The Homeplace: A Mystery (3 page)

“Stick tight. The boys from the state are sendin’ down a crime scene team, and the coroner is on his way. They might have some questions.”

Birdie looked down, scuffed her toe in the dust, and bit back a string of cuss words. She wished she could get away. “Sheriff, better send two men out to Ray-Ray’s. He can be a mean one.”

Kendall nodded and then tipped his head toward Birdie’s truck. “Any reason for Chase Ford to be here?”

“When Marty had car trouble, Chase gave him a ride over here. That’s all.”

“Tell Ford to leave.”

*   *   *

Birdie forced herself to walk back to her truck when every part of her wanted to run away from Kendall. She grabbed her thermos from the fender and filled a worn, plastic Town Pump mug. If she had been home she would have sloshed two fingers of Crown Royal in with the coffee. She looked up at Chase. “That man don’t get any more likeable with age.”

“Careful, Birdie.”

“Careful, my ass. Only thing I like about him is when I remember the blood on his face from when you decked him out behind Saylor’s Café.”

“That was a long time ago.” Chase rubbed the knuckles on his right hand. Birdie guessed he was hiding a smile.

“Anyways, he wants you to get on out of here. The rest of us are gonna wait for the coroner and the state police. Now, go on and get yourself a good cup of coffee.” She gulped at her mug. “And, Chase, Mercy’s back at Saylor’s. You know that?”

CHAPTER TWO

Mercy glared at the man in front of the stove. “I’ll not have language like that in this restaurant. My mother wouldn’t tolerate it, and neither will I.”

He hung his head. “It won’t happen again,
señora.
”

“It’s fortunate that none of our guests heard.”

He tapped the spatula on the stovetop, bobbed his head once more, and flipped three pancakes from the stove to a plate.

On the day Mercy Saylor left Brandon, she had vowed to herself that she’d never tie another apron around her waist, never again serve ham and eggs to truckers who eyed her behind, and never again fill coffee cups around a table full of farmers talking about the weather. The day she left for college she was sure she would not work in her mother’s café another day. Six months ago, she’d broken that vow, and almost every other promise she’d made to herself.

Dolly Benavidez hadn’t shown up for her Saturday morning shift. Mercy had planned on catching up on some paperwork, but she tied on an apron and tried to remember if she had missed any shifts at her parents’ restaurant when she was seventeen. Probably. Other things can take priority when you’re seventeen. Like the basketball player Dolly was always with. Mercy knew all about that. She’d had her own ballplayer when she was seventeen.

“How do you want those eggs?” Mercy asked the trucker at the counter.

“Sunny side up with ham.”

She knew he was looking at her backside.

She grabbed a pot off the Bunn machine and crossed to the table by the front windows. “More coffee here?” Not one face had been shaved that morning. Fish-belly-white foreheads peeked out from under dirty John Deere caps, and every man at the table looked old.

“Whatcha think, Mercy?”

She’d gone to high school with that one. Bobby Jackson had been a sophomore when she was a senior.

“The weather, I mean.” He held out his cup. “Today’s one of those days when you scrape frost off the windshield in the mornin’, and by noon you’ll be peeled down to a T-shirt. This time of year it means a front’s chasin’ the warm down from Wyoming, and we’re due for a change. I’ll wager we have snow by Monday.”

Heads around the table nodded.

Mercy smiled. But her insides turned as bitter as the coffee she poured.

“Mercy, here comes Pop Weber.” Bobby tapped on the window.

A battered farm truck came around the curve on the highway that led into Brandon. The driver straddled the dotted line that separated the two eastbound lanes.

Mercy checked the clock over the cash register. Ten minutes after eight. Pop Weber was on time.

Bobby tapped again. “Your mother watched out for him. It’s up to you now.”

Mercy stepped to the front window. She wiped her hands on her apron and bit her lower lip. Maybe today Pop would remember.

The truck made a hard right turn. Metal fence posts bounced in the back of the truck. It jerked to a stop in front of a boarded-up building that had once been the Brandon Inn. The only other restaurant in town had closed five years before.

A bent old man climbed out.

Mercy opened the front door to the chill outside.

Pop hobbled up the cement steps to the padlocked door of the empty building. He tried the door.

Mercy heard him curse. “Pop,” she called, “come on over and have breakfast with us.”

Pop tugged on the locked door once more. He put one hand to his forehead and leaned into the glass. A laugh cackled out of the old man, and, like a foggy day melts in midmorning sun, he straightened a bit. He caught hold of the railing and limped down the steps.

Mercy was at the edge of the highway. “Coffee’s on over here, Pop.”

“When did this place close down?” He asked her that almost every morning.

“Five years ago, Pop.”

He tottered to the edge of the highway.

“Look both ways, now.”

A semi blasted its horn. Mercy trembled. But Pop stayed where he stood. The big truck sped by. Mercy took another look and crossed. She slipped an arm around the old farmer’s shoulders and kissed his cheek. Pop had shaved that morning.

“Some days I just forget things, Mercy. Some days, I forget.”

*   *   *

Half of the pancakes in front of Pop Weber were gone, and he was on his third cup of coffee. Two more truckers had ordered ham and eggs, and the men in the John Deere caps were taking turns in the restroom before they left for their chores.

Bobby Jackson put a dollar bill and two quarters next to the cash register. “Whatcha think, Mercy?”

Mercy had heard that question every morning since she’d come back to Brandon and ignored it since that first day.

Bobby’s teeth were yellow, but he smiled his best. When he was sure she was looking he slipped another dollar in the tip jar on the counter.

He didn’t know the tips were divided up between the waitresses. Mercy didn’t get a share.

Three gray-haired women slipped in the door. They waved to Mercy and took seats at their Saturday morning table. It was the same table they sat at on Tuesdays. And Thursdays.

Mercy tried, but smiles were harder to come by now.

Bobby held the door open for two men in camo overalls and orange caps. “Get anythin’?” he asked.

“Filled.” One of the hunters smiled a toothy grin. “Gonna have breakfast and head back to the Springs. Too easy this year.”

Mercy saw a set of antlers in the back of the hunters’ pickup, but the man climbing out of the new Dodge in the parking lot made her smile.

“Chase Ford,” Bobby Jackson bellowed out as the door swung closed behind him. He met Chase in the parking lot, and the two pumped hands.

Mercy was untying her apron when Chase came through the door. Her feet moved before her mind told them. She was at the door in front of him with apron strings trailing from her fingers. She wrapped both her arms around his waist, and she pressed her face onto his chest. The top of her head touched just below his shoulders, like she remembered. She squeezed until she felt muscle and sinew. He was still strong, like he’d been all those years ago.

In the next instant he held her at arm’s length and smiled down at her.

Tears bubbled up from that place inside her and filled her eyes. Then Mercy did what she’d planned to do if she ever saw Chase Ford again.

“Ass”—the sound of her hand smacking his face filled the diner, and every head turned to look—“hole.”

*   *   *

Very few things about his job made Deputy Paco Martinez uneasy. He’d told Marty that. Paco showed his nervousness by jabbering. Marty thought of Deb and their three kids. And prayed that no one would ever come knocking on their door with this kind of news.

How do you tell someone that their wife or husband, son or daughter, is dead?

You just told them. Paco had taught him that two weeks after he was hired on the Sheriff’s Department. Be ready for them to break down, cry, faint, or lash out. But just tell them. That was all you could do.

It was bad enough when that loved one had been killed on the highway or in some farm accident. But Jimmy Riley had been shot in the head.

Paco steered the department’s car off the highway that divided Brandon into two equal halves and pointed the car toward the grain silos near the railroad tracks. The Pioneer House sat on the town side of Front Street. Once the railroad had put crews up for the night in the old hotel. Now workers in the oil patch rented rooms by the week. New company trucks sat on the street with an equal number of worn-out pickups. Friday night’s beer bottles littered the yard.

“You been here before?” Paco tipped his bald head toward the building.

“Too many times,” Marty answered. “Noise complaints, drunk and disorderlies. Once two old boys were goin’ at each other in the street at two o’clock in the mornin’. That turned into a real rodeo.”

Paco tapped a finger on the steering wheel. “Four years ago, I got called here on a shots fired. The vic had a hole in his beer gut but wouldn’t say who did it. Paramedics hauled him to the hospital in Hugo. I think he lived.”

They parked in the gravel lot at the silos and crossed Front Street to the boarding house. Paco’s first year on the job had been Marty’s senior year of high school. If Marty had to pick any of the deputies in the department to pair up with, it would be the old man. He looked like a fireplug with a potbelly, but Paco was a darned good cop.

The deputies climbed the empty stairs to an apartment on the second floor that Jimmy shared with his father.

“Smells like the burritos they sell at Town Pump,” Paco said.

Marty thought the building smelled more like cat piss.

The only light socket in the narrow hall had a broken bulb. Whatever carpet wasn’t stained dark with oil crunched with crusty red dirt, and gravel bounced from their footfalls.

Paco tapped on the door marked with a number eight. “Mr. Riley, Officers Martinez and Storm with the Sheriff’s Department. Can we have a few words, sir?”

“What the hell’s this about?” A hoarse voice rasped from inside the room.

“Please come to the door, sir.” Paco glanced at Marty. “It’s about your son.”

The voice was louder. “I haven’t seen him since Tuesday. If he’s in trouble again, I don’t know anythin’ about it.”

“Sir, we need to talk to you.”

Springs creaked on the other side of the door. “Okay. Give me a minute.”

Paco slipped his hand to his duty pistol and unsnapped the holster. He looked at Marty. The old deputy’s counsel replayed in the younger man’s head.
The best thing you can do is go home to your wife and kids when your shift is over. Don’t assume anything.
Marty’s hand hovered over his gun.

The door swung in. Jimmy’s daddy filled the space. Tufts of dark, coarse hair fringed the collar of his stained T-shirt, and work-hardened muscles bulged from the sleeves. His eyes were red rimmed, and he squinted even in the shadowy light of the hallway. “What about my boy?”

“Your son’s name is Jimmy?” Paco’s arm relaxed.

“Yeah.”

“Can we come in?”

Over the man’s shoulder, Marty could see a box of Frosted Flakes and a Coors longneck on a table in front of a flickering TV.

The man shook his head. “We’ll talk right here.”

Paco took in a deep breath. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this. Your son’s been killed.”

The father’s hand slid down the edge of the door and grabbed the doorknob. He squeezed until his knuckles turned white. He looked at Paco and then turned to Marty. “Who shot him?”

Marty’s lungs seized. And his heart paused. Who shot him? People cried when they heard the news. They asked “How?” Some screamed out and wanted to know “Why?” Not “Who shot him?”
How did he know
?

Riley swung the door open, waved with his fingers for them to follow, and turned into his rented room. He dropped his bulk onto a threadbare couch and looked up at the lawmen. “What do I do now?” He shook his head. “How much does a funeral cost? I don’t think I can afford it.”

Paco ignored the questions. “Do you need to contact the boy’s mother?”

Riley fumbled for a pack of Marlboros on a side table. He tapped the pack on the arm of the couch, pulled one out with his lips, and lit it. “She’s dead. Just me and him. Now just me.” Smoke flowed from his nostrils.

“When was the last time you saw your son?”

“Tuesday. I left on a run to Syracuse.”

Kansas.
Marty filled in the state. The town was a hundred miles from Brandon. Two or three of the big oil drillers had yards there.

Jimmy’s father continued. “Truck blew a head gasket on the way. They towed me in and I sat and played with myself until they got the parts to fix it. Dropped my load Friday mornin’ and came back here. Jimmy wasn’t around.”

“Any idea where he’d be?” Paco was good at this. He’d keep the man talking. Marty had to listen.

“School. Ball practice. That’s the only place he ever is, when he’s not sniffin’ after that little Mexican girl. I told him to get a job to make some money. He don’t listen to me.”

“Do you know the girl’s name?”

“Somethin’ stupid.” He exhaled a puff of smoke. “Dolly, I think. Only some Mexican would name a kid somethin’ like that.”

Marty’s guts puckered. Paco was one of the best men he knew, and Marty couldn’t let himself look at his friend.

Paco moved on to another question. “Sir, Jimmy had a basketball game last night. Did you go?”

The man shook his head. “Don’t have time for such foolishness.”

“Where were you last night?”

“Hey, what’s this about?”

“We just need to know, sir.”

“Sat downstairs with a couple of fellas that live here. We shared a six-pack and shot the shit. You can ask ’em.”