Dead Blow

by Lisa Preston

  Chapter 10

  “FANCY MEETING YOU HERE,” I TOLD Melinda Kellan from my front step.

  Having made a late morning of being in my socks, I wasn’t exactly dressed for the front yard. The hazy sun felt awfully fine toasting my cotton-covered toes while I slow-sipped my second cup of black bitter coffee. I’d aimed to enjoy my drink. A little harder to do now that the little off-duty police clerk stood in my driveway.

  “You a reserve deputy?” I asked.

  Her chin came up a bit. “I will be. I’m in the reserve academy now.”

  Oh, goody. Those wannabes, they’re something else. But I let my silence speak, wondering what she was doing at my home when she should probably get to work and answer phones or file something.

  “I looked up your address in the computer—”

  “Sounds like an abuse of your clerkly powers.”

  “Get over yourself.” She checked her watch. “Donna Chevigny called the sheriff’s office,” she said, “to see if we could tell her exactly when you moved here.”

  Thump, thump. My heart did a jig for a minute as I tried to decide if I was being set up for a killing. Maybe Donna didn’t believe me and Guy. Maybe she was going to loose the bull on me if I came back out to the Buckeye.

  Real slow, I said, “Um, when?”

  “Last night, late afternoon actually.”

  And then she’d called my house, but talked to Guy, confirming whatever the police might have told her.

  “Who did she talk to at the sheriff’s office?”

  “Me.” Melinda Kellan nodded a bit. “I’d like to see that horseshoe again.”

  Fetching isn’t something I’d wish on a dog, except maybe a Labrador and them only because they’d sooner hit their block heads on concrete as not carry back whatever got heaved. But there I went, fetching up the shoe for this little police clerkette, in hopes that she’d say something quiet and knowing about Cameron Chevigny dying.

  Fifteen seconds’ study is what Melinda gave it.

  “Pretty rusty nails.”

  Maybe she needed horseshoe basics explained. I obliged. “They’re generally made of iron.”

  “No shit.”

  Well, someone missed the part in Young Lady Growing Up when we decide not to swear like a sailor.

  Truth be told, I’d missed it myself until I turned over a New Leaf a couple three years back.

  Moving across the yard to the side pasture to give Red a hey, I heard Melinda following me and left it friendly enough. Charley, grinning and touching both of us in the knees with his nose, was way-too friendly with her to suit me. Usually I trust his judgment, but he is an old dog. Everything’s a possible herd to him. He helped me howdy Red and I automatically looked my horse over for any owies. Looking is just a good habit.

  “Hey, you know that closed-down pizza place in town?” Melinda said this like we were old buddies or something.

  “Huh?”

  “My mom said the place is going to re-open. She’s a realtor so she knows all the business stuff in town. Anyway, the grand opening’s gonna have the lunch buffet half-off. Sweet deal.”

  Maybe she thought we could both use a lunch buddy but she didn’t know all I knew. If the old pizza joint had changed hands, then Guy had missed his chance to get the location as a new restaurant, that’s what I knew.

  I knew someone I love was hurt and he hadn’t told me. For crying out loud, people-wise, there’s only one love for me in this town, this county, this state. I tried to scratch a note on a few of my little-used brain cells—it’s like working with a child’s magnetic letter board—to talk to Guy about losing his site. He’d hoped to set up his own place in that old pizza joint but the plan had been getting shaky for a few reasons. Yet he hadn’t said a word to me about the deal being dead.

  But then, I hadn’t asked him. I looked at my horse and dog, who always understood me. These are the species to know. With cats and people, there’s too little or too much to remember.

  Melinda gave Red’s legs and feet a good staring with me, then frowned. “Why don’t shoes rust on a horse?”

  “They do,” I said. “I mean, steel shoes, they rust constantly.”

  She shook her head, still watching Red’s feet. “When he moves, I see the bottom of his shoes. They’re not rusty at all. They’re shiny.”

  “That’s because a horse’s movement against the ground constantly buffs the rust off.”

  “Really?”

  “You betcha.”

  She toed the mud, squinted this way and that, then got around to the start of a whole ’nother conversation I didn’t think we ought to have. “Why do you think Donna Chevigny wanted the sheriff’s department to say how long you’d been in Cowdry?”

  “Look, keep me clear of this in your mind,” I snapped. “I never knew Cameron Chevigny. I’ve heard rumors and I’d guess you have, too. But I—” Pondering on the knife and its carving, I tried to think if it was any of this girl’s business. The same sick dread of accusation I’d felt when I realized Donna thought that knife with my initial on it meant something to me, about me, seeped over like fog.

  But that Heart R knife wasn’t mine or meant for me. Whose was it?

  Melinda smirked and studied Red. “Like I said before, if you see anything, notice something that doesn’t set right, you could just trot on over and let me know. Anything suspicious.”

  That’s where we left it, me kind-of lying by not telling Melinda Kellan all the suspicious little nicks about the Buckeye.

  My cheapie cell phone showed that Abby had tried to call me earlier. I had no time now to swing by her place. Shoes needing shaping were calling my name, as well as horse feet what were overdue. I pulled Ol’ Blue around the back of my first client’s house before the morning got too well set.

  And I saw right away I should have been tending my tools the night before. My hoof knives were dulled, the regular one plus my loop knife. What’s the matter with me, not minding my kit? I can’t let other people’s problems give me grief. It’s just not my business if the sheriff’s clerk is nosy or if Keith Langston and his daughter are unhappy or if Donna Chevigny and her dead husband had all kind of trouble or if some sweet young Clydesdale is dragging a leg through his pasture and going to become tiger chow.

  I clamped the loop knife in my vise and worked the blade with my ceramic sharpener. I worked and worked it, squinting at its fineness. Made it surgery sharp and then got through two half-shoeings and four trims.

  My last client of the day was at the boarding stable on the south end of town. I only have a couple horses there and it’s not my favorite place to shoe. Places where more than one shoer works always leave the possibility that it’ll be a day when more than one of us is on site at the moment. Could be fine but could be uncomfortable.

  It left me thinking about other shoers and their work while I puzzled again about the shoe I’d found at the Buckeye ranch.

  That small aluminum shoe, with a squirrelly toe and rusted nails and a mark on the outside branch, that shoe didn’t belong on a ranch, the one Melinda Kellan had come to look at. Or had she really come to ask me why Donna Chevigny had asked her that question?

  Marking the outside branch of a horseshoe is something shoers do when they bare a horse—pull all four old shoes at once—and then reshoe all four, instead of shoeing one hoof at a time. That baring a horse down, I don’t work that way but I’m on my own and remote a lot of times. If I had a full-time helper, maybe I’d go ahead and pull all four shoes at one time and shape them all, then nail them all. It could be a scoach faster.

  But I work one shoe at a time, so that in case I get hurt or something else bad happens, the horse is pretty well taken care of.

  Like now, this last horse I pulled out of his stall and cross-tied in the barn aisle. Tiff, my client, had left a check for me tucked behind his water bucket. She’s one of the few clients I allow to not arrange a horse-holder for me. Her job takes her out of town and her gelding Tommy is a decent hor
se except he can get bored and be a bit of a nipper. Tommy and I had discussed this ugly habit, me yanking his lead rope and growling and his eyes promising he’d try to be good, but I figured he could only try so long and then he’d be back to looking to taste me.

  Bending over firms up the blue jeans over the cheeks, so it’s sort of hard for a horse to properly sink his teeth into me then and there. All that’s to the good, because just then I felt a quick bump of his muzzle—him testing the waters, so to speak—and I knew in less than a second his mouth would wander back with his horse lips scrunched up and teeth going for it.

  I growled like a truly put-out demon and popped him with my hand cupped against his shoulder—which makes a good loud clap—and we had no more of that nipping business. He sighed, fluttering his nostrils like his was a sad day, but we got through the shoeing with my rump and his manners intact.

  A couple of boys who looked like they believed themselves to be cowboy-bred were holding up a fence, working on their loafing skills and watching me. Flies buzzed an out of tune, out of time symphony around a full wheelbarrow that wanted dumping, away from us. As I finished shoeing the gelding and was loading my tools, one of them came over and held down Ol’ Blue’s tailgate with one butt cheek, the better to ask me a question, I guess.

  “How much do you charge for a straight shoeing, new shoes?”

  When I told him, he frowned and went back to his buddies muttering that I charged as much as his regular shoer, Dixon Talbot, and maybe they’d check with the new guy.

  New guy? What new guy, that’s what I wanted to know. And was he any good or was he a Doc Quartercrack type of shoe slapper-onner? Some places, shoers can all get along and cover for each other and learn together a little bit, but that’s not working out for me here. Oh, it could be worse, most of us don’t steal clients or bad-mouth each other. I wondered if Dixon Talbot knew these clients of his were shopping shoers. We don’t chat enough for me to let it slip anyways. It’d be nice if we got along better, but Talbot will hardly give me more than a growl.

  The man himself drove in then, in his special-built shoeing rig. Drove in without giving me so much as a nod while the guy who’d asked me about my rates got a halter and lead rope off the rail and went into the barn. The other dude buddied up with Talbot. I was air to them. It should have made me put-out, but instead, I was studying on whether to call him Dixon or Mr. Talbot and it made me twist my ponytail, just chewing up the concern.

  I’m a better shoer than old Talbot. He carved sole like he worked for the dogs. Even if he wasn’t actually on the dogs’ payroll, he left an awful lot of hoof as scraps in the dirt. When will people respect me as a shoer in these parts? When toadies like Talbot drop dead? Sometimes, it’s a battle. And I know, I mean, I just bet I get judged on Ol’ Blue and my wooden, homemade anvil stand and battered toolbox that doesn’t have wheels and my canvas covers that I awl-stitched where fancy shoers have store-bought leather protectors for their rasps. I sighed over my lot as I fixed to head home, but gave myself a talking-to right away, because, all told, things are fine. No pity parties, that’s my coming-adult rule. No circling the drain, hanging on to old hurts.

  A little question was tickling though and I did a slow saunter to get my check. Stood there at one horse’s stall door and made nice, chatted with some kid like a social critter about the weather and riding and her horse, mostly her horse. When I judged enough time had passed, when I could hear that Talbot had cut the clinches off and was pounding steel on a new shoe, I moseyed my sweet self back out to my truck and looked things over good and careful, studied the way he had his work laid out.

  This was something I’d had opportunity to observe before, but I’d never bothered to note. Careful study was something that would tell me whether the shoe that Melinda Kellan came to see had been nailed on by Talbot. Not knowing was an itch what needed scratching.

  Nope. Talbot shod one foot at a time, like me. The cowboy’s horse stood with three old shoes and a bare front left while the new shoe being made was shaped.

  So, Dixon Talbot didn’t need to mark the outside branches of horseshoes as he made them. I needed to stop a minute and think here. The aluminum horseshoe I found on the Buckeye was put on by another shoer—not me or Talbot—or by someone who did their own shoeing. Given the specialty of the shoe, it most likely came from a pro.

  And Keith Langston didn’t see Stan Yates as someone who would buy land on a handshake deal, whether or not Cameron Chevigny would have done such a thing.

  And Hollis Nunn had a rodeo stock business with Cameron Chevigny that went bad, maybe just because of Dragoon being a worse than usual bull, but maybe there was more to it.

  And Earl Delmont’s sister had had an affair with Cameron Chevigny.

  I know me enough to know I don’t study well on even one question when I’m moving. I needed to stop. And another brain would be handy. These were ticklish, these questions. There was only one person I wanted to talk to about this stuff.

  Chapter 11

  “RAINY, THEY’RE MAKING ME GO. WHAT am I going to do?” Abby wasn’t really asking, though she didn’t know that herself. She was just calling to tell me how miserable she was with the idea of being shipped off to her mama, away from her home, her daddy, her horse, her friends and school. Her life. Our cell connection cut in and out as Ol’ Blue and I motored down the ranch road that would connect to the main two-laner leading into Cowdry.

  “Aw, Ab, I’m sorry.” I pulled over and shut Ol’ Blue off, because it’s so hard to hear over the diesel and I’d lose the connection as soon as I followed the winding, dropping section of highway. Maybe there’s too much metal ore in the butte walls, but something sure drops a cell connection on this road.

  Nothing came back.

  “Did I lose you?” I asked. “Abby? Where are you right now?”

  The voice that bleated back seemed much younger than Abby’s pre-teen. She sounded like a seven-year-old. “I don’t want to go.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.” I was bear hungry, headed for the Cascade for some tuck when my stupid cheapie cell had beeped. Now I muttered something useless over static, but heard Abby say, “The judge said I’m supposed to go and visit the school she’s near in Portland. She’s going to try to make me stay for the entire school year, or at least ’til Christmas!”

  What could I say?

  This is one put-out little girl to aunty right now.

  Come to find out her daddy had fought this thing for a while. Abby was supposed to go for the summer but made all kind of excuses. I’d had her at my side, shoeing at horse shows and rodeos on the weekends much of the summer. Now I wondered if going to her mama’s for the summer might have meant the kid could stay where she wanted, with her daddy, for the coming school year. Instead, all summer Abby had washed dishes and countertops for Guy, along with tagging along on my shoeing rounds every chance she could. She’d followed her daddy’s suggestion that she not worry about it, not bad mouth her mama at all. And the kid felt like all her good behavior bought her nothing.

  “Where are you?” I asked again. I could tell from her breathing she was on the move. “Abby?”

  She was gone. Should I keep Ol’ Blue pulled over while trying to get Abby back? Gun it and head for her house? Call her daddy? I tried every option, ready to go mama bear.

  Voice mail and empty roads are poor consolation prizes.

  Thirty minutes later, I was closing in on the Cascade Kitchen again when I saw the girl walking on the road. Just past her, I pulled Ol’ Blue onto the shoulder and watched her come up my passenger side. She was all the while wiping tears away.

  “I hate everything right now.” Abby started crying again. “What’s going to happen to Liberty while I’m gone? How could my mother do this to me?”

  That parent, that’s a woman my Abby-girl doesn’t know or want to know.

  “Doodlebug?” I sometimes called her that to annoy her, but this time she looked at me with big eyes.

 
“What?”

  “Maybe you could ask her about wind farming. I have a client, Donna Chevigny—”

  “She has the Buckeye ranch.”

  “Right. And her neighbor is some kind of wind farmer and he’s maybe buying some of her land. I think there might be big dollars in that kind of business. If you get a chance, would you see what you could find out from your mama about that field?”

  She agreed with sniffles, wide-eyed for a few seconds that the answers might mean the world for someone else, then sorry for herself again.

  Well, at least my Doodlebug would have something safe to talk to her mama about. We were a couple minutes in the Cascade parking lot before I could whisper, “If it comes to it, I’ll watch over Liberty for you.”

  Abby ran for the ladies’. I followed.

  Something about hugging a sad kid breaks me.

  * * *

  Soon enough, really needing my best friend, I was ogling something all squishy green. It was like looking at something that’d arrived from under Bean’s tail. Who picked this color anyways?

  “Well?” Guy was about begging me for words.

  Spinach appetizers are something that just sound like a bad idea. Why wilted is a word that anyone thinks would go with any kind of food, well, that’s pretty far beyond my understanding.

  And Guy looked so proud, leaning his lanky frame against one of the long steel sinks of the Cascade Kitchen’s actual kitchen, arms sprawled out sideways. A lot better sight, he was, than the green stuff inside flaky pastry in front of me.

  Popping into the Cascade for my Intended to hand over something to snack on—my plan from over an hour ago—wasn’t working out so swell. I’d left Abby after she locked herself in the last bathroom stall. She still hadn’t come out of the ladies’.

  “Is she upset about weaning Bean?” Guy already loves his future horse—that’s the way we think about Abby Langston’s mare’s baby, the one Guy named Pinto Bean the night the baby was born. He pushed the saucer of spinach-thingies toward me.