“Can the sarcasm. I call because I love you. So how’s the house?”
I opened my mouth but closed it when I heard her speaking again. “Two naked burritos, one with chicken, one vegetarian, both gluten free.”
I waited while a tinny voice responded something. The ice on Stryker Lake stretched smooth, just right for skating.
“Right,” Diane said.
Were my ice skates in a box of my things from Frog Creek, or were they at Mom and Dad’s?
“Two waters and one extra-large Diet Coke.”
Her voice came back strong. “Okay, house.”
“It’s really small.”
“You’re only one person.”
“It’s rundown.”
“You need a project to occupy yourself.”
“I don’t think it’s right for me.”
She stopped the rapid fire and hardened her voice. “Because it’s not Frog Creek? Because Ted doesn’t live there?”
My dander rose. “Ted has nothing to do with this. I’ve moved on.”
Her laugh was like a bullet in my ear. “Right.”
“So what if I’m not totally over Ted? He was my whole world for eight years. It takes time to get over a divorce.”
The rattle of a faraway voice and Diane saying a brisk “Thanks.” Then, “Don’t spill that in the car. Eat fast.”
To me: “That is bullshit. He wasn’t your whole world. You had Frog Creek and Carly. Ted was just one part. Frankly, the weakest part.”
“Okay, maybe. But I lost them all.”
“I suppose you’ve gone into mourning now that Roxy and Sarah are pregnant and you’re not.”
Huh? Shock faded to understanding. No wonder Sarah looked so washed out and had been so pissy. Sure, it hurt, since Sarah and I had both been trying to get pregnant. But how could I not feel joy for Sarah and Robert and excitement to be an aunt again? I didn’t try to explain to Diane. “Oh.”
She paused. “You didn’t know. Sorry.” And we were back on today’s agenda. “So, listen, get the house.”
“I’m fine at Mom and Dad’s.”
“You’re not fine.”
“Okay, maybe not. But I don’t want to commit to a house now.”
“Why?”
“Because I may not stay in Hodgekiss long. I don’t want to be sheriff forever, and maybe something else will come along.” Like welcome isolation on Bill Hardy’s place.
“For fuck’s sake.” A couple of little voices chimed about the fine jar. Diane spoke away from the phone. “I could fund your college education if I kept up with the fine jar. Eat your burritos and let me talk to Aunt Kate.” To me: “You’re not holding out for some kind of ranch job, are you?”
Bill Hardy. All I had to do is say yes. “Oh, hey, look at that! I’ve got to go.” I hung up. Enough of that.
Dust from May’s turquoise pickup swirled in the icy wind. I shut the front door of the house and hurried to Trey’s car.
“What’s next on the Hodgekiss hit parade?” Trey asked.
“So far, we don’t have a lot to go on. Clete says everyone loved Chad. Terminator and Lawn Dart don’t agree. Clete says Chad and Josh were best buddies, again, not everyone signs on with that.”
Trey nodded. “The railroad guys say Meredith and Chad were crazy in love. May says Josh and Meredith were having an affair.”
I waved off the last bit. “May Keller has oxygen deprivation, and you can only trust half of what she says. It’s a shame we don’t know which half.”
“Josh Stevens did it.” Not a shred of doubt colored his words. “We need proof.”
He retreated down the two-track and out on the highway to Hodgekiss. He glanced at me. “What?”
“I don’t think so.”
Darkness gathered in Trey’s face. “You have a thing for him?”
Was this jealousy coming from Trey? “No. It goes to character and what a person would and wouldn’t do.”
“You said you don’t know Josh.”
Might as well lay it out and let Trey decide whether he’d trust me on instinct. “It’s the look in his eye more than anything. Some people will kick a dog or tease a child for fun. Not Josh. He has secrets, I can almost guarantee that. But murder? No. There has to be someone else.”
The sour set of Trey’s mouth showed me what he thought of instinct.
26
“We need to talk to my aunt Twyla.”
Trey pulled in front of the Long Branch and shut the engine off. He reached for the key but didn’t take it out. “I doubt it will do any good. I already questioned her.”
I grabbed the keys from the ignition. “You questioned her, fine. Now I’ll talk to her.”
He rolled his eyes and took the keys I dangled in front of him. “Good point.”
I stepped out of his car, and a biting gust clobbered me, sucking at my breath. Well now, that was a fine reminder of how glad I was to have the sheriff job instead of feeding hay on this frozen afternoon.
Trey came around the front of his cruiser, and we waited for a pickup to pass on the highway, then we hurried into the Long Branch. I pushed open the glass door leading to the restaurant side, windows lining the highway side let in the gathering gloom. Even the sky looked like ice. Except for the smell of grease so strong it practically had a real body, no one occupied the restaurant side.
Trey poked his head into the bar side and drew it out. “She’s in here.”
I backed out of the restaurant and into the dim bar. Twyla sucked an unlit cigarette and wiped down bottles on the shelf under the mirror. She glanced over her shoulder at me and Trey. “Hey there, Katie.” She did a double take and slapped the bar. “Now, sister, that face rearranging ain’t looking a whole lot better.”
I landed on my barstool, making my back complain with the jarring. “Did you think it would heal up already?”
Twyla pulled the soggy cig from her mouth and set it next to the cash register. She picked up a rocks glass with a splash of whiskey. “Gonna leave a Frankenstein scar.”
It’s great when your family makes you feel pretty.
Trey settled himself on the barstool next to me. “Can we ask you a few questions?”
Twyla lifted her glass toward him and gave me an is he for real? look. She knocked back the whiskey.
I leaned on the bar. “Are Josh Stevens and Meredith Mills having an affair?”
Trey kept from choking but his eyes widened.
Twyla cackled. “That’s one I hadn’t heard. I can’t give credence to it, though.”
She finger-combed her hair and caught it into a ponytail. She lifted it and let it fall. “I can tell you Chad and Meredith were hitting a rough patch.”
Trey pulled his head back and clamped his mouth shut.
I stood and draped myself over the bar, grabbed a glass and the soda spray nozzle. A swhooze filled the glass with Diet Coke. I offered it to Trey. He declined. “Why do you say that?”
“Bits and pieces of this and that.” Twyla bent over to pull a Jack Daniel’s bottle from the bar well.
“Unbelievable.” Trey let the word slip under his breath.
I winked at him while Twyla poured another generous two fingers of bourbon. “Did they have a fight in here or something?”
Twyla swirled the whiskey. “Not so much. It’s sort of the body language. The way they looked at each other lately.”
I sipped my Diet Coke and waited. Beside me, Trey’s leg jiggled with impatience. No wonder he hadn’t gotten much out of Twyla earlier.
Twyla walked to the end of the bar and pulled a pencil and order pad from a mess of papers and pens beside the cash register.
I placed a hand on Trey’s leg to stop his escaping impatience. He sucked in a shocked breath, and I turned eight shades of crimson in the nanosecond it took for me to withdraw my hand.
Twyla looked up to the bottles on the shelf and muttered to herself, jotted a few words and dropped the pad back in the piles and thrust the pencil behind her ear. S
he sauntered back to us, took a sip of whiskey and set her glass down. She pointed at me. “You wait. It’ll sneak up on you. All the sudden, you can’t remember for shit. Distributor comes tomorrow, and I got to make my order.”
Trey straightened and took a breath, ready to direct Twyla back to our question, but I shot him a silencing glance.
Twyla picked up her unlit cigarette and held it between her first two fingers. “Those two, they used to be all about each other. You know, Chad went to college and found her, and we all could of told him she didn’t belong out here.”
One, two, three. Bingo.
“I’ve seen it happen before when a man brings in a girl from some big city and they never quite fit in. Like they’re better than the rest of us.”
I gave Trey an aside so Twyla would know I hadn’t missed her point. “My mother was raised in Chicago.”
Just the mention of my mother made his eyes light up. He kept his mouth shut and nodded.
Twyla swirled her drink. “They don’t talk, just sit at the table together and eat their food. Which is not that big of a deal, that seven-year-itch thing. And I think they’ve been married about that long. Happens more than you’d think.”
If I heard that phrase one more time, I might lose the thin grip that held my temper.
She stopped and eyed me. “You and Ted?”
I hated being a cliché. “Eight years.”
Twyla sipped her whiskey. “He probably started in with Roxy about the seven mark.”
Thanks, Aunt Twyla.
She must have read my reluctance to wander down that path. “So, they stop having dinner and drinks, like an evening out.” She pointed the unlit cig at Trey. “This ain’t the big city here. Date nights might mean a steak and drinks at the Long Branch because we don’t have a Red Lobster or Olive Garden or anything fancy like that.” Having defended her establishment, she talked to me again. “They got so they’d just drop in to eat, like on the way home from town or something. Then, it’s just Chad coming in. I figure Miss Meredith got enough of country living and couldn’t dig Chad’s roots out of here.”
Trey cleared his throat. “So you think Meredith and Chad weren’t getting along?”
Twyla didn’t hide her contempt for Trey and shifted back to me. “Isn’t that what I just said?”
I buried my grin in my glass, took a sip, and swallowed. I jumped up from the stool. “Thanks for the 411.”
Twyla laughed. “Look at you using cop talk and all.”
I didn’t correct her. “I’d ask Dad about this. You know he’s got the scoop on everyone at the railroad.”
Twyla rolled her eyes and nodded. “But he won’t cough up a single word. He’s been like that all his life. The secrets that man knows.”
Some folks, like my nosy sister Louise, would love nothing better than to have all those secrets scroll out of Dad’s head like documents from a fax machine. I’d rather not know too much about my neighbors and family. Although, now that I was smack in the middle of a murder investigation, selected knowledge, such as whether anyone hated Chad enough to rig up a railroad tie to smash in his head, would be good to know.
Twyla stepped back and turned to the bottles again. I barely heard her. “I’ll bet he’s got something on every one of you kids. And I’ll bet you’re all glad he keeps his mouth shut.”
A tangled blob of camo filled the vestibule, and the glass bar door swung open, spilling the mess inside. Bringing along a rush of winter cold.
“Sad excuse for skin,” Earl Johnson growled at his brother.
Newt’s top lip curled back like a little dog on the fight. “It wasn’t me what lost that block and tackle getup.”
They made inroads toward the bar and stopped midway. Earl pulled a plastic chair out from a four-top and Newt glared, backed two paces and took a two-person table next to a window. He pointed at Earl and raised his voice across the vacant space. “There’s you and me, numb nuts. I didn’t lose it. That leaves you.”
It started small, a tickle in the nose hairs, but quickly grew to an all-out assault on the sinuses. From Trey’s shocked expression and the hand he pulled up to his face, I guess it hit him first.
“Holy mother!” Twyla shouted. “What the hell have you been doing?”
Surprised, Earl and Newt stared at her.
She made a shooing motion. “Out. Both of you.”
Neither of them moved or even seemed to understand her. They looked at each other and shrugged in unison. Earl questioned Twyla from the far table. “Are you talking to us?”
Trey and I had backed toward the door, desperate to make a quick getaway. Twyla had her hand under her nose. “You smell like crap deep fried in rancid guts.”
Newt raised his arm and sniffed his camo. “Huh?”
Earl hunched his shoulders. “Been skinning ’yotes and muskrats. We’re supposed to meet Cam Shifford this afternoon. He’s taking the hides to Broken Butte.”
That’s exactly what they smelled like. Two aging bachelors who hadn’t showered since Aerosmith’s last hit, rolled in month-old muskrat carcasses. All of a sudden, the dolmades in my stomach considered jumping ship.
Newt gave Twyla the innocent expression of a kindergarten boy who’d accidentally wet his pants. “We just wanted a sandwich before Shifford gets here.”
Earl dropped his chin in the most pathetic face I’d seen outside of Facebook baby animal pictures. “We’re terrible hungry.”
How could anyone have that smell in their nose and feel hungry?
Twyla shooed them. “Get. You wait outside and I’ll bring you some burgers.”
They didn’t move. Then Earl said, “It’s fifteen degrees outside.”
Newt added, “Wind chill of maybe a hunnert below.”
“Christ,” Twyla said. She hurried behind the bar toward the kitchen. “Bud, get two burgers and fries going this very second.”
Newt turned to me and grinned. “That Twyla is sweet on Earl. She always does him favors.”
Self-satisfaction at being such a ladies’ man glowed in Earl’s smug expression. With effort, I resisted jumping his bones. “You boys had some boxes in your back seat when I pulled you over yesterday.”
Newt got a panicky look to his eyes. “We found them boxes.”
Earl frowned at Newt. “They was given to us.”
A gas mask would come in handy about now. “Who gave them to you?”
Newt hoisted an ankle to rest on his knee, and I was surprised I didn’t hear bones scraping on each other. “Gave in the sense that we cleaned out junk.”
Earl banged his fist on his table, his face a gathering storm. “We had them boxes a long time.”
Newt seemed oblivious to Earl’s discomfort. In fact, by the way he sat up straighter and his smile grew, I thought he might be flirting with me. “That was that day you saw we done all that work.”
Earl shoved his chair back and stood. “Newt’s got diarrhea of the mouth here. I suppose you all need to get going.”
Newt stood and edged in front of Earl, thrusting out his chest and giving me some kind of spastic fling of his chin that he possibly meant to look dashing. “You’d be surprised at what we find in other folks’ junk.”
Earl whacked Newt on the back of the head.
Newt grabbed his noggin. “Hey!”
Earl threw back his shoulders, and it seemed to make him smell even worse. “It’s a secret thing between us and the ones we work for. Like a doctor or lawyer thing. We ain’t got to tell you about other people’s trash.”
Trey put a big dose of mean dog in his attitude. “Where’d you get the boxes?”
Earl and Newt passed a look between them, and they retreated to their respective tables, faces neutral. I kept from growling at Trey. He’d just made my job way more unpleasant since now I had to take myself and my nose closer. I chose Newt and sat at his table. “You’re not in any trouble.”
Newt pursed his lips like a miffed old lady. “I should say not.”
; Mouth breathing kept me from throwing up but didn’t eliminate the stench. “You boys have a real knack for salvage. If it weren’t for you, perfectly good things would go to waste. I know you didn’t steal those computers. But I’d be grateful if you’d tell me where you got them.”
Earl scrunched up his face as if he were sending Newt telepathic signals and his thoughts got tongue tied.
Newt eyed me and tilted his head in the same prissy little-old-lady way.
I rested my elbow on the table and planted my face in my palm, partially pinching my nose. “You’ve been a good friend, being on my side with my divorce.” I hoped it didn’t matter that I’d never had a decent conversation with him. “And I helped you out by not issuing a speeding ticket yesterday.”
He bounced his crossed leg and flicked his head back and forth like an agitated robin. “I ain’t never.”
“Come on, Newt. I need you to help me out again.”
His glance flicked to Earl, and he leaned toward me.
Earl eyed Trey and then me. “I swear to God, Newt. You keep your mouth shut.”
Newt swung his chair so his back was to Earl. “I’m talking with my friend. You just mind your own business.”
I tried to give Newt a best-friend grin.
Newt leaned close and I fought my gag reflex. “You know that the Millses have that Dumpster? Out behind their pole barn? County only picks it up every four weeks. Them Millses, they got lots of money, and they get rid of good stuff. We got milk that’s barely past the date, and one time we got a whole bunch of cheese we only had to cut the outside off of. Every now and then, they throw away some primo stuff. Got a bunch of telephones a while back.”
I whispered to make him feel we had a special bond. “And that’s where you got the computers?”
He sat back, a cagey smile on his crusty face. Louder than necessary, he said, “I’m not telling.”
“You better not, you igit.” Earl spat a triumphant sneer Trey’s way.
I pushed back and stood, trying to be discreet in turning my head for a breath. “You’re too tricky for me, Newt. Still friends?”
Newt made sure Earl was watching and answered with a swagger, like a high school football star might talk to a star-struck freshman. “I guess.”
Dark Signal Page 21
