you?" she asked.

  "Uh, I tripped and hit my face on the bar."

  Lisa rolled her eyes. "Why lie?"

  Tim laughed.

  "Ralph Alvarez and his buddies beat the shit out of you for trying to pick up on Tony's wife, didn't they?" Lisa demanded.

  "Tony helped, too," Tim said. He ran his tongue around the inside of his mouth. "I think I've still got all my teeth. I'm surprised, though." His eyes laughed at the two of us. "Tony happened to pull in right when I was rolling 'round with her in the backseat of her car. Boy, was that a scene. She had her shirt off, and he's jumping in there trying to drag me out and she's screaming and people are pouring out of the bar. Tony and I are slugging it out and she's standing there yelling with those great big bare boobs out in the parking lot for everyone to see."

  Tim laughed and then winced. "My mouth doesn't work too good right now. I think four different guys had a shot
at adjusting it. How 'bout some coffee?"

  Lisa went into the kitchen to get him a cup, and he sat down in the remaining empty chair. "You here to help us gather?" he asked me.

  "Sure." I watched him accept a cup of coffee from his sister, his beaten face as outwardly relaxed as ever. Tim was an odd one. For all his happy-go-lucky air, there was a strange streak of violence in him. That stunt with the hotshot yesterday, and his effort at picking a fight with Charles. Not to mention the diatribe about his father. And now this. For the first time, I allowed myself to seriously wonder whether Tim could be Lisa's stalker.

  As impossible as it seemed on first blush, he had all the credentials, really. Resenting one's father could go very deep; human history was thick with bloody stories built on that theme. Tim lived here on the ranch; he knew all about horses and cattle and tractors and trailers-it was possible, I told myself.

  And it would kill Glen if it were true. I looked over at Lisa. Maybe she was wrong about all this. Maybe these were accidents after all, just a string of coincidental bad luck.

  Lisa was staring down at her cup of coffee, and I studied the neat, definite features under the blond curls. If Lisa was creating a stalker out of thin air, it pointed at a paranoia as extreme as the acts would be psychotic-if they were real. If Tim was Lisa's stalker, he was a very sick person, and if Lisa was making the stalker up, she was pretty dam sick herself. Neither scenario was pleasant to contemplate.

  Tim took a long swallow of coffee, winced, and put a hand to his jaw. "Old Tony Alvarez was kind of upset," he said to the room at large.

  "Who else got involved?" I asked him.

  "Oh, Ralph, and Danny Bell."

  "Not Sonny Santos?"

  Lisa's head jerked up at the question; her eyes shot to her brother's face.

  "Nah." Tim shook his head. "That bastard was gone before it happened. Had one drink and then left. Probably hoping for a glimpse of Lisa."

  Nobody said anything.

  "There was one funny thing, though," Tim went on slowly. "When Tony jumped on me it was no more than what I expected, and I wasn't surprised when Ralph and Danny joined in. I was sure getting the worst of it, though. Some of the other guys were trying to pull them off, but I could hear this big voice yelling, 'Let 'em fight.'

  "People were yelling back, saying these guys were killing me, and by then I was just sort of rolling around, taking one punch after another. Finally they got Ralph and Danny pulled off, but Tony was coming back in for more, and I could still hear this voice yelling, 'Let 'em fight.'

  "And suddenly it got to me. That was Al's voice. I looked up-even as out of it as I was, it shocked me enough to wake me up-and Al was looking down at me and smiling. Shit, he never smiles. He saw me look at him and his face closed down right away, but I saw that smile. He looked like he was gloating. I couldn't believe it. Hell, that bastard hates me. I don't know why.

  "Then I started thinking about all this shit that's been happening, and how Lisa keeps saying it's not accidents. And I can't get the idea out of my mind. What if it's Al?"

  Lisa and I stared at Tim. What she was thinking I didn't know. I wondered whether Tim was telling the truth or trying to cast suspicion on someone else. Either way, I didn't like it. A tangle of dark emotions seemed to be gathering around the Bennett family, and I felt inextricably caught in the net.

  Lisa jumped to her feet. "Come on, let's go on down to the barn. Dad must be ready by now."

  Tim and I followed her out the door. I felt a sudden intense worry about Glen. Where was he? Was he all right?

  We piled into Tim's green truck, Joey and Rita jumped in the back, and Tim rattled off down the road. "What's the number six for?" I asked him, trying to break the mood.

  Tim laughed. "Oh, I call her Sixball," he said, slapping the dashboard, " 'cause she's the same color as a six ball. Somebody painted the sixes on the doors one night while I was playing pool in the Saddlerack. I never did find out who did it. Everyone knows I call her that."

  Another prank, I thought, but a playful one this time. At the moment, I'd had enough of pranks, of any kind. That was the trouble with these little, tiny communities. Everyone knew everyone else, and in these quiet towns there wasn't a lot to do but mind your neighbors' business. It was the main form of entertainment. And it sometimes made for a lot of trouble and unpleasant gossip. But stalking?

  Tim passed the big house, which sat quiet in the morning sunshine. Joyce's midnight blue Cadillac was parked in the driveway. Glen's truck was nowhere in sight. Tim kept going.

  Then we were down the hill and the barnyard and roping arena were ahead. We could all see Glen, saddling Smoke, who was tied to the hitching rail. Everything seemed normal. I could feel Lisa let out a small sigh next to me.

  Business was as usual at the Bennett Ranch. Forgetting my worries, I regarded the cluster of old buildings and corrals with pleasure. The barnyard, like Lisa's house, dated from the ranch's early days; the two big old barns, much repaired, were high-roofed and cavernous, their siding weathered to a silvery gray. A couple of small sheds and other outbuildings and a good many corrals clustered around them.

  All the buildings bore the names of their original purpose. Thus the biggest barn was still called the dairy barn, though the dairy cattle were long gone; the second largest was the hay barn; the smaller buildings the calf shed, milk house, bull barn, respectively. Glen had altered them just enough to use them comfortably as a horse setup, but they still had the look and character of the turn-of-the-century dairy they had been. It was part of what I had always loved about the place.

  Tim parked Sixball, and the three of us got out of the truck. "Morning, Glen," I said.

  He looked up from tightening the cinch and smiled at me, the old, familiar Glen Bennett smile, a flash of white teeth and blue eyes, an instant of warmth and charm. I was immediately transported back to a sixteen-year-old who had been half-infatuated with Lisa's handsome father.

  "Well, hello, Gail. Did you come to help us gather?"

  "I sure did."

  "She's going to ride Chester," Lisa said. "He's for sale," she added to me. "If you know anyone who wants a nice young horse."

  She got Chester out of his pen, and I looked the colt over. He was light-boned for a rope horse, but everything was in proportion and he had the sort of flat muscling I liked. He was about fifteen-two hands, and Lisa said he was five years old. Glen wanted $6,000 for him.

  "He's ready to campaign at the heels," Lisa told me. "And he's real good outside-got a good handle on him, watches a cow real well. You'll see." She was saddling the horse as she spoke and handed his reins to me when she was done.

  "He's not cinchy or anything, is he?" I asked cautiously. The last thing I needed was to be bucked off.

  "Chester? No way. He's never humped his back in his life. He's dead gentle."

  Good. I climbed on and walked the colt around a little, getting the feel of him. Tim was saddling the roan mare he'd ridden yesterday, and Lisa got another blue roan mare who looked exactly like Smoke out of her stall.

  "Did you raise all these?" I asked Glen, who had mounted his stallion and sat waiting.

  "They're all by him," he said, looking down at Smoke. "And out of that good bay mare I used to rope on. Remember her? Annie Oakley was her name."

  "Oh, yeah, Annie." I did remember. Annie was the horse Glen had roped on when I was young. "Is she still alive?"

  "She's almost thirty," he said proudly, "but she still has a foal every year. She just foaled two days ago." He waved a hand at a small field off to the side of the bam.

  I looked where he pointed and saw a bay mare I recognized as Annie. Her back was deeply swayed and there were hollows over her eyes and a lot of gray hairs in her forehead, but she looked healthy and in good flesh. Next to her stood a bay foal.

  He was tiny and new and perfect, long-legged and bright-eyed, with a high curved neck like a seahorse. I smiled in delight at the sight of him.

  "He's a clone of Ch
ester," Lisa said. "I think he'll be a good one."

  "These three," Glen indicated the two roan mares and Chester, "are all full brothers and sisters to him."

  "That's Roany," Lisa said, pointing at the big mare Tim was sitting on. "She's the oldest. She's six. And this is Rosie." She patted the neck of the mare she was saddling. "She's four. We lost their three-year-old full brother just a month ago."

  Silence followed that remark. I remembered Lisa telling me that Glen had lost his three-year-old when the colt had gotten into the gopher grain. Another accident.

  I patted Chester's neck. How could anybody do that? Could anybody really do that? Surely not Tim.

  Tim sat quietly on Roany, not taking part in the conversation. He held himself stiffly, for Tim, and it was easy to imagine that he hurt all over. Glen had not said one word about the condition of his son's face; in fact, he wouldn't look at Tim. What in the hell was going on here?

  Lisa climbed on Rosie and Glen lifted his reins. "Let's go find 'em," he said.

  ELEVEN

  We started down a dirt road that led into the hills of the home pasture. Dust rose under the horses' hooves. The dogs trotted behind us. It was already hot. Pretty damn hot for May, or so I thought. I was sweating in a matter of minutes. So was Chester.

  I could smell the dusty dry-grass smell, a midsummer smell. The grass was bleached gold on this south slope, and sparse at that.

  "Not much feed left," I said to Glen.

  "It's all gone," he agreed. "Been a bad year. The cattle have done all right so far, but I'll have to ship them now. There's nothing left for them to eat. I doubt I'll make any money on them. Any other year, I would have had another month for sure." Glen didn't sound particularly concerned. Money wasn't a worry for him, as far as I knew.

  Chester walked along under me, quiet and relaxed. He was proving to be a pleasant, responsive horse to ride, with a light mouth and a long, swinging walk that covered the ground. I liked him.