The Homeplace: A Mystery (4 page)

He thought drinking beer with his buddies was more important than his son’s game?
Marty couldn’t feel sorry for the man. He wanted to, but he couldn’t.

Riley ground out his cigarette on the table, dropped the butt down the open mouth of an empty beer bottle, and lit another. “What do you need me to do now?”

“We can take you to see your son’s body.” Paco cleared his throat.

“No. I can drive myself.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” A lungful of smoke filled the air around his face. “Jimmy”—it was the first time he had said his son’s name—“drove a Ford pickup. Any idea where it is?”

Paco almost recited the next words. “Sir, your son’s body is on the way to the morgue at Comanche Crossing. You can view the body there. It will be up to the district attorney as to when it will be released.” It made Jimmy sound like a thing, not a person. “You can talk to them about your son’s truck.”

Riley was on his sixth cigarette and still on the couch when the deputies left him. He had never asked anything more about how his son had died. Had it been guessing when he asked who shot Jimmy? Marty shook his head.

The deputies didn’t say a word until they were in the car. Paco took a folded paper from his shirt pocket and scribbled down notes for himself.

Marty copied the older man and wrote down things he wanted to remember, but the silence battered his ears. “I saw Chase Ford this mornin’.” He needed words to fill the terrible quiet and silence the things that brewed in his mind. “He’s stayin’ out at the ranch. Gonna try to get a deer.”

Paco nodded. “I said hello to him at the game last night.”

“Big Paul didn’t come to Chase’s games, either.”

Paco shook his head. The old deputy had ten acres on a creek bottom between Brandon and Comanche Crossing. He and his wife had two little girls. They raised Shetland ponies for extra money, went to church every Sunday, and he coached soccer and softball. Paco never missed his girls’ games.

Paco started the car. “The woman Victor Benavidez married has a daughter named Dolly.”

“I know.” Marty didn’t want to hear what he knew would come next.

“Before she married Victor, Isabel kept house for Big Paul and Chase.” Paco stared straight ahead. “She came to work for them after Chase’s mother was in that accident.”

“I remember all the stories people were sayin’ back then.”

“That Big Paul was plowin’ two fields?”

“Yeah. And that the baby girl was Chase’s half-sister.”

Paco shifted the car into gear. “Most Saturdays, Dolly Benavidez works the breakfast shift over at Saylor’s. Let’s go see what she can tell us about Jimmy Riley.”

Marty wasn’t sure he wanted to hear what she might say.

CHAPTER THREE

Birdie stepped over the yellow crime scene tape. She waved for the truck driver to stop and used the keys that Andy Puckett had given her to open the pasture gate. She swung the gate open and tied it off with a piece of baling wire she found in her pickup. No need to shut it. Everything in the field was dead. Including Jimmy Riley.

Sheriff Kendall and the state police had taken her statement and told her she could leave. An ambulance waited to drive Jimmy’s body to the morgue in Comanche Crossing. The techs from the state said it would take them the rest of the day to gather what they needed.

Andy Puckett never settled down; he went on a rant again. Finally, Sheriff Kendall let him send for a truck and front-end loader to haul his buffalo to the processing plant so he could save what meat he could.

All the while Birdie couldn’t get one thought out of her head. She knew she was right about the shooter. He’d dropped the buffalo one at a time as they came in for the alfalfa hay he’d spread out along the fence. She reached down and picked up a handful. From the feel, it was fresh cut. Couldn’t have been in the bale for more than a week. The bale in the back of the boy’s truck was a regular sixty pound, square bale. Nothing special about it.

She tried to recall which farmer was cutting and baling, which field had been worked recently, and who sold to whom.

All this farm country could look the same.

Then she remembered.

Birdie hustled to her truck. She resisted her urge to salute the sheriff with her middle finger and jumped in.

She’d talked to Bobby Jackson early one morning last week. He was fueling his machinery near an alfalfa field about six miles from here. Told her he was going to start baling that day.

It was the ground he leased from the Ford family.

*   *   *

Chase rested his elbows on the checkered vinyl tablecloth and touched the side of his face.

“I can get some ice for that.” She hid her mouth behind the fingers of one hand.

“It’ll be okay,” Chase said.

“I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You’re right.” When Mercy took her hand away from her face, she was smiling. “Your face is as red as it was when you came to pick me up for our first date. Do you even remember that?”

He thought he remembered her face and eyes. But right that minute, everything about her seemed brand new. Her eyes were greener, her hair softer.

Now a few strands of gray showed in the dark hair near her ears. The skin along her jaw seemed softer. Delicate lines marked the corners of her eyes. Her green eyes. Mercy Saylor was a handsome woman. That’s what Big Paul had said about her. It might have been the only thing that Chase and his father ever agreed on.

“Our first date. You don’t remember, do you?” Lines knitted across her forehead as she waited for him to answer.

“Sure, I took you out to that old barn on McKeever’s place to shoot pigeons with my twenty-two. You were a good shot.”

“That wasn’t a date.”

“It wasn’t?”

“Birdie came with us, you fool.”

Chase grinned and reached for her arm. She pulled away. “Still, you were a good shot.”

“And I still am.” She flashed with a bit of the anger Chase always enjoyed. “I killed the last thing I shot at.”

Anger flashed again on her face, and Chase looked away. He searched for the next thing to say. He nodded toward the corner of the dining room. “That TV’s new.”

“Dad put it here so folks could get together and watch you play.” Mercy put her elbows on the table, knit her fingers together, and rested her chin there. “I was home for Christmas one year. You were playin’ in some big game. There must have been fifty people in this little room. Bangin’ on the tables every time you scored. Everyone in Brandon was proud of you.”

“Were you, Mercy?”

“All that was a long time ago.” She looked away. “See there”—she pointed at the wall—“pictures of Chase Ford, the cowboy ballplayer from the high plains of Colorado. Can even dribble a basketball from the back of a horse.”

“Quit.”

“That’s her, isn’t it?” Mercy pointed at a poster of Chase in his Lakers uniform.

Instead of his basketball shoes, they had him wear cowboy boots that day. A long mane of his blond hair hung from the back of the cowboy hat on his head. Someone had strapped a pair of pistols around his waist, and his arms were crossed over his bare chest. Two girls in gold and purple bikinis had been posed in the pile of straw at his feet. Chase had thought all of it was just plain silly until his agent told him there was a check for twenty thousand dollars coming his way.

And that was the day he met Billee. She was the bikini girl on the left.

“That’s when she was modelin’ to pay for her singin’ lessons,” Chase said. “She hit it big six months later.”

“It didn’t hurt any that she was bein’ seen with the cowboy ballplayer.” Mercy looked back at him. “I read all about it in
People
magazine.
Country Music Sensation Billee Kidd marries NBA Star Chase Ford.
” Mercy looked away. “What happened, anyway?”

“It didn’t work out. That’s all.”

“Mine didn’t work, either.”

Quiet slipped into the room and took the empty chair at their table. Pans and pots clanged in the kitchen. Dishes loaded with eggs and bacon slid over the front counter, and the cash register drawer opened and shut. They both stared out the window, content in that minute to say nothing.

Midmorning sun bathed the prairie in light so clear that Chase could count the few yellow leaves still on the cottonwoods along Sandy Creek half a mile away. Furrows green with winter wheat striped brown fields. A lone tumbleweed disturbed by a speeding semi did slow somersaults across the parking lot.

“I forgot how peaceful this could be,” Chase told Mercy.

“I know” was all she said.

Chase drew a circle on the inside of his cheek with the tip of his tongue.

“And, Mercy. Our first date.” He waited until she looked at him. “We drove to the Springs. We told your mother that we were goin’ to see
The Lion King
but went to
Pulp Fiction
instead. Stopped at Pizza Hut afterward. Got back to your house at two in the mornin’. Sat in my truck for another hour and talked about both our plans to get out of Brandon.”

Mercy looked away from him. “Sixteen years later, we’re both back.”

“I’ll be leavin’ on Monday, Mercy.”

She reached out and touched his arm, and he pulled away. He couldn’t hurt her again.

CHAPTER FOUR

Marty crushed a stray tumbleweed under the front tire of the Sheriff’s Department’s patrol car and eased into a parking spot at the front door of Saylor’s Café.

The police radio, hung beneath the dashboard, chirped. Paco grabbed the microphone. “Martinez, here. Marty’s with me.”

“This is Kendall. You talk to the boy’s father?”

“Yes, sir. He’s a strange one. We offered to drive him to the morgue. He refused. Said he’d drive himself.” Martinez twisted up the volume.

“What’s your gut feel? He do it?”

“Tough to read. I say no. But we need to watch him. He already had two or three beers in him this mornin’. I think that’s an everyday thing. Boy lived with him, but as far as I can tell the old man let him raise himself.”

“There a mother?” The sheriff’s voice crackled through the radio.

“Said she was dead.”

“We ran a background on him and the boy. Just what we thought we’d find. The father has his commercial driver’s license. Some traffic tickets. Not much else. Arlene is tryin’ to contact someone at the school so we can get a look at the boy’s records.”

Marty’s fingers tightened on the steering wheel. No one would say the boy’s name. Jimmy Riley was dead.

Paco continued, “The father said his son had a girlfriend. He wasn’t real clear on her name. If it’s who I’m thinkin’, it might be Dolly Benavidez. She works at Saylor’s. That’s where we are now. We’ll see what she can tell us.”

“Let me know what she has to say.”

“They find anythin’ at Ray-Ray’s, Sheriff?”

“No sign of him at all. They’re on their way over to his brother’s now.”

“Sheriff?” Marty tapped Paco’s wrist and took the microphone from his hand. “Has anybody talked to Coach Porter? If anyone can tell us about Jimmy, it would be his coach.”

“Good thought, Deputy. You know Porter. As soon as you finish at Saylor’s, go see what you can find out.”

*   *   *

Mercy looked up as the café’s front door opened.

“Is that Paco Martinez?” Chase asked. “He still workin’ for the sheriff?”

“If you came around more, you’d know.” She twisted her mouth in a sour grin. “I don’t know how many times people have said that to me since I’ve been back.” She waved for the two deputies to join them and looked back at Chase. “I’ll go get some coffee cups, and you boys can talk.”

“Mercy, I’m afraid they’re here on business.” Chase’s throat tightened.

Mercy tilted her head. “What?”

“They found a body this mornin’.”

Her eyes opened wide. “How do you know?”

Before he could answer, Marty stepped up to the table. “Mercy.” He touched the brim of his Stetson. “Chase, you know Deputy Martinez.”

Chase reached out to shake Paco’s hand.

Marty licked his lips. “Mercy, is Dolly workin’ this mornin’?”

Mercy felt the blood drain from her face. “She was supposed to, but she didn’t show up. Didn’t even call. That’s not like her.”

Marty glanced at Paco.

“What’s this about?” Mercy looked from Marty to Paco and then back to Marty.

Paco raised a hand and answered. “We just need to ask her a few questions. That’s all.”

“What’s going on?” Mercy’s voice trembled. “Tell me, Marty. You tell me now.”

*   *   *

Birdie recognized the old pickup. She pulled off the road at Bobby Jackson’s alfalfa field and rolled her window down. Some mornings Pop Weber would stop to talk when he saw her. Some mornings he’d just drive by.

The old man hunched over the steering wheel and never looked her way as his truck rattled by.

Birdie let out a breath. A naked, dead boy cluttered up her mind, and she didn’t need to talk to anyone this morning.

Square bales, some still tinged with a bit of green, stretched across the field in neat lines. Birdie stepped up to the closest bale and plucked out a handful of hay. She held it to her nose and sniffed. Fresh cut, like the hay with the buffalo. Three rows down from where she’d left the truck, the bale at the end of one line was missing. Mashed weeds still damp with last night’s frost showed where a truck had backed up to the fence from the dirt road.

Birdie walked closer and hunkered down on her heels where the missing bale had been. She snatched a stalk of straw from the ground, mashed it between her front teeth, and studied the ground at the edge of the field. What she saw in the powdery dust, near a strand of sagging barbed wire, stopped her breath.

She fished her cell phone from her jacket and took a picture of the spot in the dirt. She checked to be sure the image came out clear, then punched in the sheriff’s number and hit Send. When
sent
showed on the screen she dialed his number.

The sheriff answered. “What are you up to, Hawkins?”

“I just sent a picture. You get it?”

“Just a second.”