Red Velvet Revenge (21 page)

Ruth appeared next to him, and she said, “These look fantastic. We’ll take one of each.”

The sheriff gave his wife an indulgent look as Oz handed them each two cake pops.

“Now, let’s go do some dancing,” Ruth said as she looped her hand through her husband’s arm and led him away to the arena.

“They make a cute couple,” Angie said.

“Her half is cute,” Oz said. “His half is scary.”

The line drew their attention back to the work at hand. Mel checked her phone repeatedly, hoping to get a call from Joe. An hour passed, and there was still no word as they began to close down the cupcake truck for the night.

They decided to monitor the truck in pairs. Since Mel and Angie were dateless, they would camp out in the truck first while Tate and Marty enjoyed their dates. Mel didn’t want Oz out of sight, given that the sheriff had not cleared him as a person of interest, so he was stuck in the truck with Mel and Angie.

This plan didn’t work out so well, as Oz, who’d been working in the truck all day, began to pace back and forth up and down the narrow aisle in the back like the bull he’d helped to pen.

“Oz, sit down,” Angie said.

“Ugh, I’ve been in this truck all day,” he said. “As much as I love it, my brain is going to explode if I don’t get out of here.”

“Why don’t you two go for a walk?” Mel asked. “Stretch your legs.”

Angie tossed down the cooking magazine she’d been thumbing through by the overhead light in the van’s ceiling. “Oh, all right. But only because if I don’t move, I’m going to fall asleep.”

She and Oz climbed out of the truck, and Mel pillowed a bunch of jackets on the door rest and positioned her body across the seat. The windows were down, letting the cool night breeze drift through the van.

She watched as Angie and Oz walked along the road toward the stables. She had assumed they would be heading to the dance, but maybe Angie wasn’t too keen to see Tate learning the two-step with someone else.

The chime on her phone started, and she saw it was Joe. She sent up a silent prayer that it was good news before she answered.

“Well, I found him,” Joe said.

“Is he all right? Where was he?” Mel asked.

Joe made a strangled noise as if he was trying not to laugh.

“Joe!” Mel chided him.

“Melanie, it’s your mother,” Joyce said. She had obviously commandeered the phone from Joe, who was laughing in the background. “Captain Jack is fine.”

“Thank goodness,” she said. “But where was he?”

“In the closet of your old room,” Joyce said. “I think he must have figured out that it was your old room from the smell.”

“But how did he get in there?” Mel asked.

“Probably he snuck in when I went in to do my weekly cleaning,” Joyce said. “Anyway, he wedged himself into one of your old boots and he was stuck.”

“Which boots?” Mel asked.

“Those black ones,” Joyce said.

“The patent leather ones with the nice heel?” Mel asked.

“Yes, those are the ones.”

Mel let out a small sigh before she asked, “Did you have to cut them?”

“No, Captain Jack was wedged in with just his behind sticking out, but dear Joe managed to shake him loose.”

“Oh, good grief,” Mel said. “Is he all right now?”

“He’s fine,” Joyce said. “But I think dear Joe is going to herniate something from laughing. He keeps talking in a Spanish accent and saying, ‘How strange it was to be a cat in boots, but woh, I look good.’ You don’t know what he’s talking about, do you?”

Mel smiled. “Yeah, he’s quoting
Puss in Boots
—remember we took the nephews to see that movie?”

“Oh, how cute,” Joyce said.

Mel rolled her eyes. When it came to Joe, her mother always thought he was perfect.

“Tell him I’ll call him later,” Mel said. “Love you, Mom. Give Captain Jack lots of pets and some scolding from me.”

“Yes, dear,” Joyce said.

Mel slid her phone back into her pocket. The sound of the dance was far enough away that she could hear the music only faintly, as if the notes were sprinkled on the breeze.

She yawned again. The long day spent driving, making cake pops, and working the evening shift in the truck had
taken its toll, and her eyelids felt as if they were made of cement. She tried to keep them open. She forced herself to take deep breaths of the cool night air. She was sure she was awake, but then she’d start and discover she’d dozed. She thought about getting up and walking around the van to try to stay awake, but sleep hit her like a roundhouse punch to the temple, and she was out.

When she awoke, Mel had no idea if she’d slept for a solid fifteen-minute power nap or if she’d conked out for an hour or more. All she knew was that the sound of whispered voices woke her up, and not because they were whispering sweet nothings, but rather because they had the frantic sound of people having a low-grade case of hysterics.

Twenty-three

Mel lurched upright. She could hear the voices just outside the van. Was it the Bubbas coming to unplug them again? She scrambled around looking for a weapon, but all she had at hand was a wadded-up jacket, the magazine Angie had been reading, and the emergency flashlight Oz kept under the dashboard.

She grabbed the flashlight. She wasn’t sure whether she would clunk them on the head with it or freak them out by shining the light in their eyes, but she’d worry about it when she was closer.

She crawled through the two front seats and eased herself into the back. The voices were coming from below the service window in the van. She could see two shadowy figures just beyond the window. They were having a heated
discussion, and she wondered if it was the Bubbas debating lighting the van on fire.

She eased the window open and, in one motion, popped her head through the opening, snapped on her flashlight, and yelled, “Aha!”

The two shadows shrieked and then slammed into each other in their attempt to get away.

It was then that Mel recognized the short, curvy woman with dark hair and the tall young man with shaggy hair and many piercings.

“Angie! Oz! It’s me,” Mel said.

Angie had her hand over her chest, probably to check that her heart had resumed beating, and Oz slumped against the side of the truck, looking like he was afraid he might faint.

“What are you two doing, skulking around out here?” Mel asked. “You scared me half to death.”

“‘I don’t usually skulk, but I suppose I could skulk if skulking were required,’” Angie quoted.

“
Four Weddings and a Funeral
.” Mel and Oz identified the movie quote at the same time and pounded knuckles.

“We have to tell her,” Angie said to Oz.

“No, no, let’s just pretend we didn’t see it,” he said. “You know, mind our own business; butt out.”

Mel got a sinking feeling in her stomach.

“Tell me what?” she asked.

“We think we found what killed Ty,” Angie said. She whispered it as if whispering would make it less real.

“Really?” a voice asked from behind the truck. They all
stood frozen as Sheriff Dolan and his wife Ruth appeared in the shadows.

“Uh-oh,” Oz said.

“And to think we came just hoping for another cake-on-a-stick thingy,” Sheriff Dolan said.

“Cake pop,” Ruth corrected him.

“Okay, we can explain,” Angie said. “I’m sure that sounded worse than it is.”

Sheriff Dolan pushed back his hat and scratched his head, a gesture Mel was beginning to recognize as one he made when he was not happy.

“Now, Hadley,” Ruth said. “Hear them out.”

He gave her a look that mingled consternation and affection. Mel had seen the same look from Joe upon occasion. Somehow, this comforted her.

“Okay, it’s like this,” Angie said. “We were taking a walk because Oz has been cooped up in this truck all day and he was getting a little stir-crazy.”

Sheriff Dolan looked at Oz, who nodded vigorously.

“So, we went for a walk…” Angie began. She took a big breath as if bracing herself for the next part of the story. “We decided that we wanted to go and check on the bull and make sure he was okay.”

The sheriff looked between them as if they were certifiably cuckoo. “You say that like he’s some stray dog you found wandering loose. You are aware that he’s about one thousand, nine hundred pounds heavier than a dog? And he has horns, big ones.”

“We weren’t going to pet him or anything,” Angie said. Then she gave Oz a funny look and asked, “Right?”

“Right,” he said. “I just felt bad ’cause it was my cupcakes that got him captured.”

“Son, you probably saved someone’s life,” the sheriff said.

“Which would be a really good thing for you to keep in mind,” Angie said. “So, where was I?”

“The bull,” Sheriff Dolan prompted.

Mel handed two cake pops out the window to the sheriff and Ruth. She was not above bribery with baked goods if the situation warranted it. And, judging by the way Angie was shuffling her feet from side to side, she was guessing it was warranted.

“We figured he was back down in the bull pen,” she said. “When we got there the place was deserted, probably because of the dance, so there wasn’t anyone to ask where they’d put the bull, so we decided to work our way through the pens.”

The sheriff bit into his cake pop while he listened. Mel didn’t see any softening of his features. Damn. She didn’t want to be wasting cake pops.

“Well, I took one side, and Oz took the other,” Angie said. “I was halfway through the pens when I tripped on a handle poking out between two hay bales. When I pulled it out…” She paused, and a shudder ran through her. She took a deep breath and continued, “When I pulled it out to keep anyone else from tripping on it, I noticed that the tips were covered in blood.”

The sheriff’s jaw dropped, and Ruth gasped.

“Show me,” he ordered.

Mel hurriedly put up the windows and locked the back of the van. She didn’t want to leave it unguarded, but she
didn’t want to send Oz, too young, and Angie, a hothead, off with the sheriff on their own.

She decided to text Tate, telling him to get back to the van. Odds were that, with the sheriff on the premises, no one would mess with the van anyway—at least, she hoped so.

Angie and Oz led the way with Sheriff Dolan while Mel and Ruth brought up the rear. Ruth was still nibbling on her cake pop, but her eyes looked worried.

When they entered the field house that contained all of the bull pens, it was to find several of the bull owners present. They were standing at one end of the barn talking, but they stopped as soon as they took in the sight of the sheriff.

“I tripped here,” Angie said, and gestured to several large bales of hay. “And I pulled the handle out of here.”

She knelt down beside the hay bales. The bull owners walked over to where they all stood.

“What’s going on, Hadley?” one of them asked.

“I don’t know just yet,” the sheriff answered evenly.

Mel glanced at the three men, who all wore the requisite plaid shirts, jeans, and work boots. Their faces had a similar weather-beaten look to them, and their hands were big and square. These were not the type of men who lived in cubicles, but rather spent life outside, taking on the fickle temperaments of their animals and Mother Nature.

“When I pulled it out, I didn’t realize at first that it was bloody,” Angie said. “I just thought someone had been really careless.”

“More like sneaky,” Ruth said.

“Then what happened?” Sheriff Dolan asked.

“Well, then, when I realized what it was—you know,
that it had probably been used to stab Ty Stokes—I called Oz over. We weren’t sure what to do with it.”

One of the ranchers let out a low whistle.

“It didn’t occur to you to call me right away?” the sheriff asked.

“It did,” Angie said. She gave him a mutinous look. “But you’d already made a big stink about Oz being a suspect, so we weren’t sure if we should be the ones to tell you about it.”

“Where is it now?” the sheriff asked. His voice was very soft, and Mel got a sick feeling in her stomach that they had better be able to produce the pitchfork, or things were going to go very badly for Angie and Oz.

“I put it up there until we could agree about what to do,” Angie said. She pointed up at a loft, and they all looked up.

“Lead the way,” the sheriff said.

Angie climbed the wooden ladder that led up to the loft.

“I told her we should call it in,” Oz said. “But she wanted to leave an anonymous tip.”

The sheriff scurried up the ladder after Angie. Everyone on the ground was looking up at the loft as if they expected to see fireworks explode out of it. “No, don’t touch it,” they heard the sheriff say. “We don’t want to compromise any evidence that might be left on it.”

He and Angie climbed back down the ladder, and Angie nodded at Mel and Oz to let them know that the pitchfork was still up there.

The sheriff pulled his phone out of his pocket. He pressed two buttons. “This is Sheriff Dolan. I need a crime scene investigator at the Juniper Pass Rodeo ASAP.”

He turned his back to them and continued his conversation.

The rest of them lingered, uncertain of what to do. As if the quiet were too much for her, Angie turned to Ruth and asked, “How much trouble am I in?”