Bum Steer

by Nancy Pickard

  When he heard that, he turned around and grinned. Then he started to laugh. I walked toward him, but he quickly moved away from the water, clearly afraid that I might push him into it. He circled me, until he could get me between him and the pond, and then he moved in closer, until our chests were nearly touching, and he looked down at me, opening his blue eyes wide.

  “You can trust me, Jenny … but can I trust you?”

  “Come a couple of inches closer,” I suggested, raising my right knee. “And we’ll see.”

  He jumped back, and this time I was laughing, too.

  We rode back to the barn then, with Slight in high good humor and with me in agony, because the insides of my thighs felt as if I’d been riding an iron horse. The two sedans were gone from the gravel drive. I knew we’d been out in the fields a long time, but when I looked at my watch, I was shocked to discover it was nearly five o’clock. Saturday night. That left me only one more day to learn everything I could about the ranch and the men who would run it for the foundation. I needed more time with them. As we unsaddled, I said, “If you’ll take me back to the motel, I’ll check out. And then, if the offer’s still good, I’ll take that spare bedroom upstairs.”

  “You sure you want to?”

  “You’d rather I didn’t?”

  “Well, you’re settled in at the motel, and all—”

  “But it would save you time—”

  “I got lots of time.” He shook his head, as if reminding himself of something, perhaps of the fact that I was now his boss. “Oh, hell, of course we want you to stay here. Hell, it’s your house.”

  I walked toward his truck, thinking that was a highly unsatisfying answer. Maybe he was angry that I’d turned the tables on him, back there in the pasture. Heaven knows, I’d seen grown men go into terminal funks just because they lost their pocketknives. Maybe that had been an awful thing to do. Well, tough. If he was going to keep dishing it out to me, he was going to have to keep taking it, as well.

  But on the drive back he was so amiable and gabby, I decided he wasn’t angry at all; that, in fact, he relished the thought of telling the knife tale to Carl, even though he, himself, was the butt of it. I liked him for that. I liked him for a lot of reasons. His wit. His intelligence. His unpredictability. The amazing blue of his eyes. The flat belly above his buckle. The way his muscles moved under his jeans when he shifted his legs to press the clutch or the brake. The way he remembered to roll down his window to let the smoke out when he lit a cigarette. I remembered all too vividly exactly how it had felt to stand so close to him in that pasture. I liked him for all too many reasons, I told myself.

  Cool it, I told myself.

  You’re married. He’s too old for you. He lives clear across the country, and you’ll probably never see him again … well, now there was an argument that cut two ways. But there was one argument that brooked no opposition: There existed the possibility—a slim one, I hoped—that this man had killed his boss, either out of sympathy or to secure his lifetime job a little sooner. And it did seem to me that a woman who committed adultery would be adding insult to injury if the lover happened to be a murderer and the husband happened to be a cop. I turned my face to the side window so that I couldn’t see Slight Harlan’s blue jeans even in my peripheral vision, and I concentrated very hard on imagining twilight on Cape Cod Bay.

  18

  Slight stayed in the truck while I went into the motel office to settle my bill. I had to ring the silver bell on the counter to summon the owner out of the rear to help me.

  “I’m checking out of three,” I told her.

  “Now?” She was a scrawny woman in her sixties, with a pleasant smile, knobby knuckles on her red, raw-looking hands, and gray hair permed into stiff ringlets held in place by a gossamer-thin hairnet. “I had you down for three nights, dear. Something wrong with the room?”

  “No, I’m going to stay with friends. What do I owe you?”

  “Well, I’ll have to charge you for tonight—”

  “I realize that.”

  “But listen, it doesn’t seem fair to make you pay full price for what you only half-used. How about if we split the difference?”

  “That’s more than fair.”

  She presented me a bill for an amount that, even with a full extra night added on, would not have covered one night at a motel back home. As I handed her my American Express card, I had the feeling she had some point of curiosity she needed to satisfy. I felt I owed her one, so I said, “What is it?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well.” She delicately patted her hairnet, then she pressed her hand against the side of her neck as if she had a pain there. “Something happened here a while ago that’s got me more het up the more I think about it. Last night, I checked that girl into six. She was driving a white Volkswagen convertible, cute little car. I seen you talkin’ to her over to the Pizza Hut last night, so I thought maybe you’d know somethin’ about this thing that just happened …

  “A couple a hours ago, I seen these three people walking past this door, like they was going to a room, only they wasn’t anybody I’d sold a room to. And they wasn’t driving. I don’t know how they got here. Or where they parked their car. And they was dressed funny, I mean, they was dressed nice. The young man had a nice suit on, and the two older ladies had on just real pretty dresses—oh, I just loved their dresses …

  “Anyways, so I was wondering who they was going to visit, so I kinda peeked out the door, you know. Well, they walked up to room six, where I’d put that girl. And the young man, he knocked, and then the girl come to the door, and so they all went inside. And not very long after that, they all come out again. And the young man, he was carrying the girl’s suitcase, and both the ladies, they had her by an elbow.

  “Well, they all four of them got into the girl’s little car with the man driving, and they stopped by here at the office. One of the ladies, she got out and come in and paid the girl’s bill. She was real nice about it, I have to say that. And then they driven off north.”

  “Toward Kansas City?”

  “Um hum.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, the thing is, I followed that lady to the door and I looked in that car, and I seen the girl was crying. Well, this upset me then, and I’ve been getting more upset every hour. What do you think? You think they kidnapped her or something? I guess that’s what I’m afraid of. You think maybe she was in one of those religious cults, and that man was what they call one of those, those—”

  “Deprogrammers?”

  “Right, deprogrammers, and they was come to take her back? I mean, I’m a Christian and all, and I don’t like them cults no better than anybody else does, but golly, they just come and took her away, just like that! I hated to see her cryin’, a nice, pretty girl like that. So I wonder, you think maybe we ought to call the sheriff? Or not.”

  “Can you tell me a little more about what the three people looked like?”

  She described a trio who sounded to me like Dwight Brady, Alice Lawrence, and her sister, Margaret Stewart. They had come to haul Lilly back, all right, before she endangered her inheritance.

  To the worried motel owner, I said, “I know the girl. From the sound of it, that was her mother and her aunt who came after her, along with a lawyer. I don’t think they want to hurt her. In a way, I think they probably just want to try to keep her from hurting herself.”

  “Oh,” she murmured with a sad and knowing look. “I hear there’s a lot of teenage suicide in the cities.”

  “No.” I smiled at her. “She’s not suicidal, at least not that way. But it’s good of you to be concerned. If I had a daughter and she was staying at a motel away from home, I’d like to think somebody like you was watching out for her.”

  That seemed to satisfy—and gratify—her.

  I signed the American Express bill and took the top slip.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “You, too.” She smile
d. “I feel a lot better now.”

  I walked back out to the truck, wondering how Lilly’s family had known where to find her. I supposed they could have assumed she would drive down here. And Brady might have known, from making my reservations, that this was the only motel for miles around. Or would only his secretary know that? Still, he might have called here and asked for Lilly Ann, to confirm her presence.

  I turned on my heel and opened the office door again.

  “Excuse me … did the girl get any telephone calls?”

  “No,” the owner said. “And I’d know.”

  I smiled at her again and closed the door. Maybe the owner would know that, and maybe she wouldn’t. She couldn’t have been in the office every minute Lilly was there. Somebody had to wash and change the sheets on the beds, and I’d seen her raw, red hands. I’d also seen her pushing a laundry cart early that morning myself.

  I hoisted myself back into the truck.

  “Lilly’s gone. Her family came and got her.”

  “Just as well,” Slight said. He slid the gearshift into first and we bounced over to room number three. He waited outside again while I packed, but when I emerged in the doorway with my stuff, he hopped down to help me. This time when he threw my bags in the back, I didn’t even flinch. We got back into the truck and he backed out of the parking lot.

  “Slight, how do you think her family got here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, they all drove back in her car. Do you think they flew down?”

  “We saw that plane go over.”

  “That’s right! We did. But then how’d they get from the airport to the motel? Is it close enough to walk?”

  “Well, it’s a good fifteen miles, I’d say. Maybe they hitched a ride with somebody.”

  The idea of that trio sticking out their thumbs was a dubious one, and I said as much to him. “Could they have called somebody from the airport?”

  “It ain’t JFK, Jenny,” he said. “There’s no phone. But I remember flyin’ into Cedar Key, Florida, one time. By the time we had all three wheels on the ground, there was a fellow waiting for us to sell us a ride into town. It could be, some enterprising kid in Rock Creek saw the plane comin’ down and drove out to make a buck.”

  I finally shrugged off the question as unanswerable for the time being. Somehow, they’d known to come here for her. Somehow, they’d managed it. Now she was gone, and overall, I had to admit I was glad to be rid of her.

  19

  Slight stowed me and my baggage in the spare bedroom on the second floor. “This was Cat’s room,” he told me. “It ain’t haunted, I don’t think.”

  “I gather he liked practical jokes, though.”

  “Yeah.” He smiled a little. “So, if you find a dead badger on your pillow, you’ll know it wasn’t Carl nor me that put it there. You going to be okay in here?”

  I looked around me at the big, plainly furnished room: double bed on a bare frame with no headboard, table, chest of drawers, two windows, and a closet.

  “Fine, thanks.”

  “Good. Oh, and I think those are fresh sheets. I’m pretty sure we’ve changed ’em since Cat slept in ’em. You might want to sniff ’em, though, see if they smell like old cowboy.” He picked up a framed photograph from the bedside table and said, “What’s this doing in here?” I peeked over his shoulder and saw it was a picture of a little boy, maybe three years old, all duded up in jeans, cowboy shirt, boots, hat, and a big grin. A real cutie. A smaller snapshot of a handsome blond teenager, clearly the little boy several years later, was stuck in a lower corner of the cheap gold metal frame.

  “Who’s that, Slight?”

  He hesitated before he said, “Cat’s nephew, Laddy. I’m going to check on those heifers again, you want to come?”

  But I had heard the tires of the Cadillac crackling over the gravel drive and so I said, “Not this time.” Slight nodded, then left me alone in the room, taking the photographs with him. I sat down on the bed. The mattress sank several inches under my weight, not a good omen for the coming night’s sleep. What I really wanted at that moment, however, was not slumber so much as a long, hot bath to wash the prairie off my skin and to ease my aching muscles. But I also wanted to use the opportunity of Slight’s absence to try to get to know my other new employee better. When I heard Slight drive off in his truck, then heard the back door slam, I walked downstairs to the kitchen.

  Carl Everett stood at the counter, taking bacon out of a grocery sack.

  “May I help?”

  He jerked around toward me. “Uh, no. Thanks.” The phone rang, and he grabbed it. “Yeah? Slight’s not here. Yeah.” He hung it up, went back to his unloading.

  I leaned against a wall, watching him put things away, and thinking: How am I going to get this silent man to talk to me? My presence there clearly discombobulated him—he dropped the jar of instant coffee on the floor and then shut his hand in a cabinet when he went to put the coffee away. With every new clumsiness, he flushed an ever-deeper pink. To try to set this man down at a table, and try to get him to look me in the eye and talk to me, would seem an act of cruel and unusual punishment.

  “May I ask a favor, Carl?”

  The six-pack of beer cans he held broke open, spilling the first two cans onto the floor, but he nodded as he stooped to pick them up.

  “I’ve driven through the pastures with Slight, but I haven’t really looked at all the buildings yet. Would you show me around?”

  “Okay,” he said, flushing. Before he put the six-pack into the refrigerator, he took one of the beers out. He was starting to pull the tab on it when he looked up at me, startled. “Now, you mean?”

  “If you have time.”

  He looked at the can in his hand. “Uh, I guess. What do you want to look at?”

  “Oh.” I strained to keep impatience out of my voice. “The bunkhouse, the other outbuildings.”

  He nodded and moved to the screen door. It was only when he’d stood there a moment, holding it open, that I realized he was holding it for me. I stepped past him and then outside into the coolness of the twilight on the prairie. The setting sun transformed the landscape into a pale and eerie painting viewed through a lavender scrim.

  “I’ve never seen a place where the light changes color so often, and so beautifully.”

  If Carl heard me, he didn’t respond.

  We walked to the bunkhouse without speaking. Finally, I broke the silence by asking a question that wouldn’t have been allowed on any legal employment-application form.

  “You ever been married, Carl?”

  He nodded.

  “What about Slight?”

  He took a drink before he shook his head. But then he nodded.

  “Yes or no?”

  “Well,” he said after clearing his throat, “I don’t exactly recall.”

  We had, by the close of this crackling conversation, reached the front door of the bunkhouse. Carl pushed it open, leaving me to enter first. I went on in and found that the structure was one long room containing a straight-backed chair and an old square table with a record player and a pile of long-playing records on top of it. There were two big trash bins overflowing with beer cans and liquor bottles and styrofoam cups. Even more than the house, this place smelled like a brewery, and one where they didn’t take any great care with sanitation. This was where Slight had originally given me a choice of staying? One of his wry jokes, clearly. My only real choice was the main house.

  Carl came in slowly behind me.

  I strolled over to the table and, trying to act casual, sneaked a look at the record covers: Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Guy Lombardo. They were the big bands of the thirties and forties, playing “Stardust” and “Chattanooga Choo Choo” and “One More for My Baby and One More for the Road.” So this was where Carl came to do his drinking, and this was what he did while he drank. I had myself a melancholy alcoholic for a lifetime, salary-guaranteed employee.

  I walked aw
ay from the table—it felt like walking away from a desk with private papers on it—and went over to stare out one of the dirty windows. After a moment, I turned around. Carl waited just inside the doorway, the beer can in his hand, watching me.

  “Did you see those detectives today, Carl?”

  He sniffed, swallowed, shifted from one foot to another, switched his beer can to the opposite hand, sniffed again. “Yep.”

  “Did they ask a lot of questions?”

  “Uh, not too many, I guess.”

  “What’d they ask, Carl?”

  He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Nothin’ much.”

  “Carl, who do you think killed Mr. Benet?”

  He flushed the same deep-purple shade that he turned whenever Slight needled him. “Some damn fool.”

  “Yeah.” If Detectives Canales and Krulick weren’t any better at questioning him than I was, they had wasted a good part of their afternoon. I wondered if they’d finally given up, as I was about to do. “Well, thank you, Carl. You don’t have to show me the other buildings. It’s okay. I’ll take a look on my own.”

  He remained standing there.

  “In a few minutes,” I said.

  He walked out of the bunkhouse.

  I leaned my head against the windowsill. Then, in lieu of immediately taking that bath, I placed a Benny Goodman record on the player. I sat down in the single chair, rested my head on the rim of it, and as twilight deepened into night, I listened to that sweet, soaring clarinet play “Time After Time” and Sophisticated Lady” and finally, “Rhapsody in Blue.” I played that side of the record through again, and then I played “Rhapsody in Blue” two more times. The final lovely clarinet solo was winding to its haunting conclusion when I heard a deep voice speak to me from the doorway.

  “May I have this dance?”

  I opened my eyes. Slight Harlan stood there, cigarette in one hand, cowboy hat in the other. In the darkness, I couldn’t make out the expression on his face.

  I reached over to lift the needle back to its rest, then I switched off the machine.