Chapter 24

THE LIVESTOCK PROTECTION COLLAR INSIDE THE paper bag had one rubber bladder still packing its poison. The other had been slit long ago, now empty and dry. Right there in the foyer, I held the paper bag wide open and showed it to Ivy, explaining as she looked inside. “That’s what was in the thermos, salting some Zuni stew or some such.”

Ivy shook her head as she peered into the bag. Her brow didn’t wrinkle, so I couldn’t tell if she was thinking hard.

“Who prepared Vicente’s food, and who delivered it?” I asked. “Who’s lying? Oscar? Gabe? Stuckey? Eliana?”

“What are you saying, Rainy?”

I squeezed the intact bladder through the paper bag, bulging the black rubber before her eyes. “This stuff’s poison. And your lawyer told you that the cops think Vicente didn’t have a bullet in him, right?”

Ivy shook her long blonde hair. The roots were dark, the tresses clumping with a day’s worth of worry.

“I don’t have a clue,” Ivy said. “I wish Milt would get here.”

Her comment gave me pause. “How often does he come to the ranch?”

She waved a hand. “Almost never. This ranch was supposed to be our retreat. But I’m the one who really wanted it. It’s my escape from that other world. I wish I could call someone.”

Those last words sunk like a stone in my chest. I couldn’t help blurting, “Me, too.”

But I could, if she’d let me. I had people to call. Guy. I so wanted to talk to him, not just read texts or listen to messages we left for each other, but really talk.

Actually, I wanted to be with him, face-to-face, touching while we talked. Or while we didn’t say a word. That’s what it’s like with me and him. We are happy together. We just want to spend time together. All our mornings, our evenings, our free time, our lives. I’m going to marry that boy. Maybe he was asleep now. Should I wake him?

“What?” Ivy asked. “You are or aren’t?”

“Huh?”

“I asked if you’re hungry.”

“Oh. Yeah, sure.” I’m always hungry. The part of my mind that flickered a warning about poisoned food had to be shut down for the sake of my stomach. In Eliana’s absence—she was earlier to bed than us night owls—Ivy pulled out two neatly wrapped plates full of the sandwich fixings that had been on the table at lunch-time—cheese, tomatoes, onion, lettuce leaves, and much meat. The fridge also held a plate of roasted chicken—the good-smelling, uneaten dinner. I could have cleaned up all three plates.

Without Eliana to get things cuted up, we’d have plain sandwiches. Ivy pulled out a loaf of artisan-type bread, definitely not Wonder-white. Oatmeal bubbled the top edges of the brown crust. The slices were thick, meant for open-faced sammies. Ivy picked at a lettuce leaf, toying with it, nibbling. I pushed my hands deep into my front jeans pockets and sealed my lips, trying not to think, thinking. Trying.

“You wanted to call somebody,” Ivy said, her voice whisper-soft. “I’d like to call a friend.”

She was lonely, I realized. She had no one to call. I felt myself go soft with sympathy. She shook herself, like a horse getting up from rolling in dirt, and put the lettuce down. “Help yourself. I’m going to bed.”

And I’d be going to bed next to the cook.

I used Ivy’s kitchen phone and dialed. Felt like a thousand hours ago that the woman cop with the ponytail had given me her card.

Can we count on you?

She’d posed the question mid-morning. Now it was midnight. I took a breath and dialed, thought I heard a click on the line, and wondered if someone else had picked up Ivy’s house phone. For the first time, I wondered what Eliana’s bedroom was like. Did she have a phone extension in there?

Did she—like Stuckey—have something hidden in her room that didn’t belong to her?

“Steinhammer.” Her way of answering the phone seemed intended to let me know she was someone who stayed on top of things and slept a lot less than me.

“This is Rainy Dale,” I said. “The horseshoer from—”

“I know who you are. Didn’t recognize the phone number on my cell. Are you still at the ranch?”

“Yeah. I wanted to tell you, well I mean, there’s that rifle in the bunkhouse over the mantel—”

“We saw the .22—”

“And one of the men has a pistol in his locker—”

“Which one?”

“I’m not a hundred percent sure, but I heard your dead man might not have been shot anyways.”

There was a good long pause, as maybe she weighed what I was asking against my right to know, what she and I might share. She said, “They’re hoping for good results from the toxicology screen.”

Making myself give this information was hard, but it was the right thing to do. I glanced around the empty kitchen, cupped my palm to the phone, and said in lowest decibels, barely moving my lips. “Sodium fluoroacetate.”

“What’s that?”

“A poison you should tell them to look for in your dead guy. I found a cut livestock collar. One pouch is intact, but the other has been sliced open and it would have had plenty of power to kill a man. Or six.”

“Sodium … spell it.”

“Can’t.” But I said the name for her again and added, “It’s also called Compound 1080.”

I heard the clatter of typing on her end. “Google says this 1080 stuff is almost impossible to acquire.”

“Except for sheep sometimes walk around wearing rubber pouches of it.”

“The hell you say.”

“Wear it around their necks. It’s called a livestock protection collar. They’re still legal in lots of places. Nevada, Texas.”

Her breath came out in an exhale that probably used up thirty seconds and both lungs. Then she said we’d talk later, ’cause she had to make another call.

***

My next call, to home, went straight to voice mail.

The outgoing message on our home machine had been changed. It used to be my voice, saying, “You’ve reached Guy and Rainy’s. If you have a message about a horseshoeing appointment, please be sure to leave complete information about your horse and how I can reach you.”

Now it was Guy’s voice. “We’re out of town. Leave a message.”

As I left him a solid message about how much I missed him and I’d be home as soon as I could get Ol’ Blue running, I wondered why he’d done changed our home message, and I wondered what my cell’s voice mails would say, if I could play them. I wanted to call my friend Melinda, but I have just enough decency to not do that after midnight. I called my mama. She shouldn’t be too busy, should be heading north for my wedding. I told her voice mail that I was having truck trouble and I was stuck in Northern California. Maybe she could come get me.

***

The knocking on my bedroom door made Eliana stir in the next room. Maybe even whimper. I opened it to Ivy, who was not happy.

“The police are here for you.” She folded her arms across her chest. “I don’t want them here. If you’re going to talk to them, if you’re taking sides against me, you have to leave my place.”

“Ivy, I haven’t hurt you or the ranch in any way. I’ve no bad intentions, please believe me. I haven’t done anything to bring trouble to your place.”

She gave a twisted smile. “Except for that little part about digging up a dead body on my ranch?”

“Yes, ma’am, except for that.”

***

A uniformed deputy with hair so short I couldn’t tell what color it was stood waiting outside on Ivy’s flagstone doorway. Younger than me, twice my size, with all the goodies on his hip belt, including a nice big gun opposite the radio. Snaking from that radio was a coiled black wire that ran to a combination speaker and mic on his shoulder. He pushed the button when I came out and agreed that I was Rainy Dale.

“Ten-four,” he announced. “I’ve made contact.” Then he nodded at me. “Ms. Dale, I’m here to collect a collar of some sort.”

Ivy snapped at both of us. “This couldn’t wait until morning?”

They went at it until he calmed her down, staying on the flag-stone side of her open front door, and I agreed to tell the police to call if they had more questions. They were not to come to the house. Ivy said I could give them the house phone number, but I knew they already had it

Charley pressed his head against my knee. He hates tension, people having any kind of argument. I’m with him.

The cop said, “You told an off-duty day-shifter you found something.”

“Day-shifter?”

“Deputy Steinhammer.”

Like Ivy, I’d assumed handing over the livestock collar could wait ’til morning. “I didn’t expect them to send someone out in the middle of the night.”

He gave me a bland, lip-locked smile. “Yeah, we’re funny like that. Like to secure evidence immediately.”

When I went to the spare bedroom for the paper bag and my tools, I didn’t hear a sound from Eliana’s room.

But I didn’t think that was because she was asleep.

I looked back and noticed Ivy standing there watching me.

She didn’t look pleased.

My rasps, nail cutter, crease nail puller, and track nippers were laid out on the paper bag which still held the squishy little bladder of death and the Velcro straps that form a protection collar.

I brought the works to the cop at the door. “You should be careful with what’s in this bag. You should put on rubber gloves before you touch it.”

He looked me in the eye, cocked his head, and, from his left front pocket, pulled out a pair of yellow latex gloves and donned them with the stretchy snap sound.

This man was a Boy Scout, I thought, prepared. I could practically feel the rubbery tug to the backs of my own hands as I watched his knuckles bulge under the Latex second skin.

“And what do we have here?” He was staring without comprehension at the contraption of black rubber pouches—one full, one dry—that he’d pulled out of the paper sack.

“It’s called a livestock protection collar. It looks old. And you see, one of those bladders has been cut.”

“Did you wear gloves?”

I shook my head. I do have rubber gloves in Ol’ Blue, wear ’em with some of the glues I use in specialty shoeing jobs. “I was real careful. Well, not at first. I didn’t know what it was. I thought the paper bag was just wrapped around my tools.”

“And you say these were your stolen tools that you’ve recovered?”

I nodded.

He inspected them one by one. I could have fallen asleep on my feet in the time it took the uniform to finally announce, “How could you be sure these are your tools? They bear no engraving, no identification marks.”

“They’re mine. I’m sure enough to have liberated them.”

Unfortunately, he liberated them from me, said he was taking them for evidence. He even wanted the track nippers I’d been packing around in my hip pocket half the afternoon. This was not working out well. He stepped farther from the front door, maybe being respectful of the hour as he got loud on his portable radio, asking advice. Charley was at my side as I pulled the door shut and followed the cop out onto the flagstone.

The night was cooling off fast. I rubbed my arms.

“Ten-four,” he said into this radio. “Yeah. Copy that. No, from another building. Does he want me to wake ’em up?”

I waited.

He listened to his radio, said, “Ten-four,” again, then turned to me. “Ms. Dale, we’d need your cooperation to charge Mister Stuckey with the assault and theft from you. We’ll take a statement from him in the morning and refer it to the prosecutor.”

I rubbed my head. “I’m kind of over it.”

He shook his head. “Would you rethink cooperating fully? Charging that man for assaulting you at the bull sale needs to happen. You’re not the judge here, and there are diversion programs down the road anyway, but you victims who give passes for that kind of behavior are not helping.”

I nodded. “I guess I take your point.” But I felt bad.

He headed for his vehicle with all I’d given up.

“Will I get those tools back?” I called.

“Eventually, probably.”

“That’s it?”

“You have the case number. That’s good enough for a receipt. I’ll be doing a supplemental report and the detective is working now. Talk to him in the morning.” And he fired up his patrol car, driving off for the main gate in the dark.

I turned to go back inside but found the front door had been dead bolted.

***

She got it, I suppose. Ivy understood why I’d called the police to report the collar with the slit pouch. Maybe she hadn’t meant to lock me out. Or maybe Eliana had bolted the door without realizing I was still outside.

Or maybe someone was playing games with me.

I hate games. And I didn’t want to play knock-knock.

Ol’ Blue is where I went, me and my dog piling into the cab, locking the doors, which I almost never do. We’d slept in the truck Friday night, we could do the same for what was left of Sunday. I tried the ignition. No go. I tugged on the leather jacket that I’d slept in Friday night. There’s a reason shoers like leather and cotton and wool and silk. We need clothes that don’t melt when hot sparks fly. A hole burned in a natural fabric is fine, but synthetic clothes that runners wear melt like plastic, stick to your skin and keep burning. I don’t want to get burnt. I snapped my jacket’s metal buttons, turned the collar up, and pulled Charley close.

“We’ll get Ol’ Blue towed to a shop tomorrow,” I told him. “If it can’t get fixed quick, we’ll meet up with my mama and ride with her back home.” I hated to leave my truck, but I wasn’t going to miss my own wedding.

And that’s where I slept until Charley’s low growl awoke me, along with the sound of someone rapping on the driver’s window.

A silhouette in the sunrise asked if I’d seen anyone coming or going. Gabe’s voice was muffled through the glass, which was blurry from the condensation of Charley and me breathing inside the cab for the few hours’ sleep we’d grabbed.

I twisted the ignition key halfway so I could power down the window, remembering only after I got no juice that my truck was dead. I unlocked and opened the door.

“You slept here?” Gabe asked. His glance went behind me, to the house. “Ivy kick you out? We had an extra bedroom in the bunkhouse.”

“It was real late,” I said. “Didn’t want to disturb anyone.” I wasn’t going to add that I didn’t know if it was Ivy or Eliana who’d locked me out, and I’d been too unsure of my prospects to try knocking or ringing the bell at the big house, and the bunkhouse might have been hosting whichever fellow had a hand in doing in my dog’s last person.

Gabe adjusted his cowboy hat. “Anyone else up and about? I can’t find Oscar.” He turned and hollered at the bunkhouse. “Stuckey, check the barn again.”

Oscar making himself more than scarce made me think a good couple of times. I rubbed my eyes and redid my ponytail.

Ivy came out of the big house via the garage, driving her Hummer, Eliana in the front seat with her. Ivy shut the giant SUV down and flung her door open when Gabe gave her the news.

“You guys can’t find Oscar?” she asked.

Stuckey shuffled up. “Ain’t he up at the house?”

Ivy’s face offered her version of a frown, her mouth forced down at the corners for part of a split second. “Did he take off last night?”

Gabe and Stuckey looked at each other. Everybody seemed to be pointing a finger at Oscar having lit out for good.

“I could ride around and look for him.” My offer was sincere. Riding always sounds to me like the best thing to do. If I rode to the summit, I could call my mama again or try my daddy. Either of my folks were my best chance for getting out of here today, given the stubbornness Ol’ Blue was displaying.

“Not for long,” Ivy said. “You’re going in to see my lawyer before the police this morning, just like everybody else.”

Everybody but Oscar, I thought, unless we find him quick. Apparently, we weren’t going to be discussing that I’d slept in my truck last night. I figured that she could have been sleepy and kind of accidentally turned her lock while I was outside with the cop in the wee hours, or it could have been what Guy calls a passive-aggressive move. He’d probably call not talking about it passive-aggressive, too.

Gabe made his report while swiveling in place, looking in every direction. “Both four-wheelers are here. All the horses are here. He’s not in the smokehouse. We’ve looked everywhere twice. No one fed the horses yet. He didn’t come out to do chores.”

“Look again,” Ivy ordered. “Split up. Everybody check something, everything.”

She pointed down the ranch road to the east then west toward the main gate. That’s the direction I chose, waving Charley along with me. I hadn’t gone far when Ivy zipped out of the garage in her Hummer, heading east for the ranch’s back gate, while Gabe and Stuckey fired up the four-wheelers.

The solo stroll out toward the header at the ranch gate should have been the nicest little walk Charley and I had had in a while, but I pondered on Oscar hightailing it.

Either that, or someone had done something to him, making him the next Vicente.

Then I saw the white Jeep Compass just beyond the open ranch gate.

Sabino Arriaga looked better than I imagine I did. His hair was wet and his face clean-shaven. He hadn’t been there long this time, I reckoned.

I’d been avoiding him, and I didn’t even want to face the reason why.

He got out of the car, raised a hand, and stood waiting. I turned on my heel and walked back to the ranch house, slapping my thigh.

“Charley, come. Heel.”

I put my dog away in Ol’ Blue, the one-ton kennel good for nothing else at the time, then went to the barn and saddled up. Decker and I made a speedy loop out to the flock, calling for Oscar, stopping just shy of spooking the sheep. The donkey jack brayed once, and I was sure he’d betray any person hanging out down there. His son, the mule, started to follow Decker again, so I wheeled off and loped back to the barn though I’d have liked to ride for the summit and certain cell service. The others had made no progress. Gabe reported in from a four-wheel ride down to a pig wallow and back. Stuckey had tried up and down the ranch land near Reese Trenton’s place. Eliana checked the house, though it didn’t seem necessary and we all searched the barn and smoke-house and bunkhouse.

It was time to face facts. Oscar was gone.