Death at the Bar X Ranch

by Marlene Chabot

  “Yup.”

  “One message left at 3:00 p.m. on May 24th.”

  “Yeah, Mr. Malone, this is Reed Griffin. I own a horse stable, the Bar X Ranch, out in Cottage Grove. Perhaps, you’ve heard of it. Anyway, I found your listing in the yellow pages and thought I’d give you a buzz and see if you’re interested in a new client. My problem concerns horses. Most days you can reach me at 651-245-9240.” Now, the tape came to a screeching halt.

  I glanced at the expandable silver Timex wristwatch wrapped around my wide wrist. “Today’s the 27th,” I stated out loud. “He only called four days ago.”

  The nonagenarian standing next to me didn’t seem to be the least bit interested in how many days it had been since the stranger called. She was already on a totally different wavelength. “Horses? My, it’s been a long time since I’ve even given them any thought. I was a little girl back in Italy when I first caught sight of them at a circus, horses and ponies prancing every which way. Several children were selected from the audience to ride in the pony-drawn carts that day.”

  The caller and his immediate problem shifted momentarily to the back seat for me as I escorted the elderly woman out into the hall. “Were you one of the lucky ones, Margaret?”

  The little woman brushed the air with her hand. “Good heavens, no. But that same summer, my parents took me to their friend’s farm for my birthday, and I got to ride a beautiful chestnut-colored Belgian horse.” She smiled fondly. “Ginger was such a gentle horse. So, what do you think about horses, Mary?”

  Why did she have to spoil my day by asking me to recall something I’d rather not? I fluffed the straight thin hair clinging to the nape of my neck as I was forced to dig up a horrible memory from the deep dark recesses of my mind, an experience I long ago classified as a total disaster. A huge sigh escaped my lips before I began. “I rode a pony when I was four. It didn’t work out so well, and I’d rather not get into it if you don’t mind.” I had made a pact with myself long ago that I would never ever go near those four-legged creatures again, and I meant to keep it. I didn’t care who tried to prod me to do otherwise.

  Thankfully, the elderly woman honored my request, and she didn’t pry further. The two of us strolled into the kitchen, the hearth of the home or food court whichever you prefer, wrapped in our own quiet thoughts.

  The first thing Mrs. Grimshaw’s eagle eyes inspected was the black-and-white checkered linoleum under our feet. Maybe she was looking for telltale signs whether Matt scrubbed it with Spic and Span before he left the country. Too bad it was spotless. She’d have nothing to report to the other Foley apartment dwellers on that score. The woman shifted her spotlight on me now. “You misunderstood what I was asking in the bedroom, Mary.”

  “I did?” What else could she have been referring to other than horses? That’s all we had been discussing.

  “I didn’t want to know what you thought about actual horses.”

  “Oh?” She tells me that after she got me all worked up. I continued to scan every inch of Matt’s kitchen above the floor while I waited for my brother’s neighbor to explain further. The room was immaculate. Not one solitary crumb or dirty dish on the counter, table, or sink. Too surreal. Was I perhaps dreaming?

  The loud smacking noise made by Mrs. Grimshaw’s slippers when she crossed in front of me alerted me to the fact that I wasn’t listening. “What do you plan to do about the message?”

  “Ah, gosh, I don’t know,” I innocently replied. “I suppose I should at least call Mr. Griffin and let him know Matt’s not available.”

  “Yes,” the elderly woman said in a low no-nonsense manner as she continued on to Matt’s harvest gold nineteen-cubic-foot no-frost fridge that sat in the opposite corner of the room, “that would be the most sensible thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

  I casually nodded in agreement.

  Mrs. Grimshaw cracked the fridge door open now and peeked inside. After she checked the fridge’s contents for roughly two seconds, she allowed the door to close of its own accord. Obviously, she didn’t find anything of interest, or she would’ve kept the door open longer. “I don’t know if you’ve had time to listen to the news lately, Mary, seeing as you’ve been busy with end-of-school activities, but one of WCCO’s newscasters said thirty unrelated violent horse crimes were reported this month, four of which occurred in our friendly state alone.”

  I vaguely recalled someone mentioning the report in the teacher lounge, but I let it slide at the time. One, I’m not a fan of horses. Two, in the close personal circle I traveled in, none of my friends or family owned horses, and three, I was too rattled by my own topsy-turvy world to care. Instead of letting on that I had actually overheard a tiny piece of the newscast being passed on, I pretended to be totally ignorant. Who would it hurt? “You’re right. I haven’t listened to the news in quite some time. Why would anyone want to mistreat an animal?”

  The elderly woman sighed. “I don’t know.”

  The kitchen had passed my inspection and apparently the nonage­narian’s too, so we moved to the last room, the living room, where most people unwind after a stressful day.

  As soon as I entered the room, I plopped my plump derriere down in Matt’s most favorite piece of furniture in the apartment, a chunky black La-Z-Boy chair he inherited from my folks several years ago when they were refurbishing parts of their house. Choosing the comfy chair for me was a no-brainer. An elderly person would find it extremely difficult to get out of. The chair didn’t come with the necessary equipment needed to hoist a person to upright position. Hmm. Pretty comfy. So this is how Goldilocks felt when she sat in Baby Bear’s chair.

  Relaxed, my interest gravitated to Mrs. Grimshaw as she carefully positioned her small frame on the plain brown medium-sized sleeper couch that’s been slammed up against the largest wall in this room since my brother moved in ten years ago. “You know Matt’s set up isn’t as bad as I thought. I could easily settle in to an apartment similar to this for a long, long spell. What’s the square footage for a one bedroom here at the Foley, Margaret?”

  Matt’s neighbor plucked at the tight ruffles on the bottom of her apron. “Why, I don’t really know. My apartment’s a two bedroom.”

  “Oh, I just assumed . . .”

  Evidently what I was about to expound on wasn’t worthy enough to bother with as Matt’s neighbor quickly bypassed it. “I don’t mean to interfere in your life, Mary, but without a full-time teaching position in sight you may want to re-think where you now live.”

  Curious to know what path Mrs. Grimshaw might be leading me down, I swiftly queried her. “Do you have something in mind?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do.” She stretched out her almost skeletal arms in front of her. Why not move in here? You already know me, and you’d be doing your brother a huge favor.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Matt wouldn’t have to give up his lease. You could just sublet the place for the time being.”

  I folded and unfolded my hands several times, giving the woman’s suggestion serious thought. Sublet? Hmm? I wonder? Nope. You couldn’t possibly afford to stay here, Mary. Everyone says rent in the downtown district is extremely high. “Thanks, but I need to weigh other options at this time.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Ah huh. A person needs deep of pockets to cover rent for a spot in this part of town.”

  Mrs. Grimshaw slowly drew her arms inward and then cradled them on her lap. “I wouldn’t be so quick to leap to that conclusion if I were you.”

  I felt my eyebrows lift off my face. “Care to elaborate?”

  “Few people know what I’m going to reveal, so you must keep it under your hat. Capisco?”

  “Sure, sure,” I agreed barely above a whisper, not knowing what I actually was agreeing to.

  “I’m sure your brother’s shared I’m one of t
he Foley’s old-timers, not necessarily in age, mind you,” Margaret added solemnly, but rather the amount of years I’ve lived in this building.” I nodded politely. “So, what I’m going to reveal is extremely important.”

  “All right.”

  “If you talk real sweet to the owners, they’ll work with you concern­ing your income level. They’d prefer to keep their long-standing tenants happy rather than wasting time checking out every drifter that passes through their doors.”

  “That makes sense. No one wants to spend money on credit reports if they don’t have to.” My income and lease both ended in a few weeks’ time, and I hadn’t even given any thought to the consequences yet. I massaged my forehead while I mulled over what the little woman had told me. “Well, you’ve definitely given me food for thought, Margaret. Living here rates better than in the street or back home with my parents.”

  “I’m sure it does.” The elderly woman’s thin lips formed a wry smile now as she scooted to the edge of the couch and stood. “Well, I’m glad I could be of help to you, but I’d better get going. I have caramel rolls waiting to be baked.”

  Caramel rolls? Yummy. That’s the one thing my brother, Matt, and I do have in common. We love to eat, especially sweets. Just think, Mary, you’d get to taste plenty of goodies if you moved in here. I stood and escorted my brother’s neighbor to the door, ashamed of the selfish thoughts that had just meandered through my head. You don’t move into a place just because you know the neighbor across the hall shares her cooking with other tenants. How lame is that? I managed to clutch Mrs. Grimshaw’s thin hand as her feet slowly edged out of the apartment and onto the ugly hallway carpet. “Thank you so much for checking Matt’s apartment with me, Margaret, and for your housing suggestion. I really appreciate it.”

  “My pleasure. Arrivederci!” she said. Then she quietly strolled across the hall leaving me to my own thoughts.

  Chapter 2

  I closed the door behind Mrs. Grimshaw and scurried back to the cheese, the message machine. I wanted to hear what Mr. Griffin had to say one more time. When the recording ended, I dug into my small handy-dandy half-moon-shaped blue-and-green faux leather purse and plucked out a teeny notepad and pen to scribble down what I heard. It was imperative I did this since I no longer forced my memory to be all knowing. As a matter of fact, I couldn’t think of a single friend who did. Why bother when you can just Google it, right?

  The thick lime-green pen snugly gripped between my fingertips and poised for action was one of the many I kept acquiring from the local establishments around town, a freebie. Although, the stores I shopped at didn’t necessarily think so. Look, if the darn pens were really meant to remain at a specific location, then why wasn’t there some kind of coil gizmo attached to them that reeled the guilty hand back in the moment one stepped away from the counter?

  “There. Message erased.” Only one more thing to do. My index finger hovered over the off button waiting for my mind to command it to shut the machine down, but the order just didn’t want to come. I finally gave up. The dumb machine’s been on several months already, Mary, why bother with it? If someone calls for Matt, I can simply contact them like I’m doing with Mr. Griffin.

  Finished with all that I wanted to do in the apartment, I forced the pen and paper back into my cosmetic-jammed purse, made sure all the lights were off and then skedaddled out of the Foley as fast as my short legs could carry me.

  My still rather new navy-blue Volkswagen, which I affectionately referred to as Fiona after my great aunt from the Irish side of the family, was patiently waiting for me on a one-way side street two blocks south of the Foley complex. It didn’t look like anyone had tried to force his or her way into it. Now, all I had to worry about was if my meter time had run out. Nope. It hadn’t. Five minutes to spare. Next stop was Spring Lake Park.

  Since my parents wanted the lowdown on my brother’s apartment as soon as I got around to checking it out, and I had no plans for this afternoon, even though it was a Saturday, I decided to drive to my childhood home and give an in-person report instead of repeating myself over and over via the phone. Of course, there were other underlying reasons to pop by too. One, this gal hadn’t had a decent home-cooked meal in over a month, and two, I wanted to see Gracie. The folks volunteered to care for the mutt the instant Matt announced his European assignment for Delight Bottling.

  At least the drive from downtown to the burbs wasn’t too long. According to Matt, it only took twenty minutes to get from his place to Mom and Dad’s. Of course, additional drive time was required depending on what time of day or what Minnesota season it was a person happened to be tooling along Highway 65, also known as Central Avenue. There are other ways of getting to my parents’ home, but at some point one would still run into those darn red lights found on almost every street corner. As far as I knew, there was no way to avoid them unless by some miracle you’re able to don wings or catch a ride on a flying pig.

  It had been a couple weeks since I made the familiar trek to my folks’ house and I was already feeling the guilt complex creeping in as I rounded the corner to their house. Oh, I knew they’d be ecstatic to see their baby; they always were, but I was expecting the love emanating from them to be over the top today, especially since they had just learned I’d be out a job in a couple weeks. I hastily envisioned my parents literally tripping over themselves now as they made their way to the front door and welcomed their youngest child with open arms.

  I laid on the horn the second the “Bug’s” tires rolled onto their narrow, slightly inclined driveway. It was my way of giving fair warning that company had arrived. Surprisingly, the blast from the car didn’t do the job. Neither Mom nor Dad flew to the window to see who was there. “No big deal,” I soberly told myself, “They’ll go bonkers the minute you walk through the front door, Mary.”

  Unfortunately, that didn’t happen either. As soon I opened the door, Gracie charged outside taking Dad along with her. Okay, I know what you’re thinking. I’ve still got my Mom to give me the much needed hug I had anticipated. Well, rethink that one. My five-foot-five thin-boned French-descended mother had no clue I was there. She stood in the middle of the mud room with her hazel eyes affixed to the two who just flew out the door, knees locked together and hands resting on her hips while a hearty laugh spewed from her ruby red lips.

  Disheartened, I forged ahead and purposely blocked her view. The laughter that had rocked the roof only a minute ago halted abruptly. “Oh, hello Mary. When did you arrive?”

  “Well, it depends on what you count as getting here. When I first rolled into the driveway and honked the horn, or when I opened the front door?”

  “You honked the horn?”

  “Yeah,” I whined like a spoiled brat.

  “I’m sorry. I never heard it. Your father was using our ancient hair dryer on Gracie. He just gave her a bath, and I was down in the basement doing laundry.” She quickly moved behind me and closed the door.

  I turned to face her. “Why are you shutting the door, Mom? Won’t Dad be coming right back?”

  My mother shook her dark shoulder-length hair as she started to walk down the hallway. “I doubt it. It’s time for Gracie to take her daily walk around the block.”

  I followed behind as she led us deeper into the recesses of the house. “Speaking of Gracie,” I said, “How’s the babysitting going? Has she been a handful for you guys?”

  “Gracie? Heavens, no. She’s a peach. I love having her around. Your brother’s longer commitment in Europe is actually a blessing in disguise. With Gracie here, your father has no excuse for not getting his daily walks in.” Mom’s been overly concerned about my father’s lifestyle, eating and exercise, ever since he had heart by-pass surgery a year and a half ago. If she continues to watch him the way she does, he’ll probably outlive all of us, which is a nice thought. My mother’s prattling finally stopped as we ne
ared the kitchen.

  As soon as I entered the medium-sized kitchen of my childhood, my nostrils were filled with a delicious aroma. Whatever it was, it was hidden from view. It must be cooking in the oven, I thought. Well, if it’s not ready to eat while I’m here, I’m definitely begging for takeout.

  My mother was speaking to me again. “I’m glad you asked about Gracie. We’ll need someone to watch her when we go on vacation next month. You know, if you volunteered, you could have free rein of the house and a chance to reconnect with the old neighborhood, especially some of your classmates who still live in the area.”

  “I’ll think about it,” I lied, dragging on every word. Mom didn’t know the classmates still living in this part of town were those I definitely didn’t want to mess with. Born losers, in and out of jail like a revolving door.

  I pulled a wooden chair away from the round oak table, the one that had been passed down to my parents upon the death of my father’s Irish grandparents, and sat. As soon as my hand touched the ancient table’s smooth surface, I patted it just like I would an old friend. So many tears shed here, and yes, wonderful times too, including super-duper meals.

  No one knows this, but this dearly loved antiquated table actually kept me grounded over the years with its fervent message—life is nothing but one big circle that continues on and on. Someday, if I ever find Mr. Right, I’ll probably inherit this well-worn family gem. It’s a well-known fact that my sister Margaret would never want it—her decorating scheme was modern all the way. Matt and Michael? Well, they didn’t give two hoots about any kind of furniture.

  Mom and I had been indulging in sweets and a strongly brewed black mango tea she had recently purchased at a new tea shop a couple blocks from here, when Dad showed up at the back door, huffing and a puffing like the big bad wolf in the Three Little Pigs, towing the dog behind him instead of vice versa. Poor Gracie. She looked worse than Dad. Her upper torso gasped for air while her head hung low and her long tongue dangled dangerously from her mouth, dripping doggie drool on Mom’s sparkling clean, light-gray star-designed linoleum floor.