The Cowboy Way: A Creed in Stone Creek / Part Time Cowboy

Matt finished his ravioli and pushed his plate away.

Steven added milk to a mental grocery list.

“Can Zeke go to day camp with me?” Matt asked, a few minutes later, when Steven was washing off their plates at the sink.

“No,” Steven answered. “Probably not.”

Matt looked worried. “What will he do all day?”

“He can come to the office with me,” Steven heard himself say.

Fatherhood. Maybe, in spite of the ravioli supper, he was getting the hang of it.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_2334d74d-d481-523f-a841-32857336db54)

VELDA RELAYED THE parole officer’s remarks to Melissa, after saying goodbye and shutting the phone.

“Byron got out this morning,” she said, the cell resting on her lap now, her gaze fixed on something well beyond the windshield of Melissa’s quirky little car. “Just like he was supposed to. He had a ticket back to Stone Creek, and somebody dropped him off at the bus station, right on schedule.”

Parked at a stop sign, Melissa didn’t move until the driver behind her honked impatiently. Then she made a right, pulled up to the curb and stopped the car. “Maybe he decided to get off in Flagstaff or somewhere,” she said. With permission from the authorities, Byron could settle anyplace in the state, after all—except that he would have needed his parole officer’s permission to do that.

Color flared in Velda’s otherwise pale cheeks. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” she snapped, glaring over at Melissa. “If Byron didn’t come back to Stone Creek, I mean? That way, you wouldn’t have to think about him, now would you? You or anybody else in this crappy town!”

Melissa sighed. “Velda, calm down. I’m only trying to help you figure out what’s going on here and find Byron.”

But Velda shoved her door open and practically leaped out of the car. “If you really wanted to help,” she accused, “you wouldn’t have pushed so hard for my boy to do time!”

“A girl died,” Melissa said quietly.

The reminder fell on deaf ears, apparently. Maybe it was just too much for Velda to face, the reality that her only child had caused someone’s death.

“Do you know what he did while he was in jail, Melissa?” Velda ranted on, standing on the shady sidewalk and trembling even though it was warm out. “Do you know what Byron Cahill, the horrible criminal, did every day, while he was locked up?”

Melissa swallowed, shook her head, braced for some dreadful prison story.

“He helped train dogs from the shelters to be service animals. Search-and-rescue, seeing-eye dogs, dogs to help deaf people, too. He’s a good boy, dammit!”

“Velda,” Melissa said, after nodding to acknowledge that Byron Cahill might actually have an admirable side, like just about everybody else on the planet, “let me take you home. Maybe Byron’s there. Maybe he caught a ride with somebody instead of getting on the bus, or something like that.”

But Velda shook her head. A tear slipped down her right cheek. Then she pivoted on the worn heel of one flip-flop and marched off down the sidewalk, probably headed toward the trailer park where she rented a single-wide, but maybe not.

Melissa, feeling as though she’d aged a decade in the last half hour, watched as Velda’s thin frame disappeared into a copse of trees. She hoped Byron would be at home when his mother arrived but, at that point, nothing would have surprised her.

After checking to make sure the way was clear, Melissa pulled back out onto the road, executed a U-turn, and headed for Ashley’s B&B.

Mentally, she reviewed her original impressions of young Mr. Cahill. He’d been sixteen when he was convicted and sentenced. Against the advice of his duly appointed public defender, but apparently with his mother’s encouragement, Byron had waived a jury trial.

Melissa, in her capacity as prosecutor, and the public defender, a newly minted attorney imported from Flagstaff, had tried to negotiate some kind of deal, but in the end, they couldn’t come to an agreement.

The defense wanted probation, with no jail time, and comprehensive substance-abuse treatment in return for a guilty plea. After all, the argument ran, Byron was very young, and he’d never been in any real trouble before.

Melissa had been in favor of the treatment program, but probation wasn’t enough. Chavonne Rowan had been young, too. And thanks to Byron Cahill’s reckless actions, she wasn’t going to get any older. She would never go to college, have a career, fall in love, get married, have children. Naturally, the girl’s family was devastated.

Not that Byron’s going to jail would bring Chavonne back.

Secretly, Melissa had agonized over the case, but she’d presented a strong, confident face to the public, and even to her own family and close friends. She’d examined her conscience repeatedly, taken her responsibilities to heart, and she had the reputation as a ruthless legal commando to prove it.

Except for those few who knew her through and through—Brad, Olivia, Ashley and one or two close girlfriends—most people probably thought she was a real hard-ass. Even a ballbuster.

And when Melissa allowed herself to think about that, it grieved her.

Sure, she’d wanted an education and a career. She loved the law, complicated as it was, and she loved justice even more. Justice, of course, was an elusive thing, very subjective in some ways, too often more of a concept than a reality, but without the pursuit of that ideal, where would humanity be?

She thrust out a sigh. Shifted the car and her mood. She’d done the best she could with the Cahill case. And that had to be good enough.

With no reason to hurry home, Melissa decided she might as well stop by the B&B—the octogenarian guests were due in the night before—thereby fulfilling her promise to Ashley. She’d look in on the old folks, make sure they were having a good time. And still breathing, of course.

Five minutes later, she bumped up the driveway next to the spacious two-story Victorian house Ashley had turned into the Mountain View Bed and Breakfast several years before.

Ashley.

Melissa felt a stab, missing her twin sister sorely. Although they were different in many ways, Ashley domestic, Melissa anything but; Ashley blond, with a love of cotton print dresses and gossamer skirts, Melissa dark-haired, fond of tailored suits and slacks—they had always been close.

Hurry home, Ash, Melissa thought, as she parked and got out of the car.

A shrill wolf whistle from the front yard of the B&B stopped her in her tracks.

She shaded her eyes with one hand, since the sun was still bright, and spotted an elderly gentleman standing just inside the fence, in the shadow of Ashley’s prized lilac bush, wearing white Bermuda shorts, a white polo shirt, white shoes and white knee socks.

“Now that,” the old man said, gazing past Melissa to the roadster, “is some car.” He shook his leonine head of snowy hair. “Beautiful. Simply beautiful.”

Melissa smiled. At least he wasn’t a masher. “Thank you,” she said, pausing to look back at the car with undiminished admiration. “I like it, too.”

“You must be Mrs. McKenzie’s sister,” the man said, shifting his focus from the car to Melissa.

Mrs. McKenzie, of course, was Ashley.

Melissa was still getting used to that—Ashley married, and a mother. Sometimes, it seemed incredible.

“You must be one of the current guests,” she replied, smiling, extending a hand across the picket fence. “Melissa O’Ballivan,” she said.

“I’m John P. Winthrop IV,” the man replied, with a nod and a very wide—and very white—smile. “But you can call me John.”

“How’s it going, John?” Melissa asked, thinking she might be able to wrap up this interview quickly and dash off an honest email to Ashley when she got home, assuring her that the B&B was still standing. “Is there anything you or any of the other guests need?”

He beamed. “Well, we can always use another croquet player,” he said, making a grand gesture toward the nearby side gate, which led into Ashley’s beautifully kept garden of specially cultivated wildflowers.

A teenage boy from the neighborhood did the watering and mowed the lawn, so the flowers, a profusion of reds and blues and pinks and oranges, looked good, if a little weedy here and there.