Kansas Troubles (15 page)

Dewey laughed. “Unfortunately, this one’s not mine, Norma. This is Benni, Gabe Ortiz’s new wife. They’re here from California, visiting Kathryn.”

“That right?” Her Joan Crawford eyebrows flew up with interest. “You know any movie stars? You know David Hasselhoff? From
Baywatch?
Honey, that man sends more than my heart aflutter, if you get my drift.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I said. “I live quite a bit north of Hollywood and Malibu. No movie stars in my neck of the woods.”

“Shame,” she said. “So, you’re Kathryn’s new daughter-in-law. You know she meets here once a week with the Friends of the Library. She was showing around a picture of her son a couple of weeks ago. He is one sexy-looking devil, I tell you what. I was real sorry to hear he’d been snatched up. And me not even getting a crack at him. Now, the special is roast beef and mashed potatoes. It’s a good piece of meat—I picked it out myself—and it comes with salad and a big ole hunk of pecan pie. How’s that sound?”

Dewey gave me an amused wink. “Sound okay, Benni?”

“Fine,” I said, smiling back at him. I wasn’t about to nix anything this woman said.

Our food arrived quickly, and for fifteen minutes we ate and talked about Dewey’s stable and horses and his successes and failures with breeding. I told him about meeting Belinda and her offer to ride some of their horses.

“Absolutely,” he said, sipping his iced tea. “I’ll give you a tour tonight, and then you come on out whenever you want. We’ll probably be having a barbecue this weekend, too, since Chet’s in town and he just turned twenty-one last week. You going to come to see him ride in Pretty Prairie?”

“I wouldn’t miss it,” I said.

The mention of Chet got him started on what was, I could tell, a favorite subject. Chet was doing extremely well on the rodeo circuit this year, but had been on the road for three months solid. Dewey pulled out his wallet and unfolded a newspaper picture of his son stumbling away from a wild, slobbering bull, a painful grimace on his young face. “Chet Champagne scores an astounding 91 riding Bobby’s Axeman,” the headline read.

“Here’s what he looks like when he’s not running from a crazy bull.” Dewey handed me a picture of Chet flanked by his parents. The picture showed a good-looking young man with Belinda’s lean frame and Dewey’s dark hair and lazy smile.

“I bet you’re real proud of him,” I commented, handing back the clipping.

“He started rodeoing when he was just four years old,” Dewey said, folding the article up carefully. “Rode in the Li’l Britches Rodeo. You should have seen him bouncing off that old lamb, picking himself back up like a pro, not shedding a tear. I thought Belinda was going to break the fence down running out there to help him up. He pushed her away and told her he didn’t need no help, thank you very much. He’s going to be World Champion All Around soon, mark my words.” He rubbed the back of his fingers across his jaw. “That boy is the best thing that Belinda and I ever did together.”

I noticed that he didn’t mention his daughter, and I wondered just what the circumstances surrounding her death were. By the time Norma served us our pecan pie and refilled our iced teas for the third time, we were talking as if we’d known each other forever. I could understand how Dewey and Gabe were attracted to each other as friends. Dewey, for all his joking, had an easy air about him—a way of cocking his head and really listening to your words that made him enjoyable to talk to. He was the perfect complement to Gabe’s often reticent and distrusting personality.

“How’s the investigation going?” I asked casually.

He opened a packet of sugar, dumped it in his iced tea, and gave me an indulgent smile. “Gabe said you’d eventually get around to asking that.”

“I’m not asking you to reveal any department secrets,” I said crisply. “I’m just interested.”

“Gabe said you’d say that, too.”

I looked back down at my half-eaten pie, really irritated now.

He reached over and took my hand, shaking it gently. “Now, don’t go getting mad at Gabe. He’s just concerned about your safety.”

“If I had a quarter for every time I heard that one . . .”

He laughed and pushed his empty pie plate aside. “Actually, I don’t have any problem talking to you about the case. There’s still not much to go on. You saw how many people were at the party. Technically, any of them had the opportunity. On the other hand, we haven’t found anyone who has an overt motive to want her dead. Yet.”

“What about the money in the bank book Hannah gave me?”

“Gabe gave it to me this morning. I passed it on to the Sheriff’s investigator. It’s interesting, but she could have just been an excellent saver.” He ran his fingers up and down the side of his sweating glass.

“Somehow in her line of work, I find that hard to believe. You don’t save that kind of money singing in cheap bars here and there or by picking up buck-and-a-half tips waitressing in coffee shops.”

“There is certainly some truth to that, Benni Harper. But, as my mom used to say, it’ll all come out in the wash eventually. She had four sons, so that little piece of wisdom had real meaning in our household.”

There was silence between us for a few minutes. I wanted to ask more, but I restrained myself. I wasn’t sure how much they were telling Dewey, since he was technically a suspect, and how much that bothered him. Eventually our conversation started up again and turned to the one thing we had in common besides horses and Tyler’s murder.

“What was Gabe like as a kid?” I asked.

Dewey sat back and rested his arm across the back of the booth. “Not much different than he is now. Quiet, kinda moody, absolutely fearless. He was always willing to try anything once. But stubborn. As my mom would say, he was so obstinate he wouldn’t move camp for a prairie fire. We all used to get into some hairy situations as kids, but there was one thing about Gabe. If he didn’t want to do something, no amount of teasing or pushing could change his mind. He was the same way in ’Nam. Most of the time he went along with the program, but when he didn’t, that was it. He was a stone. Of course, how people viewed him never seemed to bother Gabe. I always wondered if it was because he felt so different anyway, being part Mexican and all.”

“I’ve wondered that myself,” I said. “He’s never mentioned feeling different from everyone else, but I imagine it must have affected him and Angel and Becky as children.”

Dewey motioned at the busboy to refill our water glasses. “Well, it didn’t seem like it. They were all real popular in school. Becky was a cheerleader. Angel couldn’t have possibly gone on all the dates she was asked on in high school, from what I hear. And Gabe . . . he was our star quarterback until Kathryn sent him to California during his junior year. And, I don’t mean to make you nervous, but ever since he was a kid the girls have sashayed around him like mares in heat.”

I played with the remains of my pie and smiled. “He said that was how the girls acted with Rob.”

“Well, it’s true, but he gave Rob a good run for his money. Lawrence and I were lucky enough to get their leftovers sometimes.” He gave me a wry smile. Remembering that Belinda said she and Gabe had dated briefly, I wondered if that was what he meant.

“Gabe doesn’t talk much about Vietnam,” I said. “But he did say one time that you were as nervy as a badger.”

“A stupid-ass kid is more like it. I had this thing about walking point. You know, the guy that’s in the front of everyone, checking everything out? Wanted to set the record for the most times, like some kind of Pete Rose of the jungle or something. I kept track by scratching marks inside my helmet. I don’t know where my brain was. All the times I charged ahead without thinking about what was up ahead. I could have got my friggin’ brains blown out.” His eyes darkened in memory.

“You weren’t thinking. That’s part of being young. So, was that why your nickname was Cowboy?”

He grinned. “Where’d you hear that?”

“I saw an old picture of you and Gabe and some other guy. It was on your helmet.” I paused, trying to decide whether I should ask any more questions. I wanted to hear about Gabe’s experiences in Vietnam, but I would have preferred hearing about them from him.

“Yeah, well, being smaller than the other guys probably had something to do with it, too.”

“What do you mean?”

His grin widened. “As if you don’t know. You’re a tiny little thing, and I’ll bet you a week’s wages that if I took you out to my stables right now, you’d want to ride the biggest, wildest, meanest old stallion I got on the place just to prove you can.”

I grinned back at him. “Well, I don’t think I’m going to answer that on the grounds it might incriminate me.”

He laughed and drained his glass. “You’ve been hanging out with cops too long.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to get back to work. You want to drop me off at the station, or am I going to have to hoof it in this heat?”

“I guess I’ll give you a lift, since you were kind enough to buy me lunch.”

“I’m buying?” he asked, feigning surprise.

“You bet.”

When we reached the police department, I asked him how Rob was doing.

“From what I hear, he’s going home today.”

“You don’t think he did it, do you?”

He shook his finger at me in mock admonishment and climbed out of the car. “See you tonight” was all he said.

Dense heat shimmered over the hood of the car as I watched him walk through the brilliant sunlight into the brick building. I turned the air conditioner on high and headed for the Presbyterian church. The disc jockey on KYQQ joked about the steamy weather. “Folks, this is going to be one of your woman-stabs-fiancé-with-steak-knife kind of nights, so head on out to Prairie City Nights where the beer is cold and the music is hot. Tonight, Snake Poison Posse featuring Cordie June Rodell. Don’t miss it!”

It certainly didn’t take her long to get over her grief, I thought, then chided myself. What did I expect Cordie June and the band to do, give up their careers? I tried to ignore the little twitch in the back of my mind that said a week off in consideration of Tyler’s death wouldn’t have been too much to ask. But, the other side of me argued, most musicians and singers lived on the edge and needed every penny they could make. Some of them had families to support. Which started me thinking about Tyler’s bank book again, and how Dewey hadn’t really told me anything about the case and how he’d avoided the subject in such a pleasant, unassuming way. He was probably an excellent interrogator. He’d just talk so sweet and friendly that before you knew it, you were confessing to whatever it was he wanted, just so you could make his day a little easier.

I found Becky standing behind a wooden podium in the church’s recreation hall going through her notes. The room was blessedly cool.

“Oh, good, you made it,” she said. She shuffled the papers in front of her. “Usually our meetings are in the evening, but the choir has something going on tonight so we had to make it earlier. Most of the ladies who work outside the home are probably coming here on their lunch hour, so we’ll make it a fast meeting.” People started arriving at this point, and I left Becky to the myriad discussions that many of the thirty-odd members needed to have with her. After getting my guest name tag, I perused the flyer table and was talked into purchasing five raffle tickets for the opportunity quilt the guild made for the show—an Amish-style Double Pinwheel in aqua, black, gold, bright pink, and green copied from an 1875 Amish pattern.

Never having been involved in a quilt guild, I settled down with a glass of lemonade and a large raisin-studded oatmeal cookie and watched the proceedings with interest, thinking some of the procedures might be adapted to our co-op meetings. Becky moved rapidly through the business part of the meeting—approval of last month’s minutes, various announcements, the librarian’s report and good-natured scolding for overdue books, a progress report on the guild’s latest philanthropy program, making child-size quilts for Derby and Wichita police officers to give to youngsters taken out of abusive home situations. She moved on to Block-of-the-Month, Secret Pals, and the “Elvis Lives” Quilt Challenge. The Elvis quilts would be unveiled and displayed at the opening of the quilt show this Friday night. Finally, there was a vote on donating a hundred dollars to a reward fund that had been started for Tyler by the members of her band and employees of Prairie City Nights. Apparently Tyler had been a not-very-active member of the quilt guild.

Becky announced the official meeting adjourned and told the women to break up into their separate committees to discuss final plans for the show. I sat on the edge of Becky’s committee, half-listening to her discuss setup and take-down procedures as I scanned the guild’s July newsletter. The lemonade finally seeped down to my bladder, and I slipped away, hunting a restroom. I spotted one down a long corridor and opened the door. Hearing someone inside mention Tyler’s name caused me to stop with the door half open and blatantly eavesdrop.

“I just don’t agree with it,” a woman’s voice said from one of the two stalls. “I love Becky to pieces, but donating the guild’s money to a reward fund. I mean, really. Tyler may have paid her twenty-five-dollar yearly dues and come to a few meetings, but that doesn’t make her one of us.”

“I guess it’s the thought,” the woman in the other stall answered. “She wasn’t my kind of person, but she did make beautiful quilts.”

“I still find it hard to believe she was ever Amish.”

“From what I hear, she did seem to take to the worldly life awfully easy. Buck says that innocent act of hers got them more bookings. Men just couldn’t say no to her.”

“That’s right, your brother-in-law’s in her band. I’d forgotten all about that. How are they all taking it?”

“Hard, of course. The guys in the band liked her real well. Buck says she always treated them real respectful, which is more than you can say for Cordie June.”