by Linda Grimes
Home sweet home. The condo was as clean as I’d left it—in other words, not very. But it was my clutter, and nothing about it set off alarms in my head. I dropped my small suitcase at the foot of the stairs and made a beeline for the kitchen. I’d ordered a large pizza the night before I’d left for Hollywood—what was that? Three days ago now?—and I was hoping the leftovers weren’t too stale.
Luck was with me—there were no science experiments unfolding amid the slices, and the crust wasn’t quite hard enough to hammer nails with, so I maybe wouldn’t break my teeth. There was even an imported beer left from the last time Thomas had stopped by for dinner—he always brought the good stuff.
My feast set, I turned on the TV and flipped to a cable infotainment “news” show. The Jackson Gunn story was still going strong. Lily-Ann Conrad, now L.A.’s most notorious murder suspect, had retained a lawyer. Not only a lawyer, but the lawyer of the celebrity set: Nigel Overholt. I recognized him right away because he’d worked for Thomas for a while after he graduated from law school. Thomas was always bragging about how smart his former protégé was.
In his early thirties, blessed with stunningly good looks from his Italian mother’s side of the family, Overholt might have graced the silver screen himself had he not been confined to a wheelchair. He’d tried to hang glide off the Hollywood sign when he was twenty-two, and had landed badly. But he hadn’t let the failure of his attention-grabbing stunt stop him from becoming one of the biggest names in Tinseltown, if not precisely in the way he had originally intended. That was probably why he was so good at his job—he never accepted defeat.
And now he was working for Lily-Ann Conrad. Hmm. Interesting. I wondered what Jack thought about that. Heck, maybe he’d hired Overholt for her—he certainly had enough Hollywood clout to attract the guy. I still had to call him to find out if we had to reschedule the snake shoot—maybe I could feel him out about it then.
Not that it was technically any of my concern. (Not that that has ever stopped me from being nosy, especially where my clients are concerned. Sue me. I’m a curious person.)
My cell phone rang. I picked it up without pulling my eyes away from the TV screen, where Nigel was raising one of those nifty specialized wheelchairs to a standing position. Tall guy.
“Ciel? Sorry to call so late, but I thought you should know—”
“Dave? What’s up? Is something wrong? Oh, my God, is Eeyore all right?” I said, visions blowing up in my head of my beloved pony cut and bleeding from hoof strikes. Trigger and Licorice didn’t always exhibit a great deal of patience with their smaller stablemate. Granted, Eeyore was as big an asshole to them as he was to people, so he probably deserved whatever equine punishment they doled out. Still, he was a little guy, and I didn’t want to see him hurt.
“Eeyore is fine—as nasty as ever, and I have a new bruise on my rear end to prove it.” Dave sounded resigned. I felt a little guilty about that, but not enough to rehome Eeyore. Not that any clear-thinking person would take him. “But,” he continued, “I did find something interesting in his stall.”
“What, a poison apple?” I said wryly. “Billy’s been looking at him funny lately.”
“Nope. A gun.”
Well, crap. “I don’t suppose it’s Cody’s?” I said without much hope.
“Nope again. First thing I checked. I asked Rosa about it, too. She about took my head off for daring to suggest she might own a gun, or that if she did own a gun, she would be so careless as to leave it in the barn.”
“Any other visitors hanging around since you last cleaned Eeyore’s stall?”
“You and Billy. And, of course, Mr. Gunn. But I know for a fact it can’t be his—I unpacked his luggage for him myself when he got here. And his clothes were too tight for him to be carrying concealed.” Dave coughed. “Not that I’d normally notice a thing like that, but Rosa’s eyes got so big when she looked at him that it kind of brought it to my attention.”
I bit my tongue. I’d hate to disillusion Rosa, but I knew for a fact that, metaphorically speaking at least, Gunn was packing a derringer. And maybe a few socks.
“Okay. I’ll call Billy and see if by chance he dropped it while trying to assassinate Eeyore. What kind of gun is it?”
“It’s a Walther PPK—you know, a James Bond gun.”
The movie tie-in made my ears perk up. If anyone had a James Bond gun, it would be Jackson. I said as much to Dave.
“Yeah, that was my first thought, but like I said, I unpacked for him. Besides, it’s a very popular pistol, especially with the concealed-carry set.”
“But who else has been out to the ranch?”
“Well, there’s the delivery people, I suppose. Groceries, hay, oats…” he said.
“Maybe you could call them tomorrow and ask if anyone might’ve dropped it.”
“Will do. In the meantime, I wrapped it in plastic and put it in a drawer in the kitchen. Rosa’s not too happy about that, but I told her we couldn’t very well leave it in the barn.”
“Why not the safe?”
“No room. Rosa’s keeping all her secret family recipes in there. Damn, that woman has a lot of secret recipes. No wonder I’m suffering from Dunlop’s.”
I tried to think of what to tell him to do. I mean, a stray gun in Eeyore’s stall couldn’t be a good thing, but I sure didn’t want to get the local cops involved. If they found out Jackson had been a guest at my ranch while he was supposedly in Hollywood filming, that would lead to all kinds of awkward questions. “Look, leave it where it is for now. I’ll call you tomorrow and we’ll figure out what to do about it.”
As soon as I hung up I dialed Billy. Got routed directly to voice mail, left a message to call me right away, and crawled upstairs to bed. Thomas’s imported beer was hitting my overtaxed brain cells and all I wanted to do was sleep.
Chapter 7
I woke to the sound of pans clanging in the kitchen. I would have been scared of a break-in, but no competent burglar made that much noise. It had to be somebody I knew.
I stumbled down the stairs, eyes half shut, still in my clothes from the night before. Changing into a nightgown had seemed like too much trouble. I ran my tongue over my teeth—my mouth tasted of stale beer and old pizza. Bleah. Apparently my usual dental hygiene routine had been beyond me, too.
I was flanked as soon as I walked into the kitchen. “Group hug!” poured into one of my ears at the same time as “It’s been too long!” flowed into the other.
Sinead and Siobhan, Billy’s middle sisters, who had two of the most mellifluous voices on the planet. Sometimes it was hard to listen to what they were saying because it just sounded so pretty.
Sinead was three years younger than Billy, and Siobhan a year younger than her. Both were still in college, and everyone who didn’t know them thought they were twins. They each had the amazing Doyle eyes, which, like Billy and Molly, they’d inherited from their father. (Uncle Liam must have some powerful eye genes, is all I can say.) Their hair, long and wavy, was a light chestnut color. I suspected they got their hair coloring from their mother, though I couldn’t be sure since Auntie Mo liked to appear to the world with the vibrant red hair and emerald eyes that made her resemble a young Maureen O’Hara even more than she already did.
I automatically wrapped my arms around their waists and squeezed back, trying to keep my nose clear of their chests so I could breathe. Like I said, Doyles are tall. They each had six inches on me even when they were barefoot. When they wore heels, I was a hut between towers.
“Why the hell are you here?” I blurted after they disengaged. (Perhaps not the most gracious thing a hostess can say to her guests, but it was the best I could manage in my un-caffeinated state.)
Siobhan lilted a laugh and went straight for the fancy espresso maker Thomas had left here when he’d moved on to greener pastures. She knew me well.
Sinead, always perky in the morning, said, “Not exactly our idea, shrimperooni”—Sinead was a teaser, like her b
rother—“but you know how it is. Auntie Ro hinted to Mom that you could use some help with this shower thing for Tom and … Laura, is it? Might be nice to actually meet her before the wedding. Anyway, Mom passed it along to us, and we volunteered.”
“More like we were ‘voluntold,’ but let’s not quibble,” Siobhan said, and I understood completely. Our mothers’ hints were not easily ignored.
“But don’t you have class or something?” I asked. Granted, I was a little groggy, but I was fairly sure it wasn’t any kind of holiday.
“Yeah. So? Professors don’t care if you don’t show up to class as long as you pass the tests,” Sinead said.
“That’s right. And the tests are easy if you’re careful to only pick professors who care about their image on Rate Your Professor dot com,” Siobhan added.
I quirked my mouth. “Don’t tell me, let me guess. A little tip you picked up from Billy?”
They nodded in unison, their adoration of their brother evident by the glow in their eyes.
Then it hit me. “Shit,” I said, and dug my cell phone out of my jeans pocket, where I’d left it the night before when I’d fallen into bed. Had I slept through his return call?
I scrolled quickly through a ton of wedding-related reminders from Mom until I got to Billy. Punched a few buttons and listened to him say, “Tag. You’re it. I’m exhausted, lying facedown in bed. Wish you were under me.” I called him and got his voice mail again. Swore.
“Oooh, that’s my all-time favorite,” Siobhan said as she waved a mug under my nose. “I’m a fan of strong, single-syllable Anglo-Saxon words. So expressive.”
I grabbed the mug, blew across it to cool it faster, and gulped. Repeated Siobhan’s favorite word after burning my tongue.
“Careful, it’s hot,” Sinead said. “Don’t tell, let me guess. Billy.”
I sighed. “Phone tag. And I can’t even blame him for not answering, because I did the same thing to him last night. Slept right through his return call.”
Siobhan leaned against the counter next to me and shrugged. “Don’t worry. He’ll call back soon. It’s not as if he’s avoiding your calls. It’s Mom he’s hiding from—and by extension, the two of us, because he knows we’re forced to be her loyal minions until we don’t need her to write tuition checks anymore. He doesn’t want to be roped into any wedding duty.”
That was true enough. He’d even admitted it to me. But what was he doing that had him so exhausted? He hadn’t gone into detail about his side job.
Well, no sense worrying about it until I had a chance to talk to him. “Yeah, you’re right. Listen, as long as you guys are here to help…”
* * *
I hopped the first available flight to Vegas, white-knuckling it the whole way, and rented a car at McCarran Airport. I’d hoped to catch Billy before he left Vegas, to see if he could stop by the ranch and check the gun out for me, but I still hadn’t managed to connect with him. Our voice messages kept crossing in the ether. Just as well. My ranch, my responsibility. I couldn’t leave Dave hanging there—it wasn’t right.
Sinead and Siobhan were back at my condo, diligently going through all the contact info Laura had e-mailed me. Being dedicated web geeks, they had promised to design and send awesome wedding shower e-vites to everyone on the list, and possibly to set up a remote webcam viewing station at the restaurant for those who couldn’t make it to D.C. in time to be there in person. They were even going to take care of the decorations. All I had to do in exchange was promise to get Thomas to introduce them to some of his hot lawyer buddies. (Thomas had thus far refused to do so himself, having an ironically low opinion of the species.)
About ten miles out from the ranch my cell phone played the first tongue-clicking notes of Billy Joel’s “The Ballad of Billy the Kid.” They sounded like hoofbeats, and indicated Billy was on the line. (He’d loaded the ringtone onto my phone himself when I wasn’t looking, along with a bunch of others. I never knew which Billy-related song would provide the ringtone when he called—he’d figured out a way to randomize them.)
I pulled to the side of the road before I answered, not out of an abundance of caution (I mean, the road was deserted) but because I’d sworn to my mother—on the urn holding my great-grandmother’s ashes, no less—that I would never text or talk on my phone while driving. I was pretty sure breaking that kind of vow would result, at the very least, in a comet crashing through the top of the car (God punishing right away and all), and I didn’t want to have to explain that to the rental company.
“Where are you?” I said, probably not as patiently as I could have.
“Hello, sweetheart. I love you, too,” Billy said, laughter in his voice.
My stomach fluttered at his words. He’d only ever said them in a joking manner so far—never seriously—and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. So I deflected. “Yeah, right. Kiss-kiss. Where?”
“I’m at the airport, waiting for you. Your last text said you were heading this way. Where are you?”
“Wait a second. You didn’t get my ‘fuck this shit, I’m leaving’ text?”
“Nope.”
Crap. Who did I send it to? Please not Mom, please not Mom, please not Mom …
I checked my message log. Shit.
“Never mind. I’m almost to the ranch. Dave found a gun in Eeyore’s stall. You didn’t happen to leave it there, hoping he’d shoot himself, did you? You do realize he doesn’t have opposable thumbs?”
“Ha ha. But nope. Not me. If I were planning to do away with the little bastard, I’d poison his oats. He doesn’t deserve a fast death.”
“Bill-ee…”
“Kidding, cuz. I’d never harm a hair on your darling’s head, you know that. You’d never sleep with me again if I did.”
“That’s right, and don’t you forget it. So, where are you heading?”
“Back to the ranch, apparently, to help you solve the mystery of the magically appearing gun. Shouldn’t take long—I’m already fueled. By the way, how was your flight?”
I grunted and hung up.
* * *
“How many of you have touched it since you found it?” I asked, referring to the plastic-wrapped pistol on the counter.
Dave looked sheepish. “Me. Of course. I found it. I had to get it out of the stall before Eeyore kicked it to pieces.”
“And?”
He gestured toward the guy next to him. Cody was tall, and whipcord thin. According to his employment records, he was twenty-eight, but his years spent outside in the harsh Arizona sun made him look older.
“I had to show it to him to see if it was his. He might’ve held it for a while…”
Cody ran a hand through thick, light brown hair. “I checked to see if it was loaded. It was empty. Listen, Ciel, I’m sorry this happened. I should’ve—”
“Don’t be silly, Cody. You can’t be everywhere at once. Besides, why would any of you expect anything like this when there’s not even a client here? Now, did anyone else touch the gun?”
“Well, Rosa pulled it out of the drawer—she wanted me to get it out of her kitchen—but I’d already wrapped it in plastic by then, so I don’t think she counts.”
Rosa gave him a scorching look and waved a spatula threateningly. “What was I supposed to do? A gun does not belong with my utensils.”
I stepped casually between the two of them. I didn’t think she’d hit him on purpose, but when she got excited her arms sometimes took on a life of their own. “So only you and Cody got prints on it. And whoever left it in Eeyore’s stall. If they didn’t wipe it clean first, of course,” I said.
“Yeah, I expect so. I just can’t figure who would do a fool thing like that,” Dave said.
“You got me,” I said. “Why don’t you show me exactly where it was in the barn?”
“Sure thing, honeybunch,” Dave said with an understanding smile. He knew the real reason I wanted to go to the barn—I had to see for myself that Eeyore was okay. Poor little guy was probably
upset at having his routine disrupted.
Rosa elected to stay behind and work on dinner. “I don’t want my nose contaminated by the aroma of horse excrement when I’m cooking.” She shook the spatula at all of us. “You don’t want that either.”
Dave chuckled. “Aw, admit it, Rosa. You’re afraid of the little feller.”
Rosa expelled a stream of Spanish, ending with what sounded like “diablo culo de morderse,” which I was pretty sure meant “ass-biting devil.”
Um, yeah. Couldn’t exactly contradict her on that. When I’d first moved Eeyore to the Circle C, I’d had the bright idea of letting him roam freely around the place, like a big, shaggy gray dog. He’d figured out how to open the back door to the kitchen and had nipped Rosa a good one while she was checking the corn bread in the oven. (I still contend he was being playful, but Rosa didn’t see it that way.)
Turned out Eeyore was upset, and with much better reason than his default mode of annoyance with life in general. There was a sack over his head, a rope around his neck, and a strange man stomping from one corner of his stall to the next, kicking through the straw, yanking Eeyore along with him.
“What the hell are you doing?” I hollered as I ran toward them, Dave and Cody right behind me. Jesus, what was going on? Maybe I needed to increase my security here. Get Cody an assistant or something, because the ranch was obviously way too accessible.
The man—middle-aged, roughly groomed, and decidedly stupid-looking—assessed his situation, his eyes pausing briefly on each of us. It was like Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons had come to life. You could almost see him counting on mental fingers and figuring out he was outnumbered. But instead of making up some lie about why he was there, as any rational human being would, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket, popped it open, and held it to my beloved pony’s throat.
