Bye, Bye, Love Read online

  VIRGINIA SWIFT

  BYE, BYE, LOVE

  A MUSTANG SALLY MYSTRY

  Dedication

  To Bob and Martha, Sam, Patty and Steve, Liz and Mike, and Dick

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 - Darlin’ Tommy J

  Chapter 2 - Blood on the Tracks

  Chapter 3 - The Corpse Magnet

  Chapter 4 - Professional Law Enforcement Officers

  Chapter 5 - The Soul Mates

  Chapter 6 - Hellfire or Whiskey

  Chapter 7 - If You Don’t Do It, Somebody Else Will

  Chapter 8 - Rumor Mills with Hot Pans and Sharp Knives

  Chapter 9 - The Taxidermist

  Chapter 10 - Hello, Darkness

  Chapter 11 - The Goodwill Ambassador

  Chapter 12 - Hollywood at the Wrangler

  Chapter 13 - Trigger Points

  Chapter 14 - The Pork Chop Special

  Chapter 15 - The Hard Way

  Chapter 16 - Opera Gloves

  Chapter 17 - The Ornery Hagbody

  Chapter 18 - Spawn of the Devil of the Month

  Chapter 19 - Tortilla Soup

  Chapter 20 - The Grapevine

  Chapter 21 - Protein

  Chapter 22 - Cold Facts

  Chapter 23 - Twenty-nine Messages

  Chapter 24 - Monday, Monday

  Chapter 25 - The Reeling Monster

  Chapter 26 - The Bill of Sale

  Chapter 27 - Running Without the Ball

  Chapter 28 - Turkey, Tofu, and Bull Balls

  Chapter 29 - Snowing. Again.

  HELLO, STRANGER

  Chapter 1 - The Rule of Thumb

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Praise

  Books by Virginia Swift

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter 1

  Darlin’ Tommy J

  The first time she’d heard his voice, sweet and clear, coming through the wire on this new thing called FM, Sally Alder had been totally, utterly gone. Gone, gone, gone, from the moment she’d stood in the record store, looking for the album with the hit song, “Last Night,” and found herself staring open-mouthed at the photograph of Stone Jackson on the front. His penetrating, wounded blue eyes conjured a fantasy of passion and intelligence, a vision ignited again and again as she wore out the vinyl, reveling in his songs of warm whimsy and earthy blues, invitation and anguish, loss, love.

  Like there’d been this instant connection between them. Fate. Destiny. Please. His debut album had gone platinum. American females by the millions had paid their—what? $3.50?—had mooned over that album cover, had fantasized the moment when they’d give him the comfort he so clearly needed. And by the millions, the women of America had managed to grow up and get over it.

  Not Sally.

  Truly it was embarrassing to admit it, but through albums, tapes, CDs, and live concerts, she’d followed the heady highs and desperate downs of his story. She’d dreamed, vividly, of hearing him say the words:

  “I need you to help me, Sally.”

  The precise words Thomas “Stone” Jackson was saying this very minute, sitting in her cluttered office at the top of Hoyt Hall, at the University of Wyoming, in the glory of the last fine day of September. The voice was the same: gentle, mellow, pure, hinting at irony. The long, graceful, string-bean body was just as she’d admired so many times on stage, slung with a guitar, swaying with soul, bopping with the beat, rocking out.

  The face, however, had a whole lot more miles on it than the one on that long-ago album cover. It was as if every sign of innocence had been burned away, leaving sharp bones, arched brows, wry mouth. Crow’s-feet winged at the corners of those ever-remarkable eyes. His forehead was deeply etched, and there was a whole lot more of it.

  Which mattered to her not a whit. She, too, was on the dark side of forty. Guys who managed to keep up appearances in the middle of the long strange trip suited her just fine.

  Still, experience had taught her to be wary of appealing men. Here came Jackson, saying he needed her help. Over the years, she’d extended aid and comfort to enough guys to remember to check her wallet.

  “Why me?” she asked Thomas Jackson, keeping her voice low, trying to sound neither eager nor suspicious. “Where’d you get my name?”

  “Our mutual friend, Pete,” Jackson explained, naming an old boyfriend of Sally’s who’d had his own ups and downs, but was currently riding high in the upper echelons of a southern California multimedia empire. “I’ve just bought a little place outside Cody,” Jackson continued. “When Pete found out I planned to spend time in Wyoming, he suggested that I look you up.”

  A little place! Everyone in the state had heard about Thomas Jackson’s purchase of a prime property he called the Busted Heart Ranch. The brand? What else? Two offset halves of a heart. Next to Harrison Ford, Thomas Jackson was pretty much the biggest Hollywood rancher in Wyoming. “Oh yeah?” she said. “That was nice of Pete. We keep in touch, from time to time.”

  Thomas Jackson grinned faintly. “Pete says you’re a nag and a bit of a diva, but that you’re brilliant, sexy, and can sing some. And that he’s had reason, in tight situations, to find you trustworthy.”

  “Pete’s definition of trustworthy isn’t most people’s,” she replied, trying to ignore the fact that Jackson had blithely announced that he’d casually discussed her sexuality with one of her old lovers. What was that, some kind of blasé Hollywood move? She went for Wyoming blasé. “So what’s the problem?”

  Jackson leaned back in the dilapidated easy chair usually occupied by students whining for grade changes. “You know Nina Cruz, of course.”

  Of course. Angelina Cruz, known as Nina: his ex-wife, folk singer icon. Nina had retired from the fast lane in L.A. to seek peace of mind in a gracious, but relatively modest, log house on eighty pretty acres west of Laramie, a spread she called Shady Grove, near the town of Albany, Wyoming. Nina was an ardent wilderness lover, animal-rights activist, and feminist. She drove a Range Rover with bumper stickers that said, MY OTHER CAR IS A BROOM and FRIENDS DON’T LET FRIENDS WEAR FUR. She had once told Sally she believed that, at the deepest level, plutonium, the endangerment of species, and professional football all came from the root toxin of patriarchy.

  Who in hell would leave la vida buena in southern California for la vida blizzard in southern Wyoming? Nina for one, evidently; Sally for another. Sally had left UCLA to direct the Dunwoodie Center for Women’s History at the University of Wyoming. She and Nina had feminism in common, though Nina was the type of feminist who believed that all women were extensions of the earth goddess, and Sally was more inclined to the view that women and men were all too human, equally capable of Nobel Prizes and bonehead moves on a planet ruled less by goddesses than by chance and choice.

  But Nina was also the kind of feminist who wrote big checks. Sally was the kind who cashed them. When Nina’s first substantial donation to the Dunwoodie Center had arrived, Sally had called Nina to say thanks and invite her to dinner at the Yippie I O Café, the only place in Laramie one dared take a vegetarian to dine. They’d since had several cordial dinners together, and, happily, more checks had followed. “Nina has been a very generous contributor to the Dunwoodie Center,” Sally said carefully.

  “Nina’s big on her causes,” said Stone. “So am I, come to that.” He grinned. Serious wattage. Sally tried to remain calm. Failed.

  Stone continued. “Anyway, you probably know that right now, she’s putting a lot of time and money into her latest project, the Wild West Foundation.”

  Sally nodded, though she wasn’t quite sure what Wild West was all about. Some kind of wil
derness and wildlife protection thing, it could involve anything from holding tofu potlucks, to saving prairie dog villages from bulldozers, to crusading against grazing on the public domain. So far, Nina hadn’t pissed off the people who thought Wyoming was spelled “B-E-E-F,” but the time might come.

  “I haven’t talked with Nina about Wild West. We’ve had some nice evenings, done a little business, but that’s about it. I’m sure you’d know a lot more about it than I would,” Sally told him, trying to tell him nothing.

  “A little more, maybe,” Jackson said, scooting the broken-down easy chair forward, leaning over, resting his elbows on the edge of Sally’s messy desk. “I had lunch with her today, out at her place. She wanted to introduce me to some of the Dub-Dub staff.”

  “Dub-Dub?” Sally inquired.

  “Short for WW, shorter for Wild West. My invention. The long version makes me think too much of Buffalo Bill.”

  “How does Nina like the short one?” Sally said.

  “She laughed. But then, she’s humoring me. She wants me to headline a benefit concert in Laramie.”

  Stone Jackson, playing in Laramie! It would embarrass both of them if Sally got down on her knees and told God she was sorry she had ever flirted with agnosticism. She’d have to contain herself. “That’d be great,” Sally managed. “What’s the venue?”

  “Nina wants to raise real money, so she’s thinking a big place. The university’s basketball stadium was mentioned.”

  Stone Jackson at the Dome on the Range! Sweet Jesus in a wind tunnel. Basketball stadiums tended to be echoey and loud as hell, and the Dome was no exception. But then, if Thomas Jackson had been playing at the Laramie municipal landfill, Sally Alder would have stood in line for hours to get standing room in the ooze. “I’d buy a ticket.”

  “Nina was hoping you’d do more than that. She said maybe your band could open the gig, kind of a showcase for the hometown before the national acts come on.”

  No. This was way past too much. Sally’s band, the Millionaires, was easily good enough for an average Saturday night in Laramie. Sally herself had once had a minor hit on the country-rock scene with “The Goin’ Home Alone Again Waltz.” But were they ready for this?

  And then there was the fact that this was a benefit put on by tree huggers and sprout heads. At least three members of her current band were even now probably oiling and sighting high-powered rifles in preparation for the opening of deer season on the morrow. Those guys might have some reservations about donating their talents to the kind of outfit that referred to eating eggs as “ovacide.”

  But she wouldn’t worry about that now. “When, exactly, is this event?” she asked.

  “Thanksgiving weekend,” said Jackson. “Eight weeks from now.”

  Don’t panic, Sal. In less than eight weeks, Sherman had marched through Georgia. In eight weeks, Helen Keller had probably read all of Shakespeare in Braille. Certainly the Millionaires could work up a respectable dozen songs, if they weren’t too busy terminating Wyoming ruminants. “I’ll have to talk to the guys about it,” she said.

  Stone smiled. “Yeah. See what they think. I, myself, don’t know quite how I feel about this gig.”

  Sally bristled. “I’m sure this must seem pretty small time to you.”

  Jackson tilted his head, looking compassionate, but just insulted enough to make her feel ashamed. “Eventually,” he said, “we’re all small time.”

  It wasn’t for nothing that the man had spent the better part of two decades in recovery. “I’m sorry,” said Sally. “You’re making me incredibly nervous.”

  He laid his hand on hers. “Don’t be.”

  Oh yeah. Stone Jackson, touching her very own hand, was sure to calm her down. As her blood pressure approximated that of an astronaut adrift in deep space (“Open the door, Hal”), she struggled to remember what they were talking about. “You said you’re uncertain about doing the show?”

  He squeezed her hand, nodded, and then let go. “And it isn’t the town or the venue. It’s the cause.” He swallowed. “Don’t get me wrong. I’d do anything for Nina. The woman saved my life.”

  The end of their storybook romance had made good tragic copy in Rolling Stone. Thomas Jackson had been off on a two-week bender in Hawaii with some of his drug buddies, leaving Nina Cruz back in Topanga Canyon. He’d promised her he was trying to stay clean, but there were more than enough obliging folks in the islands who could help a man get royally fucked up if he had half an urge. Old Stone Jackson had urge to spare.

  He’d come home a junkie once again, to find that Nina had emptied her drawers and packed up all her books and instruments, and left a copy of The Twelve Steps on the dining room table. Along with a note that just said, “Get a grip, Tommy.”

  The life he’d gotten was about the worst he could have chosen, spinning lower and lower, more and more out of control. And then, finally, painfully, he’d taken her advice. For years and years now, according to Rolling Stone, he’d lived day by day. In time, Thomas and Nina had divorced, headed in different directions. Then, music and the depth of what had once bound them brought them back together. Sally had seen them, featured in a People magazine spread titled “Friendly Exes.” There had been a picture of them, laughing with Bonnie Raitt at a “no nukes” benefit concert where they’d all performed.

  Even in a black-and-white photo in a weekly magazine, Sally had (as usual) seen more than laughter in his eyes. It was said that Thomas Jackson had dragged himself out of hell by living on the hope that he could make it up to Nina Cruz, and she would come backto him. He’d never stopped hoping, the Hollywood gossips said, but she’d never come back.

  Ever.

  Talk about your busted hearts. Sally’s own quest for a second chance with a first love had come out better, so far. But she remained cautious. “Nina,” Sally said, “is a remarkable woman. So, what’s wrong with her cause?”

  Jackson sat back, put his elbows on the chair arms, massaged the hard contour of his jaw with the long fingers of his left hand, then rubbed the calloused tips of his fingers together. “I can’t say if I’m being fair, but I just have this feeling that there’s something really off about those Dub-Dub people. Did you have some friends, back in the day, who took one too many acid trips, or whatever, and just never came back down? People who seemed to have tuned in to a different frequency, and never gotten back on the main channel? Mostly, they were harmless—hell, some of them probably had visions of computers and ended up ruling the world. But these guys. I don’t know,” he said, massaging his forehead.

  “Old hippies?” Sally asked. “People who seem like they fell into an iceberg in 1974 and are just being thawed out?”

  “Oh yeah. As far as I could tell, there are more than a dozen of them out there; who knows how many more we expected. They’ve even got an old school bus parked out by her barn, probably half of them crashing in it. Lots and lots of dope smoking going on. While I was there, Nina happened to mention to several of them that she’d posted ‘no hunting’ signs along her fences, but that hadn’t kept hunters out during antelope season. By the time I left, they were firing up fatties and debating further measures, everything from stringing fluorescent flagging along all the fences to painting every tree trunk on the place DayGlo orange.”

  “I can’t imagine Nina’d let them get away with that kind of idiocy,” Sally said.

  “She wasn’t listening to them. She was too busy introducing me to her foundation director, a guy named Randy Whitebird.” Stone shook his head. “I’ve never been able to figure why she hangs around with guys like that. African beads on a leather thong around his neck, Birkenstocks with socks, calls everybody ‘man,’ hugs you when he doesn’t even know you.”

  Sally laughed.

  “Yeah, it makes you laugh,” said Jackson, “until he gets wound up and starts using phrases like ‘the carnivore holocaust.’ ”

  “In Wyoming?” Sally asked. “Is he suicidal?”

  “I don’t rightly k
now what he is. Probably just off the plane from the People’s Republic of Santa Monica,” Jackson said.

  “Aren’t you?” Sally asked.

  His eyes gleamed. “Yep. But at least I grew up in a real place.”

  If you could call growing up in Lexington, Virginia, as a great-great-great-grandson of the second-most-famous Confederate general “real.” Jackson’s nickname didn’t derive solely from his storied susceptibility to addictive substances. His people were southerners, and not all of them had been Reconstructed. Living down the mother of all Lost Causes had put some of the shadows in Stone’s depthless blue eyes.

  “This Whitebird,” Sally continued. “Is he Native American?”

  “I suspect,” Jackson said, “that he gave himself the name.”

  “Probably on a vision quest. I hate that,” said Sally.

  Once again, Jackson made her feel like a shallow bigot. “I try to cut people a lot of slack when it comes to their spiritual stuff. But as I was explaining, something about this guy isn’t quite right. Then there was the foundation administrator, Kali.”

  “Kali? Hindu goddess of death, sex, and apocalypse? You’re kidding,” said Sally.

  Jackson shook his head, letting a little amusement show. “Nope. Little bit of a thing, spent most of the lunch answering her cell phone and whispering into it. According to Nina, this Kali’s got a Ph.D. in molecular biology. Evidently, she’s spent years in the biotech industry, even after she started working in environmental politics.”