Steve stepped out of the sunlight, half hoping the light would literally shed some glimmer of a clue that might help him understand what was going on in Almost. The man had walked to the box. Then what?
Still shifting far to the left to avoid blocking the sunlight, Steve knelt closer to the base of the box. There. At the corner. A swirled print fanned like a perfect bridge hand, as if the fancy dude had turned suddenly. Surprised? Interrupted?
His Texas Ranger curiosity running at full speed, Steve swiveled slowly, his eyes on the footprints just inside the opened door. He could see them clearly: the pointy toes, his own king-size boot prints and those of a third man, tennis shoes of some kind. Old Pointy Toes and Tennis Shoes were roughly the same height, and to judge by the depth of the prints in the dust, probably fairly similar in weight. Steve’s own prints were easily discernible by their sizable difference.
If he had to guess, he’d say Pointy Toes was interrupted by Tennis Shoes, though any fight didn’t break out inside the tack room. No, they’d gone peacefully and slowly enough back through the barn door and outside. Had Tennis Shoes come back for Pointy Toes after the boys went screaming for Taylor?
Steve went back outside as if the empty sorghum field could supply the answer. A red-shouldered hawk silently circled low over the field, scaring up mice or insects. From a telephone wire high above, a meadowlark sang a melodious warning. The raspy drone of cicadas in Mr. Hampton’s elm trees carried all the way from the house to the barn.
Maybe it was time to talk to Mr. Hampton.
Three older men were waiting for him as Steve drove up to Mr. Hampton’s house and parked his car next to two others. Charlie Hampton lifted a hand in greeting. Steve tipped his hat and pushed it back on his brow a little. If there had been a woman present, he would have removed it altogether.
Steve introduced himself and offered his hand.
Charlie Hampton’s grip was surprisingly strong and callused.
Steve then shook hands with the other two men Charlie named, Homer Chalmers and Sam Harrigan. Neither of them spoke, only nodded and tilted their hats back a notch. Harrigan spat a mouthful of chewing tobacco off the side of the porch without turning his head.
A man not raised in West Texas might have thought the reception chilly at best. But Steve relaxed; these men were merely waiting for a report.
“Thanks for letting me have another look around,” Steve said.
Charlie Hampton nodded but didn’t waste any words on social amenities. “So what’s been going on out back of my barn?”
“Frankly, I’m not sure,” Steve said, and continued before the frown could fully settle on Charlie’s already wrinkled brow. “But I think Taylor Smithton’s boys may have seen the end result of a scuffle.”
“A scuffle, eh?”
“They claim they saw a man who was shot in the chest.”
“Dead?”
Steve shook his head. “Not when they left him. And since he wasn’t there when we came back, they’re either right about that or...”
“Or they’re lying.”
Steve didn’t look away from Charlie Hampton’s penetrating gaze. “I have to consider that possibility.”
“Well, you can just unconsider it,” Hampton said. “I’ve known those boys all their young lives. Oh, they’re full of piss and vinegar, I won’t kid you none about that. But they’re Smithtons to the bone. Learys, too, for that matter. Hell, boy, their daddy was a cop hisself. Known him since he was a boy and came with his folks to settle here. And I knew Taylor’s daddy and his daddy afore him. No, if they said they saw a bullet hole in some man’s chest, then they saw it.”
The other two men exchanged glances, then nodded at Steve solemnly.
Steve pushed his hat back another notch and leaned against the railing of the porch. He smiled. “I roomed with Doug Smithton at Tech.”
All three men nodded as if they’d known that bit of information.
“And I agree with you. If the boys are anything like Doug, I don’t have any trouble with what you’re telling me.”
Charlie Hampton shifted his own hat to a more friendly position and mimicked Steve’s easy lean against a post. “What do you suppose happened to the fellow with the bullet hole in him?”
“I was hoping you might know,” Steve said. “Anyone besides us come or go this afternoon? In a car or van?”
Charlie shook his head. “Not that I saw. But I have to admit, I take a nap in the afternoons nowadays. The whole National Guard coulda come down the barn road and I wouldn’t have heard a thing.” He turned his head back and forth and pointed at his hearing aids. “Take ’em out when I sleep. Otherwise they whistle.”
“The boys said they talked with you before they went out to the barn and found the man?” Steve said, making it a question.
“Well now, sure if they didn’t.” Again he waved at his ears. “I was watching my show. I’d just put my ears back in when they came around.”
Steve didn’t ask what show that might be; Charlie Hampton had a satellite dish on the side of his house. It could have been anything from “Montel Williams” to old reruns of “Perry Mason.”
“Have the boys been coming out to your barn very often lately?”
Charlie frowned as he thought. “Now that you mention it, seems they have been coming round a bit more than usual. ‘Course, the fact I planted something a little different this year makes for some interest. And the sorghum’s not too high yet, making the going easier. And the careless weeds aren’t grabbing at your socks like they do later. ’Sides, barns and kids just naturally seem to go together. Their mama used to come out here with her brother and sister. Same as their daddy did.”
“Seen anything else unusual? Strangers? The boys said the man was dressed fancy.”
“Aside from a salesman or two—and let me tell you, we still get ‘em out here, even after these five years of drought—I can’t recollect seeing any strangers.” Charlie looked at his companions. Homer and Sam never looked away from Steve, merely shook their heads in unison.
“Does anyone else use your barn road besides yourself?” Steve asked.
Charlie shook his head.
“Here’s the deal, Charlie. I’d appreciate it if you’d let me block off that road so I can keep the scene clean. I’m with you in thinking the boys are telling the truth. And if this guy was as badly wounded as they say, then it’s pretty good odds we’ll need to have another look at your barn as a possible crime scene.”
“Gotcha,” Charlie said. “You go ahead and tape it off, or whatever you gotta do. There’s no need for me to even go down to the barn this time of year. That field out there is doing just fine on its own. Nothing I can do about it now except pray for some more rain.”
The other two men nodded and looked up at the cloudless blue sky. Steve followed their gaze. “Here’s hoping,” he said.
“Hear you’ll be staying with Taylor,” Charlie said.
Steve’s heart seemed to hiccup. The matter had been decided less than an hour earlier and already the town knew. Steve felt rather than saw the speculative looks from the other two men. Charlie, on the other hand, simply waited for his reply.
“I have a flight booked for tomorrow. Unless we find something before then, I’ll probably be taking it.” He didn’t want to consider why the realization made him feel flat.
“Unless we stumble across this guy running around with a bullet in his chest,” Charlie said.
Steve nodded.
“Taylor’s quite a lady.”
The one-hundred-degree temperature didn’t account for Steve’s sudden discomfort. “Yes, she is.”
“There’s a saying about the Leary women—”
Homer spoke for the first time. “Two sayings.”
“Two sayings,” Charlie agreed. “The first is that there must be something in the water out at the Leary place. Every single one of the Leary women grows up to be a beauty with a heart to match.”
Steve smiled crookedl
y. He’d just realized that both his wives faintly resembled Taylor. “And the other saying?”
“They say the Leary women are all unlucky in love.”
Dinner was all but ready. The table was set, animals fed, boys bullied into clean T-shirts, and she herself had showered and changed into fresh jeans and a soft blue blouse.
Though it was already seven and the sun was far to the west, it still seemed midafternoon, thanks to daylight saving time and the summer season. Taylor lifted her shoulder-length hair and deftly caught it in a loose ponytail. A glance in the mirror to add a dab of lipstick told her she looked exactly what she was, a woman in her mid-thirties, mother of three boys who were about to receive the talking-to of their lives.
She corralled them in the living room, sitting them down on the sofa and taking the coffee table for herself. She waited until they’d quieted completely before leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees.
“I want to talk about the letter you wrote to Steve Kessler,” she said.
“We didn’t know there was really something going on, Mom—”
“Yeah, like the nearly dead guy.”
“We really saw him, Mom. You gotta—”
She held up her hand. “We’ll talk about that .later.” She had to clamp her lips tight to keep from smiling. “Right now, I want to know what prompted you to write that letter to Steve Kessler.”
All three of her sons hung their heads.
“I’m waiting,” she said.
Finally, Josh spoke up, his guileless eyes meeting hers directly. Earnestly. “We saw him at school first, then on television, see? It was for some big fancy party in Houston. They were, like, raffling him off—”
“Auctioning him,” Jason corrected.
“Same thing,” Josh said.
“It isn’t, either, huh, Mom?”
“Hush, Jason,” Taylor said. “I’ve got the picture. Go on, Josh.”
“Anyway, they called him Texas’s most heroic bachelor. And some other junk, you know, like his arrest record and stuff, and they said he was just what any woman would want to find in her stocking at Christmas.”
“It was a Christmas show.”
Taylor blinked. “You’ve been thinking about this since Christmas?”
All three of her sons looked blank. Then light dawned. Jonah half giggled. “Heck no, Mom! Just since what happened to Aunt Carolyn.”
Taylor closed her eyes. Kessler had been involved in the raid on Carolyn’s place last spring. He’d teamed up with the FBI to capture a local connection to drug runners using Carolyn’s place as a drop-off and pick-up site for air transport of drugs.
She opened her eyes and focused her gaze on her three errant angels. “Talk to me,” she said.
“And then, at school? We heard how Texas Ranger Steve Kessler was helping kids combat crime.”
They’d talked of little else for at least a week, though she hadn’t connected the name. Taylor hadn’t thought anything of their obvious case of hero worship. She’d had a pretty good case of it herself for Wonder Woman back when. But she’d never written to Wonder Woman to try to fix her up with Taylor’s daddy. Which was probably a good thing; her mother might have held one or two objections.
“And when did you come to the conclusion that you should write him lies?”
“About two weeks ago—” Jonah began, only to get an elbow dug into his side.
“This is what you’ve been up to practically since school let out?”
A mumbled assortment of affirmatives answered her.
“Do you three have any idea how wrong you were to have done such a thing?”
“But there really was a nearly dead guy, Mom!”
“Yeah! If we hadn’t written the letter, Texas Ranger Steve Kessler wouldn’t have been here—”
“And wouldn’t be able to save the day now!”
“Nice try, guys. No cigar. If you hadn’t written that letter, you wouldn’t have community service for the next three weeks.”
“Three weeks!”
“Aw, Mo-om!”
“I mean it, boys. Three weeks of doing all your chores first thing in the morning, then helping out around town, like at Mrs. Sanders’s house, or Mrs. Harrigan’s place, and then I want you out giving Mr. Hampton a hand with whatever he might need doing.” Sending them to the site of the crime was her way of softening the blow, even if the boys hadn’t noticed it yet. “Do I make myself clear?”
“But, Mom, all we did was write a letter. Where’s the broken law about that?” Jason asked hotly.
She leveled a cool look at him. “Using the U.S. mail to perpetrate a fraud is a federal offense, punishable by imprisonment in a federal penitentiary.”
“But it wasn’t fraud—”
“I suggest you look up the definition of fraud,” Taylor said dryly.
“But we were trying to help you,” Josh blurted out. “You’ve been real unhappy without Dad around. You still cry at night sometimes. We can hear you, even if you’re trying to be real quiet.”
Taylor had to war with the urge to be sidetracked, the need to gather her sons to her chest and hug them and thank them for thinking of her. However misguidedly. Luckily, knowledge and reason won out.
“You’re right. I still miss your Daddy. I always will, guys. But that doesn’t mean I’ll condone you telling lies to try to do something for me. How do you think that makes me feel?”
Three heads looked down. Jason’s popped up first. “But don’t you think it’s a good thing he’s here now?”
Taylor had to bite the inside of her lips to keep from smiling. “What I think is that you boys owe Mr. Kessler a giant apology for writing him lies. And I think that I’d better hear you’ve been helping everyone in the community that you can possibly help. Every day for the next three weeks.”
Her sons assented, and if the agreement was made with less than their usual enthusiasm, they knew they were lucky to get community service instead of incarceration, which was the family term for being grounded.
She and Doug had come up with the community service punishment when the boys were about four years of age. Neither of them liked the idea of spanking the boys as punishment for hitting one another. Somehow the concept of a hit for a hit seemed off balance. But helping others, becoming actively involved in someone else’s troubles and needs, seemed less a punishment than a lesson in life.
And since the community service system was so well-known in Almost, the boys were treated to a host of unusual tasks and jobs and were rewarded for their efforts with hot lunches, cold drinks and freshly made fudge brownies. And since she had triplets, nearly every house in the small town of Almost sported freshly painted trim, weeded alleys and driveways and spotlessly clean attics.
“We’re sorry, Mom,” Jonah said. His brothers mumbled duplicate apologies.
She held out her arms then and gathered her boys against her chest. “Your apology is accepted,” she said, hugging them. “I love you guys. Wild and crazy as you are.”
Steve stood in the lengthening shadows on the front porch. He’d been stopped by the seriousness of their conversation, not wanting to interrupt, not wanting to intrude. And listening to every word.
He fought against feeling wholly excluded from such an intimate display of affection and family unity. Watching them, the four blond heads made golden in the light from a table lamp, the mother, her hair caught up in a ponytail, looking nearly as young as the boys sprawling across her lap, Steve felt a sense of isolation like none he’d ever encountered.
Far more than a screen door and a darkening porch separated him from this family. Past hurts, imagined and real, rooted him to the wooden slats outside. And while the temperature remained at something just below one hundred degrees, he felt chilled. And alone.
Lonely.
This is what a family is supposed to be, he thought, and immediately wished he hadn’t. He still hadn’t learned. No matter how many times he’d waltzed around the dance floor of bad choic
es, the gullible part of him still wanted to waltz again.
Damn.
“Now scoot and make sure the silverware’s on the right sides,” Taylor said, standing up and urging her brood to a room off the main living area.
As her sons disappeared through the opened doorway, Taylor turned around, shaking her head a little. She looked up at the ceiling and spoke. “And you said three would be easy. Fat lot you knew about it.”
She let out her breath in a rush and grinned ruefully. Then she walked straight across the room and opened the screen door. And let out a little shriek when she ran right into him.
Steve would have given practically anything he had or had ever dreamed of not to have reached out and grasped her arms to steady her. She smelled too good, looked too beautiful, had somehow brought the warmth back to his limbs.
“It’s only me,” he said.
“It’s...you.”
He let her go, but the feel of her lingered on his hands.
Chapter 6
Steve wondered later if dinner was always the Mad Hatter affair it seemed to him. And always as enjoyable.
The food was terrific, a damn-all-consequences cholesterol-laden array of country-fried pork chops, mashed potatoes, gravy, broccoli with hollandaise sauce, thick French bread and an amazing array of assorted pickled condiments. Dessert, in the form of frozen yogurt, followed the meal as if in apology for the dinner’s high-fat content. Steve couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten so well and with such satisfaction.
While the meal was superlative, the conversation was a hodgepodge of blood, gore, fantasy, speculation, non sequiturs and not-so-subtle matchmaking. Luckily for Steve’s appetite, he didn’t have a particularly weak stomach and told himself firmly that he was impervious to any lures a pack of hooligans might set out for him to join their chaotic family.
“That guy couldn’t have gotten far.”
“What I figure is...whoever shot the guy picked him up and carried him away.”
Steve glanced up to see which of the three boys said this; it fit his surmise exactly.
“Yeah, well, how come we didn’t see any tire tracks or nothing?”
Almost A Family Page 8
