Kansas Troubles (35 page)

“I apologize,” I said sharply, cutting into his lecture. “It won’t happen again.”

“Good.” He picked up a long strand of wild wheat and stuck it in his mouth. “Belinda says she’s sorry. She’ll tell you herself next time she sees you. Sometimes she doesn’t always think things out before she does them.”

“You don’t have to apologize for her,” I said, irritated at his condescending attitude. “What happened was between me and her. It’s not your responsibility.”

He gave me his lazy grin and rolled the wheat strand to the other side of his mouth. “Belinda and me, we were together a long time. Since high school. Kind of like the way it was between you and your first husband—what was his name, Jake?”

“Jack.”

“Right, Jack. That’s a lot of time, a lot of history. So I do feel responsible. Family loyalty means something to me. Even though we’re divorced, she’s still family in a way, because we have Chet. And because of DeeDee. So I always take responsibility for my family and my friends when they need help . . . or do stupid things.” He squinted at me, his brown eyes slits under his thick dark eyebrows. “I have a sneaking suspicion you feel the same way. Am I right?”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “But even family loyalty and friendship has its limits.”

“Does it?” He was silent for a moment, his eyes challenging me to go further.

I turned away from his gaze and looked to the house, where shouts of laughter filtered through the screen door. “But none of this has anything to do with the fact that no one forced me to ride Apache. I made that decision on my own. That’s what we’re talking about, isn’t it?”

He spit the weed out, gave a sharp laugh and stood up, adjusting his pale hat. “Well, of course it is. What else would we be talking about?”

 

“He knows who did it,” I insisted after repeating his cryptic comments to Gabe on the drive home. “Or at least he suspects.”

“He’s not stupid,” Gabe said. “He certainly has the same suspicions we do.” He frowned, his jaw setting in a familiar granite position. “What he said bothers me.”

“I think he was fishing, but I didn’t give anything away.”

“I don’t like his threatening tone.”

“You didn’t even hear his tone! How do you know it was threatening?” I sat back in my seat. “You know what I think? I think he suspects Belinda did it, though I can’t imagine why. I could imagine her killing Cordie June—but Tyler?” Then something dawned on me. “What if Dewey was having an affair with Tyler?”

Gabe pulled the car over to the side of the road and stopped, letting the engine idle. He leaned his head against the steering wheel, one fist clutched against his leg. “I don’t want to do this,” he said. “Think of them this way. I wished we’d never come. If we’d never come—”

I touched his forearm gently. “It would have happened anyway. Our coming didn’t cause this. You know that.” Suddenly, all I wanted to do was go back to California. At that moment, I didn’t care who killed Tyler, who had an affair with her, why any of this happened. I only cared about Gabe and how this was tearing him up and how he’d never be able to look into the faces of his friends again without wondering. I knew how that felt. For one incident to totally change your whole life, shake up the very foundations you thought would never be moved. But I also knew he’d never be completely satisfied unless he found out the truth. Truth, even when it was painful, was eventually always better than lies.

The next day, Sunday, we didn’t see anyone except his mother. I knew I couldn’t expect an answer from Emory until Monday morning when his sources were back at work, but I was antsy all day. Kathryn kept giving me odd looks, as if she were on the verge of saying something, then held back. We went to bed early that night simply because there was nothing else to do.

On Monday I woke early and tried not to hover around the phone. “Why don’t you go over to Otis’s and ride Sinful?” Gabe suggested when he grew weary of my pacing around the house. He’d started work on some electrical outlets that needed replacing.

“I want to be here when Emory calls.”

“I’ll be here.”

“I don’t feel like riding.”

He shrugged and went back to work. Halfway through, he discovered he needed two more outlets.

“I’m going down to the hardware store,” he said. I walked with him out to the car. “If your cousin calls, do not, I repeat, do not act on any information before I get back.”

“Yes, sir, Chief,” I said, saluting.

He took my chin in his hand and shook it gently. “I mean it,
niña
. This isn’t a game.”

I swatted at his hand. “Stick a needle in my eye, Friday. Geeze.”

While he was gone, I sat on the front porch, wrote postcards to the people back home, and replayed Saturday’s conversation with Dewey in my head. He and Tyler? Could they have carried on a relationship without anyone knowing about it? I thought of what her landlady told me—the arguments with some man over the phone. Could it have been Dewey she was fighting with over the phone? And if it was, who killed her? Cordie June because of jealousy? For that matter, jealousy could have driven any of them to do it—Belinda, Lawrence, Janet, Rob—even possibly her husband, John, though I still couldn’t imagine
that
in a million years. Maybe Dewey himself? But why? I doodled on the postcard in front of me, which showed a horrified Dorothy staring at a farmhouse with sparkling red slippers sticking out from under the crooked foundation. “I’m bringing down the house in Kansas,” it said in fancy script.

“Is Gabe back yet?” Kathryn called through the screen door.

“Not yet.”

“Oh, dear.” Her voice dropped in dismay.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m in the middle of baking lemon meringue pies and I’ve run out of eggs. I was hoping he could run to the store and get me a dozen.”

“Oh.” I cringed inside, knowing what she was expecting. I also knew that crucial phone call would probably come when I was at the store. She waited expectantly, and finally I caved in. “I can do it if you don’t mind lending me your car.”

“Not at all. As long as you’re going, would you mind picking up a few other things? You’ll probably have to go out to the big Dillon’s on Rock Road. We’re going to a potluck at Mrs. Cleveland’s house tonight. She was Gabe’s kindergarten teacher.”

I sighed, knowing I was stuck. “No problem.”

At Dillon’s it appeared everyone was doing the grocery shopping they’d put off all weekend, because it took me almost an hour to maneuver my way through the crowds. I stood in the checkout line trying to keep my impatience from getting the better of me by glancing through the magazines that grocery stores always tempt you with along with Milky Way bars, purse-sized flashlights, and rolls of Scotch tape. I picked up a quilting magazine and flipped through the pages, my attention caught by an article on quilt patterns. Apparently some woman in California had developed a computer database of quilt patterns, their origins, a cross-reference of their many names, and where they could be found in various pattern and quilt history books. I studied the examples and wondered about setting up something similar on a smaller scale at the folk art museum, though we didn’t have a computer yet. Our library had grown fairly extensive, especially in the quilting area. I tossed the magazine in with the rest of the groceries and filed it in my mind as something to look into when I got back home.

I was back at Kathryn’s, lugging in two bulky bags of groceries, when what I’d read in the article hit me. The answer had been there all along, but because I hadn’t looked any farther than my own surface knowledge, I hadn’t seen it. The baby quilt was possibly a commemorative quilt of Tyler’s time in Arkansas, the birth of her baby, but could it also be a memory of the baby’s father? I set the bags of groceries on the sofa and dashed upstairs to look through the quilt encyclopedia I’d bought at the quilt show.

“Benni, is that you?” Kathryn came upstairs and stood in the doorway of the bedroom as I feverishly searched for the page showing the Arkansas Traveler pattern.

“Yes?” I looked up from my place in the quilt book, my heart pounding. “Is Gabe back?” I asked before she could say anything further.

She touched a blue-veined hand to her chest. “That’s what I was coming up to tell you. He came back from the hardware store, but left again. A man called asking for you, and Gabe took the call. Gabe said to tell you he had some personal business to take care of, that he’d tell you about it later.”

“How long ago did he leave?” Not wanting to frighten her, I tried to keep the panic out of my voice.

“About half an hour. Benni, what’s going on?”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No, he didn’t. But I’m worried. He seemed very upset. Do you know where he went?”

I found the page for Arkansas Traveler. The small notation read “This pattern dates from the late 1800’s. At various times, it has been called Secret Drawer, Travel Star, and Teddy’s Choice. During the early 1930’s it was also called Cowboy Star.”

“I’m pretty sure I do,” I said.

“CAN I BORROW your car?” I asked Kathryn.

“What’s wrong?” she immediately demanded.

I held her steady gaze. “Kathryn, there’s no time to explain, but I have to go after Gabe. Can you just trust me on this?”

“Is he in danger?”

“I don’t know.”

“Should we call the police? Should we call Dewey?”

“No.” My voice sharpened.

Her eyes darkened slightly, and in that instant I knew she knew. But this was her son we were talking about, and a woman who had only known him six months was asking her to trust his life to her judgment. She hesitated.

“There’s no time to waste,” I said softly.

Her lips tightened. “Go, then. Call me as soon as you can.”

“I will.” I touched her hand briefly.

Driving through Derby, I mentally kicked myself over and over for not looking for more than one name to that quilt pattern. Tyler had obviously wanted to remember Dewey as well as the baby she was about to have. Arkansas Traveler . . . Cowboy Star. What was she thinking about all the months she sat and stitched that quilt, growing bigger and bigger with Dewey’s child? Then something hit me. Cowboy. Dewey wasn’t the only cowboy involved in this. His son? Could the child have been Chet’s? If Dewey would kill for anyone, it would be his son. But why? Even if she’d gotten pregnant with Chet’s child, that wouldn’t hurt his rodeo career. This was the nineties—children born out of wedlock didn’t carry the stigma they once did.

I passed the police station, slowing down to check for Dewey’s truck or the Camaro. Neither of them were in the parking lot, so there was only one other place they would likely be. I kept telling myself on the drive to Dewey’s house that I’d probably walk in and find them laughing over cups of coffee, the whole thing a crazy mixup, that it wasn’t his name on the birth certificate or Chet’s. Neither of them had anything to do with her murder. Some stranger had killed her, but they had him in custody right this minute and everything would be back to the way it was and everyone could trust each other and be friends again.

Right, Benni.

The Camaro was parked behind Dewey’s pickup truck. The truck that had most likely run me down last Saturday night. The skin on the back of my neck prickled. The question still remained . . . Who was driving? I turned off the ignition and waited, trying to decide what to do. Was I making things worse by coming? Was this something best left between Gabe and Dewey, friend to friend, cop to cop?

Well, you’re here now, I told myself. You may as well go in.

In the distance, I could see Belinda gesturing with wide arm movements at a lone riding student. Other than that, it was quiet for a late Monday afternoon. Even through the heavy air the sound of Belinda’s instructions rang clear. “Toes up, heels down,” she coached in her gruff voice. “Quiet hands!” She saw me, and her gloved hand went up in a quick wave.

The front door opened when I reached the top step. Dewey appeared in the doorway. “Thought it might be you. You may as well join the party.” His face was relaxed in a benevolent smile. I exhaled in relief. He seemed too calm for anything bad to be going on.

Inside, Gabe sat in an easy chair in the corner of the living room, both hands stiffly resting on the padded arms. The minute I saw his still face, I knew he’d confronted Dewey. I turned and faced Dewey, only then noticing the pistol in his hand. I looked into his eyes, so dark in the dim living room, they appeared black as charcoal.

Dewey gestured with the pistol. “Get on over there next to your husband while I try to figure out what to do here.”

I moved across the room to Gabe, trying to catch his eye, but it was as if he hadn’t even noticed I entered the room. He watched Dewey’s face with the unblinking concentration of a snake.

“Not too close,” Dewey said, his words slightly slurred. “Stand there.” He pointed to a spot about five feet from Gabe. He picked up a bottle of Wild Turkey bourbon and tilted his head back, drinking straight from the bottle. His eyes never left Gabe. For a minute or so, no one said a word.

“What’s going on?” I finally demanded.

Dewey set the bottle down and wiped the back of his mouth with his hand. “I sure wish you hadn’t come. This makes things a lot more complicated. What am I supposed to do now?”

I looked to Gabe, hoping he’d give me some indication of what he was going to do. But he continued to watch Dewey, his eyes measuring, concentrating. I figured the best thing I could do was stall for time. I launched right in, verbal tap-dancing having always been a talent of mine. “Dewey, no one’s going to blame you. Whoever it is you’re protecting—Cordie June, Belinda, whoever—I’m sure the police will understand.”

Dewey’s eyes shone with an alcohol-induced brightness. “Protecting? You and Gabe, you two are priceless. Do you really think I’d risk my career, my life, for a cheap tramp like Cordie June? Or even for Lawrence or Belinda? Give me a break. There’s only one person besides myself I’d do that for, and my son is, thankfully, a lot smarter about picking women than his old man.”