bed I’d just vacated. “And you had no taillights.”
I turned back and looked at the mechanic, who was desperately trying to see around me. “Can I help you with something?”
He focused on me and threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Steve sent me over; I’ve got a horse trailer out here-we re-packed the wheel bearings, fixed the brakes, rewired, and put new tires on.”
I reached up and cradled my face before my cheekbone reminded me about the pain. “Right, right…” I took a deep breath and recalled having the vehicle towed into Sheridan for a makeover. I looked over him and could see they had cleaned the old trailer off, and she wasn’t looking half bad. “Uh, you can just leave it out there, Jim.”
He didn’t move.
“Is there something else?”
He nodded. “Ya gotta pay for it.”
“Oh… you bet.” I closed the door. He was still trying to see who it was that had spoken to him from the bed. It was lucky that the wind was blowing and that he seemed just a bit hard of hearing. I dug into the jeans that I had left on the chair for my wallet as Vic rolled over and luxuriously stretched, revealing a perfectly rounded breast and alert nipple. She propped herself up on an elbow and used her red-nailed hand to support her tousled head; she made no effort to cover up. I stood there, unable to move, then remembered my mission, opened the door, and handed the guy my credit card. I stepped forward and got between him and the provocative room.
I closed the door behind me as he finished writing down the numbers and totals. He handed the card back and ripped off a receipt. I took the slip of paper and looked at him. “Anything else?”
He shifted his weight and gestured with the thumb again. “Just leave it out here?”
“Yep.” I waited until he got the trailer unhitched and had climbed back in his truck before I turned and sidled into the room, closed the door, and looked at her.
She was still lying on her side with one leg pulled up ankle to calf, one hand still supporting the mussed hair; the other was lazily making circles on the flat of the sheet. More than a little of her body was still exposed, and I took that extra second to take in the swoops and swallows of her general physique.
I felt like I should carve a statue.
I tossed the transaction papers and my wallet in my open bag, stepped over Dog, and sat on the corner of the bed as she watched me with the tarnished gold, vulpine eyes. “A horse trailer?”
I nodded, and it still hurt. “It’s a mercy mission.”
“You don’t even like horses.”
“I do too-it’s just that they’re big, dangerous, and a poor form of transportation.”
She bit her lip. “Two of the three could be said about you.”
I reached out and pulled the sheet over the portion of her anatomy that was distracting me as the knocking began at the door again. “Jeez
…”
“You’re popular.”
I stepped over Dog, who didn’t even bother barking this time, and cracked the door slightly open. I expected to see the mechanic: instead, it was Benjamin who stood there. The four-foot cowboy looked over his shoulder at the trailer.
“Are you ready to go?”
I squeezed through the doorway, drawing the door closed behind me again. I could see Hershel backing Bill Nolan’s red Dodge pickup to the horse trailer. I looked at the little bandito as his eyes traveled up and down my frame from underneath his sweat-stained cowboy hat.
“I never seen anybody in their bedclothes at ten o’clock in the morning-you sick?” He studied my face a little closer. “Boy, that’s a shiner.”
I held up a finger. “Just a second, okay?”
He nodded. I turned, shut the door, and gazed at the exquisite female stretching luxuriously on the bed of the squalid motel room. I cleared my throat and felt the pain in my head increase. “After one of the best nights of my life, I think I’m about to pay for it with one of my worst days.”
October 26: four days earlier, afternoon.
She had been petting Dog, who had rested his head on the hospital bed, but she continued to ignore me.
“Mary, if you don’t tell me what happened that night, then I can’t help you.” She looked up, and her expression made me wonder why I was trying. “If I go through the report, would you at least give me an indication as to what you agree with and what you don’t?” She continued scratching the dense fur behind Dog’s ears near the furrow of his bullet scar. “I know it hurts, but Isaac says you can talk.” I slumped back against my folding chair, picked the report up from my lap, and flipped the page. “In your initial statement to the investigators in Campbell County-”
She rolled over on her side and continued scratching Dog under his chin. I watched her for a moment, then stood and patted my leg. “Dog.” The beast was by my side in an instant and followed me. I pointed toward Janine’s desk at the end of the hall. “Go.”
I backed into the room, closed the heavy door behind me, sat in the hospital chair with the report in my lap, and tipped my hat back. “No talk, no Dog.”
She looked up at me. We sat there staring at each other.
I took a deep breath, thought about Cady and another hospital bed, and relied on my last, most secret approach when confronted by female opposition-I begged. “Please help me; I can’t do this alone.”
The muscles in her face softened just a touch. She considered me, finally clearing her throat and licking her lips as if she hadn’t spoken in years. I stared at the bandages at her throat and thought about how she’d looked on the floor of the examination room just yesterday.
When my eyes met with hers again, she barely nodded, and her voice was a fragile whisper. “Okay.”
“I’ve got some questions about the timing of that night.” I carefully avoided actually mentioning her husband’s murder. “Do you remember leaving the house?”
She nodded, almost imperceptibly.
“Do you have any idea when that was?” She shrugged and then lay there looking at me. “Before midnight, after?”
“Before.” She didn’t wheeze quite so much with this answer.
“You don’t have any idea when?”
She shook her head and swallowed carefully. “Why?”
“The volunteer fire department in Clearmont didn’t get a ten-seventy fire alarm until almost one o’clock in the morning.” I lowered the report and looked at her. “That seems like an awful lot of time between the fire in the barn and the anonymous call.”
“I could have been confused about the times.”
“I don’t think you were.” I allowed the pages of the report to fall against my chest. “Mary, you stated in the report that the hired man, Hershel Vanskike, was the one who found you.” I let the image sit there with her for a moment. “Was there anybody else there that night?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?” I leaned forward, closed the file, and dropped it flat on the floor between my boots as a symbolic gesture. “Mary, for me to really know what happened to you that night, I need you to think about it clearly-and tell me. See, I’m beginning to think that there were a lot more people there than you’re willing to say and possibly more than you know about.” I rolled my lip under my teeth. “Let’s start with the ones you do.”
“Why is this so important to you?” Her voice was stronger with this question, even if it was without emotion.
I stared at her and then nodded toward the manila folder on the floor. “This is your life we’re talking about.”
I stood up and walked over to the window. I could see the back of Kyle Straub’s sign, where another meadowlark was singing. There was something about the sign that was bothering me, and not just because it was a reminder that the thought of Kyle Straub or his grammar made my ass hurt. I let it submerge in my mind and shifted my weight from one size 14-E to the other.
“It’s going to happen like this: the statements that you’ve made to the Campbell County investigators are
