Rode Hard, Put Away Dead

by Sinclair Browning

  There were two pills inside. The label identified the contents as Prozac and indicated that the prescription was available for a refill. The doctor's name was Samuel Mullon.

  I copied the name and phone number on my pad.

  We continued searching the bathroom, but other than a myriad amount of skin toners, tighteners, retin A, cosmetics, masks, lotions and oils we found no other drugs. Certainly nothing resembling the veterinary drug ketamine.

  Back downstairs we settled back into our chairs. I noticed that our soda glasses had been refilled in our absence.

  “I wonder what she was depressed about,” Peter mused. “It couldn't have been money.”

  “Were your sister and J.B. getting along?”

  “She didn't confide her marital issues in me.”

  “But as far as you knew, there weren't any problems there?”

  “Unfortunately not.” Peter made no bones about not liking the match his sister had made.

  I didn't mention the bruising that had shown up in the autopsy report. He'd find out soon enough and if he wanted to jump to conclusions about J.B.'s relationship with his sister he could do so then.

  “Her health was good?”

  “Yes. She was always on top of that.”

  Money. Marriage. Health. The Big Three that usually drove people to depression, or worse. While Clarice had already told me about Abby's suspicions of J.B.'s fidelity, I wasn't going to share that with Abby's brother either. At least not yet.

  On my way out of the house, I purposely went through the kitchen in the hope that I would find Gloria Covarrubias. I wasn't disappointed.

  Her wedding ring and gloves sat on the sink as she buried her hands in a huge bowl of ground beef mixed with what looked like egg, cracker crumbs and spices. As her hands kneaded the mixture I was struck at how easily they blended in with the pink hamburger. I guessed meat loaf or meatballs for supper.

  “Hello, Gloria,” I said as I placed my empty ginger ale glass on the counter.

  “Afternoon.”

  “Do you know where I can find José?”

  She gave me a dark glance, thought a minute and then nodded her head in the direction of the back door.

  “He's finished with the pool and is probably doing one of the cars.”

  I thanked her and continued out, wondering if she knew everyone's schedule as precisely as she knew her husband's.

  I found José Covarrubias on a paved patch of driveway near the adobe four-car garage, a chamois cloth in one hand, a jar of Simonize in the other. The object of his attention, a silver Lexus muddy from the wax application, sat between us.

  “I'm sorry I missed you the other day.”

  He offered nothing, gave no excuse for standing me up.

  “I'm investigating Abigail Van Thiessen's death,” I said, after introducing myself. He continued buffing the car.

  “Yes, my wife told me.”

  “The police suspect that she may have been murdered.”

  “I don't know nothing about that,” he said, his eyes cast downward as he rubbed the Lexus.

  “I'm wondering if you noticed anything unusual about Abby recently, anything at all.”

  “Unusual?”

  “You know, did she seem depressed about anything, down in the dumps? Did her routine change?”

  “No.” Where José's wife had accused me of putting words in her mouth, her husband seemed reluctant to put any in his own. Still, I had to wonder why he had disappeared before my last visit when we were supposed to meet. Had there been a reason?

  “Maybe she had a health problem?” I prodded.

  My inquiry was met with silence.

  A shadow fell across the car and we both looked up to find the maid, Ramona Miller.

  “Hello, José,” she said, her eyes glittering with excitement.

  “Ramona.”

  I waited but the maid said nothing, nor did the chauffeur, so I continued my questions.

  “So there were no health problems that you know of?”

  “No.”

  “Drop … things.” Ramona said.

  “What?”

  “She …drop things,” she repeated.

  José kept polishing, seemingly oblivious to the maid's revelation.

  “Ramona, I don't understand. What do you mean she dropped things? Was she canceling appointments?”

  She picked up the lid to the can of wax and dropped it onto the hot asphalt. “Drop things.”

  “Abigail was dropping things?” I asked, not quite getting it. “What kind of things?”

  “Glass …” She pointed to her empty earlobe. “Ear …ring.”

  “So Abby was dropping glasses and earrings?”

  The girl nodded enthusiastically.

  “José, did you notice Abby dropping things?”

  “No.”

  He was a real chatterbox, this one.

  “No glasses, earrings?”

  “No.”

  “And there wasn't anything different about her?”

  “No.”

  “She was happy as far as you knew?”

  “Happy?” He looked puzzled. “I guess so.”

  “Ramona?”

  The girl nodded. “Happy.”

  “And J.B. was happy?”

  They looked at one another then and while Ramona nodded, José shrugged his shoulders.

  “You don't think that J.B. was happy?” I asked Covarrubias.

  He shrugged again. “It's not for me to say.”

  “Was there a problem of some kind?” I zeroed in for the kill.

  “She was an old woman, he was a young man.” Since I'd pegged Gloria to be about fifteen years younger than her husband, clearly José did not understand the attraction that J.B. had for Abby. Briefly, I wondered if the words two hundred million dollars meant anything to him.

  I continued on in this vein, asking more pointed questions about J.B. and Abby, but got nowhere. Ramona, who had started out very chatty, leaned against the Lexus and twirled strands of her hair around her fingers. José reverted to his Silent Sam routine.

  “Ramona, will you show me to the corrals?”

  “Show corrals,” she repeated and trotted ahead of me.

  When we got to the corral path she started to turn back to the house when I stopped her.

  “I understand that you overheard an argument between J.B. and Abby, is that right?”

  “That right.”

  “What were they fighting about, can you tell me?” I was speaking very slowly, hoping that she would be able to understand my words.

  Her hands went up chatting in pantomime motion as her lips moved silently. Then she took a fist and pounded her heart.

  “One of them hit the other one?” I guessed.

  She shook her head. “Hot …broken.”

  I thought about this a minute.

  “Abby said that J.B. was breaking her heart?”

  She grinned and nodded.

  “Ramona, this is important. Do you know why Abby thought he was breaking her heart?”

  “Joe …Tee.”

  With this confirmation I left her.

  As I walked down to the corrals I found myself wondering why Abby was dropping things. Did it mean anything?

  23

  AT THE ARENA THERE WAS A LOT OF ACTION GOING ON. THE sun was low on the horizon and the temperatures were getting cooler, probably somewhere in the 80s with the higher Oracle elevation. J.B. had taken advantage of the cool of the day to buck out some of his bulls.

  The ground had just been disked and I could see that there was a lot of sand mixed with the dirt, a good shock absorber for the students, most of whom would eventually bite the dust.

  Bevo Bailey, dressed out in full clown regalia—white makeup around his eyes and mouth, tattered shirt, wild polka dot suspenders holding up his patched Wrangler's, striped socks and running shoes—was inside the arena, waiting. His padded barrel was rolled on its side, ready to receive him in a moment's notice.

&
nbsp; In the chutes I could see J.B. leaning over a bull, adjusting the rigging. Just in front of the gate was a cowboy I recognized as the spitter I'd seen the day after Abby died.

  I walked along the outside of the arena fence until I got to Bailey.

  “Looks like they're riding today,” I said in a flash of brilliance.

  Bevo grinned. “Well, sort of. Treble Trouble's in the chute.”

  “Sounds mean.”

  He shook his head. “Double Indemnity's the star of this show, the rest are all cupcakes.”

  “Cupcakes?”

  “Sweetie pies. Heck, that little old bull don't weigh twelve hundred pounds. And there aren't any rhythm eliminators here except for the big boy.”

  I didn't have to ask for an explanation. A rhythm eliminator made sense. Once a bull rider got into the bull's rhythm, it was a lot easier to ride him. Most bucking bulls had patterns. Some just bucked in one direction, others bucked both left and right. The good ones had some spin to them, which all the top riders agreed was important.

  Of course the spinning could differ too. There were flat spins and then there were the punishing spins that whiplashed the rider. While most spinners would try to drop the rider to the outside, others tried to plant him to the inside of the spin into the well, the area inside the curve of the bucking bull.

  “It's got to be hard to ride the bigger ones,” I said.

  Bevo spat a stream of tobacco into the dust. I wondered if he ever worried about choking on his chew while he was bull fighting.

  “In real life—not this here—none of it's easy. The bigger bulls are usually slower, but they're a lot stronger. Those are the ones that can plumb jerk you over their heads and pay for your dentist's Harley. The little guys are more athletic, faster with quicker direction changes. The thing that's the same is that when you climb on one of those suckers you know they want you off. The only thing that's different is how he's gonna do it.”

  “I left a message for you a little while ago. I'd like to talk to you sometime.”

  “Sorry, but I don't talk about my friends,” Bevo said, spitting again in the dust. He grinned. “That's just a ride that takes you nowhere.”

  In the chutes I could see the slim New Yorker put on a leather riding glove. Even from this distance his chest looked a little bulky and I suspected he was wearing a protective vest. Most of the professional bull riders did. I figured that providing them was probably a requirement of J.B.'s insurance company.

  Briefly, I wondered if I could convince Bevo to talk. I doubted it.

  New York was all business as he ran a rosin chip over his bull riding rope and then scraped his glove with it too. This would make his equipment sticky, and hopefully easier to hold on to. How much rosin to apply depended on the weather.

  Bevo left me and took up his position in the arena, not far from the chutes.

  Finally, the student slipped onto the bull. J.B. leaned over and said something to him.

  The young wannabe gulped hard, grabbed his rope with his right hand and nodded, the universal cowboy signal to open the chutes.

  The gate flew open as the bull, a small Black Angus named Treble Trouble, trotted out. About fifteen feet from the chutes the humpless, hornless creature—a “muley” to the bull riders—jumped into action and began bucking and slowly spinning to the right. While I haven't seen all that much professional bull riding, this one really didn't seem to be putting his heart into it. Still, I knew that the cowboy on top of him had to be sweating bullets on his first bull ride. On the third buck, his brushed felt cowboy hat sailed off.

  I watched in fascination. The New Yorker tried to stay with the complacent bull, while taking care not to touch him with his free hand.

  “Ride him,” J.B. hollered. “Climb that son-of-a bitch's shoulders.”

  New York was yanking on his rope in an effort to stay on the bull, but muscling the Angus wouldn't do the trick, and it was as if the bull knew it. He spun to the right hard and his rider began flailing him with his free hand—automatic disqualification if this had been a real event. I could clearly see that the New Yorker was seriously off balance, hanging on to the left side of the bull at an angle that would have made Pythagoras cry.

  Finally, it was over. The rider lay face down in the dusty arena as the bull kicked out, narrowly missing the young man's head with his hooves.

  Bevo moved in immediately, flashing a red rag in front of the Angus, who snorted in disgust, ignored the clown's bait, and trotted off to the far end of the arena where he would be put in a pen. There was no fooling this bull, he knew what was expected of him and gave just that. Barely.

  New York rolled over onto his side, got to his knees, and then to his feet. As he stood and dusted off his chaps, a broad grin spread across his face, showing his dirt-encrusted teeth. “Man!” He slapped his chaps with his gloved hand. “Man!”

  “Congratulations.” J.B. was in the arena, extending his hand. “You're now a full-fledged bull rider.”

  “Man!” he repeated, and I was beginning to wonder if his first bull ride had turned him into an idiot. “That's like the best roller coaster I've ever been on.”

  J.B. chuckled.

  “Fred!” he yelled. “You're up.”

  The fat baldheaded fifty-year-old I'd seen earlier walked woodenly across the arena.

  “You better get ready, you're next,” J.B. said.

  While it was hot, it wasn't hot enough to warrant the pebbling of sweat that marched across the man's forehead.

  “I, I … don't think I can do it, J.B.”

  J.B. slapped him on the back. “Sure you can, Fred. We're gonna put you on old Daisy Clipper there and it's gonna be a piece of cake.”

  Fred's hands were shaking and his voice was cracking, the way it does when people are really scared and the moisture's sucked out of their mouth.

  “Honest to God, J.B. I …I don't think I can do it. I'm an accountant, for Chrissake, not some bull rider.”

  “Fred, take a deep breath, don't go hyperventilating on me now. Everything's gonna be fine. You're gonna get up there and climb on that little cupcake and have the time of your life.”

  As he talked, he was walking to the chutes with his hand still on Fred's shoulders. I couldn't tell if he was dragging him along or if the accountant was willing to be led to his own slaughter.

  Within minutes, Fred, wearing a protective helmet, was hovering above the bull. I stepped closer to the chutes so I could eavesdrop on J.B.'s pep talk.

  “Now you just talk to old D.C. there and you tell him that you're the meanest son-of-a-bitch that's ever crossed his path. You are flat gonna ride his ass. He knows his job, now your job is to remember those drills we've been working on, all that subconscious stuff, right?”

  Fred, looking somewhat cheerier, but still terrorized, managed to nod. It was a lot easier I suspected, when it wasn't the nod, the one that set all hell loose.

  “Don't go getting cerebral on me, Fred, just let your subconscious do what we've programmed it to do. You're just along for the ride.”

  J.B. reached for Fred's arm and gently pulled him onto the bull. The accountant, who looked a little like Elmer Fudd, was stiff with tension as J.B. helped with his rope and glove. Calendar, to his credit, kept up a steady stream of chatter in an effort to distract Fred from his fear.

  “Remember, you are one tough son-of-a-bitch and this poor little piece of hamburger just doesn't stand a chance.”

  Fred looked as though he would have cried had he had anything left in him to give.

  “You just let us know when you're ready.”

  The bull, a Charolais-looking thing from what I could see of it through the wooden planks of the chute, stood patiently. So did J.B.

  Time passed.

  Finally J.B. said, “Fred, we ain't got all day here.” Fred nodded in agreement and then realized his mistake as the chute flew open and Daisy Clipper stumbled out.

  D.C. was a large bull, weighing in I guessed at around eigh
teen hundred pounds. While he probably had the power to be one of the mean ones that Bailey had told me about, this one seemed a cousin to Ferdinand as he humped his massive back in a halfhearted buck.

  Fred stayed with the first one and D.C. trotted a bit and then humped up again. It was as though I was watching it in slow motion, for there was no speed to this bull. Although I was no judge of such things, it seemed to me that if D.C. was a legitimate bucking bull, then Treble Trouble, in spite of his failings, was real National Finals Rodeo quality.

  Fred was doing a good job of hanging on to his rope as his left hand flailed the sky. So far, his free hand had come nowhere close to the bull. I could see the stiffness in his body as his legs tried to grip the bull's broad barrel. Now the accountant looked like Elmer Fudd on a mission to eradicate Daffy Duck. His face was screwed up in intense concentration as his pudgy body bounced along the bull's back.

  “Move with him!” J.B. hollered.

  Fred showed no sign of having heard as D.C. went into a slow spin. It was enough to dump his rider. The accountant landed on his feet, stumbled, fell to his knees and miraculously regained his footing.

  D.C. now decided to really pour it on as he bucked away from his fallen rider. Bevo left him alone, the mark of a good clown who knows the importance of staying out of the way, yet has the instinct of when to jump in.

  Fred swiped his hand across his face and patted his body, as though to insure that all the parts were still there. He was ripping off his helmet when J.B. arrived to congratulate him, but Fred was having none of it.

  He handed J.B. the helmet.

  “That scared the shit out of me.”

  J.B. grinned. “So join the club.”

  “No, I mean it, J.B. You can have it.”

  “Ah, Fred, you did a good job of riding old D.C. there. Hell, another couple of seconds and you woulda made the buzzer.”

  “Fuck the buzzer, J.B. I'm done.” Fred was unbuckling his chaps and handed them to Calendar. “I have looked death in the eye and it sucks.”