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head.
    “When was the last time Dallas was with her?” Reed asked.
    “Oh, it’s been a while.”
    This was all news to Joe, but he kept his promise to Reed and Marybeth and didn’t speak. As far as he and his wife knew, April had been with Dallas since she’d left months ago. The idea of April traveling with a pack of girls from rodeo to rodeo—being known as a
buckle bunny
—made his stomach lurch.
    “What is ‘a while’?” Reed asked Eldon.
    The man looked back at him dully, then turned his head toward Brenda. Joe saw her nod quickly to him, as if prodding him on.
    “A few weeks, I guess. A while. I don’t know,” Eldon said.
    “He’ll be able to tell us?” Reed asked.
    “I’m sure he will,” Eldon said.
    “So how long has he been home with you after his injury?”
    “’Bout a week,” Eldon said. Then something went even deader in his face. Brenda glared at him, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
    “A
week
?” Joe asked. “I thought I heard you say it was a couple of
days
.”
    Eldon didn’t even move his head when Joe spoke.
    “Joe,” Reed said, “we had a deal. I ask the questions.”
    Joe looked to the sheriff with an exasperated
Then ask them
look. Dulcie carefully observed Eldon and Brenda Cates.
    “Which is it, then?” Reed said. “A couple of days or a week? It’s important that we know.”
    He didn’t go on, but Joe thought everyone in the room knew what he was saying. If Dallas had been home a week, that meant he’d been injured during the first few days of the Houston Rodeo and was at home recovering while April was . . . out there somewhere. But if he’d just returned home the day before, he could have had April with him. Until he didn’t.
    Brenda put her hand on Eldon’s thigh. It shut him up. She took over. She said, “Do you know why some people call my husband ‘Snake’ when his real first name is Eldon?”
    “No,” Reed said, “but I don’t know what that has to do with this.”
    “They call him Snake because he has a strange gift for being bitten by rattlers,” she said. Brenda had a husky voice, but it was smooth and convincing, Joe thought. “How many times have you been bitten by rattlesnakes, Eldon?” she asked her husband.
    After a long pause, Eldon said, “I don’t remember. Seven, maybe eight times.”
    “Nine times,” Brenda corrected him, then looked from Joe to Reed to Dulcie with wide-open eyes to hammer home her point. “Six times since we’ve been married. We don’t know what it is, or why it is. Whether Eldon has some kind of smell that attracts poisonous snakes or what. But if three men are walking across a pasture and one of them gets bit—it’s Eldon. I don’t know how many times he’s been out hunting with clients or on a septic tank job when he calls me on the radio and says, ‘Brenda, I got bit again.’ So I drop whatever I’m doing and take him to the hospital for treatment. But the thing is, all that venom has affected his memory. He can’t remember days or dates anymore. So when he says Dallas has been home for a day or a week, well, you can’t really believe him.”
    She turned to Eldon and said, “Sorry. I had to tell them.”
    He didn’t react.
    Brenda looked directly at Joe and said, “Dallas used to love that girl of yours. Eldon and I met her at the National Finals in Las Vegas last year and the two of them couldn’t have been happier. That’s the kind of boy he is: Dallas bought our plane tickets and put us up in the Mandalay Bay Hotel. Eldon hadn’t been on a plane in years.
    “You should have seen them together, Mr. Pickett. He doted on her. Just doted on her. They were like the Barbie and Ken of the rodeo set. Now, I don’t know what happened between them. Dallas doesn’t talk about things like that. I know she watched him like a hawk when other girls were around. He told me once she got real jealous for no reason, and he thought she was smothering him. Dallas has always been the social type, and