“Is that like a border collie? They’re very intelligent.”
“There are similarities.” Four legs, two ears, a nose and a tail.
“Where did you get . . . him, you said?”
“Yes. It’s more like he got me.”
“A stray?” Mel and his family had segued from a Dalmatian to a lab to a golden retriever, each with a lineage more impressive than Queen Victoria’s. “Are you certain that’s a good idea?”
“Sure. Everyone deserves a chance at a new life, right, Mel? I’m fortunate that the owners at KWMT were willing to give me one. You know them, don’t you? The Heathertons. Val Heatherton, I understand, is the real power, and she named her son-in-law Craig Morningside the station manager. You might not know him, because I hear you called Val, went right to the top when you—”
“Danny, I . . . oh. Just a minute, Eileen!” He called away from the mouthpiece. I had not heard a peep from his wife in the background. “Sorry, Danny. Got to go now. Eileen’s calling. We’ll talk again. Soon.”
“Okay, Mel. Give Eileen my love.”
“Of course, of course. Bye.”
I grinned at the phone. As much as I like getting answers to questions, it might be worth delaying finding out precisely what Mel Welch was up to for the pleasure of tormenting him.
“I KNOW FINE’S officially got the story, but I’m glad we’re doing this,” Mike said abruptly. We’d been driving toward the mountains and O’Hara Hill, which sat in a narrow valley just east of them, in easy silence. “Besides, it’s another chance to have you mentor me on a big story.”
He coated the last line with nearly enough dryness for me to pretend he hadn’t meant it seriously. But not quite. “I am not mentor material. You do not want me as your mentor, Paycik.”
“Yes, I do, along with other things. And you already are,” he added, which allowed me to ignore the other phrase. He’d indicated interest, but hadn’t been pushy about that. And it wasn’t that I was uninterested. It was just one more thing I wasn’t ready to think about quite yet. “But tell me why I wouldn’t want you as a mentor.”
Under the direct challenge, I skidded sideways. “I’m hard news, and you’re sports.”
“You think sports is just scores and what happens on the field? Reporting sports, really reporting it, means knowing exactly the things I’m learning from you. Digging for facts and putting together the truth. It gets my goat when people don’t realize sports reporting is everything in hard news, plus keeping score.”
“Keeping score,” I repeated. “That has a lot of appeal, doesn’t it. Knowing exactly where you stand. I wonder if that’s some of the appeal of sports. The clarity. No wondering if you’ve done okay or not. It’s all there to see on the scoreboard.”
“Not all sports.”
“But rodeo . . .”
“Cut and dried in rodeo. If you don’t win, you don’t earn anything. Period.”
“Is it hard to figure out if you’ve done a good job—played a good game, I mean—when you’re on a football team?”
”Not really. Each player has a specific assignment on each play. Watching film, you see if you did the job or not. Were you at the right spot at the right time, did you make the right move, did you accomplish what you were supposed to do? And if you don’t see it,” Mike went on, “the coaches will point it out.”
“What if the coach isn’t . . . impartial?”
He slanted a look at me. “Like I said, it’s there on the film.”
There was no film, no replay for me, except in my own head.
“Your teammates know, too. That’s what a lot of people outside of football don’t understand. It takes the team to make any individual player look good over the long haul. A team can have a top quarterback, and if his offensive line doesn’t give him time to throw, if his receivers don’t hold onto the ball, if the coach doesn’t put in the right plays, heck, if the equipment guys don’t get the right shoes, it can all go south.”
“Can an individual coast on the ability of his teammates?”
“Some. More often the individual pushes himself to play better than he has before to match the rest of his team.”
I considered that. I’d worked with some of the best in the business. Maybe I’d pushed myself to match them. I could live with that. “What about the other way around?”
“The whole being greater than the sum of its parts? Sure. But there’s got to be a level of competence. Otherwise, it pulls down the team eventually.”
I hadn’t dragged down my team. That I was sure of. There was a zing, like hitting the sweet spot on a tennis racquet, when your team produced good work, and I’d had that zing plenty of times. Too many to have been a fluke.
“Sorry. Chewing your ear. You shouldn’t get me on to football.”
“You miss it, don’t you?” I asked.
“Probably about as much as you miss big-time TV news.”
“More.”
I saw my response surprised him nearly as much as it surprised me.
MRS. PARENS welcomed us and led us to her front room, which doubled as a Cottonwood County archive. Each wall was filled with maps and photographs.
“You never told me you were a rodeo queen,” I complained after greetings.
She tipped her head. “My dear, Elizabeth, I have lived a good many years. I have known you for a short period of time. I am entirely certain that there are any number of my activities of which I have not informed you.”
It was reasonable and reasoned. Why did I still feel as if she’d been holding out on me? I said, “I would be interested in hearing anything you’ll tell me about the rodeo or those involved with it.”
“That’s far too wide a net. I would have you and Michael here for more time than would be comfortable for any of us.”
“Tell her about Cottonwood Drive.” Mike received a reproving look from the woman who wasn’t much taller than his elbow. He added, “Please.”
“Rupert Caswell drove a herd of longhorn cattle up from Texas as the open range was ending. He was the first to bring his herd to this area of what was then Wyoming Territory. He was reported to be quite a . . .” An uncharacteristic hesitation from the former teacher. “. . . forceful man.”
“Shot homesteaders he said were on his property,” Mike said.
“That was never proven in a court of law,” Mrs. Parens said.
“And sheepherders when he was over ninety.”
“Flesh wounds,” she clarified. “He was nearly blind.” I wasn’t sure if she was excusing his shooting people or merely wounding them. “He guarded his legend. As an element of that, he named his ranch Cottonwood Drive, to forever serve as a reminder that his cattle drive had given the county its start.”
“He was Linda Caswell’s grandfather? He started the rodeo?”
“Rupert was her great-grandfather. His son, Rupert Junior, began the Fourth of July Rodeo. Cottonwood Drive provided the livestock each year from its beginning, until Keith Landry’s company won the bid twenty years ago. That was the end of an era. Walter was bitter about that until the day he died. Didn’t set well with any of the Caswells.” She squared her shoulders. “Yes, Rupert Junior was quite a different sort of man from the original. Linda is much more like him than her own father, or certainly Rupert Senior. I recall Rupert Junior fondly from my youth. Indeed, he crowned me as rodeo queen.”
It was the opening I’d hoped for. “About this year’s rodeo queen and—”
“I never had Heather as a student. I know little of her outside the screening process.”
“What about her mother, Vicky?”
“She was a student when I was principal. I knew of her but not as I would if I had taught her.”
“You were on the rodeo queen committee that selected her?”
&nbs
p; “Yes.”
Remembering things Vicky had said, I hazarded the guess, “But she didn’t use the scholarship money?”
“No.”
Guesstimating Vicky’s and Heather’s ages, having a baby might have been the reason.
“Did you know Heather’s father?” I asked.
“He was not from Cottonwood County,” she said, “and to my knowledge never resided here. So I cannot give you information on him beyond what you likely know.”
“I know Heather Upton’s father died—” A tiny nod acknowledging a correct answer. “—when she was quite young.”
A tuck appeared between her brows, quickly smoothed away.
“He didn’t die when she was young?” I turned to Mike, passing on the blame. “You told me her mother’s been a widow a long time.”
“She has been. Long as I can remember.”
“You have made an incorrect assumption, Michael.”
“It wasn’t an assumption. People said it. Vicky Upton is a widow. My Mom said it. Everybody said it.”
Mrs. Parens cleared her throat. “At times a certain amount of delicacy has been valued over absolute accuracy. In addition to delicacy, there is a responsibility in discussing personal lives. In that regard, I place greater reliance on both of you than on our county’s officials.”
Ah. I’d wager a dollar or two that Mrs. Parens was Tom’s source about the big shots being out of town—and his guide in deciding it was better to let them stay uninformed of recent events.
“I see Elizabeth wondered and now has drawn the correct conclusion,” Mrs. Parens said.
We both looked at Mike.
He looked back. “Don’t look at me like I’m stupid. What . . .? Oh. She was never married?”
“That is accurate to my knowledge,” Mrs. Parens said.
“Why did everybody say she was a widow? It’s not like other women around here haven’t had kids without being married.”
“True. However, in Vicky’s case, there were circumstances that inclined much of Cottonwood County to accept the account of a deceased husband. Vicky was a late-in-life baby for her parents, who were from a generation not as open about such matters. They sent Vicky away. When she returned after more than a year with a child, a wedding ring, and an account of a husband’s tragic death, it was not questioned. I don’t know if Vicky has maintained that construct since her parents’ deaths out of respect for them, or because she has no wish to disturb her own standing.”
“I wonder if she’s told her daughter?”
Mrs. Parens gave me a searching look. “That would be between mother and daughter, Elizabeth.”
“So, who’s the father?” Mike asked. “Does anyone know?”
Her disapproval was clear. “I should imagine that Vicky Upton knows. She was never of a temperament to not know such a thing.”
Neither Mike nor I pushed.
“Now, we should depart for Gisella’s house, or we’ll be late for dinner,” Mrs. Parens said. “Ah, I see you’re surprised, Elizabeth. Gisella has her faults, but she is generous, as well as being an excellent cook.” A glint of humor lit her eyes. “I allow her the pleasure of demonstrating her skill and her generosity by having me as a dinner guest.”
Chapter Twenty
MRS. PARENS WAS not the only additional guest next door. Donald from the sheriff’s department dispatch staff and his wife Doris were there, along with Jack, a gray-haired ranch foreman Mike had worked for in his youth. Also a woman named Connie and her three teenage sons.
It was a close-run thing whether those three eating machines or Aunt Gee’s colossal spread would hold out longer. Aunt Gee won.
While we watched the final rounds of that battle, Connie came and sat beside me, surprising me by starting her remarks with, “I’m pleased to have this chance to thank you for what you did.”
Unless a “Helping Out” segment had saved her from a travel scam or taught her how to get her toaster fixed, I couldn’t imagine how I’d helped her.
“I work in the office of Burrell Roads,” she said. That was the name of the road construction company, started by his father, that Tom Burrell ran in addition to his ranch. “My husband’s not well, and Tom insisted on keeping me on full pay even when there was so little business this spring that he told me not to come to the office. I couldn’t have gone on that way, but thanks to what you did—you and Mike and Diana—making it clear Tom was innocent, we should be back to full capacity next season.” A smile lifted the lines of her face. “I just wanted you to know the good you did.”
I uttered useless, but socially acceptable phrases. She smiled again, patted my hand, and went to talk with Aunt Gee. From across the room, Mrs. Parens gave me a small, approving smile.
Only after the other guests left, and Aunt Gee allowed Mike and me to carry dishes into her surgically clean kitchen, did we have an opportunity to pick up information from her. She allowed us to provide no other assistance.
We heard that Aunt Gee was pleased that Richard Alvaro was in charge of this big case because, “He’s a good boy.” Mike and I looked at each other, but neither of us had the answer to whether Aunt Gee knew it was murder, and neither of us asked.
We also heard that Stan Newton had two major balloon loans coming due later this year, while a number of other enterprises, including the rodeo grounds, were experiencing dips. If nothing else went wrong, the expectation was he’d survive, though likely need retrenchment. If more problems arose—say, the rodeo grounds’ biggest weekend being a bust—the outlook wasn’t as optimistic.
She had no further information for me on Sonja Osterspeigel. Nor had Keith Landry’s time of death been narrowed from between midnight and when Thurston Fine discovered him shortly after seven a.m.
Finally, we heard that county leaders were a pack of fools who thought scurrying off to a hidey-hole and weaving grandiose plans about how to keep the people of Cottonwood County in the dark was what passed for leadership.
“You tell ’em, Aunt Gee,” Mike said, while I clapped.
With great severity, but a smile in her eyes, she kicked us out of her kitchen and sent us on our way with leftovers stowed in twin cool packs for each of us, along with another set for Jenny-Jennifer “because that poor girl’s stuck out there at the station without any way to get a meal.” I was past being surprised that Aunt Gee not only knew everyone in the county, but also their work schedules.
I drifted off as we headed back to Sherman. The amount of food Aunt Gee provided, the comfort of Mike’s four-wheel drive, and the warmth of the sun starting to beat back the overcast had me drowsy. Mrs. Parens’ teacherliness might have influenced the direction of my thoughts.
I’d been a good student all through school. Except in math.
Oh, not arithmetic. I can do that well enough for ordinary life. My checking account balances. I can double or halve a recipe, figure percentage off for shoe sales, or appropriate tips in my head.
No, I’m talking about Mathematics. After the first mid-term in Advanced Algebra, my teacher, a soft-spoken man named Mr. Gladner, called me in. He sat beside me in the otherwise empty classroom and asked me to solve a few problems on the spot. With each one, he looked more perplexed.
Finally, he pulled out my mid-term. “I don’t know how to grade this, Elizabeth. Your answers are almost all right, but the only time you had all the right steps, your answer was wrong.”
What did the steps matter? If the answer was right, it was right. If the answer was wrong, it was wrong.
“How do you do that?” he asked.
“Um, I sort of look at the problem to get a big picture. Then I do a few steps, and then I just sort of see it—the answer.”
“See it? Before doing the other steps?”
“Uh-huh.”
He looked at me so long I
remember heat coming into my cheeks. “Elizabeth? Do you like math? Algebra?”
“No.” All those boring steps.
He murmured something that sounded like Thank God. “Since you’ve more than fulfilled your requirement, I suggest that after this course you consider taking no more Mathematics. I’m not sure we’re ready for you.”
I was more than happy to take his suggestion.
It wasn’t until years later that I abruptly realized that quiet Mr. Gladner must have at least wondered if I was a remarkably slipshod cheater. That’s why he’d asked me to do problems while he sat beside me. It had never occurred to me before. I’d been focused on the resolution—no more math!—not the steps to reach it.
In journalism, the steps do matter, though not the way they do in Algebra. And I’ve become adept at supporting my answers while digging for the right solution.
Still, that’s the way I’ve mostly operated, grasping the outlines of the big picture long before the details are in order. Then testing and checking that big picture as I add details. Being alert to the chance that new details might wipe out the big-picture sketch.
That wasn’t how things had worked this spring however, when I’d been tracking a missing sheriff’s deputy. I’d never gotten a full grasp on the big picture until it almost was too late.
Somehow, this issue of Keith Landry’s death felt more familiar. As if I had started, if not getting back into the groove, at least walking on solid ground.
WE SWUNG BY the station to deliver Aunt Gee’s bounty to Jennifer. She dug in, but between bites told us, “Didn’t find a single bankruptcy in that name—Sweet Meadows Rodeo Stock.”
“Damn. I suppose it was too much to hope,” Mike said.
“But I did find a DBA. That’s Doing Business As. In Oklahoma.”
“Sweet Meadows was doing business under another name?” I asked.
“No. A person was doing business as Sweet Meadows Rodeo Stock. Betty Gates. She’s the widow of a minister.”
“Why on earth would the widow of a minister do business as Sweet Meadows? And what about the guy who came here to make the bid? Could it be a family business?”
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