I spun my bar stool toward Hope.
“What’s wrong?”
“Do you know why the Red Leaf family and the Rondeaux family are enemies?”
She picked at her thumbnail before she met my gaze. “No. And that’s not me protecting Jake. He won’t talk about it, Sophie won’t talk about it. But it seems to be more a problem between the Pretty Horses and the Rondeaux. The Red Leaf kids and grandkids got caught in the middle.”
Sophie had two kids-Penny and Devlin-with her first husband, Von Pretty Horses. After he died, she remarried Barclay Red Leaf, and they had three sons: Del, Jake’s dad; Terry, Luke and TJ’s dad; and Ray, who’d fathered a half-dozen kids before he’d passed on, leaving the small Red Leaf Ranch, adjacent to our ranch, to Terry. I’d never met Del or Ray. They’d both died by the time Sophie came to work for us.
“Even now that I’m married to a Red Leaf, they won’t discuss family matters if I’m around,” Hope said.
“But you’re family to them. Hell, I’m practically family to them.”
Hope shook her head. “Not in their minds.”
Maybe it was beer causing the sudden ache in my belly. “Is that because so many of them have worked for us for so long?”
“That’s part of it. Sophie is different to me when we go over to her house. She… snaps a lot. Not at me. Then she and her grandkids start speaking Lakota, and I can’t understand. It makes me uncomfortable.”
That piqued my anger, but I also realized Hope might be a wee bit paranoid. “Do they treat Joy like an outsider, too?”
“No.” Hope reached for her beer and sipped. “Still, because of… that and some other stuff, Jake’s even suggested to Sophie that she retire from workin’ for us.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard Sophie’s response to that. Do you think-”
Out of the blue we heard, “Hope Gunderson? Is that you?”
Hope faced the woman bellied up to the bar next to her where Lefty had been sitting. “Betsy? Omigod! What are you doing here?”
A lot of squealing and hugging, and then my sister disappeared into the back room with her old high school friend.
And once again, I was drinking alone.
After five minutes, the rush of people up to the bar sent me outside for fresh air. In hindsight I should’ve snuck out the back door. My one complaint about Clementine’s has always been the lack of lighting in the parking area. It’s a bitch even for people who don’t have my night vision problems.
I jammed my hands in my pockets and glanced up at the sky. No stars. No moonlight peeked through the thick cloud cover. I half expected to feel snowflakes hitting my face, the temperature had dropped so drastically since this morning.
I paced, mind racing, and I’ll admit none of my thoughts were very flattering to the Red Leaf, Pretty Horses, or Rondeaux families. But I wasn’t so deep in thought that I wasn’t aware someone moved between the parked vehicles off to my left.
Of all the times not to be carrying. I called out, “I know you’re there.”
No response.
“I’m not in the mood to play hide-and-seek.”
No response.
Screw this. I started to back up, slowly, facing forward, hoping like hell I didn’t stumble into a hole and fall on my ass before I reached the bar door.
A shadow solidified into a man. He moved toward me, both his hands up in the air, his head covered by a hood so I couldn’t see his face.
“Stop right there. Keep your hands where they are and identify yourself.”
He stopped. “It’s Junior.”
“Junior… as in Junior Rondeaux?”
“Uh-huh. I heard you was lookin’ for me yesterday.”
“How’d you know I was here?”
“I got my ways.”
Somebody was spying for Saro at Clementine’s. “So Junior, you were just waiting out here in the cold hoping I’d come out alone so you could jump me.”
“I wasn’t gonna jump you. Doncha think I learned that shit don’t fly with you last time? When you held a fuckin’ gun to my head.”
“You armed?”
“Nope. Left it in the car.”
“You alone?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Drop the hood. I feel like I’m talking to Kenny from South Park.”
He used one hand to slide the hood back.
I took two steps closer. I’d seen Junior Rondeaux one time. During our lone meeting I’d used my gun barrel to shove his face into the dirt so I really didn’t remember what he looked like. Junior didn’t strike me as handsome. He looked nothing like Rollie. He resembled any number of the young Indian men on the reservation; pockmarked skin, prominent nose and cheekbones. His unkempt black hair hung past his shoulders. He topped my height by four inches, but with his baggy clothes I couldn’t tell if his build was lanky, muscular, or flabby.
“Who told you I was looking for you? Mackenzie? Or Verline?”
“Verline. But I’m sure Mac was talkin’ smack about me.”
“Why would you say that?”
Junior scowled. “She’s a drama queen. She lives for that shit.”
“Is that why she introduced you to Arlette Shooting Star?”
“Yeah. Mac’s the type of girl who racks up and trades favors. I owed her one. So when she asked me to meet this high school girl, I said no. At first.”
“What changed your mind?”
“Mac told me Arlette was the tribal president’s niece. I knew it’d piss my old man off when he got wind of it, because he hates Latimer Elk Thunder. And I thought, What the hell, right? It was only one time.”
“Did you meet with Arlette more than once?”
He nodded. “I was supposed to flirt with her, get her to like me, then Mac was gonna tell her a bunch of that catty, mean-girl bullshit to make her cry. I didn’t want no part of that.”
“So what happened?”
Junior blew out a short burst of air. “I realized that Mac is a bitch. She zeroes in on another girl’s weakness and goes for the throat. After I met Arlette, I told Mac to back off and leave me ’n’ Arlette alone, which is probably why Arlette thought we had a thing goin’ on. We didn’t. I hung out with her. We were friends.”
“Why? I mean, it started out as a prank. And you’re what? At least five years older than her? What was Arlette’s appeal?”
“Gimme a break. I wasn’t banging her or nothin’. Arlette knew a lot of history and Indian legends. The cool stuff that we didn’t learn in school. I didn’t tell no one about it, ’cause none of my friends would believe I cared about that kinda junk. Our meetings were on the down low, know what I mean? Her uncle woulda freaked if he heard we were hanging out.”
“Like your dad freaked when he found out?”
“Yeah. Like, I thought the old man was gonna have a stroke.”
Rollie. That lyin’ SOB. I don’t know what the hell kind of game he was playing with me. It was almost as if he wanted me to consider his son a suspect. “When was the last time you saw Arlette?”
“A little over a week ago. She told me she thought we were soul mates or some stupid thing like that. But we were friends,” he reiterated. “That’s it.”
“Did your friendship with Arlette contribute to your dad booting you out of his house?”
Junior muttered about Verline having a big mouth. “That had nothin’ to do with it.”
Since this wasn’t an official FBI interview, I could be more blunt in directing the conversation. “Why did Rollie kick you out, Junior?”
His attempt at a withering stare was almost laughable. But after a minute of silence, I knew I had to play my card first.
“Lemme guess when this all went down. When Rollie found out you were working for Saro?”
“Who says I am working for him?”
“Are you?”