Dead Blow

by Lisa Preston

  I felt like someone had changed the TV channel while I was out of the room and now I was watching a whole ’nother movie and nothing made sense. Besides, if Cameron Chevigny had stepped out on his wife, it was just another reason for Donna to hurt. She’d surely been hurting with his passing.

  Earl Delmont hawked from deep in his throat, spat a wad on the ground and muttered an oath, his back to us.

  So, The Kid’s lame shoulder wasn’t the only thing bugging Earl. Nichol bringing up the Chevigny name rankled our client. This left me working to know what to make of old small-town drama.

  “Thought himself a real lady-killer, Chevigny did,” Becky Delmont said, looking from the vet to me and back again.

  We’re the new kids in town, Nichol and me. To these people who grew up and then raised their own families in Cowdry, we’ll always be foreign, needing this town’s past explained, since we hadn’t lived it.

  Then Becky moved on with, “Did you see the paper? Terrible thing, that poor girl they finally found in the backcountry. I remember when she was overdue from a walk and people were out looking for her. Must have gotten lost and died of exposure.”

  Nichol nodded. “I read the article. It happened before I moved here, but she was a client of Doc Vass. Stan Yates still brings her cat in to me.”

  “Uh . . .” Honestly, the time I spend waiting for my brain to fire up could be better used for all kinds of work.

  Becky gave a good sure nod. “Yes, the boyfriend put flyers up all around town when she disappeared. It’s good she’s found and can be buried proper.”

  The boyfriend. Stan Yates. Donna’s neighbor. Donna’s neighbor had a handshake deal with Cameron Chevigny regarding some of the Buckeye land.

  Next time I passed the one mailbox on the road to the Buckeye, I’d pay attention.

  There was other stuff I hadn’t thought about the first time I worked at the Buckeye. Now I remembered the deputy’s mention of Yates not allowing the Chevignys access. My mind circled Cameron making a deal with Yates, Donna having to get her stock off part of the Buckeye north of the ravine. It was like my brain was a herding dog, circling a couple of rank sheep or cattle or thoughts.

  When Becky Delmont went to put a hand on her husband’s shoulder, I turned to Nichol and asked under my breath, “Does Stan Yates seem like the kind of guy who’d make a handshake deal on something as big as a land purchase?”

  “Wow, Rainy. Where’d that come from?”

  “A ‘no’ is what that sounds like.”

  Nichol exhaled long through his nose. It’s a nice nose, not crooked like Guy’s. Nichol is built like he’d be cast as the quarterback hero in some sappy movie, not like a mixed-practice one-man vet office.

  “I suppose not,” Nichol told me, his voice very low. “He seems like a decent guy. Brought the cat in when it was due for shots. Not every guy would take care of his disappeared girlfriend’s cat like he does. What’s this handshake business you’re talking about?”

  “Look, I don’t know Yates. Never even met him. I just heard that he and Cameron Chevigny had a land deal, I think on the northwest part of the Buckeye.”

  Nichol cocked his head. “I don’t know Stan well myself. But I’d say he seems kind of conflicted. Wants to be a wind farmer, but really more of a city person, you know?”

  Earl Delmont whistled long and hard and turned toward us, come to words.

  “We’ll have to put The Kid down. I’ll have to call around, see about the game farm or the zoo in Portland. See who wants him for meat.”

  Nichol rolled his shoulders around, leaned this way and that, and looked like he’d hoped for more of a conversation before we got to this part about throwing The Kid’s carcass out for wolves. My face went string tight and Nichol’s fixed a hard blank look, too.

  The zoo wasn’t going to want a horse with a load of phenobarb in his muscles, so The Kid was going to get shot in the head after an uncomfortable trailer ride to the big city. He deserved a better death. And he’d deserved a better life. All the sudden, I wasn’t tough enough for my job, the things I had to hear. Not tough enough at all.

  Chapter 5

  DRIVING HOME, A BIG DUMB NOTION came to me. This happens on a regular basis.

  How to finesse Guy to the idea was a whole ’nother matter.

  But no. No, I couldn’t. It made no sense to ask for something I wasn’t too sure I wanted myself. Whatever way of warming Guy to this notion there was—if there was a way—ditched me and I was left in snacking mode as a means of helping my thinking.

  Him not being home left the kitchen free for my grazing and there’s always plenty for the mouth in Guy’s kitchen. He’s on a bit of an appetizer kick right now, but it itches me—absolutely makes me twist my ponytail into a stick—when he calls the little saucers of food “starters.”

  With a good double squirt of mustard on the spoonful of mayo I got in a bowl, I stirred up the stuff my dad and I called “holidays sauce” when I was a kid. Usually, I like it on tater tots and chicken chunks but it’s also tasty on veggies and I saw Guy had a bunch prepped up in little glass containers in the fridge. I took two of everything so as not to deplete his piles of asparagus, zucchini, peppers, green onions, carrots, and celery.

  The sigh that slips out my mouth gasket when I sink into the couch with some snacks after work is an honest one. That relief of my feet going up on the coffee table is a real fine feeling, too.

  Guy zipped home in minutes to score part of the last green onion from me and then got mighty interested in my bowl of dipping goo.

  I said, “I forgot you were starting the dinner crowd tonight. We work too much.”

  He frowned, then made faces while sniffing my sauce, finally working up the bravery to stick a pinkie in and give ’er a try. I’d been half thinking I’d catch some static for breaking into all those veggies he’d prettied up, so I waited him out on more talking. And here it came.

  He squalled, “What have you done?”

  This was one he should have been able to figure out his own self but I suggested right back, “Had a little old snack?”

  “I mean, what’s that slime you’re eating?”

  Oh. Well, seeing as how he seemed chiefly weirded out about the sauce, not the vegetable thievery, I explained all about holidays sauce.

  “Do you mean hollandaise sauce?” And he looked pale. I gave the shrug he deserved.

  “We always called it holidays sauce.”

  “No way.” Guy shook his head.

  I tried to help him out. “Big way. Maybe because we usually had it on holidays.”

  “Look, I think your family was doing a hideously goofy version of a classic sauce. Technically, this has a similar color to hollandaise—and I’ll make you some, the real stuff, you’ll like it—but I’m sure it was called hollandaise, not holidays.”

  Guy has some kind of hard life coming on, hitching himself to my wagon. Now he expounded on how he wanted a road trip across the county for vegetables and mushrooms. They have a much bigger grocery store over in Gris Loup and a farmer’s market with Friday evening hours. It used to be that if Guy said he wanted to shop, I’d say no thanks. What I’m trying these days is to say yes before I find a reason to say no.

  To Gris Loup we would go.

  In my growing up years, we’d been on a frayed-string budget, even before the folks split. Now, a shoestring seemed like too much an advertisement about my past life for me to want to mend my chaps with one. And finding a leather goods shop wasn’t something that happened in little Cowdry. The co-op feed store sells leather bundles, but I wanted a heavy, flexible piece. My broken chap strap needed mule or buffalo hide.

  “I can check at the sheriff’s office on that thing and have a gander at the tack store. I think in Gris Loup they have evening hours.” I do like to ogle saddles. The fact that I don’t own one is a heartbreaker, am I wrong?

  On the twenty-mile drive, Guy called his buddy Biff and left a message asking if he’d deleted a TrailTime map
. Then I told Guy all about The Kid’s shoulder and about Earl Delmont having a case against Cameron Chevigny, and we frowned over this bad blood.

  * * *

  There’s a fancy tack shop in Gris Loup that I’d only been to once, when I first moved here. It’s a bit of a drive and since I’m not a window-shopping type gal and can’t spend money just to spend it, the tack shop hadn’t been honored with my presence in some time.

  When we pulled into the open market parking lot in Gris Loup, I gave Guy the same stay sign—a spread palm—I give Charley when I don’t want him pushing the livestock up to me any faster. It means take time, sort of a lazy stay. Might as well put some use-ability onto Guy, what and all with us planning on keeping each other.

  He grinned. “I’ll sort of stay. I’ll be here cruising the market. And you? You’ll come bye and then away to me?”

  Guy thinks he’s so adorable since he learned a few sheepdog commands. Let’s see him use them proper one time.

  My take time hand got busy, thumb to pinky, for checking off my errands, but I counted the scary chore twice. “Tack shop, and maybe the craft store if I can’t get a replacement strap at the tack shop, Sheriff Magoutsen. Grub later?”

  “Yes, fiancée. Don’t call him Magoo,” Guy said as we parted ways, like he was being all helpful, just reminding me of something stupid I might do, when we both knew he was sticking a bad habit in my head, setting my mouth up for a mess. Our short bald sheriff does peer over his glasses, but he’s a good guy. Not his fault I have a natural disinclination to go to the sheriff’s office.

  * * *

  That humongous Paso Pastures pickup truck was parked outside the Saddle-Up tack shop, a nice glass-fronted store where bells rang as I walked in.

  The scent of well-soaped, clean leather filtered through the Saddle-Up store’s air. With a selection from budget to fancy, they stocked Westerns as well as those saddles that were missing the rope-dallying device. These can’t-rope-a-steer-from type saddles had stirrups made of metal and skinny little belts that they call leathers to hang those shiny nickel stirrups from. That is to say, they were saddles of the English persuasion.

  This end of Butte county hosts a lot more English-style riders.

  A gal was repairing a well-used Western pleasure saddle’s leather in one corner. A guy, Fred Flintstone—stood over her.

  That would make the saddler Tall Doll.

  She inserted new lacing in the saddle’s skirt, binding the left and right halves together behind the cantle to go smoothly over the horse’s spine. Her man hovered in a way that’d get him pasted in the kidneys if I was the one whose style he was cramping. I now remembered that I’d heard somewhere that the Saddle-Up people had Pasos and I could almost remember their last name.

  Truth to tell, he didn’t look like a horseman, more the Stand Over Someone Who’s Working type.

  She ignored him, just worked away, pounding now and again at the new leather lacing with a dead blow hammer. Saddlery is a skill I’d like to have. My eyeballs lingered on her swing—farrier-steady style, that would be able to drive a nail just so, like me—and then her tools. I’ve no need for a lead-shot filled mallet in my line. The most leather working I’ve ever done is a bit of braiding, but this gal had all the tooling stamps and leather-carving knives on a rack beside her. Basket-weave belts streamed across the counter next to a saddle tree with a Western pleasure rig in-progress, about to get fancy tooled floral designs all along the fenders.

  A crackling, odd, electronic voice sounded, followed by squelch.

  The counter behind the cash register had a mess of radios—one hissing static and police codes—and an ancient CB scanner, too. One Motorola radio on its side had a cracked case and a broken antenna. The dude moved to the counter and picked up the broken radio and started banging it with a screwdriver handle, pausing to listen when one of his scanners blathered more clipped words and numbers. Those guys that are police groupies, they chafe me, they really do. Figures this know-nothing is one of those.

  I studied on the loose leather for sale, picked out a buffalo hide strap, and went to the cash register. The Western, Cowdry’s weekly paper—Gris Loup’s newspaper comes out six days a week—was spread out beside the register, featuring a front page article with a head shot of a smiling woman not much older than me.

  “Got a customer, Doll,” Mr. All Kinds of Useful said, without moving his muscles.

  She was already getting up to help me anyways. We gave each other a look that I’m pretty sure commiserated on her bad tastes in the Other Gender.

  I’ve never developed a taste for bossy men.

  I gave her a friendly grin, got one back, then felt a frown coming at me from his direction.

  Yep. Flintstone scowled, so that’s the expression I handed back.

  Everything about him looked store-bought, too-clean black jeans, fancy shirt with piping and two bright colors, yellow and red. And this time he was wearing a cowboy hat decorated with a big jeweled cross. Oh, pretty please. There’s horse-hair hat band cowboys and there’s leather strappers with a concho or two. Both are fine, but I don’t even want to talk about these goobers with jeweled hat bands. I mean, what in the world is that all about? And still, his boots weren’t dirty. Clearly, he was a neat freak, a town boy playing at country. City-bred types like him leave me shaking my head. What did a talented saddler like her see in him?

  Outside a police vehicle pulled up. One of Sheriff Magoutsen’s uniformed deputies heaved himself out and paused by Ol’ Blue, reading the sign on my truck door: Dale’s Horseshoeing, and then the house phone number.

  The oaf sauntered out the Saddle-Up’s front door, making harness bells on the door jingle. I could hear him and the deputy chatting, though couldn’t make out the words. The crew cut deputy was unfamiliar to me. There’s more deputies over on this side of the county, but I guess we’ll be getting a new one over in Cowdry soon, if they promote one of ours up to fill the spot being vacated by their retiring investigator.

  Suit Fellow, the detective on the case of my poor client who died last spring, told me a couple weeks back that I might have to testify in court about that whole mess, but he didn’t yet know for sure. And I’ve heard that trials can go on for weeks. The subpoena—which I did work up the gumption to read—didn’t make itself clear about exactly when I’d have to say what. I wanted to firm things up. Guy’s after me to settle on a wedding date for ourselves, so I needed to know when and if we’d be in court. And I hoped the “if” would turn out to be a “no, don’t have to.” Testifying is not my cup of coffee. Even with never having done it, I knew it would not play to my strengths. Not enough shoeing questions, too many people questions. If the deputy here at the tack store could tell me I was free and clear or at least give me a firm testifying-in-court date, I’d be knocking off two errands at once here.

  That’s when I saw it, hanging behind the register. A size 44 sheriff’s department uniform jacket, with a name badge that said Reserve Pritchard on it. Yeah, this couple who had the Saddle-Up store, their name was Pritchard, I recalled now, Loretta and Vince Pritchard.

  Much as Loretta Pritchard’s warning at the Cascade had raised my eyebrows, there’d been talk. I thought about stuff I didn’t want to. Earl Delmont’s sister having been a lady friend of Cameron Chevigny. Noise to ignore before, but now when it was just us two gals, I went on ahead and put it plain to Loretta.

  “The other day, you were in the Cascade Kitchen and you told me to watch out on the Buckeye ranch.”

  Loretta pressed a finger to her lips. “Sorry. Maybe I talked out of turn. Sometimes I blurt things without thinking.”

  I felt sympathy for her, because I have on occasion been about the worst at blabbing. I nodded. “But what did you mean?”

  “Well, you know, he stepped out on her.” Loretta shrugged, like she was just telling the ways of the world.

  “You’re not saying you think Donna killed him, are you? Over stepping out?” I was ready to take my p
aid-for chap strap and go deal with my Intended. The world looked different these days, like it had altered or I had. Couldn’t set my finger on it, but something seemed to have changed since the morning the widow called me out of the blue, wanting a horseshoer.

  She wasn’t there to defend herself and it didn’t feel right to listen to negative talk on my new old client.

  “Eh, what do I know?” Loretta said. “Hey, you ride, right? Do you want to go ride sometime?”

  I paused. “I’d like that. But I don’t have a trailer.”

  There’s so much stuff I need to save up for. Loretta had some great used saddles for sale in the Saddle-Up store. She had less expensive, but super handy stuff, too. Specialty gear for camping with the horse. Good saddle bags. Really cool folding saws and nifty hatchet-shovel-combo tools that could be handy on a trail ride. I pointed. “Nice saws.”

  “Yeah, those could cost over a hundred bucks.”

  I nodded. Horse gear is expensive, sometimes unnecessarily so. A good saw in a deluxe riding catalogue is three-digit pricey, but she wasn’t marking up the price too much.

  She nodded with me. “Those expensive saws you see at a lot of outfitter stores are really the same as gardening saws. So, I started stocking them here.”

  “I’ll be getting a trail saw from you someday,” I promised. “And I’d love to ride with you.”

  The front door chimed as her man followed the uniformed deputy inside.

  I asked the deputy, “Would you know if the Sheriff’s around the office still?”

  He shook his head. “I can reach him on the radio but he’s over on the west end today.”

  Vince Pritchard nodded like he was all in the know and the deputy turned and said to him, “Taking time with Bill, before the retirement. I think Bill’s picked his last day. They’ll promote from day shift or swings and hire a new deputy. You could be full-time regular before the year’s out.”

  This chat got a satisfied nod from Vince Pritchard.

  If Vince was the likely candidate to quit being a reservist and become a full-fledged deputy, I couldn’t help but wonder if he would get assigned to the Cowdry office, which might mean the couple would relocate and move their horses closer to my neck of the woods. I wondered who their shoer was over here in Gris Loup and whether they’d want a new shoer for their Pasos if they moved to Cowdry.