The Love of a Lawman, The Callister Trilogy, Book 3 (4 page)

"I'm gonna pretend I didn't hear any of this, Izzy—Isabelle. You can't say stuff like that to me. I represent the law. Just cool it with the threats."

She huffed. "Some law. The county must have been desperate when they hired you."

"Look," John said—gently, she had to admit—"I know you're upset. I understand. I like dogs as much as any man, but it's not against the law for Art to protect his herd. Any sheep grower in Callister would do the same. A person's dog can't pester his neighbor's livestock. That's just the way it is."

She turned her head and stared across her shoulder into his unsmiling eyes, into irises as clear and green as emeralds. What was a
man
doing with eyes that looked like jewels? In the face of his direct look, for some reason, she couldn't admit aloud her dog had escaped her control and done something that got him killed. "Art Karadimos used to be friends with your dad. I'll bet he still is."

And she couldn't keep the accusing edge from her voice. Wasn't offense supposed to be the best defense? Hadn't she seen that tactic work often enough, living with Billy for seventeen years?

"That doesn't mean anything. If I could fix this, I would." John peeked out at the weather, his brow creased. "You got anybody to help you bury him?"

"I don't need any help."

His hand came out and touched her forearm. "Isabelle, let me help you. I know your little girl's torn up. I'm—"

"What, sorry? A lot of good that'll do. Her heart's broken. Jack was her friend, her companion. We've had him since he was a puppy. She gave him his name."

He nodded and stared at the porch floor.

"And I liked him, too," she threw in for good measure, glad to have someone to rail at and unable to let the incident drop.

He nodded again. "I'm sorry."

Oh, hell, he probably
was
sorry. Why was she being such a bitch? More conversation would be useless and as painful as punching the barn door with her fist. "Okay, yeah. Whatever." She crossed in front of him, speaking as she walked. "Listen, thanks for coming all the way out here in such crappy weather."

She opened the door and went back into the house.

* * *

John stood on the porch staring at the front door she had closed in his face.
Okay, fine, dammit. Just fine.

"Women," he muttered, stepping off the porch and tramping through the wet grass toward the Blazer. He wanted to reach the end of this whole sorry experience, and soon.

His coat was soaked. He jerked the Blazer door open, yanked off the coat and threw it in the cab before climbing behind the wheel. Shuddering, he fired the engine and turned the heat on high, waiting for comfort before driving away.

While he shivered and waited, he scanned the nearest pasture, wanting to take a closer look at the stallion. He was nowhere in sight.

Backing in an arc, he saw a long horse trailer parked at the side of the barn and held his foot on the brake for a few seconds while he studied the sleek newer model. It had room for four or five head, had tack and feed storage in the front end and a bunk area. Maybe climate control, too. Art had told him Izzy came with a pickup truck and horse trailer worth more than Frenchie Rondeau's whole house and that wasn't far from wrong. The only people who owned horse trailers as fancy as that one were in the horse business big time.

As he eased down her rough driveway, he peered over at the mares again. Their rumps were turned to the storm, so he couldn't see them clearly. That horse trailer told him they were performance horses of some kind. Maybe they really
were
cutting horses worth big bucks.

Art Karadimos' words echoed in his ears.
Them three horses she brought in here ain't canners. If she's like her old man, she probably stole 'em.

John didn't believe the neighbor's spiteful remark, but he couldn't deny his curiosity as to why anybody would bring highbred horses to Callister.

As he navigated the muddy county road, he thought about cutting horses. On his mom and dad's ranch they were simply called cow horses. Smart, quick animals able to isolate a cow or calf from a herd, then maneuver left and right to block its attempts to return. They had been around since the birth of the ranching industry. Every cattle operation with a fair-sized herd had a few trained for the task. Branding cattle and administering medical treatment would be harder without a good cow horse.

He had been in a few rodeos where cutting was an exhibition event, but cutting-horse people weren't usually rodeo people. The cutters had their own organization, their own shows.

Big bucks? Big deal. Oh, sure, there were cutting horses worth big bucks, just like there were rope horses, racehorses, et cetera, et cetera. In Texas, maybe, but Texas wasn't Callister, Idaho.

His thoughts veered to the dog. He was sure it had been over in Art's pasture, harassing the sheep just like the old fart said. Border collies were busy little critters. Why had Izzy lied? Why hadn't she just admitted what happened and been done with the whole thing?

Of the things John had learned since pinning on the sheriff's badge, one of the eye-openers that stunned him the most was almost everybody told him lies. Sometimes huge whoppers, sometimes little fibs, but untruths all the same.

Ah, well. He guessed fibbing to the law was human nature. He had done it himself a few times....
I didn't see that speed limit sign, honest.... I didn't know that trailer taillight was
out....
Hey, I only had one beer.

He didn't know if he would ever be comfortable as the man behind a badge. Even after three months, the lawdog end of the peace officer/citizen relationship felt like a shirt that didn't fit. It was a good thing filling out the sheriff's term was only temporary. A little over six months to go and this chapter of his life would end. The county would hold an election for a real sheriff and he would go out and look for a job in the real world. A world hugely different from Callister.

Back in his office, he found a phone message from his dad. A phone call from the man he wanted to hear from the least put the crowning touch on a day that had already turned shitty.

He delayed returning the call by hanging his damp coat on a chair back and placing it near a space heater, just so. He sorted papers on his desk, read over the faxes that came in daily passing on data about wanted suspects. He kept feeling Rooster's and Dana's eyes watching him expectantly, so he faced the unavoidable and on a sigh shut his office door and punched in his dad's number.

An answer came on the first ring. "How's Callister's fine sheriff today?"

John could never tell if such remarks from John Thomas Bradshaw, Sr., came in jest or in judgment. His dad had thought John wearing a sheriff's badge a joke all along. Dad wasn't the only one who held that opinion. John himself sometimes thought the situation humorous. "Going okay, Dad. What's up?"

"Your mother's worried. You haven't called her in weeks."

Shit, what could he say? That he neglected calling his mother because he hated the possibility of talking to his dad? He closed his eyes, picturing the Bradshaw patriarch standing tall and straight in the office just to the right of the ranch house's front door. The receiver was at his left ear, the four fingers of his right hand were tucked just inside the edge of the pocket of his starched and pressed Wranglers. "Put her on," John said.

"She's not here. Went down to the mall in Boise to do some shopping. I expect you forgot her birthday's coming up. It'd be decent for you to show up out here. And it wouldn't hurt if you brought her a present."

John couldn't imagine his mom, a horsewoman who could ride and rope with the best of them, strolling through a mall, shopping. He glanced at the wall calendar, which still showed January, though the date was March 1. "I didn't forget. I'm planning on coming out."

"Fine. I'll let her know. Now, don't disappoint her. 'Cause if she's expecting you, you know she'll spend two days cooking."

Besides being colorful and full of fun, Katie Bradshaw had to be the most loving, selfless woman alive. If a dozen people went to the ranch to help celebrate
her
birthday, she would spend the day cooking up a big feed for them.

Long blond-laced-with-gray hair, pulled back and banded at her nape, jeans covered by a ruffly apron, cowboy boots and sometimes spurs clumping and clinking around the kitchen—that was John's mother. He braced his elbow on the desk and propped his jaw on his hand, thinking of the similarities in personality between his father and Art Karadimos. And feeling sorry for his mother. "Okay, Dad."

"I heard the schoolkids are soon having what they call that spring break," his dad said. "I was thinking, if you wanted to bring Trey and Cody up for a week, I'd pay for some plane tickets. It'd mean a lot to your mother to spend some time with her grandsons."

Spending time with his boys would mean a lot to John, too, but he didn't know how he could remedy the present circumstances. When Julie and he divorced, the court had given her full custody, with him allowed only two weekends a month. Then she remarried and moved to California. Before going, she petitioned for a new visitation schedule and the judge had gone along. The alteration denied him the company of his sons during the entire winter, including Christmas. All he could look forward to now was a month in the summer—or two months, if he begged her. He tried to have a phone conversation with them every week just to stay in touch with their lives, but Julie's and her new husband's schedules made doing even that difficult.

His dad didn't understand that buying the tickets was only a tiny part of the problem. "Julie won't let 'em fly alone, Dad. Even if I went down there to pick them up, I don't know if that would work either. Hell, I don't even know if they're gonna come for their scheduled visit this summer. I talked to 'em just a couple of days ago. Julie's husband's already made plans."

"That's a damn shame, son. It's one thing to let rodeos and whiskey ruin your marriage, but I don't know how you managed to screw up custody of those kids. When a woman does what your ex-wife did—"

"Cut it out, Dad." To this day, John didn't know how his parents had learned he had caught his ex-wife with another man. He had never discussed it with them himself and didn't intend to.

"You should've fought her for those kids. Right now, you oughtta be—"

"Just tell Mom I'll see her on her birthday, okay?" John hung up. The incident out at Rondeau's place had left him a little short in the temper. He didn't need to hear all he had done wrong or what he ought to do in the future. He leaned both elbows on his desk, massaging his eyes with his fingertips. Jesus, would he ever do anything in his whole life that would earn his dad's respect?

When he opened his eyes, the calendar still loomed before him. Saturday. If he were still rodeoing, he would probably be at the winter show in Tucson, psyching himself up for the finals. After the show, he would probably hook up with some sweet thing and they would go to the dance. Or they might skip the dance, pick up a bottle of Crown and just go to the motel. That is, if he had enough money in his pocket to pay for a room.

The thing he would
not
be doing was readying to go out and patrol the streets and the three bars of a small town, prepared to arrest somebody for drunk and disorderly conduct.

Sometimes it was hard to be glad he had changed his ways. Sometimes, though he had been off the rodeo circuit for more than a year, when he thought about different shows in which he had competed, he still felt as if he was missing something by not being there.

Chapter 3

Covered by the thick afghan, Isabelle lay back on the sofa, her head resting on the arm, her arms enclosing her distraught daughter. The orange flames in the fireplace threw warmth and soft glimmers into the dim living room light. At last she was warm and Ava had stopped crying and dropped off to sleep.

Her neck was twisted at a cockeyed angle, but Isabelle didn't move, lest she wake Ava and start a new cycle of tears. She lay with her cheek resting against her daughter's hair, breathing the soft perfume of strawberry-scented shampoo and thinking on why and how had she come back to this place.

Three years ago her father had been found frozen to death in the alley behind the Eights & Aces Saloon. No one knew exactly what had happened, but the speculation was that he fell on the way to his car and couldn't get back on his feet.