The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3

by Jeffrey, Anna

  Big bucks? Big deal. Oh, sure, there were cutting horses worth big bucks, just like there were rope horses, racehorses, et cetera, et cetera. In Texas, maybe, but Texas wasn't Callister, Idaho.

  His thoughts veered to the dog. He was sure it had been over in Art's pasture, harassing the sheep just like the old fart said. Border collies were busy little critters. Why had Izzy lied? Why hadn't she just admitted what happened and been done with the whole thing?

  Of the things John had learned since pinning on the sheriff's badge, one of the eye-openers that stunned him the most was almost everybody told him lies. Sometimes huge whoppers, sometimes little fibs, but untruths all the same.

  Ah, well. He guessed fibbing to the law was human nature. He had done it himself a few times.... I didn't see that speed limit sign, honest.... I didn't know that trailer taillight was out.... Hey, I only had one beer.

  He didn't know if he would ever be comfortable as the man behind a badge. Even after three months, the lawdog end of the peace officer/citizen relationship felt like a shirt that didn't fit. It was a good thing filling out the sheriff's term was only temporary. A little over six months to go and this chapter of his life would end. The county would hold an election for a real sheriff and he would go out and look for a job in the real world. A world hugely different from Callister.

  Back in his office, he found a phone message from his dad. A phone call from the man he wanted to hear from the least put the crowning touch on a day that had already turned shitty.

  He delayed returning the call by hanging his damp coat on a chair back and placing it near a space heater, just so. He sorted papers on his desk, read over the faxes that came in daily passing on data about wanted suspects. He kept feeling Rooster's and Dana's eyes watching him expectantly, so he faced the unavoidable and on a sigh shut his office door and punched in his dad's number.

  An answer came on the first ring. "How's Callister's fine sheriff today?"

  John could never tell if such remarks from John Thomas Bradshaw, Sr., came in jest or in judgment. His dad had thought John wearing a sheriff's badge a joke all along. Dad wasn't the only one who held that opinion. John himself sometimes thought the situation humorous. "Going okay, Dad. What's up?"

  "Your mother's worried. You haven't called her in weeks."

  Shit, what could he say? That he neglected calling his mother because he hated the possibility of talking to his dad? He closed his eyes, picturing the Bradshaw patriarch standing tall and straight in the office just to the right of the ranch house's front door. The receiver was at his left ear, the four fingers of his right hand were tucked just inside the edge of the pocket of his starched and pressed Wranglers. "Put her on," John said.

  "She's not here. Went down to the mall in Boise to do some shopping. I expect you forgot her birthday's coming up. It'd be decent for you to show up out here. And it wouldn't hurt if you brought her a present."

  John couldn't imagine his mom, a horsewoman who could ride and rope with the best of them, strolling through a mall, shopping. He glanced at the wall calendar, which still showed January, though the date was March 1. "I didn't forget. I'm planning on coming out."

  "Fine. I'll let her know. Now, don't disappoint her. 'Cause if she's expecting you, you know she'll spend two days cooking."

  Besides being colorful and full of fun, Katie Bradshaw had to be the most loving, selfless woman alive. If a dozen people went to the ranch to help celebrate her birthday, she would spend the day cooking up a big feed for them.

  Long blond-laced-with-gray hair, pulled back and banded at her nape, jeans covered by a ruffly apron, cowboy boots and sometimes spurs clumping and clinking around the kitchen—that was John's mother. He braced his elbow on the desk and propped his jaw on his hand, thinking of the similarities in personality between his father and Art Karadimos. And feeling sorry for his mother. "Okay, Dad."

  "I heard the schoolkids are soon having what they call that spring break," his dad said. "I was thinking, if you wanted to bring Trey and Cody up for a week, I'd pay for some plane tickets. It'd mean a lot to your mother to spend some time with her grandsons."

  Spending time with his boys would mean a lot to John, too, but he didn't know how he could remedy the present circumstances. When Julie and he divorced, the court had given her full custody, with him allowed only two weekends a month. Then she remarried and moved to California. Before going, she petitioned for a new visitation schedule and the judge had gone along. The alteration denied him the company of his sons during the entire winter, including Christmas. All he could look forward to now was a month in the summer—or two months, if he begged her. He tried to have a phone conversation with them every week just to stay in touch with their lives, but Julie's and her new husband's schedules made doing even that difficult.

  His dad didn't understand that buying the tickets was only a tiny part of the problem. "Julie won't let 'em fly alone, Dad. Even if I went down there to pick them up, I don't know if that would work either. Hell, I don't even know if they're gonna come for their scheduled visit this summer. I talked to 'em just a couple of days ago. Julie's husband's already made plans."

  "That's a damn shame, son. It's one thing to let rodeos and whiskey ruin your marriage, but I don't know how you managed to screw up custody of those kids. When a woman does what your ex-wife did—"

  "Cut it out, Dad." To this day, John didn't know how his parents had learned he had caught his ex-wife with another man. He had never discussed it with them himself and didn't intend to.

  "You should've fought her for those kids. Right now, you oughtta be—"

  "Just tell Mom I'll see her on her birthday, okay?" John hung up. The incident out at Rondeau's place had left him a little short in the temper. He didn't need to hear all he had done wrong or what he ought to do in the future. He leaned both elbows on his desk, massaging his eyes with his fingertips. Jesus, would he ever do anything in his whole life that would earn his dad's respect?

  When he opened his eyes, the calendar still loomed before him. Saturday. If he were still rodeoing, he would probably be at the winter show in Tucson, psyching himself up for the finals. After the show, he would probably hook up with some sweet thing and they would go to the dance. Or they might skip the dance, pick up a bottle of Crown and just go to the motel. That is, if he had enough money in his pocket to pay for a room.

  The thing he would not be doing was readying to go out and patrol the streets and the three bars of a small town, prepared to arrest somebody for drunk and disorderly conduct.

  Sometimes it was hard to be glad he had changed his ways. Sometimes, though he had been off the rodeo circuit for more than a year, when he thought about different shows in which he had competed, he still felt as if he was missing something by not being there.

  Chapter 3

  Covered by the thick afghan, Isabelle lay back on the sofa, her head resting on the arm, her arms enclosing her distraught daughter. The orange flames in the fireplace threw warmth and soft glimmers into the dim living room light. At last she was warm and Ava had stopped crying and dropped off to sleep.

  Her neck was twisted at a cockeyed angle, but Isabelle didn't move, lest she wake Ava and start a new cycle of tears. She lay with her cheek resting against her daughter's hair, breathing the soft perfume of strawberry-scented shampoo and thinking on why and how had she come back to this place.

  Three years ago her father had been found frozen to death in the alley behind the Eights & Aces Saloon. No one knew exactly what had happened, but the speculation was that he fell on the way to his car and couldn't get back on his feet.

  At that fateful moment, she and her brother, Paul, had become the heirs of this old house, two barns, a loafing shed, a storage building and some miscellaneous ranch equipment. And three hundred prime acres that backed up to Callister Valley's tallest mountain. Years back, their parents had been offered an insulting price for the land by Art Karadimos. When their father refused to sell, Art diligently tried to
steal the place, setting off enmity between neighbors that existed to this day.

  After Frenchie Rondeau's death, with her living in Texas and her brother owning a home in town where he lived with his family, logic would have dictated they sell the homeplace for a premium price. Buyers from out of state were crawling all over Idaho towns like Callister looking for land and homes, both for investment and for relocating from urban areas like Los Angeles and San Francisco. And Hollywood.

  She hadn't even been tempted to sell and Paul hadn't mentioned it once, as if they both knew she would return someday.

  Her conscious self hadn't made such a plan, at least not immediately after their father's death. She hadn't even returned to Callister for his burial. Her brother's wife had handled the details.

  God knew, she had no scrapbooks of happy memories of growing up here, but much had happened in Texas in the past three years. The allure of an unmortgaged roof over her head and the opportunity to build a secure nest near her only family had finally drawn her home.

  Now, looking back, she supposed she had been simply homesick. In the humid summer heat of North Texas, her body began to long for nights cool enough for a blanket, sleeping with a window open, escaping the constantly blowing air from an air-conditioning unit. Her eyes began to hunger for the sight of pastures breaking into spring with brilliant green and for the dark forests that rose like regiments of monoliths, dwarfing all around them. In the non-winter of the southern latitude, she missed banks of snow and a fire roaring in the fireplace and on a cold morning warming her hands on a cup filled with hot coffee. Most of all, she missed the electric blue of the Idaho sky.

  Home, sweet home. Nowhere could ever replace Callister in her heart.

  Oddly enough, Billy's leaving hadn't been the trigger that drove her to sell out, pick up and move back home. The idea had formed in her subconscious before that, when she learned her only brother's wife had left him and taken his two kids to live in Boise. On hearing that news Isabelle looked at her life and her surroundings and knew she was a misplaced transient. Her north country roots reached out and wrapped themselves around her ankle. On that day, in her mind, she left Texas.

  Almost without a second thought, she put the Weatherford property—a house and barns and two hundred sixty acres—on the market and began scaling back her activities, making plans for the move. She sold what she couldn't conveniently haul. She said good-byes. Though she went through the motions for weeks, not until she actually hooked her horse trailer onto the Sierra's bumper, loaded Polly, Trixie and Dancer and headed northwest, did she actually believe she was doing it.

  Her brother, her aunt and her cousin met her and Ava in a joyful reunion her first day back. The euphoria lasted a week.

  Now, three weeks later, reality had set in, bringing a torrent of doubt and insecurity. Returning to Callister appeared to be the biggest mistake she had ever made.

  With her neck pain growing worse, she eased from beneath Ava's body, arranged her daughter's sleeping form on the sofa in front of the fire and spread the afghan over her. Conscience urged her to go outside and bury Jack, but she didn't want to make the ten-year-old a part of the process, nor did she want her to wake up and wonder where her mother was.

  Instead of going outside, Isabelle went to the kitchen and downed two aspirins for the neck pain and the dull headache that throbbed behind her eyes. Then she pulled a muffin tin, a bowl, and a box of chocolate cake mix from the cupboard. Why sweet food would be a balm to a child's wounded heart she didn't know, but the offer of kittens had fallen flat and she had to do something. She would be the first to admit that a mother-of-the-year prize would never share the mantel with her many horse show trophies.

  She had just dumped the powdery mix, water and cooking oil into a bowl when she heard Ava's voice. "Mama?"

  Isabelle turned and saw her standing in the doorway, her thin face set in a grim expression, a too-big green sweater hanging halfway to her knees. "Oh, hi, sweetie. I thought you were napping. I'm making some cupcakes." Lousy cook that she was, Isabelle could muddle through making cupcakes from a cake mix. The directions were shown in pictures. "Chocolate. Want to help?"

  Ava came and stood beside her, ducked her chin and pressed fingertips on the counter edge, watching as Isabelle cracked eggs. "I let Jack out the gate," she said in a small voice.

  A mix of sorrow and love piled onto guilt and pierced Isabelle's heart. It had never been necessary to punish Ava for a misdeed. The child had always punished herself. Isabelle wiped her hands on her jeans and hugged her. "Oh, Ava—"

  "He was crying, Mama. He didn't like being locked up. I was going to let him loose for just a minute, but he ran off and he wouldn't come back."

  "I know, I know." Isabelle sank to her knees in front of her daughter, looked into the troubled eyes and took the small hands into her own. "Listen to me. What happened to Jack, if it hadn't been today, it would have been another day. I don't know how we would ever have made him stop going over to those sheep. He wanted to do it. We couldn't have kept him penned up forever."

  "Do you think he'll forgive me?"

  "Yes. He will. He's in doggie heaven and he knows you loved him. It's my fault. I should have taught him better."

  She began to cry again. "But I wasn't supposed—you told me not to—"

  "Sweetheart, it was just one of those bad things that happens." Isabelle hugged her daughter fiercely, feeling the trembling in her slight body and fighting back tears of her own. When she could speak with a strong voice, she set her daughter away. "Now. You know your mama's not the best cook. These cupcakes will turn out a lot better if you help."

  The corners of Ava's mouth quirked ever so slightly. "Okay," she said, sniffling.

  Isabelle handed her the muffin tins and paper liners. "Here, you do this while I stir up everything. Let's don't cry anymore, okay?"

  Later, they cooked pizza and ate cupcakes for dessert. They talked about Jack and how sometimes events, despite everyone's best efforts, spiraled out of control. Then they watched the video of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets again. By now, Isabelle knew some of the dialogue by heart. Ava fell asleep before the end of the movie, exhausted by the emotional upheaval of the day. Truth be told, Isabelle was worn out, too.

  After tucking Ava into bed, Isabelle donned a slicker and rubber boots and made her way to the ramshackle barn. The night was dark as a mine shaft and the drizzle had developed into a cold, steady rain drumming on the barn roof. Missing shingles made for a leak here and there, but one of the lights worked and gave dull amber illumination.

  She lit her Coleman, picked up a shovel and went outside. Around the corner, she found a place for Jack's grave where the horses wouldn't trample. She began to dig.

  Busy hands didn't keep her mind from repeating the recrimination she had heaped on herself for two weeks over the foolishness of coming back here. Losing Jack only added an exclamation point. If she spent every dime in her savings account, it wouldn't be enough to put this tumbledown place in good shape. And she owned only half of it.

  The sad truth was, except for her clothes and a few pieces of furniture, she didn't own anything that was hers alone, not her horses or her truck and trailer. When Billy walked out, neither she nor he did anything about the legalities of dividing assets. She had been too devastated to deal with it and he had been too eager to follow his girlfriend to Oklahoma.

  With a knee-deep hole finished, she retrieved Jack's tarp-wrapped body from the pickup bed and placed it in the grave. Being unable to see him made the burial easier. She began to shovel mud, covering the tarp.

  Forcing thought away from the hurtful task only replaced it with nagging fear. Could she develop a horse-training business without Billy? How long would it take in an out-of-the-way place like Callister? How much of her nest egg would be eaten by living expenses while she tried? And if the venture didn't succeed and her money ran out, what would she do then? A woman's opportunities for making a living in Callister were
few and far between, especially a woman with limited ability at basic skills, like reading and writing.

  She had to sell the horses. That hadn't been her intention in the beginning, but now she could think of no other solution. As much as she loved them and wanted to keep them, their maintenance would consume her money even faster.

  She knew a few potential buyers, but to sell them she had to get in touch with Billy. Though it had always been understood between them that the horses were hers, his name was on their registration papers as half owner. She had to get him to sign off his interest. Making that call to Oklahoma hung over her head as black and endless as the stormy night sky.

  By the time she shoveled the last bit of dirt and mud onto Jack's grave, the slicker had slid down. Her thick hair was soaked and hanging heavy on her neck. For the second time today, she was wet and shaking with cold.

  All three horses had ambled to the sheds and waited for their supper. Nine o'clock and they hadn't been fed.

  She returned to the big barn and went to the grain bin at the far end where, last week, she had hauled in and stacked some sacks of oats. A little treat to warm bellies when nighttime temperatures still dropped below freezing. She scooped a coffee can full twice for each horse and dumped the oats into a gallon bucket on the barn floor. Then she lugged the bucket to the best of the falling-apart stalls and poured two one-third rations into wooden troughs on the ground.

  That done, she pulled several thick slabs from a hay bale, stuffed them into mangers mounted on the sides of the stalls and opened the barn door to allow the mares to enter. They clomped in, snuffling and blowing. After being outside in the storm, they were drenched. Poor babies. She should curry them dry, but she was exhausted, so she shut them inside the stalls and moved on.

  The tears held in check since morning puddled in the corners of her eyes and burned her nose. Through watery vision, she piled more slabs of hay into the wheelbarrow and set the bucket holding the remaining oats on top. She had used her only tarp to bury Jack, so she threw a plastic trash bag over the hay and oats in the wheelbarrow and rolled it over to the smaller barn a few hundred feet away.