State Fair (36 page)

“I know. Just watch your back. I mean that literally.”

“I promise that I will stay in large groups of people at all times. I’ll be as vigilant as a . . .” I tried to think of an apt metaphor, but failed. “I’ll be careful.”

“
Te amo.
”

“Love you too, Friday.”

Before I left, I decided to call the ranch.

“How’s Aunt Garnet?” I asked Dove.

Dove’s deep sigh sounded like a wind swooshing down a canyon. “She’s moping around here like a teenage girl who’s lost her first beau. I just don’t know what I’m going to do.”

This time Dove actually sounded concerned rather than irritated. That really worried me.

“Here’s a novel concept. Why not just ask her what’s wrong?”

No response.

“I truly don’t understand you, Gramma. You have never, in all my life, ever had trouble asking anyone anything! What’s the big dang problem?”

“Because that’s
not
how we do things.”

I held out the phone, tempted to pound it on the porch railing. “I think how y’all do things is not working out so great and maybe, just
maybe
you should try something new.”

“See you at the rodeo,” she said, and hung up.

I considered throwing the phone into the front yard, but I knew my dramatic gesture would send the twins flying over here to see what was wrong. They were monitoring my house like Columbos in broom skirts.

“That’s it,” I said to Scout, who reclined on his side with one eye open.

He’d been nervous since our house had been vandalized and had slept as poorly as I last night. “I wash my hands of them. I do, I truly do.”

His tail thumped twice.

“You, sir, are a true gentleman.” I scratched his soft belly.

The rodeo didn’t start until seven thirty, so I puttered around the house until a little after six. I called the twins, told them what both Gabe and I were doing and asked if they’d dog-sit.

“No problem,” Beebs said. “Bring him over. We’ll keep a sharp eye on Scout and your house.”

“We have the cops on speed dial,” Millee said on the other line.

When I arrived at the fair there were no parking spaces left near the grounds so I was forced to find a spot in an off-site parking lot two blocks away. But plenty of people were walking toward the fairgrounds so there was little chance of me getting attacked. When I left tonight, I’d simply catch a ride back to my truck with Dove and Daddy. Gabe couldn’t fault my diligence.

The Bull Pen was beyond crowded tonight. The country rodeo was one of our most popular events because almost everyone had a family member or a friend or a child or a friend’s child competing. It was truly a local gathering, all the contestants competing either from San Celina or Monterey County. It was an old-fashioned rodeo, existing more for fun and bragging rights than paying a large purse. But though the purses were small, the silver-plated belt buckles were big and much coveted. The bulls and broncs were spirited, but not crazy. The events were ones that most ag people could relate to—team penning, team roping, barrel racing, breakaway roping and double mugging, a combination steer wrestling and roping that originated in Hawaii.

A performance by the Wranglerettes Drill Team opened the rodeo. It was always a crowd pleaser watching the lithe young girls move in and out of formation on their precisely trained horses, their red, white and blue American flags fluttering in the wind, the horses galloping in time to the patriotic music. We all rose for the National Anthem sung in a wispy soprano by this year’s Miss Mid-State Fair.

Dove, Daddy and Aunt Garnet arrived right after the first go-round of barrel racers. Dove chattered like a parrot on crack, Aunt Garnet looked calm and thoughtful and Daddy appeared a little tight around his eyes.

I sidled up to him at the bar. “Hey, Daddy, what’s happening with the
hermanas y Sugartree
?”

He ordered a bottle of Budweiser, something he rarely did. Daddy just wasn’t a drinker. “Pumpkin, those two women are about ready to drive me to drink.” The bartender slid the icy bottle across to him.

“Apparently they already have.” I laughed.

He didn’t. I’d never seen him look so miserable.

“Where’s Isaac?” I asked.

“He went down to Santa Barbara for some kind of lecture. Comes back Sunday. I’ll sure be glad to see him.”

I put a hand on my dad’s forearm. “I’ll come over tomorrow and force them to get this all out in the open.”

He gave me a look that said—good luck—then took a long swig of beer.

The evening flew by watching the local young and not-so-young people compete. I joked and talked with people I’d known my whole life, cheered their kids to victory, lamented their defeats, ate three of Emory’s delicious miniature smoked chicken sandwiches and enough cheese grits to embarrass myself. In true addict fashion, I swigged three bottles of non-diet Coke. And I deliberately stayed away from Dove and Aunt Garnet. They sat next to each other all evening out on the balcony chairs watching the rodeo but, from what I could tell, didn’t say one word to each other. Tomorrow, this whole business was coming to a head if I had to handcuff those two together and throw them in the pokey.

They were announcing the last go-round of bullriders when I wandered back into the hospitality suite. After the last ride, a sluggish river of sweaty, slightly tipsy people would flow from the stadium seats either into the arena or back to the fairgrounds, which were open until midnight. In the arena there was the traditional dance after the rodeo, but I hadn’t gone to one since my late twenties. It used to be one of the highlights of the fair for me back when my eyes didn’t start fluttering at 11 p.m.

I searched the crowd for Daddy and the sisters. Dang it, I should have told him when we were at the bar that I’d need a ride back to my truck. I finally spotted him and Dove over by the exit. Dove’s face was flushed pink, not, I suspected, from the warm room. I pushed through the crowd toward them.

“Hey, are you getting ready to head home?” I glanced around. “Where’s Aunt Garnet?”

“She’s hiding out in the bathroom,” Dove snapped. “Just like when she was a child. She used to do that to Mama all the time.”

“What?” Even I was becoming weary of that being my unoriginal response to everything in last few days.

Daddy shuffled his feet and looked at the ground. “Garnet and Dove had a little set-to.”

I placed my hands on my hips, feeling like I was refereeing between two five-year-olds. “Oh, for Pete’s sake, what happened?”

Dove looked as guilty as a chicken-chasing puppy. “Nothing.”

Daddy cleared his throat and continued to study the brown commercial carpet.

“Okay, we quarreled,” Dove said. “Big deal. She’ll get over it once she admits I’m right.”

“About what?” I asked.

“Gramma Honeycutt’s teapot.”

“Her what?”

She enunciated slowly. “Gram-ma Hon-ey-cutt’s tea-pot.”

“What about it?”

“I said it had pink flowers. She said they were green.”

“Lord help us, you are both crazy as rabid dogs.”

“They’re pink! I’d swear it on Gramma’s grave.”

“Where is this teapot?”

She waved her hand dismissively. “Broke when we were six. That’s not the point.”

Daddy looked helplessly at me. I swear his eyes were starting to tear up.

“I’m stopping at the liquor store on the way back to the ranch,” he declared.

“You do realize you are displacing acute anxiety with irrational anger,” I said to Dove.

“Don’t start on me with that psychic mumbo-jumbo.”

“Psychological.”

“She’ll be fine. Said she’s going back to Arkansas tomorrow. I’ll drive her to the train station myself. Throw her bags after her.”

Not, I thought, until this was all resolved. “Why doesn’t she come home with me tonight? Give you both some time to cool off.”

Daddy looked like he would collapse from relief. “Thanks, pumpkin. We all need a night off.”

I started to hug my gramma, but she pushed me aside and started down the steps. When I hugged my dad, I whispered in his ear. “This
will
be resolved tomorrow.”

“It better,” he whispered back, “or I’m moving out to the bunk-house with Sam.”

Once they left, I called Gabe’s cell phone to warn him we would be having company tonight. It went directly to voice mail, which meant he’d either turned it off or was out of range. Where
was
he that he couldn’t have his cell phone on? He was so intent on me not being alone so no one could hurt me and here I couldn’t even reach him.

The Bull Pen had grown hot and sticky and I was tired. All I wanted to do was find Aunt Garnet and go home. I’d keep my promise to Gabe and ask one of the security guys to drive us to my truck.

The three-stall bathroom was hip deep in teased hair, fringed cowboy shirts tied under boobs and the chemical fog of multiple varieties of hairspray. Teenage and twenty-something girls maneuvered for a section of the two long mirrors trying to repair rodeo queen curls that had wilted in the heat. Aunt Garnet wasn’t among them.

“Was an older lady with short white hair just in here?” I asked a friendly-looking young woman wearing a sleeveless red T-shirt and a matching cowboy hat.

“Not in the last ten minutes.” We were so close I could smell her grape-flavored gum. “That’s how long I’ve been waiting to pee.”

“Thanks,” I said, backing out.

I scanned the crowd, but I didn’t see her anywhere. I checked the coat room, which doubled as a child-care area. A bored-looking girl in her early teens sat on the floor entertaining a toddler with LEGOs.

Now I was starting to worry. Where could she have gone? The only answer was out to the fairgrounds. Worry was quickly overtaken by annoyance. It could take me hours to find her. I suddenly regretted my intervention in the Honeycutt girl’s lifelong feud. Since when was it
my
job to play diplomat?

I went down the stairs, getting more irritated with each step. I was tired, hot and wanted more than anything just to go home and take a cool shower. I reached the bottom of the stairs, shoved the door open and ran right into the rock-hard chest of Detective Ford Hudson.

“Whoa!” he said, grabbing my shoulders. “Any particular reason you are imitating a battering ram?”

“My crazy aunt,” I said, pulling away. “She got in a huge, ridiculously petty fight with Dove and is wandering around the fairgrounds somewhere. It’s going to take me hours to find her.”

He cleared his throat. “Unfortunately, ranch girl, it isn’t.”

H
IS EXPRESSION WASN’T TEASING AND I FELT MY CHEST CONSTRICT. Around me the mock-terror screams from the midway, giggling packs of girls, crying babies, became muted, like someone abruptly stuck cotton in my ears.

“Hud, what’s happened to my aunt?”

“Don’t panic . . .”

I grabbed the lapels of his denim jacket. “Tell me.”

He placed his hands over mine. “You need to come with me. I’ll explain while we drive.” He flagged down a security cart, flashed his badge and told them to take us to the fairground entrance.

“What is going on?” I asked.

He placed a finger on his lips, glanced over at our driver.

Minutes later we were inside his Dodge Ram truck and I repeated, “Tell me.”

“Just a minute.” He flipped open his phone and dialed. “Hud here. What’s going on?” He listened a moment, then said, “We’re on our way. Yeah, she’s with me.” He stuck the phone in his shirt pocket, then started the truck. “First off, for the moment, your aunt is fine.”

I inhaled. The air smelled like vanilla and motor oil. “For the moment? Where is she?”

He turned on the ignition and shifted into drive. “Like a certain someone related to her who will remain unnamed, she has wandered into something she shouldn’t have wandered into.”

“What in the heck are you babbling about?”

He concentrated on the dark road. “You know if it weren’t so dang important, I’d find it hilarious. But multiple law enforcment agencies have been working on this sting operation for almost six months and there’s a good possibility that your—as you so aptly put it—crazy aunt might have flushed all that down the toilet.”

Frustration made my eyes burn. “I’m totally lost.”

“Condensed soup version. Milt Piebald. Stolen cars. Chop shop. Hot parts. Car parts these days are apparently more profitable than selling whole cars. Milt’s got a whole string of people on his unofficial payroll. Most of White Boys United, actually. Why, Mr. Piebald’s the Donald Trump of bumpers, side mirrors and alternators. Calvin Jones probably knew about it, maybe even worked for Milt when he was hanging around his skinhead buddies. We’re guessing he, for reasons as yet unknown, threatened to go to the police. Maybe he was into blackmail or wanted to make a little spending money to impress his new girlfriend. Maybe he hated what they were doing. Shoot, maybe the guy actually had a conscience. Those details aren’t clear yet. He was killed. It was made to look like it was a racially motivated incident to throw us off.”