The Homeplace: A Mystery (5 page)

She imagined Kendall tipping back his hat and staring down at his phone.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Six miles south. That section of ground the Fords lease to Bobby Jackson. He cut and baled last week. Every row is nice and even ’cept one.”

“What are you gettin’ at?”

“A bale’s missin’ from the end of one row. And that footprint in the picture is right next to it. You best send some of the state boys over here.”

“I’ll see to it that they’re on the way, pronto.”

“Yeah, pronto.” She hoped she wasn’t right.

Birdie looked down at a barefoot print in the powdered dirt between the fence line and the rows of cut alfalfa. Toes pointed to the road. She knew enough from tracking deer and coyotes to know the track was fresh. Probably made last night.

The shaft of straw fell from her mouth, and Birdie couldn’t think of one reason why a naked boy would lug a bale of alfalfa from the field. But it was the track beside the barefoot print that troubled Birdie most. It was a smooth-soled boot print with a Tony Lama logo on the heel. Just smaller than her own.

*   *   *

Mercy looked up from her cell phone. “It went straight to voice mail,” she told Chase and the two deputies.

Marty fidgeted with his coffee cup. “What about her father?”

Mercy stared at her phone. “I gave Victor the day off. He usually closes for me on Saturday nights, but with the pancake supper over at the church, we’re plannin’ on closin’ early.” Her stomach boiled with too much coffee and too much worry. “He said he was going to drive to Lamar to see his brother.” She shook her head before Marty could ask. “Victor doesn’t have a cell phone. Says he doesn’t believe in them.”

“Then try his house.”

“He won’t be there.”

“Try anyway.”

Mercy found his number and hit Send. She tapped her thumbnail on the Formica tabletop in rhythm with the ringing phone. “Victor?” She covered the phone with her hand and whispered to the men around the table, “He answered.” Then she pulled her fingers back and spoke. “Victor, listen. It’s Mercy. Dolly didn’t come in this mornin’. Is she there?”

Victor’s voice rattled through the phone line. “She spent the night at her friend Valarie’s and said they were going to the ball game in Limon today. She said something about shoppin’ for school supplies. She didn’t tell you?”

Mercy’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, I guess I just forgot.” She looked at Marty and shook her head.

“I could come in if you need help,” Victor offered.

“No, we’re not that busy. See you tomorrow.”

Mercy rested the phone on the table and bit down on her lip. “Dolly told Victor she was spendin’ the night with Valarie Maestas. She told him they were going to drive to Limon to see the freshman game and do some shoppin’. Victor said she told me she wasn’t comin’ in, and I said it was okay.” Mercy shook her head and lifted the phone to dial another number.

“Who are you callin’ now?” Marty asked.

“I know Valarie’s mother.” The lines at the corners of Mercy’s eyes pulled tighter. “And I remember how easy it was to lie to my parents.” When she looked at Marty, he nodded his head.

*   *   *

Birdie dropped her rear end on the tailgate of her truck and lifted a bottle of Walmart water to her lips. She unzipped her jacket and undid the top two buttons on her uniform shirt. The day was warming, and by noon it might be close to seventy. Any other time she would have taken off her shirt and stripped out of the long underwear she’d put on that morning. But not with two officers from state crime scene investigations and Sheriff Kendall just ten yards away. Why give them a show?

Yeah, like they’d even look.

They had finished making plaster casts of the footprints Birdie had found. They photographed everything they could, from every angle they could, and were working on the impressions of the tire treads near the missing bale.

Sheriff Kendall walked to her truck with a cell phone pressed to his ear. He slipped the phone into a shirt pocket and rested his foot on the bumper of her truck. “I don’t know what all this means right now, but I’m glad you found it. Good eyes, Officer Hawkins.”

Birdie pointed to the cooler in the back of her truck. “Water?”

Kendall popped the cooler’s lid and scooped a bottle from the ice. He twisted off the lid and took a drink. He looked out across the field and didn’t say anything.

You’re very welcome, shit for brains. Birdie was hot and ornery. This was her busiest time of the year. She should be checking hunters’ licenses, making sure no one was hunting on ground they didn’t have permission to be on, and keeping count of animals harvested.

No.

Jimmy Riley had had the back of his head blown off. The blood and gore replayed in her mind. Somebody had to pay, and that was all that mattered now.

She took the last swallow of water from the bottle. “Anythin’ on Ray-Ray yet?”

Kendall shook his head. “He wasn’t at his brother’s. Bobby said he hadn’t seen him. But Ray-Ray keeps to himself.”

“Sheriff, I’ve had a run-in or two with Ray-Ray, and there’s one thing I’d bet on.”

“What’s that?”

“Ray-Ray likes to hunt.”

Kendall nodded. “And today’s openin’ day.”

“I might just know where to look.” Maybe it was best to call a ceasefire in her battle with Kendall and find out if Ray had something to do with Jimmy’s death. A ceasefire wouldn’t mean she hated the man any less.

*   *   *

Mercy came back to the table and took the chair closest to Chase. She let her arm brush his. “Valarie’s mother said three girls slept at her house last night. And Valarie told her they were goin’ to drive to Limon to see a ball game and get a pizza.”

Paco asked what the others were thinking. “Was Dolly one of them?”

“She thinks so.” Mercy wanted it to be true. “They came in late, and Mrs. Maestas was already in bed.”

“Try Dolly’s cell again.”

Mercy dialed the number. “Straight to voice mail.”

Paco lifted his coffee cup, took a sip, and paused as if he was letting everything sink in. “Let’s all settle down. We can only go with what we know. Dolly could be in Limon. You know how bad cell coverage can be out there.” He took another drink. “Let’s assume she’s with these other girls. We can talk to her when she gets back.”

“And if she’s not in Limon?” Marty asked.

Paco was calm. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

“One thing for sure,” Marty thought out loud. “She’s not with Jimmy Riley.”

Tears filled Mercy’s eyes. But not for Dolly.

CHAPTER FIVE

Opening day at ten thirty
A.M.
should have been Birdie’s busiest time. Hunters would be moving from where they had been in the early morning. Those who had game would be hauling the animals to camp and maybe heading into Brandon for breakfast at Saylor’s. Those who hadn’t filled would be on the roads seeking a new place for an afternoon hunt. Normally, Birdie would check licenses and keep count of dead deer.

This morning, Birdie sped by trucks filled with men in blaze-orange hats and vests and never gave them as much as a nod. She knew Ray-Ray Jackson never missed opening morning, and he wouldn’t be one of the hunters on the roads.

The rolling prairie always made Birdie think of some storybook giant’s table after a holiday meal. Folds and creases made by the great tablecloth covered the November fields in tones of gold and brown. Here and there ponds and stock tanks filled with dark water stood out like dribbles of gravy.

On the far west side of the county, the giant’s younger brother had hidden the salt and pepper shakers beneath the cloth. Jumbles of cottonwoods and tamarack collected in the crinkles between the two high points, and deer thrived in the creek bottoms below.

The two sections of ground belonged to the state, and hunting was open to any who dared the muck and tangles. That place on the map was called by a Spanish name. But Birdie always thought of a wrinkled old man’s backside when she recalled what the locals called it. Ray-Ray would be hunting in the Butt Notch, Birdie was sure. It was less than a mile from the old farmhouse he called home. And the same distance from the dead buffalo.

And where she had found Jimmy Riley.

Birdie turned off the county gravel onto a trail road. Weeds scraped the undercarriage as she bumped the truck along the two packed strips of dirt that followed the north fence line. A mile in, the trail zigzagged away from the fence and up the higher of the two hills.

She stopped the truck before she reached the top, where the winds had taken down a dead cottonweed tree sometime last winter. Dried limbs stretched out over the trail road and spilled down the hillside. She killed the engine, sat for a moment, and listened. It was quiet. No gunshots, sounds of car engines, or distant tractors. Only the symphony the wind made over the prairie.

Peaceful.

But the image of Jimmy’s body wedged into her mind and stole away the thought as soon as it formed.

Birdie took her binoculars from the glove box, opened the door, and climbed the last fifty yards to the top of the hill. Birdie didn’t get a body like hers from walking. Fifty uphill yards was torture. But binoculars beat shoe leather. From the top of the bluff she could get a good look at everything in the Butt Notch.

A gunshot boomed from the jumble of the trees in the valley below. She scrambled the last few steps, dropped to her knees, and raised the field glasses to her eyes.

*   *   *

Ray-Ray Jackson wiped the blood from his skinning knife on a clump of dried grass. An inch of thick fat along back of the fork horn buck pleased him. Ray-Ray could have taken the older, bigger buck from the herd, but he had chosen the younger animal. From its small antlers, he would fashion the handle for a new knife, and the deer’s tender meat would feed him through most of the winter.

He decided to hang the buck from the low-slung branch of a cottonwood in the shady creek bottom. He wrapped the carcass in cheesecloth—to keep away the flies—and left it to cool.

No hurry to head home. The lawmen had showed up at his house that morning. The yard dog let him know they were coming. Ray-Ray had slipped out the back, lay on his belly, and watched from a sage-covered hill not two hundred long steps from his house. The two fools in their shiny sunglasses and new cowboy hats had hollered his name and peeked in the windows but never so much as looked for tracks. They wouldn’t have found his even if they had. Ray-Ray took the time to be careful that way.

Ray-Ray was sure that some judge from the next county had sent the lawmen. He knew he hadn’t shown up for court when he was supposed to, but that had been nearly a month ago, and he was hoping it had all been forgotten by now. Or maybe this had something to do with his run-in with the pretend cowboy who’d let his buffalo break down Ray-Ray’s fence. That one deserved all that he had coming. Ray-Ray leaned back against the trunk of the tree and watched the breeze rustle the edges of the cloth he’d wrapped around his buck.

Damn lawmen. Damn sheriff. Damn politicians.

Why couldn’t they just leave him alone? He kept to himself. Never bothered anybody who didn’t bother him first. Paid his property taxes in cash money over to the courthouse in Comanche Springs each April.

Ray-Ray thought for a minute and then ground what was left of his front teeth together. It had to be. That little butterball of a woman game warden was after him.

It was her, he was sure. Her that sent those lawmen out to check on him. Didn’t have the grit to come herself.

Birdie Hawkins, what a bitch.

Still, there was something about her that Ray-Ray liked. She was different than other women. Liked the outdoors. Worked hard. Cared about the deer and other wild things, like him. He thought of her thick body.

Yeah, a woman like her might be nice. Shade to cool you in the summer and warm you when January nights got cold.

A rifle shot cracked the stillness around him.

Ray-Ray turned his face toward the faraway sound.

That would be the city boys he saw earlier on the other side of the Notch. They’d hunt along the edges. Wouldn’t want to get into the thick stuff. Boys like that carried new scope-sighted deer rifles, not old Winchesters like his. They wanted to shoot at things out there a ways.

Ray-Ray rubbed the worn metal and smooth wood on his forty-five-seventy.

He liked to get close. Sneak through willows and tamaracks. Get in close enough to see the flies buzz around a deer’s nose. That’s when the forty-five-seventy did its job. Threw a bullet as big as a man’s thumb. Knock a deer flat.

The shot from those city boys’ rifle might send the deer back his way. Best if he sat tight. He eyed the buck hung in the tree. But two deer would get him through the winter and leave him another cow to sell at auction house.

Those deer ate his grass. Nibbled at the bales in his alfalfa fields. Drank from his stock tanks. It was only right. And it wouldn’t hurt anybody. He’d take another deer. Nobody would know. Not even Birdie Hawkins.

Grass rustled along the creek bank. Not a stone’s throw away, two plump does slipped from the shadows. Ray-Ray lifted his rifle.

Wait. Wait.

He put the sights on the lead deer’s shoulder. The forty-five-seventy would do its job. A gun like his could knock a buffalo down in its tracks.

*   *   *

Through her binoculars, Birdie chuckled at a hunter in green camouflage pants and jacket. Men like that paid out a lot of money to buy clothes so the deer couldn’t see them. But the state said big-game hunters had to wear blaze-orange hats and have so many square inches of orange covering their chests. So, the expensive camo Elmer Fudd had bought at the sporting goods store was lawfully covered with a bright orange vest that matched the ball cap on his head. Silly. But men liked their toys.

And Elmer, or whatever his name was, had dropped the hammer on a nice four-point buck just inside the fence line. Birdie might have spooked the deer his way when she drove her truck in. The hunter didn’t seem nervous. He wasn’t looking around to see who was watching. He leaned his rifle against the fence, took out his knife, and went about dressing the deer. Good signs. Meant he was legal.