Cowboy Sing Me Home

by Harris, Kim Hunt

  So he kept his mouth shut. He traced the line of her cheek with one finger slowly, over and over, until she yawned.

  “I’m sorry. I haven’t had much sleep the past few days.”

  “Then you need your rest.” He sat and pulled a light blanket from the foot of the bed, and they shifted until they were spooned together, her back curved to nestle against his front. He looped an arm around her waist and tucked her head under his chin.

  He, on the other hand, had slept a lot in the past few days. So he was still awake when she took his hand in hers and held it against her chest. Still awake when her breathing changed and he knew she’d drifted off to sleep.

  He stayed awake long enough to marvel at two things. One, she was the most uninhibited woman he’d ever known, when it came to her body. She made no apologies for having desires, nor for celebrating those desires. And two, she was the most inhibited woman he’d ever met, when it came to trusting people. Because he knew beyond doubt she’d just paid him the highest compliment he would ever receive, by trusting him enough to sleep in his presence.

  He held her and thought about what he’d almost said, while they made love. He’d never said that to a woman before. Then again, he’d never come close to feeling what he felt for Dusty.

  She stirred, and he smoothed her hair back. “When are you leaving Aloma?” he whispered.

  “Mmmm.” She rolled and placed her hand on his chest, her breath warm and soft against his neck. “This weekend.”

  He told himself that was good. Her leaving was a good thing, no matter how it felt right now. Because if she stuck around much longer, who knew what kind of mess he would make of things.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Luke tapped his pencil against his desk and cleared his throat.

  Toby sighed and looked up from his paperwork. “Something eating you?”

  “Just beating myself up for not catching the coincidence with Wayne and Kenny. I mean, I should have suspected something was up, when two people from Seattle show up in a place like Aloma.”

  “Why? You had no reason to suspect Wayne of anything. He grew up here. And you were the one who arrested Kenny in the first place. You did everything you could with the information you had.”

  “I should have questioned it when Wayne showed up for the first time in fifteen years.” He curled his lip and shook his head. “I shouldn’t have written it off as coincidence.”

  Toby rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, you’re right. It just never dawned on me that Wayne would be a danger to anything more than a tube of Brylcreem. Of course, if IND had been a little more up front with the information in the first place, we might have been on the lookout for something more.”

  Luke stood and reached for his hat.

  “Where you headed?”

  “Back out to take a look.”

  “You look pale. You’re not going to have any energy to play tonight if you don’t go home and get some rest.”

  “Maybe I’ll do that.” Later. When Wayne and Derek Broeker where safely tucked away in jail and he quit seeing the barrel of a gun pointed at him everywhere he turned.

  The heat hit him as soon as he opened the door, and he squinted against the white-hot sun as he slid his shades on. He walked around to the back of the building, but he’d already been over it a dozen times in the day since he’d been out of the hospital, and no new ideas came to him.

  He drove over to the Rain Fest first. Not much of a crowd around, but later on when the temperature dropped to a comfortable 95 degrees, they’d be out for their corn dogs and dart games. He stood by the gate, favoring his left leg, and let Dorothy Parks talk his ear off while sweat ran down the back of his neck, disgusted with himself at the way his heart pounded whenever someone new entered his line of sight.

  The men weren’t at Rain Fest, of course. They were probably out of the country by now. His stomach knotted at the overwhelming powerlessness he felt at that, knowing they were free, going to get away with it.

  Kenny’s car was still in the locked lot behind Johnny’s service station. Luke swung his legs out of the pickup and dropped to the ground.

  “Hey friend,” Johnny said when he walked up. “Good to see you up and limping around.”

  “Good to be up, friend,” Luke said. “I need to take a look at the car I took into custody last week.”

  “Sure thing.” Johnny unhooked a heavy ring of keys from his belt. “Look while you can, that FBI guy said they’d be picking it up either this afternoon or tomorrow.”

  Luke took the key ring from him. “You have any other keys to that gate besides this one?”

  “Sure, in the register.”

  Luke chewed his lip. They’d always used the lot behind Johnny’s station for impounded vehicles, but he’d never before worried about Johnny taking a wrench to the side of the head because of it. But if Buddy was wrong, and Wayne and Broeker hadn’t recovered the disk yet, they might still be hanging around…

  Toby had told him that Wayne had been by to visit with Johnny, before they’d broken Kenny out. He’d fed Johnny some line about Kenny’s car being a special model and wanting to look under the hood, but Johnny had refused.

  The FBI had already been by, too, and gone over the car with their fine-toothed combs. He wasn’t going to find anything they didn’t. But still, he had to look.

  Dry weeds and grass crunched under his boots as he walked across the lot. The heat inside the car was a living thing, reaching out to slap him as soon as he opened the door. He opened both doors wide to let in some air. All the trash he’d seen when he’d arrested Kenny was gone, stuffed into clear plastic bags, labeled and on their way to an FBI lab by now, he supposed. There was nothing in the glove box. Nothing in the CD player. Nothing under the seats.

  He sighed and locked the car back up again. He was missing something. The rack of tires he passed on the way back reminded him of Kenny’s flat.

  Kenny hadn’t had a spare at all, not even one of those little donut tires. If he did, he probably would have been on his way with no on ever the wiser. But he’d been so nervous when Luke pulled over to help – even refusing his help at first, although it was clear he wasn’t going anywhere without some help from somebody – that Luke had decided he needed to find some cause to run his plate and license. It hadn’t been hard; the inspection sticker was out by three months, something Luke usually just gave a warning for. But after running the license and learning of the warrant for Kenny’s arrest, he’d had no choice but to bring the kid in.

  He’d had Johnny go out and tow the car into town. And now all four tires were up.

  “Did you already fix the flat on it, or is that a spare you put on to tow it in?”

  “I fixed it, but I don’t know how long it’s going to hold. Had a wood screw in it.” He took the keys back from Luke. “I told my brother and his wife, fixing flats is all that’s keeping me in business right now. With gas prices the way they are and people worried about the crops, nobody’s going anywhere. But I’ve had a rash of nails in tires lately.”

  “Did Dusty come pick up the tire I brought in for her last week?”

  Johnny shook his head. “Nah, I intended to take it by the other night ‘cause I was going by there to have dinner with Nate and his family. But I got to thinking about all Nate’s kids running around and got distracted.”

  “Yeah, Dusty can see their place from the trailer park. She said it looks like an ant hill crawling with ants.” Something niggled at the back of his mind, and he chewed on it a second. “There was a nail in the tire on the prisoner’s car?”

  “A wood screw. One in hers, too. Like I said, these little nickel and dime things are keeping me afloat.”

  After the deal with Wayne, Luke was jumping at shadows, but at this point any coincidence was suspect. “Is that normal, to have two of the same kind of screw right there together?”

  “I imagine somebody just dropped some off a truck by accident, driving through there one day.” He pul
led a greasy red rag from his back pocket and wiped his hands on it, then his brow. “It is kinda strange, though, ‘cause they’re not all the same size nails and the same size screws.”

  Luke thumbed his hat back and rubbed his forehead. “Hmmm.”

  “Yep, that’s what I said. Hmmm.”

  “Well, I’ll go ahead and pay for Dusty’s tire and take it out to her.”

  Luke turned the situation over in his mind on the drive out to Trailertopia, but could make no sense of it. He told himself he had bigger things on his mind at the moment than a bunch of flat tires. But the uneasy feeling that he was missing something remained in his gut until he pulled up into Trailertopia and saw Dusty.

  She stood on the hitch, and had a screwdriver at one of the windows. She smiled when she saw him, and that had him grinning in return.

  “I think you’re limping less today.” She hopped down from the hitch.

  “It’s this special physical therapy I’m doing.”

  He reached for her and gave her a quick kiss. She wasn’t prepared for it, he could tell, and cast a quick glance around before her eyes met his again.

  He stepped back to give her some space, and nodded in the direction of the window. “Something wrong?”

  “No, just giving the place a once over, to make sure nothing blows off while I’m driving down the road.”

  Driving down the road meant she was leaving. The thought ruined what was starting to be a pretty good mood.

  Of course she was leaving, he told himself. What was he going to do, beg her to stay? To give up her life and live here with him? For what?

  Because the urge was strong to do exactly that, he said instead, “You need some help?”

  “It’s my trailer, Cowboy. I’ve been taking care of it for a long time. I can handle it.” She turned away to drop the screwdriver into a toolbox on the table beside her front door.

  “You can handle just about anything, can’t you?” he asked, annoyed for some reason he didn’t care to examine.

  She gave him a raised-brow look over her shoulder. “I try.”

  He told himself to stop being an ass before he ruined a perfectly good morning. “I brought your tire from Johnny’s.”

  She closed and snapped the lid to the toolbox. “Why?”

  “Why? Because I was there.”

  Her chin jutted out. “I was going by there this afternoon to get it.”

  “Now you don’t have to.”

  She bit the inside of her lip and cocked her head at him, then turned to stow the toolbox in the compartment under the trailer. The box was obviously heavy, but Luke knew better than to offer help.

  “I can handle my own affairs, Ace.”

  “I know you can,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back against his pickup. They were a pair, he decided. She bristled at the slightest offer of assistance, and he bristled every time she proved she didn’t need it.

  Being perfectly honest, he admitted to himself, she was maybe slightly more justified than he was. So instead of pushing the issue, he said again, “I know you can. You’re perfectly capable of taking care of yourself. But I was there, and I was headed out here anyway, so I thought it would be the neighborly thing to do. In case you need a couple of pointers on graciousness, I would say the thing for you to do now is say ‘thank you very much, kind sir’.”

  She rolled her eyes and stepped close. She looked at him with big green eyes under dark lashes, and her tone mocked him as she said, “Thank you very much. Kind sir.”

  He cocked his head. “You must be a graduate of Miss Emily’s Charm School.”

  “I’ll pay you for your trouble.”

  “If it will make you feel better.” He took advantage of her nearness and wrapped his arms around her waist. “Have you seen any strange people around here the past couple of days?”

  “You mean besides the couple with the black Pomeranian at the end of the row, who never speak to each other?”

  He looked toward the end of the row, where an older man sat at a picnic table reading a newspaper. “Them?”

  Dusty nodded. “He sits outside all day. She comes and goes with the dog. They never speak. They don’t even look at each other.”

  “Retirement must not be going according to plan.”

  “It looks pretty much like your average trailer park. A few families, some middle-aged retirees. You looking for anything in particular?”

  He sighed and tightened his grip on her, grateful to have her to hang on to. When the thought intruded that he wasn’t going to have her there much longer, he pushed it aside. “I don’t know what exactly I’m looking for. Just suspicious things.”

  She stepped back and he let her go. “Sorry, can’t help you there.”

  “When I picked up your tire at Johnny’s, he said he’d had a bunch of flats with nails and wood screws in them lately. I’m going to do down to the Hammond’s and take a look around. You want to come with me?”

  “The Hammond’s is the place at the bottom of the hill with all the kids, right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “The ones who put clothes on a dead tree stump.”

  “The one and only.”

  She thought a minute. “What the heck. I have time to play Nancy Drew this morning.”

  He drove slowly along the shoulder of the road to the bottom of the hill, scanning the road and passing the Hammond’s house by a few hundred yards, then circled back and did the same on the other lane. “I didn’t see anything in the road.”

  “Me either.”

  “I don’t know what I’m looking for, so that kind of hinders my detective abilities,” Luke said as he pulled into the Hammond’s drive.

  Nate Hammond had his head under the hood of a four-dour sedan when Luke and Dusty got out of the pickup. He raised it and gave them a wave.

  “Hey Luke. How’s the leg?”

  “Hurts,” Luke said. “Nate, this is Dusty. Dusty, Nate.”

  “I know who she is,” Nate said with a grin and a nod to Dusty. He laid the wrench in his hand on the engine. “Me and Julie came out to the dance last week, and we’re going again tomorrow night. You put on a real good show. It’s nice to meet you.”

  Dusty returned the greeting, and Luke said, “If I had a brother who was a mechanic, it’d be his head under the hood, and not mine.”

  “That joker actually expects me to pay him to work on my cars.”

  “He’s never heard of nepotism?”

  “Apparently not. What brings you two down here?”

  “I was wondering if you had any problems with running over nails on the highway out here.”

  Nate shook his head. “Not me, but I know Freddie Mack ran over one last week, just down the road a ways. And Jolena Marcus had another one yesterday. But I ain’t had no problems.”

  Two boys came up and started climbing on the fenders of the sedan. “Your mama sees you climbing on her car, she’s gonna skin you both.” He cocked his head at Luke. “You suspecting vandals or something?”

  “I’m not sure what I suspect. We’ve had an awful lot of people here lately with nails in their tires, all on the same stretch of road. I just made a pass by down there and didn’t see anything.” Luke felt foolish, like a boy scout on a child’s mystery, while the big boys were out solving the real crimes. “Missing one coincidence has already gotten me shot. I don’t want to fall for another one.”

  “What’s vandals, Daddy?” one of the boys asked.

  “That’s when folks go around tearing up stuff. Like spray painting fences and turning over garbage cans.”

  “Oh.” The two boys looked at each other.

  Luke looked at Dusty, and she bit her lip to hide a grin.

  “Is vandals illegal?” the other boy asked.

  “Highly,” Nate said. “Texas prisons are overrun with vandals. Why? You ain’t done nothing Mr. Tanner’s going to have to haul you in for, have you?”

  Both books shook their heads so hard t
heir eyes twitched.

  “Good,” Nate said solemnly. “I’d hate to have to lose you two. You’re some of the best kids I got.”

  “I’m gonna go in now,” the bigger boy said.

  “Me too.”

  They watched the boys stir up dust as they beat it into the house.

  “Damn it,” Nate said with a sigh.

  “You shouldn’t have said that about me hauling them in. They’re going to be too scared now to give us the story.” He laughed. “You ready to go in and put the squeeze on them?”

  “Heck no. They need a little time to panic and reflect on the error of their ways. Let their imaginations terrify them for a while. Come on, I’ve got some cold Cokes hidden in the fridge out in the barn.”

  They stood in the shade of the barn and drank their Cokes while Nate told Dusty different scrapes Luke had gotten into when they were kids, all of which Luke insisted were highly exaggerated. When they’d finished, Nate said, “That ought to be long enough. If I know Billy Dale, he’s already got a little hobo knapsack packed and is ready to run away and ride the rails. We’ll lean on Jimmy Wayne first. He’ll cave and rat on his brother.”

  It turned out they didn’t have to lean on anybody. As soon as Nate opened the boys’ bedroom door and gave them the old as time you’re-in-for-it-now look, Jimmy Wayne, from his position on the top bunk of their bunk beds, pointed at his brother and said, “It was his idea. All I did was right down the distances.”

  “You fink,” Billy Dale said. He dropped the backpack he was stuffing and slumped on the bottom bunk.

  Nate pulled up a chair at the boys’ desk for Dusty, and he sat on the desk while Luke crossed his arms and leaned on the doorjamb. “Okay boys, let’s have it.”

  “It wasn’t vandals,” Billy Dale insisted. “At least, it wasn’t supposed to be. I was just doing an experiment.”

  “What kind of bone-headed experiment are you doing, going around giving people flat tires?”