by Anna Jeffrey
Amanda had to put it out of her mind or she would go crazy. Her thoughts veered to the library. Located between the living room and the den, it was full of books. She made her way to it.
Pic’s mother had enjoyed reading and had instilled that habit in all of her kids. She had also used the library for spreading out her quilting projects. When Amanda had come here as a teenager, seeing Betty’s quilts in various stages of completion all over the library wasn’t unusual. Now, as far as Amanda knew, Betty hadn’t lifted a needle in years.
Everyone would have been better off if she had stuck to the quilting, an evil voice said inside Amanda’s head.
“True,” Amanda mumbled as she searched titles. Damn Betty. She had chosen Zoshi, knowing Pic’s eye for beautiful women.
Amanda loved books. Teaching literature to high schoolers was almost as much fun as coaching swimming. She chose a ten-year-old novel from the shelf and walked back across the house to Drake’s suite.
She closed the doors, took a seat in the buttery leather recliner and almost felt as if she were being hugged by utter comfort. She switched on a floor lamp beside the left arm of the chair, raised the footrest and opened her book. Before she had finished a page, she dropped off.
****
After a jolting trip at too much speed over the rough pasture, Pic and his group topped a rise and veered to the two-track lane that led to the homeplace. Soon, the pitiable bawls of a cow that had lost her calf came to them long before they reached her or saw the house. They drove upon her wandering and bawling. Pic came to a stop, slammed the gear shift into “park” and stepped out, hoping to be able to see if the cow was injured. She darted into the copse of cedar trees a distance away and continued to bawl.
He looked around for a telling sign of damage or danger, but saw nothing. He wouldn’t be able to get close enough to her to examine her. “She looked okay, what little I saw of her,” he told the group in the truck cab as he climbed back behind the wheel. “Just scared. She might never have ever seen a human being on foot.”
He put the truck in gear and inched toward the house.
“Did you look for her calf anywhere?” Dad asked Andy.
“Nossir, I didn’t want to take the time. The only thing I saw was some blood around the cistern.”
Pic and Drake exchanged looks. Drake leveled a pointed look at Andy. “You think the asshole who did this killed that cow’s calf and put it in the cistern?”
Andy’s throat worked. “I don’t really know, sir.”
“My God,” Dad said from the backseat.
A few minutes later, they arrived in front of the house.
The front section of the wrought-iron fence lay collapsed, as if something had crashed into it. “Truck with a cattle guard on the grill,” Dad mumbled.
The four of them stepped out of the truck.
The lantana plant at the corner had been uprooted and lay in shambles. “Betty will be upset about that,” Dad said. “She liked that plant.”
Pic gave his dad a look across his shoulder. As far as he knew, Mom hadn’t been to this house in more than eight years.
Four great swaths of something white arched across the house’s stone front. Empty paint buckets had been thrown across the yard. Pic picked one up, noted that the paint smeared on the outside of it was almost dry. He read the label. “Shit. It’s oil-base enamel. In this heat, it’s probably already dry. It’s not ever coming off those walls.”
He pulled keys from his pocket. “I’m almost afraid to go inside.”
He didn’t need keys. The padlock on the front door on the living room side had been sawed off and the door stood open. He stepped in ahead of the others. One by one they followed.
The sofa and most of the furniture had been upended. Large slashes across the sofa and chair cushions exposed their linings. Shards of broken dishes were scattered over the floor in the kitchen area, as well as foodstuffs like flour and sugar. Cans of food had been smashed and spilled out over the floor. White paint was splattered randomly over all of it, including the antique wood cookstove. A fire had been attempted in the middle of the room near the dining table and chairs, but evidently, the culprit hadn’t been able to get it started.
“Looks like it’s a good thing everything’s made out of rock,” Andy said.
“All of this took some time,” Pic said. “And maybe more than one person. I left here around one o’clock yesterday. I didn’t see a sign of another rig at any point going out. So whoever did this must’ve showed up after two. They had the whole afternoon to do mischief.”
Drake had remained silent until now. “Goddammit. This is bullshit.”
“I’m gonna check out the other two rooms,” Pic said.
He strode across the breezeway to the bedroom where the door stood open. Inside, he found the mattress slashed, the stuffing dragged out and scattered all over the room. The dresser looked to have been hacked in half with an ax. More white paint had been splattered across the rock walls. The cute little red woodstove was gone, its stovepipe hanging loose. The vandals must have wanted it.
Pic wanted to cry. Besides being important to his family, this place meant something to him personally. And to Mandy. They’d had good times here. He was glad she wouldn’t see this destruction.
When he went to the reading room, he found again where a fire had been attempted, using paperback books for fuel, but again, it hadn’t caught.
They re-grouped in the breezeway, away from the sun’s heat.
“Who the fuck would do something like this?” Drake demanded.
A rhetorical question that, by now, probably had been asked mentally a dozen times. “I don’t know,” Pic answered, “but it’s high time these cops get in gear and get to the bottom of this. They’ve been pussyfooting around long enough.”
“What the hell is taking Gilmore so long to get out here?” Drake growled. “I’m gonna call Blake.” He yanked his phone off his belt and speed-dialed the Texas Ranger’s number.
Drake had little respect for Tom Gilmore, the Treadway County Sheriff. True, the guy wasn’t a great cop, but then he was probably the best Treadway County could dredge up to do the job of sheriff. Pic and his dad had supported him in the last election.
After a short conversation, Drake turned back to the group. “Blake and Jack will be here as soon as they can. He said try not to mess up anything.”
Leave it to Drake to get whips cracking and balls rolling.
“Let’s go take a look at that cistern,” Pic said. “If that calf really is in it, we need to get it out. There’s nothing in there that will dispose of it. We can’t let it contaminate the water any more than it already has.”
They walked from the breezeway around the corner of the house. A wide streak of blood showed on the cistern’s concrete side. On the ground, a wide trail leading from the front yard to the cistern showed, as if something had been dragged. Spots of blood showed on the grass near it. The solemn group stood together staring at the cistern.
“Shit,” Pic stage whispered as all that might be required to remove a large dead animal from the cistern and decontaminate the water scrolled through his mind.
“They must have shot it,” Drake said. “There’s not enough blood for them to have killed it any other way.”
“If it was a spring calf, it would weigh around five hundred, maybe five-fifty by now,” Pic said.
“I don’t know any way to get it out but to go down there,” Dad said.
“How deep is the water?” Pic asked.
“Four, maybe five feet last I knew.”
Pic and Drake looked at each other. They were both thinking the same thing. The question was, who was more afraid of water—Pic or his brother?
“Well, is it four or five?” Drake snapped. “When you’re talking about water, there’s a big difference between those two numbers.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Dad said. “That calf won’t be floating. If you want to get it out, you’ll still have to go
under the water and tie on to it.”
Pic swallowed hard and stole another look at Drake.
“I’ll go down there,” Andy said.
“Just hold it,” Drake said in his firmest no-nonsense tone. “Why the fuck does anybody have to go down there? What we do is get some equipment in here, tear this concrete top off and fill that fuckin’ hole with dirt. Carcass covered. Problem solved.”
Dad stared wide-eyed at Drake. “We can’t do that, Son. It’s water for the house.”
“Dad,” Drake argued. “Why does the house need water? Who comes here anymore?”
A few seconds of silence passed. “It was sure nice being able to stop off here for a cool drink on a hot day,” Andy put in meekly.
Drake’s suggestion was the easiest thing. But Pic couldn’t bear to do it and Dad would never agree to it. He swallowed again. “I’ll go down there. I’m the tallest.”
“Son—”
“Dad. I know. I’ll still have to go under the water. It can’t be that big a deal to get that calf out of four feet of water. You and Andy go back to the ranch. You drive one of the trucks with a wench back out here. Get Troy to bring out a trailer and a couple of horses because we’re gonna have to catch that cow before we leave here. We might as well haul her back to the holding pens and try to match her up with one of those dogies we’ve been feeding.”
He turned to Andy. “Andy, you stay at the picnic and take the rest of the day off.”
“I don’t mind helping out, Pic.”
“This is supposed to be a holiday for you. You stay there with your family. Eat a steak and enjoy the music.”
With Dad on his heels, Pic walked back to his truck and pulled on the work gloves he kept in the jockey box. With Andy’s help, he dragged his small box of tools, several coils of rope and links of chain from the toolbox behind the cab. He didn’t know exactly what he was going to do with all of that, but he wanted it handy.
“You’re sure you want to do this,” Dad said.
What Pic was sure of was that he didn’t want to do it. “I’m sure.”
Without another word, Dad climbed into the truck and drove away with Andy.
Pic hooked a couple of coils of rope over his shoulder and returned to where Drake was still staring at the cistern as if he could will the calf to rise out of it.
“You’re determined to do this,” Drake said.
“Yep.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to, dammit. This place means a lot to Dad. He and Mom have worked hard to preserve it like Grandpa thought it originally was. And it originally had a cistern. If that number written in the concrete can be believed, it’s been here more than a hundred years. And you know as well as I do that for all of our lives, it always had good drinking water.”
Standing there, his fists jammed against his hips, Drake’s squint-eyed gaze came at him. “There’s no sense in being so damn hardheaded about this, Pic. Why take the risk?”
“It’s not a risky thing, Drake. For most people, that is. It’s just a scary thing for me and you. So are you gonna help me or are you gonna stand there and bitch?” He turned away and started looking over the ground for a rock.
“What’re you doing?”
“Looking for a rock,” Pic said. “I want to see how deep the water really is.”
Drake, continuing to grouse and complain, helped him search and soon found a football-sized rock. “I still don’t see the big deal about a fuckin’ cistern. It’s a hole in the ground.”
Pic tied one end of a rope around the rock. “This particular hole had to have been dug by hand. Think about all that hard work.”
He let the rock down into the cistern until it reached bottom, then pulled it back up, carried it around the corner to the breezeway and stretched it out straight on the breezeway’s floor. He stepped off the length of the wet section. “Four feet. Maybe a little more. Just like Dad said.”
He stared at the rope, knowing he would have to go under the four or five feet of water to tie on to the calf. Just like Dad said. Shit.
“When was the last time you had your head underwater?” Drake asked.
Big brother had always been able to read minds. Jaw tightly clamped, Pic drew a breath through his nose. “Earlier today, when I took a shower.”
“You know what I mean,” Drake said.
“Will you just cool it? Has married life turned you into a pussy? Soon as Dad and Troy get back here with the wench truck, I’m gonna ride that cable down there and get that calf. End of story.”
Drake reset his hat and walked around the corner of the house. He was worried, more scared than he would ever admit. Pic was scared himself. Until his dying day, the image of Johnny Mize being carried away by racing muddy water would never leave him. Still, he had never imagined Drake being afraid of anything.
He shoved those thoughts aside. Today was no time to be calling back that long ago nightmare. He checked his watch. Dad should be back any minute. He walked around the corner of the house, following Drake’s path, saw him staring at the front of the house. “When were you here last?” he asked him.
“It’s been years,” Drake answered. “I was planning on bringing Shannon down some weekend after the weather cools off. I had this idea we might even spend the night here.”
“Mandy and I spent a lot of time here. She’d be sick if she saw this.”
“You and Mandy spent time here?”
“Not lately. But we came here lots of times when we first got back together.”
“She wasn’t all that friendly back at the ranch house. She pissed off at something?”
Her words came to him again…..I got a job offer from a bigger school. And I’m taking it. I’m leaving you and I’m leaving this town….I told you I’m done with all this and I meant it…. “Me. But I haven’t figured it out yet.”
Drake nodded knowingly. “I wonder if Dad will want to refurnish this place,” he said.
“What’s the point?” Pic said. “Mom was the one who wanted it furnished. Don’t you remember? When she first decided to do it, Dad thought it was a dumb idea. We oughtta empty it out and just continue to work at keeping it from falling down. That’s enough preservation for the sake of history.”
Drake looked around. “I’d forgotten how many birds are out here.”
Pic noticed the cacophony of bird sounds for the first time. “They’re noisy all right. Wish they could talk.”
Just then, they heard the grind of engines and waited for Dad and Troy to arrive. Who arrived instead were Dad, pulling a cattle trailer behind the wench truck, and Kate, pulling a horse trailer holding two saddled ranch horses.
Dad stepped down from the truck. “We’ll need this trailer to haul that cow.”
“Where’s Troy?” Drake asked him.
“Dunno. He wasn’t around where I could spot him, so I didn’t try to find him.”
Pic’s memory spun backward to his question to Johnnie Sue.…As for Troy, he and that Zoshi came out of the guesthouse and they left in her car.….
A dark ugly question mark formed inside Pic’s head. Did Troy know something about what had happened here? Was that why he had taken off with Zochi? Leaving the scene, so-to-speak? A shiver passed over Pic’s shoulders as he recognized for the first time that in the far reaches of his mind, Troy’s name being added to the persons-of-interest list had been the seed from which a distrust of his little brother had been growing.
“I sent your mother and her guests home,” Dad said. “Told them to take their daughter with them. We sure as hell don’t need company right now.”
Dad to the rescue. He usually came through when something was important. Pic deliberately didn’t mention or ask about Troy leaving the picnic with Zochi.
Accompanying Kate was her protector, wearing mirrored sunglasses, a polo shirt showing his company’s log and a sidearm. “Who’s watching your horses?” Pic asked.
“Will.”
“Naturally,” Pic replied.
“He’s the one you oughtta take up with. He’s the one you should go to the mountains with.”
She gasped. “Do I try to tell you who you should take up with?”
“You two shut up,” Drake growled. Pic hadn’t seen him in such a bad mood in years.
Kate had come to work. She wore chinks, old boots and spurs and her huge retro cowgirl hat. And gloves. A bright red scarf was tied loosely around her neck. Always the fashion queen. But her appearance belied her capabilities. Not only could she sit a horse, she could handle a rope and knew what cowboying meant.
“Where’s that cow?” she asked, hooking a lariat over her saddle horn. She stuck her boot in a stirrup.
“In that cedar brakes a little ways up the hill,” Pic said, watching her swing her agile body into the saddle. “We spooked her a little. I’m sure the scent of fresh blood kept her back from the house. That’s pretty dense growth. I don’t think you can get her out by yourself.”
“Dad’s going to help me. And we might even put Ryan here to work.” She laughed and gave her bodyguard a wink. “He’s never been around cowboying. The closest he’s ever been to a cow is when a big T-bone covers his plate.”
Pic rolled his eyes. This was no time for her smart mouth. He was about to face the devil in four feet of water.
Chapter 25
The next sound Amanda heard was, “Hi.”
The spoken word startled her awake. She opened her eyes to see Shannon’s head poking through a wide crack in the wall of folding doors.
“Oh, hi.” Amanda laid her book on the side table and creaked to her feet. “Some babysitter I am.” She laughed, attempting to straighten her hair. She still hadn’t gotten used to the lack of it.
“Babysitting?”
“I’m staying with you while the guys go down to the old homeplace. One of the hands said someone vandalized it.”
Shannon’s brow furrowed. “Oh, no.”
“It’s a shame if someone has seriously damaged it.”
“What would a person have to do to get a drink of water?” Shannon asked, stepping into the sitting room. “I looked for a glass in the bathroom, but—”
