14

IT TURNED OUT THAT JOSÉ COVARRUBIAS WAS NOT AT THE Brave Bull. Gloria said he'd gone into town to run a few errands. When I'd asked about J.B. she told me he was down at the bull pens so I headed down there next.

As I walked past some of the guest houses, I was surprised to see various vehicles in front of them, including several rental cars. Maybe some out-of-town friends were staying on, which also explained Mrs. Covarrubias's cooking frenzy.

As I rounded the last bungalow, I almost ran into Jodie Austin. The model was wearing Wrangler's and another bull riding T-shirt. This one said “Feel the Rush.”

“Hi, Jodie.”

I'd startled her and I could see that she was searching her memory banks for where she knew me.

“I'm Trade Ellis. I was here the other day for Abby's service.”

“Oh right, yeah, of course.”

“You decided to stay on for a while?”

“Stay on? Oh no, no, I'm here for the school.”

“J.B.'s doing the school now?” I couldn't believe it. His wife had been dead a week and here he was going on with business as usual.

“Well, yeah. He had to cancel it last week you know.” She punctuated her words with popping gum.

I walked with Jodie down to the bull pens where we found four other wannable bull riders sitting with J.B. in the wrought iron under the oak tree outside Double Indemnity's corral. Calendar was lecturing his rapt students. The huge Brahma was ignoring him.

While J.B. nodded in my direction, he was not going to take a break until he was ready. A huge orange Gott cooler rested on a wooden table close by so I reached for a paper cup and filled it, brushing flies away as I drank from it. That's one of the problems of being around livestock in the summer. There are always a lot of flies around.

“You got to remember,” J.B. said, “that when you're riding that bull you're also riding the opinion of those two judges, plus the guy in the chute.”

A slim young man raised his hand. “But I thought you just stayed on for the eight seconds.” His New York accent grated through the dry desert air.

Jesus. The kid probably had never even seen bull riding, but here he'd plunked down two thousand bucks for a week to learn how to do it.

“Well.”—J.B. spit a stream of tobacco in the dust—

“that's one of the criteria. What are some of the others?”

A fat, bald guy, who looked to be at least fifty, said,

“You can't touch the son-of-a-bitch with your free hand.”

“Bingo, Fred.” J.B. pointed a finger at him.

“Speed, drop and whip,” said a young Hispanic cowboy, who sounded like he just might know what he was talking about.

“Very good,” J.B. said. “Remember, that bull is your dance partner, and you want to cha-cha-cha as fast as you can. Best-case scenario is that your partner will swoop, buck, drop, spin and change direction, all in eight seconds while you stay with him like flies on shit.”

That sounded like a pretty shitty dance partner to me, but then I've never been one to follow well, which means that when I do get asked to dance, they usually don't come back for seconds.

“That's eight seconds with the bull rope,” Jodie added.

The men turned to look at us.

“Right,” J.B. agreed. “The clock's still running, even if you are up in the air, not even touching the bull, as long as you still have that bull rope in your hand and haven't touched the bull with your free hand.”

“Wow, you mean like you could be out in space and still make the buzzer?” the kid from New York asked.

“Yup. Of course, you might not score as well as the guy who's with the bull all the way,” J.B. added. “Let's take a break.”

He walked over to me, recognizing the recess as my opportunity to further grill him.

“José Covarrubias isn't here, huh?” I asked, trying to keep the irritation out of my voice. After all, I'd driven up here hoping to do at least two interviews.

“I would have called you, but I didn't know he was leaving until I saw his truck drive out.”

“Did he know I was coming?”

“I thought so. I talked to Gloria this morning about it.”

It seemed unusual that an employee would purposely duck an appointment his employer had made for him. Was there a reason Covarrubias didn't want to talk with me?

“I forgot to mention that I'd like to take a look at Abby's calendar, or Day Planner, also look through her papers, her desk stuff.”

“No problem. I'll intercom Gloria and tell her to let you go whole-hog up there.” He nodded in the direction of the main house.

Finally I got down to what was bothering me at the moment. “J.B., why in the hell are you doing the bull riding school this week?”

“I know, I know. It doesn't look that good, what with Abby being dead just a short time and all. But, frankly, Trade, I don't know how this whole thing is going to shake out, and I might need the money.”

If ten thousand dollars was going to make a major difference in his current lifestyle, then J.B. really was in deep caca. My fees could be too.

“Besides, I had to cancel the school last week, and some of the students had already made their plans.”

“Like Jodie Austin.”

He gave me a funny look. “Like Jodie Austin. Memo Flores took a week off from the mines, that guy from New York took a two-week vacation from his ad agency figuring he'd see some of the West.” He pointed to a tall, good-looking young man, the only one who hadn't spoken during the part of J.B.'s lecture that I'd heard. “Paulo Moraes there came all the way from Brazil. People made plans.”

“And Abby's death interrupted that.” It was hard to keep the sarcasm out of my voice.

“Whatever. Look, Trade, it's done. Maybe I should have called you before I decided to go ahead with it, but I hired you to be my private investigator, not my conscience.”

Ouch. The cowboy was getting uppity on me.