Slickrock (Gail McCarthy Mystery) Read Online Free PDF

else."
    I studied him, mingled exasperation and affection welling up inside of me. I'd been with this big, untidy, rough-featured man for long enough to understand him pretty well.
    He still stared at his feet; I was quite aware that he felt the estrangement between us and was as uncomfortable with it as I was, but there was no way in hell he was going to bring it up. Ignore it out of existence-that was Lonny's way. Pretend everything was all right.
    What do you want out of him, I asked myself, looking at the lines framing his eyes, the strong, thick, callused hands that had touched me so often. An answer jumped into my mind: that he make some space for me in this relationship.
    Lonny loved me, of that I was sure. But he loved me in much the same way he loved his horses. He'd do what he could to take care of me; he thought I was great. But I was supposed to be part of his life.
    What I wanted, what I needed, was to have my feelings, my ideas, my agenda acknowledged. Especially when it was different from his. I needed to have him take my goals as seriously as he took his own.
    I sighed. This dialogue was rattling around only in my head; Lonny and I still sat in silence, sipping our cooling coffee. And that was just the trouble. I'd spoken these thoughts aloud before, too many times, always with the same results.
    Lonny gave lip service to the notion that my feelings and needs were important, but when it counted he followed his own road, as he always had. And I had to admit, I did the same. As I told him once, neither of us was really a team player.
    Trying to distract myself from the direction my thoughts were leading me, I stared around the lobby. The Crazy Horse Creek Lodge had been built in the late 1800s and still looked the part of the stage stop it had once been. No one had ever remodeled, or "cuted up," the rugged post-and-beam construction or the utilitarian pine plank floors and siding. From earlier owners through Lonny and on to Ted, the proprietors had all been satisfied to repair what broke and leave what still functioned alone.
    I smiled as I looked at the room. The armchairs and couches were threadbare and battered, the photos and prints tacked on the rough walls were torn and dusty, the floor was scuffed and none too clean. Crazy Horse Creek was no multi-star resort. But the fire chugged away in the woodstove, making the lobby warm on chilly mountain nights, feet were welcome on the furniture (as were dogs), and nobody had to take their boots off to come inside.
    "So, is it good to be back up here again?" I asked Lonny.
    "I guess. If this hadn't happened with Bill. I have a hard time getting it out of my mind."
    "You said your father shot himself." I scooted closer to him on the couch.
    "I never knew that. It must have been hard on you."
    "I was in my early thirties. My mom had died a few years earlier and my dad came to live with me. We lived here in the summers. " He gestured in a general way at the lodge; I knew what he meant.
    Lonny had owned a small ranch near Sonora where he kept the pack station horses and mules in the winter. But from May till October he and his family and his crew had lived here. The Crazy Horse Creek Pack Station opened every year on Memorial Day weekend and closed when the snow drove them out of the mountains.
    "He seemed okay," Lonny went on. "I knew he drank too much; I knew he missed my mom. But he didn't complain. He wasn't really well a lot of the time, but he tended bar when he felt up to it. I thought he liked being here.
    "And then one Monday morning he didn't show up at breakfast. It got later and later, and finally I went to check on him. He was living in the log cabin; you know where I mean?"
    "I know." The log cabin, one of the many cabins scattered around the pack station grounds, was the oldest structure. The story ran that it had been built by one Justin Roberts, who lived in it while he built the lodge. The log cabin was just that-a genuine log cabin, with all the logs