Cowboy Justice (14 page)

Vaughn nearly leapt from the chair. He twisted to look Dale in the eye. “What did you say?”

“He said he took his girl there. Him and Junior laughed about it real hard, about how the Sorentino place was nothing like a real farm. More like a tourist trap. So I told him, what did you expect from a dude ranch? And Shawn said, at least the food was good.”

Vaughn swabbed a hand over his face. One of the shooters had spent the night in Rachel’s house. Holy mother of God. The cape around his neck closed in, suffocating him. He ran a finger between the plastic wrapper and his neck, trying to breathe. “When were they here? Last week, last month?”

Either oblivious or unconcerned about Vaughn’s state of disturbance, Dale came around the side of the chair and buzzed his left sideburn. “You know, time is weird, man. What’s to say we’re not living the same day over and over again. Like right now, I look out the window, and the street looks the same as it did yesterday. Or maybe it really wasn’t yesterday. Maybe yesterday is really tomorrow—Hey!”

Vaughn clamped a hand over Dale’s wrist. “Dale, listen to me. Do you know where Elias Baltierra is right now? This is important.”

He scratched his head like it might loosen up his memory as it had earlier. “Hmmm. I knew you’d ask that, as soon as you got that crazy look in your eye. I haven’t seen him since he was in here with Shawn and Junior. I s’pose you could ask Junior.”

“I’ll do that,” Vaughn said, his mind distant, trying to fit puzzle pieces together that didn’t seem to even be from the same puzzle, much less match up.

Dale set the buzzers aside in favor of scissors and a comb. Vaughn blinked falling bits of hair away from his eyes.

“Speaking of Sorentino Farm,” Dale said. “Charlene Delgado says you and Rachel Sorentino are an item.”

Vaughn grunted. Hard to care about Charlene blabbing rumors of Vaughn’s private life when a dangerous criminal who’d shot at Rachel and may have connections to the death of her father was still at large. And he couldn’t even go to the place in his head that would allow him to accept that Shawn Henigin had spent the night in her house.

Dale rattled on. “I asked Rachel out a few years back. She’s a classy lady. When she declined my offer, she was real sweet about it. Said she wasn’t in the market for a relationship, but thank you anyway. Guess she changed her tune, eh? Hard for a guy like me to compete with the sheriff.” He gave Vaughn’s shoulder a good-natured nudge with his elbow.

“Are we done here?” Vaughn asked.

“Near abouts. Let me get the hairs on your neck.” He unbuttoned the cape and Vaughn took his first deep breath since the Sorentino name was brought into the conversation.

Felt like an hour passed by the time Dale finished. Vaughn tossed him forty dollars. “Thanks for the cut and the conversation, Dale.”

“Come around anytime, Sheriff. I’m happy to help keep the peace.”

Back in the station house, he swung by Stratis’s desk. “What did you find out?”

“Chaves County confirmed. Late last night, a body was found in a car that crashed off the I-70, right off Hoja Pass where your informant told us to look. The description matched Henigin, so they sent pictures. We’ll need family for an official ID, but it’s him.”

“Any drugs or alcohol in the vehicle?”

“No. Car was clean except for the body.”

“Evidence of foul play?” If the vehicle had been tampered with, it might be weeks before the forensic lab could determine that, but it was worth asking anyway. Especially in an unidentifiable car that had been wiped clean of prints.

“Nothing they could determine at the scene. His skull was a mess, teeth included, so it’ll take a formal autopsy to determine if any teeth were ripped out prior to the accident. The initial finding was that the accident was caused by steering mechanism failure. The steering gear bolts were sheered off, and I know you get what that means.”

Vaughn’s gut twisted. Everyone in his department, save Nathan Binderman, who transferred in after the fact, was intimately aware of every detail of Rachel’s father’s car crash. From day one of investigating the crash, he and Stratis had suspected foul play, but had no other evidence to support their gut-level instinct—until now. “It means it’s time to take a second look at Gerald Sorentino’s closed case file.” He released a weary exhale. “Has the Chaves County Sheriff’s Department heard of this El Diente guy?”

Stratis tipped back in his chair and joined his hands behind his head. “No, but his name came up in another conversation I had today with a border patrol buddy of mine. Last week his team seized a shipment of AR-15 rifles near the border, and the serial numbers match up with those recovered in the torched truck Kirby and Molina found. The two men who were arrested squealed, said they worked for a man named El Diente.”

Why was a drug dealer terrorizing Rachel’s family, and how had Gerald Sorentino been involved? The Parillas Valley shootout case was unraveling into too many threads to hold on to all at once, with each passing day bringing more questions than answers.

Kirby and Reyes were on double duty at the hospital guarding Meyer Jr., which left either Stratis or Molina to chase the lead with the arrested drug runners, and Molina was fresh off the graveyard shift. Not only that, but he needed a third person at Rachel’s farm, now that the ranch house needed to be processed for evidence of Henigin’s purported visit. Despite his goal of keeping Stratis away from Rachel, he had no choice but to bring Stratis with him to process evidence on her farm.

“I’ll send Molina to the state pen to interview those gun runners. Maybe we can get a better handle on El Diente’s business plan and how it involves Wallace Meyer Jr. and his associates.”

“That was my thought, but both squealers got themselves killed in a prison yard fight,” Stratis said.

“Well, hell. That was fast.”

“You could say that again. Border Patrol’s e-mailing me a copy of their interview notes. Did Dale Erskine have anything interesting to share with you?”

Vaughn dropped into the chair facing Stratis’s desk. “As a matter of fact, he did. Which is why I need you at the Sorentino Farm in an hour to process evidence.”

Stratis picked up a pen with both hands and rolled it between his fingers, avoiding Vaughn’s eyes. “I’m sure Rachel Sorentino would rather see you than me.”

Vaughn ran his tongue over his teeth. They were back to that, were they? Tired of Stratis’s passive aggressive bullshit, he had half a mind to drag Stratis into his office to hash it out, but now wasn’t the time.

He stood, glancing behind him, to where Irene was pretending to read her Bible while she listened in. “Don’t you worry, I’ll be there too. In the meantime, get on the horn with other departments across the state. El Diente just became the most wanted man in New Mexico.” He leaned over Stratis’s desk and added in a low voice, “Consider this fair warning that if you ever again talk to a victim of a crime like you did to Rachel Sorentino yesterday, be prepared to look for work elsewhere. Are we clear?”

Stratis’s jaw rippled. His eyes glinted with disgust. “Then you can consider this fair warning that I’m putting my name in the hat for sheriff come the November elections.”

As pissed as he’d been at Stratis, he hadn’t seen that curveball coming. Between Stratis and Meyer both gunning for his departure, the odds weren’t looking good for Vaughn to keep his job, but there were a lot of months between May and November, and Vaughn was smack in the middle of the biggest case of his career. His legacy.

He stood to his full height. “You’d make a top-notch sheriff. Don’t get me wrong, I’m going to fight like hell to beat you, but if you win, you’ll be great at it. Until that time comes, though, you’re still my employee, and you’ll follow my rules. Understood?”

Staring at the wall behind Vaughn, Stratis sniffed. “Sir.”

“Good. See you in an hour.”

Chapter Ten

Rachel gave new meaning to the term
breakneck
as she barreled over the dirt road leading to her family’s homestead. She was only going thirty, but with her truck’s negligible shocks and the uneven road surface, she was surprised her head didn’t pop clean off her body. It felt good, driving recklessly, beating herself and her truck up. What had she been thinking, saying what she had to Kate Parrish?

Why couldn’t she have kept her mouth shut? Or smiled and offered a “Bless your heart”? But
sloppy seconds?
Where had she come up with such a nasty barb?

There it was, though. No doubt Kate was already down the street at the beauty salon, sharing the story with her friends. If word got back to Vaughn about what she said, she would die. She would lie down in a dusty field and let the buzzards have her.

If damage control were possible, only one person in Rachel’s life would know how to go about it. Which was why she was heading straight to Catcher Creek’s number one gossip maven. She spied Amy at the chicken coop, along with Mr. Dixon and Kellan’s mom, Tina, helping the two guest families gather eggs and feed the hens. Mr. Dixon and Tina looked cozy, cuddling and whispering off to the side of the coop. Funny how Rachel hadn’t noticed how close they’d gotten over the past few months since Tina came to live with them until Amy brought it to her attention the day before.

When her truck got close, she slowed to a stop and stuck her head out the window. “Morning, y’all,” she called, lapsing into her cowgirl act without even meaning to. “Finding many eggs to gather this morning?”

She really didn’t give a flying pig if they had, but after putting her boot in her mouth with Kate, she figured it wouldn’t hurt to indulge in a minute of polite conversation.

The teenage girl in the bunch rushed to the truck, showing off a basketful of eggs.

“Wow. Neat! What are you going to do with all those?” she asked, pulling off a smile she hoped looked genuine.

“This afternoon, Amy’s giving us a cooking lesson. We’re going to learn how to make a real cowboy supper.”

“With eggs, huh?” Rachel’s idea of a real cowboy supper involved beef and potatoes, but it looked like tonight she’d be making do with eggs. She’d have to give Rudy, Damon, and Ben a heads-up so they could skedaddle to town before they got roped into the meal. “Sounds yummy. I can’t wait to try it.” As the girl returned to the coop, Rachel got her sister’s attention. “Amy, may I have a word real quick?”

Amy wiped her hands on her jeans as she walked. She pulled Rachel’s sleeve up and inspected her bandage, frowning.

“It’s fine, Ames. Geez. It’s been four days since I got hurt.”

Amy
tsk
ed judgmentally. “True, but you’re doing a terrible job taking care of yourself. The scab’s already torn once. And you’re looking pale.” She set the back of her hand against Rachel’s forehead. “Are you feeling okay? I’ve got a nice list going of available bachelors in the area, so we’ve got to get you well. You’re going to be on the arm of a good man for my wedding if it’s the last thing I do.”

What a pain in the ass sisters were. “God blast it, Amy. I don’t want your help.”

“Too bad. You’re getting it.”

She swatted Amy’s hand away. “I’ve got enough stuff going on in my life without worrying about what schemes you’re cooking up.”

“Chef humor, that’s cute. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to attend to our guests.”

“Wait. Do you know where Jenna is?”

Amy hooked her thumb over her shoulder as she walked back toward the chicken coop. “She’s at her house, last I heard.”

A quarter mile and a foothill separated Jenna’s house from the main house, which had been originally constructed for the farm’s foreman. Seeing as how they hadn’t been able to afford a foreman since Rachel was a child, the house became Jenna’s as soon as Tommy got old enough that he made their mom anxious with his little-boy energy. Better for all parties involved, Rachel and Jenna decided, that they put a couple acres of buffer between Tommy and his grandma.

In an ongoing project that took nearly a year to complete, the two of them had spruced up the exterior of the house, transforming it into a neat little cottage with a garden of succulents out front, along with a smattering of kid toys and a metal A-frame swing set. Rachel was proud of the work they did. Even as completely opposite personalities as she and Jenna were, they worked well together and rarely argued, which was more than she could say about her perpetually prickly relationship with Amy.

She parked her truck behind Jenna’s white sedan. The door and all the windows of the cottage were open. Rachel checked her watch. Ten-thirty. Jenna had another two hours before she met the school bus bringing Tommy home from the pre-kindergarten class he’d started attending in January. Plenty of time for Rachel to grill her for information.

Figuring Jenna had heard Rachel’s truck, she didn’t bother to knock before walking into the comfortably cluttered living room. Jenna sat at her desk in the corner, typing on her laptop. Books were scattered and stacked everywhere. Some novels, but mostly manuals and how-to books, along with too many kids’ picture books to count. Seemed that Jenna was always reading about how something mechanical worked, or studying up on the history of one invention or another. Door stoppers, Rachel jokingly called the thick books. But Jenna loved that kind of thing almost as much as she loved her computer.

“Hey, Jenna. What’cha up to?” She sidestepped an especially tall stack of books and sat on the long yellow sofa she’d helped Jenna haul home a few years back from an estate sale in Tucumcari.

Jenna glanced away from the screen with a smile. “Hi. I’m adding a testimonial page to Matt’s Web site with quotes from satisfied clients.”

Matt was Matt Roenick. He’d been Kellan’s good buddy long before Rachel and her sisters hired him as their oil rights attorney after the oil was discovered on their property. When he’d taken a peek at the sisters’ new Heritage Farm Web site, he’d asked for a referral to the Web design company to spruce up his law practice’s site. Rachel had been there when he’d asked that question, and she didn’t think she’d ever seen Jenna look prouder than when she admitted it was her handiwork.

In no time flat, Jenna and Matt had worked out a barter system. In exchange for a reduced fee on legal services rendered to the farm, Jenna signed on as his . . . “What do they call the person who designs and runs a Web site?” Rachel asked.

“A Web mistress.”

Rachel snickered. “You’re his Web mistress? That sounds . . .”

Jenna swiveled her desk chair to face Rachel. “Dirty, right? Trust me—I wish it wasn’t as innocent a relationship as it actually is.”

Jenna had a huge crush on the man, which Rachel didn’t understand in the least. He was a nice enough guy, and supersmart, but his hands were callous free, and he was too white-collar to be useful around the ranch.

Rachel picked at a crust of mud in the seam of her jeans. “I have to ask you something random.”

Jenna cupped her knee in her joined hands. “Random works for me. What’s up?”

“Have you heard anything around town about me? Rumors or whatnot?”

Jenna pulled her bottom lip into her mouth with her teeth. “I’ve heard all sorts of stuff these past few days. What do you want to know?”

Rachel took a deep breath and surveyed the walls. This kind of conversation was uncomfortable enough without it happening in the close confines of a tiny room. Oh, well. Time to face the music. She pushed up from the sofa and walked to the window, bracing her hands on the sill to look outside. Even though she’d never said his first name aloud to either of her sisters in her lifetime, she said, “About me and Vaughn Cooper.”

Saying the words made her dizzy. She clutched the windowsill and focused on a scrub tree in the distance.

“Yes, I have.” Jenna paused and let the revelation hover in the air.

Rachel hunched into her arms as her gut lurched. “Go on. Don’t make me pull it out of you. Tell me what people are saying.”

She heard Jenna’s chair creak, but kept her eyes locked on the window.

“People are saying that you and Vaughn are having a hot and heavy secret affair.”

All the desperate hope she’d felt that Kate Parrish was exaggerating about the gossip deflated. She squinted until all she could see was the scrub tree. “Why didn’t you warn me that people were talking?” Her voice sounded distant, calm like the eye of a tornado was calm.

Footsteps grew louder, until Jenna materialized next to her, leaning her shoulder on the wall. “I didn’t want to spook you.”

She cranked her head to the side and drilled Jenna with an exasperated glare. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“Rach, what I heard in town this week is the first time I’ve ever caught even a whiff about you having a love life. I figured you and Vaughn were happy thinking no one was noticing what you two were up to. Seeing as how this was probably your first time, I was afraid you’d stop if you knew people were talking.”

Rachel blinked. That was some effed-up logic. She was afraid to ask the next question that came to mind, but she did anyway. “My first time doing what?”

“First time doing
IT
. Duh. You lost your virginity to Vaughn, am I right?”

Rachel turned to face her sister head-on. Still, she had to open and close her mouth several times before any words would come out. “What you said is so wrong in so many ways, I don’t know where to start.”

“Are you saying you and Vaughn Cooper aren’t having a not-so-secret affair?”

Rachel folded her arms over her chest. “I’m not telling you anything until you tell me where you got your information.”

Jenna took a deep breath. “When I was at the Diamond Diva Salon getting a manicure, Linda Klauss was there, and I overheard her dishing with Nancy Tobarro while they got their hair done.”

She paused and looked at Rachel like she’d just provided irrefutable evidence to a trial jury on one of those courthouse television shows.

“Keep going,” Rachel prompted with a sweeping wave of her hand.

“Linda Klauss was one of the nurses who admitted you to the emergency room after the shooting, and she said Vaughn carried you in.”

Rachel thought back to the haze of that morning. She remembered him carrying her, but couldn’t collect enough details from her memory to know if it happened in the Parillas Valley or the hospital, or both. “Maybe. But I was injured, and woozy from shock. What’s the big deal? Linda’s reading an awful lot into things if something that inconsequential got her tongue wagging.”

Jenna’s expression turned solemn. “She said he fretted over you like a scared husband. She said he didn’t let go of your hand for more than an hour.”

Her mouth went dry.
He did that for me?

Pushing away the wild elation stirring inside her, she shrugged. “I don’t remember any of that. Everything about that day is pretty foggy. I had no control over what Vaughn did or didn’t do. That’s his business anyhow, not mine.”

Jenna pressed her lips together like she did when Tommy was feeding her a line. “Mm-hmm. Except that, as it turned out, that day in the hospital wasn’t the only time folks had spotted you two together around town.”

“We weren’t together around town, like on a date or something. I got shot. I was in the hospital. He was investigating. Sounds to me like folks are working awfully hard to squeeze water out of a rock.”

Jenna ignored her valid point. “So after Linda told her story, Nancy piped up. She saw you get in Vaughn’s truck a couple months ago out back of John Justin’s. Late at night.”

Shit.

“And then Marti, while she was doing my nails, she was listening too. She saw you and Vaughn leave Smithy’s Bar together last month.”

Ha! She had this one covered. “I never left Smithy’s with him.” That was the honest truth. Even if they did have the occasional well-timed exit.

“She said she saw you two making eyes at each other across the room, before getting up and leaving one right after the other.”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

She plowed ahead. “Maybe it wouldn’t have, except that Gloria, the bartender at Smithy’s, is friends with Marti and she said the sheriff paid your tab. Marti had asked her about it because the night it happened, when she went out front of the bar for a smoke, she recognized Vaughn’s truck in the parking lot, but you were both gone.”

She’d never been the subject of gossip before, and it felt like she’d been dropped in the middle of a rodeo arena full of bulls. “Well, goddamn, if no one in this town has anything better to do than gossip. No wonder the New Mexico economy’s suffering.”

“You want to hear the rest of it?”

She smacked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “There’s more?”

“Charlene Delgado lives down the street from Vaughn, and she can count at least a half dozen times over the past two years that—”

“Stop. Enough. I can’t listen to this anymore.” She stormed through the living room and pushed out the door, worming her hand into her jeans pocket for the fresh roll of antacids she’d snagged that morning.

Behind her, the screen squeaked as it opened. She stole a glance over her shoulder to see Jenna hot on her heels. Knowing Jenna would never let the conversation go now that the dam had broken, she flopped onto a rock to give in to the inevitable.

“Well?” Jenna prompted, standing over Rachel with her hands on her hips.

She picked open the paper wrapper of the antacids and popped one in her mouth. “What do you want me to say?”

“I’m right, aren’t I? You lost your virginity to Vaughn.”

She pushed the antacid between her teeth and cheek. “Jenna, I haven’t been a virgin since I was seventeen.”

Jenna dropped onto the rock next to her. “What? Who? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because when I was seventeen, you were eight. Plus, it’s none of your business.”

“And . . . and . . . there’ve been men in your life since then? Boyfriends and such?”

Rachel shrugged. “I’ve been on plenty of dates, but not with anyone I ever cared to call my boyfriend, not even many I’d consider my, uh, lover.” Good grief, that was a clunky word. Tripped off her tongue as smooth as a lump of peanut butter. “I’m no prude, as you and Amy have so much fun believing.”