Chapter 7

They drew a lot of stares on the street as they walked to the livery stable. Jarrod stumbled a couple times. Heath stayed beside him and steadied him. Nick got a lot of worried, sympathetic looks from people. They walked over without talking to each other at all.

The main door to the livery was wide open, not like it was the night before. There was a man there now, cleaning out a stall. It was T.J. Dyce. He looked startled to see them and he stopped.

Jarrod had been able to loosen the tight little man up on the stand when Heath was being tried for killing Parker Atlas, but you don't cure a man completely of his basic nature just because you draw him out once. T.J. was still a very cautious, very frightened man, and it showed. But when his eyes settled on Jarrod, on the bandage around his head, on Heath steadying him, T.J. slumped a little.

"Hello, T.J.," the sheriff said. "When did you come in here?"

"About an hour ago," T.J. said. "Bandy has me clean out the stalls during the day, the ones the horses have been taken out of in the morning. Get them ready for overnight. How you doin', Mr. Barkley?"

He directed that to Jarrod. Heath said, "He can't hear you, T.J., and he's a little scrambled still. You have to yell at him and hope he understands."

Nick did the yelling. "Jarrod! T.J. wants to know how you're doing!"

Jarrod turned to listen to Nick, then turned back to T.J. and gave him a smile and a nod. "Good," was all he said.

The sheriff pointed to a stall where a horse stood. Jarrod's horse. They'd pretty much forgotten it was still here. "Right behind this stall here, Jarrod!" the sheriff shouted and pointed.

Jarrod went over to the stall, gave his horse a pat on the rump. Jingo looked over his shoulder at him. He didn't know why he was still in here either, but it didn't seem to bother him.

Jarrod looked down at the spot the sheriff had pointed out. He took his pad and pencil out and made a note, then he squatted down and poked around in the straw with his pencil. Heath stayed close to him.

"Did you do any work over by this stall today, T.J.?" Sheriff Madden asked.

"Not with the horse still in there," T.J. said. "I don't think Bandy did either, but he's out somewhere. I don't know where."

"I talked to him this morning," Sheriff Madden said. "He doesn't know anything and didn't do anything over here."

"Did you?" Nick asked.

"I looked around last night with a lantern and today in the light, but I didn't see anything either, not even any blood."

Jarrod had been stirring in the straw and dirt, and suddenly he found something. He stopped.

Heath saw. "Sheriff?" he said.

Sheriff Madden came over, bent down, and saw what Jarrod and Heath were seeing. A key, pressed into the dirt under the straw.

"Could that have been there last night?" Heath asked.

"I didn't find it if it was," Sheriff Madden said. Then he said loudly, "Jarrod?"

Jarrod rose up, but Heath had to steady him when he stood. He looked at the sheriff.

"Is that your key?" Sheriff Madden asked loudly, standing up with him.

Jarrod just looked confused.

The sheriff bent down and picked up the key. He stood back up and showed it to Jarrod. "Is this your key?" he asked loudly again.

Jarrod reached into his coat pocket slowly and pulled out a key that looked a lot like the one the sheriff now held. "No," Jarrod said and put his key back in his pocket.

The sheriff turned to T.J. "Do you know this key, T.J.?"

"I never saw it before," T.J. said.

"If you didn't find it last night, somebody might have just dropped here this morning," Heath said.

"Maybe," the sheriff said. "But it was pushed down in there good. Whoever dropped it might have stepped on it and it was just too covered up with straw and dirt for me to find it."

"Then we better find out who it belongs to."

"It'll be like matching Cinderella with her glass slipper," Sheriff Madden said. "But if I have to try locks all over town, I'll do it. It'll take time though, and it might not mean anything."

"Maybe Jack Tamlin dropped it," Nick said.

"I'll check him first."

Jarrod squatted down again and poked around some more, but he didn't come up with anything. He rose up again, Heath steadying him, and then he started looking everywhere around him. If anything was stirring his memory, he didn't show it.

Sheriff Madden turned to Dyce again. "T.J., were you here last night?"

"No, sir," T.J. said. "I just found out about Mr. Barkley being hurt a couple hours ago."

"Do you know of anyone else who might have been here?"

"No, sir. You'd have to ask Mr. Bandy."

The sheriff sighed. "I did. He didn't know of anybody being here at that hour. If anybody was, it was probably a drunk looking for someplace to sleep it off."

"No drunk slugged Jarrod that hard," Nick said. "Whoever did it, meant it."

They thanked T.J. and went back to the sheriff's office in silence. Once inside, the sheriff made sure they were alone and asked Jarrod, "Well, what did you get out of that?"

Jarrod sat down. "I remember going in the foot door last night. The main door was closed. I don't remember seeing anyone but I do remember something like a shadow, not near my horse, but some kind of shadowy movement from my right as I was getting to my horse." He frowned, thinking, trying to remember.

"A shadow like a man or a horse?" Sheriff Madden asked.

"Not a horse," Jarrod said. "A person. My size or close to it." He tried to remember harder. "Just someone."

"Did you see them make a move on you?"

"I don't remember. I just remember feeling them very close, at my shoulder."

"Did you hear anything? Did you smell anything unusual, like maybe an aftershave?"

Jarrod shook his head. "Not that I remember."

"Did you see anybody else in the place or any other movement?" Sheriff Madden asked.

"Just one shadow, about my size," Jarrod said.

"Not T.J.'s size."

"No, T.J. is way too small, and you're way too big, Fred. This person was about six feet or close to it."

"Well," the sheriff said and took the key out of his pocket. He gave it to Jarrod, who looked at it carefully. "Is that at all familiar to you?"

"It's just a key," Jarrod said and wiped it off a bit with his fingers. "It's pretty clean underneath the livery dirt, though. It's the size of a key to a door, not a key to a padlock or anything small like a safe deposit box. Somebody probably got locked out of somewhere last night or today, Fred."

The door opened suddenly, and Jarrod's secretary Esther came in. She stopped right inside the doorway. "Oh, Sheriff – Mr. Barkley – Mr. Barkley, someone came into the office to see you."

She didn't speak loudly. Jarrod just looked at her as if he didn't hear.

Heath said to Jarrod, loudly, "Esther says somebody came into the office to see you."

"Who?" Jarrod asked Esther.

She spoke loudly now. "A man named Dan Lynch."

Jarrod looked at the sheriff, who looked back at him. The sheriff said, "So we're back where we started."

He didn't say it loud, so Jarrod just looked vacant, like he didn't hear him.

"Dan Lynch!" Sheriff Madden said more loudly to Jarrod. "The guy who works for Bishop! The one I caught with the dynamite!" Then he looked at Esther but still spoke loudly. "What did he want?"

"Oh," Esther said and looked at Jarrod. Then she spoke loudly. "He wanted to talk to Mr. Barkley, but I can't tell you any more than that, Sheriff."

Jarrod knew she intended him to hear. He said to her, in a normal voice, "To hire me."

Esther nodded.