Authors: Earlene Fowler
“That’s right.” He slipped his hat back on and held out a hand. “Well, then, let’s go.” I stared at it, trying to decide what to do.
“I’m lonely, Widow Harper.” He grabbed the toe of my boot and gave it a shake. “And you’re probably the only person in this old town who’ll spear a bean with me.”
“Spear a bean? What’s that supposed to be, your Louis L’Amour impression?”
“Now, Mrs. Harper, I’ll not stand by and listen to one of the greatest Western authors of all times maligned. Why, my grandpappy would turn over in his grave if he heard you making fun of his idol.” He rested his rough hands on his tooled leather belt and gave me the smartass grin that had earned him a citation for more than one moving violation from the San Celina Police Department seventeen years ago.
“Oh, what the hay,” I said, swinging my legs down. “I am hungry and yours is the best offer I’ve had all day.”
“Of course it is.”
“
Only
offer I’ve had all day,” I amended.
His grin gained a half inch. “I’m not proud.”
“But you are persistent.”
“You should know.”
After asking Malcolm to lock up, I picked up my sheepskin jacket and walked out to the parking lot, where Clay waited leaning against my truck. The rain and wind had taken a breather and dusk was falling clear and calf-killing cold.
“I’ll drive,” I said, pulling my keys out of my leather purse.
“Mind if I do?” He opened the passenger door as if I had no choice.
I jingled the keys in my hand, uncertain whether I should be irritated or not. “You have something against women in the driver’s seat?”
He feigned a horrified expression. “Why, no, ma’am. My mom would cut my ears off and feed them to me in a sandwich if I even contemplated a thought like that. She’s sixty-eight years old and still breaking ill-behaved horses and uppity grandsons. It’s just that I’ve been driving that little putt-putt around for almost a week.” He pointed at the white Ford Taurus I’d seen drive by my house last night. “And I’m itching to feel a real engine underneath these jeans. On the other hand, I consider myself a liberated man and I’d be proud to be your passenger.” He gave me an amused look that made me suspect there was no way I was going to maneuver out of this without appearing petty.
I thought for a moment, then tossed him the keys. “Be careful. The clutch sticks.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And quit talking like a character on
Gunsmoke.
”
“Yes, ma’am.”
It was dark by the time we reached the Pinos Canyon Road turnoff from U.S. 101. Driving on the murky two-lane highway toward the small foothills separating parts of the county from the Pacific Ocean, Clay kept the Chevy’s headlights on bright, adjusting them lower whenever another vehicle passed. He punched on the tape player, and one of Gabe’s Southern jazz tapes came on—Mulgrew Miller and his wild, bluesy piano.
“Yours?” he asked. I shook my head no.
“Didn’t think so.” He popped it out with a sarcastic snort and turned on the radio where KCOW was playing Eddie Rabbitt who was driving his life away. Traveling up the lonely highway west toward the restaurant, darkness wrapped around the rolling hills and occasional empty farmhouse, isolating us from everything except the drawling sound of the deejay’s voice, the growl of the truck’s engine and our own breathing. I was so accustomed to going to The Rusty Spur with friends and family, I’d forgotten its desolate location. Thinking about Miss Violet and Mr. O’Hara, what had always been familiar was now taking on an ominous cast and I began to wonder if dinner with Clay was such a good idea. What did I really know about him except that he was Brady O’Hara’s nephew and gave me one of the wildest summers of my life when I was too young to know better? The memory of his car driving slowly past my house last night caused an inward shudder. Staring out the window of the truck, it suddenly occurred to me that he could have easily killed his uncle last night. The question, of course, remained, why. I slipped my hand through the handle of the truck door, gripping it tightly while trying to talk some sense into myself. I was seeing goblins in the shadows and that probably had a lot to do with the paranoid words of a certain police chief. What reason could Clay possibly have to kill his own uncle? Now, that was a good question. One I didn’t have a single answer to because I knew exactly zilch about this good-looking, smooth-talking cowboy in tight jeans and oil baron boots driving my truck like he’d been doing it all his life.
“Awful quiet over there,” Clay said. “What’re you thinking about?”
“Nothing. Turn right at the San Celina Landfill sign.”
He let out a deep breath and flipped on the turn signal. “Makes me nervous when a woman says she’s thinking about nothing. In my experience that usually means she’s thinking about a real big something.”
“There it is,” I said and unbuckled my seat belt.
The Rusty Spur is one of those three-generation-owned restaurants the locals like to take out-of-town friends and relatives to, but keep secret from tourist guides and newspaper reporters. It only opens for dinner and only serves one thing, the most mouth-watering, corn-fed-tender, artery-clogging beef in San Celina County. Some say in the whole state of California. With only the San Celina Landfill a distant neighbor, the faded, russet-colored clapboard building that was once a bunkhouse squatted among a thick grove of oak trees twice as old as most of the residents at Oak Terrace. The only other building was a large shed in the back that housed Bill the owner’s colorful collection of pre-World War II license plates and antique farm equipment. On slow nights Bill left the cooking of the steaks to his two sons-in-law and gave impromptu tours of his personal museum to whoever was waiting for a table.
“Shoot, this place hasn’t changed since the last time we ate here,” Clay said. We walked through the crowded parking lot to the front of the restaurant where patrons, clutching long-necked bottles of beer, milled around waiting for their names to be called. Valentine’s Day as well as most other holidays was a San Celina County tradition at The Rusty Spur. When you brought your date here, people suspected things were getting serious.
We were seated right away at the table I’d reserved for Gabe and me near the smoke-smudged brick fireplace. The packed room radiated with body heat; the smoky, molasses smell of beef broiled over oakwood permeated the wooden walls. Snatches of conversations flew over our heads, beer-vibrant voices, loud and competitive as tree frogs, carped about water rights, oil wells being shut down, the price of a bunch of Santa Gertrudis calves down at the Templeton Stock Auction last Friday afternoon. From the crackly speakers above our heads, the Judds sang brightly, assuring all the girls present that it’s okay to have a night out once in a while.
“That’s not the chief,” our waitress blurted out when she came to take our order. She wrinkled her freckled nose and swung her long blond ponytail. Suzy was the younger sister of a girl I went to high school with and someone I’d taught the rudiments of barrel-racing to when I was twenty and she was ten. She leaned over and whispered to me, “What do I do with the halibut?”
Clay looked at me curiously.
“Have you got a cat?” I asked.
“No, but my boyfriend’s mother does.”
“Tell it ‘Happy Valentine’s Day.’”
She raised her thin eyebrows and took our drink orders—Coke for me, Lone Star beer for Clay—and walked away with a bouncy step.
Clay took a sip of his water. “What was that all about?”
“Just some plans that fell through.”
“With the cop?”
I dug through the cracker basket in front of us and didn’t answer. I chose a package of Ritz Crackers and fumbled with the cellophane for a few seconds before tossing it aside. Gabe was the last thing I wanted to discuss with Clay. “So, were you and your uncle close?”
He looked at me steadily; his dark eyes held a hint of wariness. “Not really.”
“Was your dad upset when you told him?”
“None of us knew Uncle Brady very well.”
“Then why are you—”
“What’s their specialty cut here?”. He leaned back in the pine-wood captain’s chair and held the plastic menu in front of his face.
“Tri-tip,” I said. “When is your uncle’s funeral?”
He lowered the menu and closed it slowly, never taking his eyes off my face. “So, what’s the deal with the fish? Señor Ortiz have something against good old American beef?”
“Look, I don’t want to talk about him. I was wondering when your uncle’s—”
“Good,” he interrupted. “Neither do I. Tell me, are you getting the same
déjà vu
feeling I’m getting? It feels like the last seventeen years never happened.”
“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” I picked up a carrot stick from the relish dish Suzy had placed between us. “Now, about your uncle—”
“Forget him. Remember that old red and white Chevy I had? We had some good times in her, didn’t we?”
“Clay,” I said, frustrated. “Why don’t you want me to know when your uncle’s funeral is?”
“Why’s it so important we talk about it right this minute?”
I dropped my eyes and studied the paper place mat in front of me, tracing the caricature of the frowning Angus bull with my finger. Maybe he was more upset about his uncle’s death than he wanted to admit and here I was, pushing at him to talk about it. “I’m sorry, I was just wondering when his funeral was going to be, that’s all.”
“Honey.” His voice held just the slightest clip of irritation.
I looked up. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the brown Formica table. “Since you seem to be so concerned about Brady’s final resting place, I’ll tell you what I know. According to his lawyer, he had requested there be no service and that he be cremated. He’d already bought a crypt down in Santa Barbara. Soon as the county’s done with him, off he goes. Good enough?”
“So I guess none of your family is coming out then.”
“No.”
“That’s it?” It seemed such a sad, lonely end to a life spent living in the same county for almost sixty years. “What about his friends?”
Clay’s laugh was low and bitter. “I don’t think we have to worry about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I said. Now let’s forget the old fart. We have better things to talk about. You know, I never could remember whether your eyes were brown or green. I can see why now. What do they call that, hazel?”
“Forget my eyes, Clay. What about your uncle? Don’t you care—”
“Remember the Mid-State fair? Nineteen seventy-six, wasn’t it? You wore the most incredible miniskirt. Some kind of blue jean material if I remember right. That long hair of yours just touched the end of it. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the bottom of that skirt. Sometimes when I’m out feeding cattle on a cold winter morning, when the wind chill factor’s about twenty below, I think of that skirt and I warm right up. What happened to all that gorgeous hair anyway?”
“I cut it,” I said sharply. No matter what kind of a man Brady O’Hara was, it seemed to me that his death deserved a little more respect than Clay was showing it. “You sound as if you didn’t like your uncle very much. Why not?”
Before he could answer, Suzy appeared, perky smile and order pad all ready.
“You know what’s good,” Clay said to me, tapping a finger on the menu. “I’ll leave myself in your hands.”
I ordered two tri-tip dinners, medium rare—one regular cut, one cattleman’s cut—with all the trimmings, fresh green salads with ranch dressing, corn on the cob and huge Idaho potatoes, heavy on the sour cream and butter, and of course, an order of San Celina’s famous salsa. I had a feeling Clay was one of those guys who had no idea what his cholesterol count was and didn’t give a pig’s snout.
Through the rest of the meal, whenever I tried to steer the conversation back around to his uncle, Clay wriggled out of it by replaying some incident of that short, hot summer we shared seventeen years ago. More than once he had me laughing at some crazy thing we did that I’d completely forgotten about. But something in me couldn’t let up about his uncle. I don’t know what I was searching for, maybe assurance that Clay had nothing to do with the murder, that Mr. O’Hara had other enemies who might want him dead. Or, as Gabe would more than likely say, maybe I was being just plain nosy.
“What do you think of that new Lorrie Morgan song?” he said at one point, after I asked him another question about his uncle. He speared a large chunk of salsa-covered beef and chewed thoughtfully.
“Which song is that?” Though I listened to KCOW on a regular basis, I never was one to pay attention to who was singing what.
“I think the title is ‘What Part of No Don’t You Understand?’”
A flush of embarrassment crept up my neck. I finished the rest of the meal in relative silence, only uttering the occasional polite response as he rambled on about his ranch in Colorado, the Triple O, where they were experimenting with a particularly hearty crossbred mix of Brahma and Red Angus. On the drive back, he didn’t press me for conversation, but instead sang along softly with the radio in a decent baritone. Through the filmy truck window, I watched the dark shapes of fences and oil wells move swiftly past us in the opaque darkness and wondered just where this Colorado cowboy fit into the whole business.
The museum was locked up tight and the parking lot empty when we pulled up next to his white rental car.
“Thanks for the steak,” he said. “But I owed you dinner. My debt’s not paid.”
“Don’t worry about it. It was paid for ahead of time.”
“So I guess I stole someone else’s Valentine present.” By the smirk on his face, it obviously didn’t bother him much.
I ignored his remark and stared out the windshield, not knowing exactly what to do at this point.
“Hey, I did appreciate your company.” He reached across the distance between us and touched my cheek. His hand felt just like I thought it would and my heart took a low hurdle. “It’s the first meal I haven’t eaten alone since I came to California.”
“No problem,” I said. “It was fun talking about old times.” I stiffened slightly when his hand moved down and started stroking my neck. I turned my head and looked at him. His brown eyes looked almost black in the semidarkness of the truck’s cab.