Stripped Bare Read online

  “It’s not the end,” I finished with him. It was a saying he repeated often.

  Someone knocked on the front door. Dad shot me a puzzled glance. No one from Hodgekiss used the front door. Carly.

  I sped from the kitchen into the dark living room. Dad followed. I crossed the closed-in porch, with its two barber chairs, old-time hair dryer that fit over the entire head, and hair-washing station. This was a holdover from the previous generation, when Dad’s mother, my Grandma Ardith, owned this house and ran her beauty parlor here.

  I flung open the door to Milo Ferguson, who was standing on the cracked concrete steps, in his brown sheriff pants and shirt. He nodded at Dad and addressed me. “I saw your rig out front.”

  I stepped back to let him in.

  “Come in the kitchen. I’ve got a pot on.” Dad led the way.

  What was Milo doing here? Hadn’t he done enough with accusing Ted? I felt like Dad was giving aid to the enemy—except I hadn’t told him that Milo suspected Ted. One of Dad’s favorite sayings was “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.” Maybe if I didn’t rub Milo wrong, it’d go better for Ted.

  While Dad poured coffee and set the cookie jar on the table, I fidgeted in the doorway.

  Milo let out an umph as he slid onto the picnic bench and sucked in his belly. Peppery whiskers covered his face, and bags drooped under his bloodshot eyes. It looked like he hadn’t been to bed either.

  “Have you figured out who killed Eldon? Who shot Ted?” Guess I didn’t have much honey in me.

  Dad set Milo’s coffee on the table and floated a paper napkin to him. He pulled the lid off the jar, and Milo reached in and brought out a golden-brown chocolate chip cookie. My guess is that Louise, Fox number two and the self-proclaimed mother of the clan, filled the jar for Mom and Dad.

  Milo bit, chewed, and followed it with a swallow of coffee, while my nerves jangled. He motioned me to sit.

  I stayed by the doorway.

  He swallowed another bite and set the cookie down. “I need to ask you some questions.”

  “Questions?” I barked.

  Dad pulled out his stern face. The one he used right before sending us to the corner.

  Milo waved his hand. “I’m just getting some background. State patrol is sending someone out from Omaha. But I imagine they’ll mostly handle the newspeople.”

  My stomach flipped. “News?”

  Milo looked miserable, but not so much he couldn’t munch Louise’s cookie. “The state patrol guys advised me to refer those bloodhounds to them. That suits me.”

  I shifted to my other foot. What if the news media caught wind of Ted being under suspicion? That would jeopardize the election, and that would devastate Ted.

  Milo folded his hands on the table in front of him. “What do you know about Glenn Baxter?”

  Huh? Dad and I didn’t offer a reply.

  Mom surprised all of us by stepping into the kitchen. “He’s obscenely wealthy from his cable news station. And even if he’s a typical East Coast dick smoker pandering to overconsumption, I do approve of his plan to buy up ranches in the Sandhills and convert the whole area to a buffalo common.”

  Mom might often be distracted, but she wasn’t stupid or uninformed. Apparently she’d been hiding on the stairs and felt compelled to join us.

  I cringed at her term for rich, entitled businesspeople who made outrageous wealth buying and selling paper, and had no compunction against screwing someone else. It wasn’t a slam against sexual orientation, any more than others use the term brown-noser, but I wasn’t sure anyone would know that. Mom believed in Karma and goodness, so her using this term, which she did often enough, seemed out of character. We didn’t know Mom’s parents and we speculated this prejudice of hers came from her upbringing.

  Milo looked startled. Maybe it was Mom’s decidedly un-Sandhills kimono, her gray Medusa tresses, or her crude terminology. Maybe all of it. He took a moment to get his breath and address me, as if he were afraid of Mom. “They say he’s one of the ten wealthiest people in the country.”

  “What does Glenn Baxter have to do with who shot Ted and Eldon?” I ignored Dad’s frown at my impatience.

  Milo’s eyes shifted to Mom hovering by the stairs, then back at me. “Talk is that Baxter wants a half dozen spreads, and figures Eldon’s as the cornerstone.”

  I eased into a chair, too tired to stay upright. “Carly told me Baxter had approached Eldon to sell.”

  Milo sat upright. “Did she say what Eldon thought about it?”

  Mom took a few steps toward Milo and he stared at the table.

  Dad leaned on the butcher block. “Eldon wouldn’t sell the Bar J. It’d be like selling his legs.”

  Milo nodded. “I ’spect you’re right. But what if Eldon had decided to sell? S’pose that might upset some people? People who might inherit a piece of the Bar J?”

  There was only one heir to the Bar J. That was Carly, unless, as Brian’s wife, Roxy snagged a few acres. No “supposing” about Carly being upset if Eldon sold the ranch. But completely irrelevant. I shrugged.

  Milo picked up the cookie and set it down. “I’d like to talk to Carly if I could.”

  I leaned forward. “Why do you want to talk to Carly?”

  “For one thing, she might know some things about her granddad that would be useful. And after that, it’s worrisome if she’s run off again. Teenagers have all these…” He screwed up his eyes and moved his hands as if twisting an imaginary Rubik’s Cube. “Hormones. It can make them do some crazy things, especially if they’re troubled.”

  Mom stepped toward Milo, thunderclouds gathering in her face.

  Warning frosted my words. “Carly’s not troubled.”

  One eyebrow cocked. “But she was upset that Eldon thought about selling the ranch? Anything else that might disturb her?”

  I stood, my chair scraping the floor. Milo pushed himself from the bench.

  Dad and Milo passed some kind of communicating look between them, but it was a language I didn’t understand.

  Mom advanced on Milo. “You couldn’t be insinuating Carly has anything to do with this.” She picked up a wooden spoon from a utensil canister next to the stove and waved it like a sword.

  Milo backed toward the outside door, keeping ahead of Mom’s lethal spoon. He eyed me. “Have Carly call me by the end of the day.”

  5

  Mom might have chased Milo off, but he was shaping up to be a definite burr under my saddle. First accusing Ted and now creeping up on Carly. That last would be an easy fix. I’d find Carly—okay, maybe not as easy as it should be—and drag her to Milo. He’d ask her a few questions and that would be that.

  On a better day, witnessing Milo’s reaction to Mom would have tickled me. Not many people saw Mom in her full-on working stage, when she didn’t sleep, barely ate, didn’t bathe for days, and her eyes had a glow like plum-crazy glaucoma. My college psych books told me she was probably manic. Folks in Grand County shook their heads and dismissed her as an artist. For us, Mom was just Mom.

  Mom and Dad showed mild concern about Carly’s disappearance. They probably accepted, as I did, that Carly had a knack for survival.

  “Try not to worry too much about Carly,” Mom said. “When I was her age I hitchhiked from Chicago to San Francisco. She’s a smart girl with an open heart. She needs to find her own way.”

  A light tapping came from the window on the kitchen door. We all turned to see the outline of Aunt Twyla’s head through the curtains. Mom slipped from her chair like a cat slinking from a roomful of dogs. She caught Dad’s eye before disappearing downstairs.

  He nodded and pushed himself to his feet. A genuine smile lit his face before he opened the door to his older sister.

  Aunt Twyla zipped into the kitchen. Unlike Dad’s thinning, gray hair, Twyla’s curls stayed thick and long, like a teenager’s, but one look at her face showed the ravages of a life of booze and cigarettes. She shoved a casserole dish into Dad’s ha
nds. “I don’t know where to take the condolence food. I’ll be damned if I take anything to that floozy Roxy, and I’m not craving a drive out to Frog Creek.”

  Did Aunt Twyla dislike Roxy because she’d been Ted’s old girlfriend, or was the animosity merited? Aunt Twyla and Uncle Bud owned the Long Branch, the most popular restaurant and watering hole in Hodgekiss, so Twyla knew most of the goings-on—if not from firsthand witnessing, then through gossip.

  Dad nodded and took the casserole dish. “Here’s as good a place as any.”

  “Where’s Marguerite?” Twyla’s cigarette-smoke-husky voice demanded.

  Dad didn’t hesitate. “Sick headache.”

  Twyla huffed her disbelief. She focused on me. “What happened at the Bar J?”

  Robert was right. It didn’t take people long to start asking. “Milo Ferguson is in charge of the investigation, and the state patrol will be involved. They have some theories.”

  Twyla eyed me. “I see the state patrol sent a woman. She got a room at the Long Branch. Channel 10 from Omaha grabbed up the other two.”

  That was fast. I hoped Milo would keep his mouth as tightly clamped about Ted, with the media, as he was with me. I planted my hands on the table and pushed myself up. “Guess the best we can do is go about our business and let them work.”

  Twyla considered me a while longer. “If you hear anything, let me know.”

  “Sure will,” I said to her back, as she hustled out the door, nearly knocking into Mom’s geriatric next-door neighbor, Beverly.

  Beverly held a rectangular cake pan in her shaking hand. “I was afraid it might be too early, but since I saw Twyla over here, I thought I’d best bring the cake.”

  I took the cold pan Beverly had obviously just pulled from her freezer. The early bird gets the gossip. “Thanks, Beverly.”

  I had a half foot of height on Beverly and she leaned toward me, pointing her face up. “I heard you were out at the Bar J. Did you see who did it?”

  I repeated my line about staying out of the investigators’ way. Before I got free from the kitchen, though, neighbors had dropped off a ham, a five-pound can of coffee, two loaves of home-baked bread, and a batch of warm cookies. All excuses to find out who killed Eldon Edwards. Sure, they were motivated by morbid curiosity, but a thin shellac of fear coated their faces, and more than that, sorrow floated in their eyes.

  * * *

  The ice had already melted from the highway, so it didn’t take long to hit our turnoff. I pointed Elvis down our narrow dirt road, watching, as always, the sky, the grasses, and the hills. Last night’s storm and this morning’s sunshine seemed to encourage green tints in the meadows, while the hills remained winter gold. No loose cattle or coyotes dotted the hills. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. Water ran in the windmills I passed, so I wouldn’t have to pitch ice. The blue sky held no warning of bad weather. My mind bounced between Eldon and Ted. Carly. Milo. Ted. Carly.

  I drove through a narrow spot between two hills, across an AutoGate, and eased on Elvis’s brakes. Out of habit, I stopped here, where our home valley opened up in front of me. The house, the barn, several outbuildings, and the plowed garden spot stretched below a hill on the west. A cultivated alfalfa field spread from the headquarters across the meadow to hills on the east, with a center pivot irrigation sprinkler at rest, waiting for summer.

  A red-tailed hawk hunting for mice soared in lazy circles over the hay meadow in front of our house. I breathed in some of his freedom. The skiff of snow from last night was a memory, and only a bit of frost lingered in shadowed hoofprints in the frozen mud of the road. The sun hovered just east of center.

  The first time I saw this view was on my third date with Ted, nine years ago. I’d come home from the University of Nebraska with a bachelor’s in psychology, a truly useless degree, unless you planned on grad school and beyond. I liked school, but I couldn’t get enthused about where it would lead me: a city, an office, someone else’s schedule, wearing heels and dresses every day. Prison.

  I knew Ted, of course. In a town of a thousand, you know everyone. But he was six years older than me, in Louise’s class. Louise disliked him, which was good enough reason for me to be interested.

  After my grade-school fantasy had faded I hadn’t given Ted much thought, until he burst into my life on New Year’s Eve. He and Roxy had broken up for the final time—they broke up every year or so, just to stay in practice. But this time it seemed to take. Roxy had moved to Colorado to work on a dude ranch.

  Ted was smart and funny. He loved to take me riding in the hills around Frog Creek. I can’t say why I fell so hard for Ted. I did. When I was with him I felt special. I was his one and only. After a lifetime of being the invisible middle child who always shared a bed and clothes, food and toys, it felt wonderful to be the focus of someone else’s life.

  I continued around the curve, toward the headquarters, and followed the drive to park behind the house. If Robert had been here at sunrise to check the cows, that meant they’d been on their own for over four hours. I might be ready to collapse from exhaustion, but I wouldn’t sleep until I saw to the state of my ladies.

  I stepped out of Elvis and reached inside for my old Carhartt barn coat. The calving lot took up three acres halfway up the hill behind our house. A worn dirt path led from our back walk, across the drive, and up a steep climb to a gate in the barbed wire fence. The most I kept in the lot was fifty head, the cows I predicted would calve the soonest. I could check on them every two hours. I adhered to common knowledge: if a cow started to calve and hadn’t finished within two hours, she likely needed an intervention.

  I trekked up the hill and into the lot. Crisp air brought scents of freshly fed hay, the musky dust of cowhide, and the hint of manure, only starting to ripen with the day’s thaw. The cows paid scant attention to me as I meandered along the softening ground, checking to make sure none needed my help. Robins celebrated spring in the soft morning air. The cows munched hay Robert had fed them earlier, their grinding teeth and their huffing breaths adding a beat to the birds’ song. At least here, peace reigned.

  Assuring myself the ladies would be okay without me for a spell, I plodded to the house. The whistle from a BNSF coal train floated from the tracks that ran along the highway twelve miles north. Some mornings, the air at Frog Creek was so still and magical that the sound made the long, impossible journey to be here in this special place. I understood how it felt.

  I stumped up the back steps, closed my fingers around the wooden door handle, and pulled, slipping into the covered porch. Worn pegs crowded with coats and jackets lined two walls. A simple bench with peeling paint flanked one wall, with boots, old tennis shoes, and even a collection of mismatched flip-flops tossed underneath. I peeled off my coat and manure-crusted boots, kicked them out of the way, and padded to the back door.

  I entered the sunny kitchen and slid along the old linoleum. I only got as far as the fridge before I stalled out. Most of my brothers and sisters have real, grown-up refrigerators. The kind that stand taller than a barefoot preteen. A modern appliance with two doors and shelves and drawers and even a separate freezer compartment. I was sure my fridge was the same as the model in I Love Lucy’s kitchen. I couldn’t use the freezer nestled in the top because it frosted over so quickly.

  I slipped from the kitchen. The house, not counting the unfinished basement, was probably spacious by homesteaders’ standards. I loved all one thousand square feet of it, even if most folks would find it dowdy and cramped.

  The silence nearly crushed me. Was it only yesterday that Carly’s annoying rap music competed with Ted’s complaints that we were out of eggs? What had Carly said about her plans? She wasn’t much of a morning person. But she’d seemed even more growly than usual. She’d refused breakfast, finished off the milk by drinking from the carton and shoving it back in the fridge. With a “See ya,” she tromped out the back door. Ted hadn’t been far behind her. Then, I’d been happy for the peace.

&nb
sp; How would I tell Carly she’d lost another loved one?

  A creak from above sent a zing shooting through me. I tore through the dining room to the short hallway leading to the bedroom and bathroom. I wrenched open the door to the attic. “Carly?”

  “Yeah,” she hollered back.

  Cool relief showered me. “I didn’t know you were home.” I started up the steep stairs where I piled her folded laundry, books, shoes, and any other things I cleared from the rest of the house. “Where’s your pickup?”

  Her head appeared around the top of the stairs, long blonde hair draping across her face. Puffy eyes and a red nose paired with her hoarse voice. “By the fuel tanks. Just a sec. I’ll be down.”

  She knew. I’d dreaded telling her, but I didn’t trust the job to anyone else. What had they said? What would I say now? I backed down and waited for her by the front door, where I strained to see to the far side of the barn, to the fuel tanks.

  The attic door clicked shut and Carly trudged from the hall, shoulders slumped under her backpack, hands thrust deep into her jeans pockets. “Hey.”

  I stood in the living room between the office we’d converted from a closet, and the couch. I held my arms out and she walked into them. But she seemed done crying and impatient with my touch. She straightened quickly.

  “I’m so sorry, Bird,” I said.

  Her eyes swam, but the tears stayed put. “Yeah. It sucks.” She looked above my head, out the window.

  I gave a quick glance outside, then back at her. “Is someone filling up your pickup?”

  Her gaze dropped to the floor, over to the wall, and with a sigh of resignation she answered, “Yeah. Danny.”

  Danny Hayward. Her sometimes boyfriend. Though not since last spring. I didn’t put much effort into hiding my surprise or disappointment. “He’s the one who told you?”

  She frowned. “He called me from town last night and I went to get him.”

  “And you stayed out all night?” That wasn’t what I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the words to show how sorry I was for not being here to tell her. Sorry it happened at all.