Authors: Earlene Fowler
“Emphasis on the boy part. He’s Gabe’s son, Rita. Lay off, okay?”
She feigned a shocked look and opened the truck door. “Benni, I’m just crushed. You know I’d never do anything to hurt your new little family.”
Why didn’t her reassurance make me feel better?
It was only after she was waving me a cheery good-bye that I realized she’d escaped before I could ask her about her long-term plans.
At the police station, Maggie, Gabe’s secretary, informed me he was in a meeting with the city manager but would be finished in a half hour.
“The Grand Poohbah left orders for you to give your official statement to Detective Ryan and then wait for him.” Her smile was warm and generous as she stuck a yellow pencil in her dark upswept hair. In her tailored plum business suit and leather pumps, a sedate twin of Natalie Cole, you’d never guess she was a better cowboy than most of the hands Daddy had ever hired. What’s more, she was one of the few people who wasn’t rattled by Gabe’s stern manner. She treated him like a sweet, rather slow younger brother even though he was twenty years her senior. Surprisingly, he not only tolerated it, but also seemed to like her assertive control over his schedule.
After agreeing to be recorded, I followed Detective Ryan, a large-bellied man with a prickly broom of a mustache, into the windowless, tan interrogation room and gave my version of discovering Nora’s body.
“Any leads yet?” I asked playfully when he turned off the recorder.
He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, torn between not wanting to offend either the boss’s wife or the boss.
“That’s okay,” I said, rescuing him. “I’ll ask Gabe.”
“Thanks,” he said gratefully, and escorted me back to Maggie’s desk.
“Give it to me,” she said to the detective, holding out her hand for the cassette. “It’ll take forever for one of the clerks to type it, and there’s no need for Benni to make two trips.” She slipped the cassette into her Dictaphone machine. “His Royal Highness is free now,” she said to me, slipping on the headphones. “I’ll transcribe this while you two lovebirds coo in there, and it’ll be ready for you to sign when you’re through.”
I smiled. “You know, Maggie, with your efficiency, you’re going to be giving the King Ranch a run for their money someday.” Her goal, one we’d talked about many times, was to utilize her degree in ranch management and buy her own ranch using her great-grandfather’s cattle brand.
She grinned back at me. “Honey, you can hang your hat on that one.”
Gabe stood next to his window, hands in his pockets, looking out at the maintenance yard. He turned around and smiled when he saw me.
“You’re a sight for sore eyes,” he said, coming across the room and pulling me into a bear hug.
“How are things going?” I asked.
“Lousy,” he said, nuzzling the top of my head. “Have you seen the
Tribune
today?”
“No,” I confessed, pulling away and looking up at him. “I picked up the
Freedom Press
when I was having lunch with Rita, but I only read Elvia’s book review and the Tattler’s column.”
He gave a disgusted “hmmph” and sat down in his chair. “That column is nothing but cheap, yellow journalism. I don’t know why you read it.”
I shrugged. “Curiosity, I suppose. Just like everyone else.”
“And as long as people keep reading it, that junk will keep being printed.”
“I gave my statement,” I said, changing the subject because he obviously was feeling grumpy, and a gossip column in a local paper wasn’t the cause. “Maggie’s typing it up now.”
“Good.”
I opened my purse and pulled out the sheets of paper from the tablet at Eudora’s. “And here’s those names you asked for last night.”
He read down the list quickly. “Thanks. I’ll give them to Jim at the update meeting this afternoon.”
“Any leads?”
He looked back down at the list in his hand. “Anything else you want to tell me about these people?”
I didn’t answer for a moment, letting him know his attempt at avoiding my question didn’t work. “Peter Grant and I had an argument today.”
He looked up at me, his face intent. “Really? What about?”
“Same old thing. Private property rights and the common good. And I guess there’s some trouble between him and Roy. I think they’re both going to try and turn this festival into a political battleground, but they’ll have to go through me to do it. I’ll toss both their butts out without thinking twice.”
Gabe leaned back in his chair, his mustache twitching in amusement. “I have no doubt about that. Should I beef up security Friday night?”
“Nah, I can handle it. They won’t backtalk me too much. Everyone knows I have high connections in local law enforcement.”
“Not to mention a very protective husband.”
“Now, an update from the home front.” I spent the next twenty minutes telling him about my lunch with Rita. By the end of my story, I actually had him smiling.
Maggie knocked and opened the door. “All done, kids.”
I signed the statement, and Gabe walked me out to the parking lot. “We’ll talk more about your storytellers tonight,” he said. “Just don’t go asking them any questions, okay? That’s my job.”
I made a cross over my heart and held up three fingers.
“I know for a fact you were never a Girl Scout,” he said. He leaned against his dad’s truck and stroked the fender. “How’s it running?”
“Fine. And don’t worry.” I poked him in the chest. “I’m taking very good care of it. Are you going to make it home for dinner?”
His eyes lit up. “Are you cooking again?”
“No, but there will be a home-cooked meal waiting for you.”
“Your cousin Rita?” he asked dubiously.
I laughed out loud. “That was a joke, wasn’t it? Actually your son is cooking us dinner. I think he’s trying to say he’s sorry. Think you can make it home by six o’clock?”
He turned and inspected an imaginary spot on the truck’s fender. “Depends on what’s happening with the Cooper case.”
I didn’t press it, though I was itching to. “Well, don’t work too hard.” I stood on tiptoe and kissed him lightly. He pulled me close in a tight hug, then turned back toward the station. After a few steps, he stopped and turned around. The wind softly ruffled the top of his black hair. In his gray Brooks Brothers suit he appeared the consummate professional, but I saw through it to a lanky, pain-racked sixteen-year-old boy whose father died before he could teach his son all he needed to know about being a father.
“Be careful,” he said, his face still. “I mean it.”
“Yes, sir,” I said solemnly, giving him a small salute, then mouthed the words
I love you.
“Yo tambien, querida.”
A short while later I felt a surge of anticipation when I turned right at the redwood Methodist church and drove down the gravel driveway to Grace’s stables. Less than fifteen minutes away from both my house and the museum on a back road that eventually led to Montana de Oro State Park and Morro Bay, it had, over the last five or six months, become my semisecret place of retreat. Though I tried to make it out to the Ramsey Ranch at least once a week, I missed the satisfying routine of caring for animals on a daily basis, working in a garden, and living far enough away from civilization that when you sat on your front porch at night, the screeching you heard came from an owl and not your teenage neighbor’s tires taking a fast corner.
The road forked at the end, one gravel road leading to her house and the other to the stables. The house was a square, neat two-story with white trim, gray shingles, and an old chimney. Across the front was a white picket fence laced with pink and yellow tea roses, and to the left grew a hundred-year-old oak tree under which sat a wrought-iron patio set. Pockets, her gray tabby cat, sat in the middle of the glass-topped table and licked one white paw.
I drove directly to the stables, knowing that was where Grace would likely be this time of day. Two large arenas flanked a wooden breezeway barn that housed approximately thirty horses. Grace’s boarding and training operation was small but exclusive, and as a rancher I teased her quite a bit about the pampering the spoiled city horses received.
“Some of them dress better than I do,” I’d said, watching her peel a pink paisley blanket and hood off a glossy Morgan owned by a society woman in town who rode dressage. “Daddy’d bust a gut laughing if he saw the outfits some of these horses wear.”
“And they eat better than all of us,” she’d replied.
I parked in front of the closest arena. Because school was still in session, only one person was riding this early in the afternoon. By three-thirty, the place would be packed with schoolgirls in skintight breeches and expensive riding boots braiding their horses’ manes, discussing the next competition, and giggling over Grace’s new seventeen-year-old stable hand, Kyle.
I rested my arms on the metal railing and watched Jillian Sinclair take her huge bay, Flirtatious Fred, through his paces. From inside the barn, I heard Michelle Wright telling all the guys within hearing range that if they wanted her heart they’d have to “take it like a man. . . .”
Grace’s high, reedy soprano echoed out of the building as she sang along. Above me, eucalyptus leaves whispered in the warm breeze.
“What do you think?” Jillian asked, riding up to me. She pulled off her helmet and shook out her pale hair. I reached up and ran my hand down the bay’s soft cheek.
“Lookin’ good,” I said. “You have a competition coming up?”
“This Sunday in Santa Barbara. I’m going to have to miss the last few hours of the festival on Saturday night because I want to get him down there early to settle in.” She patted the horse’s neck. “He’s going to do me proud this time, no doubt about it.” She swung down, locked the irons in place, and walked Fred over to the gate. I followed and unlatched it from my side.
“Thanks.” She led the horse over to a tie bar, pulled off the expensive English saddle, and tossed it over the fence. “Hot walker for you today, sweetie,” she said, kissing the horse’s forehead. “I don’t have time to work all that energy out of you.” She pulled off the bridle and handed it to me, haltered Fred, and tied him to the bar. She hefted the saddle and walked toward the tack room in the front of the barn.
“How was it this morning at the library?” I asked inside the large tack room. She threw the saddle over a wooden saddle rack and pulled off her expensive leather gloves.
“People are edgy, of course. I tried to reassure everyone as best I could, but there wasn’t much I could say. According to Gabe, there aren’t many leads. But I assume you know that.” She tossed the gloves on top of a small refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of mineral water. “Want one?” Her thin white shirt was glued to her body with perspiration.
I shook my head no and hung the bridle on a free hook.
“If there were any leads, he probably wouldn’t tell me anyway, right?” She took a quick sip from the mineral water and held the dripping bottle to her forehead.
“Probably not,” I agreed. “Even I have trouble prying information out of him about cases.”
“Well, I soothed everyone and told them they didn’t have anything to worry about, but that they should use the buddy system when walking to their cars, especially the ones who work late on Tuesdays and Thursdays.”
“Good idea anytime, actually.”
“Yes, it probably is.” She looked at me curiously. “Did you go to see Nick?”
“This morning. I don’t think he’s doing very well.”
She nodded in agreement and set her water down on a table crowded with equine medicines and grooming products. “I thought the same thing when I went by yesterday. I told him to take as much time off as he needs. He and Nora were so close, and now he’s all alone.” She bit the inside of her cheek. “I know how he feels.”
“Yes, he and Nora—”
“Benni! I thought I heard your voice,” Grace interrupted, stepping into the tack room. “Hey, Jillian. What are you two yapping about?”
Jillian and I glanced at each other guiltily. She picked up her water and took another quick sip. I picked at a hangnail on my thumb.
Grace’s freckled face scanned both our faces, then scowled. “As if I didn’t know. I can’t tell you how sick I am of hearing about Nora Cooper. When she was alive, I couldn’t go ten minutes without hearing Nora this, Nora that. I guess it’s not going to be any different now that she’s dead.” She grabbed a large plastic feed bucket full of grain and stomped out.
“Well,” Jillian said after a few uncomfortable minutes, “I guess she’s made her position clear.” She tucked a loose section of her thin white blouse into her khaki breeches. “Someone should mention to her that it doesn’t look very good, her going on like that about someone just murdered. Especially since she’s living with the deceased’s soon-to-be ex-husband.”
I smiled wanly, getting her point. “And that someone would be me?”
Jillian gave an apologetic shrug. “You do seem to be her only friend.”
“I’ll try and talk to her. I don’t want her making things tougher on herself than necessary.”
“She probably is one of the more obvious suspects, isn’t she?”
My mouth opened in surprise. “Jillian, I can’t believe you said that.”
She tossed her empty water bottle in the small waste-basket. “I bet I’m not the only one who’s thinking it. Don’t you think that Gabe has her high on his list of suspects?”
“You know I can’t talk about that.”
Her sharp, tiny features wrinkled in chagrin. “I know. Please, forgive me for my speculations. I guess I’ve got a bit of the Tattler’s blood in me. Maybe that’s why that column is so addictive.” She gave my shoulder a quick pat as she walked out. “Call me if you hear anything.”
“Bye,” I called after her. Her flippant accusation of Grace irritated me, though what she said was true. But her admission about liking the Tattler’s column neutralized my anger somewhat. I was just as guilty as her. I actually looked forward to reading the gossip column every week, which was starting to really prick at my conscience. What was it in us human beings that caused us to enjoy reading or hearing about the mortification of other people?
I found Grace at the wash racks scraping water off a sorrel Arabian with a white blaze on his forehead. I stood to the side and watched her for a moment without speaking.