The Homeplace: A Mystery (7 page)

Not much. Birdie knew that half the farmers in the county had a thirty-thirty in their pickup, or barn, or behind the kitchen door. Those that didn’t have a thirty-thirty might keep an aught-six handy. A lot of hunters carried thirty-caliber guns, and a 150-grain bullet could come from any one of them. She sucked in a breath. “What about the bullet that killed Jimmy?”

“Didn’t find it. Through and through shot. But from what the coroner can say so far, the entrance wound could have been from a thirty.” The sheriff paused. “Hawkins, what kind of gun does Ray-Ray hunt with?”

She touched the cartridge case in her shirt pocket. “Forty-five-seventy. I picked up an empty by a gut pile down in the Notch. Sure it’s from Ray-Ray’s gun.”

A long silence hung on the end of the sheriff’s line. Then, “I still want to talk to him. Go by his farm again.”

Rage flared inside Birdie. “It’s not my”—the phone went dead—“job.…”

Shit fire. She hated that man.

*   *   *

Through the scope on his father’s three-hundred Magnum, Chase spotted the tips of the big buck’s antlers. The deer had bedded down behind a clump of yucca plants on a knoll just above the winter wheat field where Chase had first seen him that morning. No doubt the old buck had found a sunny spot to chew its cud. The wind was to its back. It could see danger coming from a mile away in three directions, and the breeze would bring the scent of trouble from the other.

Chase leaned the old Weatherby against a fence post and raised his binoculars. He fiddled with the adjustment wheel until the deer came into focus. Through the spear points of the soapweed, the old buck stared right back at him.

No chance to get any closer today. The deer knew right where Chase was.

Hints of a breeze stole away the day’s warmth. The sun would be down in less than an hour. Cinnamon-dusted clouds stacked up on the western horizon, and spikes as bloodred as the smears around Jimmy Riley flared away from the setting sun.

Chase needed to get back to his trailer in the ranch yard and wash up. Mercy was expecting him at six.

*   *   *

All through school, every girl Mercy knew had told her she lived in the nicest house in Brandon. Her house sat at the edge of town, north of the highway, the railroad, and the feedlots. The prevailing wind in Brandon always came from the north. It made sense that folks who had a choice would want to live upwind of the noise, smells, and commotion that happened on the south side of town.

Mercy’s father was vice president of the bank, and Mama owned the café. Mercy knew she had more than most of her friends and she was grateful, but the house she lived in was really no different from the other houses in the county. The only time the front door was opened was when Mama decorated it for Christmas. When folks came to visit they entered at the back of the house, through the mud room off the kitchen. Mama kept a dozen chickens in the backyard, and her father ran cattle on two sections of ground north of town.

Mama had tried to keep the house clean, but there was always a gritty layer of prairie dust on the vinyl floor in the kitchen and during the summers flies had buzzed in the corners of the windows just like the farmhouses her friends lived in.

Just after four, Mercy opened the back door and ran up the stairs to her parents’ room. She started water running into the claw-footed tub in their bathroom, and when the steam fogged the windows she poured in twice as much bubble bath as she should have. Mercy gathered towels and a robe from the back of the door, stripped off the clothes that smelled of Saylor’s Cafe, and settled in the hot water to soak away the day.

Chase Ford wouldn’t come at six. Chase would knock on the back door at five forty-five. He was always early, and Mercy intended to make him wait.

She scrubbed the stains and grime from her fingernails with a stiff brush and washed her hair. She rubbed handfuls of conditioner into her dark hair, leaned back to enjoy the warmth around her, and stared out of the open bathroom door.

Mercy hadn’t touched a thing in her parents’ bedroom since Mama had moved to the rest home in Comanche Springs and Daddy had died. His deer rifle still leaned in the corner behind the door, and Mama’s full-length oval mirror sat at the end of their bed.

Whenever Mercy looked at herself in that mirror she could still see the reflection of Mama’s face behind her. Mama was there when Mercy tried on her costume for the school play, when she dressed up for homecoming, and all those other special times. Mama told her she looked like a lady.

But Mercy wasn’t a lady. She was just a girl from a small farm town on Colorado’s windswept prairies. She wanted to be something else, something more, but she never quite fit in. Not at the small eastern college she chose. Certainly not with Carl’s family in the Philadelphia suburbs.

Now she was back in Brandon. Waiting for the high school basketball star to take her to a pancake supper in the church basement. Maybe this was where she belonged.

No.

The clock downstairs chimed five times. Mercy climbed from the tub, dried herself, and put on the robe. She walked to Mama’s mirror and did a most unladylike thing for a woman on her way to church.

Mercy let the robe drop from her shoulders and appraised her naked body. The twenty pounds Carl had teased her so cruelly about had melted away in the stress from their divorce. The months on her feet at the café had taken another ten and firmed her legs. Gravity had been kind, and makeup could hide the wrinkles around her eyes.

She left the robe on the floor, pushed the box of cartridges for her father’s rifle to the side of the dresser, picked up her cell phone, and dialed a number.

“Sheriff,” she said into the phone. “You know who this is?” She let her voice purr. “I’ll see you at the pancake supper tonight, won’t I?”

*   *   *

Sheriff Lincoln Kendall tucked his personal cell phone into the shirt pocket behind his badge. He walked back to his deputies and the crime scene agents from the state.

“How much longer do you need?” he asked the lead agent.

“We’re wrappin’ things up now.”

Kendall turned up the collar of his jacket. “I’ll leave two of my men to help out. I got business I need to attend to.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ll look for your report in the mornin’.” He didn’t thank them.

The sheriff climbed into his truck and dialed home on the department’s cell. “Becky, listen. This thing turned into a nightmare. I’m not sure when I’ll get home tonight. Tell the girls I love ’em. And don’t wait up.”

He started the truck, pulled up onto the gravel road, and punched a button on the police radio. “Arlene, I’ll be in Brandon if you need me.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Marty set two cans of Mountain Dew, a bag of Cheetos, and a Snickers bar on the scratched countertop in the Town Pump store. Cecil pushed up his glasses and wriggled the skin on his nose as if to command that they stay in place for longer than a minute. He smiled at the woman in front of Marty, shook open a plastic sack, and dropped the pack of Marlboro Lights she had asked for into the bag. The woman tapped the edge of her credit card on the counter. Cecil screwed up his face, lifted a box of Tampax between his thumb and little finger, and dropped it into the bag with her cigarettes. He swiped the woman’s credit card and nodded to her as she left the store.

“Marty, is all this for you?” he asked as the deputy added two Slim Jims to his snacks.

“No. The Mountain Dew is for Paco.”

Cecil pushed at his glasses again. The bright yellow Town Pump cap on his head was the only thing he was wearing that didn’t need washing. “I heard about Jimmy Riley.” He stared at Marty though his thick glasses. “Is it true what they’re sayin’? Somebody cut off his pecker?”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“One of those fellas that drives for an oil company said he heard it from those Mexican boys that are buildin’ that fence ten miles north of town. Said they cut off the buffalos’, too.” Cecil jabbed at his glasses again and whispered, “Sound’s like devil worshippers to me. I saw a show on the TV about them.”

“You’re makin’ all this up, aren’t you? Just like the story you told about Pop Weber not bein’ able to remember things because he got lifted up by a tornado and dropped on his head. You think because you tell all these stories people will think you’re important.” Marty grabbed a Slim Jim, peeled down the plastic, and bit the end off. “’Sides, all those buffalo were heifers and heifers don’t have peckers”—he took another bite—“and Jimmy had his. I should arrest you for lyin’.”

Cecil shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t that driver that told me. But somebody did.”

“How many people you tell this story to?”

“A few.” Cecil looked down at the floor.

“Shut up, Cecil, just shut up.”

Marty took his bag of food outside. He hadn’t gotten a good look at Jimmy’s body in the field. There was a lot of blood.

What if what Cecil said was true?

When he looked down at the ragged end of the Slim Jim in his hand, his butt puckered. He tossed the rest of the sausage into the trash barrel. Birdie had found the body. He could ask her.

Hey, Birdie. Did Jimmy have his…?

Paco came around the corner of the building, opened the front door, and hung the restroom key back on its hook. The old deputy stepped off the curb and rested his hip on the patrol car. Marty handed him a can of pop and fished the Cheetos out of his bag.

“Cecil tellin’ stories again?” the old deputy asked.

“Yeah. And a whopper this time.”

“Anythin’ to it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Cecil can’t help it. I think that’s just who he is.” Paco popped the top of his pop can and sniffed the air. “Smell that?”

Marty put his nose to the breeze and smiled. “I think I smell flapjacks and maple syrup. They must be startin’ to cook over at First Methodist. Deb’s gonna bring the kids, and we’re all gonna eat together. What time is it?”

Chase’s Dodge pickup rolled down the highway in front of the island of light at the Town Pump. Both deputies waved.

“It’s twenty to six,” Paco said.

“Them Methodists start servin’ at six thirty. I better call Deb.” Marty wiped the Cheetos dust from his mouth. “I like pancakes.”

*   *   *

In just the light of the flames from a can of Sterno, Ray-Ray lifted two pieces of sizzling bacon with the tip of his skinning knife from a blackened skillet. He laid the bacon on a paper towel he had placed on a rock and set the skillet back over the fire. One by one he dropped strips of fresh deer’s heart into the hot grease and added green jalapeño peppers to the mix. He covered the skillet with a tin plate and listened to his dinner sputter and pop.

Ray-Ray lifted his head just high enough to see over the rim of the gulley where he hid. The chubby game warden’s truck still sat on the road near the gate to his property. She hadn’t just barreled in like the two sheriff’s deputies had done that morning. Birdie Hawkins was a smart woman. She had left her truck at the bottom of that little hill, climbed the fence, and was sitting out on the pasture watching his house.

If he believed the state had a right to make him buy a hunting license to kill deer that fed on his land all year long, he might have asked her to share this deer-heart supper. He could have cooked it up in the house instead out on the prairie. Spill some wild honey over scratch biscuits to go along with it. Nothing wrong with that.

Still, it rankled him something awful that the law and government were after him. Why couldn’t they just leave him alone?

But he could wait her out. He knew where she was. She was looking for him.

After he ate, Ray-Ray dug into his shirt pocket under his coat for his Zig-Zags and a baggie of homegrown weed. He twisted up a smoke and lit it in the flames from the Sterno. Sterno didn’t put out smoke that could be spotted and threw off a good bit of warmth.

He held the first drag of herb deep in his lungs for a long while. Over his head, more stars than a man could count peppered the new night. Ray-Ray liked to watch the stars and hated the way the lights in Brandon hid so many. He bet city people had no idea how many stars there really were. All those electric lights didn’t match up with what the Lord had made.

He took another puff, and dreamy warmth filled his head. He heard Birdie’s truck start up. He could go to the house now, but Ray-Ray decided to stay on the prairie and try to count the stars.

*   *   *

Marty stepped up onto the curb as Sheriff Kendall pulled into the parking lot at Town Pump. The sheriff rolled down his window, and Marty stepped in close.

“Any word on the Benavidez girl or Coach?” Kendall asked.

“We put in a call to the high school in Limon. The janitor answered. He didn’t know much, ’cept the game went in double overtime so they were late gettin’ out of there. When they came out of the school, the bus had a flat tire and they had to wait to have it fixed. Bus should be showin’ up anytime now.” Marty took another sniff of the air. He was sure he smelled maple syrup. His stomach growled.

“Anythin’ else, Marty?”

“Brandon won, sir.”

“What’s that?”

“The basketball game, sir. Brandon won. That Taylor kid hit two free throws with three seconds left.”

Paco came out of Town Pump with two cups of coffee. He gave Marty a grin and then handed one of the cups to the sheriff. The sheriff tipped his head. That was about the only way Marty had ever seen the man say thank you.

They stood next to the sheriff’s truck on the warm November evening. The sheriff’s eyes were tired, and Marty knew he was thinking about all that had happened that day. He had trouble believing it himself. Boys didn’t get killed in Comanche County. They died in car wrecks and tractor turnovers, not by a bullet in the head.

Across the highway, near the train tracks, in that old part of town, a sound like summer thunder split the night.

Paco slopped coffee from his cup onto the ground. The sheriff turned his face toward the noise. “That sounded like a gunshot.”

Lights blinked on the radios in both the sheriff’s truck and the deputies’ patrol car. Arlene’s voice cracked through the static. “Just got a nine-one-one. Shots fired. Plainsman Liquors in Brandon. Nearest unit, please respond.”