Dove in the Window (11 page)

Two of my small cousins stirred next to me, turned, and groaned in their sleep. Their soap-sweet little-girl scents eased me back to reality.

Dove squeezed my arm. “Wake up, honeybun. I need you.”

I crawled out of bed and pulled my jeans over my long cotton waffle underwear. She handed me my sheepskin jacket and old mooseskin moccasins, motioning me to follow her. In the living room we stepped over bodies cuddled in sleeping bags and blankets. On the front porch, my aunt Lollie waited, her thin, reddish face contracted with worry.

“What’s going on?” I asked in a low voice. My breath blew like white smoke in front of me. The sun was just under the horizon, the cloudless sky bleached the color of wood ash. The air was damp and cold, the morning birds silent.

“We need Gabriel,” Dove said. “Try not to wake anyone else up.”

“Where?” There would only be one reason why she’d want me to arouse Gabe this early.

“Up in the field behind the barn. Past the corral,” Aunt Lollie said, hugging herself in the cold morning air. “Lordy, I wish Clarence hadn’t convinced me to quit smoking. I need a cigarette.”

Dove pushed me gently between the shoulder blades. “We figured it would look less suspicious if you fetched Gabe. We’ll wait up at the corral.”

I ran across the yard and eased open the pine bunkhouse door. The room was warm and tart with the robust scent of men. I tiptoed across the wooden floor to the bottom bunk where Gabe slept. Sam snored above him, curled up like a huge dog under his dark wool blanket. I bent down and before I could touch Gabe’s bare shoulder, his eyes snapped open, his expression alert as a guard dog’s. It was a habit, he told me once, that he’d acquired in Vietnam and never lost.

“
Querida
, what’s wrong?” He swung his legs over the side of the bed, reaching for his Levi’s and flannel shirt.

“I’ll tell you outside,” I whispered. In a couple of minutes he joined me, sitting on the outside steps to pull on his socks and hiking boots.

“I think Dove and Aunt Lollie have found a body,” I said.

“You
think?”
His voice was sharp as he quickly tied his boots.

“Well, I’m pretty sure. It’s in the pasture behind the barn.”

“Who is it?” He walked across the front yard in a long, determined stride. I skipped to keep up with him.

Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I shook my head. “I don’t know. They didn’t say.” My thoughts turned to Wade and Kip and I wondered if they’d fought again after everyone had gone to bed. “Was Kip in the bunkhouse?”

His eyebrows moved toward each other in a scowl. “He was when we turned out the light.”

We found Dove and Aunt Lollie standing next to an oak tree in the corner of the pasture behind the main corral. Next to them lay a human body. When we got close enough to see who it was, I gave an unbelieving gasp.

Shelby Johnson stared up at the sky, but she wasn’t seeing anything. Not anymore. Gabe stooped down and placed his fingers on her neck.

I turned back and looked at my gramma and my aunt. Aunt Lollie had her arm around Dove.

“Who found her?” I asked.

“I was taking a walk up the hill to watch the sunrise,” Aunt Lollie said, “and I saw something lying under this here tree. Some crows were circling around. From a distance I thought it was a calf who died or had been killed by a coyote. When I came closer ...” She swallowed hard. “I ran as fast as I could and woke Dove.”

Gabe stood up and turned to us. “Did you touch anything?”

Both women shook their heads.

“How did she die?” I asked.

“There’s no overt evidence of violence,” he said. “Looks like she might have fallen and hit the back of her head.”

“You can actually die from that?” I asked. “I thought that was strictly TV stuff.”

“A blow to the head in the right way has been known to cause immediate death,” Gabe said. “But there’s a good chance that she might have been shoved. Most people don’t fall backwards on flat ground like this without some help. She was just unlucky enough to have a rock right where her head hit.”

The anger in Wade’s face when Shelby had come out of the barn flashed through my thoughts. Though I didn’t want to contemplate the possibility he could be involved, as soon as I could get Gabe alone, I had to tell him about the incident.

“Go back down to the house and bring me my cellular phone from the car,” Gabe told me. “This is county land. I need to call the Sheriff’s Department. Take Dove and Lollie with you.”

“That poor, poor child,” Dove said as we hurried back to the house.

“You’d better tell everyone,” I told her. “But tell them to stay down here. Gabe’s like a she-bear when it comes to crime scenes.”

Within the hour the Sheriff’s Department had a crime scene crew there stringing the familiar yellow-and-black tape, and taking pictures, and measurements, and searching the area for physical evidence. I knew enough to stay out of Gabe’s way when he went into his Sergeant Friday mode, and though this was not his official investigation, professional courtesy was being shown to him by the sheriff’s investigation team. The detective on call was a man Gabe had played racquetball with, so there wasn’t as much of the mine-is-bigger-than-yours contest that often took place when a crime scene was claimed by two different agencies. I hovered around the edge of the scene with the rest of my family waiting for some news. Dove kept the younger children inside the house watching videos and making sandwiches and cookies for everyone.

Gabe, standing over to the side watching the investigators search the grass around Shelby’s body, caught my eye and gestured for me to come to him.

I ducked under the crime scene tape and crossed the wet pasture. “What do they think?” I asked, looking up into his sober face.

He scratched his stubbled jaw with the back of his fingers. “Too early to make any judgments. They weren’t real happy when I told them how many people were out here yesterday, and I don’t blame them. Is there any way you can give them a list of who was invited to the ranch?”

“They aren’t serious? There had to be two hundred people here.”

“They are entirely serious. Some people will be obvious suspects, but they’re going to have to question everyone they can.”

This seemed as good a time as any to tell him what I’d seen take place between Wade and Shelby the night before.

Gabe’s face hardened as he listened. “Tell that to the detective who questions you,” he said when I was finished.

“I can’t believe he‘d—” I started, then stopped. I didn’t believe Wade would kill Shelby. Not in cold blood, anyway. I could, however, picture him giving her an angry push, her falling back ...

I chose my words with care. “I really don’t believe he’d leave her out here for someone else to find. If ... and I’m only saying
if,
he did push her, he’d have gone for help. Wade has a temper, but he’s not that coldhearted.”

Gabe didn’t answer, but his expression indicated he didn’t believe me for one moment.

“I know him,” I insisted.

“Just tell the detective,” Gabe answered.

Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the sheriff himself. Gabe went over and started talking to him, and I wandered back down to my relatives gathered behind the fence. They crowded around me like cattle to salt mix, asking questions. I held up my hand in protest.

“I don’t know anything,” I said. “And right now, no one does.”

I started walking back toward the house with plans to help Dove when Wade called my name. He strode toward me, his lined face troubled.

“Tell me what they found,” he said.

I didn’t answer immediately. I was still irritated at him for acting like such a jerk yesterday and for taking advantage of Shelby and Kip’s fight.
And,
a little voice inside me said,
because he just might not be as morally upright as you insisted to Gabe
. Would he have left Shelby out in the elements to die? Not the Wade I knew all those years ... but people change, and Jack’s death and losing the ranch might have affected Wade in ways I didn’t know.

“As far as I know, they haven’t found anything except Shelby’s body.” I pulled my sheepskin jacket closer around me. The shock of her death was starting to sink in, and I wanted to run into the house, cuddle on the sofa with my little cousins, and get lost in a cartoon world where you bounced right back from being hit in the head with an anvil.

“I can’t believe it.” He turned his head to spit a long stream of tobacco juice. “Who would do a shitty thing like that? She was a real nice girl.”

I was not surprised that it hadn’t occurred to him that he’d be a prime suspect. Wade had never been known for being the brightest bulb on the Harper family Christmas tree.

“When did you last see Shelby?” I asked.

He kicked at the dirt with the toe of his worn boots. “When you saw us by the barn. She was pissed at me, but she was fine.” His eyes blinked repeatedly, protesting the bright midmorning sun. “Are you sayin‘ they’re going to think I had something to do with it?” When I didn’t answer, his face grew worried.

“Benni, I didn’t kill her. I swear, the last time I saw her she was fine. As far as I know, she went home. I went to the bunkhouse, and, well, you know the rest. You were there. Then I slept the rest of the night in the camper with Ben and Luke. That boyfriend of hers is probably who done it. He’d smacked her around once in a while, you know.”

“Did she tell you that?”

“Yeah.”

“You two sure got emotionally intimate fast,” I said, wondering why in the world she never told anyone else about Kip.

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Guess I’m easy to talk to.”

“Sure, Wade, you’re a regular Johnny Carson. Did you leave the camper anytime during the night?”

“I think I might’ve gone over to the workshop and used the John once or twice. I don’t really remember. I was kinda ripped.”

“Well, you’d better remember real quick, ‘cause they’re going to be questioning you soon.”

“That’s my story. I never saw her again after our fight.”

I glared at him. “This is unbelievable. You’ve only been here a day and already you’ve managed to get into two fights, almost cheat on your wife, and become a possible murder suspect. What are you planning on topping that with today? Blowing up the ranch?”

He pulled off his hat and slapped the side of his leg. “That’s chickenshit, Benni. I wasn’t the only one involved in all that.”

“What’s chickenshit is a twenty-year-old girl lying dead in a field.”

“I didn’t kill her, I swear.” The angry tilt of his jaw lowered, and his eyes softened in that warp-speed change of mood that was the Harper boys’ specialty. It never failed to tug at my heart when I was married to Jack, and now, seeing it reenacted in Wade, my years with Jack tumbled back from the midnight caverns of my subconscious right smack into today.

“I want to believe you, Wade. I really do.”

“I know I’m a screwup,” he said. “That’s why Sandra finally packed up her bedroll and moved on. I don’t know what to do. What me and Shelby did yesterday was stupid, I know that. I was lonely, and she was mad. But I swear on my daddy’s grave she was fine when I left her.”

I didn’t answer. My emotions were too on edge at the moment to discuss his involvement any further. “I need to go help Dove right now. We’ll talk later.”

He nodded, his face blank, but his brown eyes clouded with worry.

Inside the house, Dove had the kids working in an assembly line making sandwiches and pressing out butter cookies to take out to the crime scene workers. The youngest ones were sitting around her huge television watching a Barney video. I helped myself to some bacon and eggs and sat down at the kitchen counter.

“I purely despise that big purple lizard,” Dove said. “He gives me the willies.”

“Magenta,” I said, sprinkling Tabasco on my eggs.

“What?”

“Barney’s magenta, not purple. Elvia told me that. It’s a common misconception among Barney amateurs.” I bit off a piece of bacon and smiled at her.

“Ain’t true. That lizard’s as purple as an eggplant.”

I shook my head. “Magenta.”

“Purple.”

I pointed my half-eaten bacon strip at her, punctuating each syllable. “Ma-gen-ta.”

Dove’s great-grandkids watched our spirited exchange in fascination, not used to seeing someone argue with Dove. Then they starting jumping up and down on the sofa, ready to latch on to any silly thing after being cooped up in the house for hours. “Barney’s magenta, gramma Dove. Barney’s magenta! Magenta, magenta,
maa-genn-taa!”
They screamed the last word and collapsed in a fit of giggles.

“Well, thank you very much for your input, Miss Know-It-All-Smarty-Pants,” Dove carped as she mixed up egg salad for sandwiches.

Aunt Ruth walked over to the television, peered over the top of her glasses, then laughed. “Why, Dove, I think Benni’s right. Barney is definitely magenta.”

I smirked at Dove.

She came over and slapped the back of my neck with her hand. “Quit being so sassy and gettin‘ the grandbabies all riled up. I swear you’re as bad as one of them. Now get to work. The folks out there are going to need something to eat, and Pizza Hut don’t deliver this far.” Everyone laughed, and for a moment the tension surrounding the terrible incident was eased.

The crime scene personnel worked until late afternoon. We were all eventually questioned by one of the five detectives they had working on the case. At the sheriff’s detectives’ request, the other women and I made a list of everyone we could remember seeing at the barbecue yesterday. When we were finished, it was 187 names long.

Gabe glanced over it before handing it to one of the detectives. “I’m glad I’m not in charge of this investigation,” he said.

Later that afternoon, Gabe and I sat on the porch swing and watched the last of the detectives drive away. Once the coroner’s van had picked up Shelby’s body, Dove allowed the children out of the house, and they’d run whooping and hollering around the yard, trying to release their pent-up energy. The day had turned bright and cool and smelled of damp earth and smoky leaves.