The Homeplace: A Mystery (15 page)

The turnoff to Bobby’s place was hidden by a jog in the road. Chase slowed his pickup, swung onto the packed trail, crossed Sandy Creek, and left a rooster tail of dust on his way up the hill to Bobby’s. If Marty was watching he’d know where Chase was headed.

Bobby lived in a double-wide he’d towed to the hilltop ten years before. The front door faced south and east so that morning sun would melt the ice on winter days. There were two metal buildings, better kept than the trailer, for Bobby’s tractors and machinery. Half a dozen old rusted cars sat in the yard, and where pickups and tractors hadn’t mashed down the vegetation, the weeds stood three feet tall.

In the shade of one of the buildings, a skinned fork-horn buck hung from the bucket of a Bobcat front-end loader. Hunters from the city would have hoisted a deer onto a tree branch with rope and had fun doing it. Farmers let machines do the lifting and saved their backs. It was things like that Big Paul had pointed out to Chase.

Bobby led a pinto saddle horse to a trailer he’d hitched to the back of his pickup. He tied the horse’s lead rope to the trailer and walked out to meet Chase. “Whatcha think, Chase?”

Chase climbed out of his truck. “Nice deer, Bobby. Where’d you get him?”

“Don’t tell Birdie this.” Bobby grinned, bent forward, and let a mouthful of tobacco juice dribble onto the ground. “Comin’ back from breakfast at Saylor’s this mornin’, and that little deer was standin’ in the creek bottom where my road crosses Sandy. I stopped the truck and he just stared at me. Popped him out the window with my aught-six.”

Chase smiled. “Which way you come from town?”

Bobby’s grin left his face. “From the highway. Why?”

“They found”—Chase didn’t want to say it was him—“Pop Weber’s truck about half a mile from your turnoff. Nobody can find him. Sheriff’s boys and state troopers are lookin’ now.”

“I know. That’s why I’m loadin’ this horse up. Got a call from town. We’re gonna make our own search party and comb both sides of Sandy from the highway to Butt Notch. About twenty men volunteered so far.”

“Kendall know about this?”

“I ain’t told him. Don’t think anyone else has. He’s too busy with the murders.” Bobby spit again. “What’s he gonna tell us to do? Not look?”

“He might.”

“Piss on him if he does.” Bobby reached back to rub his horse’s ear. His jacket rode up his hip, and Chase spotted a holster on the farmer’s belt.

“What’s the pistol for, Bobby?”

“People been killed in this town. Man should be careful. That’s what it’s for.” Bobby cocked his head. “Why you askin’ so many questions, Chase?”

“One of the dead was my good friend.”

“We’re all gonna miss Coach. But you didn’t come out here to tell me that.”

Chase bit his lip. “The boy was killed three miles from that alfalfa field you lease from me. Thought maybe you might have seen somethin’. If you didn’t, maybe your brother did. He around here?”

Bobby tangled his fingers in the horse’s halter. The horse pulled away, but Bobby wrapped his hand tighter until his knuckles turned white. “You think your shit don’t stink, Chase Ford. You go away to college and play basketball on TV, marry up to that pretty little country singer, and never come back here even once. Now your world turns to shit. Can’t play ball no more. Wife left you, and you show up here. And Coach’s dead.” Bobby yanked on the halter. “You’re not the big man you used to be.” Bobby’s jaw muscles bunched. “Maybe you should quit askin’ questions and get off my property.”

“The murders have us all on edge, Bobby.”

“Leave, Chase.”

Chase nodded, backed to his truck, and got in. Bobby stood stock-still. When the horse struggled and tried to pull away, Bobby held firm. Chase dropped the truck in reverse, backed away from the trailer, slipped it into drive, and swung a wide circle in Bobby’s yard on his way back to the road.

Which question didn’t Bobby want to answer?

There was no sign of Ray-Ray around the trailer or barns, but he could have been hiding anywhere.

With his deer rifle pointed at my back.

But Bobby was on his way to help with the search for Pop. Would he do that if he had something to hide?

He would if he thought it would throw the suspicion off him and his brother.

No.

Chase hadn’t learned anything at all. Bobby and Ray-Ray liked to keep people at a distance. In Bobby’s mind, Chase had asked too many questions. That was that.

Unless—

A flock of magpies cawed and hopped around something just inside the fence line at Sandy Creek. Chase slowed his truck and swung to the edge of the narrow trail road. The black and white birds crowded together and pecked at the ground.

Something’s dead.

When Chase rolled down the window, the birds never spooked. He hollered, and they stayed fixed on their free meal.

Could it be? Pop?

Chase opened the door.

He snatched a stone from the road and hurled at the greedy birds. They hopped away. The pile was shiny and slick pink, bulging with purple and red.

Gut pile from Bobby’s deer.

Chase let himself breathe. He was as edgy as everyone else in Comanche County.

Chase needed more time before he went to talk to Kendall. He wanted to find Dolly. If for no other reason than to tell her he was sorry about Jimmy.

There was a shortcut he remembered. He had passed the gate into Bobby’s neighbor’s pasture. A rutted trail angled across four fenced sections. In about the center of the pasture sat a windmill and stock tank. From there, the path crossed to the far corner of the property and met a county road about a half mile from town. The road crossed the railroad tracks and led into Brandon just behind Saylor’s Café. He’d stay away from the highway, weave through town on his way to where Dolly lived with her stepfather, and hope Kendall or one of his deputies didn’t see his truck.

*   *   *

Ray-Ray had one more road to cross before he made it to his brother’s farm. There was a bridge over Sandy Creek four miles from Bobby’s, but less than a mile from town. It had taken him longer than he’d thought it would to cover the distance between his place and his brother’s. He’d been careful and tried to keep hidden along the creek bottom.

Once he’d stayed under a fallen cottonwood for a half an hour and watched two city-boy hunters try to get within a rifle shot of a herd of deer. The deer gave the boys the slip and walked close enough to Ray-Ray that he could count the flies buzzing around the deer’s heads.

Another time, he held tight and watched a farmer’s wife out checking stock in a field. He thought it better to stay still than risk her seeing him.

Ray-Ray was sure no one knew where he was. But he’d be cautious before he crossed the county road. He’d listen for cars and trucks before he made his dash under the bridge.

The prairie could be a quiet place. But quiet meant to Ray-Ray that something was on the prowl. A bobcat hunting at dusk hushes the night birds. Rabbits hunker tight when a coyote’s about. Prairie dogs shush their chatter and dive deep into their burrows when a hawk’s shadow crosses the ground.

Ray-Ray let himself down onto his belly behind a waist-high patch of weeds, watched, and listened. A meadowlark on the dead branch in a cottonwood tree trilled its song. A wild turkey scratched for grit and clucked to itself in the dry creek bed. In the sky, geese from the lakes at Eads
V
’ed up and headed out to feed before dark. He could hear the swish of their wings and their honking calls to one another.

Nature’s noise was good.

Then he heard it. From the west. Coming his way.

Whump—whump—whump.

Ray-Ray rolled on his back and found two dark smears against the clouds.

Helicopters.

He squinted as they came closer. There were white markings on the chopper’s side, and they were painted desert tan.

Army helicopters. He gritted his teeth. Government helicopters.

The copters parted. The lead swung away from the other, over the high ground south of Sandy Creek. The second swooped lower. Maybe a couple hundred feet over the tops of cottonwoods in the creek bottom. Gusts of wind rattled branches. Dried leaves danced along the ground.

Ray-Ray scrambled into a tangle of tamaracks and fallen trees.

Leave me alone, you bastards. Leave me alone.

And he raised his deer rifle to his shoulder.

*   *   *

Chase turned up the heat in the cab of his truck. The shortcut took away miles from the trip to town, but was probably longer in time. He bumped along over the two rutted tire trails across the sage-and-prairie-grass pasture. Dried cow pies peppered the ground, but the grass was high for this time of year. Whoever ranched here was a good steward. They hadn’t let their cattle overgraze. There would be grass in the spring.

Twenty or more mixed-breed cows huddled around the windmill and stock tank.

When they were in high school, Marty and Chase used the tank on hot summer evenings after working the fields. They’d filch Coors from the refrigerator at home, drive a pickup out, and soak in the cool water of the tank after the sun went down. He’d told Mercy about the place and dared her to come skinny-dipping with him. They snuck out after dark one night, but when the moment came, Mercy had a swimming suit on under her jeans and Chase soaked his basketball shorts.

Like playing basketball. Some games you win. Some you lose. You don’t know until the final buzzer. And close games are the best.

Chase found the trail on the other side of the trampled ground around the water tank and headed west toward the road to town.

With each bounce of the truck, he thought about the terrible scene at Coach’s house. He was glad he’d left before they brought out the body. He thought about the kid, Jimmy Riley, and how basketball might have given the poor kid a shot at college. Coach had said Jimmy was that good.

But thoughts of Dolly crept back in. His half-sister. By a father he didn’t understand. Just a high school girl working for tips at the café and thinking she loved the basketball star. Jimmy and Dolly could have been Chase and Mercy.

He felt the pulse of wind slap the side of his truck. Out of the side window he saw the helicopter over Sandy Creek.

And Chase heard a rifle shot.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Birdie beat it out of the meeting in Comanche Springs as soon as she was sure she’d answered Kendall’s questions.

Yes, she’d checked Ray-Ray’s house. No, he wasn’t there. And, no, she had no idea where he was.

She headed to the east edge of the county to do what they paid her to do during the opening weekend of deer season. Be visible, check licenses, issue citations to law breakers and keep the landowners happy. She liked her job, and driving the back roads was sure less stressful than tracking Ray-Ray and following Kendall’s orders.

The breeze’s cold bite chilled her fingertips, and by noon clouds bunched on the horizon to the north.

Weather coming in. And, God, the county needed the moisture. Let it snow.

It was a prayer, not a curse.

Birdie knew cold and snow would send most of the weekend hunters scurrying for home. The more serious would stay. Deer would need to browse to keep their energy up in the cold, so they’d settle in near the alfalfa and feed crops. Snow-covered ground made them easier to spot. The hunters could take advantage of that. Most would obey the rules. A few might be tempted to hunt where they didn’t have permission or road hunt or any of a dozen things she was paid to watch out for. But that would be tomorrow. For now Birdie would do her job.

And try to forget the murders.

By noon, she’d mediated a dispute between a farmer and two hunters he’d caught on his posted ground. The hunters showed her written permission they’d been given to hunt on the farmer’s neighbor’s place. They explained they had got confused by the big open spaces and crossed a fence they shouldn’t have; they apologized and offered to pay a trespass fee. Birdie was convinced the men were telling the truth. She talked it over with the landowner, and he agreed to forget the matter.

Score one for Birdie. It’s always better not to write a ticket.

Later, she helped a man and his eighteen-year-old daughter load a nice four-point buck in their truck. The girl had shot it. The father was so proud he could hardly talk. With tears in her eyes, the daughter told Birdie that her mother had died of cancer four months before. The girl was headed off to some college back east after Christmas and wanted to do something special with her dad before she left him. He wanted to take his girl hunting. Now they had a deer to show for the hours they’d spent together. And memories of a pancake supper in a church basement and the wide-open Colorado Plains. Some days Birdie loved what they paid her to do.

But there were two dead bodies, and from what she heard from listening to the sheriff’s band on her radio, she knew there was no word on Pop Weber yet. Her truck needed gas, so Birdie swung out on the highway and headed north for Brandon. Maybe she could do something to help.

The needle on the fuel gauge bumped the “E” when she passed a highway sign showing she was twenty-five miles from Town Pump. She fell in behind two semis and a pickup hauling a horse trailer. Birdie let her foot off the gas and slowed to follow them into town.

Another pickup, with three men, caught up to her. The truck’s blinker came on just as they crossed Sandy Creek. It followed the first pickup and trailer through an open gate into the pasture on the north side of Sandy. Two more trucks and trailers waited in the field. Birdie recognized Bobby Jackson’s pinto horse tied to the back of his truck.

What the—?

*   *   *

“You told ’em I bought the beer?” Cecil stared across the counter at Allen and gritted his teeth to keep from screaming at the kid.

“They kinda, you know, made me.”

Cecil felt spit bubbles form at the corner of his mouth. “What else you tell ’em?” He dabbed his mouth with the tail of his T-shirt.

“Well, I said we went out to Ray-Ray’s to buy weed.” Allen backed away. “But I didn’t say you were with us. Honest.”