Nothing but Trouble (14 page)

“A premeditated killing with an interesting twist,” Kerney said.

“What twist is that?” Flavio asked.

“Why go to all the trouble to bind and drug the victim, only to throw him out of a moving vehicle to die in the middle of the road?”

“That makes sense if the killer wanted the body to be found,” Flavio replied.

“Or to send somebody a message,” Kerney added. “But what kind of message and who was it for?” The questions had been in Kerney’s head since yesterday, and he’d yet to come up with answers that made sense.

“Well, Mendoza is my only lead,” Flavio said. “I’ll do a little more digging into his personal life before I approach him. Maybe something interesting will pop up.”

“Good idea,” Kerney replied. He disconnected, fished out the business card Supervisory Special Agent Fidel had given him, and dialed his direct line.

Over by the catering vehicle Julia and Johnny had hooked up with Ethan Stone, and the trio were walking in the direction of the barn. When the agent answered, Kerney gave him the gist of his conversation with Sapian, and suggested that Fidel should be the one to get Flavio to back off on his investigation. Gruffly, Fidel agreed, told Kerney to stay in touch, and disconnected.

Somewhat piqued by Fidel’s attitude, so typical of federal officers who looked down their noses at local cops, Kerney put the phone away just as Malcolm Usher called him over. He asked a few questions about how cops would serve a court order to the rancher and, armed with the information Kerney provided, began talking to the cinematographer about the shots he wanted to use.

Johnny, Julia, and Ethan Stone had returned from the barn and were clustered around the construction supervisor, a man named Barry Hingle, who had the good looks and hard body of an actor.

Kerney joined them and listened as Stone told the man he wanted all the buildings to look weather beaten and dingy.

“Hardscrabble and impoverished best describes it,” Stone said. “This must appear to be the ranch of a man who is barely hanging on.”

“Daddy will absolutely hate that,” Julia said with a laugh.

“Don’t worry, my dear,” Stone said. “It’s all magic, smoke and mirrors. Barry and his crew will put every thing back as it should be once we finish.”

“You’d better,” Julia said teasingly.

Stone and Hingle moved away to inspect the buildings.

“Where’s the old man?” Johnny asked Julia, his gaze locked on his parents’ house.

“Dad is probably inside,” Julia replied. “He doesn’t get around as much as he used to.”

Johnny squared his shoulders. “I’d better go see him.” He marched off to the house and paused at the screen door to the porch for a long moment before entering.

“That should be interesting,” Julia said as she rested her hand on Kerney’s arm. “It always is when those two get together.”

Kerney wondered why Julia seemed so pleased about the tension that existed between her father and brother. He studied her expression, looking for an answer. All he saw was the face of a self-indulgent, attractive middle-aged woman. Although her eyes danced and her lips smiled, it was surface charm. The thought occurred to him that she was very much like her brother: both were vain, lacked empathy, and craved excitement. He took her hand off his arm.

Julia reacted with a teasing smile. “Oh, was I being too familiar?”

“As a matter of fact you were,” Kerney said.

“Come on, Kerney. We’re old friends. Don’t be so uptight.”

“Old friends, and nothing more,” Kerney replied.

Julia tossed her hair and gazed up at him. “Maybe we should change that.”

“Not likely.”

“Are you a happily married man, Kerney?”

“Indeed I am.”

Julia giggled. “I’ve heard that line before.” She kissed him on the cheek. “Let me know when you change your mind.”

He watched her walk away, hips swaying in tight jeans, her body toned and trimmed. Or was it that she’d been under a plastic surgeon’s knife, maybe more than once?

Johnny Jordan stood in the front room of his parents’ house, trying to force down the uneasiness that always overcame him when he was about to see his father. Except for the ticking of the ornate mantel clock above the fireplace, not a sound could be heard. On the bookcase that held his father’s prize collection of books by novelists, biographers, and historians of the Old West stood the Cattleman of the Year Award his parents had jointly won some years back.

Johnny had shown up late to the award ceremony, drunk and in the company of a blond, buxom woman he’d picked up after finishing in the money at a California rodeo. He couldn’t remember the blonde’s name or even what she looked like. She’d been just another anonymous buckle bunny, one of the many women who made themselves available to rodeo cowboys after the events were over and the partying began. But he clearly remembered the disgusted look on his father’s face when he’d walked in with his date.

He shook off the memory and pushed his uneasiness aside. Ever since the day he’d left home to become a rodeo cowboy, the old man had never given Johnny anything but grief about the way he lived his life, had never once shown any pride in Johnny’s success and accomplishments. All he got from his father was criticism and some money when he needed it. Except for the games he had to play to get the old man to open his wallet, that suited Johnny just fine.

He stepped into the kitchen, and through the window he saw his mother in the backyard tending the flower beds that bordered a flagstone patio shaded by several large honey locust trees. He watched her for a minute as she carefully pruned a butterfly bush and put the cuttings in a neat pile at her feet. She’d slowed down considerably since Johnny had seen her last, and her face looked tired and drawn.

He rubbed his eyes, stifled a yawn, put on a big smile, opened the back door, and said, “How’s my girl? Need some help?”

Bessie shook her head and removed her gardening gloves. “You wouldn’t know what to do.”

“I’d probably just make a mess of things,” Johnny agreed jovially, surprised that his mother made no attempt to hug him. “Where is he?”

“He left before you arrived to meet up with Walt down at the old Shugart cabin,” Bessie said. “That’s where they’ll be pasturing the cattle for your movie.”

“Why doesn’t he just leave that stuff to Walt?” Johnny asked. “After all, he pays the man good money to manage the ranch.”

“Because he loves doing it,” Bessie said, “and would probably die if he didn’t get up and go to work every day, even if it’s only for a few hours. It’s bad enough that he can’t ride a horse anymore.”

“Is he still not talking to me?”

Slowly, Bessie lowered herself into a patio chair and looked at Johnny with sad eyes.

“What is it this time?” he asked.

“A woman named Brenda called for you here last night, and your father answered the phone. Why did you tell her your father had had a stroke?”

“I never said that. I said he wasn’t getting around all that well. Brenda must have misunderstood. She’s a flake. Half the time I don’t even know what she’s talking about. Don’t worry, I’ll set things right with him.”

“You leave your father alone for now,” Bessie said sharply. “He doesn’t want to see you.”

“All because of what some woman who doesn’t know what she’s talking about said? That’s ridiculous.”

“Do you really want your father dead?” Bessie asked.

Johnny knelt down and patted his mother’s knee. “Come on, you know better than that.”

Bessie pushed his hand away. “You never mean any of your little lies, and you always try to sweet-talk your way out of them. Until you show your father the respect he deserves, I’m not going to stand up to him on your behalf anymore.”

She rose, reclaimed her gloves, and began snipping angrily at the butterfly bush with the pruning shears.

Johnny stared at his mother’s back. She’d been his strongest ally in the family, the person he relied on to mend the broken fences between him and the old man. He wondered what he could do to fix things with her.

It had saddened Bessie that her children had produced no offspring, although she rarely spoke of it. Would it help to tell her that she had a granddaughter? A girl that Johnny had fathered ten years ago? He decided truth telling would only backfire and get him deeper in trouble. He had no pictures of the girl, hadn’t seen her in years, didn’t even know where she lived.

He watched as his mother pruned the shrub, the twigs of the butterfly bush falling haphazardly around her feet. Figuring out a way to placate her would have to wait. Right now, there was Brenda to deal with. He needed to sweet-talk his way back into Brenda’s good graces. He wasn’t about to head back to Denver when the weekend was over without a place to stay.

As he left the backyard, he dialed Brenda’s number on his cell phone. Maybe if he told her his father had Alzheimer’s, that would do the trick.

After lunch the team drove in a convoy on a ranch road that wound toward the mountains in the direction of the Shugart cabin, where, according to the location schedule, filming of the roundup and cattle drive would take place. Julia, who had invited herself along, positioned herself between Kerney and Susan Berman in the backseat of their vehicle. During the drive she kept her leg pressed against Kerney’s while ignoring him and making small talk with Berman.

Over the course of the morning there had not been a lot for Kerney to do, other than watch Usher and his people in action. Johnny, who was riding in the lead car, had made himself scarce after leaving Joe and Bessie’s house, walking back and forth in front of the barn, energetically talking to someone on his cell phone.

After a bumpy thirty-minute drive the caravan arrived at the Shugart cabin, which turned out to be a partially collapsed line shanty marked by two old cottonwood trees that had died from lack of water. Behind the cabin stood a windmill missing half a dozen blades. Sagging chicken wire hung on listing fence posts enclosed the site.

About a quarter mile west, in a holding pasture of untrammeled grassland intermixed with clumps of blue-green sage, a small group of men were building a corral out of railroad ties, wire, and large poles. They were using a backhoe with a front-end bucket to dig the post holes and set the heavy crossrails.

The pasture rose to meet a rocky, vertical cliff face in the mountains that was broken by a sheer, narrow gap. Here and there on a jumble of outcroppings, an occasional juniper had gained a foothold, showing up dark green against gray stone etched with thin, pale-pink fissures.

Usher assembled his crew in front of the cabin and immediately got down to business. Johnny, who now seemed fully reengaged in the process, eagerly joined into the discussion of how best to film the opening sequence of the cattle roundup.

Kerney left the group and walked across the pasture toward the men who were building the corral. He was halfway there when Julia caught up to him, obviously unfazed by his earlier rejection. Kerney wasn’t sure what to expect from her. Would she be congenial or continue her seductive ways?

The day had heated up, and a fierce afternoon sun washed away the color of the grassland that waved gently in an intermittent breeze. High overhead a prairie falcon glided toward an inaccessible cliff shelf in the mountains, where some blackbirds set up an outcry and scattered into the sky.

“This is one of Daddy’s grass-bank pastures,” Julia said, as she matched Kerney stride for stride. “He burned two thousand acres three years ago, and it hasn’t been grazed on since.”

“It looks good,” Kerney said, his eyes fixed on the vehicles parked near the work site. A panel van, very much like the one that had passed him on the highway, stood out among the pickup trucks. In such a sparsely populated area, where most folks drove pickup trucks, he wondered what the probability of spotting another panel van might be. Perhaps not entirely unlikely, but certainly interesting nonetheless.

At the corral Julia introduced him to Walt Shaw, the ranch manager. Under his cowboy hat Shaw had the face of a man who’d called the open range his office for a lifetime. Probably in his late forties, he had a wide mouth, a long, broad nose, and a blunt chin.

Over the noise of the backhoe he greeted Julia warmly, pulled off his work gloves, shook Kerney’s hand, and smiled, showing a gap between his two front teeth.

“Where’s my father?” Julia asked.

“Took off some time ago,” Shaw replied.

“We didn’t pass him on the road,” Kerney said.

“Didn’t go that way,” Shaw said, nodding in the opposite direction. “He’s two pastures south, where we’re gathering the cattle.”

“Are you building the horse corral for the movie?” Kerney asked.

“Yep, but we get to keep it after you folks are long gone,” Shaw replied. “Bought and paid for by Hollywood. Can’t beat that, I’d say.”

“No, you can’t,” Kerney said, looking at the four men who were busy setting posts. Two of them were the cowboys who had stopped at the accident scene on the highway. “Is this your permanent crew?” he asked.

“They’re day hands I hired on for the job,” Shaw said. “My two full-time wranglers, Kent and Buster, are busy gathering. We’re planning to bring the cattle up here nice and slow.”

Kerney nodded and asked if the slot canyon through the mountains was Granite Pass, and Shaw allowed that it was, noting that the smelter sat one valley over, due southwest of their location.

Ranch raised, Kerney knew better than to ask about the size of the spread, which was akin to asking how much money the Jordan family had in the bank. But he did ask Julia how close the ranch came to the Mexican border.

“About twenty miles,” Julia replied. She went on to explain that the high country on the ranch was mostly leased state and federal land, while the valley land was all deeded property.

Behind Julia, twenty feet away, the two cowboys Kerney had seen yesterday were eyeing him and talking to their companions.