3 Loosey Goosey (23 page)

I took that as Toby’s confirmation of Jeremy’s advice.

“He’s my grandpa’s. Nobody rides him except grandpa and sometimes daddy.”

On cue, Peter’s truck pulled into the lot.

“But I thought your father had to work.”

“He did, but—”

Shelia appeared with her hands placed on her perfectly proportioned hips. “When he heard Jeremy was down to you, he rearranged things.”

Down to me
. My lip rose. Rhonda elbowed me in the side. “That is a shame. Lucy was looking forward to riding with you.” She tapped the rim of Jeremy’s hat with her finger.

Jeremy spun on his mother. “I told you she wanted to come. Get Pokey out too.”

Shelia’s gaze slid to me, and a smile broke over her face. “If you say so.”

Twenty seconds later, she was back with the roundest, shortest, pokiest looking pony I’d ever seen. She handed me his reins. “Watch his teeth. He bites.” With a chuckle, she unhitched the trailer and went to get inside her truck. Standing with her foot on the truck’s elevated floorboard, she called, “And his back end. He kicks too.” Then she slid behind the wheel and pulled out of the lot, leaving me holding onto Pokey’s reins and wondering just how I was going to get through the day without being kicked, bitten, or otherwise humiliated.

Forty-five minutes later, worry about humiliation was past me. I’d waved off Peter’s offers to hold Pokey’s halter while I mounted the pony and endured five minutes of the damned creature spinning in slow circles as I fought to first get my leg over his back and then to get him to stop spinning.

“He likes to do that,” Jeremy confided, once Pokey was standing still and somewhat in the right direction. “He’s good, though, when we’re heading toward the barn.”

Fifty head of cattle lay ahead of us.

I didn’t see a barn in Pokey’s future or mine for some time to come.

Still, I smiled at Jeremy and murmured my confidence that Pokey and I would be just fine. In fact, he reminded me of Kiska, in all the wrong ways.

Peter, for his part, didn’t comment. He just smiled and walked the not-to-be-ridden-by-anyone-except-a-real-man Toby up next to me. “You can still bow out.”

I snorted. Like that was going to happen. Pokey and I were together for the next hour, or however long it would take to get the cattle to the Capitol, and it was about time both of us got used to the idea.

I leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

He moved backward and flung his head from side to side.

“Don’t touch his ears!” Jeremy yelled.

I fell forward and wrapped my arms around the pony’s neck.

“Or grab him around the throat!”

Pokey’s rear end raised and a snort erupted from his throat. I would have joined him with an outburst of my own, but my heart lodged in my esophagus blocked all sound.

“Whoa.” Peter grabbed the pony’s harness again. Immediately, Pokey calmed. “Just ride him, and you’ll be fine.”

My heart still fluttering, I gave Peter a smile that I hoped looked more confident than nervous and sat with one hand gripping the saddle horn while the other held tight to the reins.

“He’s playing with you,” Peter added. “But don’t worry. Alphie will keep the other horses and cattle away from you. You’ll be fine.”

I looked down and, sure enough, there was Alphie staring at me like I was the sole reason for his existence.

I smiled and waved at the dog. He didn’t even blink.

I didn’t know about Pokey, but Alphie’s unshakable focus did nothing to calm my nerves.

However, as the cattle in front of us started moving, so did the dog and, miraculously, so did Pokey.

“He knows,” Jeremy yelled as he pushed his horse to a trot and moved on ahead.

I desperately wanted to know exactly what it was that Pokey knew, but the boy was already three horse lengths ahead of us. Instead, I settled back into my saddle and concentrated on looking as if I had the situation and my steed completely under control.

The cattle drive proceeded at a nice boring pace. Pokey, once committed to the ride, moved slow but sure. I got into the side-to-side motion of his backside, moving my body in sync with his swaying.

I glanced at Peter to see if he had noticed what a natural I was.

“Watch out,” he called and made a sideways motion with his hand.

I looked forward to see a tree branch heading my way. I dropped my reins and clung to the saddle horn instead. Then, two heartbeats too late, I ducked. Luckily, Alphie was faster than I was. He darted forward, pushing Pokey just enough to the left that the tree branch barely grazed my right shoulder as we passed.

Grinning, Peter rode closer and retrieved my fallen left rein. “I should have warned you. That’s one of his favorite tricks.”

Both reins back in my shaking hands, I narrowed my eyes and stared straight ahead, right between Pokey’s pointy ears.

With my ride back under control, Peter swung his arm again, signaling for Alphie to herd two wayward head of cattle back onto the main road.

The police had shut down Lyndale and Benton for the drive, and the trip was peaceful all the way to the intersection of Helena, Lyndale, and Montana Avenues, loving referred to as Malfunction Junction.

As we approached, things came to a grinding halt. It seemed the name had never been more apt. A giant load of straw had been dumped across the road, blocking our path. Cattle spread across the intersection, moving off the road and out into a used car dealer’s lot.

Longhorn, shorthorn, Angus, and Hereford cattle wandered between beat-up sedans and well-used pickups. Men on horseback yelled and motioned to border collies, Australian shepherds, and cattle dogs, which zipped out of nowhere to nip at a Hereford’s heels or dart in front of a daring Angus.

One particularly large, particularly stubborn steer stared two cattle dogs down.

I glanced at Peter.

“Beefalo,” he said, then he kicked Toby into action and rode into the fray.

Left alone, I stared around, feeling lost and happy that Pokey was poky and showed no signs of wanting to follow his friends into the mass of moving cattle.

Pokey, apparently bored with the happenings, turned to head back the way we had come. Not wanting to be alone with the pony, I jerked on his reins to turn him back toward the chaos. At the same moment, people flowed from between two dilapidated buildings and into the street currently occupied by cattle, cowboys, and intensely focused dogs.

People and... upright cows?

Startled, I blinked, but my eyes hadn’t deceived me. Upright cattle, humans dressed in furry cow suits, ran behind a group of people herding them into the street where the real cattle were beginning to panic.

One man, wearing a T shirt with a round brand mark on the shoulder, yelled, “People drive! Get along little doggies.”

A people drive. Now I knew what Eric’s plans for the day had been. I guessed the straw was the work of the group too.

Pushed along by the rush of people, Pokey forgot his name and broke into a trot. Alphie spotted us, but he was too occupied herding another beefalo back into line to mess with the likes of us.

Another man screamed some anti beef-to-eat, pro cattle-to-love saying, and Pokey’s trot shifted to a full-out gallop.

I threw myself forward and clung to the pony’s neck with every ounce of strength I had.

Dogs barked, horses neighed, and people yelled. It was all a mass of noise, colors, and smells that whooshed past like one big ugly kaleidoscope of sensory assault.

I squeezed my eyes shut and cursed my stupidity for trusting that a pony named Pokey would live up to his name.

Suddenly, without warning, Pokey locked all four knees and came to a bone-jolting stop. My grip slipped and so did I, flying forward over his head and onto the giant pile of straw.

I lay there, winded and disoriented, unable to move until Pokey, in an uncharacteristic move of empathy, ran his nose over me and blew.

I sat up immediately, first aware of the pain in my back and next of the horse spittle and straw that clung to my face and hair.

Grimacing, I shoved the pony’s nose away and wiped at my face. Apparently insulted, he knocked against me with his head, then turned and trotted back into the mass of cattle.

I was glad to see him go. I would walk barefoot across tacks before I’d be getting back on that demon steed.

Mumbling and groaning, I tried to stand. Straw slipped under my feet, and I wobbled, falling forward. My back shrieked, but I was too angry to let it do me in. I scrambled with my hands and feet up the pile until I was finally upright.

Victory soared through me for all of three seconds. Then I looked down.

Protruding from the bottom of the pile was a hand, pale, feminine and heart-stoppingly real.

Chapter 21

Thirty minutes later, the police had managed to cordon off the pile of straw. More men and women had arrived, these on foot, to help herd the freaked out cattle into trailers to be taken back to the fairgrounds, where I hoped they would be dosed with bovine Prozac and left to sleep off their adventure.

The dogs, left with no job, had for some reason gravitated to me. They sat in a semi-circle around me, their freaky blue eyes monitoring my every move and twitch.

I turned my gaze on Alphie, suspicious that he had somehow orchestrated the unforgiving scrutiny.

“Looks like you made friends.” George walked toward me. His words were light, but his face and tone told me something else.

“Who was it?” I asked. I glanced toward the car dealership where members of HA! and their new people-drive recruits had congregated under the watch of four uniformed police officers.

My gaze rolled over them, but my mind was blank. I couldn’t think of who, if anyone, might be missing.

Seeing where my attention was focused, George asked, “You think it was one of them?”

I looked back at him, surprised. “They put the straw here, didn’t they?” After seeing the people drive, I’d assumed HA! was responsible for the road block too.

Something close to relief washed over his face. “Haven’t heard that anyone has confessed to that, but it makes sense.”

“So whoever dumped the straw got caught underneath it...” I shook my head. I knew the HA! people were passionate about animal rights, but I doubted that any of them had planned on putting their own life on the line for the cause.

Before George could comment on the accuracy of my assumption, my phone rang. Eager to talk to anyone who wasn’t part of this tragedy, I hit answer.

My mother’s voice came through the cell. “I did it. I figured out who—”

Before she could say any more, I slapped my hand over the speaker. “I need... this is... family thing,” I stuttered out. Then I turned my back on my one true ally and quick-stepped a few feet away.

The dogs followed, but my adrenaline was pumping too hard for me to care.

“What? Figured out who did what?” I stage-whispered into the phone.

“I just told you. Aren’t you listening to me?”

I gritted my teeth, sucked in a breath, and replied, “Sorry. Things are a bit crazy right now. What did you say?”

Ten seconds of wounded silence followed, then finally, “I figured out who killed that chef. It wasn’t your brother, not that either of us or anyone with half a brain thought that.”

Insinuating that Stone did not possess a full half of a brain.

I couldn’t find it within myself to disagree.

“It was Kathy!”

“Kathy?” I flipped through everyone I knew, trying to settle on anyone with the name that had the remotest connection to Tiffany.

“My friend. I mean my FriendTime friend.”

At my confused silence, she got frustrated. “You told me to check on her.”

I did? Oh, wait... “Kathy. On FriendTime.”

“That’s what I said.” More annoyance, but it was short lived. “Anyway, she is definitely who killed that poor chef.”

I turned to face the pile of straw.

“Uh, Mom...”

“I can’t believe the police missed this. I hate to be critical of your people there, but seriously, everything was there to see. Well, once I figured out Tiffany’s password. But it wasn’t like that was that hard. Cook2. I tried Cook1 first and then—”

Three police officers lifted Hope’s limp body and placed it on a gurney.

“Mom!” I interrupted. “I don’t think it was Kathy.”

“Well, I don’t know how you would—”

I hung up on her. I would pay for it later, but staring at Hope’s lifeless form, my mind and body had gone numb. I didn’t even realize I had hung up until my phone started ringing again.

I shoved it into my front pocket and stared down at my canine guards. “What now, guys? What now?”

o0o

Detective Stone arrived five minutes later. I could feel his presence as soon as his foot hit the asphalt of Lyndale Avenue.

Peter was standing next to Jeremy and talking on his phone. Calling Shelia, or some other family I guessed, to come and get his son. His gaze latched onto me and then shifted to Stone. Within seconds, he’d put his phone away and was striding across the parking lot toward me.

I didn’t wait for accusations. I threw up my hands and pleaded for help. “I don’t know how I found her. I didn’t even know I had found her, or at least that it was Hope. Don’t make me talk to Stone.”

The detective in question already had me in his sights.

“Crap.”

Peter heaved out a breath. “You, at least, have the situation firmly in focus.”

Double crap. But then it occurred to me that no one had said how Hope had died. Maybe my original thought that it was an accident was correct. Maybe she was Tiffany’s killer too, and this horrible event was just a big cosmic kick of kismet—her dying before she could be charged with the chef’s murder.

My conversation with Stone quickly dissuaded me of this fantasy. Not, of course, that he told me Hope’s death hadn’t been an accident, but he did come out of the box in attack mode.

The conversation started off nicely enough. He greeted Peter with a nod that wasn’t exactly friendly, but it also didn’t scream
excuse me while I roast your girlfriend
.