The Cowboy's Shadow Part 5

"Look for footprints," Whit said, "and if they're small, like maybe it was a woman, tell Deputy Colton it's a false alarm."

"Oh s.h.i.+t!" Vince said. He wiped his sleeve across his face as if to change his expression. Jim jerked his hat lower.

"I didn't even think -- " Jim began. "The woman, of course!"

"You knew? Rod had a romance?" Whit asked. They both nodded. "He told you?" Rod had told the cowboys, yet never mentioned a word to his best friend?

"He didn't tell us, we guessed," Jim said, scuffing the dust with the toe of his boot and staring at the deputy's car idling at the corner. "That last night we all stayed at the range cabin. We teased him a bit, and he told us to keep our traps shut."

"Get out to the ranch and look for footprints before Colton turns up. If there's any indication, any at all, that the burglar might be a woman, tell Colton to forget to enter the call in his log, and I'll donate to his campaign for sheriff next year."

Whit was aware that Kyla struggled to control an I-told-you-so smile. He stepped on the gas.

"Are you bound to appear at this barbecue, or -- "

"I promised Glenda I'd help. After all, it's in her back yard. Come along and get something to eat. The meat should be ready, and the potato salad looked scrumptious. The slaw I'm not sure about."

He should head home, to be around when Colton arrived. Elm Street was already lined with cars and trucks. "I'll drop you off," he said.

She hesitated a moment with the door open. "Breaking into Rod's apartment probably has nothing to do with hantavirus, but if you find out who she is, she might be able to tell you about Rod movements in the past few weeks."

"Whoever she is, she won't want to admit she even knew Rod," Whit said. An empty spot near the end of the street tempted him. No one had parked here, because it was in full sun. If the elm tree still stood, it would be in the shade. He should head out to the ranch. But this would be his last opportunity to get one of those gold pins from the Pollux Mine.

The backyards of the houses of the two mine superintendents had no separating fence, so the crowd had plenty of room to spread out. Even so, the place overflowed, people pus.h.i.+ng onto the Marshall's patio, under the semi-transparent plastic roof. The corporation big wigs stood there, shaking hands and smiling like politicians. Not a chance of getting close enough to mention his gold pin.

Whit glimpsed a harried Kyla, balancing paper plates in one hand and cups in another. No sense trying to talk to her now. He might as well go home and see the mess the burglar had made in Rod's room, and come back later, when the crowd had thinned.

A caterer's truck backed down the drive. Whit dodged into a stand of junipers, much healthier trees than those growing wild on the mountain slopes. He had to watch where he stepped, so he didn't dislodge the hoses of the drip irrigation system.

"Whit!" A woman wobbled toward him on high-heeled sandals that sank into the loose soil. He searched for a name. Moira. Moira Chase. She stepped very close, so close her perfume overpowered the odor of sunbaked juniper. "Too bad about your hired man," she whispered. She spread her left hand on his chest, two fingers sneaking past the b.u.t.tons, until her ring caught on the fabric. A high-set diamond as big as an aspirin tablet. "We should talk," she said in a throaty whisper, "because I knew himvery well." Her hand slid over his belt buckle like ice cream melting. Her fingers twitched at the zipper of his jeans.

Escape! Run, perspiration streaming down his back. Jump into his pickup, get the motor started, roll up the windows, lean back, panting, against the hot upholstery. A quick, fearful glance at the rear view mirror, to make sure Moira had not followed him.

Fool. Oh course she hadn't. Not in those ridiculous shoes.

"Rod, you didn't!" Whit slammed a palm on the steering wheel. The doctor's wife!

Raunchy jokes about Moira Chase had been a staple at Whiskey Dan's, ever since the doctor had brought Moira home. A woman of twenty-two married to a man nearing fifty. That was certain to lead to snide comments, but Whit had never taken them seriously.

He unb.u.t.toned his s.h.i.+rt, stripped it off, flung it over the back of the seat.

Filthy. Filthiest where Moira had touched him. What stung most, Moira did not seem to mourn her dead lover. Only looking for another set of male genitalia to satisfy her slim loins.

On the wash-boarded gravel five miles out of town, Whit realized he was driving too fast. He eased off the accelerator. Moira Chase had broken into Rod's rooms to find a letter, a photograph, some trinket she had given him that would betray the affair. She had to keep the secret from Dr. Chase, or she would lose those big sparklers and the cute little red car she buzzed around town.

Whit felt physically ill at the possibility that Moira now leveled her sights on him. Rod's successor in the extra-marital sack. The gate stood open. d.a.m.n deputy! Whit stopped, swung the gate shut, drove too fast, slammed on his brakes and roused a cloud of dust under the cottonwoods. He struggled into the damp s.h.i.+rt, but didn't bother to b.u.t.ton it.

Deputy Colton knelt in the marigolds below Rod's window, the odor of the crushed flowers pungent in the heat. Whit kept his distance, for fear of trampling evidence. "Well?" he called.

Colton shrugged. "Boots, size eight or nine, I'd guess." A smallish man or a tall woman. Moira Chase. He tried to figure her height from where her eyes had reached. Three or four inches below his own. Eight, maybe nine inches over five feet. Just about Kyla's height.

"Tire tracks?"

"I'd say, whoever your burglar is, he buys his tires at the same place you do,"

Colton said wryly. Naturally, with only two gas stations left in town, and only one still stocking tires, three-quarters of the pickups had the same tread pattern. Rod was an oddity, his truck and equipment bought in Los Angeles.

"Drop it," Whit said. He felt no great urge to protect Moira Chase's reputation, but blackening Rod's name was another matter entirely. "Can you write down some other reason for coming out here?"

Colton grinned. "Do it all the time when a woman's involved. How about someone tampered with your irrigation equipment?"

"Fine," Whit snapped. He stared after the deputy's car until nothing remained but a column of dust. It stopped long enough to open and close the gate. Now, destroy the evidence.

The boots had sunk an inch into the tilled loam of the flowerbed, leaving detailed prints. Pointed toes, soles far from new. The right heel was nicked, and the left sole so worn a nail head protruded slightly.

"Jim, get a hoe and stir up this ground. The marigolds need weeding." Jim grinned before he turned his back.

Whit paced methodically back and forth, obliterating prints in the dusty yard.

"You know who?" Vince asked.

"I suspect, and if it gets back to her husband...Rod loved her. Let's respect that, and keep our mouths shut."

And she felt nothing for him.Only an animal l.u.s.t that any strong, young man could satisfy. "Vince, go fetch the keys to Rod's truck, look through it, bring everything to me. Do you know how to open the secret compartment in the bronc statue?" Vince nodded. "Look in there, if there's any money, bring it in and I'll put in the safe."

Whit stripped off his sodden s.h.i.+rt as he walked through the kitchen and flung it at the was.h.i.+ng machine in the laundry nook. He could not stand to wear it, fouled by Moira's touch. He sat before the computer, called the ranch accounts onto the screen, found the rows of figures meaningless in his present frame of mind.

Vince dropped a substantial stack of money before him, the rubber band parted, scattering hundreds and fifties. "And I found this, too." A sheet of heavy, cream-colored paper, folded in thirds. A photo fell out as Vince tipped the paper toward the desk, a square picture, from an instant camera. Moira Chase, sitting on a boulder known to every local, where Fellows Creek had cut a hole straight through a rock. Moira's denim- clad legs spread around the hole. She wore nothing above her waist. The photographer had caught her unzipping her jeans.

Soft p.o.r.n. The kind of pictures panting lovers exchanged, trusting each other with incriminating evidence. Moira had probably taken a similar photo of Rod.

She would have the good sense to destroy it, probably had burned it already.

Whit turned the picture face down on the mouse pad.

"That must'a been what she was looking for," Vince said.

"Obviously. I'll let her know I've destroyed it. And you'll forget you ever saw it." Vince hummed, and Whit had an awful vision of the man in Whiskey Dan's, two or three beers to the good, smirking and hinting until the truth came out.

"Vince, have you ever met Rod's sister?"

"Judith? Of course, if she has an empty room I stay in her house when I go to Reno. I pay, since I'm not sick." His brows rose. "Good Lord! If Judith finds out!"

"Exactly. She's a wonderful lady, and we'll keep our lips b.u.t.toned. Not just here. Everywhere."

Jim entered and offered a plastic sack. "Bunch of junk for the most part." Whit dumped the contents on the floor. An empty cookie packet, ice sc.r.a.per, a small flashlight, three sc.r.a.ps of paper scribbled over with what seemed to be shopping lists. A map of western Nevada, two pencils, a ballpoint pen, and half a dry doughnut.

"I didn't bring the tools he stuck behind the seat. Some of them belong to the ranch." Naturally, since Rod repaired fences and irrigation equipment. "Can't see what his woman friend would want with any of this junk."

"She didn't find the picture in his room, so she tried to get into the trunk, on the off chance," Vince said.

"What picture?" asked Jim.

"One you don't need to know about or even mention," Whit said. "Let's get back to work."

He watched as Jim and Vince piled hay bales in the old pickup, feed for the horses stabled up at the range cabin. Whit dug around in the kitchen, found a book of matches under his two dish towels. He balanced the photo, face down, on the pristine grate of the family room fireplace, held the match to the corner, and sat, his back against the stone, as it smoldered. He hated this room, hated the memory of Jenny's delight in it, her shy hints that he would father the kids to fill it.

Kyla? He could not imagine her here. A woman aiming for an M. D. Not at all like Jenny, except for what she roused in him. He lifted the poker from its hook, and beat at the ashes, whispering, "It's all physical, Jenny. Nothing at all like what we share." Apologizing ahead of time for what he would eventually do. He found himself exercising his arm on nothing but gray dust.

Chapter Five.

Kyla rocked listlessly in the swing that hung from the largest poplar tree.

Lovely evening, in the long twilight of mountain shadows. Shadows, shade, so important in the desert. Somehow she had been drawn into a darker shadow, cast by Rod and Carl, death, and the possibility of a horrible thing called hantavirus.

You may be wrong, she reminded herself. You won't know for sure until the lab work's complete.

Yet the suspicion lingered, strong enough to justify a search before Rod's trail had grown so cold it could no longer be followed. If she and Whit could findwhere , they might save others from the same death.

Kyla wished she had someone to talk to about Whit. About her illogical sense that he formed a watershed in her life. If she could catch Glenda alone...but the reflection from the television screen flickered on the window of the back room, Glenda and Mark relaxing after the busy day.

Trace puttered in and out of the garage, putting a new tail light on a bicycle.

Carl's bicycle, Glenda said, and the repair-work a form of magic.Don't admit he's gone. Fix the bike and maybe he'll come back .

The roar of a vehicle speeding down the street. Only when she felt the stretch in her neck did Kyla realize she had lifted her head and followed the sound of the motor. She leaned back, pushed with her feet, pretending her lifted head had been a prelude to swinging. I'm not anxious to see Whit, she told herself.

She had spent the afternoon in the Marshall's kitchen. Friends and neighbors, workers who still had jobs and those who were leaving, they needed to talk. As an outsider she could wash dishes and keep the bowls full. More than once, on trips to the buffet tables, she had felt unfriendly eyes. Twice she turned quickly and caught Dr. Chase staring at her. Hostile stares. After that she made as few excursions to the patio as possible.

Kyla closed her eyes on the upward swing. The woman who intercepted Whit behind the junipers had supposed they were un.o.bserved. But the window, however filled with African violets, still gave a view of the side yard. The woman was the type men dreamed of: slender, large busted. Bold. No hesitation in her caress, a hand in constant seductive motion, from Whit's chest to his...obvious what the woman had proposed.

Kyla gripped the scratchy rope of the swing as tightly as she had grasped the pitcher she'd been filling at the sink. She had thought about what she carried in her purse, shocked and appalled that she planned the same rendezvous with Whit that this woman...Then the expression of disgust on Whit's face, the length of his strides as he fled.

He does not believe in casual s.e.x, said an inner voice. She should not let herself be upset by the scene, but rea.s.sured. Her judgment of Whit had been vindicated.

But if Whit did not partic.i.p.ate in one-night-stands, why did she think their relations.h.i.+p would end after she left Argentia?

Heavens! Could Whit be looking for a wife? A wife to replace dead Jenny, the charmer who had played house and put curtains in a decrepit tree house.

Kyla dragged her feet and the swing twisted to a halt. She had better square with Whit immediately. And give him the box stored in her purse to use with a more suitable woman. Kyla eased down the hall until she could see the back of Glenda's head, and appraise the decibel level of the television. Loud enough, she decided to drown out her conversation on the phone.

She lifted the thin phone book from the hook. Whiskey Dan's. Whisman. Whispering Creek. Whitaker, Calvin. Whitaker, T. J. She pulled over the high kitchen stool, sat on it, poking at the names, as if touching the print would tell her which number would connect her to Whit. Embarra.s.sing, to have kissed a man, tacitly agreed to have s.e.x with him, and not know his first name. Embarra.s.sing also to reach the wrong Whitaker. In a small town the word would get around.

The phone buzzed, she jumped off the stool, had the receiver to her cheek before she recalled there was a phone in the back room, and she should have let Mark or Glenda answer it.

"h.e.l.lo. Fetterman residence," she said.

"Ky?"

"Yes." She should have let Glenda or Mark answer. Now Whit would think she had been sitting by the phone, waiting for his call.

"I laid out tomorrow's route. We'll be able to cover every ranch north of here if we leave at the crack of dawn. Five o'clock too early?" Ranches. Searching for the shack where Rod -- perhaps Carl -- had breathed in the deadly virus.

"Then Friday, we'll go to Reno and see Judith."

"Judith?"

"Rod's sister. She called. She wants me up there to discuss funeral arrangements. As soon as they release the body. I'd like you to come, because you can tell her a lot more about this disease than I can."

"The reports came? It's hantavirus?" she asked.

"Haven't heard a thing. But you and I know -- "

"We don't know for sure, Whit. Only the lab can tell -- "I trust your judgment." Good grief! She did not want this man trusting her with anything, most of all his surging libido, if fast on the heels of s.e.x would come a proposal. "Five okay?"

"Okay," she said.

"See you then. Bye."

Explain tomorrow. They would spend the day together, pounding along dusty roads, looking for shacks...They dare not risk going into any building. Maybe she could borrow Mark's binoculars.

"Who was it?" Glenda leaned in the door.

"Whit. We're going to do some exploring, and try to find where Carl and Rod ran into hantavirus."

"I talked to Dr. Chase this afternoon at the party, and he's quite certain Carl died of complications from the flu."

"Dr. Chase doesn't like female doctors. I made the mistake of mentioning hantavirus. Now he can't back down from his original diagnosis, or he'll be admitting that a woman came up with the right one. What's Whit's first name?

Calvin or something starting with T?"

Mark entered the kitchen and threw a soft drink can in the recycling bin. "T.J.

Thomas Jefferson. Calvin Whitaker's his father." He leaned into the refrigerator. "Mrs. Whitaker -- Calvin's wife -- doesn't call herself Mrs.

Whitaker, because she's Dr. Something-or-other, a professor of history. She wrote a book about Thomas Jefferson while she was pregnant with Whit." He straightened, a soft drink can in his hand. Kyla dropped her eyes before Mark's knowing smirk.

"Whitaker men seem to favor well-educated wives," he said as he popped the top.

He squinted, either avoiding the pressure of the gas escaping from the soda, or heaven forbid, considering the consequences of being the brother-in-law of T. J.