Left Hanging by Patricia McLinn Read Free Book Online Page A

evaporated. “They don’t know what they done. It’s not like they got human feelings,” he said with a dollop of disdain. Which didn’t say much for his opinion of teenage girls.
    “You said they were unsettled,” I reminded him.
    “Sure. Because their routine’s been disrupted.”
    Poor babies. Though, their routine certainly had not been disrupted as completely as Landry’s. Or, for that matter, Street’s. Rather than raise that, I asked, “What will happen to the business?”
    He shook his head in the manner of one at a loss to comment on the strangeness of the world.
    He was still shaking it when I got tired of that variation on no comment , and added, “Do you get the whole business now?”
    That didn’t stop the head-shaking, but he also spoke. “Yeah. Never figured it would be this way. Never figured he’d go first. Suppose most people say that in this sort of situation,” he said with unexpected acumen. “But in my case it surely is true. Keith was the businessman. All I know is livestock. Mind you, he wouldn’t have stayed in rodeo without me buying and breeding and tending my livestock. But I couldn’t do the business like he did. He loved the game of it and the winning, especially when he could beat the other side. Meeting people, making sales, writing contracts and all. He was a wonder at it, and that’s the truth. We’ll do fine this year. I suppose we’ll get by the next. After that? It’ll be like a snake that keeps moving after its head’s been cut off because it don’t know it’s dead.”
    I saw no indication that he saw any significance in his likening Landry—and their business—to a snake as he concluded, somberly, “I surely don’t know what I’ll do without him.”

Chapter Five
    I RETURNED TO our isolated spot in the bleacher seats with two boxes of popcorn and reported the conversation to Mike while watching the end of team-roping, which Cas Newton and another kid won. Now steer wrestling was starting.
    “That’s all?” Mike asked when I’d finished.
    “Wanted to keep the door open, keep him as a potential source of information. I have a question for you, too. What was Landry like?”
    “Didn’t really know him. He’s been contractor here for years, but we didn’t cross paths. He bid this year, too, but got underbid by a new contractor. The committee signed the new one end of last year.”
    “Last year? But Linda Caswell just took over as chair—”
    “Yup, Fine got that wrong. Linda wasn’t chair when they signed the new, low-bid contractor. It was Fine’s ol’ buddy Judge Ambrose Claustel in charge then. When Claustel—” He bent a look of significance on me. “—stepped down, Linda Caswell was named.
    “Then this new contractor notified them he’d gone bankrupt and wouldn’t fulfill the contract. That put Linda and the committee in a real bind. With only a few weeks until the rodeo, they either had to cancel after paying out a lot of money they’d never recoup, or they had to find somebody fast and hope to come out ahead. Landry was the somebody available.”
    “What about the bankrupt contractor? I remember you reported on the company—”
    “More like reported on not being able to find it. One letter saying he was bankrupt and poof! He was gone. Linda gave me her file, but what little contact information it had led nowhere. Claustel must have had the full file, and it went when he did. I tried contractor and rodeo associations, called long-time contractors, and no leads on this Sweet Meadows. Haeburn ordered me to stop spending time, on air or off, on it. I tried digging into bankruptcies on my own, but good lord, do you know how many bankruptcies there are? I didn’t even know the state.” He huffed out a breath. “I don’t know why I had such an itch to find out. It just felt  . . . ” He looked away. “  . . . wrong.”
    “Gut instinct can be the best reporter tool around. Maybe set Jenny on the bankruptcy search. She’s