CHAPTER 29
When Jaimie landed back in Tucson she didn’t drive straight home from the airport—she was too unsettled for that.
Everything was going south. It was like she was in the back of a car going faster and faster on a narrow road, and the driver wouldn’t stop no matter how much she begged. She was in that car to the end of the road.
She saw her ex-lover’s chopper parked in front of the Buckboard Saloon. She turned into the parking lot. She’d taken a miserable trip down memory lane at the beach house in Laguna—Chad had really messed the place up, it smelled like a goat pen—and now all she wanted was to forget. Maybe her ex would help her to do that.
Gloomy as she felt, when she opened the door to the dark saloon, she suddenly felt beautiful and sexy. Every man in the place—and most of them knew her—still marveled at her good looks. Many men tried with her, but few had the goods. She had her favorites, the guys she’d sleep with once in a while if the mood took her, but the rest could just hang out their tongues like slavering out-of-luck dogs. Today, though, her first goal was to get so drunk she could forget about her little brother.
Joe—the bartender, his name really was Joe, and she always called him “Set ’em Up Joe,” was her boyfriend in high school. Now he was a part-time welder and part-time bartender and full-time husband.
“How you doin’ today, darlin’?” He polished off the bar with a towel and set down a glass and poured a liberal supply of whiskey in it. She knocked it back like she always did, and said, “Fine.” The first one was always free. His daughter, Kayla, rode free at Jaimie’s place in return for cleaning the stalls, so really, it was an exchange. He kept her old ranch truck running and had done some nice ironwork around her place, beautiful stuff that she could put on her business cards and brochures. If she ever got around to it.
He repeated the question. “How’s it goin’?”
“You don’t know?”
“Know what?” He had hazel eyes and they were sexy, but damn he was actually one of those men who were faithful to their wives, plus, she already had her eye on the one she wanted to pick out of the herd—Harley Cawdle. He was playing pool and watching her like a dog watches a can of Alpo on the counter.
She held out her glass for another shot. Joe poured another.
“You don’t know about what happened? To my brother?”
“Michael?”
“No, the one in Laguna Beach.”
“So what about him?”
“He’s dead.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh.”
“You don’t seem that upset.”
“He was a dumb-ass.”
“I don’t know as I ever met him.”
“You wouldn’t. He hasn’t lived out here in, like, ten years.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Wanna know what happened to him?”
Joe Shively looked troubled. She knew he didn’t want to hear it, but she said it anyway. She slammed the shot glass down on the counter and said, “Somebody choked him to death, that’s what happened.”
Joe just stared at her. Opened his mouth. Almost said something. Closed it again.
She started to cry. She didn’t want to cry because it would mess up her makeup, and she really did want to get laid by Harley, but all of a sudden she wasn’t just crying, she was braying. Braying like a fucking donkey! And she couldn’t stop.
Through her tears she looked over at Harley. He was watching. His pool cue standing next to him, his hand frozen on it. Then he looked away.
Like she was embarrassing herself.
“What are you looking at, Harley?” she yelled.
He shook his head and turned away, tried to make a shot, and the pool cue shot over the ball and the ball jumped a little. His back was to her.
“Hey, Harley, you know you want it!” she yelled at him.
He studiously avoided her gaze, lining up his shot.
“You’re gonna blow it, Harley. You’re going to screw the fuck up.”
And he did. His pool cue rammed into the felt and banged against the side of the table.
Likely be the only satisfaction she’d get tonight.
She paid for two more shots and got the hell out of there.
Jaimie turned under the sign and drove down to the stables to check on the horses. Her eyes were red and she knew she didn’t look good. She’d repaired her makeup in the little cubicle they called a bathroom at the Buckboard. Coming out had run right smack into Harley. The bathroom was in a narrow hallway that led out past the kitchen—the back way out, and he’d been headed that way. She said again, “What are you lookin’ at?”
He’d mumbled something. She thought it was about her brother, but she was so angry, so embarrassed— humiliated by the weakness she’d shown—that she stomped hard on his instep. He banged against the cheap veneered wood paneling of the hallway, and she charged past him out into the night.
It was a nice night, and the stars had turned the sky blue roan, the color of her first pony a thousand years ago. The horses were all in good shape. It was sweater weather at night, and she was wearing a slinky tank top, so she rubbed her arms.
She was pretty bad off. All the crying and all the whiskey. So she let herself in, and followed by a crowd of dogs, went off to bed.
CHAPTER 30
The following morning, Tess was on the road early.
Turned out that there were two wildlife sanctuaries in the Santa Anas. The first was well-run, and it was clear the people there cared. There were several birds in rehab, including a golden eagle. Many animals had been injured—shot or poisoned or rescued from some backyard hell. Most of them would stay there forever. Others were being prepared to go back into the wild. There was a veterinarian on site, and tours to educate the public about the importance of wildlife.
Some animals—antelope, mostly, were allowed acreage to roam in.
Tess asked the wildlife biologist, a tall Swedish beauty with an earnest way about her, about the possibility of a mountain lion in Asteroid Canyon. She confirmed June Hackler’s theory.
“There probably
She, too, thought it highly unlikely that a mountain lion would attack Peter Farley.
The second place, Desert Winds Animal Sanctuary, was more like a circus that had pulled up stakes in the middle of the night. It wasn’t really a sanctuary at all, but a minizoo. The place sat at the end of a dirt road in open country not far from Black Star. No one was around when she went to look at the animals. There weren’t very many. Tess peered into the window of one of the modular units and saw a bear inside a smallish cage. The bear looked depressed.
Outside, there were several empty cages, none of them cleaned out. The animals that were there looked as if they had just given up. There were faded index cards stuck into plates. Tess saw a tiger, a lion, an ibex, and a deer. Two of the enclosures were empty, the gates open. The index card for one said “Cougar.”
She waited around for an hour, but nobody appeared. The house, not that much better than General Mullet’s in the canyon, was buttoned up tight.
Occasionally a wind blew through and the rank smell assaulted her nostrils.
