“You know, you could’ve confided in me.”
“Confided? I don’t...”
“The other day. I’d have told you everything my father did.”
“Well, you seemed busy and I—”
“That poor woman. Don’t you think I care about what she did to herself?”
“Anna Roebuck?”
“Suicide. God have mercy.”
“Most everyone I’ve talked to thinks her death is a cause for rejoicing,” Messenger said. “You don’t feel that way?”
“No. No one’s death is a cause for rejoicing.”
“But you do think she was guilty, even if you didn’t hate her?”
“God knows who’s guilty and who’s not,” Maria said. “I don’t hate anyone. I was taught to love, not hate.”
“Did you love Dave Roebuck?”
She chewed her lip, ran a hand through her tousled hair. “No. I didn’t love him.”
“You and he were close once, though?”
“Close? No. He was—”
“What, Maria? What was he?”
“Wicked,” she said. “Satan made him, not God.”
“Why do you say that?”
“He hurt people. Everyone he touched.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“Everyone he touched,” she said. Then she said, “I have to go now,” and backed away from him. She was at the door before she realized she still held the cosmetics bottle. She hesitated, flustered; started to turn back, changed her mind, put the bottle down on a display of plastic kitchenware, and then hurried out, half running, as if she were afraid Messenger might decide to chase her.
Strange one, he thought. Strange, confused mixture of child and woman, earthiness and piety. Seduced by Dave Roebuck, probably, and when he dumped her she was caught like the rope in a tug-of-war between opposing feelings: I was taught to love, not hate. If her rage at Roebuck had been strong enough, and her elemental side had won the inner struggle, she might have been capable of ignoring the biblical edict, Thou Shalt Not Kill. But the little girl, Tess? He didn’t see how Maria could have committed an atrocity like that.
All his speculations kept coming back to the death of Tess Roebuck. It was the central enigma and the key to the truth. How could anyone shatter an eight-year-old’s skull with a rock? Why would anyone change a dead girl’s clothing and then put the body down a well?
The saddle bar was just what he’d expected. Western decor dominated by saddles, bridles, and other tack room paraphernalia. Pool and snooker tables. Video poker and slot machines. Country music pounding from a jukebox. All that was missing was an electronic bucking bull. But then, that was the plaything of urban cowboys; real cowboys rode real bulls if they felt the need to prove their manhood.
He sat in a booth near the door, nursing a glass of beer and ignoring the glances and murmured comments of the bartender and the half dozen other customers. Whoever was playing the jukebox liked Reba McEntire; her voice and her music beat at him in shrill, atonal waves. It made him yearn for Miles Davis. There were plenty of things he liked about this desert country, but its typical watering hole wasn’t among them.
He’d been there fifteen minutes when Lynette Carey walked in alone. Her arrival was a small surprise. He hadn’t really expected her to keep their date, particularly not after the in-your-face tactics of her brother and Tom Spears. But she was her own woman; she honestly didn’t give a damn what anybody else in Beulah thought she should or shouldn’t do.
She slid into the booth across from him, looking as flushed and wilted as Maria Hoxie had. “Whew,” she said, “what a day. My legs feel like my ass weighs three hundred pounds. Where’s that Heineken draft you were gonna have waiting?”
“I’ll get it. I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
“Told you I would.”
He went to the bar for her draft. The fat bartender and the customers were staring openly now, the bartender with thin-lipped hostility; he slammed the full glass down hard enough to slop foam out over the rim. Messenger smiled at him, thinking: To hell with you too, buddy.
Lynette drank thirstily, said “Ah!” and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Then she said, “Why did you think I wouldn’t come?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, I’m something of a pariah in this town. Just like Anna Roebuck was.”
“What’s that? Pariah?”
“Outcast. Somebody no one likes.”
“You’re not so bad,” she said. “I like guys who do things, even if they’re not popular things. Most guys I know just sit around on their hams like vegetables.”
He smiled. “Hams like vegetables.”
“Huh?”
“Your brother doesn’t like me or anything I do.”
“Joe? What’s he got to do with you?”
“You haven’t talked to him today?”
“No. Why?”
“He found out you made this date with me,” Messenger said. “From someone who was in the café this morning, I suppose. He warned me to stay away from you.”
“Oh, he did, huh. Where’d you see him?”
He explained, briefly.
She drank more of her beer. Wire-thin anger lines bracketed her mouth now. “I’ve told him and told him,” she said. “Mind his business, not mine. But he doesn’t listen. Mule-stubborn, that’s Joe. And Skinny-Shanks Spears is worse. What’d they do, gang up on you?”
“They tried. Joe said if I bothered you he’d kick my ass purple.”
“Big tough guy. Scare you?”
“Some,” Messenger admitted. “From what I hear Joe’s a fighter. And he’s got a quick temper where you’re concerned.”
“Yeah, he’s been known to go off half-cocked.”
“Like he did with Dave Roebuck?”
Small silence. She broke it by saying, “Like that, yeah,” in wary tones.
“What set him at Roebuck’s throat the week before the murders — the fight in the Hardrock Tavern? You’d already broken off with Roebuck by then.”
“What if I had?”
“Why would Joe jump him to protect you? Why not before, while you were still seeing him?”
Lynette didn’t say anything.
Messenger asked, “Or did they have a fight before?”
“No.”
“Then why the one at the Hardrock?”
“Why ask me? Why didn’t you ask Joe?”
“I did ask him. He wouldn’t tell me.”
“Well, I’m not gonna tell you, either.”
“Why the big secret, Lynette?”
“Some things you don’t talk about, that’s all. Not even to friends, let alone strangers.”
“What could be that bad?”
“Plenty of things. They happen in Beulah, same as big cities like San Francisco. You like to think they don’t but they do.”
“Is it the reason you broke off with Roebuck?”
“Damn straight.”
“Something he did to you?”
“I told you, I’m not gonna say. Don’t ask me again.”
“But it made you hate him. You and your brother both.”
“I didn’t shed any tears when I heard he was dead, that’s for sure. If Anna hadn’t blown his head off—”
“What, Lynette? Would you have killed him?”
“No. I couldn’t kill anybody.”
“How about Joe? He could, couldn’t he?”
“What’re you getting at? You think Joe killed him and that poor kid?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Sounded like you’re thinking it.”
“No. Just tossing out possibilities.”
“Well, toss that one in the garbage. He could’ve used a shotgun on that asshole, Dave, sure, but he’d never hurt a kid. He loves kids.”
“Anna loved kids, too.”
“Sure she did. She loved her daughter enough to bust her head with a rock and throw her into the well.” Lynette finished her draft, slammed the glass down the way the bartender had. “You know something? I see why people don’t like you, Jim. You’re like a burr under a saddle with your goddamn questions.”