Dark Paradise by Tami Hoag Page B

umpire's padding
    beneath his shirt. He had the hair and freckles his name indicated. His
    cheeks and the end of his bulbous nose were perpetually pink.
     
    "That's a fact. Why, just last night he hit the jackpot on the mouse
    races. 'Course, that didn't hardly make up for what he lost downstairs
    in the poker game," he said, lowering his voice conspiratorially. His
    blue eyes twinkled,just a little joke among friends - Will and his
    weakness for wagering. "But it'll all come out in the wash, as my mama
    always said."
     
    "Will was in Little Purgatory last night?" J.D. asked, his voice as dead
    calm as the air before a storm.
     
    Grusin's jowly face dropped a little, and he swallowed hard as he
    realized his slip.
     
    "How much did he lose?"
     
    Grusin made a face, his eyes dodging around the room as if he were
    afraid the sheriff might overhear and suddenly decide to shut down the
    illegal gambling that had been going on in the basement of the Hell and
    Gone for the last two decades. "Don't worry about it, J.D. He'll win it
    back. He's been on a bad streak and he's in the hole a little now, but-"
     
    J.D. stepped a little closer in front of Red and stared at him hard.
    "How much?" he whispered.
     
    The older man's mouth worked as if he were chewing a mouthful of chalk.
    "Sixty-five hundred," he mumbled. Don't worry about it, J.D."
     
    His gaze scanned the room frantically for anyone near enough to rescue him,
    landing on Harry Rex Monroe from the Feed and Read. Relief brightened his
    face like a man having a vision. "Hey there, Harry Rex!"
     
    J.D. just stood with his hands on his hips, staring at the floor and
    breathing slowly through his mouth. Sixty-five hundred dollars. Will did
    not have sixty-five hundred dollars. The bank held the mortgages on
    everything they owned, practically down to their underwear, and Will was
    whiling away his nights in Little Purgatory, throwing money down a rat
    hole after busted poker hands.
     
    "I heard talk of a ski resort on Irish peak . . . Some developer wants to
    put up condos north of town."
     
    "They'll turn the place into another goddamn Aspen with cappuccino bars
    and prissy Swiss chalets and rents so high, everyone who works here will
    have to drive in from someplace else."
     
    Random lines of conversation penetrated the fog. J.D. forced himself to
    pay attention, forced his brain to function. He had come here for a
    reason. Will could be dealt with later.
     
    He felt ill, but damned if he would show it.
     
    Lyle Watkins, who was his neighbor to the south of the Stars and Bars,
    stood staring down into his coffee cup.
     
    He looked thin and miserable, as if worry had been eatin' away at him
    beneath his skin. "Yeah, well," he snapped suddenly, breaking in on the
    antidevelopment talk of his fellow ranchers. "You can't feed your kids
    on pride and scenery."
     
    "Can't feed them at all if these damned actors bring in buffalo and elk
    herds infected with brucellosis," J.D. said calmly.
     
    Lyle dodged his gaze, rubbing his fingertips against his coffee cup as
    if it were a worry stone. "Ain't nobody proved Bryce's herds are
    infected."
     
    "I don't want the proof to be my cattle dropping over. Do you, Lyle?"
     
    Watkins tightened his lips and said nothing. A sense of foreboding crept
    into J.D.'s chest and tightened like a fist. He swore softly under his
    breath. "You're selling out."
     
    The words were barely more than a whisper. Lyle flinched as if they
    struck him with the force of hammer blows.
     
    Humbled. He stared down at the floor.
     
    "Deal's not done yet," he intoned, the weight on the toes of his boots,
    his head hanging with shame. He had been one of the first and the
    loudest to decry the buyout of ranchers by people who wanted the land
    for their own private playgrounds, and now he was giving in, giving up,
    betraying his neighbor.
     
    "I can't afford not to.   Got to think of Debbie and the kids."
     
    "Jesus, Lyle," J.D. said, desperation