Frogskin and Muttonfat (A Thea Barlow Mystery, Book Two) Read online

  “No.”

  “We have to get back to the soddy. Fast. I think he’s there.”

  The four of us climbed into the pickup. Jimmy gave Max directions and we sped through the approaching dawn.

  “The Kid’s dead,” I said, dazed, everything beginning to register into a horrible picture. “Garland Caldwell killed him. They ‘dozed the soddy and buried Buster beneath it, but he’s alive. I think I killed Garland. I slashed him with my sword.”

  Twenty-Seven

  We sat around a table in the dining room at Racy Ladies. A closed sign was on the front door. Florie and Rocky, Jimmy Chin, Dwayne, Max and me, and Sheila, or occasionally Sheila. She was serving us dinner, and eating with us as well.

  Buster was in the hospital. Garland Caldwell was in jail. Trish was in custody in Rock Springs.

  We had reached Buster just in time; exposure and shock were about to take their toll. He and Hildy had been dealing with Deefy Hammersmith too, planning and arranging an elaborate search of the countryside. A jade treasure hunt in all the areas the Kid had been known to haunt.

  “All legal, Buster assured me,” Jimmy said. “They were going to get the proper landowner permits, share the gains, do everything right. They brought Deefy in because he knew the Kid well in the ‘fifties and ‘sixties, he also knew all the old jade-field stories.”

  “What Buster didn’t know,” Dwayne piped in, “was that good old Deefy, always out for a buck, was cutting deals with everybody. Buster caught him and Caldwell ‘dozing at the old soddy on the Ahchin place, thinking there might be jade hidden there. When he saw the Kid’s body, Caldwell knocked him out and ‘dozed the soddy over him, then sent Deefy out to set fires north of Brocheck’s, which would draw everyone away from Corcoran’s until they were finished. Deefy and the wind screwed that up, too. Let me tell you, old Deefy’s singing some pretty songs down to the station, trying to save his butt.”

  “What saved Buster,” Jimmy said, “was the way the sod blocks fell over him, creating lots of air pockets.”

  “And,” Max added, “the fact that Thea heard him moaning.”

  “I didn’t know what it was at the time, or how I made the mental connection.” I said. “I’m just glad I did.”

  “How did Caldwell get involved in all this?” Rocky asked. He shook his head in bewilderment. “He seemed like such a nice guy.”

  “Yeah, right.” Dwayne said with a snort. “Calls himself an import-export dealer. But there’s a sheet on him a mile long, every kind of bogus deal you can imagine. Name isn’t Caldwell, either. You cut him pretty bad, Thea, but nothing life-threatening.”

  “I’m glad for that,” I said, shuddering at the memory.

  “The neck wound was the worst, but all he’s moaning about is how you ruined his face. More worried about that than the prospect of spending some years in the pen.”

  “And you caught him trying to get away with the jade?” Max asked, deftly getting him off the subject.

  “They were halfway to Denver. They took what they could get, a six-hundred-pounder and two smaller ones. One of them’s the most amazing piece of mutton fat I’ve ever seen. Hildy’s out at the old barn now, checking to see if there’s any more.”

  “But who does the jade belong to?” asked Florie, looking nervously around the table.

  “I’d think you’d have some kind of claim,” Jimmy said. “At least what was found on your land.”

  Dwayne shoved away from the table and began to pick his teeth. “Yeah, I bet some lawyers will get rich figuring it out.”

  “But what if it were found in the house?” Florie insisted.

  “I’d think it would be yours,” Jimmy said. “Why?”

  “Go ahead, tell them,” Rocky said. “It’s been bothering you for years.”

  “Mother found some rough hidden upstairs in her house, under the floor boards. She sold it and helped Rocky and me buy Racy Ladies. I was scared to death grandpa would find out what we’d done.”

  “Yeah,” Rocky said. “Look what happened to Phoebe Zimmerman.”

  “I think the Kid thought he had more reason to kill Phoebe than just her stealing the vase from him,” I said. I told them about seeing the Kid watching everyone during the cocktail hour at Racy Ladies. “It was the first he knew that Caldwell had tracked him down, and he saw Phoebe talking cozily with him. As paranoid as he was, I’m sure he thought the two were working together against him. That sealed her fate.”

  I pulled out the box I’d placed beside my chair and put it on the table. “This part,” I said to Jimmy Chin, “will give me great pleasure.” I took out the green vase with dragon handles and the awesome Fingers of Buddha. I could appreciate the artistry of the piece now, the exquisite detail of the carving, but I’d never look on it again without a chill passing through me.

  “Ugh,” Sheila said, evidently having a similar reaction. She left the table.

  “We’ve all agreed,” I said, indicating the Dunns, and Dwayne, and everyone else involved, “that we had enough verification of ownership to return these pieces to Auntie Lee. Will you do the honors, Jimmy?”

  “What? And end the world’s longest argument?” But I could tell he was delighted.

  “First let me have another look at this beauty,” Dwayne said, his hand drawn to the graceful cluster of finger-like fronds. “I’ve never seen another piece of chicken bone to match this.”

  “Chicken bone!” I exclaimed.

  “Yeah, it’s the name of this color of jade. Just like a picked-clean chicken bone. My grandpa found a piece…”

  Max and I lingered over coffee after the others had gone. Sheila came back to refill our cups and sat down with us. She pulled her cards from the pocket of her T-shirt.

  “Free reading,” she said.

  “Oh, Sheila,” I said doubtfully. “I’m not sure that I’ll ever want to know what the cards have to say again.”

  “Shuffle,” she said, “and cut.”

  I did. Max looked on with an amused look of tolerance.

  Sheila spread the cards. I was surprised to see as much anxiety on her face as I felt.

  “Ah,” she said with obvious relief. “The swords are gone. These are happy cards. Love, celebration, renewal.” Her voice rose on an exultant note. “A commitment.” Even Max leaned forward with interest. “Lots of cups, look at this, and this, and this.”

  She studied the cards further, then looked at Max sharply. “There are diamonds in your future.”

  “You bet there are,” Max said, squeezing my hand and giving me the full benefit of his smile.

  “No,” Sheila said. “Not that kind. See, here you are,” she pointed quickly. “This is business, money to be made, lots of it. You’ll have to proceed with caution. Umm. Some problems, but you’ll prevail.” She gazed at him wisely. “You like the battles, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I guess I do.”

  “Well, that’s in the future. The two of you have some adventures coming, but not for a while.” She gathered up the cards. “But now, go have some fun.”

  “Sheila,” I asked before she could leave, “what were the cards telling you?”

  “I saw my death. I had a vision warning me to prepare for the journey to the other side. But fate, or whatever it is, intervened; instead of finding the dark-haired man, I took a different path—to help fight the fire. You fought the King instead.” She shrugged. “Karma.” She tucked the cards into her pocket and went back to the kitchen.

  Max pulled me from my chair and into his arms. “I think it’s time we started our vacation. What would you like to do first?”

  “Can I pick anything I want?”

  “Yes, as long as it involves just the two of us, out in the middle of nowhere, without another person in sight.”

  “Let’s go jade-hunting. I read in the book I bought that naked maidens used to walk the streams at moonlight to attract the male nature of jade. And Hildy told me about this spot, way out in the boonies where you can sti
ll find…”

  Before You Go…

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  DEAD IN HOG HEAVEN

  Dead in Hog Heaven

  A Thea Barlow Cozy Mystery, Book 3

  “This here is New Sedona,” the man said proudly from his perch on the rickety paint-spattered ladder. He wielded his brush carefully within the blocked-out letters across the front of the weathered building, finishing the A and putting the first daub of slick black paint in the top corner of the N.

  “I’m starting at the end,” he explained, wiping sweat from his bulbous nose with the back of his hand, “case I change my mind. The Missus thought it should be ‘little. Little Sedona. But I’m sick of little; I like the ring of New. How about you little lady, what do you think?”

  I grinned and raised my hands helplessly. For all I knew his “Missus” was a two-hundred-pound behemoth who could make mincemeat out of me. On the other hand, I too liked the ring of new. New beginnings; I was on one myself and looking forward to all the excesses the redundancy implied.

  “I vote for New,” I declared recklessly, leaning against my car’s fender.

  “Good, ‘cause that’s what it’s gonna be anyhow.” He balanced the brush carefully on the paint can and began to descend the ladder, peering cautiously around his big belly. “Now, what can I do for you, young lady?”

  “I need some gas,” I said, eyeing the two ancient pumps in front of the bedraggled store/cum gas station/cum post office. “Do those things work or are they just for show?”

  “You bet they work.” His big smile revealed two missing teeth on the right side. He wiped his hands on a rag that hung from the side of his overalls, and finished them off with a swipe across his undershirt. Then he repeated the process after removing his tattered straw cowboy hat to wipe the sweat off his forehead and smooth back sparse gray hair.

  “Clyde Bodie here,” he said, replacing the hat and holding out a huge hand.

  “Thea Barlow,” I answered, shaking his arthritically gnarled fingers.

  “These babies are a gold mine.” He patted one of the metal pumps with its old-fashioned glass tank top. “Guy came by two weeks ago offered me a thousand bucks apiece, but I says, ‘No sir,’ these gas pumps are my main attraction.”

  I had to laugh, surely it would take more than a couple of antique gas pumps to attract anyone to this lonely place. Even for Wyoming this was a desolate piece of nowhere. I’d driven close to two hours after leaving the main highway and had seen nothing more than a couple of long-haul trucks, three pickups, and a smattering of cows and antelope. I didn’t think a name change would make much difference, though some might think New Sedona an improvement over the old one. I kind of preferred the original name, still faintly visible under the scraped paint and new lettering: Hog Heaven. The place I’d come looking for.

  “You can laugh if you like, young lady,” he said, waggling a finger at me, “but you’ll see, folks’ll be high-tailing it out here like a herd of hungry heifers. You ever been to the real Sedona in Arizona?”

  “No,” I said, “but I’ve seen pictures, and know a lot of people who have been there.” All of them, if I remembered correctly, had been as overcome by the beauty of the place as they were disappointed with a pervasive commercialism promoting everything from psychic enhancements to drive-through aromatherapy. The place was fast becoming a New Age tourist trap.

  I thought this little post office town, population, what?—six to eight, maybe?—had an unlikely probability of becoming a tourist trap. I could see a nicely kept double-wide trailer home surrounded by a yard full of hand-made whirligigs, wishing wells, windmills and bird feeders made from plastic bottles, its occupant—the Missus, perhaps—obviously into crafts. Two other trailers were parked nearby. One could have been occupied, but the other seemed abandoned. The chances of this turning into a new Sedona were slim to none, but who was I to dampen the gleam in Clyde Bodie’s eye? I plunked some coins into a scarred pop machine that leaned beside the store’s front door and pulled out an icy root beer.

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  Also by Carol Caverly

  All the Old Lions

  Frogskin and Muttonfat

  Dead in Hog Heaven

  Death by Doodlebug

  About the Author

  Raised in a Chicago suburb, author Carol Caverly married into a Wyoming pioneer ranch family. Yes, it was a bit of a culture shock, but she quickly grew to love the stark dry landscape and, most of all, the people. Now Carol enjoys writing mysteries set in the modern New Wild West she loves.

  www.carolcaverly.com