The Clincher

by Lisa Preston

  Junior looked even bigger when a light was behind him.

  “Guy, I think he wants a rematch.”

  “Well, fine. Go talk to him.” Guy bumped me in the ribs with his elbow and glanced toward the scrap pile.

  “That’s your very best plan?”

  He nodded and nudged me again.

  Like a boss, I walked into the barn and this time noticed plenty of tools that Manuel Smith from Montana didn’t steal. A hedge trimmer. A leaf blower. There never had been stolen money, but Junior could probably blow through some serious cash during an easy night in Portland.

  And Junior didn’t look best pleased to see me. A demo list of expressions bounced across his face. I was shown surprise, effort of thinking, anger in several levels, and then his most interesting, fixing to kill.

  “Hi there, Mister Harper,” I said through gritted teeth. When am I ever going to manage to keep a promise?

  “I’ll take your head off!” He charged.

  I ran.

  Guy’s plank cracked against the side of Junior’s skull the split second I cleared the door.

  This left Guy beaming at his handiwork, the board in his fists splintered to kindling. He said to the mumbling, semi-conscious Harper Junior, “I know somebody who needs a nap.”

  I felt much safer under the night sky than in the metal barn with the whackjob, even when the whackjob looked down for the count.

  Guy slid the metal door shut, looked unsuccessfully for a way to secure it, then started picking through the scrap pile again, hefting one two-by-four then another, like a pinch hitter choosing the best Louisville slugger for his final at-bat.

  “What’s your plan?” I asked.

  “Oh. I’m going to bonk him over the head again just before the next time he tries to kill us.”

  Like, he was planning on making a night of this routine?

  And this boy says he wants to spend his life with me?

  Maybe he was figuring on that life being about another two minutes long. I snorted to let him know what a weak idea he’d brained up. “That’s quite a plan.”

  Guy shrugged. “Well, I haven’t worked on it long. I might have done better if I had more time.”

  What and all with Junior moaning inside and maybe back on his way to being frisky, Guy didn’t have time to finish explaining this swell plan of his.

  I looked to see what ideas the tools in the lean-to might serve. If we could just lock the barn door on Junior somehow. The thing with sliding barn doors is you have to jam both halves together at the same time for a lock, as well as lock them to the main wall, otherwise a person can just slide the works away.

  Guy frowned at the black boxy thing I pulled out of the lean-to. As I plugged it into the barn’s outdoor power socket, he blabbed nonsense. “Rainy? Sweetie? Hon? Whatcha doing? What is that?”

  It was a MIG welder, 80 amp, 120 volt. A handy little machine, especially given there probably wasn’t 220 power out there. And what I was doing was welding the metal barn shut.

  The little wire feed unit had an accessory bracket with a brass brush and slag hammer, but I wouldn’t be prettying up my work. A rush job is not my favorite kind, but I’ve got to take the bad with the good.

  With a few hasty, ugly welds, I was going to stop Junior, really stop him. Stop the guy who’d killed Patsy-Lynn and hurt her horse and tried to kill me. I told Guy, “Grab me that mask, will you?”

  I scraped the barn’s door handle with my do-all to get a good contact and clamped the ground line to it. About ready to rock and roll, my habits still made me take a safety glance around. There was an awful lot of tinder about. It’s called hog fuel, the rough shredded bits of bark and scrap slash left over from logging operations. Horse folk use it by the truckload to meet the Oregon mud every year. And gas cans weren’t the very best thing to have lying around while welding either. I’d just have to be careful, quick, and keep checking where the sparks landed.

  “Guy, there’s just the one piece of eye protection here, so—”

  “I’ll use these.” He pulled sunglasses out of his shirt pocket.

  I shook my head. “Not good enough. And what about Misty? Go to her, keep your back to the welder, and put your hands over her eyes.”

  There was no reason to blind the hardy little horse who’d carried us down the trail in the dark.

  There was no reason to hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.

  It wasn’t an auto-darkening eye shield, so my first squeezes of the welder’s trigger were wild apple guesses. I flipped the visor up and down a bunch, peeking and adjusting the scrap metal I made part of the barn, turning the metal door into a permanent wall.

  Welding to that metal building wasn’t easy, given its thinness.

  The impossibly bright arc was a flicker of hope and a promise of strength. I made it work, ignoring the sparks flying at my body, letting them burn themselves out on my jeans and singe carbon pits into my boots. I checked my progress, welded, checked and welded. This was a long few minutes.

  When I finished, a flame danced on the metal, the paint burning off. I blew it out.

  Guy started singing “Come on Rainy, light my fire.”

  Junior started kicking inside.

  I picked up the slag hammer, fixed to do battle again if Junior broke my welds, thinking a weapon with longer reach would have been a more inspired notion.

  Big as he was, though, Junior wasn’t a big enough man to test my metal. My welds held and it sounded like Junior dozed off again, weakened.

  I’d made metal anew. I had real strength. I’d earned it.

  Junior hadn’t earned his. Muscles and moods and zits on his mug, that’s what his steroids got him.

  An inability to make babies or heal a simple scrape, plus tender feet after his system got screwed up metabolically, that’s what excess steroids got Spartacus. Too much size, not enough sanity.

  And what did it get Patsy-Lynn?

  A dark truck drove up, very slowly, from the direction of the big house.

  Guy took a step to stand between me and the approaching truck. He faced it, giving me his back. “Is that the pickup that drove by when we were talking at the old pizza place?”

  “Dixon Talbot’s rig?” I leaned around him to stare at the big black truck in the night, dual rear wheels, judging from the width. The trees blocked my chance to see if there was a shoer’s box in the back. Was I wrong about everything, always? “Let’s get out of here.”

  “What’s the problem?” Guy asked.

  “Just come on.” I turned for the backcountry trail we’d run in on.

  Guy grabbed my hand, held fast. “Rainy, what’s going on?”

  Junior’s daddy’s voice creaked from the driver’s window. “Rainy? Is that Rainy Dale?”

  This was the truck I’d seen on Oldham lane after shoeing for Patsy-Lynn that last time. Now I placed it as her towing truck, one she only used hauling to shows.

  I bet Junior’d borrowed it that day she died and she’d known he was coming back.

  I bet his daddy came to understand this in the days after the funeral, too. The sheriff’s men would have talked to him about my seeing a truck coming up Oldham lane. Junior had said he was hundreds of miles away when Patsy-Lynn died. A road trip is provable, but the credit card statement showed what poor Patsy-Lynn had already known. Junior was home early. And then he’d taken the truck, but she knew he could be back any minute, so she wanted me to stay with her. At some point, Old Man Harper had figured out for sure that his son was lying about being hundreds of miles away when his wife died. Maybe he studied those non-

  existent credit card transactions before handing the records over to the police. Junior’s story fell apart with scrutiny.

  I stood fast, like Guy, willing to have a go at Harper Senior. He needed to make right by his wife. I needed him to.

  However else was I going to let go the guilt of not being Patsy-Lynn’s friend when she’d needed one?

  Guy had a question. “Now
what?” He still held my hand as he looked across the gravel at the oncoming truck.

  But Mr. Harper stopped, shut his engine off, and just sat in the driver’s seat. Headlights of other cars turned into Harper’s driveway, searching the night.

  “Now we call the po-lice and Junior goes to the pokey. We’ll talk to his daddy. I bet even early on, a part of the old man wondered if his son had an outburst and hurt Patsy-Lynn. Maybe Junior didn’t mean to kill her. Probably he didn’t mean to. But she died at his hands. And that must have been pretty hard for Mr. Harper to face. And he loves his son, like natural. So, sending his kid away was his best solution.”

  Guy snapped his fingers. “That’s why the old man wouldn’t give a blood sample to the police. Being the father, his DNA would have been a close enough match to the DNA on the rasp that it would have strengthened suspicion on his son. He’s smart enough to know that. And that’s why the police asked Keith and me for samples, trying to make it seem to Mr. Harper like, hey, they’re asking everybody, just give a sample.”

  Since I’d just found out Guy was smart enough to guess the reason why Mr. Harper refused to give blood—and the reason had never dawned on me—I was sort of impressed with my man.

  And there was that part about Guy saving my life, which started just because he was coming to help me find a missing horse that was none of my business, but bugged me all the same.

  We only caught Junior ’cause Guy was willing to do an instant Ride and Tie with me in the dark on a strange horse. Bareback. Without a bridle. Turns out the guy can ride.

  And Guy is the only person I know who’d walk into a dead-end barn and go toe to toe with Winston Harper Junior.

  Besides, he can run like the dickens and sometimes that’s as good as standing to fight.

  “I figured out some things,” I said. “From the sheriff, I realized not everything was related. They made me think about drugs. I think it was Dixon Talbot who snapped off my hood ornament and I bet he throws my business cards in the garbage. But it wasn’t his truck coming to the Flying Cross the day I left Patsy-Lynn. If the deputies go talk to Talbot, I bet they find out he gave Harper Junior a ride right after Junior left Misty up in the hills and got a flat tire.”

  Guy tried to cut in like a fellow on a dance floor. “Rainy—”

  “And it wasn’t a shoer who broke into Nichol’s office. I’m sure that was Junior. And he stole steroids.”

  “You almost got killed up there,” Guy shook his head, closed his eyes, and wrapped his arms around me.

  But I was on a roll. “See, I guessed that Abby’d bred Liberty to Spartacus. I started to think about why Spartacus got so big and nasty and suddenly had sore feet and his scrape didn’t heal and he had trouble breeding. That’s all problems from getting over-dosed with steroids. And I thought about why Patsy-Lynn might have a problem with her husband’s son. After I got Abby talking, I guessed that Junior took Misty, but he meant to get Liberty.”

  He’d wanted the baby back, the baby Abby tried to make and take.

  Guy rubbed the used little horse’s face. Misty was almost home now. We could lead her there, avoiding the cattle guard by going through the Langstons’ pasture. The Solquists would be glad to have their mare back.

  Junior would have had a long wait expecting Misty to drop Spartacus’s baby. And Liberty and Abby were safe from him now.

  “Misty,” I told her, “you did great. You need water, a rub down, and some good feed.”

  “Hay Misty for Me,” Guy sang.

  “The singing doesn’t actually help,” I said, trying not to encourage him with a smile.

  “Every little bit helps.” Guy grinned.

  “Like I got a little bit from Talbot and Nichol and Abby and the sheriff and—” I stopped because he waved. “What?”

  “I’d just like to get this nailed down,” he said. “Will you marry me?”

  Yeah, I’d figured out some things.

  I love Guy. Love him.

  Chapter 30

  BEFORE MIDNIGHT, JUNIOR WOKE UP AGAIN and started trying to open the door, but my welds held.

  The sheriff’s car and two deputies rolled up, parking right on Old Man Harper’s heels. Watching this, a bit of tenderness crawled into my heart for Old Man Harper. Calling the law by midnight had been his deal with himself and his son. He had kept his promise.

  After we speed-explained our end of it to the police, Guy and I talked more to the real Mr. Harper about what his son had done and why the old barn was welded shut.

  I cut the welds for the deputies, but stayed wary of Junior ’til they got him handcuffed and in the back seat of a patrol car. They brought out an ambulance so his head could get looked at, but the handcuffs stayed on for keeps.

  After that, Sheriff Magoutsen and his men wanted to hear details.

  I told him all about welding the barn shut in the first place, the little battle we’d had in and out of the barn. About the chase through the woods before that. Junior’s abduction of me. The evidence on the kitchen table back home. And my destruction of evidence, from when I’d found and cut up the plywood Junior had used over the cattle guard near the Solquists’ road. I asked if they’d want my new tool box, since that’s what Junior’s plywood had become.

  Mr. Harper, the real Mr. Harper, the aged man, cried. His shoulders shook and he mumbled in defeat. “At first, Win didn’t tell me anything and I couldn’t understand her death at all. I mean, why would she kill herself? And why was she injured? Her face was bruised.”

  I swallowed, hearing for the first time what else had happened to Patsy-Lynn, picturing her stepson belting her across the face like my ex had done me.

  “Win said we were missing cash, but now I think he just said that to distract the sheriff and me.” Mr. Harper shook his head. “The sheriff’s men were trying to figure out the rasp, knew it wasn’t unrelated to Patsy-Lynn dying, but we didn’t know what to think. Then I checked the credit card statements the sheriff’s investigator wanted and I realized my son wasn’t on the road when he said he was. When I confronted him, Win finally told me he didn’t mean to hurt her, that he was in the garage and she’d already started the car, she’d been about to leave. He told me she was mad at him about some mare he’d brought in, and about who had control over the stud. He said they argued and maybe pushed at each other and she hit him with the rasp, then he pushed her down and left. Win said he hadn’t meant to hurt her. He said she must have passed out. And my Patsy-Lynn died of carbon monoxide poisoning.”

  Magoutsen nodded. He’d known—all the sheriff’s men had known—medically, how she died.

  Guy and I looked at each other. I reckon we were both thinking that Junior could have saved Patsy-Lynn. And I bet I knew why she was mad at him in the first place. She didn’t like some strange Arab being at their Quarter Horse place with no explanation. She didn’t like him messing with her stallion.

  But she wouldn’t have hauled off and hit Junior with a rasp, starting that fight.

  She wasn’t a dummy. She wanted to live. I bet he pushed her long before she swung her weapon.

  He started that fight and he finished it. She was already afraid of her stepson and that’s why she wanted me to hang around.

  I wished I had.

  Patsy-Lynn, I am so very sorry. If I had it to do over again, I’d be a friend. I’d stay with you.

  I’d be a better person when someone needed a better person to help out.

  And I bet Junior knew real clear what he’d done after he laid his ’roid rage on his stepmama.

  Mr. Harper was realizing too, that there was more to the story. Now he’d learned from me and the police that his son had tried to kill me and tried to make it look like I’d killed Patsy-Lynn. I told the sheriff about Junior planning to tamper with his dad’s pills and he gave me a severe nod that meant he’d take care of this, too.

  Harper looked shell-shocked, leaving me thinking about all he’d lost, all he thought he’d had.

  A good son.<
br />
  I never had one except when he was inside me.

  Guy says some lucky couple has a good son only because of me.

  * * *

  Come morning, Guy got my mama on the phone and he made a lot of things plain. He got my daddy on the phone and did likewise.

  Nobody but me had held a grudge against me all this time. Guy gets the past, but he’s all about the future.

  Within another day, I said yes to him. We got all the folks back on the phone again to tell them we were engaged. Guy was mighty delighted-looking with having a fiancée.

  “How’d I manage to persuade you?” he asked.

  I thought, just for a minute, about giving him a look to indicate he should make himself clear, but I could well enough guess his meaning. Maybe making Guy work so hard at it, at me and at us, wasn’t too becoming. Finally, I did my part, understood him. He wasn’t talking about a goose pen or his restaurant dream, he was talking about me.

  I spoke slowly. “I think it was you being a good guy who really cares about me.” And I reckon I went red from my toes to the tip of my ponytail.

  “Well, fine,” Guy said.

  * * *

  A few weeks on, Guy and I kept stiff upper lips when Keith Langston made his daughter sign a contract that she owed Mr. Harper for the stud fee and she would have to give away Liberty’s baby to boot.

  “I can’t have her profit from what she did and I have to have her pay for what she took. I’m trying to raise a winner here.”

  Abby wailed at the double whammy, looked to me for some sympathy, but Guy and I had already talked about the wise severity of Langston’s thinking.

  She washed dishes for Guy, and I put her to work as a helper on Saturdays. She says she’s going to be a vet someday, but a horseshoer first. I turned her back over to her daddy after one long day where we’d worked a rodeo and I couldn’t stop smiling.

  Abby had cleaned up the pulled shoes for me, held horses, fetched stuff, and acted all big and important when I let her light my forge. We were dirty and needing showers ’cause I’d been running the fire all day.