Love Mercy (5 page)

Mel swallowed over the painful lump in her throat, not trusting herself to answer. He looked like the pictures she’d seen of concentration camp survivors, all bones and staring fish eyes. The smell of death in the room had been sweet and lingering, like unchanged water in a flower vase.

She climbed into her muddy white truck and started the engine. It coughed a few times, then settled into its normal low growl. The streets were fairly empty on her drive through town toward Highway 1. The turnoff to the Johnson and Ramsey-Ortiz ranches was about halfway between Morro Bay and San Celina. She flipped the heater to high, attempting to warm up the truck cab, but the weather stripping around the windows had deteriorated. A cold draft always whistled down the side of her neck.

She turned off the highway onto Breyer Ranch Road, named for a family who hadn’t ranched in San Celina County for fifty years. A late, lingering tule fog hovered three feet off the ground, making it feel like she was driving through that artificial dry-ice smoke many second-rate Vegas magicians used to punch up their magic acts. Tule fog always reminded her of her father, a person she tried to think about as little as possible. A winter-lean squirrel dashed in front of her truck, causing her to brake suddenly, cursing under her breath.

In a few minutes, she passed by the mailbox and long, narrow road that led to August and Polly’s ranch. She’d drop by after her lesson with Benni, check on whether they needed any groceries or chores done, her regular Tuesday and Thursday routine. Brad and Evan were covering her afternoon shift at the feed store, like they had since she started helping August and Polly under the pretense of wanting to learn about ranching. The Johnsons paid her minimum wage or sometimes with tomatoes, peppers and squash from Polly’s garden. Polly never caught on that Mel was working for them at Love’s request.

“Polly and August are typical old-time ranchers,” Love told Mel four months ago, when she first asked for Mel’s help. “They don’t want anyone to know they need assistance.” Like many small ranchers, they were land rich but cash poor. “I can get away with checking on them two or three times a week, then they start telling me nicely to mind my own business. If I told them you need the work, they’d feel like they were helping
you
out.”

“I’ll do it for free,” Mel had said.

“I know you would,” Love said, squeezing her shoulder. “But they would feel like that’s charity. August is getting up there in age and isn’t as strong as he used to be. Rocky says he’s noticed it too when he’s gone out to visit them.”

So Mel started going out there Tuesday and Thursday afternoons after her riding lesson with Benni. She’d show August what she’d learned by exercising their two horses, Duke and Daisy. Polly usually had some sort of little chore that she needed done. She’d pay Mel in cash, pressing the soft, old bills into her hand and telling her with a gentle laugh not to spend it all in one place. Mel had saved every penny they paid her, keeping it in a blue Maxwell House coffee can in her cupboard. A stupid hiding place. A burglar with the IQ of a banana slug would find it in twenty seconds. Right now there was 241 dollars. Mel didn’t know what to do with the money. It embarrassed her to take money from Polly. She couldn’t imagine spending it.

So Mel saw them two days a week, and Love found an excuse to drop by Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Since Polly and August faithfully attended Rocky’s church every Sunday, that only left Saturday when someone wasn’t checking on them. Love always found some reason to phone on Saturdays. The plan was working, for now.

Mel worked hard at pretending she wanted to learn ranching, though she couldn’t imagine anything she’d less want to do. She was a born and raised city girl, a native Las Vegan. Though she loved the quiet, ordinary pattern of Morro Bay town life, ranching and its never-ending chores didn’t appeal to her. She liked doing a job and walking away, preferring someone else shoulder the responsibility of the larger issues. That’s what she’d liked about patrol work. She did her ten-hour shift, wrote her reports, then, along with the patrol car, turned the whole thing over to the next officer. Unlike a lot of cops, advancing into detective work had never tempted her. She had no desire to delve deeper into victims’ lives or to take her work home. Get in, take care of business and get out. That’s what had been so perfect about being a street cop. No long-term relationships.

She helped the Johnsons as a favor to Cy and Love, to whom she owed a huge debt for taking her in, though she knew they’d protest that. When she drove into Morro Bay almost three years earlier, she had a desperate agenda that she was sure Cy and Love had eventually guessed, though they never asked her outright about why she came to this town in particular. Their innate kindness and respect for a person’s privacy was, she felt sure, what kept them from asking personal questions about her past.

She turned at the long driveway that led to the Ramsey-Ortiz ranch, driving under the wrought-iron archway. In the distance she could see the low, one-story ranch house with the deep front porch. A cheery Christmas flag showing a Nativity scene hung from one of the porch’s pillars. When she pulled her truck around the circular driveway and parked in front of the house, Benni’s white-haired grandmother, Dove, stepped out on the porch.

“Hey there, missy,” she called, as Mel opened her truck door. Her eighty-seven-year-old face was a road map of deep wrinkles, the result of too many unprotected years in the sun. “Before you leave, I have some pumpkin bread for y’all.” She made her way slowly down the three porch steps, using her four-pronged cane that was painted with bright red, yellow and green stripes, like a psychedelic barber pole. Her long, waist-length braid flicked like a mare’s tail.

“Great,” Mel said, coming around the truck to accept the older woman’s embrace. Though Mel was not a demonstrative person, she learned the first time they met that there was no use trying to dodge Dove’s enthusiastic hugs. They were as much as part of her as her Arkansas roots. “I love pumpkin bread.”

“
USA Today
claimed there was a shortage of pumpkins back East this year,” Dove said. “Some kind of fungus. Apparently it galloped right past us without stopping, because I have enough pumpkins for ten families.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mel said.

“How’s things in Morro Bay? You keeping those Rice boys on the straight and narrow?”

“Trying to,” Mel said, smiling at Dove, who had bent down to pull some weeds that had dared to stray into her pristine flower beds.

After Cy died thirteen months ago, unable to manage the feed store and help Magnolia with the café, Love sold the feed store to Bill Rice, a millionaire farmer down in Santa Maria. He bought the business for his twentysomething grandsons, Brad and Evan. He renamed it B & E Feed, hoping to instill in them some pride of ownership. Bill asked Mel to stay on, take care of the books and work the counter full-time. He liked how she organized and kept track of the store stock. He decreed that the feed deliveries and heavy lifting be done by Brad and Evan, confessing to Mel that he hoped the physical labor would knock some of the wildness out of the boys, who preferred to spend their time surfing, checking out girls and partying.

Though they were both as flaky as bales of timothy hay, Mel liked the young men, calling them Bert and Ernie or the Muppet Brothers right to their faces, which only made them laugh. They were nice enough guys, especially for growing up so privileged. She understood that Bill had tacitly hired her as an expensive babysitter. She and the boys had an agreement. She’d cover for them when they had hangovers, and they’d pay her double time under the table from their generous trust funds. Because of their little deal, which she suspected their indulgent grandpa was all too aware of, she made enough money to meet her simple needs. And Bill made sure she was covered on his company’s health insurance plan. It was a fair exchange.

“Benni’s out in the corral,” Dove said, sticking the handful of weeds into a plastic grocery sack she pulled from her flowered apron pocket. “Maisie’s practicing barrels. She had to change her lessons from Wednesdays to Thursdays because she’s taking some kind of special math class or something. She’s real good with numbers, Benni says.”

“Maisie?”

Dove cocked her head, squinting into the sun. “Maisie Hudson. Guess you two haven’t crossed paths. Benni’s giving her barrel racing lessons. Her daddy’s a deputy sheriff, old friend of the family. He’s kind of a smart mouth, but he grows on you. He works cold cases.”

“Oh,” Mel said, not particularly interested.

Since she’d left the force three years ago, her old life as a cop mostly seemed like a television show she’d watched as a child, familiar in a vague sort of way. Benni’s husband, Gabe, a retired police chief who now taught a couple of philosophy and criminal justice classes at Cal Poly, seemed to understand that better than anyone. Whenever they met at a barbecue or when he’d come to buy feed, they’d talk about ranching, the weather, the price of cattle, how the Dodgers were doing. Never about their former law enforcement careers.

“Guess I should get out to the barn,” Mel said.

“Don’t forget that pumpkin bread before you leave,” Dove called after her. “Otherwise I’ll have to throw it to the pigs.”

“You don’t have pigs,” Mel called back.

“You are one sharp snickerdoodle,” Dove replied, giving a loud cackle.

Out in the corral next to the barn, Benni sat up on the top rail with her dusty boots dangling, watching a copper-haired girl in her late teens canter a gray mare around three blue-striped barrels set in a triangular pattern.

“What’s up?” Mel said, joining Benni up on the railing.

“Hey,” Benni said, turning to look at her. Her long, red blonde hair was pulled back in a braid almost as long as her grandmother’s and dangled through the back of a bright green San Celina Farm Supply cap. “Maisie’s almost done. She had to change practice days.”

“Yeah, Dove told me.”

“Good run,” Benni called out to the smiling teenage girl, who held up a hand in reply. “Want me to time you?”

The girl nodded and trotted the horse to one end of the corral. When she got the mare calm and situated, she waved at Benni.

“Okay,” Benni called. “Go!” She punched the stopwatch button.

The teenage girl raced around the barrels, hugging her horse’s sides with her long, jean-clad legs. It amazed Mel that she stayed in the saddle as the horse flew around the barrels in a cloverleaf pattern. The girl circled the last barrel and raced down the middle of the arena. Benni clicked the stopwatch.

“Twenty-three seconds. Good run!” she called. “You’re getting there. Cool off Shoney while Mel and I tack up Redeye.” She jumped down off the fence. Mel followed suit.

“So, how’s things at the feed store?” Benni asked, her sun-freckled face smiling up at Mel.

Mel smiled back, still a little amazed that she actually looked forward to talking with Benni. The first time they met at one of August and Polly’s barbecues, Mel was certain she wouldn’t like this woman whose tiny, narrow-hipped body never seemed to stop moving and whose upbeat, talkative personality was the type that would normally set Mel’s teeth on edge. But it only took ten minutes for her to discover the kind heart behind Benni’s cheery personality and the sharp, often bawdy sense of humor that Mel recognized came from spending so much time around cops and ranchers.

“You know Bert and Ernie,” Mel said. “They’re a couple of flakes . . . but, as they say, they’re my flakes.”

“They’ll straighten out,” Benni said, laughing. “You know Gabe’s son, Sam? Gabe and Lydia, Sam’s mom, despaired of him at times, but he eventually grew up and became a responsible adult. Though Gabe still teases Sam about where he went wrong since Sam decided to join the fire department.”

“I can imagine,” Mel said.

They walked into the cool, dim barn where Redeye, the dark red gelding that Mel had been riding for the last few months, stuck his head over his stall door.

“Hey, Red,” Mel said, gently rubbing her knuckles over the horse’s nose. He blew warm, moist air in reply.

Benni glanced at her watch. “I have to go in and take a roast pan out of the oven for Dove. Her arm’s still weak.”

“Darn, I meant to ask her how it was feeling,” Mel said. Dove had fallen and sprained her shoulder a month ago and was supposed to wear a brace to keep her from using it.

“It’s much better,” Benni said. “But she ditched the brace despite the doctor’s order, and she’s not supposed to lift anything heavy. Trying to keep her from doing that is a full-time job. She hates asking for help. I’m trying to just ‘accidentally’ be there when she needs something lifted or moved.”

Mel nodded. “Reminds me of August and Polly.”

“Yeah, they’re all of a kind. You tack up, and I’ll be out shortly.”

“No problem.”

While she gathered the horse tack, Mel thought about how much time they were all spending trying to help these older people maintain their independence. It felt right to her, like she was part of something bigger and more important than herself.

She opened the stable door, fitted the halter around Redeye’s massive head and walked him outside to tie him to the railing. While she brushed his slick, warm coat with long, regular strokes, the scent of horse and hay and the sharp, metallic odor of rich soil floated around her, reminding her of Cy.

“I’m worried,” he’d said the last time she saw him, only hours before he died. Love had gone into San Celina for a long-overdue mammogram appointment. Cy insisted she go, though she complained it could wait. Mel suspected that he’d done so because he wanted to talk.

“Why?” She’d been reading to him from
Shane
, one of his favorite novels. She hugged the musty-scented book to her chest, saving their place.

“I didn’t think I’d die this young. I’m afraid Love won’t have enough to live on. The women in her family are long livers.” He managed a shadow of his old grin. “I mean, they live long, not that their livers are—” He started coughing, the fluid in his lungs thick and wet-sounding. It seemed cruel and unfair to Mel that Cy, who had never smoked, would contract lung cancer.