Left Hanging (15 page)

She clicked her tongue. “Men an’ snakes. Sometimes it’s hard to tell them apart. Even for a woman like that with a good head on her shoulders
 . . .
”

Penny went on, but I was stuck on that phrase.
A woman with a good head on her shoulders
. She’d said that before. She’d said it in connection with someone being taken in by—

“Penny!”

“. . . maybe he loved her, maybe not, but he never treated—”

“Penny!” I nearly shouted it.

Her eyes opened wide, but she stopped talking.

“Who all dated Keith Landry?”

“Like I said, I don’t know other places he’s—”

“From here. From Sherman. Sonja, you said. And he was pursuing Heather Upton. Who else?”

“Like I said, the rodeo queen if it was anybody. He goes way back with that. One way or another, it’s always a surprise the girls who go with him. Now when Mike Paycik goes with a girl—”

“Who else did Landry date from around here?”

Miracle of miracles, my question changed the direction of her flow. Like a twig turning the Mississippi.

“Vicky Upton at the start. That surprised some, brought up strict the way she was. Jolie Graf a few years after that, then Barb Duncan, and Chrissy Baretski. Then Linda five years ago. Like I told you, that had jaws sagging. First off, she wasn’t no rodeo queen, and him going after rodeo queens had got to be a joke, and why she
 . . .
” The flow went on, around and past me.

Linda had been romantically involved with both Zane and Landry.

“Elizabeth! You forget something?”

I blinked myself back to the present. My groceries were bagged. Penny was ready for the next customer.

“No. I
 . . .
I just had an epiphany. Sorry.” I hurriedly paid, and pushed my cart out to my car.

Next thing I knew, I heard my name again. “Elizabeth?”

Once more I blinked back to the present. This time to find Tom Burrell standing beside me, with the trunk of my car yawning open.

Chapter Seventeen

“ARE YOU OKAY?” Tom asked.

I blinked a couple more times, pulling myself back to the here and now. “Fine. Thinking about potatoes.”

His mouth quirked. “Care to share?”

“Too long and complicated for the Sherman Supermarket parking lot.”

“Then how about a drink at the Kicking Cowboy?”

My mind skittered sideways at that. “Where’s Tamantha?”

“Sleepover. Like I said, she’s got quite the social life.”

“Aren’t you here to shop?”

“I can skip it. But if you have things you need to get home?”

Abruptly, I realized he probably wanted an opportunity to come clean about his editing job on the phone call list. Everything settled into place. “We could go to my hovel. I have wine.”

“Better not.”

“Why, Thomas Burrell, are you trying to protect my reputation?”

“Yes.” He was serious. “Or at least to protect your choices.”

I sheered away from that. “Okay, let’s go.”

“What about your groceries?”

“Dog food, paper towels, and glass cleaner. They’ll keep.” I dropped the trunk closed. “See you there.”

I didn’t wait for a response. When I pulled into the parking lot, he pulled in right behind me.

Inside the Kicking Cowboy, I paused, getting my bearings. A bar stretched along the left side, but tables were occupied by solid citizen types, mostly in couples.

“Not what you expected?” Burrell put a large, warm hand briefly to the small of my back and leaned close to be heard over music from a speaker directly above us. “Table in the back corner.”

I headed that way. “I had imagined a wilder scene.”

“Come by during rodeo week.” He received and returned hellos from several solid citizen types sitting at tables. “On second thought, don’t. It can get rough.”

“Hey, Tom. Good to see you here.” That greeting came from behind the bar.

“Hey, Badger. Good to see you, too. How about a draft and
 . . .
” He looked at me.

“Vodka tonic.” I preferred wine, but VT was my fallback, figuring no one could mess that up.

“Vodka tonic,” Burrell repeated, as if the bartender wouldn’t have heard me. Sometimes chivalry is downright weird. “At the back table.”

“Sure thing.”

The bartender’s response coincided with the last notes of a man’s song about writing a letter to his younger self.

A slurred voice rose from a huddle of young men at the bar near the pool table. “—only been dead a month. And here he comes walking in with somebody new. It ain’t right he’s cattin’ around!”

“They’ve been divorced for years, you moron.”

A woman’s voice added, “And if you want to talk about catting around, Mona Burrell—” A new song opened with a hard drumbeat, smothering the voices.

Burrell’s face showed no expression.

I felt like an idiot. I shouldn’t have pushed him when he’d reconsidered being seen in a social setting with me, especially here, since this had been a favorite of his ex-wife.

“Don’t let that jackass bother you none, Tom,” said the bartender as he delivered our drinks. “More beer than sense in him. Already took his keys.”

“Thanks, Badger.” He went for his wallet.

“After all you been through, it’s on the house.”

Tom thanked him again.

Turned out, I was wrong about not messing up a vodka tonic. With the bartender—Badger—beaming at us, I fought a grimace at the first sip of liquid so sweet he must have added sugar by the tablespoon, and managed a smile for his good intentions.

After his departure, silence ballooned between us.

I broke it. “Explain why having a drink with you in a bar is better for my reputation—” I skipped the topic of
choices
. “—than a civilized glass of wine at my house?”

“Because everybody can see what we’re doing. And not doing. Now, what’s this about potatoes—growing, eating, or cooking?”

“Cooking.” I’d rather get right to his apology over withholding some of the phone records, but perhaps he needed to ease into it. “First, for background, I am a decent cook. Some things I do quite well. Cookies, brownies, things like that. And you should taste my lemon bars.” Did that sound like an invitation? I slid my glass to the right, watching condensation trail behind it, took another swallow, and regretted it. “Plus, I can cook the complete Danniher Thanksgiving turkey dinner. That was self-preservation after I tasted restaurant turkey my first year away from home.”

“Never understood the big deal with turkey. It’s dry. Give me a steak.”

“Gee, could that be because you’re a cattle rancher? But no Danniher turkey is dry. Everybody loves it. However, early in my—” I skidded around the word
marriage
.
“—cooking career, I had gaping holes. Especially baked potato. Yes, I know, it’s basic, it’s easy—”

“Tamantha—”

“Oh, no you don’t. You can’t make me feel bad by saying Tamantha can do something. That girl probably could have designed a suspension bridge in the cradle if it had occurred to her that she wanted to.”

Fatherly pride shifted his Abraham Lincolnesque face closer to craggy handsomeness.

“Anyway, if I tried to bake a potato, it came out like a rock. Oven, microwave, toaster oven, it didn’t matter. Potato rock. Wes took to calling me
Potato
the way couples call each other cabbage or muffin.” I caught myself before venturing deeper down memory lane.

“And here’s where my epiphany starts. One day I was helping a co-worker put a Band-Aid on his hand. I kept a supply, because he was always hurting himself. Later he nearly got shot by a kid in Indonesia on assignment, and it shook him up enough he finally got into AA, so— But that’s not the epiphany. I’m putting the Band-Aid on, and he says something about getting this puncture wound while pricking a potato with a fork before baking it.”

I sat back. Burrell raised his eyebrows. “And?”

“I grabbed him by the arm and demanded, ‘Pricking? What’s this about pricking a potato?’”

“You didn’t know about that?”

“No
.
”
I moderated my voice. “No, I didn’t. Not until my co-worker said that. And there it was. The trick nobody had told me, because everybody thought everybody knew it. The one small trick that you have to know in order to make sense of what you’re dealing with.”

He regarded me with those depthless eyes. “And?”

“I can now bake a potato like nobody’s business.”

“That wasn’t what had you staring into your car trunk at the supermarket like it held the answers of the universe. What do you know now that makes sense of something?”

I was listening, but I wasn’t looking at him anymore.

I would have sidestepped the answer, anyhow. Learning to bake a potato, yeah, I’d tell him about that. But he was inviting more. And I wasn’t accepting. Especially since what I knew now that made sense of several things involved his good friend Linda and her love life. It certainly added another dimension to Street’s hints that Linda held a grudge against Landry and his company.

And now I had the perfect excuse for a change of subject.

A familiar figure had caught the corner of my eye, and I tracked him to a seat at this end of the bar, with his back to us. Without waiting for an order, Badger put down two large doubles of something amber-colored, unpolluted by water or ice.

Stan Newton upended the first in one long swallow, followed by a healthy draw on the second.

I turned to Burrell. What I saw in his so-often unreadable expression said this was why he’d brought me here. “Been going on every night for nearly a month,” he said in his usual, unhurried voice. “Including Wednesday.”

Had Stan lied about seeing Zane and Watt arrive at the rodeo grounds? Or, fueled by alcohol, had he gone there and had a confrontation with Landry?

“The cause?” I asked Tom.

He hitched a shoulder. “There’s talk of money. That’s not new. The pendulum has always swung back eventually. Usually going higher than where it started.”

“Anything else?”

“He passed a comment to someone when he was well into one session that a conscience was a detriment to a businessman.”

Considering that Newton’s body language sent off waves of
Leave Me Alone
, I felt safe in assuming that
someone
was Badger—the one person Newton wouldn’t want to scare off.

“Suggestive, possibly. Not conclusive.”

“Not at all.” Without comment or fuss, he emptied most of my vodka tonic into his water glass. “You want something else?”

“No, thanks. I better get going.” Newton was among the few who didn’t watch us leave.

Tom walked me to my car door, holding it open. I got in. “Thanks for the drink.”

“You didn’t drink much of it.”

“I’ve had sweetened ice tea in the South, but that’s the first time I’ve had a sweetened vodka tonic.”

“Badger’s idea of a girly drink. We’ll get it right next time.”

“Not if he thinks I drank it all.”

“No point hurting his feelings right off.” He stood there. Not closing the car door. Looking at me.

“Something more, Burrell?”

“Yeah. I was waiting to hear you say that your epiphany was about how your ex-husband calling you
Potato
showed what a bastard he is.”

He punctuated that by closing the door and walking away.

MIKE HAD LEFT a voicemail.

“Elizabeth, I was looking at the pictures I took. I can see that the deputy who hollered was holding something with a pair of tweezers, but can’t get detail.”

DAY FOUR

SUNDAY

Chapter Eighteen

THE KNOCK was at the hovel’s front door, shortly after eleven o’clock Sunday morning. I’d had no nasty ringing phone wake-ups today, thank heavens. I heard the knock, but felt no obligation to answer. There’s no law I know that you must answer your door just because someone knocks on it. Besides, I was sitting on the back steps, waiting to see if Shadow would return to eat while I was there.

Some people’s pets do tricks. This dog’s only trick was disappearing.

After Friday’s progress, I’d left Saturday before he ate. This morning he’d been halfway through his food when I came out, and he’d immediately vanished. Talk about persona non grata. Just the sight of me put a starving dog off his food.

Yes, I was having a pity party.

The track my mind had followed during the conversation with Mel had gotten fed up with being ignored and woke me this morning with its unvarnished conclusion: My family—including my professional representative—thought/believed/feared my success in broadcast journalism was thanks to my ex-husband.

Morning is not my best time, which is why that conclusion had found the opening to mug me. Perhaps, too, my resistance had been weakened by the potato epiphany Burrell had forced me to see.
Potato
had not been an affectionate nickname. It had been a reminder of a failure.

Now, there sat the conclusion, no longer ignored, but instead lodged in my head and fully-armed. My success was not mine.

My ex had pushed. Prodded. Watched for opportunities. I would have stayed at our first jobs out of school, where we met. Wes had provided the kicks up the career ladder. Beyond that—?

Tom Burrell came around the corner from the front driveway with his usual long-legged gait.

Most people would have started talking right off, about how he’d knocked but nobody answered. He said nothing as he approached me at an unhurried pace, his gaze taking in the half-f food dish, the dogless yard, and me. He sat beside me without permission. Also without talking.

After a few minutes, I realized it hadn’t been that I didn’t want company, I just hadn’t wanted conversation.

A minute more, and I realized that with Burrell there, the examination of my ex’s role in my career had settled back into its corner. Sure, it growled a little, but it stayed there.

Then Shadow emerged from behind the garage. He stopped and looked from me to Burrell and back. He sniffed the air audibly. Slowly, he approached, coming at an angle that brought him closer to me than Burrell.

“What kind of dog do you think Shadow is?” I asked.

“Male.”

“I guessed that when I saw him peeing standing up. I meant what breeds do you think he has in him.”

“As many as he could get.”

I grimaced.

“Best you could call him is a Wyoming ranch dog,” he said.

“Is there such a breed?”

“More of a generic than a breed.”

“Don’t you think he has collie in him?”

“Like Lassie?” He ended the question on a cough that sounded suspiciously like it covered a laugh.

“I’m not saying purebred, but those ranch dogs often look like they’re related to collies. A ranch collie. Look at him, the way his ears tip, the markings around his ruff, the long nose. And I’ll bet he’ll have a good coat when he’s cleaned up.”

“
If
he’s ever cleaned up.”

“I think he has a certain panache.” There was silence beside me. I looked over. “Don’t you think so?”

“I think it’s a damned good thing you already named him Shadow, because any Wyoming dog would starve himself to death rather than be called Panache.”

I laughed. Shadow skittered toward the garage. It was something he’d have to get used to, because laughing was something I wanted to get used to.

Tamantha Burrell came around the corner from the direction of the driveway, determination in every line of her narrow face.

With dimples and curls she might be called cute. Tamantha had ears that poked out between straight, almost lank hair, and extremities that tended to stick out of whatever she wore, as if she’d grown since she got dressed that morning. She’s called bossy.

Chances are she won’t outgrow the label. In fact, in another fifteen years, as she climbs whatever career ladder she decides on—and if Tamantha decides to climb those rungs will get climbed—she’ll surely pick up the other “B” tag: bitch. If she reaches grandmotherdom, her decisiveness might, finally, become “character.”

When she spotted Shadow, her expression shifted from disapproval to admonishment. I was cravenly grateful it was directed at her father. “I wouldn’t have waited this long if you’d said there was a dog. What’s his name?”

“Shadow,” I said, since the question had been directed at me. “But he doesn’t like people. At least not yet. He’s been on his own a long time, and it seems he might have been treated badly. We have to be patient and give him time to get used to us. Don’t rush him. Don’t try to be friends with him until he’s ready.”

She listened until I stopped, then turned and looked at the dog. Then at me. Then her father. It was the last two looks that had the hair rising on the back of my neck.

“Daddy says some people are like that, too, and we should treat them just like what you said. Be real patient with them, wait for them to come to us. Not rush them. You know, people like you,” she said.

I snapped my neck around to glare at the father of the pint-sized know-it-all. The move hurt my neck, as well as giving little satisfaction, because the brim of that all too useful cowboy hat hid his eyes, and the rest of his face was expressionless.

“Daddy said we had to be patient—”

“Tamantha.” Father and daughter looked at each other. This time, father won.

I would not stoop to pumping a second-grader for information about what her father might have said. However, now that she was heading into third grade
 . . .
but it would have to wait until the father wasn’t around.

Tamantha turned to the dog and said, “I won’t hurt you, so don’t be silly. Come, Shadow.”

And he did.

Or almost. A heck of a lot closer that he’d come to me with the exception of the one time he’d assigned himself as my guard dog.

“Good dog,” she said. “Now eat your food.”

She came and sat on a lower step between her father and me, extending her legs in front of her, emphasizing that her pants were even shorter on her than they had been when I met her at the start of May. She wore a top with bright red and yellow stripes that had to be new because the sleeves almost covered her wrists.

Shadow ate. Whenever he glanced toward us, it was directed to Tamantha, and I’d have sworn the message was
see how good I’m doing at exactly what you told me
?

When he finished, Tamantha said, “Good dog. Now let’s go see what’s in this yard.”

“I don’t know—”

“She’ll be okay,” Tom said to me. To his daughter he added, “Don’t bring back any live snakes.”

She stood and started off. Shadow stared at her a moment, then trotted along parallel to her, though ten feet to the side. He wagged his tail. It was the first time I’d seen him wag his tail.

I found myself grinning stupidly. “Your daughter is terrifying.”

“Tell me about it.”

I turned to view his profile. “Single parenthood tough?”

“Not her doing. It’s the wondering if there are better ways, or things you’re forgetting or never knew.” His mouth did that quirk thing. “’Specially woman things.”

My opinion was that Tamantha would be better off learning
woman things
from the man sitting next to me than she would have been from her mother, but it wasn’t my place to say that. “You’ve got time. And I’d imagine your sister will be a big help.”

“Yeah, she will.” He stretched one leg, seeming to signal a shift in the conversation. “Best tell you what I’ve learned while we have the chance. The shouting at Wednesday morning’s meeting with the rodeo committee was over Landry saying he wanted yet another bonus, or he wouldn’t bring in the stock. The committee’d about decided they had no choice but to pay, when Street arrived with the stock trucks. Best guess is that Landry was shouting at Street about the timeline of his arrival, taking the teeth out of his grab for another bonus. Less clear what Street was shouting about. One person who heard claimed Street said something about it was one thing with strangers, but Landry’d known him twenty years.”

“What was
one thing with strangers
?”

“No idea. The person didn’t stick around, though the shouting went on. Between the committee in the morning and the showdown with Street, I got three reports of Landry shouting on the phone. One, telling somebody they owed him and better rethink their high-and-mightiness. Two, telling Evan Watt he didn’t care what he’d said before, Watt better get his sorry ass to Sherman, pronto. Three, telling a liquor store they damned well better deliver.”

That all fit.

“Couple folks I talked to mentioned Landry was drinking hard,” he added. “They’d known him from other years, and they said this was new. And bad.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this last night?”

“Didn’t know last night.”

I felt my brows hike. “You’ve talked to people since last night?”

“Couple folks who work at the rodeo grounds go to the same church as Tamantha and me.” He tipped his head to indicate his daughter’s approach. Shadow stopped well back. “Had a chance to talk a bit about what’s been happening at the rodeo grounds.”

I understood and would cooperate with his inclination to cloak what was going on with generalities such as
what’s been happening at the rodeo grounds
. Though it wouldn’t have surprised me to discover his daughter knew more about the situation than we did.

She announced, “I’ll be rodeo queen when I grow up.”

“Will you?” Tamantha is not a girl I would have expected to have that ambition. For one thing, she’s not a pretty or even cute child. More important, I would have expected her not to waste her ambition on anything smaller than running several countries. On the other hand, Mrs. Parens had been a rodeo queen.

“Yup. Probably a bunch of years in a row.”

“Usually in these things, once you win, you can’t enter again.”

She cast me a disdainful look. “Real queens rule forever, and I’ll be a real queen.”

As I said, several countries. Come to think of it, Tamantha, Mrs. Parens, and Heather Upton might be sisters under the skin.

Burrell stood, resting his hands on his daughter’s thin shoulders. She leaned back against him, as content as I’d ever seen her. “Time we got going. Tamantha and I—”

My phone rang. I put a hand on it, but didn’t pull it out.

“You’d best get that,” Burrell said.

It was Mike. “Elizabeth. I’ve got something.”

I didn’t move to make this private, and the Burrells stayed where they were. “The pictures you took?”

He sighed. “Can’t see much except blurs on the beam. Otherwise, most of what I got is a bunch of deputies’ backs. In the one I mentioned on the message, you can see a deputy’s hand holding something with tweezers. What’s being held is mostly a pixilated squiggle. Maybe a thread. Maybe something else.”

“Too bad. It was worth a try.”

“I suppose. But here’s what I do have. Aunt Gee has good information that Stan Newton is in trouble financially.”

Technology let us down with the pictures, but Aunt Gee’s grapevine worked fine in confirming what Burrell had presented last night. I needed to tell Mike about that. “How much trouble?”

“That’s not clear yet.” That
yet
meant Aunt Gee remained on the case. “The other bit of news is that Jenny—”

“Jennifer.”

“
Jennifer
is emailing us a list of rodeos Landry’s company has worked the past five years—places, dates, contact names. Sending it to Richard, too. Since she’s done with that, she’s going to dig on that contractor going bankrupt.”

“That’s great.”

“Listen, how’d you like to come to Sunday dinner at Aunt Gee’s?”

My eyes flicked to the Burrells, then away. Had Tom been about to issue an invitation? Had I wanted him to? “Uh
 . . .
”

“We can see what else she knows.”

“I thought I’d go see Mrs. Parens today.”

He made a sound that might be spelled, “hmm,” but carried as much warning of danger ahead as the loudest train whistle.

Mike’s Aunt Gee and Mrs. Parens were next door neighbors and rivals. Rivals for what wasn’t clear, unless it was uncontested Empress of Cottonwood County. Mike had claimed he didn’t know the history and was neither brave enough nor stupid enough to ask.

This from the man who’d faced down NFL defenders for enough years to build a nest egg and a reputation. The nest egg had bought him a ranch in the county; the reputation was going to help him secure a spot in big-time broadcasting when he chose.

“Better see Mrs. Parens first this time,” he said, referring to a visit a few weeks back in which we’d had lunch with Aunt Gee, then answered Mrs. Parens’ summons to visit her in her front parlor. “That way, she gets to feel good about our going there first, and Aunt Gee gets to feel she stole us away.”