Stripped Bare

by Shannon Baker

  I leaned my hands on the bed and shoved my face close to his. He smelled like Ted, and my thoughts froze. The slight musk, spicy skin—that unique personal Ted smell. So familiar I never thought about it. The smell I might lose forever.

  I pulled back. “If you won’t tell me, I’m going to have to keep digging and someone might kill me.”

  His alarm popped like hot grease. “Stop it, Kate.”

  “Who?”

  “Let it go.”

  “Tell me.”

  His chest rose and fell, and I realized mine did, too. Like two bulls in a standoff.

  I whirled around to leave.

  “Stop.”

  I didn’t.

  Defeat withered his voice. “Okay. I’ll tell you.”

  He spared one look out the window, where there was still no sign of daybreak. “I can’t remember every detail, but some of it’s coming back. I told you I’d left Roxy’s and heard yelling on Eldon’s porch.”

  I stepped toward the bed.

  “When I got closer, I saw Eldon wasn’t alone.”

  “Baxter?”

  He paused. “No. Carly. The wind picked up, so I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but I think they were arguing.”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “Because they were yelling.”

  “But the wind was blowing hard, right?”

  He squinted as if seeing the night again. “Yeah. Real hard. It blew my hat off and I had to chase it down.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I got my hat, and by then they’d left the porch. A light went on upstairs, in Eldon’s office. I thought I should let them work it out, but it was Carly, and sometimes when she flies off the handle, she’ll listen to me when she won’t pay attention to anyone else.”

  True enough. He’d acted as peacekeeper between Louise and Carly a time or two.

  “I went up to the house. I knocked, but no one answered, so I went inside.”

  A thought occurred to me. “You didn’t think Carly and Eldon would wonder why you were at the Bar J?”

  He stared at his feet. “I thought I’d tell them I was investigating missing cattle in the area.”

  Yeah, Ted would have a ready excuse.

  “I heard Eldon’s voice upstairs. He was kind of bellowing, because he couldn’t hear and wouldn’t wear his hearing aids.”

  Obviously Roxy kept him informed about Eldon’s annoying habits, such as not wearing his hearing aids.

  “I thought about leaving again, but Eldon sounded really mad. So I started up the stairs. The closer I got, the better I understood him, and that’s when I started to run toward the office.”

  Hot pins pricked my skin. “What did you hear?”

  He swallowed. “Eldon said, ‘This is my land and I’ll do what I damned well please. When you get your inheritance, you can decide for yourself.’” Ted closed his eyes. “But what he said next is what scared me. ‘Quit waving that gun around like some damned outlaw. You know you’re not going to use it.’”

  I tried to picture Carly threatening Eldon with a gun.

  “I forgot all my training, because I wanted to keep Carly from doing something stupid.”

  “You burst in?”

  He nodded. “Everything happened all at the same time. I threw myself at the door, got a quick glimpse of Eldon sitting at his desk, then fire burned through me. I remember the roar of the gun, but that’s it.”

  He stopped talking, but his chest heaved like he’d run a mile.

  I played out his story twice, seeing everything, from Ted walking to his cruiser and changing his path, through to him being shot.

  The door to his room opened and we both shouted, “Go away.”

  I couldn’t believe what I had heard. “You confessed because you think Carly did it?”

  “I can claim self-defense.”

  This was why I loved Ted. Just when you thought he was the biggest shit in the world, he did something noble. Stupid and misguided, but noble.

  I glared at him. “Carly didn’t do it.”

  Uncharacteristic gentleness touched his voice. “I know you don’t want to believe she could kill someone. Neither do I. But the evidence is there, babe.”

  I growled. “Don’t call me ‘babe.’” He knew I hated pet names. I’ll bet Roxy loved them. “How could you even suspect her?”

  “She was there.”

  “On the porch. You didn’t see her in the house.” I tapped the rail with the underside of my wedding band, as if the ticking noise could make my brain work better.

  He whispered, “She shot Eldon.”

  No. “She worshipped him.”

  He met my stare. “Think about it. She’s got all that fire and temper. Passion, you’d call it. She flies off the handle. She doesn’t always make the best decisions. You know as well as I do how upset she was at Eldon for even considering selling the ranch. Is it so hard to believe she lost her temper?”

  My conviction was set in my tone. “She didn’t shoot Eldon.”

  His voice cracked. “I know how much you love her. I love her, too. So drop this investigation. Let Milo charge me.”

  I didn’t wait for more conversation. I don’t remember opening the door and running out, though I have a vague recollection of Beth Salzberg chasing me.

  25

  Taking only enough time to fill the gas tank, I was on the road before three a.m. Allowing for the time change from western Nebraska’s Mountain zone to Lincoln’s Central, I ought to reach Susan’s before anyone roused out of bed.

  I had to see Carly. Hug her. Talk to her. She’d been to the Bar J moments before Eldon was shot. She must know something.

  The three-hour drive was torture, with my thoughts stampeding from Carly to the possibility of a baby. I tried to quiet myself with deep breathing. If I’d been in Elvis, I’d have my blues CDs. Ted only played country music. I’d rather listen to the rattle in my own head than suffer the twang. When I succeeded in switching gears from Eldon’s murder, my brain kept coughing up aha moments that swirled my empty gut into a sulfuric sludge. There was the time Ted’s phone rang while he’d gone to the barn to find pliers. I’d answered the local number, but the caller hung up. When I punched to reconnect, I got generic voice mail.

  Then there was the night I’d gone to bed at eight o’clock and had fallen into an exhausted sleep. I woke an hour later to use the bathroom. Ted wasn’t in the house, but I spotted him in the equipment shed. The light shined from the open door and Ted paced back and forth, talking on the phone. Every now and then he threw his head back and laughed.

  Now, I rubbed the moisture from my eyes and focused on the dawn breaking over the eastern hills. Cattle moved around in the pastures, waiting for someone to bring them feed. Calves cavorted in the weak sunshine. I didn’t feel their joy as the pickup labored up one hill and coasted down the next.

  Damn me. I’d even checked his phone the next morning to see who he’d called. It was an unknown number and he’d talked for over an hour. Did I ask him about it? No. It was probably one of his college friends and he’d gone to the barn so he wouldn’t wake me. Asking him about it would make me a suspicious wife. I either trusted him and or I didn’t.

  The truth was, I didn’t. But I hadn’t admitted it. Now I was every bit as mad at me as I was at him.

  I circled back to Carly. During my teens, my refuge from the war zone of the Fox house was the Bar J. For the cost of gas for the twenty-mile trip, I could find peace and someone to listen to me. Glenda and Brian’s few cramped rooms with a wood-burning stove were always clean and smelled of something wonderful baking. Glenda welcomed me like she was a mother cat and I was a lost kitten.

  When Carly was born, I feared I’d lose my welcome. But Glenda still kept the lumpy couch for my bed. I went from honorary ward to integral cog in the family. Always a fussy baby, Carly accepted me as a surrogate mother. Glenda delighted in the bond between her daughter and me.

  Glenda always acted happ
y to see me driving Elvis down her dusty road. It meant that I’d stay with Carly and Glenda would have hours of freedom to ride her horse or help with cattle work, knowing her baby was in good hands.

  I pulled into Lincoln in the middle of morning rush hour. Traffic slowed to the speed of a sloth on Xanax as I hit three thousand stoplights between the thriving downtown businesses and the state capitol building. Sharp-suited men and women bunched at crossings on their way to the banks and law offices along the shaded streets. I maneuvered to the dowdy southern downtown neighborhood where Susan and her roommate lived, in an old brick house that had been divided into four apartment units.

  Spring hit Lincoln a few weeks earlier than it hit Grand County. Here, the lilacs had already gone from masses of purple and white to lush green bushes. Peonies popped in wild profusion in almost every yard, sprinkling their pink and white petals on thick green lawns. The trees boasted full leaves and the flowering crab apple trees were nearly spent. The whole neighborhood throbbed with spring’s vitality and cheer. It bounced against me as if I wore a cone of doom.

  I found street parking two blocks away and felt lucky. I’d lived not far from here over ten years ago, when I’d been an undergrad. I’d always liked Lincoln. If I left Ted, maybe I’d move back here. And do what? With my psych degree, no practical experience, and no PhD, I wasn’t qualified to do anything more than answer phones or sell clothes. And with my fashion savvy, those clothes would be at the Orscheln Farm and Home.

  I didn’t bother locking Ted’s pickup, and I lumbered up from the drive while walking to Susan’s building and up the stairs to the second floor. Even this early, music thrumped from more than one unit, tunes boxing with one another in the dark, rundown hallway. A lingering odor of mildew, from the century the house had stood in Lincoln’s humidity, mingled with stale beer, a faint tinge of pot, and old garbage. The wood stairs and walls bore chips and holes, scuffs and dirt from countless semesters of young renters on their own for the first time.

  I needed to pull Carly to me and assure her that everything would be all right. As if I could guarantee anything but my love for her.

  I pounded on Susan’s door, hoping Carly could hear me above the wailing alternative rock music slithering under the frame. Footsteps that sounded like a kangaroo approached, and the door was flung open with such force that I felt sucked inside. Saskatchewan loomed in front of me, all six-foot-five-inches of hair, including a dark beard that ran halfway down his chest.

  “Hi, Sask.” I stepped inside.

  “Hey.” He was unruffled to find his roommate’s sister at his door before eight o’clock. “Didn’t know you were in our fair city.” Sask’s mother had named him Rodney. His family ranched in Choker County and Susan had met him at a track meet their junior year of high school. They were best friends, each other’s backup dates for proms, and now roommates.

  He lumbered to his phone, tapped a few times, and the music slunk to a less ear-damaging decibel. I eased into the cramped living room strewn with piles of coats, clothes, books, dirty dishes, blankets, fast-food containers, and things better left unidentified.

  “Susan’s not up yet.” He glanced at his phone. “She doesn’t have class on Wednesdays until noon.”

  I kept my arms to my side, afraid to touch anything for fear of disease. “That’s okay. I’m really here to get Carly.”

  He looked confused. “Carly Edwards?”

  The bedroom door swung open and Susan stumbled out, rubbing sleep from her eyes. She wore plaid pajama pants and a red wife-beater. A younger version of me, her wild hair tumbled around her head and shoulders. Her sleepy eyes flew open to match her O of a mouth when she saw me. The door gaped open, and she looked like Lot’s wife after she’d caught her last glimpse of Sodom.

  Sask’s music drifted to the ceiling.

  The first flash of fear flicked in my belly. “Where is she?”

  My voice released Susan and she shoved a pile of clothes on the floor with her bare foot. “I can explain.”

  A hard edge colored my words. “Explain what?”

  She passed a glance to Sask. “She was really upset. She needed some time, so she asked me to stall for her.”

  Blood pushed into my brain faster than it could drain. “When did she leave? Where did she go?”

  Susan swayed from foot to foot, like she used to do when she was three and got caught playing with Diane’s makeup. “Well. I talked to her, like, really late Monday night.”

  Dread clenched my stomach. “What about Tuesday? Was she even here at all?”

  The rocking stopped and she bit her lip. “No.”

  I pushed my hand through my hair, maybe trying to get my brain to settle down and think. “She called you? She didn’t have her phone.”

  “I didn’t recognize the number, and I almost didn’t answer. But it was a western Nebraska area code, so I did. She sounded really upset.”

  “Of course she’s upset.”

  “She said her granddad had died and she couldn’t deal with the funeral and all the family. She said Roxy was making her nuts.”

  All that was true enough. “Did she say where she was or where she was going?”

  Susan shrugged. “You know Carly. She has these meltdowns, but she always comes around. I tried to get her to book it here. Told her she could crash on the couch.”

  We both glanced at the couch, which was covered with so much debris the brown fabric hardly showed.

  “When did you see her last?” Susan asked.

  “Monday morning, the day after Eldon was shot.” I leaned on the door.

  Sask tapped the music off.

  Susan hadn’t moved. “She sounded freaked out. I didn’t want to lie to you but, you know, I wanted to help her out. She had to deal with Glenda and then her dad. I didn’t think she’d go, like, AWOL or anything.”

  “Maybe she’s hanging out with a friend or something.” But why would she call Susan to stall? Why not just tell me she needed space?

  “God, Kate. I’m so sorry.”

  “She didn’t give you any clue where she was?”

  Susan shook her head. “I think you know her the best of all of us. I mean, she told me how much she liked living with you and Ted.”

  I shoved a pile of junk aside and plopped onto the couch. I rose and pulled a thick geography textbook from under me, then sat back. “Where would she go?”

  “Don’t worry. She’s strong.” Susan swept a jumble of debris to the floor and crouched on the arm of the couch, slipping her feet under my thigh. “Remember the night Glenda died?”

  I wished I could forget it. “Bad night.” I’d left Glenda’s crowded room. Drowning in grief, I’d needed to be alone.

  Susan’s voice got that ragged edge. “When Doc Kennedy told us Glenda wouldn’t last through the night, I didn’t know what to do, so I went to the chapel with the rest of the sibs, but you weren’t there.”

  It all came back. The faded Southwest-print couch and garish blue carpet of the hospital lounge. The smell of artificial air, perfumed with cleaning supplies, the faint soggy vegetable smell from the cafeteria, and fear. I had traced the zigzag of the couch pattern, fighting a rage so basic it seemed ingrained in my blood.

  “When the nurse came to tell us it was all over, we couldn’t find Carly.” Susan paused. “That was the first time we all went looking for her.”

  The shadows bathed the waiting room off the main lobby. Silence muffled the chilly space, because the receptionists, accountants, and visitors had vanished hours ago.

  Without any sound to alert me, I had turned my head, knowing what I’d see. Carly stood at the edge of the carpet, a ghost of sorrow. No tears dribbled from her eyes, which seemed like puddles of pain. Even in the dimness of the security lights, she appeared bloodless, as if I could see through her.

  I had held my arms up and she drifted into them. Twelve years old, and now without a mother.

  Susan leaned into me. “We found you on that couch in the lobby. Y
ou were a crying mess. But Carly, man, that kid was like iron. She didn’t shed a tear.”

  Carly had trembled in my arms. Still smelling like a kid: sweat and clean at the same time.

  Susan hadn’t learned to distrust happiness as I had. “She’s going to be fine, and she’ll find you when she needs you, like she always has.”

  This was Susan’s version of Dad’s motto: If it’s not okay, it’s not the end. Did they forget that things don’t always turn out for the best?

  Instead of yelling at Susan for being so foolish, or throttling her as I itched to do, I pushed myself from the couch.

  Susan jumped up and met me at the door. “I’m really sorry. I thought I was doing the right thing.”

  I hugged her because she needed forgiveness—and I needed to forgive her—and patted her cheek because I knew she hated it. “I love you, Suzy-Q. Call Mom. She finished up a piece and is back in the real world. Let me know if you hear from Carly.”

  26

  When you live in the Nebraska Sandhills, you spend a lot of time behind the wheel. The region covers a quarter of the state, and the scenery doesn’t vary a whole lot—just mile after mile of rolling, grass-covered sand dunes. Every ten or twenty miles, you might meet another vehicle. You only know it’s settled country because of the endless barbed wire fences strung to the horizon. That was fine with me. I’m not always a big fan of people.

  I bought a sleeve of crackers and some string cheese when I fueled up, and washed it down with a slug of apple juice. I set the cruise control and barely moved the steering wheel over the miles of straight road.

  Carly could flake out, that was true. But disappearing for days, with her granddad’s funeral coming up, didn’t seem like something she’d do. Ted couldn’t be right; Carly didn’t kill Eldon. But she was in some trouble. As the miles ran under the wheels of the pickup, my anxiety climbed. I reached for my phone and scrolled until I found the number.

  Mary Ellen Butterbaugh answered on the first ring and, after I identified myself, said, “Carly’s teachers brought her homework to the office. You can pick it up whenever you’re in.”

  I couldn’t care less about homework. “Could you call Danny Hayward out of class, please?”