Stripped Bare (28 page)

I didn't want to be an investigator. I wanted to stay here on my ranch, tend my cows, clean my barn, plan my branding.

I pulled off a glove and reached to flip the switch that would brighten the series of bulbs dangling from the center lane. Four stalls were lined up on either side, all empty now, but ready in case of a blizzard or bad weather, when I'd bring in the baby calves.

I turned from the light, already starting down the lane, heading for the wire stretchers I needed to repair the fence. My next step didn't hit the ground in front of me; I pulled it back at the same time that I gasped. My foot landed behind me and I fell backward against the barn door. It wasn't latched, and when it swung outward, I slammed onto my tailbone. The cry I let out wasn't due to pain.

I sat with my legs in front of me, my gloved hand over my mouth, the bare hand planted on the frozen ground, propping me up. I couldn't close my eyes, couldn't look away. A whimper lifted from my lips and my stomach clenched.

My natural inclination would be to stay that way forever. But I forced my knees to bend, my arms to thrust me forward. I couldn't quite make it to my feet, but I crawled until I could register what my eyes had seen.

The missing calf wasn't a mystery anymore.

It was sprawled across the lane. Glassy eyes stared at nothing, the black tongue clamped between white teeth, under lips drawn back in a grimace. Blood had seeped into the trampled hay from the gaping slit across the calf's throat.

My knees trembled as I pushed myself to stand. My innards swirled like a washing machine filled with vinegar.

There was no doubt.

I was getting closer to finding the real killer.

 

24

Not much stirred in the hospital this late—or was it early? The hall lights blazed, but most rooms I passed clung to a sort of fake twilight. The floor nurse watched my approach. I sounded like a parade marching down the empty hospital corridor. When I got closer, I recognized her as Beth Salzberg, a girl from Danbury I'd played basketball against in high school.

She met me with a bucktoothed smile, much too perky for someone who'd pulled the night shift. “He's having a good night,” she said, even though I hadn't asked.

Normal Sandhills manners dictated that I ask after her kids or parents, but I didn't stop. Rolling into Ted's room like a tank on attack, I said, “Wake up. It's time for you to stop this game.”

“Kate!” He'd been sitting up in bed. “You're here!”

I might have been surprised to see him reading a book, something I'd only witnessed a couple of times in our marriage, but I didn't care. “What the hell is going on?”

Dahlia wouldn't be in until official visiting hours, so Ted's dark whiskers shadowed his face. He raised his hands in surrender mode. It seemed to me he moved quicker than yesterday. “Roxy's not going to sell to Baxter. She'll talk to Carly first.”

Darkness blanked the scene from the window, throwing my stormy reflection back to me. I gripped the rail on his bed. “Tell me why you confessed.”

His jaw worked. “Let it go. I can plead self-defense and might not spend any time in jail.”

“Maybe yesterday I might have gone for that. But someone made this personal, and I'm not going to let that stand.”

Beth Salzberg walked in, chirping like a sparrow. “I need to take your vitals.”

Ted and I both turned to her and, in a synchronization seldom displayed in our marriage, said together, “Not now.”

Her mouth dropped open, but she backed out of the room, stammering, “I'll c-come back later.”

Ted put his hand next to mine on the rail. “What do you mean, personal?”

“In the last two days I've nearly been killed because someone tampered with Elvis, and someone sent a pretty clear message, via a dead calf, that they don't want me looking into Eldon's murder.”

“What are you talking about?”

I explained about Elvis and the calf. I told him my theories about Rope and Baxter.

When I finished, he said, “That doesn't make any sense.”

I banged the rail and he jumped. “Why? What are you not telling me?”

He scowled. “Nothing. I killed Eldon, so no one should be trying to scare you.”

I leaned my hands on the bed and shoved my face close to his. He smelled like Ted, and my thoughts froze. The slight musk, spicy skin—that unique personal Ted smell. So familiar I never thought about it. The smell I might lose forever.

I pulled back. “If you won't tell me, I'm going to have to keep digging and someone might kill me.”

His alarm popped like hot grease. “Stop it, Kate.”

“Who?”

“Let it go.”

“Tell me.”

His chest rose and fell, and I realized mine did, too. Like two bulls in a standoff.

I whirled around to leave.

“Stop.”

I didn't.

Defeat withered his voice. “Okay. I'll tell you.”

He spared one look out the window, where there was still no sign of daybreak. “I can't remember every detail, but some of it's coming back. I told you I'd left Roxy's and heard yelling on Eldon's porch.”

I stepped toward the bed.

“When I got closer, I saw Eldon wasn't alone.”

“Baxter?”

He paused. “No. Carly. The wind picked up, so I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I think they were arguing.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because they were yelling.”

“But the wind was blowing hard, right?”

He squinted as if seeing the night again. “Yeah. Real hard. It blew my hat off and I had to chase it down.”

“Then what happened?”

“I got my hat, and by then they'd left the porch. A light went on upstairs, in Eldon's office. I thought I should let them work it out, but it was Carly, and sometimes when she flies off the handle, she'll listen to me when she won't pay attention to anyone else.”

True enough. He'd acted as peacekeeper between Louise and Carly a time or two.

“I went up to the house. I knocked, but no one answered, so I went inside.”

A thought occurred to me. “You didn't think Carly and Eldon would wonder why you were at the Bar J?”

He stared at his feet. “I thought I'd tell them I was investigating missing cattle in the area.”

Yeah, Ted would have a ready excuse.

“I heard Eldon's voice upstairs. He was kind of bellowing, because he couldn't hear and wouldn't wear his hearing aids.”

Obviously Roxy kept him informed about Eldon's annoying habits, such as not wearing his hearing aids.

“I thought about leaving again, but Eldon sounded really mad. So I started up the stairs. The closer I got, the better I understood him, and that's when I started to run toward the office.”

Hot pins pricked my skin. “What did you hear?”

He swallowed. “Eldon said, ‘This is my land and I'll do what I damned well please. When you get your inheritance, you can decide for yourself.'” Ted closed his eyes. “But what he said next is what scared me. ‘Quit waving that gun around like some damned outlaw. You know you're not going to use it.'”

I tried to picture Carly threatening Eldon with a gun.

“I forgot all my training, because I wanted to keep Carly from doing something stupid.”

“You burst in?”

He nodded. “Everything happened all at the same time. I threw myself at the door, got a quick glimpse of Eldon sitting at his desk, then fire burned through me. I remember the roar of the gun, but that's it.”

He stopped talking, but his chest heaved like he'd run a mile.

I played out his story twice, seeing everything, from Ted walking to his cruiser and changing his path, through to him being shot.

The door to his room opened and we both shouted, “Go away.”

I couldn't believe what I had heard. “You confessed because you think Carly did it?”

“I can claim self-defense.”

This was why I loved Ted. Just when you thought he was the biggest shit in the world, he did something noble. Stupid and misguided, but noble.

I glared at him. “Carly didn't do it.”

Uncharacteristic gentleness touched his voice. “I know you don't want to believe she could kill someone. Neither do I. But the evidence is there, babe.”

I growled. “Don't call me ‘babe.'” He knew I hated pet names. I'll bet Roxy loved them. “How could you even suspect her?”

“She was there.”

“On the porch. You didn't see her in the house.” I tapped the rail with the underside of my wedding band, as if the ticking noise could make my brain work better.

He whispered, “She shot Eldon.”

No.
“She worshipped him.”

He met my stare. “Think about it. She's got all that fire and temper. Passion, you'd call it. She flies off the handle. She doesn't always make the best decisions. You know as well as I do how upset she was at Eldon for even considering selling the ranch. Is it so hard to believe she lost her temper?”

My conviction was set in my tone. “She didn't shoot Eldon.”

His voice cracked. “I know how much you love her. I love her, too. So drop this investigation. Let Milo charge me.”

I didn't wait for more conversation. I don't remember opening the door and running out, though I have a vague recollection of Beth Salzberg chasing me.

 

25

Taking only enough time to fill the gas tank, I was on the road before three a.m. Allowing for the time change from western Nebraska's Mountain zone to Lincoln's Central, I ought to reach Susan's before anyone roused out of bed.

I had to see Carly. Hug her. Talk to her. She'd been to the Bar J moments before Eldon was shot. She must know something.

The three-hour drive was torture, with my thoughts stampeding from Carly to the possibility of a baby. I tried to quiet myself with deep breathing. If I'd been in Elvis, I'd have my blues CDs. Ted only played country music. I'd rather listen to the rattle in my own head than suffer the twang. When I succeeded in switching gears from Eldon's murder, my brain kept coughing up aha moments that swirled my empty gut into a sulfuric sludge. There was the time Ted's phone rang while he'd gone to the barn to find pliers. I'd answered the local number, but the caller hung up. When I punched to reconnect, I got generic voice mail.

Then there was the night I'd gone to bed at eight o'clock and had fallen into an exhausted sleep. I woke an hour later to use the bathroom. Ted wasn't in the house, but I spotted him in the equipment shed. The light shined from the open door and Ted paced back and forth, talking on the phone. Every now and then he threw his head back and laughed.

Now, I rubbed the moisture from my eyes and focused on the dawn breaking over the eastern hills. Cattle moved around in the pastures, waiting for someone to bring them feed. Calves cavorted in the weak sunshine. I didn't feel their joy as the pickup labored up one hill and coasted down the next.

Damn me. I'd even checked his phone the next morning to see who he'd called. It was an unknown number and he'd talked for over an hour. Did I ask him about it? No. It was probably one of his college friends and he'd gone to the barn so he wouldn't wake me. Asking him about it would make me a suspicious wife. I either trusted him and or I didn't.

The truth was, I didn't. But I hadn't admitted it. Now I was every bit as mad at me as I was at him.

I circled back to Carly. During my teens, my refuge from the war zone of the Fox house was the Bar J. For the cost of gas for the twenty-mile trip, I could find peace and someone to listen to me. Glenda and Brian's few cramped rooms with a wood-burning stove were always clean and smelled of something wonderful baking. Glenda welcomed me like she was a mother cat and I was a lost kitten.

When Carly was born, I feared I'd lose my welcome. But Glenda still kept the lumpy couch for my bed. I went from honorary ward to integral cog in the family. Always a fussy baby, Carly accepted me as a surrogate mother. Glenda delighted in the bond between her daughter and me.

Glenda always acted happy to see me driving Elvis down her dusty road. It meant that I'd stay with Carly and Glenda would have hours of freedom to ride her horse or help with cattle work, knowing her baby was in good hands.

I pulled into Lincoln in the middle of morning rush hour. Traffic slowed to the speed of a sloth on Xanax as I hit three thousand stoplights between the thriving downtown businesses and the state capitol building. Sharp-suited men and women bunched at crossings on their way to the banks and law offices along the shaded streets. I maneuvered to the dowdy southern downtown neighborhood where Susan and her roommate lived, in an old brick house that had been divided into four apartment units.

Spring hit Lincoln a few weeks earlier than it hit Grand County. Here, the lilacs had already gone from masses of purple and white to lush green bushes. Peonies popped in wild profusion in almost every yard, sprinkling their pink and white petals on thick green lawns. The trees boasted full leaves and the flowering crab apple trees were nearly spent. The whole neighborhood throbbed with spring's vitality and cheer. It bounced against me as if I wore a cone of doom.

I found street parking two blocks away and felt lucky. I'd lived not far from here over ten years ago, when I'd been an undergrad. I'd always liked Lincoln. If I left Ted, maybe I'd move back here. And do what? With my psych degree, no practical experience, and no PhD, I wasn't qualified to do anything more than answer phones or sell clothes. And with my fashion savvy, those clothes would be at the Orscheln Farm and Home.

I didn't bother locking Ted's pickup, and I lumbered up from the drive while walking to Susan's building and up the stairs to the second floor. Even this early, music thrumped from more than one unit, tunes boxing with one another in the dark, rundown hallway. A lingering odor of mildew, from the century the house had stood in Lincoln's humidity, mingled with stale beer, a faint tinge of pot, and old garbage. The wood stairs and walls bore chips and holes, scuffs and dirt from countless semesters of young renters on their own for the first time.