The Homeplace: A Mystery (28 page)

Maybe he shouldn’t sleep at the trailer.

Pack up and leave.

That would be best.

Be far away from Brandon by the time the sun comes up.

Chase turned toward the highway. Mercy’s house was four blocks away. Coach’s home was near the school. Everything held too much badness. He stopped for the sign at the four-lane highway. The snow had slowed to twirling bands of wind-driven flakes. Hints of moonlight threaded through the clouds.

A semi downshifted at the curve into town, and the windows on the second floor of the school vibrated with a moan. Down the street the lights were off at Saylor’s and on at Town Pump. He waited as the big truck whined past, sending waves of slop up from its tires. An old sedan followed the truck. The car’s blinker came on, showing its driver wanted to turn left toward the silos, railroad tracks, and trailer houses south of the highway in the old part of town.

While he waited, Chase fiddled with the radio until he found the oldies station from Lamar. He tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel to the rhythm he hadn’t heard in years and tried to remember the song’s name.

He wished for the simple times of long before. When his knee was sound and basketball was fun, and before three bodies haunted Brandon.

The car on the highway started its turn and splashed through dirty slush in the middle of the roadway. The back tires lost purchase on the icy pack and began to spin. The driver corrected, but too late. Almost in slow motion, the car slid sideways across the road, bumped a utility pole at the corner, and dropped both back wheels into the ditch in front of a boarded-up building.

The driver gunned the engine, but the wheels just spun.

Maybe I should help?

He answered his own question.

It’s what people do.

Chase checked both ways and eased across the road to the stranded car.

*   *   *

Birdie waited until night and the curve of the hill swallowed up Marty. Why was he so cocksure? Going after Ray-Ray all by himself?

Birdie felt an uneasy twinge in the bottom of her gut.

It was Marty’s job to go after Ray-Ray. She’d done her part chasing the wild man across the biggest part of Comanche County. Now, it was up to Marty to do the rest. Birdie knew damn well that he was good at what he did. If any man had to go up against Ray-Ray, Marty was the best bet.

But if Birdie was sure of anything, it was that no matter how good a cop he was, Marty was one dumbass. He took chances he shouldn’t and just didn’t think things through. He’d proved that when he pulled that stunt with the tractor during the fire. Back in high school, Coach even said right in front of the whole team that Marty would lead with his face in a fistfight.

More than anything else, he never thought of how what he did might affect his wife.

Birdie shook her head.

There was no scare in Ray-Ray, and he could be mean enough to make a pit bull nervous. If Marty and Ray-Ray met nose to nose, neither was apt to back down.

Dumbasses. Both of ’em. They deserve each other.

Birdie lifted herself from the crater her butt had melted in the snow. Marty had a wife, two little boys, and a baby on the way. Somebody had to be sure Ray-Ray didn’t shoot Marty’s ass off.

She tugged her jacket up over her hip, slipped her pistol from its holster, and blew the snow off the rear sight. The knee-deep snow made for tough going. As much as she tried to step from one of Marty’s footprints to the next, she couldn’t. His stride was too long for her stubby legs, so she kicked her own path to follow him.

Damn Marty for makin’ me walk in the cold.

*   *   *

Hunting Ray-Ray was way different from taking a twenty-two and putting the sneak on a plump rabbit in a weed patch behind an old farmhouse. Or taking his bow and stalking whitetails along the creek bottom. Rabbits and deer didn’t carry forty-five-seventies.

Marty’s toes had passed cold and now burned numb. He pulled the ski mask up over his ear and cocked his head into the breeze.

Maybe? Just maybe.

He thought he’d heard something far out across the prairie, back toward the road where he’d left the kid trooper. He tucked the mask back over his face and checked his watch.

Ten thirty.

Reinforcements should be there by now. Sheriff Kendall would be leading the cavalry out to do battle. Kendall would lead from the rear. That was his style. The sheriff wouldn’t take a chance at getting shot at, and he’d stay close to the back. Directing things, he’d tell everyone. He’d really want to be the first to tell the story to the newspaper or that little TV gal from the Springs. That’s how the man got re-elected.

All that mattered was who got to Ray-Ray first. If it was Kendall and the troopers, there’d be red blood on the new snow.

Marty dropped off the hill and into the brush along the creek. If he was right, Ray-Ray had dug his cave into the east side. If Marty could get far enough west and come over the hilltop, chances were best that Ray-Ray wouldn’t hear him. If he had to, Marty could belly crawl the last bit.

So many ifs.

He planned on kicking snow onto the dark spot where he’d seen the smoke coming from. It had to be a chimney of some kind. Stop up the smokestack and wait for Ray-Ray to come out. Sounded easy in his head, but Marty knew nothing was ever as easy as it seemed.

He and Chase had found wild bees in an old hollow tree along Sandy Creek. It was the summer before they started junior high. He told Chase he’d read in a farm magazine how they could light some rags on fire and stuff them into the hole. The smoke would chase the bees away, and they’d have all the honey they wanted. The plan went just like it was supposed to, except that not all the bees had read the same magazine as Marty. A few illiterate ones hung around, and when Marty stuck his hand in, they let him know they were still there. His fingers swelled up to twice their size and what honey hadn’t melted in the fire was full of ashes.

Marty sucked in a breath of cold air and replayed his plan in his head. Everything seemed right, except Ray-Ray’s stinger fired bullets as big around as a man’s thumb.

Marty left the creek to make his way up the hill. With every fourth or fifth step he stopped and clawed away the icy clumps that packed the soles of his boots. He didn’t dare stomp his feet. The thorn tear on his knee throbbed. His breath came in hard gasps, and frost from the icy air settled deep in his lungs.

Shadows cast by the moonlight tangled in the different world the night painted on the snow. From the top of the hill his own shadow stretched out and touched the dark spot above Ray-Ray. Smoke drifted back to him.

The shotgun hung like a club from his frozen fingers. Before he did another thing, Marty said a prayer for his boys and Deb and asked God to be sure that she knew how much he loved her.

Far off, out east on the prairie, he spotted specks of light from the State Patrol cars.

In his next prayer he pleaded for just enough time to do what he needed to do. Before he said amen, Marty asked for forgiveness.

He dropped onto his knees, pushed aside the snow-covered tree branches, and crawled through the cold snow down the hill.

*   *   *

Following Marty wasn’t hard. He’d tromped a path plain enough for a blind man to find. Keeping up was something else. Soft snow covered the brushy creek bottom. Each tree branch Birdie touched sent a cascade of white, cold powder down her coat collar.

The snow turned icy at the base of the hill. Where it was deep enough to only cover Marty’s boot tops, Birdie sank to her knees. Sweat poured off her face and mingled with the melted snow on her neck. She used her hands and knees and some cuss words she hadn’t said in years to help her climb the hill.

That dumbass was bound to do something stupid, and she needed to be close by to bail out his sorry butt.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Chase opened the door to his truck. “Looks like you might need some help.” He hung a smile on his face. Maybe the first one since he’d laughed with Marty beside the tractor in Mason’s field.

Snowflakes swarmed in the headlights from his truck, and freezing air slapped his face.

The man beside the stranded car flipped his sweatshirt’s hood off his head and looked over his shoulder at Chase. Like a box turtle trying to hide in its shell, the man pulled his neck into the folds of his shirt and hunched his shoulders in the cold.

“Thanks for stopping. We drove over a hundred miles in this storm.” He nodded to a woman in the passenger seat. “And got stuck two blocks from home.”

“Roads are bad, huh?” Chase joined the man at the back of the car.

“Sure are. Thought I’d hafta use a crowbar to pry my fingers off the steerin’ wheel.”

“Get back in, and I’ll give it a push. If that doesn’t work I’ve a got a chain in my truck.”

“Thanks.” The man raised an arm to shield his eyes from the glare of the headlights and looked up. “Hey. You’re Chase Ford, aren’t you?”

Chase nodded.

“You probably don’t remember me. I was in sixth grade when you guys took State. Biggest thing that ever happened around here.” He stuck out his hand. “Eddie Payton’s my name. Doris is my oldest sister. She was a junior that year.”

Chase shook his hand. “I think I remember you, Eddie.” He didn’t really, and a fuzzy reminder of a high school girl with braces named Doris flashed across his mind. “What’s your sister up to these days?”

“Livin’ outside Oklahoma City. I can’t wait to tell her that I saw you right here in Brandon.”

Chase fought off a shiver. “Let’s see if we can get this car unstuck.”

“Wait.” Eddie walked to the side of his car. “Come here, I want you to meet someone.”

He opened the door, and the dome light came on. A woman with red curls poking out from under a green Carhartt stocking cap was stretched over the console checking a chubby redheaded boy strapped into car seat in the back.

“Karen,” Eddie said. “You’re never gonna believe who stopped to help us. It’s Chase Ford. You know, I talk about him all the time.”

Karen slipped a pacifier into the little boy’s mouth. Vestiges of old acne pocked her cheeks, but her smile was pure. “He does talk about you a lot. See this?” She pointed at the purple sweatshirt with the Lakers logo her little boy wore.

“Yes, sir.” Eddie beamed. “I want you to meet Chase Ford Payton, future Brandon Buffalos basketball star. We named him after you.”

Chase’s knee threatened to fold. His breath caught in his lungs. “Wow” managed to seep from his lips.

“Shoot, there’s four other little boys named Chase that I know of in this end of the county.”

“I, uh, I…” Chase’s insides went watery. “I don’t know what to say.” When he looked up, moonlight reflected off the town’s water tower, and a single beam seemed to rest on the painted letters celebrating that state championship so long before. “I hope he grows up to be a better man than I am.”

The little boy’s father shook his head. “Nobody’s better than Chase Ford.”

*   *   *

Mercy tucked the bundle under her arm and slammed the trunk of her mother’s Lincoln closed. The blanket-wrapped package was the last thing she needed to bring in. And the last jigsaw piece to her plan.

A semi truck hauling a flatbed of pipe lumbered down the highway, flinging blobs of dirty slush to the edge of the café’s parking lot. Snowflakes, pink from the neon sign, danced in the air, like she had danced with Chase when the whole world ended in the crepe-paper-draped basketball court at the high school.

Everyone. Everyone had watched the star player and the girl he had chosen that night.

The whine of spinning tires seared the air. Uptown, in front of the boarded-up hardware store, two men pushed the back of a car that had slid into the ditch.

Mercy shut the café’s front door behind her. She had already pushed all the tables to the side except for a two-top with a pair of chairs at the center of the room. She kicked off her boots and crossed the cold floor in her stocking feet. She hung her heavy coat on the hook inside the office door, smoothed the front of her satin dress, and fumbled in her purse for her reading glasses.

If it had been the start of her morning at the café, Mercy would have looped the cord that held her glasses around her neck. She’d need them close to work the cash register, tally receipts, and perform all the other little tasks that required younger eyes.

She perched the glasses on the end of her nose and adjusted the thermostat up two degrees higher than she ever had. She wanted the chill off the room. It would have been nice to have a fire in a fireplace. But that was something the old café didn’t have.

Six candles sat evenly spaced along the length of the breakfast counter and one sat on the table in the middle of the room. She lit each candle and hid her glasses under the counter.

Tonight she needed to be young again.

*   *   *

Nobody’s better than Chase Ford?

Didn’t Eddie Payton know?

Chase turned and took a step away from the car. Bile swam in the back of his throat and threatened to gag him.

He named his son after me?

Every sin and shortcoming of the last years tumbled through Chase’s mind. All the broken promises and all the people he had let down bubbled to the surface. In the center of it all he saw who he had hurt the most.

When Chase turned back, Karen stood by her husband. He’d slipped his arm around her hips. Both smiled back at him.

“I told Karen all about you,” Eddie said, and he hugged her tighter. “Not just the Lakers stuff. Everybody guessed you sent money back here to Brandon. You know, for the new computers at school. Scholarships so those kids could go to college. There was even a rumor that you paid the taxes for a couple of the farmers who stood to lose their farms. People around here owe you a lot.”

Chase needed to ask. What about my divorce? And the stories in the magazines? And on TV? And the pills? But the words wouldn’t form in his mouth.

Because everything since his knee failed him had been wrong.