Caulder and Youngblood shared an adjoining booth, holding compresses to their aching heads.
Big Coop sat by himself in a third booth, sipping a Coke. He didn’t seem much the worse for wear.
The family was huddled with the elderly couple at the counter.
“At least let me get my money back from these a-holes!” shouted the manager, hovering behind the register. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed drily.
“Not until the police get here,” I said. By now I had my coat off, gun back in the horizontal-carry holster that crossed my form-hugging tee.
Youngblood gave me the eye again, now that my shape was in full view. Sometimes I like the attention, but most times I can do without. It comes with the territory.
Coop looked over and smiled, too. Even the elderly guy at the counter gave me the once-over. I got a kick out of that.
“I wanna see you shoot that thing again,” he said.
Apparently it was my pistol he was eyeballing and not my mother’s mammiferous genetic endowment. Ah, vanity.
“Not today, Pops. Sorry.”
“Boy, but that was nice shootin'.”
After hanging up with 911, Marta had informed us that most of Bend’s small police force was somewhere east of here, helping evacuate ranches from the path of an oncoming forest fire. A month of rain in Portland and half a state away they’re battling blazes. The closest cops were on the other side of town on a domestic-disturbance call. They’d be here in a half-hour.
But I’m not one to just sit around waiting.
“Something about this stinks like twenty pounds of you-know-what in a ten-pound bag,” I said, to anyone listening.
“Murder always stinks,” said Youngblood. He pointed at the robber with the bullet hole in his arm. “And I want to see this one fry for it!”
The robber glowered.
“But why did he leave the rest of us out here and only take you four in back?”
Youngblood shrugged. “Ask him.”
I looked to the robber. He gave another pug-ugly scowl.
“I’ve got a different idea,” I said. I crossed to the gumball machine in the corner and tugged the machete from under the metal stand. I laid it on the table in front of its owner, the robber with the crushed nose.
“What are you doing?” shouted the worried mother.
“He won’t try anything,” I offered. Then I set the other machete in front of his partner. “Neither will he. They know what I can do with this.”
I patted my holstered friend.
“You just gave that one back the murder weapon,” said Coop.
“Did I? You expect me to believe he knocked all three of you guys out by himself, killed Jenkins, and cleaned the blade? All in the little time you were in there? Nobody’s that fast.”
“What are you saying?” asked Caulder, gingerly rubbing the knot on his head.
“I told you something stinks.”
I glanced out the window. Looky-loos gathered in the parking lot, no doubt drawn by the gunfire and the Closed sign on the door.
I turned to the manager. “Could you go out and keep everybody back on the sidewalk? Tell them the police are on their way.”
Grumbling, he complied, heading out to quiet the crowd.
I leaned against a table and stared at the ranch hands. “Now. You three.”
“What about us?” asked Caulder.
“You carry blades?”
Youngblood answered, “We’d hardly be ranch hands worth a spit if we didn’t.”
“That’s what I thought. Haul them out.”
The three exchanged sly glances.
“You a cop?” asked Youngblood.
“Concerned citizen.”
“No way am I doing it,” he said.
“You think one of us killed Jenkins?” asked Caulder.
“I’m just marking time till the police get here.”
They sat silently, three monkeys speaking no evil. Marta and the patrons waited by the counter.
Finally, Coop’s face opened with a wide grin. “What the hell,” he said, pulling a small pocketknife from his back pocket. “Let’s see how this plays out.” He opened the knife and laid it on the table in front of him, took another chug of Coke.
Caulder followed, reluctantly, laying his own blade before him.
Youngblood still wasn’t budging. “This is stupid! Jenkins signed my checks, signed all of our checks. What the hell reason would I have for killing him?”
“Maybe a little dancer from Salem had something to do with it,” I said.
His face froze like he’d just gotten an eyeful of the Medusa’s serpentine do.
I didn’t dare glance at Marta because I knew she’d be smirking. Youngblood couldn’t know how I got that info. Right now I had the upper hand—he had no idea how much I knew.
When his shock wore off he reached to his belt and unsheathed a blade that made Jim Bowie’s look like a nail file. He laid it on the table, muttering a string of short but expressive old Anglo-Saxon words of four and five letters.
I looked at his knife. It gleamed. “Nice. Goes with your spurs.”
“I haven’t cut anybody’s throat with it since at least last week.”
I grinned, sidestepped to the front door, opened it. “Keep them back!” I shouted to the manager dutifully restraining curious citizenry. I propped the door open with a chair.
Marta piped up, “You’re going to let all the bugs in, honey.”
“That’s the idea,” I said.
I sauntered back, leaned my butt against a table, cocked a knee, and set a boot on a chair, striking quite a pose. I imagined I was being directed by John Ford, a town sheriff facing five suspected culprits: a couple of banditos, two ranch hands, and a cocksure foreman who was making time with his murdered boss's young filly.
“I think before the posse arrives we got time for a little story.” I realized my speech had a thick Texas twang. I dialed it back.
The old man barked from the counter, “I wanna see you shoot that gun again.”
His taciturn wife spoke up for the first time since this started. “Oh, Elbert, honestly.”
I looked at the family, mother cradling now-sleeping infant. “You folks okay?”
The couple nodded simultaneously. Both had calmed considerably.
I turned back to the five in the booths.
Coop drained the last of his soda and rattled the ice cubes in the plastic glass. “Can I have another Coke?”
I stared at him. He grinned.
Marta looked at me as if I was suddenly her boss. “Go ahead,” I told her.
She fetched Coop’s empty glass to refill it.
“You’re acting pretty casual for a guy who might be a killer,” I said. “But maybe that’s your game.”
Coop shrugged. “This is more entertaining than my average Wednesday.”
“I take it you didn’t care for Jenkins.”
His smile waned. “We never had a beef, but we weren’t exactly bosom. He didn’t deserve what he got, that’s a fact.”
Caulder spoke up, jerking a thumb at the bandits in the next booth. “So if that guy didn’t have time to knock us out, kill Jenkins, and clean his weapon, how could one of us do it?”
“One couldn’t, but two of you could. One kills Jenkins and cleans the murder weapon after the other knocks two of you out. He would've hit you from behind so the innocent guys wouldn’t see who clubbed them.”
The three exchanged glances, thinking it over, trying to remember exactly how it went down in the restroom.
“But all three of us were knocked out,” said Youngblood.
“You were awake by the time I got back there. If you’d ever actually been asleep.”
“This is stupid,” he repeated.
“You were Jenkins's foreman. Must have worked for him awhile. He trusted you, because while he was out inspecting the herd or bidding on new head, he had no idea what was going on back at the ranch between you and his dancing frau.”