Slickrock (Gail McCarthy Mystery) Read Online Free PDF Page A

the pad in her lap.
    "Any other possible reasons?"
    "Not that I know." Ted kept meeting the deputy's eyes. "He was staying in the lodge here, room number seven," he added.
    "We'll check it out. And we'll take the car back down to the department, have a look at it." She stood up. "If you'll give me his room key?"
    "Sure."
    Ted went to the main desk, found a duplicate key, and handed it to the woman. She headed for the stairs, her quiet partner in tow, and turned back to give us a look.
    ''This seems pretty straightforward; however, I'd like to ask you all to stay here and be available for questioning tomorrow, in case there's a problem."
    "Okay if I go out for a ride during the day?" I asked.
    "As long as you come back." She smiled.
    The two of them turned and creaked their way up the stairs.
    We all stared at each other.
    "I wonder if he made it?" Ted looked directly at me as he spoke.
    "I don't know," I said. "It would depend on whether that bullet hit something vital"
    "I'll call the hospital in Sacramento in the morning." Ted said it with decision-another Ted trait. I'd noticed before that he tended to deal with difficult situations in a black-and-white fashion.
    Now, having settled the matter of Bill Evans, he stood up. "I'm going to bed."
    He looked at Luke and Jake as he spoke; the two brothers stood up with him. Both tall and lean with light brown hair, brown eyes, fair skin, unremarkable faces, they were hard to tell apart from a distance. Closer up, Luke had a squarer jaw and looked older. Jake's hair was curlier, his expression shyer.
    They followed Ted up the stairs now; we all knew that they would be up at 4:00 A.M. Saturday was a big day at Crazy Horse Creek-lots of pack parties going in. Feeding and saddling began early.
    Once they were gone, I looked at Lonny. He still stared at his boots, his face withdrawn. Tracing his familiar features with my eyes, I felt a disturbing sense of frustration.
    I'd been with this man for five years. Like all long-term relationships, ours had its ups and downs, but we'd survived them well, or so I thought. Until this last six months.
    Lonny had finally gotten a divorce from the wife he'd been separated from for seven years. The divorce had entailed a fair amount of financial dickering; by the time all was said and done, Lonny had sold his home in Santa Cruz County and his interest in this pack station. True to his announced intention, he'd purchased sixty acres in the Sierra Nevada foothills and moved. Two months ago, to be exact. He'd packed up his furniture and his cats, put his three horses in the stock trailer, and gone.
    Not without asking me to marry him, though. Which had caused me a lot of grief.
    Lonny's idea was that I would marry him and move with him to the foothills, giving up my job and my home, in order to make a new life with him. Although the offer was flattering, it didn't fit into any of my plans, and therein began to lie a problem.
    For Lonny was determined to pursue his plan, with me or without me, as I came to see; no amount of lobbying on my part for a compromise had much effect on him. Going back to the mountains was his goal, and back he was going.
    I'd adjusted, in a sense. I'd acknowledged that it was my choice not to go with him. I'd agreed that we would continue to have a relationship. But as anyone who's ever been in one knows, a long-distance relationship is not the same as having a boyfriend a few miles down the road.
    Lonny and I had never lived together, but we'd lived near each other, and we'd always spent most of our nights together. Suddenly I was sleeping alone. And Lonny lived three hours away.
    I didn't like it. And I didn't know what to do about it. I loved Lonny, but I did not love the direction our relationship had taken.
    "So," I said to him, "how's it going?"
    He stared at his boots. "All right, I guess. Until this."
    "How are things on the ranch?"
    "Okay. The barn's getting built. Feels like I don't have a lot of time for anything