by Lisa Preston
It was the most helpful thing anyone had said to me all day.
But the batteries weren’t Ol’ Blue’s problem. We gave them time to charge, I cranked. Ol’ Blue stayed dead. When Gabe and I gave up, I dropped the hood and the news. “Ivy wants everyone to come up to her house. I think she wants to talk.”
“Beautiful,” Gabe said, rolling his eyes. “When’s she going back to LA?”
I gave a wide-eyed shrug. Inside Ol’ Blue’s cab, Charley eyed me from the safety of the passenger side. I could almost hear his thoughts as he watched me.
Let’s go home.
Gabe coiled his jumper cables, stuffed them in the Bronco, and told Stuckey, “Go get Oscar.”
We watched Stuckey head off on his errand, watched different lights switch on and off inside the bunkhouse. I asked, “Is that first room on the right in there yours?”
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “Why?”
Studying him with all my attention, I said, “I found my shoeing tools—the ones that were stolen when I got hit at the bull sale—in Stuckey’s locker.”
“Jesus. You did? What an idiot.”
I blinked a few times and waited.
The light was dim, so it was hard to tell, but Gabe might have reddened a shade or two with his comment. He patched things up with, “I meant Stuckey, not you. You seem like a real smart girl.”
No, I don’t. I seem like a girl in the wrong place, and for way too long, and way too slow to put things together.
***
Stuckey was the first to report to Ivy’s house. I waved him to the window by the fireplace for a little one-on-one time. Instinct told me to get him to come clean before Gabe and Oscar walked in. Across the great room, Ivy organized her calendar and papers at the head of the table while Eliana cleared away the many unused dinner dishes with plenty of clatter.
“Did you hit me Saturday morning at the bull sale? Move my truck? Take some of my tools?” I asked Stuckey, not interested in Ivy’s plan for going subtle.
“No!” His gaze darted around, resting longest at the front door.
Waiting for Gabe to come and save him, I decided. “People clapped after I worked my dog in the arena, they made an announcement. You saw Charley. You recognized him and freaked.”
“No!”
Air whistled out my pursed lips. It was sort of like dealing with a four-year-old who’d taken a cookie but was still married to the hope that no one had seen the naughtiness. I glanced across the room and could tell Ivy was keeping tabs on us. I liked the backup but doubted she could hear much of what Stuckey and I said, if anything. I remembered standing here with Oscar hours earlier, looking out the window that now showed only a black square of night. We’d been looking at a body bag. I started from scratch, again.
“Did you ride a four-wheeler out to the east gate of the ranch, get a ride to the bull sale from Robbie Duffman?”
Stuckey’s lips parted into a soundless oval and he nodded.
“Then at the sale, you saw my dog.”
Another nod. He did better with statements than questions.
“And you recognized him. You knew he was Flame.”
The nods came full and hard. Then he folded his arms across his chest. “You looked in my room? Went through my stuff?”
What could I say to that? That I had been putting laundry away for Eliana? I remembered the washer and dryer in the bunkhouse alcove. They did their own laundry. They had a real sweet setup on Ivy Beaumont’s ranch. It would be a lot to lose.
“Yeah, Stuckey, I snooped.” I pulled my track nippers out of my hip pocket. The reins had been up in my shirt. “These are mine, aren’t they?”
“I guess.”
I wanted to bonk him between the eyeballs with the nippers and recalled how I’d picked them up from my pile of reclaimed tools when I felt the urge to have a weapon handy. Stuckey was the kind of fella who had to be talked into the truth. I needed to make it easy for him to admit his wrongs. And there were bigger hooves to trim, so to speak. I thought of Charley, alone and happier in Ol’ Blue’s locked cab. I’d vented the windows to keep him comfortable, since he’d been clear he wanted to stay in the truck. I promised to deal with whoever had hurt him. I tried to make my voice steady as I said to Stuckey in a matter-of-fact way, “It was you. You hit me on the head at the sale grounds, and a couple years ago you—”
“No, ma’am.”
“Gabe said it was you.”
“He told?”
“You took my truck. You dumped me and my truck, and you stole my tools. Charley ran from you, and that’s why he was wandering the ranch.”
Stuckey’s face turned dark and hard, his eyes shiny. “’Bout what happened Saturday, what are you going to do now?”
“I’ve already done it. I took my tools back.”
A coat of anxiety fell off Stuckey’s shoulders and a better invisible garment, this one made of relief, settled over him. “Is that all?”
“Why’d you do it, Stuckey?”
“I ain’t sure.”
I smacked my hands on my hips. Mommed him a bit. “C’mon. You can do better.”
He tried harder. “I don’t know. Just because. Maybe you can’t understand, ’cause you’ve never done something that seemed like you might ought but might shouldn’t and you didn’t think it through or know why you done it at the time.”
Well, he’d just described a lot of my life.
“Did you ever hurt Charley?”
Stuckey looked at the door. Men’s voices muffled on the other side of it, stomping on the flagstone as they kicked dirt off their boots. We were out of time. Stuckey wasn’t going to offer more than he was forced to admit.
He grabbed me. I gasped. Voice hoarse, he asked, “You found the other thing?”
I wasn’t playing dumb, though I’m pretty skilled at it. “Other thing?”
Eliana opened the front door.
“Don’t tell. You have to hide it.” Stuckey’s whisper was sullen, a bit angry, but urgent.
“What?” I asked, leaning an ear close to his mouth as Gabe and Oscar came in.
“I’m not telling.” Stuckey’s eyes dilated, dark and flared. “That could get you killed.”
Chapter 22
TICK TOCK. I LOOKED AROUND IVY’S dining table. We were where we’d been twenty-four hours earlier, but without the food and friendliness. Eliana had put the chicken dinner away while Ivy and I were in town. The slightest scent of roast fowl lingered, and the bare table made the atmosphere worse. Tense. I hadn’t heard the clock before, a big antique in the living room end, on the mantel above the fireplace, but now it filled my ears. Tick, tock, tick, tock.
Eliana and Oscar sat on one long side, as far from each other as possible, which put Eliana close to Ivy at the far head of the table. Stuckey wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t look at anybody. I wanted to pull Ivy aside and compare notes, so to speak, but she commanded everybody to sit down and listen up. I wasn’t about to sit between Gabe and Stuckey now, so there I was at the other head of the table, in the always-absent Milt’s spot.
Ivy asked, “Who here knows anything about Pleasures massage parlor?”
That was her idea of subtle? Or getting to the point? I should have told her the details about confronting Stuckey minutes before.
Eliana looked at Ivy and said nothing. Oscar, Gabe, and Stuckey looked at each other in a way that made me think all the boys knew about Pleasures.
“I’ve got some questions,” Ivy said. “I want to understand what happened here a couple of years ago. We are going to reconstruct the timeline. We’re going to figure this out.”
I nodded. The police wouldn’t care about my dog getting mutilated two years ago. I cared. Ivy cared.
“You were gone, right?” I suggested. “You used to spend less time here.”
Ivy patted the folder of receipts with the calendar on top. “I narrowed it down to the weeks I wasn’t here. I used to come to the ranch about once or twice a month, and I missed some l
ong weekends.”
I thought about what Ivy had already deduced from her records.
Oscar lied to me.
I said one word to Ivy as we eyed each other down the long table. “Fire.”
She nodded. “Fire.”
Calling my dog by his old name was hard, but I managed to say, “You thought Vicente took him and Flame.”
She looked down at Oscar.
He sat frozen, not volunteering a word.
Ivy pointed to her tally of purchases and her calendar. “I hired you in February two years ago. Fire had a breeding scheduled in March. And you were here then. I made a big hay buy. I paid all five of you, counting Vicente. And I deducted the mileage when I took you and Eliana and Vicente to town. You two went to that little Mexican market and Vicente went to the library.”
Gabe started to make a face but straightened it out and waited. Stuckey still studied the table. Eliana watched Ivy, who watched Oscar.
Oscar shifted on his chair and folded his hands on the table where a plate should have been. “Perhaps I make a mistake on when I began work for you.”
Ivy rolled her eyes and thrust her chin at me. “Of course, yesterday, I didn’t know Vicente was dead. I guess I thought that wherever Vicente was, he still had Fire and Flame.” Now she rapped her calendar like a lawyer making a closing argument in front of the jury, or in this case, a whole bunch of suspects. “But as soon as we realized that your dog is Flame, we should have wondered where Fire was. Two years ago, Fire’s breeding was for Reese Trenton’s bitch. It was spring lambing time.”
“What happened to Fire?” I asked the table. As soon as we got Ivy’s old dog squared away, we were going to deal with what happened to mine.
Stuckey’s shoulders hunched and shook. Shame and stress came off him in waves as he cried. Eliana wrinkled her face with discomfort and looked at Gabe and Oscar, their impassive faces giving nothing.
“I didn’t mean to,” Stuckey mumbled.
Ivy started to rise. Her neck stretching tall and tight. I caught her eye and shook my head with the barest movement.
That won’t work.
She reconsidered, stayed quiet. I made my voice understanding, sympathetic. “You didn’t mean to.”
“I didn’t!” Stuckey’s voice grew fierce.
Ivy sat back down and spoke like a sweet big sister. “You didn’t mean to what?”
“Shoot him. I was trying to save him.”
“Aw, Stuckey.” I said it like a gentle admonishment, resigned, rubbing my forehead with both hands. Yeah, a shot dog trumps one with cut ears.
“I didn’t mean to.” Stuckey’s repetition bordered on a whine. “I’m sorry. I was trying to save him. You can do whatever you want to me. I’m sorry.”
Ivy was floored. “You … shot … Fire?”
Stuckey’s voice spiked with stress. “I didn’t mean to shoot him. I was trying for a coyote. It would have got him. I was trying to save Fire.”
“You shot Fire.” Ivy’s voice was quiet now, hurt and resolute. “You killed him?”
Stuckey nodded and shot a grateful look at Gabe. “Gabe stood up for me, buried him.”
“Where?” Ivy asked.
Gabe cleared his throat. “Down where the flock is now. East. Between some oaks. It’s a nice spot.”
Stuckey shot his guilty look all around and clasped his hands over his head.
Ivy rose and stood with her back to us. Was she crying?
Ti-i-ick to-ock. Was the clock really in slow motion while the near silence stretched, or was that just the situation torturing us? I watched Ivy but felt one or two people at the table glance at me.
Finally, Ivy turned and faced us. “Tomorrow, you guys are going to dig up my dog and take him to be cremated and … I’ll spread his ashes, I don’t know, in the sea, or … that’s not the point. You should have told me the truth. You should have been more careful. Poor Fire.”
“Stuckey screwed up,” Gabe said, “real bad. And we should have told you. He was just real scared. Asked me to cover for him. I’m sorry, Ivy. I really am.”
“I was scared,” Stuckey said.
Ivy glared at Gabe and Stuckey, ignoring the other side of the table. “Tell me, did he die immediately, or did he suffer?”
“It was a clean kill,” Gabe said, his voice quiet and respectful.
Ivy seethed. “A clean kill. You guys shot my dog, and you kept that from me, let me think Vicente had just taken off with him.”
Gabe started to bristle at her accusation. I could tell he wanted to point out that he hadn’t shot the dog, but to his credit, he kept his trap shut.
“What did Vicente say when Fire died?” I asked.
Stuckey looked at Gabe, then the table. Gabe looked right back at me and said, “He never knew.”
Ivy thrust her hands on her hips, her face as flushed. “I get that this has nothing to do with Vicente, but you guys have to tell the police if they ask about this part. I’ve told them that I thought Vicente had taken off with Fire and Flame, because that’s what I thought had happened.”
“I’m scared,” Stuckey said. “I don’t want to be in trouble with the police.”
“It had to be just some vagrant or something,” Gabe said. “I mean, that got Vicente. You know how people sneak onto the ranch, dump garbage. We had those homeless people who came in from Trenton’s north section off the interstate that one time. People have dumped stuff over near the east gate.”
I remembered mention of trespassers before. It’s a problem for ranchers all over the west, people traipsing across the private land, camping illegally, dumping garbage. It’s come to blows, and worse.
Ivy paused and pulled a photo from her folder. She’d been busy while I was out there trying to get Ol’ Blue started.
She’d printed a full-size picture of the thermos.
“Spring lambing,” Ivy said again. “Eliana says she was sending meals up to Vicente. One of you would have brought them up to him.”
My mouth opened as I got it, and I wondered when Ivy had put it together.
If Vicente wasn’t shot or stabbed, he might have been poisoned.
I remembered Ivy’s huge tray of meds. Plenty to kill with an overdose.
Gabe’s nostrils flared as he eyed Oscar, Eliana, and Stuckey. “Well, I sure as hell didn’t fetch meals for him.”
Stuckey ducked his head down like a scolded dog.
What had been inside the thermos the police found near the body and tagged as evidence?
“I know nothing,” Oscar said.
Ivy and I looked at each other down the length of the tables. I figured we were reading each other’s minds.
Someone’s lying. Who is it?
I watched Ivy study her employees one by one. Didn’t she get it? It was certainly occurring to me that if whoever hurt Charley had been the one to kill Vicente, then that person had a whole lot to lose and this was not a safe table to sit at. But then, I’d gone to sleep the night before thinking that someone around this table knew, like Charley and I did, where the body was buried.
I’d proved the body was there, but that was all I’d proved.
Maybe I was wrong the night before. Maybe the other person who knew where Vicente Arriaga lay dead and buried hadn’t been around Ivy’s dining table but was one of those other people in Ivy’s orbit. I tried to think it through.
What about her little waif Solar, who was involved in something hinky at the Great Dogs shop? What about that fellow who delivered the coal coke? He passed cash with Stuckey. And something had passed between Stuckey and the hay deliverers, a woman and a man. Maybe someone else who came onto the ranch regularly had a whole side business that involved money and contraband. What about Duffy, who sure wasn’t a good enough shoer to earn real money at it? What about Ivy’s lawyer, who had way too much influence with the medical examiner’s office and was a criminal defense attorney to boot? What about her doctor, so free and easy with major meds? And what about Ivy’s too-absent hus
band, Milt?
What about Reese Trenton, the rancher who’d lost land with Ivy’s purchase of her hobby ranch? He was packing a pistol and a grudge. A grave was waiting for someone on his land.
I wanted to go home.
Whatever was going on here likely involved more than one person. Which meant more than one person was lying.
Chapter 23
THE THREE MEN FILED OUT FOR the bunkhouse. Eliana went for her bedroom down the hallway and shut her door with a click. I drummed my finger on the table near Ivy’s folder of receipts, her calendar, and the enlarged photo of the thermos.
“Can I use your phone?” I asked. “I need to tell Guy I’m having truck trouble and may have to stay another night.”
Ivy flipped one delicate wrist in half a wave. “Sure.” But then she motioned me to join her at the other end of the great room as she sank onto a white leather couch. “I’ve got to figure this out.”
I nodded and sat beside her. “Okay. What did Vicente do in his time off?”
“Other than go to a massage parlor?” Ivy smirked. “I’d drop him off in town on my way to the store, pick him up on the way back.”
“Did he go to bars, friends, the bank?”
“He didn’t use a bank. He usually wanted to go to the library. He liked to read in there.”
That surprised me. I don’t know why. I should figure that people are way more interesting and confusing than they seem at first.
“Wait a minute,” I said, harking back to the sight of the dead man’s wallet contents spread out on the tarp in front of the cops. I snapped my fingers. “Let’s go look at your photos again.”
We went back to Milt’s office. With a few clicks on the computer, countless thumbnails filled the screen.
Ivy asked, “What are you looking for?”
I paged through her shots until I spotted one that showed Pleasures massage parlor as one of the three cards from Vicente’s wallet.
“Can you blow this up?” I asked.
Ivy frowned, clicked and tapped, making her computer show a full-screen version of the cards extricated from the wallet, laid out one by one. There was the California State Identification for Vicente Arriaga, there was the business card for Pleasures massage parlor, there was the library card.
