by Rachel Lee
Those words might as well have come in flashing neon, she thought, lowering her gaze to the food. Rolling stone. No wish to be tied down. She knew the price of losing someone you loved all too intimately. Do not go there.
Disappointment swamped her, but she forced it down and kept her guard up.
“So Claire spoke to that driver, huh?”
Her head snapped up and the first words that occurred to her popped out. “You’re very single-minded, aren’t you?”
One corner of his mouth lifted. “Sometimes to my own detriment. I’ve been called a bulldog.”
“I can see why.” He said very little about himself, but kept on coming right back to the mystery he wanted to solve. So much for a casual “getting to know you” conversation over breakfast. Probably safer for her, she thought. “I told you what Claire told me. She recognized the guy and asked him about off-loading the crate or whatever they were doing. And I told you what she said he said.”
“Would she have mentioned you?”
“Like I told you, she said she didn’t. I’ve never known her to lie. We didn’t talk about it after that night.”
“Can you remember anything about the truck?”
She almost put her fork down, feeling as if she was being grilled. She probably was, she thought with a sudden spark of amusement. What did she expect from a former cop who was on a case? Besides, she had agreed to be his cover.
“I couldn’t see all that clearly. You’ve looked out those windows at night, and the trucks were parked at the far end of the lot. Let me think.” She closed her eyes, trying to summon as vivid a memory as she could.
“It wasn’t new,” she said after a moment. “It looked a little dirty. I don’t even know if I described it right when I called it a box truck. It was one of those trucks where the cab is separated from the container on back, but it’s all one piece.”
“I know what you mean.”
“What else?” she wondered. “It had one of those stubby noses that don’t stick out, kind of like the driver is sitting over the engine. I saw it from the side, but just briefly.” She sighed. “It was white, I think. Maybe. I can’t be one hundred percent certain, because of the lighting in the parking lot, and it was mostly in the dark. I suppose it could have been a very light yellow?” She paused then shook her head. “I get the feeling it was white.”
“How dirty?”
“I seem to recall some mud splash. Not unusual around here. I didn’t see a company name on the side. Overall it didn’t look very clean.” She shook her head and resumed eating. “Take it from me, there was nothing to make it stand out. If it had looked new, that’s something I would have noticed. Basically, it was the kind of truck that we see around here making local deliveries sometimes.”
“Thanks. That’s very helpful.”
She pursed her lips. “I don’t see how. Could I have been any vaguer?”
“You limited the models of truck I need to be looking out for. You limited the colors and condition and even age. You even said it looked as if it drove dirt roads. The field just got narrowed.”
“Not by much,” she said, but smiled. “I don’t think I remember anything else, though.”
“After breakfast want to take a ride with me?”
Her heart leaped, then reason reasserted, much to her own dismay. “Sorry, but my car is old and I try not to put too many miles on it. I can’t afford major repairs right now.”
“That’s okay. I managed to rent one. It looks like it might be able to do a few hundred miles.”
She almost laughed at the description, but then said, “Rented one? Where? Our only car-rental place shut down after the semiconductor plant had the big layoff.”
“There’s a used-car dealer on the edge of town who was glad of some money.”
He was definitely resourceful, she thought. That never would have occurred to her. “Where would we go?”
“I want to take a look at where Ray went off the road. And then I’d like to do some dirt-driving around the county.”
She perked up with excitement. “Really? We’re going to investigate?”
“Call it recon. I want to know the lay of the land.”
* * *
An hour later, after she had showered and dressed in jeans and a blue T-shirt with a gold-embossed butterfly on it, they set out in his rental. It was more than a few years old but spotless inside and out—to be expected of a dealership. She glanced at the odometer and saw what he meant: this car had rolled over a hundred thousand miles some time ago.
Buck looked amused when she checked. “Trust me, the guy sells them with a ninety-day warranty. It’s got to be good enough to make a few hundred more miles.”
She giggled and settled in, fastening her seat belt.
“It also,” he remarked, “won’t stick out around here like my truck cab would.”
“I take it you don’t want to be noticed?”
“I’ve already been noticed entirely too much.” He told her about being picked up by Gage the night before. “Imagine, a ticket for speeding on foot.”
That made her laugh again. “People notice things around here. It’s actually kind of comforting.”
“Then I guess you’ve never gotten out of line in your life.”
“I really haven’t had the opportunity,” she replied truthfully.
“Until me,” he remarked in a low voice.
That stopped the conversation until they were ten miles out of town and he spied where Ray’s rig had gone off the road. It would have been hard to miss. The roadside grasses hadn’t been mowed in a while, and in the ditch running alongside the road they were deeper, though not taller, because the mower swiped it all down to the same level. It was easy to see where they had been flattened.
The road itself was elevated above the surrounding land, most likely, Haley had always believed, to help snow blow off the road surface and make sure water drained away, as well. But that elevation made the ditches to either side pretty deep, and the bank down to them steep.
Buck pulled onto the shoulder and flipped the flashers on before climbing out. She hesitated, then followed him. The road seemed completely deserted right now but that wouldn’t last. It usually carried a fair amount of traffic toward Laramie and the interstate.
The imprint of the truck was still visible, although tramping feet and the subsequent recovery of the rig had churned the area quite a bit. Buck pointed to a dark-brown blotch in the grass.
“Diesel,” he said. “Burned the grass out. He must have been going at nearly full speed when he went off.”
“How can you know that?”
“Those diesel tanks are built to be tough. It would take some force to puncture or rupture one, especially against the ground.”
He turned and looked back at the road surface. “No skid marks, and absolutely no damn reason for him to go off this road unless he was totally out of it.”
“He seemed fine when I saw him at the truck stop,” she insisted. “Wide awake, coherent. Buck, he didn’t look remotely sleepy.”
“I believe you. Besides, I have his check points. He was only halfway into his eleven-hour shift. He’d stopped to sleep earlier in the day.”
“Then...” She didn’t want to say it. She knew what Buck suspected, she had known it all along, but somehow standing beside this road at the spot where Ray had died made it all the more real. She nearly shivered.
“Let’s go,” Buck said abruptly. “If there’s anything else I need to know from here, I’m sure I can get it from the sheriff.”
They waited in the car while several other vehicles passed, then pulled a U-turn and headed back toward town.
“He eased into that ditch,” Buck said. “Going nearly straight ahead. There were lots of outcomes from going off the road, but only one of them would have rolled the truck that way.”
There was nothing she could say to that. It made her feel sick in the pit of her stomach to face the unquestionable fact that Ray had pr
obably been murdered. Until this moment, she wasn’t sure she had believed it.
“If someone was willing to kill Ray...” She didn’t finish the thought.
He reached out and covered her hand, squeezing gently. “Just don’t talk about it at all. Act like you’ve forgotten all about what happened in the parking lot. That’s the safest thing to do. And I’ll keep an eye on you.”
“You and what army?” she asked, knowing that he couldn’t be with her every minute. It was impossible. But the touch of his hand was somehow comforting, and equally electric. She fought the urge to turn her hand over and clasp his tightly. Distance, she reminded herself. Keep a safe distance.
But she didn’t withdraw from his touch.
He didn’t take them all the way back into town, turning instead onto a northbound county road. They drove a few miles and then he pulled over at an access gate, the kind ranchers and farmers had so they could use the roads to get to outlying areas of their land. He pulled onto the level bit of ground leading to the gate, a mixture of grass and dirt, and parked.
“What are we doing?” Haley asked.
“Recon. I want you to think for me, since you know the people and the area, and then we’re going to explore some dirt roads.”
“What do you want to know?”
He waved to the wide-open spaces that seemed to go on forever except to the west, where they bumped into the mountains. “There’s nothing out here.”
“Except for fences, there doesn’t seem to be.”
“But people live out here.”
“Well, of course.” She frowned at him. “The ranchers, the hired hands, there are even some small properties here and there near the roads.”
“Anyone you can think of who seems to be doing better than ordinary, just recently? Places where you might be able to conceal some box trucks? Off dirt roads?”
“Everybody has a barn,” she remarked. “Sheesh, Buck, these are impossible questions. We have a couple of ranchers who’ve been doing well enough since I can remember. We’ve got plenty of others who are scraping by. The only sudden wealth I’ve seen anywhere was at Ray’s funeral.”
“Where do the Listons live? In town?”
She bit her lip, suddenly a little nervous. “No. They have a small homestead, just barely enough to get by on. And I do mean barely. They eat what they raise, they wear clothes from church donations—can you imagine how hard that was for Ray?”
“I can. Go on.”
“Any cash they have comes from selling whatever extra they grow. At least a couple times a week in the summer, they’ll come into town and set up a little farm stand along with some other people and sell produce and eggs. They raise hogs and chickens mainly, all corn fed, from their own crop. In the autumn when I was kid, and the hogs were all nice and fat, my dad used to buy a side from them and fill the freezer. A lot of other people did, too, I seem to remember. Pork, bacon and cured hams. Apparently it was just enough to get by on.”
“Any kids other than Ray?”
“One, an older boy. He left town just before I went to high school. I barely remember him.”
“So they’re on their own and getting older and living a hardscrabble life.”
“That’s not a crime.”
“No, but it might make someone easy prey for a get-rich scheme. And they may not even know what’s going on. How do we get there?”
She hesitated, then finally said, “I don’t like this, Buck. They’ve never had a lick of trouble with the law, except for that time that Ray got into a fight. They’re good people.”
“I didn’t say they weren’t. I just need to check it out.” He turned in his seat, resting his forearm over the steering wheel so he could look straight at her. “I’ve got very little to go on here, Haley. The only thread is the Listons. They might have nothing to do with this, but I have to check it out. Maybe Ray was the only one involved. Or maybe he got his parents into something they barely understand or know about. I’m not accusing them.”
After a minute of internal warfare, she finally nodded. “Okay. Give me the map. It’s been a while and I need to refresh my memory.”
He pulled it from the visor over his head and passed it to her. She studied it, then said in a quiet voice, “It’s amazing how well I remember it all.”
“What do you mean?”
“My mom used to love Sunday drives. We drove all over the county time and again, and then when she got too sick to drive anymore, I used to take her out. She said the wide-open spaces, the fresh air, did her a world of good.”
He clasped her shoulder, saying nothing, just offering silent comfort. She was glad he didn’t say anything, because that memory had brought a huge lump to her throat.
She forced herself to focus on the way to the Liston place, and when she felt it was safe to speak again, she started giving him directions.
No, she didn’t like this at all, but she had to admit he was right. Unless something landed in his lap, he had to start with the Listons.
* * *
A dirt-and-gravel road was their last turn to the Liston homestead.
“Well,” Buck remarked, “this is the right kind of road to spray a truck with mud.”
“Do you have any idea how many roads there are like this in this county? Or how many driveways to ranches are simply graded dirt?”
“Don’t smash my illusions.”
Haley laughed in spite of herself. She was quite confident this was a wild-goose chase anyway. She just couldn’t imagine that after all these years the Listons would suddenly decide to break the law. If they were that type, they’d surely have done it decades ago.
The farmstead appeared in the distance. All the necessary buildings were there, from the small two-story house to the barn and the smoking shed. The outlying fence wasn’t in the best of conditions, but nearer to the buildings it improved. Hogs and goats began to dot the landscape, and the large chicken coop appeared a long distance behind the barn. An expansive field of corn was turning golden behind the buildings. In front of it sat a rusty tractor and implements that looked as if they had been salvaged from the dust bowl. The whole place looked sad and neglected. Most people would have passed it without a second glance.
“See?” she asked Buck. “They have nothing.”
“They have a barn,” he remarked.
“Everyone does!”
“But who would be most likely to rent it out?”
That silenced her. As they got close to the house, though, Buck nearly jammed on the brakes. “Do you see what I see?”
She could hardly miss the brand-spanking-new silver sports car parked in front of the house. It looked so out of place that it was jarring. “Maybe Jim came home,” she said finally, her mouth dry. “He’s Ray’s older brother.”
“He must have been successful.”
“Maybe he’s the one who sent money for the funeral. I mean, if he owns a car like that...”
“Then why wouldn’t they have said so, instead of claiming it was an anonymous donation?”
“Maybe Jim didn’t want them to feel bad.”
“Maybe.”
They were just approaching the rutted drive when Haley suddenly said, “Turn in.”
“What? And set off alarms?”
“I have a perfect excuse to drop in. I’ll find out if the car is Jim’s. Just turn in.”
He seemed to hesitate, but then he gave a sharp turn to the wheel and they bounced their way along the deeply rutted drive. Haley noticed the ruts, although she said nothing about them right then, but it remained there wasn’t a farmer or a rancher out here who couldn’t grade his own drive. It was a necessity unless you could afford to hire the job out.
“When did it last rain?” Buck asked.
So his thoughts were following the same path. “We’ve had some heavy rain this year. Maybe ten days ago?” Plenty of time to grade this mess.
He pulled up near the silver sports car and muttered something about eighty to a hundred g
rand. Haley was a bit stunned. Who spent that kind of money on a car?
“I’ll wait out here,” he said. “They don’t know me from Adam. Just be careful what you say.”
“I’m not an idiot,” she said sharply. “I’m just a neighbor stopping by to see if they need anything.”
“Forty-five minutes out of town is a little more than dropping in.”
He was right, and nervousness started to twist her stomach and dry her mouth. She looked again at that car and hoped like hell Jim had come home and that he’d found a successful career wherever he’d gone.
Her palms had grown damp and wanted to slip on the door handle. She tightened her grip and climbed out.
“Five minutes,” he said. “Or I’m coming in.”
The way he said that led her to believe that he felt he could take on half an army and win. She wondered if that was true.
She steadied as she walked to the door, climbing weathered and uneven steps, crossing a porch with planks that were warped and splintering. When she reached the wooden door, she knocked.
A minute later, the yellowing sheer curtain twitched as someone looked out and then the door opened, revealing Mrs. Liston.
“Haley! What are you doing here?”
“I was out on a drive with a friend and I just wanted to stop by and see how you were doing. To ask if you needed anything.”
“We’re fine, just fine. Come in.”
“I can’t stay,” Haley said as she crossed the threshold into a ragged-looking parlor. “My friend is waiting.” Then she gave Mrs. Liston a hug and looked around. Mr. Liston sat in an armchair that boasted duct tape over worn fabric. Another man sat on an ancient couch covered with horsehair. He resembled Ray, only neater, cleaner and better fed.
“Jim?” she said, managing to sound surprised.
He smiled at her. “Sure enough,” he said easily. “I wish I could have gotten here in time for the funeral.”
“Well, it’s nice to see you again. Life treating you well?”
“Well enough. I do pretty good selling cars down L.A. way.”
She smiled and crossed the room to shake his hand. “It’s good to see you again. It seems like forever. That’s some car you have out there.”
