Stripped Bare (21 page)

Unbelievable. “And how are you holding up today?”

“I allowed myself one small breakdown, but I'm ready to fight now. I'm a strong woman determined to save my man.” She paused. “Our man. You're going to help me.”

“No, I'm not.”

She jumped at me. “You know he didn't kill Eldon.”

“Probably not.”

“So you can't let him take the blame.”

I inserted the key into the ignition. “I've got some things to do today. Get out of my pickup.”

She let out an impatient sigh. “It's my fault Ted's in this trouble.”

I agreed with her up to a point. “No one forced Ted to sleep with you. He had a choice.”

She considered that. “I'm not sure that's true. I really think we're meant to be together and there's no fighting that destiny.”

“Like I said. Get out of my pickup.”

She held up her hands. “Okay, okay. I get that you're mad at me. But maybe I should be mad at you, too.”

“At me?” The words clogged in my throat.

She smoothed her tight pink sweater over her breasts—those breasts so much more impressive than mine. “Sure. If Ted and I are meant to be together, you're the one who is the interloper.”

Her ten-dollar word stopped me for a second. “Is there something about the concept of marriage you don't understand?”

She wagged her head. “What is it, really? A quasi-religious institution requiring a certificate handed out by the government. Based on what? Those two organizations' interpretation of a love relationship? How does that even make sense? Is it a legal partnership to share assets and children or is it a mashup of church and state standardizing morality? Whatever it is, church or government, I say they have no right to dictate to me who I love and how that relationship should work.”

That was a whole lot more analytical thinking and use of polysyllabic words than I'd have thought possible for Roxy. “What you're saying is that marriage means nothing and you can do what you want, including sleeping with a married man.”

“I think that's a pretty rudimentary way to state it, but basically, yes.”

Where did this vocabulary spring from? “Okay,
now
you can get out.”

A gust rocked the pickup and we bounced together for a moment.

“I'm not leaving. We have to find Eldon's killer to free Ted.”

I'd had enough of this game. “You run along and find the killer. But be careful, because someone doesn't want the killer found.”

She tore off her glasses. “Ted was right. You are the most stubborn person!”

I wasn't stubborn. He just wanted his way all the time.

She sounded matter-of-fact. “People are talking about you. They know you're investigating, and you seem sort of professional because of the speech and being married to Ted. People like you and they'll talk to you.”

Translation: people didn't like Roxy. I hadn't realized she was capable of honest self-awareness.

I tilted my head back and moaned. “Will you please leave me alone?”

“You're going to help me, and here's why: I control the Bar J. I can call Glenn Baxter at any moment and start negotiations.”

I whipped my head toward her.

“But I won't.
If
…”

I waited.

“If you help me figure out who killed Eldon.”

If I hadn't lost my sense of humor two days ago, I might laugh at this twisted “Gift of the Magi.” Ted promised to get Roxy not to sell if I didn't investigate. Roxy promised not to sell if I helped
her
investigate. “If Ted goes free, you might not end up together.”

She lifted an eyebrow at me.

“He told me he wants us to work it out,” I said. Even though I wasn't convinced of his sincerity.

The other eyebrow poked up. “Is that what you want?”

I didn't like Roxy. I didn't like her at all. I channeled Mom and gave Roxy an unvexed, serene look.

She folded her arms, smug all up in her face. “Start the pickup. We're going to Hodgekiss.”

 

18

I wasn't sure how much I'd compromise to keep living at Frog Creek, but I'd do just about anything to save the Bar J for Carly. Even if it meant helping Roxy.

Neither of us spoke for an hour and twenty minutes. I normally would have turned on the radio and listened to the midday livestock reports, but I didn't want to diminish whatever discomfort Roxy might experience in the silence.

I pulled into Hodgekiss. “Okay, Sherlock,” I said. “Got any good ideas?”

She flipped one spiral curl with her index finger. “Yes. How about you?”

I didn't want to collaborate but I had to. “Nope. Who do you think did it?”

“Oh, come on. Make a guess.”

Gah! She was itching for a knuckle sandwich. “Don't make me kill you.”

She stuck out her lower lip. “Spoil sport. I think it was Dwayne and Kasey Weber.”

They hadn't been happy about the discussion at the debate and had zipped away at the first chance. That didn't mean they were murderers, but it was as good a place as any to start. “Why do you think they did it?” I asked.

My guess is that Roxy harbored jealousy of Kasey Weber. They were both leggy, some might say pretty, women who took pride in their sex appeal. They hung out together and acted as if they considered themselves the social stars of Hodgekiss. Like most frenemies—a word I cringed to use, but one that Roxy probably loved—they both were competitive.

I don't like a “they say,” but that didn't stop me from my internal mixing of fact and conjecture. Roxy married Brian about a year after Glenda passed. They'd only been married two years before he died. But in that short time, he'd provided her with the resources to be the queen she probably felt she was meant to be. She had money, prestige, and a handsome husband.

But then Kasey appeared on the arm of Dwayne Weber, not a year after Roxy and Brian married. Dwayne's divorce wasn't final when Kasey moved in with him, a sure sign they'd been having an affair. The two of them launched into a business, raising rough stock for the rodeo.

Brian's accident left Roxy with an unfinished horse barn and a tight budget doled out by her skinflint father-in-law. Kasey and Dwayne had earned a stellar reputation and were driving new pickups, hauling fancy stock trailers, and sitting with rodeo royalty at the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas. That placed Kasey well above Roxy on whatever diva scale they used.

Roxy tapped the dash and gave me that smug smile. “Let's go out to their place and find out.”

“Tell me now. I don't like playing games.”

She resigned herself to me being a stick-in-the-mud. “I was visiting with Kasey at the Top T bull sale last fall.”

Roxy kept talking, but my ears quit listening as a white-hot poker jabbed me. Ted had gone to the Top T bull sale last fall. I'd had the flyer sitting on the kitchen table and mentioned I thought we ought to bring in some new blood for our herd. The Top T is outside of Billings and is known for its easy-calving Angus bulls. We'd been buying bulls from local producers for years. That's not a bad thing, and we could still get good genetics, but I'd wanted to take a few days off with Ted. Just him and me on a road trip to Montana. At the end, we could buy a bull or two and charge all the expense to the ranch.

Ted had thought it a grand idea. He ran it by Sid and Dahlia at one of our interminable Sunday dinners—one of the dinners Dahlia insisted we drive to Broken Butte to attend, every other weekend. She'd assign me something like a salad or dessert, for which she always had a comment. Things like “You say you used nutmeg in this apple salad? Huh. I've never tasted anything like it before.” Or “I understand how sometimes the eggs just don't beat up enough to make a decent meringue. It doesn't taste that bad.”

Sid thought new genetics was a good idea, too, and we got the go-ahead. But Ted planned the trip during the weekend of Mom and Dad's fortieth wedding anniversary, a party my sibs and I had on the calendar for months. He pled forgetfulness, but even back then I'd wondered about it.

Now it made sense. He'd taken Roxy. A tiny ice pick stabbed into my temple.

Roxy didn't notice my silence. “Kasey and I have been friends for around five years. We know things about each other no else knows.”

And yet, compadres that they were, Roxy didn't hesitate to rat her out.

We headed east out of town to the Webers' parcel. If it sat outside a city, it'd be called a ranchette. In Hodgekiss, where medium-size ranches measured in the five-thousand-acre range, the Webers' one section didn't amount to much.

April had stopped pitching her hormonal fit and the wind had died down, but she was fixing to drop into her melancholy stage as a bank of dark clouds scooted toward the sun. After a short drive we pulled off the highway and rolled up in front of the Webers' manufactured home. By Grand County housing standards, it ranked toward the top—mostly because it was only a few years old. In another ten years, it would look like any number of double-wide trailers plopped in the middle of pastures.

A newer metal barn and several corrals perched directly in back of the house. A group of pens held bucking horses. Bulls of various breeds dozed in other pens. Some with horns, some brockled, black, dun, or even striated, they looked nothing like the menacing monsters they'd become in a rodeo arena. Portable panels ran in every direction, as if the Webers used whatever means they could to create more space for the stock.

The whole operation had the feel of too much squeezed into too little space.

“Ready?” Roxy nudged my arm.

On principle, I shot her a contemptuous glance, then climbed from the cab. A feedlot smell whacked me in the face.

Roxy met me in front of the pickup. She was all graceful, long-limbed giraffe next to my squat toad.

I slapped myself upside the head. Not literally, but on the inside. Ted picked me. And he wasn't the first one who had ever wanted me. I had left a string of broken hearts in my wake. Okay, two—and admittedly they were both even more flawed than Ted, if that was possible. Still, it would do me no good to denigrate myself.

Why the hell was I even thinking about this? I needed to concentrate on finding Eldon's killer so that Roxy wouldn't sell the ranch. My priority had to be Carly.

Roxy strutted ahead of me like a runway model in her fashionable cowboy boots, up the packed dirt path toward the redwood deck, and I followed in my scuffed and muddy ropers. The front door swung open before we could knock.

Kasey pushed the screen out and slipped from the house to the deck in her stocking feet. “Oh my God! What are you doing here?” She threw her arms around Roxy. “I'm so sorry to hear about Eldon.”

Roxy produced not one but a whole passel of tears. Like a miracle fountain, they gushed out of her eyes. “It's a tragedy.”

Even Kasey seemed taken aback. She patted Roxy's shoulder and her glance drifted to me. She had to be wondering what Roxy and I were doing together.

Like Roxy, Kasey had long, lean lines. When she'd shown up in Hodgekiss a few years ago, people took to calling her High Pockets. She wore faded Wranglers and a T-shirt. Her thick blonde hair, usually worn free, was held hostage in a braid today. She must hate not having her sexy on with Roxy looking all dolled up.

Kasey waited until Roxy gained control and pushed away. With a devilish gleam in the back of her eye, she said, “How is Ted? I heard he was shot.”

Roxy's tears started all over again. “He's so brave.”

I resisted rolling my eyes. “He'll be all right.”

Kasey put an arm around Roxy again. “How are you? I've been so worried.”

Roxy brushed away a tear. “I must have missed your call. You know how spotty cell service is between here and Broken Butte. I've been on the road almost constantly.”

Kasey didn't miss a beat. “I didn't call. I knew you'd call me when you were ready to talk, and I didn't want to interrupt if you were”—her eyes shifted to me, then back to Roxy—“busy.”

Roxy flipped her hair, apparently finished with the mourning portion of the visit. “It's okay. She knows.”

Kasey's eyes widened in surprise. I was pretty darned surprised to be traipsing around the countryside with Roxy, myself.

A gust sent the overpowering odor of manure whirling around our heads. The sun dimmed, and we looked up to see gray elephant clouds lumbering close. Kasey swung the screen open and gestured inside. “Come on in. I put the coffee on.” Of course she did. If you were in the house and someone drove up, you made coffee. It was Sandhills law.

We stepped into the faux foyer, a square of tastefully patterned linoleum to mark the area before the Berber carpet began covering the living and dining room. That ended with more of the same linoleum, in the open kitchen visible through the breakfast bar. The whole house had a sterile feel, as though they'd bought it furnished in the drab earth tones and hadn't added any of their own touches.

Either Dwayne and Kasey maintained the modest home because they hoped to move to a bigger, better place soon and didn't want to put too much into it, or they'd grown up in rural poverty and a new house decorated by the manufacturers passed for elegance.

We followed Kasey into the kitchen. “Where's Dwayne?” Roxy asked.

Even without makeup, Kasey's vivid blue eyes and long, dark lashes gave her a finished look. “One of the mares is foaling and he's got her in the barn. He's been babysitting since four this morning.”

Kasey grabbed three matching ceramic mugs, with the Weber Roughstock logo, from a cupboard and filled them. I took a sip and felt the hair growing on my chest.

Roxy and I perched on barstools, looking into the kitchen. Kasey leaned against the counter, facing us. From where she stood, she had a clear view of the road heading into her place from the highway and of the lane leading to the barn, where Dwayne held vigil.