Montana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  How she always found room for another one was beyond Doreen.

  “I’m not up to anything,” Doreen breathed, not even daring to whisper, taking Stella by the elbow and hustling her back down the hall, away from Roy, who would screw everything up royal—and put her in the hospital—if he came out of his boozy stupor too soon. “And be quiet, will you? Roy’s got himself a job at the lumber mill as of today, working swing shift. He needs to sleep all day if he can.”

  Stella looked so pleased at the prospect of a paycheck coming in, even it wasn’t hers, that Doreen almost felt sorry for telling the first whopper that came to mind. Hallelujah, Stella must be thinking, now she could keep every plate, every month, whether the bingo gods had been good to her or not.

  “Really?” she asked, sounding almost girlish. “I told Roy he ought to apply at the mill—his daddy and his granddaddy both worked there until they dropped in their tracks. Sure, we lived away for a while, Roy and me, but the name Fifer still means something around there.” By then, she was nearly clapping her hands. “I just never thought he’d want to lower himself to pulling lumber off the green chain, since he went through trucking school and everything—”

  Lower himself? Doreen thought, grabbing up her keys and purse, easing toward the front door, the only way out, as fast as she could. How was it possible for Roy Fifer III to get any lower than he already was? Numerals after his name, too, like the Fifers were blue bloods instead of trailer trash.

  “You’re going somewhere?” Stella asked, as if they’d been friends all along, as if she hadn’t treated Doreen like a slut trying to sneak into a palace every time she set foot in the Hall of Stupid Plates.

  Like she hadn’t called Davie a freak a million times, because of his tattoo and his piercings and those weird clothes he wore.

  But Davie would be okay now; she didn’t have to worry about him anymore.

  The Creeds, at least this new generation, anyway, did right by their own.

  “I’ve got a chance to put in some overtime at the casino,” Doreen explained, making herself sound eager. “They’re shorthanded today, and there’s a tour bus coming in for a slot tournament.”

  Doreen put her hand on the screen-door handle.

  Down the hall, in the room she’d never set foot in again if there was a God in heaven, Roy let out a bellow and then yelled that he had a belly ache.

  Stella’s papery face went pale.

  “He’s just having a bad dream,” Doreen assured her, pushing open the screen door and bolting.

  “But what if he’s sick?” Stella called after her, from the little porch in front of the door. “Shouldn’t we call a doctor or—”

  Doreen didn’t even wait for her to finish the sentence.

  She just beat it—ran across the lawn to the curb, her keys slippery in the palm of her hand. She hadn’t been able to resist a few moments of gloating, and now she was out of time.

  She’d been so sure Roy was down for the count, after all he’d drunk during the night and then the little bonus she’d put in his Bloody Mary when he got home, saying he needed some “hair of the dog.” Even from the yard, though, she could hear him raging and wailing and carrying on.

  As soon as she was inside the Buick, with the engine running and the doors locked, though, she knew she was safe.

  Roy Fifer’s old beater of a car had been junked months ago; he’d driven Doreen’s when he couldn’t borrow a rig from one of his drinking buddies, and left her stranded at work more than once, too, so she’d had to bum a ride home from one of the other waitresses.

  Anxious, but still needing one more look, Doreen glanced toward the door of the trailer, saw Roy standing on the threshold, whale-big and sick as he deserved to be.

  Don’t you worry, she told him silently, as she sped away. Soon as they pump your stomach, you’ll be right as rain.

  D AVIE FROWNED , laid the phone at the cabin back in its cradle.

  Tyler was at the table, prying open one of the two buckets of take-out chicken they’d picked up for supper coming back from Missoula. “Problem?” he asked mildly.

  Kit Carson, knowing he wasn’t going to get any of the extra-spicy—with his delicate stomach, Tyler had decided, the dog would have to stick with kibble for the duration—had slunk away to lie, woebegone, on his bed in the corner.

  “Mom told me to call her at six, straight up, no matter what,” Davie said. “But there’s no answer at the trailer.”

  “Did you try her cell phone?”

  “She doesn’t have one,” Davie answered, with a shake of his head. “She made such a big deal about how I had to remember to call her just when she said—”

  Tyler didn’t offer a reply. Davie was probably thinking the same thing he was: that Doreen hadn’t been able to last out her final two weeks at the casino after all, with that money burning a hole in her pocket. She and Roy had boogied for the Bright Lights, most likely, and saying goodbye to Davie evidently hadn’t been a priority.

  “What if Roy did something to her?” Davie fretted, after a long time. “You know, so he wouldn’t have to share the money?”

  The chances of Roy harming Doreen in some way were all too good, especially if he’d talked her into putting his name on the bank account, but Tyler didn’t see any point in saying so. “Why don’t you wait a little while, until after supper, anyhow, and try calling her again. She’s probably just gone to the store or something.” Tyler paused. “If you still can’t reach her, we’ll head into town and look her up, make sure everything’s okay. Fair enough?”

  Davie looked somewhat mollified, but he didn’t go the whole way with it, or he’d have put away more of the chicken than he did. That whole second bucket, extra-crispy, was his.

  “I wanted to tell her about the triple-wide,” Davie confided, pacing, shoving his hand through his hair every once in a while, a habit he’d probably picked up from Tyler. “And the new truck.”

  “You can do that later,” Tyler said, wondering if he shouldn’t give Jim Huntinghorse a call, have the sheriff send a deputy by old Stella Fifer’s trailer to make sure Doreen was all right. At least, as all right as anybody could be, living in that kind of setup.

  In that strange way things sometimes happen, the phone rang right then, and Davie scrambled for it, practically yelled his hello.

  Tyler watched as the color drained out of the kid’s face. “It’s for you,” he said, after listening for a few seconds and gulping hard. “Sheriff Huntinghorse.”

  Tyler took the receiver. What if something had happened to Lily and her little girl? Or to Dylan or Logan or—

  “Jim?” He practically barked the name.

  The lawman had barely been in office a week, if that long, and he already sounded as though he was looking forward to a quiet retirement. “Ty, have you seen Doreen McCullough today, by any chance?”

  The first thing Tyler felt was relief. It wasn’t a sorry-to-inform-you call.

  Sighing once, Tyler put a hand on Davie’s shoulder and pressed him back into his chair at the table, afraid the kid’s knees would buckle if he didn’t sit down. Obviously, even if Doreen was just fine, this whole parental changing of the guard thing was harder on Davie than he’d been letting on.

  “No,” Tyler said, shifting his attention back to Jim. “Is anything wrong?”

  “Plenty,” Jim answered. “Roy Fifer’s down at the c
linic, in the emergency room. They pumped his stomach a little while ago, and he swears up and down Doreen tried to kill him with some kind of poison and lit out with a whole lot of money that belonged to both of them.”

  Tyler frowned.

  Something Davie had said recently snagged in his mind—the boy had been telling him about past stepfathers and boyfriends, and he’d said one of them had some kind of fit at supper one night and died right there at the table.

  Boo-hoo. That had been the extent of Davie’s sympathy.

  “Ty?” Jim prompted, when the silence stretched on too long. “You still there?”

  Davie’s eyes were the size of the lids on the chicken buckets.

  “I’m here,” Tyler confirmed. Then, for Davie’s benefit, he added, “Doreen’s all right.”

  “Is that a personal endorsement,” Jim asked, conveying a little amusement and a lot of controlled frustration, “or are you telling me you’ve seen her after all?”

  “I haven’t seen her,” Tyler reiterated, with an edge in his voice now. “I presume you tried the casino already?”

  “Gee,” Jim retorted, “why didn’t I think of that, since I used to manage the place and hired her myself, so I know that’s where she works?”

  “Maybe she lit out early,” Tyler said, tired of the bickering, good-natured or otherwise. “She was planning to start over someplace else, that’s all I know.”

  “And the boy is staying with you, according to Roy.”

  “Yeah,” Tyler answered, bristling a little and spacing his words out wide. “The boy is staying with me.”

  “I’ll need to have a word with him,” Jim said wearily. “He might know where she’s gone.”

  “And he might or might not tell you,” Tyler pointed out, watching Davie closely. The kid had gotten the gist by now, knew Jim hadn’t called to say Doreen had been hurt, or worse. “Shall I bring him to town, or are you coming out here?”

  Davie had been busy looking disinterested until then; now, he was gaping at Tyler and pale again.

  “I’ll come out there,” Jim decided, after a moment’s thought. “I could use a little of that fresh country air.”

  “We’ll be here,” Tyler said.

  Jim gave his ETA as fifteen minutes and hung up.

  “Why does the sheriff want to talk to me?” Davie immediately demanded.

  Tyler drew back his chair, sat down at the table again. Pushed his plate away. “Roy’s at the clinic, Davie. They pumped his stomach a little while ago. He claims your mother poisoned him, and evidently, she’s nowhere to be found. Jim figures you might know where she went.”

  “Why can’t they just let her go?”

  There was no way to sugarcoat the situation. “Worst-case scenario? Because if she did poison Roy, she could be charged with attempted murder,”

  “And that jerk sheriff thinks I’d tell him where to find her— if I knew—so he could throw her in jail for the rest of her life?”

  “That ‘jerk sheriff’ is one of my best friends,” Tyler said quietly. “When you refer to him around me, I’ll thank you to remember that.”

  Davie drew in his horns a little. “I don’t know where she is,” he said, almost in a whisper.

  “Any wild guesses?”

  Davie flushed, and the ghost of the spider on his neck glowed pink. “No,” he said, a little too quickly. His eyes blazed. “Next thing, you’ll be saying this whole thing was a scam, that Mom and I planned it this way from the first—”

  “ Was it a scam, Davie? Were you supposed to call your mother at six so the two of you could meet up somewhere later and take off, say at the end of that road right out there?” He cocked his thumb toward the long, winding driveway. “After I was asleep, maybe?”

  “No!” Davie yelled. He seemed about to surge up out of his chair in a fit of rage, but in the end, he either didn’t have the energy or the courage.

  “Tell me more about that poor bastard who croaked at the supper table,” Tyler pressed quietly. “I think you called him Marty. What was his last name, Davie?”

  Tears welled in Davie’s eyes. “You think Mom killed him? Maybe that we both did?”

  “I didn’t say that. I just want his name.”

  To Tyler’s surprise, and considerable relief, Davie reeled it off, along with a rural address outside of San Antonio. Then he got to his feet, started gathering up his few belongings, like he was planning on hitting the road.

  Tyler didn’t move from his chair, didn’t speak.

  “Aren’t you going to ask me where the hell I think I’m going?” Davie finally demanded, running an angry arm across his face.

  “Okay,” Tyler said easily. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

  “Well, I’m going someplace! ”

  Tyler suppressed a humorless chuckle. He’d never seen a kid in so much pain, and with his background, that was a wonder. “Like where?”

  Apparently stumped, Davie sagged onto the edge of his cot, sat there with his head hanging. Kit Carson got up off his blanket-pile and ambled over to lick the kid’s face.

  “I’m probably not your kid anyway,” Davie sniffled, after a long time.

  Tyler gave a sigh. “You’ve got all the signs,” he said.

  Davie looked up. “Of what?”

  “Of being a Creed. You’ve got a temper like a woodstove burning nuclear waste, and you’re ready to rush off half-cocked to no place in particular.” Tyler sighed again. “I’m not accusing you of anything, Davie. But if you know where your mother is, you need to tell Jim when he gets here.”

  “It’s not like she has anyplace to go,” Davie said, and the words stuck in Tyler’s heart like a barrage of tiny needles, hitting all the bruised places and quivering there. “You think we’d have stayed with Roy Fifer, or any of the others, if we’d had a choice? ”

  “Your mother’s always had a choice,” Tyler answered. “You didn’t.”

  Davie ducked his head again, and his shoulders stooped. “She always said if she could live anywhere she wanted, she’d pick Vegas,” he said, his voice so small Tyler could barely hear it. “We tried to make it there once, but things were too expensive. Mom said a person had to have a lot of money to live in Vegas. It was too depressing if you were broke, like us.”

  Tyler heard a car pull up outside, knew it was Jim. Left his friend to let himself in, since he knew the way. “Did you have friends there?” he asked. “Family, maybe?”

  Davie shook his head. “Just another of her crap boyfriends,” he said. Then, with a bitter laugh, he met Tyler’s gaze again. “ That lasted about five minutes. Mom was crazy about him, but he didn’t want to get involved with a woman who had kids. As in, me .”

  Las Vegas, Tyler thought, hearing Jim step up onto the porch, tap at the door frame before entering. It would be a depressing place for a single mother running her feet off for a paycheck. But Doreen wasn’t broke anymore, was she? And she didn’t have to worry about Davie now, either.

  Which probably meant she’d be looking up the kid-free boyfriend.

  Jim walked in, drew back a chair at the table and sat himself down. After a nod to Tyler, he turned to Davie.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,”
Davie said, albeit reluctantly.

  Jim was tall and lean, a good man in a fight, as Tyler had ample cause to know, having grown up with him. Jim Huntinghorse had been as wild as all three of the Creed brothers put together once upon a time, but now he was the pride of the tribal council.

  “How are Sam and Caroline?” Tyler asked.

  Sam was Jim’s son, four or five years old, and the light of the man’s life. “Sam’s growing up fast,” Jim answered. “And Caroline—well, she’s still Caroline.”

  Tyler gave a partial grin at that. Jim and Caroline Huntinghorse went all the way back to elementary school, and it had been a tempestuous relationship from day one. They’d divorced but reconciled later on. Tyler would have bet his brand-new-and-shiny-blue pickup that when they weren’t fighting, Jim and Caroline, they were tearing each other’s clothes off.

  “Things have a way of working out,” Tyler said easily, for Davie’s benefit as much as Jim’s.

  “If you say so.” Jim sighed. “I hear you and Lily are back together.”

  “Word does get around,” Tyler confirmed. “She’s in Chicago and I’m here, so ‘together’ isn’t the operative word.”

  Jim threw his own words back at him. “Things have a way of working out,” he said, watching Davie. Sizing him up. After years of managing a casino, Jim was real good at reading people. Now, his face softened a little. “Where’s your mother, Davie?” he asked.

  “Probably on her way to Las Vegas,” Davie said.

  Tyler felt a surge of hope.

  Jim gave a slight nod, doing his inscrutable routine. He’d played the noble savage to the hilt, all his life. “You planning on meeting up with her later?”

  Davie flushed, flung a rebellious glance at Tyler. “I’d rather go to a foster home,” he snapped.

  Jim raised his eyebrows. “I see,” he said.