Chapter 3 – Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain
When I got back to Maude's, Doralice was in her mother's office with the door closed. "Tell them I'll be back later," was the message I left with Art and went out the batwing doors. Blue, my roan mare, was tied up out front, and I mounted and turned her toward Uncle Ben's. Time I went and talked to him and Pappy, to see if they knew anything else about Billy Flynn or the elusive Mr. Pike.
Pappy was still asleep, so Ben sat with me on the front porch and we smoked a while. He told me all sorts of stories about Billy Flynn, and how every time the town thought it was rid of him, he found a way to come back. Nobody knew who he bought the property from that eventually became Maude's. Jackson Baker owned it, then it was sold to Frank Dunkirk, then Lester O'Day, and that's when everyone lost track of it. Two or three years passed while the empty and rapidly decaying warehouse just sat there. No one knew who owned it or what was to be done with it until one day Billy Flynn turned up with the Deed of Ownership and began tearing it down.
Jackson Baker and Lester O'Day were dead, and Frank Dunkirk had moved to California some years ago, so the ownership trail went cold. When I asked Ben who Billy Flynn owed money to, all Ben could remember was that it was another gambler, but no one local. And he couldn't remember a name.
Pappy woke up and joined us on the porch, but he was no more help than Uncle Ben. And neither one remembered anything about the address change on the buildings at all. Why did I know about it? All I could figure was something came up about it while I was still in school, and that's how I knew.
I spent some time in the barn with Noble and Melody and Gracie. All three were gettin' older, as was yours truly, and it started me thinkin' about the future. And I don't mean the 'many years down the road' future, I mean the immediate future. I was rememberin' how much that 'Mrs. Donovan' moniker rankled me every time I heard it applied to Doralice, and just what I was gonna have to do to change it. And thinkin' about Doralice made me wonder just what it was that I saw in her eyes when we were all sittin' in Maude's office earlier in the day. Cristian had been right about one thing when he said Doralice was awfully quiet.
We'd talked a lot about our childhoods and all the things that had happened when we were growing up, but there was one thing we never talked about – and that was Doralice's marriage to Sergio Medina. They were married for almost five years before he tried to beat her to death and she shot him twice with a derringer. I knew a few more details than that, but not a whole lot. I was the one that rescued her from hanging in Mexico, and it almost cost me my life to do it. I wondered if she thought this attempt to get everything Maude owned was connected to the Medina family, still quite powerful in Monterrey. There was only one way to find out.
I took my leave of Ben and Pappy and headed back to town. I stopped at Maude's first because I wasn't sure just where Doralice would be, and if she wasn't around I wanted to talk to her mother. There was no sign of Doralice but Maude's door was open, so I knocked on the door frame. She looked up and waved me in. "I wondered how long you were gonna be out at the house. How are the boys?"
By boys, of course, she meant Ben and Pappy. "They're fine," I told her. "Gettin' old, like the rest of us. They send their regards."
"They don't come in much anymore. Have I been replaced as their favorite?"
I shook my head. "Nobody'll ever replace you, Maude. They don't go anywhere much anymore. Once in a great while to the LB Bar to see if Ray's still standin', once in a while to Claytonville. They still come here more than anyplace else. They've gotten to be homebodies."
"What about Bret and Beau?"
"Bret's travelin' with Ginny most of the time. And Beau, I'm afraid, has become a permanent resident of Baton Rouge."
"Got married again, didn't he?"
"Yes, he did. To a beautiful girl named Danielle."
She shook her head. "Time sure goes by, doesn't it? Seems like just yesterday that I convinced you to go bring Doralice back from Mexico."
I sat down in front of her desk. "Since she's not here, that's what I wanted to talk to you about."
"What, Doralice? Or Mexico?" I knew which one she was hoping for, but the talk about her daughter and me was gonna hafta wait for now.
"When we were all here earlier – there was somethin' botherin' blue eyes. You got any idea what it was?"
Maude watched me a long time before she answered me. "You know she was here with me talkin', don't you?"
"Yes."
"Then you know that she's the one you should be talkin' to."
"I will, Maude. I just . . . there's so much I haven't asked her about the marriage to Medina. I didn't wanna bring up somethin' that was bound to be painful. But I know what she was thinkin' this mornin'. She was wonderin' if they were responsible, wasn't she? After all this time."
"The thought had crossed her mind."
"What do you think?" I wasn't gonna ask Maude what Doralice had to say about the whole thing, but I did wanna get Maude's opinion on the subject.
"To tell you the truth, I think if they were gonna do anything, they'd have done it a long time ago."
"Yeah, they didn't seem to have a lot of patience, did they?" I wasn't kidding. In just a matter of weeks they'd arrested Doralice, put her on trial and convicted her, sentenced her to hang, and tried to do just that. The only thing that delayed them was Cristian's knowledge of the Mexican court system and Maude's money – used as bribes where necessary. Until the money ran out. That's where I came in.
I masqueraded as a Texas State Police Marshal named Rory Emory and almost succeeded in getting Doralice back to Texas. Almost because I was shot by a Mexican Federales rifle in a mad chase across the desert and Doralice had to keep me alive for over a week with a raging infection, little food and even less water. How she managed it I'll never know; I was delusional or unconscious most of the time. Bret and Beau had to finally come find me, and they got us all back across the border in one piece.
"No, the Medina's aren't long on patience. That's why I don't think there's anything to worry about from them. Of course, I've been wrong before." We both laughed. Then she stared at me as seriously as I've ever seen her. "She's worried, Bart. It's been more than four months since the two of you worked out your differences and got back together, and nothin's changed. Is it ever going to?"
"You mean, am I ever gonna marry her?"
"That's exactly what I mean."
"Don't you think that should be between me and Doralice?"
"I do believe that." Pause. "I'm not gonna get any more out of you than that, am I?"
I grinned at her. "No, ma'am."
"Alright, get outta here. She's at the house."
Ten minutes later, I was at the front door. Maude and Cristian had bought another house closer to the edge of town, and Doralice had taken over Maude's old place. Most of the time I was there with her, so I had a key. This evening the door wasn't locked, and when I walked in I could hear the sound of my lady crying. Whatever caused it, I wanted to stop it. "Doralice?" I called.
The crying stopped, and her voice sounded almost normal. "In here, Bart," she called from the bedroom.
I went to the room where we'd spent so many nights and found her sitting on the edge of the bed. "Blue eyes?"
She turned around and smiled at me, but the smile couldn't hide the tears. Had I caused this?
