She came back to her desk, sat down as I vacated her chair, and tapped the necessary keys to, I suppose, put the computer back in a safe mode for the ranchers and the families of Fillmore County. “Did you find what you were looking for?” she asked.
“Yes and no,” I said.
“Tell me what you’re trying to do,” she said. “Maybe I can help.” I hesitated and she said, “I can keep a secret, Mike.”
She was looking at me with her sincere, and very blue eyes and, so of course, I melted. “You know Cade Morgan? Well, I was trying to find out more about him. I found some stuff but I was wondering about his friend Toby who’s been hanging around for the last few weeks. No luck there.”
“Cade Morgan made X-rated movies before he came here,” she said. “And Toby is a Russian national who invested in his films.”
I’m sure my astonishment played across my face. “How did you know that?”
“Mike,” she said, “the women in this county know everything.”
“Do you know who cut the throats of those cows?”
“No,” she confessed. “We’ve been leaving that one up to the men. Do you think Cade and Toby did it?”
I told her something I hadn’t even told myself. “I think they may have had something to do with it. That’s only a suspicion. I don’t have a thing on them.”
“How about those two brothers from Green Planet?” she asked.
I had actually given Brian and Philip a pass, just as all of us had that first day we met them. Now that Mary had brought them up, I gave those boys a good think, conceding, “It would make a kind of strange sense, I guess.” I added, “But I’ve been working with them out on the BLM and I don’t think either one of them could use a knife without cutting their own fingers off. I also don’t think they’re the cow killer types.”
She nodded. “And Cade and Toby are?”
“I don’t know, Mary. Let’s just keep all of this between us, OK?”
She mimed a zipper with two fingers across her pretty face and said, “My lips are sealed.”
I left the library and headed back to the Hell Creek Bar. On the way, I considered asking to use the phone in the bar to call some pals I still had in Hollywood to ask them what they knew about Cade. On the other hand, I again reminded myself none of this was any of my business. When I arrived at the bar, Laura and Tanya were not there. Joe said, “They went to the motel to get washed up. Want a beer?”
I did but I had some other things to do. Like all cowboys in town, I needed to visit the hardware store, not to buy anything but to talk to the owner, a man named Normal (not Norman but Normal) and yet another of the Brescoe clan although his last name was Packer. Normal Packer’s mother was a Brescoe so that still made him one. “Hi Normal,” I said, after pretending to shop along the short aisles of his store. “How’s business?”
Of course, that’s the wrong question to ask a small businessman in a place like Jericho so it was fifteen minutes later before Normal had finished his discourse on the state of his economic situation, which was naturally not good and never had been. “Well,” I said, “maybe things will pick up.”
“We’ll see,” Normal said. “So what’s up with you, Mike?”
“This is kind of off the wall,” I said, “but you being a Brescoe and all, what’s the latest on the mayor and Ted? They doing OK?”
Normal considered me, and said, “As a matter of fact, I think they are. I haven’t heard anything, anyway. Why?”
“I always liked Ted and I just wondered.”
“You like Ted? I’d say you were about the only one. I don’t like him and I don’t know anybody in the family who does. He’s right much a prick.”
“I guess I’ve always rooted for the underdog,” I said, lamely, and made my escape.
I’d pretty much done downtown Jericho since I’d hit the bar, the motel, the library, and the hardware store so about all that was left was the mortuary and fortunately I didn’t have any reason to go there. I headed back to the courthouse, catching Jeanette on the steps as she walked out with an entourage of county leaders. They fanned around her and kept going, apparently with their Jeanette “to do” lists.
Jeanette waved me over. “Mike, go on over to the fairgrounds and help the vendors set up. The rodeo folks will also need assistance figuring out where to put their trucks and what to do. You helped last year so you know the drill.”
“OK, boss,” I said, even though she’d just given me enough work to burn through the entire day and probably most of the night, too. Because I was feeling a little silly, I said, “After I finish that, what else do you want me to do?”