Big Sky Mountain Part 14

The cafe patrons politely ignored him.

"Don't mind Treat," the aging waitress whispered to Kendra when she reached the counter, order pad in hand. "He's just running off at the mouth because he made a move on Brylee Parrish last night, over at the Boot Scoot Tavern, and Walker let him have it, right in the teeth."

Kendra winced at the violent image. "Ouch," she said, keeping her voice down.

"Broke his nose for him," the waitress added unnecessarily and with a note of satisfaction.

McQuillan must have overheard because his gaze swung in their direction, and Kendra felt scalded by it, as though he'd splashed her with acid.

"Go ahead, Millie," he growled at the still recalcitrant waitress. "Tell the whole world Walker's side of the story."

"It's everybody's side of the story," Millie said, undaunted. "You made a d.a.m.n fool of yourself at the Boot Scoot and that's a fact. Ask me, you're just lucky Walker got to you before Hutch Carmody did."

Hutch's name, at least in connection with an apparent bar brawl over one Brylee Parrish, caught in Kendra's throat like rusty barbed wire snagging in flesh.

McQuillan's face flamed, and his full attention shifted, for whatever reason, to Kendra. "You'd do well to think twice before you take up with Carmody again," he informed her. "He's no good."

Kendra couldn't speak, she was so galled by McQuillan's presumption. Who the h.e.l.l did the man think he was, talking to her like that?

"Shut up, Treat," Millie said dismissively. "All these good people are trying to enjoy their morning coffee or catch a quick breakfast. Why don't you let them?"

A terrible tension stretched taut across the whole cafe, like ma.s.sive rubber bands. The snap-back, if it happened, would be terrible.

Chair legs sc.r.a.ped against the floor as men in various parts of the room pushed back from tables, ready to intercede if the situation went any further south.

"All I wanted to do," McQuillan went on, as an ominous, antic.i.p.atory silence settled over the place, "was help Brylee forget about her broken heart. Dance with her a little, maybe buy her a drink." He pointed to his battered face with one index finger. "And this is what I got for my trouble."

Just then, Essie, the long-time owner of the b.u.t.ter Biscuit and a no-nonsense type to the crepe soles of her sensible shoes, trundled out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her ap.r.o.n and advancing until she stood opposite Treat McQuillan with only the counter between them. Her eyes, with their Cleopatra-style liner and shadow, were hot with temper.

"I've had just about enough out of you, Treat," she said, her voice ringing off every window and wall. "You behave yourself, or I'll call Boone and have you hauled out of here!"

McQuillan flushed a dangerous crimson. "You'll have to call Slade instead," he retorted bitterly, apropos of who-knew-what, "because he's filling in for Boone. Guess he didn't quite get being sheriff out of his system, old Slade."

"I'll call the d.a.m.n President, if I have to," Essie answered back, "and don't you sa.s.s me again, Treat McQuillan. I knew your mama."

I knew your mama.

Kendra almost smiled at the familiar phrase, in spite of the tinderbox climate in the b.u.t.ter Biscuit Cafe that sunny and otherwise beautiful late June morning. In Parable, the bonds of friendship and enmity both ran deep, intertwining like tree roots under an old-growth forest until they were hopelessly tangled.

"I knew your mama" was enough to shut most anybody up.

Sure enough, McQuillan subsided, spun around on his stool, stepped down and strode out of the cafe, looking neither to the right nor the left.

The chuckles and comments commenced as soon as the door closed behind him.

"I'm not sure that man is entirely sane," Essie observed, watching him go.

n.o.body disagreed.

Kendra ordered her latte and croissant, waited, paid for her purchase and left the restaurant, still feeling strangely shaken by the episode.

Walking back to the office, she got out her cell phone and speed-dialed Joslyn's number, hoping she wouldn't wake her friend up from a post-partum nap or something equally vital.

Joslyn answered on the first ring, though, sounding too chipper to have delivered a baby so recently or to be contemplating a nap. "Hi, Kendra," she said. "What's up?"

"I'm not sure," Kendra answered honestly. Why was she calling Joslyn?

Joslyn simply waited.

"I hear Slade is standing in for Boone," Kendra finally said, reaching her storefront and fumbling with her keys. "As sheriff, I mean." She was used to juggling purses and briefcases, cell phones and coffee, but her fingers seemed slippery this morning.

Joslyn replied cheerfully. "Boone's sons are coming for a visit, so he needed some time off to get his place ready. Slade offered to take over the job for a few days."

"Oh," Kendra said, opening the office door and practically fleeing inside. What was she going to say if Joslyn wanted to know why she'd bother to ask about something so clearly not her concern in the first place?

"Why do you ask?" Joslyn said, right on cue.

Kendra sighed, dropping her purse onto her desk, then setting down the coffee and the bag with the croissant inside, too. Even with those few extra seconds to think, she didn't come up with a plausible excuse for the inquiry.

The truth was going to have to do. "Deputy McQuillan was making a big fuss when I stopped in at the b.u.t.ter Biscuit a little while ago. Going on about how Walker Parrish a.s.saulted him last night and he's going to see that he's charged."

Joslyn sighed. "There was a little scuffle at the Boot Scoot last night, as I understand it," she said with just a touch of hesitation.

"And Hutch was involved," Kendra said.

"Indirectly," Joslyn confirmed.

"Not that it's any business of mine, what Hutch Carmody does." Kendra was speaking to herself then, more than Joslyn.

Joslyn gave a delighted little chuckle. "Except that you do seem a little worried," she observed. "Why don't you just admit, if only to me, your main BFF, that you still have a thing for the guy?"

"Because I don't have a thing for the guy.'"

"Right," Joslyn replied.

"I'm a mother now," Kendra prattled on, unable, for some weird reason, to stop herself. "I have a dog and a Volvo, and I need to make a life."

This time, Joslyn actually laughed. "All of which means-what, exactly? That you don't need a little romance in this life you're making? A little s.e.x, maybe?"

"s.e.x?" The word came out high-pitched, like a squeak. "Who said anything about s.e.x?"

"You did," Joslyn replied with good-humored certainty. "Oh, not in so many words. But you're feeling a little jealous, aren't you? Because you have some scenario in your head of Hutch defending Brylee's honor at the Boot Scoot Tavern?"

"I wouldn't call it...jealousy," Kendra finally replied, her tone tentative.

"Okay," Joslyn agreed sunnily. "What would you call it?"

"You're no help at all," Kendra accused, further deflated, but smiling now. Talking to Joslyn always made her feel better, even when nothing was really resolved.

"Let's do lunch in a couple of days," Joslyn said, "after Mom goes back to Santa Fe and things return to normal around here. Maybe Tara can join us."

Still feeling like an idiot, Kendra replied that she'd enjoy a girlfriend lunch, said goodbye and hung up.

She spent the morning noodling around on her computer, carefully avoiding the "Down With Hutch Carmody" webpage, along with the temptation to add a thing or two, and answered a grand total of two inquiries by phone.

By ten forty-five, she felt so restless that she set the business phone to forward any calls to her cell, locked up the office and drove out to Tara's chicken ranch, intending to pick up Daisy and go home. Madison still had a couple of hours to go at preschool, which she was starting to enjoy, and Kendra didn't want to disrupt the flow by taking her out early.

Tara was outside when Kendra pulled into her rutted dirt driveway, wearing red coveralls and wielding a shovel. Daisy and Lucy frolicked happily nearby, playing catch-tumble-roll with each other.

"Don't tell me," Tara chimed mischievously, approaching Kendra's car on the driver's side. "You're here to help me clean out the chicken coop! What a true friend you are, Kendra Shepherd."

Kendra laughed. "You wish," she said. It was a relief to stop thinking about Hutch Carmody and s.e.x for a while. They were two separate subjects, of course, but she hadn't been able untangle one from the other since her phone conversation with Joslyn.

"Then what are you doing here?" Tara asked, looking like half of "American Gothic," except young and pretty instead of severe.

"Can't I visit a friend?" Kendra bantered back, pushing open the door and stepping somewhat gingerly into the muck of the barnyard. She wished she'd swapped out her Manolos for a pair of gum boots before leaving town.

Not that she actually owned gum boots.

Tara laughed at Kendra's mincing steps, pointed out a relatively clean pathway nearby and paused to lean her shovel against the wall of the chicken coop before following Kendra toward the old farmhouse she'd been refurbishing over the past year.

The woman was the very personification of incongruity, to Kendra's mind, with her model's face and figure and those ridiculous coveralls.

They settled in chairs on Tara's porch, since the weather was so nice and the dogs seemed to be having such a fine time dashing around in the gra.s.s, two flashes of happy gold, busy being puppies.

Once seated, Tara nodded in the direction of Boone Taylor's place, which neighbored hers. "He's finally cleaning up over there," she said in a tone that struck Kendra as oddly pensive. "I wonder why."

CHAPTER NINE.

WHEN HUTCH ARRIVED at Boone's place that morning, he brought along plenty of tools, a truck with a hydraulic winch for heavy lifting and half a dozen ranch hands to help with the work. Opal followed in her tank of a station wagon, bucket-loads of potato salad and fried chicken and homemade biscuits stashed in the backseat.

Boone, standing bare-chested in his overgrown yard, plucked his T-shirt from the handle of a wheelbarrow where he'd left it earlier, now that he was in the presence of a lady.

Hutch grinned at the sight, and backed the truck up to a pile of old tires and got out.

Boone walked over to greet him, taking in the other trucks, the ranch hands and Opal's behemoth vehicle with a nod of his head. "You always were something of a show off, Carmody," he said.

"Go big or go home," Hutch answered lightly. "That's my motto."

"Along with make trouble wherever possible' and ride bulls at rodeos till you get your teeth knocked out'?" Boone gibed.

"Is there a law, Sheriff Andy Taylor, that says I can only have one motto?" Hutch retorted. The Maybury reference had been a running joke between them since the election results came in last November.

"Reckon not," Boone conceded, looking around at the unholy mess that was his property and turning serious. "I appreciate your help, old buddy," he said.

"Don't mention it," Hutch replied easily. "It's what friends do, that's all."

Boone nodded, looked away for a moment, cleared his throat. "What if Griff and Fletch get here and want to turn right around and head back to Missoula?" he asked, keeping his voice down so the ranch hands and Opal wouldn't overhear.

"One step at a time, Boone," Hutch reminded him. "Seems like the first thing on our agenda ought to be making sure the little guys don't get lost in all this tall gra.s.s."

Boone's chuckle was gruff. "I laid in plenty of beer," he said.

"Well," Hutch replied, heading around to the back of his pickup to haul out shovels and electric Weedwackers, "don't bring it out while Opal's around or we'll get a rousing sermon on the evils of alcohol, instead of all that good grub she was up half the night making."

Boone's chuckle was replaced by a gruff burst of laughter. "If she's brought any of her famous potato salad, she can preach all the sermons she wants," he answered, and went to greet the woman as she climbed out of her car and stood with her feet planted like she was putting down roots right there on the spot.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hutch watched as Boone leaned down to place a smacking kiss on Opal's forehead.

Pleased, she flushed a color she would have described as "plum" and pretended to look stern. "It's about time you got your act together, Boone Taylor," she scolded. Right away, her gaze found the toilet with the flowers growing out of the bowl and her eyes widened in horrified disapproval. "That commode," she announced, "has got to go."

She summoned two of the ranch hands and ordered them to remove the offending lawn ornament immediately. Two others were dispatched to carry the food and cleaning supplies she'd brought into Boone's disreputable trailer.

"If it isn't just like a man to put a toilet in his front yard," she muttered, shaking her head as she followed her willing lackeys toward the sagging front porch. "What's wrong with one of those cute little gnomes, for pity's sake, or a big flower that turns when the wind blows?"

"Does she always talk to herself like that?" Boone asked, helping himself to a Weedwacker from the back of Hutch's pickup.

"In my limited experience," Hutch responded, reaching for a plastic gas can to fill the tank on the lawnmower, "yes."

The next few hours were spent whacking weeds, and the result was to reveal a lot more rusty junk, numerous broken bottles and the carca.s.s of a gopher that must have died of old age around the time Montana achieved statehood.

Opal occasionally appeared on the stooped porch, shaking out her ap.r.o.n, resting her hands on her hips and demanding to know how any reasonable person could live in a place like that.

"She thinks you're reasonable," Hutch commented to Boone, who was working beside him, hefting debris into the backs of the several trucks to be hauled away.

"Imagine that." Boone frowned, shaking his head in puzzlement. He'd worked up a sweat, like the rest of them, and his T-shirt stuck to his chest and back in big wet splotches.

"And don't think I didn't notice all that beer in the fridge!" Opal called out, to all and sundry, before turning and grumbling her way back inside that sorry old trailer to fight on in her private war against dust, dirt and disarray of all kinds.

"Beer," one of the ranch hands groaned, his voice full of comical longing. "I could sure use one-or ten-right about now."

Later on, when the sun was high and all their bellies were rumbling, Opal appeared on the porch again and announced that the kitchen was finally fit to serve food in, and the thought of her cooking rallied the troops to trail inside, take turns washing up at the sink and fill plates, buffet style, at the table.

The ranch hands each sneaked a can of beer from the fridge-Opal turned a blind eye to those particular proceedings-and wandered outside to eat in the shade of the trees.

Opal sat at the table in the middle of Boone's freshly scrubbed kitchen, and Boone and Hutch joined her.

"You're a miracle worker," Boone told her, looking around. The place was still scuffed and worn, just this side of being condemned by some government agency, but all the surfaces appeared to be clean.

"And you've been without a woman for way too long," Opal retorted, with her trademark combination of gruffness and relentless affection.