A Cowboy's Love

by J. M. Bronston

  “She’s with Ray? No, Ervil, she can’t stay with Ray! She can’t!”

  “Well, she’s just going to have to. There’s no one here can look after her, what with Edna sick and all.” Ervil sat down on a straight-backed chair near the window and put the shoes on the table next to him as though that was the very spot he’d been looking for all the time. “She’ll have to stay with Ray from now on. He’s going to have to look after her. He’s her father, ain’t he? I just hope he sees properly to the child’s spiritual life. That’s what Edna would want.” Ervil’s chest heaved in a big, helpless sigh. “But there’s no telling with that boy.”

  His eyes wandered aimlessly around the room and then finally focused on Jamie, as though he’d figured out at last who she was and what she was doing there. He gestured toward the beribboned box in her hand and added abstractedly, “You can leave that off if you want, but I don’t know as how I’ll be seeing the kid again.”

  “Never mind.” Jamie had to get to Mandy right away, get her away from Ray. “I’ll give it to her myself.” She didn’t even say goodbye as she let the front door slam shut behind her, leaving Ervil staring slackly into the empty room.

  She had the Civic pulling up in front of Ray’s trailer home in a matter of minutes. Sharperville’s few short streets end abruptly in open rangeland and the trailer was set well off by itself, beyond the last of the streets, on three dusty acres, with only a rough dirt road leading up to it.

  Jamie slammed to a stop and was out of the car instantly. In a moment she was knocking on the door, pounding on the door, yelling at the top of her voice.

  “Ray! Damn it, Ray!”

  She pulled violently at the handle, but the door was locked. She tried to see into the windows but there was no sign of anyone. Helplessly, she slammed her hand once, hard, against the locked door, and then ran back to her car. The rising waves of panic were taking over her rational self and she sat still for a minute, gripping the wheel, trying to get control of herself, of her feelings, of her thoughts.

  Oh, God! Let her be all right. Please let her be all right.

  Her hands were shaking as she started the engine. She turned the car around sharply, and in a moment was racing for the main road, heading for the Jackman ranch.

  I need help. I need Cal!

  She found him at the far end of the alfalfa field where he’d just finished repairing the fence. His tools were already loaded into the truck, and he was putting a coil of wire and a bucket of staples into the bed when her car pulled to a noisy stop on the dirt road.

  He needed only one glance at her face. The color was drained away beneath her tan, and her blue eyes were frantic with fear and anger and frustration. He tossed the wire into the truck and took a few long strides toward her.

  “Jamie, honey. What’s happened?”

  He tried to put his arms around her, but she was too distracted to let him. Instead, she walked to his truck, and slammed her hand against the tailgate, and then she strode back to him and then away again, this time to the fence, then back and around him. She was like an animal, looking for a way out of its cage.

  “All right,” she was saying as she paced frantically. Her tone carried a challenge. “All right. I’m coming to you for help. You said, I can come to you for help? All right, I’m in real trouble now and I’m coming to you. I need help. I need help real bad. You’ve got to help me, Cal.” She stopped in front of him and her eyes filled with tears.

  Cal didn’t try to touch her. “What’s happened?”

  “It’s Mandy. Ray’s got her. Edna’s sick, real sick, up in Salt Lake in a hospital and Ervil doesn’t even know what he’s doing, he’s totally out of it. The doctors say Edna’s going to die, so Ervil just handed Mandy over to Ray like she was a package or something. He doesn’t even expect to take her back. Tina took her away last night and there’s no one in the trailer and I haven’t any idea where they are, where they’ve got her!”

  Cal was sorting it out cautiously. “Well, darlin’,” he said thoughtfully, “according to the law, Ray has the right to have Mandy with him.”

  That pushed her right to the edge, beyond caring what she said. “Yeah? Well, screw that!” She turned away from him and walked to the nearest fence post. She slammed it hard with her hand and then turned and came back to him. “You don’t understand. I promised her! I told her I would see to it that she wouldn’t have to be alone with Ray and Tina ever again.” She was crying, but they tears were of rage; there were no tears in her voice. “I’ll kidnap her if I have to, I mean it, Cal. I will.”

  Her tension had been strung too tight for her to bear and Cal’s arms went around her protectively. “I know, honey,” he said. “I understand. And you’re not going to have to kidnap her. We’re going to get her back.”

  “Okay. You just tell me how.” She was tense as a drum in his arms.

  “Well, for starters, we’re going to do it legally. Mostly legally, anyway. Shoot, darlin’, I don’t want my girl winding up in the slammer.”

  His tone was easy, his kiss was feather-light on her hair, and his voice, so gentle and steady, helped her breathe again, a little more calmly.

  Grudgingly, she began to settle down. “You better have a suggestion,” she said. “Or I’m going to do something serious. I mean it, Cal.”

  “I know, sweetheart. I know. And I do have a plan. Thought we might talk about it tonight, but maybe it’s best we don’t, after all. The thing is, we don’t want to risk having you too much involved.”

  “What do you mean ‘not involved.’ How can I not be—”

  He stopped her with a calming gesture of his hand, stroking her hair back from her face. “You’ve got a court fight coming up and you’ve got to be absolutely clean. You leave this part to me. We’re going to have to move fast and I know what I’ll be looking for. But don’t worry, Jamie. I’ll be needing your help, so for sure there’ll be plenty for you to do. You just hop into the truck while I get some stuff I need back here.”

  “You better know what you’re doing.”

  “Trust me,” he said, as he reached into the truck’s bed and pulled out his toolbox. “It’ll be okay.”

  She climbed into the cab and while she waited for him, she took a couple of deep breaths and had a quick little talk with herself.

  You asked for his help. You came to him for help, you asked him to do something, so don’t go trying to stop him, now that he’s doing it.

  Cal poked through a number of items in the toolbox and then muttered, “One of these should do.” He removed a few small-size picks and dropped them into the pocket of his jeans. He checked his cell phone to be sure it was fully charged. Then he went around the front, hoisted his long frame onto the driver’s seat, and started the engine.

  “Okay,” he said, backing the truck around on the dirt road and heading toward the state highway. “Show me where that trailer is.”

  “The very first street this side of town,” she said. “Take a right on Eighth South and go way past all the houses. It’s about a mile east of Main.”

  “Okay. Now, when we get there, if you don’t see any sign that Ray has come back since you were there, I want you to leave me and drive away. Not too far. Stay right where you can see if he’s coming back. If you see him, call my cell. Let it ring just once; I’ll know that means he’s on his way. Then, you just take off. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be long gone before he arrives. Otherwise, if he doesn’t show, swing by and pick me up in exactly fifteen minutes. I won’t need any more time than that.”

  “You’re going into the trailer?”

  “You betcha.”

  “That’s breaking and entering!”

  “Yup.” He took his eyes off the road for a moment to smile at her. “Burglary, too, I guess. Don’t worry, honey. I’ll be real surprised if I don’t find what I’m looking for.”

  Jamie took a deep breath and nodded once, knowing he’d say nothing more about it. At least, not for now. She turned away and s
tared out the window and started to chew on her thumbnail. It was probably a good thing she didn’t see Cal take the big Smith and Wesson from the pocket in the door at his side and slip it into his belt at the small of his back. He lifted the tail of his shirt over the revolver to cover it. Then he looked over at her and he grinned. He reached over and took her hand from her mouth and brought it to his lips.

  “It’s going to be all right, Jamie,” he said, kissing the rough fingernail gently. “Nothing’s going to go wrong.”

  * * *

  Cal waited till Jamie was out of sight. Then he pulled the tiny picks from his pocket and selected one. It took him only a moment to open the lock and let himself into the trailer home. He hadn’t expected that Tina and Ray would be strong on housekeeping, so he wasn’t surprised by the mess of papers and clothes and dirty dishes that littered the place. On the kitchen counter, he found the usual drug paraphernalia. Pipes, foil, a bottle of chlorine. A mess of steel wool, baking soda, glass vials. A scale. He took several pictures with his phone, making sure to get enough of the background to identify the location.

  On the floor, shoved up against a cabinet in the corner of the kitchen, he found a crumpled bag made of a stiff, thick plastic. The blue logo stamped on its side was clearly visible and its interior was cloudy with a white dust which, Cal was sure, a laboratory analysis would show to be cocaine or heroin. He had no doubt that Ray had lifted a single kilo package of the drug for his private purposes, either business or pleasure. Skimming was a dangerous game, but Cal suspected that Ray was just dumb enough to try to play it.

  A fast look over the rest of the place, over the unmade bed, the shoes and sweaters and pants spilling out of dresser drawers, cigarette-laden ashtrays, and Cal saw, on the table next to the bed, a couple of used syringes, more evidence that Ray was a user as well as a distributor. He had already noted a couple of cell phones and a beeper unit on the coffee table in the living room area. Those, together with the short-wave radio on the floor next to the front door, had confirmed his certainty, as soon as he entered the trailer, that Ray was using the electronic gear to signal ground coordinates to planes coming from Mexico.

  As ugly as the disordered mess was, Cal was glad to see it. The clutter suited his purpose.

  “Just as well. They’ll never know anyone’s been through this place.”

  He rifled quickly through the dresser drawers, finding only a couple of loaded pistols mixed in with Tina’s panties and bras and another pistol in the drawer next to Ray’s socks. A big Ruger .45 was in the nightstand along with a box of cartridges and few packs of detonator caps.

  “Stupid sonofabitch.”

  He was moving fast but carefully. Learning to “take his time in a hurry” had been an essential part of his training, back when he was a little tyke on his dad’s ranch. Without wasting any motion, Cal took some pics of the contents of the drawers, showing the firearms and the caps.

  But it was in the corner of the closet, concealed under a stack of folded blankets, behind some scattered shoes, that Cal finally found what he needed. A ledger book, with entries showing Ray’s record of his distributions, including dates, code names, quantities of drugs delivered, and the payoffs received.

  And under the ledger, packs of hundred-dollar bills, still in their bank wrappers. Cal ran a thumb over the edge of one of the packs. Each of them held a hundred bills. A recent payoff, then, not yet removed to its more permanent hiding place. Most likely Ray planned to launder it through the car dealership to an off-shore numbered bank account, beyond the easy reach of prying regulators.

  Still working quickly, he photographed the hiding place, then moved the blankets and took pictures of the ledger, closed and then opened to selected pages, and a careful close-up of the bills, fanned out to show the quantity.

  He glanced at his watch. Only another minute before Jamie was due back. He checked to be sure there was no sign that he’d been there, and he picked his way through the cluttered trailer, back to the door. There had been no phone call and he’d had no need to use his Smith and Wesson.

  He stood to one side of the window and checked that no one had approached the trailer. Outside, the field was quiet, dry in the hot mid-day sun, and in the distance, a tractor moved slowly, raising a shimmering cloud of dust.

  Right on schedule, the truck appeared, trailing its own cloud of billowing, sandy dust, and Cal quickly let himself out of the trailer, being careful to lock the door behind him. Everything had gone perfectly.

  “Good girl,” he said as he climbed up to the passenger side of the truck. “Let’s move it out of here.”

  “Are you okay?” Jamie headed back to Harvey’s ranch as fast as she could go without risking the attention of a local trooper. “Did you find what you wanted? Did you have any problems?

  “Yes, yes, and no.” Cal laughed, answering her questions in order. “It was just like I figured. That ex-husband of yours is doing it big-time. My affidavit should be enough to get a court order, but I’ve got pictures to back it up.” He slid down in the seat, his long legs braced up against the dash board and he leaned his head back against the seat. He pushed his hat forward almost over his eyes and grinned happily.

  “Let’s go make a phone call to Elaine French. We’ve got some good news for her.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  They went back to the ranch to use the land line in Harvey’s office.

  “The van’s not here,” Cal said, looking over the row of vehicles parked in the smooth dirt driveway. “Ellie’s probably got the kids with her over to Butcher’s Fork.” He paused on the kitchen steps and peered out toward the pasture.

  “I don’t see Harv, either. Looks like the whole family’s gone.”

  She followed him through the kitchen where the table was already set for the next meal. There were kids’ drawings on the refrigerator door and a bowl of fresh fruit on the countertop. The room was so clean and orderly it might have been waiting to be photographed. A pang of longing stopped her for a moment. For Jamie, this homey, ordinary kitchen glowed with the aura of normal family life, comfortable in its orderliness, its sense of children cared for, parents responsible and reliable.

  This, she imagined, is how it is in a normal, happy home. This is what I want for Mandy and me.

  She sighed, acknowledging the moment’s bittersweet awareness of her dreams—and her losses. She kept it all to herself as she joined Cal.

  “I’ll show you were the phone is,” he said, leading her down the hall, “and get you Elaine’s number. Then I’ll heat up some coffee for us. There’s a pot left from breakfast. I’m the only one around here drinks coffee.”

  The room Harvey used as an office had a small desk, some file cabinets, and a big, comfortable old chair that was covered in dark brown leather.

  “Here’s Elaine’s number,” he said, scrolling through the contacts on his cell phone. “You start talking to her and I’ll get us some coffee.”

  * * *

  Elaine French sat back in the big leather chair, set a fresh yellow pad in front of her on the desk, and wrote the day’s date in the upper margin.

  “Okay, Jamie,” she said into the speaker phone. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  Jamie started with the news of Edna’s illness, and a big satisfied smile brightened Elaine’s face.

  “This is super. Just super, Jamie. It’s exactly what we need—just the kind of change in circumstances that can convince the judge to modify the original custody award.” She ticked off the analysis: “One, Edna won’t be taking care of Mandy anymore. And two, Ervil refuses to have the child there in his home. It’s a beginning. It gives us a stronger case than we had before.”

  She didn’t give an instant’s sympathy to either Edna or Ervil. As far as she was concerned, they were on the side of the bad guys and now it looked like they were out of her way. Her mind raced ahead. Now, if Cal could dig up some information on Ray Nixon . . .

  Jamie interrupted her train of thought. “T
here’s lots more, Elaine. Hold on a minute and I’ll let Cal tell you all about it. He’s just getting us some coffee.”

  Elaine tapped her pen on the yellow pad in eager impatience.

  This is great. I’ll bet that darling cowboy has turned up something on that bunch. I knew I could count on him.

  She heard Jamie say, “Here, you can talk to her,” and then it was Cal on the line.

  “How’re you doing Elaine? I told Jamie you’d be in your office today, even if it is Saturday.”

  She didn’t bother to tell him that it had been many years since anything gave her as much pleasure as she found in her work.

  “Fact is,” she said, “I’m just now preparing the petition to modify Jamie’s divorce decree. What she just told me, about Mandy’s grandmother being so sick. That’s great. That’s going to help a lot. And she said there’s more. So what have you got for me, Cal?”

  “We got plenty. We may even have enough to hang that ex-husband of Jamie’s out to dry.”

  “Great! That’s just great!” She flipped a switch on the phone console behind her on the credenza. I’m going to record this, Cal, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Sure thing, Elaine. No problem. Now, here it is.”

  While Elaine made rapid notes on her legal pad, interrupting him occasionally to ask a question, Cal reviewed everything he had seen at the trailer.

  “I got photos, too—just fifteen minutes ago—pictures of the ledgers, and all that drug stuff all over the place and the paraphernalia and what’s probably the payoff money. And there’s a bunch of guns in that trailer and loose ammo and everything. That’s going to be enough to convince a judge that Mandy shouldn’t be allowed to be with him, isn’t it?”

  Elaine laughed. “It should be enough after I get finished with him. And I’m not going to ask you how you got all this. I feel pretty sure Ray Nixon didn’t invite you in to take a look at his place.”

  “Let’s just say the front door was open and I sort of went in to wait for him, you know? Like one old friend to another.”