Cowboy Justice

by Melissa Cutler

  But with so many folks coming and going, she was hard-pressed to remember anyone’s faces, much less their names. Amy gave her a daily briefing, but mostly, she got a free pass from being a hostess as long as she stuck to the role of resident cowgirl. She’d practically worked up a Texas drawl with all the howdys and y’alls she tossed around in front of the guests.

  It was just her luck that when the travel magazine sent a journalist to review Heritage Farm in February, she highlighted Rachel as one of the main spectacles, or as the journalist called her, “A real live cowgirl who looked plucked from the history books of the Wild West.” Rachel didn’t think cowgirls plucked out of history would be carrying cell phones and GPS navigators on their belts, but there was no arguing with the uptick in business the farm received once the article came out. Never in a million years would she have guessed the financial future of her ranch hinged in part on her abilities as an actress. Such was life.

  At least she’d get an acting break when the inn closed for the summer months.

  “We’ve kept a real close eye on them,” Amy said.

  “Who?”

  “The Westenbergs and Moores, silly. That pain medication you’re on is making you loopy.”

  Rachel grunted. She didn’t have the heart to tell Amy she wasn’t on any pain meds, and her lack of focus was more because she talked so dang much that Rachel couldn’t help but activate her mental mute button.

  “. . . and Kellan and I gave the workers a big speech about not letting them wander off too far. Today they went on a tour of Chris and Lisa’s dairy, then Mr. Dixon was taking them to Main Street for some shopping.”

  The inn had been Jenna’s idea, the restaurant, Amy’s. Their father’s death a year and a half ago left the sisters with a pile of bills and no money to pay them with, so Jenna proposed the transformation of their home into a dude ranch as a way to save the property from foreclosure.

  Rachel had vehemently opposed the idea. She’d argued that she needed solitude—her mental health downright required it—and having their home crawling with tourists sounded like hell on earth. More importantly, if the sisters got busy creating a new business, Rachel had argued, who would keep an eye on Mom?

  What a bitter piece of irony that question turned out to be.

  “What are you thinking about?” Amy asked, cutting into Rachel’s thoughts.

  She blinked, looking around. She hadn’t noticed the car had stopped in front of their house. “Nothin’. Why?”

  “You were staring at the porch, scowling. Don’t tell me you’re thinking of remodeling it. I know it could use a fresh coat of paint, but we’ve got enough going on with the wedding in less than three months.”

  She took the out Amy provided. “Needs more than a coat of paint. The wood’s rotting through on some of those rails. You say it doesn’t matter for the wedding, but half the Catcher Creek population is going to be here. For most of them, it’ll be the first time they see our inn. I’ll feel better if the place is up to snuff.”

  Amy waggled a finger. “No home improvement projects until your arm heals, got it?”

  “Hmph.”

  “Promise me you’ll take it easy for a few days. I want to hear you say the words.”

  Rachel unbuckled her seat belt with her left arm to prove the pain was no match for her iron will, but she could barely stifle a moan as a cloud of pain thundered along her shoulder and down her spine. “All right. I promise.” She rubbed the pain from her arm. “Since when are you so bossy?”

  “Since the resident bossy-pants got shot yesterday.”

  “I’m not that bossy.”

  Amy stepped out of the car with a tskof protest and preceded Rachel to the front door.

  Sloane Delgado and Tommy met them on the porch. Tommy, Jenna’s five-year-old son, looked nervous. He held tight to Sloane’s hand, his eyes as huge as coffee cups. Given the way Jenna and Amy had blubbered over her yesterday, Tommy probably thought her arm had fallen off or she was dying.

  “Hey, Tommy,” she said with her best smile.

  “Are you okay, Auntie?”

  She knelt and took his hands. “Never better, buddy. I got a scratch on my arm is all. The doctors put a Band-Aid on it.” She held her bandaged arm up as evidence. “See? It’s nothing. Doesn’t even hurt anymore.” He was a smart kid, so he probably didn’t buy her flippant explanation, but he did relax at her words.

  Sloane ruffled Tommy’s hair. “We thought we’d say hello, but we’ve got to get back to the kitchen. We’re making cookies as a welcome home present to you.”

  Tommy beamed.

  “That sounds great. Thank you,” Rachel said.

  Sloane had come to work as a waitress at the inn’s restaurant, but had morphed into an indispensable member of the family. She’d moved in a few months back to escape her meddlesome grandmother’s house, and paid her rent by sitting for Tommy. The week before, she accepted the promotion Rachel and Amy offered her to become the overnight manager of their inn for the fall tourist season, even though she had her heart set on moving to New York City someday as a fashion designer.

  Rachel knew diddly-squat about fashion, which was probably why Sloane’s wardrobe looked to her like she’d hijacked the luggage of a circus clown. Today she was done up in a neon green blouse with a neon orange flower the size of a melon tacked in the center of her chest. Rachel half expected water to squirt from the center of it.

  “I got to sleep over with Uncle Kellan last night,” Tommy said, his chest puffed up with pride. “We set up sleeping bags in the kitchen, like we were camping.”

  “Wow,” Rachel said. “Why the kitchen?”

  He raised his arms, palms up, and looked at her like she was bonkers not to understand. “So we wouldn’t bother the guests, of course.”

  “I bet you two had fun.” Kellan was Tommy’s absolute favorite grown-up in the world. Rachel wrote it off as a father figure issue, being that Kellan was the only daddy-age male in the little boy’s life. Regardless of the reason, though, Rachel was grateful that Kellan lived up to Tommy’s lofty expectations of him. Sounds like last night he’d surpassed them.

  “Come on, Tommy. We’d better finish those cookies,” Sloane said. “Otherwise they won’t be much of a welcome home gift to Auntie.”

  Rachel watched them disappear into the house.

  “In you go, Rach,” Amy said. “You lie down and I’ll bring you lunch.”

  “Think I’m going to stay out here for a little while.”

  “Nice try. Now get your butt in the house.” Amy pointed through the open doorway.

  Rachel backed up a step. “I’ve been cooped up in a hospital room. I don’t think I can stand to go inside another set of walls quite yet.”

  To her relief, Amy didn’t argue. Instead, she gave Rachel the stink eye. “All right, but don’t do anything I wouldn’t approve of.”

  Rachel grinned. “Isn’t that what I always said to you? Never worked because you made it your life’s mission to win my disapproval.”

  Amy grew taller, her expression one of mock indignity. “Not lately, I hope.”

  “Nah. You’re right. Not since you moved home. I’ve been real proud of the choices you’ve made.”

  Amy winked. “Aw, thanks, Momma Two.”

  Rachel groaned. “Good grief. It’s been a while since you or Jenna called me that, thank goodness. I’ll be in after I get my fill of fresh air.”

  With a nod, Amy disappeared inside and left Rachel to her own devices, which was exactly what she needed at the moment. Or most any time, for that matter.

  A raised splinter of wood on the armrest of the porch swing caught her attention. She wandered over and picked at it restlessly. As always, the swing reminded her of Vaughn—painful, arousing thoughts of the first night they’d spent together. The kiss he’d given her while they rocked on the swing in the darkness. The caresses that followed, along with the silent agreement to take it further. Right there on the porch.

  The on
ly reason she hadn’t lugged the swing into the desert and burned it to an unidentifiable lump of carbon was that it served as a reminder of the devastation that could arise from selfishness, and of the vow she made to never let it happen again. At the time, she’d thought, What the hell, I deserve a little happiness. But look where that lapse in judgment had gotten her. Look where it had gotten her mom.

  She gave the swing a shove and watched it jerk and dance on its chains. To escape the darkness of her thoughts, she wandered down the stairs and around the side of the house. The sound of a forklift diverted her attention. She waved to Damon and Rudy, her newly hired ranch hands and unofficial tour guides to the inn’s guests, as they worked in the feed hold across the corral from the stable. Rudy took a few steps in her direction like he might try to talk to her, so she quickened her step. Most ranch hands she knew were strong, silent cowboy types, but Rudy could flap his lips as fast as both of Rachel’s sisters, which was saying something.

  In an effort to be a kind boss, Rachel endured daily conversations with him, but she didn’t have it in her today to stand and nod while he rattled on about his singular passion—the weather. And, sweet Jesus, the man knew a lot about the weather. Not only in northeastern New Mexico, but on a global scale.

  Before she realized where she was headed, she stood before the closed stable door. She slipped inside.

  It was cooler in the stable than outside. Ventilation fans and swamp coolers whirred and rattled on the ceiling. Five horse heads poked over the doors of their stalls, clamoring for her attention. They stamped and shook their heads. As soon as she made eye contact with Growly Bear, he backed up with a huff and turned a circle, stamping anxiously.

  Rachel approached him, her heart sinking. He’d been Lincoln’s best buddy and next-door stall neighbor for years. She stroked his neck. “I know, Growly.”

  He whined quietly and pushed his nose into her neck.

  She nuzzled his cheek as she continued her methodical strokes. “You don’t have to tell me. I know he’s gone.” Her gaze went to the empty stall.

  Grief was nothing new to Rachel. She’d lost both her parents in the past two years. But the pointless loss of an innocent animal before its time hit her in an all-new way. Suddenly, nothing was more important than saying a final good-bye to Lincoln. She’d been too heartsick to ask Vaughn what was to be done with his body, but she suspected it was handled like any other livestock—cremated by Quay County Animal Control.

  Rachel had never heard of a rancher holding a funeral for a dead horse, and she certainly wasn’t going to broadcast that she was doing it, but she and Growly Bear needed closure, and Lincoln deserved to be cried over.

  “Okay, Growly. You and I are going riding.”

  Saddling Growly offered its own challenges. The saddle blanket, halter, and reins were as easy as breathing to affix on the horse, but the saddle took three tries to hoist onto its back. The effort strained the skin around her wound, but despite the pain, she was too obstinate to seek help.

  Once Growly was ready, she tucked a baggie of Fig Newtons in the saddlebag, along with a sky-blue ribbon from the accessory drawer Jenna had created for her horse, Disco. The plan was to stop by the west end pasture and gather dried wildflowers for a bouquet. Corny, maybe, but no one else would know.

  She’d lost her favorite hat when she fell from Lincoln the day before, so she grabbed her back-up—a worn, soft cream felt Stetson with a braided leather band. She led Growly out, pausing at the door to reach above it and touch the smooth steel of the horseshoe mounted there, a gift from Kate Parrish’s father many years ago, that her father had nailed over the door with the promise it would bring her luck.

  When she mounted Growly, a particularly sharp pain shot through her left arm. She ran her hand over the bandage and her fingers came back bloody. Dang it all, she’d probably ripped the scab open. Amy would strangle her tonight when she helped Rachel change the bandage and saw the damage. Oh, well. Nothing she could do to change that now.

  She walked Growly out of the stable yard, her thoughts drifting to the day the horseshoe was given to her. The day she’d come to consider the most liberating day of her life.

  She’d been ten years old.

  Her memory began in the bakery section of John Justin’s Grocery Store on Main Street during one of her mom’s most intense bipolar meltdowns. Back then, Rachel had never heard of the word bipolar, though she lived in a house held hostage by the illness.

  Rachel and her sisters’ reactions to their mom’s depression were as different as their personalities. Rachel’s anxiety was paralyzing. She clearly remembered, during Mom’s outbursts, not being able to breathe or make her legs work. Standing there—frozen, her eyes riveted to the scene—her body became a sponge, absorbing the pain of everyone around her, along with the fear. She took it all in and made it her own.

  Amy, almost four years younger than Rachel, took Mom’s episodes as a personal affront. Maybe because she looked the most like Mom, or maybe because she’d been born with her heart on her sleeve, but for reasons Rachel didn’t understand—and probably Amy didn’t either—she’d exacerbate the situation, picking fights, goading Mom on. Having her own parallel meltdown.

  Jenna, nine years Rachel’s junior, seemed oblivious, like she’d been born with skin too resilient for their volatile home life to penetrate. When Mom would start into an episode, she’d wander off to play. For the longest time, Rachel thought Jenna would be the one to emerge into adulthood undamaged. Then Jenna turned thirteen and she turned wild—partying, drinking, running off for days at a time until a deputy, Vaughn most always, dragged her home kicking and screaming.

  Rachel couldn’t remember what Mom’s trigger had been the day of her meltdown at John Justin’s, or if there even was one, but she remembered Mom throwing loaves of bread at the store’s baker, shouting obscenities. Then six-year-old Amy started clearing loaves of bread off the shelves while screaming at the top of her lungs. Jenna, one at the time, popped Cheerios in her mouth from the stroller tray and watched.

  In the midst of the anarchy, Rachel, paralyzed and fighting the churning pain of her tummy, felt her fear dissolve for the first time ever. The scene before her narrowed until it seemed as if she were watching it on a small television at the opposite end of a long hallway. Then her legs unfroze.

  She took a step back. Then another. Exhilarated by her newfound freedom of movement, she turned her back on her mom and sisters. And she walked away. Stepping through the sliding glass doors of John Justin’s into the quiet, sunlit street was a feeling that would stay with her forever.

  It was her moment of liberation.

  Their farm was too far away for her to walk home, so she’d gone to the feed store. The Parrish family who owned it had always been kind to Rachel when she’d shopped there with her dad. They passed her sweets and told her jokes. That day, she walked into the feed store, and Mr. Parrish believed her lie that her mom had driven off and forgotten her, probably because everybody in Catcher Creek knew what Bethany Sorentino was like. Mr. Parrish gave her a peppermint and a horseshoe that had been laying on the counter, explaining that it would bring her luck. Then he drove her home, where, horseshoe in hand, she set off on foot over the fields and pastures until she was hopelessly lost.

  Hours later, her father, on his horse, found her sitting against a boulder. He sat with her for a long time, and when she asked if she could start working the farm with him in the mornings and after school, he hugged her and told her, Of course you can, Jelly Bean.

  She missed her dad so much. Not the part of him who gambled and schemed their bank accounts dry, but the man who’d taught her to be a farmer. The man who found her when she was lost. This was her second spring without him, and though the loss wasn’t nearly as acute as it had been a year earlier, her grief remained, tempered only by the anger and embarrassment she felt at how blind she’d been to his faults.

  A mile into the ride, when she sensed Growly had warmed up enoug
h to handle some speed, she nudged his flanks. They took off over the landscape, both woman and horse needing the exertion of a long, hard run to ease the burden of their grief.

  * * *

  From his vantage point at the top of the mesa, Vaughn looked at the gash in the dirt running along the twenty-foot drop of the mesa’s face. The path Wallace Meyer Jr. took on his way to the valley. Stratis was on the scene with him, and the two had worked all morning to reconstruct a timeline of events from the previous day.

  They’d begun in the canyon and followed the path of footprints around the south side of the mesa, where the slope was gentle enough to drive a truck up or walk. The footprints turned to scuffs once they reached the top of the slope, the marks of someone scooting on their knees. The scuff marks ended next to the imprint of a truck tire where, it seemed, Rachel stood and fired at the men. On the ground, scattered near the footprints, were six .38 bullet casings.

  Not a good find. Not at all.

  Which was why Vaughn was standing on the edge of the mesa, watching a hawk circle in the distance while he overcame his urge to kick something.

  His interview with Wallace Jr. yesterday had lasted hours and yielded nothing except a grudging admittance—a demonstration of cooperation, his lawyer proclaimed—of the identity of the fourth man at the scene, the suspect currently at large with Elias Baltierra. Shawn Henigin. Henigin had a history of petty thievery and drug charges from Tucumcari to Santa Fe, the most recent arrest being a year earlier for possession of a stolen car. The charge hadn’t stuck, as the car owner had a sudden change of heart and decided he’d allowed Henigin to borrow it.

  Kirby and Molina were equally unsuccessful tracking down Henigin and Baltierra. At the county line to the south, they found a truck matching the one in Rachel’s photographs as far as they could tell. Hard to determine exactly, given that it’d been torched to a crumbling shell. Four AR-15 rifles, also torched, were discovered in the backseat. That accounted for all the rifles in Rachel’s crime scene photographs, but it certainly didn’t mean Vaughn was going to amend the statewide APB out on the two suspects identifying them as armed and dangerous.