oversensitive to you because you’re such an insensitive lout? Has it ever occurred to you that maybe your jokes aren’t funny? Have you ever thought that she might be interesting to people with brains, people who are actually interested in things like history?”
“Lighten up, Meryl.”
“No, you lighten up, Chase. Lighten up on your sister. It’s time you gave up that teasing crap. She’s put up with it for years, but I’m the one who’s sick of it. I ever hear you talk like that about Belle again, I’ll stuff a fist down your mouth to shut you up.”
For a moment nobody moved.
Laurie looked impressed with Meryl’s aggressive defense of Belle.
Belle’s eyes shone with tearful gratitude.
Ever irrepressible, Chase grinned. “Did you forget you’re a lawyer now? You don’t have to get tough. You can just sue me. So if you love her so much, when are you going to marry her?”
Meryl slid into the booth beside Belle and put both of his arms around her, pulling her close to him and then kissing her deeply enough to make his future brothers-in-law hoot at the couple.
When he finally stopped kissing her, he still didn’t let her go.
“This isn’t how I’m going to ask you,” he said, “not here, not in front of them.”
“Some people are just born into the wrong families,” she told him.
“You’re telling me!” Meryl exclaimed, and as the mood lightened, he kissed her again, quick and hard and affectionately, taking all of her lipstick and leaving her looking proudly thrilled.
A little later, when Belle excused herself to go to the ladies’ room, Chase leaned across the table and said, “Come on. You’re telling me you think my sister is easy to get along with?”
“She is for me, Chase. I don’t know what your problem is.”
“And you really think the history of this county is fascinating?”
“I’m interested in what she’s interested in. You might try that sometime.”
Chase leaned back and laughed. “I’m interested in women who are interested in me.”
Meryl laughed, too. “Well, there’s a surprise.”
TWO HOURS and several beers later, after they’d all had steaks, the owner of the grill, Bailey Wright, walked up to the head of the booth, behind Bobby. He was a big man in his thirties, beefy, as befit the proprietor of a joint that specialized in hamburgers. Grease from cooking them stained the white chef’s apron tied at the back of his neck and around his girth. The jukebox was blaring over the rain and thunder, and his place was festive and cozy with talk and laughter, good smells and flowing drinks. Every now and then the lights blinked on and off, which made the jukebox stop, but each time it happened, Bailey just yelled in his foghorn voice, “No worries! We’ve got a generator! We’ll keep cookin’, you keep eatin’.”
That always got a laugh, even from the locals who’d heard it many times before.
“I just talked to your dad,” Bailey Wright informed the three siblings.
“Here?” Chase started to get up.
Bailey waved him back down. “He’s not here. He called on the phone. He gave me a message. He said you three-” He looked from Chase to Belle, then put a hand briefly on Bobby’s right shoulder. “-shouldn’t even try to get back out to the ranch tonight. You can’t get through. He said the highway’s washed out in that low place, and you’ll get swept away if you try. So he’s got a room at the Rose Motel for you boys, and another one for himself-”
“What’s he doing in town?” Bobby asked.
“That’s what I just told you,” Bailey said patiently, if not quite accurately. “He took a horse to Doc Cramer, tried to get home, but got stopped by the water over the highway.” He looked at Belle. “You’re supposed to stay with Laurie tonight.”
“I can stay at the museum,” she said in an argumentative tone.
“We could all stay at Laurie’s,” Chase said.
“No, you can’t!” Meryl Tapper and Bailey Wright said at the same time, sharply.
Chase made a show of jumping backward in comic reaction, and Bobby snorted.
“Your father specifically told me to tell you not to do that,” Bailey said to him. “He said Laurie’s got enough on her hands with a three-year-old, and the last thing she needs is the extra trouble you’d cause her.”
“That sounds like Mom talking,” Belle said, sounding grumpy about it.
“Jody’s at the ranch tonight,” Laurie said.
Bailey shrugged. “He must not have known that when he said it.”
“Aw,” Chase said, “but we could make it a party.”
“I wouldn’t advise that,” Bailey said as he walked away.
“Oh, well, he’s got us a room.” Chase lifted his latest beer and took a drink, “He’d be pissed if he had to pay for something we didn’t use.” He twinkled at Laurie. “But, hey, if you want, maybe I can slip out of the motel a little later.”
She blushed and threw a handful of peanuts at him.
Meryl, his brother’s best friend, eyed him over the top of a beer glass, and said, “You wouldn’t want to stay at Laurie’s house, Chase. She’s not ‘interested’ in you, are you, Laurie?”
“Not like that,” she said, and blushed again.
ALL EVENING LONG a progression of people dropped by their booth to say howdy, to ask about what Billy Crosby had done, and to send along regards to Annabelle and Hugh Senior. The four Linders and Meryl didn’t notice when the door opened one more time and the din of noise suddenly quieted. They didn’t think anything of it when they heard one more voice addressing them.
“Got you a special place back here, huh?”
They looked up and saw Billy Crosby standing behind Bobby’s chair.
“Oh my God,” Belle whispered to Meryl, who took her hand again.
Billy wore a distinctive straw cowboy hat with its brim tightly rolled on each side and the straw blackened as if it had been burnt. Tied up over the crown of it was a leather chin strap he pulled down when he needed to secure the hat atop his head. He was known for his hat, and perversely proud of being teased that it was ugly.
Chase slid out of the booth and stood up. “What are you doing here?”
“Out of jail, you mean? Why would a man who didn’t do nothin’ be in jail in the first place, Chase?”
Bobby was standing by then, too. “Answer the question, Billy.”
The other man laughed in his face. “No evidence, Bobby. You can’t hold a man when there’s no evidence. Not even in this county named after your goddamned grandfather, or whoever it was.” Billy looked all puffed up with victory and with drink. “There’s still some justice in this world!”
“Take it easy, Billy,” Chase said in a low voice.
“Ain’t nothin’ easy, Chase,” Billy retorted. Holding a long-necked beer bottle in his right hand, a drink he appeared to have brought in with him, he was swaying on his cowboy boots. “But I guess you wouldn’t know that, would you? Everything comes easy for you Linders, don’t it?”
Bobby pushed back his chair.
Chase shook his head at his brother, to head him off.
“You got all the money you’ll ever need,” Billy went on, while the women stared at him, and the men waited tensely to see what might happen next. “Everything you ever want. College, all paid for. Even you, Meryl. They never offered me that-”
“You never got straight A’s,” Bobby said sarcastically.
“Neither did you,” Billy shot back. “But that don’t mean you don’t get everything all paid for by your mommy and daddy. You just got nothin’ to complain about in this life, do you, Chase? Do you, big Bobby? Or you, either,” he said, looking straight at Belle. Then he stared at Laurie. “Smart of you to marry a rich rancher, Laurie, instead of some poor-ass county lawyer like Belle’s gonna do. Or maybe you’re marryin’ Belle ’cause you don’t wanna be a poor country lawyer, is that it, Meryl?”
Meryl let go of Belle’s hand and got out of the booth.
“Time for you to take a nap, Billy,” he said.
Bobby grabbed the back of Billy’s shirt collar.
“Take your fuckin’ hands off me, Bobby!”
“Shut up, Billy,” Chase snapped.
“What’s wrong with you?” Laurie said, looking with disdain at Billy.
