the gun out.
“Mind if we jam with you?” the guy says, and he raises the object in his hands: an acoustic guitar.
I exhale loudly and let go of the gun.
“Excuse me?” I say, trying to keep my voice steady and not give any indication that my body is racing with adrenaline. “You want to do what?”
“We heard you was sitting out here picking on a guitar last night,” the guy says, grinning widely as he approaches. “We thought we’d stop by and see if you wanted to jam with us.”
The man seems to be about thirty, give or take a few years. He wears a Dallas Mavericks ball cap and the same blue work shirt Skip Barnes wore earlier today. He has strong worker’s hands and a beer belly that strains the buttons of his shirt.
“Who told you I was playing?” I say, thinking of the black truck that seemed to be keeping an eye on me the night before.
“Norma,” he says, gesturing toward the office of the motel. “She owns the place. You can’t do anything in Rio Lobo without half the town hearing about it.”
The man introduces himself as Dale Peters. He says that he and his friend, Walt Mitchell, used to be in a band that played one night a week at Lobo Lizard, but their lead singer left town and now they just play together for fun.
Walt gets out of the truck and shakes my hand. He’s a middle-aged black man with graying hair. He has a pleasant smile and wears a plaid shirt, new jeans, and a clean pair of tennis shoes.
“I play bass or rhythm guitar,” Dale says. “Walt here teaches music at the school and can play just about any instrument God created. But neither of us can sing worth a lick.”
I’m not really in the mood to play with a couple of strangers, but it occurs to me that I might be able to use this to my advantage. Today we interviewed two men, one who works at the high school and one who works for Carson McCormack. Maybe I can get some information on our suspects.
“Sure,” I say. “Let me just go get my guitar.”
I pick up my hat, careful to keep the gun concealed, and walk into my room. When I come out with my guitar, Dale is sitting down, trying to tune his instrument, and Walt is walking from the truck with a banjo in one hand, a small snare drum in the other, a fiddle case wedged under one arm, and a harmonica tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt.
I bring a chair over from the porch of the neighboring unit, and the three of us sit down in a triangle. I ask why they want to play with me. Rio Lobo might be small, but there have to be other people here who can pick a guitar.
“We ain’t never jammed with a Texas Ranger before,” Dale says.
“Or someone who has a hit country song written about them,” Walt adds.
I chuckle. “So you know all about me, I guess.”
“Not everything,” Dale says, grinning. “We don’t know if you can sing worth a damn, but we aim to find out.”
Chapter 24
DALE STARTS PLAYING the recognizable opening chords of Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line.” Walt plays the snare drum with a wire brush to keep the same scratchy background beat you hear on Cash’s version. I join in on guitar. Dale sings the first verse. He was right—he’s not much of a vocalist. When it comes time for the second verse, he nods to me, and I sing it. He defers to me and lets me sing the rest. In the original recording, Cash changes the key of his vocals, and the last verse is almost a full octave lower than the first. I don’t sound anything like Johnny Cash, but I do my best to lower my voice as the song progresses.
Dale and Walt both notice and appreciate the effort.
“Hot damn, boy,” Dale says. “You ain’t half bad.”
I sing the rest of the night. We play George Strait, Tim McGraw, Blake Shelton, and Eric Church. We don’t just stick to guys’ songs, either—we play a couple of Dixie Chicks tunes and have a good laugh rolling through Dolly Parton’s “9 to 5.”
Dale is a heck of a guitar player, much more than just the rhythm guy he made himself out to be. And Walt, as Dale said, can play pretty much anything. Through the two hours we