Tom left first. Mike went to settle the bill while Diana, Jennifer, and I finished our drinks.
And while Diana eyed me.
“What’s wrong, Diana?”
No, I didn’t ask that. Jennifer did.
But Diana addressed me. “You gave up awfully quick — for you — about going with them.”
“That’s because I thought of something else.” No sense fibbing when she had me dead to rights. “This is just for us three for now. The guys go investigating livestock auctions in South Dakota, so we keep this to ourselves.”
“This what?” Jennifer asked impatiently.
“This question that occurred to me while we were talking about the possibility that York was stealing from Lukasik. How many defendants end up being part of their lawyer’s life for decades? Until the end of York’s life, in fact.
“He was not a good foreman, not a good cowhand. He was lazy. Yet he not only stayed on at Lukasik Ranch, he was promoted. Mrs. Lukasik didn’t like him. Gable Lukasik didn’t like him. The other ranch hands didn’t like him. Yet Norman Clay Lukasik kept him on. Why?”
Diana frowned. “And recently York’s gone from passively being a bad employee to stealing by rustling. How could Lukasik not have suspected that? Especially with Tom going to him about issues with grazing association members.”
“Exactly. Lukasik said his herd’s been staying even, so he’s not a completely hands-off owner. He had to know something was wrong. Yet—”
“He didn’t do anything about it,” Jennifer completed. “Okay. I’ve got that. But that’s what the guys are checking, right? If York was stealing, including from Lukasik.”
“That’s not what we’re looking into. We’re digging into why Lukasik kept York on and — possibly — let York steal from him.”
Diana nodded. She had it.
Jennifer worried her lip. Then her head came up. “York was blackmailing him?”
“That’s sure one possibility, isn’t it?”
“Okay, but how do we look into it when York’s dead and Lukasik’s not going to tell us?”
“First, by having you and your brilliant minions see what you can find out about Lukasik’s financials.
“Second, by putting the rest of your collective wizardry into closing that gap between York being found not guilty and his coming to work at the ranch Lukasik had just bought. We’re looking for evidence that York and Lukasik were in contact. Ideally, evidence that Lukasik was paying York.”
“Got it. And we’re not telling the guys until we find it.”
* * * *
On the way to the Pickled Cow, Mike and I stopped at his house for him to pack a bag for the trip to South Dakota, while I changed into Tom’s specified wardrobe.
Driving east, I asked, oh, so casually. “When you came back here, did you try to buy back your family ranch?”
“Thought about it. Looked at buying the old home place, then leasing the land back to the grazing association, similar to what I do with my place now. Talked to Tom. He was willing, but Lukasik was talking around the county about soaking the football player getting sentimental over a stretch of dirt.” One side of his mouth lifted. “Put my back up. Plus, it was just one part of the ranch. Getting all the pieces back, getting it up and running, that’s a heck of a challenge.
“Went out there one day. Had a vague idea of taking some of Grandma and Grandpa’s things. But when it came down to it, they seemed to belong there, like the roses. Tom came by — still don’t know if that was a coincidence or if he knew I was there. Anyway, we talked more. Not about buying the place. About other … stuff.”
Fathers and sons stuff and family ranches, I suspected. Tom didn’t have the closest relationship with his father, either. And that, too, seemed to center around the family ranch.
“When it first happened, losing the ranch, I swore I’d save every dollar to buy it back. I learned about handling money, I saved, I invested — being careful, limiting risks.
“It wasn’t until I stood at what used to be the entry to our home ranch, knowing I could do it, that I wondered if I should.” He cleared his throat. “There it is, the Pickled Cow.”
* * * *
To my relief, the Pickled Cow Bar offered plenty of pickles, but no pickled cattle parts.
However, I wouldn’t recommend the pickles, encased in dirt encrusted jars. In fact, I wouldn’t recommend the Pickled Cow Bar at all.
Outside, it sat amid bare dirt, with the same color plastered to its walls and roof.
Inside, it smelled. Sweat, old beer, clothes worn too long, things tracked in on boots, topped off by old sweated out beer soaked into clothes worn too long.
It was dark, even on a day when the arc of Wyoming sky seemed to pulse brightness. I was grateful it was dark. I couldn’t see the things making it smell.
I felt some making my boots stick an extra beat so it seemed like walking across the sticky side of duct tape.
“You folks in the wrong place?” a sneering voice asked from the darkness behind the bar.
“No,” Mike said in a voice I seldom heard him use. I immediately flashed to watching football with my dad and mics picking up players talking trash to each other. “Two beers. Can.”
With my eyes adjusting, I could make out the man behind the bar. He had pitted skin, producing an irregular pattern of stubble. His greasy hair was pulled straight back into a stringy rat tail.
One other person was in the place. A man — or a heap of men’s clothes — slumped on a stool at the far end. Bar stools don’t encourage good posture, but this slump did not appear attributable to the stool.
Without a word, the bartender took two cans from a refrigerator. I hoped age had turned it that dingy gray color. He opened them and placed them on the bar.
Mike gestured to the red plastic bar stool next to the one he took. I hesitated, then sat. We were not getting off these stools without more duct-tape sensation.
I noticed he did not take his hat off — no place safe to put it in this place — though he pushed back the brim as he took a brave drink from the can.
“Hey, you’re Mike Paycik, aren’t you?” the bartender asked in an entirely different tone. “Watched you score four touchdowns in one game your senior year at UW.”
I have never been more surprised or more grateful for Paycik’s football hero status.
“He is,” I said immediately. He handles it well, often with self-deprecating humor. Not this time. This time he was cashing in. “And the sports anchor for KWMT-TV in Sherman.”
“I know. I watch him every night. Can’t wait to see more of that interview with John Smith. Seems like a good guy. And he must be rolling in dough.”
“Not yet. But he sure should be with his next contract,” Mike said.
I settled back — metaphorically only — as they did the mutual sports fans’ mating dance. It was an almost immediate match.
The bartender — Nash — turned out to be articulate and quite pleasant. Even to unimportant me.
Mike did a good job steering gradually away from sports. “How’d you come to be working here?”
“Wouldn’t be if I had a choice. Place belongs to my step-father. I got into debt with some guys — never gambling again — and the step-father said he’d only bail me out if I worked here two years and lived with them. Two years. Got four months left and then they can strike a match to this place and let it burn. Never coming back in that door. Never dealing with these thugs again.”
“Thugs?” Mike quirked an eye toward the other customer.
“Oh, him. He’s harmless. Some of the others aren’t.” Nash leaned closer. “You heard about the guy who got shot? Foreman of the Lukasik Ranch? He was in here a lot.”
“You knew him, huh?” Mike portrayed someone deeply interested, but too cool to show it. “Did he ever talk about when he was tried for murder?”
Nash rolled his eyes. “Did he ever shut up about it would be the question. And the answer would be no. He’d go on and on about how some TV show nearly got him sent to the gallows — like there is such a thing these days—”
I suspected I knew where he’d gotten the term, though.
“—and it wasn’t even like the TV show talked about him at all. It was all about that ancient mess Rock Springs had. So why he kept jawing about it, I never understood. Not that I hung around him trying to make sense of it. Serve the drinks and get away. That’s my motto. What I don’t hear can’t make me want to poison these lowlifes. At least any more than I already want to.”
I wasn’t entirely unsympathetic with his assessment of his clientele. At first blush, though, it would seem to produce an atmosphere not conducive to repeat business.
On the other hand, there wasn’t much competition around.
And Furman York and his buddies might have recognized an upside to a bartender who wanted nothing to do with them — relative privacy.
“Gotcha. Still, interesting to have one of your regulars murdered.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Deputies in asking you questions about him and stuff.”
“Yeah, they’ve been in, but not much I could tell them. Don’t know names. Knew the Lukasik truck, but the others are just, you know, old pickups. One guy looks like he takes steroids or something.”
“Interesting. Like ’roid rage maybe.”
Nash’s mouth turned down. “He never lost it or anything, not here anyway. Doesn’t say much. The guy who got shot talked the most. The other one who drank with them regular talks about how he’s scored lately, getting close to getting a big new truck. You know—” Abruptly, he became more intense. “—another guy who drank with them now and again was busted for selling drugs last fall. Maybe a drug deal gone wrong.”
Mike nodded wisely. “Definitely a possibility. Maybe the truck guy’s involved with him.”
Nash snorted. “If he had drug money he wouldn’t still be griping about driving short hauls around here. He’d have the big fancy one he goes on and on about.”