She fell into his arms. 'I'm not referring to sex. I'm talking about having some fun-F-U-N!'
He held her at arm's length, staring into her sea-green eyes. 'Hell, you're right. I've forgotten how to spell it. As for the Ripper business, it's not even my case anymore. Let them deal with it.'
She pulled away and went to the porch swing, pulling herself into a ball there. 'I really don't want to hear another word about the fucking case, Lucas.' She pulled her feet up and under her. The swing swayed only slightly, unhappily.
'Isn't that what I just said? Am I missing something here?' Lucas watched her sulk, and then he stared down at the movement around the stables. Men who worked the horses and saw to their needs had already begun to exercise some of the animals. 'Let's go for a ride, shall we?' he suggested.
She remained balled up, but her eyes found his. After regarding him for a moment, she smiled. 'Now your're talking.'
'Walk you to the stables?'
'You're on.' Meredyth's smile broadened, lighting up her features.
'Is this how you intend to always get your way with me?' he asked.
'Whatever are you talking about?' She pushed open the porch screen door and skipped down the stairs. 'I have no modus operandi that you don't know about.'
He followed her down the steps and along the gravel drive to the path leading to the stables. 'I meant the way you had me come to the deduction you wanted.'
'Are you suggesting that I would stoop to some sort of Aristotelian third degree to bring you around to the conclusion you'd already logically deduced, Detective, in the subterranean depths of that big head of yours?'
'Aristotelian…is that a shot?' He grabbed her and began tickling. She ran ahead of him with Lucas giving chase. Their laughter joined with the robins and the sparrows nipping at one another, flitting in and out of the trees. Their laughter echoed in the quiet and rumbled down to the workmen at the stables, who looked in their direction, and the laughter traveled across the lake.
Now, arms entwined, they sauntered the rest of the way down the path toward the stables, hibiscus bushes and a thicket of trees lining their way. 'Kind of like Oz for grown-ups here,' Lucas confided. 'I really like this place, Mere.'
'Good…I'm glad you do. Strange thing is, Lucas, it's always been special for me and my parents, but now, having you here to share it…well… it's positively dreamlike.'
'I know what you mean…the sharing of it, like we shared the desert that night-that's what makes it doubly special.'
A tractor down at the stables roared into animation. Behind them, just out of earshot, Lucas's police-band radio crackled into life as well, and Stan Kelton's voice came over, asking, 'Lucas? Lieutenant Stonecoat? If you can hear me, please respond.'
After a pause, Kelton cursed and broke off.
In the house, on Lucas's cell phone, Jana North was leaving a message at the same time. 'Lucas…I tried Dr. Sanger's cell and now I'm trying you. There's been an unusual shooting at a cafe in the Spring Brook area, not far from the Waller County line and the farm we raided. Four dead, two civilians, two state troopers. Looks like a hell of a firefight, but the troopers only got off one round. And, Lucas, a silver-gray BMW was seen leaving the scene.'
A groundskeeper who came in and did the landscaping once a month arrived, pulling in alongside Lucas's unmarked squad car. He regarded the car as something unusual, and seeing the house had been opened, he guessed one or more of the family had come up from Houston for the weekend. Surveying the stables, he saw Dr. Sanger and a guest waiting for a pair of fine-looking, eager horses to be saddled up. Howard Kemper wondered at the injustice in the world, that some people had all this freaking free time and lavishness in their lives, while he had played the Texas and Louisiana lotteries religiously for the past ten years, to win the occasional fifty or a hundred bucks.
He shook his head, climbed up on the back of his truck, sat on the lawn mower, and turned the ignition key. He drove it down the ramp and out onto the thick grass, where he began the chore he would normally have completed by now if circumstances in his life hadn't gotten so hectic this morning. Riding high on the mower, Kemper thought he saw something shiny and reflective off in the trees down by the lake. When he looked again, it was gone, whatever it was. Likely just the way the sun had spanked the surface of the lake right now, he guessed. Damn beautiful lake, and unless you were native to the area, you'd never guess it a man-made lake.
After a moment of feeling odd, as if someone were watching him, Howard began cutting grass in earnest, and whenever he did so, his complete attention went to the job. He and his machine became one; for Howard, it was a kind of Zen thing, cutting grass.
In what other profession could a potbellied, middle- aged man with no education or desire for one, with a pickup and the right tools, make a living riding around on his rump, enjoying the sun, the fresh air, the view, the squirrels, and the birds in the trees? The Zen of Lawn Maintenance. He thought it'd make a great book title and a bundle of money, a book like that, but he wondered how he could get it written. Mr. Brody, across the lake, was rumored to have made his money writing paperback Westerns and suspense novels centering around a turn-of-the- century Sherlock Holmes type. He reportedly wrote two books a year-living off advances and royalties. Perhaps Brody'd be interested in co writing the lawn maintenance book if Howard proposed dictating it to him, but then Brody seemed pretty disinterested in his own damn lawn, leaving all decisions regarding that green nuisance, as he called it, to Howard's judgment. Brody claimed to hate grass and anything smacking of lawn work. How does any man ever cultivate such an attitude toward his own lawn? Kemper wondered.
CHAPTER 19
The horseback riding at an end, Lucas and Meredyth found themselves invited by the horse wranglers, brothers Jeff and Tommy Farnsworth, to dine on steaming-hot tamales, burritos, and Texas chili cooked up by the boys' mother. Lucas learned that they lived in a small house at the end of the property. They ate off the back of their pickup, the gun rack in the cab displaying a bolt-action Remington rifle that fired a,223-caliber bullet at high velocity. Lucas began talking guns with the young men, telling them of his handgun collection, and bragging that he owned a U.S. 7th Cavalry eight-shooter hanging on his wall at home, one which had been authenticated to have been taken off one of George Armstrong Custer's men by a Sioux warrior at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He left one brother fascinated, the other squinting and skeptical.
'Damn!' responded the younger brother, Tommy. 'Could it be Custer's gun?'
'No, but it definitely belonged to one of his men.'
Jeff skeptically said, 'Custer fought the Sioux. How'd it get into your family?'
'Came down to my family in a horse trade. My grandfather recognized the value of the thing. He was a shrewd man.'
The boys were duly impressed. 'Sure would like to see it sometime.' said Tommy. 'Think next time you're out this way that you could bring it along?'
'Sounds like it ought to be housed in a museum,' said Meredyth, 'and not carted about like a baseball trading card.'
'I keep it in a gun case, and I transport it in a gun box, not a cereal box, Mere.'
Lucas wound up handling the Remington bolt action.223-caliber rifle, looking down its sight, testing its scope. 'Do you know this thing is loaded?' he asked the brothers.
'Keep it handy for runnin' off the occasional coyote,' said Jeff matter-of-factly.
'And sometimes, real, real early in the morning,' added Tommy, 'you get a fox messin' round the henhouse. Lost some good layin' hens to foxes. Really got Ma pissed off.'
Lucas's large red hands caressed the length of the Remington, his eyes taking in its every line and feature. 'Damned pretty weapon.'
'It's good for two hundred and fifty freakin' yards,' boasted Jeff.
'Bagged a lot of deer with her,' added Tommy.
Meredyth had begun humming the tune to 'Pretty Woman,' and then began singing, 'Pretty weapon…firing down the street… pretty weapon… the kind I'd like to meet…to clean one day… come what may….'
