by Lisa Preston
And there shaking his hand was a man I recognized as Patsy-Lynn’s barn-help, all cleaned up in dress jeans and a crisp long-sleeved white shirt. His fingernails were scraped clean, which made me realize they were usually dirty, like mine.
Barn-Help shifted from one foot to the other, then noticed my blank look and said, “Ted.” I dipped my chin in response to his introduction, or reminder, since he or Patsy-Lynn had probably told me his name before. He slunk off into the crowd. A decent-looking fellow, Ted, when shaved and showered.
No one can help the looks their born with. It’s what we do that matters. What Harper Junior did was put a sympathetic hand on his dad’s shoulder every time he was near. He shook hands with countless townfolk coming to pay their respects and he nodded with every condolence expressed. Like a good son.
Someone asked him when he’d gotten into town and how long he’d be around.
“Just a couple days. Drove and drove to get here after the bad news,” Junior said. He and the cowboy asking went on with talk of the late breeding season and last year’s foal crop.
In the cavernous living room, quiet chat kept on about the horse world, as can’t be resisted when this many people with a hand in the business are together. I stood around feeling stupid and out of place as was apparently my lot to do at a dead client’s funeral.
Guy was busy, moving here and there, keeping the tables on the side of the room discreetly inviting with pastries and finger food. When I caught his eye, and he smiled and scurried away. Business people and cleaned-up clients chatted all somber-like, so the gathering didn’t have the atmosphere a catered get-together of so many of Cowdry’s movers and shakers should have. And I was by far the worst dressed female there. I must have looked pretty Amish next to the slinky black number Cherry Edelman flounced by in. I own one skirt, this denim wrap-around thing I made at the end of eighth grade in home-ec class—proudly the last such class in the state and maybe the country, the school said—in Texas.
That year.
I had to put my mind somewhere else.
How soon could I leave?
Through a big archway was another sprawling living room and lots of funeral-goers standing around in their Sunday best, making quiet murmurs, either about ordinary things like weather and critters and the government or else they were making nice little comments about Patsy-Lynn. In death, my client seemed more real and human, cheated from her life. Now I wondered if she’d had children. How she met Harper. How she got her start in horses. I wished I could say something nice, but I didn’t trust my voice.
“She was something else,” someone said.
“Mm-hmm,” a couple other people murmured to agree.
“It’s such a shame,” one woman whispered to another. “I’m sure she didn’t mean to do it. It must have been an accident.”
So, those ladies were going with the She Accidentally Killed Herself story.
“No, I heard there was money taken,” whispered another. “That’s on the hush-hush, but there’s word going around that it was a robbery.” She said it like a dirty word and I guess it was, being’s this is Cowdry.
The women went on with their theories. Not knowing where I fit, I turned away. Owen Weatherby and other men sat in stuffed leather loungers and talked sheepdog breeding. The walls here were covered in framed pictures, all of a young guy in football gear. Junior, I suppose. I wandered.
In the bathroom, I studied out the window and gave myself a good stern talking to. I reminded myself of my mission to Turn Over a New Leaf, be courteous and kind. To be adult and responsible. There’d been a time when I couldn’t wait to be grown up, thought my problems would be over. Then I got myself into real problems and found out pretty quick that teenage angst wouldn’t be too big a deal if angst was the worst of it.
The room’s little window gave a long view, down the back of Harpers’ land. The orchard carried no deadwood. I thought of the day laborer Patsy-Lynn had hired to prune, the one she said made off with her new hedge trimmer.
Pretty, looking out that window. The sliding sun was painting the east slopes with pinkish-orange alpenglow. Straight west, a partly logged hill glinted like it was kissing the sun right back in gratitude. I remembered Patsy-Lynn once saying something about an old metal barn and cottage at the back of the ranch, near the federal and state forest lands bordering the Flying Cross. I guess it was the original homestead before Harper had the fancy house built. The big house had come along with wife number one—Junior’s mama—and she died when he was young.
Probably this grand house was to Patsy-Lynn’s liking, too. It was pretty fancy with wood floors and dark paneling. No doubt she did some upgrades here like she had in the barn.
Me, I’d have been happy with the shack and old tin barn out yonder.
Harper and Patsy-Lynn hadn’t been together long when I came to Cowdry but she sure seemed to like it here.
I left the bathroom and followed kitchen sounds. Metal pot lid clangs and a whooshing oven door told me the kitchen was just around the corner. A catered funeral would have been Patsy-Lynn’s choosing, but hanging out with Guy’s hors d’ouvres—“whore’s ovaries” is how my daddy pronounced that phrase to my mama’s everlasting horror—was not what I felt up for.
The whole house was highfalutin, with big wide hallways, fancy floors, and molding along the upper edges where the ceiling and walls meet. There was a statue of the head and shoulders of someone who looked like Colonel Sanders. The dining room had those wood strips around the wall about hip high. There’s a name for that kind of strip. I used to know the name, back when I lived with my mama.
But Mama’s place was never like this, spacious and grand at the same time, with the extra tall ceilings and crystal pieces displayed in a fancy cabinet just to show off.
Low murmurs came from another room and I guess I thought the reception was all through the house when I pulled on the doorknob.
It was weird, a tiny part of my brain said, that a slip was hanging on the door’s other side. The red silk thing fluttered like a giant tissue as I opened the door.
I don’t own a slip, don’t see the point of them.
But now I saw that a slip lets you hang in there for another round in strip poker. Cherry Edelman was obviously a poor poker player.
She giggled out a little shriek from the bed inside the room and pulled a pillow over her personals.
“Sorr—” I started.
Man, that man was like a big, overblown statue. And I could tell, ’cause he was bare-ass—he was nekkid from the waist down. Harper Junior’s butt muscles had muscles. He’d kept his dress shirt on, but his tie was now on Cherry. Maybe he worked out so much to compensate for his complexion, which looked like an acned teen’s. His build made the big veterinarian seem like a ninety-pound weenie-boy. All I can say about guys with pecs like that is they’d better not ever stop pumping iron, else in a month’s time they’ll need a bra like Cherry’s lifter model draped over a lamp, whorehouse red with lacy edges. Thong undies to match dangled over one of her spike-heeled black shoes, abandoned on the rug.
All this took a split second to absorb. Backpedaling a lot faster than I’d toddled into the room, I was pink and breathing hard in the hallway. It’s a serious hallway, wide with a wood floor and a thick rug that pads the way and a serious reason is why we were all there, all of us except Junior and Cherry.
Apparently, they’d needed to do laundry and were getting it all done at once.
Chapter 13
CHERRY HUSTLED OUT OF THE BEDROOM I’d half-walked into even as I stood in the hallway to that wing of the Harper house with my jaw still hanging down. Their exertions were not my beeswax. To me, beeswax is for lubing my pritchel and filling hoof wall nicks.
She was giggling. “Oh, Rainy, it was nothing.” Then she said as an aside, “And unfortunately, I do mean nothing.”
I was dumbstruck.
“And certainly none of your business. M’kay?” Cherry darkened up a little and look
ed like she’d like to wallop me but we both knew who’d win that catfight, if it came to it. A contest Cherry could beat me at is being on her back, feet in the air. In my mid-twenties now and I’ve been with exactly three different guys. And that’s at least two too many, given the quality of choices I’ve made in the past. So Cherry could stand there annoyed, wanting to whack me, but she wouldn’t dare push it. One of us works hard for a living.
Cherry looked away. I was just ready to congratulate myself on my scowl when I realized what a turd I was being, half-thinking about brawling at a funeral reception.
I never get it right. Not ever.
Cherry took her time returning to the main gathering. She peeked into the open arch at the far end of the hall and glanced over like she was waiting for me to go away. I did.
Guy set a tray of saucy chicken bits on a long side table by the statue of Mr. KFC. People started picking up the tidbits right away. I followed as Guy evaporated back to the kitchen.
“Very appropriate selection there,” I told him.
He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
I hinted. “Catch that little statue of Colonel Sanders around the corner?”
He gave me a big look and went back to work, messing with some white sauce he dripped over pieces of fruit. “You would be referring to the bust of Brahms?”
Mercy.
I toddled down another hall, hoping not to find more people celebrating a funeral reception with a quick roll in the hay. That last door was open, showing a master bedroom. A dead woman’s jewelry tree sat on the bureau. I turned away. At the other end of the hall, I paused a good bit on my side of a metal door. There were a few voices, words I couldn’t make out, but at least nothing sounding like anyone pouncing on anyone else’s bones. The heaviness of the door should have clued me, but sometimes I think a two-by-four across the skull is needed for me to gather any wisdom.
The thing of it was, suddenly I was standing in the garage where Patsy-Lynn Harper died. And I wasn’t alone. A voice rumbled, startling me to my toenails.
“Found your way here pretty well, Rainy Dale.”
It was Paulden, the deputy who’d stopped me on the highway the evening Guy and I were coming back from the co-op. He was out of uniform, in black jeans and a dark sport coat, a bolo tie dressing up his shirt. Lots of guys were dressed that way in this house today. It’s standard Sunday go-to-meeting clothes for country folk. My brain was still coming up with a response when he asked, “When was the last time you were in this room?”
How I hate it when my voice cracks, gets me gulping my answer. “Never. I’ve never been in this garage before.”
“Hmm,” said he, not the most articulate of men, though I may risk redundancy on the observation.
Someone from the corner waved Paulden off. It was Suit Fellow, wearing what could have been the same stained blue sport coat as the first time I’d seen him.
I faced Paulden. “That day, you said that I was the last person to see Patsy-Lynn alive.”
Suit Fellow snorted. “I sure hope not. I hope you were the second to last.”
“Huh?” I turned and tried to take in both of them at once.
Suit Fellow got elaborate, what and all with apparently talking to an idiot. “The last person who saw her was the one who watched her die or left her dying. And that wasn’t you, was it?”
“No, sir.” I wanted Patsy-Lynn’s last hours to be as nice as possible. I wanted to be as nice as possible. “Maybe she started her car and the garage door got stuck and she got woozy from the fumes and passed out. She could have done it without actually meaning to kill herself, couldn’t she?”
“Her injuries are not consistent with that version of events. And there is unexplained disruption of the scene.”
Deputy Paulden moseyed back out to the reception as Suit Fellow settled into this chat, closing the door gently behind him.
I pointed at the door, beyond which muted funeral conversation droned. “Isn’t the thing”—I hesitated, not liking that I had some schooling on this point—“that a killed woman is usually killed by the man in her life?”
Suit Fellow raised his eyebrows halfway to his receding hairline. “It is indeed. Ms. Harper had a husband, and an adult son. But at the time in question, one was in a meeting locally with a reputable person, and the other was hundreds of miles away, which is easy enough to verify with credit card receipts and surveillance footage from gas stations.”
Without waiting for me to catch up, he shifted and faced the direction of the garage bay doors. We couldn’t see out because the doors were closed, but we both knew the main gate lay beyond, fifty yards or so away. “The road out to the Flying Cross is a little lonely, don’t you think?”
“I guess.” I shrugged, just a little, to let him know that he wasn’t Einstein with an observation like that. Then I startled and blurted, “Patsy-Lynn was on the phone when I got here.”
He frowned. “And?”
“And she seemed pretty upset. No idea who it was though. She hung up when I walked in the barn. And she wanted me to stay after I did the shoeing. To have coffee or a soda. That was a first.”
“And you’re just remembering this now? Anything else you remember from that day?”
The strange thing was, I did. I could see the truck coming at me and the dude walking down the road.
“There was a guy afoot on Oldham road. A fake cowboy.”
“A fake cowboy?”
My head bobbed. “Feathers hanging off the band of a dark leather cowboy hat. Like from a department store.”
When I couldn’t come up with anything more on the dude, Suit Fellow said, “Tell me more about the truck. Old? Late model? Say anything you can remember about it. The driver. What was the driver wearing? Any bumper stickers, parking stickers, a hat in the dash, anything. Better still, do you remember make and model?”
“I don’t know what it was.” Horses’ legs are what I notice. I remember gaits and the horn quality, angles and shape of hooves. I’d little idea what anybody wore on any particular day, couldn’t say much about their vehicles. Confidence and kindness with horses and dogs sticks with me, as does meanness.
The detective waved a hand, caught my eye, and asked, “Do you know what it wasn’t?”
I gaped at him. He was serious. A different way to ask and answer the same question. A good idea. I about steamed my brains with the effort, smoke nearly coming out my ears.
“Well, it wasn’t a diesel. I’d know that sound. It was big. It wasn’t white or yellow or one of those pastel, freaky new colors.” That would have revolted me and I’d have noticed it.
“Brown, green, black, dark blue?”
“Yeah, dark. And a dually,” I said this last word suddenly. Though certainty on color wasn’t coming, that truck was wide, way wide.
I could sort of see it in my mind’s eye, making me hug the right shoulder of the road with Ol’ Blue. Driving toward me as my mind moved on. I’d been thinking about my last appointment of the day, shoeing Abby Langston’s little mare, Liberty. Something was going on with that kid.
Suit Fellow said, “Think about that fake cowboy of yours and who was behind the wheel of that truck.”
I pursed my lips and shook my head, holding my temples. “There’s just nothing there.” I wanted to explain to him how I could see that recollection, even hear it. My brain recalled the sound of the vehicle coming toward me, the engine winding up then down for clutch action, that whole bit. I could hear it in my mind. But I hadn’t studied on the driver, not at all. There’d been no reason for me to look at the man behind the wheel.
Blurting like a backwards hiccup, I said, “I don’t think there was a passenger in the truck. And I think it was a man who was driving.”
“Rainy,” he said, “have you come across a fellow named Manuel Smith at some of the ranches? Does odds and ends work?”
“I don’t know that name. Patsy-Lynn did mention a day laborer who might have made off with her hedge trimmer.
”
“What else can you tell me about that?”
“Not a thing.”
He grunted. “You encounter a lot of different horse people in your job, go to a lot of peoples’ property. If you see or hear anything a little odd, maybe money changing hands—”
“Was there money missing from this place the afternoon she died?”
He exhaled a long time, then added, “Or if you see people with drugs—”
I shook my head. “I’ve never seen anything like that around here.”
“Has anything else occurred to you that seemed odd, out of place, or worth mentioning to us about the last day you were here? Think about that afternoon.”
I could see it, feel it. My left hand curved the same way I’d held Spartacus’s toe, getting the first nails driven. I could see the glimpse of Patsy-Lynn twisting her mouth when I’d slapped Spartacus, I could see the blur of her end of the lead rope as she twirled it in the air for no good reason. I remembered that I might have liked that soda she offered, if I’d had the time and inclination, which of course I hadn’t. Besides, she was too clingy, a time-sucker, artificially upping our relationship.
She’d never before fetched me a soda, just once waved me over to the fridge to get one myself. She wasn’t someone who waited on others.
Could there have been something in her fridge she didn’t want me to see?
Suit Fellow said, “Why are you frowning? Remember something?”
I shook my head, not feeling too good, wanting to free myself of fog. “I was just trying to think back. I had another appointment and had to scoot as soon as I’d finished.”
“That was at the Langston residence.”
Whether he said this to prod my memory or to impress me with his figuring out where else I’d been, I don’t know. Maybe both, but I don’t like someone else knowing my business. Still, he said it friendly enough and for a guy who’d at our first meeting seemed a hair shy of slapping handcuffs on me.
* * *
