“Shelby picked out this guy?” she asked. “This older guy?”
“Oh, there was no question about it. I suspect it was almost the second she saw him.”
“But he’s a roughneck. How do you feel about that?”
Walt leaned over and took off his boots. He straightened and looked at her with those scary general’s eyes. “If he does anything to hurt her, I’m going to kill him.”
Muriel shook her head and pulled the DVD out of the sleeve and loaded it in the portable player. “Shelby must be very grateful,” she said facetiously.
He climbed up next to her, leaning back against the wall, stretching out his long legs, shooing first Buff and then Luce off the bed. “I think she’s secretly enjoying his fear. I can’t wait for this movie.”
“It’s a chick flick,” she said.
“Clint Eastwood’s in it,” he said, settling back. “I like Clint Eastwood.”
“You won’t like him in this. He’s romantic. He doesn’t blow anyone’s brains out or say ‘Make my day’ even once.”
“But you took your clothes off in front of him. I want to see the look on his face.”
“Well,” Muriel said, “if you look very closely you might see an expression that approaches oblivion. He’s seen a huge number of actresses in the nude, and remains very much in control of his emotions. He wasn’t tempted in the least.”
“Poor fool.” Walt pushed Play.
“Are you determined to watch this?” she asked.
“I can’t wait.”
“This is going to bore me to death,” she said tiredly, leaning back against her pillows and yawning.
“Want me to wake you up for the naked part?” Walt asked her.
“Wake me up when you’re naked,” she said, yawning again.
Mel received a very important phone call at the clinic. She hung up, took a deep breath, looked at her watch: 10:00 a.m. She picked up the phone and called Shelby, but there was no answer at the ranch—they could be out riding. She called Brie. “Hi. I need a sitter. I can try to find Jack if you’re—”
“I just saw him leave the bar in his truck,” Brie said. “I’ll come and get the kids, how’s that?”
“Thanks. I have an errand and could be a few hours.”
After hanging up, she went into Doc Mullins’s office. “I did it,” she said. “I got a county rehab placement for Cheryl Chreighton.”
“How’d you manage that?” he asked, impressed in spite of himself.
“It wasn’t easy. I had to make a hundred phone calls. It would have been infinitely easier if she had committed a crime and could blame it on booze. She could have gotten treatment in sentencing. This was way harder.”
“She have any idea you did this?”
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “I didn’t want to give her time to think about it. She’d just get drunk and change her mind. But if I blindside her, get her over there and they dry her out and get her in the program, she has a chance.”
“Exactly one,” he stressed.
“Yeah, I’ll never be able to pull that off again if she relapses. So—I’m going over there. I’ll take your truck and leave you the Hummer for patients.”
“Jack’s truck would be a better ride,” he said.
“Can’t do that,” she insisted. Jack and Cheryl had history. There was a time, long before Mel, that Cheryl had a fierce and embarrassing crush on Jack, and Jack had to put her down rather harshly. “I can’t get Jack or even his truck involved. It might send the wrong message. Besides, I keep reliving that nightmare of riding to the hospital in the back of your pickup with a patient, holding a bag of Ringer’s over my head. I’ll take your truck and leave you the Hummer,” she said, holding out her hand for the keys.
“Good luck,” he said, handing them over.
After Brie had taken the kids back to her RV, Mel drove a few short blocks to the house she now knew to be the Chreightons’。 It was in disrepair, which several of the houses on this block seemed to be. People tended to get used to things like peeling paint, sagging roofs. Plus, this was not a family with money. No one worked but Dad, and he only worked when there was work, piecemeal, probably with no benefits.
She knocked on the door and it was a long time before a morbidly obese woman answered. She had never seen Cheryl Chreighton’s mother before, which in a town this size was incredibly strange, but it was apparent why—the woman had probably not been out of the house for many months, perhaps years. She had a cigarette in her yellowed fingers and a frown on her face. She answered the door with a barking hack. Mel gave her time to catch her wheezing breath.