Rode Hard, Put Away Dead

by Sinclair Browning

  It was sobering to see all of the consignments, since it was as good an indication as any that the drought was taking its toll. These were ranchers, just like me, selling off their cattle because their range could not support them without water. If things didn't change quickly, I could easily find myself in the same situation. Not a pretty thought. Not pretty at all.

  The Wilson boys, after their national calf roping careers, had built a million-dollar state-of-the-art auction and stockyards facility out in Marana. Just off I-10, it was convenient to the freeway, and far enough out in the country that no one was going to complain about a little cow manure, or a string of pickup trucks and stock trailers filled with horses, heifers, steers, cows and bulls disrupting neighborhood traffic patterns. The fact that the owners, Jeb and Cody, were salt-of-the-earth, good old-fashioned American boys, didn't hurt their business either.

  The thing about ranching is that in a world gone crazy with lawsuits and broken contracts, you can still find people in our world whose word is golden. Who, when they say they'll do something, do it. Who, when you need help, give it without being asked. Whose word you can take to the bank. The Wilson boys were no exception.

  Add to that that ranching has become high-tech for a lot of these folks and the Wilson family does everything they can to help the rancher determine when the best time is to sell his stock. The commodities exchange is checked several times every day for the price of beef. Jeb and Cody will also happily tell you how many chicken and fish places have been replaced with steakhouses.

  While some auction-goers like to be close and lean against the red pipe ring, I prefer a higher position in the tiered stands where I can look down on the computerized electronic scale. I also like the higher elevations so I can see who's there without turning around. The other reason is that in the hot weather it puts you closer to the cool air being pumped out of the side-mounted draft evaporative coolers. I sat in line with the bigger of the two cooler vents.

  They ran the horses through first, and there were a number of them. Many were scrawny, underfed things that had been turned out on the sparse Indian reservations. Then there were the well-broke, older ranch horses, being sent through since they were perhaps beginning to stumble, or not go about their daily work with the same alacrity as they had when they were youngsters. They'd still make good riding horses for people who weren't going to ride them at breakneck speeds through cactus-studded desert in pursuit of rogue cows.

  The number of horses was yet another barometer of our drought. One thing was for sure, I'd never give up Dream or Gray. Not willingly.

  Perhaps some of the consignments were from ranchers spooked by the Fortunada's recent loss of fourteen head of horses after they had eaten too much burro weed.

  The horse part of the auction used to be a lot more fun when they were ridden in the ring. Then you could get an idea of how the horse worked, although truthfully, they all looked like they reined pretty good when they were ridden in the small area. When a cowboy put spurs to them and rolled them around, there really wasn't any place they could go, but to turn over their hocks and execute a nice rollback.

  They don't do that anymore. Now the auctioneer reads a script that is provided by the horse's owner. From this piece of paper you learn that the horse is gentle, has been used to gather cattle, whatever.

  What usually isn't provided is if the horse has reared up and fallen over backward and killed someone, which is why buying a horse at auction is tricky. A guy I know who is in the dude ranch business and really knows his stuff, tells me they're lucky if 60 percent of the horses they buy at auction work out. For the rest of the buyers, those with a lot less horse sense than my friend, the percentages are much lower; the mistakes more costly if you count the broken equipment, busted limbs and shattered vertebrae.

  There are some scrupulous owners who will consign a horse who has a bad attitude or is crippled and stipulate that the horse must go for dog food. Sometimes though an unscrupulous owner says nothing. It's the Wilson's policy to deny their sale to anyone who has ever lied about a consigned horse.

  If no history is provided on the animal, the auctioneer might volunteer information such as “He's got iron downstairs,” which you can then use to make the jump in logic to the fact that if the horse has shoes on they must have been put there so he could be ridden, ergo he must be a saddle horse.

  Most of the horses went for dog food prices, which was unfortunately probably their destination. With the drought, no one I knew was looking to take on more mouths to feed or water.

  The cattle sales took a couple of hours. I'm always amused at the body language on sale days. Some bidders start out bold, waving their hands or cards and then become more subtle when the auctioneer knows they're in the game. The regular buyers raise a finger, wink or barely nod their heads. A few latecomers walked up the steps with their backs to the ring and twitched their cards or made a fist, both actions that were readily picked up by the bid spotters. Cell phones have also invaded the auction barn as the buyers stay in close contact with their clients.

  The music of the auction barn played—the snap of the whip to encourage the cattle to move out of the ring, bored kids kicking the back of the wooden seats, the buzz of the flies, the lowing of the cattle, the constant clanging of the heavy metal gates and above it all, the singsong of the auctioneer's patter.

  When a group of scrawny uncut Indian cattle came through, they were “all frame, boys.” A calf, blind in one eye, was “Look at that! A miracle on his way to town.”

  Cody's wife sat next to the auctioneer, recording the information on each sale into the computer. As I sat there watching the cattle move through the arena I was amazed, as I always am, by the sheer volume of money that was changing hands, most of it by wire transfer. Conservatively at least a half million dollars a week goes through the old Pueblo Stockyards. That's a lot of beef.

  Finally it was over and I found Tommy. He was tall and lean, anorexic almost. His blue work shirt was splattered with the remains of the day, his Wrangler's were stained with something suspiciously brown and held up with a carved leather belt and a badly scratched calf-roping buckle. A cigarette dangled from his blistered lips, its long ash marching dangerously close to his mouth. His shapeless straw cowboy hat had seen better days as a wide band of sweat stained the crown where it attached to the brim. When he gave me a thin smile, I noticed that he was missing one of his front teeth.

  We went back inside to the air-conditioned comfort of the café, which was now relatively empty since most of the ranchers had headed home, although many of their brands remained here, painted on the brown cement floor. There was no mistaking this as anything other than a cowboy café with the walls of photographs of old roundups, calf ropings, rodeos and cutting contests, interspersed with ancient canteens, cracked leather harnesses and discarded chaps.

  When Tommy removed his hat, it turned out that he was like a lot of cowboys. Bald.

  We ordered hamburgers and waited for our lunch to arrive. He'd known J.B. Calendar on and off for years and detailed highlights of the times their lives had commingled, many of which seemed to be centered on alcohol.

  “Is J.B. drinking a lot these days?” I asked.

  “Compared to what?”

  “I don't know. I guess compared to usual.”

  He laughed, a snort really. “J.B. always drinks a lot. Maybe he's gotta live up to his name or something.”

  I gave him a puzzled look.

  “His dad died drunk, but before he did he named his kid after his best friend.”

  I thought about this a minute.

  “Jim Beam?”

  He nodded.

  Probably not good news. From what Martín had been telling me and from the drinking I'd seen J.B. do up at the Brave Bull, it sounded as though he was headed down the same grim path as his father. Interesting that he and Abby had both had abusive parents. Had that been part of their attraction for one another? And if so, had they left the abuse behind
them or had they repeated with each other that which they'd learned as children?

  Our hamburgers arrived and we were busy for a minute or two slathering mayonnaise and mustard on them. One of the great perks about eating at the Marana Stockyards café is that the beef is always excellent and our lunch was no exception. After I had my burger under control, I continued my questions.

  “I hear that J.B. and Abby had quite a honeymoon.” Tommy was burying his French fries in salt. “J.B. hocked everything he had for that and when that wasn't enough he started borrowing money from his friends.”

  “Including you?”

  “Yeah, he got me for a hundred bucks. But hey, he paid it back, with interest.”

  It sounded like Abby had paid for her own honey-moon after all since I imagined the money to pay back his friends had come from J.B.'s new bank account.

  “Well, he probably doesn't have to worry much about money these days,” I said. It was a fishing trip to see if Renner knew about J.B.'s million bucks.

  “Don't imagine.”

  It didn't sound as though Tommy knew about J.B.'s windfall.

  “You knew Jackie Doo Dahs?” I abruptly changed the subject.

  “Knew her?” He smiled, once again showing me the space where one of his front teeth used to live. “I used to date her.”

  “When?” It was hard for me to imagine that a woman who had been married to J.B., who at least got points for being relatively cute, would also date Tommy Renner. Where J.B. had a healthy cowboy outdoor look to him, there was something consumptive about Tommy.

  “Before she married J.B. And after their divorce,” he said. “And before she married J.B., and after their divorce.”

  He didn't look like a parrot, but hadn't I just heard him repeat himself? “You said that twice.”

  “Well, they were married twice.”

  “J.B. and Jackie were married twice?” Now, who was the parrot?

  “Yep. And divorced twice. Me and Jackie go back a ways. After that last time, that's why J.B. don't talk to me.”

  Not only had my client not told me about his ex-wife, but he had also somehow neglected to mention that he had married the same woman twice. Great guy. No wonder Tommy Renner's name had not appeared on his list. He knew too much. Interesting that Uncle C hadn't mentioned J.B.'s two marriages to Jackie either. Maybe he didn't know.

  “When'd they get divorced?”

  “The last time?” Tommy was talking with his mouth full and mayonnaise was dribbling out as I looked for something else to focus on. The sign warning NO DANCING ON TABLES WITH SPURS would have to do.

  I nodded.

  “Oh, 'bout a year before he married the rich one.”

  At least that part jibed with what Uncle C had told me. It also coincided with the time that J.B. had started dating Abby. I wondered if he'd dumped Jackie for her.

  “I guess she came back into J.B.'s life after he married Abby,” I said. “Something about wanting more alimony.”

  “Alimony?”

  “You don't think she was after more money?”

  “Jackie? Nah. She wanted J.B., that's what she wanted.”

  A cold chill went up my spine. How badly had she wanted him? Enough to kill?

  “You think she wanted to have an affair with him?”

  He shook his head and bit into a handful of French fries that crunched when he talked. “Oh no, she wanted him back. All of him. Permanent like.”

  “You're telling me that she wanted him to divorce his wife?”

  “Yeah, that's what she told me. She was working on him to do it too.”

  My mind was spinning. The fact that Jackie and J.B. had been married twice was probably a pretty good indication of some kind of strong attraction between the two of them. What had Clarice told me when we were talking about sex I guess the cowboy was really something in that department. Jeepers, Abby used to say he was so good, she wanted to share him with her friends. Was that the attraction J.B. had for Jackie?

  But the money may have been an even stronger lure. Abby had given J.B. a million dollars, which had probably looked pretty good to his former wife. Had she somehow known about the $60 million he was going to inherit now that Abigail Van Thiessen was dead? If Jackie Doo Dahs could pull off a third marriage to J.B. Calendar she'd be in tall cotton. Suddenly, I had another strong suspect in my already crowded field.

  “Are you dating Jackie now?” I was betting that most of Tommy's appeal could be found below his scratched calf-roping buckle.

  “Nah. She only has eyes for him. As far as I'm concerned she might as well be a nun.”

  My eyebrows shot up with the image of Sister Doo Dahs in her habit.

  Tommy took another giant bite out of his hamburger. “But anyway, she's got another cause now instead of sex and J.B.” He had the good grace to finish most of his bite before continuing. “She's into animals.”

  “Really?” I'd heard that some exotic dancers used animals in their acts. Was Jackie one of those?

  “Yeah. That was a problem her and J.B. had. Her and me too. She didn't like rodeo, said it was mean to the animals. Hell, most of them only have to work eight seconds a week, what's mean about that?”

  “Well, some people don't like it,” I said.

  “And then them lab people with the mice and dogs and stuff.”

  I knew what he was talking about. The University of Arizona was using some lab animals and had been picketed by some of the local activists.

  “So she's involved in the animal rights movement?”

  “Yeah. Big time. She's even got this sandhill crane costume that she wears.”

  “She dresses up like a sandhill crane?”

  “Only sometimes. When she's protesting.”

  I ate for a minute and then asked, “Do you know if J.B. ever abused her?”

  He choked on his hamburger. “You mean like hit her?”

  “Yeah.”

  “A couple of times that I knew of.”

  Damn. There was that trust thing again. J.B. had lied about that too. Had he told me the truth about anything?

  “But it was after she hit him.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Jackie's got a pretty good temper.” He stopped eating long enough to roll up his dirty shirtsleeve. He pointed to a crescent-shaped scar on the inside of his forearm. “That's one of Jackie's brands.”

  “She did that to you?” It looked like a pretty healthy scar to me.

  “She threw a bottle at me and it hit the counter, broke and I got the ricochet.”

  “Jackie do that kind of stuff to J.B. too?”

  “A couple of times they got into some knock-down drag-outs. Hell, when she was with me I had to shove her around a bit. Self-defense. He had to do the same thing. She can get kinda wild.”

  I let the subject drop. While I wasn't keen on J.B.'s pounding on women, it sounded like Jackie Doo Dahs may have been stepping over the line a bit. One thing was for sure in any event: I needed to check out his ex-wife.

  After I paid the bill we headed back out into the sweltering heat.

  “Where can I find Jackie, do you know?”

  Tommy was lighting a cigarette and although he had no problem talking with his mouth full of food, I had to wait until he got it lit before he answered.

  “You mean like now?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That's an easy one. The circus is in town. That's where I'd try. Look for a stacked lion or something.”

  And with that he was back to the pens.

  29

  IT WAS WELL AFTER TWO WHEN I HIT I-10 AND DROVE DOWN-town. I'd called María López Zepeda before leaving the Old Pueblo Stockyards and she had agreed to give me a few minutes as long as I could get to her office before three-thirty.

  Parking can be a bear when you're driving a big pickup, and it's never more troublesome than when you are trying to park in one of those big overhead garages. I drove slowly since I always think the concrete ceiling is going to crunch the t
op of the cab and cave it in on my head. While it felt close, I probably had feet to spare. Still, not one of my favorite things to do.

  López Zepeda's office was on the seventh floor of the Arizona Bank Building. I gave my name to the receptionist and sat on a soft brown leather couch admiring the view and the Michael Chiago painting of a group of Tohono O'odham people gathering saguaro fruit. Seeing that for some reason reminded me of the old Apache words for June, before we started using the English language. While I don't speak the language, I remembered the translation—face painted red with cactus fruit—a reference to the saguaro fruit. In the background of the painting was a large mountain peak that I recognized as Baboquivari. Interesting coincidence given the scene of Abby's death.

  María, along with her two partners, had built a healthy defense practice, stoked in large part by their defense of a lot of drug dealers. The senior partner, Oscar Horowitz, had teethed on defending guys like Joe Bonano and Peter Licavoli, Mafia kingpins who years ago had made Tucson their home.

  Three minutes later I was in María's office. After she thanked me for referring J.B. to her, I asked, “Did you get him out?”

  “Can't. He's not bailable.”

  “So he's been charged with murder one?”

  She nodded. “And the county attorney's concerned that he may skip town.”

  “The itinerant cowboy business I suppose.” I was sure J.B.'s former lifestyle probably had something to do with it.

  “He's got access to money and he could flee.”

  “It's a pretty good can of worms, isn't it?”

  She nodded again. “Are you getting anywhere?”

  Since J.B. had made it clear from the beginning that I could share anything I learned with his defense attorney, I brought her up-to-date on what I'd learned, which really wasn't all that much. When I got to the part about Jackie Doo Dahs, María was clearly upset.

  “Another wife? He never said anything about that.”

  “That makes us both surprised.”

  “¡Hijuela!”

  “I'll see if I can track her down. Apparently she wanted J.B. back.”