"It's honest work."

Jean lit his cigarette, nodded. "No doubt. Honest work."

"Why are you standing out here in the dark?" I asked. "Your boss too embarrassed to bring you into the party?"

Jean narrowed his eyes. He mouthed the words your boss like he was trying to interpret them, like he was suspicious he'd just been insulted.

"Sheckly," he decided.

"Yeah—the big ugly redneck. You know."

In the glow from the white Christmas lights, Jean's smile looked unnaturally luminous.

The fierceness in his eyes didn't diminish at all. "I see."

"You did a hell of a job clearing out Alex Blanceagle the other night."

No response. Jean took a drag on the cigarette, turned his head, and blew smoke leisurely toward the porch. The old drunk musicians had launched into something new—an instrumental that sounded vaguely like Lester Scruggs. A couple of women were dosidoing with each other on the sidewalk.

I looked toward the front door. Brent Daniels now stood next to an icefilled garbage can, drinking a beer as fast as he could. Several people were talking to him but Brent wasn't paying them any attention.

"What was that about?" I asked Jean.

He followed my gaze, caught my meaning. "I told Brent Daniels I admired his sister.

Her music. I said I hoped she would tour Europe soon."

"Like Cam Compton used to. Make a nice courier system, wouldn't it? Good cover, touring with a band, with lots of equipment, if you had goods you wanted to deliver to a lot of places in Europe."

Jean blew more smoke. He gave me the crab eyes. "Do you intend to provoke, Mr.

Navarre, or are you simply an idiot?"

"I'm not usually like this," I confessed. "Usually I don't find so many corpses in one week. You usually leave so many?"

Jean smiled coldly. "An idiot," he decided.

He disengaged his back from the tree and was leaning forward to say something when some commotion erupted around the side of the house.

Somebody by the shed yelled "Ohhh!" like he'd just seen a great triple play. A woman shrieked. A crowd of people started to converge around the horseshoe pit. Some were swearing, a few laughing. Willis Daniels' hoe down faltered to a stop as the musicians got up to see what was going on.

A drunk cowboy staggered away from the scene, laughing, telling people what had just happened in a loud enough voice that Jean and I could hear him fine. Apparently Allison SaintPierre had just knocked Tilden Sheckly out cold with a horseshoe.

I looked at Jean.

He tossed his cigarette down in a leisurely way. It bounced off a root and disappeared in the crack between two other roots, then dimmed to a little orange eye. Jean looked up at me and smiled, almost pleasantly this time.

"My boss," he said with satisfaction.

Then he turned and casually walked in the opposite direction, into the dark.

29

Sheckly wasn't out cold, exactly. Just slightly cooled down.

I nudged my way through the spectators and found him sitting in the dust, his fingertips on his temples and a look of complete dismay on his face. He was dressed in black from boots to shirt. His Stetson lay nearby, knocked from his head. Below Sheck's left eye, the cheek looked like a crosssection of a rare filet mignon. An inch higher and the horseshoe would've blinded him.

An older woman squatted next to him, patting his shoulders and trying to console him.

Her words came out slurred. The margarita in her other hand sloshed at a fortyfive degree angle.

A couple of cowboy types stood on the other side. They seemed anxious to lend the rich man a bandanna, or an arm to lean on, or a gun to shoot Allison Saint Pierre.

Anything he needed.

Sheckly shook his head a couple of times. He dabbed at his ruined cheek with the back of his fist, looked at the blood on his knuckles, and regained some colour in his face. Then he tried to get up and failed. He rallied again, staggering to his feet with the help of the cowboys.

"I'm gonna kill that crazy bitch."

The men murmured agreement.

Sheckly blinked. He stumbled, huge and awkward as a drugged horse.

He scanned the crowd, targeted me briefly, and seemed to make a foggy connection.

Then his eyes kept moving.

Allison SaintPierre was nowhere to be seen, though a few people were looking in the direction of the ranch house and shaking their heads as they speculated about her. I went toward the house.

When I bumped into Willis Daniels on the porch he turned around and grabbed my upper arm and for a second I thought the old man was going to clobber me with his cane. I hardly recognized him. The Santa Claus smile had vanished. His eyes blazed.

His cement coloured hair was flattened into sweaty bangs against his forehead.

He looked disappointed when he saw I wasn't someone he wanted to clobber. At least not at the moment.

"Damn it," he muttered, lowering his cane.

"Allison went this way?"

Willis raised his cane again and shook it at nobody in particular. Then he glared in the direction of the horseshoe pit and began grumbling things about Mrs. Saint Pierre that weren't fit for Santa's elves to hear. I went inside.

Stringed instruments decorated the walls. A couple of kids slept on a Naugahyde couch in the living room while their parents told Aggie jokes and mixed drinks in the kitchen. The door to the first bedroom down the hall was open. A woman I didn't know had passed out on the bed in the middle of a pile of cowboy hats. The door to the second bedroom was ajar and Allison's voice came through in a tone so shaky it made me wince—like an Estring tuned to the point you just knew it was going to snap in the guitarist's face.

"He pushed me down!" she yelled. "I'm not going to just stand there like you and—"

"Allison—" Miranda's voice was only slightly more in control. "You should look at yourself, girl."

I opened the door.

They were both standing by the bed. Miranda looked like a young square dancer in her fulllength denim skirt and white blouse and bandanna around her neck. She wore no makeup, but the colour in her face looked healthier than usual because she was angry.

Her eyes were bright brown.

She picked a twig out of Allison's hair. She had plenty to choose from. Allison had smudges of dirt on her face and dust all down her side. Her red blouse had come untucked from her jeans. She had the same murderous look I'd seen in her eyes that afternoon, but now her eyelids were swollen and red, a few tears smeared in with the dirt.

Miranda saw me before Allison did. The singer's shoulders relaxed just slightly. She said nothing but her posture invited me in. If I'd been alone in a room with Allison right then, I would've welcomed company too.

"What happened?" I asked.

Allison started. She had a little trouble bringing me into focus. She took a shaky breath before she could answer me with something besides a scream.

"Sheck."

"He pushed you. So you figured you'd just brain him with a horseshoe?"

Allison splayed her fingers and brought them up to her ears. "He moved too fast. I swear to God the next time—"

Her voice broke. However violent a show she was used to staging, however much she normally got away with, this time she'd surprised herself. The muscles in her face had started loosening up.

"There can't be any next time," Miranda said.

"You could've succeeded in killing him, Allison," I said. "Easily."