Left Hanging (14 page)

I
huh
’d. “Except Grayson Zane and Evan Watt,” I said.

“If we believe Newton.”

“Right.” I considered another aspect. “Was the damage the bulls did a lucky break? Or would someone who knew bulls, which appears to be everyone in Cottonwood County—”

“Except you.”

“—except me, know they’d be displeased about having a body dumped in their midst and expect a fair amount of, uh, disruption to the evidence?”

“Expect, maybe. Sure couldn’t count on it.”

We sat for a moment. Mike in apparent thought. Me in contemplation that if fences were meant to be sat on, they would come with cushions.

I broke the silence. “You’re awfully quiet.”

“Thinking about how this murder happened with the community leaders out of town. Is that an angle of investigation? Where they are, and what they’re doing?”

The network has a storied annual retreat for top execs. My ex had angled to be invited from his first job. Once he started going, he’d returned saying the decisions were super exciting, would change the industry forever, and would blow me off my feet, though he couldn’t divulge any top secret details. I didn’t want details. By that time, I’d been around enough to see that whatever
super-exciting
,
change-the-industry-forever, blow-me-off-my-feet
concept the brain trust conceived at these bashes were illusions.

I compressed that hard-won wisdom into a question to Mike. “Do we truly care where they are and what they’re doing?”

“It’s like your friend said. The timing was significant for the murderer. It’s part of the planning, or the trigger. Otherwise, the murderer just happened to pick this time with all the big shots gone? Too lucky to be believable.”

“I don’t know that it’s lucky for the murderer. If the bigwigs had been here, Richard wouldn’t be in charge. And would any of the people who might have been put in charge have noticed something
not quite right
?”

“Probably not.” He rallied. “But the murderer couldn’t have known Richard’s smart. That’s another point—do we tell Richard what your source said?”

“No way. It would only distract him. Not to mention possibly putting my source in an awkward position. Richard’s getting info from the official source, and we’re not impeding his investigation.” After another silence, I asked, “What are you thinking, Mike?”

“Thinking that no matter what, it would be a good idea to track down those bigwigs.”

I huffed.

“You don’t agree?”

“I don’t
dis
agree. I just can’t find it in me to go looking for Haeburn. But go ahead. Besides, you have connections, I don’t.”

His connections came in handy sixty seconds later, when Grayson Zane walked past.

Mike called to him. Zane smiled, started toward us, slowed when he recognized me, but kept coming. I used his approach as an excuse to descend from the fence.

Mike hopped down—showoff—and extended a hand to Zane. “Haven’t had a chance to say hello, Grayson. Good to see you.”

“Hey, Mike. Heard you’d come back to Sherman.”

“Yeah, doing sports for KWMT. We’ll have to set up a piece. You know my colleague from the news side, E.M. Danniher? Elizabeth, this is Grayson Zane.”

We shook hands. “Apparently I’m the only one in the state who didn’t know your championship status, Mr. Zane.”

“Grayson, ma’am. And that’s no problem. Truly, no problem.” A twitch of his mouth seemed directed at himself rather than me. “I consider it even trade for you not asking about my name.”

“I was holding off until now,” I said. “I still get points, right?”

“Fair enough. My father kept wanting to name a baby of his Gray, to have a Gray Zane, for the writer Zane Grey, you know?”

“Yes, I know.” I suppose I deserved his doubt I’d know of the famous western writer of an earlier age, considering I’d proved myself ignorant of current rodeo stars.

“Mama kept saying, no. Dad kept saying, the next one will be Gray. I’m the ninth, and after I was born, Mama said I was the last. Dad said okay, as long as my name was Gray. Mama got it to Grayson, but couldn’t budge him more.” He had a good grin.

I smiled back. “The name’s well suited to rodeo.”

He lifted his shoulders. “The bulls don’t care what your name is when they try to stomp the stuffing out—” He cut it off in apparent memory that bulls succeeded in stomping the stuffing out of a man recently.

I nodded, acknowledging the shift to serious. “How did you get along with Keith Landry?”

“Fine.” He was either a damned good liar or telling the truth. “In fact, I owed him. After my rookie season—”

I flaunted my homework: “All-around rookie of the year.”

“After that season, I had a couple bad years—injuries, rig broke down, bad luck. Folks thought the good rookie year was the fluke, and the no-win years were the real deal. Would’ve been easy to slide right off the circuit for good.”

Quite forthcoming for a man who’d evaded me, then given minimal answers Thursday. Why the change? Because he’d decided what to say? Because accidental death seemed the accepted view?

“But Landry got me invites,” Zane said. “Opened doors I was fortunate enough to walk on through. I got back on the upswing.”

“That sounds very generous of him.”

“Contractors and cowboys got what you call a symbiotic relationship.”

Knowing how to pronounce symbiotic and use it in a sentence did not cross him off a list of potential murderers. “Meaning?”

“Meaning we need them, and they need us to make the show go,” he explained. Score one for the cowboy. He not only knew the meaning, he’d wrong-footed me. “The animals are like the third leg of a three-legged stool. The whole thing falls over without them.”

“Yet the protestors—”

“Them! Listen, Ms. Danniher, just because we wear cowboy hats doesn’t make us stupid. And we’d have to be stupid to abuse the animals that provide our livelihood.” I groaned. He ignored it. “If these animals aren’t fit and treated right, we don’t get the ride that gives us the points that put the dollars in our pockets.”

“Please, I’ve already heard that refrain enough to hum along.”

“You saying I’m preaching to the choir?”

“I haven’t formed a judgment, except to know I’ve heard the line frequently enough to not want to hear it again.”

“Fair enough. Got to get along now. See you later, Mike.”

His grin carried a self-deprecating twist, which gained him far more points than his argument had. He tipped his hat, turned and started away, displaying a rear view made for jeans ads.

“Zane
 . . .
Grayson!”

He stopped, turned. I waited. He didn’t budge. Ignoring Mike’s curiosity bubbling beside me, I closed the gap. Mike kept pace.

“You hadn’t been to this rodeo for several years. Why not?”

“Just the way the schedule fell those years.”

“But you used to come to Sherman every year.”

“Most years.” He was cautious, not on edge.

“Did you have an emotional attachment to the area?”

He dismissed that. “Nice enough place. Like a dozen or more I see most years.”

“Other emotional attachments? Say dating someone?”

For less than the intake of a breath, his body and face stilled. Then he relaxed it out of existence. “Nope.”

“Never dated anyone from here?”

“Now, Ms. Danniher
 . . .
” The drawl was back. “. . . if I considered every girl I dated in every town an attachment, I’d be attached all over this country.”

“I’m not interested in every town, only here. Have you dated anyone in Sherman?”

He was shaking his head before I finished. “Can’t say as I recall. Sorry, ma’am.”

He started to tip his hat. I cut in. “When did you arrive here?”

“Thursday morning.”

He had that right on a technicality. Even Newton said his arrival was about midnight. “What time?”

“Can’t rightly say. Got here when I got here.”

“Did you see Keith Landry when you got here?”

“No, ma’am.” With his calm apparently unruffled, he tipped his hat and departed once more.

Mike and I stayed put until he disappeared around a truck. This time I don’t think either of us was considering Grayson Zane’s jeans-wearing assets.

“You saw that?” I asked Mike for confirmation.

“Yeah. But I don’t get it. Why would the question of dating around here put him on edge?”

“And make him not want us to know it put him on edge. Both very interesting questions.”

Chapter Sixteen

SHERIFF’S DEPARTMENT vehicles began rolling in before Mike and I had a chance to return to the torture seat on the fence.

“Ligatures?” Mike asked.

I understood his shorthand. Did I think Richard Alvaro was having another go at the scene, now that he knew it was a crime scene? Or as Dex would say, now that Richard knew it was a scene consistent with a possible crime having been committed. “Yes.”

“Shall we go see?”

“Better not.” Barely were the words out of my mouth than Alvaro peeled away from assigning deputies to specific areas of the pen and strode toward us.

“What are you two doing here?” he demanded.

“Hey, Richard. We’re waiting on the rodeo committee meeting,” Mike said with great presence of mind. “To find out if they’ve decided about going ahead or not.”

I focused on keeping my face a pleasant blank.

Alvaro gave us a solemn survey. “I don’t want you poking around the investigation.”

“What are you investigating, Deputy? Anything new?” I asked. Because not to have asked would have been very suspicious.

“No,” he said shortly.

The guy needed lying lessons, but he had the law enforcement do-what-you’re-told stare mastered. After issuing his order-by-facial expression, he walked away.

I watched what was going on in the pen as closely as I could without seeming to stare. To keep it believable, I let Alvaro see me watching a couple times. They were going inch by inch over the ground as well as the tubed panels that formed the pens.

The problem was, they were working on the chute that opened onto the arena and then a couple of the pens closest to it. There were about four other pens between us and where they were working, with all those panels obstructing our view.

Mike had his phone out, taking photos. I turned my back to the pens, facing him so he could aim over my shoulder and look natural. “They’ve got something,” he said. “Go ahead, look. Richard’s occupied.”

I turned to see Alvaro climbing a ladder to look at something being pointed at by a deputy on another ladder. Between them was the crossbeam of the wooden chopped-off goalpost structure that divided the permanent structures from the movable pens.

“Getting anything?” I asked.

“They’re looking at the beam’s top and sides. Won’t know if there’s more to see until I get the pictures on a bigger screen.”

“When will—Richard,” I warned.

Mike shifted the phone to one hand and had it behind my head before the deputy faced our way as he descended the ladder.

But apparently Alvaro had a suspicious nature, because we heard him order his people to get out tarps and put them up. While they started that, another deputy climbed the second ladder and took photographs of something on the beam.

The tarps had covered about half the enclosure when an excited call came. “Got something, Richard. I got something.”

With nothing to lose, Mike and I angled across the open area to cut the distance to what was going on. His longer stride got him there first, taking pictures as he went. By the time I got to where other pens stopped us, all I saw was a gaggle of deputy uniforms around the base of one of the wooden uprights.

Alvaro told everyone to lower their voices. He turned toward us and glowered, but didn’t need to do more, because the tarp between us rose with perfect timing.

“Spoilsport,” I muttered. “See anything?”

“No detail. It looked like the guy held something between his fingers, but no idea what. Again, maybe a bigger screen
 . . .
”

“Or maybe you could worm it out of Lloyd.”

“I might be able to do that. If I can get him alone, and in the right frame of mind.”

“HERE COMES your friend,” Mike said, looking toward the office.

Turning away from the now shrouded pen, I saw Oren Street step off the porch.

“Good heavens, it’s like that café in Paris, where they say you see everyone you know if you sit there long enough.” I considered the surroundings. “Only without the café, or the wine, or the other amenities.”

“That’s Sherman, Crossroads of the West. That’s the thing about rodeo, too. People always on the move, coming and going. Hit a new town every week. Those climbing up, and those sliding down the ranks.”

Street stopped and stared at the tarped pen.

“C’mon,” I said to Mike. “Fair’s fair. You rehabilitated me with Zane, I’ll rehabilitate you with Street.”

Oren Street shot a wary look at Mike as I executed introductions as if they’d never met.

“What’s going on over there?” Street tipped his head toward the pen.

“Sheriff’s department is sifting through the pen again. It’s routine.” I hurried into a question to steer his thoughts away from what looked far too much like a crime scene for the chatty mood I hoped for. “Is there a decision about the Fourth of July Rodeo? That’s what the committee talked with you about, isn’t it?”

“It’s what we were talking about, but if there’s a decision, they haven’t told me.”

His sourness struck me as unfair. They’d hardly had time to decide, much less inform him, since he’d left the meeting. But I shook my head in sympathy. “I’d think with the livestock already here, it would make sense to go ahead.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling them.” His gloom, which had lifted a bit, returned in full force. “I’m not the talker Keith was, though. He’s the one knew how to make folks see things his way.”

“But you’re expecting the committee to vote in favor of going ahead with the rodeo?” Mike asked in friendly tone.

Street shot an uneasy look at him. “That Linda Caswell never has liked this company. Didn’t want us when we started coming here, didn’t want us when we bid this year. And she’s the only one voted against it when Keith said we’d step in when that other company backed out on ’em.”

Interesting. She’d made it sound as if she’d voted for Landry, though out of necessity.

“When was it you started coming here?” Mike asked, apparently taking to heart what he said I’d said about giving people questions they don’t mind answering before getting to tougher ones.

Street’s gaze swept across us to the masked pen. It lingered before traveling to the front gates, then toward the mountain-top horizon to the west. “Let’s see
 . . .
It was the year before my baby was born. I missed her birth to be here for our second year, so it›s twenty.»

“No trouble before now?” I asked.

His eyes flickered. “Not with the stock. Nobody’s ever had any problem with my livestock.”

“But with Keith Landry?” I speculated.

“He could talk the birds out of the trees when he wanted to.”

“What if he didn’t want to?”

He cut me a look. “He didn’t waste much time with those he didn’t want something from.”

“And what did he want?”

“Hell if I know. I ain’t no mind reader.”

“What did he pursue?” I kept my tone mild. “You knew him for a lot of years. You must have seen what he went after.”

“Power. Money. Women.” He paused a moment. “Not like he’s the first or’ll be the last.”

I had to agree. It wasn’t an original list.

“You said no trouble with the livestock,” Mike said, not challenging, “but it was unusual to have them here this early. Why bring them so early?”

“Why? Because Keith hollered at me on the phone that I better get them to Sherman right away and forget resting them the way they need. Hollering about how I baby them worse than my kid, and when I tried to say anything, he kept hollering to get them here. Didn’t matter it was tough on the animals, or I had to scramble and change everything.

“Sure as hell, things went wrong. Truck with the pens didn’t show, so’s we had to use pens left from the night’s rodeo. And that was after holding stock in the trucks for near two hours. All around it was a full-blown shit storm. Sorry, ma’am.”

“What did Landry tell you about why he wanted the stock here early?” I asked.

“Tell me? Didn’t tell me nothing. Explainin’ wasn’t his way.”

“You must have a guess.”

He shook his head. “Something with the rodeo committee. That’s all he said. Bottom line is, livestock’s here. Top-line livestock. We can give Sherman a damned good rodeo for the Fourth like we agreed to. If you’re looking for a reason that wouldn’t suit certain people, check the grudge somebody’s been holding for twenty years.”

With that, he turned and marched toward the tic-tac-toe pens, heading down one of the corridors toward the arena, but well to the east of the area tarped by the sheriff’s department.

When he was out of earshot, Mike said, “Might as well have pointed a finger at Linda Caswell, but wonder what that stuff about a grudge was?”

“Not being subtle doesn’t mean he’s not on to something. I’d like to talk to her again.”

“More waiting. At least it hasn’t been dull,” he added as we returned to the fence.

With my mouth open to respond, I spotted another familiar form. Good heavens, it
was
a crossroads. “There’s
your
friend now.” I tipped my head toward Ms. Blue Hair emerging from the next aisle west from the one Street had taken.

“Like I said, Crossroads of the West,” Mike said.

“Listen, Mr. Chamber of Commerce, go see what progress you can make with Ms. Blue Hair.”

He grunted assent and headed off to intercept her.

I climbed the fence and used the added height for a better view of the pens bounded on the east by the grandstand, on the south by the arena, and on the west by the sheriff’s department’s tarps. Oren Street was almost out of view to the east. About the same distance to the west, and just skirting the tarps, was a cowboy in a black hat. He turned, giving me his profile. Cas Newton. I looked to where Mike had caught up with Blue Hair.

As a rough guess, each of the three had traveled about the same distance. As if they’d come together at the center of the triangle they now formed, then bounced away.

Had Street come upon a moment of star-crossed love and turned away in embarrassment? That would fit his personality from what I’d seen.

And Cas and Blue Hair? Maybe they didn’t want anyone to know about their meetings
 . . .
though in that case the stock pen maze didn’t seem the best place for a rendezvous.

Street, as a partner in the stock contracting firm, had contact with Stan Newton. Was that who Cas and Blue Hair were sidestepping? Or Richard and his cohorts? Or maybe it was
anyone
they didn’t want to know. Because if word reached Heather, or her mother, the safest place for young Caswell Newton might be inside the rodeo arena with hard-charging animals.

I smiled when I spotted a familiar figure over by the concession stand, talking with a couple workers I didn’t recognize. Needham Bender, plying his trade. At least he knew his story would make the newspaper, since he owned it. What Mike and I found might never see the light of day.

Mike ambled back, talking on his phone as he came. He hung up before he reached me. “Got to get to that tournament. You want the report with or without profanities?”

“Without.”

“That’ll speed things up. She was in the rodeo grounds to take a shower because she doesn’t want to stink like your friend Roy and his, uh, companion. But she also doesn’t have the money to throw around like those, uh, dim college kids.

“But—”

“Yeah, she’d need a grounds pass. I mentioned that. She said it was none of my business how she got in.”

“Did you ask her anything about Cas Newton?”

“No. I want to be able to keep talking to her.”

“That’s great, but there’s a time when you have to risk open lines of communication with a source in order to push for information.”

“Did you push Oren Street?”

“No. I—”

“I’ll push her if I think it’ll help us. And now, I’ve got to get going, or I’ll miss that tournament final. Coming?”

“Not yet. I’ll get a ride to the station from somebody.”

“I’ll give you a call tomorrow.” He started off. As a sight to watch, his rear view held its own with Grayson Zane.

The rodeo office door opening pulled my head around. Linda Caswell came out, followed by Burrell.

Fat lot I’d get out of her with him being all protective. I’d try her later. So I went after Mike, to catch a ride to the station.

ON THAT EVENING’S foray to the Sherman Supermarket, I selected new dog food—after checking ingredients—paper towels, and glass cleaner. The last qualified as a talisman of faith that I’d get enough paint off the bathroom’s glass surfaces someday to need glass cleaner. Feeling virtuous with not a single package of cookies in my cart, I chose my spot in Penny’s monologue on how the rodeo wasn’t the same under Newt and rammed in my question.

“What was that you said before about Grayson Zane, and something happening years ago, and not giving the heart orders, but he should have done right? Did he date somebody?”

“—but give the devil his due, he dotes on that boy. Dated Linda Caswell, five years back.” It took a second to realize she’d shifted from Newton to Zane. “Now there’s a good woman. But not the least bit glamorous. Not even pretty. Surprised everybody when Grayson Zane took up with her for that spell. Didn’t surprise nobody when he dumped her, because it would take a brain to see her quality, and those rodeo cowboys wear their jeans so tight they’re forever squeezing the parts that do their thinking.”