“Hiram? And a woman?” Mike repeated.
“He did blush…” I said.
“Hiram?”
“You have a thought about it, Tom?” Diana asked.
“Yep. Hiram and Yvette.”
Not only did I know whom he meant, but it triggered a cascade.
Elvis. Romance. Hiram Poppinger blushing. Yvette.
They streamed through my brain like Penny’s mismatched pronouns, somehow making sense amid the jumble.
That didn’t mean I accepted it without confirmation. “How do you know?”
“Yvette? Yvette who?” Mike asked.
“You know,” Jennifer told him, “the one who thinks she forced Elvis to fake his death because she loved him too much, Elizabeth told us about her weeks and weeks ago.”
“Oh. Right. You met her at a wedding you went to with Leona.”
“Yes,” I confirmed. “But, Tom … why? Why would you think Hiram and Yvette…?”
“Because of what Hiram said about doing a favor for Clyde by talking to York. And Clyde doing a favor for him—”
“By talking to Yvette,” Diana finished off. “Makes sense, since they’re family.”
“Who’s family?”
“Clyde and Yvette.” Diana raised a finger, drawing lines in the air. “Clyde’s mother was a cousin of Yvette’s father. That makes Clyde and Yvette second cousins. But closer than that, because Yvette’s father was raised by Clyde’s mother’s family after his parents died.”
“I thought Clyde was related to Dirk Seger,” I said. Dirk and his wife, Krista, owned Sherman’s solitary bed and breakfast. She also happened to be related to the owner of KWMT.
“He is,” Tom said. “By marriage, anyway. Clyde’s wife is Dirk’s older sister. Half-sister.”
My head hurt. “Good heavens, this county’s genealogy is a nest of snakes.”
Mike reached for three more cookies. “Well, the good news is Yvette getting together with Hiram should ease the heat on Elvis. He can finally quit pretending he’s dead and come out of hiding and not have to worry about Yvette.”
Ignoring that happy aspect and somewhat grudgingly, I said, “I suppose it might fit with what Clyde said and with Hiram’s reaction.”
“Right, we’re finally at you two talking to Hiram.” Jennifer accompanied her brisk statement by brushing cookie crumbs from her fingers in apparent preparation for typing.
“No, we’re not. We still have Clyde,” Mike objected. “Let’s hear that first.”
“He didn’t say a word about Hiram.” I looked directly at Tom. “With that and the check he wrote, we need to look at him more closely.”
“Let’s hear what he did say,” Mike said.
I gave the broad outline, Tom and Diana gave the technical rustling details.
Mike whistled. “Can’t get away from York rustling from grazing association members as a possible motive.”
“Couldn’t that be a defense?” Jennifer asked. “Defending your ranch, like some states have for defending your home.”
“Even if it were, it wouldn’t cover going to the grazing association, confronting York, and shooting him,” I said. “Besides, what we have might be enough evidence for a suspect to believe York was rustling, but it’s not enough evidence to know. I want to know if he was or not. And if he was, to be able to prove it.”
“So do I.” Tom’s quiet voice reminded me we weren’t trying to build a defense — for him or anyone else — but were looking for a killer. Partially for justice, partially to exonerate him. Of course if we consulted Tamantha there’d be no partially involved. “Then I’d like to shove the proof down Lukasik’s throat.”
That last statement’s slide from the height of disinterested pursuit of truth into the muddy reality of disliking someone, eased the mood.
More cookies and coffee refills also helped.
“Now Hiram,” instructed taskmaster Jennifer.
I obliged, with Tom’s contribution limited to nods, until I reached the end.
“Something I want to know,” he said to me, “is why you asked Hiram if the marks were right up to the body?”
“First, because the best reason I could think of—” I mentally apologized to Dex for skipping his contribution to this point, but the less I brought him up — even to this group — the better. “—that explained the killer brushing out the marks was a scuffle. Going right up to the body’s consistent with that.
“And the other reason I asked about the marks being right up to the body was to test my thoughts about the gun. Hiram says he didn’t touch the body, says he didn’t see a gun, says the marks went right up to the body. That all fits with the Sampson-Alvaro interplay, with them already having the murder weapon because it was under the body, and with it most likely being York’s gun. Because, again, it if had been somebody else’s gun, Shelton and his buddies would be going after that somebody else.”
Mike said, “How would the gun get under York? He fell on his own gun? Suicide? That’s far-fetched with someone sweeping around his body. Accident? Someone wanted to wipe out they’d been there?”
“Possibly. Or someone swept at the dirt because he or she killed York and put the gun under his body.”
“That’s weird,” Jennifer said. “Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know why—” Yet, I hoped. “Hiram knows more. But he’s not sharing. We need to talk to him again.”
Tom closed his eyes.
“Couldn’t it have happened another way?” Diana asked. “Say York didn’t die right off, but staggered. The killer’s dropped the gun and—”
“Why would the killer have dropped the gun?”
“Horror at killing York.” Diana ignored Jennifer’s snort and kept going. “The killer’s dropped the gun, York staggers toward the killer, and he or she pushes York away, causing him to fall. On top of the gun.”
“Like an accident? Like York just happened to fall on it. So the gun being under York doesn’t mean anything? Well, that doesn’t get us anywhere,” Jennifer complained. “We’re going backward.”
I argued, “It might keep us from going too far down a wrong path. We need to keep possibilities open. Jennifer, will you look particularly at where Furman York was and what he was doing between being acquitted and when he returned to Cottonwood County to work on Lukasik’s ranch.”
“Okay.”
“Why?” Mike asked.
“Murder’s usually about the victim. Jennifer’s picked up enough from his childhood and before he came to O’Hara Hill to see a pattern. How he acted here since he returned also fits. Between the not guilty verdict and returning here to work on the ranch is the gap in Furman York’s life we don’t know anything about yet.”
Jennifer said, “We’ll keep filling in details for that earlier part, but make this gap a priority. When was the trial exactly?”
“Mrs. Parens will know. And check real estate records for the sale of the ranch.”
“Got it. What about York’s friends? Aren’t most people killed by someone they know?” she asked.
Mike raised a hand. “I called Jack Delahunt, and he says he doesn’t know of anybody he’d call York’s friend.”
“The guy’s got to have some associates,” I protested. “Besides, could he have pulled off the rustling on his own?”
“It’d be a lot easier with help,” Mike said. “Jack did say there were rumbles about York being associated with a couple guys from Big Horn County who don’t have the best reputation.” Big Horn was the next county east of Cottonwood.
Tom spoke up. “That fits with what Badger told me.”
“For Pete’s sake, when were you going to share that you got information from him?” I demanded.
“When the topic came up or nobody else had anything to say, whichever came first.”
“I’m half tempted to report you to Tamantha. She wouldn’t stand for such dilatoriness.”
“Dila-what?” Jennifer asked.
“Procrastination,” Mike said.
Peacemaker Diana kept to the point. “Tell us now, Tom.”
“Badger says Furman York was known to drink with some of the Lukasik Ranch hands at the Kicking Cowboy, but not often. The hands came in regular. It was York who didn’t come in often. The past few years even less.”
“Darn. Not surprising, I suppose. But I hoped if we found his drinking spot—”
“Hold up there. Don’t close the gate yet. Turns out Badger has a buddy who works at a place across the county line — the eastern county line.”
“Where the rustling in Cottonwood County started,” Diana said.
Tom dropped his head slowly in confirmation as he kept talking. “Badger and this buddy were talking the day York was shot and the other bartender says York was a regular there. Had two, three guys he drank with. Not one of them somebody Badger’s buddy said he’d introduce to his worst enemy.”
I perked up. “Where is this place? What are the names of these guys York drank with? Does the buddy know where they work? Live?”
“Before you go charging off,” Tom said, “none of us goes tonight. It’s late. And we have to wait for the Pickled Cow to—”
“The what?”
Tom correctly deduced I’d heard the name of the bar. “—open tomorrow. Even then, it’s a long shot. York’s group wasn’t the kind to pay with credit cards or otherwise be free with their names. The bartender didn’t even know the name York and he thought Fur-Man was a nickname. He only put it together with news of the shooting because he’d seen him driving a Lukasik Ranch vehicle.
“Better to wait. Bartender’s talked to Big Horn deputies and if some of York’s group comes in, he’ll call and let them know.”
“Then he calls Badger,” said Optimist Mike. “And we hear through Tom.”
“I dig. Tom waits for a phone call,” Jennifer said with a bit of attitude. “What are the rest of you going to do?”
Easy choice for the top of my wish list. “Try to get Gable Lukasik off by himself so I can pump him about his father.”
“Nice,” Diana said, but she didn’t truly disapprove.
“Anything from your kids?”
“My entire crop from dinner with them is that Asheleigh’s cute and she and Gable are really, really serious.”
I twisted my mouth. “After Gable, I don’t care how long a shot it is, I’ll follow up with Badger’s bartender friend—”
“Not alone,” the guys chorused.
“—because we can’t wait around for—”
“I’m going with you,” Mike said. “Or I go alone.”
“I’m going.” I didn’t mind his coming. A second pair of ears did help, but the first pair of ears would be mine. “Tom? What do you plan to do?”
“You mean besides trying to talk James into talking Shelton into letting us back in to talk to Hiram again?”
* * * *
I couldn’t sleep.
My reason said Tom wasn’t a serious suspect. Something else wouldn’t let me sleep.
Why this hadn’t happened last night, I couldn’t imagine. Unless it had something to do with his being in the house. If the sheriff’s department had decided to take him in… Well, at least I’d have known right away.
To keep my mind off visions of Thomas David Burrell’s possible arrest — unlikely arrest — I searched for an instance when I’d felt like this. Examining those memories, I realized I usually combatted concern with reason, fear with action.
Then my memory produced a previous instance.
Before my wedding to Wes, my ex for the past year-and-a-half, I had fretted about the weather. We had contingencies in place. Even better, every forecast from every source — and I checked them all — predicted fine weather. Still, I fretted, and worried, and couldn’t sleep.
The weather was perfect.
The wedding was perfect.
I’d wasted all that effort worrying about the wedding. I should have worried about the marriage.