The widower’s two step tn-2

by Rick Riordan

  Now I could drive past 1604 and halfway to the village of Bulverde before I was ever out of earshot of a convenience store.

  The sky behind me was city grayorange and ahead of me rural black. Just above the hills, the full moon made a hazy white circle behind the clouds.

  I exited on Ranch Road 22, a narrow twolaner with no lighting, no posted speed limits, plenty of curves, and nothing on the shoulders but gravel and barbed wire. A killway, my dad would've called it.

  In my goreloving adolescent days I used to pester the Sheriff to tell me about all the traffic accidents he'd handled on little ranch roads like RR22. He usually said no, but one night he'd gotten drunk enough and fed up enough to tell me in graphic detail about a particularly nasty headon collision. He told me murder scenes were nothing compared to car accidents, and then he went on to prove it. I never asked to hear any more of his work stories.

  I swerved once to avoid a dead deer. Fence posts and mile markers floated into my headlights and out again. Occasionally I passed a billboard advertising a new housing development that was about to be built-CALLE VERDE, FINE LIVING FROM THE 120's. I bet the folks who'd moved out here for a retirement in the country were pleased about that.

  The 7Elevens and H.E.B. s would be coming in next.

  The turn for Serra Road was unmarked, despite what Miranda had told me, and it wasn't much wider than a private driveway. Fortunately I could see the Daniels' party all the way from RR22. A quarter mile or so across a dark pasture, lights were blazing in the trees and a fire was burning. There was the distant hum of music.

  I bumped along Serra Road with rocks pinging into the wheel wells of the VW. The air was the temperature of bathwater and had a strange mix of smells- manure, wood smoke, gasoline, and marigolds. One more right turn took me over the cattle guard of the Daniels' property.

  Their front yard was a full acre of gravel and grass. A dozen pickup trucks were parked around a granddaddy live oak several stories tall and hung from root to top with white Christmas lights. One of the pickup trucks was a huge black affair with orange pinstriping and silver Barbie doll women on the mud flaps. I wondered if there could be two such trucks in the world. Not with my luck.

  The house itself was low and long and white, with a front porch that stretched all the way across and was now spilling over with people. Willis Daniels and his standup bass were the centre of attention. He and a small bunch of grizzled cowboy musicians, none of them from Miranda's group, were burning their way through an old swing number-Milton Brown, if my memories of my father's 78 collection served me right.

  All the players were drunk as hell and they sounded just fine.

  Smaller clumps of people were gathered around the property, drinking and talking and laughing. Half a dozen were throwing horseshoes by the side of the house, their light provided by a line of bare bulbs strung between a mesquite tree and a toolshed. Some women in dresses and boots and lots of silver jewellery were gathered around a campfire, helping blearyeyed kids roast marsh mallows. All of the pickup truck cabs were dark and closed but not all of them were vacant.

  Next to the oak tree two men were talking-Brent Daniels and my buddy Jean.

  Brent was wearing the same dingy checkered shirt and black jeans he'd been wearing the last three times I'd seen him. They weren't getting any prettier and neither was he.

  His black hair looked like dayold road kill. He was shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot.

  Jean wore a dark blue linen jacket, slacks that were a little too tight around his middle, a white collarless silk shirt, black boots, and a silver bracelet. His hand was clutching Brent's shoulder a little too firmly and he was leaning close to Brent's ear, telling him something.

  When Jean realized somebody was watching their conversation he cast around until he found me. He locked his fierce, indifferent little eyes on me for a second, finished his statement to Brent, then pulled away and laughed, patting Brent's shoulder like they'd just shared a fine humorous story. Brent didn't laugh. He turned angrily and walked toward the house.

  Jean leaned back against the oak. He put his heel on the trunk, produced a handrolled cigarette, and began fishing around his pockets for a lighter. He watched me as I walked toward him.

  "The steel guitar player."

  "It's honest work."

  Jean lit his cigarette, nodded. "No doubt. Honest work."

  "Why are you standing out here in the dark?" I asked. "Your boss too embarrassed to bring you into the party?"

  Jean narrowed his eyes. He mouthed the words your boss like he was trying to interpret them, like he was suspicious he'd just been insulted.

  "Sheckly," he decided.

  "Yeah-the big ugly redneck. You know."

  In the glow from the white Christmas lights, Jean's smile looked unnaturally luminous.

  The fierceness in his eyes didn't diminish at all. "I see."

  "You did a hell of a job clearing out Alex Blanceagle the other night."

  No response. Jean took a drag on the cigarette, turned his head, and blew smoke leisurely toward the porch. The old drunk musicians had launched into something new-an instrumental that sounded vaguely like Lester Scruggs. A couple of women were dosidoing with each other on the sidewalk.

  I looked toward the front door. Brent Daniels now stood next to an icefilled garbage can, drinking a beer as fast as he could. Several people were talking to him but Brent wasn't paying them any attention.

  "What was that about?" I asked Jean.

  He followed my gaze, caught my meaning. "I told Brent Daniels I admired his sister.

  Her music. I said I hoped she would tour Europe soon."

  "Like Cam Compton used to. Make a nice courier system, wouldn't it? Good cover, touring with a band, with lots of equipment, if you had goods you wanted to deliver to a lot of places in Europe."

  Jean blew more smoke. He gave me the crab eyes. "Do you intend to provoke, Mr.

  Navarre, or are you simply an idiot?"

  "I'm not usually like this," I confessed. "Usually I don't find so many corpses in one week. You usually leave so many?"

  Jean smiled coldly. "An idiot," he decided.

  He disengaged his back from the tree and was leaning forward to say something when some commotion erupted around the side of the house.

  Somebody by the shed yelled "Ohhh!" like he'd just seen a great triple play. A woman shrieked. A crowd of people started to converge around the horseshoe pit. Some were swearing, a few laughing. Willis Daniels' hoe down faltered to a stop as the musicians got up to see what was going on.

  A drunk cowboy staggered away from the scene, laughing, telling people what had just happened in a loud enough voice that Jean and I could hear him fine. Apparently Allison SaintPierre had just knocked Tilden Sheckly out cold with a horseshoe.

  I looked at Jean.

  He tossed his cigarette down in a leisurely way. It bounced off a root and disappeared in the crack between two other roots, then dimmed to a little orange eye. Jean looked up at me and smiled, almost pleasantly this time.

  "My boss," he said with satisfaction.

  Then he turned and casually walked in the opposite direction, into the dark.

  29

  Sheckly wasn't out cold, exactly. Just slightly cooled down.

  I nudged my way through the spectators and found him sitting in the dust, his fingertips on his temples and a look of complete dismay on his face. He was dressed in black from boots to shirt. His Stetson lay nearby, knocked from his head. Below Sheck's left eye, the cheek looked like a crosssection of a rare filet mignon. An inch higher and the horseshoe would've blinded him.

  An older woman squatted next to him, patting his shoulders and trying to console him.

  Her words came out slurred. The margarita in her other hand sloshed at a fortyfive degree angle.

  A couple of cowboy types stood on the other side. They seemed anxious to lend the rich man a bandanna, or an arm to lean on, or a gun to shoot Allison Saint Pierre.
>
  Anything he needed.

  Sheckly shook his head a couple of times. He dabbed at his ruined cheek with the back of his fist, looked at the blood on his knuckles, and regained some colour in his face. Then he tried to get up and failed. He rallied again, staggering to his feet with the help of the cowboys.

  "I'm gonna kill that crazy bitch."

  The men murmured agreement.

  Sheckly blinked. He stumbled, huge and awkward as a drugged horse.

  He scanned the crowd, targeted me briefly, and seemed to make a foggy connection.

  Then his eyes kept moving.

  Allison SaintPierre was nowhere to be seen, though a few people were looking in the direction of the ranch house and shaking their heads as they speculated about her. I went toward the house.

  When I bumped into Willis Daniels on the porch he turned around and grabbed my upper arm and for a second I thought the old man was going to clobber me with his cane. I hardly recognized him. The Santa Claus smile had vanished. His eyes blazed.

  His cement coloured hair was flattened into sweaty bangs against his forehead.

  He looked disappointed when he saw I wasn't someone he wanted to clobber. At least not at the moment.

  "Damn it," he muttered, lowering his cane.

  "Allison went this way?"

  Willis raised his cane again and shook it at nobody in particular. Then he glared in the direction of the horseshoe pit and began grumbling things about Mrs. Saint Pierre that weren't fit for Santa's elves to hear. I went inside.

  Stringed instruments decorated the walls. A couple of kids slept on a Naugahyde couch in the living room while their parents told Aggie jokes and mixed drinks in the kitchen. The door to the first bedroom down the hall was open. A woman I didn't know had passed out on the bed in the middle of a pile of cowboy hats. The door to the second bedroom was ajar and Allison's voice came through in a tone so shaky it made me wince-like an Estring tuned to the point you just knew it was going to snap in the guitarist's face.

  "He pushed me down!" she yelled. "I'm not going to just stand there like you and-"

  "Allison-" Miranda's voice was only slightly more in control. "You should look at yourself, girl."

  I opened the door.

  They were both standing by the bed. Miranda looked like a young square dancer in her fulllength denim skirt and white blouse and bandanna around her neck. She wore no makeup, but the colour in her face looked healthier than usual because she was angry.

  Her eyes were bright brown.

  She picked a twig out of Allison's hair. She had plenty to choose from. Allison had smudges of dirt on her face and dust all down her side. Her red blouse had come untucked from her jeans. She had the same murderous look I'd seen in her eyes that afternoon, but now her eyelids were swollen and red, a few tears smeared in with the dirt.

  Miranda saw me before Allison did. The singer's shoulders relaxed just slightly. She said nothing but her posture invited me in. If I'd been alone in a room with Allison right then, I would've welcomed company too.

  "What happened?" I asked.

  Allison started. She had a little trouble bringing me into focus. She took a shaky breath before she could answer me with something besides a scream.

  "Sheck."

  "He pushed you. So you figured you'd just brain him with a horseshoe?"

  Allison splayed her fingers and brought them up to her ears. "He moved too fast. I swear to God the next time-"

  Her voice broke. However violent a show she was used to staging, however much she normally got away with, this time she'd surprised herself. The muscles in her face had started loosening up.

  "There can't be any next time," Miranda said.

  "You could've succeeded in killing him, Allison," I said. "Easily."

  Allison managed to refocus on me. "You're the one who slammed Cam's head into a beer keg, Tres. What- it's okay for you to act that way?"

  Miranda gave me a look I couldn't quite read. She seemed to be willing me to say something.

  I'm not sure why, but just then the room we were standing in came into clearer focus. I realized it must be Miranda's. The burgundy and blue quilt on the bed, the miniature wooden horse on the desk, the dried arrangements of sage and lavender along the windowsill all seemed right for her. A tiny blond Martin guitar was propped in the corner. A few Daniels family photographs were framed in silver on the nightstand. It was a strange room-sparse and orderly but also cozy, definitely feminine. Normally I would've guessed it belonged to a little girl with a tidy mother, or perhaps to somebody's grandmother.

  Miranda kept giving me a silent request.

  I looked at Allison. "Why don't I drive you home? You need to get out of here."

  Wrong answer. Miranda tightened her lips, but she said, "That's a good idea."

  Allison collected herself. She was just about to agree, I think, when Tilden Sheckly barged into the room.

  He moved like he was still groggy, but he managed a pretty hideous facsimile of his regular grin. The left side of his face was still mostly blood and dirt. His unruly graybrown hair was flattened on top by sweat in the shape of his missing hat.

  "Allison SaintPierre," he croaked. "I think we need to talk."

  Sheck walked toward her. I made the mistake of trying to stop him, figuring that he was still dazed.

  The next thing I knew I was sitting on the rug with my jaw feeling like it had just been branded. There was either blood in my mouth or dark beer-Guinness, maybe. I don't remember Sheckly's upper cut at all. I certainly didn't have time to block it.

  "I'll talk to you in a minute, son," Sheckly said unevenly. He was focusing a little to the left of my eyes. "We'll have some words about trespassing in people's offices. Right now, stay out of my way."

  He grabbed Allison by the wrist.

  Allison managed to break Sheckly's grip and rake the bad side of his face with her fingernails, but Sheck looked like he'd expected that. He winced and swayed backward and then smiled, like he'd just been given permission to try again with a little more force.

  "Sheckly," Miranda said, soft but insistent.

  "Miranda, darlin'." He kept trying to get his mouth to work right, to have that normal smooth tone to it. "This ain't your fault, honey. I know that. But you understand what your friend here did? At your Daddy's party? You think I'm gonna let her walk away from that-would that be right?"

  Allison tried for another slap and got her wrist intercepted. The back of Sheck's other hand struck her across the mouth with a sound like a leather belt snapping.

  Miranda stood frozen, staring at Sheckly's fingers around Allison's wrist. I had no luck trying to get off the floor.

  Sheck was raising his hand to strike again when Brent Daniels stepped into the doorway and cocked the hammer of his shotgun.

  Brent didn't need to say anything. Sheck knew the sound of a doubleaughtsix just fine. Sheck's hand froze next to his shoulder, like he was saying the Pledge of Allegiance. He turned around.

  When he saw it was only Brent he tried to reconstruct his smile. A little bead of blood dripped off his chin.

  "Aw, Christ, son, put that damn thing down. You know I ain't-"

  "You step away," Brent insisted.

  Brent's voice was even and deadly serious. His eyes were still bloodshot but there was no alcoholic glaze to them. No hesitation and no uneasiness. Brent's eyes were alert and dangerous and I couldn't quite remember why I'd ever thought of him as dimwitted.

  "Brent-" Miranda started to say, firmer than before.

  "Shut up, Miranda."

  Sheckly stepped sideways, toward the foot of the bed. He wiped at his chin. "All right, Brent. It's your house. Just appears to me-"

  "Get out, Mr. Sheckly."

  Sheck raided his hands slowly, giving up. "All right, son. All right."

  He looked at Allison to let her know nothing was finished. He searched his pocket for a handkerchief and realized he didn't have one. He walked toward Brent until his chest was onl
y a few inches from the shotgun's muzzle.

  "Can I pass?"

  Brent stepped aside silently. Sheckly got a glint of dazed amusement in his eyes.

  "Maria would be proud of you, son. Taking up a gun again." He winked, I think. With his ruined face it was hard to tell what was intentional and what was just the flesh going into shock. "You cut a fine figure of a man."

  Then, mumbling pleasantly to himself about all the people he was going to kill, Tilden Sheckly left the room.

  When he was gone the barrel of Brent's shotgun lowered to the floor. I got to my feet.

  Allison collapsed onto the bed. Her hands clenched but they trembled anyway. She gave Brent a crooked smile, winced, dabbed her tongue into the corner of her mouth, and tasted the blood there. "My hero."

  Brent was blushing violently, but I don't think it was from Allison's comment. Miranda looked at him with an expression somewhere between outrage and sympathy.

  "Oh, Brent-Good Lord, I'm sorry."

  "Shut up, Miranda," Brent said again. He was staring at the floor, digging a hole in the rug with the shotgun muzzle. "For once, just shut up."

  'I'll

  30

  I leaned against a cedar post on the Daniels' back porch, staring across the dark field toward the barn where Brent Daniels had retreated. I could only see what was illuminated by the kerosene lantern Brent had hung at the edge of the roof, and from a hundred yards away that wasn't much. The building was apparently half tractor shed, half apartment. On the side closest to me was a curtained window with no light coming through.

  The field between here and there was scarred with black lines of trenches, pocked with mounds of dirt. About thirty yards out was the dark silhouette of a backhoe. Some kind of plumbing work in progress.

  My jaw where Tilden Sheckly had hit me throbbed every time my heart beat. My lower gums were puffy, but I hadn't chipped any teeth and my tongue had stopped bleeding from the hole I'd bitten into it. Compared to Sheckly-compared to a lot of people I'd met this week-I counted myself lucky.