Blue Lonesome (18 page)

“Maybe so, but some people
do
die. And the ones that don’t get deathly sick. I tell you, it was more than a warning. It was attempted murder.”

“Why would anybody around here want you dead?”

“You know why, Sheriff.”

“Stirring up a matter better left alone is hardly cause for attempted murder.”

“It is if I’m right and somebody other than Anna Roebuck is responsible for those two killings. That person is afraid I might get at the truth.”

“Who? Got any ideas about that?”

“All I know is, I’ve had warnings from John T. Roebuck and from Joe Hanratty and Tom Spears.”

Espinosa’s eyes took on a glass-hard shine. “You saying it could be John T. wants you dead?”

“I’m not saying anything. I’m giving you information so you can do your job.”

“John T.’s great-grandfather was one of Beulah’s first settlers. Him and his family are the best friends this town has ever had. I know John T.; known him all my life. He’s never harmed a single person, not one.”

Then why do his sister-in-law and Jaime Orozco dislike him so much? Why is his wife a drunk? Why did he come on to me like Brando playing the Godfather?

Messenger said, “And I suppose Hanratty and Spears are Godfearing pillars of the community, too.”

“They’re not killers.”

“Neither was Anna Roebuck.”

Espinosa stared at him, hard, for a clutch of seconds. Messenger matched the stare with an unblinking intensity of his own. “You know what I think, Mr. Messenger?”

“I’ve got a pretty good idea. Quit my crusade and get out of town while I’m still alive.”

“That isn’t what I was going to say.”

“Different words, maybe, but the same message. Another warning. Well, I’m sick of warnings and I’m damned if I’ll stand still for an attempt on my life.”

Espinosa asked tightly, “What’re you planning to do about it?”

“I don’t know yet. But I’ll tell you what I’m
not
going to do. I’m not leaving Beulah with my tail tucked between my legs, the way I’m supposed to.”

“That mean you’re looking to cause more trouble?”

“What it means, Sheriff, is that I’m staying until one of us finds out who tried to kill me tonight. And who really murdered Dave and Tess Roebuck.”

IN HIS CAR
in the City Hall parking lot he slid a random jazz tape into the cassette player, turned the volume up loud. Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, a short-lived combo but still among the best ever. Opening press roll by Zutty Singleton on the drums that ended in a series of hard, fast rim shots to set the tempo. Straight, simple pattern woven by Louis’s magical trumpet and Fred Robinson’s trombone, Fatha Hines on the keyboard creating contrapuntal harmonics and then an amazing run of rich chord progressions. Jimmy Strong’s clarinet developing a wail that matched the piano note for note, chord for chord, then fading to let Fatha carry the sweet, hot harmony. New Orleans-style twenties jazz that soothed him, kept his rage from boiling over the edge of control.

He had never been this angry in his life. And why the hell shouldn’t he be: Nobody had ever tried to kill mild-mannered Jim Messenger before. But it was a blind anger, without direction or focus. The baked apple would do nothing to track down the men who had lured him to Mackey’s; he would have to do it himself if it was to be done at all. But how? Not a detective, not a hero, just an out-of-his-element CPA with a midlife compulsion and a frustrated mad-on.
How
, for Christ’s sake?

Louis’s trumpet was dominant now, one of his celebrated solos: hard, powerful, and so dirty-sweet and low-moaning it made you ache to hear it. Brilliant departure on … was that “Wild Man Blues”? No horn man had never blown as hot as Armstrong. No horn man had ever been able to improvise like Armstrong—

Improvise, he thought. Improvisation.

The soul of jazz. “One person’s mad concept balanced against the correct counterbalance of restraint and understatement”—he’d read that somewhere once. Three kinds of melodic improvisation: soloist respects the melody, with the only changes the lengthening or shortening of some notes, repetition of others, use of atonal variations and dynamics; the melody is recognizable in the soloist’s rendition but its phrases are subject to slight additions and alterations; soloist departs entirely from the melody, uses the chord pattern of the tune rather than the melody as a point of departure. Broad musical definitions for what was really indefinable. Still, if you were trying to explain the concept to someone who knew nothing about music, you could simplify it into a more or less apt capsule definition: Improvisation is that which is bold and unpredictable.

Soloist respects the melody; soloist departs from the melody. Bold and unpredictable, either way. But no soloist can work completely alone. He has to have rhythm and harmony and syncopation—backup help, input from sidemen that may also be bold and unpredictable.

When you looked at it that way—didn’t the same thing apply to him, his life? For all of his adulthood hadn’t he been a frustrated soloist playing the same written chords over and over again without departure or assistance, straight through toward the end? The only “mad concept” he’d ever had was the one that had led him here to Beulah.

And didn’t the same apply to the situation he was facing now? Hadn’t he been approaching it in the same linear, uninspired fashion that he’d approached his life? Yes, and it would be useless to go on that way; he’d never get anywhere without help and a change in method.

He’d given his life edges. Time now, by God, to give it a little bold unpredictability.

HE PROMISED HIMSELF
that if he slept badly, or awakened with a severe headache, he would go to the hospital for X rays first thing in the morning. Head injuries were nothing to fool with; they could be serious, no matter how minor they seemed at first. But he slept all right, and felt reasonably well when he awoke—just a dull throbbing in his temples and some tenderness to the touch. No concussion, then. It had been shock as much as the blow itself that made him fuzzy-headed and cockeyed those first few minutes in the pit.

He drove rather than walked to the Goldtown Café for breakfast. His appetite was good; another positive sign. He caught Lynette Carey’s eye when he walked in; she acknowledged him with a brief nod, but she didn’t smile and she didn’t look his way again. Nor did she serve him, despite the fact that he made a point of sitting in her section. No help there. Not that he’d expected any, as poorly as he’d handled the meeting with her in the Saddle Bar.

Two possible allies, then. One was Jaime Orozco. Messenger felt certain Orozco would do whatever he could to help clear Anna’s name, but his resources were limited. The other possible ally and best hope was Dacy Burgess.

He would go talk to Dacy first, as soon as he finished breakfast. Try to convince her that the plan he’d developed last night was worth risking. She had more to gain than he did if she agreed. The trouble was, she also had more to lose if the scheme backfired.

W
HEN HE DROVE
down into the Burgess ranch yard, Lonnie and the yammering and snarling Buster were there to greet him. Dacy was in the stable, the boy told him; he didn’t have much else to say. And if he noticed the bandage above Messenger’s ear, the iodine-stained abrasions on his hands and forearms, he didn’t ask about them.

The interior of the stable smelled of manure and trapped heat. Dacy was bent over next to the hindquarters of a copper-red horse, applying some sort of sticky brown substance to the animal’s right leg just above the hoof. When she heard his footfalls on the rough floor she glanced around briefly, then resumed her work on the sorrel’s leg. She didn’t seem any more surprised to see him than Lonnie had been.

He watched her, not speaking. She had a sure, gentle touch, and when she murmured soothingly to the horse, it pricked up its ears and tossed its head as if it understood the words. Maybe it did, he thought. Some people had that kind of rapport with animals.

Dacy straightened finally, put the cap back on the bottle of brown gum, and then pretended to notice him for the first time. “Well, well, look who’s here,” she said. The sarcasm was mild and without rancor. “How long has it been, Jim? A whole twenty-four hours?”

“I have a good reason for coming back.”

“Don’t you always? Keep this up and folks’ll think you’re looking to move in permanently.”

“I am,” he said, “but not permanently.”

“Now what does that—” She broke off, her eyes narrowing into a squint. The light in the stable was thin and dusty; she’d only just noticed the bandage. “What happened to you?”

“Some trouble last night.”

“What kind of trouble?”

He told her about it, tersely. She didn’t interrupt and she showed no reaction. When he was done she shook her head, but not as if she disbelieved him; it was more an expression of disgust and anger.

“That’s a hell of a thing to do to somebody,” she said. “Diamondbacks and sidewinders are damned poisonous critters.”

“Not as poisonous as some people.”

“You got that right. Who you think was behind it?”

“I don’t know. Is John T. capable of a trick like that?”

“With the right reason.”

“The right reason in this case is guilt. I’m sure of it, Dacy. The only person with a reason to want me hurt or dead is the real murderer of Anna’s family.”

Her mouth quirked sardonically, but she didn’t argue with him. She said, “Two men out there at Mackey’s. Hirelings, you reckon?”

“Either that, or the guilty man and a friend. Joe Hanratty and Tom Spears, for instance.”

“Why them?”

He told her about his run-in with the two cowhands. “The pickup they were using was a green Ford. Spears’s truck? He was driving.”

“Yeah. But Joe drives a Blazer, not a white pickup with a busted antenna. I wish I could tell you who belongs to that truck but I can’t. Lot of white pickups in this county.” She paused. “John T., Hanratty, Spears—they can all be hardasses. But cold-blooded killers? I don’t see it.”

“You saw it in Anna. You still do.”

No response. Dacy withdrew a cigarette from the pack in her shirt pocket, put it between her lips. Almost immediately she yanked it away and crumbled paper and tobacco between her fingers. “Fucking cancer sticks,” she said.

Messenger said, “People snap sometimes—we both know that. You can’t tell what somebody might do if he’s pushed far enough.”

“That goes for my sister, too.”

“Yes, but the point is, it goes for everybody. I don’t even know my own limits. Do you know yours?”

“Up to a point. After that … maybe not.”

“Dacy, isn’t there
any
doubt in your mind about Anna’s guilt? Even a shred?”

“Sure, a shred. You think I
want
to believe she killed my niece? But I tore myself up denying it at first, and I’m not going through all that again without proof. Show me some proof, Jim, any kind. Then I’ll fight like hell to clear her name.”

“I can’t find proof without help, your help. Give it to me and in exchange I’ll help you, if you’re willing to take a chance.”

“What’re you talking about? Chance on what?”

“Having me around for a while. Giving me a job.”

Dacy stared at him the way Espinosa had last night. “A
job
? Doing what?”

“Whatever Jaime Orozco used to do here. Whatever you want me to do—chores, scut work, anything.”

“I can’t afford a hired hand—”

“You don’t have to pay me,” Messenger said. “I’ll work for room and board. Sleep in the trailer outside; I’ve had enough of that motel in town.”

“You’re serious,” she said, as if she still couldn’t quite believe it.

“I’ve never been more serious.”

“And just how am I supposed to help you?”

“Not only me—you and Lonnie, too, if I’m right about Anna. You know the people involved, things about them I couldn’t find out on my own. If we put our heads together, there’s a chance we could come up with some fact or angle that’s been overlooked. That’s one possibility. Another is that my moving in here might force the real murderer’s hand.”

“Force it how?”

“It’s bound to shake him up, because it says I can’t be frightened off, I’m determined to settle in and keep digging for the truth. If he’s worried enough he might just make a mistake, do something desperate.”

“Like trying to kill you, is that it? You want to set yourself up as a target.”

“Not exactly. I’m not going to fall for any more tricks and I won’t get into a position where I can be caught unawares.”

“Famous last words.” Then she said, “But you’d be all right as long as you were on my land. Nobody’d dare come after you here.”

“Are you sure? The one reservation I have is that my moving in might put you and Lonnie in danger.”

“Shit, that’s not a worry. I know how to take care of myself and my son. You’ve seen what I can do with a rifle, Jim. Lonnie’s an even better shot than I am.” Her gaze now was speculative. “You really think this could lead where you want it to—prove somebody else killed Dave and Tess? I mean
prove
it.”

“I think it’s the only way either of us is likely to have a chance of proving it. All I’m asking for is ten days. What’s left of my vacation. If something hasn’t broken by then, I’ll go back to San Francisco and you’ll never see or hear from me again.”

“Ten days, huh? You ever work on a ranch?”

“No, but I take orders and I’m a fast learner.”

“Know anything about cattle? Horses?”

“A little about horses. I used to ride when I was a kid.”

“When you walked in here, what was I doing to Red?”

“I don’t know. What were you doing?”

“Putting on Cut-Heal medicine. He’s got a cut on his right fetlock.” She sighed, reached out distractedly to stroke the sorrel’s flank. “God knows,” she said at length, “there’s plenty of work that needs doing around this place, and most of it doesn’t require an expert hand. Hard work, dirty work. That kind bother you?”

“It never has.”

“You’d do as you’re told, no backsass?”

“No backsass.”

“I’ll have to talk to Lonnie. He’s got as much say as I have.”