by Lisa Preston
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t figure out anything. And what I did do, I messed up, did it wrong.”
“How’s that?”
“What I did, asking that guy Darby to check inside the tire, it was bad police procedure. It didn’t impress anyone.” Melinda was turning into a kid now. She sounded mighty glum, like she was moping.
Made me think of Abby. I missed that girl, the one I’d aunty’d and been a big sister to. Abby was just starting to grow up in the promise of a good way, not the sullen, unhappy girl she’d turned into in the last week or so. Now that Abby was going away, things were different. People change when life happens to them and it would happen to my sort-of niece this year. People change for better and worse, their minds and pasts and futures all lock up.
Melinda did some a-hemming and said, “The mens rea isn’t necessarily all that hard to point to here, you know, if the Chevigny death was a homicide, but the evidence, I mean, crap.”
Knowing a bunch of Greek or Latin doesn’t mean it’s got to be said with every breath, am I right?
“I envy you,” Melinda said. “You know what you want to do and you’re already doing it. You’re on your own. I’m still waiting for the starting gun to go off in my life.”
In my whole entire two-and-a-half decades, I’d never heard something so silly. “What’s there to wait for?” I asked. “Be independent. Go after what you want.”
“Well, in the job I want, what I really want to do, well, I’m dependent on others to get it. I can’t just go out and be what I want, I have to get picked, get hired.”
“What do you want?”
“I want to move up in the sheriff’s department.”
I set my burger down pronto, wondering on her words. “I figured. But, why?”
“Why?”
“Looky, those uniforms.”
“What about them?” She was starting to give me an undeserved stink eye.
“Well, they look so hot. Overwarm, I mean.” I can never tell if she’s laughing at me or with me. But I sobered her up right quick with the observation that word had it there was a hiring coming up at the sheriff’s department. “The sheriff’s probably going to hire a reserve to become a full-time paid deputy, huh?”
“Other than me, Pritchard’s the only one with the department who put in for the job. And he’s been a reserve way longer than I’ve been a clerk, so, yeah.” She frowned.
“So that’s why you’re trying to make him look bad,” I beamed. “Seriously, what is it with you and Vince Pritchard?” I cocked an eyebrow.
She looked a little scolded and said, “I’d be a better cop than him.”
How could she know something like that? I offered another stern scowl. Good thing my supply’s large.
Then Melinda opened her heart wide. “I want to be a cop.”
It was like looking at me, just a few years ago, wanting to be a horseshoer. I could fall in like with Melinda, surely I could.
I did.
“Well,” I said in my most helpful way, “you’ve certainly got the mouth for being a cop.”
“What’s that supposed to mean, the mouth?”
“The vocabulary,” I explained. “You cuss.”
My friend, the potty-talking cop wannabe, gave me a withering look that only increased when I spoke.
“It doesn’t look good, you making Vince look bad by pointing a finger at him.”
She howled. “Oh, it couldn’t have been him who fired that round.”
“Why not?”
“The person that kid Joby Thurman saw leaning over the water trough? It absolutely could not have been Vince Pritchard.”
Chapter 26
“THE THING IS, I’M ACTUALLY KIND of full.”
“You ate out,” Guy accused. He was sitting at the dinette whisking something that had the makings of a fancy-pants happening going on in the kitchen. Ingredients I don’t know and utensils I can’t work were all over the counters. Trying to ignore the burnt plastic smell of the passed-on microwave was a little piece tough. I felt as bad as things smelled to have forgotten about dealing with the ruined microwave.
“Uh . . .” I made an effort to not burp.
He was on his feet now, pacing a little. “Fast food, I’ll bet.”
“You’d win,” I admitted, sure he’d understand when he found out dinner only set a body back two dollars. “The cheeseburgers were ninety-nine cents.”
Guy looked like he was hurting somewhere deep, maybe under his liver. He spread his hands wide after taking them off his guts. “Why?”
I shrugged. “There’s a special going on. Why do I have to explain how Dairy Queen sets their prices?”
Guy groaned. “I mean, why would you eat that crap?”
Okay, now first of all, he’s just got to get over the food thing, right?
But then, he’s not going to, is he? And spoiling for a fight isn’t like Guy. He wants to cook and hang out in the evenings. When we’re getting along, our evenings together puttering like we do, it’s my favorite thing. I ran a few more breaths in and out of my lung pipes while I was thinking. Guy stayed tetchy. Getting along isn’t enough, I realized. Where I’d let us down before was in not showing myself to Guy. And I’d kept letting us down by not considering him in the way he does me. Guy puts me first.
“Look,” I said, “cheeseburgers aside, I’ve been being a jerk to you and I shouldn’t have been and I’m sorry.” Whew. Give the Melinda thing a whirl, I thought. Own up to my turdiness right away and show some regret.
A smile tugged at one corner of Guy’s mouth, then the other. “You mean you’re ready to—”
“Please, not the marriage class thing?”
He countered like we were negotiating a sale. “Do the marriage thing?”
“That, yeah. Guy, I’m sorry.” I took a knee, I really did. Reached for his closest hand with both of mine. “Marry me, please?”
He laughed and turned red. He’s hard to resist like that. “Marry you,” he repeated the words, drew them out for savoring as I stayed in my begging position. “Well, fine.”
“I’m not joking. I mean married like marriage. Like, with a wedding.”
“You’re ready to plan?”
“Heck yeah.” I would have apologized for cussing, but my mouth was busy being kissed. We grinned at each other. “I’ll marry you this minute, tonight, tomorrow, next week, any day you say.”
“Well,” Guy said, “I’m going to cook everything we have. We have to pick a date, a location, an invitation list.”
“Watch this.” I dialed on the house phone.
His brow furrowed and he raised his hands in a question. “What are you doing?”
The right voice came on the line and I asked one thing. “Want to be my maid of honor?”
It was quiet. Throat-clearing came as my friend made the right guesses, got herself caught up, and then I heard, “Yeah, I do.”
“Come on over. We’ll gab and Guy’ll feed us.”
“We just ate.”
“I know. And we’re in trouble over that. But if we hang out long enough, we’ll be hungry again.”
Guy stood there, relaxing a bit but still a little wary-looking when I told him plain who I’d called. Then he had to go and say, “Melinda Kellan? You said she’s a bit of a witch.”
I nodded, but now I had an amendment to the observation. “But she’s a good witch. And now she’s going to be the maid of honor in our wedding. Who else should we invite? Can I ask Donna? I just really like her. I’m hauling that tire back out to the tractor for her tomorrow and I can ask her then.”
“Invite anyone and everyone. That reminds me, I saw the Nunns in the Cascade today. The hay guy has the hots for Donna Chevigny.” He looked happy-naughty with knowing. Grinning, hands folded across mine on his chest, Guy told me about Hollis Nunn coming into the Cascade. “He said she puts lead in his pencil.”
“He’s out of luck ’cause Donna would never take up with a married man.”
“He’s not married.”
“He’s so married that he and his old lady, Holly, look like each other.”
“Holly? That’s his sister. They stopped in to eat and he called me over. Hollis mentioned you in a very nice way. And he said you should be careful on the Buckeye because of a particular bull.”
I sat up.
“I thought Holly was his wife.”
He smiled. “Not so much. She’s his twin. But listen, I don’t want you to come a cropper out there dealing with the tractor around Donna Chevigny’s bull—”
“You sound like Hollis now.”
“His words,” Guy nodded. “Rainy, I want you to be careful. You know what? Just wait. Wait ’til I get off work tomorrow. I’ll go with you on that tire favor errand deal of yours.”
“His sister. Not his wife. Huh.” I shook my head. I thought about how mysteriously certain Melinda Kellan had been that Vince Pritchard was not the person little Joby Thurman saw skulking around the Buckeye shed way back when. Melinda knew something, like the police tended to, that she wasn’t sharing.
If it couldn’t have been Vince Pritchard, it sure could have been Hollis Nunn. I hadn’t known Hollis was interested in Donna. Hollis and Cameron Chevigny had a falling out of some kind in their rodeo stock business. Suppose Hollis Nunn had made the tractor roll, killed Cameron on purpose?
Guy kissed me. “Since you picked a maid of honor and called her over, I’m calling Biff—”
“Biff.” I snapped my fingers, recalling my time with Stan Yates, Arielle’s note.
“Anyway, Biff will stand up for me. Hey, Abby could be your flower girl. By the way, Bean is here, in the pasture with Red and The Kid. Keith Langston got his neighbor to do the hauling. He said Abby wanted him to bring Liberty, too.”
The horses had been off in the back of the field, out of sight when I first got home. I went out now to take a look and a think.
The pasture situation was going to take some figuring out. Bean was hollering his little head off, put-out with being de-mama’d. The Kid came dragging himself up for a nuzzle. I was staring at the field for cross-fencing ideas, when my friend Melinda showed up.
Red gave Melinda his mean face, definitely getting some order from Horse Planet about putting off the newby. It didn’t strike too well for Melinda’s points, this bit about Red not taking a shine to her.
“You’ve got to get on his good side,” I said.
“Which side would that be?” Melinda asked.
“The outside.”
She smiled so friendly, I couldn’t help smiling back. That is, until she said, “I think I’d like a mule.”
That was a little bit of a horrifying idea, to be honest. Some mules will wait a decade to step on your foot over an old resentment. If they’re not handled right early on—and most aren’t—they can be a bear to deal with for eternity. The old boys on the ranch where daddy worked said that mules’ll haunt a ranch, break stuff even after they’re buried. They have a thing about their ears, and their braying scares some horses.
But they are tough and they have tough feet, even if they are shaped weird.
“I did some reading,” Melinda said. “A Quarter Horse to race a quarter mile, a Thoroughbred to race a mile or three, an Arabian to race fifty or a hundred, right?”
I nodded.
“And to race a thousand miles, get a mule. I read that.”
Not much for me to say. She was right, but no one goes hard a thousand miles. That’s life.
She about squared off in front of me for an answer, badgering me with, “Mules stay, right?”
I nodded. They do have amazing strength. Like Melinda.
“They’re stayers,” I admitted.
More nodding. “Raise ’em right, they can be a world of miles. They’re strong and smart.”
Oh, she’d been reading up.
“They never forget and they can hold a real grudge.” Then I thought, well, hey, of course she’d like something born of a horse and a donkey, they’re just like her, and me.
“You’re a mule,” I said.
“Yeah, I am.”
“I always try to figure what kind of horse someone would be. Like Magoutsen? He’s a grade horse, but a good solid reliable one. That other deputy? He’s an Appendix Quarter Horse, got a little Thoroughbred in him.” I tried to think of others at her work place. “That other reserve, Pritchard—”
“You can’t compare him to a horse. He’s a gutless fuckwit,” she said.
“Halfwit,” I suggested.
“Sorry.”
I considered what she’d said. “You really think he’s gutless?”
“It’s his defining characteristic.”
Being a coward is a heck of a thing for one person to say about another. Having eaten a few chicken chances myself, I’m not about to point any fingers. But if she’d caught him being less than brave, it’d be a story worth hearing.
“Are you guessing? About Vince?”
She gave a bare nod that set me to shifting about like Red when he’s been asked to stay put for longer than his mind can stand it.
“I think you’re right about the horseshoe, about it coming from one of the Pritchards’ horses,” Melinda said, “you’ve got to be.”
“But there’s no way of telling what day that shoe got thrown out there.”
“It still proves their horse was ridden out there, and if they say it wasn’t, someone’s lying. I’ll bet the horse was out there, the knife was put behind the water trough and the shot was fired by the same person the same night. And I’ll bet it was Vince’s pistol that put that round in the tractor tire.”
A sigh escaped me. “You and Vince are gunning for the same job. It doesn’t look great for you to go back to making a case against him, though I do see that he’s the one with the motive to hate Cameron Chevigny over dallying with Loretta.”
She snorted. “I’m not making a case against Vince. I told you, it wasn’t him the kid saw skulking around that night.”
“How do you know?”
Melinda grinned and nodded like, yeah, she did know. “There’s a thing I heard, long time ago.”
I gave that notion some thinking, trying to imagine what she thought she knew or what she might actually know. Finally, I asked, “Something ’bout Vince?”
She shook her head. “About men.”
“The rat bastard thing?”
Rolled her eyes at me. “Rainy, they are not all rats.”
“You know for a fact they’re not all rats? You checked all of them?”
I was feeling a smidgin proud of my arguing abilities.
“You’re about to marry a prince, Rainy.”
She had me there. “Yeah, I am.”
“You got me off track—”
“I do that—”
“The thing is, a guy can’t pick heavy stuff up when he’s bent over the way that kid showed us.”
She went over to Ol’ Blue and bent at her waist bent in a perfect ninety-degree angle, her back parallel to the ground, arms hanging straight down from her shoulder sockets.
“Try this,” she told me. Then she waved for me to wait a minute and pointed to my toolbox. “Try it leaning over like I just did, like the kid showed us and see if you can pick it up.”
“I can pick it up,” I assured her. “I can lift real weight. Shoeing builds a back.”
She just looked at me, a tiny grin trying to creep out the right corner of her mouth.
Sliding my toolbox into position near the wall, I leaned over in the same Army Girl posture she’d done. With my hands dangling, I grabbed my toolbox up from down low and pulled it to my chest without a peep.
“Okay, call Guy out here and get him to do it.” She was out-and-out smirking now.
“What are you up to?” I asked.
“Humor me, please? I bet you Guy can’t pick up your toolbox if he’s bent in that position. And if Guy can’t, then Vince Pritchard couldn’t.”
Chapter 27
TAKEN ABACK, I BIT AND EXPLAINED to Melinda that Guy wasn’t a bulky muscle man type, but he was a plenty strong guy, just not a flaunter. He can hold a plank position, even a side plank, for five minutes. But even as I promised Melinda that Guy could lift my toolbox, she annoyed me shaking her head and daring me to call him out.
Then she double dog dared me.
“Hey, Guy,” I bellowed at the house.
Oh, if only he hadn’t been wearing that apron when he stuck his head out.
“Hmmm?” He was stirring something in a teeny tiny saucepan, using a little Barbie-doll-sized whisk.
“Would you come here a sec?”
He looked a little hesitant to give his future bride, like, two seconds of his valuable time. And then he saw her looking fit to skin him.
“I don’t want the sauce to curdle,” he explained.
Oh.
My.
He was trying to antagonize me, surely. I was put to whisking while he was put to the lifting task. Doing exactly what Melinda told him to do, exactly how she told him to do it—oh, he’d make a fine husband—Guy set to pick up my toolbox with his back and legs straight, hips at a perfect ninety-degree angle.
He fell over. My Guy couldn’t lift my tool box from that position.
Such a spectacle would have knocked me on my butt for a good giggle if I hadn’t been stirring—hey, what was this sauce? It smelled like caramel.
“Mmm, will this stuff be ready soon?”
Guy took his little saucepot back from me. “Come inside, both of you.”
Biff drove up in his eyesore of a lime green El Camino.
“My best man,” Guy said, switching the saucepot to his left hand so he could shake hands with Biff.
“Congratulations, bro.” Biff grinned all around, eyeing Melinda with interest.
Her face was poker straight, watching Biff as she told Guy and me, “I bet Biff can do the lift.”
Biff went along, his faced perplexed, cooperating with a silly, put-upon grin. And he lifted my toolbox while in that ninety-degree bend, no problem.
“Enough,” Guy said, stirring. “I need to add the cream. Inside, everyone.”