Stretch kept talking to someone half the house away. His tone was sharp, commanding. Suddenly, his wife’s voice rose sharply, as well, giving back as good as she’d been given, and the pair argued loudly and savagely for a few seconds before Mrs. Azrael called for her son once more.
Her grating voice made Longarm’s ears ring. Haven winced.
Stretch yelled, “I’m comin’, goddamnit, Ma!” His booming voice reverberated around the house, as did the pounding of his boots and the chinging of his spurs.
“Don’t you curse with visitors in this house, you peckerwood! And take them spurs off. How many time I gotta tell you?”
“Ah, hell!” Stretch said, his voice louder now as he entered the study. He stopped just inside the door and raised each boot in turn, unbuckling the spurs before dropping them with a raucous clatter near the door.
“Now come in here and meet our guests proper. They got a few questions for you, too.”
“I already answered all the damn questions I’m going to,” the firebrand said, walking into the room, his glowering stare on Longarm, who’d gained his feet and turned to face the man.
He wouldn’t put it past ole Stretch to try to deliver another sucker punch.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Stretch said, holding up his hands in mock innocence. “I don’t roughhouse in Ma’s house.”
He had a cut beneath his chin. It curled up over the outside edge of the chin, and the blood was smeared in his scraggly spade beard, around the beginnings of a scab. Apparently, he’d washed up, for his sandy, wet hair was slicked straight back from his forehead.
“Good to hear,” Longarm said.
“She might take me over her knee,” Stretch said, grinning and glancing at Agent Delacroix sitting on the couch opposite his mother. “Who’s that?” he asked, jerking his thumb at Haven.
“I can speak for myself,” Haven said curtly. “I am Agent Haven Delacroix of the Pinkerton Agency.”
Stretch looked at her, his lower jaw hanging slightly, and whistled.
“Oh, quit,” his mother cawed. “These folks are gonna think I didn’t raise you with a half ounce of manners!”
“You didn’t.” This from Vonda standing in the doorway behind Stretch, arms crossed beneath her breasts again, shoving them up so that they were half-revealed. They were as creamy as fresh milk.
Stretched whipped his head toward the girl. “Who invited you?”
“No one!” Mrs. Azrael said, jutting her arm. “Git back out to the kitchen and help Angelina so we can eat sometime tonight. I’m so hungry I could eat that bronc out in the breaking corral!”
Vonda slid her eyes from her husband to Longarm, gave her bottom lip a sensuous nibble, and then she turned her mouth corners down, dropped her arms from her breasts, and headed back down the hall, bare feet slapping angrily.
“And get some shoes on!” Stretch yelled at her.
“You go to hell, Stretch!” Vonda screeched.
“That girl,” said Mrs. Azrael. “Don’t know what this kid ever saw in her.”
Stretch looked at Longarm, grinning. “You know, don’t ya?”
Longarm dropped back down in his chair.
“She’s very pretty,” Haven said. “But she’s not why we’re here. We’re here…”
“About the dead lawmen,” Longarm said.
“And about the gold,” Haven added crisply.
“Ah, hell—that gold again. Christ!” Stretch walked over to the liquor cabinet. “I don’t think there ever was any gold in the first place. I think that old Santana was full of…” Catching himself, he cast a jeering grin over his shoulder at his mother. “Chili peppers.”
Mrs. Azrael snorted. “Quit tryin’ to charm this woman, Stretch. You’re married. Beside, she’s got too much class for you. Delacroix, Delacroix. Is that French?”
“Indeed, it is,” Haven said proudly.
“I knew it. You got clean lines. I bet you’re of noble birth. I am, too—back in Ireland.”
“Does that make me a nobleman?” Stretch asked, turning and leaning back against the liquor cabinet.
“You’re a cur.” Mrs. Azrael snorted, glancing at her husband, who sat staring out his one good eye at the cold fireplace. “You got ole Whip to thank for that. His blood’s murkier than a flooded gulch!”
She extended her empty glass to Stretch. “Refill,” she said, wagging the glass impatiently, slurring her words slightly. Her black eyes glittered.
Stretch’s big, sunburned face darkened with embarrassment, and as he stepped forward, he glanced sheepishly at Haven, who had her back to him. He took his mother’s glass and stomped back to the liquor cabinet.
“Who found the dead lawmen, Stretch?” Longarm asked the firebrand.
“A couple of the boys,” Stretch said, angrily clanking bottles and glasses.
“I’m going to want to talk to them.”
“They ain’t big talkers.”
“Just the same, we’ll palaver,” Longarm said, not liking the Double D foreman at all. His suspicions were running off their leash about Stretch. As the lanky foreman splashed more liquor into his mother’s water glass, Longarm said, “And you’ve never seen or heard of anyone having found the stolen gold…?”
“You need to ask that again?” Stretch scoffed.
“Just wanted to hear it plain from your gums. Seein’ as how five lawmen got murdered on your land when they came down here to look for it, I’m gonna need a whole lot of other things plain before I leave here.”
“I will, too,” Haven said.
As Stretch delivered the refilled glass to his mother, he scowled at Agent Delacroix. “Should a woman be in your line of work?”
Haven gave him a blank stare.
“You mind your manners, boy!” Mrs. Azrael said. “Forgive him, Miss Delacroix. I tried to raise him right, but you can’t beat sense into a rock. I do hope you find your gold, though. You’re awfully pretty, and I’m pullin’ for you. And I’m just so sick of hearin’ about that gold!”
She looked at Longarm as Stretch resumed his position by the liquor cabinet. He’d already tossed back two shots of busthead and was now sipping his third. “I hope you find whoever killed them lawmen, Marshal. But I don’t hold out much hope. Double D Ranch is home to more than a few outlaw trails stretching between the Mogollon Rim and the White Mountains and Mexico. If you stay out there too long, sniffin’ around, you best be careful you don’t end up the same as them others.”
To Haven, she said, “Maybe you’d best stay here with me, Miss Delacroix. It ain’t safe out there for a man, much less a pretty girl.”
“We’ll protect you here,” Stretch said with a lascivious leer.
“I’m sure your wife would appreciate that, Mr. Azrael.”
Longarm looked at Stretch. “Any of your own men been shot out there?”
Stretch filled his mouth with whiskey, puffed out his cheeks, and swallowed. “Nope. Just lawmen like yourself. Like Ma says, best tread quiet out there.” He gave a cold smile, his eyes glittering now like his mother’s. “Bullets buzz around like blackflies out there, don’t ya know.”
Stretch splashed more liquor into his glass and headed for the door. “I best go see if the girls need more wood split for the stove.” He grabbed his spurs and clomped off down the hall.
“Don’t mind him,” Mrs. Azrael said. “All the whippin’s in the world couldn’t turn him out right, though Lord knows I wore the bark off many a willow sap across that boy’s derriere. Stretch’s got too much of Whip’s blood.” She studied the old, one-eyed rancher who sat in a catatonic stare and shook her head. “Oh, but we did have some good times, though, didn’t we, Whip? Despite the hardships.”
She slapped her hand down on the sofa arm. “My word, you two will want to clean up for supper. Help yourselves to the washtub on the porch. There’s a barrel with fresh water there, and I’ll have Vonda fetch some clean towels.”