“Plain’s fine,” Glen answered, looking at Kelly as she ignored him. “Mildred, you and Colton were the last ones to see Lucy Handling?”
“According to what Tom says, yeah, that’s right, we were.” Mildred answered, as Katie put the pie and a fork in front of Glen. “Why?”
“What did the three of you talk about when she was in here?” he asked, watching Katie as she poured him a cup of coffee. “Thanks.”
“Not a whole lot of anything. She wasn’t here that long.” Mildred answered, looking at his cup. “You drink it black?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“We talked about her going to college, but Lucy said she planned on staying at the ranch,” Mildred recalled. “Colton asked her if she would be interested in working here, but she told him that she didn’t want to wait tables. That’s when he said something about her working for Zingg.”
“What’d she say to that?”
“Over her dead body. Lucy said she’d never work in a place like that. Then he made a smart-ass remark about her having boobs now, and she could make more money than the others.” Mildred shook her head. “Tom and I been through this a hundred times.”
“I know, but sometimes you start talking about it and you remember something that you forgot,” Glen said. “What did Colton mean by that? Her having boobs, now?”
“When Lucy was in high school she was pretty flat chested. It bothered her that she wasn’t as shapely as some of her classmates, so for her high school graduation her parents paid for her to get those breast implants.”
“At seventeen years old?”
“It’s not that uncommon,” Katie said. “My ex-husband, he paid for his girlfriend to get boobs, and she was only sixteen. Then she started running around on him, found her a boyfriend around her own age. Next thing you know, she’s pregnant and now -.”
“It did a world of good for her self-esteem,” Mildred broke in. “Katie you need to take care of those towels. But Colton,” she looked at Glen, “was way out of line talking to her like that. It’s bad enough him talking to Sandy that way, but for… she’s a kid. You don’t talk to a kid like that.”
“Sounds like Colton has a way with women.” Glen said taking a bite of the pie. He looked at Kelly, who was standing back looking at him. “Lucy, she has a boy friend?”
“Can’t say I know of any,” Mildred said, shaking her head. “But we have a lot of single young men around here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t have a couple chasing her. After all, she’ll be inheriting a lot, you know. But I think Tom said he checked into that theory.”
Glen shrugged, taking another bite of the pie. “He probably has. I’m just trying to piece some things together. This is pretty good pie.”
Katie smiled as she walked up to the counter. “I baked it myself.”
“You’re a good cook.”
“Thank you.” Katie blushed as the phone rang. “I think we get the apples and cherries all the way from Oregon. They come in over at the grocery store and Nora brings them over…”
Kelly picked up the receiver. “Colton’s Place. Yeah, hold on. Katie!”
“I have to go,” Mildred announced. “I’ll see you people tomorrow.”
“See you, Mildred,” Katie stated, watching her walk out the back door.
Kelly walked around the corner. “Katie, your husband’s on the phone.”
Katie walked around the corner and picked up the receiver. “Hi, Donny... Oh, oh no!.. I’ll get Sandy to cover for me and I’ll be home in a few minutes.” She hung up the receiver then dialed a number. “Sandy, it’s Katie. I need you to cover for me this evening… Donny cut his arm on a broke window pane and I have to hurry home… Thanks, I owe you one.” She hung up the receiver and hurried around the corner where Kelly was standing. “I have to go. You can hold the place down till Sandy gets here.”
“I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” Kelly replied, looking around at the empty room.
Glen finished his pie, looking after Katie as she hurried out the door. “Kelly, about my going down to Zingg’s -.”
“I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to know if you’re finished going down there?”
“I don’t know.”
Kelly looked at him scornfully. “You don’t know?”
“No, I don’t.”
* * * *
Tom’s cell phone rang as he sat next to the door of the pickup. He looked at the number. “Sandy, everything all right honey?.. Just remember the breaks aren’t that good and it takes time for it to get stopped… We’re on our way back. I’ll see you in a few minutes.” He put his cell phone in the pocket of his hunting jacket.
Colton smiled. “Wife demanding you get home, huh?”
“Sandy’s filling in for Katie.”
“Why?”
“Donnie cut his arm, so Katie had to leave.”
“That woman always has an issue. I’m plannin’ on stopping by the café, I’ll drop her off home for you,” Colton stated. “It’ll be close to closing time when I get there.”
“Sandy’s taking the car. If you’re going to the café, I’ll ride along with you.”
“Fine with me.” Colton shrugged. “Don’t trust her to get home by herself, huh?”
“I need to work on the car brakes. If there’s someone I don’t trust; it’s someone in this town.”
“You’re talkin’ about the guy who killed those two strippers?” Colton asked, taking the corner onto the highway faster than normal.
“What the hell you doin’ up there?” Tory yelled from the back of the truck. “You forget we’re back here?”
As the barrel of Tom’s rifle slid across the edge of the seat, he pulled it over to him. “Lucy Handling wasn’t a stripper.”
“You don’t know if she’s dead or alive, do you?”
Tom glanced at him, but didn’t say anything.
* * * *
Colton pulled into the café parking lot. “That your tank?” he asked, thumbing toward a white 1969 Buick Roadmaster, as he parked.
“Yeah,” Tom answered, and swung the door open.
Tory Stoutman laughed, patting Garrett on the shoulder as they stepped up the porch of the café. “That’s one of the biggest cows I’ve seen in these parts. That ought to fill your freezer.”
“Ought too,” Garrett agreed as they walked inside. “Good to see you gal. How are ya?” he greeted Sandy, waving at Kelly.
“I’m doing just fine, Garrett. We haven’t seen you or Nancy in town for awhile. We miss ya. So what can I get you?”
“Coffee’s fine,” Garrett answered. “Can’t stay too long. We have to get that elk over to the locker pretty quick.”
“What about everyone else?” Sandy asked, looking at her husband and smiling.
“Coffee’s fine,” Troy replied, sitting at the table. “I’m sure Gina has supper waiting, so I can’t stay too long or I’ll be sleepin’ with the dog tonight.”
Hank laughed. “Wouldn’t be the first time would it?”
Tory looked at his dad. “It wouldn’t be a first, but I kind of want the last time to be the last. And her being pregnant doesn’t help. As irritable as she is, this one has be a boy.”
Sandy and Kelly carried coffee pots around filling the men’s cups as they turned them upright.
“This your third?” Garrett asked.
“Fourth and last,” Tory answered. “She gets fixed or I do. I don’t care which, but this is it!”
“I notice your wife didn’t ask you, Tom, if you want anything else,” Russ commented and laughed.
“Our dinner will be ready when we get home,” Sandy stated.
“I’m sure it’ll be better then what anyone’s been getting here lately,” Tom said. Taking hold of her waist, he pulled her down on his lap.
Sandy sat the coffee pot on the table then kissed him. “You have any luck?”
“I
didn’t. But Garrett shot the biggest cow elk we’ve seen in these parts for a long time.”
“What’s that you have on your neck?” Tory asked looking at Sandy. “What the hell, you have a hickey.” He laughed. “You two been messing around?”
“It was part of her birthday,” Tom said smiling, noticing Colton watching them.
“What else was part of that birthday?” Russ asked jokingly.
“None of your damn business,” Tom answered.
“I don’t give my wife hickeys,” Tory stated. “And we’ve only been married three years. How long you two been married?”
“Eleven,” Sandy answered.
“This past June,” Tom added.
Sandy kissed him. “You want anything else?”
“I’m fine,” Tom said.
“What about you, Glen?” Tory asked, looking at Glen who was sitting at the counter. “You give your wife hickeys?”
“No, he doesn’t,” Kelly snapped as she put the coffee pot on the coffee maker.
Tory hooted and laughed with the rest of the men. “Guess she answered that question!”
“From what I hear Tom and Sandy did plenty of messing around before they were married. Ain’t that right, Moratelli?” Colton asked. “Fact is you were both married to other people at the time. And you’re high school principle wife, who was making ninety-thousand a year, took you to court for child support.
“Imagine that, a sheriff only making thirty-thousand having to pay a woman child support when she’s making three times what he is. Of course Sandy’s ex-banker-husband didn’t help when he came in and testified that he’d caught the two of you in his bed screwing, did he?” Colton asked. “And now your ex-wife wants you to take your daughter, after she got herself knocked up and had some black guy’s kid, and support her. Ain’t that right, Moratelli.”
The room fell silent and everyone looked at Colton.
Sandy felt Tom flinch underneath of her and she thought he might come up off the chair after Colton. “Ignore him, Tom,” she said lowly.
“I’m not ignoring that son-of-a-bitch anymore.” Taking Sandy by the waist, he moved her up off his lap and stood.
Tory stood.
Hank taking hold of his son’s wrist, shook his head for him to stay out of it.
Glen shoved his chair out of the way, not knowing what was going to happen, but willing to help Tom if he needed it.
“Colton,” Garrett cleared his throat. “We better get that elk to the locker. I don’t like them lying around too long.”
Colton smiled and nodded. “You’re right, Garrett. We better get them to the locker. Sandy and Kelly can close it up.”
Tory looked at Tom as he watched Garrett and Colton walk out the door. “Hey, Tom. Colton’s comments, ya gotta let’em blow over, ya know.”
Tom frowned. He looked around the room at the men who were looking at him. It was some more of that baggage they had to put up with, and he didn’t like it, especially coming from someone like Colton Hornbaker.
Fourteen
Tom lay in bed thinking. He thought about Colton’s comments to Sandy in front of her co-workers, it was too much like the one he had made to Lucy Handling before she disappeared. Colton calling Sandy, ‘that woman’, like she was someone he hardly knew, making the accusation that she was coming between their so-called friendship. But what he had said that evening in the café in front of everyone. Colton had been snooping far beyond the usual small town gossip to find that information.
He rolled on his side and put his arm over his wife. It was obvious that Colton didn’t like Sandy. Maybe he didn’t like him either. What was it that Tory Stoutman had asked him? Something about pissing Colton off? What was it he said to Colton to make him mad? He’d been asking questions about the stripper’s disappearance. Routine questions, nothing out of the ordinary.
Maybe Colton just didn’t like women in general. Maybe that was why he never married. But there was that lingering question in the back of his mind that bothered him, even though he had tried to brush it under the rug, put it off as coincidence. Colton Hornbaker was one of the last people to see Lucy Handling and that stripper alive, so did he have something to do with their disappearance?
Sandy kissed his chest. “Can’t sleep honey?”
“I’m having a hard time getting to sleep.”
“You’re thinking about what Colton said this evening, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. The son-of-a-bitch has been snooping into our lives, or he wouldn’t know all those things.”
“It doesn’t matter, Tom.”
“Yeah it does. It matters, and he’s going to pay for it.” Tom kissed her and sat up, leaning against the headboard. “Our lives haven’t been perfect, but they’re the choices we made and they aren’t anybody else’s damn business.”
Sandy sat up beside him. “We all make choices in this world. Some of them are right and others aren’t. I know I made the right one, and that’s all that matters. It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks.”
“We both did. But it isn’t any of their damn business.”
“Let it go, honey.” Sandy kissed him. “We’re old news, we’re not the talk of the town these days.”
“We will be tomorrow morning.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why’s that?”
“Glen’s the talk of the town these days.”
“Glen?”
“Yeah. Mitch came in talking about him right in front of Kelly. He says Glen’s been running around with Denise Keegan, one of -.”
“I know who she is.”
“Kelly wanted to talk to me about it but -.”
Tom shrugged. “It isn’t any of our business.”
“That’s what I told her.” She took Tom’s hand. “I didn’t really want to hear it. That they’d have to work it out.” Sandy ran her tongue across his fingers. “Like we did,” she said, sucking on his finger tips.
“Get on top?”
* * * *
Driving down the street to the sheriff’s office, Tom saw Colton’s silver pickup sitting along the curb. Pulling up behind it, he got out of his truck, taking a baton from behind the driver’s side of the seat. Walking up behind the pickup, he swung the baton with his left hand, striking the driver’s side tail light, breaking out the lense and bulb. Checking the parking space between the pickup and curb, seeing it was more than the allotted twelve inches, he switched the baton from his left hand to his right, striking the passenger side lense, as he turned, breaking it and the bulb. Walking back to his pickup Tom wrote out two tickets and put them on the windshield.
* * * *
Tom walked into the office. Leaning against his desk, he glanced through the mail. “Glen,” he tossed the mail on his desk, “about what Colton said yesterday evening -.”
“It’s nothing, Tom. Forget it.”
“I can’t forget it. We work together. You have to know the truth, not what Hornbaker said.” He hesitated. “When I first met Sandy… It was night and during a storm. I was on duty and it was raining so hard I could barely see the road. I’m driving down the highway and I see these flashing hazard lights. So I turned on my lights and pulled up behind this car. There’s this woman, soaking wet, looking in the trunk of a red BMW. I didn’t really want to get out in the rain, but what else could I do?”
“It was Sandy?”
“Yeah. She had a flat tire and was trying to find the spare so she could change it, out in the middle of a damn thunderstorm. I told her to get her purse, I’d give her a ride home and have someone pick the car up. But she didn’t want to leave it there. She said if she left it, her husband would kill her. I finally convinced her, so she gets in my car. I turned on the dome light to see if I had a towel in the back seat. She’s sitting there beside me, her hair dripping all over the seat, her breast showing through this thin, white, blouse she has on and I look at her. And I swe
ar to god, she’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen in my life.”
“So you took her home?”
“To her house,” Tom clarified. “Her husband, he was a banker, a real ass. She told him the car had a flat and we had to leave it along the road. He got pretty mad and started ranting and swearing at her. I listened to about as much of his shit as I cared too, then I told him if he’d had a damn spare in the thing we could have changed it, and he could pick the damn thing up the next morning at the compound lot.”
“That had to make him happy.”
“At that point, I didn’t really care. When I got out to my car, I noticed Sandy’s purse on the floor. Instead of taking it to her I waited till the next day. I wasn’t on duty, so I had my car. I waited and watched until her husband left, gave him fifteen minutes, to make sure he wasn’t coming back, then I knocked on her door.”
“Was she surprised to see you?”
“Yeah. Sandy said she was hoping I’d come back.”
“So that’s when you and her started seeing each other?”
Tom nodded, “Sort of. We talked a couple hours then, yeah. You can only talk about so much. I had her in the sac within a couple of hours and we’ve been together ever since.”
“Two hours?”
“You ever just know when something’s right? Well, this was right. Being with Sandy was the most right I’d ever felt in my life, and it still is.” He sat in the chair at his desk. “My marriage to Diana,” he shook his head, “it wasn’t good. She was the one who made the money and there wasn’t a damn day go by she didn’t remind me of it. She made all the financial decisions, from where to bank, to which car to buy, to where we were going to eat out.
“With Sandy, everything’s fifty-fifty. I make the money now, but I never, never over-ride the decisions we make. If we decide we’re buying a purple cow, that’s what we buy. I don’t decide on a white one later and buy it. Our relationship, our marriage, is nothing like Hornbaker tried to make it sound yesterday.”
Glen shrugged, “You didn’t have to tell me all this, Tom.”
“Yeah, I did. If we’re going to work together, I don’t need you questioning what I do.”
“How long did it take for the two of you to finally tie the knot?”
“About a year. After Sandy’s husband caught us in bed, she was divorced within three months. They didn’t have any kids, and she didn’t get anything out of it. Mine took a lot longer. Diane was reaming me out for everything she could for child support, and she had the judge feeling sorry for her, even though she didn’t have any proof that I was running around on her. We had the custody hearings for the kids -.”