Foster Justice

by Colleen Shannon

  Twiddling with the ticket, Mary looked as if she wanted to believe him.

  Thomas continued smoothly, “Just get the drilling started, and I promise to explain everything to Trey myself after he’s settled. By the time you come home, he won’t be angry with you. Why on earth should you apologize for helping to make him a millionaire, anyway?”

  “Trey deserves to hear the truth from me.”

  “It’s your decision, but he was on the verge of alcoholism when I got him to agree to sell and come back out to LA. If you tell him now, you’ll ruin his concentration and he really is a talented artist with a bright future. Keep to the agreement and everything will be fine. He just needs time to adjust to city life.”

  Reluctantly, Mary rose. “And when Chad Foster finds out?”

  The smile playing about Thomas’s lips turned cold. “Once he’s answered the bugle call to rescue his innocent little brother, we’ll have a clear field at the ranch. Get to work.”

  CHAPTER 3

  Three weeks later, beneath the huge Texas Ranger seal in his office, Chad was on the phone, glaring down at a crossed-off list. Stubble shadowed his cheeks and chin. His eyes were bleary and red. “No shit, LA’s a big place! But my brother hasn’t answered my calls in way over a week and he never does that. I’m telling you, he’s a victim of foul play . . . if you send detectives to the art galleries in Beverly Hills—”

  A click interrupted him. Chad crossed off the last notation, LA police, and shoved the list aside. The flashing computer screen on his desk showed a search engine titled “Corporate Locators.” The middle of the screen flashed, “Del Mar Corporation. Nothing found.” Chad snapped off his screen in disgust, looking up at his Texas Ranger colleague, Corey Cooper.

  Where Chad was living blood and bone representing Texas’s ranching heritage, Corey could have posed for a poster advertising the state’s new diversity. His name was Irish like his father’s, but his lush dark hair and honey-toned skin bore more of the 50 percent heritage of his Mexican mother. While no doubt their immediate ancestors had tried to kill one another, Corey and Chad had turned an armistice into a friendship based on shared beliefs. The Job was better furthered by cooperation rather than the old blood feud between Rangers and Mexicans, going back to 1836 when Texas was a republic and the Rangers were first formed.

  “I thought you had a business card to follow up on to find this redhead,” Corey said in a soft drawl that bore no trace of a Spanish accent. His mother had forbidden him to speak Spanish at home, but he was still fluent when he wanted to be.

  Chad often had to strain to hear Corey, but the way he spoke lent as much weight to what he said as the words themselves. People tended to listen to him. Carefully. “I did. Gentleman’s Pleasure won’t tell me squat. I hope the whole fucking state falls into the ocean.” Chad shoved his hat back and rubbed his forehead.

  “Trey’s there,” Corey reminded him.

  “He’ll float along with all the other turds.” For the first time, Chad realized Corey had an arm behind his back. “You got a trick up your sleeve or an itch to scratch your ass?”

  Apparently used to Chad’s shortness, Corey merely unveiled the paper he held with a proper flourish. “Since you had the police artist sketch that tattoo you saw, I’ve done some of my own research. Forget the old motto ‘One riot, one ranger.’ You’re looking in the wrong place to find Trey. Your new motto should be, ‘One tattoo, one floozy.’ How many tattoo artists do such a distinctive design, even in Hollyweird? Find the artist, you find this Jasmine.”

  Chad grabbed the drawing as if it were a lifeline. The words were torn from him. “Thanks, Corey. I . . . never shoulda let him leave.”

  Corey looked at the many medals and award plaques bearing Chad’s name on the wall above his desk. “You always take too much responsibility for everything. Trey’s an adult. It’s not your fault he went off half-cocked and then disappeared as soon as he reached LA.” An impish smile curled Corey’s sensitive mouth and for a moment he was his Irish father’s spitting image. “Women like that keep your peter in the jar beside their beds for special occasions.”

  “He’s just a kid. And the only family I have left. I’m gonna haveta go out there to find him.”

  Corey was shaking his head before Chad even finished. “Nope. Sinclair won’t let you transfer to that FBI task force working in Californio. He wants you after those rustlers in Menard. Since you’ve had more rustler arrests than anyone on the force, it makes us all look good—”

  Chad rose. “We’ll see about that.”

  Corey stared after him, black eyes flaring with alarm as Chad marched to the door stamped “Captain Ross Sinclair, Company C, Texas Rangers.”

  “Patience, Chad,” Corey warned.

  Chad repeated the word as if in a Cantonese dialect. “Pa—tience.”

  Inside his office, Ross Sinclair looked up from paperwork, frowning as Chad entered after a perfunctory knock. “Why are you still here, Foster? They’re expecting you in Menard.”

  Chad had planned to be cool, calm, and collected while he made his case. Instead he burst out, “Dammit, I have to get on that task force investigating this Del Mar Corporation. I got a copy of the closing statement the title company is preparing on the deal Trey signed and tracked them as a suspect in all the mineral-rights land fraud going on in the Panhandle. This I know: They bought Trey’s share of my ranch. I’m convinced there’s something shady going on that he’s probably landed smack dab in the middle of, as usual. He’s never gone so long without answering my calls, even when he was pissed.” Chad sprawled in the chair before the desk.

  “Giving you an obvious conflict of interest. The answer, for the second time, is no. There had better not be a third.” Sinclair pulled another form in front of him. “If Trey’s set on staying in California, my best piece of advice is simple: Learn to like fruitcakes.” Sinclair waved him away. “Now obey your orders or you’ll answer to me.”

  Instead of leaving, Chad leaped to his feet and leaned his palms on the desk, glaring down at his boss.

  Sinclair glared right back. He had iron-gray hair, sky-blue eyes meant for laughter, now gleaming with the sharp glint of steel, and a regal bearing as much a legacy of his twenty-five-plus years as a Ranger as due to his daddy’s East Coast blue blood. His father had come West with a rich inheritance and bought the Sinclair ranch, now one of the Panhandle’s largest, which Sinclair had added to greatly during his tenure at the Rangers. Chad knew even the snootiest of the Hampton Sinclairs moseyed to Texas for the reunions that were chuck wagon gatherings of the rich and famous. Sinclair didn’t stay in the Rangers because he had to; he stayed because he wanted to, and Chad admired him for it.

  Still, despite their almost friendship, Chad knew Sinclair was ever conscious of his role as Chad’s mentor and commanding officer, which was proved with Sinclair’s sharp, “Besides, we have a little jurisdiction problem past state lines. Or did you forget that, along with respect for your superior officers?”

  “If you transfer me to the task force I’ll have jurisdiction.”

  “Our rights to dispense frontier justice died at our shoot-out with Bonnie and Clyde, Foster. It’s high time you learned it.”

  Chad spoke without emotion. “From where I stand, it looks like it died with you. And your promotion.”

  The two Rangers locked gazes in the kind of pissing match Texas lawmen invented.

  Sinclair took a deep breath. “I’ll overlook that, given your stellar career with no insubordination, but you’re trying my patience, which grows shorter as my stack of paperwork rises.” They both glanced at the towering pile. “You’d stick out in Beverly Hills like a sore-tailed cat at a rocking chair convention, anyway, and probably not get a damned thing done before you got yourself arrested.”

  Sinclair shoved a file forward. “This is what we have so far on the Menard rustlers. Get to work.”

  Chad’s fingers curled automatically into fists. But he couldn’t quite punch his cap
tain, even as a parting gift, no matter how worried he was about Trey. Instead, he removed his badge and gun and set them gently on the desk.

  Astounded, Sinclair looked from them to Chad and back, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “You bullheaded SOB. You worked ten years of car wrecks and speed traps to get here—”

  Chad added his handcuffs to the desktop.

  “—and you’re giving it up over this?”

  Chad walked out, proud even without his badge.

  Later that day, while he loaded Chester into the horse trailer hooked to his Dodge double-axle diesel dually, Chad watched a geologist take seismic readings from the bluff overlooking his ranch. With her small waist and pleasing hips, she looked feminine even in a hard hat and worn jeans and work boots. Normally Chad would have approached her to warn her away from their boundary line, but she was across the fence on the adjacent property and he was too antsy to get started on his trip to California.

  So he drove off, putting her out of his mind the minute he turned onto the highway. As Chad rumbled down the road, Chester’s red tail switched from side to side outside the rear of the trailer, as if waving good-bye. Inside, Chad secreted an old but still functional Colt .45 Peacemaker with ivory-handled grips and a fancy F engraved in gold, into a compartment beneath his seat.

  Just in case . . .

  On the land adjacent to the Foster ranch, the woman stared after him and his rig long after he disappeared. A wayward beam of sunlight showed the gleam of red hair beneath the hard hat.

  Mary reached for her cell phone and pressed a speed dial button. The phone rang and rang. “Dammit, Trey, pick up. Why haven’t you been answering your phone?” For the tenth time, when the phone beeped, she tried leaving a message. “Trey, your brother is on his way to find you. You need to call me right away. Please, give me a chance to explain. I have a new cell phone number.” She left the number and hung up, and then went doggedly back to work.

  Two days later, Chad arrived in Beverly Hills. With his dually and Chester’s trailer attached to the back, he was Sinclair’s proverbial sore thumb. The periodic thumps coming from the trailer grew louder. Chester was getting restive and he couldn’t blame the stallion. Chad saw a large park on his right and pulled into the half circle street in front. His rig barely fit, blocking the entrance, but he couldn’t help that. If he didn’t see to Chester, the ornery nag would hurt himself.

  Chad unlatched the trailer, haltered Chester and led him out. As soon as they reached the grass, Chester did what horses do. Chad looked around for somewhere to tie him up safely while he fetched a shovel, but he didn’t like the looks of the two men eyeing him from a bench. One wore a vest over a beer gut and kilt. Greasy dreadlocks brushed past his shoulders. The other was a bit more respectable but still looked like scum to Chad. Pulling Chester with him, Chad went back to the truck and with one hand got a shovel and blue antiseptic to daub on Chester’s hock.

  Beer Gut muttered something. Chad straightened from examining Chester’s hock and tilted his hat back to eye the guy. “You say something?”

  Beer Gut hesitated, and then rose aggressively. “No horse gonna crap in my spot.”

  “We’ll be gone in just a minute.” Chad dumped the full shovel into a trash bin and turned back to Chester, daubing bright blue antiseptic on the slightly swollen hock knowing it would bring the swelling down by tomorrow as long as he didn’t ride him. At the other guy’s hooting, Chad turned back around to see round buttocks mooning him. Encouraged, Beer Gut made a show of his assets, or lack thereof.

  Sweaty, tired, and worried about Trey, Chad was in no mood to have all his prejudices about LA proved right the minute he set foot in the place. His temper snapped. Tying Chester’s lead over the heavy, anchored trash can, Chad turned and in one fluid motion pushed the guy’s jiggling butt with his boot. He went sprawling.

  “Why are you complaining? He smells better than you. Get a bath. Better yet, get a job.”

  Beer Gut scrambled to his feet, his face red. He made fists and started forward, but the sound of a motorcycle drew their attention. Lights flashing, the white motorcycle, a monster of chrome and throaty tailpipes, stopped. An equally impressive cop got off, complete with a starched uniform bearing the famous City of Beverly Hills emblem on his sleeve.

  He eyed the tense trio, seemed to recognize the two homeless men. “Ernie, I’ve told you before, lewd behavior will not be tolerated. Do you always moon the”—the cop paused as he eyed Chad as if he couldn’t quite categorize him—“tourists?”

  Chad smiled grimly. Good, the local law had seen the whole thing. At that moment, a restive Chester snorted, his head rearing back. The trash can shuddered with a metallic squeal, broke loose from its base and flew straight toward them, spilling its contents as it came.

  Chad was able to sidestep in time, but Ernie and the cop, who had their backs to the can, were too slow. An assortment of trash and horse manure was strewn over Ernie’s sandaled feet and the cop’s shiny boots.

  “Stop that, you infernal critter!” Chad grabbed Chester’s lead before he could begin to loosen the small concrete stand where the trash can had been secured. Pulling Chester with him, Chad led him back to the trailer, snapped off the lead, and whacked his rump. Chester seemed happy to go back into the trailer, one eyeball rolling back at Chad as if to say, You’ve gone and done it now.

  His teeth grinding, Chad turned back to the cop, who was still trying to wipe the mess off his boots.

  “I’m sorry, Officer . . .” Chad read the guy’s badge. “O’Connor. I’m a Tex—former Texas Ranger on a missing person’s case. I had to find an open space to doctor my horse. We just got here . . .” Chad broke off as he watched the cop scribble on his ticket pad. “I’m sure I’m violating some local ordinance, but he’s been missing a week and . . .” Chad trailed off again as the cop tore off one ticket and began writing another one. Chad’s conciliatory tone grew sarcastic. “Would you believe I’m on my way to a Spielberg shoot?”

  “Spielberg isn’t working on a Western,” came the calm reply. “Good try though.”

  The snickering from the two homeless men only made Chad angrier. The cop handed him two tickets. Glumly, Chad signed where indicated.

  “Illegal parking, no horses in the city limits. I’ll forego littering and disturbing the peace as I know these two probably started it.” The cop tried one last time to clean the goop off his boots, and then stalked away. “I’ll be back this way in a few minutes and if I find that rig parked here, I’ll have it towed.” He straddled his shiny bike, smiling for the first time. “Welcome to California.” He drove off.

  The guffaws of the two homeless guys were Chad’s musical accompaniment as he collected his shovel and crate of horse supplies, put them back in his truck bed, and rumbled away.

  Chad keyed in an address in the GPS on his dash, got back on the 10 East and wished to hell he could head on all the way till sunset. Still, he felt a grim satisfaction as he crumpled the two crisp tickets. Let them try to enforce them. There was no reciprocity agreement between Texas and California, and since cop courtesy hadn’t worked, he’d do what most people did when cited for something that couldn’t be enforced: ignore it.

  It was late when Chad reached the Los Angeles Equestrian Center in Burbank. He had to admit he was pleasantly surprised by some of the pristine, obviously lovingly restored old homes lining the streets. From exuberant pink bougainvillea flutes to loud tulip trees loaded with throaty trumpets, the entire landscape was a riotous harmony that would never occur in Texas. Still, by the time he had paid for a month’s rental of a stall and a place to stake his tent, he was too tired to head for the tattoo parlors as he’d originally planned as his first part of the investigation. Tomorrow, after he’d rested, he’d try the art galleries. Maybe he’d missed one in his phone survey.

  The next afternoon, with Chester’s trailer safely at the center, but still feeling out of place in his big truck, Chad slammed on his brakes as he coasted Beverly
Hills’ commercial streets looking at art gallery windows. He’d always thought the name of one of the fanciest shopping districts in the world was a true oxymoron: Rodeo Drive. Yeah, if you like to ramrod two-thousand-dollar shoes and ten-thousand-dollar suits . . .

  Chad ignored the honking behind him as he eyed a painting in a large gallery window. It showed Palo Duro Canyon at dusk, mostly shades of gray and black, with a bit of deep blue for contrast. And off center, his back to the world behind him, a man leaned against a sorrel quarter horse that was the spitting image of Chester. His pose was so stark and alone against the larger landscape that Chad felt a visceral recognition.

  “Sooner or later, you end up with gray,” had been Trey’s last comment to him.

  This had to be the place. That was his brother’s handiwork and his way of moralizing to his big brother. Chad eyed the sign: Kinnard’s American Masters. He didn’t recall this one on the list he’d investigated from Texas, so it must be a new gallery. Chad looked around for a parking spot.

  Inside Kinnard’s gallery, Jasmine lightly touched Roger Larsen’s arm. He was Kinnard’s attorney and something of her mentor, though he wanted to be much more to her. So far she’d been able to hold him off, but it was becoming difficult.

  “This is another one of Trey’s paintings.” She nodded at a stark but powerful landscape showing blooming prickly pear cactus, longhorn cattle, and a pumpjack. Typical Texas art, but stylized so that its bold strokes became homage to the old and a love song to the new.

  While they admired the painting, the door discreetly buzzed. Jasmine looked in that direction, her hand half on, half off Larsen’s arm as a tall cowboy entered the gallery, complete with worn Stetson, boots, and a swagger. His hat shaded his face, but she didn’t need to see it to know he was no wannabe.

  Texas, all right. Jasmine knew the type. Tip to toe all man, and cradle to grave for the women dumb enough to love him.