In the Moon of Red Ponies (Billy Bob Holland 4)

“I can sympathize with your situation, Darrel. You don’t get a lot of help. But you beat up a friend of mine with a blackjack. It was a lousy thing to do. So don’t be pointing your finger in my face.”

I saw his jawbone tighten. He looked sideways, out the window. “So maybe I’d change that, I mean about American Horse.”

He waited for me to speak. When I didn’t, he opened the door to let himself out.

“Darrel?” I said.

“What?”

“Does the name ‘Mabus’ mean anything to you?”

“No.” He looked hard at me. “Why? Who is he?”

“Probably no one important. Forget I mentioned it,” I replied.

“Were you really an assistant U.S. attorney?” he said.

ALL MORNING Darrel McComb remained agitated and angry. He was convinced now that Wyatt Dixon had broken into Greta Lundstrum’s bungalow and that Dixon had taken information of some kind from the house and was sharing it with an attorney. Now, through the attorney, Darrel had obtained the names of two men who were possibly hired gunmen recently arrived in the area. He started to go into the sheriff’s office and tell him of everything he had discovered, then realized he would also have to tell the sheriff he was in the sack with a woman he was using as a confidential informant, one who was perhaps involved with criminal activity.

Darrel had arranged a supper date with Greta that evening. And once again he knew his interests in her were far from purely professional. His memories of their tryst Saturday night caused sexual stirrings in him that made him wonder if part of him wasn’t still locked in adolescence. He was also starting to experience another problem, one that was like a sixteen-penny nail driven into his skull. He felt he had betrayed Amber by sleeping with Greta. It made no sense at all. Amber treated him as though he were a moral cretin, a bumbling loser she could dress down at a public dance. To get rid of his own guilt feelings, he let himself imagine Amber in bed with Johnny American Horse, her knees spread on top of him, Johnny’s hands cupped on her breasts, her mouth open and her eyes sealed with her passion. Then he felt such rage at the vision in his head he smashed his fist into a locker door while other cops stared at him, bewildered at his behavior.

He tried to eat lunch in a café downtown but couldn’t finish his food. He returned to the department, checked out a cruiser, and headed for Stevensville. At first Greta had been devastated by the damage done to her home, but she had quickly regained control of herself, substituting anger and resolve for loss and helplessness. In fact, Darrel was impressed. She had moved into a motel, put someone else in charge at her office, and hired carpenters, roofers, drywallers, and painters to repair her house. She worked side by side with them, firing a nailgun into studs, rolling paint onto drywall, rope-pulling bales of shingles onto the roof. The workmen showed up at 7 A.M., called her “ma’am,” and did not use profanity within earshot of her.

When he pulled into the driveway she was on the roof, in white painter’s pants, a cute white cap on her head. She climbed down the ladder, a hammer swinging from a cloth loop on her side. “How you doin’, handsome?” she said.

“Thought I’d check out how it’s going, maybe update you on a couple of things I found out,” he replied.

But she seemed uninterested. She tucked a strand of hair in her cap and watched a carpenter running an electric saw through a board. Then she turned back at him and smiled. “Want to have some lunch and maybe a little rest break?” she said.

He felt his loins tingle, his hand close on the steering wheel, and again wondered who was controlling whom.

“I already ate. I’m on the clock, anyway,” he said.

“Good, that makes two of us. I have to be back here by three. Follow me to my motel. There’s a restaurant next door where you can park the cruiser. I’m in room six.”

She pinched his chin, got in her SUV, and drove off.

He waited five minutes, filling out the log for the cruiser, then followed her. He parked on the far side of the restaurant, bought a roll of breath mints from the cashier, used the restroom, and exited the building by the same door he had entered. He cut behind the building, found Greta’s room on the back side of the motel, and knocked on the door.

She opened it on the chain, and through the crack he could see she already had her shirt off. She slipped the chain and let him in, then rechained the door and set the night lock. The curtains were closed, the air-conditioning unit turned on full blast, the room as frigid and dark as the interior of an icehouse. She worked her painter’s pants off and kicked them into a corner. “Come on, honey bunny, the clock’s ticking,” she said.

He couldn’t quite believe the facility and level of intensity with which she entered lovemaking—almost like a prostitute, but with an obvious and unembarrassed joy. She came before he did, then mounted him and came a second time with him, collapsing next to him, laughing, biting his ear.

“That one put me on the moon,” she said.

“I hear that a lot,” he said.

“Don’t take a compliment lightly,” she said, and hit him playfully with her knee. Then, before he could reply, she was in the shower.

Was she jerking him around as badly as he was beginning to think? Maybe it was time to find out. She came out of the bathroom, blotting at her hair with a folded towel, another towel wrapped around her. She touched at a red swelling under her arm, examining it, then saw him watching her and lowered her arm.

“Ever hear of two guys by the names of L. W. Peeples and Tex Barker?” he asked.

She faced the opposite direction, dropped her towel, and began putting on her undergarments. “No, who are they?” she said.

“Their names have turned up in the B&E investigation on your house.”

She was hooking up her bra now and he could see her face.