Two Good Men [Hell's Delight: Unbridled 3] (Siren Pubishing Everlasting Classic ManLove)

by Karen Mercury

  “Cindy. Don’t forget, no peanuts, and have him back here by nine p.m. on the nose.”

  “Dodge. I’d never forget about his peanut allergy.” She looked like a completely different person. Her hair was dyed much lighter, and she looked like she was getting those smokers’ lines around her mouth. We’d been such little kids when we’d hooked up. I was going to give Ryan the hardline birds and bees lecture, pounding him with the necessity for birth control. He was not going to wind up in the same predicament Cindy and I had.

  She smiled when she looked at Ryan. “All right? Come now.”

  She reached out her hand to him, but he wouldn’t take it. Just sullenly played games on his phone while walking to the car.

  That was when King made an appearance around the side of the house. Arms folded before his chest, cowboy hat shading his eyes, it was hard to tell what he was thinking. But Cindy did the classic double-take, looking blandly at him, looking away, then giving herself whiplash looking back.

  In that second, I knew she’d never make it far with Phil.

  She was ogling King, and it wasn’t subtle either. Her eyes did the complete sweep from his face to crotch then back again, taking it all in. Her hand was still out as though waiting for Ryan to take it. She didn’t even notice he’d jumped into the back seat of the car, mumbled a “hey” to Phil, and kept playing his games.

  It was so noticeable even Georgia tittered. “You’d best go now,” she told Cindy happily, “or you won’t get to see everything.”

  “Oh—right,” mumbled Cindy, and got obediently into the passenger seat.

  But I knew. King had seen it, too. He was an expert at assessing the ogling of other people, and a few minutes later, driving north in my truck, he brought it up.

  “Hate to say it, Dodge. But that couple won’t last long.”

  “Was thinking the same thing. She’s not ready to settle down. She just went off with that dillweed because she’s not used to being alone. But he won’t be the last, either.”

  “Exactly. I don’t get the impression she’s too…into him.”

  I knew what King was trying to say. He was just too polite to say it aloud. Phil Dillweed wasn’t going to be Ryan’s stepdad any more than the next dickmeister. King had gotten me Hardscrabble Ranch’s lawyer who had assured me since Cindy had abandoned Ryan, had been the one to leave us alone in the house while taking off without notice, her chances of getting him back for partial custody were slim. I was the stable one, the breadwinner. She was the rolling stone, the flake. It would be generous of me to allow her supervised visitation, and that was all.

  * * * *

  “Cockroach Blockers is giving me a headache the size of my grandma’s thimble collection.” Levi Steinbeck compressed the skin between his eyebrows and sighed. “Captain Marick has agreed to subpoena their records just to make sure they have a purchase order from the hotel for fumigation on that day. But it’s been deny, deny, deny. Osmond still won’t even admit his truck was there. Now he’s not returning phone calls. I’m telling you. If we finally get a trial, I’m going to take that witness seat and ejaculate my knowledge on the face of that eight-tenths of a sorry bastard. It’ll be some creamy web of payback. Either he knew Mike and Flo were in Room 411, which makes it murder. Or he didn’t, which makes it manslaughter.”

  I said, “Not to mention extreme incompetence. Why’d they block off other rooms people were working in and not that one?”

  “Which makes it murder,” said King.

  “Or,” Levi said, “it proves they didn’t know anyone was there and just wanted to kill rats.”

  We were enjoying more cheese, champagne, and crackers from the refrigerated unit. It no longer grossed me out, and I did like a nice Brie.

  “So you blew your wad on your last ride, I heard.” Levi chuckled. He was the sort of guy who enjoyed the hell out of others’ misfortunes.

  King nodded and sipped champagne. He’d only stayed on the bronc five seconds on his last ride. “This is the first year in eight that I’m not going to nationals. I’m willing to accept my rodeo career is over. Hand over the reins to younger bucks.”

  “It’s hell on your bones and muscles,” I added.

  “How’s the hooch biz going?” King asked Levi. “What with you having to be here full-time and all.”

  “I got a partner running things. Dr. Hamerelli will be back next week to run the crime lab, although I must say I’ve been doing an admirable bang-up job.”

  “Then you won’t be needed at either place,” I thoughtlessly said.

  Levi drew himself up to his full height of six-five. “I beg your pardon, sir! I’ve developed contacts and expertise the whole time Hammer’s been gone that is irreplaceable. He needs an assistant. And my guy up at the distillery is in dire need of my expertise. He started making peanut-butter-flavored Ginger Jake, or shall we say, Pea Butt Jake, which did not go over well with the upscale crowd we’re trying to draw. Oh. Excuse me. This is my police station contact.”

  Ostentatiously, Levi put his phone on speaker. We were treated to the high-pitched Mickey Mouse voice of some kid, hysterical about something.

  “Slow down, slow down, Con, my man.”

  King told me, “That’s Coningsby Dawson. IT guy under Captain Marick.”

  “Fire. Fire, man!” shrieked Con. “Someone set fire to the Cockroach Blockers building! It’s a three-alarm fire!”

  “Wait, wait,” said Levi. “Three alarms is…good? Or bad?”

  “Three alarms is bad,” said King.

  “Well, it depends on what you mean by bad,” I said. “‘Bad’ as in a giant fire, or ‘bad’ as in it was not a very giant fire?”

  Con shrieked, “Three alarms! As in a big, bad, giant fire! The fire department has sent out all six of its trucks and they’ve requested more from Hell’s Delight!” He paused to catch his breath. “Knowing your investigations, I thought you’d want to know.”

  Maybe the weed wore off at that precise moment, but Levi suddenly leaped into action. Putting his pipe in his inner vest pocket, he yelled, “Cumon! Let’s get down there and see who’s acting suspiciously.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  King

  We lit out down the main drag.

  Like a few scalded cats, we tore ass down to the fire.

  The perimeter was already blocked off by the cops. Stumbling like the heroes in a cop show, we grabbed lookie-loos by the shoulders and tore them away so we could get a better view. The fire was fully developed, with flames licking second-floor windows. In just the past ten minutes, the smoke had darkened to a pearly charcoal. The stucco building from the forties or fifties was completely engulfed. As we jogged around the sawhorses cops had set up, I thought I could feel heat coming from the structure. We tried getting in a few times, but Levi didn’t have his medical examiner’s badge with him, and policemen shoved us back every time.

  “Where’s your buddy, that Con guy?” Dodge asked Levi.

  Levi, fire literally in his eyes, said, “We need to act like cornered animals to get in! Act unpredictably and claw at everyone around us.”

  Dodge and I rolled our eyeballs at each other. We had to get up close and personal, figure out what was going on. A cowboy rushed up behind us, putting his hand on my shoulder, urging me forward.

  Dodge started telling him, “You can’t get through. Cops won’t let—”

  Doil Payne waved a laminated card at the cop guarding the sawhorse. “They’re all with me!” The cop motioned the four of us inside the ring of fire.

  I asked Doil, “Did you show him your employee card?”

  Doil said, “No. My gay rodeo membership card.”

  Levi hit me with the back of his hand. “You don’t think they’d let a discharged employee in here, do you? He’d be their first suspect.”

  “He wasn’t discharged,” Dodge and I said in tandem.

  “What do you know?” Levi asked the gay cowboy.

  Doil said, “My old coworker called
me. Said the fire started in the file storage room, right on the first floor, the southwest corner near the nursery.” There was a gardening nursery next door to Cockroach Blockers, and workers were busily moving plants away from the wall of heat.

  “Ah-hah.” Levi, hands on hips, surveyed the scene. “And what’s directly above the file storage room? What’s on the second floor?”

  “That was all of our offices. Sales room downstairs, our offices up. Only employees went up there, supposedly.”

  I got Levi’s drift of where he was heading. “Whose office is directly above the file storage room?”

  Doil looked at the ground blankly. He was starting to get the drift, too. “Humphrey Osmond’s. His office was the biggest. That’s his window right there.”

  The reporter Alex Coldiron, part-time firefighter, strode by in full regalia. He had donned one of those enormous helmets, only his features peering out from a black protective hood. What little skin that showed on his face was sooty with smoke. Instead of greeting me, Alex cried,

  “Doil! You shouldn’t be here. You don’t even work there anymore.”

  Levi yelled, “Is everyone in this town gay?”

  I asked Alex, “Why does Doil need to leave? Is this fire under investigation?”

  Alex said briskly, “Every fire is under investigation.” His face softened a little, and he said to Doil, “It does look suspicious. Started with an accelerant in a box of papers. You guys ever use ethyl alcohol in your business?”

  “Ethanol!” said Levi, the chemist. He slapped his own forehead. “Lord love a duck! They’re going to try and accuse the booze distillers again!”

  Ignoring him, Doil said, “Nope. It’s used in combustion, maybe.”

  Levi cried, “It has a high octane rating. You can blend it into fuel. There are hundreds of uses for ethanol.”

  Doil said, “Yeah, and we don’t use it, so you’re right, that’s suspicious.”

  Alex went off hauling his fire hose, and a piercing shriek split the smoke closer to the building. It was the wail of a woman in distress. I knew these feminine sounds from the rodeo, bull riders getting concussions from having their brains slammed against the inside of their skull, women stabbing their faces on the bull’s horns—women fatally stepped on.

  Doil put his hand on my shoulder so he could stand on tiptoe. “That’s Mrs. Osmond,” he said, almost under his breath.

  Dodge said, “If Osmond started the fire to cover up his paper trail, why would he ruin his own office? He could just burn down the file room.”

  “Let’s find out why his wife is hollering like Tarzan,” suggested Levi, and surged ahead.

  There were only a few people allowed inside the police tape. One of them was Richmond Herman, the former director of public works. Current mayor—for whatever good that was these days—of Hell’s Delight.

  I guess it wasn’t that odd he was standing inside the police tape. As mayor, he should know what was going on. But it was the expression on his face that set off my radar. Arms folded almost with satisfaction, Richmond Herman wore an expression that could only be called smug. Yes, he fucking looked smug, as if he’d somehow expected this to happen, or was glad that it had happened.

  I knew him from his former job. Hardscrabble had tried to get the city to pave an access road, and had failed. The road was horribly potholed, but because it only led to Hardscrabble and no other businesses or homes, Herman vetoed it. We all sort of hated him around the ranch.

  Sailing by him, I tipped my ten-gallon hat to him. His eyes barely flickered, and he didn’t register any recognition. He was sort of glassy-eyed, just as happy as a gopher in soft dirt.

  “Jenny!” cried Doil, getting to his knees next to the collapsed woman.

  Jenny Osmond had five people around her, all clutching at her. “Jenny…Jenny…Jenny…” What the fuck had happened? Flames were now shooting from the upper story windows, and the roof had started to collapse despite the valiant firefighter’s spewing of gallons of water.

  Jenny was sobbing in such a twisted, frightening way, it took one of the other women to answer. “Doil! Humphrey was in his office when it happened. We think his door must’ve been blocked because he never came out! Steve Holt was the last to see him going into his office before Tom Blankenship yelled ‘fire’ out in the storage room.”

  I exchanged looks with Dodge and Levi, and we stepped away out of respect. I told my fellow investigators, “I saw a weird sight. Look over there. Wait, now he’s gone. Richmond Herman, you know the asshole who’ll be mayor now that Mike Seville’s dead, he was standing right there with a…”

  “Strange look?” suggested Dodge. “The gleaming look of a pyromaniac?”

  “You’ve chosen your words wisely,” said Levi, nodding with understanding. “I know that assmuncher. He wouldn’t give me a permit for a new water line up to my distillery. Cumon, let’s get all the suspects out here! Line ’em up, nuts to butts.”

  “Uh,” said Dodge, “I think there’s only one suspect right now. Make sense if he wanted to burn the papers.”

  “And burn Osmond while he was at it,” I added.

  Levi said excitedly, “Let’s go find the fuckboy.” He jogged around the northeast corner of the building, toward where I thought I’d seen Herman’s Lincoln Continental. Herman was the old-timey sort of construction guy who played by—or manipulated—union rules, went to policemen’s and building exchange banquets to suck face, and became drunk with power. Humphrey Osmond was one such fellow. I could tell by the way he’d yelled at us at the hotel that he hollered at all his employees like that. Yelled at everyone, except bigwigs like Richmond Herman. Funny thing with psychopaths like that. They did have the ability to turn it off and on.

  “There’s the cockhead!” shouted Levi, pointing. “Just as you suspected. He’s the pyro all right. Just look at that fiery gleam in his eyes! He’s here for the thrill of it all.”

  I had to fucking admit, Levi was on the nose. The guy, his beady eyes and jutting chin and all, was oozing smug as he stood in his stupid cowboy boots—stupid because he’d never rode a horse in his life—with the blazing flames literally dancing in his pupils.

  He jumped when he viewed Levi pointing at him. He even took a few stumbling steps away from us, then seemed to think better of it. The arrogant look returning to his face, he stood casually, like any other old arsonist enjoying a nice blaze.

  Levi was one for direct confrontation. “You! Yes, you fucking king of the road and the sanitary sewer! You put Humphrey Osmond up to the fumigation!”

  “Yeah!” I shouted, close at Levi’s heels. I was fully aware of the Colt .45 that I always wore in my hip holster. I’d drawn it eighty times in my job, to put an injured cow out of its misery, fend off a coyote, or harvest a rabbit for dinner, and only once in anger. That once had been a booze-fueled bar fight where some alt-right neo-Nazis had accused me and my fellow cowmen of being gay. Of course, some of us were, but to be accused of it was beyond the fucking pale.

  Well, never accuse a bunch of guys with Colt .45s of being light in the loafers. About four of us drew our weapons, and the skinheads quickly scattered. The Great Battle of the Pit o’ Dummies was over before it’d even begun.

  “Yeah!” I yelled. “You probably knew Mike Seville and Flo Jannery were in that room!”

  “King,” whispered Dodge, right at my shoulder. “Don’t show your hand so fast.”

  But it was too late. Guffawing with confidence, Herman sauntered toward us. He must’ve been that self-assured, because all three of us, who had strength and right on our side, stopped dead in our tracks. “What the fuck are you talking about, you faggot cowboy? I’m here to see what’s going on in my jurisdiction. No more, no less.”

  Levi snarled, “Less is more when you’re a fucking murderer.”

  Herman threw his head back and actually chortled like some TV bad guy. “Murder who? There haven’t been any dead bodies in Hell’s Delight since you stopped killing people with your poi
sonous hootch!”

  Levi bawled, “That was an additive someone else was adding to my highly-esteemed Ginger Jake, and I’ll thank you for—”

  I elbowed Levi maliciously. “Levi. Shut up. You don’t need to defend yourself.”

  “Oh.” Levi straightened himself up. “As far as bodies go, no one has seen the likes of Humphrey Osmond since he went into his office right above the file room.”

  “Oh yeah? Show me the body,” oozed Herman.

  As he was basically admitting he knew there was a body, it was pretty apropos when just that second Captain Marick and Alex Coldiron rounded the corner of the building, on a mission. Herman took this opportunity to make a dash around his Lincoln, heading back for the main action, his arms chugging like a train.

  But Marick stopped him. He held up a palm like a traffic cop and shouted, “Hold it right there. Nobody make a move.”

  Shocked maybe more for his colorful lingo than by his actual words, no one made a move. This made it all the more obvious when four firemen trudged by between clouds of smoke, carrying a stretcher. The body was covered with a sheet.

  “That,” seethed Alex Coldiron, looking directly at Herman, “is Humphrey Osmond.”

  No one said a fucking word. Everyone was quiet as nuns.

  I blinked at Dodge. He blinked back at me, like we had some kind of code. Which we didn’t. We were just stunned beyond all reason.

  Then Herman made a break for it.

  He fell on the hood of his car and went hand-over-hand toward the driver’s side. That’s when I automatically drew my Colt, and Marick drew his regulation .40 cal semi-auto. Adrenaline coursed through my veins in almost the same way as when I’d drawn on that white supremacist. I felt sick, yet powerful. Drawing our weapons was an automatic action when a murderer was trying to make a getaway. Marick and I both had jobs that required lightning-fast reflexes.

  “Not so fucking fast, Herman,” bawled Marick. “We’ve got a few questions for you that are best answered down at the station.”