A Rendezvous to Die For (8 page)

I
thanked my lucky stars I’d had the sense not to enter into a
cyberspace shouting match with Eric and had never responded to his
messages; there were no threats from me to Eric in my outbox.
However, I did live to regret my habit of storing files on my
computer to avoid paper clutter. Shaw immediately pounced on a folder
I’d foolishly entitled
eric
and added more arrows to his growing mass of evidence. Right there,
in plain sight, was a years’ worth of Eric’s columns.

Shaw’s face was
virtually gleaming with this discovery. By the time he’d copied
those articles and e-mails onto CD-R disks he’d brought with him, I
felt tried, convicted, and sent up for the murder of Eric Hartfield.

“
Damn!” I said
to Sanders, after Shaw and his buddy had left. I threw a displaced
pillow back onto the sofa. “
Damn
him! My lovely, comfortable carriage house will never be the same,
now that it has been dirtied by Shaw pawing through my personal
belongings. How could I have allowed myself to be so blindsided?”

“
Keep telling
yourself this is routine business, Cassandra. You know you’re
innocent and so do I. Trust me to do my job and don’t let Shaw draw
you into a verbal war.” He headed for the front door. “I’m
going back to my office now. I’ll keep my eyes and ears open.”

As soon as he had
left, I furiously sprayed shelves with a household cleanser, spritzed
furniture with polish, and did whatever it took to wipe away all
vestiges of the deputies’ intrusion into my life. I couldn’t help
but think of all the television shows I’d seen where innocent
citizens had been railroaded for murder, only to be exonerated years
later. Could that happen to me? I wouldn’t let it. I’d conduct my
own investigation and beat Shaw to the punch.

Jack’s
friend, Randy Pearce, was meeting me at Leo’s Bar at noon. It was a
good place to start.

* * *

Leo’s Bar was like a hundred
other roadhouses strung out along Minnesota’s rural roads. The
one-story building hugged a row of spindly pine trees. Its walls were
a nondescript gray that looked as though they hadn’t been repainted
since the building was erected thirty years before. The windows were
filled with the ubiquitous neon beer signs and appeared dreary in the
noonday sun. Only three pickup trucks were parked in the gravel lot.

I knew who Randy was as soon as I
entered the place. Tall and slender and decked out in jeans and
boots, he could have been a Jack Gardner clone, except for his shy
demeanor. He couldn’t meet my eyes when I introduced myself and
shook his hand. I prattled on, trying to put him at ease, after we
were seated across from each other in a red, cracked-vinyl booth.
“Are you self-employed like I am, so you can get time off in the
middle of the day?” I sipped my fourth cup of coffee for the day.

“
Self-employed. Guess that’s
a fancy way of sayin’ I work when there’s work to be had.”

Sensing Randy’s reluctance to
engage in small talk, I cut to the chase. “Do you sometimes work
with Marty Madigan?”

“
I drive the ambulance for the
city. That’s one of my jobs.” He picked at his fingernails. “It’s
pretty chancy work. You don’t need an ambulance every day in a
place like Colton Mills.”

I waited without speaking, as he
took a drink of his Coors.

“
Now, Madigan, he’s another
sort altogether.” He glanced at me briefly, then focused on the
suds topping his beer. “Not like us grunts, workin’ for a livin’.
He shows up only when the rescue operation needs a chopper. You know
. . . after a bad accident, when someone has to be flown to a
big-city hospital. That’s the only time I see the guy. We’re not
like friends or nothin’ like that.” He attentively wiped the
condensation from his beer bottle.

The waitress heated up my coffee.
“So . . . you drive the ambulance—”

“
I see Marty, maybe three, four
times in a year.” He played with his napkin, twisting it around his
finger.

“
Is he easy to work with?”

“
He’s a grumpy kind of guy,
know what I mean?” He glanced at me again. “Maybe he don’t mean
nothin’ by it, but he can be rude as hell. And demandin’.” He
motioned for the waitress to bring him another bottle of Coors.

“
Like when?”

“
The last time, I thought he
was gonna throw a punch at one of the EMTs.” He took a long swig
from the bottle.

“
Why?
What happened?”

Randy rested his elbows on the
table and leaned toward me, making eye contact for the first time.
“It was an accident out on County Road 113. Remember it? Middle of
the winter? Colder ‘n a witch’s tit.”

“
I can only imagine.”

He dropped his gaze and ran a
finger around the rim of the beer bottle “A mother and her son went
off the road and plowed into a snow fence. Both had to be airlifted
out of there. We had the two bundled up when Madigan set his chopper
down in the road. The guy insisted on seein’ their faces before
he’d take ‘em on board.”

“
Was that a problem?”

Randy folded his arms and leaned
back in the booth, gazing in my general direction. “I’d say so.
They’d been bandaged up and covered to keep from gettin’ frost
bite and goin’ into shock. Usual thing is to just load ‘em up and
fly the chopper to the hospital. Every minute counts. You know?”

“
So what happened?” I leaned
toward him to make sure I caught every word.

“
Madigan kinda spazzed out.”
He rubbed his forehead. “He’s a big guy, you know? He pulled his
arm back like he was gonna hit the EMT guy, then yanked the cover off
the woman, took a quick look, and told the EMT to load ’em up.”

“
Was the EMT concerned that
Marty might not transport them safely?”

“
Well, yeah, but he wasn’t
about to challenge him. He’s got the only chopper for miles around.
Nobody’s gonna make Marty mad.”

“
Thank you for telling me about
this, Randy. I really appreciate it.” I reached into my pocket and
handed him my business card. “Just in case you think of anything
else,” I said.

All
by itself, Marty’s behavior probably did seem strange, but if his
family really did disappear without his knowledge, maybe he was still
focused on searching for them. As much as anyone else, I knew the
powerful pull family could have on a person. While Marty had a family
and lost it, I remembered a time when I didn’t have a family and
yearned for one.

Foster mothers would tell me,
“Any day now, a family is going to swoop you up and take you home
for their very own!” What I really wanted was for my own parents to
come back and reclaim me. I imagined them “somewhere.” Whenever I
went into a public place, I looked for my “real parents.” I’d
check out every passing couple and listened to how they talked to
each other or to their kids. I even studied their eyes, to see if
they were like mine. But every year, my fantasy family faded further
into the background, and months passed into years. Over and over
again, I packed my meager belongings and moved on to another foster
family’s house. Always abruptly. Always without discussion.

I remembered the oft-repeated
scenario, as if it were yesterday. My social worker would come to
school to pick me up. She’d take me out to her car, and my clothes
would be there, in plastic bags. Once, I was allowed to keep a toy
stuffed horse I’d gotten for a birthday. But in ten years, I didn’t
own anything that couldn’t be put into a Hefty bag.

One day, I started looking
forward to a permanent new family, not backward to the ones who’d
abandoned me. As each placement ended, I would think that maybe the
next one was the real family, the real mother, the real place I could
stay forever. I still had my stuffed horse with me when the concept
of “family” took on a whole new meaning. Mrs. A took me in and
kept me with her until she died, when I was seventeen. I knew I was
luckier than most of the foster kids I had bunked with over the
years. I had four years of “family.” I had my own closet in my
own bedroom filled with clothes Mrs. A had bought me. Soon, I was
living the way I imagined “regular” kids lived—in a life filled
with swimming lessons, picnics in the park, and pedaling a new bike
through the streets. Because Mrs. A had no other family, it was
always only the two of us, and I hoped the arrangement would never
end. Mrs. A encouraged me to forget my past.

I thought about what I knew of
Marty Madigan. Maybe he was still locked into his past, fixated on
events that had occurred nearly forty years ago. Had his sadness or
bitterness driven him to such anger that he’d kill the person who
got in his way? Had Eric uncovered something about his past that he
wanted kept buried? I wanted—needed—to know.

Chapter
8

Thursday mid-afternoon

On the way back from my meeting
with Randy, I stopped in at Sanders’ office. He had persuaded the
sheriff’s department to make a second copy of the photos they’d
confiscated from me. He not only had my cameras and several fat
envelopes of color prints, he also had an envelope with the photos
from my digital camera copied onto a compact disc. Once again, I
thanked God and Anna for sending Sanders to me. If I had depended on
my own resources, I would probably never have seen the pictures
again.

At home, an hour later, I loaded
the disc into my computer and clicked through some of the photos.
Images of people having a good time at the Rendezvous filled my
screen and I forgot, for a moment, the last horrendous one taken at
the door to the sweat lodge. When I flipped through the color prints,
I stared at it, trying to see and remember any details that might
provide a clue as to the identity of the murderer. When nothing
seemed out of place, I gave up and stashed the photos in a folder in
my file cabinet for future reference.

Since it was only 2:35 p.m., I
decided to take Jack up on his invitation to visit his cutting
clinic. The smell of horses and saddle leather had always been a good
way to re-ground myself and I was ready for a diversion. Too much
deep thinking was decidedly depressing.

I didn’t mind that the sky was
overcast as I drove to Patriot Stables, because cloudy skies always
produce more interesting photos. Already in a “downcast” mood, I
wasn’t about to let the lack of brilliant sun deepen my gloominess.
I focused on the types of photographs I could produce. By the time I
reached the stables, my disposition had changed considerably. I was
the always-interested professional.

Several horse trailers, still
hitched to their pickups, were parked in the field surrounding the
fenced arena situated a short distance from the barn. I parked on the
other side of them, grabbed my camera and headed toward the group of
mostly young riders—more girls than boys—who were focused on
grooming the animals. The adults, who had driven the trucks, milled
about drinking coffee and reading newspapers. The pounding rhythms
and undecipherable lyrics of some new rock song intermingled with
whinnies from one horse to another. I counted about fifteen horses.
Jack was nowhere in sight.

A half dozen red and white
Hereford calves drifted around the arena, occasionally bawling for
their mothers. Teenage girls chatted while they saddled their horses,
in their inimitable murder-the-English-language that always made me
feel middle-aged. First girl: “Me and him went to the concert alone
this time.” Response: “The concert was, like, you know . . .
awesome.”

The overnight drizzle, which had
produced the lingering overcast sky, had made the arena muddy. No one
seemed to mind, although it appeared to be a messy day for both
animals and riders. Once the horses were saddled and ready to go by
their riders, they were taken to the gate. By now, I had snapped
several photos and was searching for Jack. No one else seemed to mind
that he wasn’t immediately available.

Five minutes later, Jack
sauntered over to the group, leading his horse. He looped the bridle
reins to the fence and greeted his students. He went from horse to
horse, checking the tightness of the girths and the rest of the tack.
“Lookin’ real good,” he said to the “concert” girl,
obviously impressed with the figure she cut in tight jeans and
spandex top. The girl beamed, and it took me back to the summer I was
seventeen. I’d gotten sucked into Jack’s orbit, too, naively
thinking he’d singled me out as someone special.

When the gear was checked out,
Jack returned to his horse. “Cowboy up!” he shouted, and as if it
were choreographed, fifteen jeans-clad legs swung across saddles in
unison and, once all riders were astride their horses, they turned
their attention to the arena. Jack exuded “Texas cowboy,” from
his battered Stetson to his muddy chaps. The best pix are in the
details, I thought, and zoomed in to photograph his well-worn cowboy
boots poking through the stirrups.

Jack was uncharacteristically
earnest as he addressed the riders. “The idea behind cutting is to
separate a cow from the herd,” he said. “You’re going to teach
your horses to mirror the cows’ moves, until an individual cow goes
where you want it to go. That’s going to require good reining
skills on your part and good athletic ability on your horse’s part.
The first thing we’re going to do is introduce your horse to a
cow.”