“They didn’t hear anything, either?” she asked in surprise.
“In one room the TV was on so loud the two people staying there could barely hear me pounding on their door. It’s just one woman on the other side, but I woke her out of a dead sleep. I figure I’ll have to wait till morning to canvass the rest.”
“I don’t know what to do,” Leland said. “My mom’s not going to like this. It’ll really upset her. She had a cow when Hillary Hawthorne set up shop in room six and pasted a nine behind it.” He added, as an aside to himself, “Something I actually found sort of titillating.”
Sophia held up a hand. “Keep your sexual fantasies to yourself, Leland.”
“What?” he said in a desultory tone. “You guys are in your sexual prime, right? I’m a single man in my forties who lives with my widowed mother. Knowing Hillary was putting out a few doors down was the highlight of my whole year. If my love life doesn’t improve soon, it might be the highlight of my whole decade. But that isn’t what I’m trying to tell you.”
“Then you’d better get to the point,” she said.
“I don’t have another room for you. I never did make it over to the hardware store today so I can’t steal the lock from the laundry like I did before. I’m afraid Mr. Guerrero will have to find another place until I can get this room repaired.”
Leland made it sound as though he wouldn’t mind if Rod stayed away indefinitely. What with the damage that seemed to follow him, his brand of trouble wasn’t nearly as “titillating” as Hillary Hawthorne’s.
A V formed between Rod’s eyebrows. “So where do you suggest I go?”
Choosing to stare at the carpet rather than brave Rod’s displeasure, Leland rocked back and forth, and Sophia understood why. Rod could be intimidating when he was angry. She knew that from when she’d used her Taser on him. His expression then, and now, brought new meaning to the saying, “If looks could kill.”
“There’s the Sundowner on the other side of town…” Leland said.
Rod glared at him for several seconds more, then finally responded. “Which has, what, eight rooms?”
“That’s about right.” He nodded. “Yeah. Eight. I’m sure of it.”
“You don’t think that, owing to the recent influx of reporters, they’ll be full over there, too?”
Leland shrank back a step or two, out of the doorway. “You could try getting a room in Douglas or Sierra Vista….”
“I’m not leaving town.”
Sophia decided this might be a good place to break in. “Any of your stuff missing?” she asked Rod.
“No.”
“You’ve checked?”
“I’ve checked.”
“So…whoever did this just meant to send you a message.”
“Whoever did this hates my guts and wanted me to know it.”
“Who do you think it was?”
His beard rasped as he rubbed a hand over his face. “The same person you think it was.”
“Stuart.”
“Who else?”
It had to be his half brother. One of them, anyway. As far as Sophia knew, no one else in Bordertown felt strongly enough about Rod to do something like this.
She unclipped her radio from her belt. “I’ll call my officer, have him dust for prints.”
After getting off the bed, Rod grabbed the keys he’d tossed on the dresser. “You don’t want to do that yourself?”
“And let you confront Stuart on your own? No way,” she said. “I’ve had to see the M.E. enough for one summer.” She didn’t specify which man she believed would be left standing but, in her opinion, there was no contest. Maybe Stuart could hold his own against a regular guy.
But Rod was no regular guy.
“This has been a really shitty day, you know that?”
Rod had insisted on driving his Hummer. They’d already been to the Dunlap ranch but were unable to rouse anyone at Stuart’s place, so they’d gone next door, where Patrick had answered as soon as they knocked. Once he got over his initial surprise at finding Rod on his doorstep, he said he didn’t know a thing about the trashed motel room. He also claimed he hadn’t seen his brother since they got off work at dinnertime.
Sophia believed him. Rod must’ve believed him, too, because he’d stalked back to the Hummer without taking Patrick up on his offer to have his wife come to the door and vouch for his presence at home.
They’d left the ranch without stopping at the main house. All the windows had been dark, suggesting that the older Dunlaps were already in bed. Now they were on their way to the Firelight, Stuart’s favorite bar.
Rod’s bad mood translated into a lead foot, but Sophia let his speeding slide. It was late, there wasn’t much traffic on the road and she could understand why he might be a little eager to get ahold of Stuart.
“I can’t say today’s been too stellar for me, either,” she said. After leaving her father’s feed store, and fending off reporters who’d tried every possible tactic to get her to say more than she should about the UDA killings, she’d holed up in her house. She’d been trying to get some rest before working graveyard. Tonight, she planned to patrol the ranches, see if she could spot anything that might help solve the UDA murders or at least discourage a fourth incident. But her attempt at sleep had been a wasted effort. Instead, she’d lain on her bed, wide-awake, pondering whether or not to approach her mother with Leonard Taylor’s story.
If Anne had gone to the police, it meant her mother had believed her and yet had done nothing to protect her. And if she hadn’t, Sophia would’ve dragged their most horrifying skeleton out of the closet for nothing. They’d struggled so hard to get beyond what Gary had done….
Sophia didn’t want to have that awkward conversation. She preferred to let her mother keep pretending, so they could have some semblance of a relationship. As contemptible as Sophia found Anne’s actions regarding Gary’s behavior, Anne was trying to make up for her shortcomings in other ways. She brought over produce from her garden, had just quilted Sophia a blanket, saved magazines and news clippings she thought Sophia might find of interest. As imperfect as Anne was, she was really the only family member Sophia had left. Her brother visited occasionally but work demands kept him on the East Coast, where he was busy raising a family.