The Homeplace: A Mystery (19 page)

The two pricks were laughing.

“Damn it,” she shouted, and slammed the door behind her. “I half expected to find you two all burned up, and now you’re playin’ in the dirt and gigglin’ like two schoolboys who got a peek at their first
Playboy
magazine.” She kicked a cascade of dust and dirt clods at Chase and Marty. “Damn you two.” She rubbed her face to hide her smile. “Either of you hurt any?”

Chase raised up onto his elbows. “A little banged up, but we’re fine, Birdie.”

His knuckles were scraped and bloody, and when he smiled white skin showed through the dirt in the creases around his mouth. Right then Birdie didn’t know what she would have done if he hadn’t been okay. She wanted to cry but couldn’t let him see her do that. She had to be Birdie, the tomboy. One of the guys. Just another friend. Not Birdie, the girl who had always loved Chase Ford. She couldn’t look at Chase, so Birdie did what she always did when life confused her. She put on her tough act.

She snatched up a dirt clod the size of a hen’s egg and heaved it at the side of the tractor. It exploded into a cloud of dust just over Marty’s head. “Damn you, too, Marty Storm. Connie Mason is tellin’ everybody how you made her take your car and promised you’d save her house. Playin’ big hero, huh?” She stepped right up to where he sat and pointed her short, thick finger in his face. “Did you think for one minute about your wife and boys?” She stared down at him and trembled with what she wanted to be anger, but Birdie knew it was fear, or relief, or maybe it was love. “If I didn’t care about your wife so much, I’d twist both your nuts off with a pair of fencin’ pliers. And I’d do it right now.” And she gritted her teeth because she needed to cry.

“Settle down, Birdie,” Chase said.

*   *   *

“Settle down, my ass.” She stomped back to her truck. Her hand shook when she reached for the door handle, and Birdie wanted long legs and blond hair and for Chase to look at her the way he always looked at Mercy. She wanted to be the woman standing next to him on the cover of the old
People
magazine that she kept hidden in a toolbox in the back of her pickup. But most of all, right then, Birdie didn’t want to be Birdie. She stood with her hand on the door and stared across the prairie, so glad nothing had happened to him.

“Birdie,” Chase called.

“What?” she snapped over her shoulder.

“Birdie, what about the fire? Did they get it under control?”

“Yeah.” She sucked in a breath. “The boys decided the best place to fight it was ’bout a mile up the road.” A dirty finger stopped a tear before it left her eye. “You know the place where there’s that one big cottonwood and the creek bottom squeezes in real narrow-like? Seemed like every farmer in twenty miles was there with a chainsaw or shovel, choppin’ trees and brush as that wall of fire came at ’em. Someone remembered where the county left one of their graders up the road. That Collins kid hotwired it, and they busted through a fence and scraped everythin’ that might burn out of the creek bed for about a hundred yards.”

She couldn’t look at Chase. “The firebreak stopped it from movin’ east. The road stopped it on the south and through the smoke, we could see you two turnin’ dirt in Mason’s field. The wind changed just enough to slow it, but I … ah …
we
couldn’t see you through the smoke and dust you were churnin’ up.” She rubbed her mouth with the back of her hand. “If you two wouldn’t have done what you did, it might still be burnin’ fields and farms all the way to town.” She wanted to see Chase’s dirty face again and remind herself he was all right, but she couldn’t let him see her wet eyes. “You did good. It was brave. Damn stupid, but brave.” She rubbed her eyes.

Chase hauled himself up from the ground and started toward her. “What’s wrong, Birdie?”

She waved for him not to come closer. “Damned smoke in my eyes, that’s all.”

*   *   *

From the way she said that, Chase knew it wasn’t the smoke in Birdie’s eyes. Something was wrong. It wasn’t in her voice, the way she said it, or even the tone. It was the way the moment squeezed his gut when she spoke. So much like the way Billee spoke when the pills steered his life so far from hers.

When one pill eased the pain in his knee. The second numbed life around him. And the next took him hundreds of miles out of his mind. Until that day one too many pills turned numbness to rage.

Birdie glanced back. Her eyes searched deep inside him, begging him to speak to her. But his throat knotted, and he wanted those pills he had sworn to Billee, to the others in the room with that circle of chairs, and to God above that he’d never touch again. He clamped his eyes shut and prayed for something to rescue him from that moment, and when he opened them his rescuer was a GMC pickup.

Chase’s throat opened, and he breathed out. “Look who’s comin’.”

The lights on the top of Kendall’s new GMC flashed red and blue. The sheriff followed the tracks Birdie’s truck had crushed into the stubble.

Chase turned, reached down, and took Marty’s hand to pull him to his feet. With his next breath he swallowed away the need for the pill.

Marty brushed off the seat of his pants. “Just what we need.”

The sheriff’s truck veered off the tire tracks and pulled up next to Birdie’s truck. Kendall jerked open the door and in two steps he pushed by Chase and was chin to chin with Marty. “Deputy, what the hell do you think you’re doin’?”

“Sir?”

“You let a civilian take your car. Decided to fight the fire on your own?” Spittle sprayed from the sheriff’s mouth, and the muscles in his jaws bunched. “Explain yourself.”

“Sheriff,” Chase said.

“Stay out of this, Ford.”

“Sheriff.” Chase pointed at the others who’d come to rescue him from Birdie. “If you wait a minute, Marty can explain it to everyone. They probably want to hear about it, too.”

A string of pickups full of sooty-faced volunteer firemen drove through the farmyard and out into the field. Windows were rolled down, fists pumped, and men cheered. Near the end of the line was Marty’s patrol car. As they came closer, Chase spotted Connie Mason still at the wheel. Someone had shown her how to turn on the flashing lights. Bringing up the rear of the parade was a van marked with the logo of the TV station from Colorado Springs.

Kendall tapped the front of Marty’s shirt with his finger. “We’ll talk about this later.” As he walked around the side of his pickup, Kendall bent down and scooped up a handful of sooty dirt. He smeared some across his clean shirt and touched his face with his dirty fingers.

Birdie stepped up next to Chase—the old Birdie, the one he understood, not the one he’d tried to figure out moments before—and they watched the sheriff walk out to meet the newcomers. “You hold him,” she said to Chase. “I’ll get my fencin’ pliers.”

The men from the trucks rushed by Chase and Birdie to get to Marty. There was laughter and back slaps and as much noise as there had been sixteen years before when Chase was the hero of that basketball game in Denver. Chase half expected them to lift Marty onto their shoulders. Kendall leaned against the side of his truck, and his attention seemed more fixed on the van from the TV station than the celebration.

“Listen up,” Earl Collins shouted out.

Chase recognized him from high school. Earl had been two years ahead of him in school and had the rounded shoulders and bull neck that a man gets from swinging eighty-pound hay bales onto the back of a flatbed trailer for most of his life. A white fire helmet smudged with black soot sat on his head. All the other helmets were red.

Earl threw his huge arm over Marty’s shoulder. “Listen up,” he said a second time. “Every one of ya did a great job out there today. I’m proud of ya.”

“Does that mean you’re buyin’ the beer tonight?” A voice called from the circle. Thick laughter followed.

“Not hardly. I’ve seen all you can drink.” He laughed with his men. “Besides, we still have work to do.” He lifted his arm from Marty. “I want A and B squad to drive the perimeter and watch for hot spots. We don’t dare let anything flare up again. Taylor’s bunch needs to go back west, and the other swing north.” He paused and looked over the group. “Rest of ya, we got an old man to find. There’s still a girl who could be out there somewhere. Stow your gear, and let’s meet back at County Road Seventeen and Sandy Creek. We only got a couple more hours before it gets dark. From the looks of this sky”—Earl raised his face, and every man in the circle looked at the dark clouds building on the horizon to the north—“we could be in for snow tonight. Y’all know Pop will never make it if it turns cold.”

Chase tugged up the zipper of his jacket at the hint of chill in the air. Birdie fished a handkerchief from her hip pocket and wiped her eyes. When Chase looked at her, she glanced away.

“Sheriff?” Earl Collins called out. “Anythin’ else you want these men to be doin’?”

Kendall had left the circle and was halfway to the TV truck. He turned back to answer. “You covered it all, Earl.” Kendall touched the brim of his cowboy hat with two fingers in what Chase took for a mock salute. The sheriff raised his voice. “The county thanks each and every one of you.”

“That dickwad sounds like he’s makin’ a speech for his next election,” Birdie said just loud enough for Chase to hear, and she spat on the ground.

“Some things never change,” Chase answered. “Look where he’s headed.”

Kendall walked up to a young, blond woman near the TV van. His stern look turned to a big smile.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Jody Rose lifted her thick hair and slipped in the earpiece. “You be sure that burned field shows in the shot,” she barked to the man with the camera on his shoulder.

“Hey, I know what I’m doin’,” he said. “Now let’s get on with it, before what’s left of the smoke drifts away.”

“I’m almost ready.” In spite of the cold, Jody wriggled out of her parka and let it drop to the ground. She tucked her shirttail into the top of her jeans and made sure the denim shirt pulled tight across her breasts.

She’d caught a break. The news manager had decided to give her this live shot at halftime of the Broncos game. Half the state of Colorado would be watching. Jody wanted this on the demo disc her agent had promised to send to the networks.

She stepped away from the van and motioned for Kendall. “Sheriff, stand here.” Jody moved him beside her. She ran her fingers through her hair again and pulled the wind-whipped strands from the corner of her mouth. “Ready.”

The man with the camera tapped his headset. “Going live in three … two … one … and you’re on.”

“Most regard Comanche County as a quiet place.” Everything slipped away but Jody’s focus on the camera lens. “Take exit four-one-four from Interstate Seventy and drive thirty miles south on the two-lane road. It’s a slice of yesterday’s slower pace.” She decided to drop the Andy Griffith Mayberry imagery she’d toyed with. Too sugary. “People here know their neighbors by name. Even if that neighbor’s farm is ten miles down the road. No one locks their doors.”

She could imagine what she looked like in the lens of the camera. Hair teased by the prairie wind. Behind her, rolling fields, some still smoldering from the fire. Standing next to the tall lawman in the cowboy hat. This was a once-in-a-career opportunity. Jody inhaled, and the smell of the smoke and fresh dirt fueled her.

“All that changed Saturday morning.” Jody had to hold on to each second and make it work for her. She looked into the camera as if it were her friend. “The body of a high school student was discovered in a field just five miles from the sleepy town of Brandon. And when the sun came up this morning, Brandon High School’s beloved basketball coach, Robert Porter, had been found stabbed to death in his home. Are the killings connected? Is a serial killer at work in Comanche County?”

Jody paused. “But there’s more to this story. This morning eighty-seven-year-old local farmer Alfred ‘Pop’ Weber’s abandoned truck was found on a county road. Friends, units of the National Guard, and helicopters from Fort Carson have joined the Sheriff’s Department to search. You see, their friend Pop suffers from Alzheimer’s.” She stared at the lens and imagined viewers thinking of their own grandparents. “And within the last half hour, volunteer firefighters stopped a suspicious prairie fire that threatened farms and ranches.” She touched Kendall’s arm lightly and below the level of the camera shot—like she’d told him she would do. “I’m here with Comanche County Sheriff Lincoln Kendall to give us the latest on this series of unthinkable events.” For the first time, Jody turned from the camera and looked up at the man beside her. “Sheriff, do I understand you’re also looking for a missing high school girl?”

She knew Kendall was ready. No need to worry about that. Kendall was a man who used events and people to his own advantage. He wouldn’t waste a few minutes in front of a TV camera. Right now, he thought he was using her. But she was way ahead of him.

“Thank you, Jody.” Kendall touched the brim of his hat. “We are tryin’ to find out what we can about the girl, but right now I’m more concerned about the old farmer. I told my team that Pop Weber is our top concern.”

She smiled at just the right amount of cowboy twang in his voice.

Kendall fixed his eyes on the camera. “The volunteer fire department out of Brandon did a helluva job on this fire. They got it stopped before it could do any real damage. One of my deputies, Marty Storm, was a hero today. I’m proud of that boy.”

Jody made a mental note to find out more about the hero.

“Right now,” Kendall went on, “our priority is findin’ the two missin’ folks. I’ve asked the state for their help investigatin’ the cause of the fire.”

“Does that mean you think the fire was set on purpose?” Jody asked.

“The cause of the fire is yet to be determined. Let’s just say I’ve asked them to investigate all possibilities.”

Jody hid the tremor of excitement that coursed up her spine. The story just kept getting better.

“Sheriff, what can you tell us about the murders?”

“Hold on, little lady.”

Little lady? No. Too much. Jody nudged his leg with her knee. For one second she turned her concerned look to a glare.