Left Hanging (29 page)

“He couldn’t have known that.” Or shouldn’t have known. “The pickup wasn’t running anymore. No way could he see the hose or Watt in the cab. Why did he react that way?”

“He says instinct.” Our eyes met for a flash, before the law enforcement officer veil dropped over his. But I’d seen. He wasn’t satisfied, either. “Ask him yourself,” he added gruffly. “Now, about your movements
 . . .
”

Oh, I will ask Mr. Grayson Zane that question. That question and several others. Yes, I will
.

We went back over my movements, starting with the phone call, in which, I repeated, Evan Watt had
not
given any indication of what he wanted to talk to me about. To Alvaro’s further credit, he didn’t allow himself more than a solitary Stupid Easterner smirk over my encounter with the bulls. When other characters appeared in my narrative, he listened carefully, jotting notes as I told who I’d seen where doing what.

“You’re a very good witness, Elizabeth,” he said at the end.

“I’m a reporter. But I know eyewitness accounts are suspect—even from reporters. So, you don’t think this is a suicide attempt?” I tried to keep my voice casual, but he still went official on me.

“That has yet to be determined. Until it is, in light of what else has happened, we need to get as much information as possible. Now, let’s go back to this figure you saw off to the side. Street says he doesn’t remember seeing anybody before Cas.”

“But he looked right at her and—”

“Her?”

My mouth opened in surprise. “I don’t know why I said
her
, Richard, I truly don’t. Maybe it was subconscious, something about the movement or
 . . .
”

I stared at the table’s gray surface, felt my eyes lose their focus. Instead, seeing Street drop down by the tailpipe. The figure. Frozen. The faintest motion. The lights. The figure, turning, leaving— “Blue.”

“What?”

“The figure had a streak of blue in her hair.”

THE NIGHT dragged on. Needham asked us to unburden our souls to him. I responded by asking him to copy all his notes and share them with us. He chuckled almost silently and moved on.

The crowd thinned out, with many leaving after their time with Richard. Vicky and Heather were among those. As they left, Heather shot one look at Cas, who was watching her.

But what caught my attention was Vicky giving me an I’ll-get-you-later glare. How unfair was that? Both Mike and Tom had told Alvaro about seeing the Uptons depart the rodeo grounds with enough time to have rigged Watt’s truck. All I did was corroborate that they could have loosed the bulls on me by parking somewhere and doubling back on foot.

I went to find coffee, but got distracted.

Beyond the bank of vending machines, I saw a deserted, half-lit cafeteria, and beyond that a patio. I went out, letting the door close softly on the broom handle someone had placed on the floor to keep the door from locking.

A few tables and chairs populated the patio, but I chose to sit on the low wall bordering one end, my feet dangling above the ground. I was glad I’d grabbed a denim jacket as I left the hovel. Even the hottest climate can feel relatively cool in the middle of the night. In Wyoming, it’s not just relative.

I felt more than saw the mountains’ bulk off my right shoulder. A different volume of darkness began to present their shape as my eyes adjusted. Looking to the south, I almost thought I recognized the peaks of the Tetons. But that was imagination, because they weren’t visible even in daylight.

While the mountains on my right gave a sense of solidity, the horizon toward my left ceded nearly all the space to the sky. It was almost too big, too star-spattered, too teeming and too empty at the same time.

“Elizabeth.”

I jerked my head around. I hadn’t heard anyone open the door or approach. Yet here stood Linda Caswell.

I brought one leg back over the wall to the patio side. “Yes?”

“I’ve been thinking about what you said earlier. About lying in a murder investigation. What I told you about Keith Landry and me, that was all true. But I was trying to distract you. Make you think along other lines.”

“Because you knew I knew Landry bribed Stan.”

That stopped her for a long breath. “Yes.” She sat on the wall, facing the patio, leaving me her profile. “Tom’s right, you are smart. You have no reason to believe me, but I knew nothing about the bribe until earlier today. Yesterday now. I still don’t believe Stan murdered Landry.”

We sat in silence a moment. “So, I’m smart, and you have a knack for dealing with difficult people. Your father, your sister, your brother-in-law, and the rodeo committee.”

That drew a huff of delicately blended disgust and self-deprecation. “Which made me all the more susceptible to the most shopworn line of flattery.”

“You were emotionally vulnerable.”

She made the sound again, turning to me. “Because the dried up old maid is always emotionally vulnerable?”

“Because of your sister’s death.”

She looked past me. Out to the horizon. That ever-mirage horizon of Wyoming where things look much closer than they are.

I thought about Linda and her sister. And then I thought about the two brother horses her nephew had showed me, one born bucking, the other not.

“This county. This damned county.” She spoke as evenly as someone asking for the salt shaker at dinner. A jolt like holding a frayed electrical cord went through me. There was emotion there, yet even more control.

Once more giving me only her profile, she stated, “You know the Caswell history, I’m sure. My father, his lost romance and late marriage, and how he drove my mother to her grave in his quest for a son.” The scoffing sound returned, quieter, but harsher. “She died of cancer. She refused treatment because of the pregnancy. They didn’t want to say breast cancer then. The same cancer my sister died of. When Inez got the first diagnosis, she asked me to research the family medical history before she decided on treatment. We never knew
 . . .
Inez decided on a double mastectomy and aggressive treatment. That’s almost certainly why she had those two years. Before it came back.”

Stillness weighted the long silence before she spoke again.

“Has anyone you loved died of cancer yet?” Her final word sent an atavistic shiver through me. She turned, looking for my answer.

“No.”

“They tell you to celebrate each day—the support people, the doctors. They tell you to enjoy the life while it’s still there. What they don’t tell you is that every second of celebration, every instant of enjoyment has its dark twin of grief. It’s a marathon of mourning. Every waking instant—more, because even dreams
 . . .

“You try not to show it to anyone else, in the hope—prayer—that they’re not feeling the same way, yet you know they are. You still don’t share it, though, because you can’t risk robbing them of even a breath of the good moments by mentioning the bad ones you’re facing. Or maybe that’s all bullshit. Maybe it was all just pride. And fear.

“It’s a siege. The outside world recedes, becomes stranger and stranger. It’s hard to tell if they withdraw or if you shut them out. I remember going to the drug store, and there were familiar faces. People Inez had known, had helped, had worked with. They were all saying what a lovely person she was, asking how she was doing. I said, ‘She’s dying.’ Just like that. They melted away. I’d broken the rules. I’d made them see. Nobody wants to see.

“Not even Inez. Maybe especially not Inez. She fought to the last second. She died trying for one more breath. No deathbed benediction, no peaceful parting words.

“And when it was over, there was nothing left in me at all. I’d used up every bit of love, of grief, of strength, of hope, of prayer—everything. If it hadn’t been for Cas
 . . .
”

She looked at me, gave a slight smile.

“That’s right,” she said. “Not my father. Certainly not my brother-in-law. They needed greatly, too, but I only cared for Cas.”

I wanted to put my hand on her arm. I wanted to tell her she should not carry that burden. But I was talking to her as a reporter. And who was I to tell anyone such a thing?

“Whatever I had, I gave to Cas. It wasn’t much. I was hollowed out. Spent. Bankrupt. I buried my father not long after, and I felt nothing. Nothing. That was the woman Grayson Zane found.

“What it comes down to is this, I didn’t commit suicide because of Cas. I started living again because of Grayson. It was a short time, really, though it didn’t feel like that while we were together. There was—I thought there was—a restfulness between us.” She laughed sadly. “I suppose I made it simple for him by neither demanding nor asking anything.”

When she didn’t say more, I asked, “Made what simple for him?”

She looked at me. Direct and open. “I believe you know, E.M. Danniher. But I will say it for you. Grayson Zane swept me off my feet, romanced me in his own way for a brief time, left me abruptly and without explanation. He did all of that at the behest of Keith Landry, and in return he received Landry’s assistance getting his career back on track. And when Grayson was gone, Landry, in turn, swept in to scoop up the remains.”

I stared at her. “How long have you known it was a setup?”

“Almost from the beginning. No, perhaps that’s not entirely accurate. I
refused
to know almost from the beginning. I let myself know only a few months after it was over.”

“You know about the others?”

“Others?”

“It’s far too late for crappy lying, Linda.”

Her mouth shifted. Not quite a smile, but an easing. “I strongly suspected. Landry had said something. A reference to my being a departure from his usual, and something about rodeo queens. It was only when I began using my mind again that I put it together. At first I thought perhaps I was the only one, because of what my family represented. He had a lot to say about that at the end,” she said dryly. “About my family, and about how I thought I was too good for him. But he’d said other things, too. Things about how these other women thought they were so hot, but he had complete power over them.
Power
. The way he said that
 . . .

“I warned Sonja Osterspeigel when I saw a cowboy rushing her and caught a
 . . .
an expression on Landry’s face. Sonja did not listen. I was relieved to see the experience showed no sign of diminishing her, ah, exuberance.”

“And this year?”

“I asked Vicky Upton to lunch the day Landry arrived. Among other talk about the rodeo, I dropped in what I hoped would be a subtle hint. She
 . . .
” Her eyelids dropped slowly. When they raised, she met my look. “. . . she left the table and vomited before she reached the ladies’ room.”

Had Linda suspected before that lunch that Vicky had been an early point in Landry’s pattern? That Landry was Heather’s father? She certainly suspected now.

She stood, and something shuffled to the front of my brain to get asked in case her mood of cooperation disappeared.

“The first time we talked, you said you were surprised Landry could supply the livestock for the rodeo. Why?”

Her eyebrows rose. “I thought I said. The Fourth of July holiday is the busiest time for rodeo contracts—except for those who send stock to the NRF.”

By this time the initials were almost as familiar as NATO, UN or POTUS. “And that would affect Landry
 . . .
?”

“I would have expected that he had all his stock committed long ago, with contracts to other venues.” The eyebrows dropped into a frown. “He must have held some out, but that didn’t seem like him. He told me the Fourth came first for a rodeo contractor, and every animal better earn its keep then.”

The wheels in my brain turned, though I was too tired to know exactly where they were heading.

“There’s one more thing I want to say,” Linda said. “I have not a single doubt that Grayson did
not
kill Landry or try to kill Watt. It’s just not possible.”

LINDA’S HIERARCHY of suspects was clear. Stan got an I-don’t-believe-he-committed-murder. Grayson graduated to absolutely no doubt. Cas wasn’t even a possibility, so wasn’t mentioned.

I watched her go inside, walking through the cafeteria toward the hallway that led to the waiting room.

Gradually, I became aware of another presence on the patio. Still facing the cafeteria, I shifted focus to the side. In the deepest shadow. A tall figure in a cowboy hat. Grayson Zane.

It reminded me of that first day at the rodeo grounds. Zane staying close enough to see what was going on, but keeping a distance. I’d had to run him down and corner him.

Now, he was so busy watching Linda’s departure that I wouldn’t have to corner him. But what if I tried to run? Could I reach the door before him? No. Could I jump from my wall and get around the building to the ER entrance before he caught me? Probably not. Would he try to stop me from doing either move? I doubted it.

If he killed Landry and tried to kill Watt to prevent his sordid story from coming out, Linda was in far greater danger than me.