The Homeplace: A Mystery (21 page)

In three more miles, she topped a little knob in the otherwise flat nothing. Next to the road, an old pickup sat. The hood was propped up with what looked like a shovel handle, and the driver’s door hung open. A man leaned on the fender, elbows-deep in the engine compartment.

The letters on the license plate meant the truck was registered in Comanche County. Hanging out of the top of the jeans of the man who fiddled with the motor was more butt crack than Birdie ever needed to see.

It was Cecil from Town Pump, and someone was in the passenger seat. That didn’t sit right.

If they were having trouble, why wasn’t the passenger helping out?

Birdie let off the gas and coasted up beside the stranded truck.

She powered down the window and shivered at the icy wind. “What’s goin’ on?”

Cecil turned around. “Birdie?” Shiny snot clung to the whiskers above his lip, and his face was red with cold. “God, I’m glad you’re here. I found Pop.” He jerked a thumb toward the pickup’s cab. “Damn truck stalled, and my phone’s dead.” Cecil cleaned his lip with the end of his tongue. “I don’t think he’s feelin’ too good. We got to get him to a doctor.”

Birdie leaped out her truck faster than her short legs had ever moved. “Where’d you find him?”

“He was just standin’ in the road a couple miles west”—he sniffled—“west of here.”

She leaned in through the open door.

The old man huddled on the seat. Dried blood matted the few strands of hair that hung across his forehead. The wrinkled skin over one eye showed red and purple. He shivered like a dried leaf.

Pop turned toward her. Glassy eyes searched her face. “Alice?” he whispered.

“No, Pop. It’s me, Birdie.”

“Alice?” the old man said again.

Birdie turned to Cecil.

“That’s all he’ll say. I think he got knocked in the head a pretty good one.” Cecil rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. “Do you know who he’s talkin’ about?”

“His wife’s name was Alice.”

Cecil bent down and looked in at Pop. “She dead?”

Birdie nodded. “Uh-huh.”

“Long time?”

“She was gone when I met him.” Birdie’s gut tightened. “Almost twenty years ago.” She looked back. “I’ll get us some help, Pop.”

“Tell Alice I’ll be home soon.”

“I will, Pop.”

Birdie dug into her jacket pocket for her phone. “There’s a sleepin’ bag behind the seat in my truck. Let’s get him wrapped up in it. I don’t want to move him if we can help it. I’ll see how soon the paramedics from Comanche Springs can get here.”

She checked the phone to be sure she had a signal. Only one bar showed on the little screen. She walked to the end of Cecil’s truck as she stabbed at the keypad.

Birdie looked down at the tire tracks Cecil’s truck had left on the dusty road. She spotted where his truck must have stalled and where he had turned for the side of the road. But further down, where the county roads crossed, she expected the tracks to trail back to the west. Instead, they turned north.

Birdie turned back to Cecil.

He told me he found Pop west of here. Cecil’s a damn liar. But why lie about that?

Hair prickled on the back of neck. The tire tracks from the north led back toward Sandy Creek. Where the fire had started.

Her bare hand found the edge of the tailgate. Cold flowed up her arm until her elbow ached. In the truck box, an empty bottle of Bacardi rum rested against the wheel well, and just inches away a bright red Bic lighter nestled on the rusty metal.

Birdie cocked her head. Cecil had the sleeping bag under his arm and stood at the side of the truck a step away from her. His lips turned up in a grin, and phlegm bubbled in his nostrils.

Settle down. Cecil will lie just to lie. The whole county knows that.

She looked down at the phone in her hand.

Call failed.

Damn it.

She hit
send
again.

Over Cecil’s shoulder she saw her Glock on the dashboard of the truck. Because …

Because when she drove the gun belt was too tight around her lardass. French fries and Hostess Fruit Pies were going to get her killed.

She glanced at her phone.

Nothing.

She put it to her ear and tried to keep Cecil in the corner of her eye.

“Can you hear me?” Birdie said into her phone.
Please?

Cecil took a step toward her.

“Arlene, this is Birdie.” She pushed confidence into her voice and spoke to the dead phone. “We found Pop.”

Cecil’s shoulder brushed her as he passed with the sleeping bag. He opened the passenger door to his truck.

“I’m with Cecil.” She said his name loud as she dared. And said it again. “Yeah, Cecil. From Town Pump in Brandon. Listen, we’re out on County Road Seventeen, ‘bout ten miles south of Sandy Creek. Send an ambulance.”

Cecil glanced over the top of his truck. The grin was gone.

Freezing wind cut through her jacket and shirt. Pinpricks of cold stung every pore on her skin. The wind chased its first wave of icy pellets across the prairie and scoured the dusty road.

“Pop got hit in the head. Might have a concussion. Tell ’em to hurry, Arlene.”
Oh, please, someone hurry.

Then Birdie was alone with Cecil. No phantom help on the other end of the phone. White mist rose from the tight line between his lips. He stood for a moment, then shook out the sleeping bag and draped it over Pop Weber.

“Cecil.” She tried to swallow the lump of fear in the back of her throat, but it refused to move. “Shut that door. I don’t want Pop to catch a chill.”

Cecil didn’t move.

“Get over here.” Keep him busy thinking help is coming. She walked to her pickup’s door. “I want you to show me exactly where you found him.” Her lungs ached with the strain, and her pulse pounded in her head. “The sheriff will want to know. I’ll get out my map.”

She kept the map in the glove box. Just above her pistol on the car seat. Cecil sniffled up the slick wetness in his nose and held her stare.

“Damn it, Cecil. Let’s get the spot marked while it’s still fresh in your head.”

Cecil shrugged his shoulders, took a step to the front of his pickup, and pulled out the shovel handle that held his hood open.

Birdie jerked with the crash of the hood.

Cecil looked down the road at the tire tracks his truck had left in the dirt. He lifted his head as if to follow the tracks to where they turned north, not west as he had told her. He swatted the shovel handle into the open palm of his free hand.

God help me.

With her toughest voice, she barked at him. “C’mon, I’m freezin’ my ass off. Get over her. I’m not gonna bite ya.” She pulled open her truck’s door.

Cecil stepped closer. The handle smacked his palm again.

Birdie hit the button on the glove box. She felt his eyes on the back of her neck and the whoosh of air as the handle slapped his hand again.

She added the seconds it would take to grab the pistol, pull it from the holster, turn, and face him.

He’s too close.

She plucked the map from the glove box, shoved by him to the hood of her truck and spread the map.

Wind shuffled the paper under her fingers, and icy snowflakes peppered the back of her hand.

Then she heard it. From over the only hill on the otherwise flat prairie came the sound of a car engine. A car crested the top. Not just any car, but a Sheriff’s Department car.

Cecil tossed the shovel handle in the back of his truck and looked down, and a trickle from his nose splattered on the map. “Show me where we are now, and I’ll figure out where I found Pop.” A grin flashed across his face.

Gravel crunched under the tires of the car from the sheriff’s department. Paco was behind the wheel. Birdie’s shoulders sagged with relief.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Marty tried to think of how many times he had seen the coroner’s van in the last year. Whatever that number was, it hadn’t prepared him for three times in less than two days. He parked at the side of the road behind two pickups with volunteer fireman stickers in the back windows. The coroner’s van had pulled in close to the yellow tape another deputy had strung along the charred fence post above the creek bottom. That deputy’s four-by-four sat next to the van from the state crime lab. He’d seen that van three times, too.

The wind chased the first snow squall of the coming storm across the prairie and bleached the sky as pale as the two corpses he and the coroner had already seen.

As many times as he tried to push it way, still Marty wondered if the body of the girl would be pale or burned black by the fire. He told himself to keep thinking
girl
until he was positive it was Dolly.

Before he opened his car door he rehearsed one more way to tell Chase his half-sister was dead. Maybe there was a chance the body wasn’t Dolly’s, he lied to himself again.

He climbed out and turned his coat collar up against the chill. Soft voices floated up from the creek bottom. Marty followed the tracks along the blackened fence to the place where the first loop of yellow tape was tied. He swung his leg over the top strand of wire and lied to himself one more time.

It’s not Dolly.

Marty slid down the steep bank to the creek. Craning his neck to shield his face from the cold, he followed trampled footprints through the scorched weeds toward the voices. The charred dirt stuck to his boots, and melting snowflakes turned inky black on the leather. Above him the branches of the burned cottonwoods hung like gallows’ arms against the washed sky.

Lonnie Colby, a deputy from the other side of the county, nodded when Marty walked up.

“Where is it?” Marty couldn’t say
the body
out loud.

Lonnie blinked the snowflakes off his eyelashes and jerked his head toward a spot where the creek twisted closer to the road above. “Over there. Coroner’s with her and the two techs from the state.”

“Is it—”

“They won’t say for sure. You know how they are, Marty,” Lonnie answered. “But it’s her. She had on the Riley kid’s letter jacket, and when they rolled her over there was a pay stub from Saylor’s Café in her back pocket. Her body laid on top of it, kept it from gettin’ burned in the fire. Coroner said the check was made out to Dolly.”

Marty’s chin dropped to his chest.

“Coroner won’t say for sure. He called for dental records so he can make a positive ID when he gets her to the morgue. But it’s her, Marty.” Lonnie dug under his coat for a cigarette. He pulled one from the pack with his lips and lit it. “Chase know?” he asked in a puff of smoke.

“He knows.” Marty shook his head. “He’s just waitin’ for me to tell him for sure.”

“Listen, Marty. Chase’ll want to hear this. Wasn’t the fire that killed her. I heard the coroner talkin’. She was dead first. Somebody dumped her here.”

*   *   *

It surprised Birdie that the head paramedic could bend over. The buttons of his blue uniform shirt gaped open, showing a paunch bigger than hers.

He struggled up from where he knelt beside Pop’s stretcher in the back of the ambulance and climbed out to where Birdie stood. The pulse from the red strobe lights on the cab of the truck painted the shadows and falling snowflakes crimson. “You, Alice?” he asked Birdie.

“Nah.” She shook her head.

“Didn’t think so.”

“Alice was his wife.” Snowflakes teased her face.

“She dead?”

This time Birdie nodded. “For more than twenty years. Why?”

“He said ‘Alice hit me.’ At least that’s what I thought he said. I asked him again, and he just started mumbling.” The paramedic looked back at the ambulance, and the cold turned his breath to steam. “Poor old fart.”

“How is he?”

“No way of telling how bad that bump on his head is until they run some tests at the hospital.” He flipped open a metal clipboard and scribbled some notes. “Mostly he’s just a wore-out old man. Let’s hope all he needs is rest and a couple of nights in a warm bed.”

“You take good care of him.” Birdie’s throat knotted. Pop had been on his own as long as she could remember. Drove the same truck and lived all alone in an old house too far from town for anybody to really look in on him. Just an old man who most people in the county felt sorry for. If Birdie didn’t find someone who cared for her she’d end up just like him. The wind sent a shiver down her back. And Birdie didn’t have an Alice to remember.

The paramedic climbed into the back of the ambulance and pulled the doors shut.

Birdie touched the closed door and breathed in the gassy fumes from the exhaust.
God, take care of Pop.
She’d never been any good at praying. She wasn’t sure if God even heard prayers if you didn’t use words like
thee
and
thou
. She looked up into the gray sky and she added one more thought.
If Thee got an extra minute, could Thee watch over me?

The breeze sculpted the falling snow into mushroom caps on the tops of the fence posts. A couple inches of the white stuff covered the dirt road like the downy feathers hunters plucked off geese. It swirled around the tires as the ambulance, with Pop in the back, lumbered away.

The marks on the road that showed Cecil’s truck had come from the north—not from the west like he had told her—were covered now. Would anybody believe her if she tried to tell them what she suspected? Would it matter?

“Officer Hawkins.” It was the sheriff.

Kendall had shown up after Paco called in. Two State Patrol vehicles followed the sheriff, and the van from the TV station in Colorado Springs was right behind. After Paco wrote down everything Cecil could remember about finding Pop, the little TV blonde stepped up with a big smile and the zipper tugged down on her parka. Cecil was more than willing to talk with her.

“Hawkins, get over here.” Kendall again.

Birdie moved close enough to the circle of cops beside Kendall’s truck that the steam from her breath mingled with theirs.

“Listen up,” Kendall started. “This storm could be a bad one.” Powdery snowflakes sluiced from the brim of his cowboy hat as he moved his head. “We just got word that they closed the interstate from Fort Morgan to the state line. They’re reporting a dozen semis have slid in the ditch. It turned icy fast, and they’re guessin’ it’ll be all over us in a couple hours.”