Chapter 22

TICK TOCK. I LOOKED AROUND IVY’S dining table. We were where we’d been twenty-four hours earlier, but without the food and friendliness. Eliana had put the chicken dinner away while Ivy and I were in town. The slightest scent of roast fowl lingered, and the bare table made the atmosphere worse. Tense. I hadn’t heard the clock before, a big antique in the living room end, on the mantel above the fireplace, but now it filled my ears. Tick, tock, tick, tock.

Eliana and Oscar sat on one long side, as far from each other as possible, which put Eliana close to Ivy at the far head of the table. Stuckey wouldn’t look at me, wouldn’t look at anybody. I wanted to pull Ivy aside and compare notes, so to speak, but she commanded everybody to sit down and listen up. I wasn’t about to sit between Gabe and Stuckey now, so there I was at the other head of the table, in the always-absent Milt’s spot.

Ivy asked, “Who here knows anything about Pleasures massage parlor?”

That was her idea of subtle? Or getting to the point? I should have told her the details about confronting Stuckey minutes before.

Eliana looked at Ivy and said nothing. Oscar, Gabe, and Stuckey looked at each other in a way that made me think all the boys knew about Pleasures.

“I’ve got some questions,” Ivy said. “I want to understand what happened here a couple of years ago. We are going to reconstruct the timeline. We’re going to figure this out.”

I nodded. The police wouldn’t care about my dog getting mutilated two years ago. I cared. Ivy cared.

“You were gone, right?” I suggested. “You used to spend less time here.”

Ivy patted the folder of receipts with the calendar on top. “I narrowed it down to the weeks I wasn’t here. I used to come to the ranch about once or twice a month, and I missed some long weekends.”

I thought about what Ivy had already deduced from her records.

Oscar lied to me.

I said one word to Ivy as we eyed each other down the long table. “Fire.”

She nodded. “Fire.”

Calling my dog by his old name was hard, but I managed to say, “You thought Vicente took him and Flame.”

She looked down at Oscar.

He sat frozen, not volunteering a word.

Ivy pointed to her tally of purchases and her calendar. “I hired you in February two years ago. Fire had a breeding scheduled in March. And you were here then. I made a big hay buy. I paid all five of you, counting Vicente. And I deducted the mileage when I took you and Eliana and Vicente to town. You two went to that little Mexican market and Vicente went to the library.”

Gabe started to make a face but straightened it out and waited. Stuckey still studied the table. Eliana watched Ivy, who watched Oscar.

Oscar shifted on his chair and folded his hands on the table where a plate should have been. “Perhaps I make a mistake on when I began work for you.”

Ivy rolled her eyes and thrust her chin at me. “Of course, yesterday, I didn’t know Vicente was dead. I guess I thought that wherever Vicente was, he still had Fire and Flame.” Now she rapped her calendar like a lawyer making a closing argument in front of the jury, or in this case, a whole bunch of suspects. “But as soon as we realized that your dog is Flame, we should have wondered where Fire was. Two years ago, Fire’s breeding was for Reese Trenton’s bitch. It was spring lambing time.”

“What happened to Fire?” I asked the table. As soon as we got Ivy’s old dog squared away, we were going to deal with what happened to mine.

Stuckey’s shoulders hunched and shook. Shame and stress came off him in waves as he cried. Eliana wrinkled her face with discomfort and looked at Gabe and Oscar, their impassive faces giving nothing.

“I didn’t mean to,” Stuckey mumbled.

Ivy started to rise. Her neck stretching tall and tight. I caught her eye and shook my head with the barest movement.

That won’t work.

She reconsidered, stayed quiet. I made my voice understanding, sympathetic. “You didn’t mean to.”

“I didn’t!” Stuckey’s voice grew fierce.

Ivy sat back down and spoke like a sweet big sister. “You didn’t mean to what?”

“Shoot him. I was trying to save him.”

“Aw, Stuckey.” I said it like a gentle admonishment, resigned, rubbing my forehead with both hands. Yeah, a shot dog trumps one with cut ears.

“I didn’t mean to.” Stuckey’s repetition bordered on a whine. “I’m sorry. I was trying to save him. You can do whatever you want to me. I’m sorry.”

Ivy was floored. “You … shot … Fire?”

Stuckey’s voice spiked with stress. “I didn’t mean to shoot him. I was trying for a coyote. It would have got him. I was trying to save Fire.”

“You shot Fire.” Ivy’s voice was quiet now, hurt and resolute. “You killed him?”

Stuckey nodded and shot a grateful look at Gabe. “Gabe stood up for me, buried him.”

“Where?” Ivy asked.

Gabe cleared his throat. “Down where the flock is now. East. Between some oaks. It’s a nice spot.”

Stuckey shot his guilty look all around and clasped his hands over his head.

Ivy rose and stood with her back to us. Was she crying?

Ti-i-ick to-ock. Was the clock really in slow motion while the near silence stretched, or was that just the situation torturing us? I watched Ivy but felt one or two people at the table glance at me.

Finally, Ivy turned and faced us. “Tomorrow, you guys are going to dig up my dog and take him to be cremated and … I’ll spread his ashes, I don’t know, in the sea, or … that’s not the point. You should have told me the truth. You should have been more careful. Poor Fire.”

“Stuckey screwed up,” Gabe said, “real bad. And we should have told you. He was just real scared. Asked me to cover for him. I’m sorry, Ivy. I really am.”

“I was scared,” Stuckey said.

Ivy glared at Gabe and Stuckey, ignoring the other side of the table. “Tell me, did he die immediately, or did he suffer?”

“It was a clean kill,” Gabe said, his voice quiet and respectful.

Ivy seethed. “A clean kill. You guys shot my dog, and you kept that from me, let me think Vicente had just taken off with him.”

Gabe started to bristle at her accusation. I could tell he wanted to point out that he hadn’t shot the dog, but to his credit, he kept his trap shut.

“What did Vicente say when Fire died?” I asked.

Stuckey looked at Gabe, then the table. Gabe looked right back at me and said, “He never knew.”

Ivy thrust her hands on her hips, her face as flushed. “I get that this has nothing to do with Vicente, but you guys have to tell the police if they ask about this part. I’ve told them that I thought Vicente had taken off with Fire and Flame, because that’s what I thought had happened.”

“I’m scared,” Stuckey said. “I don’t want to be in trouble with the police.”

“It had to be just some vagrant or something,” Gabe said. “I mean, that got Vicente. You know how people sneak onto the ranch, dump garbage. We had those homeless people who came in from Trenton’s north section off the interstate that one time. People have dumped stuff over near the east gate.”

I remembered mention of trespassers before. It’s a problem for ranchers all over the west, people traipsing across the private land, camping illegally, dumping garbage. It’s come to blows, and worse.

Ivy paused and pulled a photo from her folder. She’d been busy while I was out there trying to get Ol’ Blue started.

She’d printed a full-size picture of the thermos.

“Spring lambing,” Ivy said again. “Eliana says she was sending meals up to Vicente. One of you would have brought them up to him.”

My mouth opened as I got it, and I wondered when Ivy had put it together.

If Vicente wasn’t shot or stabbed, he might have been poisoned.

I remembered Ivy’s huge tray of meds. Plenty to kill with an overdose.

Gabe’s nostrils flared as he eyed Oscar, Eliana, and Stuckey. “Well, I sure as hell didn’t fetch meals for him.”

Stuckey ducked his head down like a scolded dog.

What had been inside the thermos the police found near the body and tagged as evidence?

“I know nothing,” Oscar said.

Ivy and I looked at each other down the length of the tables. I figured we were reading each other’s minds.

Someone’s lying. Who is it?

I watched Ivy study her employees one by one. Didn’t she get it? It was certainly occurring to me that if whoever hurt Charley had been the one to kill Vicente, then that person had a whole lot to lose and this was not a safe table to sit at. But then, I’d gone to sleep the night before thinking that someone around this table knew, like Charley and I did, where the body was buried.

I’d proved the body was there, but that was all I’d proved.

Maybe I was wrong the night before. Maybe the other person who knew where Vicente Arriaga lay dead and buried hadn’t been around Ivy’s dining table but was one of those other people in Ivy’s orbit. I tried to think it through.

What about her little waif Solar, who was involved in something hinky at the Great Dogs shop? What about that fellow who delivered the coal coke? He passed cash with Stuckey. And something had passed between Stuckey and the hay deliverers, a woman and a man. Maybe someone else who came onto the ranch regularly had a whole side business that involved money and contraband. What about Duffy, who sure wasn’t a good enough shoer to earn real money at it? What about Ivy’s lawyer, who had way too much influence with the medical examiner’s office and was a criminal defense attorney to boot? What about her doctor, so free and easy with major meds? And what about Ivy’s too-absent husband, Milt?

What about Reese Trenton, the rancher who’d lost land with Ivy’s purchase of her hobby ranch? He was packing a pistol and a grudge. A grave was waiting for someone on his land.

I wanted to go home.

Whatever was going on here likely involved more than one person. Which meant more than one person was lying.