Larger Than Life

by Alison Kent

  Neva slid the plank next to the duo and latched the tailgate. She did make one last circle around the truck to make sure she wasn't leaving anything, forgetting anything, or missing anything belonging to the man. That done, she climbed behind the wheel and collapsed—but only for the thirty seconds she allowed herself to catch her breath.

  She had no time to stop and smell roses, lilies, or even manure, and so she turned the key in the ignition and put the rig on the road. And then she reached over and turned off the CB radio before it had a chance to crackle to life. Candy was waiting on the supplies and wouldn't be happy with the delay or with Neva being incommunicado.

  But Candy would just have to deal. As long as she'd lived and worked with Neva, as far back as their relationship went, the duality of their backgrounds on which it was based, any upset suffered wouldn't last long, leaving Neva to let that worry go and focus on the one in the here and now.

  Because there was something about the added cargo in the bed of the truck that left her itchy and rubbing the backs of her fingers beneath her chin. If she hadn't already been in a precarious position, looking over her shoulder at every pin she heard drop, finding him wouldn't have caused a blip in the circle of her personal radar.

  And more than likely a simple explanation existed for the condition of her mummy man. Unfortunately, she couldn't come up with anything that worked in context. Had she found him busted all to hell up in a parking garage or behind a club or in a halfway house in Houston where she'd once lived, that would be one thing. This was another.

  He was out of place. One hundred percent out of his element. Staring at the endless road ahead, she thought back to what she had seen. The goatee and mustache that were clipped and shaped, while the rest of his beard was a day's growth waiting to be shaved. The same with his hair; it was just long enough to visibly hint at a dark coffee brown.

  No man in Pit Stop wore GQ-styled facial hair or purposefully shaved his head. And then there was the tattoo. Not a simple Cupid's arrow piercing a heart or the word Mom. No American flag or John Deere logo. This one wore an intricate tribal design, a series of angles and arches, circles and swirls that cupped the base of his skull and his neck.

  He also wore combat boots instead of Lucchese's, camouflage fatigues instead of Wranglers. And the sunglasses caught up with a sport strap around his neck were Oakleys and cost two hundred dollars at least. She could see him in Houston's Montrose. In L.A. or Soho. On a Calvin Klein billboard hawking boxer briefs.

  She reached over, the sweat running down her spine an uncomfortable tickle, and notched up the blower on the AC. The man wrapped like King Tut in the bed of her truck was as indigenous as she was to the counties encompassing U.S. Highway 62 between New Mexico and Texas.

  And she couldn't help but wonder if the business that brought him here went as far underground as did hers. Or if he posed a more personal threat and was here to put an end to what she'd been doing the last five years.

  All she knew for sure was that any man hoping to take her down would have to take her out in order to succeed. And wasn't that a comforting thought?

  Two

  Holden Wagner took a seat in the single visitor's chair occupying the office of County Sheriff Yancey Munroe and settled back to wait. Munroe had sworn he wouldn't be but a minute. A minute which meant nothing, as Holden well knew, in the West Texas way of telling time.

  An Ivy League education. An Oxford law degree. And after a rather illustrious career during which he'd made a name defending the religious expression guaranteed by the First Amendment, he'd taken up a new cause—and taken himself off the radar—seven years ago and twenty miles west of the county seat of Pit Stop in a place called Earnestine Township.

  Earnestine Township. A community of four thousand, faith-based and inclusive, where polygamist unions and arranged marriages formed two sides of the same coin funding the residents' religious beliefs. Where libel and slander lawsuits filed against militant nonbelievers were instrumental in funding the city's coffers. Where sales and property taxes funded very little at all since the populace believed in austerity, tithing times three, and the church was tax exempt.

  He shook his head, breathed deeply, pinched the crease in the knee of his Armani suit pants. Armani in the land of denim, dungarees, and what outsiders considered debauchery. His position as the township's attorney wasn't solely about turning away suspicion of child abuse, welfare fraud, and incest, but was also about guaranteeing the freedom of the religion the population so ardently embraced.

  Freedom from naysayers, yes, but from interlopers, too— both in the form of antipolygamist activists, former church members, anxious residents of neighboring communities, and public discontent. To former colleagues, his career move was a long slide down the legal ladder into a murky swill. For Holden, it was a solution, a compromise, a penance— one reminding him who he was. And who he wasn't. What he was. And what he wasn't.

  But most of all, what he had—and hadn't—done. And the only thing he could do now.

  Sitting in an industrial office, staring at certificates mounted in black document frames, at windows treated with Venetian blinds, at a wood grain rubber waste can overflowing with stained Styrofoam coffee cups, did not reflect on his worth or his abilities. Neither did the fact that he upheld the rights of middle-aged men to take young girls to wife reflect on his proclivities or his moral beliefs.

  It did, however, reflect on the resolve and intent that had driven him since the age of eighteen when he'd watched his parents die for their zeal as much as their sins. Coming here today represented a sacrifice allowing him to continue his practice, his success, and most importantly, his life. With all he'd endured, all he'd forfeited, he would not go quietly into any good night.

  "Sorry for the delay, Wagner." The sheriff entered the room and closed the door. Holden heard it latch, heard the thud of boots on the speckled linoleum as Munroe rounded the metal desk freshly painted a color more toast than taupe. "Had a bit of an emergency out at the Bremmer place over by Earnestine. Seems Radford's son, Jase—you might know him? He plays football. Halfback? At Earnestine High?— he's been gone for a week and the old man just snapped to the fact. Thought the boy was staying with friends."

  Fighting a choking sensation made Holden doubly glad he'd decided to forgo wearing a tie. "Not a problem, Sheriff."

  "Good. Now, what can I do you for?" Yancey Munroe was a tall man of Scandinavian descent, lean but for a stomach that spoke of his love of beer. He was equally fond of his gun.

  Holden uncrossed and recrossed his legs, used the delay to regain his composure. "Actually, the Bremmer boy may be tied to the disappearance of my client's daughter, Liberty Mitchell. I understand from talking to her classmates that the two were dating."

  After a moment, Munroe sat, his expensive ergonomic chair at odds with the rest of the room's furnishings. "You're here about a missing girl, then."

  The obvious. So eloquently and redundantly stated. Hands laced in his lap, Holden met the other man's gaze squarely and refused to release it. "Yes. Liberty Mitchell. A student at Earnestine High reported to have been dating Jase Bremmer."

  The sheriff shook his head. "The office hasn't heard a word. Meaning no report has been filed. Is that what you're here to do? On behalf of your client?"

  "The family isn't yet ready to make this official." Holden's shortness of breath returned. But this time it was about closing in, about the thrill of the hunt. "They're quite sure they know where she is."

  "That so?" Munroe sat back, laced his hands behind his head. His khaki uniform was clean and pressed but depress-ingly dull and faded. "I'm guessing then that your being here means they'd rather not go get her themselves."

  "Not when all the evidence points to her being out at the Barn." There. It was out. The reason he was here. The Big Brown Barn and Nevada Case. Holden wasn't sure whether it was the idea of bringing down the woman or her rumored cause that was responsible for the surge in his pulse.

&nbs
p; He saw the lift of the sheriff's brow, the tick in the other man's jaw, knowing his own would have been equally evident had he not worked so long to govern his emotions. One small mannerism gave so much away.

  "I see." Munroe slowly sat forward again. He picked up the pencil he'd left on his desk blotter, held tightly to both ends. "What sort of evidence?"

  Holden waited for the pencil to snap. "With their parents' permission, the school principal held interviews with several of Liberty's classmates. I was allowed to sit in. She was present during discussions about the Barn's website, and about other girls believed to have disappeared with Ms. Case's help."

  "None of that has ever been proven as fact, Wagner," Munroe said, shaking his head. "You know that. Besides, if being present at a discussion is all the evidence you have, you're really stretching. The township's fathers must be getting desperate to put blame for your runaway problem someplace other than where it belongs." He used the pencil to point due west. "On that goddamn travesty you call a church."

  "I'm not here to discuss religion, Sheriff," Holden said. Or here to lose his temper. He was too close to his goal of putting an end to the cancer of the Big Brown Barn. "I'm here about Neva Case's possible involvement in the disappearance of Liberty Mitchell."

  "Neva Case has never been connected to the girls from Earnestine that go missing. The girl who works for her designing jewelry, that Candy Roman, she's the only one Neva can be connected to that way, and they both came out of Houston." The sheriff's mouth quirked with his mistaken upper hand. "You really can't believe everything you see on those prime-time TV news shows."

  "Sheriff, I promise you. I am not here because of anything I've seen on television. Or because of Candy Roman. I've worked for the township long enough to separate fact from fiction," he added, creasing the knee of his slacks again.

  "Then you're doing better than most because I can't tell you how many parents have come to this office," Munroe began, counting them with a repetitive bounce of his pencil's eraser against the blotter, "sat right where you're sitting, and begged me to list their daughters officially as missing persons after a thorough search of the Barn turned up nothing."

  "Not a strand of hair, a lost button, a barrette, or trash from a favorite candy bar." The pencil stopped. "Now, if you want an unofficial escort while you check out the hearsay bringing you here, I'll be more than happy to meet you out there later this evening after I finish the paperwork on the Jase Bremmer case."

  Such an impassioned defensive rebuttal deserved a round of applause, but Holden kept his hands laced in his lap. "Sheriff. I realize the lifestyle practiced by many of the residents of the township leaves a bad taste in the mouths of outsiders. But it leaves an equally bad impression on us when law enforcement does not take our claims seriously. And goes so far as to protect one of its own."

  Munroe reached toward the far left corner of his desk and placed his pencil point-down in a mug emblazoned with the likeness of the Pit Stop Pirates mascot. Then he pushed to his feet, his hands flat on his desktop, his body leaning forward to form a silently menacing angle.

  His expression, however, when he looked up, was a blank slate. "By one of our own, Wagner, can I take you to mean a law-abiding taxpayer who is innocent of all suspected crimes until proven guilty? Just as residents are in every community that falls under my jurisdiction? Including that of Earnestine Township?"

  Too late, Holden realized his mistake. He needed to treat this case as dispassionately as he did the disappearance of any of the girls from Earnestine. It didn't matter that his own existence depended on his plans after finding the missing Liberty Mitchell.

  Were that to be discovered in the course of this search, were this case to make the news, were his name to be connected, his past dredged up and into the fray, red flags would be run up poles best left empty for his future's sake.

  He got to his feet, as well. "Seven o'clock, then. At Ms. Case's office."

  The sheriff straightened, moved one hand to his hip above the butt of his gun. "No need to bother her there. We'll meet at the Barn."

  A quick knock sounded on the door before it pushed open. "Yancey, I need to ask—oh, I'm sorry. Kate wasn't at her desk." The woman waved back toward the receptionist's empty chair. "I didn't know you had a guest."

  "It's fine, Jeanne,"Munroe said, coming out from behind his desk. "Mr. Wagner was just leaving."

  "Sheriff. Mrs. Munroe," Holden said, and since the other made no move to do so, showed himself out.

  Yancey waited for Wagner to leave before turning to his wife and giving her a quick peck on the cheek. She smelled like fruit and flowers the way she always did after getting her hair done—embracing, as she told him, the onset of middle age, simply adding highlights to the new strands of silver.

  Laying her palm to his face, she patted him in that gentle way she did everything. "I didn't mean to run off your guest."

  "Holden Wagner's not exactly a guest." A scumbag. A sleaze. A snake oil salesman. A shark. "It was business."

  Jeanne turned to gaze at the closed door. "Hmm. Well, I'm not sure if he's what I expected in person."

  "I don't know why you would've expected anything," he said, returning to his chair.

  "Oh, come on, Yancey. Holden Wagner? Don't tell me having him show up in your office wasn't a surprise." As she sat in the seat Wagner had vacated, Jeanne's smile asked questions Yancey knew he wasn't going to like. "And an intimidating one at that, am I right?"

  "No, you're not right." What a load of crap. Intimidation had nothing to do with Yancey's reaction to the other man. "Gimme a break. The man's no better than any of those pervs in Earnestine. He's worse, in fact, helping them get away with that bullshit they call religion. Protected statutory rape, that's what it is."

  "The girls aren't forced, Yancey," she said calmly. "And they marry with their parents' permission. You may not like their beliefs or practices, but what they do is perfectly legal."

  "Only because of the way pretty boy there twists and ties the law into suits and injunctions and anything else he can. He's a piece of work. The defender of religious freedom, my ass."

  "Yancey Munroe." Her smile teased him, the way the brackets around her mouth deepened, the way her lashes fluttered beneath a sliver of bangs, the way her laugh lines crinkled. "Are you jealous?"

  "Of what?" he asked with a snort.

  "The attention he gets. The fact that he's making the news while making a name. The way he always wins." Jeanne glanced almost wistfully at the closed door. "The way he always looks like he stepped off a big city society page no matter how hot and dusty it is."

  "I deserve more credit than that, Jeanne. I don't need a thousand-dollar suit to prove I know the law." What he did need was for a nice cluster bomb to obliterate Earnestine from the map and make his job easier.

  "So, why was he here?"

  "Business."

  "Now, Yancey. You give me a little more credit. If Holden Wagner comes all this way to see you in person, it's got to be about one of the girls." She paused. "And the Barn."

  Damn Neva Case and her meddling. His life would be a hell of a lot simpler if the Big Brown Barn was exactly what it appeared to the public to be. The business it was registered and licensed and taxed as. A legitimate business. One that designed, crafted, and sold jewelry and other girly bric-a-brac through mail order and the Internet.

  Neva did enough business, in fact, that Jonnie Mayer, Pit Stop's postmistress, had taken on part-time help just to process the orders coming in and the packages going out. But Neva's jewelry wasn't the business in question. And Jeanne knew that. His wife was not a dumb woman. And he'd been silent too long.

  That became obvious when her blue eyes, which usually sparkled, narrowed harshly. "Don't tell me you're going out there."

  "I'm doing my job. That's all. I'm not accusing Neva of anything. A girl's missing, and her family has reason to believe she's hiding out at the Barn."

  "Are you going to Judge Ahearn for a war
rant?"

  Yancey shook his head. "I'm just going to pay Neva a friendly visit."

  "When?"

  "Later tonight."

  Jeanne's mouth narrowed to match her eyes. "Alone?"

  "With Wagner."

  At that, she slammed her palm down on his desk. "Yancey, you promised me you would not go out there again."

  "This is business. It's not about Spencer." And even as he said it, he wondered which of them he was trying hardest to convince.

  Jeanne crossed her arms tightly and leaned back, turning her body sideways. "Everything for you is about Spencer. I specially when it comes to the Barn."

  "You're exaggerating, Jeanne."

  "I am not. I have been married to you for twenty years and have been Spencer's mother for nineteen. The same length of time you've been his father." She pointed at him with one finger, her voice shaking more than her hand. "Don't tell me I'm exaggerating. Not after what went on there with Spencer and Candy."

  Candy Roman. Neva's premiere designer. And a big fat thorn in Yancey's side. He was not about to stand back and let that trashy hip-hop piece sink her claws into his only son. Spencer had a football scholarship to Texas Tech. He'd be leaving Pit Stop in less than a month. Yancey intended to see his son had no reason to ever come back except to visit his mother.

  "I'm going out there tonight. With Wagner. A courtesy call to see if Neva knows anything about the missing girl. If I happen to run into Candy—"

  Jeanne surged to her feet. "You had damn well not happen to, or so help me, Yancey Munroe, you'll be bunking in with your son. And you can explain to him why."

  Yancey felt the slam of the office door reverberate in his bones. That woman. His wife. He would not be sleeping in any bed but hers, and she knew that. Taking care of Nevada Case and her Big Brown Barn was the business of law en-lorcement. Seeing that Candy Roman kept away from his son was the business of Spencer's future.