Skull Duggery (19 page)

“No, no,” Jamie said, beginning to gather the papers to him. “Enough, already. Thank you, Julie, we can finish up this afternoon.”

A quick, wincing exchange of eyebrow-shrugs between Julie and Gideon sent the same message both ways: There went their plan to go into Oaxaca together. “Tomorrow?” Julie mouthed, and Gideon nodded.

“Anyway,” Jamie went on, “Annie’ll be arriving at the airport, and I’m going to have to get going in a minute. Carl”-he gestured at Carl, manfully, gracefully cinching a saddle on a fidgety mare-“is tied up with a guest ride, so it’s up to me.”

“What about your knee, Jamie?” Gideon asked. “Can you drive all right? If not, I’d be glad to pick her up for you.”

“No, it’s not a problem. The vans all have automatic shifts, so I don’t use my left leg. Have a seat, Gideon, will you?”

“Julie, I’m glad I found you!” It was Tony, striding toward them from the dining room, still chewing. “I owe you an apology. I was on you like a ton of bricks there the other night, and I had no business doing it. A few too many beers, I guess.”

Tony rose a couple of notches in Gideon’s estimation.

“I had no business prying,” Julie said. “I had a few too many beers too.”

Tony took a chair from another table, pulled it over, and straddled it wrong-way-round, with his elbows leaning on the back. The denim over his massive thighs was stretched tight with the strain. “You see-”

“Tony, it’s all right, you don’t have to,” Julie said.

“No, I want to.” He looked at his brother. “Or did you fill her in already, Jamie?”

Jamie shook his head, looking down at the papers he was continuing to arrange. “Not me.”

“Okay, then.” Tony took a rasping breath, gathering his thoughts. “It’s like this. What I started to say-”

Gideon got up, murmuring. “I guess I’ll go-”

Gruffly, Tony waved him back. “Just sit, will you? I got no deep, dark secret here. I just didn’t want to talk about it in front of…” With his chin he gestured at Carl, still busy below with the horses, and well out of hearing range.

“It’s like this…” he said again and had to stop for another noisy, sighing breath. Deep, dark secret or not, he was having trouble getting it out. “See… well, in a way I’m responsible for what happened. With Blaze, I mean. When she… when she…”

“Tony, you are not responsible for what Blaze did,” Jamie said with a patient resignation that suggested they had been through this many times before. “Nobody thinks that. Even Carl doesn’t think so. You’re the only one.”

Tony ignored him. “See, the thing is,” he said mostly to Julie, “things were messy. See, my father made Carl the executor of the will, with full power of attorney-”

“Technically, it wasn’t power of attorney,” said Jamie. “It was-”

“Well, whatever the hell you want to call it,” Tony said with exasperation. “It meant that he was running the damn ranch for the two years it took me to get out of jail and show up. Okay?”

Jamie was silent.

“And you know Carl, he was working his ass off, and not doing too bad, either, considering it was just a horse ranch at the time. He was the boss man, and Blaze, she was the boss lady. And then, all of a sudden, after all that time, in walks the black sheep brother, who never gave a damn about the place, fresh out of jail, to take it all away from them. How could they not be ticked off?” Unexpectedly, he chuckled. “And if that wasn’t bad enough, I was so big-headed I actually fired him, remember?”

“Well, for about five minutes,” Jamie said.

“More like five days.”

“You fired Carl?” Julie said, her eyebrows going up.

Tony shrugged. “Yeah, I did. Amazing, huh? See, I just-well, I wanted him out of my hair, you know? I mean, he was already sending me all this advice about how I should and shouldn’t do things when I got back. I figured he’d cramp my style-I didn’t know him then, you understand. So I sent him this letter telling him I was gonna let him go. I knew this guy Brax, you see-I forget his whole name-”

“Braxton Faversham,” Jamie said.

Tony smiled. “Braxton Pontleby Faversham, right. Is that a name or what? Anyway, he grew up on this ranch in Oregon, so he knew all about that stuff, and I just figured I’d be better off with him as my head wrangler instead of Carl. But, I don’t know, the more I thought about it, the lousier the idea got. My father really thought a lot of Carl, and I didn’t really know Brax all that well. Besides,” he said, laughing, “who ever heard of a head wrangler named Braxton Pontleby Faversham? So I changed my mind, told Carl I wanted him to stay. But the whole thing-he couldn’t have liked it.”

“Tony, that is simply not fair,” Jamie said. “Have you ever once gotten even a smidgen of resentment from Carl?”

“Well no, not from Carl,” Tony admitted, “but, you know, Carl’s pretty good at keeping his feelings to himself. But be honest, how else could he feel? How would you feel? One day he’s the boss of the whole shebang and the next day he’s just another hired hand, taking orders from the jailbird son-the jailbird son on account of whose happy arrival his wife has just taken off with some sleazy ranch hand.”

When Jamie opened his mouth to protest, Tony shushed him. “Anyway, it wasn’t really Carl I was talking about, it was Blaze. And Blaze-I know you agree with me, Jamie, even if you won’t admit it-Blaze was pretty damn hot-tempered, even as a kid. You’ll never make me believe she didn’t resent it when I came back. She must have thought I was gonna boot her out or something.”

“Well, what did she say when you showed up?” Gideon asked. It wasn’t his business, but he’d gotten caught up in the tangled story.

“She didn’t say anything,” Tony said. “She didn’t stick around long enough for me to get there. That’s my whole point. About three days after she finds out I’m on my way-two days before I show up-she’s gone, along with What’shisname-”

“Manolo,” Jamie supplied.

“With Manolo.”

“Manolo and sixteen thousand dollars cash, the entire ranch payroll,” Jamie said bitterly, and to Julie and Gideon: “Did you know he robbed me at gunpoint? It was the worst experience of my life. It was nightmarish, what with his waving the gun in my face and talking that way, without moving his mouth, like something out of Night of the Living Dead.” At the memory a shudder ran visibly up his body and ended by making his head jerk. “I couldn’t understand what he was saying, and he was getting more and more wild. He was like… I thought for sure he was going to shoot me.”

“And you think,” Julie said to Tony after a moment, “that she ran off with this guy because she couldn’t stand losing the ranch to you?”

“That’s exactly what I think.”

“But I don’t understand. She didn’t just leave the ranch, she left Carl. Why would you feel responsible for that?”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t only because of me…”

“It wasn’t at all because of you,” Jamie insisted. “Tony, you’d been residing elsewhere for years-”

Tony laughed. “ ‘Residing elsewhere.’ Don’t you love it?”

“You have no idea what Blaze was like. She was just so darn… She should have been in heaven. She had this beautiful little baby of her own-Annie-and as far as Carl was concerned, she walked on water; he couldn’t do enough for her. But she just couldn’t be happy, she simply didn’t have it in her. Manolo wasn’t the first… the first other man she was involved with, you know that.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Tony said listlessly. “But you know, Blaze and I never got along real well, even when we were kids. I don’t know what it was. I think maybe she resented me because she thought the old man, you know, liked me best of all.”

“The old man did like you best of all,” Jamie said without rancor. He looked at his watch, straightened the papers, slipped them into a folder, and grabbed his cane. “Oh my goodness, Annie will be arriving in less than an hour. I’d better be on my way. Thanks again, Julie, we’ll finish up easily tomorrow.”

As he left, Dorotea appeared with a platter loaded with four more mugs of coffee and a plate of nougat-and-almond bars.

“Gracias, mamacita,” Tony said, brightening and snatching one of the bars off the plate before she could get it to the table. “Ah, turrones, my favorites! Still warm too.”

“What isn’t your favorite?” Dorotea said in Spanish and stomped back to the dining room with the empty platter.

“Dorotea’s personality doesn’t change much, does it?” Julie said, smiling.

“Heart of gold,” said Tony, chomping away. “Best cook in Mexico. Wait till you try these.” He shoved the plate at them.

Indeed, they were luscious. Feather light, but moist and chewy at the same time, and subtly sweetened with honey, they ranked right up there with the best confections he’d ever tasted. And that coffee! He was beginning to see why Tony and the others so willingly put up with the woman’s crabbiness.

“What did Jamie mean,” he asked after a couple of blissful swallows, “about Manolo talking weirdly? Did he have some kind of impediment?”

“Not before Carl gave him one,” Tony said, laughing. “Busted his jaw in two places.”

“Carl hit him?” Julie exclaimed. “It’s hard to imagine that. He’s always so in control, so calm.”

As if to illustrate her point, a smiling, serene Carl, looking handsome and very much at home on horseback, was heading slowly out through the corral gate, followed by a line of devoted, mounted females. Like a gaggle of imprinted ducklings scurrying after mama, Gideon thought. Well, maybe not quite.

“Not when his wife is screwing around on him, I guess, pardon the language,” Tony said. “I guess he did feel bad about it, though. He paid for getting the guy’s jaw wired.”

Another turron slid down Tony’s gullet, and then another, the last of them. (“You guys weren’t gonna eat this, were you?”) He finished his coffee, pulled over the one Dorotea had brought out for Jamie, and started happily on it as well.

“And Blaze was never heard from again?” Julie asked. “She never even wanted to hear about her daughter?”

“Nope, never.”

“She just up and left with her boyfriend? No note, no anything?”

“No nothing,” Tony said. “I mean, I hadn’t got here yet-I didn’t show up until a couple of days later-so all I know is what everybody tells me. Blaze used to go into Oaxaca for lessons once a week, and she’d stay overnight-Wednesday, I think, and come back on Thursday. So one week she leaves for her lesson as usual-this is, like, one day after this creep Manolo gets kicked off the ranch by Carl-only she doesn’t show up the next morning the way she always does. And that happens to be Thursday, the morning Jamie brings back the payroll from Tlacolula. So Jamie gets in the van with a suitcase full of cash as usual, and starts driving back here, and as soon as he gets to a deserted stretch of road, Manolo jumps up and sticks a gun in his ear-he was hiding on the floor in back-grabs the cash, and drives off in the van, leaving the poor kid standing out in the desert, shaking like a leaf. I don’t think he’s ever gotten over it, even though there’s no way it’s his fault. He had to bum a ride on a manure wagon to get back.”

“And then?” Gideon asked.

“There isn’t any ‘and then.’ Good-bye Manolo, good-bye Blaze, good-bye payroll. End of story. Hey, look who’s here!”

Jamie and a broadly smiling Annie were coming across the terrace toward them.

“How the hell did you guys get back so fast?” Tony said, getting up and holding his arms open for Annie, who responded with her own enthusiastic hug.

“Tony, it’s so good to see you. I’m so glad I didn’t miss you!”

There were a few minutes of chatter, mostly to explain that Annie had caught an earlier flight than expected and had taken a taxi to Teotitlan rather than wait for Jamie. The taxi had pulled into the Hacienda’s parking lot just as Jamie was starting out for the airport in one of the vans.

“What happened to the turrones?” Jamie asked. “What happened to my coffee? I saw Dorotea bring it all out. I was gone, what, ten minutes, and it’s all gone?” He shook his head. “Never mind, if I put my mind to it, I think I can figure it out.”

Tony hunched his shoulders. “I was hungry.”

“Turrones?” Annie said. “Did I miss turrones?” She was back on her feet and headed for the kitchen. “Maybe she made a few more.”

Smiling, Tony watched her go. “One thing we got in this family, we got healthy appetites,” he said approvingly, then called after her. “Hey, bring out whatever she’s got in there. We could use some more coffee too!”

“What kind of lessons was she taking?” Julie asked Tony.

“Huh?”

“You said Blaze went into Oaxaca for lessons every week. I was just wondering what she was taking.”

“Oh hell, I don’t know. I think it was some kind of-”

“Dance,” Jamie said. “Blaze’d been taking ballet lessons since she was nine. She was really serious about it too; practiced three solid hours every morning, seven days a week, even right after Annie was born. That’s one of the reasons I couldn’t believe it when she actually-”

It had taken all this time since the word “dance” for Gideon to find his voice. “She was a ballet dancer?” he croaked.

Jamie looked at him, puzzled. “That’s right, a good one. We all expected her-”

“How many teeth did she have?”

Now everybody looked confused, including Julie.

“How many teeth?” Jamie echoed with a hollow laugh. “I have no idea.”

“Tony, do you know?”

“No, how the hell would I know how many teeth she had?” Like the others, he’d been thrown off by Gideon’s sudden intensity. “What’s this with teeth?”

“How many teeth do you have?”

“How many-I don’t know, how many teeth does anybody have?”

“Mind if I peek?”

Tony looked at him peculiarly, then shrugged. “What the hell, help yourself.” He opened his mouth and Gideon peered in.

“No, they’re all there. Damn,” he added softly.

“Damn?” Tony echoed. “What do you mean, damn? Why shouldn’t I have all my teeth?”