The Homeplace: A Mystery (24 page)

But Cecil. Just his name made her skin crawl. The way the slimeball had acted while they waited for the ambulance to take Pop to the hospital still turned her stomach. She knew he’d lied about where he’d found the old man. If Cecil had something to do with the fire, then maybe he had something to do with the murders. But what?

She mapped the fire in her head. Paco said that they’d found the body they thought was Dolly’s about where the fire had started. West of where she’d found Cecil and Pop. West, not north.

Was Cecil trying to hide something? Was he that smart?

Scuffs in the snow alongside the dirt road showed the deer were on the move. Spooked out of the creek bottom by the fire, no doubt they were looking for shelter to ride out the storm. A set left by a coyote probably meant he was on the lookout for an easy dinner before the rabbits and other tasty critters hunkered down in their burrows to hide from the coming cold.

The next marks in the snow were different. She tapped her brakes and felt the back of her truck slip on the snowy road.

The tracks that crossed the dirt road at the Butt Notch hadn’t been laid down by any animal she had been entrusted to protect. She eased her pickup to the side of the road and checked the side mirror to see if the state trooper would do the same. He pulled in behind her and they met at the back of her truck.

The footprints came across a stubble field, ducked under the fence, crossed the barrow ditch and snowy road, and padded off across the bent prairie grass on the other side. From the length of the stride, Birdie could tell the man was in a hurry.

“Think these belong to him?” the trooper asked.

“Ain’t nobody but Ray-Ray who’d be out in this weather on foot.” She zipped up her Carhartt and adjusted the pistol on her hip. “His farmhouse is a couple miles from here, but that ain’t where he’s headed.” She shook her head. “He’s up to somethin’.”

The trooper squinted and looked out to where the tracks disappeared in a tangle of weeds and red tamaracks. “What’s out there?”

“Just two square miles of the roughest damn country God put in this county. And Ray-Ray’s spent all his forty years huntin’ and hikin’ in it. He knows every wrinkle out there.” Birdie lifted her foot to the running board on the side of her truck, pulled up her pant leg, and retied her boot laces. “You get on your radio and tell ’em what we found and say that we’re gonna follow those tracks for a ways.”

While the trooper did what she told him, Birdie dialed Marty’s number on her cell phone.

No answer.

She found a stocking cap and a pair of gloves behind her pickup’s seat. Snowflakes settled in her short hair. If there was one thing she hated more than walking, it was walking in the cold.

The trooper pulled on mittens. “Should I bring my shotgun?”

“Hell, if Ray-Ray’s as mad as I’m bettin’ he is he won’t let us get close enough for a scattergun to do any good.” She shut the door to her truck. “Do you got a machine gun with you?”

The trooper’s jaw dropped open. “There’s an M16 in the trunk.”

“Better bring it and all the bullets you can carry.” Birdie wiped her nose on the back of her glove.

“So you think he might shoot at us?”

“Not us.” Birdie slipped her pistol from its holster, checked to be sure there was a cartridge in the chamber, and snapped the gun back in place. “Ray-Ray’s been after me to come to dinner for years. If he shoots at anybody, it’s gonna be you.” She clomped out across the snowy ground. “You might want to walk behind me. Ray-Ray’s an awful good shot.”

*   *   *

Nowhere on the strands of DNA that made Chase who he was had the Creator thought to add patience. Waiting was something Chase didn’t do well.

He paced across Doyle’s classroom office again and stopped at the window. No sign of Kendall’s truck in the snowy parking lot outside. Chase pivoted on the heel of his boot and walked the eight steps to the far wall then turned and walked back.

He hated waiting.

That was why basketball suited him so well. The game moved. The back-and-forth on the court, the jumping and running, and the challenge of the opponent satisfied his senses. The hardest year of his life came during his freshman year of college when he was relegated to watching from the bench while older teammates played his game.

It had been almost as difficult during his rookie season with the Lakers, but an injury to a veteran player provided an opportunity that Chase wouldn’t give back. By the tenth game of that season he was being introduced to the crowded arenas as part of the starting lineup.

When the torn knee took basketball away, he spiraled inward, first waiting for the surgery, then waiting to heal, and finally waiting through long days for the rehab to give back his strength. The pills made waiting easier.

He took the last two steps to the window, paused, and looked again. Doyle had said Kendall was on his way. Chase glanced at the clock over the door. Eight minutes had gone by since Doyle had left him in the room alone and two since he’d last checked the time.

*   *   *

The footprints on the fresh snow were easy enough to follow. Maybe too easy.

What was Ray-Ray up to?

Cold air found its way up the back of Birdie’s coat and teased the bare swatch of skin where her shirttail had again worked loose from her pants. When Birdie paused to hitch up her britches, the state trooper bumped into her.

“Watch it,” she said.

“You said to stay close.”

“Not that close.” She glared at the trooper. “Gimme some room, Junior. Ray-Ray might miss you and hit me.”

“I thought you said he was a good shot.”

“Everybody misses once in a while.”

The trooper hung his head and stepped back.

Birdie clomped on. The more she thought about it, the more it didn’t make sense. If Ray-Ray didn’t want to be found, he was just too good to leave tracks like the ones they were following. He had to know they were after him. She pushed aside a tree branch, stepped through, and gave the branch an extra tug before she let it go.

Junior yelped as the branch smacked the top of his head.

“Damn it,” Birdie hissed. “I told you not to be watchin’ your feet. Ray-Ray’s out there somewhere.” She pointed through the brush. “You keep your eyes on where you’re goin’, not where you’re steppin’.” Her words turned to gray mist in the fading light. “If you get shot, don’t expect me to drag you outta here.”

She ducked under the next spray of branches and sent the last springing back toward Junior.

No yelp.

He’s learning.

But she’d rather have Marty with her than the still-green trooper. She fished her cell phone from her coat, thumbed Marty’s number up, and hit Send.

Call failed
showed on the little screen.

Crap.

Ray-Ray’s tracks never so much as showed a stumble. Never showed any signs he was tired and always stayed where they were easy to see. Almost as if he wanted to be found.

Double crap.

Birdie shook her head.

What’s he up to?

Hair stood on the back of her neck, and cold goose bumps popped up between the hairs. She knew each step put her and Junior farther from the road and closer to wherever it was Ray-Ray was leading them. Her arm brushed a thick tamarack, and powdery snow cascaded over her face.

Triple crap. And put a cherry on top of it.

Birdie dabbed at her eyes and blew through her lips. When she drew the next breath, she stopped stock-still.

“Junior. Smell that?”

He made a slippery sucking sound with his nose. Then sniffed again. “Yeah,” he whispered. “I smell something. What is it?”

“Wood smoke.” She sank to her knees and pulled the trooper down beside her. “Like from a campfire.”

*   *   *

In two more trips back and forth across the room, Chase ate up a minute and thirty-five seconds by the clock over the door. He traced a circle with the tip of his tongue onto the inside of his cheek and started the next trip. Outside the window, snowflakes the size of quarters replaced the smaller flakes from earlier. A gust of wind spun the snow into swirling funnels between the vehicles parked in the lot.

Chase stopped at the window and painted a steamy circle on the cold glass with his breath. Outside a semi rushed by, spraying slop and shaking the windows in the old building. Near the lights at Town Pump, a pickup turned onto the highway and headed toward the school. Between swipes of the truck’s windshield wipers, Chase recognized the black hat on Kendall’s head.

About time, Sheriff.

Chase waited to be sure that Kendall would stop, and when the sheriff stepped out of his truck, Chase went to meet him in the hallway.

A puff of cold followed Kendall in from outside. He slipped out of his jacket as he walked, brushed the snow from his hat, and placed the Resistol, crown down, on top of the trophy case outside the gym.

Doyle must have been watching for the sheriff to arrive. The detective came through the gym doors and met Kendall before Chase could get to him. Doyle had a clipboard of papers under his arm and a can of Diet Coke in his hand. He held out the clipboard for the sheriff.

Kendall glanced down the hall at Chase, hesitated for an instant, and then took the papers from Doyle. His head nodded and the muscles along his jawline tensed.

Even in the shadowy hallway Chase could see the shiny scar at the tip of Kendall’s left eyebrow. In a tight basketball game in that very building almost twenty years before—when Chase was a sophomore and Kendall was a junior—Chase had poked the ball loose from a Comanche Springs guard. The ball had rolled toward the sideline in front of the visitor student section, just at half court.

Mercy Saylor sat in the front row, determined to let everyone from Brandon know she was dating the captain of the Comanche Springs team. In a flash of muscle and sinew fueled by jealousy and teenage bravado, both Chase and Kendall dove for the loose ball.

The skin on four knees sang out as they scraped across the hardwood floor. Elbows gouged for ribs. Kendall’s head smacked the bleachers at Mercy’s feet, making a cut that took ten stitches to close, and Chase came up with ball.

Standing in the hall all those years later, Chase remembered his satisfaction when he saw Kendall’s blood on the floor that night.

Just like then, Kendall wouldn’t look at Chase. When he patted his snow-damp hair, his fingers lingered an extra second on the shiny pink place near his eye.

Chase walked up to Kendall and Doyle. “Sheriff.”

“Not now, Ford, can’t you see I’m busy?” His eyes stayed on the papers.

“Sheriff.”

“I said not—”

Chase grabbed Kendall’s shoulder and turned the sheriff to face him. The clipboard clattered to the floor, and papers scattered among the wet footprints. “Listen to me, Kendall. Whatever happened when we were in high school is long over. I’m here to do what I can to help find who killed Coach and my sister.”

Kendall’s hand hovered over his holstered forty-five. The pink scar on his face turned as red as the blood that flowed in the veins behind it. He took a half step closer to Chase.

*   *   *

Everything around Birdie was as quiet as the falling snow except for the chatter of the trooper’s teeth. “Quiet,” she hissed through her lips.

“I’m—I’m—I’m freezin’.”

“Hush yourself,” she said in a hoarse whisper, and then added, “Man up. I haven’t had any feeling in my butt for half an hour.”

Snowflakes drifted through the tamaracks where they hid. Birdie’s knees cramped, and tiny icicles formed where her stocking cap touched her eyebrows. She squinted into the last light of the day, trying to find some faint glow from the fire that sent the smoke wisps teasing her nose.

“Can you see anything?” she asked the trooper.

“No,” he moaned.

“Are you trying?”

“No.”

“You’re as worthless as tits on a boar hog.” She shifted her seat on the snowy ground. Leaves crackled, and a branch snapped under her. “Listen, Ray-Ray’s gotta be sittin’ out there by a fire toastin’ his behind, while we’re freezin’ ours. It’s gonna be pitch dark in a few minutes. Maybe I can spot the fire then.” Cold stabbed the two inches of naked skin where her shirttail had worked loose. “When I tell you, you’re gonna crawl outta here. When you’re good and gone, get up and run back to your car. Radio in and tell ’em to send all the help they can spare.” She caught a nose drip on the back of her glove. “I’m gonna sit here and keep watch. When the others get here, you bring ’em to this spot. And tell ’em to keep quiet.”

“You’ll freeze to death.”

“No, I won’t.”

One advantage of being a fat girl was the extra layer of insulation around her middle.

Junior struggled onto his knees. He looked at Birdie. “I’ll bring a thermos of hot chocolate back with me.”

“Hell, no. You better bring me a pint of whiskey.” She winked at him. “Be sure to keep your butt down. Now get, and do it now.”

The trooper scrambled on all fours until he’d cleared the canopy of brush where they’d hidden. He looked back over his shoulder at Birdie and lunged to his feet.

Out of the twilight, the boom of a rifle shot shattered the stillness.

“Junior,” Birdie screamed.

*   *   *

Mercy watched the sheriff’s truck pull into the parking lot at the high school. Like Chase, he hadn’t stopped at the café.

She locked the front door to the café, flipped off the lights in the dining room, and hit the switch to kill the neon
open
sign. The light sputtered, and its pink shades faded from the steamy window. She took her wool coat from a hook behind the office door, slipped it on, and draped a scarf around her neck.

“Is the food for the sheriff ready, Hector?” she called to the man in the kitchen.

“Yes,
señora.
There’s a couple boxes. I’ll take them to your car.”

“Just put it on the backseat.”

“Might not be room. The trunk might be better.”

“No.” She stomped to the kitchen doorway and bristled. “If you can’t get it all in the back, put a box on the front seat. Is that too hard for you to understand?”