A Taste of Blood and Ashes

by Jaden Terrell

  Mace’s voice trailed off. “I play that moment over and over in my mind. Why was my finger on the trigger? Did I swing the barrel toward him as I went down?” His cheeks were wet, but he didn’t bother to wipe the tears. “Do you want me to tell you I wanted him dead? That I had some crazy impulse when I started to fall and realized he was standing right in front of me? That for just a moment, just that wrong moment, I hated him?”

  “Did you?” I said.

  He leaned back against the cooler, his arms outstretched like Christ on the cross. The unopened beer can rolled from his open palm. “I’d tell you if I could,” he said. “I really would. Because I wish to God I knew.”

  33.

  Billy was waiting by the fire when I got back. He’d laid out my air mattress and sleeping bag and given the horses their evening meal. I thanked him and said, “How’s Khanh?”

  “Wrung out. She wanted to wait up for you, but I promised to wake her up if you got yourself killed, and she finally went on to bed. You want a beer?”

  “I think I had enough.”

  I brought him up to speed, and he said, “How come all the good stuff happens when I’m somewhere else?”

  “It’s your imposing demeanor. Scares all the bad guys into good behavior.”

  “Right.”

  “How are you on sleep?”

  “I’m good. You want me to keep an eye on the Underwoods?”

  Knowing what I did about Gerardo, I thought they were probably safe enough tonight. “Nah. Take a break. You want to grab a room at one of those bed-and-breakfasts and meet me back here sometime tomorrow?”

  He grunted. “Rest and relaxation in a beautiful pastoral setting. What are you tryin’ to do? Kill me?”

  Saturday Morning

  Khanh must have been exhausted, because she was still asleep when I woke up the next morning. I took two more Tylenols and did my requisite deep breathing, found it marginally more comfortable than being ripped open by shrapnel. I’d just finished feeding and watering the horses when a soft footfall scraped the ground behind me, and Rhonda Lister said, “I thought I’d come by and see if you needed some help.”

  She’d clipped her hair back on the sides and let the curls fall down her back. Her tight jeans had sequins on the pockets, and her powder-blue shirt was knotted beneath her breasts. She looked young and wholesome, like a woman on a cereal box.

  I said, “I’m just about done here, but I’m about to take the boys for a walk. They could use the exercise. Want to come along?”

  “Sure. I could use some too.” She patted her stomach, moved in close enough for me to smell her perfume, some rich blend of spices and exotic flowers that fogged my brain and weakened my knees.

  She looked just fine to me, but I didn’t say so. Instead I got two halters and two lead ropes from the tack compartment, gave her Crockett’s red ensemble and kept Tex’s turquoise. It was early, but the sun was already bright, the sky a brilliant blue.

  “I stopped by last night,” she said. “You must have been out late.”

  “I took Zane down to Jake’s. We had a couple beers.”

  “That was nice of you,” she said. “I think his world has gotten very small in the last year.”

  “It wasn’t altruism,” I said. “We were talking about the case.”

  “Did you learn anything new?”

  I told her about Zane’s revelation and Owen’s belt buckle. Watched her face for a reaction and thought I saw a flash of alarm quickly supplanted by a mix of sympathy and mild surprise. I wasn’t worried that she’d spread the news. Hap or the Underwoods were just as likely to beat her to it. And maybe that was a good thing. Let whoever was behind the arson feel the net closing in.

  “Poor Zane,” she said. “And poor Owen. Do you think Junior killed him to protect his father?”

  “Junior or someone he told about it.”

  “It doesn’t change much, does it? It could still be almost anybody.”

  She was wrong, though I didn’t say so. It changed everything. Because what were the odds that, on the very night he’d learned about Tom Cole’s murder, on the very night the man who’d told him had been killed, Zane would end up bleeding on a stall floor with a broken back and a fractured skull?

  The horses plodded at our sides as we wound between the trailers and out onto a grassy field behind the showground. It had been recently mowed but not raked, little mounds of clippings brown and drying in the sun.

  She ran a hand down Crockett’s neck. “Can I ride him?”

  Maybe she was giving me a gracious out, maybe the open field had simply brought the thought to mind. Go with the flow, I thought, and said, “Depends. How good are you?”

  “Good enough.”

  “Go ahead then.”

  She laughed, twisted a hank of mane around her fist, and in one fluid move, swung onto Crockett’s back. Settling into the curve of his spine, she wrapped her legs around his sides.

  I said, “You’re a ringer. I thought you said you weren’t a horseman.”

  “I said I’d rather drive a Ferrari. That doesn’t mean I don’t know how to ride. I learned right after Jim and I got married. Your horse, he neck reins?”

  “If you want him to. But leg pressure’s all he needs.”

  She urged him forward, then pushed him into a running walk and circled him around the field. His gait was smooth, his front legs arcing up and over like a water wheel. Her curls bounced softly between her shoulder blades.

  I watched them circle once, twice, take a lazy serpentine. Then she pulled him to a stop in front of me, sitting deep with her hip bones and tugging gently on the lead rope. Her cheeks were flushed, her smile broad as she leaned forward and brought her far leg over his hips to dismount.

  She landed lightly on the balls of her feet. Laughed again. “He’s lovely.”

  “Better than a Ferrari?”

  “I wouldn’t go that far. Give me the smell of gasoline over the smell of horses any day.”

  “You’re a madwoman,” I said. “Not that I’d turn down a Ferrari, if somebody’s handing them out.”

  We walked back toward the campground, a lightness between us that I knew couldn’t last. I let the horses loose in the corral, and when I’d hooked the panel back in place, I realized Rhonda was kneeling by the fire pit, stirring up the flames. Another chunk of firewood and a small pile of twigs lay on the ground beside her knees. The air grew sweet with the smell of burning walnut.

  She glanced up as I came to join her. Turned back to the fire as I sank into one of the director’s chairs. She gave the wood another prod and watched the flames leap and the embers swirl. Her expression was rapt, almost covetous.

  I watched her stare into the flames and finally said, “Tell me about the fire.”

  She blinked as if reeling herself back from a faraway place. The fire crackled and danced and she tore her gaze away from it and clasped her hands in her lap. “What about it?”

  “You tell me.”

  She licked her lips and looked away. After a long moment, she said, “You know how you said you were looking to buy a horse? And I called you a liar?”

  “And I told you—”

  She held up a hand. “I lied to you too.”

  Not what I’d expected. “Oh? What did you lie about?”

  She gave the firewood a fierce jab. “We talked about my father. I don’t know why I told you about it. Maybe because you asked. Most people don’t.”

  The weight in her voice said she was leading to some deep and private place, a place she’d kept locked down tight for a long time. An anxious flutter settled in my stomach, a fear of saying the wrong thing, of being trusted and found wanting. “And?”

  “I told you he was dead before the flames reached him.”

  “That wasn’t true?”

  Her hands fisted on her thighs. “I watched all his races, every one I could talk my mother into taking me to. I was in the stands that day. The car spun around and around, and parts were fl
ying, and gas was spewing, and then it crashed into the wall and . . . I don’t know. I guess the impact, something sparked.”

  “And it went up.”

  “It went up.” She fed a smaller stick into the fire, watched the bark glow red, then gray to ash. “It went up like a torch.”

  She was aware of people screaming. She could see their mouths move, like characters in a silent movie, but all she could hear were the squeal of tires and the clash of metal. Her mother’s fingers dug into her upper arm. Then there was a whoosh of flame, and a high thin wail she knew must be her father’s.

  The windows filled with flames. Space compressed, and the crowd fell away, then the track, then the car itself, until all she could see was the square of glass and the terrible, beautiful flicker of fire.

  Her eyes had welled, but she’d held them open wide and unblinking. As if by watching hard enough, she could will the door to open and her father to stumble out. He would be bruised, maybe even burned, but okay.

  Then she saw it. A hand, his hand emerging from the flames, fingers spread wide, pounding on the glass.

  “They said he died on impact,” she said. “That he didn’t feel a thing. Why would they say that?”

  “Probably to give you comfort.”

  “It didn’t comfort me,” she said. “It just made me not trust anything they said.”

  “And you’re still carrying it, aren’t you? You never left that night behind.”

  “What do you want me to say? That I can’t get it out of my mind? Well, I can’t. That I go to fire-walking retreats and keep a lighter in my purse? Well, I do. A fire is like a tiger in a cage. You can’t deny the beauty or the power. You can’t tame it, but you can use it. You can keep it under control.”

  “Can you?”

  “I didn’t set that fire at Zane and Carlin Underwood’s. I know that’s what you’re asking, and the answer is still no.”

  “Is that what I was asking? It wasn’t meant to be an accusation.”

  She pushed herself up, dusted her hands on her jeans. Gently, she placed a hand on either side of my face and said, “Oh you silly, beautiful man. Of course it was.”

  She pressed her lips gently to mine, flicked her tongue between my teeth, then walked away, leaving me with an ache in my groin and the taste of her mouth on my tongue.

  34.

  While I waited for Khanh to wake up, I got my laptop from the tack room and did a quick background check on Lori Mae Tillman, the woman who had claimed to be drinking with Tom Cole on the night he died. She was deceased, dead almost two years from causes the obituary listed simply as natural. She was survived by three children, the oldest one a daughter, Sharon. I looked up her married name and tapped her into my database. Two small children, bachelor’s in accounting, reasonable credit, no police record.

  It was early, but a quick look at her Facebook page showed she was online. The wonders of modern technology. I dialed her number, and the phone’s default voice mail directed me to leave a brief message. I did, and she called me right back. She had a pleasant voice, warm and open, even when I told her who I was and what I needed.

  “I’m investigating an arson out near Hidden Hollow,” I said. “Something’s come up that ties this case to a man your mother knew some forty years ago.”

  “Tommy Cole,” she said at once. “She talked about it some, there at the end.”

  “What did she say?”

  “She wasn’t exactly in her right mind by then, mostly lucid, but not always. She was ashamed of what she’d done. Said that, by all accounts, he was a decent man and she’d tarnished his memory. She felt bad for his wife, thinking he was with another woman.”

  “She never tried to make it right?”

  She hesitated. Then the words came out in a rush, as if she was afraid that if she stopped to take a breath, I’d hang up. “I don’t want you to think badly of her. She was kind and funny, and she’d give you the shirt right off her back, but Daddy left when I was three, and she was a single mom with no marketable skills and not much education. She waited tables thirty-five years and barely made enough to put clothes on our backs and food in our stomachs. What those men paid her was enough to get us by and send us all to college.”

  “And if she went back on her word, they’d take it back?”

  “I think she was afraid they would. Or worse.”

  “She never wondered why someone would pay that kind of money to discredit a dead man?”

  “I don’t think she wanted to think about it. It frightened her.”

  “Do you know who paid her?” Silence on the other end. I said, “Sharon, it’s important.”

  “It was forty years ago. Why does it suddenly matter now?”

  “I think you know why it matters. If Cole was with your mother, then he wasn’t with the men who paid her. They were establishing an alibi.”

  I ran down the high points, and when I finished, she was quiet for a long time. I counted my breaths in and out, comparing levels of pain with varying breaths, trying not to fidget.

  At last, she said, “She never told me who they were, just some men she met at the diner. Customers, you know. But she never threw anything away. We still haven’t had time to go through all her things, just put them in the shed. There might be something there. A bankbook, a copy of the bank statement for that month. Something.”

  “I’ll send someone by tomorrow. She can help you look.” I didn’t ask because I didn’t want her to say no.

  “We go to early service, but we won’t be home from church till after ten.”

  “She’ll be there at ten thirty,” I said, then remembered that my truck was on its way to Silverado heaven and added, “She and her driver.”

  I hung up just as Khanh came out of the trailer, moving stiffly, a cup of coffee in her hand and another tucked between her forearm and her stomach. She handed me one of them.

  “How do you feel?” I asked. The bruise on the side of her face looked swollen and had darkened to a purplish blue.

  “Okay, but not so pretty. No more fashion model for me.” She smiled. “You got pretty nice black eye too.”

  “You need to ice that,” I said. “Make the swelling go down.”

  “Hot shower too,” she said. “All my muscle sore. What we do today, boss man?”

  I filled her in on what we’d learned last night and said, “I’m going to talk to Doc, see what he has to say. Then see if I can find the sheriff, give the buckle to him.”

  “Sheriff not be happy,” she said.

  “That I found it, or that I didn’t give it to him last night?”

  “Maybe both,” she said. “Maybe he not wanting it found.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “But I can only think of one reason for that.”

  She nodded. “Same reason he not like it when you find Owen Bodeen bone. He know who set that fire, and it somebody he know.”

  “Somebody he wants to protect.” It made sense. The man was no fool, but the cursory investigation of the arson scene was too sloppy for a man who’d studied murder trophies and cooling-off periods. But was he protecting himself or someone else? Whichever it was, it was eating him alive.

  “Let’s see what Doc has to say,” I said. “Then we’ll worry about the sheriff. You want to come?”

  She shook her head. “You go talk to Doc. I finish you skip trace.”

  I found Doc in the inspection area, examining the pasterns of a pretty chestnut mare. I stood three feet away and put my hands in my pockets. “Doc, I need to talk to you.”

  The rider whose horse he’d been checking gave me a sour look. Seven more riders waited in line, and none of them looked happy either.

  Doc didn’t look up. “Kind of busy here.”

  “It’s important.”

  He glanced up then. “Is Zane all right?”

  “Far as I know.”

  He let out a breath. “I’ll catch you when I finish here.”

  “It’s about Owen Bodeen.”

 
He stiffened, then ran his hands lightly down the horse’s legs. “All right. Give me a minute.” He straightened and set the thermography camera aside, then pressed his fists into the small of his back and made a quick apology to the riders in line. He looked back at me and jerked his head toward the clinic, a gesture I interpreted as an invitation to follow him.

  He closed the door behind us and said, “I haven’t seen Owen in more than a year. By all accounts, he left town the night of Zane’s accident.”

  “Why do you think that was?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Owen told Zane he’d seen you and Sam Trehorne kill a man.”

  “He . . . what?” His confusion looked genuine. “When?”

  “Last year, the night before Zane’s accident. He said he was with you when you did it. Thomas Cole, wasn’t it? You knew him back in the day.”

  “I knew him. He was a good reporter, which meant he was an annoying man.”

  “Annoying enough to kill?”

  “Nobody murdered Tommy Cole,” he said. “And if you’ve looked into this thing at all, you know Samuel and I were at my house all evening. There were witnesses.”

  “Your wife and Trehorne’s wife.”

  “Plus Dalt and Eleanor Underwood and the Listers.”

  “A cozy little group.”

  He sighed and spread his hands. “You got this idea from Zane, I guess. But you have to remember, brain trauma can play tricks on the memory, and those seizures only make it worse.”

  “I did get it from Zane. But I think the fact that someone tried to smother him with a pillow Thursday night gives some credence to his story.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “You have a point.”

  “And then there’s Lori Mae Tillman. Someone paid her to say she was with Tom Cole that night.”

  He cocked his head, gave me an appraising look.

  “I know she’s dead,” I said. “I guess you know it too. Must have been a relief to learn she’d passed away. But she carried that guilt a long time. That’s the kind of thing that, when the end is getting close, people tend to want to shed.”

  “You’re saying she lied about being with Tommy. And you’re saying she told someone.”