Death Rides Again (A Jocelyn Shore Mystery) (3 page)

This half of the Feed and Supply was a tack store that looked as though a small and surprisingly clean rodeo had set up inside and then exploded. Half a dozen saddles topped an assortment of sawhorses, which were jammed between racks of jeans, jackets, and work gloves. Bridles, bits, ropes, and other gear hung in random order from hooks on rough-hewn wood paneling. One corner was devoted to a diverse selection of cowboy boots, including an incredibly ornate pair in ostrich leather with a distinctive pattern of bumps and an equally distinctive price tag. I breathed in the clean smell of new leather and denim with pleasure.

Kyla, to my surprise, looked completely disgusted. Following her gaze, I saw the reason. Near the cash register, Carl Cress lounged against the counter and next to him stood Eddy Cranny. Eddy saw us enter and now stood as stiff as an ROTC cadet getting dressed down by a general. Carl hadn’t noticed. He was leaning on one elbow chatting up the cashier, a middle-aged woman wearing too much eye shadow who was twirling a strand of dyed auburn hair and giggling. Kyla moved forward, a barracuda gliding toward her prey, and I followed, reluctant to participate in a confrontation in a feed store but also unwilling to abandon my cousin. Or, more accurately, unwilling to let Kyla loose on Eddy unsupervised.

“Aren’t you bad, Carl?” the cashier said in a breathy, teasing voice. “You didn’t really.”

“I surely did. Had my Mexicans take ’er apart and load the pieces on my flatbed. Told the buyer it was seasoned lumber. That warn’t no lie, neither. Not my fault the fool never thought to take a look to see just how seasoned it was.”

Carl threw back his head and laughed, a big genuine laugh, the kind that made other people laugh with him even if they hadn’t heard the joke, or as in this case, only if they hadn’t heard the joke. He had, however, inadvertently managed to divert Kyla from Eddy. She swerved and stopped right behind Carl’s left shoulder.

“What fool are we talking about, Carl?” she asked loudly. “Not my uncle Kel, right?”

He jumped and turned, swallowing his laughter with a gulp. “Why, girls. Nice to see you. Everyone over at your place recovered from this morning?”

“More or less,” I answered, trying to nip that particular topic in the bud. I didn’t want Ruby June’s private business spilled all over the feed store like a torn sack of grain.

Kyla wasn’t going to allow herself to be distracted. “Who’d you sell old lumber to, Carl?” she asked again.

Carl’s eyes darted back and forth in shifty little twitches.

Kyla slammed her fist down onto the counter, making us all jump.

The cashier gave another giggle, this one considerably higher than her previous offerings, and said, “Carl’s been contracting out at the racecourse. They’re putting up new stands. Nothin’ to do with Kel Shore, right Carl?”

Kyla’s smile was icy. “Oh, I see. So you’re selling inferior materials to a public venue where people’s lives will depend on the soundness of the construction? Is that it?”

“Whoa, whoa. You got entirely the wrong idea,” Carl protested, holding up his hands. His eyes had finally settled, and I knew the lie would be a good one. “One of my friends is puttin’ up a hot dog stand out there is all. That lumber is plenty good enough for that, and anyways I’m just repaying him for some shifty dealing he did with me a while back. It’s just good fun between the two of us. Nothin’ at all for you pretty ladies to worry about, and I surely wouldn’t do nothing illegal. Y’all know me.” He grinned at us and winked.

Kyla made a sound like the one used by the monster in all the best horror movies just before it attacked and ate one of the minor characters. My attention, however, was still on the cashier, who looked confused and worried, which made me suspect the hot dog stand had not figured into the original story. Carl was already edging away.

“Well, if you ladies will excuse us, me and Eddy will just be getting on with our business,” he said.

Kyla remained motionless as Carl passed, his cowboy boots loud on the plywood floor, but when Eddy attempted to follow, she stepped into his path, blocking his way.

Keeping her voice low, she said, “I heard about what you did to Ruby June this morning, you ugly little piece of shit. I suggest you go home, pack your things, and clear out of this town permanently.”

Eddy’s eyes flickered away nervously. “But I didn’t mean…”

Kyla cut him off. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what kind of excuses you’ve got. But you better believe that if I ever hear you hit Ruby June again, I will personally hunt you down and put a bullet in your head.” She emphasized her point by poking him hard in the chest as she said each of the last three words.

Eddy reeled back a couple of paces, then scuttled sideways between a rack of jeans and a saddle display and followed Carl out the door with a single frightened backward glance.

The cashier gave Kyla an approving if somewhat nervous smile. “Those Crannys have always been a mean bunch, but I’m sorry to hear Eddy’s turning out that way. He never seemed quite like the rest, but I guess snakes don’t breed kittens, do they?” She clicked her tongue, then added, “So, what can I do for y’all today?”

Ten minutes later, we drove away with thirty sacks of feed cubes in the bed of the pickup and a bad attitude in the cab. I signaled left and turned very slowly at the corner of the town square, conscious that we’d had to leave the tailgate of the pickup open to accommodate the load.

“I can’t decide which one of them I want to kill most,” Kyla fumed.

“You gave Eddy a good scare,” I consoled her. “Now it’s up to Ruby June.”

“I suppose. Do you think she’ll actually kick him out?”

“I’m not sure she means to.” I thought back to the conversation I’d had with Ruby June, feeling as though I’d missed something important. “It’s weird—she wasn’t nearly mad enough about being hit. She kept making excuses for him.”

Kyla was silent for a moment, then she said, “Why the hell would she put up with him? It’s not like she’s used to seeing anything like that at home. She ought to know better.”

“I can’t tell you—I’ve never understood it. It’s sad, but I see it at school more than you’d think. A nice girl taking up with some creepy loser and then taking his jealousy and abuse. Instead of her helping him away from a bad element and onto a better future, he usually drags her down, cuts her off from her friends, and destroys her self-confidence. It’s terrible.”

Kyla, who was a dedicated backseat driver, took her eyes from the road to stare at me. “You see it? Why don’t you do something about it?”

I shrugged. It was a teacher’s eternal dilemma. “Do what? Unless I can tell there’s been physical abuse, I have no authority whatsoever. Every year I do my classic ‘come to me if you need help’ spiel and run through how to identify abusive relationships. If the girl is one of my students, I’ll call her aside and talk to her, especially if her grades are slipping.”

“And? What does she say?”

I slipped into my breathless high-pitched sixteen-year-old girl voice, “You don’t understand, Ms. Shore. He’s not like that. He’s had it hard. He’s wonderful.”

Returning to my normal voice, I added, “The only thing they’re right about is that I don’t understand. I guess for some of these girls, having an abusive boyfriend is better than having no boyfriend at all.”

“But Ruby June? She was always such a happy little kid. She doesn’t need her own pet asshole.”

“No. But I don’t think there’s much that we can do about it. It’s her life. If we’re lucky, she’ll figure it out before Kel kills Eddy. Anyway, that’s not the biggest problem here right now.”

“It’s not?”

I shook my head. “Carl Cress.”

“What a weasel.”

“Worse than that. I’m positive he was lying about the hot dog stand. He probably did sell inferior lumber to the racetrack. Plus, did you see his face when you asked him if he was ripping off Kel? He looked like a dog that just got caught drinking out of the toilet bowl.”

“That’s just his normal expression,” said Kyla automatically. “But you’re probably right. What are we going to do about it?”

I considered as I made another turn. “You want to go out to the racetrack?”

*   *   *

The narrow road leading to the R. “Blackie” Roberts Memorial Fairgrounds and Racetrack had been freshly paved with glistening black asphalt and the acrid smell permeated the truck. Loose gravel pinged off the undercarriage with a sound like marbles falling on a pie plate. I was glad we were driving the ranch truck, which could only be improved by splashes of hot tar, rather than my little blue Honda. Out here, Thanksgiving had been skipped altogether. Pairs of Christmas wreaths lined the road in preparation for the weekend’s festivities, interspersed with candy canes and wire deer dripping with lights. However, as we drew closer, even Christmas gave way to complete chaos.

In one corner of the parking lot, a giant yellow bulldozer pushed gravel from a massive pile onto a newly mown field to extend the available parking. White caliche dust billowed around it like smoke and coated everything downwind. Near the rodeo stands, workers were assembling large portable animal pens, while two men herded a dozen protesting goats into one of the new corrals. On the other side of the stands, the white fence surrounding the racetrack gleamed in the sunlight, the rich loam on the newly smoothed oval track looking as soft and deep as a featherbed. All around, the air was filled with shouts in both English and Spanish, punctuated by the frequent staccato bursts of a power hammer.

Kyla and I parked and then walked along the edge of the lot, trying to avoid the dust thrown up by the bulldozer. As we passed a pen containing a pair of enormous white Brahman bulls, a young man wearing worn jeans and a cowboy hat glanced our way. I guessed him to be in his early twenties and definitely heterosexual if his second and overtly appreciative look at Kyla was any indication. He caught my eye, realized he was staring, and blushed.

“You all might not want to get too close to them,” he suggested, still looking at Kyla. He indicated the bulls with a lift of his chin.

Kyla frowned. “Why not? They’re in a cage.”

He grinned. “They only stay there because they don’t know they could bust out as easy as a hot knife through butter.”

“Why put them there, then?” I asked with some concern.

He shrugged. “They have to go somewhere.”

One of the big white animals lifted its head, liquid black eyes looking expressionlessly in our direction. I began backing away. Kyla on the other hand, jutted out her jaw and stared back at it.

“Hey, can you tell us where the hot dog stand is?” I asked.

This temporarily distracted Kyla from the bull, and the cowboy from Kyla. The cowboy frowned for a moment, then answered, “There’s a bunch of small buildings going up around the rodeo arena over there.” He pointed, and added, “Maybe it’s one of them.”

“Thanks,” I said, and grabbed Kyla’s arm.

“What’s your hurry?” she asked as we made our way through the pens and crossed the dusty field to the arena.

“Just not in the mood to be gored and trampled today.”

“He was just yanking our chain. Those cows weren’t going to break out and charge us.”

I blinked. “Those aren’t cows. They’re bulls. Exceptionally large bulls.”

“Cows, bulls, whatever.”

I thought about trying to explain the difference, then figured the chances that Kyla would wander around the fairgrounds provoking animals in their pens were really low and decided to let it go.

As we approached the stands, we could see a half dozen ramshackle booths. A couple had been painted sometime recently, the rest remained weatherworn. All of them looked as though they had been slapped together from used lumber, and I found myself relaxing a little.

“Maybe Carl wasn’t lying after all. Or at least not about the old wood,” I said.

Kyla glanced at one of the signs, then stopped. “Fried Oreos. What the hell?”

I turned and read the freshly painted sign aloud, “‘Fried Oreos, fried Twinkies, funnel cakes, sausage on a stick.’” I grinned. “On a stick! All food is better on a stick. Wish they were open now.”

She looked appalled. “I’m judging you right now. Tell me you wouldn’t actually eat any of that.”

“Of course not,” I lied, giving what I hoped was a convincing little laugh and thinking I would have to ditch her tonight when we came to watch the rodeo.

Kyla put her hands on her hips and looked around. “They’re really going all out this year aren’t they? I don’t remember all this stuff when we were here last time.”

“You haven’t been here in at least five years. Plus the racetrack is new,” I reminded her. “But you’re right, I don’t remember them ever having a rodeo over Thanksgiving before. Looks like it’s going to be fun.”

She shot me a glance. “Fun. Yeah, right. Anyway, I’m starving. Let’s go back.”

We returned to the parking lot and stopped dead in our tracks.

A goat perched atop the mound of feed sacks in the bed of the red ranch truck and now appeared to be intent on chewing her way to the bottom.

I gave a shout and ran forward, waving my arms. The goat raised her head briefly, golden eyes with their odd horizontal pupils taking me in and then dismissing me. She raised a cloven hoof to liberate another few cubes from the torn sack and took one between delicate lips.

“How in the world did it get up there?” asked Kyla as she came up beside me. She looked around as though searching for a stepladder.

“Jumped. Goats can get into anything. I’ve seen them in trees. Besides, the tailgate is down.”

I hoisted myself onto the pickup bed and then climbed onto the mound of feed sacks. Face-to-face, the goat seemed larger and more solid than she had from the ground. She certainly was not at all bothered by my presence. I waved my arms again but got less response than she would have paid to a horsefly. I reached out and grabbed one of the curved horns and pulled gently at first, then as hard as I could. The goat shook me off with a nonchalant toss of her head and took another cube.

Kyla started to laugh. “Goat one, Jocelyn zero.”

“Very helpful. Get up here and help me push.”