The Crush (17 page)

"Rennie?" Crystal used a damp cloth to swipe some spilled sugar off the counter. "I heard she became a doctor. Can you beat that?

Don't know whether to believe it or not. She never came back to Dalton after her folks packed her off to that fancy boarding school up in Dallas. I guess after what happened they wanted to wash their hands of her."

"Why? What happened?"

Crystal didn't catch his question. Instead she smiled at an old man who hobbled up to the counter and took one of the stools near Wick's.

He was wearing a plaid cowboy shirt with pearl snap buttons and blue jeans, both starched and ironed as stiff as boards. As he sat down, he removed his straw hat and set it on the counter, crown down--the proper way.

"Hey, Gus. How's life treatin' you?"

"Same as yesterday when you asked me."

"What'chu havin'?"

He looked over at Wick. "Been ordering the same goddamn meal for twenty years and she still asks."

"Okay, okay," Crystal said. "Chili cheeseburger and fries," she called out to the cook, who had been catching a break now that the after-church crowd had thinned.

"And one of those." Gus nodded toward Wick's beer.

"Gus is one of our local celebrities,"

Crystal told Wick as she uncapped a beer bottle.

"Not so you'd notice," the old man grumbled.

He took the bottle from her and tilted it to his tobacco-stained lips.

"Rodeo bull rider," Crystal said proudly. "How many years were you a national champion, Gus?"

"A few, I guess."

She winked at Wick. "He's modest.

He's got more of those champeen belt buckles than Carter has liver pills."

"That many broken bones, too." The old man took another long drink of his beer.

"We were talking about Rennie Newton,"

Crystal said. "Remember her, Gus?"

"I may be all bent and broke near in two, but I ain't brain-dead." He looked over at Wick again. "Who're you?"

Wick extended his right hand across the vacant stools separating them. It was like shaking hands with a cactus. "Wick Threadgill. On my way to Amarillo. Killing some time before hitting the road again. Seems I knew one of your local girls."

Crystal moved down the counter to slap menus in front of two young men who had come in and greeted her by name. When she was out of earshot, Gus turned on his stool toward Wick. "You knew the Newton girl?"

"In college," he said, hoping that Gus wouldn't ask which institute of higher learning they had attended.

"You gonna take offense at straightforward man talk?"

"No."

"Some do these days, you know. Everybody's gotta be politically correct."

"Not me."

The old man nodded, sipped his beer. "That little gal was one of the finest looking two-legged animals I ever clapped eyes on. One of the most spirited, too. 'Course she wouldn't've looked twice at a mangled old fart like me, but when she was racing, everybody stopped to watch.

She got the blood of all the young bucks pumping hot and thick."

"Racing?"

"Barrel racing."

Barrel racing? The Rennie Newton he knew used a ruler to stack up her magazines.

He couldn't imagine her competing in a rodeo event. "I didn't know she participated."

"Hell, yeah, son. Every Saturday night April through July, Dalton holds a local rodeo. Ain't much of one on a national scale, but to folks around here it's a pretty big deal.

Almost as big as football.

"Anyhow, cowboys would stack up three deep to watch Rennie race. Never showed an ounce of fear. No, sir. I saw her throwed off her horse twice. Both times she got right up, dusted off that saucy butt, climbed right back on.

"The cowboys used to say it was the way she rode that made her thighs so strong." He winked his crinkled eyelid. "Don't know myself, as I never had the pleasure of getting between them, but them that did said they ain't never had it that good."

Wick grinned, but his fingers had formed a death-grip around his beer bottle.

"But that was cowboy talk," Gus said with a shrug. "We're all big liars, so it's anybody's guess as to who was talking from experience and who was talking out his ass. I figure a lot more tried than actually got to enjoy. All I know is, that little filly kept T. Dan good and riled, and that was fine by me."

"T. Dan?"

The old cowboy fixed a rheumy, wary gaze on him. "You didn't know her at all, did ya?"

"No. Not at all."

"T. Dan was her daddy. A son of a bitch of the worst sort."

"What sort is that?"

"Y'all doing all right?" Crystal had returned after preparing cherry Cokes for the two young men at the end of the counter.

Wick said, "Gus was telling me about T.

Dan Newton."

"He hasn't been dead near long enough to suit most people around here," she said with a dry laugh.

"What did he do to piss everybody off?"

"Whatever he damn well felt like," she replied. "Just for example, tell him about your beef with him, Gus."

The old cowboy finished his beer. "T. Dan hired me to break a horse for him. He was a good horse but a mean bastard. I broke him, trained him, but wound up with a busted anklebone.

T. Dan wouldn't pay for my doctor bill.

Said it was my own fool fault that got me hurt. I'm talking about a lousy seventy-five dollars, which was chicken feed to somebody with T.

Dan's bankroll."

"He was good at making money but bad at making and keeping friends," Crystal said.

"It sounds like the whole family was rotten to the core," Wick said.

"If you ask me, the town's well rid of 'em." Gus scratched his cheek.

"Wouldn't mind seeing that gal take another spin around those barrels, though. Just thinking about it has got me horny. You got plans tonight, Crystal?"

"In your dreams, old man."

"What I figured." With what looked like a painful effort, Gus got off his stool and hobbled over to the jukebox.

Wick finished his beer. "Thanks for everything, Crystal. It's been great talking to you. You take credit cards?" Before signing the tab, he added a hefty tip and enough for an extra beer.

"Uncap another long-neck for Gus. My compliments."

"He'll appreciate it. Never knew him to turn down a free drink."

Trying to appear nonchalant, he said,

"Earlier you said that Rennie's parents had sent her to boarding school. What was the final straw for them? Why did they want to get rid of her?"

"Oh, that." Crystal pushed a slipping bobby pin back into her pile of hair. "She killed a man."

Chapter 11

"Excuse me?"

"You heard right, Oren. She killed a man."

"Who?"

"I don't know yet."

"When?"

"Don't know that either."

"Where are you?"

"Headed back."

"From?"

"Dalton."

"You went to Dalton? I thought you were going to bed and sleep the day away."

"Do you want to hear this or not?"

"How'd you find out that she killed a man?"

"Crystal told me."

"Am I supposed to know who Crystal is?"

Wick recounted most of his conversation with the waitress in the Wagon Wheel. When he finished, Oren said, "Was she credible, you think?"

"As the FBI. She's lived there all her life, knows everybody in town. The caf`e is the epicenter of the community. Anyway, why would she lie?"

"To impress you?"

"Well, I was impressed, but I don't think that's why Crystal told me."

"Then for kicks?"

"I don't think so. She isn't the type who'd lie for recreation."

"Well, she's your friend, not mine. I'll have to take your word for it. Did she know you're a cop?"

"I'm not a cop."

"Jesus," Oren muttered. "Did she know or not?"

"No."

"Then why was she divulging all this information to a total stranger?"

"She thought I was cute."

"Cute?"

"That's what she said. But I don't think Gus was all that keen on me." Wick smiled, imagining Oren silently counting to ten.

Finally he said, "You're going to make me ask, aren't you?"

Wick laughed, then repeated almost word for word his conversation with the retired bull rider. "Rennie Newton fanned his embers, but he hated her old man. According to your research, T. Dan Newton was a successful businessman, right?"

"And community gadabout."

"Even so, he wasn't the town's favorite son. Gus called him a "son of a bitch of the worst sort, which, in policemen's vernacular, probably translates to somewhere in the vicinity of cocksucker."

Oren ruminated on all that, finally saying,

"Rennie Newton was a wild child?
Promiscuous?"

"Both said our Rennie was hot to trot."

"The gossip about her could've been exaggerated.
Once a girl's reputation goes bad it only gets worse."

"Gus conceded that," Wick said.

"In any case, it sure as hell doesn't match Dr. Newton's present image."

"Sure as hell doesn't."

"So who is this woman?" Oren asked in frustration. "What's the reality and what's the pose? Will the real Rennie Newton please stand up?"

Wick had nothing to contribute. He was more bumfuzzled than Oren. He'd been subjected to a brush-off that still stung. To get that good at rebuffing a man's attention she must've had lots of practice, which was contradictory to what he'd heard, today.

Oren said, "The talkative Crystal didn't give you the lowdown on the murder?"

"What murder?"

"She killed a man, Wick."

"We don't know it was a murder. It could've been a hunting accident, an errant tennis serve, a boating mishap, or--"

"Or maybe she screwed some poor bastard into a coronary. Did you check with the local police?"

"I don't have a badge so I couldn't go waltzing in and start asking questions about a killing when I didn't even know the nature of the crime--if indeed it was a crime. I didn't know the victim's name or when the incident occurred."

"Newspaper files?"

"It's Sunday. A high school kid was baby-sitting the phone, but the offices were closed.

Ditto on government offices and the courthouse."

"Public library?"

"Closed for remodeling. Books could be checked out at the bookmobile parked on Crockett Street, but no research material was available."

Oren sighed with frustration.

"I couldn't press Crystal for more information,"

Wick continued. "I was still experiencing the concussion from her bombshell when the city's baseball team trooped in. They were fresh from practice, hot, thirsty, demanding beer and burgers. Crystal had her hands full.

"Besides, if I'd continued talking about a girl I was supposed to have had a passing acquaintance with years ago, Crystal might have turned suspicious and clammed up. Gut instinct told me she wouldn't have taken such a shine to me if she'd known I was a cop."

"You're not a cop."

"Right. That's what I meant."

"What about the old man? That Gus. Did he have anything else to impart?"

"He'd started talking to a clone of himself about the good ol' days on the rodeo circuit. I couldn't very well interrupt and ply him with more questions."

"Maybe you didn't want to hear the answers."

"What's that mean?"

"Nothing."

Wick did a ten-count of his own. For the last couple days Oren had been casting out these tidbits of bait. Wick recognized them for what they were and refused to bite. Oren wanted to know whether or not he was attracted to Rennie Newton, regardless of her possible involvement in a homicide. It wasn't a subject he cared to discuss, or even self-analyze.

"I tried to learn more, Oren. I drove around Dalton to see what I could see, but it was futile. As soon as I get back to Fort Worth I'll go on-line and see what I can find, but I didn't bring my laptop--"

"Got it, got it," Oren said. "You did all you could."

"Thank you."

After a long silence, Oren said, "So what do you think?"

"About what?"

"Her, Wick. Dammit! Who are we talking about?"

"Hell, I don't know what to think. We need to find out what this "killing" amounted to."

"Except a dead man, you mean."

Wick's patience slipped another notch, but he kept his voice even. "Until we know the facts surrounding that, we shouldn't jump to any conclusions."