by Laura Crum
“Sure. If it’s okay with you. Kate visited yesterday and gave me her okay.”
“Did she?” Lonny smiled his tired smile. “She’s sort of an odd duck, but she means well. I think the little yellow horse is a good one. I rode him a few times. I’m glad you like him.”
“Kate said something else. She said she was at the saleyard,” I glanced down at Mac, “that evening. She saw something. She wouldn’t tell me what. Maybe she saw someone.”
Lonny met my eyes. “There must have been someone, all right. Because it damn sure wasn’t me.”
“I know,” I said. “Bret knows it, too. It’s only this detective who thinks you’re guilty.”
Lonny’s mouth twisted ruefully. “John Green. Who has been a detective in this county for thirty years. He doesn’t know me. All he knows is, the evidence damns me. And that’s good enough for him.”
“Get a good lawyer,” I said. “Hire a private investigator. Find out who did it.”
“Maybe,” Lonny said, and looked down at Mac with that weary smile. “Should we go for a ride? I haven’t ridden Smoky in a week.”
“Can we, Mama?” Mac begged.
“Sure.”
And in another minute we were all out at the corrals, catching and saddling horses. Just another day on the ranch.
Chapter 12
Bret arrived early that afternoon, true to his word. Blue and Mac and Freckles were down at the swimming hole. Lonny had departed for home, after riding around the ranch with the three of us. I was the only one left in camp, sitting outside under an oak tree, reading a mystery by Laurie King. I looked up at the approach of the blue Jeep.
Bret climbed out of the driver’s side and sat down. “I just went by and had a chat with Lonny,” he said.
I put my book down. “What did he say?”
“I wanted to get his story. Off the record. Starting with that barbecue he had on Friday night.”
“So, what did he say?”
“He said he invited a few people over. Lorene and Cole and Blake, Donna, Justin, another guy you haven’t met named Rusty Porter. He’s a local rancher who goes team roping with Lonny. And Kevin showed up, uninvited, and joined the party.
“Lonny says that at some point in the evening, after lots of beer had been drunk and all the steak had been eaten, Kevin started coming on to Lorene.
“Those were his words. ‘Coming on.’ I wasn’t there, so I don’t know if Lorene was flirting with Kevin or it was all on Kevin’s part or what. All I know is that Lonny said that it pissed him off and he told Kevin to get the hell out of his house. Kevin left, I guess, but not without doing some hollering at Lonny. Lonny says he told Kevin to go to hell and leave Lorene alone, or some such thing.
“Apparently Lorene didn’t like this, because shortly after Kevin left, she left, too. And all those guys heard her tell Lonny, ‘You don’t own me.’ She was thoroughly pissed off, by all accounts.
“So, according to Lonny, the rest of them hang around for a while, and then they all leave.”
I was thinking fast. “What about the gun?”
“That’s what I asked him,” Bret agreed. “Lonny said that he has no idea when the gun was stolen. It was in an unlocked drawer in his bedside table.” Bret grinned. “You’ll find a gun like that in virtually every house in this county. It’s why we have so few break-ins.
“Lonny said he hadn’t looked at the gun in months. It was no secret that he had it. Lorene certainly knew. I asked if it could have been taken that night and he said, sure. The bathroom is across the hall from the bedroom and both are out of sight of the living room and deck, where the party was going on. Everybody used the bathroom. Anybody could have stolen that gun.”
“And anybody who was planning this crime would have had the sense not to get their fingerprints on it.”
“Yep,” Bret said. “But it could have been anyone who was in Lonny’s house for the last few months, including someone who walked in while he was gone, since he doesn’t keep it locked. So it doesn’t narrow our suspect list down much.”
“Did Lonny tell you what happened at the auction yard on Saturday evening?”
“Yeah. There wasn’t much to tell. Saturday was always sale day and Lonny usually picked Lorene up after the sale and took her to dinner. He drove out there about the usual time, about six o’clock, and walked in the office. He wasn’t sure if Lorene was still pissed at him or not. He said he stepped in the door, saw her working at her desk, and asked if she wanted to go to dinner. She made a short answer, said she still had a lot to get through, and Lonny figured she was still mad at him. So he said, ‘See you later,’ and left. And that’s all he knew until Blake called him around ten o’clock that night and told him what happened.”
“So Blake found the bodies?”
“That’s right,” Bret said ruminatively. “Blake found them. Right around seven o’clock.”
“Does Blake inherit the business?”
“Looks like it,” Bret said. “Neither Cole or Lorene had kids.”
“Will he keep on running it?”
“Hard to say. Cole ran that business. He wasn’t just the auctioneer. Cole was the oldest son. His dad, Ron, ran the business before him. Lorene did the books and worked the front office. Blake is really just a yard man. He takes care of the physical operation, handles the livestock, does the feeding. He’s gonna need some help if he wants to keep it going.”
“Does Blake live there?” I asked.
“Yeah. He’s got a house out back of the yard. Cole and Lorene both lived near there, but not on the place.”
I was thinking. “Did Lonny see anyone while he was there that night? Blake? Kate? Cole? Kate said she saw Blake back in the pens.”
“Lonny said he didn’t see anyone. But he wasn’t looking. He was thinking about Lorene and wondering if she was mad and he wasn’t paying attention to much of anything else. He didn’t see Cole. Cole had a separate office. Lonny doesn’t know whether he was in it or not. He doesn’t remember seeing Blake or anyone else.”
“Where were the bodies found?”
“On the floor of the main office. Cole’s body was near the doorway to his office. Shot nice and neat, through the heart, both of them.”
I remembered the dark stain on the floor that I’d seen, and winced.
“Did anyone hear the shots?” I asked Bret.
“Blake isn’t sure. He was questioned, of course. He says he might have. But people shoot up here all the time. Nobody pays much attention to the sound of shots.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I’ve noticed. I hear pistol shots a lot in the late afternoon. Somebody in that direction,” and I gestured, “must have a regular target practice.”
“Kevin Moore,” Bret said.
“Oh.”
We looked at each other. Then Bret got up. “I thought I’d take a little drive down to the saleyard and see how Blake’s doing. Maybe visit Donna on the way back. Want to come?”
“Sure,” I said. And a minute later we were bumping across the pasture in the Jeep.
“I had a look around the saleyard office yesterday afternoon,” Bret said, half shouting over the engine noise and bumps and thumps. “Then I went up and had a look around Cole’s house. Didn’t find anything of interest. I hope to hell John Green doesn’t find out what I’m up to.”
“Uhm-hum,” I said. “Bret, what is it you’re looking for? What do you think Cole was up to?”
Bret waited until we’d crossed the pasture and I’d opened and closed the gate and gotten back into the Jeep to reply.
“I think he was skimming,” he said at last. “In lots of ways. There’s been rumors about him for years. Luke Barstow, he’s an old rancher, he’s been raising cattle in these parts since before I was born. He hauls all his livestock down to the sale at Atwater. I asked him why, once, and he said he didn’t trust that damn Cole Richardson. He told me a few stories. It made me curious. So I kept my ear to the ground. And I heard a few more stories.”
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“What sort of stories?”
Bret gave me a direct look. His eyes were the same green-brown they’d always been. I still had a hard time reconciling his lined face and silver hair with the young man my mind pictured.
“You gonna be able to keep this to yourself?”
“Yes,” I said. “I might tell Blue. He can keep a secret. He’s not chatty.”
“I can see that. All right. Luke Barstow told me that Cole was doing lots of little things to make extra money. He’d get a truckload of cattle where the rancher wasn’t quite sure of the count—happens all the time. It’s hard keeping an accurate count of cattle that are being herded past you and crowded into the truck. The rancher would send the truck to the sale and tell Cole that he thought there were a hundred head on it. Cole would tell him there were only ninety-eight, and that was that. Nobody questioned it.”
“What would Cole do with these cattle?”
“Rebrand ’em and run ’em through the sale. The brand inspector is his friend. If he told Joe not to worry about the secondary brands on the cattle, Joe wouldn’t think twice about them. Whatever the cattle sold for would be pure profit for Cole. He wouldn’t have spent a cent to acquire them.”
“What are secondary brands? I heard that brand inspector talking about them when we were at the café Tuesday.”
“If a guy buys a steer, say, that has the brand of the man who raised it, and then the buyer rebrands the steer with his own brand, the first guy’s brand becomes a secondary brand. Normally you need to have a bill of sale that shows that the animal was inspected by a brand inspector at the time of the sale. That’s to prevent theft. But Joe, the brand inspector, he’d take Cole’s word on anything. And there were a lot of other ways Cole would cheat people, according to Luke.”
“Like what?”
“Ranchers will drop cattle off a few days before the sale, sometimes. And sometimes a weak calf, that can’t stand the strain of the hauling, will get sick and die. Luke said that Cole would tell people that cattle had died when none did, and he’d keep those cattle, rebrand them and sell them.
“Another thing he could do.” Bret’s eyes were on the road. “As an auctioneer. He could sell cattle a little cheaper if he wanted, just pretend he hadn’t seen the higher bid. A sale moves really fast, you know? ‘Going, gone, sold at thirty cents a pound.’ When maybe thirty-five cents was offered and ignored. Cole could sell cattle under market value and then resell them at the next sale and pocket the profit.
“And there was another way I think he was making money on cattle.”
“What’s that?”
“The time-honored western way.” And Bret grinned. “Stealing cattle.”
“Stealing cattle,” I parroted. “You mean like, as in cattle rustling? Riding into somebody’s pasture at night and gathering their cattle by the full moon?” My words brought an elusive image to mind.
“Yep.” Bret grinned again. “Most of the ranches in these parts are pretty big. And everybody loses a few head from time to time. Cattle break a leg, or get sick and die, and wind up in a ravine somewhere and the rancher never finds ’em. So a little attrition, that’s taken for granted. Luke Barstow reckons Cole was stealing cattle from him and every other rancher in these parts. Just a few head. Now and then. Not enough to make it obvious.”
“Hmmm,” I said. “I don’t think this Luke liked Cole much.”
“Nope. He didn’t like Cole’s dad, Ron, either.”
“So, do you believe Luke?”
“I’ve been paying attention,” Bret said. “There’s other people who say the same. Most of it’s said pretty quietly, because Cole was a big man around here. But it’s said. I wondered about it. I heard that Cole built a fancy place on the coast on some land his dad left him. Like I said, I wonder.”
I thought for a minute as the Jeep jounced down the road. “Wouldn’t Blake have to know?” I asked at last. “If Cole was doing all this and Blake was, is, what did you call it, the yard man?”
“You’d think so,” Bret said. “I’m not sure, though.”
We were nearing the saleyard now.
“Blake keeps to himself,” Bret said. “He doesn’t talk much. He sure never talked about Cole.”
“Could Blake have been Cole’s partner in all this stuff?”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of that.” Bret looked ruminative. “And now Blake owns the whole place. I wonder how he’s gonna manage it.”
I said nothing. The Jeep bumped into the graveled parking lot of the Carson Valley Saleyard. I could see a small group of men standing out in the corrals, near the scales. Bret and I climbed out of the Jeep and strolled in that direction.
“Who’s there?” I asked Bret.
“Blake, Justin, Kevin, Joe, and Rusty Porter, he’s the one that was at Lonny’s barbecue.”
The five men formed themselves into a semicircle, flanking Blake, as Bret and I approached.
“Hey, Bret,” Blake said.
The rest of them made noises of greeting in our general direction. I recognized the four already familiar faces. The stranger, a man with short, ginger red hair and a round face, must be Rusty Porter. I nodded and stretched my lips into a brief half smile.
“How’s it going, Blake?” Bret responded.
“All right. I’m trying to get things organized so that we can have a sale on Saturday.”
“The show must go on.” Bret smiled sympathetically.
“Damn right.” Blake’s blue eyes showed a flash of something, I wasn’t sure if it was anger or pain. “Justin knows a guy from Fresno who can do the auctioneering. I’m still trying to find someone who can run the office.”
Justin Roberts said quietly, “Dave might know someone. I’ll ask him.”
“Thanks, Justin.” Blake looked relieved. “I’ve got to keep this thing going, if I want to make a living.”
Justin smiled. “We all know that. No one wants to see the sale disappear. We need you to keep it going. We need a place to sell our cattle. I’m glad to help if I can.”
The words were kind and reasonable, the smile on the man’s face was courteous and friendly. Why, I wondered, don’t I like this guy? Some undercurrent that I couldn’t place was bothering me.
The men around Blake looked reflective. Joe, the brand inspector, spat out some tobacco juice on the ground. “Damn it. Justin’s right, Blake. We all need the sale to stay in business.” Joe’s voice had the whine I’d noticed before, his heavy-jowled basset hound face looked lugubrious, as if he nursed a perpetual grievance.
I didn’t care for Joe, either. He seemed to have an unnaturally large chip on his shoulder. Hell, I didn’t seem to care for any of these guys. Maybe I was becoming a curmudgeon in my old age. I was certainly developing hermit-like tendencies, anyway. My judgment about these men was undoubtedly colored by my general distaste for social intercourse.
My eyes drifted around the faces. Kevin Moore, I noticed, was watching Bret. After a minute, he spoke.
“So, Lonny’s out on bail?” The voice was the same as I remembered it, slightly drawling, with a mocking undertone.
“That’s right,” Bret said.
“I hear you’re visiting the man.” This was directed at me.
“That’s right,” I echoed, meeting the cynical brown eyes.
“Tell old Lonny to watch his step,” Kevin said. “He’s gonna pay for what he did.”
I watched Kevin carefully. The rest of the group did, too. His half smile never wavered. He kept meeting my eyes.
Biting back the angry retort that leaped to mind, I answered him quietly. “I’ll be sure to tell Lonny exactly what you said.”
Kevin Moore heard the edge in my voice. If anything, the faint smile grew more pronounced. He was baiting me. Prodding. Trying to get a response.
I closed my lips tightly and nodded.
Bret had taken in this little exchange and seemed to make a snap decision.
“Come on, Gail,” he said, and headed for the Jeep.
I followed him, looking over my shoulder at the group of men. They watched us go with guarded eyes, not one of them registering any surprise at our sudden and unexplained departure.
“I didn’t want you to get in an argument with Kevin,” Bret said, when we were back in the Jeep and bumping across the parking lot.
“I wouldn’t have,” I said. “I could tell he was trying to provoke me.”
“He does that,” Bret said. “I wasn’t sure what you’d do.”
“Give me a little credit,” I said. “I’m not as dumb as all that.”
Bret just smiled. “We learned one thing. Blake does plan to keep the sale going. That’s interesting.” He was quiet for a minute, his eyes on the road ahead. “I really want to see Donna,” he said at last.
“How are you gonna justify questioning her?”
“I’m not questioning her. I’m not on duty. I’ve known her a long time. I’m just visiting.” Bret’s lips twitched. “She just lost her boyfriend. Why wouldn’t I visit her?”
“Good point.” I subsided back in my seat. “Lead on.”
And we bounced through the green hills toward the old stone house.
Chapter 13
Bret pulled up in front of Donna Wells’ arena five minutes later. Donna was easy to spot, out by her barn, saddling a horse. Horses were no doubt her comfort in stressful times, just as they were mine. Of course, I thought, all horse people are like this. Look at the way Lonny had wanted to go for a ride on Smoky his first day home. Horses are an antidote for pain.
Bret ambled slowly in Donna’s direction; I followed him. Donna saw us coming, but just kept on saddling her horse, which looked like the same young sorrel gelding that she’d been riding the other day.
When Bret was a few feet from the hitching rail, Donna paused, the snaffle bridle in her hands, and raised her eyebrows. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
She didn’t sound angry, just tough. As before, I was struck with the impression that this woman could probably out-cowboy most of her male compatriots.
Bret smiled at her. “I came to see how you were doing.”
