Dog Gone Lies (Pacheco & Chino Mysteries Book 1) (29 page)

Everyone took a sip of whatever they were drinking.

“Hey, maybe that should be Pacheco, Parker, and Chino, PIs—what do you think, Jack?”

“Well, not sure about that, but why not Pacheco, Lewis, and Chino—right, Sue?”

Sue looked embarrassed. She didn’t want to have this conversation.

“I think we’re all important to the success of our business. The name doesn’t matter that much. But we need Sue as much as anyone. This is no doubt the wrong time and the wrong place, but I can’t help it—this has been on my mind for hours. I have struggled with this issue about what is right and what is wrong—and I have made up my mind.”

Everyone was looking at Ray, clearly confused. He had changed the mood, and they didn’t know why or what he was talking about.

“Sue, I don’t want you to just live here. I wasn’t honest when I said I wanted you to live here with me—that’s not what it is at all. Sue Lewis, will you marry me?”

Nobody had seen that coming, especially Sue. She looked stunned, not happy. Ray had just dropped a bombshell—not a smart thing to do in front of your buddies, surprise your lady by asking her to marry you.

“I don’t want you to be my roommate, I want you to be my wife.”

Sue ran out the door without saying anything. Ray still didn’t know how he had screwed up. He’d been driving all day and he’d realized that he wasn’t comfortable with Sue just living with him. He knew it was silly, but that’s how it was—he wanted to get married. He wanted her to make the same commitment to him that he wanted to make to her. He had no desire to have an affair or a live-in mistress. Ray was tired of not being married and she was the person he wanted to be with. It started to dawn on Ray that he hadn’t said all of the things he should have said—and it hit him hard when he realized he had just popped the question without any warning and had done it in front of Tyee and Big Jack. It became very clear to Ray that he was one big dumbass son-of-a-bitch. How could he be so smart at some things and so stupid at others?

“Ray, I think you better go find her.” Tyee said this as gently as he could—he really wanted to scream it at Ray. Ray seemed to have shocked himself and now didn’t know what to do.

He ran out the front door. Her car was gone. Oh, crap. What had he done? Then he noticed it was parked down the old road a ways. He started running. Ray got almost to the car and tripped. Mr. Prince Charming took a nasty fall. He hit the rocky ground pretty hard, scraped both hands and bruised his chin. After he stopped moving he sat up. If he hadn’t been such a proud old fart he would’ve started crying. What more could possibly go wrong?

Sue walked up to him. She had obviously been crying.

“Are you okay, Ray?”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what—being the nicest man in the world? Just because you didn’t think about how I would react isn’t bad, Ray. You said what you felt—right there in front of god and everybody. My answer is yes—I would be proud to marry you.”

She fell into his harms and they tumbled over backwards and started laughing—maybe it was a mixture of laughing and crying.

Fishing

They decided they would be married in two weeks. The ceremony would only be for a few people, and it would be at the cabin. When Ray called his son and told him he was getting married, Michael reacted angrily. Ray said it didn’t matter, but Sue knew that it did. Sue had history and family, but she wasn’t inviting anyone who would actually come from that distant world. She would let a few people know from her family, but only if she was sure they wouldn’t attend. She didn’t want anyone from her past to interfere with her joy.

Ray, Tyee, and Big Jack met and decided on the construction plans for the new office and living quarters. The contractor said he could start in a week. They also discussed new security measures for the area around the office building. The plan involved installing cameras along the perimeter of the property.

Big Jack and Chester had established a working relationship that had Chester doing everything and Big Jack supervising—surprisingly this seemed agreeable to both parties. Big Jack’s ankle was getting better, and he’d gone on a diet that still seemed to involve large quantities of beer.

“Ray, I know this doesn’t make much sense considering that at some level I’m probably still hiding from some people—but I’ve decided to run for the mayor’s job. Can I count on your endorsement?”

“Hell yes, you can. I think this is great Jack. We need to get Tyee going on putting together a campaign strategy. When’s the election?”

“They haven’t picked the date yet, but it’ll be at least six months so we have plenty of time. You know, I don’t want to get to sentimental here, but this is the first time I’ve felt like I belonged somewhere.”

“I know the feeling, Big Jack.”

Ray wondered if it was wise for Big Jack to run for the mayor’s position. On the other hand, the risks seemed small. The FBI had done what they said and provided Jack Parker with all of the necessary documents to establish his new identity. It was very unlikely that anyone was even looking for the long gone Philip.

Tyee was meeting Ray at Big Jack’s today to go over some last minute pointers before the big fishing tournament on the weekend. The El Paso paper even ran a story in the sports section about the Elephant Butte fishing event. They were predicting large crowds. Ray was still very unsure why he was doing this—so much had changed since he’d agreed. He now had a construction project to oversee and a wedding to plan. Of course, he knew all of that was just an excuse. What really bothered him was that he didn’t want to be embarrassed—by catching no fish at all.

Big Jack had given Ray a cap and vest for the event. As Ray’s sponsor, the cap and vest had Big Jack’s store’s name “Jack’s Bait, Boats, and Beer” plastered all over. It was gaudy—maybe even ugly—but very visible. Big Jack was the organizer of the fishing tournament and no doubt there was some kind of conflict of interest in also being a sponsor, but Ray was pretty sure no one would care.

As the weekend drew closer, experienced-looking fishermen started to show up at Big Jack’s store to register. Big Jack said it looked like they were going to have their largest number of contestants ever. That made Big Jack happy and Ray nervous.

Sue had advised Ray to turn off his macho competitive nature and just enjoy himself. What possible difference could it make if he won or not—or if he even caught a fish? Ray knew she was right, but the male competitive juices were hard to control.

“Ray, I have some lures I want to show you. Based on the temperature reports for this weekend, I was thinking we might try something a little different.”

“Tyee, why don’t I give you the cap and vest and you fish. Nobody will have to know it’s not me. You like to fish, so it’ll be fun for you, right?”

“This is getting a little tiresome, Ray. Why are you so nervous?”

“I really don’t know. But all of these guys showing up—have you seen them? There was one guy yesterday who must have had twenty sponsors all over his boat and his vest—looked like a NASCAR driver.”

“Trust me, Ray—these guys don’t know any more than we do—and if you’ll listen to me and do what I say, you’ll have the edge. Those are the same guys I beat three years in a row, remember?”

Ray grudgingly shut up and listened to what Tyee was trying to tell him.

There had been several election events scheduled for the week, but after Martinez was arrested he was officially removed from the ballot so Deputy Clayton was running unopposed. Turnout didn’t matter any longer—he would soon be the sheriff of Sierra County. Everyone seemed pleased. Even most of the Mayor’s old supporters were now claiming that they’d been in favor of Clayton all along.

After the mayor resigned he more or less disappeared. He put his house on the market and most people believed he had gone to Las Cruces to stay with his brother, a chili farmer in Hatch. Ray suspected that the mayor wouldn’t be back—he had trampled on too many people with his mayoral power and had few real friends.

The opening day of the tournament was a cloudless, beautiful morning. Ray was still nervous but with all of the badgering by Sue and Tyee, he’d decided he would just enjoy the experience and stop worrying about embarrassing himself. Once he relaxed, he started to mingle more with the experienced fishermen. This was an interesting group, from full time pros to amateurs whose real jobs included a judge, a couple of doctors, and several schoolteachers. Ray started to enjoy their company and realized he’d been silly to have been so nervous. Almost immediately, people were giving him advice and tips—while it was technically a competition, for most of the participants it was just fun.

Ray’s first day wasn’t a disaster. While he didn’t catch anything to keep, following Tyee’s directions of releasing anything that wasn’t large enough to be considered for the trophy, he did catch fish. He started to wonder if Tyee was right to have Ray going only for the largest fish caught, but he stuck with the plan.

Also according to Tyee’s instructions, he stayed in one place. This didn’t seem right to Ray. He thought it made more sense to move around and look for that perfect spot. Tyee had said no to that. He had to stay in one place—there were plenty of fish all over the lake, so moving would just waste time and fuel. Tyee had become very bossy in the last few days before the tournament.

“Tyee, I did exactly what you told me to do today, and I don’t have a fish.”

They were sitting on Ray’s cabin porch enjoying a beer.

“You’re doing fine, Ray. Just keep doing the same thing tomorrow. You may not catch the biggest fish—remember no matter what anybody says, there is an element of luck involved—but on the other hand, you may. If you do it the way you want to it’ll
feel
busy but you’ll lessen your chances of winning.”

“I don’t remember you being so smug before.”

“Probably you weren’t listening.”

Sue came out and put in her two cents.

“Boys, please don’t fight—it upsets the womenfolk.”

They laughed and said they sure the hell didn’t want to upset the womenfolk.

Happy had noticeably improved over the last few days. The swelling was gone and he was walking normally. He was out in the yard chasing imaginary critters of some sort.

The contractor had moved material for the remodel into the yard, and it was beginning to accumulate a very large pile of various materials along the side of the outbuilding. They had approved the plans, and Ray was excited to see the completed project.

Sue had given notice on the house she was renting and had moved most of her belongings into the cabin. The transition to marriage was looking like it was going to be very smooth. Ray fretted a little over his son’s reaction. The conversation had been very strained, and they never really talked much about who he was going to marry. Ray could imagine that Michael would be even less pleased if he knew it was someone almost twenty years younger than Ray—a lot closer to Michael’s age than Ray’s. None of that mattered to Ray at the moment. He had given thought to how difficult this could be for Sue in ten or fifteen years, but he wasn’t going to give up years of happiness to protect her from the inevitable. He wanted to make sure the next however many years made Sue happy.

Sue had insisted that Ray know her history before they were married. He’d said it was unnecessary, but she told her story anyway.

“First, Ray, you need to know I have been married, twice. The first was mostly of no consequence. We were way too young and more than anything else I think we got married because we were bored. It lasted a little more than a year. His name was Allen, and I haven’t seen or heard from him in twenty plus years. The second marriage was more serious. After my first divorce, I won a scholarship to go to a college in New York. I won it writing an essay on the importance of education. It was mostly BS, but I still I won. It wasn’t a full scholarship, and my family didn’t have the money to kick in any help, so I decided it was stupid of me to pile up a bunch of debt going to college. Even though I’d more or less decided I wouldn’t go, they invited me to an orientation meeting at the school. I went and fell in love.”

“Sounds pretty romantic.”

“It was. Now don’t go and get weird on me. I love you, Ray—this is something that happened a long time ago, so just listen.”

Ray nodded. He wasn’t real sure he wanted to hear any of this.

“He was an Assistant Dean. A little older than I was, but not much. He was absolutely gorgeous, and we were immediately attracted to one another. What followed was a whirlwind romance. We married and I moved to the university. Since I was now an employee’s spouse, I could go to school for almost nothing—with the scholarship money, I had it covered. Our life centered on the school and time seemed to fly by. I got my bachelor’s degree in three years. I had no job plans and was basically going to school because I could—so I entered a medical program. About three years later I had all of the requirements to be a physician’s assistant.”

“Things weren’t working out as well for my husband, Ken was his name. He hadn’t progressed as fast as he thought he should and had made some enemies in the school administrative ranks with his constant criticism of how they ran things. So I got my degree and he got fired. He was totally taken by surprise. To get to the point, he couldn’t find another job. He looked everywhere, sending out hundreds of resumes. He thought he was being blackballed by the school’s administrators, and maybe he was. To help us out, I took a job in New York City with a local doctor’s group. The money was very good and we found a small place to live. Ken began to drink. He got into arguments with everybody—the landlord, the postman—anybody he saw. Then he started accusing me of having affairs. He just became unreasonable. One night he got so angry at me, he hit me.”