Bad Company (28 page)

Jerry Jeff finally managed to get the stallion under control. Dickie jumped off, ran to Sally, grabbed her by the shoulders, and said, “What the hell happened?”

“Somebody threw a rock at my head, but it hit my sign and bounced off and nailed your horse. I think it came from that direction!” Sally pointed toward the Wrangler’s café entrance. The sheriff ran into the crowd, shoving people aside, his hand on the butt of his gun.

Now the sirens were sounding. Two fire engines came barreling down Grand Avenue, turned onto Third, and pulled up by the flaming Esther, firefighters leaping off the trucks. Several got busy hooking up hoses, while the rest worked to push back the surging crowd, many of whom were quite certain that this was absolutely the best Jubilee Days parade in history.

Esther was large, but crepe paper burned fast. Much to the disappointment of the crowd, the fire had soon been reduced to smoke and sodden ash, singed boards and blackened chicken wire. Now on the sidewalk in front of the Wrangler, Sally stood next to Brit, who was staring forlornly at the remains of Big Esther. “That was my most ambitious engineering project ever,” she said.

“Happily, as a lawyer you’ll be using other talents,” Hawk told Brit, squeezing her shoulder.

Herman, who’d been busy pulling the flatbed out of range of the flames, got out of the cab of the truck, walked over to Brit, and put his arms around her. “Cowboy up, darlin’,” he said.

Assured that Brit was in comforting hands, Hawk turned his attention to the dazed Sally. “Are you all right?” he asked, shaking her by the arm.

Sally looked down at the sign dangling from the hand on the arm he wasn’t shaking, then looked back up at Hawk. “You’re pinching me,” she said. “Let go.”

But as it turned out, Sally wasn’t the only one getting pinched. “Comin’ through!” somebody yelled. “Police! Clear out of here!”

Four sheriff’s deputies came around the corner from behind the Wrangler, pushing the crowd back as they moved. They were followed by Dickie Langham, panting hard from his riding and running, but trying to jolly the crowd into dispersing. “No cause for alarm here, folks,” he said, smiling and trying not to gasp. “Just a tiny bit of trouble with a fella who had a drop or two too much to drink this morning. You all get on home now, or have a bite of lunch, or go on out to the rodeo. Looks like the parade’s about over. Enjoy the rest of your Jubilee Days.”

Unaware of what she was doing, Sally watched, hypnotized, as an Albany County Sheriff’s Department patrol car drove up in front of the café. Dickie walked past Sally and Hawk, over to the vehicle, put his hands on his hips, worked on catching his breath. And now, from around the corner of the building, here came Bone Bandy, weaving and reeking of whiskey, hands cuffed behind his back, held and prodded by an un-characteristically disheveled Scotty Atkins. Bone certainly appeared a whole lot too piss-eyed to have the vaguest idea of where he was, or what was happening to him. But drunks, Sally knew, could go in and out of consciousness, in and out of memory. Just as Scotty pushed him past Sally and Hawk, Bone raised his head, on a neck that had seemed all but boneless only a second before. He looked Sally in the eye. “Hello, angel,” he whispered.

Chapter 26
Daytime Nightmares

“I don’t want to go home,” Sally insisted. “In fact, that’s the last thing I want. I’d just sit there and brood about the fact that I have hardly any underwear. It’ll be bad enough waiting around, wondering what that crazy bastard Bone’s telling the police.”

“But you’re exhausted,” said Hawk. “And if you’re not, I am. Even without having your skull smashed with a rock, your brain must be fairly addled.”

Not to mention another intimate moment with a frigging horse. “I am a little shaky,” Sally admitted. Maybe I’m so mixed up, I think I’m fine.”

“In that case, come in and have a cup of coffee, and tell me exactly what happened,” Delice said firmly. She’d come jangling up just in time to see Bone bundled into the patrol car.

Hawk looked Sally over carefully. “Okay,” he decided. “I could go for a burger.”

It was noisy as hell in the Wrangler. Once the police took off, the parade-goers had flowed into the café and bar, jabbering about the thrilling surprise ending to the afternoon’s entertainment. Delice commandeered a table in the restaurant, and soon Sally and Hawk were settling down to a late lunch.

Her heart was still hammering, but Sally figured that an order of Wrangler onion rings was just the thing to slow it down. Hawk had gone into brooding mode, saying nothing, barely looking up from the cheeseburger and fries he was demolishing, as if he hadn’t consumed a full pound of aged American beef only the night before. Then again, dinner at the Yippie I O seemed awfully long ago.

Delice peppered Sally with questions. She mumbled answers while she crunched her way through four cheap paper napkins’ worth of hot, sweet, greasy rings. “So it seems,” Sally concluded, wiping the ketchup off her fingers with a fifth napkin, “that Bone Bandy is the one who visited our house Tuesday night, and called me up this morning, and just tried to bean me with a rock. Looks like it’s up to Dickie and Scotty to find out whether he pushed me into the bucking chute. What I don’t get is why? What’s he got against me? I still can’t quite believe that he was the one who killed Monette.”

“That son of a bitch!” Delice spat. “Well, at least this’ll probably be the last chance he gets to terrorize women for a while.”

Sally looked up from the pile of soggy napkins, trouble in her eyes. “Yeah. I guess. But how could I have read him so wrong Thursday morning? I guess some part of me really wanted to believe that he was capable of at least a little fatherly grief. Boy, what a sap, huh?”

The burger was gone. Only a few hard, cold fries remained on Hawk’s plate. He pursed his lips, staring at the ruins of his lunch, then looked up, expressionless, the round lenses of his glasses gleaming. “There’s no evidence at this point that you were off-base. You said then you didn’t think he’d killed his daughter—why change your mind about that now?”

Sally leaned on her elbows and put her head in her hands.

“He’s no prince, but I don’t think he killed her either,” Delice told Sally. “Otherwise, why would he have been sitting at my bar at ten o’clock this morning, crying in his whiskey, telling everybody who could stand to listen that one way or another, he’d find the fucker who killed his little girl, and get all the bastards that ever did him wrong?”

Delice put a hand on Sally’s arm. “Hey, I’m an expert on drunks. The ones who are bad off—and Bone’s definitely in that category—get real confused. When they happen to be sober, they can have their sensible moments, but when they’re loaded, they get wild hairs up their butts. Bone could have latched on to you because he’s imagined up some diabolical connection between you and the murderer. Then again, he could just be obsessing about something you did a million years ago, that seems like only yesterday to him. Drunks are like that. People who deliberately lobotomize themselves have problems distinguishing between fantasy and reality, or for that matter, twenty years back and this week.”

You probably don’t remember giving me a raft of shit one night when Tanya and me had a disagreement at the Gallery. You got me throwed right out of that place. I been a little annoyed with you ever since.

“Actually, he did mention something about me getting him kicked out of the Gallery bar, way back when,” she said. “Maybe he has carried a grudge all these years, and this week’s events have just set him off. But face it, guys, if Bone didn’t murder Monette, then the killer is still on the loose. How reassuring is that?”

“At least we know the cops have the guy who’s been bothering
you
. Take what you can get,” Hawk advised.

She nodded reluctantly. “And there haven’t been any more murders. I guess it’s good news that it doesn’t look like there’s a serial killer, going around town stalking honky-tonky angels. So that leaves us back with Bone insisting that Monette was blackmailing somebody. Any theories as to who?”

All three sipped the ineffectual Wrangler coffee. When Dwayne Langham pulled a chair up to their table, Sally was grateful for the distraction.

“Hey guys! I hear I missed the parade of the century!” said Dwayne, with anomalous cheer.

“Yeah, Dwayne.” Delice sneered at her brother. “Where were you? Down at the hospital, swindling crippled little old ladies out of their homesteads?”

Dwayne gave her his patented blank stare. “Something came up,” he said mildly.

“How’d you know Molly was in the hospital?” Hawk asked Delice.

“It was the talk of the white elephant sale. By the way, Mustang, when you didn’t show up this morning, I bought that captain’s chair for you. Fifty bucks—figured you were good for it. I thought I’d better grab it before somebody else did.”

“You’re a pal,” Sally told her.

“So what’s going on with the land swap, Dwayne? Don’t try to play dumb—Burt told me Nattie drank up half the Dom Perignon in the Yippie I O cellar last night, and then gave him grief about not getting a family discount. Like you two need a discount! Where is the Wicked Witch of the West anyhow?” Delice asked.

Dwayne ignored his sister’s insult to his wife.

“At the beauty parlor,” he answered. “Or maybe getting a massage. Hair, nails, I don’t know. Seems to me she just had it all done a couple of days ago, but you know Nattie. Pretty high maintenance. I can’t keep her schedule straight.”

Delice shot Dwayne an assessing glance. “Burt said you guys had closed the Wood’s Hole deal.”

Dwayne smiled faintly, sphinxlike. “You’re not going to tell me a damn thing,” Delice said. “I know you.”

Sally wasn’t either. Even though it had been Delice’s idea to get involved with the thing in the first place, Sally figured that what she and Hawk had discovered was Molly Wood’s business. Discretion was admittedly not her strong point, but in this case, the fact that Dwayne was sitting there made restraint easier.

Dwayne changed the subject, addressing Sally. “I heard Dickie arrested Bone Bandy. Rumor has it that Bone burglarized your house and came at you with an axe. And he was the one who attacked you at the rodeo.”

“Not exactly,” said Hawk, answering for her. “As usual, the rumor mill is cranking up a somewhat faulty version of events.”

Taking a page from Dwayne’s book, Sally decided not to elaborate.

“So are you up to gigging tonight?” Dwayne asked her. Was she? Was there anything she could do, with what remained of the day, about the tragedy of Monette Bandy or the displacement of Molly Wood? With Bone behind bars, Sally herself had nothing to worry about anymore. As for Monette, the police were, after all, in charge of the murder investigation. Scotty Atkins might have hit bottom, yesterday afternoon at a table not far from where they were sitting. But Sally knew, with a deep, not altogether comfortable certainty, that Scotty wouldn’t let go of this case. He’d drive himself, and everybody else, hard, fast, and into the ground, looking for the answer.

And then there was the problem of the Happy Jack for Wood’s Hole land swap. When it came to the future of Molly Wood’s home on the range, Sally and Hawk had done pretty much everything they could. They had the carry-on-size eye bags to prove it.

Face it. Sally’s Jubilee Days had so far been a bust (with the demise of Big Esther, a true flaming bust). But at last she was out of danger. She was entitled to seize a little pleasure, make a little music, blow off a little steam. The proceeds from Delice’s benefit would go to the women’s shelter. It would be partying with a purpose. “What the hell,” said Sally.

“But first a nap,” Hawk insisted.

Right as usual. She was beat enough to lie down in the gutter in front of the Wrangler, never mind the spilled drink cups and half-eaten pretzels, the drowned cigarette butts, the Slim Jim wrappers.

When he found out that they’d walked downtown, Dwayne considerately offered Sally and Hawk a ride home. In her demented state, she had to laugh. Riding in Dwayne’s Beamer, the “little bitty” vehicle Nattie had complained about having to drive sometimes, was like sailing along in your own custom-made cloud. And Dwayne, unlike Nattie, kept his vehicle shipshape. Whatever emergency gear he might have stowed away, the interior of the BMW was immaculate, not marred by so much as a stray Post-it note. Sally wondered if some employee of the Centennial Bank was obliged to vacuum the boss’s car every day.

“Nice car,” she told him. “I remember a time when you were driving a VW bus with a mattress instead of a backseat and the remains of a McCarthy daisy on the window.”

“To everything, there is a season,” Dwayne answered.

“Must drive you crazy, taking Nattie’s Escalade fishing, the way she’s got stuff piled up in the back,” Sally went on.

Dwayne shrugged. “It’s her car. The way business has been lately, I barely have time for fishing, much less organizing her gear. Here you go,” he told them as he pulled up in front of their house, and leaned over her to open the passenger-side door. “Get some rest, and we’ll rock ’n’ roll.” He took off the moment they were out of the car.

“Damn,” Hawk muttered as they went inside. “Guess we missed our chance to grill him about the land swap.”

“He sure split in a hurry,” Sally said. “I don’t think he was in the mood to answer questions.”

And she did have questions, but not ones she could put into words. Something was tugging at the back of her brain, but at the moment there wasn’t enough electricity firing inside her head to do more than pull her shoes off and fall on the bed. Hawk collapsed nearly on top of her.

She dreamed of a mountain brook, bubbling through a mountain meadow, and birds singing. But as it flowed on, the stream darkened and turned the grass the color of dried blood. Then there were ants, hauling the coated dead stalks away, groaning, and a woman lying in the grass, her hair and nails and lips the same deadly color, and no face.

And then Sally was dragged out of her daytime nightmare, in a tangle of jeans and T-shirts and Hawk’s arms and legs, when the telephone rang. She put a pillow over her head, but Hawk sprawled over Sally’s back to reach the bedside table and picked up the receiver. “It’s Brit,” he said, handing Sally the phone.

The sulky voice came through the wire, but for once Brit didn’t sound bored out of her mind. “Hello, hello? Sally?”

“Gmmph,” said Sally, trying hard to wake up.

“Listen. Herman just called me from the Lifeway. He went down there after the team roping this afternoon.”

“Oh yeah? How’d they do?”

“Third. Hamburger money. But that’s not why I called. Remember you asked me to get Herman to lean on his brother?” she said.

“Mmm-hmm,” Sally murmured.

“He and Adolph are on their way down to the courthouse to talk to my dad. I don’t know how, but somehow Herman, like, convinced Adolph that he had to come clean with the cops.”

That woke her up. Sally shoved Hawk off her and pushed herself into a sitting position. “Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. I don’t know what Herman did to him, but he managed to get Adolph to tell him that he didn’t just drop Monette off Monday when he took her home.”

“What happened?” Sally said.

“Adolph is a total worm,” Brit observed.

“What happened, Brit?” Sally persisted.

“According to Herman, Adolph said he decided to stay for his whole lunch break. He ‘just went in for a toke and a quickie,’ ” Brit answered. “At first he said Monette was ‘her usual horny self,’ and he was just doing her a favor.”

“A favor. But then he changed his story?” Sally asked.

“When Herman leans on you, I guess he can get pretty heavy,” Brit said.

“Get to the point, Brit,” Sally said, fully alert and out of patience.

“Adolph finally admitted to Herman that he deals a little smoke now and then. Monette had made some connections for him, on a kind of barter basis, I guess—he’d give her a couple of joints if she found him buyers. And sometimes she’d trade sex for dope.”

“And that’s what she did Monday?” Sally asked.

“Yeah. This gets kind of gross, Sally.” Brit hesitated.

“Don’t worry about it, Brit. I’ve seen stuff that goes way beyond ‘kind of gross,’ ” Sally prompted.

“She wanted something new. He went inside, and they got loaded, and then she pulled out a rope. Adolph used to ride with Herman, and he recognized it as a piggin’ string.”

“Go on,” Sally said, wishing, with part of her heart, that Brit would just stop right there. Too late to stop now.

“She made Adolph let her tie him up before they had sex, Sally,” Brit said.

“She tied him up?”

“Uh-huh.” Sally heard Brit swallow, hard. “Then they did it, and then she wanted him to tie her up, and do it again, but he had to get back to work.”

Sally had to ask. “Did Adolph say anything about how Monette was when he left her to go back to the store?”

She heard Brit take a breath. “He said she cussed him out for leaving her high and dry. And he pitied the next fool she got her hooks into, because, in Adolph’s words, ‘That bitch had a hole in her that nothing could ever fill up.’ ”