Shotgun Moon

by K. C. McRae

  “If that’s what she was doing. Maybe it happened just like she said. If you know Lauri, that’s pretty normal behavior for her.”

  “You heard all of it?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, she is kind of a pill,” Jamie said. “But hinky behavior’s still hinky, whether someone acts that way all the time or not.”

  Merry was silent. Lauri was a lot of things, but she was also family.

  He went on. “We still don’t know enough. I’m going over to Lamente’s place now.”

  “Can I come with you?”

  Brow wrinkled, he quirked up one side of his mouth. “No.”

  “But maybe you could call me later and let me know what’s going on?”

  He hesitated. Then, “I’ll try. But we have to play this thing by ear.”

  She nodded. Between their friendship and his job, Jamie was wedged firmly between the proverbial rock and hard place.

  ———

  Jamie turned and walked back through the alley to the police station while Merry, unwilling to encounter Rory Hawkins again so soon, circled around the drugstore to Main Street. Shirlene’s Dry Cleaning was next to the Suds ’n’ Fluff Laundromat. Weathered cracks in the blue exterior paint exposed dark red brick underneath.

  Her aunt’s business, funded five years before by Uncle Al’s life insurance, provided steady income, made more so when Shirlene began taking in laundry from local roughnecks and ranch hands. The story was that her career twist began when a young man toted in one of the ranker piles of clothing she’d come across, placed them gingerly on the front counter, and asked in a polite voice if she could see her way clear to helping him out. The laundromat next door wouldn’t let him use their machines for his work clothes, and the trailer he was staying in didn’t have a washer.

  She told him he could have them the next day, naming what she thought was an outrageous price. He kept smiling, nodded, touched the bill of his cap, and left. If he had been dismayed, she might have lowered her price, but he hadn’t. That night, she ran the clothes through the washing machine in the laundry room off her kitchen. Twice, with an extra dose of Borax and very hot water, just as she had with her husband’s for so many years.

  When the roughneck returned the next day, he brought a couple of friends, each with their own garbage bag full of filthy clothes. Word got around. After six months she had enough extra money to buy an industrial washing machine and dryer, which she installed in the back of her shop next to the dry cleaning machinery.

  Down the street, Harlan’s Hardware, Garden, and Feed still sold a little bit of darn near everything. Further down, the Dairy Shack hunkered in the middle of a large dusty lot, looking abandoned. The teenagers who collected there to eat hotdogs and ice cream wouldn’t show up until evening. Between these landmarks, many of the storefronts on Main now held trendy little shops and bric-a-brac dens to satisfy tourist tastes.

  The edge of town boasted evidence of new construction: a 7-Eleven, a tiny Kingdom Hall, a Chevron with a drive-through carwash. Ropes of neon tubing, pale in the midday sun, outlined the Lucky Lowdown Casino in flashing magenta. The parking lot behind backed up to a hay field that stretched toward the blue foothills of the Sapphires.

  But the changes mattered little to her visceral recognition. At the core Hazel, Montana was still her hometown.

  She hadn’t lived there for six years. During the first year as a less-than-blissful newlywed, she’d visited often, and she was able to come home twice during the year before her trial. The next four she spent in a privatized Texas prison after a jury of her supposed peers found her guilty of manslaughter. She’d moved to Dallas—flat, humid, drawling Dallas—when she married Rand, but it had never really been her home. She’d convinced the parole board of that, and now that they’d let her leave she’d never set foot in the state of Texas again.

  Hurrying to the Blazer, she glanced at her watch. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t met with her parole officer yet. She’d left a message for her but hadn’t received a call back.

  Merry had been delighted to learn she wouldn’t have to make a weekly trip to Missoula to check in. Though small, Hazel was the county seat and boasted a hundred-year-old courthouse, two judges, and one poor soul to baby-sit the various offenders on parole throughout the county. That same parole officer also contracted to the Montana Interstate Compact Unit, which supervised parolees from other states.

  The downside of having her minder so close at hand was that Hawkins would know the woman. But how well? Was he just pawing air, or could he really sabotage her parole? Dread gnawed below her sternum, but the urgent need to assess Hawkins’s threat potential overrode it. Merry needed to know if she’d be reporting to an active adversary or merely a weekly annoyance.

  She had no paperwork, no appointment, and looked like hell. But she remembered the address.

  Good enough.

  A block off Main she found the two-story brick home that had been converted into offices. On the lawn in front, a painted wooden slab advertised the Hazel Office Mall. Next to it, a chainsaw carving of a grizzly cub waved at passersby.

  Running nervous fingers through her hair, she stepped to the cement walkway that led from the sidewalk to the front door. A slight breeze whispered through the cottonwood leaves above, carrying the sharp scent of hot tar. A road crew was working somewhere nearby.

  Inside, a small foyer narrowed to a long hallway that led straight through to the alley in back. The heavy wet odor of carpet shampoo accounted for the vivid yellows and oranges of the ugly paisley carpet. She started toward the rear of the building, examining plaques on the doors as she went.

  She stopped and put one hand on the wall when she saw it. Unexpected and unwelcome, the name on the door halfway down the hall had nothing to do with finding her parole officer.

  It had everything to do with the past.

  Kate O’Neil. Attorney.

  No doubt she was an excellent lawyer. Kate had excelled at everything she’d ever tried. Well, everything except keeping Rand faithful. But that was like trying to stop the universe from expanding. His peccadilloes were hardly her fault.

  At least she hadn’t blamed herself.

  She’d blamed Merry.

  What was Kate doing back in Hazel? She was smart enough and tough enough to make it in a larger pond. Plus, the money here had to suck.

  Merry balked at the thought that this might be the solution to Lauri’s problem. She’d wanted an attorney, one with a strong sense of justice and the brains to back it up, and here one had been dumped in her path. That Kate would probably toss her out on her ear for having the sheer nerve to ask for help didn’t mean it wasn’t worth the risk.

  Her hand crept toward the doorknob. A rustle from behind the door made her heart buck, and her hand jerked back. After she’d seen the parole officer. She’d come back then. Kate was probably busy right now, anyway.

  Sweating in the dim, humid heat, Merry located the office she wanted by the back door. Not knowing whether she was supposed to or not, she knocked lightly.

  “Come on in!” a voice sang out from the other side.

  Seated behind a desk piled with neat stacks of files and loose paperwork, a woman with tight iron-gray curls and deep lines radiating from the corners of her eyes peered at her over a pair of half glasses. She stopped typing on the keyboard in front of her and beamed.

  “Merry McCoy. Good Lord, girl, what’d you get yourself into?” She finger-walked through several files until she located the one she wanted. “Well, get in here, take a load off. I’m not gonna bite.”

  Hesitant, Merry advanced into the room, combing her memory. “Mrs. Sonberg?”

  “Not anymore, I’m not. Yvette Trager, at your service. Well, so to speak. I finally gave that sonofabitch Sonberg the heave ho five years ago. Don’t know what took me so long. But you just call me Yvette, now,
okay?”

  Merry eased into the chair across from the desk. No wonder she hadn’t recognized the name. Mrs. Sonberg had been the secretary at the high school for over two decades. Her hair had been darker then, but the blue eyes remained the same—able to penetrate your bullshit as if she possessed some specialized x-ray vision.

  “I called, but when I didn’t hear back, I thought I should drop by.”

  “Glad you did. I’ve been gone to a conference for the last four days, and I’ve just gotten behinder and behinder.”

  Yvette Trager opened the file and sat back in her chair. She wore matching polyester slacks and a long-sleeved tunic the same blue as her eyes. On the floor, a fan moved enough air in the room to make it tolerable without disturbing any of the paperwork. The shrieks of children at play drifted through the open window.

  “So what happened?” she asked.

  Merry looked out at the street. “I’m sure it’s all in there.”

  “Some of it is. The official stuff. But that’s not what I asked. How am I supposed to help you if I don’t know the whole story?”

  “I didn’t know you were supposed to help me at all.”

  “Just keep an eye on you, huh. Make you toe the line. Watch your P’s and Q’s. Cross your T’s and—”

  Merry half-grinned and held up her hands. “Okay, okay.”

  “—dot your I’s.”

  “So there’s an alternative?”

  “Well, no. More like a bonus. Icing on the cake. Gravy … I’m starving. Let’s go get us some lunch over at the Moose.”

  “Right now?”

  Yvette cocked her head to one side. “Afraid to be seen with me?”

  “Of course not.”

  Silence. Just more of that look.

  “Okay, maybe a little.”

  “Too bad. ’Sides, there’s not a soul who gives a damn who doesn’t already know all about you. The rest don’t care. Might as well face up to that now.”

  Merry sighed. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Yvette snorted. “I encourage that kind a talk from most a the dumb shits I work with, but you can skip the formalities.”

  “That mean you’re buying?”

  “Dream on, honey.”

  ———

  They walked the couple of blocks to the Hungry Moose Diner, where the lunch crowd filled most of the tables and booths. The owner’s daughter, Janelle Paysen, who waitressed or cooked as the need arose, stood with one denim-clad hip slung against the counter chatting with a handsome young man wearing a battered seed cap. When she saw Yvette, she waved them toward the back.

  Merry inhaled the potpourri of grease, coffee, and toasted bread. Well-worn white tile, red Formica, and chrome gleamed in the bright daylight streaming through the large windows. At a table in the far corner, a disheveled man leaned over his plate, intent on shoveling the mountain of eggs, chicken-fried steak, and biscuits and gravy in as fast as he could. A crumpled pack of cigarettes sat next to his plate.

  Heads turned to watch as they made their way through the tables to the back corner. Merry walked quickly, studying the floor. Had people talked about her when she was gone? Did any of them already know that Clay Lamente had been killed? Or that her cousin had found him?

  Yvette slid into a booth. “Welcome to my second office.”

  Merry cleared her throat and sat down across from her. The idea of telling her parole officer about how she’d spent her morning crossed her mind, but she rejected it immediately. No need to volunteer information she didn’t have to.

  Janelle followed behind with coffee. Not bothering with menus, Yvette ordered the pork sandwich, and Merry asked for a tuna melt. The Moose’s tuna melt was on her list of freedom foods. After Janelle left, Yvette extracted the file she’d stuck in her capacious satchel. She pushed aside her coffee cup and silverware and handed Merry a pamphlet.

  “These are the rules. Follow them.”

  Merry glanced through the meager pages. “Looks simple enough.” She folded them and tucked them in her back pocket.

  Yvette leaned forward and impaled Merry with her gaze. “Well, you’re not exactly falling all over yourself trying to tell your side of the story. I’m guessing by now you know how that’s usually received and pretty much don’t want to bother. But I can figure out some of it—there’s a fair amount between the lines in these reports, and I managed to get a hold of the trial transcript, so that tells me the rest, considering that I know a bit about your charming ex. And I know a bit about the company he finds himself drawn to. Got great taste in women, but he doesn’t understand them, and rotten taste in friends, and he doesn’t understand them either.”

  She paused and flipped through the file. “So what I think happened is this friend of Rand’s—what’s his name? Oh, here, Zeke. Anyway, this Zeke fellow was attacking you—” Her voice softened. “—raping you—and you made him stop. For good. Don’t know if you intended that or not, but that’s what happened. May’ve gotten a little out of hand, but I think it was self-defense to start with.”

  Yvette stopped and squinted at her, waiting.

  Merry clasped both hands around her cup to hide their slight trembling. She took a careful sip of coffee. Over time she’d woven a veil between the vivid memories and the present. Zeke’s contorted face hadn’t visited her dreams for more than a month now.

  Yvette continued. “But that wasn’t the end of it, was it? Well, it wouldn’t be. Someone was dead.”

  Janelle brought their lunch then, and Merry was grateful, both for the fast service and that Yvette had the good sense to shut up, even if it was only for a few moments. She hadn’t prepared for this onslaught, had thought checking in with her parole officer would be short and sweet—yes ma’am, no ma’am, I’ll see you next week, ma’am. Even the therapist at the penitentiary hadn’t made her feel like this. Of course, he couldn’t have found his way out of a paper bag with a flashlight and a map, so there was that.

  When they were alone again, Yvette squirted mustard on her pork chop sandwich. “You ever see that bumper sticker, the one that says, ‘My wife ran off with my best friend, and I sure do miss him’?”

  Her first cellmate had made a similar comment, and Merry had managed to force a laugh. But she hadn’t intended to talk about what happened, and certainly not here in her hometown diner. But Yvette had created a hairline fracture in her practiced façade. Helpless to stop the widening crack, she struggled to remain silent, but the words tumbled out anyway, raw and awful.

  “Yeah. That’s about right. Rand was pissed because I killed Zeke, and he refused to believe I wasn’t fucking him for fun. ’Cause his best friend might do his wife, but he’d never be low enough to do it if she hadn’t seduced him first. That what you want to hear? Does it help you to supervise my parole to know that, Yvette? I got fucked, then I got fucked over, and now I’m fucked up. Does knowing that make your job easier?”

  Merry winced and looked away. The words hung heavy in the air. Too late to swallow them now. The elderly couple at the nearest table stared at her in horror.

  Yvette took a sip of iced tea, eyes on Merry’s face. “Yeah. It does.” She picked up a French fry. “And Merry? Don’t use those f-bombs around me. I don’t like it.”

  “That’s the Mrs. Sonberg I know.” Her laugh was bitter.

  Yvette pointed the fry at her. “And don’t ever, ever call me Mrs. Sonberg again.” Now her voice held real warning.

  Merry blinked.

  She popped the fry in her mouth and spoke around it. “You seeing anybody?”

  “You’ve got to be kidding. Now you want to know about my love life?”

  “No. I want to know if you’re in therapy.”

  “Oh. No, I’m done with all that.”

  “You sure that’s a good idea?”

  “It’s not court ordered, so you can’t make me.”
/>
  “Christ, you sound like a little kid.” She held up her hands. “Now, hold on. I’ve got almost enough from you for this week. You got a job?”

  After a few moments, Merry shook her head. “I’ve got the ranch and some money from Mama’s life insurance. It’s not like I’m living on the street.”

  “Are you actually working the ranch?”

  “No. Most of the land is leased to Frank Cain.”

  “Well, then look for something to do, something where you’re around people. Part-time is fine. Even volunteer work.” Yvette wiped her lips and tossed her paper napkin on the cold remains of her lunch, then scooped up her purse and Merry’s file.

  “I got to get back, get myself caught up so I’m only my usual day or two behind. Come see me next week.”

  Merry folded her arms. “When?”

  Yvette looked at the ceiling, consulting an internal calendar. “Tuesday’s pretty good. Drop by in the morning.” She stood. “And while you’re thinking about the job thing, I want you to think about what you’re going to do about that chip on your shoulder. I know you’ve been through a lot, but if you don’t do something about your attitude, you’re going to make more enemies than you can handle.”

  After she left, Merry poked at the uneaten tuna melt. She’d have to leave it on the list. The Moose’s tuna melt. Strawberry shortcake with real whipped cream. Fried egg sandwich. Fresh-caught trout. McDonald’s French fries. Sun tea. Chips and onion dip. Moose Drool ale. Peanut butter and chokecherry jam sandwich. Chester-fried chicken. Double-fudge brownies. Freedom foods, all.

  Yvette Trager thought she knew what had happened, and she’d been right about a lot of it. But she didn’t know the whole story.

  Merry picked up the bill. And imagined the accusing eyes following her as she walked up to the register.

  four

  After Uncle Al died, Merry’s aunt had sold their big white two-story just off Main Street and bought a more compact dwelling on the edge of town. She’d painted the neat Craftsman-style house robin’s-egg blue with white trim. Her love of gardening showed in the landscaping.