Read Online Cutter (Gail McCarthy Mystery series) by Laura Crum - Free Book Online

outside the windows of the pickup, looking as good as it ever did.
    I'd lived for five years in the Valley when I was doing my graduate work at U.C. Davis, and I knew its moods. Oven-like in the summer, cold and clammy with tuley fog in the winter, often windy in the spring-a soft, sunny day like this one was exceptional good fortune. Even so, I liked the Valley; it wasn't pretty by anybody's standards, particularly those of someone born and raised in a coastal town like Santa Cruz, but to me it felt familiar and comfortable.
    I understood the point behind the alfalfa fields, the grain towers, the Holstein cattle, the almond orchards, the car graveyards. The good straight roads ran like rulers, the towns were bare and simple, and if there wasn't beauty, there was, at least, sense.
    An hour later, we were chugging sedately down the palm-tree-lined main street of Los Borregos, a typical Valley town with a slightly shabby, left-behind-in-the-fifties air, and took the turnoff to the fairgrounds where the cutting was to be held.
    The truck bumped down a dirty entry road and I pulled into a field that was a parking lot for the day. Trucks and trailers in all colors and sizes were parked every which way on the mowed grass, and horses were everywhere-tied to trailers, nickering to their companions, being ridden at a fast trot toward the arena, led by men and women whose spurs went clink, clink, clink with every step. The men were mostly clean-shaven, their hair short and neat under cowboy hats, their jeans pressed and their shirts crisp. The women wore cowboy hats, too; they mingled with the men indistinguishably, as equals, their waists cinched tight by trophy buckles as large as those of their male counterparts. The whole scene was full of movement, shouted greetings, the thud of hooves on grass, the jingle of bits and spurs. In the bright morning air, it felt like an old-time circus setting up in a field.
    Getting out of the truck, we threaded our way through the parked rigs and the loping horses, keeping an eye out for Casey and Melissa. Bret said hi to several cowboys.
    "Don't you miss being a part of this?" I asked him, gesturing at the sunny jumble of horses and people.
    "Sometimes. It's a lot of work, though. You're just looking at the fun part; you're not seeing all those 5:00 A.M. mornings when your hands and feet get numb, galloping horses in the fog, all those evenings you're so sore it's hard to get to sleep." He grinned. "Taking it all in all, I don't miss it much."
    His glance roved through the crowd. "There's Melissa," he pointed.
    Sure enough, Melissa was walking toward us, looking like a cowboy's dream in a tight, satiny pink blouse that emphasized her large breasts, a belt with a huge silver buckle around her waist. With her blonde hair curling and frothing around her face and her eyes outlined in several interesting colors, she was a Barbie doll come to life. Not for the first time I wondered why she chose to present herself as a cheap toy; she seemed to have more on the ball than that.
    "Hi." Melissa gave us a welcoming smile, and Bret grinned back at her with his guaranteed-to-devastate-'em version.
    "Casey's saddling the horses up," Melissa said, specifically to me, though her eyes drifted to Bret. "We're parked over there." She waved a hand at a long aluminum trailer where Casey could be seen swinging a saddle up on a sorrel horse. "I'm on my way for coffee."
    In a minute she was disappearing into the crowd, Bret's eyes following her round bottom until it was out of sight.
    "Let's go say hi to Casey," I said, breaking his reverie.
    "Whew," he shook his head.
    "It's hands off as long as I'm around, buddy," I told him firmly. "I'm not up for breaking up a fight."
    Bret gave me an undaunted smile. "I'll have to check her out some other time," was all he said.
    We started toward Casey's trailer, Bret pointing out people as we passed them. "There's Will George."
    Will George proved to be a stocky man in his late