The Big Fix (7 page)

That was true enough. He’d even admitted it to me. But what was he doing that had him so exhausted? He hadn’t gone into detail about his side job.

Well, no sense worrying about it until I had a chance to talk to him. “Yeah, you’re right. Listen, as long as you guys are here to help…”

*   *   *

I hopped the first available flight to Vegas, white-knuckling it the whole way, and rented a car at McCarran Airport. I’d hoped to catch Billy before he left Vegas, to see if he could stop by the ranch and check the gun out for me, but I still hadn’t managed to connect with him. Our voice messages kept crossing in the ether. Just as well. My ranch, my responsibility. I couldn’t leave Dave hanging there—it wasn’t right.

Sinead and Siobhan were back at my condo, diligently going through all the contact info Laura had e-mailed me. Being dedicated web geeks, they had promised to design and send awesome wedding shower e-vites to everyone on the list, and possibly to set up a remote webcam viewing station at the restaurant for those who couldn’t make it to D.C. in time to be there in person. They were even going to take care of the decorations. All I had to do in exchange was promise to get Thomas to introduce them to some of his hot lawyer buddies. (Thomas had thus far refused to do so himself, having an ironically low opinion of the species.)

About ten miles out from the ranch my cell phone played the first tongue-clicking notes of Billy Joel’s “The Ballad of Billy the Kid.” They sounded like hoofbeats, and indicated Billy was on the line. (He’d loaded the ringtone onto my phone himself when I wasn’t looking, along with a bunch of others. I never knew which Billy-related song would provide the ringtone when he called—he’d figured out a way to randomize them.)

I pulled to the side of the road before I answered, not out of an abundance of caution (I mean, the road was deserted) but because I’d sworn to my mother—on the urn holding my great-grandmother’s ashes, no less—that I would never text or talk on my phone while driving. I was pretty sure breaking that kind of vow would result, at the very least, in a comet crashing through the top of the car (God punishing right away and all), and I didn’t want to have to explain that to the rental company.

“Where
are
you?” I said, probably not as patiently as I could have.

“Hello, sweetheart. I love you, too,” Billy said, laughter in his voice.

My stomach fluttered at his words. He’d only ever said them in a joking manner so far—never seriously—and I wasn’t quite sure how to respond. So I deflected. “Yeah, right. Kiss-kiss.
Where?
”

“I’m at the airport, waiting for you. Your last text said you were heading this way. Where are
you
?”

“Wait a second. You didn’t get my ‘fuck this shit, I’m leaving’ text?”

“Nope.”

Crap. Who did I send it to? Please not Mom, please not Mom, please not Mom …

I checked my message log.
Shit.

“Never mind. I’m almost to the ranch. Dave found a gun in Eeyore’s stall. You didn’t happen to leave it there, hoping he’d shoot himself, did you? You do realize he doesn’t have opposable thumbs?”

“Ha ha. But nope. Not me. If I were planning to do away with the little bastard, I’d poison his oats. He doesn’t deserve a fast death.”

“Bill-ee…”

“Kidding, cuz. I’d never harm a hair on your darling’s head, you know that. You’d never sleep with me again if I did.”

“That’s
right,
and don’t you forget it. So, where are you heading?”

“Back to the ranch, apparently, to help you solve the mystery of the magically appearing gun. Shouldn’t take long—I’m already fueled. By the way, how was your flight?”

I grunted and hung up.

*   *   *

“How many of you have touched it since you found it?” I asked, referring to the plastic-wrapped pistol on the counter.

Dave looked sheepish. “Me. Of course. I found it. I had to get it out of the stall before Eeyore kicked it to pieces.”

“And?”

He gestured toward the guy next to him. Cody was tall, and whipcord thin. According to his employment records, he was twenty-eight, but his years spent outside in the harsh Arizona sun made him look older.

“I had to show it to him to see if it was his. He might’ve held it for a while…”

Cody ran a hand through thick, light brown hair. “I checked to see if it was loaded. It was empty. Listen, Ciel, I’m sorry this happened. I should’ve—”

“Don’t be silly, Cody. You can’t be everywhere at once. Besides, why would any of you expect anything like this when there’s not even a client here? Now, did anyone else touch the gun?”

“Well, Rosa pulled it out of the drawer—she wanted me to get it out of her kitchen—but I’d already wrapped it in plastic by then, so I don’t think she counts.”

Rosa gave him a scorching look and waved a spatula threateningly. “What was I supposed to do? A gun does not belong with my utensils.”

I stepped casually between the two of them. I didn’t think she’d hit him on purpose, but when she got excited her arms sometimes took on a life of their own. “So only you and Cody got prints on it. And whoever left it in Eeyore’s stall. If they didn’t wipe it clean first, of course,” I said.

“Yeah, I expect so. I just can’t figure who would do a fool thing like that,” Dave said.

“You got me,” I said. “Why don’t you show me exactly where it was in the barn?”

“Sure thing, honeybunch,” Dave said with an understanding smile. He knew the real reason I wanted to go to the barn—I had to see for myself that Eeyore was okay. Poor little guy was probably upset at having his routine disrupted.

Rosa elected to stay behind and work on dinner. “I don’t want my nose contaminated by the aroma of horse excrement when I’m cooking.” She shook the spatula at all of us. “You don’t want that either.”

Dave chuckled. “Aw, admit it, Rosa. You’re afraid of the little feller.”

Rosa expelled a stream of Spanish, ending with what sounded like “
diablo culo de morderse,
” which I was pretty sure meant “ass-biting devil.”

Um, yeah. Couldn’t exactly contradict her on that. When I’d first moved Eeyore to the Circle C, I’d had the bright idea of letting him roam freely around the place, like a big, shaggy gray dog. He’d figured out how to open the back door to the kitchen and had nipped Rosa a good one while she was checking the corn bread in the oven. (I still contend he was being playful, but Rosa didn’t see it that way.)

Turned out Eeyore
was
upset, and with much better reason than his default mode of annoyance with life in general. There was a sack over his head, a rope around his neck, and a strange man stomping from one corner of his stall to the next, kicking through the straw, yanking Eeyore along with him.

“What the hell are you
doing
?” I hollered as I ran toward them, Dave and Cody right behind me. Jesus, what was going on? Maybe I needed to increase my security here. Get Cody an assistant or something, because the ranch was obviously way too accessible.

The man—middle-aged, roughly groomed, and decidedly stupid-looking—assessed his situation, his eyes pausing briefly on each of us. It was like Bluto from the old Popeye cartoons had come to life. You could almost see him counting on mental fingers and figuring out he was outnumbered. But instead of making up some lie about why he was there, as any rational human being would, he pulled a switchblade from his pocket, popped it open, and held it to my beloved pony’s throat.

I skidded to a halt, flinging my arms wide to stop Dave and Cody. I took each of them by a wrist and held them back. (Okay, I might have been holding myself upright at the same time. I can multitask.)

Dave spoke first (I was still gasping), temporarily forgetting his cowboy dialect. “Wait a minute. Why don’t you let the pony go and we’ll talk about this. What are you looking for?” As if we didn’t know. “Maybe we can help you find it.”

“Stand back or the pony gets it!” the man said, his gruff voice making the ridiculous words sound menacing.

Kick him, Eeyore! Kick. Him. Now.

For once in his cantankerous life, Eeyore stood still. The bag over his head must have been inhibiting his natural impulses.

I swallowed hard and found my voice. “All right, mister. Stay calm. Nobody’s going near you.” I spared a nanosecond to glance at Dave and Cody, making sure they were listening. “What can we do for you?”

“You can give me the gun that was supposed to be here, that’s what you can do,” he said, eyes getting wilder.

“What gun is that?” I asked, squeezing both the guys’ wrists. They got the message and kept their mouths shut.

“The goddamn gun that was supposed to be here, that’s what gun!”

Eeyore took exception to the man’s tone and tried to rear up, only to be yanked—harshly—back down by the rope.

I reached for him reflexively, but halted when Bluto pressed the blade harder against Eeyore’s neck. The thin cloth of the sack wasn’t going to offer any protection against cold, sharp steel. I tried desperately to think of a way,
any
way to get that knife away from my pony’s throat. We weren’t close enough to rush the guy, even if the wall of the stall hadn’t been blocking us.

“Um, why don’t we help you look for it?” I said, keeping my voice reasonable. Mostly. It didn’t squeak, anyway. “It’s obvious the gun is important to you—maybe a gift from someone special?—and you need it back.” There. If he wasn’t bright enough to think of his own damn lie, I’d do it for him. Give him a credible out, and maybe he’d leave quietly. “You probably have a good reason to suspect whoever, um, stole it from you took it here. Once we find it, you can be on your way.”

His mouth drooped open while he considered what I said.

Come on, you idiot. Take the opening and run.

“Uh … yeah,” he finally said, a dim bulb lighting behind his eyes. “That’s it. The gun is special. It was a present from my, uh, girlfriend. For my birthday—”

That’s it, Bluto. Come on, you can do it! Now let go of my pony.

“—and her asshole ex-boyfriend, he stole it and headed this way. He called her to, um, rub it in and told her since she was into tiny things—he’s a shit-face asshole jerk, is what he is, and he don’t know from tiny, the pencil-dick—he told her she may as well give her present to a pony as to me. Right, like
he
was some kind of stallion.”

Boy, when he took an opening, he really ran with it.

He seemed quite pleased with his embellishment of the story I’d started for him. I nodded my sympathetic understanding and kept squeezing. If I hadn’t been so terrified for Eeyore it would have been tough to hold my laughter in check.

Dave pried my fingers gently from his wrist and said, “Damn, that’s cold. I feel for you, buddy.” He looked at me, his eyes telling me to go along with him, and then continued. “You know, I shoveled a bunch of muck out of that stall this morning. Maybe the gun was in the mess? The pile is outside, over by the corral. Why don’t we go look?”

I let go of Cody, who said, “Good idea. I’ll get a shovel.”

The man stiffened. “Wait!” He still held the knife to Eeyore. The rest of us froze. “You go get the shovel, girly. You other two—you stay where I can see you.”

I nodded. “Sure thing. Um, meet you out by the pile?” I said. With any luck, he’d leave Eeyore in the stall.

Apparently he wasn’t as dumb as he looked. He took Eeyore with him, knife to throat, making sure Dave and Cody were in front of him the whole way. Even newly armed with the shovel, there was nothing I could do that wouldn’t allow him time to plunge the knife into Eeyore’s throat—not a risk I was willing to take.

The aromatic pile of dung and straw was percolating in the sun next to the new three-bin composting system Dave was hot to start using. I’d been hesitant to make the investment (feeling as I did that other things—say, like eating—were more important), but Dave insisted it was the green thing to do, and would pay for itself—eventually—when we started selling the finished, soil-like product to gardeners. Billy thought we should call it “Cielie-Poo.” (Uh-huh, the origin of his new endearment for me.) Dave was lobbying for “Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue, But If You Want Them to Grow, You Need This Poo.” Which, granted, was a bit long, but Dave said we could always abbreviate it as “U-Need-This Poo.”

Right now I needed something, that was for sure. Maybe the poo was it. It wasn’t like it hadn’t worked to get me out of a tight spot before, as about a hundred neo-Vikings could testify to. But I’d been told lightning doesn’t strike the same spot twice, so I wasn’t going to count on it.

I started poking at the pile gingerly, keeping a wary eye on Bluto.

“Hurry it up, girly. I ain’t got all day.”

I shoveled faster, turning over big globs of straw and manure, not really paying attention because, of course, I already knew the gun wasn’t there. As I was lifting a particularly fresh bunch of horse hockey I heard a plane overhead.

Billy.

Everyone looked up, including me. Bluto didn’t like it. “Hurry the fuck up! You two, start digging—hey, where the hell do you think you’re going?”

Cody stopped. “To get more shovels.”

“Forget it. Use your hands. Dig!”

Dave sighed. They both reached for the pile as Billy circled around. I dropped the shovel and threw my arms up in an I-give-up gesture, hoping Billy could see me.

“Listen, mister, I don’t think the gun is here.” I waved an arm, broadly, over the pile. For all this guy knew, I was a heavy gesticulator. “Maybe we should check the other stalls first”—I swung my other arm toward the barn—“because maybe the ex-boyfriend threw the gun in the wrong one,” I said, my voice growing louder with the approach of the plane.

Bluto glanced upward, looking edgier by the minute. “You’re not done here—keep digging!”

Billy flew by, heading toward the landing strip. Damn it. I’d been trying to wave him off. No telling what this maniac might do if he thought he’d be outnumbered even more. He’d have plenty of time to do major damage before Billy could land and run to us.