Callen thought, Fuck me, and secured the reins to a branch before crossing the road again.
“It’s Billy Jean Younger,” Bodine said. “She’s one of our bartenders.”
Garrett Clintok nodded. “Sheriff’s on the way. I’m going to need both of you to stay clear. Heard you’d come back, Skinner.”
Not sheriff, at least. “Hadn’t heard you were deputy. Bodine’s had them send down keys to that cabin right up there. I’m going to take her and the horses up there.”
“You’re going to wait until I say different.” He looked down at Callen’s jeans, boots. “You went right on out there, compromised the crime scene.”
“I did that,” Bodine said quickly. “I saw her and I didn’t think, I just tried to get to her. Callen stopped me. I’m sorry, Garrett, I just reacted.”
“Understandable enough. Did you touch her?”
“Callen stopped me before I got to her. I could see— Anybody could see she was gone, but I just reacted.”
“Her phone’s on the ground, the other side of her car,” Callen added. “We didn’t touch that, either. Deputy.”
“I really would like to get inside, just sit down. Maybe have some water.” Bodine shifted, just a little, just enough to put herself between the men and the ugly vibrations in the air. “I’m feeling a little shaky. Do you think Callen could go down to where I have Mike blocking the road, get the keys? We’d be right there. Big Sky Cabin. We didn’t want to leave her alone, but now that you’re here…”
“You go ahead. I don’t want you talking to anybody about this yet, not until we get a handle on things.”
“Thanks. Thank you, Garrett.”
They crossed the road together, got the horses, began to lead them up the road.
“You played him like a fiddle.”
Bodine sighed. “I don’t care for playing the weak-kneed female, but I’d forgotten how the two of you butt heads.”
“I butted back, that’s different.”
The cold edge in his voice made her want to sigh. “Maybe so, but I didn’t see the sense in having a pissing match with Billy Jean lying there twenty feet away. Since I’m supposed to be weak-kneed, go on and take the horses up to Mike. Ask him to have somebody come and take them in. I’ll wait on the porch in a damn rocking chair.”
Inside a half hour she’d made coffee; they had a fire going. And she’d paced about two miles circling the living area of the cabin.
It didn’t do her nerves much good when instead of the sheriff, Clintok walked in.
“I know this is a hard time for you, Bo. Why don’t you sit down for a bit? I’m going to take your statement in just a little while. Skinner and I are going to talk out on the porch first.”
“The sheriff’s here. I saw the trucks out the window.”
“That’s right. They’re doing what needs to be done, just like I am. Skinner?”
He jabbed a thumb at the door, stepped out again.
“Don’t provoke him,” Bodine warned.
“My breathing provokes him.”
Callen walked out. Clintok leaned back against a porch post, nodded. “Let’s hear your side of it.”
“That’s an interesting way to put it. We were riding to work,” he began.
“You and Bodine? You do that a lot?”
“First time, but then I haven’t been back long, and only started working at the resort officially as of last night.”
Tipping down his sunglasses, Clintok aimed those hard eyes over them. “I heard you were working at the Bodine Ranch.”
“Things changed.”
“They fire you?”
Don’t provoke him, Bodine had asked, but doing so held too tempting. Knowing how to get under Clintok’s skin, Callen smiled a little. “Logic says if they had, I wouldn’t be working at their resort. We were riding to work,” he said again.
“Whose idea was that?”
“I’d say mutual. I was planning on it. She was planning on it. We ended up planning on it at the same time.”
“Looks like you took a big detour. Quicker ways to get from the ranch to the resort on horseback.”
“We wanted a ride.”
“Who picked the route?”
“Bodine.”
Clintok’s mouth twisted into a nonverbal Liar. “Uh-huh. How well did you know Billy Jean Younger?”
“I didn’t know her. I never met her.”
“Is that so?” Now Clintok hooked a hand in his gun belt. “You’re working at the resort, but you never once met her.”
“That’s right, seeing as I just started there.”
“Where were you last night, Skinner?”
“I’m living on the Bodine place, and that’s where I was.”
“In the bunkhouse?”
“No, I’m in the shack.”
On a long, slow nod, Clintok stepped closer, crowding Callen’s space. “Alone then.”
“Most of the time. Bodine and I had a conversation and a beer last night, pertaining to me taking over for Abe Kotter while he’s gone.”
Rather than move back, Callen simply edged forward. “Are you seriously trying to wind what happened to that girl around to me? Does it stick that deep for you, Clintok?”
“I know what you are, what you’ve always been. Did Billy Jean get a piece of you there when you went at her? She give you that eye?”
“I never met Billy Jean. Bo gave me a shot.”
“Now, I wonder why she’d do that.”
“Ask her.”
“Be sure I will.” With his mouth twisted in a sneer, Clintok tapped a finger on Callen’s chest. “You’re back here a handful of days, and we’ve got a dead woman. You’re back here a handful of days, and you want me to believe you never once stepped foot into the Saloon at the resort and made yourself known to the good-looking woman working the bar? I know bullshit when I smell it, Skinner.”
“Seems to me you’re shoveling that shit so deep you’d be hard put not to catch a whiff. There’s a boot scraper by the door, if you don’t want to go tracking it around behind you.”
Clintok’s face went red as boiled beets, a transition Callen knew—from past experience—generally presaged a sucker punch.
“Go on, follow through with that.” Callen’s invitation blew as cold and stiff as the wind. “We’ll see where we end up.”
Clintok’s teeth set—Callen would have sworn he all but heard them grinding. But the deputy backed off.
“You can go on to work, for now. Don’t make any traveling plans.”
“I’ll leave when Bodine does.”
“I told you to move along.”
Deliberately Callen walked down the porch, sat in one of the rockers. “Now, tell me what law I’m breaking.”
Clintok’s right hand closed into a fist. “It won’t take me long to deal with you. That time’s coming.”
But he walked inside, leaving Callen sitting in the rocker.
“There’s coffee,” Bodine said immediately.