Forging Fire

by Lisa Preston

  If they wanted to have a normal working day, there were certainly things to do. There’s always work that needs doing on a ranch.

  I cleared my throat hard. “Listen, Ivy. I’ve got some things to say. For starters, I’m real appreciative of your hospitality, and, I’ll tell you what, you’ve got horses due for shoeing—I saw the overgrown feet on that gelding in your barn, and your Appy mare is about due—and I can take care of those shoeings for you. Now, the thing is—”

  Ivy held up a hand and cocked her head. I figured I was dealing with the same kind of accidental prejudice that often comes my way. She wasn’t to know I’d gone to Cornell, I’d apprenticed twice under very good shoers and worked my tail off, that I know all the anatomy and physiology of the equine limb and can hand forge therapeutic shoes.

  “I’m a good shoer,” I promised. “Let me start with your Appy mare. I’ll do her fronts and you can decide if you want a full shoeing.” Couldn’t believe I was talking a non-client into letting me shoe her horse for free, but I had debts to pay here.

  “If she can really shoe,” Gabe told Ivy, “I’d sure say yes.”

  Ivy nodded, eyes eager. “Well, that would be great, Rainy. Stuckey is going to be our horseshoer. You could mentor him along if you don’t mind. He went to school for it and everything, but it takes a while to get the experience. And he knows another shoer, Robbie Duffman.” She faced Gabe again. “Would he work for double time?”

  Gabe nodded. “I’ll call Duffy. Maybe you want to order a load of hay delivered? Be good for the cops to have some comings and goings to keep them on their feet. Eliana and Oscar can just stay shut in.”

  “I’m not sure how long I can hot shoe,” I said, distracted with what I wanted to say and confused a bit by the whole pieced-apart situation. “I’ll need to get a propane refill in a bit, unless you want to order up some coke.”

  Ivy stared at me like I was the weird one, her expression pinched, shooting me daggers with her eyes. “What did you say?”

  “You need some coal coke,” I said, “for that forge at the back of your barn.”

  “The forge. In the barn.” Her face changed, relaxed one or two levels, then she nodded slowly, obviously thinking and deciding even as she spoke. “Coal coke? That’s what it’s called? Okay, then. How do you order it?”

  “The heating oil place might have some,” Gabe said. He pulled his hat on and headed for the door. “Since Oscar’s shut up inside, I’ll see to the morning feeding.”

  “Good,” Ivy said. “Let’s find a way to get him in here. It’s safer.”

  The second Gabe was out the door, Ivy turned to me. I took a breath, set to clear the way, but she beat me to it with, “Did you talk to the cops out there?”

  We could hear Gabe’s voice through the door. Sounded like he was fending off the cops outside right that minute.

  “A little.” I sucked in several more giant breaths and exhaled. Where to start?

  Pounding on the front doors made Charley duck his head flat on the floor and eye the entry. Ivy opened the door, ready to dispense a mouthful of sass, but the ponytailed woman cop beat her to it and pointed at me.

  “Outside, Miss Dale. Right now.” Ponytail held a tape recorder in her left hand.

  Openmouthed, I felt it all pile on me, the full awkwardness of how things had developed, combined with confusion. I stood up straighter, and had to use some forceful air to keep myself from whispering.

  “Ivy, I called them. I had a hunch from the way Charley was acting, so I went back up the hill with him and dug where he showed me, and sure enough there was the body, so—”

  “The body!” Her shriek made Charley cringe. “What do you mean the body? A dead body, like the police are saying? You found it? Here? On my property? Who is it? How’d it get here?”

  “Well, don’t you know? It would have to be Vicente. Who else would Charley point out?”

  “Turn that thing off,” Ivy snapped at the cop who waved the tape recorder between us like some kind of news reporter.

  Ponytail said, “I need to talk to Ms. Dale, now. She needs to step outside if you won’t let me in.”

  “She’ll be right out,” Ivy said and slammed the door.

  “Oh, my,” I said. “I’m sorry for the ruckus. I didn’t think this through, but I really don’t know what else I should have done.”

  “Wait a minute,” Ivy snapped. “You … Who are you, really?”

  My jaw moved without words for a while as I considered her question. “I, uh, I’m me. Just me.”

  “There’s a body buried on my ranch? And you dug it up? And you think it’s Vicente?” Ivy’s hands left her hips and spread in aggravated wonder between us. “Why are you really here? What happened to Vicente?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You just said you found his body on my ranch. You knew. You knew something.”

  “I didn’t know. It was Charley,” I said. “He went and laid down on that same spot. It’s a shepherd thing. And I realized that down the steeper side of the hill is the interstate. It’s where I found him, two years ago. I figure that sometime after Vicente was gone, Charley came on down—”

  “What happened to Vicente?”

  I held up two fingers. “Couple things. Why would he be buried if he died naturally? And B, I don’t know what happened to him. I just unburied him.”

  “Who buried him?” Ivy whispered her question at me in an urgent way that made me realize she didn’t want the police on the other side of her front door hearing this as she learned it. “And how did he die?”

  “I don’t know the answer to either of those questions,” I said. “That’s what the police are for. But I think I stopped at that same spot on the interstate on my way down here Friday night. Charley was staring up the hill. The spot calls to him. And that’s because it’s where his person was buried. I figure that after Vicente was buried up there, Charley waited some time before he came down to the interstate …”

  Whether I shut up because Ivy waved me off or because I’d said enough to last a little while, I don’t know. Ivy stepped across the great room to the righthand hallway.

  “Eliana?” She hissed the name in a demand, smothered by an attempt at whispering.

  The bedroom door next to the guest room I’d spent the night in cracked open.

  “Did you know about any of this?” Ivy asked her. “Anything?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Eliana was teary-eyed and sounded like I felt. Physically, I did feel some bit better than the day before. I’d slept like the dead, and I had Charley back, after all, but mentally, things were just getting stickier. I could hardly take it in.

  Ivy waved Eliana back into the bedroom—I gathered there had been a stern talking-to about the girl staying put—then took a series of hard breaths and started pacing. When she stopped, her hands melded to her slim hips, and she faced me hard.

  “Damn, Rainy, you suspected Flame was trying to tell you … that? Why didn’t you say something?”

  “Guess I felt a little silly, if you can understand.” Really bad, I was looking forward to the part of the day when things would get smoothed out. “We’d both been saying we needed to talk to each other.”

  “Not about this! I had no idea.”

  Knocking at the door went on for a good thirty seconds and Ponytail’s voice called out, “Ms. Dale, we’re not going away. You really do need to come out and talk to us. Come explain to me what the problem is.”

  I didn’t know what the problem was. “All this time, you thought Vicente just packed up and left? Made off with your stud dog, too?”

  Ivy nodded, a sad smile flickering across her face. “It’s happened before. You feel like you’ve got the help all figured out, then one of them moves on. Or brings in drama, wants you to hire their wife and kids and grandma and everything.”

  I thought of her hired help, Gabe and Stuckey and Eliana and Oscar. Did they want Ivy and Milt to hi
re their families? Would they just move on one day? People are so complicated. Dogs and horses are straightforward, keen, biddable, and sure. My kind.

  Words spilled out of me in a splutter that threatened tears. “I was afraid. I was scared that what you wanted to talk to me about was you keeping Charley.” I squinted and forced myself to not wipe my eyes or let the hiccupping sniffle exit my gullet.

  Charley came and pressed into the back of my leg again. I started crying, though I still tried to stem it. The way my shoulders shook gave me away.

  “Oh, Rainy, that was it? You’re worried that I’ll take him from you?” Ivy hugged me, quick and hard. “No. I wouldn’t do that. He’s obviously yours now. Just look at him.”

  Wiped those tears up double quick. I hadn’t realized the threat of Ivy taking Charley back had grown such tentacles of dread in my heart, like bad weeds. The second that Ivy told me it was never going to happen, the icy threat melted away to nothing.

  “He’s mine,” I said.

  “He’s yours.”

  It was the most peaceful and relieved I’d felt since crossing back into this godforsaken state.

  And Jeez Louise, I was ready to go home. I was getting married in three days.

  Unrelenting knocking thrummed the double front doors.

  Ivy let loose an impressive string of swearing that showed a whole ’nother side of herself. “How did Vicente die? And who in the fuck buried him?”

  Outside, a four-wheeler roared to life and motored away.

  Another string of curses flew and then Ivy asked, “Rainy, would you please tell the men to come in here? Now.”

  “The cops?”

  “No!” Ivy’s eyes went wide. I’d seen Eliana cast a similar, frightened look when she poked her head out of the bedroom.

  “Oh.” I got it, but felt late to the party again. “You meant Gabe and Stuckey and Oscar. Yeah, I’ll fetch them.”

  Judging from the vibrations on the front door, I’d be bumping into cops on my way out.

  “Oh, God,” Ivy said. “I have to figure out a way to get Oscar in here. He usually does the barn chores on Sunday. Gabe and Stuckey get the day off, but that’s not going to work right now. Oscar’s a good man, Rainy. I know Eliana doesn’t like him, but he’s a good man. Sends everything he earns back home. He could stay in my guest room just for now, which means that if you stay tonight, you’d have to use the bunkhouse. There’s a fourth bedroom in there. Would you mind? Gabe and Stuckey would be out there, but they’ll be gentlemen, I promise.”

  I didn’t figure on staying the night, but now didn’t seem the time to say so. I planned to do one thing at a time—facing the cops being the first priority—but I wanted to consider all the stray bits of odd information.

  “What’s the deal with Oscar and Eliana?” I asked.

  “Are you serious?” Ivy hissed, barely audible. “They don’t have green cards. My ranch is a sanctuary.”

  The ranch wanted the cops gone so that Eliana and Oscar didn’t get deported.

  Chapter 14

  IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE THE fellas’ day off, but Stuckey and Gabe were lined up like schoolboys on the bunkhouse porch in front of the pudgy cop, who held a tape recorder. Gabe and Stuckey both had their cowboy hats snugged down hard. Stuckey looked half-whipped and plenty scared, in jeans, a denim shirt, cowboy boots, and the beginnings of a good bruise on the left side of his jaw. Gabe wore an openmouthed stare as he listened to the cop. It occurred to me that just rolling out of bed, they’d both been caught unawares by police on the ranch.

  I wanted to observe them but had no time. Another police SUV had joined the cluster of vehicles, this one towing a small, open, empty trailer with two ramps coming off the back. I realized the four-wheeler we’d heard from inside Ivy’s house had been a police machine, not one of the ranch’s rigs.

  The ponytailed woman cop was leaning in the driver’s window of that unmarked car, talking to a man in a plaid shirt behind the wheel who was holding an extra-large cell phone in his right hand. He was looking at me through the windshield and obviously mentioned my presence to the uniformed cop. Ponytail pressed the button on her shoulder mic and whatever it was she said made Pudgy, over on the bunkhouse porch, press his radio button and say, “Ten-four.”

  I caught parts of what Ponytail and the plainclothes dude in the unmarked car were debating—whether to have me go to the station for a video interview right then.

  Plaid Shirt said, “Let’s do the preliminary in one of the residences if we can.”

  “I was going to put her in my front seat,” Ponytail said.

  He shook his head half an inch. “Not in a police car.”

  I cleared my throat hard and walked toward them. “Y’all wanted to talk to me.”

  A look passed between them, then Plaid Shirt started talking on his bulky phone again. Beside him on the front seat was a machine our local vet back home carries into a few barns on special call-outs—a portable X-ray unit. These were not the kind of people who looked at horses’ bones inside a hoof capsule. I hadn’t figured on them using an X-ray machine for anything.

  Ponytail gave me a big smile and jerked her head toward the three men outside of the bunkhouse’s front door. “I’m going to grab something from my car. Meet you over there.”

  I toddled to the bunkhouse. On the porch, I said, “Um, fellas, Ivy wants you up at her place.”

  Stuckey ducked his head down an inch as he asked Pudgy, “Can we go?”

  When the cop gave an okay, Stuckey pretty well bolted for the big house.

  “There’s no one else inside this house?” Pudgy asked Gabe.

  “Nope.”

  “Mind if we look, just for our safety?”

  “Fine by me.”

  “Well, do you live here, sir?”

  “Yeah,” Gabe said, “I live here.”

  “Great, then you can give us permission to go inside. And you’re giving that consent now, right?”

  Gabe leaned without moving his feet and swung the bunkhouse’s front door wide open. “Be my guest.”

  I looked from Gabe to the cop and back again. All sorts of conflicted feelings rose in me. I didn’t have a dog in this fight. I didn’t want to interfere with the police and whatever lawful doings they had on tap. Ivy had been good to me and she wasn’t inclined to have the police tromping through her property. Oscar seemed like a real good fellow.

  Pudgy walked in and kept going, room to room, with momentum.

  In front of the open door, barely moving my lips, I said to Gabe, “Ivy didn’t want the po-lice inside at all.”

  “Zoo monkeys having a shit fight are more organized than these cops.” Gabe matched my super-quiet speech, eyeing the police inside, all the cars outside. “It would only make them suspicious to keep them out.”

  “But what happens if—”

  Gabe walked into the open living room of the bunkhouse, removing his hat. I followed his lead.

  Pudgy strolled back from his wander around the rooms and spoke loud into this radio. “That’s a ten-four. It appears unoccupied in a quick search.”

  Then Pudgy turned away from us, fading back into the bunkhouse living room and turning down the volume on his radio when a couple of different voices came back on the channel. I didn’t catch a word of that static-clipped code. Ponytail stepped onto the porch and joined us, walking in through the open front door like it was an invitation.

  Pudgy pivoted in front of an open bedroom door and asked Gabe, “What’s in the trunk, sir?”

  “My personal stuff.”

  “That’s your bedroom?”

  Gabe nodded and folded his arms across his chest, then immediately unfolded them and tucked his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans.

  “And the other rooms?”

  All four of the bedroom doors were open, revealing small rooms, each with a twin bed, a footlocker, and a small dresser. One looked so clean and tidy, it had to be the unused bedroom that I’d been offered for the night.
A fifth door showed a plain, single bathroom.

  “Other hands stay here,” Gabe said. “Some seasonal workers, some more permanent, like myself.”

  “I’d like you to make a list of all the people who work here.” Gabe did an angled tilt with his head. “Respectfully, officer, that’s something you should see my boss about.”

  “I’d like your cooperation.”

  “I feel like I gave it to you, sir.” Gabe redonned his cowboy hat. “If you’ll excuse me now, I’ve got chores to see to.”

  With Pudgy’s curt nod, Gabe headed for the front door and was out in a flash. I started to follow him but heard the mutter behind me.

  “This could work,” Pudgy said.

  “Yeah,” Ponytail agreed. “Noncustodial. That’s how they want it done.”

  I wondered if I’d remember what they said long enough to ask Melinda about it the next time I had a cell connection or a land-line. Or the next time I was home. I stepped out the front door and ran into Gabe, who was suddenly striding back across the porch, hatless. Almost touching him, I leaned in and asked, “Where’s Oscar?”

  “In your truck.” Gabe’s comment was so quiet, so low, only I heard, especially over his heavy footfalls as he continued stomping across the bunkhouse porch, jumped off, and made for the barn.

  Between the two houses sat Ol’ Blue. I realized how close my truck was parked to one of the bunkhouse windows and that Gabe and Oscar had made use of the convenience.

  Now the creak of one of my truck’s cab doors opening caught my attention. I was looking at the driver’s side. Its door was closed, so the passenger side had been used this time. Over the topper, I barely made out the back edge of a cowboy hat slipping away, making for the flagstone entry to the big house.

  “Excuse me, sir? Ma’am?” Gabe’s holler made both deputies come to the door and look his way as he headed for the barn. I walked a couple steps back on the porch to give them room. And I suppose my body blocked their view of the big house.

  Gabe waved toward the barn, the opposite direction from that flagstone entryway to safety, the other side of Ol’ Blue. “I have to go into the barn to feed the horses. I can be quick about it. Just throwing hay. And of course, you’re welcome to come with. Is that okay?”