Dead Blow

by Lisa Preston

  “He gave you a dead blow hammer to use in leather working.” I figured that before he died, Cameron Chevigny told his latest mistress that she’d never be anything more, and I wondered if he had any idea what happened to that hammer.

  “Sweet. You swapped tools.” Melinda looked pretty proud of herself, be-smirking Loretta now. “Look, we know you rode out here and tried to shoot him, you missed, hit the tire and it made the tractor roll.”

  Melinda was like one of those prosecutors, speechifying a final argument. Hey, I’d have voted for a conviction. Even Loretta swallowed at all the truth Melinda spelled out.

  “Then you rode right up to him on your horse. You sat there, watched him dying, needing help, and you rode away. The tractor protected your tracks all year. It’s plain as day. Your horse makes distinctive impressions. Your horse lost a shoe as you rode out. We have the horseshoe. Your shoer identified it as coming off your horse, too.”

  “That’s not proof of anything.” Loretta sounded like a cookie-stealing kid who had already swallowed and thought not admitting anything was the way to go.

  “We know about Arielle Blake, too,” I said.

  “Everybody knows about her.” Loretta moved up the roof peak.

  Where did she think she was going? I glanced at Melinda. She wore a poker face that would have stumped Guy and Biff and their other buddies during card night.

  Reloading was all Donna could think of when the detective asked her about a little pile of spilled shot they found back here, but the Chevignys never did any reloading.

  “What’s your handle on TrailTime?” I asked, “The find-my-phone tracker showed Arielle’s phone somewhere around Keeper Lake. You rode out there with her phone after you killed her. Did you kill her with the dead blow hammer? You had to get rid of the murder weapon. But you broke it. Over her head? They found the lead shot spill out here. And the emptied plastic hammer floated on the lake. Guy’s buddy Biff photographed it on Keeper Lake. You used your hatchet combo tool to bury her, didn’t you? Did you throw that in the lake, too? When you heard people were sent to search around the lake, you had the good sense to delete your ride from TrailTime—”

  Melinda said, “Their servers will still have her entry.”

  The look Loretta gave was one for Lucifer.

  “You bitches. You can’t prove anything.” Loretta snatched the shovel off the roof in less than a blink’s time, cocked back and looked to be sizing up the distances between her and Melinda, her and me.

  I thought I could prove the theory of gravity and I was willing to give it a whirl in the next breath if Loretta gave us any guff. High time for me to holler some encouragement to Melinda. “Shoot her! Shoot her!”

  Melinda gave me a glance. “I don’t have a gun.”

  Loretta dropped the shovel. The clang of the blade striking the tin roof made Dragoon snort beneath the shed. As quick as one thought skidded into my brains—why would Loretta throw down a perfectly good weapon, one with such long reach as a shovel?—a brighter realization kicked it out. Um, because she had something better?

  As the shovel blade slid in a slow screech down the roof, Melinda pinned it with one foot. She took her eyes off Loretta as she bent for the shovel, so she didn’t see Loretta reaching. Pushing her riding jacket back, Loretta touched the holstered pistol on her right hip.

  “It’s ok, Melinda,” I said. “She’s a lousy shot.” Well, she was, right?

  Loretta straightened up, her hand gripping the pistol, deciding. It hadn’t yet cleared leather. Maybe she hadn’t unsnapped the holster’s retainer strap. It would be awful close to the point of no return. But she stood stiff and I was afraid in that split-second she was choosing to draw.

  She’s a tall drink of water, taller than either Melinda or me.

  Or maybe guns do that to my perception of a person.

  So, I went to my butt, then my back, just pressed my sweet self right onto that shed roof.

  The nap position may seem like a bad way to have a brawl, but on a shed roof, it’s the best way to fight. The winner is the one who stays on the roof and being on my back gave me a one-up on that score. Melinda crouched, low and ready, but waving one hand in a calming kind of way, like she was going to talk Loretta out of doing another desperate thing.

  If Guy was around, he’d be singing about a catfight on a hot tin roof, I just know he would.

  I inched toward Loretta on my back, hips and knees bent, ready to mule kick.

  Melinda talked low. “Look, Loretta, let’s not make this any worse.”

  While she reassured our would-be killer, I got in kicking range. Maybe Melinda was in shovel-swinging range by then. I couldn’t concentrate on anything but that pistol snug between Loretta’s hip and hand. If the gun barrel started to move up toward me or Melinda, I was going to kick Loretta right off this shed in one move. The fall wouldn’t hurt her much, but Dragoon might entertain himself by killing her.

  I said, “You carried Arielle Blake’s cell phone all the way out to Keeper Lake, threw it in there with your hatchet tool. You threw the dead blow hammer Cameron Chevigny gave you in the lake too, but it floated up, because you broke it open out here. They found the lead shot. Got pictures of what’s left of the hammer. They’ll get your hatchet and her phone out of the lake bottom.”

  Loretta opened her mouth to talk several times while I held forth, but she never came up with a thing to say.

  “Raise your hands,” Melinda ordered her.

  Loretta would not obey.

  “Rainy, if she tries anything—”

  “I’ve got this.” Cocked and ready, my double kick was.

  “Okay,” Melinda said, cocking the shovel back with her voice like thunder, “here’s what’s going to happen. Loretta, I’m going to drop that pistol over the edge and it will fall. You will not move a muscle.”

  I tightened my abs for booting the bad woman to the back of beyond. I didn’t trust Loretta a hair width, not while she was still breathing.

  It was the longest split second on record, Melinda stepped forward, drew Loretta’s pistol and dropped it over the edge of the roof. Dragoon snorted and trotted out from under the shed, down the hogback, back into the east pasture. I saw Charley perk up out on the lease land, watching the bull move.

  Loretta sat down, knees to chest, wrapped her arms around her legs and buried her face in her thighs.

  I scooted away from her a bit. Melinda did, too, holding the shovel like a shepherd’s staff.

  When the sky cracked and it started to sprinkle, Loretta was the first to want to get on the right side of the roof where we were all stuck. She pointed out that Dragoon was far enough away that we could get in the shed, close it off with electric wire to keep safe from him.

  “We’re staying right here,” Melinda said. I was way with her on this. It was stable here, things couldn’t get worse.

  “But it’s raining.” Loretta said this like she was explaining things to dummies.

  I glared at her. We could shiver on that roof all night if we had to. Donna or Guy would eventually call out the cavalry, so to speak. “You made of sugar? You gonna melt or something, ’Retta?”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  I figured the pet name thing was something Cameron Chevigny plied all his chippies with, and they responded in kind. Arielle Blake played with his middle name, calling him Biff. Loretta called him Cam. He called them Rielle and Retta. Wondering what his special name had been for Earl Delmont’s sister, I rolled my lips in and clamped my teeth shut, managing for once to not speculate out loud when it would only escalate the mood.

  Melinda grinned at me and I flashed a big smile back in spite of the situation. I admired her quick, brave decision to go get Loretta out of danger.

  S’pose Sheriff Magoutsen hired on guts? Surely that’d make my buddy Melinda the next deputy. I’d an idea what’d happen when he heard about Almost-a-Reserve Kellan facing Dragoon and thinking to study on those tracks that the tractor had protected a
ll year. It would make Loretta’s husband miss the chance to get hired full time if Melinda got the job.

  And that might make Reserve Deputy Vince Pritchard cry like a girl.

  Chapter 30

  WE COULD HEAR HOLLIS’S ENORMOUS HAYING tractor rumbling a mile off and soon we saw the headlights making their slow way through Stan Yates’s land and then through the wire fence into the Buckeye west pasture north of the ravine. By now, Dragoon wandered to the lease land, which sent Charley scampering back to the ranch side. The tractor cab was stuffed with the three menfolk—Hollis Nunn driving fast as that big John Deere allowed, with Sheriff Magoutsen and my Guy crammed in next to him.

  I was real glad about having asked Guy to marry me.

  “Donna must have called Magoo out,” Melinda said. When I laughed, she added, “Oh, crap, I shouldn’t call him that.”

  Pointing at Loretta, storm-faced witch that she was, I told Melinda that there was a police scanner in the Saddle-Up shop.

  “Oh, then that’s how she had a nice head start to get out here so she could sic that cow on us.”

  “It’s a bull,” Loretta and I said together, though it was the last thing we’d agree on.

  Hollis motored the tractor straight into the shed, which made a big amount of racket, and someone hopped out. The gate banged shut with a reassuring clang, the electric gate over the water trough snugged up. I loved the relief of knowing Dragoon had a fence to stay behind.

  My first view of Guy was upside down as I somersaulted off the shed roof.

  “What are you doing here?” I asked.

  “Donna gave up her spot in the tractor to let me come check on you. Hollis had to take the sheriff and couldn’t carry a fourth.” He explained how the bid for the third slot in the tractor led to a certain fit pitched by Vince Pritchard, who was having to stand by back at Stan Yates’s property with Donna. Guy smirked, liking telling me about Loretta’s husband trying to argue his way in, talking big and getting a big black stare from Magoutsen on that account.

  Then Magoo heard from Melinda and me on a mess of happenings.

  Loretta said, “I want a lawyer.”

  About Reserve Pritchard, Magoutsen said, “A bully I don’t need.”

  He didn’t need a coward either but maybe I didn’t need to say so.

  Hollis said, “I’m going to have to make two more trips, since that tractor only held a couple of people besides the driver.”

  It was so dark by then that scaring up some horses was not something anyone but me wanted to do.

  “Loretta Pritchard,” Sheriff Magoutsen said, “turn around and put your hands behind your back.”

  “No way.” Loretta looked like her mind hadn’t caught up to the consequences of all she’d done.

  “Way,” the Sheriff said. “You’re under arrest, Loretta.”

  Loretta looked good in handcuffs. Guy gave me his coat and Sheriff Magoutsen shed his uniform jacket for Melinda.

  Melinda looked good in an official sheriff uniform.

  * * *

  Melinda and I spent some time under that shed, waiting for transport that night. She finally had a chance to see the water trough, the concrete block behind it.

  “That’s where the knife was?”

  “Yeah.” I undid my belt and shucked the scabbard off. Maybe I’d give the knife back to Darby, if the Sheriff didn’t need it. I knew I wasn’t going to keep it. “So you knew it was Loretta that the kid saw.”

  “Well, I figured it was a woman the kid saw. In that position, men can’t lift, because their center of gravity is near their chest. Women can do it, because our center of gravity is lower.”

  “Unless it’s a really small, light dude? Like Biff.”

  Our eyes adjusted as night fell. The rain gave up and the stars turned on by the hundreds. There are worse ways to spend an evening than in remote central Oregon, hanging out with a good friend, watching for shooting stars.

  When Hollis came back out, he had another deputy who carried cameras and notebooks and looked like he’d be busy for a little while. Melinda talked the deputy through things while Hollis drove Guy and me back to the barn in that loud, lumbering haying tractor that could make the long drive around the ravine. Magoo went back out again on the last trip and I thought about Donna taking the long way around in her life.

  Back at the Buckeye barn, things were getting sorted out, Donna and I talked.

  This knowing more, knowing the fullness let Donna see some spring even as we both shook our heads at Loretta Pritchard’s off-the-map acts. I swear, it was a thing of beauty, her awakening.

  Loretta had gone as far as to eliminate her competition—poor Arielle—then point a gun at someone she said she loved. And she pulled the trigger. When she saw him caught under the tractor, she left him to die. To top it all off, she tried to get Melinda and me killed.

  “I don’t know,” Donna kept saying. “I just don’t know.”

  “Makes no sense, does it?” I said, shaking my head and following Donna to the far corner of her porch, wanting to put my hand on her shoulder but just not sure.

  Donna was quiet a long time, looking like she’d cry or laugh. “Makes as much sense as falling for your hayman.” Her mouth curled. “Makes no sense, does it? Woman my age, taking up with a man again?” Redness glowed under her heavy, working-woman tan.

  “I guess it makes sense to me,” I told her. “As much as the notion of any great couple makes good sense.”

  Donna nodded, knowing my meaning, what and all with both of us still being too much of ourselves to say something as mushy as . . . love.

  What a notion. I puzzled on it like a business undertaking in the days of loafing I took next. Felt due. I was bushed. The only thing that lightened my load was learning that I wouldn’t have to go to court. The man who’d tried to make a piñata out of me last spring took a deal, as Melinda put it. I could only hope that Loretta Pritchard would too. They sent scuba divers into Keeper Lake and found a cell phone, and the hatchet-shovel-combo tool, though the one was dead and the other bad rusted. Melinda told me that Stan Yates identified the cell as the right color and make and model to be Arielle’s.

  * * *

  I brought the Heart R knife back to Darby Ernst.

  “I got it for Loretta Pritchard,” he said.

  “Good trade.”

  “No, I meant—” He stopped as I handed it over in its scabbard.

  “You can resell it or whatever. Donna doesn’t want it and neither do I.”

  * * *

  The last thing I wanted settled made me stop at Stan Yates’s house on my way to the Buckeye. I faced the man and put it plain. “You have no reason to bear a grudge against Donna Chevigny.”

  He looked down and away. “That’s true.”

  “You and Cameron didn’t have a deal.”

  Yates shook his head.

  “If you go talk to her, it would clear things up,” I said.

  Could have knocked me over with pony breath and a soft muzzle when he told me he’d already been to see Donna and they’d come to an understanding.

  “She even said she’d like to come out and lay some flowers for Arielle,” he told me. “I’m going to spread her ashes out there where she loved to walk.”

  Head bowed, I asked if I could pay my respects as well. Sounds like we’re all taking a long walk, ’cause I knew Guy would be beside me.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, visiting back at the Buckeye ranch, I did many hours of wedding planning.

  I’d sit on the porch with my good friend Donna, lacy shade trickling through the last of the maple leaves as winter drew in. A good winter, it’d be.

  Some days, my buddy Melinda’d came up to the Buckeye with me. Guy, of course, hung out sometimes, too. Some Sundays, Hollis and his sister brought out enough beef to make a body think they’d rustled cattle and needed to burn the evidence. We had a big old time.

  As much as Donna sort of appointed herself an aunty to me, Hollis wanted to un
cle me and he was a little stern with Guy sometimes, checking out the intentions of my Intended.

  This takes some getting used to, this having a made-up family, but I’d like to try.

  “You must hold her high,” Hollis told Guy, shaking gnarled fingers at my boyfriend. “Put her above everything else.”

  Love him, Guy. He took the talking-to with proper seriousness. “Yes, sir.”

  “Does she come first?” Hollis asked, still stern.

  “Heavens, yes,” Guy grinned.

  I asked about Dragoon.

  Donna made a call, a good one. “He’s going to Black Bluff, going to sell him.”

  I perked up. “In California? Always thought that’d be real interesting.”

  My adopted uncle looked over quick. “You want to see the Black Bluff bull sale?”

  I tipped my noggin. He saw my nod and raised me a head cock.

  “The Black Bluff bull sale is an area you ought not bother with.”

  “How’s that?”

  He put it a little more plain, but not much. “Rainy, you and yours might want to stay clear of there.”

  Him uncle-ing me to Donna’s aunty-ing could get to be a bit much. I snapped my noggin back over to eyeball him, but Hollis was looking away. Somehow, I knew he wouldn’t say more. I didn’t know if I was being warned off for good reason and if so, I could hardly guess at what that reason might be and I wanted to get back to my own aunty-ing. As I was looking for Abby, my best friend found me.

  “They say the Loretta Pritchard case is probably not going to trial,” Melinda said. “She’ll plead out.”

  I was mighty grateful for that news and asked how things were at work, what and all with one reserve Pritchard quitting and the sheriff looking to fill the retiring guy’s spot and almost-reserve-deputy Kellan having cracked the whole deal in on Cameron Chevigny’s non-accident.

  Melinda blushed a bit. “Well, there are, you know, thousands of rules about police procedure and maybe there were a couple that I didn’t break, but in this case, it seems not to count too bad since I wasn’t a cop.”