Mad Dog and Englishman: A Mad Dog & Englishman Mystery #1 (Mad Dog & Englishman Series) (12 page)

“Why?” he asked. “Why should I have killed him?” The sheriff was in the mood to kill someone about now. He was willing to listen to nominations. The jack the truck came with wasn’t really designed for changing flats on country roads. He’d spent more time than he could afford figuring out how it was supposed to work. Wrestling the spare—at least there really was a spare and not one of those mini-tires more appropriate for dunking in coffee—out from under the bed, and then making the swap while the truck swayed and threatened to topple on some important part of his anatomy had caused his patience to run out. He’d be ready to resubscribe after he solved a murder and the mystery of this woman and the motorcyclist.

She shrugged. The spandex emphasized nipples that stood erect from emotion or exertion. She looked as good in her clothes as out. With most women it was one way or the other, not both. She looked dangerous, but she looked good.

“If somebody doesn’t kill him, he’ll kill me, not that that particularly matters. What matters is that he’ll also get to my daughter again.”

The sheriff looked down at his hands and tried rubbing a smudge of grease off. The smudge stayed. He couldn’t wipe it away any easier than he could wipe away his confusion. He dabbed at the blood that was still oozing from the cut above his eyebrow, then used a thumb and forefinger to massage his jaw. It was a gesture that would have plainly told anyone who knew him of his stress and frustration, and his growing intolerance of whoever continued to contribute to either.

“I think maybe it’s time someone told me what this is all about,” the sheriff said through teeth he somehow managed not to clench.

“What do you want to know?” the woman asked.

“Everything,” he replied. “Just start at the beginning and if you’re not sure whether to tell me something, do it. Let me decide what’s important.”

“I’m not sure what the beginning is.”.

“God damn it! Tell me what the hell is going on and tell me now!” the sheriff shouted, his composure finally gone.

“He’s after Heather, you idiot,” she screamed right back. “He wants to get his hands on her, and probably his prick in her again too, and I’m going to kill him before I let that happen.”

The sheriff felt his jaw drop. Who is the dark man and why is he after my daughter, he wondered? If the woman was right, the sheriff might have found a reason to kill again, but he was still thoroughly confused. He was pretty sure the dark man hadn’t sexually assaulted his daughter as of the early hours of this morning when he’d seen her last, or since, up to the time he’d spoken to Judy when he was at Simms’ and she was here. Like everything so far, it just made no sense.

“Who are you?” the sheriff asked. “What have you got to do with Heather?”

“I’m Heather’s mother.”

The sheriff thought he had reason to know Heather’s mother. The woman’s reply just further confounded him. The two of them stood and stared at each other, waiting for the other to say something that made sense or related to the moment of sex and violence they’d just shared…or for the Mad Hatter to invite them to tea.

A stallion whinnied and the sprinklers ticked off a few more moments of eternity in a landscape that seemed to reach from alpha to omega and maybe back again. A man and a woman failed utterly in their mutual attempts to communicate, and in this way, as in most things, the universe went on as normal.

***

Judy English stared at the pretty girl in the revealing camisole and felt properly shocked. Not because everything bordered on being indecently exposed, but because she looked so good just this side of naked. For Judy, the shocking part was that the pretty girl was her own reflection in a dressing room mirror, beneath lights so harsh they seemed designed to help a woman find her flaws and remind her not to commit sins of the flesh or purchase erotic offerings improbably discovered in a boutique in the Hutchinson Mall.

Judy was power shopping, and about out of time. The movie she’d dropped the girls off to see would soon be over. She knew she should get back before it let out to make certain they didn’t start trolling the mall for boys or scarfing up junk in the food court. Judy had taken a sandwich to the ranch for Heather but skipped her own lunch. Now she was hungry. She had her heart set on eating at the Red Lobster across the parking lot before heading home to Buffalo Springs. The closest you could get to seafood in Benteen County was the tuna salad at Bertha’s. Judy had promised herself a reward if her scale read under 110 pounds that morning. Thanks to Englishman, she’d burned a lot of calories last night. Enough, if the scale’s reading of 108, and her reflection in this mirror, were to be believed.

She slowly pivoted and glanced over her shoulder for a rear view. It wasn’t bad, especially not for a small-town schoolmarm pushing forty. But what on earth did she want with a camisole? She couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually had a date. Not that there weren’t offers. The shop teacher and the basketball coach had made it clear they were willing to provide for her physical needs. So had several farmers, some of them already married, and even one kid who wasn’t much more than Heather’s age. Most of them were cute enough, a couple were even hunks, but…. Well, when you got right down to it, the “but” was that they weren’t Englishman. She hated him down to his bones, sometimes, except when she still loved him so much she couldn’t wait to jump them.

She tried a side view and consciously stopped sucking in her tummy. Not horrible.

Judy had wanted something that Benteen County didn’t offer for as long as she could remember. She wasn’t sure what that was, and she hadn’t been able to explain it to Englishman when she tried to persuade him to move away, maybe even outside of Kansas. He’d seen the world, or at least the collection of army bases at which he’d been stationed on his way to and from Vietnam. Benteen County was home. It was familiar, comfortable. He didn’t want to leave. Well, in comparison to where he’d been, she supposed, that was understandable. But what about Paris, or even Kansas City, Missouri? There was more to be experienced out there and she wanted to discover it strongly enough to fight for it. Their fights had gotten to be about all kinds of things, mostly, she supposed, that neither of them were who each other had expected. After the divorce when she was free to leave, she hadn’t. She didn’t think it would be fair to deprive Heather of her father and a familiar home. Not while their daughter was young. Not, apparently, until she was old enough for college. And then, well there were still things Judy wanted to see but she was afraid the men in Paris, or Kansas City, still wouldn’t be Englishman.

She looked at the price tag again. Absurd! The money should go into that travel fund she’d been promising herself she’d start sometime soon. Her reflection smiled wickedly out of the mirror. Englishman would like this view even more than she did. Paris would wait a little longer.

***

“Hey Lois, here’s your double-bacon burger combo.” Heather English plopped an immense stack of food down on their table. She and Heather Lane were spending the last of the funds Judy had left for them to entertain themselves with while she went on her shopping spree. They were in the north end of the Hutchinson Mall in the fast food cluster by the cineplex and the video game arcade. Nearby, a silver haired matron sat at a piano and made elevator music of REM’s “Losing My Religion.” Even if the girls had recognized this sanitized version, they wouldn’t have thought anything of it. REM already belonged to an ancient generation from their view point.

“Lois?” the other Heather paled. “Why did you call me Lois?”

Heather English began unwrapping her chili-cheese burger. “Cause your name is Lane. You know, like Lois Lane from Superman.”.

“Oh, yeah.” Heather Lane’s reply was subdued enough to get her companion’s attention.

“Gee! Did I say something wrong? I didn’t mean anything by it.” Heather English was concerned enough to delay her attention to the mound of food that awaited.

“No, it’s OK,” the visiting Heather sighed. “It’s just funny, you know. It’s like, you just guessed my alias.”

“Wow! You have an alias?”

Heather Lane was recovered enough to pop a straw into her cherry coke and the wrapping from her burger. “You told me about your name. I guess it’s only fair for me to tell you about mine. Lane’s not really it. Heather is, but even though I trust you like eternally, Mom would kill me if I told you our real last name. Lane’s the one she picked for us to use while we’re hiding out from my dad. And it’s funny you called me Lois, because that’s where it came from, Superman’s Lois Lane. See, I’ve got these aunts. One of them is Linda Lois…well, I guess I shouldn’t tell you her last name either. Anyway, a long time ago she got in this tough spot and needed to pretend she was someone else and that’s what she came up with. Lois Lane. I thought it was so cool, you know, cause she picked it so she could be the heroine of her own story, the girl the superhero will always come rescue.”

She filled her mouth with bacon burger and Heather English shook her head in admiration. “That is so awesome. It’s like something from a movie.”.

“Speaking of movies,” Heather Lane said as she dunked a seasoned french fry into a pyramid of catsup and mayonnaise, “I never thought your Mom would let us see
Scream
. Mine won’t let me see Wes Craven’s films.”

“Actually,” Heather English confessed around a mouthful of chili-cheese burger “I think Mom may have the impression we went to that Robin Williams, Billy Crystal movie. I’d kind of take it as a personal favor if you wouldn’t say anything.”.

“Sure,” the pseudonymous Lane girl agreed. “My Mom’ll be a lot happier if she thinks the same.”

“I thought you didn’t enjoy it,” the rural Heather observed. “You never screamed once.”.

“Just inside,” the urban Heather replied. “Mom taught me not to scream, not unless it’ll do me some good. She says if you scream around a guy, you just make it worse. She says it was that way with Dad. She taught me to clam up and wait for my chance, so I sat on the edge of my seat in the movie and did the white knuckle bit.

“Anyway,” Heather Lane continued, “this is just one more thing it’s better Mom doesn’t know.”

“Mothers are so….” Heather English couldn’t find an adjective that was sufficiently inclusive of overly protective, warden-like, up-tight, not-with-it, and lacking-in-understanding.

“Too true,” her look alike agreed around a sip of cola. “I’ve been stuck in convents and girls’ schools and stuff all my life. It’s like Mom does everything to keep me from ever getting close to a boy. Like at the ranch. You know that Cody who works there?”

The sheriff’s daughter did. In fact, he was the source of the offer of assistance in losing her virginity she’d told her father about. Well, maybe not a direct offer, but he’d made reference to showing her how to sit a different kind of saddle. She’d known what he meant. Cody was several years older than she was, but the Buffalo Springs school system was small enough that she was aware of his reputation as a letch. He’d bragged about bagging most of the homecoming queens in his age group. The homecoming queens denied his claims. Basically, Heather English thought Cody was a dork who probably hadn’t scored as often as he maintained, though maybe often enough to deserve his reputation. He was a cute dork, though.

“Sure, I know him.”

“Well, like I think he’s got the hots for me. He’s been hanging around all the time and giving me the eye, only Mom won’t give me a chance to be alone with him. She’s always there, always part of the conversation. But I’m hoping, you know. Just yesterday he whispered to me that he had a plan to win Mom over.”

The Heather of Buffalo Springs could believe that. Cody had a way of hanging around anything female. She even caught him trying to hit on her mom once, which had made Heather English feel more than a little weird. She thought Heather Lane really ought to know about Cody, but she didn’t want to hurt her feelings.

“He’s got the cutest little butt and all that sweet blond hair. I’m thinking maybe I might like to re-lose my virginity to him.”

“Re-lose your virginity?”

“Sure. I mean, it’s not like I can remember what my father did to me. I may not have a cherry to pluck anymore, but that doesn’t mean I know what I’m doing. Oh, I’ve read lots of books and had some sex-ed classes. I know what goes where and I even bought some rubbers out of a machine in a service station restroom for just in case, but I’m still, like, terrified of doing it. I mean, what if I don’t like it or what if he can tell I’m not pure and then he expects me to know what to do and I like blow it.”

Heather English couldn’t help the giggle that escaped her. “From what I hear, blowing it is exactly what he’ll be hoping for.”

Heather Lane chortled Cherry Coke through her nose and Heather English snorted some partially masticated fries across the table. When Judy English, carrying enough merchandise to supply an expedition to darkest Arkansas, returned, she had to drag a pair of hysterical Heathers from the food area to the parking lot. In spite of all the food they hadn’t managed to swallow, it was obvious neither of the girls would have an appetite for supper in Hutch. Judy endured her own hunger and disappointment, along with an endless harmony of girlish giggles, as they abandoned metropolitan Hutchinson for the long drive back to Benteen County.

***

If he hadn’t brought in a prisoner, Wynn knew he’d have been catching holy hell from Mrs. Kraus about the missing police cruiser, revolver, radio, and the fact that he’d been out of contact for most of the day. He did have a prisoner though, so all he got was a lot of angry muttering when he asked her to arrange for somebody to tow the cruiser out of Calf Creek. As he escorted his prisoner back into the jail he could hear her making snide comments about him to the pair of old biddies who’d brought in her lunch and their prying curiosities. Neil Bowen was more respectful of him than anyone else he’d encountered today, maybe because the man was still a little concerned about getting lynched or shot for resisting arrest, especially since Wynn had borrowed a spare pistol out of the armory closet and let the black man see him load it.