The Homeplace: A Mystery (10 page)

Kendall met the coroner at the front gate. The two talked for a minute. They kept their voices low enough that Birdie couldn’t hear. One of the paramedics joined them. More hushed conversation, and then the coroner and paramedic went into Coach’s house.

Sheriff Kendall walked to the corner of the yard. The neighbor lady, the pastor from the church, and Mercy stood there at the fence. The sheriff told them it was best if they would all go home. Mercy unfolded her arms and touched the ends of her hair.

Damn, Mercy. Just like high school. Never miss a chance to show off for the boys.

From the porch with Birdie, Marty and the other paramedic watched Mercy stretch and primp. Birdie glanced down at her short legs, green uniform, and stained Carhartt parka, then shook her head.

And sixteen years later Mercy still has more than clothes to show off.

Sheriff Kendall came back to the porch. “Officer Hawkins,” he said, “you talk to Ray-Ray this afternoon?”

She shook her head. “Never caught up to him. Went by his place. No sign of him.” All the pancakes she’d eaten in the church basement somersaulted in Birdie’s stomach. “You’re not thinkin’ he had somethin’ to do with this?”

“Two murders in my county on the same day. I gotta think about everythin’.” He looked from the house back to the yard.

When Birdie followed his eyes, Mercy was still by the fence.

“Hawkins, I want you to check Ray-Ray’s house once more on your way home. If he’s there, call me, and we’ll decide what to do. Otherwise there’ll be a meetin’ at my office, nine o’clock tomorrow mornin’. I want you to be there. Go on now.”

“I promised Chase I’d take Mercy home.”

“You do what I say. I’ll take care of Mercy.”

*   *   *

Marty had just finished stringing yellow crime-scene tape around Coach’s house when two cars from the state police showed up. An hour had passed so he called Deb again to tell her where he was and let her know he had no idea when he’d be home.

Paco Martinez’s patrol car pulled in behind the boys from the state. Instead of following them into the house, the old deputy came to Marty. He had two cups of coffee from Town Pump in his hands and a paper bag tucked under his arm. He handed Marty one of the cups and opened the bag. “Breakfast burritos. Take one,” he said.

“We’ve had long nights before,” Marty said, reaching into the sack, “but none like this.”

Paco gave a head jerk to the paramedics. They joined Paco and Marty at the fence. Paco had burritos for them, too.

“Anythin’ yet?” Marty asked.

The lead paramedic shrugged. “We could be here a long time. It’ll be up to the coroner how soon we can take the body.”

“Do we know anythin’ more than when we got here?” Marty sipped his coffee.

“Coroner had me take a liver temp. I’m guessin’ time of death was late last night.” The paramedic took a bite of his burrito. “Did you see that gash on his forehead? Before we found the knife, I thought he fell and hit his head. Now I’m thinkin’ someone hit him and then stabbed him. Hit him hard. No sign of a struggle. He could have laid there for three or four hours before he bled out.”

A chill crept down Marty’s back.

The paramedic chomped down another bite. “Helluva way to die. All alone like that.”

Kendall crossed the yard to join the others. Paco held out the bag with the burritos. Kendall shook his head. “There’s nothin’ more for me to do here. Paco, you and Marty hang tight and help the troopers with anythin’ they need. I want you both in my office at nine in the mornin’.” He zipped up his coat and adjusted the brim of his cowboy hat. “Earned your money today, didn’t you?”

The sheriff let himself out of the front gate and opened his pickup’s door. In the light from the dome lamp, Marty spotted Mercy Saylor in the passenger seat.

*   *   *

Birdie knew Ray-Ray wouldn’t be home. He damn well knew they were looking for him and was holed up somewhere waiting for things to blow over.

If he was still even in the county.

But her oath as a Division of Wildlife officer was to uphold the laws of the state. That meant even if she didn’t like Sheriff Kendall, she had to do what she was asked.

There was no sign anyone was home at Ray-Ray’s when Birdie pulled into the yard. A dog came out from under the porch and barked. No lights came on in the house. She sat for a long minute more and then slipped the truck into reverse and headed for home.

Damn it, she hated taking orders from high-and-mighty Sheriff Lincoln my-shit-don’t-stink Kendall.

She could complain to her boss first thing in the morning. But he’d tell her that the state of Colorado paid her to enforce the law. Not just when it came to game and fish. And if the locals needed her help, she was to do what she could.

It should have been a good day. Seeing Chase again. But two dead bodies …

Birdie opened the back door to the old house she rented a mile south of Brandon.

Chase looks just like he did.

Birdie kicked off her boots on the throw rug just inside the kitchen door. She hung her jacket and gun belt on the hooks next to the refrigerator. She took a water glass from the dishes left to air dry on the rack next to the sink.

Birdie opened the cabinet over the sink, took down a bottle, and filled the glass half full of Crown Royal.

Chase Ford. She still dreamed about him after all those years. But Mercy still had his attention. Always would.

Birdie took a drink. And the tears she thought were gone poured down her face.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

If any house in Comanche County was haunted, it was the ranch house where Chase was raised. Not by ghosts or spirits, but by his memories. No matter how far he took himself from the Colorado prairies, no matter how much money he had, and no matter how many people knew his name, he could not forget the things that had happened in that house.

He had promised himself he would leave it just the way it had been on the day he walked away. After his father’s death, he had paid people to take the food from the kitchen, give his father’s and mother’s clothes to charity, drape the furniture, and pull the curtains. He never wanted anyone to live there again.

Drawn to the house because of the two dead men—one who had been his friend and the other who was so much like Chase himself as a boy—Chase did something he had told himself he would never do.

He opened the door.

The beam of his flashlight pierced the midnight darkness. A spiderweb, filthy with years of trapped flies and moths, curtained the opening. Chase reached up and brushed it away. He held his breath, fearing that the betrayal and evil he remembered would reach out their talons and draw him in.

But it was just an old house. Swirls of dust floated in the column of light. Piles of stuffing the mice had torn from the furniture were strewn across the floor, and rodent droppings crunched under his boots.

It was the good times he remembered first.

The smells of all the dinners from his mother’s kitchen. The warmth the house offered on cold nights. The times they laughed together—his father and his mother. The times before the accident.

Big Paul never said it was Chase’s fault. He never said it with words. But his father’s eyes and the things he didn’t say made it clear to Chase that his father held him accountable for that terrible day.

It was Chase’s sophomore year of high school. The basketball team had a game in a town a half day drive from Brandon. Big Paul was busy with the harvest and needed his help. Chase pleaded to go with the team, and Big Paul only relented when his mother said she would drive the truck.

She’d done it before, and that day should have been like all the others. But it wasn’t.

When Chase got to the hospital in Hugo, she looked small. Bruised and cut, plastic tubes taped to her arms. A helicopter was on its way to take her to Colorado Springs, where they could better care for her.

“Her back’s broken,” the doctor told him. “She might never walk again.”

But Chase’s mother was strong. She had faith. He loved her. He would help her.

After weeks in Colorado Springs, they moved her to the rehabilitation center in Denver. Chase drove there each weekend. To see her, to help her, to tell her how much he loved her.

Big Paul never visited, and his mother never walked again.

In the beam from his flashlight, dingy bed sheets hung over the hospital bed Big Paul had brought from Pueblo. When his father finally brought her back to the ranch, he put the bed in the dining room. His mother stayed there. While Chase was at school and Big Paul worked the farm, she lay in her bed alone. A nurse visited each day. But his mother was alone.

Then Isabel came. Big Paul said he hired her to cook and clean. Take care of the house. Do what she could for his mother.

At first everything had been fine. Then instead of coming each day, Isabel moved in. It would be easier that way, Big Paul told him. She took a bedroom upstairs. And then she shared Big Paul’s bed.

His mother had to know. But she smiled and pretended everything was fine.

Chase pretended, too.

For two years he pretended. When the people in Brandon talked, he pretended he didn’t hear. When alcohol fueled Big Paul and he bellowed through the house that his mother should do them a favor and die, Chase pretended he didn’t mean it. When Isabel swelled with the baby, he pretended that he couldn’t see.

His world became basketball. The people in town praised him. He led the state in scoring. Everyone in the county came to the games. Everyone but Big Paul.

And when they played for the championship in Denver, his mother listened on the radio by the hospital bed in the dining room. Big Paul and Isabel never made it to the game. They stayed in the hotel. Together.

And his mother died. The favor his father demanded happened three days after the championship game. And Chase quit pretending. He moved in with Coach and promised himself he’d never go back to the ranch again.

What do seventeen-year-olds know about forever?

A full-ride scholarship took him to college that fall. Then four years in the pros. A year trying to make it back and three more on TV. And four lived in a blur. Billee left him, and he was alone. As alone as his father.

He heard that Isabel moved out. And that she had a baby girl she named Dolly. Years later she married an older man named Victor and lived in Brandon until she died.

Like the old house, Big Paul stayed alone on the prairie. Worked the farm and raised his cattle, and folks in town said he partnered up with Jim Beam. Driving by the homeplace, anyone would think it just like every other farmhouse and would never know about the filth and darkness inside.

Chase climbed the stairs to his room. He sat on his bed and switched off the flashlight. Darkness wrapped around him. Outside an animal screamed. A barn owl swooped by the window carrying a struggling rabbit in its talons. Down the hallway, Chase heard bedsprings groan and his mother cry downstairs.

He left the house and locked the door behind him.

*   *   *

Sheriff Kendall jerked awake to the vibration of his cell phone on the table by the bed. He caught the phone as the next series of hums made the phone crawl over the polished wood. As sleep left his eyes he saw the incoming number.

He punched
receive
and pressed the phone to his ear. “Sheriff Kendall here.”

He twisted in the sheets and touched the naked hip of the woman next him.

“Good to hear from you,” he whispered into the phone.

“I’ve cleared it with my boss. I’ll be there tomorrow, and I’m bringing a camera crew with me. Anything I should know?”

Kendall enjoyed the woman’s voice. “Meetin’ tomorrow mornin’ at nine. Can you be there?”

“I’ll do my best.”

He liked the purr in her voice. “Okay. County buildin’ in Comanche Springs. See you there.”

Kendall swung his legs out of bed and sat up. He squeezed the cell phone until his fingers hurt.

“What it is, Linc?” the woman beside him asked.

“Just a reporter from a TV station in Colorado Springs. Wants to interview me. About the murders.”

“Oh, no. Don’t you have enough to do?”

“It goes with the job,” he told his wife.
And voters remember a man who’s been on television.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Most times a shower washed away the day’s troubles and put Marty at ease. This night, he stood under the stream of water until he had used every drop from the double-wide’s tiny hot water heater. He let icy cold water pound his back and shoulders while the faces of the two dead filled his mind.

Murders didn’t happen in Comanche County.

The last one Marty remembered was two years before. A farmworker with too much liquor in him had stuck a knife in his brother’s back. Over a woman. Paco found the killer behind the bar, cradling his dead brother’s head lying in his lap, bawling over what he’d done.

That killing happened in a blur of whiskey and machismo. It wasn’t cold and calculated like what had happened to Jimmy Riley and Coach Porter.

Marty padded barefoot past the room where his two boys slept in their bunk beds above a tumble of toys and clothes. He whispered a prayer to keep them safe as he looked in. Marty dared not turn on the light in the master bedroom, but pushed Deb’s cowboy boots out of the way with his foot and eased into bed beside her.

Her eyes never opened. She mumbled to him, turned, and curled up next to his side. In his wife’s belly, the weight of their unborn little girl rested between them. Marty’s eyes wouldn’t close. Too much to think about.

Jimmy and Coach.

Marty replayed the day over and over again in his mind. Each time it came back to Jimmy’s father. He never went to see his son play. Worried about the truck and how much a funeral would cost. Then Marty had found the cartridge box on the table in the apartment.

Did Jimmy’s old man have something against Coach for the attention he gave his son? And what had he said about Jimmy’s girlfriend?