His solemn gaze met my incredulous one. “Would you repeat that? I could have sworn you said you needed my help.”
He removed his hat and flung it onto the seat next to him. “Something’s going on at the station.” He averted his gaze, as if mesmerized by the Sugar Rush ice-cream truck parked across the street.
My heart went out to him. His way of looking at things was so black and white; it had to be difficult for him to criticize his superiors. “Are they painting the men’s bathroom? Or do you mean something’s not quite right in the sheriff’s office?”
His lips tightened. “The investigation into this case is being rushed. Details are being overlooked.” He raised his cup to his mouth. “I pointed out to Wallace we needed to canvass the neighborhood.”
“I thought you said Pleasant spoke with the guy in the pink house.”
“He’s one neighbor. The whole block should have been interviewed.”
“Did Wallace actually stand in your way?” I knew Sheriff Mack Wallace through his daughter, Crystal. As young teens, we’d played on the same softball team, the Chisos Mountain League Cactus Flowers.
“No, but he assigned the other deputies to an incident of suspected cattle rustling.”
“That’s pretty common,” I said.
“But murder is not.” His eyes narrowed in speculation.
I raised a hand. “Don’t say, Murder wasn’t common until you moved to town.”
“Fair enough.” He gave me a nod. “Now, I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me exactly what the neighbor told you.”
If he was ignoring his strict code of confidentiality, he must be disturbed. “I’m glad to help.” And I suddenly meant it. I gave him a smile, and he gave me another unblinking stare.
“At first he said a blue vehicle that was definitely not a truck. He was rude. And I have a good idea Pleasant is the reason he slammed the door in my face.”
“Any dent on the end of your nose is your own doing.” He dug the pencil out of his pocket. “Tell me what the other neighbor said.”
Busted. “Which one?”
“That’s what I thought.” He glared.
I sighed. “It wasn’t a long conversation. I asked if she witnessed anything the night of the murder, and she said yes. She’d seen Patti and a man drive up around midnight.” My best friend had told me that same thing at the station, which was a plus in her column.
He made a note. “And?”
“When I asked if she got a good look at the man, she described a guy with boots and a cowboy hat.”
He nodded and kept scratching on the paper. “Which could have been anyone.”
I opened my mouth to argue.
“But there’s no reason Patti would lie about being seen with Jeff,” he interrupted. “She’s on record as saying the same thing.”
I wanted to ask him about his date with Patti, but I could wait. I didn’t want Lightfoot to get distracted by my nosiness.
Wishing I could read his notes, I continued. “I asked if she saw or heard anything else.”
He covered his writing with his hand. “Go ahead.”
“She says she heard a raccoon in the trash cans around twelve thirty and Patti’s jeep start up at around one or one thirty.”
With an absent gesture, he lifted the cup in his hand while smoothing his long hair back behind his ears. He circled something in his notes. “Why would Patti threaten to kill this Jeff guy? I’ve never seen her riled up about anything.”
“She’s a slow burner.”
A frown line appeared between his eyes. “You mean she has a long fuse.”
“Exactly. Her anger keeps burning and burning until finally it explodes all over everybody and everything.”
He made a note.
“Uh, well, she can get loud, but I’ve never known her to strike out at anyone.” I forced a laugh. “She’s all scary Goth Princess and nothing else.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Why did she explode all over Jeff Clark that night?”
“He was drunk and coming on to her.” I sipped my coffee. “Sounds like a good enough reason to me.”
“Why was she angry before he was drunk? Before they even reached her house?”
“Well, who says she was?” My voice rose in frustration. It was clear as the nose on his face that Patti was the injured party here. “And how do we know they’re telling the truth?”
His eyes narrowed again. “Why would they lie?”
Before I could stop it, my cheeks flamed. “Depends on who we’re talking about!”
“You know I can’t disclose that information.”
“I don’t give a flying fig what you can or can’t do. We’re talking about Patti—not some hardened criminal.”
He sighed, gave me a mock glare, and flipped back through his notebook until he found the correct page. “The couple that tours with the band?”
“Wilhelmina and Heather?”
“Huh.” His brow creased. “No. That guy with the red hair and black leather.”
“Clay and Britney.” I tapped my finger on his notepad. “If you ask me, they’re a bit too helpful.” I told him how they’d accused Dustin Akers of murdering Jeff.
He lifted his cup, and then set it down without taking a sip. “That’s garbage. Akers has an airtight alibi.”
“Which is?”
After a weighty pause, he continued. “He has more on his mind than murder.” He studied my face. “Cancer.”
A lump formed in my throat. The poor guy was fighting for his future, and I’d mentally accused him of murder. I glanced up from my coffee cup to find Lightfoot watching me.
“You know him?”
“I’ve met him. He asked me to show him downtown, so we went for a walk. He told me about his music, and how that snake Ken Price refused to give him a shot as lead singer of the band.”
It was my turn to ask the questions. “What do you know about that couple, Britney and Red?”
He didn’t immediately respond, which told me he knew plenty. He remained quiet for several seconds. Was he organizing his thoughts or deciding what he was willing to share? “What do you know?” he asked, sidestepping my question.
“You’ll give me something in return?” I asked.
“Okay. Yes. Didn’t I say I would?” With his finger, he loosened the back of his collar.
In spite of Lightfoot’s calm and steady demeanor, he wasn’t fooling me. He was worked up about this case because the wrongful arrest involved Patti. It all made sense once I put two and two together. He had a thing for my best friend. “They want us to think it was Dustin Akers because he should have had Jeff’s job, et cetera, et cetera.”
“But that’s not good?” Lightfoot began to tap his index fingers on the table.
“No. We don’t want to place all of our focus on Dustin.”
His jaw clenched. “Because . . .”
“Dustin has cancer,” we said in unison.
I leaned forward and smiled. “And he’s quitting the band after this tour.”
“You sure?” Lightfoot was genuinely surprised.
“That’s what he told Uncle Eddie. Why would he say it if he wasn’t actually going to do it?”
Lightfoot just looked at me. “Of course, he could be telling a lie, trying to throw us off his scent.”
“If you really want to get Patti off the hook and look like a hero, you should be asking one question: where was Clay the night of the murder? That’s what you should be asking.”
He closed his notepad and shoved it in his shirt pocket, slid from the booth, and placed his cup in the tub we used for dirty dishes. “And why do I need to look like a hero?”
I opened my mouth to respond.
He held up a hand. “Don’t answer that.”
“Where are you going?”
> “Sheriff Wallace wants to ask me some questions.”
I hurried to put away my cup. “I’m coming with you.”
“No. Stay here, keep your eyes and ears open, and then report back to me. That’s how you can help me without getting in the way.”
“Wait a minute,” I cried. “You’ll still impress her even if I help you.”
“What?” He turned from the door. “You know I can’t bring you with me. This isn’t television.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I could lose my job if I don’t follow the book on this one.”
He had a point. Broken Boot needed Lightfoot’s solid grasp of right and wrong. How could I ask him to compromise on that one integral part of himself, his very foundation? Patti, when she found out, would understand and respect him for standing his ground.
“Fine.” I crossed my arms, pasted on a smile, and laced my voice with saccharine. “I get it. Don’t let little old me stand in your way.”
He inched his hat back from his forehead with his thumb and smiled. “Thank you kindly, Miss Josie.”
I was so shocked to see the white of his teeth that my mouth fell open. Before I could encourage him to use that line on Patti, he jerked open the door, set the cowbell jangling, and strode out to the parking lot.
Well, shoot. He’d distracted me on purpose with that toothpaste grin of his.
One day Patti was going to thank me for sacrificing my dignity, or else.
Chapter 18
After taking Lenny outside and tossing some kibble in his bowl, I drove to the West Texas University field house. I found Coach Ryan Prescott with his athletic shoes on the desk and his hands laced behind his head—which made it difficult to ignore the fact he lifted weights alongside his players. When he failed to look my way, I decided the blackboard and the plays that covered it had hypnotized him.
“Why, Ryan Prescott. Who said you could hide in here from your responsibilities?”
With a bit of a delay, he roused himself and removed his Nikes from the dented metal desk. “Look what’s come home to roost. I haven’t seen you inside this place since—”
“Never,” I interrupted. “It smells like armpits in here.”
“Yeah, that’s right. You never did breach the walls of . . . What was it you called this place?”
I grinned. “The Temple of Meatheads.”
“That’s it!” He chuckled but his red eyes drooped, and he wore at least a two-day-old beard. Ryan’s requirement that his players remain clean-shaven was one of the many regimens he’d introduced to turn them into fighting machines. The fact that he himself wasn’t clean-shaven made me wonder what was up.
“Late night?”
He tried for his usual devil-may-care grin, but the corners of his mouth barely lifted. “The team’s not jelling,” he said, pulling off his West Texas cap and ruffling his hair. “You know we lost our first game last week, which was a fiasco. Thank God we have a bye this week.”
Everything he said was true, but the team’s difficulties usually made him fighting mad, not worn-out. If memory served, that smile usually accompanied a dating fiasco. “What’d you do now? Refuse to meet her mother?”
A frown appeared across his brow. “How’d you know I was dating someone?”
“You’re always dating someone.”
“Am not.”
“Was it or was it not you who told me that you had ants in your pants and you’re born to dance?”
He hooted with laughter until he was red in the face. “How old was I? Eighteen?”
I frowned. “You were a freshman. That’s all I know.”
“What makes you think I didn’t mean just what I said? That I liked to dance?”
“Huh. Context, my friend. I remember the context even if you won’t admit it.”
“Huh.” He stood, stretched his long arms above his head, and started for the door. “Come on, I want to show you what I’m working with.”
Not being a football fan in Texas is like rejecting your mother’s milk. Back in college, Ryan’s endless talk of game strategy and his endless dissection of his opponents’ plays wore me out. Now that we saw each other less often and had both mellowed, I didn’t mind being taken into his confidence.
In fact, it was a huge compliment.
As we climbed the stands, the air was redolent with the smell of sagebrush and creosote. I glanced skyward, curious as to the source, and found one gray cloud floating lazily on a backdrop of blue. A brief sun shower was the likely source.
We found seats halfway up. The metal bleachers were sizzling, and I was glad I’d worn jeans. I pulled my sunglasses over my eyes and raised my hand to shield me from the blinding sun. Still I could barely make out the activity on the field.
“What are you doing out here without a hat, city slicker?”
He removed the West Texas cap from his head and plunked it down on mine. A sudden cool breeze flirted with his hair, but he’d worn the hat too long for any breeze to win out.
I started to argue, but he didn’t act as if he minded the heat or the glare. “Trotter,” he yelled to one of three assistant coaches wearing a blue polo and white shorts on the field, “tell Patrick to break the huddle twice as fast. Josie could call plays faster than what he’s doing.”
I shoved him. “Watch it.”
Trotter blew his whistle and proceeded to pass along Ryan’s comments to the quarterback decked out in all white.
“Patrick’s got a good arm on him,” I said, as the quarterback threw a fifty-yard pass into the skilled hands of his receiver, a player wearing the number 10. He followed it up with a series of short passes to two other players and then another bullet down the field again to 10, passing forty to fifty yards as we watched.
“In practice, he’s lethal,” Ryan continued. “In a game situation, he’s like jelly. Too sweet.”
I considered the best way to begin.
“When’s the last time you came to one of our games?”
“This Saturday?” Truth be told, I hadn’t seen a game since my return to Broken Boot nine months earlier.
“Uh-huh. You’re already thinking of a way to weasel out of it, aren’t you?”
“No.” With Ryan, it was usually best to come right to the point. “You weren’t up late playing cards by any chance?”
His eyes remained on the field. “No. Why? It’s not like you to be so nosy.”
“We are talking about me, right?”
Then he grabbed my knee and squeezed. “I meant when it comes to where I am, what I’m doing, and who I’m doing it with.”
Busted. “Look, whatever. As long as you go to work every day and church on Sunday, you can date whomever your heart desires . . . within reason. I’m worried about Patti, so shoot me if I skip the pleasantries. But if you need to share your feelings about how your new gal doesn’t appreciate you or answer your text messages, we can do that instead.”
After a laugh so loud it had the closest players on the field turning their heads, Ryan wiped his eyes. “Boy, howdy. I didn’t think you’d come all this way to watch practice.”
I ducked my head and grinned. “Remember the other day, when I asked you about the poker game at Pete’s?”
“Have you finally gotten around to asking what you need to know?”
“I’m working on it.”
“Continue.”
“Have you heard of any other card games in town?”
“I could’ve sworn you already asked me that.” His head snapped toward a tackle running up the field so slowly, Senora Mari could have passed him. “And I told you no.”
“Right. You also said you left early.”
“Beacon,” Ryan shouted, nearly bursting my eardrum. “Get your tired butt down the field twice that fast, or you’ll be running the bleachers after prac
tice.”
The skinny player froze in midstride.
“You hear me, son?”
“Yes, sir,” the young man bellowed like a boot-camp private, and flew down the field to the line of scrimmage as if his hair were on fire.
With a slight turn of his head, I could feel Ryan staring at me from behind his shades. “Is there something in this for me?”
Patti’s pale face and atrocious jumpsuit abruptly came to mind. I reined in my impatience. Coach Ryan Prescott was used to being in charge, so I played the game his way. I placed a hand on my heart. “What—tamales and margaritas don’t cut it anymore?”
His gaze returned to the field. “I’m in the mood for a night at the White Horse, listening to real music and drinking cold beers.”
“Which you do here in Broken Boot . . . frequently.”
“Not as often as I like, because I have students and their mommas watching me at every turn.”
I was a bit confused. “You want me to drive you to Austin so you can line dance with a bunch of honky-tonk hipsters?”
“Let’s shake the dust of this town off our boots and hang out like we used to.”
Though we’d spent hours on end at the White Horse during college, I was surprised. When Ryan broke up with that diva, beauty queen Hillary Sloan-Rawlings, I was so happy I nearly threw a pool party—even though Casa Martinez only had a quaint, aboveground version. My ex was a genuinely nice person, and she was so not his type. Had another local beauty refused to go out with him a second time? Or was he being genuine about just wanting an opportunity for two old friends to hang out, like he said?
It might sound strange, but I liked Ryan enough not to want to date him ever again. I glanced his way, trying to read his expression and intentions from his profile.
“Ha ha, very funny,” I chortled. “You had me thinking you meant a date or something.”
He shook his head and gave me a slow smile. “Do you think I’m half-crazy or just completely nuts?”
I chuckled. “Both.” In spite of the heat, the view from the stands was breathtaking. The mountains in the background, the big blue sky above. I studied the field before us as the quarterback hurled the ball more than forty yards, only to have the receiver run the wrong route. “What about Jayda? Aren’t you and she almost a thing?”
The Good, the Bad and the Guacamole Page 22