by Paty Jager
Ella cradled her arms and moved them in a back and forth motion as if rocking a child.
No, Ella, I am not ready for a child. I have to have a husband first. At the thought of a husband, Ryan’s face appeared. Her heart sped and her mind traveled through all their good and bad times during their short friendship.
Slowly Ryan changed, evolved into Johnny Clark and she was Lil. They talked, hugged, and Lil backed away, spreading her hands over her stomach, an angelic smile on her face. Johnny’s face became red and angry. Lil backed away, then turned and ran. The anger from the man scared and chilled her.
Shandra’s body trembled and grew cold. She grasped the blankets to pull them snugger around her and woke.
Still trembling, she turned on the light. One o’clock in the morning. Sheba’s body stretched across the bottom of the bed. “Sheba, I need your warmth and security.”
The dog crawled up to lay beside her. Shandra stroked the large head. Why had Ella come to her now? And with dreams of Lil and Johnny?
She shook her head. Just because she gave you dreams that helped solve the last murder does not mean she is doing it this time. You only dreamed of Ella and Ryan because you are lonely. And you dreamed of Johnny and Lil because they are on your mind.
But what about Lil holding her belly as if she were pregnant?
Chapter Eight
The next morning Shandra boiled water, made tea, and added sweet rolls and fruit to the tray. She carried the tray out to the barn and used the toe of her boot to knock on the door of Lil’s room.
There were stirring sounds coming from the other side before the door finally opened.
Shandra walked in, noting a box on the end of the bed with photos spilling out.
“I brought some breakfast and thought maybe we could talk about you and Johnny and see if we can find someone to send Ryan investigating other than you.”
Lil was dressed in a large, purple and black plaid shirt over her usual nearly thread-bare jeans. Her white hair stuck out from her head like an explosion of stalactites. Without her cowboy hat, Lil looked like a woman wearing a spiked white helmet.
Watching the older woman, Shandra saw the resemblance to the young girl in the photo she’d seen last night.
“After you left last night, I lay in bed thinking about the last time I saw Johnny. We’d fought.” Lil took a breath and continued. “I’d gone to see my mother’s best friend. She’d become like a mother to me after Momma and Poppa died. Gran loved me and I loved her, but she didn’t have the patience to listen to my problems or care that I’d fallen in love.” Lil took the offered cup of tea. “She and Pappy liked Johnny well enough, but they didn’t like that he traveled with the rodeo circuit and that I went with him on several occasions.” She smiled wistfully. “Those trips with Johnny gave me some wonderful memories.”
Her eyes glazed over and her expression relaxed, giving her face a younger glow.
Shandra took a sip of tea, allowing Lil to drift along on memories. When it appeared she was taking the long tour, Shandra cleared her throat and brought Lil back to the conversation.
“Why did you go see your mother’s best friend?”
The question did the trick. Lil’s eyes closed briefly then opened. Pain radiated from their hazy blue depths.
“I was shocked by Johnny’s anger. He’d never gotten angry with me before. And his accusations… I didn’t take them well.”
“What did he accuse you of?” Shandra was making mental notes. The fact Johnny had a temper was a sure sign he probably had someone somewhere he’d been in an altercation with.
Lil shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.” She put the cup down and stood. “I’ve got chores to tend to.”
Shandra caught the woman by her small wrist. “Lil, I can’t help you if you don’t tell me everything.”
Lil peered into her eyes. “I’ve been living with the pain of Johnny deserting me for thirty years. Now that I know it wasn’t on purpose, I don’t want to dredge up any more pain.” Lil pulled her arm free and walked out the door.
There had to be something more to this. Who was her mother’s best friend? Maybe she’d be more willing to help keep Lil out of jail than Lil was.
Lewis, who’d been curled up on the pillow on Lil’s bed, ran across the bed, bumping the box of photos onto the floor. The photos scattered across the wood floor as the cat flew out the door.
Shandra knelt and picked up the pictures closest to her. There was writing on the back. Me and Johnny Cheyenne Days. She turned the photo over and it was another photo of the two at a different rodeo. Again the only purple on Lil was the silk neckerchief tied around her neck.
Picking up the rest of the photos it was clear Lil had labeled all of them.
Shandra put the box on the table and started through the photos. She now had a visual of Lil’s grandparents, an uncle, and there was even a photo of Lil’s parents. Lil was a spitting image of her mother. Then she found a photo of Lil and a woman who looked old enough to be her mother. Me and Momma’s best friend, Sally Albright.
She had what she wanted. The name of the woman who Lil had confided in all those years ago. I hope she’s still alive. Shandra replaced the photos and put the box back on the bed. She collected her tray and headed to the house. She’d spend however long it took to find Sally Albright.
~*~
Ryan woke too early to catch breakfast at Ruthie’s and too early to talk to any of the people he wanted to see this morning. He put on sweats and a T-shirt and went for a jog up the road out of town toward the ski lodge. This hour of the morning the traffic was light and the view spectacular. One of the reasons he moved back to Idaho was because he’d become homesick for the fresh air with a tang of pine, the majestic snow-covered mountains, and the lack of crime and violence. Six months after signing on with the Chicago P.D. he’d been ready to bail. But he’d signed a contract and he’d thought being in a big city would make Lissa see he could live in a big city.
He snorted. Boy was I blind, not seeing she had fallen for Conor. He’d dated a few women while in Chicago, but they all seemed fake. Coming back to Idaho he’d met a woman who wasn’t fake. Just infuriating because she only saw the good in the people around her. How could Shandra side with a woman the whole community called Crazy Lil? There had to be a reason for them to tack crazy onto her name. Today he planned to learn all he could about the woman, the ranch, and the man they’d found.
His phone rang.
“Greer.”
“That’s short and to the point,” Bridget, his little sister, said. “You must not have looked to see who was calling.”
“You’re right. Had I known it was you, I would have let it go to voicemail.” He couldn’t stop the grin when she huffed just like when they were kids and he’d aggravated her.
“Where are you? You’re breathing heavy. I didn’t catch you in the middle of anything….intimate?”
Anyone else would have been embarrassed, but his little sister was the only woman he knew that actually asked him for details when he dated. And not just what they ate. She asked questions that turned him red and caused him to stutter. He was pretty sure she did it on purpose.
“No. I’m running.” He stopped and stretched his calves. “Why did you call?”
“Cathleen said you called in the other day from Shandra’s phone. Are you two seeing each other?”
The innuendo in her voice wasn’t lost on Ryan.
“No, we are not seeing each other the way you think. She found a dead body, called me, and I’ve been out there leading a search and rescue team to dig the body out. That’s it.” There was no way he’d tell her he’d spent the night at Shandra’s even if it was in the spare bedroom. Bridget had a way of seeing things how she wanted to see them.
“I see. She called you. She should have called dispatch. Why do you think she called you?”
Ryan ran a hand over the muscles tightening in the back of his neck. Yep, his little sister was the only p
erson who had ever given him a headache. In the military and in law enforcement, he’d never been frustrated to the point of pressure in his head.
“Bridge, I have to go. I need to finish this run and check on some leads. Why don’t you call and harass the husband to be.” He really wanted to get back to town, get breakfast, and start finding answers.
“You’re dodging the obvious,” she sang in that irritating voice she’d used when singing the k-i-s-s-i-n-g song as a kid.
“No, I’m dodging you and getting back to work. Bye.” He pushed the off button and shoved the phone back in his pocket.
Shandra’s face leapt into his mind. She was lucky. She didn’t have siblings to call and harass her.
Did Lil have siblings? Or any family other than her grandparents? Something else to look into. Lil’s family history.
He turned and headed back to Huckleberry. He wanted to be at the city recorder’s office as soon as the door opened. The recorder could be putting the list together while he read through copies of the Huckleberry Gazette from 30 years ago and older.
Chapter Nine
“Why do you need a list of people living in Huckleberry from nineteen-eighty to eighty-four?” Martha Samples the city recorder asked.
“It’s part of an investigation.” Ryan tried to keep a smile on his face, but the moment he walked in and flashed his badge the woman had continued to ask questions.
“This have anything to do with the bones that artist at the old Whitmire Ranch found?” Martha licked the end of a pencil and jotted down the dates he’d mentioned.
“I’m not at liberty to say.” Ryan started to back away from the counter. “Can you have that for me by noon?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me at all if there were more than one body up there on that mountain.”
Ryan stopped. “Why do you say that?”
“There’s a reason Ralph and Virginia kept Lil on the ranch.” The woman smiled smugly.
He was pretty good at reading people. The smugness was all show. He doubted the woman had anything factual to say, but he’d also learned sometimes what people made up could lead you to the truth.
“Why did they keep Lil on the ranch?”
“She was loose. Running off with rodeo cowboys and not coming home for days.” She nodded. “They had to keep a tight rein on her.”
He scanned the woman. She had to be close to Lil’s age. “How do you know so much about Lil’s grandparents when you appear to be about the age of Lil?”
The woman blushed. “I was three years behind Lil in school. Everyone in the school knew Lil liked cowboys. She followed the boys around who wore cowboy boots and word was any one of them could get whatever they wanted from her.” She leaned closer. “If you know what I mean.”
“That was in high school. In eighty-four she would have been about thirty. Was she still following cowboys around?” This was where he hoped to find a connection between Lil and Johnny.
“Oh, yes, that was when she was going off to rodeos with an announcer. He’d been a big-shot rodeo man. He had an accident. After that he took to announcing the rodeos. I can’t remember his name, but he spent a lot of time in Huckleberry for about two years.” She nodded up and down like a bauble head sitting on a car dash.
Ryan had some more things to discover. “I’ll be back at noon for that list.”
He made a right at the courthouse and headed to the newspaper office. The young girl at the desk showed him into a room with a microfiche projector and handed him several rolls of microfiche.
“That’s nineteen-eighty to eighty-four copies of the gazette.” She looked over her shoulder at the open door. “If you need help, just holler, I’ll be at the desk.”
He waved his hand as he slipped the film from the earliest dated box into the machine and listened to it whirl onto the reel.
Three hours later, he’d read accounts of Johnny, looked at several pictures of him alone and him with Lil. He read about a fire at the Whitmire ranch and how their son, Jerome, happened along in time to warn Ralph and Virginia, his parents, and save the barn. Conjecture was Lil had caused the fire, but the local authorities couldn’t find enough evidence and the grandparents were adamant she didn’t. But the girl refused to give an alibi. And Jerome held to the account he saw her slipping out the back of the barn moments before he saw the flames.
Ryan added Jerome Whitmire to the list of people to interrogate.
His phone buzzed. Glancing at the number, he quickly punched the on button. “Greer.”
“I sent preliminary findings to Sheriff Oldham. He said you’re in the field so here’s the preliminary cause of death. Blunt force trauma,” Sheila Rickman of the State Police forensic lab said.
“Could you tell what the cause was?” He knew it would take a miracle for her to ascertain that information from a thirty year old pile of bones.
She laughed. “Oldham asked me the same thing. No. At this point all I can tell you is it was something heavy and round.”
“Like a tire iron?” Premeditated murder would have the killer packing a tire iron to the site to whack Johnny in the head.
“No, the indention isn’t that small. It’s more the size of a driving club and swung with force. Here’s the other news. I’m pretty sure it was the hit that killed him, but the way the ribs were cracked, he could have been knocked out and the force of the weight of the earth on him could have suffocated him before he came to from the hit on the head.” She took a breath. “Or just over the years, the weight of the clay, that’s the material we extracted from the bones, could have caused the deteriorating bones to crack. We’ll know that better after more tests are run.”
“You’re calling the body a him. So it is a male?” Ryan had to get all his evidence clear and concise.
“Definitely a male.”
“And you’re definite it was murder and not a fall from a horse or something like that.” His gut told him it was murder, but he had to cover all the angles.
“Yes, it was murder. The impact is too high on the head to have come from getting thrown from a horse. He would have had to land on the top of his head. As tall as he was that would have been impossible from a horse. From a cliff, it could happen.”
Ryan jotted the information in his notebook. “We think we know who the victim is. I’ll send medical and dental records to you today. Did you come across anything else you found odd?”
“Not odd. As would be usual the leather accessories, belt and boots, were intact, as well as the belt buckle someone had cleaned up before sending.”
The tone of her voice made Ryan cringe. As a detective he shouldn’t have let Treat clean the buckle up.
“Sorry about that. I had an overzealous rescue member.”
“The dirt under the body that you sent produced snaps and buttons like on a western shirt and jeans. Also a key chain with the name Lil engraved. It had purple glass-cut beads around the edge. Not what a man would usually carry and I doubt the name was short for Lilburn.”
“Purple and the name Lil.” Ryan had enough evidence to question Lil Whitmire. “Thanks Sheila.”
He hit the off button and stared at the screen. It was hard to picture the tiny woman in the photo gazing up at the cowboy could swing an object hard enough to kill him. But if she stunned him and shoved him in a hole…
Chapter Ten
Shandra stretched and picked up her phone. After an hour of fruitless searching, her next step was to call the city recorder’s office and ask about information on Sally Albright. The phone rang twice and a pleasant voice answered.
“City Recorder’s office, Martha Samples speaking.”
“Ms. Samples—”
“Call me Martha, everyone does.”
Shandra smiled. A friendly person, good. “Martha, I’m trying to find Sally Albright. Could you see if she still lives in Huckleberry?”
“Mrs. Albright does still live here, though her niece has been trying the last two years to get her to live at the new assis
ted living place over in Hafersville.”
The wonder in the woman’s voice intrigued Shandra.
“Why won’t Mrs. Albright move?” Shandra needed the woman’s address or phone number, but she’d play the gossip game to get Martha’s alliance.
“She says she spent many wonderful years here in Huckleberry and all the people she loved are buried here.” Martha’s tone didn’t approve.
“Well, I know as people age they become more obsessed with the past. I’m sure she wants to be buried next to her husband when the time comes.” Shandra assumed the husband was dead since Martha hadn’t mentioned the niece moving Mr. and Mrs. Albright.
“Yes, her first husband ran the local paper. Mrs. Albright was proud of the fact he allowed her to edit the newspaper stories. She taught high school English.”
“Is there a chance you could give me either her phone number or her address? I have some questions I’d like to ask her.” Shandra stared out the window watching Lil water the plants on the back patio. She needed to learn as much as she could about Lil as a young woman and discover why Ella was rocking a baby in the dream.
“I’m not supposed to give out that kind of information to just anyone.”
If there had been authority in the way she said it, Shandra would have thanked her and hung up. But the undertone of the woman’s voice led Shandra to believe she could get it.
“I really need to talk to Mrs. Albright about some people she knew years ago. I think they might be related to me, and I’m trying to discover more about them.” It was a small fib. She did want to know about people Mrs. Albright knew, and Lil had become like family to her, so it wasn’t that huge of a tale.
“Oh, who were they? Maybe I can help?” Martha’s quick response proved she liked gossip.
“If Mrs. Albright can’t help me, I’ll come by the office and have a chat with you.” Shandra wouldn’t hang Lil’s past out for the whole town to hear, but if she could make this woman think that she would, there was a strong chance she’d get what she was after.