Dang Near Dead (An Aggie Mundeen Mystery Book 2)

by Nancy G. West

  “Wow,” she said. “Perfect.”

  “Must be the Western White House,” Sam said. We drove on a road barely wider than our car. Live oaks, mesquite and black brush flanked our vehicle, hiding wildlife I knew must be there.

  A cow lounging in the road ahead swiveled a sullen face toward us, her loose jaw chewing her cud. As we rolled closer, she lumbered to stand and focused on us with disgust. She took a firm stance in front of our vehicle.

  “She’s chewing curly mesquite,” Meredith said. I thought she was mostly slobbering.

  Having apparently concluded that we’d fatally interrupted her reverie, the cow swiveled around, flipped her tail at us and waddled into the brush.

  Meredith giggled. “I hope the people are happier to see us.”

  We rounded a bend and saw ranch headquarters. The lodge made of Hill Country limestone with a steep metal roof stretched wide across a clearing. The wood-plank porch, bordered with a stripped cedar handrail, wrapped around the building.

  Sam eased his four-year-old navy blue Chevrolet, a 1993 Caprice he’d bought from SAPD, up to the porch rail. The vehicle looked so much like a cop car, he might as well put a sign on it. Maybe Bandera County residents wouldn’t notice. Sam parked next to a yellow Jeep CJ that looked like it had bumped over a lot of rocks.

  He got out, hitched up his pants and slapped the Caprice’s hood. “Wonder if I oughta tie this here doggie up for the night?”

  Meredith and I smirked. As we climbed onto the porch, I spotted Sam’s new Roper boots. He must not be totally opposed to country life. I missed a step, bumped into a cedar post and scratched my arm.

  “Ouch.”

  “Are you okay, Aggie?” Sam always appeared amused by my tendency to crash into inanimate objects. I ignored him and reached for the lodge door.

  Angry voices coming from inside the building froze my hand on the knob.

  Two

  “Whadya mean you went horseback ridin’? You’re assistant manager, for chrissake.” I gathered the woman with the husky voice was the manager.

  “Have you inspected the cabins for guests comin’ in? Did you stop by the waterfront and shootin’ range to see if the wranglers are ready? Did you check the stables or just nab your horse and take off? You’re s’posed to be helpin’ me.” She sounded as though she didn’t need much help.

  I heard a softer, less strident female voice. “Those women in cabin six are too busy twittering over cowboy sightings to want anything else. There’s no way I can clean in there anyway. Their clothes are strewn all over. If I go anywhere near cabin four, Selma Tensel lectures me about conservation like she discovered it. George Tensel, the old coot, ogles me when I leave.”

  “What about the corrals?”

  “Ranger Travis doesn’t need any help. He’s got Monty to do his scut work. Besides, I don’t like milling around among loose horses inside a corral. It’s dangerous. And I don’t like the way Ranger leers at me.”

  The manager’s voice rose. “Then stay away from Ranger. Get those empty cabins ready. We got people comin’ in.”

  I knocked twice and opened the door. When I peered in, the older woman’s face was flushed.

  Both she and the younger woman pasted on smiles. “Bertha Sampson,” said the first woman. She emerged from behind the check-in desk and stuck out a rough-skinned hand for us to shake. “Manager of the BVSBar Ranch. Welcome to God’s country.”

  Bertha could have been in her early forties.

  Meatiness distorted harmonious features that I thought had once graced a thinner face. Her eyes might look huge if not sunk in puffiness as they were now. She wore a loose western shirt hanging over baggy jeans and well worn, flat-heel boots. Her hair looked as if it received the same lack of care as her clothes.

  I silently pledged to keep exercising, avoid salt, and wear flattering attire.

  “This here’s Vicki Landsdale, my assistant.” Vicki, who looked about twenty, had pale blue eyes and a rosebud mouth. Her fair skin and strawberry-blond hair made her appear way too delicate to exist on the rocky terrain we’d just navigated. We shook hands all around like settlers reunited after surviving a journey through the badlands.

  Meredith signed the ranch guest book, paid for our rooms and smiled at the women as though they were old friends. “This lodge is lovely. How old is it?”

  “It was built in 1865. The thick walls keep us from needing much air conditioning,” Bertha said proudly. “Beams and porch rails are made from stripped cedar trees right off this ranch.”

  From what I’d overheard Vicki say, conservationist Selma Tensel, in cabin four with husband George, would have preferred they’d left the cedar trees in the ground.

  “Rock paths and steps are all made of Hill Country limestone,” Bertha said. As she described the ranch, her face softened. “Vicki, honey, show these lovely folks the way to their cabins.” Bertha nodded to us. “She’ll get you whatever you need.”

  Vicki led us down the steps and gave Sam driving directions to our cabin.

  Meredith hopped into his car. I told Vicki I’d walk with her and follow them. I like getting to know people and trying to determine what makes them the way they are. Sometimes I get so curious, my feet itch.

  We started down the trail. The two o’clock sun beat down on us as we shuffled along the limestone and dirt road. The temperature felt like it was above ninety, but the air was dry and the sky clear.

  I filled my lungs.

  Whitebrush alongside the road blocked our view into the thicket. I thought I heard small animals skitter away. There were no guest cabins anywhere. No other people. I needed to talk.

  “Have you been assistant manager here long?”

  “Sometimes it seems like forever,” Vicki said. “I wasn’t doing very well in college in Wisconsin. I started dating this guy…a hippy-type sociology major/artist with long hair.” She shrugged. “Big deal. My parents pegged him for a loser and wanted to get me away from him. Since I like horses, they thought a summer working at a Texas dude ranch would make me appreciate what I had back at school. So they got me this job, shipped me down here and hoped I’d be ready to return to college in the fall.”

  Most contemporary parents gave up worrying about their kids’ college friends. Either Vicki’s parents were old-fashioned, or her family was exceptionally close. I found their concern refreshing, not having had a real family myself. Anyway, it sounded to me like the girl could use a friend. Long walks make people open up. I still couldn’t see any cabins and was beginning to sweat.

  “He was a nice guy,” she said. “Had a lot of empathy for people.”

  I sensed Vicki had the same trait.

  “His sociology class used to visit war veterans at the Milwaukee VA hospital. He took me with him a few times.” She stopped, looked at the sky, took a deep breath and visibly settled down. “It’s so peaceful here.”

  Peaceful but hot. I heard another critter scurry through the brush.

  “Probably a mouse,” she said. “We don’t see very many. Snakes or hawks generally take care of them.” My skin prickled.

  “You’re sure it was a mouse?”

  “A larger animal like an Angora goat or white-tail deer would have made more noise. Deer hide in the brush all over the ranch. We have to confine Angoras to fenced areas on the northwest side of the property; otherwise, they’ll eat all the vegetation. We have javelinas, but they forage at night. They look like pigs and travel in bunches. You usually smell them before you see them. They have a musk gland near their tails that smells awful.”

  “And you like it here?”

  “It’s not so bad. I love being outdoors, and I’ve found a great horse to ride.”

  Our feet made a scratchy sound on the path. Sometimes I’d see the hint of a building, but when the trail turned, it would disa
ppear. I felt as if we were alone in the universe.

  “It’s good to get out from under my parents’ thumb,” she said. “They’re good people, but they can be overbearing. They thought I’d hate this place. Actually, I like being on my own. Some of the guys here are jackasses, but most of them are nice.” When she blushed, I wondered which nice wrangler she had in mind.

  “I miss having somebody I can talk to,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “Of course not. I love meeting new people.”

  “I’ve never been anywhere but Wisconsin. At nineteen, it’s time I looked around. If I just didn’t have to deal with Trey…” She looked out at brush as dense as her thoughts must be. I waited for her to elaborate. Trey, whoever he was, apparently wasn’t going to be a topic for discussion.

  “Is your work hard?”

  “Not really. When we have a full complement of guests and some of them are demanding, we get pretty busy. Most of the time, I get to enjoy watching people have fun. Bertha’s loud, bossy, and short on social graces, but she’s a good manager. I’ve learned a lot from her.”

  “She seems to love this ranch.”

  “She managed guest services for her aunt and uncle for years. She knows every inch of these eighteen hundred acres.”

  We were isolated in the middle of a big chunk of land. I had researched the layout of the ranch. Except for roads leading to the main lodge, cabins, or areas used for activities, this whole eighteen-hundred acres was rough, rocky country covered with thickets of mesquite, whitebrush and cedar where deer and other hardy creatures could roam, hide and proliferate. The soil couldn’t sustain farming or grazing; it could only support sheep and goats. As Vicki said, the manager had fenced off an area where her Angora herd could eat everything from wildflowers to weeds without stripping the brush white-tail deer needed for cover. I’d found Bertha Sampson listed among Angora goat breeders. She apparently exploited every conceivable route to make her acreage profitable.

  Vicki was talking. “Bertha’s the one who found them...her Uncle Max and Billy Sue Vernon.”

  I stopped. “Found them? What do you mean? What happened?”

  “She found their bodies in a remote area of the ranch five years ago, dead from heat stroke and dehydration. Their Jeep was nearby, out of gas. It’s the yellow one Bertha parks near the lodge.”

  The articles I’d read held some truth. “Surely they took water with them?”

  “They knew to take water. They grew up in the Hill Country, so they appreciated the power of the Texas sun. Bertha said the sheriff found their empty thermoses. Max collapsed near the car. Billy Sue apparently tried to walk back to the lodge but didn’t make it. They were in their late fifties. The last time Bertha saw them, she said they were giggling like kids and said they were going on a treasure hunt. Bertha said she had no idea what they meant.”

  “Do you know?”

  “I’ve never heard any talk about treasure.”

  “Were they in good health?”

  “Bertha told me they exercised regularly. Billy Sue was determined to stay young and was always going to some diet meeting. Max was careful about what he ate, but I heard he took pills for something.”

  My empathy mushroomed. In spite of all they’d done to take care of themselves, the Vernons had died way too young.

  “Bertha must have been devastated, finding them like that. Did they have children?”

  “They had a son, Herb, who never cared one whit about the ranch. He’s married now, but they rarely come around. Bertha was like the Vernons’ daughter. They left the ranch to her. Their will said she shouldn’t sell it to a developer, but she wouldn’t do that anyway. Her soul is here. She wants everybody to care about this place like she does.”

  “The medical examiner must have done autopsies?”

  “I guess so. Bertha doesn’t talk about it. She still drives their Jeep, though.”

  “The one parked in front of the lodge?”

  “Yes. She tells everybody it’s her personal vehicle, off limits. But she leaves the keys in it. I think it’s her way to remember them.”

  Just beneath my sympathy for the Vernons and for Bertha, my curiosity bubbled. Unexplained deaths would undoubtedly pique Sam’s interest, even deaths that had occurred five years earlier. It appeared the reporter who’d written about the Vernons wasn’t overzealous. Maybe he’d hoped to prompt an investigation of their demise.

  Our vacation might not be peaceful after all.

  Three

  While I debated when to tell Sam and Meredith about the former ranch owners’ deaths, we arrived at cabins five and six, which were enclosed side-by-side within a single elongated building.

  “You and Ms. Laughlin have cabin five,” Vicki told Meredith and me. “There’s a breezeway running behind both cabins’ sleeping areas and a community bathroom behind that. The three girls have the cabin on the right, cabin six.”

  “Girls?”

  “We call them that. They’re actually three women who’ve never been in the country before.”

  Her description sounded like Meredith and me. I was clueless about outdoor living except for my brief childhood time at Uncle Fred and Aunt Novena’s farm outside Chicago after Mom and Dad died. Meredith, a native Texan, was a city girl, but she did have experience riding horses with English saddles.

  Sam had mentioned traveling to Wisconsin to hunt and fish when he lived in Chicago. After earning English and law degrees, he’d joined the FBI. Shortly after he and Katy married, he left the FBI to become a homicide detective for Chicago PD. He said he preferred local law enforcement.

  Since moving to Texas, he hadn’t had time for outdoor recreation.

  He pulled the Caprice up to where the road stopped a hundred feet in front of our cabin. Between the cabin and Sam’s parking spot, a huge live oak tree with a ten-foot diameter canopied over a picnic table. At the edge of the canopy, paths snaking right and left wound around to cabins barely visible in the distance. Ranch buildings were apparently widely spaced. Secluded. Meredith’s and my cabin must be pretty far from Sam’s.

  Meredith and I grabbed light suitcases from the trunk and plodded toward cabin five with Sam toting our heavy bags. Vicki held the door open while we stepped inside to peruse our accommodations.

  Our habitat looked to be about fifteen by eighteen feet with two stacked wood bunk beds angled together at each corner. Filling the wood bed frames were thin yellowing mattresses, a far cry from the pristine white bedding we were used to. Meredith frowned. At the right end of the room, a wood table and four chairs filled the center space between corner bunks.

  “I can use that table for my laptop.” I’d learned the ranch had recently gotten dial-up internet service. For readers who wrote Dear Aggie seeking advice on staying young, I researched techniques and products that promised perpetual youth. I’d continued writing the column anonymously when I moved to Texas, but I wanted to get in the best possible condition before revealing my identity. Nobody wanted a slightly overweight, out-of-shape slob pontificating about how to stay young.

  We asked Sam to heave our suitcases onto chairs and eyeballed bunk beds in the left corner.

  “Two bottom bunks?” I said.

  “With double sheets on the mattresses.” Meredith turned to Vicki. “Could you get us a couple more sheets and four pillow covers?”

  “Sure.”

  Lower walls around the cabin were made of cedar planks turned rough side out. They’d never been sanded or varnished. If we brushed against them, we’d get splinters. Above a waist-high rail, unpainted wood ran up to the low ceiling. There was a window at each end of the elongated cabin. The floor was stained concrete. A few braided rugs might have softened the effect. The open doorframe at the rear of the cabin apparently led into the breezeway and, beyond that, the community bath
room. The entire structure seemed designed to make occupants long to be outside.

  “We’ll tour the ranch later and enjoy dinner and music on the patio.” Vicki handed us maps of the ranch, which showed locations of the lodge, cabins for guests and staff, the Medina River where we’d swim, corrals and the shooting range. The brochure had looked like a pleasant summer camp for grown-ups. Now I realized we were actually going to engage in physical challenges.

  Vicki pointed to a spot on the map. “If you walk back toward the lodge, you’ll see an arrow sign on a tree directing you left toward the river. I’ll meet you at the waterfront at three-thirty.”

  She turned to Sam. “While they settle in, I’ll show you your cabin, Mr. Vanderhoven. You’re in cabin four, next to Selma and George Tensel.”

  “The conservationist? That might be interesting.” I smiled innocently. I was still irritated by his remark about my aversion to normalcy.

  He swung around and tramped toward the car to get his suitcase, looking grumpy. I usually ignored his irascible moments, but I was worried about his demeanor. He could easily descend from grouchiness into depression. Meredith sensed my unease.

  “He’ll be all right. As soon as he gets used to the environment and slower pace, he’ll begin to enjoy himself.”

  When Sam’s precious daughter, Lee, died with Katy in that terrible auto accident, a chunk of my heart had died, too. Sam grew so depressed he had to leave Chicago. Six months after he lost his family, he escaped to Texas.

  Months later, when a huge banking conglomerate bought the small bank where I worked, and my bank stock shot sky high, I had options. Since the aunt and uncle who reared me had passed on, I had no ties to Chicago. Texas sunshine might be what I needed. I moved to San Antonio and enrolled in graduate school to study everything I’d missed the whole time I’d been submerged in banking and business courses. That’s where I met Meredith.