Peggy Dulle - Liza Wilcox 04 - Saddle Up

by Peggy Dulle

  “No, he was explaining to me about rodeos. I’d like a bacon cheeseburger and fries.”

  She took the menu and smiled. “You got it. Riley’s an okay guy, just watch his hands. He likes to put them places they don’t belong.”

  “Oh, Tammy,” Riley said, blushing.

  Considering I was close to ten years older than Riley, there wasn’t any chance of him wanting to put those wandering hands on me, but it was kind of fun for her to say and for him to blush.

  I put my hand on his arm. “Don’t let her tease you, Riley.”

  “Ah, Tammy’s okay.” He nodded toward the cowboy on my left. “She’s in love with Davis.”

  Davis turned and frowned at Riley. He was older, taller and leaner than Riley, but still tanned like he spent his life in the outdoors. “She is not.”

  “Yes she is. I see the way she looks at you, man. She’s got the hots for you.” Riley winked at me, then turned his attention back to his burger.

  Tammy brought my cheeseburger a few minutes later. It was a fourth of the size of the cowboy’s and perfect for me.

  When she brought dessert for both men, I gasped. Each had a fourth of an apple pie covered with melting vanilla ice cream.

  “I should have started with the pie.” I grinned. The dessert looked and smelled fabulous.

  Riley and Davis laughed.

  “Are you here with the rodeo?” I asked them as I loaded my plate with ketchup for my fries.

  “No, we’re locals,” Davis said. “I’m a pretty good heeler, but not good enough for the circuit.”

  “A heeler?”

  “In the team-roping competition, two men on horseback chase a steer. The header ropes the steer around the horns, head, or neck. I rope the hind legs.”

  “Wow, I didn’t realize rodeos had their own vocabulary.”

  “Teacher?”

  “Yes, how did you know?”

  “No one else calls what we say vocabulary,” Davis laughed.

  “This is a nice town,” I said, taking a small bite of my cheeseburger. It was juicy and tasted fabulous.

  Riley scoffed and said, “No, it’s a piss-ant town with no jobs and no future. If we didn’t have the rodeo, the entire place would dry up and blow away. We should sell and get out.”

  Davis pointed to Riley. “We’ve got a big corporation that wants to buy the town and level it for a new highway. He’d like to see us sell. Me, I’ve lived here my whole life and I want to raise a family here.”

  “I haven’t had a chance to see the entire town. Where is your school?”

  “We’ve only got one. It goes from kindergarten to twelfth grade, but we’ve got great teachers and the kids pretty much get taught what they need to learn. So you might have a first grader practicing algebra and a sixth grader still trying to memorize his basic skills.”

  “Every child has their own learning plan?” I asked.

  “Yeah, it’s great for the advanced kids and for the kids who need extra help, they get it. Each parent is required to work in the classroom twenty hours a year. It doesn’t sound like much but it sure helps.”

  “I don’t see any big business in town, where does everybody work?” I took another bite of my cheeseburger, pretending that I was just making small talk rather than investigating the town.

  “There’s a power plant north of the town, most have jobs there and then during the summer months the lagoon takes on extra help at the marina, store, and café. Mostly that’s taken by the high school kids.”

  “Ridgedale seems like a nice place to raise a family,” I suggested.

  “It’s not,” Riley interjected, threw a twenty on the counter, and left.

  I watched him go.

  When I turned back, Davis was shaking his head.

  “I’m sorry that Riley was so rude. He lost his mom last year. It was real sad. She was a nice lady. He just wants to get away from here. There are too many bad memories.”

  “I know how that is. I lost my mom four years ago.”

  Davis nodded, turned back to his pie. I noticed that Riley hadn’t touched his. I wondered if Riley’s mom and Sheryl Ann’s son had both died from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Death was more than a statistic, it affected everyone. And if the town was a cancer cluster, wouldn’t leveling it and putting in a highway be the best thing to do?

  CHAPTER 10

  As I left the cafe, I watched Davis move his last piece of pie crust from one side of his plate to another for the tenth time. The customers had thinned and Tammy had spent the last ten minutes topping off my Diet Coke and Davis’ Coke rather than waiting on other customers. Riley was right about one thing, Tammy did have her eye on Davis.

  I wandered down the street. The buildings were in need of paint in any color besides ubiquitous brown. They must have gotten a huge supply cheap since the motel and every other building were all painted that same color. Boards covered the windows to a card shop, antique store and day spa that had tried to make a go but failed. Across the street was an ice cream shop that had several patrons, including Riley who leaned on the counter and flirted with the teenaged girl with a waffle cone in one hand and a scoop full of chocolate ice cream in the other. It looked like the business had been quickly erected just for this weekend, as a paper sign was taped over a neon sign that read, Sarah’s Flower Shop.

  Next to the ice cream shop stood a building marked Ridgedale Reader. Red and white checkered curtains were pulled closed across the two windows on either side of a wooden door. I checked the street both ways, waited for several trucks pulling horse trailers to go by and then jogged across. The newspaper office didn’t have hours posted, so I tried the handle. When it turned gently, I pushed the door open.

  A young woman sat on the front of a desk. Her long brown hair hung loose from her head, which was tilted backwards, as her legs wrapped tighter around a jeans-clad boy. He had his right hand under her shirt as his left held on his cowboy hat. His lips were on her neck and she cooed in delight.

  My eyes widened as my face flushed red and I gasped. The man jumped back, releasing his hat which tumbled to the ground as the woman leaned around him to glare at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I stuttered. “The door was open and so I just came in. I didn’t see any hours posted.”

  “Hang on a minute.” The young woman frowned. She pulled the boy to her by the front of his shirt, gave him a long kiss, then patted him on the butt, turned him around and said, “I’ll catch you later, Trevor.”

  He blushed, quickly swept his hat from the floor and lowered his head as he passed me. He was a gangly youth, maybe early twenties, with large black eyes. His wiry dark-brown hair was short and messy, probably from the woman running her fingers through it. Now that the two weren’t entangled, I got a good look at the woman. She made me think of a dangerous spider. She had deep-set eyes the color of chestnuts. Her thick, wavy, auburn hair hung down to the middle of her back. Her tall, slender build was accentuated by the boot-cut jeans and rhinestone-specked tight-fitting tank top.

  She jumped from the desk and extended her hand. “I’m Grace Banner, editor and owner of the Ridgedale Reader. What can I do for you?”

  I shook her hand and introduced myself, quickly coming up with a reason for my visit. “I’m a teacher and I always try to check out the local paper when I visit a new town.”

  “Welcome to Ridgedale, Liza. Did you come for the rodeo?”

  “Yes,” I told her.

  She closed her eyes and sighed. “I love when the rodeo is in town. It brings all those young cowboys with tight asses and overactive libidos.”

  I nodded toward the door. “Was that your boyfriend?”

  She laughed. “Oh no, that was Trevor. He’s a bull rider.”

  “Bull rider?” I asked.

  “Oh honey. The bull riding is the best event at the rodeo. They open the gate and the bull charges out, bucking and spinning to try and throw the rider. My heart pumps like it’s been zapped with an electrical prod until the rider
gets thrown or lasts those eight seconds. It’s amazing.”

  “I can’t wait to see it,” I said. Bull riding did sound exciting.

  “So pull up a chair and I’ll tell you all about Ridgedale,” she said as she went around and sat at her metal desk.

  I grabbed a chair from a table that held two computers. The office was the size of a small bedroom, one wall covered in metal bookshelves filled with paperback books. All of the furniture looked second-hand or maybe third-hand, probably from the school since I had similar equipment many years ago. Behind Grace hung a large portrait of a gentleman standing by a horse and holding a newspaper. His thick, straight black hair was speckled with gray and his face showed character in lines and coloring.

  Grace glanced behind her and said, “That’s my granddad. He opened this newspaper seventy-five years ago. When he passed away, my dad took over. I spent every day with my dad, after school and on weekends. My first exposé ran when I was ten. It was on the school’s mismanagement of the cafeteria funds.”

  “Bad food or just unhealthy?” I asked.

  “Both, because the guy who ran it spent half the funds on his mistress and the other half on the food. I followed him for five days to get a picture of him and Miss Steward, the third grade teacher. The picture ran with my article. He was fired, she left town, and we had real pizza for the first time in two years.”

  “You were an investigative reporter way back then.”

  “It’s what I like best.”

  “So does your dad still come into the newspaper?” I already knew the answer, but sometimes when you ask a question you get a different response.

  “No, my dad died five years ago.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry,” I told her.

  “That’s okay. He went with his boots on.” She smiled.

  “Excuse me?”

  She chuckled. “Dad was fifty-two and he was killed trying to ride a bull at the rodeo.”

  “They let him ride a bull at his age?”

  “My mom and dad own all the land in Ridgedale – you don’t say ‘no’ to them. He lasted seven seconds before that bull threw him into the gate.”

  I remembered what Justin had said about Blue Stripe Enterprises and their financial trouble ten years ago. “I remember Ridgedale’s name for some reason. Didn’t something happen here about ten years ago?”

  “Oh yeah, that was the floods of 2000. It rained for twenty days and the levee broke in seven places. The entire town was under four feet of water. Some of the trailers in the park north of the city ended up in the lagoon, which is south of us.”

  “Wow. What a mess!”

  “It cost my parents a bundle to fix it all.”

  “Why?”

  “They lease the land to the locals for $1.00 a year. They were never in it to make any money. But when everyone flooded and nobody, including my parents, had flood insurance, it was a disaster.”

  “So they were on the hook to fix everything?” I asked.

  “Yes, but everyone helped out. The entire town worked together to get the downtown area and people’s homes cleaned and fixed. I remember the caravan of big rigs they brought in to take all the trailers back to the park.”

  Obviously Grace didn’t know about her parents taking on a partner to help pay for the cleanup, but she would have been only eleven or twelve at the time. “How big is Ridgedale?”

  “The town itself is just what you see – six blocks. You blink and you’ll miss it but our land area is almost a hundred square miles.”

  “That’s pretty big. San Francisco is only about forty-six square miles.”

  “Yeah, but San Francisco is forty-six miles of homes, apartments, and businesses. We are a hundred square miles of dirt and scrub oak trees.”

  “No businesses?”

  “We’ve got a power plant, a lagoon for recreation, plus the few smaller businesses, like mine, a grocery store, and a couple of restaurants.”

  “I ate at the café today. They have great hamburgers.”

  “Tammy’s dad slings a mean burger, that’s for sure,” Grace said. “Are you staying at the inn?”

  “No. there was a problem with my reservation, so I’m at Sheryl Ann’s house.”

  Grace laughed. “That’s because the computers at the inn still have floppy drives and they use dial-up for their Internet connection.”

  “I’ve got a nice room at the house,” I said.

  “That room is much better than those at the inn, but you have to share a bathroom.”

  “There is that,” I said. It was time to ask a tougher question. “I’ve heard this area has some health issues.”

  “Some environmental idiots think Ridgedale is a cancer cluster because we lost a few residents to the disease. But that’s bullshit,” she spit out. “Last year my mom had the water, soil, and air tested numerous times and they couldn’t find anything.”

  “Then why do they still think it?”

  She shook her head. “Doc says that we have more people infected with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma than any other place around. But it doesn’t make sense. Mom’s done every test they’ve asked for and they’ve all come back negative. We’ve tested for contaminants, excess metals and chemicals.”

  “Doc?”

  “Yeah, Doctor Glen Sanders. He lives on the top floor of the red brick house at the north end of the street. The bottom floor is his office.”

  “Maybe it’s just a coincidence?” I suggested.

  “I don’t believe in coincidences,” she said, glancing at her watch. “I’ve got to run. Anything else I can tell you about Ridgedale?”

  “No, that’s okay. Is there a library in town? I’d like to learn a few things about rodeos before I go tomorrow.”

  She pointed to the wall of books. “This is the library and I think I’ve got a few books that will help.”

  Grace went to the bookshelves, scanned several shelves, and then grabbed three books. She handed them to me and said, “Just bring them back when you’re through. We’re on the honor system here.”

  “Thanks.” I left the newspaper office, books tucked under my arm.

  I headed directly for the doctor’s office. It was easy to find the beautiful two-story Colonial brick home, with a white porch in front decorated with hanging pots overflowing with flowers, and white shutters around each window. It made the rest of the buildings in town seem shabbier than they were. Parked on the right of the house was a gorgeous sleek black Jaguar. Being the town’s only doctor must pay very well.

  A simple white plaque adorned the red door. It said “Doc. Sanders” but didn’t list any office hours. If you’re the only doctor in town, I guess you work when people are sick. I knocked but got no answer, so I turned the handle and walked in. The inside was bright and cheery from the afternoon sun that streamed through the large windows. It was exquisitely decorated with over-stuffed pale blue couches, oak tables, and book cases displaying photographs, trophies, and homemade clay figurines. There were several pictures of the doctor with new babies and small children. He had team pictures for soccer, baseball, and softball, all listing him as their sponsor.

  I wandered through the living room, and called, “Hello?”

  No answer.

  I could see a dining room to the right and a small door to the left. I opened the door to a fairly large kitchen with green granite counters, stainless steel appliances, and ceramic-tiled floor.

  “Hello?” I called out again.

  Since I still hadn’t found anyone, I went back to the living room. I took the hallway to the right. There were three doors, probably bedrooms in the original design. When I opened the first door, I found a fully equipped examination room, complete with oxygen system, electronic monitors, and brand new computer system. Cabinets filled one wall, and through the glass I could see all types of bandages, gauze, and other medical supplies. A locked cabinet held bottles of solutions and medications.

  But still no doctor, receptionist, or patients.

  I clo
sed the door behind me and went to the next room. This examination room had an x-ray machine in the corner, overhead surgical lighting, and more cabinets bulging with supplies. This was the best funded clinic or doctor’s office I ever seen.

  Through the last door, I found the doctor’s office. He had a massive cherry-wood desk with two leather high-back chairs positioned in front. The right wall held five file cabinets. I didn’t know the names of Sheryl Ann’s son or Riley’s mom so I couldn’t look up their medical files. And I wasn’t even sure if the cancer cluster was related to the rodeo family’s deaths that would occur in a few days. But I’ve always had a hard time swallowing coincidences, so one had to be related to the other. My stomach tightened and my pulse skipped up a few beats. This was trespassing and I didn’t want to get arrested before Tom arrived, did I? But a family was going to die and I had to do what I could to stop it.

  I set the books Grace had loaned me on one of the chairs by the desk, then tried the first file cabinet. It slid open easily. As I thumbed through the names on the files, nothing looked familiar. If I had hours, I could take out all the files and try to figure out what might be important.

  The rest of the cabinets also held patients’ files. I went to the doctor’s desk and sat down. The top drawer was slightly open, so I slid it out – office supplies. I opened the small right drawer and found note cards and envelopes. The drawer underneath it was another file cabinet. When I slid it open I saw a file for Blue Stripe Enterprises, the corporation that was trying to buy up the town. I set the file in my lap and opened it. There were invoices for medical supplies all paid for by the corporation and given to Doc Sanders, including his new digital x-ray machine and computer system. Why would a corporation buy supplies for a doctor’s office that they wanted to level? That didn’t make any sense to me.

  My stomach dropped when I heard the click, a few seconds before the words.

  “What the hell are you doing in my office?” the gruff voice yelled.

  CHAPTER 11

  I quickly slid the folder back into the open drawer and stood. Two men walked through the door, both in jeans, brightly colored collared shirts with snaps, cowboy boots, and carrying straw cowboy hats, both in their mid-fifties, one slightly taller, the other slightly wider. The taller man’s deep set brown eyes were narrowed at me. He was the one yelling – must be the doctor.