“He started rodeoing when he was just four years old,” Dewey said, folding the article up carefully. “Rode in the Li’l Britches Rodeo. You should have seen him bouncing off that old lamb, picking himself back up like a pro, not shedding a tear. I thought Belinda was going to break the fence down running out there to help him up. He pushed her away and told her he didn’t need no help, thank you very much. He’s going to be World Champion All Around soon, mark my words.” He rubbed the back of his fingers across his jaw. “That boy is the best thing that Belinda and I ever did together.”
I noticed that he didn’t mention his daughter, and I wondered just what the circumstances surrounding her death were. By the time Norma served us our pecan pie and refilled our iced teas for the third time, we were talking as if we’d known each other forever. I could understand how Dewey and Gabe were attracted to each other as friends. Dewey, for all his joking, had an easy air about him—a way of cocking his head and really listening to your words that made him enjoyable to talk to. He was the perfect complement to Gabe’s often reticent and distrusting personality.
“How’s the investigation going?” I asked casually.
He opened a packet of sugar, dumped it in his iced tea, and gave me an indulgent smile. “Gabe said you’d eventually get around to asking that.”
“I’m not asking you to reveal any department secrets,” I said crisply. “I’m just interested.”
“Gabe said you’d say that, too.”
I looked back down at my half-eaten pie, really irritated now.
He reached over and took my hand, shaking it gently. “Now, don’t go getting mad at Gabe. He’s just concerned about your safety.”
“If I had a quarter for every time I heard that one . . .”
He laughed and pushed his empty pie plate aside. “Actually, I don’t have any problem talking to you about the case. There’s still not much to go on. You saw how many people were at the party. Technically, any of them had the opportunity. On the other hand, we haven’t found anyone who has an overt motive to want her dead. Yet.”
“What about the money in the bank book Hannah gave me?”
“Gabe gave it to me this morning. I passed it on to the Sheriff’s investigator. It’s interesting, but she could have just been an excellent saver.” He ran his fingers up and down the side of his sweating glass.
“Somehow in her line of work, I find that hard to believe. You don’t save that kind of money singing in cheap bars here and there or by picking up buck-and-a-half tips waitressing in coffee shops.”
“There is certainly some truth to that, Benni Harper. But, as my mom used to say, it’ll all come out in the wash eventually. She had four sons, so that little piece of wisdom had real meaning in our household.”
There was silence between us for a few minutes. I wanted to ask more, but I restrained myself. I wasn’t sure how much they were telling Dewey, since he was technically a suspect, and how much that bothered him. Eventually our conversation started up again and turned to the one thing we had in common besides horses and Tyler’s murder.
“What was Gabe like as a kid?” I asked.
Dewey sat back and rested his arm across the back of the booth. “Not much different than he is now. Quiet, kinda moody, absolutely fearless. He was always willing to try anything once. But stubborn. As my mom would say, he was so obstinate he wouldn’t move camp for a prairie fire. We all used to get into some hairy situations as kids, but there was one thing about Gabe. If he didn’t want to do something, no amount of teasing or pushing could change his mind. He was the same way in ’Nam. Most of the time he went along with the program, but when he didn’t, that was it. He was a stone. Of course, how people viewed him never seemed to bother Gabe. I always wondered if it was because he felt so different anyway, being part Mexican and all.”
“I’ve wondered that myself,” I said. “He’s never mentioned feeling different from everyone else, but I imagine it must have affected him and Angel and Becky as children.”
Dewey motioned at the busboy to refill our water glasses. “Well, it didn’t seem like it. They were all real popular in school. Becky was a cheerleader. Angel couldn’t have possibly gone on all the dates she was asked on in high school, from what I hear. And Gabe . . . he was our star quarterback until Kathryn sent him to California during his junior year. And, I don’t mean to make you nervous, but ever since he was a kid the girls have sashayed around him like mares in heat.”
I played with the remains of my pie and smiled. “He said that was how the girls acted with Rob.”
“Well, it’s true, but he gave Rob a good run for his money. Lawrence and I were lucky enough to get their leftovers sometimes.” He gave me a wry smile. Remembering that Belinda said she and Gabe had dated briefly, I wondered if that was what he meant.
“Gabe doesn’t talk much about Vietnam,” I said. “But he did say one time that you were as nervy as a badger.”
“A stupid-ass kid is more like it. I had this thing about walking point. You know, the guy that’s in the front of everyone, checking everything out? Wanted to set the record for the most times, like some kind of Pete Rose of the jungle or something. I kept track by scratching marks inside my helmet. I don’t know where my brain was. All the times I charged ahead without thinking about what was up ahead. I could have got my friggin’ brains blown out.” His eyes darkened in memory.
“You weren’t thinking. That’s part of being young. So, was that why your nickname was Cowboy?”
He grinned. “Where’d you hear that?”
“I saw an old picture of you and Gabe and some other guy. It was on your helmet.” I paused, trying to decide whether I should ask any more questions. I wanted to hear about Gabe’s experiences in Vietnam, but I would have preferred hearing about them from him.
“Yeah, well, being smaller than the other guys probably had something to do with it, too.”
“What do you mean?”
His grin widened. “As if you don’t know. You’re a tiny little thing, and I’ll bet you a week’s wages that if I took you out to my stables right now, you’d want to ride the biggest, wildest, meanest old stallion I got on the place just to prove you can.”
I grinned back at him. “Well, I don’t think I’m going to answer that on the grounds it might incriminate me.”
He laughed and drained his glass. “You’ve been hanging out with cops too long.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to work. You want to drop me off at the station, or am I going to have to hoof it in this heat?”
“I guess I’ll give you a lift, since you were kind enough to buy me lunch.”
“I’m buying?” he asked, feigning surprise.
“You bet.”
When we reached the police department, I asked him how Rob was doing.
“From what I hear, he’s going home today.”
“You don’t think he did it, do you?”
He shook his finger at me in mock admonishment and climbed out of the car. “See you tonight” was all he said.
Dense heat shimmered over the hood of the car as I watched him walk through the brilliant sunlight into the brick building. I turned the air conditioner on high and headed for the Presbyterian church. The disc jockey on KYQQ joked about the steamy weather. “Folks, this is going to be one of your woman-stabs-fiancé-with-steak-knife kind of nights, so head on out to Prairie City Nights where the beer is cold and the music is hot. Tonight, Snake Poison Posse featuring Cordie June Rodell. Don’t miss it!”
It certainly didn’t take her long to get over her grief, I thought, then chided myself. What did I expect Cordie June and the band to do, give up their careers? I tried to ignore the little twitch in the back of my mind that said a week off in consideration of Tyler’s death wouldn’t have been too much to ask. But, the other side of me argued, most musicians and singers lived on the edge and needed every penny they could make. Some of them had families to support. Which started me thinking about Tyler’s bank
book again, and how Dewey hadn’t really told me anything about the case and how he’d avoided the subject in such a pleasant, unassuming way. He was probably an excellent interrogator. He’d just talk so sweet and friendly that before you knew it, you were confessing to whatever it was he wanted, just so you could make his day a little easier.
I found Becky standing behind a wooden podium in the church’s recreation hall going through her notes. The room was blessedly cool.
“Oh, good, you made it,” she said. She shuffled the papers in front of her. “Usually our meetings are in the evening, but the choir has something going on tonight so we had to make it earlier. Most of the ladies who work outside the home are probably coming here on their lunch hour, so we’ll make it a fast meeting.” People started arriving at this point, and I left Becky to the myriad discussions that many of the thirty-odd members needed to have with her. After getting my guest name tag, I perused the flyer table and was talked into purchasing five raffle tickets for the opportunity quilt the guild made for the show—an Amish-style Double Pinwheel in aqua, black, gold, bright pink, and green copied from an 1875 Amish pattern.
Never having been involved in a quilt guild, I settled down with a glass of lemonade and a large raisin-studded oatmeal cookie and watched the proceedings with interest, thinking some of the procedures might be adapted to our co-op meetings. Becky moved rapidly through the business part of the meeting—approval of last month’s minutes, various announcements, the librarian’s report and good-natured scolding for overdue books, a progress report on the guild’s latest philanthropy program, making child-size quilts for Derby and Wichita police officers to give to youngsters taken out of abusive home situations. She moved on to Block-of-the-Month, Secret Pals, and the “Elvis Lives” Quilt Challenge. The Elvis quilts would be unveiled and displayed at the opening of the quilt show this Friday night. Finally, there was a vote on donating a hundred dollars to a reward fund that had been started for Tyler by the members of her band and employees of Prairie City Nights. Apparently Tyler had been a not-very-active member of the quilt guild.
Becky announced the official meeting adjourned and told the women to break up into their separate committees to discuss final plans for the show. I sat on the edge of Becky’s committee, half-listening to her discuss setup and take-down procedures as I scanned the guild’s July newsletter. The lemonade finally seeped down to my bladder, and I slipped away, hunting a restroom. I spotted one down a long corridor and opened the door. Hearing someone inside mention Tyler’s name caused me to stop with the door half open and blatantly eavesdrop.
“I just don’t agree with it,” a woman’s voice said from one of the two stalls. “I love Becky to pieces, but donating the guild’s money to a reward fund. I mean, really. Tyler may have paid her twenty-five-dollar yearly dues and come to a few meetings, but that doesn’t make her one of us.”
“I guess it’s the thought,” the woman in the other stall answered. “She wasn’t my kind of person, but she did make beautiful quilts.”
“I still find it hard to believe she was ever Amish.”
“From what I hear, she did seem to take to the worldly life awfully easy. Buck says that innocent act of hers got them more bookings. Men just couldn’t say no to her.”
“That’s right, your brother-in-law’s in her band. I’d forgotten all about that. How are they all taking it?”
“Hard, of course. The guys in the band liked her real well. Buck says she always treated them real respectful, which is more than you can say for Cordie June.”
“Really?”
“I guess Cordie June’s practicing her temperamental artist act, ’cause Buck says sometimes they want to wring her skinny neck she gets so high on her horse. Her and Tyler used to fight about that all the time. Tyler was smarter than Cordie June, that way. She knew which side to butter her bread. Buck says the backup band can do a lot to make a singer look good or bad. You know, my money is on Cordie June. According to Buck, she has a real hot temper. He said one time he worked with her in a bar in Kansas City, and she tried to stab another woman with a fingernail file for insulting her outfit.”
“No kidding! Do you think . . . ?”
I heard the toilet flush and started to back out.
“Now, Marsha, it’s a long way from stabbing someone with a fingernail file and outright killing somebody. Besides, you know about Lawrence and Tyler. Maybe he did it. I’m just glad that Janet wasn’t here today. That hundred dollars would have been the very last straw on that camel’s back. Sometimes Becky’s just too nice, you know? Anyway, Buck says Lawrence . . .”
The stall door opened, and I never heard what Buck said or about Lawrence and Tyler. To avoid getting caught, I ducked in the men’s room next door and, since I was there, decided to make use of it. I heard Marsha and her friend chattering past the door, and I waited a few minutes before cautiously peeking my head out to see if the coast was clear. What they had to say started me really wondering about Cordie June. And about Lawrence. Maybe that fight between him and Rob at Becky’s party didn’t actually have anything to do with Lawrence’s daughter, Megan. With a little voice that sounded an awful lot like Gabe’s telling me none of this was my business, I wondered just how competitive Tyler and Cordie June had really been, and where Lawrence fit into Tyler’s life besides being her boss. As the owner-manager of the club, maybe he had ultimate say in who was the headliner. What would Tyler do to get that spot? What would Cordie June do to snatch it away? Even though I knew I’d get a lecture, I couldn’t wait to tell Gabe all this. Then again, why should he get mad? I hadn’t gone looking for this information. It just dropped in my lap. Serendipity.
The committees had broken up by the time I came back into the recreation hall, and most of the guild members were gathering up their purses and leaving. I scanned the crowd of women and wondered which ones were Marsha and her gossipy friend.
“Where have you been?” Becky said, coming over to me. “When’s Gabe supposed to be home and what are you two doing for dinner tonight?”
“In the bathroom,” I said. “And we’re having dinner with Dewey.”
“Well, drop by if you get away early, though knowing Dewey, you probably won’t. He’ll show you his stables, and we’ll never see you again.”
I laughed. “I’m not that bad. Besides, I’m going to help Otis with Sinful, so you’ll be seeing plenty of me, I’m sure.”
She glanced at her watch. “Oh, dear, it’s five o’clock already. Stan’s going to be home soon. I still have to pick up the girls at the community center. I guess it’s a Charlie’s Chicken and Barbecue night.”
Kathryn’s beige Plymouth was in the driveway when I drove up. I walked into the living room and was greeted by my friend Daphne. She shot a halfhearted snap in my direction, not bothering to get up because of the heat.
“You know, there are certain groups of people in this world who would gladly put you in a stewpot,” I told her.
“Oh, you’re back.” Kathryn walked into the living room with a startled look on her face. She held an embroidered tea towel in her hands. I felt myself flush and wondered if she’d heard my comment. “Where’s Gabe?” she asked, her face becoming bland again. Maybe her hearing is going, I thought optimistically.
“Still with his friends, I guess.”
We contemplated each other silently for a moment. Gabe’s coming and goings seemed to be the only topic of conversation we’d been able to manage so far. I stood there awkwardly searching my mind for something to keep the conversation going.
“Well,” she said finally, “are you finding enough to do around our little town? There are some museums in Wichita, and we do have two malls. I’m sure they’re not what you’re accustomed to, but they’re quite nice.”
“I’m keeping busy,” I said politely, wondering where she thought I lived in California—Beverly Hills? “If Gabe doesn’t have anything planned, I think I’ll go out to Otis’s tomorrow and work with his horse.”
After promising his mother that tomorrow night for sure we’d have dinner with her, he started up the stairs to change. I dogged his heels, listening to him reminisce about his old friends, waiting for him to finish so I could bring up what I’d heard at the quilt guild meeting.
“So, did Dewey take you out to lunch?” he asked.
“Yes, sir, Chief Ortiz,” I answered. “He kept a real good eye on me. And he even took off the handcuffs to let me eat.”
“That’s not how I meant it,” he protested. I poked him in the stomach when his T-shirt was only halfway off. “Hey, offsides. Ten-yard penalty.”
“I’ll penalize you, Friday,” I said, poking him again.
“You’ll what?” He laughed and, using his shirt as a lasso, slipped it around my neck and pulled me to him. “Now, tell me again what you’re going to do to me?” We kissed deeply; he dropped the shirt and moved his hands down to hold me firmly in the small of my back. His chest was hot and damp, and a deliciously familiar desire rose up in me.
“Querida,” he whispered. “You’re driving me crazy.”
I broke away. “Put an ice pack on it, pal. We’ve got a dinner date with Dewey and Cordie June. Did you find out what time?”
He glanced at the nightstand clock. “We’re supposed to meet him in thirty minutes. We’re going to a steak place in Wichita.” He reached into the closet where he’d neatly hung all his shirts and pulled out a white polo shirt.
“Steak? You? Isn’t he aware you are no longer a bovine flesh eater?”
He pulled the shirt over his head. “They have fish, too, Miss Smart Mouth. Just don’t come crying to me when they’re having to ream out your veins so your blood can find a path to your heart.”
I clasped my hands to my chest dramatically and fell backward on the bed. “Oh, baby, I get so turned on when you talk healthy. Please, tell me about protein supplements again and I’ll tear my clothes off right now.”
Kansas Troubles Page 12