Cowboy Justice cc-2

by Melissa Cutler

  Stealing from friends and family became shoplifting when Gwen was a teenager. That’s when therapy started. What a waste of money those quacks had been, because no matter how many hours she spent on a counselor’s sofa, no matter what kind of antidepressants they pumped her with, her impulse to steal only grew more powerful.

  Vaughn earned his police badge with the Albuquerque City Police Department when he was twenty-two. That year marked Gwen’s first arrest, after she shoplifted a necklace from a Tucumcari jeweler. Wallace Meyer himself did the honor. Didn’t matter to him that Gwen’s parents had tended his horses every week for years. He recommended the maximum sentence to the judge for a petty misdemeanor—ninety days in juvenile hall and a five-hundred-dollar fine.

  Vaughn pulled his patrol car into the driveway of the house he grew up in, parking behind his dad’s four-by-four Chevy. He knew by the collection of beat-down, piece of crap cars lining the street that Dad was holding class in his workshop. He’d retired from service as a farrier and now taught at the college full-time. When the mood struck him, he held class at his personal blacksmith shop in the house’s original garage.

  Vaughn stepped from the car and adjusted the brim of his hat. The aroma wafting out of the kitchen windows told him Mom was home too, and baking cookies. Good timing on his part.

  When Vaughn and his sisters were growing up, Mom worked alongside Dad as a farrier. They’d met while his dad was going through farrier college in Texas, and his mom had taken to the profession like a termite to wood. Eager to establish their own business, they’d picked up and moved west, to Tucumcari. A year later, Vaughn was born.

  Mom gave up her career when she decided her firstborn daughter needed more rigorous supervision. Vaughn sometimes wondered if she ever missed her job. He liked to believe she regularly stole away to the blacksmith shop when no one was paying attention to craft trinkets out of forged steel for her church’s craft sales the way some women knitted hats or painted. Working with metal had been her favorite part of the job. Her hands looked too soft and fragile to handle the hammers and heat anymore, but a guy could dream.

  Rounding the corner of the walkway that cut between the house and the garage, he saw a half-dozen folks gathered around his dad. Most looked college age, with a couple middle-age guys thrown in.

  Small-time ranchers, when they scaled back their businesses or passed the work on to their children, sometimes signed up for farrier school. Probably the first time in their working lives they had time to learn how to shoe a horse. For the most part, professional farriers were called upon for horseshoe maintenance around ranch country. It was a skill that took a lot of know-how to master, and it was easier and more cost-efficient for a rancher to hire a farrier than learn the trade himself.

  Vaughn leaned against the wood siding of the house, watching. He never got tired of listening to his dad teach, like he’d taught Vaughn so many years ago.

  Dad bent over an anvil, tongs in one hand and a rounding hammer in the other, giving a lesson on shaping a toe clip. “Make the first blow a hard one. That’ll seat the shoe against the anvil.”

  He demonstrated with a whack of the hammer that made the two older men in the class flinch from the noise.

  “Hey there,” his dad said when he noticed him. “My son, Vaughn,” he said to his class in that proud father way that made Vaughn feel eighteen again.

  He gave a two-finger wave.

  Dad held out the rounding hammer. “Want to show them how a sheriff does it?”

  “Nah, I’m on the clock. Besides, I never was as good as you.”

  Dad beamed at that, his bushy salt-and-pepper mustache curving up at the ends. “Are you staying for dinner?”

  Vaughn shook his head. “Need to have a word with Gwen, then get back to work.”

  Dad paused, midswing of the hammer. Guess he read Vaughn’s tone and phrasing correctly. Having a word with Gwen meant she was in trouble.

  Straightening, Dad passed the tongs and hammer to the nearest student. “Go ahead and take a few practice swings.”

  Walking to Vaughn, he doffed his gloves and wiped his hands on his leather apron. “Everything okay?”

  His code for What did she do this time? Up close like this, he looked old, with more gray hairs than brown, and his skin grizzled from too many years working near high heat and smoke.

  “Nothing new.”

  Dad nodded and smoothed his mustache, his eyes radiating a weary sorrow. Damn, Vaughn hated to cause his parents more grief. They’d suffered enough because of Gwen’s illness. Not much he could do about it now though. Not with Meyer ready to punish Vaughn by lashing out at his sister.

  “Class is almost over,” Dad said. “Stop by the workshop before you leave. I’m forging a new sole knife tonight and could use your input.”

  What he really wanted was the scoop on Gwen, and Vaughn respected him enough to give it to him straight. “Will do.”

  As Dad resumed his lesson, Vaughn opened the kitchen door, then took his hat in hand. Mom was at the sink washing dishes.

  “Hey, Ma.” He bussed her cheek with a kiss as his eyes trolled for the cookies he’d smelled from the driveway. They weren’t cooling on a rack, and they weren’t on the kitchen table. He checked the cookie jar. Empty.

  She shooed him away with her drying towel. “Get on with you, now. They’re still in the oven.”

  “Aw, you didn’t even give me a chance to use my advanced detective skills,” he said with a smile and wink. “Gwen around?”

  She eyed him suspiciously, her face turning guarded. “In her room.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Everything’s fine. I need to tell her some news I heard yesterday.”

  A frown tugged at her lips, but she nodded and returned to the sink. Vaughn walked down the hallway, twirling his hat on his finger, his eyes passing over innumerable framed family photos. The trip they took to Texas when he was little. Vaughn in a big red cowboy hat sitting on a pony. Stephanie and Gwen sitting on Santa’s lap, screaming their fool heads off. Pictures that had been hanging there his whole life, but that he couldn’t resist glancing over every time he visited.

  He stopped outside Gwen’s door, wondering, as he had the whole drive over, what the hell he was going to say. Thirty years old and she was living in the same room that held her crib when she was a baby. She’d been in and out of this room her whole adult life, depending on the boyfriend of the moment or whether she’d been fired for stealing from the stores she worked at.

  A television was on inside. He knocked three times and waited.

  She opened the door and gave him the once-over. “I didn’t do anything,” she said. “I haven’t left the house all week except to go to a party last night.”

  Great. A real high achiever. “Yeah, that’s good. May I come in?”

  Giving the door a shove to open it all the way, she turned and walked into the room. Vaughn followed, closing the door behind him.

  At least she wasn’t a slob. No piles of clothes on the floor, and her desk had only a stack of papers on one corner. She clicked off the television and perched on her neatly made bed. Vaughn took the desk chair.

  “I’ve got a problem and I need your help,” he said. Bullshit all the way, but as a cop he’d learned that everybody loved to feel important.

  She rolled her eyes. “Spare me your condescending cop-speak.”

  Oh, sheesh. God help a man with sisters.

  His throat reminded him that a cigarette would feel real good right about then, and really steady his nerves. He swallowed a few times. “A situation’s come up at work, a disagreement between my department and the Tucumcari police on how to prosecute a crime.”

  That got her attention. “You and Wallace Meyer have hated each other’s guts for years. What is it this time?”

  “The crime involved his son.”

  “Junior? He wasn’t at the party last night, and everybody had a different opinion about why. He’s in jail, isn’t he?”

  Vaug
hn leapt to his feet, blinking fast and whipping up the air with his arms. “Whoa, now. You party with Wallace Meyer Jr.?”

  “Not last night, I didn’t.”

  Oh, hell, no. “He’s . . . he’s . . . a friend of yours?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. Why?”

  Vaughn crossed the room in two strides to hover over her. “Gwen, listen to me. Junior’s bad news. He’s into some scary stuff that could get you in trouble or maybe even killed. What about his pals, Elias Baltierra, Shawn Henigin, and Jimmy de Luca? Are you friends with them too?”

  “Jimmy, yeah, we’re cool. Eli and Shawn come around sometimes, but I wouldn’t call them friends.”

  He leaned in closer. “Any idea where I could find them right now?”

  “How should I know? I only see them around parties, is all.”

  He hated that he had to ask this next question, but couldn’t see a way around it. “Tell me the truth—are you using drugs?”

  Sneering, she gave him a shove that backed him out of her face. “Don’t be a jackass, Vaughn. Do I look like a junkie?”

  He knelt, hands on hips, right up close to her, and gave her the same thorough looking over he might give someone he’d pulled over for erratic driving. Her skin was tan, not ashen, and free of scabs and sores. Her eyes weren’t bloodshot. No dark circles under her eyes or weird bruising anywhere. But her hair smelled faintly of pot.

  He fluffed her hair and took another whiff. Yep. Eau de Ganja.

  “Hey!” she squealed, swatting at him.

  Swabbing a hand over his face, he paced to the other side of the room and watched his dad’s class through the window, reining in his fury. When he could speak without shouting, he rounded on her. “Damn it, Gwen. Pot? You’re thirty, for Christ’s sake! When are you going to grow up?”

  She vaulted from the bed, and he knew by the fire in her eyes that he’d tripped her temper switch. Lovely. Just what he needed.

  “You don’t get to waltz in here with your fancy sheriff badge and that big brother smirk and boss me around,” she yelled. “I have my shit together, and I don’t need you or anyone else lecturing me on what I do in my free time.”

  “You’ve got nothing but free time,” Vaughn hissed as quietly as he could manage. “You have nothing going for you at all.”

  “Screw you!”

  “Kinda feels like that’s what you’re doing—screwing me over at my job, putting me in a position where I either got to sit on my hands while the police arrest you over and over again, or set aside my ethics as a sheriff to keep you out of jail.”

  “I don’t need your help,” she shouted, shoving him again.

  He planted his feet right in the middle of her room, his hands in his pockets, and let her push on him. It wasn’t like his little sisters hadn’t beaten on him a million times when they were kids, and maybe it would wear her temper out faster. “Is that right? Then tell me how you’re going to play it the next time Wallace Meyer or one of his gophers arrests you for possession of drugs or stolen merchandise? Because, right now, they want to catch you. They’re on the hunt.”

  The head of steam she’d worked up deflated. “You don’t know that.”

  Vaughn scoffed. “You know what I’m doing as soon as the warrant comes in from the judge? I’m going to the hospital to arrest Wallace Jr. for a violent crime. Chief Meyer knew it was coming to this, and the first chance he had, he got in my face with a threat against you.”

  She dropped to her bed again and wrapped her arms around her knees. “What?”

  “That’s why I’m here. You think I want to talk to you about this shit? Wallace Meyer told me straight up that if he catches you with so much as one foot stepping outside the law, he’s putting the full power of his position into prosecuting you. I came here to warn you. If you feel the sudden need to go shopping, or however the urge starts inside you, do me a favor and head to Albuquerque, okay? Stay out of Tucumcari.”

  She hugged herself tighter. “I live in Tucumcari.”

  “Okay, well, don’t go shopping. And for the love of God, no more parties with Wallace Jr.’s crowd.”

  “Fine.”

  “And while we’re at it, how about you show a little respect for the people who raised you and hand over any pot you have in the house.”

  Her eyes turned wide and innocent. “I don’t have any.”

  “Give me a break, Gwen. Hand it over or I’ll search your room. Because I’d rather you be pissed at me than be storing drugs right under the noses of our parents.”

  After a minute’s deliberation, she opened her closet and scrounged around in a drawer. Blank-faced, she handed a baggie to him.

  He pocketed it, nodding. “Thank you. Anything else?”

  “No.”

  “Are we clear about things?”

  She picked at a fingernail. “Yes.”

  He put his hand on the doorknob, then stopped. “I know you don’t think you need me, but I can list a hundred different ways you might get into hot water fast, now that Wallace Meyer has it out for you. If you have a problem, you call me, okay? If you think you’re being tailed or harassed by the Tucumcari police in any way, you let me deal with it. Got it?”

  “Yeah, I got it.”

  “If you ever get to thinking about doing stupid shit again, drugs or shoplifting—whatever—think about Mom and Dad, will you? Think about what this is doing to them.”

  She stalked up to him, indignation written all over her face. “You have no idea what I’m going through. No idea what it’s like to have a problem you can’t control.”

  He opened the door, the itch for a smoke burning in his throat again. “Yeah, sis. You’re right. I have no idea what that kind of impulse control is like. You’re such a special snowflake.”

  She threw something at him, a book or folder. He wasn’t sure which because he ducked, then scrambled out, shutting the door. A second something thunked against it.

  “Were you two arguing?” It was Mom in the living room, her apron bunched in her hands, her face anxious.

  Turning on his brightest smile, Vaughn swatted the air as he walked to her. “Sibling squabble. I suggested she work with Dad at the college to earn her keep around here. She told me to butt out of her life.” He slung an arm across her shoulders and guided her to the kitchen.

  “She doesn’t want anybody’s advice, Vaughn. You know that. I’ve been praying for guidance, but that’s about all she’ll let me do to help her.”

  Seems like Gwen was letting Mom do plenty, providing her with free boarding and food, and probably doing her laundry too, but he’d never call Mom out about it. “You get any answers from the Big Man on High yet?”

  “Not yet.”

  He rubbed her shoulders. “Whatever you do, keep trying.” He glanced at his watch. Five o’clock. “Any chance you’ve got some extra cookies to spare? I’m going to check in with Dad, then I’ve got to get on patrol.”

  In a six-man department, the sheriff was on the hook for patrol as much as the most junior members of the team. There simply weren’t enough bodies to cover the shifts while the sheriff sat behind his desk. It was one of the many things Vaughn loved about being a sheriff of a rural county. He loved getting his hands dirty on the job, keeping his finger on the pulse of the community. He hadn’t gone into law enforcement to work a desk job.

  “I already packaged them for you.” She presented him with a bag full of snickerdoodles.

  “Thanks, Ma.” He took the bag and bussed her cheek. “I’ve been craving cookies since the last time you sent a batch home with me.”

  She followed him to the door. “If you had a girl of your own, I’m sure she’d make you cookies whenever you wanted.”

  He couldn’t help but smile at the singsongy nag, relieved her anxiety over his argument with Gwen had passed. And yet, he didn’t know how to break it to her that he wasn’t all that attracted to domestic types of women. He didn’t want a rancher’s wife—some cute little thing who stayed home to cook hi
m dinner and wash his clothes. It was a certain truck-driving, ride-the-range sort of cowgirl who’d captured his interest.

  He wondered what his mom would think of Rachel. He could almost reconcile it in his head, the two of them bonding. Not over cookies or knitting, but horseshoes and grain feed.

  He opened the bag and popped a cookie into his mouth. “You’re not going to rest until I get hitched, are you?”

  “I need grandchildren.”

  Bam! There it was—Mom’s favorite topic. Uncanny, how she’d weaseled the conversation in that direction. Still, he had the good grace to look surprised by the suggestion. “Wait a gosh-darn minute. Stephanie gave you three grandchildren. Frankly, I thought I was off the hook years ago. I sent Steph a fruit basket to thank her.”

  Mom got that twinkle in her eye that only showed up when she found him charming. “You did not send your sister a fruit basket for having a baby.”

  “Sure I did. When she popped the second one out and it was a girl. I figured my keister was covered because she’d had one of each, so I sent her another fruit basket. Actually, more like a fruit tower. Boxes of apples and pears and oranges—a whole tower of fruit.”

  He’d reeled her in good now. Chuckling as she was, she’d forgotten all about the fact he hadn’t brought a girlfriend around in a long, long time, or that her middle child was a petty thief and all-around loser.

  “I’ve always wanted one of those, like from the catalog,” she mused.

  He gathered her in a bear hug. “That’s good to know.” He kissed her hair. “See you soon, Ma. Thanks again for the cookies.”

  He found his dad alone in the workshop, sharpening a hoof knife. He afforded Vaughn a sideways glance. “Did I hear your mother hassling you about grandchildren again?”

  He opened the cookie bag and popped one in his mouth. “Brings her great joy to nag me about it, so I’m hard-pressed to complain.”

  “That a boy,” Dad said with a grin. “’Course, if you’re really interested in bringing her great joy, it wouldn’t kill you to bring a woman around for dinner every now and then.”