The Turbulence of Butterflies (Max Howard Series Book 6) Read online

  “You know what; I think I’ll take you up on that, Max, if it’s not too much trouble and we won’t be gone long.”

  After she followed me to corral area and parked, I stepped down and handed the reins to her. “I’ll be right back,” I said and headed back to the barn and tack room for another horse and saddle. As I saddled an older gelding that I knew was sure-footed, I wondered what had brought her out to the ranch. She was a long way from Austin where she and Robert Gage were stationed. I hadn’t heard from her or her partner in several weeks, but I was happy for her company.

  After the double suicide of a married couple in Buda, Texas, that I was acquainted with, Robert Gage had dropped me like a hot potato. At the time, Sabine worked with Robert so I figured she was just following his lead. I assumed the sudden distance between us was because of my soured relationship with the Governor of Texas, Jeb Richmond. I had the feeling that Robert was taking a liking to the spotlight of Texas politics a bit too much for a Texas Ranger and when the Governor and I had a falling out, he knew exactly which side of his slice of bread to butter.

  Twenty minutes later, Ranger Henderson and I followed a copse of cedars along an escarpment until we crossed a dry creek bed. I was headed for a switchback that would take us up to a mesa that overlooked the ranch. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky that day and we’d have a good view of the ranch.

  “It’s so beautiful out here, Max.”

  “It surely is. It kinda makes me wonder what I did to deserve it all.”

  “Guilty conscience, huh?” she teased with a raised eyebrow. She knew how I’d come to own the property and the controversy surrounding it. She was one of the investigating Texas Rangers on the Pape Ranch Murders case.

  The situation had involved Rebecca Haas and had become known as the Pape Ranch Murders thanks to a publicity seeking student newspaper editor at Texas State University in San Marcos. I quickly put the editor, Mary Beth Carter, out of my mind. The mere thought of her still unsettled my stomach and I didn’t want to spoil my ride.

  “Not so much guilt anymore at my age. It’s more of a why now?”

  “Survivor’s remorse, I’d guess,” she said and smiled at me.

  “You think?”

  “You’re one of the luckiest men I know. The fact that you’ve survived this long is beyond me,” she said with an obvious disingenuous smile to let me know she was messing with me.

  I couldn’t argue that point with her, though, and didn’t. We stopped at a shallow pool in a limestone formation and let the horses drink. It was small depression in the rock of a dry creek that was fed by a trickle of water from an almost dry spring. The aquifer beneath the ranch was being sucked dry by San Antonio and Bexar County, to the extent that few of the springs on the ranch flowed anymore. All of the creeks on the ranch were dry now, except for this one. The ranch had a small spit of land that was bordered by the Guadalupe River for half a mile and it was the only access I had to surface water except for this pool and the manmade tanks.

  I called the eight-hundred-acre section where we were headed, The Penny Pasture. It had a small half acre pond that was recharged with each heavy rain and a well that no longer pumped enough to stay even with the evaporation in the tank. The State of Texas had choked off the well with a regulator a month ago because the wildlife on the ranch wasn’t as important as the illegals pouring into San Antonio and their demands upon the aquifer’s water supply. Well, that and the fact that I had been singled-out by the Governor for my failure to do him a favor and he had the Underground Water Authority place the regulator on the well. It was all perfectly legal and wasn’t worth a long drawn out fight in court about, especially with my suit against Solms County Commissioners. Governor Richmond’s term in office would be over in a few months and I would bide my time until then.

  “You’re not going to ask me why I’m here?” she said, breaking into my thoughts.

  “I suspect I know, but I’m happy for the company anyway. I’m feeling a little lonesome since Sunny left to visit her relatives in Washington.”

  “When’s she coming back?”

  “Whenever she finds that burr under her saddle or her sister gets better.”

  “Oh,” she said and nodded her head that she understood. “I wasn’t prying.”

  “I know you weren’t,” I said. I pulled up Sally’s head from the water and gave her a nudge with my boot. Sabine moved her horse up the trail and we rode side by side.

  “Rebecca Haas escaped from the Lockhart Correctional Facility two days ago. She managed to exchange places with an inmate that was being transferred to Harris County for a hearing. TDCJ doesn’t know how it happened yet, but the bottom line is she’s out and on the loose.”

  I had to smile at Sabine’s telling of the news. The desire to escape from confinement must have run in Rebecca’s family. Rebecca’s aunt, who was also Fran Pape’s twin sister, had pulled the same trick to escape an elderly care facility in New Haven a few years back and she’d suckered me into helping her. That was how I came to now own the Pape Ranch. I had gotten to know the family intimately back then and I was never quite convinced that Rebecca Haas was guilty of killing Fran Pape’s sister, but she had been found guilty in a court of law after the testimony of her former lover. Although he had never seemed credible to me, the jury had believed him.

  “I expect I’ll see Rebecca Haas again,” I said.

  “I expect you will too, considering your connection,” she said in a voice and emphasis on the word connection that was meant to needle me again in a friendly way. “That’s why I’m here.”

  “What’s Robert been up to lately?” I said to change the subject.

  “He’s at Headquarters now on special assignment.”

  We crossed through the Penny pasture which had a weathered old cabin still standing beneath a big oak tree. The tin roof had caved in decades ago and I’d found an old Indian Head copper penny there while exploring it a few months back. I would have to ask Rebecca Haas about the history of the old house, if I ever saw her again.

  We picked up the trail that led to the switchbacks and Sabine fell in behind me. We began to climb toward the top of the mesa.

  “So, you miss him?” I said to play with her and needle her back.

  “Excuse me?” she said with enough of a surprise that I knew I’d gotten to her.

  “You’re right, it none of my business.”

  “I work with Robert. It’s strictly a professional relationship, Max.”

  “Okay.”

  “We are not involved!”

  “I believe you.”

  “You thought we had something going on? Why would you think that?”

  “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Seemed to me there was a lot of smoke when the three of us had lunch that day in Austin? Guess I was wrong,” I said. I turned around in the saddle and gave her a big smile to let her know I was playing with her.

  “You sure as hell were! There was no fire on my part. He’s a married man. Where are we going?”

  “It must’ve been that salsa and the fajitas. We’re almost there. There’s a survey crew on the property. I can see them better from up on top of the mesa.”

  The mesa was an anomaly in the Hill Country. It was a flattened hill top where the cedar and brush had been cleared and worn flat by wind patterns over hundreds of years. The Comanche had used the mesa based on the arrowheads and artifacts I’d found there. It was probably less than twenty acres, but it gave a commanding view of the ranch and the surrounding Hill Country. Shane had told me the hilltop was an ideal place for a windfarm, but I wasn’t interested.

  “I can’t believe this view. You’re so lucky,” Sabine said as we climbed up the trail to the top of the mesa.

  Fifteen minutes later, we stopped about twenty yards from the edge of the mesa and dismounted. I didn’t trust the stability of the rim while on horseback. “Follow me,” I said and walked slowly to about five feet from the edge. I scanned the land below with the bi
noculars I had around my neck. I could see two men about a hundred yards from their truck taking a bearing.

  “Why are you putting in a road? There’s nothing there.”

  “It’s just a preliminary survey. I may want to put a road in one day. This’ll tell me the best route and give me an estimate to how much it’ll cost.”

  “Where’s it going?”

  “Here and there,” I said with a broad sweep of my arm. I didn’t want Sabine or anybody else to know about the Spanish cistern.

  “That’s kind of weird, Max,” she said and looked at her watch. “We need to head back. I have a meeting downtown in San Antonio at three. It’s been great to be out in the fresh air.”

  “Come back another time, I’ll show you the rest of the ranch.”

  “I’ll take you up on that, if I’m through here again and have some time.”

  “I hope you do. What’s going on in San Antonio?”

  “The Feds. They’re in an uproar about Rebecca Haas escaping. They’re still smarting from that incident at your ranch with the Vice President and the Governor. It’s big, Max,” she said with a frown to emphasize the meeting’s importance.

  “Well, they deserve whatever sticks to them. I sure hope they fired those two Secret Service agents at the front gate that shot Rebecca Haas.”

  “You don’t want to know what happened to them.”

  “Don’t tell me they got accommodations,” I said, but figured they had. Both men had emptied their fifteen round clips into Rebecca Haas’ car and she was barely scratched.

  “Okay, I won’t,” she said and grinned. There wasn’t a lot of love lost between the Texas Rangers and the Secret Service after the incident. “Your name sure has come up a lot lately since the Haas women escaped.”

  “No doubt in a profane way.”

  “To put it mildly. I want you to call me if she contacts you.”

  “That goes without saying, Sabine.”

  “I wish I could believe you. I know how you felt about the verdict. Robert said you were pretty mad. Look, there’s a lot of finger pointing going on and the Feds want to blame somebody. Shit rolls downhill and I just don’t want to see you get caught up in this again. You’re at the bottom of the hill, understand?”

  I did indeed understand, but I wasn’t going to concede her point. “I get it,” I said. “I’m not angry anymore. I can’t help it if the Texas Judicial System is more interested in supporting popular opinion than administering justice.”

  Several years ago I had been selected as The Rancher of the Year for the land reclamation work on my ranch. The ceremonies sure hadn’t been my idea. I only accept the award because of Emily. If the politicians hadn’t shown up, the Secret Service and the Texas Rangers wouldn’t have been there, and Rebecca Haas would have never been shot. The fact that she had a loaded gun in the car was no big deal to the ranchers at the ceremony and sure wasn’t to me. If I had to blame anyone for the incident it was the trigger-happy feds and the fake-news media who were more interested in the audience numbers than the truth. But, it was all ancient history now and Rebecca Haas was on the loose. I sure hoped she had the good sense to get the hell out of Texas.

  We rode down the switchback in silence. I looked back at Sabine every once in a while, and she seemed lost in her thoughts and with a smile on her face. She was a woman that liked the outdoors, I could tell. It gave me some pleasure to see a happy woman, who wore a uniform, and who could sit a saddle well. It was a weakness of mine that I had always been attracted to female cops. Sunny had been the Chief of Police for the Lummi Nation’s Tribal Police Department. But before that, she was a uniformed officer when I first met her. When I gave into the fantasy of dating a cop in a uniform I surprised myself and fell head over heels for her never thinking I’d have a chance with her. “Man, you sure lucked out,” I said to myself and forgetting that Sabine was right behind me.

  “What?” Sabine said.

  “Don’t mind me. I talk to myself sometimes. Bad habits are hard to break, the older I get.”

  After that exchange between us, we rode in silence most of the way down. I could tell she was content to exist in the moment and find contentment in being on horseback. It was a Zen kind of thing and we both enjoyed it. It was like what I’d tried to teach my kids about fishing. It didn’t matter if you caught anything or not, it was more about the act that you were outside by the water and enjoying yourself.

  “You want some help with the horses? I have a few minutes,” she said after the ranch came into view.

  “Alright,” I said.

  I could tell she wasn’t ready to let the day’s ride go and get back to the reality of a boring meeting in San Antonio. She was a woman I liked. I started thinking about which of my grandsons she would get along with. Unfortunately, the two that came to mind were way younger than Sabine and weren’t enough like me to appreciate her qualities or uniqueness. I hoped she was smart enough not to just settle for any cowpoke that came along. There were a lot of fellas that could wear a hat well, but that was about all.

  We rode over to the corral area and unsaddled the horses. When we took the saddles into the tack room, she looked around and took a deep breath. “This reminds me of when I was a girl on my uncle’s ranch during the summers. I love the smell of horse manure and hay. You want to brush them?”

  I handed her a brush off a shelf and put a scoop of oats in two feed buckets for the horses as a treat for hauling us up the trail. We walked back out to where the horses were tied. I led Sally inside the corral and Sabine followed me with her horse. I closed the gate while she began to brush the gelding. “What’s his name?”

  “You know, I don’t know. Tomás bought him at the auction a few months ago and he probably didn’t come with a name.”

  “Oh, please, can I name him?”

  “Sure, I don’t see why not. This is Sally.”

  “I want to name him Roberto?”

  I raised an eyebrow at her and waited.

  “It’s an inside joke.”

  Oh, sure it is. “Roberto, it is, then.”

  “Will you take a picture for me?”

  She handed me her smartphone out of her back pocket and leaned up against the horse’s hip with one arm resting over his rump and posed herself. She grinned widely and pointed to his backend with her other hand. I guessed she had plans for the picture and the implication was obvious to me. Robert Gage could be a horse’s ass sometimes.

  After Sabine left, I set the horses free in the corral and walked over to the renovation work going on in the old ranch house. I still wanted to talk to Tomás. He had been pestering me to let his wife and family come live with him on the Pape Ranch before President Trump built the Border Wall, but I had told him no. I didn’t want to be responsible for more illegals coming into Texas. Tomás wasn’t around anywhere and the men working on the house hadn’t seen him that day.

  I hung around a little longer inspecting the work inside the house. It was almost habitable. Most of the work that was left to be finished was cosmetic. The trim needed to be installed, a few cabinets replaced, and the water hooked up still, but it would do. After a while of walking around, I realized I was just avoiding going home to my own empty house.

  Seeing Sabine again had distracted me momentarily from my discontent at Sunny leaving. Without Sunny and Katie, I was at a loss with what to do with myself. Learning about Rebecca Haas had titillated my Hoppy Gene. I needed to involve myself in something that could challenge my old brain while Sunny was away, but then I quickly dismissed the idea. She had been pretty emphatic before she boarded her plane that I was to stay out of trouble while she was gone.

  . . .

  It was four-thirty when I drove past the Meeting Center on the way to the house and Emily’s car was gone. My family shared the ranch’s vegetable garden with Clete’s family. Emily could be in the garden I told myself. I called over to Clete’s house as I drove to ask if he could see her car. It was the same garden my grandfather had
started nearly a century ago near the old ranch house. Clete’s house was closer to the garden than our new house was and so he shouldered much of the manual labor a good garden required. Emily had taken to poaching the garden over the spring for the zucchini.

  “Hey, Max,” Clete said.

  “Is Emily over there?”

  “She was. She left about twenty minutes ago.”

  “Thanks, Clete. Everything okay?”

  “Yes, sir. You know that spot in the garden where you buried the animals?”

  “Yes,” I said with my heart now in my throat.

  “It looks like something was digging around over there. Emily told me about it before she left, so I back-filled the hole and went over it with the tractor to compact it back down. I just finished up.”

  My stomach turned over. I had buried Juan Fuentes there and hadn’t told anyone. I had probably violated a dozen state laws, but the real reason was I knew no one would believe he had been killed by the spotted jaguar on the ranch. Most people had thought he had returned to Mexico and I was okay with that.

  “It was probably a coyote,” I said.

  “Just thought you should know is all.”

  “Now why would Clete say that?” I said to myself after I closed the call. “Did he know about Juan?” I hated having so many secrets to keep. It was going to turn me into a paranoid old man, if I wasn’t one already.

  I pulled up in front of our house and was about to step down from the truck, when Emily called me.

  “Where are you?” she said.

  “I just got home.”

  “Did you talk to Bryan? He called the Meeting Center earlier looking for you.”

  “Why didn’t he call me on my cell phone?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. Ask him. He and Ava are flying in tomorrow morning.”

  That was news that made my day and I knew I’d sleep well that night. My grandson was coming home.

  Chapter 4

  I called Shane Wagnor before I went to bed that night to tell him I wouldn’t be out to the ranch at noon and to reschedule our visit to the cistern for the following day. He was okay with that and then proceeded to tell me about the engine problems on the grader and the cost estimate to fix it. I couldn’t get to sleep after hearing that bit of news and so at midnight I called Sunny. It was only ten out there in Washington. It was our off-night and she wasn’t expecting my call. We had agreed to talk every other night but, still, I was surprised when she didn’t answer her phone. The worries that only an older man married to a younger woman can have kept me up the rest of the night.