Champagne for Buzzards

by Phyllis Smallman

  “Best to walk on a little farther, just so you can show Joey who’s boss.”

  “Oh, I think he knows that already.” I followed Marley down an eight-foot-wide path cut deep into the jungle. The path was the width of two passes with the rotary mower Howie used to keep it from getting overgrown. Each week he drove the tractor out through the brush, around a small lake to where a stream came in from the Breslau property to the east and then back again, leaving a green lane behind him. It was a path Joey knew, but any unusual thing on it would set him doing the sideways cha cha. Now he walked sedately on, past Spanish moss waving and flowing in the breeze, without a hint of anxiety. The rustle of the thick palmettos at the base of the oaks didn’t even seem to bother him. He strolled along like a real gentleman — for about ten seconds. “Watch it,” Marley warned. “Not so close.” Before I could pull him back, Joey stretched out his neck and nipped at Wildflower’s flank. The little mare screamed in pain and indignation and shot forward while Joey tossed his head, prancing and playing innocent.

  Wildflower, being a lady, settled down immediately while Joey sidestepped and shook his head and acted the fool. “Go ahead of me,” Marley said. “Joey likes to lead.” It was too late for her advice. Joey was already trotting forward to take his rightful place at the head of the parade. It would have taken a tank to stop him from being first.

  But still, despite his manners I thought we were doing fine. We’d trot a couple of hundred yards farther along the trail, then we could turn around and have a nice quiet walk back to the barn and I’d have exercised Joey just the way I promised Clay.

  I just didn’t get it. Clay loved the ranch while I thought it would be best to rip up the whole three hundred acres and put in a mall with an enormous parking lot.

  Something caught Joey’s eye, or maybe tweaked his nose, because he stopped, lifted his head and seemed to be sniffing the air. He gave a soft whinny and sidestepped into the underbrush.

  The broken end of a branch jabbed into my thigh. “Stupid, stupid animal.”

  “What’s that noise?” Marley asked. “I thought there was no one out here.”

  I could hear it now, a mechanical roar, growing louder and more offensive by the second. Clay’s land, bordered by a river on the east and a stream on the west, was long and deep, running from one country road to the next one north. Beef cattle had once kept the land clear but Howie had given up ranching years before Clay had arrived. Most of the northern part of the ranch had gone back to nature and could only be accessed from the cleared land around the farmhouse to the south. It was supposed to be a fine and private place.

  Three vehicles shot around the bend and nearly ran us down. When they’d halted, Joey and I were boxed in.

  Some primeval instinct set the hairs at the nape of my neck tingling…or maybe it was the rifles mounted across the handlebars of their machines that were scaring the shit out of me. The riders were grinning like they’d found treasure. These weren’t the kind of men you wanted to be alone in a dark alley with — nor the kind of men you wanted to meet out in the bush.

  CHAPTER 15

  The noise of the machines was deafening. Joey backed his rear deeper into the brush. Barbs snagged my clothes and raked my body. Branches scratched Joey’s sides. He didn’t seem to notice.

  Forcing his way sideways and back through the underbrush, he worked his way out of the circled machines, then turned and faced his enemies. He blew out a loud snort of disgust and tossed his head.

  The guy on the lead three-wheeler was young — late teens or early twenties. I took my eyes off the long gun slung across the handles of his machine and had a good look at the revolver he wore in a holster at his hip. But there was something more in his eyes, something besides guns to worry about. He swung a leg the size of a tree trunk over the seat and dismounted. Hitching up his jeans, he swaggered towards me. Blond and beefy, he would have been handsome except for the sneer and fifty extra pounds that gave him a bloated look.

  I recognized the look on his face, a predatory look — like he’d just been handed a brand-new toy. But I’m no one’s toy.

  I glanced at the two guys behind him. They were staying with their machines, waiting and watching to see how it would play out, maybe waiting to be given orders. No help there. Marley and I were on our own.

  The young fool coming towards me smiled.

  I have to say it did a lot to improve his looks. Then he licked his lips. I felt like a prime cut set in front of a man who hadn’t seen food for days.

  “I’m Boomer Breslau,” he said, loud and proud like I should know him and be real delighted to be in his presence.

  And in a way I did know him. His grandpa’s ranch ran alongside Clay’s to the east. Clay had lots to say about this family and their use of illegal aliens to farm their land, some twenty-five hundred acres of tomatoes and such.

  “I’m Sherri Travis. I’m a friend of Clay Adams. Does Clay know you’re here?”

  “Friend?” he roared and then laughed, choosing to ignore my question. “I hear you’re more than friends. You’re the sweet piece that warms his bed.”

  He moved closer. “He’s pretty old for you, ain’t he? But when a man has as much money as he does, guess he doesn’t have to be real good to keep a woman happy.” His laugh warned me. There was no use making nice with this guy. There was only one thing he’d understand and I’d only get one chance.

  “Sherri,” Marley said from behind me, “let’s go back.”

  “Why you want to do that?” Boomer Breslau said while Boomer’s face said, “I can have anything I want. I can have you. And no one can stop me.”

  “Let’s go, Sherri,” Marley said again.

  Marley was ignoring the fact that there was just this one track, nowhere else to go, and I was pretty sure we couldn’t outrun them.

  Boomer laughed. “Stick around, girls.”

  Without turning my head or taking my eyes off him, I said to Marley, “You start back, I’ll catch up.” Hopefully she’d ride like hell and bring help.

  “I’ll wait for you,” Marley said.

  “No. You hurry on back and tell Tully and Ziggy we have company. Make sure they prepare a real warm reception.”

  “Oh,” she said, suddenly understanding.

  Boomer Breslau held up a hand to stop her, “No reason to do that.”

  “Okay, I’m going,” Marley said. I heard Wildflower’s hooves beating the earth as they galloped away but I kept my eye on the nasty bastard in front of me.

  “Now why’d you go and do that?” Boomer asked. “You ain’t afraid of me, are you?” He stepped closer, his eyes locked on me. I knew that look, seen it in too many drunk’s eyes not to know what it meant. I eased my foot out of the stirrup. He was about to get a taste of my fancy new boot.

  Boomer Breslau reached out a hand for me. Joey had him. Took a nice big chunk of his arm and held on, nodding his head and grinding his teeth in delight.

  Boomer yelled, a real stupid thing to do around a horse with Joey’s nasty and unpredictable personality. The yell set Joey rearing back, pulling Boomer with him. I grabbed the horn, hoping Joey wouldn’t topple backwards on top of me, and fought to keep my feet in the stirrups. Joey released Boomer.

  Boomer fell back on his ass with Joey’s hooves slicing down inches from Boomer’s head. Crablike, he scuttled away and scrambled to regain the safety of his ATV.

  Joey reared one more time but his heart wasn’t in it. I leaned forward and stroked Joey’s neck. “Okay, sweetie,” I whispered to Joey. “You did just fine.”

  Then I spoke up to the three men staring at me from their machines. “Now why don’t you boys just go on home?” I said. “I’ll tell Clay you came by to introduce yourselves.”

  I turned Joey and cantered back towards the house, trying to decide what I would do if they followed me and ran me off the path into the palm
ettos. Swear like hell and threaten them with everything under the sun likely. I couldn’t think of anything else.

  Just when I thought I was well clear of danger, some extra sense, some tingling of the hairs on the back of my head made me look around. Had they come after me?

  But it wasn’t that. This was a whole new terror. Deep in the palmettos, hidden and fleeting, I looked into the eyes of a man. Dark-skinned, with chiseled features, he had a face from an Aztec carving. I felt the scream bubbling up from my gut. The memory of recent pain and Joey’s reaction to surprises quelled the instinct, but my knees must have tightened, must have sent the signal for speed. It was all the stupid piece of dog food needed.

  CHAPTER 16

  Joey bolted. Any man trying to run us down was going to have his work cut out trying to outrun Joey. We flew along the narrow lane. Palm fronds and other green stuff slapped us, probably adding to Joey’s speed. I bent lower in the saddle to keep from being swept away by a branch, glued to his back by panic.

  At the edge of the forest I saw Tully and Ziggy careening towards me in Tully’s beat-up old wreck. Joey saw it too. He came to a stop and shook his head, spraying me with lather.

  “Take it easy,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t turn around and bolt back into the forest. “Take it easy.” I wasn’t sure if it was meant for Joey or me. I pulled Joey up close to the board fence of the pasture as the old pickup slid to a stop beside us.

  Tully had a rifle across his lap. Ziggy had a shotgun, with the butt planted on the seat, in his left hand. They were looking like this was an everyday occurrence for them, a scary thought.

  I panted, “Fun’s over, gentleman.” I reached down and patted Joey’s neck.

  “What happened?” Tully asked.

  “Met some bad news guys out there, but this fellow finally did something right. He bit the hand that needed it.”

  Tully said, “We’ll just go on out there and have a little talk with those boys.”

  “Naw, everything’s cool.”

  Tully’s mouth was pulled tight into a thin angry line. “Those guys need a lesson in manners, need to be told about trespassing.”

  “Waste of time,” I said, nudging Joey into a walk. “They’ve already gone.”

  Tully got his old truck turned around while I walked on with Joey. I was shaking all over with shock. Boomer was nasty but a known threat, at least I was stupid enough to think so. I’d dealt with a hundred guys like Boomer in a dozen different bars. Discouraging dickheads is part of the job for any woman tending bar and most of the grungy places I’d worked in abounded in fools just like Boomer Breslau.

  At the moment it was the dark face in the palmettos that was scariest for me. I couldn’t quantify it, didn’t know what he threatened or why that guy was out there, unless he was a criminal or a crazy person. Any man hiding out in all that wilderness had to be one or the other. It wasn’t an easy place to get to. There was only a narrow track, through deep jungle of vines and underbrush, running into the back two hundred acres of Riverwood. There were about a hundred acres of cleared land up near the house but the other two hundred acres had gone back to slash pines and palmettos and was home for gators, wild pigs, panthers and bugs — not a place that most people would find hospitable.

  To get there he would have gone in from the lane behind the barn or have followed one of the waterways into the jungle from the surrounding farms. Those waters teemed with gators.

  This much I knew: he definitely didn’t want to be seen. He was hiding, and there was a murderer about. Had I just looked into the eyes of the man who killed Lucan Percell? It couldn’t be a coincidence that this man had shown up the same time Lucan’s body had. What had the sheriff said about looking for a stranger? That guy definitely qualified as a stranger.

  I tried to think it through. Had the man in the woods been at the Gator Hole, killed Lucan and hid the body and himself in the truck?

  I tried to imagine climbing into the bed of a truck with a dead body, snuggling up real close, and not screaming the place down. Then, while I was hiding there under the tarp, someone gets in the truck and drives me and the body to God knows where. It took a lot of imagination. I couldn’t really come up with another scenario that put the murderer at Riverwood. It didn’t make sense, but then nothing made sense.

  Maybe Howie surprised the murderer when he was bashing in Lucan’s head. That’s why the man got in the back of the truck, to hide, and that’s why he was now out in the underbrush. It was the only situation I could come up with to put both Lucan’s body and a man in the truck.

  It seemed sensible that when Howie brought Big Red back to Riverwood, the killer had come with him, trapped under the tarp with the body. After Howie parked the truck and went home, the murderer had taken off for the jungle out behind the farmhouse. But why hadn’t he headed back to town? It wasn’t that far to walk.

  I didn’t want to get involved with the guy in the woods or the police and I didn’t want any of it to end up in the papers with my name attached. I was hoping it would all just disappear with no help from me. Self-interest is a wonderful motivator and leads to all kinds of sins.

  I’d invited seventy-five people to a party, and the number one thing on my dance card was creating a fantastic evening for Clay and his friends on his birthday. Nothing else mattered.

  When I got back to the barn Marley was walking Wildflower up and down outside the barn, worrying and waiting.

  “Sorry,” she said with an embarrassed lift of her left shoulder.

  “What for?”

  “For running out on you. Those guys scared the shit out of me.”

  “Me too, thanks for getting help.”

  She frowned.

  “Yeah, well…”

  I was more concerned about Joey than Marley. I slid to the ground and checked him for damage. There were raised ridges of scratches along both of his sides and when I wiped my hand across his flank it came away with blood on it.

  Tully pulled his old truck up in the shade of the barn and creaked his door open.

  “He doesn’t look too bad,” I said when Tully ambled over. Tully took Joey’s bridle and said, “We’ll rub the horses down and put them out to pasture. You two look like you could do with a coffee.”

  “Do you think he’s all right? Think maybe I should get a vet?”

  “This horse is tougher than he looks.” He ran his hand over Joey’s side. “Clay says he was bred for country like this — a little scratch won’t harm him none.”

  Marley and I walked in silence back to the house. Now was the time to tell Marley about the man I’d seen. I owed it to her.

  And I should phone the sheriff so they could begin the manhunt. But something didn’t seem right with this scenario. I was left with one nagging thought. If he was the murderer, why was he hanging about? Why was he staying? And what was Boomer Breslau doing out there? Looking for someone would be my guess.

  Marley held the screen door to the kitchen open. “If you’re not mad, why are you so quiet?”

  “What?” I thought we’d already covered this conversation.

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  “What? Why?”

  “I ran out on you.”

  “No you didn’t; you did just what I wanted you to do.”

  “You sure?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to go for help?”

  “Yeah, but…”

  “You did exactly the right thing.”

  “I’m not very brave,” she said, following me into the kitchen and letting the screen slam shut behind her.

  “That makes you smart.” Her words were another good reason for not mentioning the face in the woods. “Brave is just another word for stupid.” If I told the sheriff what I’d seen, Marley would have to be told, that was for sure. I couldn’t keep a search party quiet. And if Marley knew there was someo
ne hiding in the woods, she’d take off for Jacaranda and there would be no one to help me. See how selfish I am?

  I headed straight for the shower, distance being the best aid to silence. It would also give me time to think things over.

  I wanted to present Clay and myself as a real couple. Nothing too fancy, just down home and settled. I was even going to have family present. Although Tully and Ziggy were a risk, I was trusting them to be at their most charming. I’d even bought them both new shirts to wear.

  Having the sheriff’s men around would interfere with my plans. And, after all, there was nothing to bring the murderer back to Riverwood, was there? That was the last place he’d want to be.

  Whatever was happening way out back of beyond, it had nothing to do with me. Just as in Jacaranda what happened a block away was none of my business, same thing in the country. If it happened way out there, it was none of my business.

  After my shower, I’d checked all the doors and windows in the big old house, thinking I could lock it up and make us safe. It was a crazy hopeless chore, with five entrances and double that number of windows on the ground floor, some of which couldn’t be locked.

  And it didn’t stop there. The house had porches, the true living space, all around it. Anyone could climb up on the roof of the porches and get to the second floor that way. Any idea I had of keeping intruders out was quickly evaporating. No way could you secure this house. We were sitting targets for anyone wanting in.

  I knew Clay kept a handgun in the closet of our bedroom but if I started carrying it around with me it would take some explaining. Besides, my record with firearms wasn’t good — they always ended up in the wrong hands. Best not to go armed.

  In the kitchen Marley announced, in a tone of disgust, “She fell off again.” Seemed she’d gotten over her worry about deserting me.

  Tully shook his head in disappointment. “You used to be so athletic, always winning things in school, what happened?”

  I poured a cup of coffee. “Well, you see, back then there was no horse named Joey involved.” I took my coffee with me and went to try the bolt on the back door. “That horse is a waste of space.” The lock had been painted over multiple times and probably hadn’t been used in years. “What are you doing?” Tully asked.