Let It Bree: Let It Bree / Can't Buy Me Louie

2

“NEDERLANDER HIGHLANDER RANCH,” Louie repeated for the umpteenth time, rolling the words in his mouth as though tasting them.

“Some Scottish guy?” asked Shorty, taking a last drag on his cigarette and flicking it out the window. The lighted stub seared a thin orange flame through the darkness.

Louis slugged Shorty on the arm. “There’s an ashtray in here.”

“Oh.” Shorty stared straight ahead, looking like a basset hound that had just been severely chastised. “Sorry, Lou.”

Louie sighed. He hated guilt trips. Reminded him of his ex-wives. The first two, anyway. He also hated being stuck with an imbecile like Shorty on a critical job, but Shorty was the nephew of Clancy “The Neck” Venuchi and if Clancy said Shorty was working a job, only a bigger imbecile than Shorty said no.

“Forget it,” said Louie. “We need to figure out where this Nederlander Highlander place is.”

After a little boy hanging around outside the stock show had told them he’d seen a girl and her bull trot into a cluster of rundown nearby buildings, Louie and Shorty had driven around that area for several hours. They’d waved money in winos’ faces, until one swore he’d seen two people loading a buffalo into a big yellow truck with the words Nederlander Highlander Ranch on it.

The buffalo had to be the bull.

But Nederland Highlander?

“Shorty, get the map book. Look up Nederlander.”

Shorty reached underneath his seat and retrieved the thick Denver Regional Area guide they’d purchased at the Tattered Cover.

“Right.” Shorty flipped open the book and stared at a page.

“What’re you lookin’ at?”

“A map.”

Louie bunched his fist, fighting the urge to smack some sense into his partner. “There’s over a hundred pages in that thing. Check the frickin’ index.”

“Right.” Shorty flipped to the back of the book. “Ned…er…lander,” he muttered under his breath. “Ned…er—”

“N-e-d-e-r-l-a-n-d-e-r.” Louie loved books, especially detective novels, so he had an affinity for words and their spelling. But he had a feeling this street map was the first book Shorty had cracked open in years.

Shorty made a smacking sound as his finger slid down a page. “Dere it is!” He brought the book to within inches of his face. “Ne…der…land.” He looked up. “No e-r.”

“Good.” If it was in the book, it was close to Denver. So the girly and the bull had hopped a ride to a nearby town. Sweet. “Check which highway leads to it.”

“Right.” After a pause filled with more smacking, Shorty announced, “Twenty-five north to thirty-six to one ninety-three to one nineteen.”

“I said which highway, not how high can you count.” No sweat. They’d spent a chunk of today on the I-25 highway, and Louie remembered signs to highway 36. The rest was chump change.

He started the engine.

“Lou?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ll use da ashtray next time.”

If Louie has his way, there’d be no next time with Shorty. Fortunately, this job would wrap up soon. All Louie had to do was steal the frickin’ bull and cart it to a rendezvous point outside Lubbock, Texas. There, they’d hook up with a go-between who’d pay them their dough and take the bull off their hands.

Louie’d never messed with a bull before, but after being told his take would be a cool half a mil, he figured he could dance with the beast if he had to. Besides, he’d done some studying. Brahmans looked tough, but were for the most part temperate-like.

Sorta like himself, he figured.

Louie turned the wheel and steered down a side street. He could almost smell his cut of the loot, a scent sweeter than his mama’s spicy grilled sausages and peppers. With his take, Louie would fulfill his dream to escape Trenton and buy a boat in the Keys. Spend the rest of his days catching big fish, drinking strong whiskey and loving lusty women. Big, tanned, lusty women. The kind who overfilled a bikini and overloved a man…

Feeling a rush of rare benevolence, Louie finally answered Shorty. “Yeah, just ‘member we got an ashtray.”

A match sizzled as Shorty lit his cigarette, making a great show of tossing the blown-out match in the ashtray.

Louis held out his hand for a cig.

“Thought you’d quit.”

“I did.”

“Then why you want a cig?”

“I need to chew something.”

A bit too quickly, Shorty tossed a cigarette which Louie caught in midair. He ran his nose along the white cylinder, inhaling the pungent scent of tobacco. Squeezing the spongy filter between his teeth, he said, “We’re on our way to findin’ Mr. Money Bull.”

“Mr. Money Bull,” Shorty repeated, blowing out a stream of smoke. “I won’t letcha down, Lou. We’ll get that bull to Texas, wrap up da deal and never have to work again for the rest of our lives.”

Louie grinned, enjoying a whiff of secondhand smoke. Never have to work again. He could smell the sea breezes now. Could feel the hot sun on his skin, the sweet sting of whiskey on his tongue. And when he got tired of the tanned, lusty women, maybe he’d invite wifey number three down for a visit.

Hell, if Shorty did good and helped pull off this job without any more glitches, maybe Louie’d give him visiting rights, too.

“WELL, I’ll be dam—”

“I didn’t hear that!” Mattie stuck her head out the kitchen door.

Ida didn’t look. Being seventy-five years old had its prerogatives, and one of them was enjoying words of the bluer variety. But forget explaining that to her daughter Mattie. Hell, it was still a mystery to Ida how she’d raised such a rule-fixated puritan as Mattie. Good thing she lived next door and not under the same roof with Ida and her granddaughter Bree.

“Hush!” Ida held up a gun barrel, motioning for silence. To the TV, she said, “All right, muffin, let’s have a dose of straight talk.”

Mattie stepped into the living room, wiping a dinner plate with a dishrag. “You watch too many gangster flicks,” she continued. “You sound more like a gun moll than a respectable senior citizen. And how many times have I told you not to clean your pistols in the living room! What if company dropped by, saw weapons strewn all over and told the deputy sheriff? After that incident in the Buffalo Lodge, you swore you’d never again—”

“Hush!” Ida waved the gun barrel again. “They’re talkin’ about my granbaby.”

“My niece Bree’s on the news?” Mattie clutched the chipped china plate she’d been drying to her chest. “Did…Valentine…win?”

The pert, auburn-haired newscaster talked earnestly to the camera. “…reportedly the bull was stolen after winning the grand champion prize, which is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to the seller—potentially millions to the buyer. This story is about more than a big bull. It’s about big money.”

The TV reporter checked something on a piece of paper. “Police say the alleged thief was wearing brown boots, blue jeans and a blue-and-white checkered shirt.”

Mattie gasped. “That sounds like the outfit Bree picked out for the competition—”

“Police have issued an all points bulletin,” continued the announcer, “for the alleged thief and the bull, which has a white heart on its right rear flank—”

“That’s our Valentine, all right!” Ida blurted, standing. “They think my granbaby stole Valentine! What’s wrong with those city slickers in Denver? Big-city smog go to their brains?” She mulled this over for a moment. “Ya know, Bree had a verbal agreement with that Bovine Best outfit…wonder if that implied contract is being misinterpreted by these media jerks. They’re conveniently forgetting the word implied and making it appear Bree broke a contract and stole Val.” After barking a few choice expletives at the TV, she said, “I gotta go find Bree—clear up this mess!”

Ida snapped the revolver chamber into place with a click. “Gotta grab my coat and boots—it’s butt-freezin’ cold this time of year.”

“What in God’s name do you think you’re doing?” asked Mattie, her face pinched with irritation.

“While I’m getting dressed, find my keys, wouldja?” She glanced around the room. “I’ll need my holster, too.”

“Mother! You’re not driving that…that death trap to Denver!”

“My pickup ain’t no death trap. Just fixed the brakes last year. Where’d I kick off my boots? Oh, there they are.”

“You can’t get the bull into the pickup—”

“Hell, I know that. Bree ’n’ I’ll figure out how to get the bull home.” Ida slipped her tiny feet into a pair of cream-colored boots with purple trim.

“I’d…I’d go with you, but I have three sons to look after.”

“I know, honey pie. Now stop frettin’ and help your sweet ol’ mama get ready.”

Mattie made an exasperated sound. “Does my sweet old mama have to carry a gun?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“To shoot people with, sweetheart.”

“We’re in a family crisis and you’re quoting from those…those bad-guy videos!”

“The Fallen Sparrow, 1943, John Garfield. Who wasn’t a ‘bad guy,’ just a lost soul.” Ida paused.

“And them’s not just ‘flicks.’ Them’s words to live by.” She headed down the hallway. “Grab that bag of chips and a few apples. Meet you at the pickup,” Ida yelled over her shoulder.

“VAN WON’T START,” Kirk said, trying to sound calm. One hell of a feat considering a beast’s massive, horned head nearly hung over the front seat, mere inches from the right side of Kirk’s face.

Kirk reminded himself, again, that the girl said this animal was “intelligent” and “sweet-tempered.”

“We’re stuck?” asked the cowgirl. “We just got in!”

The bull released a hefty snort as though seconding her comment.

Man, that bull had bad breath. “I thought we had enough gas to make it to the station, but I was wrong.”

Wind whistled past. Clouds were creeping across the night sky, blotting out part of the moon. Kirk swore a coarse bull whisker brushed the side of his face. Was this monstrous thing hungry?

“Uh, when did your beast last eat?” he asked.

The girl made an indignant sound. “It’s a Brahman bull, not a beast. And it’s a vegetarian, so it won’t take a bite out of you. Unless you tick him off.”

Tick him off? “I thought you said he was sweet-tempered.”

“He has his moods, like anyone else.”

Wonderful. A moody bull. Worse, one that occasionally got “ticked off.” Kirk had never ticked anyone off. He was always Mr. Reasonable—the result of growing up with a wild, flamboyant mother for whom he had to constantly intervene. Once he’d had to mediate between her and a department-store Santa who his mother swore had propositioned her. Wouldn’t that be Kirk’s luck, after all these intervening, mediating years, to piss off a bull?

“Where were you headed to?” he asked.

“Chugwater.”

“As in Wyoming?”

“You know another Chugwater?”

“What are you doing several hundred miles away from home?” He probably shouldn’t ask. Alicia could make the story of a broken fingernail last a day…he couldn’t even fathom how long a lost-with-a-bull tale might take.

“So, now what do we do?” she asked, ignoring his question. “Any ideas?”

“Ideas? Too many,” Kirk muttered. He was accustomed to excavating and viewing the fossils of long-dead plants and beasts, not driving real live ones around.

He took in a deep breath and looked at the sky. Those clouds didn’t look like snow clouds, but in Colorado, one never second-guessed the weather. He itemized his priorities. First, he needed to find shelter and food. Second, tomorrow morning, he’d deal with their travel logistics.

“There’s a lodge up the road,” he finally said. “A few minutes’ walk. We can stay there tonight.”

“Lodge?” She sighed heavily. “I, uh, don’t have any money.”

“I have a credit card. I’ve stayed there before. The area behind the lodge backs right up to a mountain. Good resting spot for your bull.” He’d ask for one of the rooms at the far end from the main lodge. Considering it was January, high in the mountains, he seriously doubted anyone would be staying overnight at this out-of-the-way place. Stashing a bull would be the least of their worries.

He hoped.

“Do you have a cell phone?” she asked. “I’d like to call my grandmother.”

“Service is maxed out.” He’d tried calling Alicia earlier and discovered he was too far into the mountains to get a signal. “But I’m sure there’ll be phones in the rooms.”

“Think they’ll have oats or hay?”

For Valentine. “There should be some grass, bushes outside…and we can order twenty bowls of cereal on top of dinner.” He buttoned his top shirt button, anticipating the chill outside.

“Let’s go,” he said, opening his door. “Tarl Cabot, watch out,” he murmured under his breath, jumping to the ground.

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Kirk flicked the switch of room number one, located at the farthest end of the Sundance Lodge. Although he’d assumed the place would be mostly empty, a gang of Harley riders—seen year-round in these parts of Colorado because of the scenic mountain roads—were staying overnight. Fortunately, there were two adjacent empty rooms available.

Bree followed him inside, checking out the far window through which she could see her bull tethered to a pine tree. “This room’s perfect for me. I can keep my eye on Val.”

He nodded. “Fine. I’ll leave our sandwiches here while I check my room, make a call.” He placed two butcher-paper-wrapped packages on a chipped wooden coffee table.

“Funny how they didn’t question your wanting to buy five boxes of that oat bran cereal, too,” said Bree.

Kirk chuckled. “Nederland’s filled with free spirits—I could have asked to buy one of the tie-dyed T-shirts off their backs and they wouldn’t have blinked an eye. The community is filled with former hippies or hippie wanna-bes. You know, peace and love and all that.”

“Well, I like peace, but I can do without—” Bree huffed a breath and looked around the room, feeling a little stupid for her slip of the tongue. Just because she wasn’t interested in love and marriage and all that nonsense, didn’t mean she had to announce it.

“You’re probably wondering what I was doing hitchhiking in the middle of nowhere,” she said quickly, switching topics. “I, uh, missed my ride from the stock show and a really nice truck driver said he’d give us a lift to Nederland so I said okay but I didn’t want to be dropped off in the middle of a town, so I told him just to leave us off on the side of the road. Figured we’d get a lift somehow to Chugwater, but nobody was stopping, so I jumped out in front of your stopped van…” She sucked in a breath, hoping the story sounded relatively sane and plausible, and it should considering she’d left out the parts about the gangsters and guns.

As he stared at her sorta stunned like, she realized this was the first moment she’d had a chance to really see him in the light. His hair was thick, blond. And he was solidly good-looking. Put him in a double-breasted suit and a gray felt hat, he could star as one of those hunky, hard-boiled detectives in one of Grams’s gangster flicks.

But she doubted this guy even owned a suit. He looked extremely comfortable in his faded jeans and blue-and-gray flannel shirt. Hard to fit his down-home look with that fancy van, though. The two didn’t mix.

He finally broke the silence. “Well, you’re safe now. That’s what matters.”

She hoped that was true. Thanks to this guy, she was, for the time being. Tomorrow, she’d figure out how to get back home, clean up this “alleged theft” confusion, and get back to leading a normal life.

“What’s your name?” asked Bree. She’d hovered next to the door as he’d filled out the registration stuff in the lodge lobby, so she hadn’t overheard any information, such as his name or where he lived.

“Kirk Dunmore. Yours?”

“Bree Brown.” She eyed the TV, knowing in her gut that the story of a Brahman bull trotting out of the Denver Stock Show would be on the news. Escapee livestock was big news. Last year when those llamas had bolted free and run down the I-25, it’d been on all the stations.

She’d check the TV later, when she was alone.

Then she thought, with a sickening realization, that chances were Grams, who watched the news religiously every evening, would have seen a story about Bree and Valentine riding out of the coliseum and be worried sick.

Bree looked around the room for a phone. “I need to call home.”

“Yeah, I need to phone my fiancée, too.” Fiancée?

Bree pushed her hand through her curly hair, unsure why her stomach felt as though it had just flipped upside down. Couldn’t be because of Kirk’s remark. Like she cared. She eyed the sandwiches Kirk had purchased. My insides are flip-flopping because I’m hungry. After she’d eaten something solid, she’d feel lots better.

But when she looked at Kirk, her stomach did another somersault.

The way he stood—legs spread, arms crossed solidly over his chest—he looked like a rough and rugged explorer, the kind of guy who fearlessly tackled anything in the world.

What did he say he had in the back of the van? Pickaxes. Shovels. Oh yeah, this man treated life like an adventure. Only a man like that would understand Bree’s own yearning to strike out on her own and discover the world.

She dipped her head, rubbing her chin against the slick rayon of the jacket he’d loaned her. She caught a whiff of scent—his scent. Male. Musky. Inside her, the curl of heat ignited, spreading through her like a small fire.

Kirk scraped his hand across the stubble on his chin. “I’ll go check my room now, call Alicia, then come back for that sandwich.”

Alicia? Had to be the fiancée. Bree nodded absently, slipping off the jacket so she didn’t accidentally sniff any more of his lethal male muskiness.

He left, the room door clicking shut behind him. She’d do the same with her reactions. Shut them down. Tight. After all, he was just a nice guy who’d helped her out of a jam. By this time tomorrow, they’d both be back in their separate worlds, never to see each other again.

3

BREE RAN BAREFOOT through a jungle, crowded with vibrant green leaves, birds, hanging vines. Her feet slapped hard against cold, damp earth. Pounding footsteps followed, tracking her. She glanced over her shoulder. Dense foliage blocked her assailant’s face. Her gaze dipped. He wore turquoise boots.

Bang-bang-bang.

Bree jolted awake. Cold perspiration slicked her body. She blinked into the dark, her gaze following a stream of moonlight from the window next to her bed.

Outside stood a massive, dark shadow close to the tree line.

Valentine.

She released a shaky breath. I’m in the lodge. We’re safe.

Bang-bang-bang!

Swiping a shaky hand across her brow, she glanced at the digital clock next to the bed—3:00 a.m. Who would be knocking on her door at this time of the morning?

The thugs?

Her stomach curdled. Could they have traced me to this lodge in the middle of the mountains? Maybe not such a far-fetched idea considering they were determined to get Val, which meant big money for them, bigger money for whatever breeding outfit illegally sold Val’s sperm. And for that kind of money, the thugs would go through anything, do anything, to get the prize.

Even take my life.

Hairs stiffened along her arms. Don’t start spooking yourself.

Hell, if they’re that smart, all they’d have to do is look behind the lodge and see Val plain and clear in the moonlight. No need to knock on any doors and alert people that they’re stealing a bull!