A few songs later, Junior leaned close and whispered, “Most of them learned to dance in a pasture. They still look like they’re trying to avoid stepping in a pile of cow shit.”
The wine had taken effect. Her eyes were bright, her cheeks flushed. Feeling a pleasant buzz, she tossed her hair over her shoulder and laughed.
“Come on,” he said, placing his hand beneath her elbow and helping her off the stool. “Mother and Dad are at their table.”
Alex moved with him along the perimeter of the dance floor to the cluster of tables set up for dining. Sarah Jo and Angus were seated at one. He was puffing on a cigar. Sarah Jo was idly waving the offensive smoke away from her face.
Alex had been apprehensive about wearing the russet leather skirt and matching, leather-trimmed swea
ter, but she felt more comfortable in them than she would have wearing Sarah Jo’s burgundy satin dress and looking out of place in a room where people were stamping out “Cotton-Eyed Joe,” yelling “bullshit” in the appropriate places, and drinking beer straight from opaque amber bottles.
“Hello, Alex,” Angus said around his cigar.
“Hello. Junior was hospitable enough to invite me,” she said as she sat down in the chair Junior was holding out for her.
“I had to do some arm-twisting,” he told his parents, taking the chair next to her. “She plays hard to get.”
“Her mother certainly didn’t.”
Sarah Jo’s cool, catty remark momentarily stifled the conversation. It served to counteract the potency of Alex’s glass of wine. Her giddiness fizzled and went flat as day-old soda. She nodded toward Sarah Jo and said, “Hello, Mrs. Minton. You look lovely tonight.”
Even though her dress was inappropriate, she did look lovely in it. Not vibrant, Alex thought. Sarah Jo could never look vivacious and animated. Her beauty had an ethereal quality, as though her visitation on earth was temporary and tenuous. She gave Alex one of her vague, secretive smiles and murmured a thank-you as she took a sip of wine.
“Heard you were the one who discovered Pasty’s body.”
“Dad, this is a party,” Junior said. “Alex won’t want to talk about something nasty like that.”
“No, it’s all right, Junior. I would have brought it up myself, sooner or later.”
“I don’t reckon it was coincidence that you met him at that honky-tonk and climbed into his pickup with him,” Angus said, rolling the cigar from one corner of his lips to the other.
“No.” She paraphrased for them her telephone conversations with Pasty.
“That cowboy was a liar, a fornicator, and, worse than all his other vices put together, he cheated at poker,” Angus said with some vehemence. “In the last few years he’d gone plumb goofy and irresponsible. That’s why I had to let him go. I figure you’ve got better sense than to put any stock in what he told you.”
In the middle of his monologue, Angus signaled the waiter to bring another round of drinks. “Oh, sure, Pasty might’ve seen who went into that stable with Celina, but the one he saw was Gooney Bud.”
Having said his piece, and giving Alex no opportunity to dispute it, he launched into a glowing review of a jockey from Ruidoso that he wanted to ride for them. Since the Mintons were her hosts, Alex graciously let the topic of Pasty Hickam die for the moment.
When they’d finished their drinks, Angus and Junior offered to go through the barbecue buffet for the ladies. Alex would just as soon have gone through the line herself. She found it difficult to make small talk with Sarah Jo, but after the men withdrew, she valiantly made an attempt.
“Have you been members of the club for a long time?”
“Angus was one of the charter members,” Sarah Jo supplied distractedly. She kept her eyes on the couples doing the two-step in an eternal circle around the dance floor.
“He seems to have a finger in just about every pie in town,” Alex remarked.
“Hmm, he likes to know everything that’s going on.”
“And be a part of it.”
“Yes. He makes things happen and spreads himself thin.” She gave a delicate sigh. “Angus has this need to be well liked, you see. He’s always politicking, as though it matters what other people think.”
Alex folded her hands beneath her chin and propped her elbows on the table. “You don’t believe it matters?”
“No.” Her entrancement with the dancers ended. For the first time that evening, she looked directly at Alex. “Don’t you read too much into the way Junior treats you.”
“Oh?”