I had no time to parse the meaning of that gleam because Shelton must have signaled to the waiting sheriff’s department vehicles. We had to step smartly to the edge of the road to give them room.
The driver of the first official vehicle to pass us was Richard Alvaro. He raised a finger off the steering wheel, acknowledging us without anyone else being able to see it.
Tom touched his hat brim in an almost equally subtle response.
I waved broadly. Continuing to wave after Alvaro’s vehicle passed, so the next in line saw me.
“Want a bullhorn, too?” Tom muttered.
“Do you have one?”
He expelled a would-be dismissive breath, but couldn’t suppress the fanning of lines at the corners of his eyes. So he changed the subject. “Get what you wanted by coming out here?”
“No. Of course I didn’t. Not with you and Shelton lumbering in like indiscreet elephants.”
Especially since I couldn’t define what I’d wanted. Except everything of any significance whatsoever. In other words, short of someone falling to his knees and admitting to shooting Furman York, I wasn’t getting what I wanted. It’s what sent me on to the next interview, the next bit of research, the next question.
I had the eerie feeling he’d read my thoughts or knew some other way that I wouldn’t have been completely satisfied even if he and Shelton hadn’t arrived.
I switched gears as the last official vehicle passed and we resumed the walk to my SUV. “What brought you out here, anyway?”
“Deduction.” At my lifted brows, he added, “What you asked me about what Penny said. What I answered. How your mind works. And everybody else being at work at the TV station.”
“I’ve been doing this a long time, Burrell. I don’t need an escort to conduct an interview. You can’t tell me you think Lukasik would knock me off in broad daylight on his own ranch.”
“No, I don’t think he would.” He held my gaze. “Doesn’t mean I’d trust him not to, Elizabeth.”
“That’s melodramatic.” I raised a hand as he started to reply. “Okay, okay. You’re entitled to your opinion. But now that you’ve achieved your goal of ending my talk with Lukasik, are you going to stand here and chat?”
“Maybe.”
He’d made no move to open the SUV door or otherwise hurry me into my vehicle. No follow-through was a most un-like-Tom-Burrell situation. As was chatting.
“Ah. Got it. Because remaining here bugs Lukasik.”
He said nothing.
“It’ll also bug Shelton.”
“Collateral damage.”
“I’m good with that. Small price to pay for bugging Lukasik,” I said.
“Tell me what was said before I got here.”
“I’ll have to repeat it all when we’re all together.”
“I’ll corral the food while you do that.”
Who could pass that up? Not me.
I told him.
“…stonewalled by your friend Kesler, a glimpse into what appears to be a strained — at best — relationship between father and son Lukasik, and a view of the father’s professional skills. But what I didn’t get was insight into the victim. Nor did I get any leads on York’s friends or associates.” I eyed Tom. “Was York part of the ranchers’ guild?”
“The ranchers’ guild,” he repeated between amusement and caution.
There’d been an element of truth beneath Lukasik’s mocking reference to a sacred communal order of cow patties. As highly individual as the ranchers were, there also was a sense of community. Loosely knit, but strong.
“You know. Branding, roundups, moving cattle up the mountains and down the mountains.” I rattled them off as if I knew more about these activities than observation and listening.
“Wouldn’t say he was. Lukasik’s place is big enough it doesn’t need as much mutual aid as us smaller operations who pitch in to help each other. Now and again some of their individual hands come along. Informal. Because they know folks from around.”
“But not Furman York.”
Subtlety would do nothing. Blunt instrument all the way. “His choice or because people didn’t want him there?”
“Can’t say.”
I huffed.
“Really. Don’t know, Elizabeth. When he joined up with the Lukasik Ranch, I was a kid. Not looking at much beyond school, basketball, and the Circle B. By the time I came to noticing what was happening in the county, it was settled that York didn’t mingle with ranchers or hands.”
“Who did he mingle with?”
“Can’t say— I mean, I don’t know. Could ask Badger.”
Badger was the bartender at the Kicking Cowboy in town. It was one of those in-between bars. Not seriously bad, yet a hint of seediness made the careful feel like they were living dangerously.
“Good. Known associates, enemies, anything you can pick up about him.”
“Yes’m.”
“Are you sassing me?”
He laughed. Almost like his old self — no, almost like the self he’d become in the past few months.
“What about Gable?” I asked.
“If there’s anybody from the Lukasik place helping other folks, Gable’s the first. Works hard and willing to learn. Can’t ask better than that.”
Hoping to hold onto his improved mood, I asked, “Why’s it called the Lukasik Ranch, when yours is the Circle B? I’ve noticed some ranches use the name of the brand, others the name of the owner.”
“Depends on the history, who started the ranch, who has it now, and who’s talking. Talking with somebody who knows the reference as well as you do, you’re likely to say the Smith place or the Jones place.
“More formal references, it gets more complicated. A place that’s been around a long time, keeps the same home ranch, pretty much the same acres, it’s going to be called by the brand a lot. Especially where more than one person or family owned it to start, so the brand covered all of them. Or a company owns it now, you call it by the brand if you’re referring to the home ranch, by the company if you’re talking about the whole thing, see?”
What I saw was my simple question had no simple answer.
“Which did Lukasik do?”
“He bought out a place that’d been the G-Bar-T brand for nearly a hundred and fifty years, then he declared it the Lukasik Ranch.”
“It’s interesting,” I said, “he makes a point of putting his name on the ranch, on the trucks, but doesn’t show interest in the other aspects. Seems like his wife did and his son does. But he’s indifferent to the… the—”
“Ranching.”
I nodded. “He likes what Lukasik Ranch means to other people. But he doesn’t care about the ranching part of it. He said it flat out. Also, it stands to reason or he wouldn’t have put someone as bad at it as Furman York in charge. That’s unusual in a ranch owner, isn’t it?”
“Different people feel differently about ranching. A lot depends on when you’re hit — when you get the bug. There’re phases.”
“Phases? Like the moon?”
He looked up to a blue sky with no sign of the moon. “Sort of. When you get hit can decide how bad you get it. How much you’ll care. How much you can take.”
I waited, knowing he wasn’t done.
“How much heartbreak you’ll take,” he said at last.
“The heartbreak didn’t scare you off from ranching.”
“No.”
The syllable vibrated with something more. The heartbreak hadn’t scared him off because he had an affinity with heartbreak?
It wasn’t that he couldn’t be happy. But did he trust it?
The only happiness he really trusted now was Tamantha.
I veered away from the concept of Tom Burrell’s happiness.
But, in retrospect, I could have done a better job of changing topics.
“Mike came back to ranching. Even knowing the heartbreak from losing the family ranch as a kid.”
He cut me a look. “He’d been caught at a real tough stage that—”
“Phase,” I corrected.
A glimmer of a smile. “Phase. Kids usually like the ranch when the balance of chores and fun tips toward the fun. A lot fall away from loving it when they get a little older and the balance shifts. Especially somebody like Mike, who’d gotten big enough, strong enough, tough enough to do a lot of work young. Can feel like working’s all you do. But you get past that and you start seeing the rest. Mike got a glimpse of the rest. Then they lost the ranch.”
“What do you mean, a glimpse of the rest?”
He huh’d, saying it was a good question without a good answer. “Might be it’s different for each of us.”
He wasn’t getting away with that. “Tell me what it is for you.”
Silence. But not his never-going-to-tell-you silence. “Ever hold two contradictory feelings at the same time? Like you knew they couldn’t both be true, yet there they were, inside you?”
Had I ever…? I was looking at one and we’d just been talking about the other.
All I said was, “Yes.”
“Well, with ranching, it’s like this swell of huge all-encompassing pride of ownership, like your heart’s too big for your chest because it’s yours. You’re its, too, though. It holds you.”
He shifted, looked away, adjusted his hat, then looked down at me.
“Isn’t this supposed to be about Furman York?” he asked.
His retreat didn’t surprise me.
“It is. We told you about Jennifer’s excellent question about why he switched from oil to cattle. If he’d gotten the cattle ranching bug early, why go into oil? Unless. Maybe, he got the ranching bug from being here in Wyoming.”
“Not likely when he’d been exposed to ranching early in Texas and didn’t take to it.”
“Also not likely getting bitten by the ranching bug suddenly a few years after his trial?”
“No. Another thing. Most of those who get the ranching bug don’t dream of working for somebody else. Even as foreman.”
“Jack Delahunt—”
“Jack’s a special case. He’s a cattleman. Taught himself to be a good businessman, too. That’s put him in a special situation. Now, York, he reached his level of incompetence early on. Turnover’s real high on the Lukasik Ranch as a result.”
“But Kesler said he’d been here from when Lukasik bought the ranch.”
“Before. He worked for the previous owners.”
So Kesler’s pretty close about working on the ranch as long as Lukasik had owned it meant he’d been here longer than Lukasik. Sneaky.
A tuck formed between Tom’s brows. “Suspect Mrs. Lukasik asked him to stay on. Take Gable in hand. Teach him to ride, about ranching. At least enough he wasn’t a danger to himself.”
“Is Kesler a top hand?”
“Sure was in his prime.”
“Would he have made a good foreman?”
“Yep.”
“Yet Lukasik chose someone lazy and not good with cattle or people. Does Norman Clay Lukasik strike you as stupid?”
“Some other adjectives, not that one.”
“And yet that’s who he’s had as foreman of his ranch. Why?”
“That’s where you’re the expert, Elizabeth, finding out why.”
* * * *
I wasn’t feeling like much of an expert at figuring out the death of Furman York. Nor several other matters.
“You and I are off for getting together tonight, I suppose,” Tom said.
That was one of the matters.
“I’m sorry. I think the others will expect—”
“No need for sorry. Not your doing.”
Before I could respond, a rider came into sight, trotting along the fence line toward us.
Kesler. Not Gable.
“Tom. Wanted a word. Section of fence at the Dry Fork property needs work before it opens.”
Tom lifted his head to acknowledge hearing Kesler, then turned to me.
“Where you going next?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Get somebody else to go with you.”
“Tom—”
“You’re the one says two pairs of ears are better than one. Get someone else to go along with you,” he repeated. “You’re poking into hornets’ nests. I know — can’t stop you. Just remember, one of the hornets is a murderer. Want you to stick around, ’specially now you owe me a date.”
* * * *
Tom and Kesler dwindled in my rearview mirror.
Dating two men at the same time is not all it’s cracked up to be.
Actually, I don’t know that anyone’s ever cracked it up to be anything, so maybe it is all it’s cracked up to be.
As I mentioned, the scheduling is a bear.
Mike and I tried the movies — once — in Sherman, trading commentary with our heads close together and our hands meeting in the popcorn. Holding hands when the popcorn was gone. But no more than that, with many pairs of curious eyes on us.
After that, we went to Cody a couple times. For a movie (not great) and dinner (great.) Another time we had Sunday brunch in Cody, then spent the afternoon at the Buffalo Bill Museum. We also spent a day searching for furniture for his sprawling, mostly empty house — something other than a mega-couch, TV, and workout equipment.
That made it more homey to watch movies at his house, sharing popcorn, trading comments with our heads close together, and doing more than holding hands.
Tom and I spent time at his ranch, often with Tamantha, including riding horses to a gorgeous valley well above his home ranch where we all had a picnic. One day, we drove over the state line to Red Lodge, Montana to visit with Tom’s sister, Jean-Marie. She looked after Tamantha, while we had a nice dinner at a historic hotel that could teach Sherman’s Haber House Hotel a thing or two.
Another time Tamantha stayed with Mrs. George, their neighbor, while we went to a talk by an author we both liked at the Cody library. After Tamantha went to bed, we sat outside on his deck, watching the stars, talking, and being silent.
I swore I saw a bedroom curtain twitch. It was like having a curfew and a fourth-grade chaperone.
And then there were times when we — me and one or the other of them — would start to plan time together and instead broaden it to include the entire group.
Did I enjoy the time spent with each of them? Hugely.
There’s something about being with another person for a concentrated period of five, eight, ten hours that either makes, breaks, or deepens the connection.
Deepen, in both cases.
Both.
Have I mentioned complicated?
* * * *
An incoming message pinged not long after I started the trek on the ranch road back to the highway. When I reached that intersection, I stopped and read the message. It was from Diana.
Rather than working the rest of the day and using her lunch hour to keep a dental appointment, she was taking the afternoon off. Barring dental catastrophes, she’d be available by two-thirty if I wanted company.
I messaged back “Sure” and arranged to meet her then.
I also mentally juggled the order of what I’d do next.
Not even Tom could object to my going alone to my next stop.