by Anna Jeffrey
“Oh, my God,” Shannon said. “So what happened?”
“Nothing much, except that everybody in town is still gossiping about it. That and the fact that Pic sometimes stays at my house for days at a time keeps the gossip lines humming. I have no secrets left.”
“That’s really something. And here I was trying to convince Drake he should make up with his mother. How upset was Pic?”
“We had a few brittle moments, but I never did tell him the whole story. He didn’t pressure me, so I’m still not sure how much of it he knows.”
“He’s perfect? No skeletons in his closet?”
“I know it’s hard to believe, but Pic doesn’t have a lot in his life that he has to hide. With him, what you see if what you get. Mostly, he was upset because I didn’t trust him enough to tell him. I just couldn’t tell him. He and I are really close, but I was so embarrassed. Plain and simple, I didn’t know what to say.
“Probably fifty percent of the people who’ve heard this story still don’t believe that I knew nothing about what Sam was up to. But you want to know the one person who has never judged me and who has probably read the whole report Betty came up with?”
“Who?”
“Pic’s dad. I’ll always love him for that. Everybody talks about what a libertine he is, but deep down, he’s a good man. I know he drinks like a fish and he cheated on Betty for years before she left the ranch. No one really knows why. He seems to love her.”
Shannon shook her head. “Learning about this family is so strange. I don’t know if you know, but I haven’t been married before. My own family and I don’t see much of each other. All of these family dynamics while people are still living together are new to me.”
“I know what you mean. The brawling Lockharts were new to me, too. My mom and dad were Ward and June and my life until I got grown was like Leave it to Beaver. The Lockhart family fights used to scare me. If you look around this place, there’s a gun of some kind in every corner and Bill Junior has that big case full of hunting knives that look like they could dismember a grizzly bear. I used to wonder if they would all get into a shoot-out or a knife fight. But over time, I learned to not get too concerned. Most of the time, all it amounts to is words. They never did anything to me. That is, until Betty.….And God knows what she’ll think of next.”
“I know Drake loves his family,” Shannon said. “He speaks about them only with affection. I believe he loves his mother, but he doesn’t know how to contend with her.”
“That’s true of all of them. They all love each other, but they all have strong personalities and opinions. When they’re all together in the same room, it’s sort of like being in a room full of lightning strikes.”
Shannon laughed. “Sounds like you know them pretty well.”
“I do now,” Amanda said and couldn’t keep from smiling, suddenly realizing she, too, loved all of them and their quirks. “Even evil Betty must have been a good mother. She raised all of her kids to be decent people when her heart must have been breaking over all that went on between her and Bill Junior. And she was good to her parents though they don’t have anything to do with her. They retired from menial jobs with little to show for their lifetime of toil. Betty and Bill Junior have been very generous with them.”
She glanced at the clock on the mantle. 4:00 p.m. “Listen, are you feeling okay now?”
“I’m fine. Thank you for sitting with me and helping me pass the time.”
“They should all be returning pretty soon. In the past, this picnic has ended around six. I’d like to leave before they get back.”
“Are you and Pic not getting along?”
“Um, we have some issues. I’m not ready to confront them yet.”
“By all means, if you feel you need to go, I’ll be fine. I might wander back over to the food table and visit with the housekeeper.”
“That will be interesting for you. Johnnie Sue’s a character out of a book. She hasn’t been here long, but if she likes you, she’s a treasure trove of information.”
Chapter 26
The next evening after a grinding day, Pic slouched in a folding aluminum chair, staring into the night sky dotted by a billion stars, his eyes looking for constellations while his brain tried to make sense of all going on around him. He thought of himself as an easy-going guy, but Shit! The last five days were enough to make his head explode.
Crickets chirred from all directions. A a night bird’s call drifted across the prairie. Horses snuffled from the portable corral the hands had built—all sounds he usually found pleasant and relaxing. Tonight, he hardly heard them.
After returning from the old homeplace last night, a meeting with Blake, the sheriff and the security team had taken place. What they’d had to say had been sobering. The Lockhart clan could no longer brush off the idea of someone seeking revenge against them. What the hell was up with someone wanting to seriously harm him and/or his family? This was ridiculous and confusing and after yesterday, a little scary.
By this morning, security had been beefed up on every family member, a development that had brought on a mixture of annoyance and concern. While each family member had additional people sticking close with them, Troy had apparently slipped his security team altogether. And he wasn’t answering his cell. Where the hell was he?
The last person he knew of who had known his whereabouts was Johnnie Sue when she had seen him leave the picnic with Zochi yesterday. Were he and Zochi together somewhere? No one seemed to know if she had come back to the picnic, then left the ranch with her parents and Mom. Troy’s security team had wanted to report his absence to Blake Rafferty, but Dad had persuaded them to wait a few hours. Troy never failed to get home in time to take care of his horses himself or arrange for someone else to do it.
Pic had called him last night, but got only his voice mail. Another thing to worry about. It seemed as if he had been worrying about where Troy was and what he was doing since the little fart first moved to the ranch when Pic was thirteen.
Last, but not least in his mind was Mandy. She was leaving him? For a new job four hundred miles away? Was this because she thought something had happened between him and Zochi? Or was something else at play? It made no sense. They had been a unit for more than two years. Just five days ago she was talking about having his babies.
What would he do without her? No other woman had ever filled the blank spaces in his life like she did. He couldn’t let her leave. He needed to be in town resolving whatever issues existed between them, but he also needed to be here overseeing the round-up. A trip to town and back would take most of a day. And if something happened here that needed his attention and he wasn’t present, he would be letting the ranch and the family down, something he would never do.
He was sweating. His clothing had been stuck to him all day. The sun had set, but the temperature still felt as if it were in the nineties. “I’ll be glad to see summer end,” Pic said to Marcus who sat beside him. The guy had been at his elbow all day. He had surprised Pic by being able to ride a horse.
“Hah,” Marcus said. “Man, this is a cool day. I’ve seen it over a hundred degrees at midnight.”
Pic knew Marcus had served in Iraq, though he didn’t know exactly what he had done. He also know that Marcus wouldn’t discuss it.
They had just finished a supper of chicken-fried steak, cream gravy, fried potatoes and homemade biscuits. “When’s the last time you ate a good meal off a chuck wagon?” Pic asked him.
“This is a first for me. I didn’t know you guys had cooks other than your housekeeper.”
“We don’t. Eddie’s a ranch hand, but it so happens that he can cook. The two guys helping him are hands, too, but both of them know how to put together a good meal. Cowboys work hard. They need to eat good.”
Marcus nodded. “You guys do this every year, eh?”
“Yep. Been doing it since I was a little kid. I must’ve been around twelve when I first came out on round-up with Dad.”
<
br /> Marcus shifted in his chair. “Saddle sore, huh?” Pic said, grinning. Being in top physical shape didn’t save a man from the aches and pains that came from being horseback for most of the day.
“You could say that. I was a kid the last time I rode a horse.” Marcus chuckled.
Pic laughed with him. He liked Marcus, thought he was a good guy. A bond was growing between them. “I thought you were from New Jersey. Where did you learn to ride a horse?”
“There was a riding club not far from where I grew up. Texas isn’t the only place that has horses, you know.”
Pic laughed. “Maybe. But Texas is the place that has the best horses.”
“So what comes of all this?” Marcus asked, making a sweep with his arm.
“This is part of the fall sale. Tomorrow we start out sorting the culls. Getting rid of aging and barren cows, bulls we can no longer use, but are too old to sell to another ranch. And animals in general that we think wouldn’t make it through the winter for this reason or that.”
“You sell sick cattle?” Marcus asked, concern sounding in his tone.
“Not to the beef market.”
“Who decides which ones are to be sold?”
“The ranch manager. We call him the wagon boss.”
“Not the foreman?”
“The ranch manager just looks after the cattle. The foreman looks after everything, including the hands.”
“What’s your job?”
“Money. The ranch has a lot of money riding on everything running smooth. We don’t want to accidentally get rid of good stock. The sorting is a fast-moving process. Shit happens. Circumstances can change with the snap of a finger. That’s when I step in and decide what happens next.”
Marcus nodded, but asked no more questions. They sat in silence for several beats. Finally, Pic said what had been festering in the back of his mind all day. “You know something, Marcus? I agree with my brother. This is a bunch of bullshit. Hell, I feel like I need to ask if I can take a piss. Whey the fuck don’t y’all find out who’s doing this shit and arrest him or them or whoever?”
“We don’t investigate or arrest. That’s up to the cops. All we do is protect.”
“We’re thirty miles from civilization. Other than myself, who or what do I need to be protected from?”
“You never know. Thirty miles from civilization is a good place for something to happen or someone to get hurt. And there’s no cell phone service. You couldn’t call for help if you had to.”
Pic released a huge sigh, longing for the days when his life was simpler.
“That was something, you going down into that well to get that calf,” Marcus said. “Blake Rafferty told me you had a deep-seated fear of getting your head under water.”
“Yeah, well, sometimes you gotta do what has to be done, even if you don’t like it. I expect you know all about that. Drake told me you were a Navy SEAL.”
Marcus shook his head. “Nah. Marine Recon. The same thing, but different.”
“Tough job, huh?”
“It was a challenge. But like you said, sometimes you gotta do what has to be done.”
“I nearly joined the army once,” Pic said.
“Why didn’t you? The government would’ve been happy to get a man like you.”
“The recruiter down at Stephenville begged me, but things at the ranch changed all of a sudden and sticking with being a cowboy became the better option.”
Pic creaked to his feet, pressed his hands to his sides and stretched. He was worn out. He’d had a total of about six hours of sleep in the last two days. “Daybreak comes early,” he told Marcus. “I’m gonna turn in. How about you?”
“It’s been a long day for me, too. Thought I’d better let you know, I’ll be pulling out in the morning, going back to Dallas for a few days, but someone will replace me before I leave here. We want three people here as long as you’re here.”
Besides Marcus, two more security people had come to cow camp with him. They had parked a small camping trailer not too far from Pic’s. Where they were at the moment, Pic didn’t know. He hadn’t seen them since before supper. “Where are your buddies now?”
“Don’t worry. They’re around. If you use the panic button we gave you, you’ll see them in about thirty seconds.”
“Panic button. Shit.”
“This is serious business, Pic. And we take is serious. What happened at that old house was a violent act. At some point, we and Blake Rafferty and his partner believe the bad guys will go after one of you personally. Maybe it’s already happened once with that hit and run up in Fort Worth.”
Pic couldn’t disagree about the killing of the calf. The carcass had been taken up to Fort Worth for a necropsy even though he suspected Drake’s comment about it being shot being once in the head to be correct. “Did you put extra people with Drake and his wife?”
“Sure did. With her being pregnant, she’s particularly vulnerable. If some asshole goes after her, meeting up with Steve Logan and his partner is something he won’t foget.”
Pic stared at him a few seconds, lost for words, not wanting to ask just how far these guys would go to protect the people they guarded. “And Mandy?”
“Already done. We put a partner with Chris. She’s covered.”
Pic huffed. “That’ll piss her off. She’s already felt like she was in jail. She’s worried about what the kids at school and their parents are gonna think.”
Marcus shrugged. “Chris and Angelo try to stay out of her way, but if she has a problem, they can be there in under a minute. She’s got a panic button, too.”
“How long do you think this is gonna go on?”
“As long as it takes.”
Pic’s life had suddenly become an alternate universe. He couldn’t recall ever fearing another human being for his own safety or that of the people he cared about. Finally, he said, “If the sonofabitch doing something to one of us is what it’s gonna take to get him caught, I hope he does it soon. This is getting clear crazy.”
He opened his trailer door, but before he stepped inside, he turned back to Marcus. Back at the ranch he and his cohorts were staying in one of the ranch’s guesthouses. “Will you be going back to the ranch before you go to Dallas?”
“I’ll be stopping by there,” Marcus said.
Pic dug a small envelope from his shirt pocket. He had tried to call Mandy several times before he left the ranch, but never reached her. Earlier, when they had taken a break for dinner, he had written her a note that somebody had to deliver. Then he had written Kate a note and asked her to do just that. With no cell phone service and him not planning on leaving this location before Tuesday or Wednesday, he didn’t want to go a week without contact of some kind. “See that my sister gets this, okay?”
“Glad to,” Marcus said, taking the note.
****
Amanda stood in the middle of her living room surveying the collection of cardboard boxes she had picked up at the grocery store, some packed, some partially packed, some empty. One more indication that in her mind, she had already accepted the job at Odessa High School.
She hadn’t yet told Eric Frazier she was taking his job offer, but she might as well She hadn’t heard a word from Pic since Wednesday, five days ago. She had no intention ever again of letting herself languish waiting for him. Been there, done that. Thus she had begun sorting items she would dispose of.
True, he had left a couple of messages to call him on her voice mail on Thursday, but back then, she had been too upset to return his calls. Now that she had had time to think and get past her anger, she wished she could talk to him, but he was out of range.
She had cried enough to fill a bucket with tears. She had hardly slept. She couldn’t make herself eat. She felt as if she were moving in slow motion, as if she had dived into the pool with a big rock tied to her ankle. But she was doing better. This morning, she had awakened without tears.
Her doorbell chimed. Grateful for the distraction
, she hurried to the door and looked through the peephole. Kate!
Kate Lockhart had never been to her house. Kate rarely came to Drinkwell for any reason.
Amanda swung the wooden door open and pushed the screen door out. “Kate, come in.”
“Hey.” Kate thrust out a small pot of flowers, forcing Amanda to grab it. “African violets,” Kate said. “I was supposed to bring a bouquet, but the cut flowers looked so pitiful I figured they’d be trash by sundown.”
Pic. Amanda held the pot with a trembling hand. Tears burned her nose and eyes, but she bit them back. “Uh, thanks.”
“They’re not from me. They’re from Pic.”
Amanda found a weak laugh. She didn’t dare speak or she would break down.
Kate walked into the living room and looked around at the multiple boxes. “Moving?...Or what?”
Kate probably didn’t know about the job offer from Odessa High School. “Uh, just, uh, packing some things before school starts.” Amanda wiped away an aberrant tear with a fingertip.
“Hey, it’s okay with me if you want to cry,” Kate said. “He’s a good guy, but he’s a dumb turd. How you put up with him, I don’t know.”
She dug in a leather hobo bag the size of a suitcase. “He told me to give you this.” She handed over a small envelope. “I was supposed to get here with it before the weekend, but I had to be at a horse show. I didn’t have time to detour through Drinkwell. Pic will wring my neck if he finds out I was so late bringing it.”
So Pic had given her the note before Friday? And Kate had been hanging onto it the whole weekend? Amanda suppressed an urge to scream. But she was so happy to hear from Pic, she couldn’t be angry. She took the envelope, but didn’t open it. “Would you like something? I’ve got some Cokes. Or some tea.”
“Can’t,” Kate said. “Will’s waiting for me back at the ranch.” She turned for the door.
Amanda followed her. “Well, uh, thanks for the plant. And the note….And thanks for coming by.”
“Aw, hell, Amanda.” Kate suddenly turned and wrapped her in a big hug smothering her with warmth and Euphoria, Kate’s favorite fragrance. “You’re like part of the family. I don’t know what’s going on between you and that dumb-shit brother of mine, but I want you to get things worked out, okay?”
