The Maverick: The Maverick / Magnate’s Make-Believe Mistress

She’d entrusted Longfellow with the precious piece of paper which might yield dramatic evidence, once unfolded. There had clearly been writing on it. The dead man had grasped it tight in his hand while he was being killed, and had managed to conceal it from his killer. It must have something on it that he was desperate to preserve. Amazing. She wanted to know what it was. Tomorrow, she promised herself, their best trace evidence specialist, Longfellow, would have that paper turned every which way but loose in her lab, and she’d find answers for Alice. She was one of the best CSI people Alice had ever worked with. When Alice drove right back down to Jacobsville, she knew she’d have answers from the lab soon.

Restless, she looked around at the lonely landscape, bare in winter. The local police were canvassing the surrounding area for anyone who’d seen something unusual in the past few days, or who’d noticed an out-of-town car around the river.

Alice paced the riverbank, a lonely figure in a neat white sweatshirt with blue jeans, staring out across the ripples of the water while her sneakers tried to sink into the damp sand. It was cooler today, in the fifties, about normal for a December day in south Texas.

Sometimes she could think better when she was alone at the crime scene. Today wasn’t one of those days. She was acutely aware of her aloneness. It was worse now, after the death of her father a month ago. He was her last living relative. He’d been a banker back in Tennessee, where she’d taken courses in forensics. The family was from Floresville, just down the road from San Antonio. But her parents had moved away to Tennessee when she was in her last year of high school, and that had been a wrench. Alice had a crush on a boy in her class, but the move killed any hope of a relationship. She really had been a late bloomer, preferring to hang out in the biology lab rather than think about dating. Amoeba under the microscope were so much more interesting.

Alice had left home soon after her mother’s death, the year she started college. Her mother had been a live wire, a happy and well-adjusted woman who could do almost anything around the house, especially cook. She despaired of Alice, her only child, who watched endless reruns of the old TV show Quincy, about a medical examiner, along with archaic Perry Mason episodes. Long before it was popular, Alice had dreamed of being a crime scene technician.

She’d been an ace at biology in high school. Her science teachers had encouraged her, delighting in her bright enthusiasm. One of them had recommended her to a colleague at the University of Texas campus in San Antonio, who’d steered her into a science major and helped her find local scholarships to supplement the small amount her father could afford for her. It had been an uphill climb to get that degree, and to add to it with courses from far-flung universities when time and money permitted; one being courses in forensic anthropology at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. In between, she’d slogged away with other techs at one crime scene after another, gaining experience.

Once, in her haste to finish gathering evidence, due to a rare prospective date, she’d slipped up and mislabeled blood evidence. That had cost the prosecution staff a conviction. It had been a sobering experience for Alice, especially when the suspect went out and killed a young boy before being rearrested. Alice felt responsible for that boy’s death. She never forgot how haste had put the nails in his coffin, and she never slipped up again. She gained a reputation for being precise and meticulous in evidence-gathering. And she never went home early again. Alice was almost always the last person to leave the lab, or the crime scene, at the end of the day.

A revved-up engine caught her attention. She turned as a carload of young boys pulled up beside her white van at the river’s edge.

“Lookie there, a lonely lady!” one of them called. “Ain’t she purty?”

“Shore is! Hey, pretty thing, you like younger men? We can make you happy!”

“You bet!” Another one laughed.

“Hey, lady, you feel like a party?!” another one catcalled.

Alice glared. “No, I don’t feel like a party. Take a hike!” She turned back to her contemplation of the river, hoping they’d give up and leave.

“Aww, that ain’t no way to treat prospective boyfriends!” one yelled back. “Come on up here and lie down, lady. We want to talk to you!”

More raucous laughter echoed out of the car.

So much for patience. She was in no mood for teenagers acting out. She pulled out the pad and pen she always carried in her back pocket and walked up the bank and around to the back of their car. She wrote down the license plate number without being obvious about it. She’d call in a harassment call and let local law enforcement help her out. But even as she thought about it, she hesitated. There had to be a better way to handle this bunch of loonies without involving the law. She was overreacting. They were just teenagers, after all. Inspiration struck as she reemerged at the driver’s side of the car.

She ruffled her hair and moved closer to the tow-headed young driver. She leaned down. “I like your tires,” she drawled with a wide grin. “They’re real nice. And wide. And they have treads. I like treads.” She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “You like treads?”

He stared at her. The silly expression went into eclipse. “Treads?” His voice sounded squeaky. He tried again. “Tire…treads?”

“Yeah. Tire treads.” She stuck her tongue in and out and grinned again. “I reeaaally like tire treads.”

He was trying to pretend that he wasn’t talking to a lunatic. “Uh. You do. Really.”

She was enjoying herself now. The other boys seemed even more confused than the driver did. They were all staring at her. Nobody was laughing.

She frowned. “No, you don’t like treads. You’re just humoring me. Okay. If you don’t like treads, you might like what I got in the truck,” she said, lowering her voice. She jerked her head toward the van.

He cleared his throat. “I might like what you got in the truck,” he parroted.

She nodded, grinning, widening her eyes until the whites almost gleamed. She leaned forward. “I got bodies in there!” she said in a stage whisper and levered her eyes wide-open. “Real dead bodies! Want to see?”

The driver gaped at her. Then he exclaimed, “Dead…bod…Oh, Good Lord, no!”

He jerked back from her, slammed his foot down on the accelerator, and spun sand like dust as he roared back out onto the asphalt and left a rubber trail behind him.

She shook her head. “Was it something I said?” she asked a nearby bush.

She burst out laughing. She really did need a vacation, she told herself.

Harley Fowler saw the van sitting on the side of the road as he moved a handful of steers from one pasture to another. With the help of Bob, Cy Parks’s veteran cattle dog, he put the little steers into their new area and closed the gate behind him. A carload of boys roared up beside the van and got noisy. They were obviously hassling the crime scene woman. Harley recognized her van.

His pale blue eyes narrowed and began to glitter. He didn’t like a gang of boys trying to intimidate a lone woman. He reached into his saddlebag and pulled out his gunbelt, stepping down out of the saddle to strap it on. He tied the horse to a bar of the gate and motioned Bob to stay. Harley strolled off toward the van.

He didn’t think he’d have to use the pistol, of course. The threat of it would be more than enough. But if any of the boys decided to have a go at him, he could put them down with his fists. He’d learned a lot from Eb Scott and the local mercs. He didn’t need a gun to enforce his authority. But if the sight of it made the gang of boys a little more likely to leave without trouble, that was all right, too.

He moved into sight just at the back of Alice’s van. She was leaning over the driver’s side of the car. He couldn’t hear what she said, but he could certainly hear what the boy exclaimed as he roared out onto the highway and took off.

Alice was talking to a bush.

Harley stared at her with confusion.

Alice sensed that she was no longer alone, and she turned. She blinked. “Have you been there long?” she asked hesitantly.

“Just long enough to see the Happy Teenager Gang take a powder,” he replied. “Oh, and to hear you asking a bush about why they left.” His eyes twinkled. “Talk to bushes a lot in your line of work, do you?”

She was studying him curiously, especially the low-slung pistol in its holster. “You on your way to a gunfight and just stopped by to say hello?”

“I was moving steers,” he replied. “I heard the teenagers giving you a hard time and came to see if you needed any help. Obviously not.”

“Were you going to offer to shoot them for me?” she asked.

He chuckled. “Never had to shoot any kids,” he said with emphasis.

“You’ve shot other sorts of people?”

“One or two,” he said pleasantly, but this time he didn’t smile.

She felt chills go down her spine. If her livelihood made him queasy, the way he looked wearing that sidearm made her feel the same way. He wasn’t the easygoing cowboy she’d met in town the day before. He reminded her oddly of Cash Grier, for reasons she couldn’t put into words. There was cold steel in this man. He had the self-confidence of a man who’d been tested under fire. It was unusual, in a modern man. Unless, she considered, he’d been in the military, or some paramilitary unit.

“I don’t shoot women,” he said when she hesitated.

“Good thing,” she replied absently. “I don’t have any bandages.”

He moved closer. She seemed shaken. He scowled. “You okay?”

She shifted uneasily. “I guess so.”

“Mind telling me how you got them to leave so quickly?”

“Oh. That. I just asked if they’d like to see the dead bodies in my van.”

He blinked. He was sure he hadn’t heard her right. “You asked if…?” he prompted.