“Good. From time to time, he needs adjustments. The headaches start again. Mood swings. Loss of control.”
They head up a ramp toward the box with their reserved seats.
“But the adjustments work?”
“They always have before.”
Maggie balls her fists. “So he needs to see his doctor.”
“That’s the challenge.”
“Why?”
“By the time he needs it, he’s less rational.”
“Tell me about it.”
The two of them swim upstream against traffic in the corridor, weaving around clusters of people like salmon in a river full of boulders. Their box is on the exact opposite side of the arena from the entrance, so it’s a long swim.
“More emotional.”
“Um, yeah.”
“And less open to suggestion.”
“Completely.”
“But the jealousy—that’s a new thing.”
“Protectiveness.”
“What?”
“Hank is just trying to protect me.”
“Okay, protectiveness. That’s since you. Other women just haven’t mattered that much before.”
“That’s a backhanded compliment if I’ve ever heard one.”
“But the point is, I think you can get him there. To the doctor. Because you matter to him.”
“I hope so.”
“Me, too.”
Gene’s phone rings. “It’s Laura.”
Fear grips Maggie, along with a little guilt. Hank doesn’t need any more blows right now. Should she have gone easier on him, since she knows he’s having trouble? “Take it.”
Gene listens, frowns, paces, and finally says, “I’ll get on it.”
“Well?”
“Mrs. Sibley is threatening to slaughter your goats.”
Maggie barks out a laugh.
“They got out—”
“Again.”
“Again. And they left pellets all over the front steps and jumped on the hood of her car and dented it. She said to tell you, and I quote, ‘They’re meat, not pets.’”
Maggie enters the box. “Hopefully we can get back before she proves it.”
After she’s settled, Gene returns to the pens, and Maggie watches the rodeo alone, sipping a beer and dining on peanuts she buys from the beer guy roaming the stands. She tosses her shells to the floor like everyone else around her. Her mind races, and only the bucking events capture her attention. The Double S broncs and bulls are magnificent, if she does say so herself. Or if the rhinestone-bedazzled couple next to her does. They’re quite taken with the bucking talent, and she’s bursting to pass along their compliments to Hank, if only he’d respond. But he doesn’t. Not to her five texts or two calls.
With only a few contestants to go in the last event, she bags it. She and Hank have been planning to drive through the night and be home by sundown the next day. As she sidles out, her phone buzzes with a group text with Hank from Gene. She waits to read it until she’s outside, standing near the exit. The wind has picked up, pushing warm air. An ill wind. It’s a little late to blow now, she thinks.
Gene: If I don’t see you guys before you take off, drive safe. I’ve got things from here. See you in Casper.
Hank’s response is immediate. Thanks, buddy.
Maggie wants to send a blistering text to Hank along the lines of You sorry SOB, I know you’ve been getting my texts and calls. But Gene’s words still ring in her ears. She needs to get Hank in to his doctor. ASAP. So she just texts back: Casper?
Gene: My return flight takes me there. You guys are picking me up tomorrow afternoon on your way home.
Somehow she’d missed that in the planning, but it makes sense. If he returns through Billings, someone will have to drive two and a half hours each way north to get him.
She hustles to their rig through the parking lot, moving from darkness to pools of light, over and over, from light pole to light pole. The big Double S trailer is under one, and Hank is spotlit, sitting on a wheel cover, talking on his phone. His face is somber, and he has the dark circles under his eyes that tell her his story. He puts the phone down.
When he speaks to her, he blows out a bottle’s worth of Jack fumes. “Before you say a word, I’m sorry.” His words slur, but not as bad as she expects. “Please believe in me, Maggie. I need you to.”
She grabs a finger and kisses it, then puts his hand to her chest. “I know. I do. And we can talk about it more later. For now, I’ll pack while you’re on your call, then we can leave.”
“I think I’ll be able to drive by then.” His expression is serious.
She makes a sound that’s a cross between a laugh and a snort. “Not on your life, cowboy.” And her heart lifts like it’s on wings. Something about this strong but vulnerable man does it for her like nothing and no one ever has. Or will again.
Twenty-Eight
Hank and Maggie make Douglas, Wyoming by eleven on Sunday, trading driving and napping shifts again, although Maggie’s first shift was a triple while Hank slept off the previous night’s excesses. Since then, Maggie has snuck in reading a few more chapters in her latest book on the Crow, From the Heart of the Crow Country. She must have drifted off again, though, because Hank’s voice pulls her from sleep.
“Wake up, beautiful,” Hank says.
Maggie yawns. Her ass hurts on the side she landed on when Lily bucked her off weeks ago. She turns her seat heater on. “How long was I out?”
“Since Cheyenne.”
More than two hours. Yeah, she did more than drift off. “Are we stopping?”
Even as she’s asking the question, they pass the last exit. Town gives way to farm and ranch land again. Mountains on the left. Treeless prairie on the right and in front of them northward as far as the eye can see.
“We can make Kaycee on our gas—that would be ideal, so we only have to gas up once before we get home—if you don’t need a stop. And if my Excedrin holds out.” He grins. “I feel like shit.”
“So why’d you wake me? I could have slept another—what?—hour?” She wrinkles her nose. The truck cab is starting to smell stale, bordering on rank, after ten hours with two unshowered humans, the remains of their snacking, and one farty dog.
He offers his hand and she takes it. “I was lonely. And a little sleepy. Keep me company until we pick up Gene?”
She stretches, arching her back and rotating her neck until both pop. “Sure.” She opens the lid on her mango Bai and adds. “It’ll cost you, though.”
“I’m good for it.”
They smile at each other. Hank is clear-eyed. His phone rings from the passenger floorboard.
“Want me to get that?” she asks.
“Who is it?”
Maggie dives for the phone and reads the caller ID. “Looks like the main line from Piney Bottoms.”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind.”
Maggie answers it. “Hank Sibley’s phone.”
“Uh, yes, this is Andy.”
Andy doesn’t have a cellphone, Maggie remembers. “Hey, Andy. It’s Maggie.”
“Oh, good. I was wanting to talk to you. I didn’t know your number.”
“What’s up?”
“Deputy Travis was here.”
Maggie’s mouth goes dry. “What did he want?”
“He interviewed Penny.”
Her mind churns his words. Why would Travis question Penny? And why would he come talk to Andy about it? “Have you talked to her?”
“I ain’t got her number. She gave it to you.”
Maggie’s phone is plugged into the charger. She picks it up and looks up Penny in her contacts. “You ready?”
“For what?”
“Her number.”
“Oh, I can’t call her.”
“Why not?”
“I was hoping you would.”
Andy is shy and lives by a different operating manual than most people. She gets it. And she does want to know what Travis talked to Penny about. F
or Andy’s sake, for Hank’s, and for her own. “All right. But what did he want with you?”
“To go over my alibi again.”
“Does he have a problem with it?”
“Only that I ain’t got one for the nights Paco was gone. I was in the bunkhouse alone.”
Hank looks at her and mouths, “Is everything okay?”
She shakes her head at him and mouths, “No.” To Andy, she says, “Any idea why he mentioned Penny to you?”
“He thinks I’m sweet on her.”
Maggie smiles. “Aren’t you?”
“He thinks I was jealous of Paco. Because he dated her. And that I wanted his job.”
Motive. “Oh. I’m sorry.”
His voice is stricken. “Will you call her? Make sure she’s all right?”
“I will. We’ll be home in about five hours. Do you want me to call you back or talk to you then?”
“Then. I have to work. With Hank and Gene gone, we’re mighty busy.”
“Of course you are. Try not to worry about it, and I’ll talk to you soon.”
“Thank you.”
Maggie ends the call. She briefs Hank on Andy’s side of the conversation.
“That’s bullshit. The last thing Andy would do is kill someone. The second to last thing he would do is try to take something from someone else. A job. A girl. Anything. The kid is moral to the core.”
“He sure seems that way to me.”
Maggie presses Penny’s number. “Maybe Penny will have some answers.” The phone rings four times and goes to voicemail. “Penny, this is Maggie Killian. We met at the Occidental and Paco’s service. I hope we’re still on for our music lesson tomorrow night.” She is about to tell her the reason for the call, then doesn’t. Something tells her the girl won’t call back if she knows it’s about Paco’s murder. “Could you give me a call back, please? As soon as you can. Thanks.” She hangs up.
They pass an exit with a Kum & Go gas station. Maggie stifles an inappropriate urge to laugh. Whoever came up with that name had to have known how vulgar it sounds. Hank exits the interstate. The rest of the drive to the airport is traffic lights and industrial, with a few bars sprinkled in doing brisk midday Sunday business. If Maggie was up for karaoke, they could make a detour into the Alibi Lounge. But she’s not. She wants to do something, though, she realizes. She wants to feel useful.
“Hank, put me to work.”
“What?” The look he gives her is one part confused, one part amused.
“On the ranch. You have plenty of work to go around. Let me do some of it.”
“Where did this come from?”
“From me feeling like a freeloader.” Something not going unnoticed by your mother and sister, she thinks.
“All right.”
“Starting tomorrow.”
He laughs. “All right.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I.”
“Good. Thank you. And I want to be paid.”
“Of course.”
“But not in cash.”
He waggles his eyebrows. “I feel so objectified.”
“I already get that, Hank. I need something else.”
“Your wish is my command.”
“I want you to see your doctor. ASAP.”
The temperature in the truck cab falls ten degrees.
“Hank?”
“Huh?”
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you.”
“And?”
“And tomorrow I’ll call my doctor.”
“With me present.”
“You’re killing me.”
“No, and I don’t want anything else to either.”
He sighs. “With you present.”
She leans across the console and kisses his cheek. “Thank you.” She feels like a lead weight has fallen off her chest. Now all she has to do is make him follow through.
He turns into the Casper/Natrona County International Airport. Two minutes later, they see Gene. He wads up and throws away a Cheetos bag, then sticks out his thumb, hitchhiker style. It’s slightly orange. Hank pulls to the curb, and Maggie throws open her door, bracing it against the wind. The last time she saw Gene, she was angsting about Hank’s volatility, with Hank a rodeo-no-show. She wonders if he’s thinking about it, too.
Gene is already throwing his bag into the bed. “You lovebirds want me to drive so you can canoodle in the back seat?”
There’s no way Maggie is getting back there. Between the stench of Louise and the truck blowing all over the road, she’ll be carsick in minutes. “My turn to drive. You get in the back and stretch out.”
Maggie and Hank exchange places. He grins, in sync with her.
“If you’re sure.” Gene gets in the back seat. “Oh, hello, Louise.”
Hank hits the locks. “I think you just got suckered, bud.”
“Jesus, when was the last time you gave this dog a bath?”
Maggie passes pronghorn antelope grazing by the parking lot, then pulls out of the airport. “A month ago, maybe? When she barfed all over herself and the inside of my truck.”
“That’s thirty or more dead-animal rolls ago. And she gets carsick?”
“Not if you sing ‘You Are My Sunshine’ to her while rubbing her belly,” Hank says.
Gene laughs. “Screw you.” Then he stops abruptly. “Hey, guys, I got some news.”
“About Andy’s alibi?” Maggie asks.
Gene leans over the console between Maggie and Hank. “What? No. About Michael. You have news about Andy?”
Hank turns sideways in his seat. “You go first.”
“The background check on Michael came back. It’s not good.”
Twenty-Nine
Maggie chews the inside of her lip. She likes Michael. Has she been wrong about him? “Bad news in what way?”
“He just got out of jail, for one thing,” Gene says.
Hank cocks his head. “For what?”
“Burglary.”
Maggie merges onto the interstate, heading north.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. So I had a friend up in Lame Deer ask around. Apparently Michael’s family is bad news. Drug dealers, big into opioids. The assumption is that they steal them to sell them.”
“Was that what Michael was stealing?”
“I’m not sure. My friend said Michael’s conviction came after a string of arrests that didn’t stick. But he also said that burglary doesn’t mean the same thing on the reservation as it does to us off of it.”
Now he has Maggie’s attention. “In what way?”
“It goes back centuries. Successful raids against other Indians was a respected activity. A way to prove manhood. Stay battle-ready between battles. Show superiority over an enemy. My friend says the Cheyenne considered it a sign of skill and intellect. Some still do.”
Hank nods. “I’ve always heard that.”
Maggie compares what she’s learned about the Crows to what Gene is telling her about the Cheyenne. It makes sense. They crest a hilltop with large rock outcroppings and stunted evergreens, then head downhill into the sea of brown prairie again.
She asks, “What does that mean for Michael and Double S?”
Gene turns to Louise. “Get off me, mutt.” In the rearview mirror, Maggie sees him push the dog to her side of the back seat. “It makes me real nervous, having a convicted thief living on the place. But we need the help. What do you think, Hank?”
“Too big a risk. I think we should cut him loose as soon as we can replace him.”
“Hank!” Maggie says. “At least give him a chance. He seems like a good kid.”
“A chance to steal from us? He’s a grown man, Maggie.”
“He’s poor, Hank. Maybe now that he’s away from bad influences and has a steady income and a different cultural environment, things will be better.”
“Maybe. Or maybe he’s a con artist who has you hornswoggled already.” Hank winks. “Hand me a bag of potato chips a
nd a water, will you?” he says to Gene.
Gene finds them in a convenience store bag and tosses them to Hank. “How about we talk to him about it and see how he responds? If he knows we know, maybe it will keep him on the straight and narrow.”
Hank opens the bag, and chips erupt out the top from the release of pressure. Maggie snatches one that lands on the console. She crunches it and puts her hand out for more.
Hank deposits a handful in her palm. “I guess we could do that.”
Maggie’s phone rings.
Hank picks it up. “It’s a 307 number.”
“Put it on speaker.”
He presses something on the screen, and the phone connects to the call.
“Hello?” Maggie says.
A girl’s voice enters the truck with them. It’s clear and bell-like. “You called me.”
She smiles at Hank. “Hi, Penny. I’m driving. I have you on hands-free, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Andy said the police came by to question you.”
“How does he know that?”
Maggie leaves the lee of hill cover to cross a bridge. The wind roars through the creek bottoms, knocking the truck and trailer to the shoulder, near the railing. Sweat beads on her brow. She muscles the wheel left, slow and steady. Just as quickly as it rocked them, the wind disappears behind another hill as they climb back up to the prairie.
Maggie swallows hard. How many seconds have passed without her answering? “Sorry. It’s really windy. Um, Deputy Travis came out to the ranch. He told Andy about it. We were all worried about you.”
“I’m fine. He just wanted to know about me and Paco.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like did he break up with me. Was I upset with him. When I saw him last. But I told him I was the one who broke things off. Paco dated a lot of women. I didn’t want to catch a disease or something, you know?”
Oh God, how Maggie knows. She used to ask her on-and-off boyfriend Gary Fuller to bring a clean bill of health and a bottle of penicillin for her when he’d come off the road from touring. “So you hadn’t seen him in a while?”
“I saw him last week. At the Ox. But we barely talked.”
“And that’s what you told Deputy Travis?”
“Yeah. Oh, and he wanted to know when Andy and I got together. That made me laugh. I was like, um, ‘Never.’ I’m used to guys who only want one thing. Not Andy. He’s too shy to have a girlfriend.”
Dead Pile (Maggie #3) Page 15