“No?”
“No. You know it, too. You saw John T. after I did last night and he told you I’m staying.”
“How do you know I saw John T.?”
“Sheriff Espinosa. He looked me up this morning.”
“That baked apple. John T. sic him on you?”
“Seemed that way to me,” he said. “Baked apple?”
“Brown on the outside, white on the inside.”
“Is that the kind of man Espinosa is?”
“A lot of people think so, most of them brown.”
“Does John T. run him too, along with everything else around here?”
“John T. doesn’t run me or mine.” She paused and then said, “Ben does what he pleases about half the time. And John T. doesn’t like you worth a damn. What’d you say to rile him up last night?”
“Didn’t he tell you?”
“No. He says you’re a fucking troublemaker — his words.”
“Do you agree with him?”
“No. I think you’re probably a damn fool.”
“Why? Because I refuse to accept your sister’s guilt?”
“Because you’ll end up getting people mad as hell at you if you try to prove different. Mad enough, maybe, to do you a meanness.”
“Hurt me?”
“That’s what the expression means.”
“What if I’m right, Dacy? You don’t mind if I call you Dacy?”
“Why should I mind. It’s my name.”
“What if I’m right? What if Anna didn’t do it?”
“You’re not right. But if by some miracle you were... I guess it’d depend on just how right.”
“I’m not sure I understand that.”
“On who did it. Nobody liked Anna much; they can all live with her being a murderer. But if it turned out to be one of Beulah’s select citizens instead... well, you wouldn’t be doing the town any favors.”
“Why didn’t people like Anna?”
“Same reason they don’t like me,” Dacy said. “The Childresses have always kept to themselves and we do things our own way. Plus there’s the fact that our old man was a pretty shrewd horse trader. He once screwed John T.’s old man out of some land, or so old Bud Roebuck always claimed. If the Roebucks don’t like you, nobody likes you.”
“Dave Roebuck must’ve liked Anna.”
“Sure. And that made John T. dislike her all the more.”
“Did he get along with his brother?”
“No. Never did. It got worse after—”
“After what?”
She hesitated. And shrugged and said, “Dave hit on John T.’s wife once. John T. threatened to horsewhip him if he did it again. But don’t try to make anything out of that. It happened four... no, five years ago.”
“Maybe it happened again, more recently.”
“Uh-uh. Too many women said yes to Dave for him to keep after the ones that said no. He hit on me once too; I told him I’d rather screw a snake and he never bothered me again.”
“Isn’t it possible Lizbeth changed her mind and went after him?”
“Not hardly. You don’t know Lizbeth. She’s got her faults — booze, for one — but she knows who’s buying and buttering her bread and she doesn’t play around. Besides, she’s a cold fish. In bed, I mean. Wouldn’t think it to look at her, would you?”
“How do you know she’s cold?”
“John T. let something slip once.”
“Well, what about him? Does he play around?”
“If he does he’s damn discreet about it.”
“You don’t like him much, do you.”
“I don’t like him at all. He’s a user and a first-class son of a bitch. All the Roebucks were and are. They either get their way or they make you pay for fighting them. Sometimes they make you pay even if you don’t fight them. But not in blood, if that’s what you’re thinking. Ruining people is John T.’s way, not killing them. And family means a lot to him. He didn’t get along with Dave, maybe even hated him, but he fought like hell more than once to protect him.”
Messenger asked, “You have much trouble with John T.?”
“Some. Now and then.”
“Then why do you keep living here, this close to him?”
“Now that’s a stupid question, Jim. Why do you suppose? It’s my home. Where else would I go?”
“You could always make a new home.”
“Like Anna did?”
“That’s a different thing and you know it. She didn’t want to leave; she was forced to.”
“Well, I don’t want to leave either. And nobody’s forcing me out. I wouldn’t give John T. the satisfaction of leaving after what happened with Anna, and I’m sure as hell not going to do it now.”
“Did he try to force you out then?”
“He took a couple of shots at it.”
“What kind of shots?”
“Ones that didn’t hit anything. That’s all I’m going to say about it. My business and his, nobody else’s.”
He nodded, glanced up along the road to where it vanished into the heat-hazed hills. “How far is the mine from here?”
“The Bootstrap? Why?”
“I thought I’d take a look at it.”
“Why?”
“No particular reason. I just want to look at it.”
“You won’t find anything to prove Anna was there the day of the killings.”
“I don’t expect to. How far?”
“About a mile and a half.” Dacy lifted her chin in the direction of his Subaru. “But you won’t get there in that.”
“Bad road?”
“Bad enough. Four-wheel-drive country up there. You’d have to quit a mile below the mine or risk busting an axle.”
“Could I walk the last mile?”
“Sure, if you don’t mind an uphill climb most of the way. And these hills are full of rattlers, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”
Messenger said, “Your Jeep has four-wheel drive.”
“So?”
“Would you let me borrow it for an hour or so?”
“You’re something, you are. No, you can’t borrow it. Nobody drives that Jeep but Lonnie and me.”
“Will you take me up to the mine?”
“Take you? You think I got nothing better to do? I don’t play at ranching, I work at it.”
“Drive up, quick look around, drive back. It wouldn’t take very long.”
“Long enough.”
“I’ll pay you for your time...”
It was the wrong thing to say. Anger kindled in Dacy’s eyes. “Ranching, that’s all I work at. I’m not a guide or a goddamn chauffeur.”
“I didn’t mean to insult you. Will you do it as a favor?”
“I don’t owe you any favors.”
“No, you don’t.”
Her gaze moved over his face, as if seeking an understanding of how the wheels and cogs worked inside. “I swear,” she said, “you’ve got more balls than a three-peckered bull,” but she was no longer angry. It was almost a compliment.
“Will you take me?”
“I don’t know why I should, but all right. Ten minutes maximum at the mine, then I’m coming back down whether you’re ready to leave or not.”
“Fair enough.”
He went around to the passenger side of the Jeep. The wind kicked up again, so violently that his hat was nearly snatched away. Grit stung his eyes again, got into his mouth and nostrils, and made him cough. When his vision cleared he saw that Dacy had tucked her head down and lowered the brim of her Stetson; she sat waiting patiently until the wind subsided. Then she started the Jeep and bounced them upward along the track.
He said, “Is it like that often around here?”
“Like what?”
“The wind. Blow hard and stop, blow hard and stop.”
“Oh, that. Sometimes. You get used to it.”
“Makes me a little edgy.”
“You should be here when it goes on that way for days on end. Your nerves feel like they’re baking inside your skin, like a potato inside its jacket.”