My chest hurt, actually ached, at this news. I begged, “Tell me there’s more.”
“I wish there was, but there’s nothing else about him, or about Cole. I’m sorry, Ruthie…I even looked through another stack of letters that Case’s mother found years ago. They were also written by Una, but from earlier, in the 1870s. Before the Spicers reached Montana Territory.”
“Tish…why does it matter now? Why?” My voice was hardly a whisper.
“I wish I knew,” she said sincerely.
I couldn’t think about it anymore. To change the subject, and also because I desperately needed to know, I asked, “Where can I get birth control pills here?”
To my relief Tish giggled and flipped a paper clip at me. She said, “That naughty Marshall,” and then I laughed, bending to retrieve the paper clip she’d flung.
Before she could answer my question, her cell phone made a noise. She brushed her fingers over its surface and said, “That’s Robbie. He’s stopping in to say good-bye.”
“That guy from Northwestern?”
Tish nodded, her fingers flying across her phone as she responded to him. She explained, “He’s heading back to Chicago. Little bastard took a job at Turnbull and Hinckley.” She looked out the window, where a dusty BMW drew suddenly to the curb. “And he’s texting and driving.”
Rob Benson climbed from his expensive little car with a look of obvious distaste as he scanned the town. I had seen pictures of him and so wasn’t in awe of his flawless features. As he settled his sunglasses up on the crown of his head and entered the office, I thought, Player. For sure.
“Little sister?” he asked me before offering any other greeting. “Hello, hello.”
Tish stood and said crisply, “Rob, Ruthie. Ruthie, Rob. Heading for home?”
“Yes. Might I just say thank you, Jesus,” he replied, but then his shoulders sagged a little and he asked with a completely different tone in his voice, “Is Al here?”
“On the way,” Tish said, scrutinizing his face with a look that reminded me distinctly of our father – his lawyer look, as we’d always said. She ordered quietly, “Tell me what it is, Robbie.”
Robbie’s baby-blue eyes darted to me and then back to Tish. He muttered, “Goddammit to hell and back. With a first-class ticket.”
Tish moved from behind the counter that separated her desk from the rest of the office and put her face near Robbie’s. She said intently, “What? You texted me some weird shit last night. What is it?”
Robbie ran one hand through his meticulously-styled hair, knocking his sunglasses askew. Righting them, he said, “I was a little drunk, sorry. Tish, I want to tell you something but I need your word you’ll keep quiet on this.”
“On what?” she demanded.
Robbie looked at me and said, “And yours. Shit. Who am I fooling?”
I must have appeared as surprised as I felt, because he was quick to tell me, “I don’t want to involve you in this – shit, I don’t want to be involved in this. Talk about wrong place at the wrong fucking time. Listen, Tish, let this whole thing with Ron Turnbull and the Yancys go. Please, just trust me. As your old friend, trust me.”
“What ‘whole things’ would these be?” Tish asked intently. She gripped his shoulders in her hands and he flinched a little; clearly he was no match for my sister. Few men were.
“Tish, the Yancys mean business here. They are not to be fucked with. I know all of this shit I’m not supposed to know. Will you kill me if I tell you something terrible about your father?”
Tish was speechless; my heart plummeted.
“Tell us,” I said, when it was apparent Tish couldn’t speak; a part of me reflected that she had always been more of a daddy’s girl than me.
“He’s fucking Christina Turnbull,” Robbie spit out, as though the words stung his mouth.
Tish’s hands fell away from Robbie and went directly to her lips. She looked as though she’d just bitten into a piece of rotten food, as though she may vomit. Robbie swallowed hard and said, “I only know this because…I’m fucking her, too.”
“Rob,” Tish uttered, thoroughly stunned.
Robbie said, “I’m dead, crucified, fucking castrated if Ron ever finds out. Jesus, Christina’s like a woman on the hunt…I think she gets some sicko satisfaction by keeping all these secrets from Ron…”
“Dad wouldn’t…” I started to say, but then realized my father could very well cheat on his wife, as my mother was living proof of this. I asked, “Who is this Christina woman?”
“The wife of one of Chicago’s most powerful lawyers,” Tish whispered, smoothing her blouse with both palms in a gesture I recognized as an attempt to calm herself. She snapped at Robbie, “What the hell were you thinking?”
“I was horny! She came onto me, I swear to God. You’ve seen that woman – you think I could possibly say no? Jesus, I’m sorry,” he said, sounding less like an adult lawyer and more like a petulant teenager. He said, “Things have basically ended between us since I came out here…she’s tired of me anyway. It’s all Jackson, all the time.”
“Jesus, Dad,” Tish almost growled, addressing our errant father back in Chicago.
“Christina told me a couple of things, earlier this summer, before I left the city,” Robbie rushed on, tentatively regaining his composure. “She knows all this shit, Tish. Like the fact that Ron bought the power plant here in town from the Yancys. Or one of their little side companies, anyway. They owned it first and they were doing something illegal in there, Christina didn’t know what exactly, but she heard that a local park ranger guy, or someone with a shit job like that, was asking questions out here…not long later the Yancys quietly sold to Ron’s company so that –”
“They could keep their noses clean and Derrick could sweep in here for his daddy and buy up the town nice and neat anyway. No one would have been the wiser,” Tish finished. “But why me? Why would Ron want me out here?”
“It was a fluke, Tish. Your dad volunteered you, remember?” Robbie reminded her. “Jackson’s hiding beneath Ron’s nose. To be fair, I don’t think your dad knows anything about the power plant shit. In fact, I’m certain. Jackson figured that if he volunteered you to work for Al this summer, it made him look good too. Less of a chance that Ron would suspect anything between him and Christina, and then they could keep up with their secret little meetings. Christina is totally hot for Jackson, even I know this. Jesus, it’s so twisted…I hate myself, I really do. Tish, I’m telling you, your dad is more of a pussy hound than I’ve ever known, and I thought I was bad…”
“Enough,” I said firmly.
Tish met my eyes and we exchanged several dozen sentences with one look. When she looked back at Robbie, he was nearly incinerated by the anger in her gaze. She whispered, “I don’t care about that. What I need is something concrete. I need to know who started that fire in our barn. Who, Robbie?”
Robbie said, and he sounded sincere, “I don’t know, Tish, I swear. Ron paid somebody probably, but good luck ever tracing that back to him. I do know Ron ordered Derrick to fuck up your apartment here last month, to scare you away for good. Remember when we were in Chicago to take the bar exam, we were having lunch with your dad and Lanny? Ron and Christina stopped at our table, remember? Tish, you were the one who brought up the fact that Redd Co. had purchased Highland Power, and that must have startled Ron. And – oh Jesus – that night you called me, the night of the fire…”
“What?” Tish demanded, teeth clenched.
Robbie said, “I talked to Christina that night. I told her a little of what you’d told me…about realizing that Redd Co. was Ron’s company…I didn’t realize this info could hurt you…”
Tish breathed hard through her nose; if I was Robbie, I would have run for my life at the expression on her face. She said tightly, “You think Christina told Ron? And he arranged to have our barn destroyed? Would he have called Derrick that night? Derrick threatened me just last month, told me that accidents happen
to people we love…oh God, he was planning to hurt us even then…”
Robbie said miserably, “I don’t know. I can’t confirm any of that. But I am sorry, Tish, if I played any part. I would never purposely hurt you, not for anything, you know that right?”
She shoved away from him and sank onto her desk chair. She was completely still for a moment before ordering quietly, “Find out what you can, do you hear me? You owe me that, Benson.”
He nodded. I was still sitting dumbly on the edge of the desk, attempting to process this information. At last Robbie said, “I have to go. But I will find out what I can.” He paused and said to Tish, “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re happy here. You owe yourself that.”
***
By noon, thanks to Mary, I had a solid handle on the expectations of my new job; I decided I was pretty darn lucky that I was both a fast learner and Tish’s little sister – as I wasn’t exactly otherwise qualified to take on the duties of dealing with the daily paperwork of a law office. Tish was as distracted as I’d ever seen her. She’d called Case three times to make sure that he was all right; he was resting up at home. I had talked her out of calling Dad at least as many times. Just after Al and Mary left for lunch, I actually had to pry the phone from her hand.
“Now isn’t the time,” I said with certainty. “Tish, it’s a shock, I know, but do you think Dad is going to openly admit to messing around on Lanny? Besides, how would you tell him you found out?”
Tish bit her bottom lip hard enough to make little dents. She finally agreed, “You’re right, I know. If Robbie’s my insider now, I can’t rat him out before he even gets back to Chicago.” She closed her eyes and said, “I could just kill him.”
“Who, Dad or Robbie?” I asked.
“Dad,” she whispered. “Dammit. Mom’s never been wrong about him. God, remember that summer when we actually tried to help Dad get back together with her? When Blythe was in jail?”
I nodded; I had been twelve, and dying to reunite my parents.
“Thank goodness Mom is smarter than that,” I said.
Tish’s posture changed markedly, her eyes suddenly fixed out the front window behind me. She said, low and with a deadly tone in her voice, “There’s Derrick.”
I turned to see a large black SUV creeping past the law office. Based on the angle of the sun, I knew he couldn’t see us peering out at him; I caught a glimpse of a dark-haired man with mirrored sunglasses blocking his eyes from sight. He seemed to be checking out the new paint job on the window, which proclaimed Howe and Spicer, Attorneys-at-Law in a lovely script, edged in gold.
Tish flew out the front door of the office before I knew what she was doing. She raged at the man behind the wheel, “I know what you did, you son of a bitch!”
I followed directly after her, catching her upper arm in my grasp, afraid that she might charge the street. She was breathing furiously, unwilling to be the first to look away from the man in the SUV, whom I could not spare a glance; I was too worried about my sister. A man in the car behind honked the horn twice, in irritation, as Derrick was holding up the flow of traffic on Main Street, halted as he was here in front of the office.
“Tish,” I said, pitching my voice low and trying for a calm tone. “Please…”
Derrick stepped on the accelerator and drove away; it was only as he turned a corner and was out of sight that I released my grip on Tish’s arm.
“Jesus Christ,” she breathed out in a rush, seeming to come back to herself. She said, “Ruthie, I’m sorry. That was very…unprofessional of me…”
“Let’s go have lunch at my place,” I said, rubbing her back as I had when she’d been nearly immobile beside Case’s hospital bed. “It’s all right.”
Tish locked up the office and the two of us walked across the street, the noontime sun hot on our bare heads. She followed me up the steps outside my place and sighed deeply before she said, “We didn’t really get to talk about what Robbie said this morning.”
Al had arrived as Robbie was leaving, putting a damper on any further conversation in that particular vein.
“I will tell Al everything, but I want to talk to Case first,” Tish said, and her voice had mellowed a little. She said, “I wish there was a way I could access Derrick’s cell phone records. Legally, that is. Just to see if he and Ron spoke the night of the fire. It would be a start. You should have seen the hatred rolling from him when he looked at me just now.”
This scared me deeply; I was terrified that whoever started the fire would decide to take additional drastic measures.
“So, obviously the Yancys and Ron Turnbull are in bed together. They’ll protect each other,” I said with certainty.
“Our job is to find the link, with hard, admissible evidence,” Tish said, as I unlocked the door to my apartment. At least she sounded more like herself.
“We better eat at the diner,” I said to Tish, after I gave her the grand tour, which took about fifteen seconds. “I don’t have a lot of food here. I haven’t even been to the grocery store yet.”
“We can go together after work,” she said. “Let me hit the bathroom first.”
“You can touch all four walls from the toilet!” I called after her, and was heartened to her giggle in response.
***
Marshall gave me my first lesson on how to saddle a horse that evening. Clark made supper for us (“Yes, I’m completely spoiled,” Marshall acknowledged. “I hardly ever cook for myself”) and we ate broiled catfish and mashed potatoes with Wy and his dad. After dessert, Wy came to hang on the corral to watch as Marshall led Banjo, one of their mares, from the barn and tethered her with a lead line to the top beam of the fence. She was a lovely horse with a smoky, gray-brown hide, a dark stripe down the middle of her back, and graceful black legs.
“Hi, pretty girl,” I told her, patting her neck, which twitched beneath my touch.
Marshall cupped her square jaws and kissed her between the eyes, saying, “She’s about the most even-tempered of our mares, except for Oreo. You’d never believe she was sired by the same stud as Arrow.”
He said words like sired and stud so matter-of-factly, and I felt a smile move over my lips. He caught my amusement and winked at me.
“Good to know,” I said lightly, still stroking Banjo’s neck. Marshall held my gaze and I reminded myself Wy was just a few yards away, watching everything we were doing, and therefore forced myself to refocus. But it wasn’t exactly easy, as Marshall was wearing his cowboy hat and a pair of worn leather gloves, so incredibly handsome and tempting in his work clothes, and to make matters worse, we hadn’t kissed in the last two hours. It seemed a thousand times that long, and then I smiled at this thought.
He moved behind me to grab the saddle pad from where it was resting over the corral fence, not quite touching me in passing, but close enough that I felt the heat of him. Banjo’s saddle was positioned beside it.
He said, “The blanket goes first,” and passed it into my hands.
Wy said helpfully, “It goes right on her back.”
“Really?” I responded, teasing the boy with my tone.
Marshall said, “Thanks, Wy.”
I positioned the blanket, which was a fleece rectangle about an inch thick, as squarely atop her back as I could.
“Now, if you have to adjust the pad, pull it backwards or lift it straight up,” Marshall said. “If you slide it forward along her back, it irritates the hair there. Pulls it the wrong way.”
I nodded, absorbing his words, watching Banjo; she was standing still as a carving, her sleek black tail the only thing that moved occasionally, as though perhaps twitching away a stray fly.
Marshall grabbed the saddle itself, his muscles taut as he held it, the evening sun catching him in a way that made my throat ache with emotion. He looked so right in his black hat, gripping the saddle so effortlessly.
“You want to approach from the left,” he explained. “This is a western saddle, which means the cinch is
permanently attached to the right side. You flip the left stirrup up over the top of the saddle and then settle it squarely over the pad. You want about three or so inches of pad showing in the front. It’s not easy at first.” He demonstrated, of course making it look easy, and then swung it down from Banjo’s back and said, “Now you give it a try.”
I took the saddle from his arms and was surprised at how heavy it was, but I was determined to do this right. I strained to lift it to Banjo’s back (which seemed higher than a skyscraper at present), but I finally managed, only knocking the saddle pad a little off-center.
“That was pretty good,” Marshall said, grinning at me. The sun danced over his shoulders; he was facing away from it and my eyes were dazzled by both his grin and the low-slanting beams. He explained, “The western saddle hasn’t changed much in design in probably a hundred years.” He caught a raised piece on the front of it into his gloved hand and explained, “This is the horn and always goes in front. Beneath it is the pommel, and here in back is the cantle. These are the –”
“Stirrups,” I interrupted. “That I do know.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he responded, lifting the one closest to us and settling it over Banjo’s back. He said, “Now we buckle the cinch, which was the hardest thing for me to get when I was first learning.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“I think I was probably three or four,” he said, in all seriousness. “Dad had us in saddles almost before we could walk.”
“What was your first horse’s name?” I asked him.
“Dee,” he said softly. “She was a little sorrel that Garth and I both learned on.” My adoring gaze moved between his lips and his eyes.
Both of us nearly forgot Wy until the boy piped up, saying, “I remember her! I rode her a few times too, before we had to put her down.”
Marshall resumed the lesson, explaining patiently, “First, reach beneath and grab the cinch. See here? And this is the latigo strap, which has to run through the ring of the cinch.” He demonstrated. “Then, you have to feed the strap through the D-ring, this thing here. What you want is about a foot or so of free strap coming from the D-ring. Then, you tie a western cinch knot.”
Until Tomorrow Page 24