Winsor, Linda (6 page)

At
her quizzical look, he explained. "Rounding up the cattle and weeding out
the nonproductive cows and the calves bound for market."

"Oh."
So that explained why there were just a few horses in the corral at Hopewell.

"The
stallion and a few others have run wild since Dan took sick, so Tick and I have
our work cut out for us."

The
Hopewell land ran on forever with its own network of narrow and mostly unpaved
roads before they reached a paved county highway. Some were pitted, and jostled
the all-terrain vehicle so Deanna had to cling to the door, despite her seat
belt.

According
to Shep, the cattle she saw grazing here and there were not his but were owned
by neighboring ranchers who leased the land from him. That certainly explained
how such a large place could have such a meager, not to mention spooky, center
of operation. She hadn't mentioned it, but that partly accounted for her
trouble sleeping. Who could get a good night's rest in a ghost town?

"So
what was the noise you mentioned earlier?" Shep asked, as though reading
her thoughts. His knack for doing that was unsettling. "You know, what you
tried to block out with the radio ear plugs."

It
was the first reference he'd made to his unorthodox wake-up call. In
retrospect, it was kind of funny, but he had yet to see the humor in his
rupturing an ice bag and scaring the bejittles out of her. But then, neither
had she until her mind replayed the incident while she was doing her hair and
makeup. She'd been snatched from a sound sleep, not sure if she was being
smothered, drowned, or worse.

"Are
you kidding? I never dreamed the country was so loud, especially at night with
all those loudmouthed animals and insects. When they weren't whistling, they
were gargling. When they weren't gargling, they were singing. When they weren't
singing, they were squeaking. And I swear I heard at least three frogs being
strangled before I turned to the radio to drown it all out."

"Yeah,
we don't have fire and police sirens to drown them out like you do in the
city."

Deanna
cut a sidewise glance at her companion. From the twinkle in his eyes, he was
teasing. "Well, in my book it certainly shoots the concept of quiet nights
in the country."

"Just
Mother Nature's lullaby. All the creatures singing out that all's well or
warning of an upcoming change in weather conditions. The more you listen, the
more you can tell what's going on in the world."

"You
mean like Station Eight's siren is different from Station Twenty-Two's, so you
know which district the fire is in?"

Shep
grinned. "Something like that."

"But
those poor frogs... well, it was just awful."

"They
were probably just in love. It does strange things to creatures of all kinds, I
guess."

Yeah,
like causing an intelligent, well-adjusted career woman to make an utter fool
of herself. And she had felt just like the frogs during the police
interrogation, choking on the emotion that had led her into becoming the
perfect patsy

Shep
accelerated to pass an old farm truck on the long, isolated road and waved as
they went by The driver responded in kind.

Losing
herself in thought, she closed her eyes and leaned back against the headrest.
Heavenly
Father, what am I going to do?
Gram would tell her to trust in the Lord,
but Deanna hadn't let go of the controls of her life in ages. Snatched from her
hands by circumstance and her poor judgment as they'd been, it didn't look like
she had any choice now.

***

"That
dame is gone like the wind. I swear, boss, I have no idea how she slipped
through our fingers
and
the cops." The caller in the phone booth
off the interstate that led to Great Falls hoped the poor connection combined
with the roar of passing trucks would cover the fear cracking his voice. No one
disappointed the boss and lived to tell about it.

The
ominous silence on the other end thundered in the man's ear. He had to break
it. "She musta slipped outta the parking garage when I went to the john. I
mean, it was just me, ya know?"

"Were
you also in the john when Majors blew himself up in his own car?"

The
caller's pulse accelerated. It wasn't his fault. He'd followed the man all over
the city and watched in shock as the car exploded for no apparent reason.
"Nobody knows what happened there.
Nobody...
not even the
police."

"But
they will find out. Then I'll have to find out from them, because my own men
are incompetent." His boss's words were as void of emotion as that
rabbit-eating snake he kept as a pet in his penthouse suite.

At
the moment, it felt like the cold-blooded creature was slithering through the
caller's veins, approaching a heart seized still as one of the hapless animals
the creature fed upon.

"Look,
boss. I can't help it if my partner ate some bad Chinese and I had to answer
nature's call."

"Of
course not. It's perfectly understandable." The man even hissed his
s
's
like a bloomin' snake when he talked slow like that.

"Yeah,
well I appreciate that, sir. I surely do." But did the big man really
understand? The caller looked at his reflection on the dirty glass of the
enclosure, certain he looked into the face of a dead man. He ought to just hang
up and split, head for some place like Florida or Mexico. Except that the man
on the other end of the phone had a long reach. Birds of a feather worked together,
and this lethal breed lived all over the world.

"I'll
take over from here. It's time I called in a favor from a colleague in the DEA.
When I know something concrete, I'll contact you. In the meantime, you and your
partner stand by for my call."

So
did the command mean go back and wait for a message by phone or from a gun? The
boss man ordered murders with the same tone he asked for coffee refills, which
he drank as black as his temperament when provoked.

"Oh,
and don't eat any more Chinese food till this is over."

"You
got it, boss. I don't even like the stuff."

The
man in the booth wiped his forehead, wishing he felt as at ease with things as
his tone suggested. With friends on both sides of the law in and out of Canada,
there would be no escaping retribution if the man on the other end of the phone
wanted it. Sheesh, who could help having a sick partner or going to the john?

"We
will
find her," his superior said. It wasn't a reassurance. It was
stated as nothing less than a fact.

"I'll
be waiting to hear from ya." Using his right hand to steady his left, the
caller hung up the phone. He shivered, despite the warm spring evening. All the
man could do was pray that Deanna Manetti and the money would be found soon,
distracting the drug lord from petty matters like him. He might get away with a
broken nose or lose a finger, but this Manetti dame was a dead woman walking.

Six
weeks at the earliest, 'lessen I can find something else. I been callin' around
all mornin'."

Deanna
stared at Shep's "shade tree" mechanic in the late morning sun, her
expression lying somewhere between a squint and a grimace. The only shade in
Charlie Long's automotive junkyard was the overhang of his cabin. At the
moment, they were in the fenced-in lot where he'd towed her crinkled car. Six
weeks?

Beside
her, Shep made some sort of grunt, no more pleased with the news than she was.
"Might as well ask about having that faulty airbag replaced, too. Much as
this baby cost, it should have worked and repacked itself."

"Dad-gummed
foreign cars..." Charlie spat to the side, shaking his head. "They're
snazzy enough, but they're biddies to keep runnin'." He chuckled.
"Like some women, I reckon."

Deanna's
neck grew hot as he shot a speculative glance at her. Ordinarily she'd have
shot back that it was none of his business how she chose to spend her
hard-earned money, but she needed to remain on the old coot's good side.
"I didn't buy it new. It was a drug repo auction. I was just in the right
place at the right time."

"Till
now," Charlie observed in a wry voice. "It just don't pay to buy
outside the good old U.S. of A.; I don't care how new a model ya get or how
good a buy it is. Why, I wouldn't take one if it was given to me," the
mechanic snorted. "Foreign parts is foreign parts and sooner or later a
body's goin' to pay to get 'em... when and if they find 'em, that is."

Deanna
nodded. How could she not agree? If she'd had an old American-made car, Charlie
would undoubtedly have had a used part in the vast lot of rusting has-beens, or
he could have found a new one right away But her blue baby was so pretty, so
snazzy And she'd taken a leave of her senses with an atypical crush—in love
with love, with life, and with a stylish Stetson. It was a far cry from the
well-worn topper Shep tipped off his forehead in dismay

"Just
get it so it will run. I'll worry about the airbag expense later," she
said with a sigh.

"Check
out the airbag anyway, Charlie," Shep contradicted.

"Getting
a price won't hurt," he explained to Deanna, "and if I'm going to fix
something, I want it done right. Might have saved that knot on your
noggin'."

Charlie's
spontaneous smile diffused any further objection she could muster. It was
almost a fatherly one, a protective kind that spoke of genuine concern. She had
to steel herself to keep from latching on to the sentiment like a lifeline. Her
parents were gone and the last shoulder she'd leaned on vanished into thin air,
allowing her to fall flat on her face in a heap of trouble.

"I'll
make more calls," Charlie offered. The eyes beneath the ample bushes of
his brow narrowed as they shifted from Shep to Deanna then back to Shep.

"Thanks,
Charlie. I know you'll look out for me. Always have." Shep reseated his
hat, as if the matter was settled.

Strange.
She had looked out for herself pretty well until recently. She prided herself
on being able to stand and survive on her own. Talk about being an idiot. The
past few days clearly had shown her how wrong she'd been. If Deanna wanted to
rely on someone, she'd better look beyond her mirror like Gram always said.

Like
Shep did. She recalled how easily he'd given God credit for getting him through
another day, how trusting it had sounded. Oh, she could ask quickly enough, but
could she earnestly
trust
like that? It defied logic to sit back and
wait for God to take over, like letting go of a steering wheel and allowing the
car to steer itself into or out of a collision. How could she not try to stop
or avoid it? Staring at the accordion-pleated hood of her blue baby, Deanna had
proof positive that even with both hands on the wheel, she hadn't been able to
control her own destiny

Shep's
voice invaded the cloud of revelation enveloping her mind. "Just radio me
when you hear something."

"Sure
thing," Charlie replied. "I wanna get it out of here right quick.
Invites vandals."

Ushering
Deanna to his Jeep, Shep halted in midstep.

"Vandals?"
He echoed her very thought.

An
icy stab of alarm cleared Deanna's mind, riveting her attention to what the
mechanic had to say

"Yep.
I can't figure it." Charlie jerked his head toward the fence where a patch
of new chain-link fence beamed bright against the weathered rust of the old.
"Cut clean through my fence like one of them criminals on TV and made
straight for that snazzy job. I only put up the fence to keep Buck from
tomcattin' around at night. But come quarter to three this mornin', he
commenced to raise thunder. By the time I got out here, whoever it was had left
his cutters and a right smart-lookin' jacket hanging on the fence in his hurry
to get out. Saw his taillights as he headed away from town, tires a squealin'
and Buck a yappin' after him."

Charlie
glanced over at a bulldog with a drab fur coat at least two sizes too large at
the collar. The face he turned toward them at the mention of his name reminded
Deanna of an aged Winston Churchill sans the cigar.

Shep
scowled. "Did you call the sheriff?"

"Naw,
probably some drifter. I figured he saw this rig and helped himself to a closer
look." Charlie grunted. "'Sides, if he came back for his jacket, me
'n' Buck would be ready for 'im."

"Yeah,
if he was local, he'd have known about Buck." Shep turned to Deanna.
"Why don't you take a look and see if anything is missing. You'd think
he'd have at least snagged those hubcaps."

"He
was more curious than greedy," Charlie informed them. "Had the trunk
popped. Left the glove compartment open. I just stuffed everything back in
there."

"You
going to look?" Shep prompted when she made no move toward the car.

Deanna
felt as if she physically pulled herself from the icy pool of panic that formed
in her mind. He. Was
he
the one—or one of the ones—who'd trashed her
apartment? Had someone found her? And if so, what was he looking for? It should
have been obvious by now that she wasn't floating in cash, or she wouldn't be
stranded out here.

Canada
wasn't so far away Deanna had seen enough crime television to know that with
the kind of money she'd been accused of taking, she could have had false IDs made
and caught a plane to anywhere. She walked over to the sports car with leaden
feet and slipped into the driver's seat. Her hand shook as she opened the glove
box. The owner's manual, along with all her maintenance receipts, were stuffed
into the organizer in haphazard manner. She pulled them out and put them in
order, wishing her life could be put to rights so easily.

The
contents of her vinyl cosmetic bag that had contained a brush, spare lipstick,
and a few personal products had been emptied and scattered into the far
recesses of the glove box. Leaving them where they were, rather than call
attention to the contents, she put the organizer over them and closed the
compartment door. As far as she could tell everything was there.

What
good would anything she had in the car be to anyone anyway, much less a vandal
or a thief? The answer to that nearly paralyzed her.

They
didn't want her car. They wanted her.

Shep
leaned on the open door of the vehicle, peering in. "Anything
missing?"

"N...no.
I don't think so. Must have been a nosy vandal." Her attempt to laugh was
shallow at best.

He
stepped back. "Hey, Charlie, is that the jacket in the back?" At his
nod, Shep reached behind Deanna and retrieved a crumpled and soiled silk-linen
blend sport coat. "You're right; he must have been a well-dressed
drifter," he said, checking out the label.

"Like
as not that was either stolen or handed out at a shelter."

Deanna
couldn't comment with her heart wedged in her throat. She'd seen the jacket
before—on C. R. Majors. Except it couldn't have been C. R. because he was dead.
Even expensive men's wear stores carried more than one of a particular design
or color. Besides, C. R. wouldn't be caught dead—

She
winced as Shep tossed the jacket in the back and helped her out of the car.

"Did
I hurt you?" He released his hold on her arm.

"No,
I'm just a little stiff from yesterday's accident, I guess." Somehow her
rubberlike legs supported her. Part of her insisted the jacket was just a
fluke. She was overreacting with nerves that were frayed to the point of
snapping. Yet another more latent voice cried out,
God?
as if some
heavenly voice was going to reassure her.

"The
jack and spare are still there," Shep observed from behind her. He rifled
through the contents of the trunk.

Unless
C. R.'s jacket had been taken by his murderer. Unadulterated fear chilled the
very marrow of her bones, oblivious to her desperate reasoning. But how had the
man found her car when she didn't even know where she was?

"It's
a real tire, too," Charlie observed in approval as Shep pulled out an old
map that must have belonged to the previous owner from under the spare.

No,
the one who searched her place couldn't have found her, she concluded, grateful
that both men seemed oblivious to her dismay. It was simply impossible.

"Don't
see much of that anymore," the mechanic went on. "Them flimsy little
emergency jobs come standard now."

Shep
grinned. "Not in these cars, Charlie." He handed Deanna her
leather-encased portfolio. "Anything missing in this?"

As
though expecting something to fly out at her, she peeked inside. Nothing inside
was worth stealing, just plain paper and her drafting supplies. She had no real
work in progress, having been on the job just long enough to acquaint herself
with the current procedures and marketing personnel. At least her search gave
her a chance to find her voice, if not any answers to the questions bombarding
her.

"Nothing
is missing that I can tell. Like Mr. Long said—"

"Make
that Charlie," the older man interrupted. "I don't hold with much
formality around here."

"Like
Charlie said," Deanna flashed an appreciative glance at her host,
"whoever went through the car must have just been curious." And he
was likely some vagrant who lucked out at a shelter with wealthy contributors.
C. R. didn't have the only expensive jacket in the world. She took a deep
breath to override the sense of helplessness her lingering doubt instilled.

"Or
thought there might be some money tucked away," Charlie speculated.
"This model all but shouts big bucks."

"Well,
it lies," Deanna said. "Just because it looks expensive doesn't mean
it was." And just because the jacket looked like C. R.'s didn't mean it
was. Appearances could be misleading. "I'm just glad they didn't damage
anything when they found nothing worth stealing."

It
had
to be vandals... a fluke. Since she was certain that she couldn't
find where she was on a map, the police or the people who'd ransacked her
apartment couldn't either. End of story.

"Buck
didn't give him much time to think beyond saving his hide." Charlie
pointed to the bulldog watching them through the folds of his brow.

Buck
didn't look like Deanna's idea of a junkyard dog, despite Charlie's talking as
if the animal did more than sleep, eat, and cast a lazy eye over visitors.
Somehow she pictured a Doberman or a rottweiler, not a pudgy pooch that hardly
looked as if it could catch a burglar any more than its stub of a tail. Talk
about appearances being deceiving.

"Nonetheless,
you ought to report it, Charlie." As if his word settled the matter, Shep
started toward the Jeep. "Never can tell about these things."

Deanna
cast a quizzical look at Shep as she got in on the passenger side. His
expression was fathomless, suggesting neither suspicion nor dismissal. From
what she'd seen to date of her rescuer, if he were to err, it would be on the
side of caution.

"Aw,
I hate to bother Sheriff Barrett. And that deputy of his is more interested in
listenin' to the scanner than doin' anything productive." Charlie followed
Shep to the vehicle. "I been tellin' you, Shep, you ought to consider
takin' the sheriff's place when he retires this fall. Lots of folks think
that's right up your alley"

"It's
not gonna happen, so save your breath. Hopewell needs all my time." Shep
started the Jeep, giving it gas when it threatened to die.

"Don't
hurt to think about it, does it?"

The
Jeep jerked backward as Shep shifted into reverse. "I've got all I can
think about right now without adding something else."

Lips
twitching, the mechanic stepped back to give them space. With a keen glance at
Deanna, he gave in to a lopsided grin. "Yep, I reckon you do at
that."

Shepard
Jones wasn't the only one with a lot to think about. Deanna fastened her seat
belt as they accelerated out onto the highway toward Buffalo Butte proper. He
couldn't possibly be any happier than she about her being stuck here without a
vehicle for a minimum of six weeks. She'd thought for certain that Charlie
could hammer out the dents, replace the flat tire, and she'd be on her way. Who
knew her radiator and some special order thingamabob was trashed as well?
Without adding auto theft to her rap sheet, she was stuck in the boonies where
people left the
g
off of half the words that ended in
-ing,
dogs
and guns were man's best friends, and dressed up for women meant clean jeans.