Gun Shy (17 page)

“Who is?”

“Mickey White’s father.”

“He sounds like a gentleman.”

I answered uneasily, “Not really.”

And later that afternoon, my suspicions were borne out.

The second phone call came as I was locking up the sparkling clean and disinfected-to-within-an-inch-of-its-life kennel. I walked Maude to her car, hunched inside my canvas barn coat, stepping around cold brown puddles that gave off feeble reflections of the day’s dying light.

“Are you sure you don’t want to come over later for a bite to eat?” Maude said.

“Thanks,” I said, trying not to sound despondent. “Buck left some stew the other night. I put it in the freezer. Maybe I’ll warm it up.”

She opened her car door and turned to me. “I’ve known you and Buck as long as you’ve known each other,” she said, “and it seems to me that you both enjoy the chase more than the capture. Not just Buck,” she said pointedly, “both of you. Maybe you’ve grown out of that, maybe you haven’t. But you’ve got an awful lot of years invested in each other. It might be prudent to invest another hour or two talking to each other before tossing it all away, don’t you think?”

I hugged her, and she got into her car.

I was walking back to the kennel building to lock up when I heard the phone ringing inside. I hurried to answer it.

It was Letty Cranston again.

“Oh, Mrs. Cranston, you just missed her!” I hurried to the door to make sure, but there was no sign of Maude’s dusty Volvo. “Do you have her home phone?” I gave her the number and added, “I’m so glad you called back, though. We were disconnected last time before you gave me a number, and the sheriff’s department has been trying to reach you.”

“My dear, don’t I know it!” she exclaimed. “I must have a dozen messages! What is going on? I certainly can’t be wanted for any crime up that way. I haven’t even been there in twenty years!”

I knew it probably wasn’t my place to relay the news, but I honestly couldn’t be sure the authorities would ever be able to talk to her in Crete. I said, “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but the woman who was renting your cabin, Mickey White, was shot to death there last week. Her husband was found a few days later at the bottom of a ravine. He hit his head and drowned in the creek.”

Her silence was brief, and when she spoke her tone was brisk and matter-of-fact. “Well, I can’t say I’m surprised. That husband of hers was a no-account loafer who was born to meet a bad end, and Mickey—well, God bless her for her disability and all, but she couldn’t have been the easiest person in the world to live with.”

“How well did you know them, Mrs. Cranston?”

“Oh, they’ve been renting the cabin from me for about three years now, every October. My next-door neighbor in Florida is Mickey’s aunt; that’s how I got to know them. Poor Amelia, she must be just heartbroken. I’ll have to call her. She talked about Mickey all the time. Not having any children of her own, don’t you know, she more or less adopted Mickey. She came to visit once or twice—Mickey did—and what a pill. Always demanding this and insisting on that. And that husband of hers, ‘Yes, dear’-ing her all over the place. I tell you the truth, it plumb got on my nerves after a while. Hard to believe he did what he did. But the dog was nice,” she added, in a slightly cheerier tone. “Smartest dog I’ve ever seen.”

I homed in on what she’d said earlier. “What do you mean? What did her husband do?”

“Oh.” She seemed taken aback, as though she too were trying to rethink the conversation. “He had an affair,don’t you know. Who would think he had the gumption?”

“No kidding,” I said, trying to encourage her to keep gossiping. “When?”

“Oh, Lord, it had Amelia in such a tizzy this summer. The worst of it was that Mickey’s father found out and actually threatened to have Leo killed! Well, not threatened so much as promised. And if anyone could do it, that man could. He’s got money, and some friends in low places, if you know what I mean. Why, I hear tell”—a burst of static interrupted her, and I rejoined the conversation as she was saying—“therapist, if you can believe that. As far as I know, that put an end to Leo’s roving eye. But like I said, it doesn’t surprise me a bit, the way things ended up.”

“Therapist?” I repeated. “You mean, like a marriage counselor? What—” More static, loud enough for me to be forced to remove the telephone receiver from my ear.

I said quickly, “Mrs. Cranston, I think we’re about to lose the connection. Could you give me your cell phone number? I know the police will want to talk to you. Are you still out of the country?”

She acknowledged that she was, and read off a series of numbers, which I copied down faithfully.

She said, “But the person I really need to talk to is Marsha Lee, who is supposed to be managing that place for me. Somebody’s got to get in there and—”

More static.

I said, “I don’t think the police are letting anyone in. It’s a crime scene, you know. But I can have them call you as soon as they release it. Mrs. Cranston? Mrs. Cranston?”

I was talking to dead air.

I pushed the OFF button on the phone, waited for a dial tone and excitedly dialed the sheriff’s department. This was the kind of thing I would usually eagerly share with Buck, but when the dispatcher answered I found myself instead asking for my uncle Roe. With sudden insight, I knew that if I was going to be the one to break the ice between Buck and myself, it should be with a topic that did not involve police work.

“Sorry, Raine, he went home early,” replied the dispatcher. “You want me to patch you through?”

“Yes, thanks. Wait,” I added. “Take down this number for whoever is working the Mickey White case.” I knew that at least one of those people was Buck. “The state police might want it too. It’s for Letty Cranston, in Crete. Yeah, that’s near Greece.”

I gave her the number, and she said, “Crete, wow. Love to be there on a day like today, wouldn’t you?” I agreed it would be nice, and she rang through to my uncle’s house.

I counted eight rings and was just about to hang up when my aunt answered. I was so excited that at first I didn’t even notice her distracted tone or the voices in the background.

“Hi, Aunt Mart,” I said. “Listen, is Uncle Roe around? I’ve got some important—”

“Raine! Raine!” Her voice was high and thin and on the verge of hysteria, and then I knew something was wrong. “Thank God you called. I’ve got to go. They’re taking him now. I’ve got to go.”

“What?” I demanded, and I felt coldness creep through my fingertips. “Taking who? What’s wrong?”

“Roe,” she said, sobbing. “They’re taking him in the ambulance. They think it’s his heart.”

I spent the next six hours in the ICU waiting room of Middle Mercy Hospital, holding my aunt’s hand, bringing her coffee, making telephone calls. I called the pastor, my cousin Kate in Chicago, who was Aunt Mart and Uncle Roe’s oldest child, and Maude. The pastor was at the hospital within half an hour, and Maude wanted to come, but I asked her instead to simply take care of the dogs in case I didn’t make it home by morning. Aunt Mart refused to let Kate make a flight reservation until she knew more about my uncle’s condition.

I kept trying to call Buck, both because, as ranking member of the sheriff’s department he needed to know the situation, and because I needed him. He needed to be here, with me, and with Aunt Mart. His home phone kept ringing through to voice mail, and his cell phone was apparently turned off. I knew it was his day off, but I was furious with him for not letting me know where he was going, for not being there when I needed him. I
always
knew where he was, just like he always knew where I was. It wasn’t right, this estrangement. How dare he do this to me; how dare he desert me when I needed him most? I was so upset, so frustrated and helpless, that I could almost even blame him for Uncle Roe’s heart attack.

Finally I gave up and called the office, leaving it up to the dispatcher to spread the word to the department. Over the next two hours, five deputies showed up to sit with Aunt Mart, but none of them was Buck.

Around midnight, the doctor came in to tell us that it had indeed been a heart attack, but that the damage did not appear to be severe and my uncle was expected to make a full recovery. Aunt Mart and I hugged each other, and the pastor hugged both of us and said a little prayer of thanks. So did I.

“We’ll keep him here for a few days,” the doctor went on, “but it will be quite a while longer before he can go back to work. Think of this as a warning. We’ll be talking about some major lifestyle changes before we send him home.”

Aunt Mart demanded, “Can I see him?”

“Just for a minute. He needs his rest.”

She returned from my uncle’s room beaming and dabbing her eyes with a tissue. “He’s as feisty as ever. Not a thing in the world wrong with that man. Already trying to give me a list of things he wants brought to him from the office, like that’s going to happen.”

One by one the visitors hugged her, promised their availability day or night and departed. For a moment I was confused by how familiar the scene looked: somber-faced friends and men in uniform lined up to embrace and offer comfort, and then I remembered where I had witnessed the same kind of scene before—at the funeral home when first my mother, and then my father died. I was seized by an intense gratitude that this time, the outcome was different.

It was close to three a.m. by the time I got Aunt Mart settled at home and in bed with a sleeping pill the doctor had given her to make sure her rest was uninterrupted. Wearily, I made my way toward my own home and bed.

But there was one stop I had to make first. On impulse, I swung my car onto the narrow dirt road that preceded my own driveway by a couple of miles—the road that led to Buck’s house.

To my great relief, I could see both his car and his pickup in the open garage when I swung into the short drive that bisected his yard. He was home. I wasn’t in the least bit concerned about waking him before dawn; he would have wanted me to, and besides, he deserved it. Why hadn’t he answered his phone?

I left the car door open for light and bounded up his front steps. “Buck!” I pounded on the door. “Buck, wake up, it’s me!”

I didn’t give him time to get to the door, or even to turn on a light. I tried the door, and it was open, as I knew it would be.

“Buck!” I called again, and hit the light switch by the door. At the same time, I saw a light come on in the bedroom down the hall. I rushed toward it.

“Buck, it’s Raine! I’ve been trying to call you. I—”

I broke off as I rounded the corner and came face to face with Buck at the bedroom door. He was tousle-haired and shirtless, wearing a pair of hastily donned jeans that weren’t quite buttoned, and his hand was braced against the door—not to open it, but to close it against me. He need not have bothered.

From my position as I burst into the hallway I had a perfect view of the rumpled bed and of the woman who struggled to cover herself there. Her face was stricken, and her eyes, as they met mine, conveyed an anguish of humiliation and regret.

I looked at her for a long time. Then I looked at Buck. He closed his eyes slowly against what he must have seen in mine, or perhaps in an effort to mask the emotions that he did not want me to see in his.

I said quietly, “You need to call the office.”

And I left.

“They had him up walking this morning,” I told perhaps the sixteenth caller that day. “He’s already giving orders and making the nurses crazy. He’s going to be just fine.” And in response to the inevitable question, I added, “He’ll be out of work at least six weeks. After that, I don’t know. Thank you. I’ll tell him you called.”

I hung up the phone and rolled my neck to loosen the stiffness. Sonny, who had actually gotten Hero to play a rather sedate game of fetch with a knotted rope toy, asked, “Who’s in charge of the sheriff’s department while your uncle’s laid up?”

I answered, trying to keep all inflection out of my voice, “Buck.”

“Oh,” she said, and held my gaze for a moment. “That’s . . . complex.”

She knew about my early morning encounter with Buck, and so did Maude. The one thing I had never done was evade the truth about Buck’s character, not even to protect my own ego. I shrugged. “He’s the senior man. I don’t know if it’s official yet, but somebody has to take over. It’ll be him.”

I sat down across from Sonny at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee. It was almost noon, and I had lost track of how many cups I’d poured.

Cisco sat beside me and pressed his shoulder insistently into my knee. He hadn’t let me out of his sight since I had returned before dawn that morning, and now he couldn’t seem to get close enough to me. Dogs hate to have their routines interrupted, and the events of the past twenty-four hours had upset everyone.

Sonny sat back in her chair, her coffee mug cradled in both hands. “Well, I’m just going to say it. I like Buck.”

“Everyone does. He’s a nice guy.”

“I thought you two were good together.”

I shrugged. “We were. Most of the time.”

“And I just can’t believe he did this to you. He should be shot.”

“He has a record,” I pointed out. “And I don’t think shooting him would help.”

She covered my hand briefly with hers. “I’m sorry you were hurt. Can I do anything?”

I allowed myself, for one brief moment, to feel a stab of grief. “Know any good lawyers?” I inquired.

Then I glanced down at the coffee, thought about warming it up and decided to drink it as it was. “I’m not hurt,” I told her, a little bit surprised to find that it was true. “With everything else that’s happened, it actually doesn’t seem very important at all. Maybe I feel a little stupid, but I’m not hurt.”

What I couldn’t entirely put into words was the fact that what I really felt was relief. It was as though I had been waiting all this time for the other shoe to drop, and now it had. I wasn’t surprised, or even disappointed. Of course I had known deep down that the fantasy of saving a marriage that had already been shattered into irreconcilable pieces was just that—a fantasy. I was simply glad that what had once seemed like an impossibly difficult decision had been made for me.