"You did a hell of a job clearing out Alex Blanceagle the other night."
No response. Jean took a drag on the cigarette, turned his head, and blew smoke leisurely toward the porch. The old drunk musicians had launched into something new—an instrumental that sounded vaguely like Lester Scruggs. A couple of women were dosidoing with each other on the sidewalk.
I looked toward the front door. Brent Daniels now stood next to an icefilled garbage can, drinking a beer as fast as he could. Several people were talking to him but Brent wasn't paying them any attention.
"What was that about?" I asked Jean.
He followed my gaze, caught my meaning. "I told Brent Daniels I admired his sister.
Her music. I said I hoped she would tour Europe soon."
"Like Cam Compton used to. Make a nice courier system, wouldn't it? Good cover, touring with a band, with lots of equipment, if you had goods you wanted to deliver to a lot of places in Europe."
Jean blew more smoke. He gave me the crab eyes. "Do you intend to provoke, Mr.
Navarre, or are you simply an idiot?"
"I'm not usually like this," I confessed. "Usually I don't find so many corpses in one week. You usually leave so many?"
Jean smiled coldly. "An idiot," he decided.
He disengaged his back from the tree and was leaning forward to say something when some commotion erupted around the side of the house.
Somebody by the shed yelled "Ohhh!" like he'd just seen a great triple play. A woman shrieked. A crowd of people started to converge around the horseshoe pit. Some were swearing, a few laughing. Willis Daniels' hoe down faltered to a stop as the musicians got up to see what was going on.
A drunk cowboy staggered away from the scene, laughing, telling people what had just happened in a loud enough voice that Jean and I could hear him fine. Apparently Allison SaintPierre had just knocked Tilden Sheckly out cold with a horseshoe.
I looked at Jean.
He tossed his cigarette down in a leisurely way. It bounced off a root and disappeared in the crack between two other roots, then dimmed to a little orange eye. Jean looked up at me and smiled, almost pleasantly this time.
"My boss," he said with satisfaction.
Then he turned and casually walked in the opposite direction, into the dark.
29
Sheckly wasn't out cold, exactly. Just slightly cooled down.
I nudged my way through the spectators and found him sitting in the dust, his fingertips on his temples and a look of complete dismay on his face. He was dressed in black from boots to shirt. His Stetson lay nearby, knocked from his head. Below Sheck's left eye, the cheek looked like a crosssection of a rare filet mignon. An inch higher and the horseshoe would've blinded him.
An older woman squatted next to him, patting his shoulders and trying to console him.
Her words came out slurred. The margarita in her other hand sloshed at a fortyfive degree angle.
A couple of cowboy types stood on the other side. They seemed anxious to lend the rich man a bandanna, or an arm to lean on, or a gun to shoot Allison Saint Pierre.
Anything he needed.
Sheckly shook his head a couple of times. He dabbed at his ruined cheek with the back of his fist, looked at the blood on his knuckles, and regained some colour in his face. Then he tried to get up and failed. He rallied again, staggering to his feet with the help of the cowboys.
"I'm gonna kill that crazy bitch."
The men murmured agreement.
Sheckly blinked. He stumbled, huge and awkward as a drugged horse.
He scanned the crowd, targeted me briefly, and seemed to make a foggy connection.
Then his eyes kept moving.
Allison SaintPierre was nowhere to be seen, though a few people were looking in the direction of the ranch house and shaking their heads as they speculated about her. I went toward the house.
When I bumped into Willis Daniels on the porch he turned around and grabbed my upper arm and for a second I thought the old man was going to clobber me with his cane. I hardly recognized him. The Santa Claus smile had vanished. His eyes blazed.
His cement coloured hair was flattened into sweaty bangs against his forehead.
He looked disappointed when he saw I wasn't someone he wanted to clobber. At least not at the moment.
"Damn it," he muttered, lowering his cane.
"Allison went this way?"
Willis raised his cane again and shook it at nobody in particular. Then he glared in