I resisted the urge to step closer and touch him, the physical need to bend down and put my lips against his. “Okay.” I cleared my throat. “What do you suppose Clete will ask?”
His face fell. “I was hoping you were here to forgive me.”
I pushed off from the radiator and walked to the foot of his bed. Sarah said to give myself time, and that’s what I intended to do. “Let’s concentrate on the debate first.”
If his eyes were fingers, they’d be stroking my hair. “I love you, Kate. Ever since you threw that punch at me on New Year’s Eve. I need to know there’s a chance for us.”
Ted hated anyone to be mad at him. He’d charm and cajole until he softened the toughest resistor, not because he cared for them but because he wanted them to love him. He was trying to break me down. And even knowing this, the memory of that night fluttered inside me, ripe with the excitement of romance.
I’d been in the Long Branch on New Year’s Eve, closing on midnight. Dickie Halstead had brought his slick college roommate home for the weekend, and the dude thought he was all that and a bag of chips. He’d been dogging me, trying to buy me drinks, putting his hands where they oughtn’t be, and promising we’d seal the new year with a kiss. When the countdown started, I spotted him shoving his way toward me. I wound through the herd of drunks, trying to get away. When the shout of “Two!… One!” rose, someone grabbed my shoulder. By that time, I’d had enough folderol from the dude, and without looking first, I whirled around and drove my fist into his chin.
The chin belonged to Ted, and I hadn’t done much damage. But the incident tickled him and we’d started dating. It was like someone clicked a light on in a gloomy room. When Ted shined on me, the whole world brightened. Within months we were married. I’d never regretted it. Not a lot, anyway. I wasn’t sure even now that I’d do it differently.
Ted’s skin had the dry, pale look of plaster. His eyes filled enough that a tear fell from each. I tried to predict which would reach his chin first and what route it would take through his stubble. He sniffed. “I’m so sorry.”
“Hey, I’ve got a new rule for you.”
His bloodshot eyes appeared worried. “Rules?”
I watched closely to see his reaction. “No Roxy. If you want me to stay, you can have no contact with her. No calls, no visits.”
Was that sorrow? “I can’t stop her from coming in here or calling me.”
“If she shows up, you send her away. If she calls, hang up.”
He shook his head. “But I can’t be mean to her.”
My skin burned, sending heat all the way through me. Very slowly, as if talking to a two-year-old, I said, “You’re married.”
He looked chastened. “I know. And I love you. But she’s all alone. I can’t just cut her off.”
Unbelievable. Even for Ted. I leaned forward and glared at him. “Your choice. You hurt her or you hurt me.”
“I just need some time.” He sounded as though he believed the request was reasonable.
Maybe I’d harbored this secret idea that I’d walk into the room and butterflies and bluebirds would swirl around us. We’d fall into each other’s arms, all the past vanishing in our declarations of true love. Disappointment dropped, heavy and blue.
We didn’t speak for a moment. “Are you mad at me?” he asked.
Didn’t I have a right to be? I stood at the foot of his bed, feeling untethered. Screaming, crying, pounding his chest—while it might feel great—would accomplish nothing. Words couldn’t come close to solving anything. So I stayed silent.
His pathetic smile was probably calculated to elicit my sympathy. “I don’t have any feeling yet. Doc says he’s not worried, but I think he’s hiding his concern.”
A thousand words of support and encouragement stayed fenced inside of me. He didn’t deserve my care. I walked to the window to shed the urge to say something nice.
A long, uneasy silence followed. The afternoon was dying as quickly as my hope. I hadn’t really come here to talk about the debate. Whatever I’d wanted, I wasn’t getting. I turned to leave.
“No. Wait!” Ted sounded desperate. “I didn’t kill Eldon. I didn’t.”
Wow. He’d shifted from the I-love-you-please-don’t-leave-me track with a jolt. “What did Milo say?”
Ted grasped the rails. “He says it looks like I did it.”
I shrugged. “Did you?”
“You know I didn’t. But I can’t prove anything in this hospital bed. You’ve got to help me.”
No. I didn’t have to help him. I stopped at the foot of his bed. “Why should I believe you didn’t kill him? Seems like you’re pretty good at lying to me.”
His face mottled like a tomato left on the vine during a heavy freeze. “I know. I’m sorry. But this is different. I didn’t do it.”
Yeah. That didn’t mean I wouldn’t be happy to see him hang for it.
But that wasn’t true. Sarah was right. With this much confusion, I needed to stay steady.
Ted probably knew everything going through my head. Hope lit his eyes. “Help me with this. Like we’ve done before. We’re good at figuring out the puzzle.”
Back and forth, the Louise and Diane battle waged in my head. The Sarah Solution felt like the safest course. I let out a sigh. “Okay. But let me ask you something first.”
Trepidation slowed his response. He probably thought I wanted to know about Roxy or something affair-related. “Sure.”
I turned back to the room and leaned against the window. “Did Carly know about you and Roxy?”
He shook his head. “I’m sure she didn’t. Why?”
I scowled at him. “Because she’s been acting weird lately, and if she found out about you and Roxy, that might explain it.”
His eyes flicked away and back to me. “I didn’t notice she’s been any different.”
Carly’s world was under attack and I needed to know on how many fronts she was fighting. “Is that what you were talking about a couple of weeks ago when you came home really late and Carly was still up?”
“What? When?” He sounded rattled.
“Were there so many nights you were with Roxy that you can’t figure this out?” At most, I would only be a couple of weeks along. Was that too soon for nausea? Should I tell him I might be pregnant? No. I should not.
He acted as if he was concentrating hard to remember. It was probably a delaying tactic while he considered how his answer might help or harm him. “When Carly was up? Recently?”
I waited. “What did you talk about?”
He paused. “I don’t know.”
I pushed away from the window, impatient with his stalling. “You want me to help you but you can’t answer one question for me?”
Again, silence. He inhaled. “A few weeks ago she wanted to know if I knew where the wreckage from her dad’s plane was taken.”
It wasn’t a healthy obsession. “What else?”
“She asked a bunch of questions about when Roxy and Brian decided to build the new house, and how much I thought it had cost. It seemed off the wall, but you know how Carly is.”
I knew how Ted was, too. At any questions about Roxy, he’d backpedal and avoid answering. I stared at the rippling wheat for what seemed like an hour. Several times I was on the verge of telling him I might be pregnant. Instead, I did what I do. I got down to business. “Let’s see if we can figure out who killed Eldon. What do you remember from that night?”
He wrinkled his forehead in concentration. “I can’t remember being in Eldon’s house.”
I hated to even think this. “Going to the Bar J. Maybe we ought to start there.”
He quit moving. “You don’t want me to do that.”
True. “Okay. Let’s start with you leaving Roxy’s house.”
Another lump traveled down his whiskery throat. “She had the extension club meeting and she was running late. But I was sleepy because … Well, you know how I get after…”
I clenched my fists. �
��Then what?”
“I decided to take a quick nap before I came home, because I knew you’d be calving and dinner would be late.”
I considered shooting him myself. “So Roxy left you. She wasn’t at the ranch at all?”
He nodded with effort. “I woke up about an hour later and got dressed.”
Another detail he could have deleted. Yet, the events seem to be coming back to him.
“The wind was blowing and I thought it might start snowing. I was thinking about how miserable it would be for you, night calving, and I thought I heard arguing, but then figured it was just the wind.”
His tongue ventured out and traveled along dry lips. A sweating pitcher of ice water sat on the bedside table, with a bendy straw in it. I didn’t offer it to him.
Perspiration smeared his pasty face, showing his fatigue. “Then I heard it again. I looked over at Eldon’s house and saw someone on the front porch. I thought maybe he was hollering at me and I didn’t want to go over there. He wouldn’t be happy to see me there with Roxy.”
Yeah, I knew how he might feel.
His eyes drooped closed and he rested a beat before going on. “I kept walking to the cruiser. But decided I’d better go deal with it.”
He smacked his dry tongue in his desert of a mouth. “No one was on the porch when I got there, so I let myself in. I…”
He stopped talking and his eyes lost some focus.
“Who was in the office?” I prompted.
He concentrated on the memory I couldn’t see.
I pushed him. “What made you go into the office?”
He let out a pent-up breath. “I can’t remember.”
“You don’t know who was on the porch?”
Frustration, and maybe a twinge of fear, hazed his words. “No. But we know the motives for murder are money or love.”
Here we go again. “I’ve heard that.”
“Right. So, they say May Keller has a thing for Eldon. Maybe she got tired of being rejected.”
Really?
He warmed to the subject. “Or maybe Jack found out about Eldon’s affair with Aileen Carson.”
Again with Aileen and Eldon. “Do you have any proof of that?”
“No.” He paused. “What if Eldon refused to loan someone money?”
Twyla had mentioned something about this. “How do you know about Eldon lending money?”
His excitement disappeared in a puff and I had my answer. “He wouldn’t loan Roxy money—is that what you’re saying?”
Ted raised a hand as if to ward me off. “She doesn’t need money. I’m saying maybe someone else was desperate for his help. When he refused them, they might be mad enough to kill him.”
I paced at the foot of the bed. So far we hadn’t come up with anything. I slapped a hand on his bedrail and he jumped. “Why can’t you remember?”
We caught each other’s eyes and held. This is the weird bit of love I’ll never understand. Chemicals, subconscious, pheromones, whatever it is, jumped between us like energy waves in a Tesla tube. It’s the way we’d always been together. Just me and Ted in our own world.
I did not want to love this man.
“I need you, Kate.” His whisper slid over my skin like a caress.
I made myself picture Roxy. Funny how that brought the arctic freeze back in a hurry. “If you’d think about that night, maybe something would come back to you.”
He shifted his glance out the window to the wheat field, the green blades undulating in April’s never-ending breeze. Something subtle flitted across his face.
“What?” I urged him.
It took him a single second to hide the alarm mounting in his eyes, and he yawned. It had to be fake fatigue. He brought his attention back to me. “You need to get back for the debate and I’m really tired.”
“You remember something.”
He raised his eyebrows in innocence. “Nope. No. All this thinking wore me out.”
I glared at him for a moment, but he was right. I needed to take off. “Okay. But I’m coming back and we’re going over this again.”
I could have lived forever without seeing the true caring in his eyes. “You’re a good woman, Kate. I promise to do right by you.”
It was a little late for that.
* * *
I skedaddled back to Frog Creek, no further ahead as far as suspects or debate prep and lots further behind as far as time. I made a quick pass through the calving lot, craving more of the peace I felt in the quiet of the herd.
I had less than an hour to get cleaned up and make the drive to town. Instead of leaping up the steps at a run, I plopped down and watched the cows on the hill. One cow kinked her tail.
I closed my hand around the phone in my pocket. I needed to talk to Carly, as much for me as for her. But Susan wouldn’t let me, and calling would harden them both. I ground my teeth in frustration. A stupid debate loomed, which I had to ace to keep Ted in office, so I could keep my options open to live at the one place on earth I’d made my own, with the man who’d sworn to love me forever. Chores mounted up with feeding, tagging, pairing up, doctoring, and fencing. Maybe it was time to admit I couldn’t do everything.
I padded inside and dialed the Choker County sheriff’s number.
“Have you found Carly?” Milo asked, as soon as I said hello.
“She’s in Lincoln with Susan.” I braced for more of his accusations.
“Huh.” He umphed as if he had settled himself and his gut in a chair. “I hear you’re gonna fill in for Ted at the Legion.”
“Have you found out anything about Eldon’s murder?” I didn’t ask what I really wanted to know: Did he still suspect Carly?
“What say I catch up with you after the debate?”
Milo refused to tell me more and I had to promise to meet him at the debate. It seemed like there would be yet another new twist in the crazy maze called my life.
11
What do you wear to a debate to represent your cheating, lying, shot-in-the-line-of-duty, perhaps paralyzed, repentant, but still maybe-not-faithful husband? I chose a black broomstick skirt, in case I needed to invoke the powers of the witch in me; polished black-and-turquoise tooled cowboy boots, in a pretense that I had taste and flair; and a short soft buff leather jacket, just because I liked the way it felt and it might relax me. I surveyed myself in the mirror and focused on my flat belly.
That was a situation for another day.
I’d give Ted’s left nut to be able to stay home and watch my cows. How insane was it to put myself through this to defend Ted’s position? But I didn’t feel I had a choice. If I let it all crash now, out of spite or a knee-jerk reaction, and Ted and I later decided to commit to each other, what would we have left?
I could always bail out downstream.
I looked out the bedroom window while I stuck a sterling silver concho earring into the seldom-used hole in my ear. I squinted up at the sky and eyed some dark clouds in the gathering dusk. If anything fell from the heavens tonight it would likely be rain and not snow, so the cows would probably be okay. Still, I hated leaving them on their own. I grabbed my phone and hurried toward the back door. I punched the speed dial.
Jeremy, Fox number eight, panted into the phone. “Yeah?”
I tried to sound breezy. “What’re you doing?”
“Now?”
“Yeah.” Friendly, not bossy big sisterly. “Or right away. Soon, anyway.”
“Right now,” he grunted, “I’m in the middle of someone.”
A high-pitched giggle made me cringe. It didn’t surprise me, not much anyway. “Never mind.”
More giggling.
I heard the grin leave his voice. “No. Wait. What is it?”
“Nothing.”
“I heard about Ted and stuff.”
Of course he did. It had been almost two whole days; why wouldn’t someone fill in my twenty-one-year-old brother? “I just wondered, if you weren’t busy, if you could run out and keep an eye on
my cows.”
“Dad said I should be at the debate, but if you need me at the ranch, I’m on it.”
There was nothing that kid wouldn’t do for anyone. That’s probably why he never had two bits to rub together, since he’d loan or give money to anyone who needed it. He had a son, little red-headed Mason. The only surprise is that more of his kids hadn’t popped up. Hands down, Jeremy was the most loveable of all the Foxes.
“Thanks. I don’t know when I’ll be home.”
“No worries,” he said. “I’ll bring someone to keep me occupied.” More giggling.
Great. I gave him a list of chores I hadn’t been able to get after. That eased my mind considerably, and in short order the debate would be history and maybe my hands would quit shaking. I needed to handle one crisis at a time, and right now it was the debate’s turn at bat. My conversation with Milo waited in the bull pen.
I started down the back steps, and then realized I was wearing only one earring. I sprinted back to the house for its match.
Back on the road. One of the biggest advantages of living at Frog Creek is that I stayed isolated. With Ted and Carly going to town every day, I hardly ever left the place. In the last few days, though, I’d spent more time driving than ranching.
Fifteen minutes later I swung onto Main Street, angle parked toward the top of the hill, and climbed out of Elvis to hike up to the Legion hall. Wind buffeted the trees and sent a chill over the darkening sky.
Heavy feet carried me toward the hall, which sat like a flat-roofed castle centered on the top of the hill. Too bad I couldn’t climb on my sled, as I’d done on snow days as a child. I’d slide down Main Street, the straight line that ran from the front door down the middle of the street, bisecting the post office, Burnett’s Tack Shop, Hodgekiss Farm and Ranch Supply, and the Long Branch on one side of the street, and the First State Bank, Dutch’s Grocery, the Methodists’ Jumble Shop, and a rickety fourplex known as the Apartments, on the other.
I lingered at the windmill that the Grand County Commercial Club erected sometime in the nineties, smack in the middle of the road, halfway from the Legion to the highway. They thought it would bring to mind the bygone days of the 1880s, when Hodgekiss was a railroad stop for loading cattle for the Chicago stockyards. The windmill hadn’t drawn tourists, as was intended, but it did give teenagers something to light on fire at Halloween.
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