A Wild Red Rose (12 page)

Clint introduced her to the Queen of the Barrel-Racers, Norma Jean Scruggs—older than Renee, he said, and still at the top of her game. Obviously, he and the long-legged, big-busted, black-haired and strikingly blue-eyed Norma Jean had shared some “good times”, but as Clint never asked Renee about her past exploits, she gave him the same courtesy. Still she found herself digging her claws into his arm as if he’d ditch her for the barrel-racer any second, and she had to hang onto him. He winced a little and removed her hand.

Norma Jean gifted Clint with a parting squeeze to her ample and probably real bosom, cautioning, “Don’t get yourself killed now. Renee, he’s a good ’un. If you get tired of him, just send him on over to the Cactus Blossom. That’s my rig.”

“Not-a-chance,” Renee answered with great emphasis.

“Didn’t think so. Break a leg, Clint.”

That might have been a show biz term for good luck, but during Frontier Days, the possibility remained very real. The rodeo boasted a slate of forty of the biggest, meanest, toughest bulls to be had. Once the bull riding started, Clint routinely returned to the trailer covered with bruises. On the second day of the event, one bullfighter broke an arm, or had it broken for him by a ton and a half of bull.

Renee sat in the stands whenever Clint worked in the ring. She’d never tell him how often her breath caught when he threw himself at one of the monstrous animals or beat another in a race to the boards by inches. She’d never admit being glad this was his last year of bullfighting. When Frontier Days ended its nine day run, she packed with great relief ready to return to the nice, safe small venues where Clint spent more time signing autographs than he did fighting bulls. They were stowing all the loose items and preparing to go on the road when a man rapped on the door of The Tin Can.

“Clint, glad I caught you. Someone’s on the phone in the office. You got a Renee Hayes traveling with you?”

“I’m Renee,” she answered as she folded up the bed.

“Go in that entrance right there. I’ll be along shortly, ma’am.”

Wondering why anyone bothered to call now after she’d been gone for nearly two months, Renee started off across the vast lot. Clint detained her guide.

“You have any idea what’s going on? Should I go with her?”

“Well, I don’t know, Clint. When a woman’s daddy calls, it usually means trouble.”

Clint finished the packing and moved their vehicles close to the entry where Renee had disappeared. He found the office and Renee with a face turned pale around her freckles. Still on the phone, she took down notes on a piece of paper. “I’ll get there somehow,” she said before hanging up.

“What’s the matter, Tiger?”

“My mother is dead. She drowned in the pool. Probably drunk. The maid found her when she came in this morning. Dad was off at a charity golf tournament all weekend and stayed over to do some fishing. They think she fell in sometime Sunday afternoon. The funeral is on Wednesday. They want me to come.”

“Sorry for your loss,” murmured the office manager.

“Thank you, we weren’t close. Daddy is going to have a ticket waiting at the Cheyenne airport along with a FAX of my passport since my license has gone missing. Clint, would you drive me over there?”

“If I can leave The Tin Can parked here for a while, I’m coming with you. I don’t want you to face this alone, Renee.”

“That would make a nice change, not having to face everything alone. Let’s go.”

Renee pressed her face against the glass of the Nelle’s side window as they drove to the airport. “I wonder if I’ll end up that way—dead over a day and found by a maid or a gardener.”

“You aren’t a drunk like your mother. You aren’t the same.” Clint glanced over, his blue eyes full of pity. She couldn’t stand that.

“Really? I dealt with my problems by using sex. She used liquor. Not much difference. I can’t cry for her, Clint. My mother married for security, not to have kids. When I was a child, she wanted me to be a pretty in pink kind of girl. I wasn’t. I liked to ride and spend time in the barns. I’d get filthy following my Cousin Rusty around. When I didn’t measure up, she gave me to Uncle Dewey. My sister Cathy was worse than me, but she grew up to be captain of the Mt. Carmel softball team, state champs. She’s happily married, has kids of her own. Cathy will die surrounded by family.”

“Because you protected her. Does she know?” Clint asked.

“I don’t think so. We were close until I went to Paris. Since then, I’ve felt alone. I had a clique of friends, a new guy every weekend, Bodey Landrum for a while. I guess you knew that.”

Clint nodded.

“Sorority sisters, two husbands, but I was always alone with what I knew.”

“Not now, Tiger. When we get to Rainbow, you be sure to introduce me to your Uncle Dewey.”

Chapter Eleven

Clint took a seat next to Bodey Landrum and Eve, directly behind the family in St. Leo’s church. Bodey wore a black suit, dark gray shirt, a bolo tie held in place with a big chunk of turquoise, a business black Stetson and plain black boots. Eve had chosen a simple dress, also black, and a little tight in the bust because she still nursed her baby. Her only accessories were a sterling silver cross on a silk cord and a velvet bow holding back her white-blonde hair. Clint still marveled after knowing Bodey for years and the kind of women he hung with, that the King of the Bull Riders had ended up with this stunning but quietly religious woman. Renee was more Bodey’s type, or had been. He didn’t like that thought.

As for himself, he had retrieved a tailored suit of deep navy blue and a white dress shirt from Bodey’s closet. Clint’s striped silk tie, a power tie, had been a gift from his father. He wore no hat, and his shoes were shiny black oxfords. Renee turned to stare when he sat down beside her and raised her eyebrows. He guessed she’d expected him to show up in jeans.

Renee looked wonderful, considering the event, with her simple haircut and less makeup than she’d been wearing when they first met. Still, she’d gotten hold of some gunk to cover her freckles, and the deep red silk tank she wore under a tailored dark suit jacket dipped a little low for a church occasion. She, too, wore a cross, but hers was large and golden and a little gaudy with gems, probably real, not costume. The thing, big enough to ward off vampires, filled the space between her neck and cleavage, a very sexy symbol of piety.

Clint had helped her dress, trying to tug up the rear zipper of the slim skirt matching the jacket. The gadget wouldn’t close, so he’d just told her it was closed. After all, the jacket would cover the gap. He wasn’t given a say about her jewelry before he went off to claim his suit at the Landrum mansion, but she told him an artist in San Francisco gave her the cross as a parting gift because he owed her big bucks for being his model. He believed her.

The first row of St. Leo’s Church overflowed with members of the Niles family. Jed Niles, the widower, sat next to Renee hemmed in by her slim, athletic sister, Cathy, Cathy’s husband, and two antsy young nephews. Her Uncle Ted Niles and his lively, fiftyish bride, Mona, came next, then Rusty and his curly-haired wife, Noreen, holding their squirming toddler, Katie. Jesse, their son, old enough to be somber and well-behaved, sat across the aisle with the deceased’s niece, Chelsea, in her twenties, fair, frail, and beruffled even in black. A small, blonde woman of middle age referred to by Renee as Ex-Aunt Anna stayed close by Chelsea, a hand placed on her daughter’s arm. Uncle Dewey had not put in an appearance.

Two elderly nuns on their knees in another pew prayed privately before the service began. Clint remembered meeting them at Rainbow Liquor and Groceries just before this adventure began, but couldn’t recall their names. They gave him a friendly nod after easing themselves up painfully from the kneeler when the music began.

The casket of reddish mahogany, draped in a blanket of pale, pink roses as if it were a winning racehorse, sat in front of the altar rail. Fr. Brian, a young priest with a gentle manner, new to St. Leo’s and innocent of knowledge of the Niles family, stuck to the ritual, promising an eternal and happier life for the departed. If he noticed there were no wet eyes in a congregation made up mostly of Jed’s business acquaintances and neighbors from Red Horse Acres, he gave no sign.

Knowing the circumstances of the death, he kept his eulogy brief and emphasized God’s eternal compassion for the weakness of mortals, whom only He could judge and forgive. Stepping down from the lectern, the priest blessed the coffin with holy water. The pallbearers came forward to take Prudence Niles on her final journey to the spot prepared in the graveyard behind the church.

By the time the family reached the freshly dug hole under the canopy, most of the neighbors and businessmen had taken to their cars and headed for the funeral feast. Catered by Le Rosier Courville and sure to be good, food awaited for the grieving at Tara-on-the-Bayou. Mrs. Parker came from the back of the church and offered to take the restless children over to the house for some refreshments. Renee turned her back on the woman who screwed her father, but Cathy and Noreen gladly handed over the kids. Jesse made a token protest about staying while Great-Aunt Pru got put in the ground, but, stomach growling, gave in to a promise of punch and little sandwiches. Cathy’s husband thought he might ride along, too, if his wife did not mind.

Only the immediate kin, Clint, the Landrums, and the two old nuns took seats on the folding chairs for the last of the rites. Under the shade of the canopy, sweat rolled off the mourners as the morning heated up. The whirr of insects in the grass drowned out the words of the soft-spoken priest. As the coffin lowered, the funeral director handed out long-stemmed pink roses matching those on the casket and urged the family to come forward, pitch the flowers into the grave, and say a last prayer if they wished. Whether they wanted to or not, all felt obligated to accept a rose.

As Renee dropped her rose into the grave and bowed her head briefly, a loud voice called from the rear of the line, “Here I am, Pru’s beloved Brother Dewey. Made it in just time to say good-bye to Sis.”

Renee turned so suddenly clods of dirt came loose from the edge of the hole, and she swayed toward the grave. Clint vaulted over a row of folding chairs, grabbed her elbow, and steadied her, as lightning quick as he would have been in the bullring.

Ex-Aunt Anna placed her small self in front of a suddenly pale Cousin Chelsea, but Dewey didn’t appear to notice. He snatched a rose from the undertaker and continued to blunder forward, leaving fumes of whiskey in his wake. Dewey tossed the rose stem first as if he played darts in a bar.

“We had some good times, Pru. Good times. I’ll never forget how close we were. Hey, Renee, baby, give your Uncle Dewey a consoling hug.”

The scrawny man, his gray comb-over flapping in the light breeze, held his arms open wide and advanced on Renee. He had deep lines etched in his face by alcohol, cigarettes, and sin. Renee retreated, treading on Clint’s toes. Clint placed himself between her and Uncle Dewey, not as big, not as fierce, but every bit as monstrous as the bulls he faced each weekend. Clint grabbed the elbow of the man’s soiled white suit and turned him toward a nearby iron gate in the fence separating St. Leo’s cemetery from that belonging to the nuns of Mt. Carmel.

“You and I are going to have a talk way over there while the rest of these good people finish saying good-bye.” Clint marched Dewey toward the gate.

“Do I know you? Who are you to get between me and my niece?”

“I’m Clinton O. Beck, and I fight nasty animals like you.”

The smaller man began to struggle, trying to slip out of his jacket, but Clint had him by the neck now. They kept on moving through the gate and past ancient tombstones toward a large monument, ornate with columns and topped by an angel—big enough to block the sight of what Clint intended to do from the mourners. He lifted Dewey over a low wrought iron fence decorated with willows and lambs and bashed him face first against the side of the crypt. Little flakes of whitewash built up over the years fell away like snow in August.

“You with vice? Look, we can cut a deal,” Dewey begged, tasting the blood from his split lip.

“I love Renee, and I know what you did to her.” Clint turned the man and held him by a lapel as he drew back a fist and plowed it into Dewey’s corrupt face. The lapel came lose. The man on the other end of that fist flew through the air and landed on his backside near a small marker where a child lay buried. Dewey scrambled to get up and run, but tripped over the tiny tombstone. Clint’s arm jerked him back behind the sepulcher.

Over in St. Leo’s cemetery, the priest said the final words of burial, but all eyes turned toward the big tomb on the other side of the fence.

“My God, that cowboy you brought home is beating up Dewey at his own sister’s funeral. I’ve about had it with your men, Renee,” Jed Niles told his eldest daughter. “Now I’ll have to go over there and stop that.”

“No, don’t go!” Renee hung on her father’s arm.

Jed Niles, tall and heavy from living a prosperous, well-fed life, shook his daughter off. His well-groomed white hair fell across his sweating forehead, and he wiped his red face and wet hands with a linen pocket square before starting toward the nun’s cemetery.

“Jesus, Renee, must you always be the drama queen, even at mom’s funeral? Why did you bring your latest man toy, anyhow? Have you no respect?” her sister, Cathy sniped.

“I’ll take care of it, Jed,” Bodey Landrum intervened. “But if Clint Beck is beating a man up, he probably deserves it.”

Bodey overtook and passed Jed Niles at the gate. Eve Landrum started after her husband and called out, “Bodey Landrum, remember this is not a barroom brawl, but a sacred rite.”

Renee ran after her father, followed by everyone else at the gravesite except the funeral director and the astounded priest. Even the creaking old nuns hot-footed with their canes across the cemetery.

“Hurry, Nessy, hurry. I feel our presence is needed,” white-haired Sr. Helen urged as she wobbled along.

The priest shook his head and said to the funeral director, “I’ve seen things like this happen at wedding receptions, but never funerals. Of course, I haven’t been in Cajun country very long. Should I intervene?”