The Homeplace: A Mystery by Kevin Wolf Page A

Jimmy Riley and Coach Porter.
    Marty padded barefoot past the room where his two boys slept in their bunk beds above a tumble of toys and clothes. He whispered a prayer to keep them safe as he looked in. Marty dared not turn on the light in the master bedroom, but pushed Deb’s cowboy boots out of the way with his foot and eased into bed beside her.
    Her eyes never opened. She mumbled to him, turned, and curled up next to his side. In his wife’s belly, the weight of their unborn little girl rested between them. Marty’s eyes wouldn’t close. Too much to think about.
    Jimmy and Coach.
    Marty replayed the day over and over again in his mind. Each time it came back to Jimmy’s father. He never went to see his son play. Worried about the truck and how much a funeral would cost. Then Marty had found the cartridge box on the table in the apartment.
    Did Jimmy’s old man have something against Coach for the attention he gave his son? And what had he said about Jimmy’s girlfriend?
    Sniffin’ after that Mexican girl.
    Would he kill his son over that?
    Marty shifted in the bed and balled up his fists.
    Dead buffalo. Dead boy. Coach on the floor. Blood. And his best friend, Chase Ford, back in town.
    No way Chase had anything to do with any of it. But Kendall hated Chase. What might the sheriff try?
    Don’t even think it.
    Marty’s eyes flew open again. A scream caught in his throat. Keep it in. Don’t let it out. Paco had said, Don’t let it get to you. But it had. Every image had climbed into his brain and threatened never to leave.
    *   *   *
    Kendall tugged the bed sheet over his chest. He shook his head.
    A dead boy in the morning. Then Coach.
    He hated having to call the state for help. Come election time, some might think he couldn’t do his job.
    And what about Mercy? She gave off all the right signals. Called him and purred like a kitten when she asked if she would see him at the church supper. But she showed up on Chase Ford’s arm. Strutted her tight little self in those tight jeans and looked over her shoulder to be sure he noticed.
    He noticed. Even licked his lips.
    At Coach’s house, when he’d sent Ford on his way, Mercy jumped up into his truck and even snuggled up to him once they were down the road and out of sight. When he’d pulled the truck around to the back of her house and killed the headlights, she jumped right out of the truck, ran for the door, and said over her shoulder, “See you next time.”
    Next time? Hell. She was still the same pricktease she’d been in high school.
    On top of it all, Chase Ford shows up in my county for the first time in fifteen, sixteen years. Wouldn’t it be something if Chase had something to do with this? Catching him would make re-election a sure bet.
    He slugged his fist into the pillow and settled his head into the mark it made.
    In the morning he’d float the idea by the state cops that they should take a hard look at Ford. For now he let the images of what might have happened with Mercy warm his thoughts. In a few moments sleep closed around him.
    *   *   *
    A tendril of smoke from the burning toast teased Chase’s nose. He reached across his trailer’s stovetop to flick the bread off the rack, and tiny drops of sizzling bacon grease splattered his wrist. He cursed to himself, but the pinpricks of pain reminded him that in spite of everything that had happened the day before, he still could feel.
    Coach was dead. Murdered. Like the kid they found with the buffalo.
    It would be light in another forty minutes. Not that it mattered. He hadn’t slept. After breaking his promise never to go inside the ranch house, he’d lain awake in the trailer and counted the sounds of trucks on the highway, listened to the swoop of the wind around the old building and the coyotes’ howls. Anything to keep his mind off Coach.
    Chase cracked two eggs into the skillet. In the years since Billee had left, he still had not learned to fry his own eggs. He could