twenty-one

Merry’s first call went through to Barbie’s voicemail. She hung up without leaving a message and tried the Quikcare Clinic next. A woman answered after four rings.

“Hello? I’m looking for Olivia Lamente.”

“This is Olivia.”

“Hi. This is Merry McCoy.”

Silence.

“Listen, I was going through some of my mother’s papers, and she has a note here that she sold a gun to Bo a few years back.” She was surprised at how easily the lie came to her.

A pause. “Yes?”

“Listen, I know it’s a bad time, but I was wondering whether he kept it or sold it to someone else.”

“Why?”

“I was, uh, kind of hoping to buy it back if I could track it down.”

Another pause. “You’re allowed to have a gun?”

Uh oh. “If I permanently disable it, so it won’t work. Then it’s okay. I don’t want to shoot it. Only have it because … because it was Mama’s.”

Sorry, Mama.

“What kind was it?” Olivia said finally. But her tone was softer.

“A thirty-eight.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t really know much about guns. What did it look like?”

Merry described the revolver in general terms. “And it had her name on it.” She hoped Olivia hadn’t heard about the gun that killed Denny Teller.

She didn’t give any indication she had, saying, “I think I remember seeing it.”

“Did he sell it?”

“I don’t think so. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, he taught Barbie how to shoot with it.”

The tiny shiver traveled up Merry’s neck again.

“But it was probably lost in the fire, along with everything else. I’m sorry. I know about wanting to keep things that belonged to those we’ve lost.”

“I know you do, Olivia. I’m sorry, but I had to ask.”

“I understand.”

After they said goodbye Merry sat looking out the kitchen window for a long time, trying to put it all together.

———

Merry spent the next few hours catching up on mundane chores. She cleaned Izzy’s stall and spread clean bedding. She did her laundry, picked up the house a little, and watered the bushes running rampant in Mama’s rose garden.

She remembered the shotgun as she came in the back door to the mudroom. Sure enough, it was leaning against the back of a cupboard there. The exterior surface was finely pitted with rust, but it looked clean enough inside. She’d take it apart and oil it down sometime soon. The box of ammunition tucked on the shelf below might have been purchased by her grandfather; the shells inside were old, wrapped in stained cardboard rather than brightly colored plastic. Tucked in with them was a metal box that held three chokes designed to screw on the end of the barrel in order to narrow or widen the shot spray, depending on the prey.

Merry grabbed the box and gun and took them out to the barn. She climbed the ladder to the hayloft and stuffed them into a gap between the floor of the loft and the wall. As a teenager she’d used the space to hide contraband cigarettes, tequila, and the occasional joint. This, too, was contraband for a felon on parole.

Back inside she was folding a load of laundry when the phone rang. She sighed. Having free access to a phone wasn’t as great as she’d remembered, and it didn’t help that Mama hadn’t believed in Caller ID. But she gave in to its trilling demand in case it was Shirlene or Kate calling, trying to ignore the excited, piping voice in the back of her mind that hoped it might be Jamie.

“Hello?”

A pause and then a voice cutting in and out.

“Hello?”

“… wasn’t home.”

“Lauri? Where are you?”

The connection cracked again, allowing only spurts of her cousin’s voice.

“I can’t hear you.” Merry tried to hide her exasperation. “Are you on a cell phone?”

“I was over there the night he died. She wasn’t there.”

What the hell was she talking about? “Who wasn’t where?”

“Barbie wasn’t there.”

“At Clay’s?”

“No! At home.”

Wait a minute. “She wasn’t home the night Clay died? You’re sure?”

“Yes.” Now Lauri sounded frustrated. “Janelle told me she said she was home, but I went inside … slashed …” Her cousin’s voice faded out.

Slashed. That was the night Lauri had punctured Barbie’s waterbed. Of course. Merry tried again. “Where are you? Are you okay?”

A few seconds passed, and Merry thought the cell connection had given out. Then, “I’m all right.”

“You need to come back home.”

“No way. It’s not safe.”

A part of Merry agreed with her cousin, though reason screamed that Lauri was making it harder on herself by running away.

“At least tell me where you are.”

“Will you listen to me? Barbie wasn’t home.”

“Okay, I get it. But damn it, Lauri, tell me where you are.”

The connection abruptly ended. Merry stood with the phone still pressed to her ear, a pair of tube socks dangling from her hand.

Shit.

———

After lunch Merry headed back out to the barn. Leading Izzy to the center of the aisle, she hooked her halter to the crossties and began brushing her coat with a round rubber currycomb, scrubbing in small circles. The mare’s hair sloughed off as she worked her way from neck to rump. Then she did it all again with a stiff-bristled brush, and a final time with a soft-bristled brush, smoothing the horse until she gleamed.

So before peeping in Clay’s window in the hope that she could seduce him and then convince him he was the father of her baby, Lauri had gone over to Barbie’s, walked in, and vandalized her waterbed. The house had been empty, even though Barbie and Olivia had supposedly been busy with WorldMed-related work.

Was her cousin telling the truth? Merry thought so. Why hadn’t she told someone earlier? She said Janelle Paysen had told her about Barbie’s alibi. Which meant she might not have known before. She hadn’t exactly involved herself in discussions about her own case. Though, now that Merry thought about it, Lauri might have known about Barbie’s alibi for a while. If she didn’t want to admit she’d borrowed her mother’s boots because she’d get in trouble, she sure wouldn’t want to admit she’d taken a knife to someone’s property.

Either way, Olivia had lied to provide Barbie with an alibi. She seemed so protective of the younger woman, a regular mama bear. She’d always taken in strays—horses, dogs, people. Even Barbie had mentioned it the day after the fire when she’d come to see Merry, though she certainly hadn’t seen herself as one of Olivia’s rescue projects. Still, Clay had been Olivia’s stepson. She couldn’t know she was protecting a murderer.

Merry brushed Izzy’s face and combed out her dark brown mane and tail. She lifted each hoof and pried it clean of debris with the curved metal hoof pick, then placed pad and saddle on her back. The mare opened her mouth to accept the bit, and Merry gently bent her ears forward to fit the headstall over them. She led her out of the paddock and mounted up.

Despite the horse’s eagerness, Merry held her back to a walk at first. They made their way east, toward the rolling foothills that rose up on the edge of the ranch. Out on the flat beyond the barn, she eased into a jog.

Had Denny known Barbie’s alibi didn’t hold up? Maybe he and Anna had stopped by her house and no one had been home. But Anna hadn’t seemed unsure about where her roommate had been when Merry talked to her at the bloodmobile. Then again, as Jamie said, anyone can lie.

Denny, flopped in that awful recliner, talking about Clay’s new little hottie. Barbie, her face alive as she’d said she’d kill to protect herself.

At the base of a small rise half a mile away, Merry slowed to a walk again, and she and the mare picked their way to the top.

Where she and Rand had lived in Texas, the constant flat horizon defined a perfect saucer of ground where the light fell hot and pale. Here the altitude, low humidity, and the contrasting richness of undulating purple-blue mountains enriched the sunlight to a generous ripeness. A cloud shadow poured across waving grassland.

An unreasonable sense of nostalgia assaulted her without warning. Izzy’s ears twisted back as she swung down under a wind-twisted pine, looping the reins over the stub of a lower branch. Squatting on her haunches, she surveyed the meadow down slope through a veil of yearning. She inhaled the spice of willow and timothy hay, wild roses and equine musk: a plethora of memories mixed together in the still, dry air and deposited into her soul for consideration.

Izzy whuffled softly in her ear, offering the warmth of her breath, her animal concern, the whisper-soft touch of her tender nose against skin. Merry stood and stroked the big horse’s neck, mounted, and continued east.

Why did Barbie feel so many had to die? Jealousy, maybe, for Clay. But Bo? Maybe his death really had been an accident.

Denny could have known why she killed Clay. That might have been enough for him to confront her. Merry suspected he wouldn’t want to turn Barbie in so much as get something for his knowledge. Blackmail. Because if he’d wanted to turn her in, he would have. He’d obviously had some kind of truck with Sergeant Hawkins.

Avarice had done him in. Not that Merry could say she’d miss him much.

What about Anna? She was the link between Denny and Barbie. Was she next on Barbie’s hit list?

Merry and Izzy rambled along a circuitous route, ending at the Lamentes’. The mare picked her way among the charred ruins of the smaller outbuildings. Where one had stood, the fire had left behind only a small, blackened pile of wood charcoal surrounded by a rough square of singed earth. The house had fared little better, reduced to a scorched skeleton leaning precariously against the sky. In the open, stark interior, Merry could see the wreck of barely recognizable furniture protruding from the mess. Izzy nosed a piece of seared countertop lying in the front yard and shied away from the stink.

Merry dismounted and looped the reins over a piece of broken fencing. She loosened the saddle girth and walked to the half-burned horse barn.

———

Lauri squinted at the Glamour magazine Janelle had lent her, the light from the kerosene lamp growing dim. Something wrong with the glass thingie that fit around the flame. She sighed, and wished for the forty-second time that day for electricity.

No TV, no telephone, no microwave, and worst of all, no hair-dryer. So not only was she stuck in a tiny dark cabin in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere, she had to look like shit, too.

Janelle said she believed Lauri was innocent. But even so, Lauri couldn’t tell her about following Barbie Barnes. Janelle would say it was too much of a risk, wouldn’t like Lauri using her car to do it, and wouldn’t get why she was doing it at all. Lauri couldn’t tell her the whole truth either; however much Janelle vowed to be on her side, she wouldn’t understand what Lauri had done to the waterbed. Wouldn’t matter how much she tried to explain it. There had been too many other situations like that, too many other people who gave her that look when she’d only been trying to tell them what they’d asked to know.

So she hadn’t told her. Janelle worked all the time, so she wouldn’t see her own car in town, and if someone else saw it and asked Janelle about it, Lauri would tell her that she’d had to come into Hazel to get something or other.

At least she got out once in a while. It was hard to follow Barbie during the day in a town the size of Hazel, so she only did it at night. She’d dyed her hair dark like Janelle’s and added a variety of hats and a pair of big ugly sunglasses like Janelle would wear—that girl had the worst taste—and no one had taken a second look. At least, she didn’t think they had.

And at night Lauri could get close enough to see what Barbie was doing in her house. Persistence pays off, her mother always said. Lauri was just waiting for that to happen. She was getting pretty tired of waiting for Merry to catch on, though. She’d been going great guns there for a while, tracking down clues like Nancy Drew and generally making a pest out of herself. Then she’d kind of dried up, like she’d hit a dead end. Plus, she’d started hanging out with Barbie Barnes.

At first, Lauri had thought it was because she knew what Barbie had done and was trying to prove it, but that quickly went out the window. Drinking together, getting all chummy, and crying on each other’s shoulders. Made her sick, having to watch that garbage through the kitchen window. Seeing how everybody liked sweet little Barbie so much. Only Lauri seemed to know what a bad person she was.

And why didn’t they all like her like that? What was it that Barbie had? How did she fool them all so easily?

She was worried Merry might have heard her when she took up her nighttime watching place, high in the branches of the big old tree in the yard next to Barbie’s house, just as her cousin stormed out. It was cold at night sometimes, but not too bad, and Janelle had lent her some pretty good outdoor clothes.

Clay had certainly made the wrong choice in women, but Lauri would make sure Barbie got what she had coming. She had to pay for killing the man Lauri loved, the man she was going to have a family with. And besides, if she didn’t, everyone would continue to blame Lauri. She couldn’t imagine going to jail for Clay’s murder, she just couldn’t. And she didn’t want to be running her whole life either. She sure as hell wasn’t going to be sitting in this nasty cabin that belonged to the Paysens when it came time to have the baby.

Then Denny died and Sergeant Hawkins blamed Merry. So now she had even more reason to find out what really happened, didn’t she? Lauri had hated doing it, but she’d finally made the cell phone call. Merry wasn’t working fast enough on her own, and it was pretty clear no one believed anything Lauri had tried to tell them.

No one but her cousin. So she had to come through. She just had to. Lauri had seen the hunted look in her eyes that first day when she’d barged into the police station, before Officer Gutierrez asked all his questions. Merry hated that place.

Now Lauri got it, even after just one night in jail. It sucked, and she had no intention of going back.