I thought his eyes were beginning to look moist with tears, but then again it could've been the green wavy glass, and reminding myself of the detective's instructions to find out as much as I could about the nephew, said, “I'll be out front in half an hour.”
Besides, it was obviously some stupid misunderstanding that would, in the end, prove Patience's nephew blameless. Of course there had to be a simple explanation. Something less horrifying than Patience drowning in my car, and her favorite and only nephew, her murderer.
Garth stood patiently leaning against the balustrade of the County Courthouse, smoking a cigarette. He got enough second looks from passing women to confirm my initial impression. The guy was a hunk in a pair of tight 501’s and I would've bet my lunch money thirty-two by thirty-six was stamped on the leather patch of his jeans. A western shirt snugged across the broad shoulders and a couple of open snaps showed a few dark curly chest hairs. His rock hard jaw was shadowed with a day-old beard and he carried some serious dark circles under his eyes. All of which said he'd probably not had much sleep the last day or so, but otherwise he was a perfect candidate for a Marlboro ad. I may not be in the market for husband number three, but I wasn't totally immune to a good-looking man. I found my mouth silently forming the words, “Saddle up, cowboy.”
He crushed the cigarette under his heel, pushed off the corner of the building and loped in my direction. I barely had time to reach across the truck to open the door when he hopped in.
With the easy familiarity of one who is happy to be riding in a truck, he stuck out the big square hand, the tinny voice from the jail phone was now a deep and resonant baritone. “Garth Thorne Esquire, at your service, ma'am.” He winked, to show me the esquire was only for fun. The hand shake was firm but not bone crushing, and in spite of his well-trimmed nails, I felt calluses on his palm. If nothing else was right about this cowboy, at least he was familiar with hard work.
“Lalla Bains,” I said, looking down at his hand still holding mine. I managed to slip out of his grasp and nervously snagged the gears into reverse, backing the truck out onto the street and barely missing a Pepsi truck. “Sorry. It's this darn cast.”
He nodded. “My aunt said you busted up your leg flying. Pardon me if it sounds like a pick-up line, but what's a classy lady like you doing flying crop-dusters and driving a dumpy ol’ truck like this?”
I couldn't help but smile. “It's the farm truck. I drive it, though my dad gets annoyed because I grind the gears.” I demonstrated by lurching the stick shift into first. “And the short version on the flying is that I sort of fell into it. So, how long has it been since you've seen your aunt?”
The crease he'd been wearing between his eyebrows faded in obvious relief. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Well for starters, for believing that I'm who I say I am. I'm her nephew, fer Chris’ sake, but you'da thought I was the Hillside Strangler with the way the local cops treated me. Sorry, but it's been so damn frustrating. Cops thought they could grill me till I confessed something I didn't do,” he said, running fingers through dark wavy hair. It was a little long for my taste, but I knew it had that uncombed look women adore. “I used my one call to my lawyer in Enid,” he said. “He set up such a stink they ran like the pack o’ mangy coyotes they are.”
“When did you get here?” I asked sweetly. He might be cute, but I'd rather have a complete stranger in the radar of the local cops than me.
He pulled out the ashtray, and seeing it was empty, asked, “Mind if I smoke?”
“No problem,” and rolling down my window, I pulled the ashtray open.
“You want one?”
I laughed. “Does it show?”
“I'm trying to quit myself,” he grinned and flicked the unlit cigarette out the window. “So, you asked—oh yeah. I drove straight here with a quick stop in Reno. I had some friends to catch up with. I got here, oh, sometime ‘fore sunup this morning, musta been around five.”
“Did you see your aunt then?”
“Nah. I was beat. Besides, it was too early, so I pulled my rig into her driveway and took a nap. That turned out to be a mistake.”
“The police?”
“On some crock about non-support for my kid.”
“Oh? A boy or a girl?”
“A daughter. You got kids?”
“Bad timing, wrong men, the usual issues.”
“Too bad. I owed my aunt a visit, but the trip out here was to see my kid.”
“Here in Modesto?”
“Stockton. She turned sixteen a couple of weeks ago, so I'm overdue on the visits but not on back child support,” he frowned and went back to examining the road.
If this guy weren't so cute, it would be a waste of my time. He was here to see his kid and in jail for old child support issues.
“Were you and your aunt close?”
“We were.” You know how an expression flickers across someone's face, but you can't read it because you either don't know the person well enough or you think you forgot to ask the right question? I was feeling that way now and only hoped something would fall out sooner than later.
“Times change people. I got married, opened a business, had a kid. It all went to hell when I started drinking. That'll mess with your life. When the checks started bouncing my wife got me to sign papers for stuff I don't even remember, and I think I signed away custody of my kid. So with no reason to stay, I hitched a ride with a sympathetic trucker friend. Poor ol’ boy must've got tired of hearing my sob story, ‘cause he tossed me out somewhere near the Texas panhandle. It went downhill from there.” His deep chuckle belied the next statement. “I'd guess you'd call it downhill, since I woke up in an unoccupied dumpster.”
“Dumpster?” He had to be kidding. I snuck a peek at his handsome head and tried to imagine those dark curls matted with garbage, his manicured nails grimy with dirt.
“You have no idea how cold it can get in Texas ‘til you spend a winter's night outside. Trust me Darlin’ that dumpster saved my ass. I hitched another ride and woke up in a whorehouse outside Enid and couldn't tell you how I got there.”
“A whorehouse! Really?” This was entertaining. “I'll bet they're a lively bunch. Kinda like a full time pajama party, huh?”
The eyes crinkled with amusement. “Oh, it was fun all right,” he added dryly. “Getting sober in an Oklahoma whorehouse was a hoot, scrubbing toilets during the day and AA every night.”
Unlike my own ragged digits, which had more than a nodding acquaintance with the underbelly of an airplane, his own very clean nails said he no longer hung around dumpsters. I curled my own neglected nails around the wheel to hide them.
“I didn't leave under the best of circumstances, grabbing a bag and hitching a ride out of Stockton, but I made a good living for us in Stockton, and I thought leaving her with all of it would mean she wouldn't do without, but she figured otherwise. So, part of my program is to apologize to the people I've hurt. I've recognized the harm I've done and tried on several occasions to make amends, but I guess she doesn't think apologies or the support checks are enough.”
It must have been hard to confess so much to a stranger. I almost felt guilty about prying into his private life. Almost. “So, she's lying about the back child support?”
“Darlin’ AA taught me that lyin’ went with drinkin’ and I've long since given up both. She got the business, the house, the cars and money for my kid. It took me awhile to get back on my feet, but me and John, he was the night manager at the cathouse, we got us a truck repair shop, and we work on a fleet of tractors. Nothing as big as before, but it keeps us going, and I pay all my bills.”
“So, this is your ex's punishment for leaving?”
“I can't think of anybody else who'd go to this kind of trouble. Maybe I'll go back to court, get joint custody like I should've in the first place. I could take my kid to Oklahoma for the rest of her summer vacation.”
“At sixteen?” I thought of my God-dau
ghter, Maya, at two years older and added, “Do you have any idea how hard it would be to tear a sixteen-year-old away from her friends and the local mall?”
“They got malls in Enid.” His dark brows settled into a stubborn line. Then he looked over at me and grinned. “Oh, hell, I'll work it out with the ex soon enough. So, you feel better knowing I wasn't in jail ‘cause I was a murder suspect?”
“Sure do,” I said. “I already trucked home my share of criminals today.”
He slapped his thigh and laughed, sending shock waves through the cab of the truck. “I gotta tell you Darlin’, you're a sight for sore eyes. This trip's sure been a doozer.” Then his tone turned serious. “I can't believe the old girl went and drove herself into a lake. What was she thinking?”
I wasn't sure how I felt about being addressed as Darlin’ but maybe it's what they all did in Oklahoma. “I'd like to know myself, since she did it in my car.”
All his lighthearted sunshine disappeared again. “It was your car she was driving?” He shook his head. “Well, bump my ass and call me an Okie! Don't this beat all. So, what happened? Girls’ night out? Whoop it up in town and you were too drunk to drive home?”
“’Fraid not. I wasn't in the car.”
He was giving me a quick and concentrated once-over. “Please, Darlin’, don't tell me they're fixing to size your pretty little self into striped pajamas?”
I gave him a look over my sunglasses. Since little and I are seldom used in the same sentence, I wasn't sure if he was kidding or not. But, then he hadn't seen me standing either. From what I'd seen of his big frame, I'd say his chin could easily rest on my five foot nine frame. “Not if I have anything to say about it. I have absolutely no reason to do in someone I barely knew.”
“Nobody else did neither, but the cops're desperate to hang this on somebody, and I guess I look good for it.”
My sentiments exactly. “If it makes you feel any better, I was also cautioned not to leave town. I've got to run a crop-dusting business, so, where did they think I was going to go?”
He quietly digested that little tidbit of news while I cut across three lanes of traffic and jumped the off-ramp for home. I nosed up to the intersection, and could feel Garth tense as I shot through it, but if he had an opinion about my driving he kept it to himself.
“I find it hard to believe the cops're thinking somebody murdered my own kin. That ol’ girl didn't have an enemy in the world. As a matter of fact, if anything her worst problem was that she liked ever'body. Anybody who paid the slightest bit of attention to her was her newest best friend. I told her it could be dangerous and maybe that's what happened.”
“You think she might have taken up with a stranger?”
“Bad company? Can't see what else it could be.”
I turned off Hatch onto Whitmore and we pulled into Patience's driveway.
“Well,” I said, “She couldn't have been driving my car, because…”
Garth wasn't listening and I couldn't blame him. He was staring at the yellow police tape surrounding the perimeter of her house. Occupying the last half acre of land carved out of its original eighty acres, the house looked like a lot of the old two bedroom farmhouses in the county.
A sleek black forty-five foot custom diesel pusher loomed over much of the parking space and almost dwarfed the house. Gold pin striping rippled from front to back. A mountain scene, complete with wolves baying at the moon was expertly painted on the stern. It was the same type of custom rig that ferried country/western singers around. I also knew, from friends who had them, they started at close to a million dollars.
“Nice land-yacht,” I said.
“If you like, I'll give you a tour, but first I want to take a look inside her place,” he said, hopping out of the truck.
I called at his back, “I think the yellow tape means keep out?”
Garth's long legs stepped over the yellow tape, and while I was still dithering over unauthorized entry, he went inside. Since both of us were already under suspicion, what could it hurt, right?
Just inside the door, I asked, “Shouldn't it have been locked? Or at least shut? Shouldn't there be a patrolman here to keep out the curiosity seekers like us?”
Garth hooked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans and leaned close enough so that his very brown eyes were securely settled onto mine and with a wink said, “Nobody's ever gonna accuse you of being dumb, are they, Darlin’?”
five
The interior of Patience's country cottage was almost as dark as the lingering summer twilight. But even in the dim interior, I was distressed to see all the damage. Except for her big heavy upright piano, everything else was dumped over or tossed against the wall hard enough to break. Two floral print chairs were upended, looking like chubby schoolgirls with their white panties showing. The sofa's cushions were slashed, the cotton stuffing pulled halfway out.
Garth stood muttering at the disaster inside. “I've seen Oklahoma tornados do less damage than this.”
I answered something about my own housekeeping skills and stepped around him. Whatever happened here was not the work of sloppy housekeeping.
“Cops do this?” Garth asked, bewilderment turning to anger. “Tear up her house like this?”
“Of course not. They must have found it this way.”
“Then why was the door left open? Something ain't right here.”
I was still fumbling along the wall feeling for a switch when Garth disappeared into the next room.
“Hey! Where you going?” I shouted into the void. The dark interior had that violated feeling and it was beginning to creep me out. “I should call Caleb!”
“If he's a cop, you can count me out,” he called back. “Gimme a minute? I wanna see how bad it is.” His voice faded as he went into another room.
Unwilling to stumble around a dark room, I anxiously held my post by the front door and waited for Garth to rescue me, that is if he would stop his exploring every room.
I was about to holler at him to stop fooling around, when I felt the hair on the back of my neck tingle. Someone was standing close enough for me to feel his breath on my neck. I saw Garth go into a back room, didn't I? Then who was standing behind me?
I could feel my knees start to buckle. Taking a shaky breath, I squeaked, “Something I can do for you?” I was sure someone was behind me, and to prove my point, something, I think it was a gun, was pressed firmly into the small of my back.
“Don't turn around,” said a rusty whisper. “You and your boyfriend took what's not yours, so where is it, girly?”
With my heart hammering in my chest I quaked, “What do you mean? Who are you anyway?” I was babbling, hoping to stall him until Garth came back. What's taking Garth so long? Doesn't he realize someone's out here holding me at gunpoint?
The whisperer hissed, “Don't play cute with me, sister. You know what I'm talking about.”
“I most certainly do not!” I was incensed at the idea of being accused of theft. Murder maybe, but not theft. I pointed a shaking finger in the direction Garth went and croaked, “That's Patience's nephew back there, and if I scream he's going to come out, and if he does, he's going to come out swinging.”
“Don't even think about it,” he snarled, pushing the tip of the gun harder into my spine.
Until now, no one had ever pointed a gun at me, much less backed it with such intense emotion. I couldn't have screamed if I wanted to. The glue that held me so well to this spot had spread its way up to my arms and I found myself unable to move, much less call for help.
He poked me again. “What's he doing in there?”
Anger knocked against my better judgment. “Making me a tuna sandwich!” I snapped. “Why don't I call him and we can find out.” There was a crash from the other room, and I felt the wisk of air as the door opened behind me. I started to turn around, but he poked me again in the back. “Don't turn around. I know who you are, girly, and where you live, so don't think this is the last you'll hear f
rom me.”
Then, the door softly closed, and my gun-toting whisperer disappeared as quietly as he had entered.
Suddenly, a wall light and three lamps in the living room came on. I stood where my captor left me, standing in front of the door, small sounds coming out of my mouth.
“Hey, hey, Darlin’ what's wrong? You look like you been chased by a herd of crazed armadillos.”
“Arma-di—dillos?” I stuttered, my nerves disconnecting. “Just a minute, I have to sit down.”
He managed to reach me as I collapsed onto a couch. “Who was it? What did they want?”
“I don't know,” I said, weakly. “He kept saying we took what doesn't belong to us.”
“Like what? Money? That's a hoot. I mean, look at this house. Anything here say money, jewelry, or imported wine cellar to you? Whoever he was, he sure did a number on this place.”
I thought of Caleb's calm reasoning and said, “Don't touch anything. I'm going to call the sheriff.” But, before I could get back to the car, Caleb rolled up in his sheriff's car.
“Don't you look at me like that, Caleb Stone,” I said, thrusting out my chin. “We found it this way. And I presume by the look on your face, you didn't leave it like this either.”
He made a noise in the back of his throat, taking in the damage, giving Garth and me a sour look. “The place had double bolts on front and back doors, I checked. Both doors were locked.”
That started me up. “Speaking of which, why isn't there a patrol car out here to watch the place?” I ignored the two gawking deputies and went on the offensive. “Your guys let some scumbag waltz in here and vandalize the house of a dead woman. It's a damn good thing the poor woman can't see this mess.”
A Dead Red Cadillac Page 4
