by Lisa Preston
Unfortunately, he liberated them from me, said he was taking them for evidence. He even wanted the track nippers I’d been packing around in my hip pocket half the afternoon. This was not working out well. He stepped farther from the front door, maybe being respectful of the hour as he got loud on his portable radio, asking advice. Charley was at my side as I pulled the door shut and followed the cop out onto the flagstone.
The night was cooling off fast. I rubbed my arms.
“Ten-four,” he said into this radio. “Yeah. Copy that. No, from another building. Does he want me to wake ’em up?”
I waited.
He listened to his radio, said, “Ten-four,” again, then turned to me. “Ms. Dale, we’d need your cooperation to charge Mister Stuckey with the assault and theft from you. We’ll take a statement from him in the morning and refer it to the prosecutor.”
I rubbed my head. “I’m kind of over it.”
He shook his head. “Would you rethink cooperating fully? Charging that man for assaulting you at the bull sale needs to happen. You’re not the judge here, and there are diversion programs down the road anyway, but you victims who give passes for that kind of behavior are not helping.”
I nodded. “I guess I take your point.” But I felt bad.
He headed for his vehicle with all I’d given up.
“Will I get those tools back?” I called.
“Eventually, probably.”
“That’s it?”
“You have the case number. That’s good enough for a receipt. I’ll be doing a supplemental report and the detective is working now. Talk to him in the morning.” And he fired up his patrol car, driving off for the main gate in the dark.
I turned to go back inside but found the front door had been dead bolted.
***
She got it, I suppose. Ivy understood why I’d called the police to report the collar with the slit pouch. Maybe she hadn’t meant to lock me out. Or maybe Eliana had bolted the door without realizing I was still outside.
Or maybe someone was playing games with me.
I hate games. And I didn’t want to play knock-knock.
Ol’ Blue is where I went, me and my dog piling into the cab, locking the doors, which I almost never do. We’d slept in the truck Friday night, we could do the same for what was left of Sunday. I tried the ignition. No go. I tugged on the leather jacket that I’d slept in Friday night. There’s a reason shoers like leather and cotton and wool and silk. We need clothes that don’t melt when hot sparks fly. A hole burned in a natural fabric is fine, but synthetic clothes that runners wear melt like plastic, stick to your skin and keep burning. I don’t want to get burnt. I snapped my jacket’s metal buttons, turned the collar up, and pulled Charley close.
“We’ll get Ol’ Blue towed to a shop tomorrow,” I told him. “If it can’t get fixed quick, we’ll meet up with my mama and ride with her back home.” I hated to leave my truck, but I wasn’t going to miss my own wedding.
And that’s where I slept until Charley’s low growl awoke me, along with the sound of someone rapping on the driver’s window.
A silhouette in the sunrise asked if I’d seen anyone coming or going. Gabe’s voice was muffled through the glass, which was blurry from the condensation of Charley and me breathing inside the cab for the few hours’ sleep we’d grabbed.
I twisted the ignition key halfway so I could power down the window, remembering only after I got no juice that my truck was dead. I unlocked and opened the door.
“You slept here?” Gabe asked. His glance went behind me, to the house. “Ivy kick you out? We had an extra bedroom in the bunkhouse.”
“It was real late,” I said. “Didn’t want to disturb anyone.” I wasn’t going to add that I didn’t know if it was Ivy or Eliana who’d locked me out, and I’d been too unsure of my prospects to try knocking or ringing the bell at the big house, and the bunkhouse might have been hosting whichever fellow had a hand in doing in my dog’s last person.
Gabe adjusted his cowboy hat. “Anyone else up and about? I can’t find Oscar.” He turned and hollered at the bunkhouse. “Stuckey, check the barn again.”
Oscar making himself more than scarce made me think a good couple of times. I rubbed my eyes and redid my ponytail.
Ivy came out of the big house via the garage, driving her Hummer, Eliana in the front seat with her. Ivy shut the giant SUV down and flung her door open when Gabe gave her the news.
“You guys can’t find Oscar?” she asked.
Stuckey shuffled up. “Ain’t he up at the house?”
Ivy’s face offered her version of a frown, her mouth forced down at the corners for part of a split second. “Did he take off last night?”
Gabe and Stuckey looked at each other. Everybody seemed to be pointing a finger at Oscar having lit out for good.
“I could ride around and look for him.” My offer was sincere. Riding always sounds to me like the best thing to do. If I rode to the summit, I could call my mama again or try my daddy. Either of my folks were my best chance for getting out of here today, given the stubbornness Ol’ Blue was displaying.
“Not for long,” Ivy said. “You’re going in to see my lawyer before the police this morning, just like everybody else.”
Everybody but Oscar, I thought, unless we find him quick. Apparently, we weren’t going to be discussing that I’d slept in my truck last night. I figured that she could have been sleepy and kind of accidentally turned her lock while I was outside with the cop in the wee hours, or it could have been what Guy calls a passive-aggressive move. He’d probably call not talking about it passive-aggressive, too.
Gabe made his report while swiveling in place, looking in every direction. “Both four-wheelers are here. All the horses are here. He’s not in the smokehouse. We’ve looked everywhere twice. No one fed the horses yet. He didn’t come out to do chores.”
“Look again,” Ivy ordered. “Split up. Everybody check something, everything.”
She pointed down the ranch road to the east then west toward the main gate. That’s the direction I chose, waving Charley along with me. I hadn’t gone far when Ivy zipped out of the garage in her Hummer, heading east for the ranch’s back gate, while Gabe and Stuckey fired up the four-wheelers.
The solo stroll out toward the header at the ranch gate should have been the nicest little walk Charley and I had had in a while, but I pondered on Oscar hightailing it.
Either that, or someone had done something to him, making him the next Vicente.
Then I saw the white Jeep Compass just beyond the open ranch gate.
Sabino Arriaga looked better than I imagine I did. His hair was wet and his face clean-shaven. He hadn’t been there long this time, I reckoned.
I’d been avoiding him, and I didn’t even want to face the reason why.
He got out of the car, raised a hand, and stood waiting. I turned on my heel and walked back to the ranch house, slapping my thigh.
“Charley, come. Heel.”
I put my dog away in Ol’ Blue, the one-ton kennel good for nothing else at the time, then went to the barn and saddled up. Decker and I made a speedy loop out to the flock, calling for Oscar, stopping just shy of spooking the sheep. The donkey jack brayed once, and I was sure he’d betray any person hanging out down there. His son, the mule, started to follow Decker again, so I wheeled off and loped back to the barn though I’d have liked to ride for the summit and certain cell service. The others had made no progress. Gabe reported in from a four-wheel ride down to a pig wallow and back. Stuckey had tried up and down the ranch land near Reese Trenton’s place. Eliana checked the house, though it didn’t seem necessary and we all searched the barn and smoke-house and bunkhouse.
It was time to face facts. Oscar was gone.
Chapter 25
ELIANA DIDN’T WANT TO BE TAKEN to the police interview. Ivy laughed it off with a shake of her head. “I could not get that girl to stop with the food this morning.”
She had pu
lled the Hummer back into the garage, waving me to come along inside the bay. As we entered the house, she explained that Eliana had been the first one up. The tables were piled with a spread of cinnamon French toast, pancakes, and sausages, plus all sorts of little bowls of goodies on the side to add—maple syrup, whipped cream, pecans, blueberries, strawberries, and chocolate chips.
There wasn’t enough chocolate in the world that could be slathered on this situation to make it appealing.
Hustling around looking for Oscar had used up the time that was supposed to be spent in consultation with the attorney. While Ivy got on the horn with her lawyer and arranged to meet at the police station, Eliana put away all the untouched food she’d assembled. Ivy hung up the phone and waved us to the garage, rolling her eyes as she did.
Back in the Hummer, Ivy explained how she was to drive Eliana and me direct to the police station. Gabe was going to take himself and Stuckey in for the second round of appointments with the cops. Ivy promised everybody her attorney would make sure everything was on the up-and-up, too.
Maybe there wasn’t enough time to fix the possible monkey wrench that had been thrown into whatever agreement the police and the lawyer had come to on interviewing and polygraphing everybody, yet not take action on Eliana and Oscar. Probably Oscar would get less leniency now, but perhaps Eliana, who hadn’t made a run for it, would still be okay. I told Ivy about the trench dug on the neighbor’s ranch, how he’d seen a man in a dark baseball cap slipping onto his land.
“It was Oscar,” Ivy said.
But we both knew proof was hard to come by.
***
“In Southern California, everyone has a Maria,” Ivy told me, looking in her rearview mirror at me as she drove us to Black Bluff. I’d slipped into the back seat naturally when she said I could bring Charley, but then Eliana joined me there, so here we sat on each side of Charley like a row of children behind Ivy.
“Ma’am?” I glanced at her, then at Eliana. She was looking younger by the minute, her frightened face childlike this morning.
“Everybody has a domestic,” Ivy said. “A Mexican. No one cleans their own house. And those girls, those beautiful Latina girls I’ve hired and all of my fake friends have hired to clean our houses, and cook and take care of kids, those girls don’t drive or have a car. You have to go pick them up and bring them to your house for the day and everything ends up spotless and no one even bothers to learn their girl’s name. Everybody just calls their girl Maria. Everyone has a Maria.”
Their girls. Probably in Ivy’s class of friends, yeah, people are that far off base. But other people live in Southern California and know their help’s name, or don’t have someone else to do their chores. My mama, for one. I frowned, thinking of what my mama had been trying to tell me, and managed an “I dunno” for Ivy.
“You’re adorable, Rainy. You’re so naive in some ways.”
But I am just barely smart enough to shut my mouth sometimes. Because undocumented workers weren’t the only reason Ivy Beaumont didn’t want the police on her ranch.
My mama had known about the Beaumont reputation in Hollywood.
“I want to call my mom,” I felt like I was six years old. “Even with your husband in the movie business, you probably never heard of my mother, but she does a little acting. Her name’s Dara Dale.”
“Your mother is Dara Dale? A horse rancher type woman?”
My mama?
Oh.
My.
“Uh, no, that’s the wrong one,” I said. I’d never known there were two people packing that name. My mama thinks horses smell bad.
Ivy started in again as she parked at the government building’s visitors’ section.
“You live up north,” she said. “Things are different there. Down here, it’s important to provide a safe space for these people. They’re good workers, and they’re not bothering anybody.”
These people. Did she have to provide her workers with a safe working space for six or seven days a week, instead of five? For once, I kept my mouth in check, taking time before I finally allowed, “I’m from Texas, ma’am. I’ve bucked hay beside many a Mexican. And men from farther south, while we’re at it. I do understand those hard workers and the fix they’re up against.”
Ivy rolled her eyes toward a Lexus in the lot. “At least Leonard’s here. About time he earned his retainer.” She slammed the tranny into park, flung open her door and then mine.
Eliana looked at me with tears in her eyes as she got out on the passenger’s side and whispered, “It was Oscar.”
She was fast pulled away from the Hummer by Ivy. I double-checked to make sure the windows were all left a bit open for Charley then dawdled to try my cell phone as they entered the government building.
***
Between my mama and my daddy, she’d be the one with the more maneuverable vehicle. My phone had three bars of connection and I’d gotten enough charge in Ivy’s car on our foray into Black Bluff.
I hung up on both Guy’s unanswered cell and our home message machine. I told my mama’s cell phone, “I think I need a tow truck. I’m at the Black Bluff police station right now.”
For good measure, I texted her, asking, Are you nearby? Can you come get me at the Black Bluff police station? Both my folks were driving north for the wedding right about then, and I wondered which was closer to Black Bluff. My wedding was going to mark the first time my mama and daddy had been in shouting distance of each other since I was thirteen years old. That friction was one good reason Guy and I had planned an outdoor wedding. In Oregon. In the springtime.
We’re not made of brain cells.
Here in California, the weather’s always perfect. Shirtsleeve weather, which made Ivy’s attorney, in sport coat and tie, look pretty out of place to me. But, inside the climate-controlled lobby of the Black Bluff town hall, sheriff’s station, courthouse, and licensing department, it was downright chilly. A sign in the lobby said no cell phone use. There was a crowd waiting for us. One tie-wearing fellow said he was a special agent with the state’s Bureau of Investigation. Another was a local officer with the town of Black Bluff. Others wore Tehama County deputies’ uniforms. Ivy and her lawyer frog-walked the terrified Eliana down a hall. Hanging near Mr. Special Agent was the remaining plainclothes detective, with collar-length hair, in dress Wranglers and a plaid shirt, with no tie, sleeves rolled up. I think he was the one who’d been in the unmarked police car on the day before.
“Rainy Dale,” Plaid Shirt said, waving me down the opposite hallway from where they’d marched Eliana.
I nodded, cell phone still in hand. “I’m trying to reach my fellow.” I kept thinking about Guy having changed our home phone machine’s outgoing message. I wanted to keep hitting send ’til I got an answer from him. I was just about to call the Cascade Kitchen to see if he was at work. I’d try Melinda next, just so she could tell me things were all right in the home pasture.
Plaid Shirt knocked once, and someone opened a heavy door from the inside. We were in another hall, just outside what looked like a little interview room.
He said, “How about you put the cell phone down for a couple of minutes so we can talk?”
I pocketed the phone and gritted my teeth. “Okey doke.”
“Great. We’d like to talk to you about what happened this weekend.”
“About me getting thumped and my stuff getting stolen?”
“No, this is about the other matter, Ms. Dale. We’d like you to sit down with me and Agent Mattingly for an interview.”
“About what?”
“Murder.” Mister Special Agent stepped forward as Plaid Shirt faded out of the room. “I’d like to talk about whether or not you killed Vicente Arriaga.”
“I didn’t kill anyone. I never knew Vicente. He was probably a good fellow, though, I can tell you that.”
“And you know that because?”
“Because I have his dog.” I explained the proof that Charley was a good dog, so it w
as reasonable to figure he’d had a good person. I squinted at this tie-wearer and wondered whether he was playing bad cop or not playing at all. Po-lice are an odd herd. My buddy Melinda has a weird sense of humor. And it mushroomed when she went to deputy-sheriff-school last fall. By the time she got back this winter, she made the squirrelliest small talk ever heard. So maybe this tie-wearing super special agent had the same affliction of canted humor that Melinda Kellan achieved after going to police school. I tried to allow for it.
The agent looked a lot like the easygoing plainclothes detective in that general cop way—same build and a white guy and all—but was somehow on a whole ’nother level. This piece of work had a file under his arm and failed to make himself clear in any form. He was six feet stupid in a five-nine body. Asked me why I thought I was there.
“Someone hitting me on the head, stealing my shoeing tools, and my dog finding a dead body.” My hand went to the back of my skull and rubbed. It still hurt to touch, like the bruise was spreading. Maybe it was a little mushy there, too.
“Did the deputy or the Black Bluff officer or the sheriff’s investigator tell you that?”
“No, I told them that.” I spoke slow enough for him to catch up and tried a little not to roll my eyes.
Then we sighed at each other, and he looked at me while I looked around the tiny room.
It had a mirror on the far side, honest to goodness. Like, someone could be eyeballing us from the other side of the glass. I stared at the goggle-eyed gal in the mirror. My frayed ponytail needed the use of a comb. Brown eyes looked black from being dilated in the bright light, lids a little wider open than usual, spooked-like. And I saw his reflection, too. Maybe younger than I’d thought at first glance, thirty-five or so. Folks in that range that used to look like they had some real age on me, but shoeing’s an in-the-weather job. Makes my face older than my years. High mileage, I am. His sport coat was a real dark navy that had looked black in the hallway, and his pants were dark gray. For no good reason, my brain went to thinking about how gray horses change shades over their lives, and then of course I thought about how two grays might not make a gray and how a little Arab I’ve trimmed since it was a baby was born looking chestnut and is now a light gray and—
