Chapter 25

ELIANA DIDN’T WANT TO BE TAKEN to the police interview. Ivy laughed it off with a shake of her head. “I could not get that girl to stop with the food this morning.”

She had pulled the Hummer back into the garage, waving me to come along inside the bay. As we entered the house, she explained that Eliana had been the first one up. The tables were piled with a spread of cinnamon French toast, pancakes, and sausages, plus all sorts of little bowls of goodies on the side to add—maple syrup, whipped cream, pecans, blueberries, strawberries, and chocolate chips.

There wasn’t enough chocolate in the world that could be slathered on this situation to make it appealing.

Hustling around looking for Oscar had used up the time that was supposed to be spent in consultation with the attorney. While Ivy got on the horn with her lawyer and arranged to meet at the police station, Eliana put away all the untouched food she’d assembled. Ivy hung up the phone and waved us to the garage, rolling her eyes as she did.

Back in the Hummer, Ivy explained how she was to drive Eliana and me direct to the police station. Gabe was going to take himself and Stuckey in for the second round of appointments with the cops. Ivy promised everybody her attorney would make sure everything was on the up-and-up, too.

Maybe there wasn’t enough time to fix the possible monkey wrench that had been thrown into whatever agreement the police and the lawyer had come to on interviewing and polygraphing everybody, yet not take action on Eliana and Oscar. Probably Oscar would get less leniency now, but perhaps Eliana, who hadn’t made a run for it, would still be okay. I told Ivy about the trench dug on the neighbor’s ranch, how he’d seen a man in a dark baseball cap slipping onto his land.

“It was Oscar,” Ivy said.

But we both knew proof was hard to come by.

***

“In Southern California, everyone has a Maria,” Ivy told me, looking in her rearview mirror at me as she drove us to Black Bluff. I’d slipped into the back seat naturally when she said I could bring Charley, but then Eliana joined me there, so here we sat on each side of Charley like a row of children behind Ivy.

“Ma’am?” I glanced at her, then at Eliana. She was looking younger by the minute, her frightened face childlike this morning.

“Everybody has a domestic,” Ivy said. “A Mexican. No one cleans their own house. And those girls, those beautiful Latina girls I’ve hired and all of my fake friends have hired to clean our houses, and cook and take care of kids, those girls don’t drive or have a car. You have to go pick them up and bring them to your house for the day and everything ends up spotless and no one even bothers to learn their girl’s name. Everybody just calls their girl Maria. Everyone has a Maria.”

Their girls. Probably in Ivy’s class of friends, yeah, people are that far off base. But other people live in Southern California and know their help’s name, or don’t have someone else to do their chores. My mama, for one. I frowned, thinking of what my mama had been trying to tell me, and managed an “I dunno” for Ivy.

“You’re adorable, Rainy. You’re so naive in some ways.”

But I am just barely smart enough to shut my mouth sometimes. Because undocumented workers weren’t the only reason Ivy Beaumont didn’t want the police on her ranch.

My mama had known about the Beaumont reputation in Hollywood.

“I want to call my mom,” I felt like I was six years old. “Even with your husband in the movie business, you probably never heard of my mother, but she does a little acting. Her name’s Dara Dale.”

“Your mother is Dara Dale? A horse rancher type woman?”

My mama?

Oh.

My.

“Uh, no, that’s the wrong one,” I said. I’d never known there were two people packing that name. My mama thinks horses smell bad.

Ivy started in again as she parked at the government building’s visitors’ section.

“You live up north,” she said. “Things are different there. Down here, it’s important to provide a safe space for these people. They’re good workers, and they’re not bothering anybody.”

These people. Did she have to provide her workers with a safe working space for six or seven days a week, instead of five? For once, I kept my mouth in check, taking time before I finally allowed, “I’m from Texas, ma’am. I’ve bucked hay beside many a Mexican. And men from farther south, while we’re at it. I do understand those hard workers and the fix they’re up against.”

Ivy rolled her eyes toward a Lexus in the lot. “At least Leonard’s here. About time he earned his retainer.” She slammed the tranny into park, flung open her door and then mine.

Eliana looked at me with tears in her eyes as she got out on the passenger’s side and whispered, “It was Oscar.”

She was fast pulled away from the Hummer by Ivy. I double-checked to make sure the windows were all left a bit open for Charley then dawdled to try my cell phone as they entered the government building.

***

Between my mama and my daddy, she’d be the one with the more maneuverable vehicle. My phone had three bars of connection and I’d gotten enough charge in Ivy’s car on our foray into Black Bluff.

I hung up on both Guy’s unanswered cell and our home message machine. I told my mama’s cell phone, “I think I need a tow truck. I’m at the Black Bluff police station right now.”

For good measure, I texted her, asking, Are you nearby? Can you come get me at the Black Bluff police station? Both my folks were driving north for the wedding right about then, and I wondered which was closer to Black Bluff. My wedding was going to mark the first time my mama and daddy had been in shouting distance of each other since I was thirteen years old. That friction was one good reason Guy and I had planned an outdoor wedding. In Oregon. In the springtime.

We’re not made of brain cells.

Here in California, the weather’s always perfect. Shirtsleeve weather, which made Ivy’s attorney, in sport coat and tie, look pretty out of place to me. But, inside the climate-controlled lobby of the Black Bluff town hall, sheriff’s station, courthouse, and licensing department, it was downright chilly. A sign in the lobby said no cell phone use. There was a crowd waiting for us. One tie-wearing fellow said he was a special agent with the state’s Bureau of Investigation. Another was a local officer with the town of Black Bluff. Others wore Tehama County deputies’ uniforms. Ivy and her lawyer frog-walked the terrified Eliana down a hall. Hanging near Mr. Special Agent was the remaining plainclothes detective, with collar-length hair, in dress Wranglers and a plaid shirt, with no tie, sleeves rolled up. I think he was the one who’d been in the unmarked police car on the day before.

“Rainy Dale,” Plaid Shirt said, waving me down the opposite hallway from where they’d marched Eliana.

I nodded, cell phone still in hand. “I’m trying to reach my fellow.” I kept thinking about Guy having changed our home phone machine’s outgoing message. I wanted to keep hitting send ’til I got an answer from him. I was just about to call the Cascade Kitchen to see if he was at work. I’d try Melinda next, just so she could tell me things were all right in the home pasture.

Plaid Shirt knocked once, and someone opened a heavy door from the inside. We were in another hall, just outside what looked like a little interview room.

He said, “How about you put the cell phone down for a couple of minutes so we can talk?”

I pocketed the phone and gritted my teeth. “Okey doke.”

“Great. We’d like to talk to you about what happened this weekend.”

“About me getting thumped and my stuff getting stolen?”

“No, this is about the other matter, Ms. Dale. We’d like you to sit down with me and Agent Mattingly for an interview.”

“About what?”

“Murder.” Mister Special Agent stepped forward as Plaid Shirt faded out of the room. “I’d like to talk about whether or not you killed Vicente Arriaga.”

“I didn’t kill anyone. I never knew Vicente. He was probably a good fellow, though, I can tell you that.”

“And you know that because?”

“Because I have his dog.” I explained the proof that Charley was a good dog, so it was reasonable to figure he’d had a good person. I squinted at this tie-wearer and wondered whether he was playing bad cop or not playing at all. Po-lice are an odd herd. My buddy Melinda has a weird sense of humor. And it mushroomed when she went to deputy-sheriff-school last fall. By the time she got back this winter, she made the squirrelliest small talk ever heard. So maybe this tie-wearing super special agent had the same affliction of canted humor that Melinda Kellan achieved after going to police school. I tried to allow for it.

The agent looked a lot like the easygoing plainclothes detective in that general cop way—same build and a white guy and all—but was somehow on a whole ’nother level. This piece of work had a file under his arm and failed to make himself clear in any form. He was six feet stupid in a five-nine body. Asked me why I thought I was there.

“Someone hitting me on the head, stealing my shoeing tools, and my dog finding a dead body.” My hand went to the back of my skull and rubbed. It still hurt to touch, like the bruise was spreading. Maybe it was a little mushy there, too.

“Did the deputy or the Black Bluff officer or the sheriff’s investigator tell you that?”

“No, I told them that.” I spoke slow enough for him to catch up and tried a little not to roll my eyes.

Then we sighed at each other, and he looked at me while I looked around the tiny room.

It had a mirror on the far side, honest to goodness. Like, someone could be eyeballing us from the other side of the glass. I stared at the goggle-eyed gal in the mirror. My frayed ponytail needed the use of a comb. Brown eyes looked black from being dilated in the bright light, lids a little wider open than usual, spooked-like. And I saw his reflection, too. Maybe younger than I’d thought at first glance, thirty-five or so. Folks in that range that used to look like they had some real age on me, but shoeing’s an in-the-weather job. Makes my face older than my years. High mileage, I am. His sport coat was a real dark navy that had looked black in the hallway, and his pants were dark gray. For no good reason, my brain went to thinking about how gray horses change shades over their lives, and then of course I thought about how two grays might not make a gray and how a little Arab I’ve trimmed since it was a baby was born looking chestnut and is now a light gray and—

“Tell me everything you know about Vicente Arriaga.”

“Okay.” I paused a second, quit thinking about horse colors and their heritability, then told him, “I’m done.”

“You’re done? You think you’re leaving? You in charge here?”

“Huh?”

“Do you have a hearing problem or is it something else?” He gave one sharp downward tip of his head that was meant to be a reprimand.

Hate that. Especially from guys do I hate it. Oh, the face I put on could resemble a stiff, close-lipped smile but was all about telling him what a jackass he was. And I wouldn’t excuse my potty mouth and mind for thinking of him as a jackass. Which got me thinking about how a decent donkey jack is what I needed to find, one that had been bred to the right mare. The resulting mule baby would be earmarked for Melinda. I had Charley back. Once I got Ol’ Blue going, I could pick up the stock trailer and be home tonight and these last couple days would be just a bad daydream. And I have been known to daydream. But I can control it and I proved it right then with, “I hear pretty good still, though I’ll surely lose my hearing early.”

“Wilson!” Mr. Special Agent called out as he lurched to his feet and the door opened.

Plaid Shirt man entered the interview room with a photo of the livestock protection collar I’d handed over to the deputy fellow in the wee hours. Super Special Agent and Plaid Shirt looked at me then stepped out together and muttered to each other long enough to get over themselves about whether or not I’d killed Vicente. I reckon people who had a hand in doing someone in are a mite more skittish in a police interview than I was, even if it wasn’t my favorite indoor place to be.

Plaid Shirt came back in and shut the door. No more special agent for us. “You know, Miss Dale, Deputy Steinhammer—”

“She’s the one with the ponytail?” I twisted my ponytail into a tight stick then set it free, trying to picture him in yesterday’s plaid shirt, trying to keep all these police people sorted out in my mind.

“Yeah, she’s the one who did the preliminary interview with you after you called nine-one-one. Said you hadn’t known the Beaumonts before Saturday morning. She sold me on your digging up a body where your dog lay down. Quite a story.” He clicked his pen and poked the photo of the livestock protection collar. “Where exactly did you find this thing?”

“In a locker in the bunkhouse. I was looking for my stuff. See, some tools were stolen from my truck Saturday morning—”

“At that bull sale? And you were assaulted there.”

“Right. So yesterday, after I did some shoeings for them, I grabbed a shower and sort of took it upon myself to peek into all those lockers at the foot of the beds. Found my track nippers, crease nail pullers, cutters and rasps.”

He shook his head. “You’re speaking Greek to me. I’m not sufficiently familiar with horseshoeing to know the difference between these things.”

“You’ve heard of horses, haven’t you?”

He glared at me. “You got this out of Herbert Stuckey’s locker?”

Well, no wonder he went by Stuckey. I nodded. “Stuckey can get baffled by a water glass, but I think he might have a good heart after all.”

Plaid Shirt blinked a few more times. “When did you go into his locker?”

“Yesterday. Afternoon. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken the stuff, but I wanted my track nippers back. They’re new.” While he studied the photo, I wondered again, did Oscar or Gabe plant the stuff in Stuckey’s locker? Poor Stuckey didn’t seem much smarter than a nail. “We heard through Ivy’s lawyer that the dead man didn’t have a bullet inside himself.”

His face darkened, like he hated that we knew something. After a hesitation, he said, “Clothes have no puncture wounds. X-rays show no fragments or bullets. No broken bones. No signs of trauma. Those livestock protection collars carry enough poison to kill five men. And there’s no antidote to the poison.”

I nodded. “That’s the way I heard it, too.” I thought about the neighbor rancher’s story about one of the hands killing a dog with an M-44 in Nevada, and Stuckey admitting he’d shot and killed Fire. And Stuckey or someone cutting Charley’s ears. I didn’t have to make these guys understand me, but I gave it a quick whirl. “Someone on that ranch hurt my dog a couple of years ago. Nobody’s going to care about that but me.”

He frowned and waved me down, tried to soothe me but I was getting madder than a gut-shot cat. “I’m talking to you about another case. But let’s think about this for a minute. These tools that were stolen—”

“But really, it was my dog that I—” I stopped as he shook his head. Took one big breath and let it out with, “Gabe’s sure that Stuckey was the one who jumped me at the sale grounds. And that was over the same dog.”

Plaid Shirt sighed. “This dog of yours sure seems to get some undue attention.”

“I’ve been thinking that myself.”

“How long are you going to be a guest on the Beaumont ranch, Miss Dale?”

“I’m out of there today. One way or the other. I’m calling a tow truck if I can’t get my truck started and hoping to get my mom to pick me up.”

“That’s great.”

I thought of my buddy Melinda pontificating after she went to police school about the proper ways they had of doing things. I made a mental note to ask her when I got a chance. “Going into those lockers in the bunkhouse like I did, is that what you police people call a bad search?”

Plaid Shirt gave a flat smile. “Not when a civilian does it.”