CHAPTER 10

ROSEMARY SET her smeary plate and empty milk glass on the kitchen table beside her old clip-fed .22 rifle, and went to her desk for the telephone book. She was poring over its brief list of auto repair shops and wondering what time such businesses opened when Tank sprang suddenly to his feet and sounded the alarm so vigorously that Rosemary clapped her hands to her ears. “Tank! Quiet!”

He stopped barking but dashed off toward the front of the house. Following him, Rosemary peered out her front window, watched her new gate open slowly, and groaned as the stroller appeared. Damn!

She tossed the dog’s bed into the far corner of the living room, told him to lie down and stay there, and reached the front door just as the bell sounded. Deep breath and squared shoulders, and she pulled the door open. “Kim, I’ve been up since five A.M. and I’m just about to go back to—”

“God, Rosemary, I’m really sorry!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I was just out for a walk, get Tyler out of the house for a while, and I saw your truck.”

“It clearly made more of an impression on you than it did on the deputy who came by to look at it.”

Kim flinched, and bent to lift her son free of the stroller. “Listen, you’ve gotta…I know what you’re thinking and it’s not true, or if it is, it was an…accident, like.”

“I beg your pardon?” said Rosemary again. They were inside now, and as Kim turned to close the door, Tyler said, “Doggie!” and launched himself across the room before either woman had time to respond.

Tank was on his feet at once, his barking thunderous. Tyler lurched to a stop, flung his arms up, and fell back on his bottom. For a long moment dog and boy stared at each other; then Tyler rolled over onto his knees and scuttled back to his mother.

“Wow,” said Kim softly. She picked her son up and sat down with him on the couch. Tank settled onto his bed, head on his paws and eyes on the visitors.

“Uh, Rosemary. Will he bite?”

“I haven’t had him long, so I can’t be sure. I was told he doesn’t like children.”

“Boy. He’d make a hell of a baby-sitter is what I think.”

“ No doubt. Kim…”

“Yeah, right.” Kim lifted Tyler off her lap and set him on the floor beside the couch. Then she brushed back her white-blond hair, settling it behind her shoulders. “Okay, I gotta say I knew Eddie was really mad at you. That doesn’t mean he’d’ve shot up your truck, I don’t believe he did that. But I’ve got this uncle’s part owner of the auto-body place downtown, he can come get it, fix it up for you and not charge you. Just so’s you won’t hold it against us. Unfairly.”

Kim finally ran out of words, and Rosemary got one in. “Why?”

“Huh? Like I said, so you won’t—”

“No. Why is Eddie mad at me?”

Kim dug into her flowing hair with both hands, as if to keep them safely occupied. “Because you told the sheriff he’d robbed that woman’s house and then trashed it. Ms. Morgan’s place. The sheriff gave him a real hard time about that and even asked him if maybe he was out there when she got shot.”

Rosemary had her mouth open to protest, but Kim wasn’t finished. “And you complained about him to Rob down at the station, almost got him fired. And you’ve been hanging around with that old bastard at the end of the road who always treats Eddie like he was dirt.”

Rosemary sighed. “Kim, stay right there and keep a hand on Tyler. Water’s still hot, and I can make you a cup of coffee in two minutes.”

“Cream and sugar,” Kim called after her. She made the coffee, doctored it more or less as directed, and carried it into the living room. “Milk will have to do,” she said as she set the mug on the coffee table.

“Oh, that’s okay, milk’s all I got at home, too. I always say cream just in case.”

“I see.” Rosemary turned the closer fireside chair around and sat down. “Okay, in reverse order. I went to see Tom Becker yesterday because Leona Barnes, at Enders, had asked me to. Eddie’s name didn’t even come up. I bought gas yesterday at Rob’s Gas and saw Eddie there, but I had no reason to complain about him and I didn’t.

“And what I told the sheriff, or rather the deputy, was that I’d been to Ms. Morgan’s house and found that someone had torn up the place and probably stolen—whatever there that was worth stealing,” she finished. With an inner wince, she now recalled that she’d forgotten all about Mike Morgan’s computer, and presumably a music system of some sort, neither of which had been in the cabin yesterday. Maybe the sheriff’s people had taken them for safe keeping?

“The sheriff came in then, and he asked me whether I’d seen anyone else out on Ms. Morgan’s property,” she went on, “and I told him the truth, that Eddie had driven up while I was there. That was it.”

“Eddie said he found you poking around out there, and he’s heard you’re asking everybody questions about Mike Morgan. How come? I thought you told me you didn’t know her.”

“That’s what I said, and it’s true. But the people I know or talk to, and the places I choose to go, are none of Eddie’s business nor yours, either.”

“Eddie says—”

“Kim, if Eddie’s in trouble, it has nothing to do with me.”

Kim’s brow furrowed and her eyes glinted with sudden moisture. “When you talked to the deputy this morning about your truck, did you say Eddie did it?”

“No.” Because the possibility hadn’t occurred to her. By the time the deputy arrived to look over the damage, she’d decided that the culprit was Christy Mendes, and had inexplicably shifted into a keep-it-in-the-family stance that she must have absorbed unwittingly from her husband. To the deputy’s suggestion that the shooter was probably “just some kid,” she’d replied only that any such kid belonged in jail, and his inadequate parents in the very next cell.

Two tears spilled down Kim’s face, and she lifted a hand to brush them away. “I don’t believe even Eddie would have been dumb enough, mad enough, to shoot your truck. Honest, Rosemary. Or to tear up stuff out there at that Morgan place—I mean, he didn’t like her, but she’s dead for chrissake so what’s the point? And he didn’t steal anything of hers, or I’d’ve seen it.”

“Why didn’t he like her?”

“All I know, when he heard she’d inherited that property from old Jared, he got real interested. He’s been wanting to move further out of town practically forever, and he likes it up that way. Anyway, he saw her at the station and said something to her about maybe buying it.”

Rosemary could envision the scene. “Like offering to take it off her hands?”

“yeah, something like that. And I guess she really put him down. People say she has—had—a real rough mouth on her. Tyler, stop that!” she snapped, and slapped the hand of her son, who had climbed back onto the couch and was trying to dig into the shoulder bag Kim had set beside her. As he set up a howl, there came a low whine from the dog’s corner, and Tyler widened his eyes to white-edged circles and closed his mouth.

“Good boy,” said Kim, to one or the other. She pulled a many-keyed ring from the bag and gave it to Tyler. “Now you stay quiet. Look,” she went on to Rosemary, “Eddie’s not this mean person. Well, he can sound that way, kind of, but just when he feels pushed, you know?”

She leaned forward, toward Rosemary and away from her son, and spoke more softly. “See, his family’s got a really bad name, but that’s not Eddie’s fault. Some of them get off on shoving people around or beating them up, but Eddie doesn’t, he really doesn’t. He’s never laid a hand on me, or Tyler either.”

Rosemary made an effort to pull her weary mind into this new scenario. In the year of her residence on Willow Lane, she’d seen Kim Runyon several times a week, and had never noticed suspicious bruising or anything to suggest the young woman was concealing pain.

Now Kim blinked hard and sat straighter, squaring her shoulders. “He needs a steady job with regular hours and benefits, something that’ll pay him enough so he can support his family and have a few bucks left over for a beer now and then, like other guys. I almost had my mom talked into taking Tyler so I could go to work full time for Maya, and Eddie could go to community college for a brush-up and then go to the police academy, like Steve did.”

Steve? Probably the favorite cousin.

“But turns out I’m pregnant again, so it wouldn’t hardly be any use.”

“Kim…”

“So what I want to ask, it’d be a real help to me if you’d stay out of Eddie’s way, kind of. Honest to God, I know he wouldn’t go to hurt you, and I’ll get the truck fixed right away.”

“Kim, that’s not necessary. I have insurance.”

“Right, and soon as you make a claim they’ll raise your rates or cancel your policy.” Kim spoke in the weary tone of someone who’d been there. “I owe you anyway, you always been real nice to me. As soon as I get home from here I’ll call my Uncle Chuck at Acme Auto Body, in town, and tell him he’ll be hearing from you. I think I have…” She dug into a front pocket of her bag and fished out a card. “Yeah. Here’s his card.”

She held it out, and after a moment Rosemary took it.

“He’s a good guy, and he does good work. And I promise I’ll keep an eye on Eddie. Thing is, he’s had some small-stuff trouble before and if he was to get seriously out of line now, he could wind up doing time and then I’d be on my own with two kids.”

Rosemary wondered just what “small-stuff trouble” involved. “Would you really be any worse off?” she asked.

Kim lifted her chin and peered down her nose from narrowed pale eyes. “You sound exactly like my mom, and I just tell her, her problem is she’s been sleeping alone too long.”

“You can’t possibly know how long I’ve been sleeping alone,” said Rosemary. “Or for that matter, whether I am.”

“Bullshit,you’retoo…”Kim shut her mouth tight, her face flaming.

Tank, maybe catching something strange in the voices, got to his feet and came to Rosemary, to put his head in her lap.

“Good boy.” She ran both hands over his head, caught his ears and pulled at them gently before gesturing to the floor next to her chair. Tank sighed and lay down.

“You know, that’s a pretty weird dog,” said Kim, in tones that indicated she was happy to switch to a more neutral subject. “I never seen one that minded so quick.”

“I think Ms. Morgan must have been a good trainer,” said Rosemary.

“Or something.” Kim got to her feet. “I mean, she just turned up here alone, like she’d disappeared from someplace else without even leaving a hole there. Then you do the same thing, and her dog, like, recognizes you. Spooky.”

“I assure you, I left some holes,” said Rosemary. “And she must have, too, somewhere.”

“I still think it’s spooky,” said Kim as she got to her feet. “Thanks for the coffee, and I better go. I’ll just put this cup in the kitchen.”

“No, that’s all right.” Rosemary got quickly to her feet, but Kim had already reached the bifold door that closed the kitchen and breakfast nook off from the living room.

“Hey! With a child in the house you shouldn’t leave a gun just laying around like that!”

Ranch-raised by a father who despised both vermin and cruelty to animals, Rosemary had taken time before breakfast to prove that her shooting eye was still in by knocking six tin cans off her back fence—naming a can for one of her nasty relatives each time she pulled the trigger. “I wasn’t planning on having a child in the house.” She took the mug from Kim’s hand, set it down on the table beside the rifle, and more or less herded the younger woman back into the living room, pushing the door closed. “With all that’s been happening lately, I thought I should make sure I’m still a good shot. And I am. But I don’t shoot trucks.”

“Right,” muttered Kim. Tyler was clinging to her left leg, peering around her to eye the dog. She pried him loose, took his hand, and towed him to the door.

“Tell Eddie that.” Couldn’t hurt.

“Oh. Yeah, I will. That fence is new, too. Boy, you’re sure setting up for protection,” Kim said over her shoulder as she lifted Tyler and carried him down the porch steps to put him in his stroller.

“Sometimes people get the wrong idea about a woman living alone,” said Rosemary gently. “Kim, isn’t Tyler old enough to walk?”

“Oh, sure, he walks most of the time. But he won’t go out at all unless we start with me pushing him in the stroller. Eddie says that just proves he’s a real boy.” Kim began to maneuver the heavy stroller over the flagstones. “Sometimes I think there’s just too god-damned many male people around,” she added over her shoulder as she reached the gate. Her “See you later” came faintly as the gate swung shut upon mother and son.

ROSEMARY called Uncle Chuck—Chuck Ballew was the name on his card—and found him deep-voiced, pleasant, and fully aware of her circumstances. After she told him the make and model of her truck, he assured her he could get the parts from Redding this morning and would send a couple of guys to pick up the truck within the hour. He couldn’t offer her a loaner, but she’d have her own wheels back midday tomorrow.

An hour later, she stood on her front porch and watched her truck disappear from sight. Two young men from Acme Auto Body had knocked most of the windshield loose, gathered up the pieces, brushed off stray fragments, and draped a tarp over the driver’s seat. Then the larger one drove off in an Acme Auto Body Ford and the other, with a wave and a “See ya tomorrow,” did the same in her poor wounded Toyota.

“And here we are all alone in the world without any wheels at all,” she told Tank. “I think what we need is a good long walk.”

WHEN they returned, dusty and thirsty, it was to find a different vehicle parked before the house: a big white SUV of some sort with the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department logo on its door. “Shit,” said Rosemary softly, and snapped Tank’s leash to his collar.

The driver’s door of the SUV opened, and Sheriff Angstrom stepped out and came toward her, hand extended. “Mrs. Mendes, I was sorry to hear about your recent trouble.” Tank’s head and tail came up as he eyed this newcomer, and Angstrom stopped, both hands in sight. “No threat here, buddy.”

“Friend, Tank,” said Rosemary to the dog, and then, “Thank you. have you found out anything about who did it?” She returned his grip briefly.

“No, ma’am.” He glanced upwards at the gray sky, and at that moment the first drops of rain spattered into the dust of the road. “Could I come in for a few minutes to talk to you about it?”

Without waiting for a response, he moved forward to open the gate for her. Not quite so tall as he’d seemed when she met him at his office, he was long-legged and an easy mover. “This is Tank,” she said, moving past him with the dog in tow. “He was Ms. Morgan’s dog, and I’ve adopted him.”

“Hi there, Tank,” he said, and offered a hand, which Tank sniffed politely. Rosemary unlocked her front door and released the dog from his leash. “Just give me a minute to wipe him down,” she said, and did so, with a towel hanging over the porch rail.

Inside, she hung her jacket in the coat closet, and it was only when Angstrom unzipped his, a brown leather number with no official insignia, that she noticed the fairly unobtrusive holster on his right hip. “Please sit down,” she said, and perched herself on the edge of the couch.

He took one of the fireplace wing chairs. “I understand some-body shot out your truck’s windshield last night.”

“That’s true. But I can’t show it to you; it’s at Acme Auto Body being repaired.”

“I don’t need to see it, I’ve read the report. What I wondered, though, have you given any further thought to who might have done the shooting?”

“Of course I have.”

He leaned back in the chair and stretched his legs out. “Did you come to any conclusions?”

“Not really. your deputies seemed to think it was just a prank by passing teenagers.”

“Shouldn’t think there’d be many passersby of any age on this street,” he said. When her only reply was a nod, he added, “Maybe you could help me out about this. You remember that telephone call I told you about? Purported to be from a lawyer’s secretary?”

Purported? thought Rosemary. Some small-town sheriff. “I remember.”

“And Captain Diaz in Arcata told me he’d heard there was some tension among Mendes family members, but so far as he knew it was of no concern to the police. So you see, what I’m wondering, could somebody from your family there have come over here looking to give you trouble? Because I have to tell you, when local kids are out shooting up cars or signs or barns, they don’t generally stop with one. Far as we’ve heard, your truck was the only hit last night.”

“I’m—not comfortable talking about family matters,” she muttered. He waited.

“Well. My husband was involved in a family business. He was killed in an accident, there was a large financial settlement, and the rest of his family—his aunt and cousins and their children—thought they should have the money. They had no legal claim, but that hasn’t stopped them from pestering me about it. It’s possible that some of the younger members may have found where I live.

“This is just speculation on my part,” she added. “I’ve not seen any one of them. But I’ve been getting telephone calls with nobody replying when I answer.”

“And you don’t want to file a complaint?”

“I have no evidence. And I don’t think they’ll go so far as to injure me. intimidation is more their style.”

“Shootin’ up a person’s property is carrying intimidation pretty far,” said Angstrom. When she made no reply, he gave the slightest of shrugs. “So what about local folks you might have irritated?”

She decided to try to dodge this one. “I don’t think I’ve been here long enough to make enemies. But I’ll give it some thought.”

“Well, about all we can do is try to keep an eye out here around Willow Lane. And ask you to let us know right away if anything scares you.”

“Thank you, I’ll do that,” she said in chilly tones.

He grinned. “Hey, I’m one of the good guys, honest. not just fishing for personal stuff I’m not entitled to. But if strange people are coming into my county threatening residents, even new residents, I want to know about it. And family issues are often the worst kind, just ask any cop.” He got to his feet, and Tank, who’d been resting head on paws, now sat up with pricked ears and watchful gaze.

“He’s not aggressive,” said Rosemary quickly. “Just protective.”

“Comes to the same thing, sometimes,” he said. “This guy already lost one main person, and he might be real watchful about her replacement, which is clearly you.”

“I’ll see that he behaves,” she told him, and stood up. “Since you’re here, would you like to have a look at the books and CDs I brought home from Michelle Morgan’s cabin? They’re over here.”

Angstrom followed her to the corner where she’d set the boxes, and glanced inside. “Not worth any money, so not likely to be of interest to looters. If you’ve looked them over…”

“Oh, I have.”

“Find any new personal information?”

She shook her head. “Nothing beyond a sense of what kinds of books and music she liked.”

“That’s personal, and interesting, but not useful to law enforcement. Far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason you can’t keep them.”

“And there’s one more thing. I’m wondering whether you found a computer and a music system when you first checked out her cabin.”

“As I recall from the list, there was a boom-box, and the deputies brought it in. But they’d have brought a computer in, too, and it wasn’t mentioned. You think she had one?”

“Sabrina Petrov mentioned to me, in passing, that Mike Morgan had a laptop; she’d talked to Sabrina’s son, Marcus, about it.”

”That’s interesting. I’ll check into it.” he moved to the coat closet, to collect his jacket. “Oh, about the dog.”

“I intend to keep him, too.”

“Fine. What I was going to say, hold him close. There’s been a pack of something, maybe feral dogs, slaughtering sheep near here, and farmers are pretty upset. I’m on my way to see the results of a new attack last night.”

“Gray Campbell told me about that. My property is well fenced, and Tank goes out only with me, and on leash.”

“You Gray’s new friend I’d heard about? Good for him,” he said, with a nod and a glance that might have been approval, or perhaps appraisal. Rosemary had been away from the patterns of male–female social exchanges for so long that she no longer knew the code.

“Thank you. I’ll pass that on to him,” she said, and followed him to the front door.

He paused there, glancing out the nearby window. “Was that truck your only transportation?”

“It was. It is,” she said, and reached past him to open the door. “But I’ll have it back tomorrow, and for tonight, I’m planning to stay quietly at home and make up for the sleep I missed last night.”

Watching him dash through the light rain to his vehicle, she tried to decide why she hadn’t suggested Eddie Runyon as the possible truck shooter. Probably, she acknowledged to herself as she closed the door, because she felt she’d made a kind of tacit bargain with Kim.

 

1986

I Think this will need your attention, B.D.” The call came from outside. Brian Conroy, bent over a table in the still-open-to-the-sky dining room, straightened, said, “The revisions look good,” to the architect, thrust the blueprints at the man, and set off at a lope toward the front of the sprawling new house—his “Mogul Mansion,” Brianna called it.

“What?” he snapped at the slender, dark-haired young woman who stood looking off toward the hills. “Sorry, Sammie,” he added quickly to Sammie Andre, his political secretary and general right-hand person. “What’s up?”

She didn’t turn, simply pointed. “The usual, looks like.”

Two horses came slowly along the trail that led into the hilly scrub brush east of the ranch. The first, head down and limping in the off foreleg, was led by Brianna; the second trailed slowly behind, her older brother, David, hunched over in the saddle.

“Jesus Christ, what hit you?” Conroy approached his daughter as if to scoop her up, but she waved him off. Her face, he noted belatedly, was pale under streaks of sweaty dust, and her left arm hung oddly.

“Goddammit, Dave, why can’t you ever—”

“It wasn’t his fault, Daddy.” Brianna at twelve was five feet eight headed probably for six feet, all long bones and no flesh to notice. Now she grinned, her mouthful of big teeth oddly sexy in an androgynous face. “All mine. I ran Pogo at a gully while I was helping Davy check fences, old Jericho tried to keep up with us, and we got all tangled up. And then Davy had an asthma attack. And I think I did my collarbone again. Shitty luck, huh?”

“I wouldn’t call it luck exactly,” Conroy said, eyes on his son.

Under that flinty gaze David pulled himself straight, dismounted, and dug into his jacket pocket for his inhaler.

“Sorry,” he muttered. Nine years older than his lanky sister, David was a compactly built young man of medium height with dark hair and eyes and a wary expression.

“You put the horses up,” said Conroy. “And get Jed to have a look at Pogo, while I do the same with your little sister.”

“I’m sorry, Davy,” said Brianna, and went to plant a kiss on her brother’s cheek. “I’m sorry, Pogo,” she said to the horse, rubbing its neck. Cradling her left arm in her right, she turned to her father, who reached for her again and then stopped himself, letting his big hands fall empty to his sides.

“Pogo’s getting kind of old,” she told him. “Maybe he won’t be sound in time for the rodeo. Maybe I need a new horse, remember the one I told you about?”

“Jesus, Brianna, what makes you think you’ll be sound in time for the rodeo?”

“Hey, I’m a fast healer, remember?”

“God knows you’ve had plenty of practice. Okay, come along carefully to the car and we’ll pay another visit to the hospital emergency room.”

“B.D., no.” Sammie, who had moved to speak to David, turned as she heard this exchange. “You have people from Sacramento due in just over an hour, you’re still in work clothes, and God only knows how long a line there’ll be at emergency.”

“Shit. Well, they’ll just have to wait, Sammie. Give ’em bathrooms and chairs and drinks. And explain that my daughter needed me.”

“David would be happy to take her, and I’ll deal with the horses.” Conroy was shaking his head as she added, “The inhaler took care of his asthma attack, and he doesn’t like these political meetings anyway.”

“True. But…” He turned his gaze on Brianna, who started to shrug but quickly regretted it and rolled her eyes instead. “No problem, Daddy.”

“Shit.” Conroy looked at his watch, and nodded. “Okay. Dave, turn the horses over to Sammie and go get your wallet or whatever. I’ll take Calamity Jane here down to the garage and strap her in, and see you there. And Brianna, I expect you to do exactly what your brother tells you. And don’t give the doctor any trouble.”

“Got it,” she said.