Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8)

by Deborah Coonts

  “Any idea why?”

  “Doc Latham said he had a bad heart.”

  “Could that be true?”

  She gave a shrug. “Maybe, but Josie’s parents were acting all snake-bit and all before it happened.” In her eyes, I saw the hate of someone much older. “Those things shouldn’t happen. They were nice folks.”

  “Can you give me their names and phone number?”

  “I don’t have it. We weren’t close. Last name was Brown from somewhere near Atlanta, I think. Mrs. Bates will have it, though.”

  “Dora Bates?”

  “She works in the front office, handles the money, that sort of thing.”

  “I’ll find her, thanks.”

  “She knows more than you might think.” The red flush of anger faded her freckles.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, but she’s got something going on.”

  So did Poppy, if I could read her right. “So, what changed in Reno?”

  “Everything.”

  “Who were you shouting at while all the chaos was going on?”

  “What do you mean?” She looked genuinely confused as the red flush receded.

  “Someone across the arena?”

  “There you are!” The angry bellow from behind me made me flinch. I stopped myself from the involuntary cower to move out of harm’s way.

  Poppy dropped her broom and backed away.

  I didn’t need to turn to know who it was. Homer Beckham, Poppy’s Rodeo Dad, had found us. More worrisome, he had found her.

  Headed for his daughter, he brushed by me.

  Squaring my shoulders, I caught his arm and held on. “Hold on a minute, cowboy. Let’s not add child endangerment to your list of legal woes.”

  Red-faced, walking the tightrope of control, he turned his anger on me. “My legal woes? Just wait until I report you to your superiors.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “She’s a kid. You can’t question her without a parent present.”

  Even though practically all of that was wrong, I thought it best not to poke him with the semantics stick. “We were just having a chat. She’s free to go.”

  Every fiber of my being screamed for me to take that child and not let him touch her. But, he was her father.

  And I had no proof he’d do anything to her other than yell. Even though words were our most effective weapons, yelling wasn’t yet a felony. Not until it became something else.

  Another one of life’s lines, often impossible to draw.

  Where did anger end and abuse begin? Easy to prove if there was a bruise. But how did you show a bruise on your soul?

  Frozen by indecision and indignation, I stood between Homer and his daughter. What should I do? What could I do?

  “It’s okay,” Poppy whispered. “He yells. It’s his way to offload stress. He has never…” Her voice trailed off.

  “You sure?” Where my hand gripped his arm, I could feel Mr. Beckham’s anger still vibrating through him, but it was dissipating.

  She nodded. At first a bit hesitant, then stronger. “We’re good. I lied to him. I came here to sub for Bethany so she could go find you. Who knew Mr. Turnbull would get himself killed?”

  Interesting phrasing, I thought as I watched the father lead his daughter away. Despite his anger, he leaned onto her, wrapping a protective arm around her shoulders and planting a quick kiss on the top of her head.

  Relationships.

  “Do you know you are like the most difficult person to find? You are never where I think you should be.” Romeo didn’t look disgruntled, although he sounded it.

  Lost in thought after Poppy disappeared with her father, I hadn’t wandered far. The detective and I convened at the railing just above the arena floor. “I’ve been doing legwork, as requested. How’s the girl?”

  “A tough customer. I couldn’t even get her real name out of her.”

  “Bethany.”

  “Bethany?” Despite knowing better, he sounded like he didn’t believe me.

  I didn’t dignify his skepticism with a protestation of competence. Frankly, I would have gone as far as expressing insult had I had the energy for it. “Her grandmother’s last name was Pickford, her fourth husband’s name, at least that’s what I was told. I haven’t checked that out. Not sure if the girl uses it or another.”

  “Your Mr. Trenton pretty much shut us down.” He stared at the group clustered around the body. His hands gripped the railing. His knuckles turned white. “He could tell I was just fishing.” Romeo gave me the side-eye. “What do you call him?”

  “Squash.”

  “I can’t figure his name. Does he play it or do it?”

  “Do it, if I have to pick one.”

  Romeo swallowed hard as he turned to watch the techs and his colleague begin to clear the crime scene. “Anyway, he let me run with the line a bit before setting the drag and reeling me in. Even with his tacit complicity, we couldn’t get anything out of the girl. She’s either one cool customer or scared beyond belief.”

  “If you had to choose?”

  This time he looked at me square on. “I really couldn’t tell you.”

  “Did you get anything out of her at all?”

  “No family. No home. From Reno.”

  Reno.

  The girl hadn’t told him about Mona. I wondered why.

  “What did you do with her?”

  “We had to let her go.”

  “You just let her walk out of there into the night?” My voice rose with indignation. “Guilty or not, she’s a kid. And as a girl, she’s a target for all kinds of nasties who lurk in the wee hours of the morning. You know that.”

  “Of course I know that. Squash is riding herd on her until he tracks you down. A word to the wise, I think you’re paying time and a half.”

  “Me?”

  At the look on my face, he gave a laugh. “Why are you surprised? You’re the one who went all mama bear. You become what you pretend to be.”

  “Tossing my own platitudes back at me won’t get you any points.”

  “Being at the top of the heap isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, is it?” Romeo could find the insight when he looked for it.

  “You think I asked for it? I was promoted to the level of my incompetence by attrition—I was the only one left standing.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “Who put you onto the girl in the first place?”

  “One of the clowns.” He didn’t look at me as he pulled his pad out of his pocket and flipped through the pages. “Darrin Cole. He said he saw the girl arguing with Turnbull in the barns before he staggered into the ring.”

  Darrin Cole. That was the second time his name had come up tonight.

  “I’d sure like to know why Turnbull went into the arena with a bull. What was he after?”

  Romeo, fresh out of answers, shook his head.

  “Your Detective Reynolds is more of an idiot than I remembered. How does he afford those Italian suits? And how does he not get fired?”

  “His wife writes romance novels. And I don’t know.” Romeo looked as beat as I felt.

  “We’ve got to stop hanging out together. I don’t think it’s good for either of us.” I don’t know where that came from or why I said it.

  “I’ve tried to let you go, but I just can’t.” Romeo snaked his thin body through the railing, dropped to the dirt, then turned to stand in front of me. “You coming?”

  I looked at the narrow gap, the four or five feet to the dirt. “Not that way.”

  While I circled to the stairs, Romeo waited for me. “You look like hell.”

  I looped an arm through his, locking elbows. “I’d be nice if I were you. I’m about to be your best friend. Come with me.”

  I filled him in on what I’d gathered so far, which, while not much, was a darn sight more than anyone else had, as I led him through the main gate of the arena. I nodded when we passed Rico, who was finishing a wipe down of his tractor. I patted my pocket whe
re I’d secured the lipstick in a plastic bag, and he smiled.

  “Any idea what’s with the lipstick and the Tawny Rose thing?” Romeo sounded like a typical man at sea when it came to female war paint.

  “A clue, maybe. But so far, the women I’ve met have been young and completely fresh-faced.”

  Continuing straight ahead, we entered the wide main aisle of the temporary barns. Rows of stalls extended off to each side. Behind wooden walls and visible only through the thin metal slats of the top half of the stall door, animals shifted, some curious, some wary, most settling in to work on sweet coastal hay. Mona had bought me a pony when I was barely old enough to remember my name and where I lived.

  “Where are we going?” Romeo hissed, as if afraid of startling the horses. He needn’t have worried—the animals weren’t bothered by us.

  But something else had them moving and shifting at a time of night when they should be settled. Of course, murder could do that. Man and beast, a connection that spanned eons. And horses were more sensitive than we realized. That pony had taught me that. While not a dog that would pull me out of a burning building, that pony knew my moods.

  Mona hadn’t wanted a pony. After a year or more of wearing her down, I finally broke her and she relented. Looking back, I think she got the last laugh. A Welsh pony, blind in one eye and mean as spit, he took me all over Pahrump with nothing but a rope and halter and a bit of moxie.

  My first sense of freedom. I’d been six.

  But if I let my guard drop, he’d whip around and bite me on the ass—a good introduction to the vagaries of life. I still carried the lesson with me, along with a scar or two.

  That pony had saved me. He didn’t whisper behind my back or say cruel things to my face. He didn’t care what my mother did to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. In Pahrump, prostitution was legal but not popular with the locals.

  “Stinks in here,” Romeo muttered.

  The sweet smell of fresh shavings. The muskiness of the animals. I thought it smelled like heaven—a little girl’s heaven for sure.

  “Do you ride?” he asked.

  I glanced down each row of stalls as we moved past. “Been a long time.”

  “Is there anything you don’t do?”

  “I don’t sing in public.” At the next intersection, I saw what I was looking for to our left. I tightened my arm hooked through his and steered him down the row of stalls to our right. “This way.”

  Romeo disengaged his arm. “You sing in private?”

  “For a price and only in the shower.”

  Romeo gave a low wolf whistle.

  “Would you quit?”

  “You asked for it.”

  “I did indeed,” I said, referring to something else altogether. I liked his smile and his guff and was glad they’d both returned.

  We found Homer Beckham nervously pacing outside a stall in the middle of the vast barn. The horses in the stalls close by seemed nervous, upset.

  “Animals, they pick up on stuff we don’t even begin to see. I find that interesting, don’t you Mr. Beckham?”

  “What?” He looked startled to see us but recovered his composure quickly.

  “Where’s Poppy?” I couldn’t shake the nagging need to protect her. But from what? Or whom? Her father? He was the obvious choice, but the answer was rarely found in the obvious.

  “I sent her back to the hotel.”

  “Alone?”

  He shrugged off my concern as he grabbed a rope knotted tight to the bars of the stall. A halter hung from the end. “It’s a block or two. She’ll be fine.” He lifted his chin toward Romeo. “Who’s the kid?”

  I felt Romeo stiffen beside me. I knew how he felt. He had to overcome his apparent youth. As a female in a man’s world, I had to overcome my presumed incompetence. Nobody said the world was fair or people were smart, but that didn’t mean we had to tolerate unfairness or stupidity. “This is Detective Romeo with the Metropolitan Police Department.”

  Beckham snorted. “Where’d he get his badge? A box of Cracker Jacks?”

  He never saw my elbow. It connected with his jaw, dropping him like a stone. Romeo shouldered in next to me. I rubbed my elbow as we both stared down at the inert lump of Homer Beckham.

  “Why’d you have to hit him?” Romeo asked, knowing the answer.

  “Hard-wired to vigilante.” I threw an arm around his shoulder. “If you get tired of chasing the bad guys, you’d make a great setup man. We could take our act on the road.”

  A shiver of pain flicked through his smile. “Not a bad idea.”

  Something was going on with him—I hadn’t imagined it. Some time with a high-octane liquid lubricant was in our future.

  “Beckham has been begging for me to hit him all night.”

  “A bit of hyperbole.” Romeo looked at me from under a frown. “What’s he done to you?”

  “He’s a bully and an idiot.”

  “Hardly indictable.”

  “Exactly. So…” I motioned to Mr. Beckham laid out at our feet. “Sometimes we have to do our own dirty work.”

  Romeo shook his head. Mr. Beckham hadn’t moved. “A glass jaw.”

  “Excuse me?” I feigned indignation.

  “You’re going to regret that.” Romeo looked at me with a glint in his eye.

  “He broke one of my cardinal rules.” I waved off my own assertion. “In fact, he offended me in most ways possible, but the last one put him over the edge.”

  “And that was?” Romeo knew it—I could see it in his smile—but he asked anyway.

  “I’m fair game, but don’t insult my friends. And, for the record, that one was worth it.”

  “You don’t always have to ride to my rescue.” His ego bloomed.

  “Of course I do. It’s what friends do.” I looped an arm around Romeo’s shoulder. “Besides, you know I can’t resist knocking the stuffing out of a bully.”

  “He’s twice your size.”

  “With men like that, even before I open my mouth, I’m ahead of the game. Underestimating women is the secret handshake of their brotherhood.”

  “Along with scaring children,” Romeo muttered as he looked at the inert form of Homer Beckham with growing distaste. “Surprise leveled the playing field then?”

  “Please. I think I’m offended. I got skills. Tilting at large human windmills is Rule Number One in the Lucky O’Toole Rules for Life.”

  “You sure have a lot of rules. How many are there?”

  “As many as I want.”

  A man half stood, his head barely visible between the metal bars comprising the top half of the stall walls, giving Romeo a start.

  I expected to find him here. And he looked about as I thought he would—the frown and lack of eye contact of someone more comfortable with four legs than two. Younger than I thought—not the seventy I envisioned but closer to a world-weary fifty—he had dark hair. A few streaks of gray, from what I could see, but the weathered skin and the ancient look in his eye gave away the years. A stained baseball cap tilted back on his head. A Giants fan.

  “Who are you? And where is Mr. Beckham?” His voice fit him, smoothed soft by time and a life dedicated to healing, wary, as if humans couldn’t be trusted.

  “You must be Doc Latham?” I brushed by his question about Mr. Beckham.

  “Yes, and you are?”

  Romeo did the badge thing, and I rode in on the implication I was with him.

  “I see.” His tone remained gruff, like someone rousted out of bed in the middle of the night might have, but it lacked even a hint of wary. “And Mr. Beckham?”

  Romeo and I both glanced down.

  Doc Latham followed our gazes and his frown disappeared, replaced by a look of respect and a hint of satisfaction, if I read him right. “What happened?”

  “He said the wrong thing,” I explained.

  “He’s good at that,” the doc said, then he disappeared.

  Romeo and I stepped over the slumbering giant a
nd leaned into the stall through the open doorway. The horse smell rose up strong and pungent.

  I breathed deep, stirring happy memories, but my young detective wrinkled his nose. “City boy,” I said out of the side of my mouth.

  “If you could call Minneapolis a city.”

  “What else would it be?” In my weakened state, I was easily sidetracked.

  “An outpost in the tundra.”

  I smiled at his involuntary shiver. That explained how Romeo ended up in the Mojave. We’d never really hit on the topic before, but I wasn’t surprised to learn he was a Midwesterner—solid stock like my right-hand man, Miss P.

  Doc Latham squatted next to a pretty pinto, brown and white patches with a hint of black—a striking color combination. Well, it would be striking except the poor pony’s eyes were wide with fear and rolled back enough to see the whites. His nostrils flared enough to see the pink inside. A dark stain of sweat matted the hair on its neck, permeating the small space with the smell of fear.

  “What’s going on?” I took the lead since Romeo still hung back a bit.

  The horse didn’t move except to pull in labored breaths, all its energy focused on the expansion of its rib cage. The vet ran his hand down the length of the horse’s neck, a gentle stroke, and murmured in a soothing tone. He had large, wide hands, strong from pulling fences and settling scared animals, I suspected. “There, there. Just relax. You’ll be better in a bit.”

  The horse cocked an ear back as if he understood. His breathing slowed, or maybe I imagined it. My breathing rate adjusted to the horse’s—a sympathetic response as I willed the horse to fight but to relax. Panic made breathing more difficult. But panic, once entrenched, was hard to shake off.

  Learning to function despite the panic—that was the key. Now, how to communicate that to the horse?

  “Horse is having a hard time breathing, pulse is slow, temperature has dropped, but he’s stabilized.”

  “Any idea what caused it?” Romeo asked, leaning around me to get a better look.

  “Yeah,” the doc pivoted to face us. He held a syringe in a gloved hand. The syringe was huge by human standards; the needle had the diameter of a garden hose. He stroked the horse’s neck again, his fingers probing. “See this here?” His fingers found a knot in the flesh. “Puncture wound and a messy one.”