“No, ma’am. We most all know each other and get along.”
“Anything unusual happen before Thursday morning?”
“No. Well . . . but that wasn’t—”
“Go ahead and say, Cas,” Tom said.
“Somebody got in my gear bag. I didn’t notice until last night, and it wasn’t a big deal. Nothing missing. Probably just one of the guys needing tape or something.”
“You noticed Thursday night—when could someone have gotten into it?” I asked.
He frowned. “Wednesday night most likely. I’d left it with my ropes while I talked to somebody after my events, and when I came back, it looked like somebody’d knocked into my stuff. Didn’t think anything of it, not until I saw things moved around last night.”
“Any idea who might have done that?”
“No. It’s just regulars around.”
Tom shifted his weight. But I didn’t need the hint. “That’s not entirely true, is it, Cas?” I let that sink in. As red started up his neck—chagrin at being called on the fib, rather than anger—I added, “I’ve already talked with two cowboys from the circuit who don’t usually compete here. I want to hear your side.”
His eyes flashed to mine in transparent surprise. His first unguarded reaction. “Side? Nothing’s happened between the circuit cowboys and us.”
Sometimes a shot in the dark doesn’t hit anything. “Outsiders have been around the rodeo grounds, however, right?”
“A few, I guess. Most circuit guys come later. And they’re mostly not above saying hey to a local because they have their pro rodeo card and I—we don’t yet.”
“What did you talk to Grayson Zane about yesterday evening?”
“He wanted to get filled in, since he hadn’t been here in a few years. Asking how the rodeo was run, who was in charge, things like that.” The glow in his face now had nothing to do with chagrin. He basked in the memory of being asked anything by a champion.
“Like who the judges are? Chute men? Clowns?” Tom asked. I suspected it was more to fill in for me than out of curiosity.
“Sure, that. And about the committee, the front office.”
“How about the stock contractor? Did he ask about him?” I resumed.
Cas shook his head. “No. He knew Landry was dead. Everybody’d heard by then.”
“How about yesterday morning? Did you see Zane then?”
“No. I wasn’t at the rodeo grounds in the morning.” The jury was out on the truthfulness of that answer.
“What did you think of Keith Landry?”
“Can’t say I knew him. Saw him a bit other years.”
Not a word about the lunch. “Has there been any talk about this year’s rodeo? Anything out of the ordinary?”
He shook his head.
“Have you heard rumors or stories about people involved with the rodeo that have to do with their personal lives?”
His eyes did the bad-liar flicker. On top of that, when he said, “No,” he didn’t shake his head, as he had with previous negatives.
Pressing or not pressing is always a split-second decision. This time my internal vote went for not pressing. If I wanted to talk to the kid later, better to play it friendly now. “How about non-rodeo people? Any issues there?”
“No problem with town folk.” That was deliberately obtuse.
“What about the animal rights people protesting out front?”
“We ignore them.”
That came fast and a little loud. He’d rehearsed it. But if he hadn’t recognized me as last night’s spotter—and I thought he’d be a lot more embarrassed now if he had—who had he rehearsed for?
“Must be hard to ignore every last one of them . . .” I held his gaze an extra beat. He tensed but didn’t crumble. “. . . when they’re shouting as you drive past the gates.”
“Only when it spooks the horses we’re trailering in.”
“You don’t mind animal rights activists saying rodeo hurts animals?”
The kid and Tom made eye contact. So much for Stoic Westerners. They might as well have shouted Outsider Alert. With a side order of disgusted Women!
“One of the jobs of a journalist is to ask questions the audience would ask,” I said. “That’s the image of rodeo for a lot of people. That you cowboys are having sport at the expense of pain to the animals. Prods and spiked straps and sharp spurs. That’s what a lot of people beyond Wyoming think of when they think of rodeo.”
“All against the rules,” Cas said. “No prods allowed. Spurs got to be rounded, so they roll along the horse’s hide, not dig in. And that’s with a horse’s skin seven-, eight-times tougher than ours. And flank strap’s got to be padded with fleece or that rubber stuff.”
“Neoprene,” Tom filled in.
“Right, that stuff. So it’s padded. But even if it weren’t, you’d have to be some kind of fool to cinch it tight, because that would keep the horse from kicking up as much, and that’s what you want because it’s how you get points.”
Tom nodded. The kid nodded back. They turned to me, probably to see if I was nodding. I wasn’t.
“Besides, they aren’t accusing us of doing those things here in Sherman,” Cas said, volunteering something for the first time. “They got this loopy idea about animals roaming free. No riding horses, no keeping a dog on a leash, no having a cat inside. Most of ’em wouldn’t know which end of a horse to feed, much less that they’re individuals. You ever seen a bucking horse, ma’am?”
“Of course. I’ve been to the rodeo.” Twice.
“I mean out, natural. C’mon.” He struck out, with Tom right behind, neither looking at me. If I stayed put, I’d get left.
I didn’t stay put, but I still lagged. Boots let them extend their head start while I slid around in the leather flats I’d worn while last night’s shoes aired out. Who knew dust could be so slippery.
I joined them at a pasture fence. Two gray-muzzled horses ambled over, eyeing Tom and me with curiosity before focusing on Cas.
“This’s Jammer.” Cas pulled a baggy from a pocket. I was revising my view of him until I realized it held oats. He shook out a pile on a palm and extended it to the horse, which muzzled the food deftly. “He’s bucked any soul who’s tried to ride him.”
He fed a bucking bronco by hand, and I couldn’t get a dog to be in the same yard with me when he ate.
“Now, his full brother, Marble, here . . .” Cas fed the other horse. “. . . wouldn’t buck if you set off a firecracker under him. Jammer came out bucking from the start. Threw one too many hands, and my grandpa wanted to sell him for dog meat.”
Checking ingredients of Shadow’s dog food shot up my to-do list.
“It was Dad who put Jammer in rodeo. Was in the NRF three years running,” Cas said with evident pride.
Tom murmured. “National Rodeo—”
“Finals,” I finished with all the confidence of someone who’d known that for nearly a whole day. “That’s fine, but—”
“Wait,” Cas said. “Watch this.”
I followed the direction of his tilted cowboy hat in time to see Jammer kick out his heels, arch his back in a move a Halloween cat would envy, kick out again. He repeated the cycle, then trotted to us. I’m no expert on horses—or dogs, as I’ve proven—but I swear that animal was grinning.
“You showing off that old renegade again?” asked a sharp voice from behind us.
It was Stan Newton. He shook hands with Tom, who introduced me.
“Didn’t think Cas did near good enough last night to have TV come out to talk to him. Nowhere near his potential.” Not only was Newton one of those fathers, but he was playing games by pretending Tom hadn’t called about my visit.
“That’s Mike Paycik’s beat.” I blithely threw Mike under this bu
s. “I wanted to talk to Cas about information he might have concerning Keith Landry and his death, since Cas was at the rodeo grounds the evening before . . .”
I stopped because Stan had gone from fair weather to tornado in a heartbeat. He stepped toward me. I held my ground. Unnecessarily, Burrell interposed his shoulder.
I’d learned over the years that, unless he has a mob behind him, an interview subject who comes straight at you is seldom as dangerous as the ones who slither around behind you. That went for husbands, too.
“It’s a good thing the sheriff’s department has more sense than you do, Miss Big-Shot TV reporter. They know Cas had nothing to do with that poor excuse for a stock contractor.”
“Dad. It’s just questions.”
“Poor excuse for a stock contractor? But you supported his bid last fall and more recently.”
Stan Newton’s lightning bolt gaze flickered. His expression backed down to merely stormy, and he retreated a step. Burrell returned to his previous position. “Learned things since.”
“Like?”
“That’s rodeo committee business, not yours.” Newton wasn’t done blowing hard. “I’ll tell you who you should be asking questions of—those crazy animal people. I’ve always said they were nuts enough to cause real trouble. They ain’t normal.”
“Do you have any evidence that connects them to Landry’s death?” I might have stressed evidence.
“What I’ve got is good sense. Those people yelling and screaming about things they know nothing about don’t have a lick of sense. And they’ve never worked for anything. Those are the people you should be asking. That’s the kind to up and throw a man into a bull pen to let him get stomped to death for no good reason. That’s what I told that deputy this morning on the phone. Wanted to talk to the sheriff—acting sheriff since you liberal media types are driving out the real sheriff—but that Alvaro boy thought he knew better. Let me tell you, that isn’t the way things were run under Sheriff Widcuff.”
“No. Under Widcuff—”
Burrell’s low voice talked over me. “What do you think, Cas?” And he was right. Arguing with Stan was not productive.
The boy stood tall and met his elder’s eyes. “Deputy Alvaro seems all right.”
“About the animal rights protestors,” Tom pursued.
“They could stand to take more showers, sir.” Red charged up his neck again. I wondered if he and Blue Hair had indulged in simultaneous showering. “And things’d be a lot better off if they used their mouths for something other than talking all the time.”
This kid had cajones. If he knew I’d seen Ms. Blue Hair using her mouth for something other than talking with him—an activity that gave him ample opportunity to assess if she needed a shower—he had a major set of them. Even if he didn’t know, to toss around those hot potato words under these circumstances was impressive. Or foolhardy.
“But mostly we ignore them,” Cas concluded, glancing at his father. And now I knew who he’d been rehearsing for.
I looked at Stan, saw only satisfied pride. Then at Cas, straightforward, upright, and in all ways a young pillar of the community. This was getting us nowhere, and with Stan on guard duty there was no hope of getting into useful territory. I wrapped it up, leaving an opening for a return visit.
Once inside Tom’s truck and starting the trek back toward the turnoff, I said, “If that Ma’am-ing and Sir-ing is what passes for rebellion in Wyoming, you folks need a course in tattoos, piercings, drug abuse, and foul mouths.”
“Oh, we got those, too, but that’s not always the most dangerous kind. Sometimes it’s the quiet, hidden rebellion that can cause the most trouble. And heartache.” Without looking at me, he added, “Go ahead, ask your questions.”
“How’d you know I’d met Cas last night?”
“Linda. She’d heard some from Cas, some from Vicky Upton.”
I grunted acknowledgement, then played back what I’d recorded, absently watching clouds pile up on the northern horizon—which, considering the distances out here, could mean it was raining in Canada—while I listened. When it completed, I said, “If one of those animal group people ended up dead, I’d sure want to look at Stan a lot closer.”
“For an accident?”
I sidestepped. “Not sure it would have been an accident if it involved Stan and the animal rights people.”
I played the recording again. The third time, I took notes. “Cas seems pretty sharp,” I commented as we neared town.
“Yeah, I’d say so.”
“I get the feeling he was hiding something.”
“Kid that age? Sure.”
I slanted a look at him, but his face gave nothing away. Did he know about Cas and Miss Blue Hair? More importantly, was there any way to find out without giving away what I knew? No.
“It’s a lot simpler,” he said, “if you just ask if I knew Cas was running around on Heather with one of those protestor girls.”
“Why the hell didn’t you say so earlier?”
“You didn’t ask.”
I forced myself to breathe in and out. “That is not how this works if you want to be part of what Paycik and I are doing.”
“They’re kids. I don’t see their love lives being a factor in the rodeo’s future.”
“We don’t know enough to eliminate anything. Cas Newton is running around with one of the animal rights protestors his father hates. Not to mention he appears to be treating this like a short-term hook-up, and he sure wouldn’t want to have Heather find out and lose his permanent good thing.”
“You’re pretty worked up about this. Maybe your personal history has something to do with that.”
I stared at him, too stunned at his using personal after ignoring the personal elephant that had propped its butt between us since the night he’d kissed me at my door, to even pretend to fend off whatever it was he’d clearly decided he wanted to say.
“Your divorce. It’s natural you’d see it from the point of view of the woman. Women scorned, you could say.”
“Or not say,” I snapped as we bumped into the KWMT lot.
“Want to talk about it?”
“You want to talk about my divorce, when you have not said word one about—about other things?”
Give him credit. He did not ask What other things? He did say, “Not up to me.”
“The hell it’s not.”
His mouth twitched. The credit he’d accrued dipped. “You could have mentioned it.”
“I—I could have!”
“Yup. Any time. If you’d wanted to.”
I restrained myself, heroically under the circumstances. “Your actions, your responsibility for discussing it or not.”
“I wasn’t acting alone for long, as I recall.”
I gathered myself and my dignity. “I’m working, and I’m going inside now.”
“I’ll walk you in.”
Short of shooting him, I couldn’t think of how to stop him.
Chapter Thirteen
INSIDE KWMT, it was a case of good news-bad news, which seemed appropriate.
The good news was Mike was back and nearly done with his regular work for the day.
The bad news was he said to Burrell, “Why don’t you come with us to Elizabeth’s place tonight. We’ll pick up pizza and talk about where we are with this.” That was bad news on multiple levels, including that I hadn’t invited Paycik, and here he was inviting someone else.
Burrell said, “Not tonight. I’m picking up Tamantha from camp and only have a couple days before she heads to my sister’s.”
“Busy social life for a second-grader,” Mike said.
“Third-grader,” he corrected, leaving no doubt he was echoing his daughter.
Tamantha was the light of his life. And one s
cary short person. When it came to determination, she could make a Navy Seal look wishy-washy.
Burrell left, and Mike got back to work, while the good news-bad news trend continued on the “Helping Out” front.
The good news was the Cheyenne contact had called, leaving a detailed message at my work number after, he said, receiving a not-in-service message on my cell. More and more of Wyoming had coverage, but leaving both numbers was easy insurance.
The bad news was the details he left included that his station didn’t have any footage similar to what I was looking for.
Good news—he thought Denver had run something, and he left the name and number of a likely contact—bless him.
The Denver contact said, yes, they’d run footage of a house stripped of its contents by thieves. He’d check with his boss and see about our using it.
The whole conversation took about five minutes. And that included my tacking on that I’d be interested if he heard anything about a rodeo contractor named Keith Landry who’d been at a rodeo somewhere near Denver the weekend before. With that lack of specifics—did I have any idea how many towns around Denver held rodeos?—he was understandably pessimistic, but said he’d let me know if he got anything.
If the video came through from Denver, I’d need to supplement it with something local. There was no Better Business Bureau in Sherman, and I doubted Les Haeburn would approve a trip to Cheyenne to interview the state rep there. Maybe someone from the sheriff’s department. But who?
That was the only reason I called Mike’s Aunt Gee. Absolutely the only reason.
She gave me a name of an officer who would talk about how to prevent being victimized. She also gave me the name of two more Cottonwood County bigwigs who apparently completed the list of the absent. She had learned from an unspecified source that a.) not even spouses knew a location, b.) everyone had left Wednesday morning by personal vehicle, and c.) the exodus had been in the works for a week before that.
I took note of all this, thanked her, then dropped in an oh-so-casual question about what she knew of a Sonja.
“Sonja? Which Sonja?”
Left Hanging Page 10
