The Homeplace: A Mystery (22 page)

In the sky above Birdie, the sun showed through the gray clouds like a blurred white disc, and the snow turned from fluffy to hard and wet. Cold slipped up her jacket to the bare skin where her shirttail had pulled loose from her pants.

“Paco, I want you,” Kendall continued, “to check out the place Cecil said he found Pop. It’ll be dark in another hour, and snow will have covered most of the signs, but I want a set of eyes on it, pronto. Don’t know about you, but I’m havin’ a tough time swallowin’ what Cecil’s tryin’ to tell us. If he lied about that, there might be somethin’ else he’s keepin’ from us.”

Birdie perked up. Maybe she should say something about the tracks. Kendall looked her in the eye.

“Hawkins, some of the volunteer firemen say they think they spotted Ray-Ray about an hour ago. He was on foot and headed back toward his farmhouse. You know him better than anybody, so get on over there and invite him to come to town and talk with us.” A stream of mist flowed from the sheriff’s nostrils. “I’m gonna send one of those state troopers with you in case he needs some persuasion.”

“I don’t need any help.”

“My call. The trooper’s goin’ with you.”

A hot rush replaced the storm’s chill. Birdie gritted her teeth.

Kendall held her eyes for an instant more and then looked away. “We’ll leave Cecil’s truck here. He says he needs to get back to his job at Town Pump. One of the troopers will give him a lift into town. If this storm is as bad as they say, he won’t be goin’ anywhere anytime soon.” The sheriff nodded at the TV truck. “I’ll follow them into Brandon. All we need is someone else lost on these roads tonight.” He wiped a drop of melting snow from his earlobe. “You know what you got to do. Now let’s get with it before we all freeze our asses off.”

The men moved away. Birdie caught Paco’s arm and held tight until they were alone.

“I didn’t say nothin’, but Cecil was actin’ real strange when I found him and Pop.” She double-checked to be sure Kendall couldn’t hear her. “Even strange for Cecil.”

“What are you tryin’ to tell me, Birdie?”

“He said he came up on Pop west of here. I’m tellin’ you, the tracks his truck made came from up north.” Birdie squeezed Paco’s arm harder. “Where the fire started.”

“Cecil will lie to you just to stay in practice, you know that. Why would he start a fire?”

“I can feel this one in my gut. Maybe Kendall’s right.”

Paco looked at Cecil still talking with the TV woman. “Where does Pop fit into all this?”

“I haven’t figured that out yet. You know somethin’ else?” Birdie reached under her jacket and tucked her shirttail into her pants. “The paramedic said Pop was mumblin’ about his wife Alice and then blurted somethin’ about her hittin’ him. What you make of that?”

“Just the stress talkin’, I’ll bet. Pop isn’t sure which day it is most of the time.” Paco squeezed her shoulder. “Okay, if the snow doesn’t shut me down, I’ll see if I can find anythin’. Birdie, you be careful. Ray-Ray can turn mean if he thinks you’re nosin’ around what’s his.”

“I can handle Ray-Ray.” She doubted Ray-Ray was still in the county, but she didn’t dare say so to Kendall. She mopped the snow off her side window with her forearm and opened the door. Birdie snatched her pistol from the dashboard, sucked in a breath, and fastened the gun belt around her soft waist.

“Where’s Marty?”

“You didn’t hear? Fireman found a third body. Girl. Might be Dolly Benavidez.” The old deputy turned for his car. “Marty’s out helpin’ at the scene.”

God, Chase, I’m so sorry.

Paco’s car headed down the snowy road. Cecil kicked the snow off his feet and slid into the front seat of one of the State Patrol cars.

Birdie climbed behind the steering wheel of her truck. The Glock stabbed her hipbone, and the belt pinched a roll of fat on her belly, but there was no way she’d take it off again.

Sheriff Kendall opened the passenger door of his truck and held the arm of the little blond TV girl as she climbed in.

The son of a bitch.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Cecil tapped his thigh to the rhythm of the wipers swiping snow from the windshield. “They wanted me to be a state patrolman.” He rubbed his nose with the one hand, never losing beat with the other. “That was back in Missouri. Not here.”

“That so?” The trooper leaned forward, grasped the steering wheel in both hands, and squinted into the storm.

“Yeah. Yeah, it was. I’d’a been a good one, too.” Except Cecil had never lived in Missouri or even been there. He hadn’t finished high school, and he had a criminal record for possession, and petty theft, and he’d been nicked a few times for bad checks. “They was real interested in me, ’cause they knew I’d be good in high-speed chases. They saw me drivin’ stock cars.” He’d never done that, either. “That’s when they asked me to join up. They were lookin’ for a specialist to do that high-speed shit.”

Sometimes he just couldn’t shut up. Especially when he was pee-your-pants nervous.

The trooper driving the car had to be twenty-three or twenty-four years old. He had one of those buzz haircuts and hadn’t said more than two words hooked together since they had left the place where Cecil’s truck had died. Cecil thought this trooper had been specially trained in interrogation, and that’s why the sheriff had made Cecil ride with him. They were looking for information, but Cecil knew how to keep his mouth shut.

The State Patrol car’s back end fishtailed on the snow-slick pavement when they made the turn from the county road onto the highway west of Brandon. The trooper corrected, and they drove on.

Torrents of snowflakes slapped the windshield. The driver turned up the speed of the wipers.

Cecil’s hand kept up with the new tempo. “Let me ask you somethin’.”

“What’s that?” Two words again.

“Supposin’ a fella just left his vehicle by the side of the road. Kinda like we left mine back there. You know, with nobody around now, and a police guy like you wanted to look inside it. Could he just do it, or would he need one of those … whatcha call it?”

“Warrant?”

“Yeah, warrant.”

“It depends on a variety of circumstances.”

Cecil got the trooper to say more than two words. He was proud of himself.

He don’t know I’m playin’ him.

The trooper continued. “If a vehicle was just sitting there, we could look in the windows, but anything more would require a warrant before we could search it. In most cases.”

“That’s what I thought.” Cecil let out a breath. He was safe for now. “Sheriff said you’d drop me off at Town Pump. You know they’ll need my help, what with this blizzard and all.” Cecil had drunk all the liquor in his trailer, but he always kept a pint of Bacardi in his locker. And there was one more thing he needed to take care of at the store.

*   *   *

The snow had come by the time Chase saw the town of Brandon in the distance. Wet flakes clumped in the tops of the tumbleweeds, and slop thrown by the tires drooled off the Dodge’s windshield. Far out on the prairie, the tips of the sagebrush blended into the gray sky.

Where a culvert let some unnamed branch of Sandy Creek pass under the highway, Chase turned from the blacktop onto the dirt road that led to the house where Dolly had lived.

Something inside made him need to stop.

The house sat just at the edge of town, with goat pens, a chicken coop, and a corral in the back for a pair of horses.

Coach had said Dolly’s stepfather, Victor, was a good man. In Brandon a good man worked hard. Many times, at two or three jobs. A good man did what he had to, to care for his family. A good man didn’t drink up his paycheck.

When stringing fence, driving trucks, and swinging a shovel in the oil patch wore out his body, Victor washed dishes at Saylor’s. He came in early and stayed late. He mopped floors, learned to cook, and after he’d been there five years, Mercy’s mother made him night manager. Folks in town said after her stroke, he ran the place until Mercy came back to Brandon.

The weeds along both sides of his house were mowed short. The barbed wire didn’t sag. One fender on the pickup in the front yard was a different color then the other three, but the tags on the license plate were current.

Chase nosed his truck into the drive closest to the goat pens. The house sat dark. The horses stood with their rumps to the storm, and snow streaked the wooly hair on their backs.

He checked his cell phone one more time to see if he’d missed a call from Marty. He hadn’t, and down deep he knew Dolly was dead.

All the things he could have done to save Dolly stacked up in his mind. He could have brought her, her mother, and Victor to California with him. Or bought them a house far away from the little town where people still shook their heads and whispered about his father.

Instead, because it was easy, he’d stayed away from Brandon, from the people he had disappointed, from his home, and from Dolly, and he never did one thing to help.

Chase stepped out into the cold afternoon. Goats fidgeted in their pen.

Chase’s mind drew the picture of the girl’s body lying on the scorched ground. Dark hair burned away. Wrinkled, charred skin on arms wrapped tight around her chest. He wanted her to be sleeping, and he wanted to kneel down and touch her shoulder and have her wake up. And when the girl in his imagination lifted her head, Chase shut his eyes. It did no good; the girl looked so much like him.

Cold air filled his lungs and chilled every part of him until he thought the tears would freeze in his eyes. When he looked down again, she was gone.

“I’m sorry, Dolly.” Not because she was dead now. Because he’d never known her.

A siren moaned in the distance. Chase could make out the roof of Mercy’s house on the far side of town. He could see the goalposts behind the high school. Snowflakes sparkled from lights on the sign over at Saylor’s, and the pastor brushed snow from his windshield in the parking lot at the church. Nothing in Brandon was ever hidden. But the town kept its secrets well.

*   *   *

Bright specks of snow clung to the roadside and dusted the ruts in the dirt parking lot as if some giant in the sky had emptied a great bag of powdered sugar into the wind. Mercy stepped to the café’s front window and shivered. In the flat light of the afternoon, a stray paper bag did lazy somersaults over the asphalt in front of Saylor’s.

“I hear something,” she said to the smell of spice and sweetness that hung in the air of the empty restaurant.

The wail of a siren pierced the silence over Brandon before the pulse of lights painted the wet pavement red. An over-the-road rig’s brakes moaned, and its driver eased to the side of the road so the ambulance could pass.

“What is it?” Hector called from the kitchen.

“Ambulance from Comanche Springs.” She wiped her hands on her apron. “What more could happen today?”

When the ambulance passed, the semi pulled back onto the highway and headed toward Denver. From that west direction, Chase’s Dodge drove by the café.

Mercy held her breath, hoping in spite of the madness that had seized the little town that Chase’s truck would stop.

And that he’d come into the café. He’d reach out and gently touch her shoulder as he took a seat at the counter. She’d bring him coffee, and they could talk again. She’d watch the snowflakes caught in his long hair turn to droplets. He’d smile at her, and the two of them would be seventeen again. Before the murders. Before their marriages failed. Before they left for the world so far from Brandon.

Instead she watched his truck roll by.

“Hector, get the food ready for the sheriff.”

“Already,
señora
? It’s only four o’clock.”

Mercy remembered when the workers called her mother
señora,
and she was the
señorita.

She drew a deep breath to stop the memory. “You heard me. Box it up when it’s ready and put it on the backseat of my car.”

“It’s getting cold out,
señora.
I can take it to the school.”

“No. I’ll take it.” She leaned close to the window and watched Chase’s truck turn into the parking lot at the high school. “When you’re finished with the food, go ahead and clean up. We’ll close early tonight. The weather’s getting worse.”

“
Si, Señora
Mercy.”

“Lock up, Hector. I won’t be back tonight.”

Mercy stepped into her office. She took her comb from her purse, turned to the mirror, and ran the comb through her hair. She cursed the tiny lines that crowded the corners of her eyes and trembled at what she’d become.

*   *   *

Chase pulled into a spot between two county vehicles and killed the engine. Returning to the high school should have been a homecoming. He had spent what might have been the very best years of his life in the halls, classrooms, and gym of the school. There had been a time he thought he practically owned the old building.

The heat faded in the cab, and snowflakes turned to wet blobs on the windshield. Around him, Brandon’s streets were empty. In the fading afternoon, falling snow angled through lights over the gas pumps at Town Pump, and a woman with a shovel scraped snow off the sidewalks in front of the store. Farther down, the lot at Saylor’s sat empty, but the lights glittered behind the café’s windows.

As Chase stepped from his truck, an over-the-road rig downshifted as it made the curve into Brandon. Windows rattled on the second floor of the school building.

When Chase was in school, kids would look up from their work or pause in their reading at the sound even though it happened dozens of times each day. He and Marty played a game with each other, betting on how long it took from the rattle of the windows for a teacher to say,
Never mind that,
or
Just go on,
or any of their pet ways of telling their students to ignore the commotion. The record was a minute and thirty-two seconds. Old Miss Anders had been asleep at her desk for that one.

The semi never slowed, and it sloshed through the wet snow on its way through town. Chase turned up his collar and went inside.