Which burned hotter, Shelton’s scowl or Tom’s?
Tom’s. His aimed all at me. Shelton’s spread across the three of us.
Tom took half a step. Shelton held his arm, not physically stopping the other half a step, while advising against it.
The movement directed Hiram’s attention our way. “Them.”
His disgust drew looks from Alvaro and Sampson.
No sense trying to keep a low profile now. I started toward Hiram.
“You can’t talk to him.” Alvaro stepped in front of the much shorter rancher. “This isn’t the beginning of a beautiful friendship, breaking all the rules.”
Beautiful friendship? Breaking all the rules? What was he talking—? Oh. Casablanca? My reference to Of all the grazing associations, replacing Of all the gin joints…
I was impressed. First, he’d heard me. Then, he’d connected the reference.
“Elizabeth.” Tom made my name a reprimand.
“She’s fine,” I told him, knowing his main interest. “Tamantha’s with the Undlins, making doughnuts. In fact, we’re here on her orders.”
His scowl eased by a modest percentage at the last sentence.
Shelton’s deepened. “Now obey my orders and get out of here.”
“We’re behind the police tape, not interfering with your scene. Freedom of the press, Sergeant.”
“Doesn’t give you any right to be on private property.”
“Grazing association property,” I shot back. “Tom?”
Tom held my gaze a moment, adjudicating my appeal to his authority, then looked away. Following the direction of his gaze, mine landed on Hiram Poppinger.
“Tom’s worried about him.” Diana’s conclusion matched mine.
“Shouldn’t he worry about himself?” Mike muttered.
“Yes,” I said.
“He knows he didn’t do anything.”
Mike and I looked at Diana. She gave a slight nod, confirming the unspoken part of her comment would go something like, but he’s not entirely sure about Hiram, who might have gotten himself into a mess.
“If Hiram…” My part in this unspoken exchange added …did this and we start investigating, we’re not pulling punches to save him.
“Of course.” Diana’s nod emphasized her silent addition of Tom wouldn’t expect any different. And if you or anyone has doubt about… oh, anything… this clinches it. Because Tom’s more convinced Hiram didn’t do this than he is worried that he might be accused of it.
“Okay,” I said. Yeah, well, how about people worrying what he might be accused of? Not me. Other people. Like his daughter.
“I think I got that.” Mike took off his cowboy hat, wiped his brow and put it back on. “But I sure would like to go back over it.”
Diana patted his arm. “We will later.”
“Are you three done muttering over there?” Shelton demanded.
“No. But we’ll take a timeout.” I looked at Tom. “We left it in your court.”
“They can stay.” His straight, hard look added, But they better get something done.
I preferred Diana’s non-verbal communication to his.
“Thank you. Now, if we can ask a few questions—?”
“No,” Shelton snapped. “Alvaro, Sampson, move that tape. Get these people — these spectators — back.”
With the police tape putting us out of conversational range, I looked around and spotted Cagen, a reporter for the Independence, among a knot of people nudged back by the police tape. Leaning forward to see around a man with a potbelly, I searched for Cagen’s boss without success.
When I straightened, Needham stood beside me, watching with bright-eyed interest.
He knew exactly what I’d been doing.
“That was quite the get-together at Diana’s for your folks. Pretty much all the most interesting people in the county.” He considered for a beat. “The most interesting who aren’t entirely eccentric.”
“I didn’t think my parents were ready for what Cottonwood County has in the way of top eccentrics.”
He grinned. “Nice people, your parents. Can see a real blend of them in you. Proud as Punch of you they are.”
I knew they were. Sometimes, though…
That could wait for another day. One without a possible murder.
The sheriff’s department certainly treated the scene like a murder. Caution or a reason they weren’t sharing?
As if following my train of thought, he said, “Lean pickings on the information front, huh?”
“What do you know about this, Needham?”
“Like you, just got here. Wouldn’t think accident, based on this response.” He tipped his head toward the scientists behind the screening.
“Shelton told me once that Hiram Poppinger’s a lousy shot.”
“That screen’s not covering sniper distance. Wouldn’t need to be much of a shot.”
“What about the victim?”
“Dead man is Furman York.” I noticed he didn’t say victim. “Foreman of the Lukasik Ranch, which belongs to this grazing association.”
“Did you know York?”
“Wouldn’t say I did.”
“So, not a friend?”
He confirmed what I’d picked up in his careful words. “Wouldn’t say a friend, for sure.”
I turned to him. “What are you not telling me?”
“Lots.” He smiled. “For starters—”
Even before a voice interrupted Needham, he’d stopped, because his attention had gone to somewhere over my shoulder.
I turned, too.
Movement among pockets of observers outside the east end of the police tape caught my eye. Clumps coalesced, forming an identifiable center around one man, while maintaining ragged fringes of those not persuaded to be drawn in.
That one man had white hair combed back and flowing to his collar. The white hair glimpsed from the late-arriving pickup, I guessed.
He was tall and thin. Tall, with more of the height coming from his legs and neck than most people. Thin, of the kind that gave me the impression I could see the ridge of his femur press inside against loose-fitting jeans. The sort of bony thinness of Abraham Lincoln that brought to mind the word gaunt.
Not that he otherwise reminded me of Lincoln. That honor belonged to Tom. And, coming from Illinois, I know my Lincoln.
With Lincoln, my attention went to his eyes. With this man, my attention went to his mouth, thin and wide.
“Norman Clay Lukasik,” Mike said in a low voice. He’d come up beside me when Needham and I shifted our attention to the newcomer. “Furman York worked for him. Though you could say it started the other way around.”
I’d heard Lukasik owned a major ranch. He was a defense attorney. He’d long been in demand around the region for high-profile cases. Frequently with the kind of client that made you think, “Who on earth would defend him?” Or, not to be biased, her?
Before I could ask Mike how and why Lukasik had worked for York, the lawyer raised his voice to courtroom levels.
“Furman York was not a happy man. Despite all the tonics here of open spaces—” His long arms spread wide. “—blue sky—” Those arms now stretched up as if he held the blue heavens aloft. “—and good companionship.” He encompassed the gathering with one sweeping arm. Then, with a glint that invited his viewers to join the joke, he swept the other arm, indicating cattle in a nearby field.
A few chuckles rumbled briefly, then faded.
With their fading drawing away any element of levity, Lukasik solemnly continued in a low, throbbing voice, “We shall all hope that his eternal rest brings him the peace he, sadly, seemed to lack in life.”
No one joined his hope by word or gesture, though shifting of work boots raised the dust to a level that might indicate discomfort.
As if unaware of the reaction, which I doubted, Lukasik raised his voice again. “This is abominable. For a man’s body to be left on the dirt like an animal. I demand he be accorded the respect that would be given to an animal.”
Had he misspoken?
Didn’t he want his former employee to be treated better than an animal?
Or did he mean it the denigrating way he’d said it?
I picked up a murmur of animal — impossible to trace its source. It sounded less like the murmurer’s objection to the treatment of York than confirmation that the description fit.
Norman Clay Lukasik reminded me of an old-school actor my parents had taken the family to see when I was a kid. He’d projected his voice to every corner of that theater.
This guy managed the trick even outdoors in Wyoming, with lusty competition from the wind.
“This is my employee who has been murdered. My long-time employee.” He started with long strides toward the police tape, aiming directly for where Hiram Poppinger stood between the two deputies.
Lloyd Sampson said, “Sir, you need to stay back.”
Lukasik ignored him. “The foreman of Lukasik Ranch, operating in his capacity as my ranch’s representative. My—”
“My crime scene.”
At Shelton’s flat words from a distance, Alvaro stepped directly in front of Norman Clay Lukasik, only the tape separating them.
Lukasik stopped advancing.
He was smart enough to recognize he might have gone through or around Lloyd Sampson, not Alvaro.
Then he compensated for stopping by projecting his voice even more.
“Furman York was my trusted foreman—”
Hiram, his mouth working like he’d swallowed something sour, snorted. I thought at trusted, rather than foreman.
“—for more years than many of you have been alive. Not—” He dropped his voice. “—including you, Sergeant Shelton.”
Shelton remained impassive at the possible slight. Though how it could be a slight when the speaker’s trunk clearly had more rings around it, I didn’t know.
“My foreman,” Lukasik belted out.
“Impressive,” I muttered to Needham. “I wouldn’t want to be standing next to him.”
“Not even his best performance. Should have seen him at the beginning, in all his glory.” The dryness of his glory would fan a wildfire.
Hiram tried to advance, stopped when Lloyd clasped his arm. Richard still separated him from Lukasik.
“The foreman you’re boo-hooin’ about didn’t do diddly squat for your cattle numbers. How long you been stuck at near enough the same number to make no difference? Some foreman. Anybody who’d hire Furman York to clean out a barn, much less be foreman deserves what he gets. More like foreman of your playpen than a real ranch. Ranching’s not your business, not your livelihood. Never has been. Not like the rest of us.”
“Good thing it’s not my livelihood. With the herd barely staying even, much less growing like you’d expect from the births, it’s no way to get rich. Don’t understand how you all do it. Oh, that’s right—” Lukasik smirked and his voice turned sharp. “—you don’t.”
He jerked his head toward Tom. “Burrell with the paving company, that neighbor of his working at the airport. Makes us all part-time ranchers.” That effort to include himself in their community twanged with insincerity. “Your other jobs just aren’t as lucrative as mine.”
Ah, now that sounded sincere. And self-congratulatory.
“None of us puttin’ murderers back on the street, either,” Hiram snapped. “We can live with ourselves.”
A low sound like a vibrating wire indicated agreement from others. No one spoke it, though.
The upper corners of the lawyer’s lips retracted. “I have no trouble living with myself when someone I represent to my fullest ability is found not guilty by a jury of his or her peers. That’s what our justice system is all about. Innocent until proven guilty.”
“Or until you buy off a juror.”
“Watch it, Hiram.” Sharp and short, those words sounded nothing like Lukasik’s others. Out of control? Or a deliberate effect? “I’ve been thinking a case out of criminal court could be interesting. Slander has a lot of appeal. And those few acres of yours would make a nice little addition to my ranch. Have to be brought up to my standards, of course, which the house couldn’t be, so the bulldozer—”
“Why you—” Hiram’s surge forward stretched Lloyd’s arm to the max. The deputy held on.
Good thing he doesn’t have a shotgun now, I thought.
Didn’t need to say it, since I saw similar thoughts reflected in other faces.
Tom was right. Hiram might be in trouble.