Bittersweet (24 page)

When I got back to the house, though, I was surprised when I didn't see Sue Ellen's red Ford Focus, surprised and more than a little worried. Where was she? What was keeping her? According to Patsy, she had left Three Gates a couple of hours ago. It didn't take two hours to drive from Three Gates to Bittersweet—more like thirty or forty minutes. I was feeling cross, too. I hoped that Sue Ellen wasn't going to make it a habit to leave without an explanation or promise to be here and then not show up. My mother needed somebody she could depend on.

And then—of course—I felt cross at myself and guilty for feeling cross at Sue Ellen. My mother ought to be able to depend on her daughter, rather than on a friend, oughtn't she? And she couldn't. On Sunday, I had to go back to Pecan Springs, where I worked and lived. And my mother would be here, with a man with a bad heart. Or here alone, if the worst happened and Sam didn't make it.

Thinking about all this, I sliced enough turkey for several sandwiches and got ready to make the soup. I was spooning the leftover mashed potatoes into a big pan when I heard a car drive up.
At last, Sue Ellen
,
I thought, with a gritty satisfaction.
It's about time.
Or maybe Leatha, back from the hospital with news about Sam. I went eagerly to the window to look.

But it wasn't Sue Ellen's Ford, and it wasn't the Impala that Leatha was driving. It was a black SUV with dark-tinted windows. The next minute I heard someone frantically pounding on the front door and a woman's voice shouting, “China! China, it's Amy! Come on, open up, please!
Please!
”

And when I opened the door, there were three of them on the porch,
Amy, Chris, and Sharon. All three were panicked, wide-eyed, white-faced, and disheveled, and they all began shouting at once.

“We have to show you something, China,” Amy cried breathlessly. “On the iPad.” She was holding it up.

“Yes!” Sharon blurted, waving her arms. “You need to see this!”

“Right now,” Chris exclaimed, pushing forward. “There's no time to mess around! You're not gonna friggin' believe this!!”

“Whoa,” I said, and held up my hand. “Get a grip. You guys are
not
charging into my mom's house until you settle down and tell me what this is all about.” I turned to Amy, whom I knew. “Okay, Amy. Why are you here?”

“Because we've just seen something really . . . bad,” Amy said. “Really horrible. We came to you because we're afraid to go to the cops.”

“Because of what we were doing,” Chris added.

“What we were doing when we saw it,” Sharon amended.

“So we need your legal opinion,” Amy concluded.

My
legal
opinion? I rolled my eyes. “Of all the ridiculous—”

My cell phone chirped. I pulled it out of my pocket and saw that it was Mack.

I opened the door. “Okay,” I said. “You can come in while I take this call. But no more shouting or screaming. And no more talking all at once. Got that? Amy, there are cold soft drinks in the fridge. Take what you want. And the three of you choose one person to tell me what's going on and why you're here.
One
person. No interruptions.”

They filed meekly into the living room while I stayed in the hall and answered the call. Mack spoke quickly and tersely, the way cops do when they're conveying information.

“China, listen. I was heading south on 187 when I picked up an
11-79—code for an accident with an ambulance on the way. I wasn't far from the scene, so I headed over. I'm here on the Three Gates ranch road, about four miles off 187, with Ethan, the volunteer fire department, an EMS crew, and Jack Krause. We're looking at what's left of a red Ford Focus at the bottom of a very steep hill. Krause says that the car belongs to his wife. If she was driving it, she did not survive. It burned.”

I couldn't speak. Sue Ellen was . . .
dead
?

“China?” Mack asked urgently. “China? You there? You got that?”

“I . . .” I sucked in my breath. “Yes. I've got that, Mack. Did Krause see it happen? You're sure it's Sue Ellen in the car? Do you have a positive ID?” I was clutching at straws. Patsy had already said that Sue Ellen was leaving Three Gates, heading to Bittersweet. It had to be her.

“No witnesses,” Mack said. “Krause wasn't here when it happened. The wife of one of the Gates brothers—the owners of the ranch—drove along and saw the smoke and called 9-1-1. But she couldn't get a cell signal until she got out on 187, and after that, it took fifteen or twenty minutes to get a deputy here. The car had been burning for some time.” There was a murmur of voices in the background and the spitting sound of tires spinning on gravel. “There's no ID yet, either, China. The wreck is too hot to get the body out.”

“Just one body?” I asked. “What about passengers?”

Shouts, and a motor revving up. A door slammed. Mack raised her voice. “Can't be sure yet, but it looks like she was alone. Probably going too fast and lost control.” A pause. “Didn't you tell me that she has a sister?”

“Yes, Patsy. Patsy Wilbur. She lives with her parents. Jack Krause should be able to give you their address.” I swallowed, thinking how this was going to hurt others. Sue Ellen's sister, her parents, my mother. “Will the sheriff—”

“Yeah. Somebody will handle the notifications.” More doors slamming, another shout. “Sorry, gotta go, China. Ethan is yelling at me. I thought you'd want to know, since you were expecting her.” Mack clicked off.

I stood there for a moment, staring at my phone, trying to catch my breath. Sue Ellen,
dead
? How had it happened? I'd only been on that ranch road a couple of times, but I remembered the steep drop-offs, first on one side, then on the other, and the hairpin turns as the road slanted up the hill. If you were going too fast, if you got into a skid around one of those curves—

Yes, if you got into a skid there was nothing to keep you from sliding right off the road. If that happened, you could die. Even if you were a cute, bouncy cowgirl with high hopes and big dreams. I suddenly thought of my mother, who had come to depend on Sue Ellen's willing helpfulness and high spirits—and who was expecting to be able to count on her, now that Sam was out of commission. How in the world was I going to tell her that her young friend was dead?

Soberly, I pocketed my cell phone and went into the living room. Amy and Chris were perched uneasily on the sofa and Sharon on a nearby chair, cans of soft drinks in their hands. Gulping a deep breath, I dropped down onto Sam's big round hassock, at one end of the coffee table.

“Sorry,” I said, and heard my voice catch. I cleared my throat. “I've just had some bad news. There's been a car crash. A young woman who was here for dinner yesterday—who has just moved into the guest lodge. Her car went off a road and down a hill and caught fire. She's . . . dead.”

“We know,” Amy said. Her voice was trembling, and her hands were squeezed into tight, hard fists. Her iPad was on the coffee table in front of her. “We saw it.”

“But we didn't know it was a friend of yours,” Chris put in.

“Shut up, Chris,” Sharon said sharply. “We agreed. Amy is the one who's supposed to talk.”

“Sorry,” Chris muttered. “Tell her, Amy.”

I was staring at Amy, astonished. “You
saw
it? What do you mean, you saw it? I just got off the phone with Mackenzie Chambers. She was calling from the accident scene. She said there were no witnesses. Somebody happened to drive by and see the smoke and called 9-1-1, but by that time it was too late.” I could hear my voice rising. I was out of control and I didn't give a damn. A young woman was dead and these kids— “You don't mean to tell me
you
were on that road when it happened? You saw it happen and you didn't stay around to help? Do you know that you can get twenty years for failure to stop and render aid?”

Amy shook her head so hard that her red curls bounced. “
We
weren't on that road, China. We didn't see the wreck happen, either. But our drone was there. It saw both vehicles. And recorded what it saw. We've got the video.”

My stomach muscles tightened. I couldn't believe what I'd just heard. “
Both
vehicles? There was another vehicle involved—a
second
vehicle?”

“A pickup truck,” Sharon said grimly. “It was the truck that did it. On purpose.”

“And it wasn't us!” Chris slammed his hand down on his knee. “We had nothing to do with what happened. You'll see, when you look at the video.”

“Just look.” Amy pushed her iPad toward me. “Just
look
, China. You'll see what happened.”

“No,” I said, pushing it back. “Hold on a moment.” I took a deep breath, clenching my jaw, forcing myself to think. This was a tricky
situation, for them and for me. I needed to handle it right, from the get-go. I glanced from one to the other. All three of them were white and scared. I thought they were telling the truth. And I thought that their story was essential. I let out my breath between my teeth.

“Okay,” I said. “Who's got some money?”

The two girls looked at Chris. “I do, I guess,” he said uncertainly. “Why are you asking?”

“Give me a five or a one, whatever.” I was impatient. “Come on, Chris, hand it over.”

“Ah,” Sharon said wisely. “She wants us to put her on retainer. So she doesn't have to tell.”

“Of course,” Amy said, snapping her fingers. “Attorney-client privilege. We see it all the time on TV. Chris, give her something so she'll be our lawyer. If we're in trouble with the cops, she can get us off the hook.”

She can get us off the hook?
That wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but it was close enough. I wanted their information. But I wanted to protect them, especially Amy, Ruby's daughter. And I wanted to protect the video. If Amy and her friends were telling the truth, it would be evidence. The police were looking at Sue Ellen's death as an accident, but this video could change that. It could be evidence that could convict a killer.

Chris fumbled for his wallet and took out a ten-dollar bill. “Here. It's all I've got.” He put it on the table. “But now I won't have any money for supper.”

“Thank you. I'll give you your change and a receipt when we're done here.” I turned back to Amy. “Now, about that iPad. I'm going to look at the video, yes. But before I do, you are going to tell me how you got it. How and where and when. And why.”

Amy slid a troubled look at Chris.

I pushed Chris' ten-dollar bill back toward him. “We're not playing games here, Amy. This is serious. If you don't answer my questions—
all
my questions, and truthfully—you can count me out.” I hardened my voice. “Now, how did you get that video?”

Sharon squirmed in her chair. Beside Amy, Chris nudged her. “Tell her, Amy.”

Amy gulped. “Okay. We were at Three Gates Ranch, spying on a pigeon shoot.”

“
Pigeon
shoot?” I shuddered. How could people actually— But now wasn't the time for that.

“Yeah.” Amy made a face. “It's pretty awful. PETA has been trying to call attention to these things, wherever they occur. We wanted to get video of this one to put on YouTube, so everybody can see what goes on. Fourteen states have made it illegal. We think Texas should, too. That's really why we came here today. Not so much to demo the drone to Warden Chambers, but to video the shoot.”

“I see. So you were on ranch property when you were conducting this aerial surveillance?”

“Yes,” Amy said, and added defensively, “It was the only way we could see what we needed to see. The game ranches set up these shoots by invitation only, no public notice, no advertisement. We only found out about this one by accident. A cousin of one of the hunters—”

“They're
shooters
,
not hunters,” Sharon put in heatedly. “No self-respecting hunter would want to be involved in something like this.”

“Don't bet on it,” Chris growled.

I cleared my throat.

“Anyway,” Amy said hastily, “a PETA member sent us a copy of the invitation. That's how we found out. If you want to see it, it's out in the SUV. It has the directions on it. Otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to find the shoot.”

“Is pigeon shooting legal or illegal in Texas?” I asked.

“Legal,” Amy said. “The birds are rock doves or collared doves. Both are open season, which means that they can be shot at any time. At the shoot, this guy grabs one and throws it up, sort of like a clay pigeon, and a shooter tries to drop it. There's an entry fee—a thousand dollars. And several prizes, around fifteen thousand dollars total.”

“So you were trespassing on private property to film a lawful process,” I said. “And interfere with the ranch's lawful business operation.”

Chris scowled. “Wait a minute. I thought you're supposed to be on
our
side.”

“I am,” I snapped. “This is what being on your side sounds like.” I turned back to Amy. “So where was this pigeon shoot, exactly? Where were you in relation to it?”

“A little more than four miles inside the ranch. The ranch road makes a Y about four miles in from the highway. The main road, the right-hand leg of the Y, goes off to the ranch compound. The pigeon shoot was on the left-hand leg, maybe a quarter of a mile past the Y, on top of a hill. We drove as close as we could get without being seen and pulled off behind some trees.”

I pointed to the iPad. “Show me. On Google Maps.”

“Oh, good idea,” Amy said, and pulled the iPad toward her. She typed something in, fiddled with the screen display for a moment, then turned the tablet toward me. It displayed a map. “Here's Route 187, and here's the ranch road. Here's the Y. We took the left fork, drove up to about here,
and pulled off.” She pointed. “This is the track that leads up to the hill where they were holding the pigeon shoot. Chris flew the drone pretty high and off to one side, hoping they wouldn't notice it. For a while, they didn't, and we got several minutes of pretty good pictures. But then somebody shot at it. The drone was hit by some buckshot—”