by Laura Crum
“That’s weird,” he agreed, when I was done, and looked as mystified as I felt. “What would be the point of coming here on horseback at midnight?”
“I was hoping you could tell me,” I said, as I hopped out of the Jeep to open the gate.
Bret drove through and I shut the gate behind him. In another moment we were bouncing down a dirt road between rounded green hills at a greater rate of knots than I would have chosen, Bret wearing a purposeful expression behind the steering wheel.
“Whose property is this?” I asked, gesturing at the ranch land we were passing.
“Right-hand side of the road is Donna Wells’ place. Left-hand side is Kevin Moore.”
The second name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t place it. “I don’t see any houses or barns,” I said.
“These are big places, both of them. Several thousand acres each. You can’t see their houses from here. Donna and Kevin both raise cattle; they’ve got lots of ground. Lonny’s little gentleman’s horse ranch is the only one in this valley.”
“Kate must really be the low-rent district,” I said.
“She is.” Bret grinned. “Not real popular with the locals, old Kate.”
“Why?” I asked, though I thought I already knew.
“The ranchers don’t agree with her anti-slaughter campaign,” Bret said. “She’s always hassling the Richardsons, who run the livestock auction, and they’re a real important local family. Nobody likes it.”
“So why isn’t Kate a suspect when two of the Richardson family get murdered?”
Bret spat what I thought was probably tobacco juice out the side of the Jeep. “Like I said, there’s too much evidence against Lonny. John, the detective, is an old, fat, lazy cop. Just between you and me, and I hope you’ll keep it to yourself. He’s not going to look any further for a suspect.” Bret was quiet for a second, his eyes on the bumps ahead. “I can’t see Kate shooting those two. What motive would she have?”
“But someone shot them. And since we assume it wasn’t Lonny, it has to be someone else. And Kate acted really strange when I was talking to her this morning. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or upset or if she’s always kind of hostile, but she sure acted like something was bugging her. And she’s passionate about stopping the slaughter of horses. Sounds like a motive to kill an auctioneer to me, at least as good a motive as Lonny’s supposed to have. Got any ideas, if you don’t like Kate?”
I could tell that Bret did have some ideas; even after a hiatus of ten years, my childhood friend’s expressions were instantly familiar to me and I found myself recalling his typical behaviors without any effort. Bret was quiet, looking ahead, pointedly not answering me. I knew this meant that he didn’t choose to share his thoughts with me. I also knew that no amount of coaxing was likely to change his stance. Bret had always been secretive.
Five minutes and lots of rolling oak tree-and-granite-studded hills later, Bret gestured at an old stone house off to the right at the end of a winding drive, next to the creek, with a barn, a set of corrals, and an arena beside it. “Donna Wells’ place,” he said.
The house was pretty and the yard well-tended. I could see some shiny horses in the corrals. The whole place looked simple and pleasant.
“Who’s Donna Wells?” I asked.
“Biggest landowner in these parts,” Bret said. “She inherited the place from her parents. She was raised in that stone house.”
“Is she married?”
“She was. Twice. She’s single now. Rumor has it she was seeing Cole Richardson.”
“The one who was killed? The auctioneer?”
“That’s right. Lorene’s brother.”
“Oh,” I said, wondering if I would ever be able to keep this local infrastructure straight in my head.
Bret smiled, as if he intuited my thought. “Everybody around here is either related to, or has been at one time or another said to be seeing everybody else around here. It’s confusing.”
“What about Kate?” I asked. For some reason I was interested in Kate. “Anybody supposed to have been seeing her?”
“Nope. Like I told you, the locals don’t like her. They avoid her.”
“She’s good looking,” I said. “I bet some of these locals have noticed.”
Bret shrugged, and pointed again, this time to a big house on top of a hill to the left of the road. “Kevin Moore’s place.”
“Who’s he? I know I’ve heard that name.”
“Lorene’s ex. Who was apparently trying to get back together with her. He and Lonny weren’t on the best of terms. A couple of people heard them arguing at that barbecue Lonny had on Friday. And then Lonny threw him out.”
“Oh,” I said again.
“Kevin Moore has a lot of money,” Bret added. “People say Lorene left him because he ran around on her.”
“What do you think?”
“I think he ran around on her all right.” Bret grinned. “I don’t know if that’s why she left him.”
Our dirt road was bending to the right, moving away from the route of the stream, which was dropping into a narrow canyon, the canyon that Blue, Mac, and I had come up yesterday, via the old highway. The road we were on ran between low hills, following level ground toward what looked like another big valley ahead.
We passed a fenceline and Bret gestured to the right. “Justin Roberts’ place.”
“Now who’s Justin Roberts?”
“He’s a small-time rancher. His place borders the saleyard. He’s the one who saw Lonny leaving the auction on Saturday evening.”
“Right after Cole and Lorene were murdered?”
“Yeah.”
“Does Justin Roberts have any reason to lie about that? Or any motive to kill the Richardsons? Maybe he didn’t like having a livestock auction as a neighbor.”
Bret shook his head. “Justin was friends with Cole. And he loves the cattle business. He sold cattle at the sale all the time. He’s just a small-time kind of a guy, but he really loves being a cowboy. And unfortunately he’s not lying about seeing Lonny. Lonny admits it.”
“He admits it?”
“Yep. He says he was there, all right. Stuck his head in the door of the office, asked Lorene if she wanted to go to dinner. He says Lorene told him she had more work to get through; they had a big sale that day. Lonny says he never saw Cole. He just said good-bye to Lorene and left. Justin saw him drive out.” Bret pointed. “See that mailbox on the top of the next hill?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Justin’s driveway. He’s got a little place up there. Runs a few cattle. When we get to the top of the hill, you’ll see the saleyard.”
I was thinking. “So, Blake, the other Richardson brother, found the bodies an hour after Justin saw Lonny?”
“Yep.”
“And he never saw anyone else around the saleyard?”
“He doesn’t remember seeing anyone in particular. But he was busy. Feeding the cattle, doing the chores.”
“Right. So he might not have noticed someone who was being sneaky.” I was still thinking. “So, Lonny’s gun, with Lonny’s fingerprints on it, was found at the scene?”
“You got it.”
I shook my head, and then was sorry as the Jeep hit a deep rut, giving my half-twisted neck a painful jerk. “Has anybody wondered about that? Lonny would have to be an idiot to shoot those people and leave his gun there. He’s not that dumb.”
“I agree,” Bret said. “John’s taking the tack that it’s a crime of passion. Lonny was crazy jealous that Lorene was breaking up with him and getting back together with Kevin. He wasn’t thinking straight.”
I snorted. “Not likely,” I said. “I know Lonny.”
Bret grinned. “Even I know Lonny well enough to know that’s not him. But old John is sticking to his guns. He thinks he’s got his man.” Bret pointed through the windshield. “There’s the yard.”
I followed his hand and saw the array of corrals ahead and to the right, arranged a
round the skirts of a small hill. Surmounting the hill, surrounded by a gravel parking lot, mostly empty of cars, but full of various tractors, trailers, and pieces of equipment, was a battered red barn, which looked as if it held offices at one end. The local livestock auction. The end with the offices had some yellow crime-scene tape around it, I noticed.
Bret waved his pointing hand. “Voilà,” he said.
Chapter 8
We had no sooner parked the Jeep and gotten out when two people approached us from opposite directions. One was a tall, slim, dark-haired man who came striding out of the corrals. The other, a shorter, stockier guy with a soft chin and close-cropped light brown hair, stepped out of a white pickup parked right in front of the saleyard offices. Both men wore Wrangler jeans, cowboy boots, and baseball caps, the de facto uniform for livestock folks. Bret, I noticed, was dressed the same. I knew that my loose brown cotton cargo pants and fleece-lined flat-soled boots marked me definitively as an outsider in this world.
“That’s Blake Richardson,” Bret said quietly to me, looking toward the taller man, “and Justin Roberts.” Bret’s eyes now pointed at the thickset guy walking across the lot from the truck.
“Oh,” I said, and decided to keep quiet.
Neither one of the men was the least bit interested in me. Their eyes passed over me without comment; I could see that in both their minds I was some sort of non-essential accouterment of Bret’s. Not his wife, not young or good looking enough to be a girlfriend, not dressed appropriately for a livestock person. Immediate dismissal from the mind.
It made sense, after all. Perhaps under other circumstances there might have been some curiosity about me as a stranger, but at the moment the locals had one subject occupying their thoughts.
Blake Richardson reached us first. On close examination he proved to be a fairly handsome man of roughly forty, with a big nose, vividly blue eyes, dark hair showing gray at the temples, and a reserved, somewhat strained expression. Considering that he’d lost his brother and sister the night before last to a murder, he seemed pretty darn composed and calm, if a bit somber.
“Hey, Bret.” Blake’s voice was low. The three of us watched Justin Roberts approach.
When Justin was within a few feet of our little group, Blake jerked his chin in a greeting to him, and Justin nodded civilly in return. “Bret,” he said, half smiling in our general direction. Both men glanced at me briefly and then looked away.
“Gail McCarthy,” Bret said. “She’s an old friend of mine. She’s visiting from the coast with her husband and son.”
The men made polite noises. Now I was placed. I noticed that Bret made no mention of the fact that the person I was visiting was actually Lonny. Both men had their eyes on Bret.
“Any news?” Blake asked.
Bret shrugged. “Lonny Peterson’s been arrested. You knew that.”
Some silence greeted his remark. No one protested that Lonny was surely innocent. They just waited.
I was finding that I didn’t like these two men. Why, I couldn’t say. The older I got the more I found that I responded to people’s energy, the feeling that I got from them, more than I had any logical reasons for like or dislike. In this case, the tall man gave me an edgy, uncomfortable feeling, and the thickset Justin felt antagonistic, as if he were trying to dominate the situation. I had no idea what, if any, subtle body cues had given me this impression. Certainly not enough words had been said for the dialogue to be relevant.
I took a half step backward.
“Will they set bail?” Justin Roberts asked evenly.
Bret shrugged, and regarded Justin quietly, saying nothing. After a moment his attention shifted to Blake. “How’re you doing?” he asked. The tone carried no emotion, but I was familiar enough with good-old-boy speak, and with Bret, to know it represented a form of sympathy.
“I’m okay,” Blake said. “Getting through it. I’d like to know who killed my brother and sister, though.”
“You don’t think it was Lonny Peterson?” Justin Roberts looked genuinely curious.
Whatever answer Blake might have made was abandoned as all four of our heads turned in the direction of a fancy dark green dually pickup, which entered the parking lot, drove across it at a brisk clip, and pulled up next to our little group. The man inside rolled down the driver’s-side window, turned off the engine, and spoke without leaving his seat.
“Any conclusions?”
I studied the speaker. He looked tall, though it was hard to tell, seeing him seated. He had brown eyes and hair and the sort of double chin that said he was carrying extra pounds. Like the other men, he wore a ball cap. Something in his lazy tone sounded inappropriate to our discussion.
“Kevin.” The greeting came from Bret. The other two men obviously knew the newcomer; Blake met his eyes briefly; Justin Roberts’ chin jerked up an inch. I supposed the driver of the truck to be Kevin Moore. Neighboring rancher who, if I remembered right, used to be married to Lorene, and had been dating her again. Had been heard arguing with Lonny at a recent barbecue at Lonny’s house. Suspect number one, I decided, and looked at Kevin Moore with renewed interest.
The lazy brown eyes met mine with what I thought was considerably more curiosity than the other men had shown.
Bret saw the look and said, “This is Gail McCarthy, an old friend of mine. She’s visiting from the coast with her husband and son. Gail, this is Kevin Moore. His ranch is just down the road.”
Kevin Moore touched the brim of his ball cap. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
Something in the quiet drawl sounded sarcastic; why, I wasn’t sure. The words were perfectly appropriate; it was the look in the man’s eyes that seemed mocking. I nodded in his direction and said nothing.
Kevin Moore turned his attention to Bret. “So you guys put old Lonny in the clink.”
“That’s right.” Bret met Kevin’s eyes and said nothing. I smiled to myself. Bret was a master at this game. Nothing had changed.
For what seemed like a long time the two men stared at each other quietly. No one broke the silence. Kevin was the first to drop his eyes.
I was deciding that I liked Kevin Moore even less than I did Blake or Justin. Maybe I was just getting anti-social in my old age. Maybe Lonny being accused of these murders had upset me even more than I realized, and I was now suspicious of everyone. But I was getting a bad feeling from these men.
After another few seconds Blake spoke to Bret. “Do you guys think Lonny did this?”
Bret just shook his head. “You know what we found,” he said quietly.
“Lonny’s gun,” Blake agreed. “And we know Lonny was here. But I wouldn’t have thought he’d do something like that.”
“Damn right he’d do something like that.” Kevin Moore spat out his window. “Who else has a motive?”
The other two men said nothing. All three of them watched Bret. Clearly the locals wanted to know what tack the sheriff’s department would be taking.
Bret stared into the middle distance for a while, and then spat on the ground and shrugged. “More than my job’s worth to talk about it,” he said evenly. “I’d better go. I was just giving Gail, here, a tour of the local sights.”
Kevin Moore half smiled. “Had to include the site of our latest local drama, huh?” He did not sound particularly heartbroken for a man who had just lost his ex-wife and current squeeze.
“That’s right,” Bret said, and took a step toward the Jeep.
As if realizing how cavalier he appeared, Kevin Moore met Bret’s eyes with a sudden show of seriousness. “I’m not gonna forget about Lorene,” he said. “If Lonny killed her, I want you guys to make sure he pays for it.”
Bret nodded as if Kevin had mouthed a meaningless pleasantry. Taking his cue, I followed suit with a “Nice to meet you all,” and moved after him toward the Jeep.
Various polite murmurs followed us from the men. Blake Richardson and Justin Roberts remained standing by Kevin Moore’s open window as we drove o
ut of the parking lot. I could see Justin’s mouth opened in speech.
“I wish we could hear what they’re saying,” I said to Bret.
“They’ll be a lot more free when I’m gone,” he answered. “They’ll be speculating on whether Lonny did it.”
“Can they possibly believe he did?”
“I dunno.” Bret shrugged his right shoulder. “Maybe one of them has got a reason to want us to think that.”
“Kevin Moore, you mean? Do you think he did it?”
Bret shrugged the shoulder again. “I don’t really think anything,” he said. “I just wonder. You want to go back now?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, I do.”
I was finding that I was suddenly weary of the dark weight that seemed to be settling on me as my attention focused on these murders. I wanted to go back to vacation mode. Blue and Mac were at the swimming hole now, in the sunshine. I wanted to be there, too.
“Want to go swimming?” I asked Bret.
He shook his head and smiled, as if his mind were elsewhere. We bounced along the dirt road in silence. A dusty blur ahead of us announced itself by loud engine noise to be a growling diesel pickup, coming our way. As it drew alongside, both Bret and the driver of the truck slowed to a stop. Looking across Bret, I could see the solitary driver, a man of roughly sixty, with a jowly face that reminded me of a bassett hound.
“Well, hi, Bret. What the hell are you up to?” The words were ordinary enough, but the man’s voice had an odd whining twang, and this typical greeting had the sound of a complaint.
“Just taking Gail, here, for a drive. She’s visiting from the coast with her husband and son.” Bret’s voice was noncommittal.
“I thought you’d be out investigating who killed Cole and Lorene. Or are you guys sure Lonny did it?” The man’s whiny voice had an avid note as he said this.
“Ask John Green, not me, Joe. He’s the detective.”
“I know you don’t know shit. That’s for sure.” Joe spat some tobacco juice out the window of his truck, narrowly missing the Jeep. “And you wouldn’t tell me if you did know. I’m headed down to the saleyard to talk to Blake.”
