Roughstock (A Gail McCarthy Mystery) (12 page)

ELEVEN

Cornering Trav turned out to be easy. I simply rode up to him where he sat on his little sorrel mare, watching the roping.

Travis looked as he always did, a tall, slender kid with an unremarkable face-brown eyes and hair, fair skin, a strong chin-wearing Wrangler jeans and tennis shoes with spurs, a T-shirt that said No Fear, and a lime green baseball cap. He sat on the mare with his usual relaxed grace-the quiet, understated poise of the natural horseman. Only the expression on his face was different. Travis, normally exuberantly friendly, looked somber.

I was reminded suddenly of all the talk-that Travis was really Jack's son, the result of one of his many extramarital flings. That was why he'd hired Trav and let him live on the ranch, given him a horse and taken him roping-so people said. Just who had told me this? I tried to remember and couldn't. It
was talk-stories that had clung to Travis for as long as I'd known him.

Which was for two or three years, more or less. I'd met him on one of my first calls out to the Hollister Ranch; Jack and Bronc had both been out of town and Travis had had a colicked horse. I could still remember my first impression of Trav-young, friendly, worried, anxious to do right by the horse, eager to comprehend my instructions. Unlike a good many men in their twenties, Travis wasn't on any kind of a macho trip.

Fortunately the horse had made a complete recovery and, ever since, Travis and I had been friendly. Not friends, exactly-I knew nothing of his personal life, and he knew as little of mine. But we chatted amiably together when we saw each other, mostly about horses, which was, of course, what we had in common, and my initial impression had only been confirmed. Travis was a genuinely nice, easygoing kid.

"I'm sorry about Jack," I said to him.

His eyes shifted to my face and then back to the roping. "Me too." There was a long moment of uncharacteristic silence. Finally he said, "I heard you were up there when it happened." The words seem to come out reluctantly, and he kept his eyes on the activity in the arena.

"Yeah," I agreed. "A friend of mine was out with him the night he was killed."

Travis looked at me briefly. "Do the cops suspect her?"

"I don't think so."

More uncomfortable silence.

"What will you do now?" I asked him at last.

"Stay on the ranch and work for Bronc." There was some emotion in his voice, something I couldn't place.

"I hear Jack left the ranch to be part of the state park."

"Yep." Travis didn't seem curious as to how I had heard it. "Bronc and I get to live there, just like we are, and take care of it. It's in Jack's will."

"That's good."

Travis still stared almost fixedly at the team roping, his usual lighthearted, youthful demeanor completely absent. In his stern expression was a faint resemblance to Jack's typical firm-jawed visage and I was reminded yet again of the talk that Trav was really Jack's son. And yet Bronc had said Jack was sterile.

Deciding these were hardly questions I could ask Travis, I said, I hoped lightly, "The cops spent two days questioning me up in Tahoe. Have you been through that, too?"

"Oh yeah. They came out and grilled me and Bronc. Don't make no difference, though. Bronc and I can give each other alibis." Trav said this firmly, then jerked his chin toward the chute. "I'm up in a minute."

With the words, he wheeled the mare and trotted off, looking, I thought, relieved to be rid of me. Well, what did I expect? These were probably the last things he wanted to think or talk about. Still, it was odd the way he had volunteered that Bronc and he could alibi each other. Living on the same ranch as they did, it would be easy to see why this would be the case, but why was he so quick to tell me?

And why so unfriendly? His unnatural reticence could be the way he dealt with grief, but somehow it had seemed more than that. Almost hostile. I wondered suddenly if Travis might believe Joanna had killed Jack and I was covering for her.

Riding Gunner back to Lonny's trailer, I unsaddled him and brushed him, then took Blue for a slow walk. After that I drank a beer with a couple of friendly ropers while I watched Lonny and Bronc win the third pot of the day. Bronc managed to heel all three steers neatly by two feet to beat a good seventy teams, despite the fact that he was the oldest roper in the arena. I cheered them on happily, forgetting, for the moment, Jack's murder, and simply enjoying the sunny day and the ambiance.

It wasn't until the roping was over and we were unsaddling Burt and Pistol, that trouble returned. It
came in the form of a battered blue pickup that pulled in the front gate and rolled to a stop in the parking lot, not far from our rig. A woman got out and leaned on the fender, smoking a cigarette with jerky, abrupt motions. Tara Hollister.

I couldn't stand Tara Hollister. Everything from her too obviously dyed blond hair to her hard-faced, tough-girl attitude, to her skintight, overly sexy clothes grated on my nerves, but nothing so much as the idea that she posed as a horse trainer. Despite the fact that to even a moderately knowledgeable eye she was not a very good hand with a horse, she had managed to convince a few even more ignorant folks of her abilities, and always seemed to have two or three horses "in training."

I had a very low tolerance for the sound of Tara's deep, somewhat harsh voice pontificating along the lines of "that son-of-a-bitch just needs a shorter tie-down and a good whack alongside the head, and he'd be all right in the box." Mostly it was bullshit, and I guess I've got a low bullshit tolerance. But more than that, I thought Tara was often downright cruel, and I don't put up with cruelty at all.

"There's Tara," Lonny said, following my line of sight to the figure beside the truck. "You gonna go over there and question her?"

He was half playful, half serious; I'd already considered doing just that.

"No," I said finally, "I'd better not."

"Why not?"

"Because I'm a witness in that trial she's involved in, and I'm afraid she'll ask me questions about that. It's tomorrow," I added, mostly to myself.

"Trial?" Lonny said blankly.

"Remember? The night she rode that sorrel gelding to death? Well, she's suing the former owner. You know."

"Oh yeah." Lonny's face was rueful. "I forgot about that."

I wasn't surprised. Lonny had a selective memory to go with his optimistic attitude; he tended to remember only those things that were pleasant or directly relevant to what he needed to do. The unpleasant and unnecessary details of life were neatly forgotten. And Tara's lawsuit, a matter of small claims court, was just such a sorry transaction. I didn't like to think about it either, as the whole thing seemed both sad, ridiculous, and awkward.

"You ready to go?" Lonny grinned at me. His mind had clearly switched back to the enjoyable ending of a typical roping day-a drink, dinner, and a roll in the hay.

"I guess so." My mind was elsewhere, but I obediently helped him load the three horses in the trailer and was putting Blue in the truck when I heard voices raised in the unequivocal tones of a major argument. Everyone in the arena heard; conversations and motion came to a fascinated stop as the whole place craned its attention on Tara Hollister and Bronc, who were shouting at each other over by his rig.

"That's my horse, you know damn well he is. He was born out of one of Jack's mares while I was married to Jack, and I'm taking him back." Tara's usually low voice was shrill with anger.

"Bullshit." Bronc spat on the ground at Tara's feet. "This horse is mine just like everything on that ranch is mine. And if you were a man, you ring-tailed bitch, I'd make you remember it."

He turned and led Willy toward the rear of the trailer, every muscle of his body hard. Tara raised her arms, hands curled into claws, and sprang on his back, her fingernails gouging at his face. Lips pulled tight over her teeth, she screeched, "You think so, you motherfucker? Try it."

There was a collective gasp. Thrown punches were not unknown at roping arenas, and I had witnessed two twentyish women clawing at each other in precisely this way a month ago, over a blond kid I would have said was not worth the trouble. But the spectacle of a woman attacking a man of Bronc's age seemed absurdly shocking.

Bronc was doubled over, Tara clinging to his back, clawing and kicking as his arms sought a purchase on her body, angry ejaculations shooting from his mouth. Tara, for her part, was still screeching, though I couldn't make out words anymore.

By this time people nearby had recovered from their surprise at the sight, and two youngish ropers jumped into the melee and grabbed Tara, pulling her off Bronc. She was still shouting insults and made some attempt to claw at the men holding her, at which one of them shook her lightly with a muttered "Calm down."

Bronc, for his part, wiped the blood from a wicked-looking scratch on his cheek, and turned to take Willy's reins from Trav, who had caught the startled horse. He stared at Tara, being held by her elbows, and then spat again. "You'll have this horse over my dead body, you little murdering bitch."

He led Willy into the stock trailer, loaded Trav's mare behind him, tied the two horses and latched the door, then walked around and got in his pickup. Trav climbed in the passenger side quickly. Starting the engine, Bronc said a brief "Thanks" to the two men who were still holding Tara, and pulled out of the parking lot. Only when his rig disappeared down Martinez Road did Tara's captors release her.

Rubbing her elbows, she glared at them malevolently, then climbed into her own truck and proceeded to skid out of the parking lot in an adolescent display of bad temper. The whole crowd watched her departure, eyes wide. This was definitely the stuff of which gossip was made.

"Whew." Lonny had started his truck and was nosing it out of the parking lot at a considerably more sedate pace. Ignoring the little knots of chatting, gesticulating ropers gathered by their rigs, he bumped on down the drive toward the road. Lonny wasn't much of a gossiper.

Left to myself, I might have stayed to talk, but my motives, I assured myself, were more professional than mere curiosity. If anyone had ever looked like a creature who could murder out of rage, Tara's contorted face had looked it this afternoon.

"How in the world could he have married her?" I said out loud.

Lonny had no trouble understanding what I meant. He shook his head, then smiled deprecatingly. I looked at him curiously; his expression was almost sheepish.

"What are you thinking?" I demanded.

"I'm almost embarrassed to say it."

"Come on."

He sighed. "Jack was in his fifties. Just a little older than I am." He glanced in my direction. "Tara's what, mid thirties? And whatever else you can say about her, she's got a good body. She makes sure you notice." He gave a brief laugh.

"You're saying he married her just to get in the pants of a youngish, decent-looking woman? That he was so stupid, or going through such a mid life crisis that he didn't look beyond that? That's hard to believe."

I thought about Jack as I had known him-a handsome, wealthy man, a confirmed flirt certainly, but not obnoxiously so. I'd seen no hint of desperation in his eyes. And there would have been no reason for it. Plenty of women would have been willing to take on Jack Hollister.

"Why?" I asked Lonny. "Why would you think that?"

Lonny didn't answer, but looked more sheepish than ever.

Watching his profile as he drove, the answer dawned on me by degrees. "Is that what you feel about me?"

His hesitation was its own answer. "Of course not," was what he eventually said. "But I've wondered, sometimes, if there wasn't an element of that. It
bothers me a little."

We were both silent. Lonny was fourteen years older than me, hardly the gap of the century. But it was a gap, nonetheless, and there were times when I noticed how youthful I appeared next to him. Normally this was pleasant, but there were moments when it struck me as mildly incongruous. After all, the farcical elements of a May/December romance were as old as human history.

"So," I said slowly, "you're saying that Jack, and maybe you, were, shall we say, thinking with your peckers when you got involved with younger women."

Lonny laughed. "I hope it's not that simple. But there's an element of that in most men. Jack had a lot of it, I think."

I chewed on that awhile. I had to admit, the subject was becoming a lot more personal, and I was perhaps more interested in Lonny's motivations than Jack's. Eventually, though, I dragged my mind off my own feelings and tried to analyze what Jack's motivation for marrying Tara might have to do with his subsequent murder.

"So let's say Jack married her because she was relatively young and good-looking and could ride a horse. An ornament to his manhood, shall we say, something he could take to the roping arenas and be all puffed up about. Maybe she was good in bed, even. But he rapidly grows disenchanted, and starts running around on her, which we all know he did. So Tara demands a divorce and a bunch of money and, we suppose, gets it. So where'd the money go, anyway-she doesn't look rich."

Lonny seemed relieved to be off the subject of his own motivation and back on Jack and, for once, entered into the spirit of investigation with some enthusiasm. "She did for a while. This was before you started to go roping. Right after Tara broke up with Jack she was driving a rig that must have cost a quarter of a million and buying horses hand over fist. She bought a pretty fancy place, too, or so I heard. But over the last couple of years it's all disappeared."