Stripped Bare (19 page)

“Dig deep into your heart. Find out what you love the most. What has driven you from the time you were a child? When you discover it, you'll know what to choose.”

With that, she stepped close to me, placed both of her hands on my face, and pulled my head toward her, looking into my eyes. The cool of her palms, roughed from her work, felt like a benediction. Her eyes told me, in a way her words never could. “I do so love you.”

I breathed in her Lily of the Valley scent. “I love you, too,” I managed to croak.

She brewed her tea and I forced myself out of the sanctuary of home.

Spring decided to throw off her gloomy sweater and strutted out in a sundress. The hills had that sweep of green that would make a cow's mouth water just thinking about tearing into the juicy grass. I wasn't quite that taken with the sunny day and promise of new growth.

I drove along the rolling hills, only noticing the state of the pastures and the weather because, for the last eight years, these details had dictated my days. Today, it could have been blowing or sleeting or blazing under a burning sun.

I tried to cling to the blessing I felt Mom had given. But I kept returning to her advice. What had driven me all my life?

That wasn't hard to define. Glenda and I had talked about it many times. After growing up in the chaos of hand-me-downs, securing solitude only under a bed, never having room and peace to think and be, we'd both found our place in the world. We had homes and purpose and something we called our own.

I believed Glenda loved Brian, and I loved Ted, even if I had fantasies of castrating him right now. But I loved Frog Creek as much as Glenda and Carly loved the Bar J.

The highway stretched in a straight line, with flat pastures on either side. A gravel shoulder and deep barrow ditch lined the roadsides, with a three-strand barbed wire fence a few yards into the prairie.

Lost in retrospection, I topped the last hill just before the long flat into Broken Butte.

Damn!

A stream of black blocked the lane in front of me. Cows. Maybe three cows or a dozen. Holy mother. My insides exploded in fear. I'd smash into one or several of them and we'd all splatter in a rain of gore. I reacted.

I hit Elvis's brakes and jerked the wheel to the right. Thank God no one but me and a million suicidal cows were on the highway. I had little control. No way Elvis could weave through them like a pole-bending mare. My teeth clenched and my eyes squinted while I expected to slam into five hundred pounds of black hide and bone.

Baby. Oh, baby. I had to come through this in one piece in case—

I barreled through the cows, nicking one but not even toppling it.

I wanted to close my eyes and throw my hands over my face, dive to the floor and curl into a ball like an armadillo. It would do as much good as trying to drive this death rocket. But I couldn't give up.

Like a star trooper avoiding all the asteroids, I banged another cow but miraculously made it thought the herd. Not one animal stood between me and the open road. We'd done it! Even though I was cruising in the left lane, the cows and I had survived. I nearly started breathing again as I jerked the wheel to the right to get in my lane. My hands vibrated on the wheel as an ear-bursting
thunk-clank
exploded in the cab.

Elvis didn't alter his direction. I spun the wheel to regain my side of the road. Elvis had his own idea. Whatever that horrific noise was, it meant something busted. The surge of adrenaline tightened every muscle. I was doomed.
We
were, if I was carrying a new life.

Elvis kept veering left. All the while, the tires gave a shriek and Elvis shuddered as if fighting an interior demon. I battled along with him, willing his tires to straighten, for the brakes to slow us safely. My wishing failed. Metal scraped on pavement. I cranked the wheel.

Useless.

I tugged the wheel frantically but we didn't change direction, and the driver's side tire dropped from the pavement with a bounce. Elvis kept racing to the left. The front passenger side tire thudded onto the shoulder.

We were going to fly from the road. We could flip head over wheel. Be crushed under Elvis's steel.

We lurched toward the ditch. With insane expectations, I kept spinning the wheel, even though it was nothing but a useless appendage. It waggled in my hands. I felt like I held air.

Elvis bucked, his back wheels squealing like a dying rabbit. We headed for the left barrow ditch. Too fast. Too damned fast.

I braced myself, with my foot on the brakes and my back pressed into the seat. The cows on the road were nothing compared to this jet into the pasture.

My life depended on blind luck.

The crunching, screeching, roaring of tires mingled with the stench of burning rubber. Green of new grass swirled with brown of winter kill, mixed with yellow wildflowers and blacktop as the world rushed past my window.

We dropped from the pavement to the rocky shoulder. I bounced hard against the seat belt. My hands flew off the wheel. No loss there. I braced myself between the door and the dash. I clenched my jaw, expecting my bones to break, the windshield to shatter in my face, the steel of Elvis to crumple around me, crushing my body. Mashing the little life that might have started inside me. We crashed down from the shoulder into the ditch, plowing sand and weeds in the grill. I bit my tongue and tasted the tang of blood as we slammed into the far side of the ditch.

My forehead banged against the useless steering wheel as we came to an abrupt stop.

Silence. Alive.

I might have sat there two seconds or maybe twenty minutes. When awareness caught up to me, the only sounds were ragged breath, a meadowlark, and Elvis's idling engine. I killed the engine and swallowed blood and fear. Hot rubber, and freshly plowed dirt filled my nose.

Both hands planted on my stomach. “Are you in there?” I whispered. At most I could only be two or three weeks along. Even though my seat belt dug into me, it would take much more trauma to hurt a baby inside all my body's insulation.

With shaky fingers I tried twice to unhook my seat belt. “What did you do?” I asked Elvis, more to hear a voice, as proof of life, than expecting him to answer.

In my rearview mirror, I watched the scattered cows bunch along the side of the road.

I had to throw myself against the door several times before it cracked open. That was probably a good thing to beat some sense into me. I pushed the door against a pile of sand and weeds and climbed out. My knees buckled and I hit the ground. I rested on hands and knees for several seconds before collecting myself. I was alive and unhurt. No need to fall apart.

A cool April breeze chilled the sweat I hadn't realized covered me. I reached back inside and pulled out Ted's old hoodie, which I kept behind the seat. I slipped it over my head and it hung to midthigh. Coaxing my legs and feet to work, I made my way to the front of the car and bent down to look underneath.

Well, what do you know about that? Elvis had a broken tie rod. That's exactly what it had felt like, once I thought back to the clanking noise that had started the terrifying seconds. I had survived and diagnosed the problem, but it didn't make me feel any safer.

The tie rod wasn't just broken. I dropped to the ground, and on my back I scrunched under Elvis to get a better look. My breath bounced against the underside of Elvis, loud and fast with fear.

The bolt holding the tie rod to the driver's side tire was missing. The rod had become detached when I swerved to miss the cows.

Elvis was old and prone to mishaps. It's possible this was an accident, pure and simple. Possible.

Except, I'd stated in front of the Legion hall full of people that I would see to it that Eldon's murderer was found. The person Milo thought had killed Eldon was lying in a hospital bed in Broken Butte, unable to walk, let alone mess with a tie rod.

There was someone else who didn't want me to find the real killer, and they'd gone to some trouble to make sure I didn't.

 

16

I called Robert and Sarah to my rescue and waited in the ditch for them arrive. Two eighteen-wheelers roared past, and an old rancher pulled off to ask if I needed help. By then, the loose cows had wandered back to their pasture, probably on their way to the windmill. Other than that, it was me, the wind, and a herd of cows keeping watch on the prairie.

Robert and Sarah ranched twenty miles east of Hodgekiss and down a one-lane blacktop road another five miles. They lived farther away than some of my family, but they'd help me out without too many questions. Since they owned a flatbed trailer, they could haul Elvis home. Robert dropped Sarah at Frog Creek so she could bring Ted's pickup for me.

The long wait gave me time to calm the tremors that radiated from my gut. Someone had tried to hurt me. Maybe even kill me to stop me from finding Eldon's murderer. That was enough to send me cowering to Frog Creek and my cows.

Except, now that the hell-ride was a memory, it didn't scare me as much as torque me off.

Thank goodness I'd left home at first light. The wreck set me back more than two hours. How long did the breakfast shift at Hardee's last?

Robert arrived in his working clothes, hair matted and sticking out in forty-five directions from the Elmer Fudd cap he always wore on cold mornings. He leaned under Elvis to inspect the tie rod, even though I'd explained the “accident.”

By the time he climbed out, Sarah had joined me, asking if I needed them to take care of anything at the ranch, but also checking me out for injuries and agitation. I was glad for no hugs and are-you-okays.

Robert frowned at me. “Looks like someone removed the bolt.”

Sarah spun toward me. “What's going on?”

I tried for a chuckle, which sounded more like a drowning goat. “Elvis is old. Things fall apart.”

“Maybe,” Robert said. “But what if there's something else?”

I started moving toward the pickup. “There's nothing else. I've got to go.”

Sarah took a step after me. “Is this connected to Eldon's and Ted's shootings? You need to be careful.”

Robert raised his voice to follow me into the pickup. “Call me if you need anything.”

I needed time to go back a few days, but Robert couldn't give me that. “Thank you. I know I seem like a mess, but I promise I'll explain it all to you soon. I'm okay. Really.”
Or I will be, anyway.

I climbed into the luxury of leather seats and automatic windows. Frog Creek purchased a new pickup every other year. It went to Sid and Dahlia. Their two-year-old pickup then went to Ted. And Ted's four-year-old pickup became the official work truck—in other words, mine. Technically, the newer pickup was for both Ted and me to use, but we called it Ted's pickup and I rarely drove it. Ted mostly drove the county cop car, the one I assumed was sitting behind Roxy's house now.

With one last wave and a mouthed thank you to Robert, I pulled onto the highway heading for Broken Butte. My ever-practical mind began to assess. Because the ranch was incorporated, all the equipment, as well as the livestock, the house, and everything in it, belonged to Frog Creek. The corporation shareholders consisted of Sid, with 33 percent; Dahlia, with 34 percent; and Ted, with 33 percent. If I divorced Ted, the best I could do would be 16.5 percent of the home and business I'd poured myself into.

That train of thought chugged to nowhere. I turned my attention to Hardee's and Nat. I needed to find out what she knew about Carly being at the Bar J that day.

*   *   *

Old cars and pickups filled the Hardee's lot. I parked and walked into a circus of high-schoolers. Not only sprayed with the nectar of a sunny spring morning and the end of the school year looming, they also were wired on the last bit of freedom before first bell. Noise and laughter and a few flying hash browns pounded on the nerves of the war-weary counter help. The smell of fryer grease and burned coffee assaulted me.

I dodged a sailing straw wrapper and sidled up to the counter. Nat Hayward stood with her back to me, pulling sandwiches out of the warming bin and stuffing them into a bag. She turned and saw me and her eyes flew open in surprise. She'd asked me to come here, and yet she still acted like Peter Rabbit caught in Mr. McGregor's garden.

She dropped the sandwiches in the bag, zipped her fingers along the top to seal the fold, and barely projected above a whisper, “Eight thirty-five.” A strutting six-foot-two, acne-faced boy with flopping bangs grabbed the bag. Nat stepped back to the order area.

“How long have you been working here?” I asked.

She poised her fingers above the computer register and didn't look me in the eye. “I took a job as a maid at the Rodeo Inn three days a week. As long as I'm in Broken Butte, I might as well get a few more hours in.”

“It's a long way to drive.” I cut it off before I finished with “for a minimum wage job.” I was sure Eldon paid them a decent salary. I know he supplied them their house and all the beef they could eat. He probably paid for their groceries and utilities as well.

Three girls giggled and flirted behind me. A kid with a breaking voice answered their teases.

Nat raised her gaze to mine. “Danny's got some lawyer bills from when he and Carly ran away to Denver.”

Ouch. When Carly had called me, I'd picked her up and brought her home, leaving Danny on his own. I'd called Nat and Rope, of course, and told them the hotel where Danny was staying. Before they could get him home, he was picked up for trying to hold up a gas station and for minor in possession of alcohol. Nat and Rope had never made mention of it. Maybe they blamed me or Carly for Danny's trouble.

“Do you know why Carly was at the Bar J the day Eldon died?” I asked.

She glanced around, eyes jumping from customers to the other workers. “I shouldn't have told you to come. I've got nothing to say.”

“Did Rope tell you not to talk to me?”