A Killing in the Valley by JF Freedman Page B

get it,” she said quickly. “There are too many girls who’ve been doing the plays at school since their freshman year. The drama coach has his policies—new kids never get leads. But I could get one of the other parts, like a munchkin.”
    Kate stood up and gave Sophia a hug, both for love and support. This was a good sign, Sophia’s first positive move in a long time. Kate almost literally felt her shoulders lighten. “Have an upbeat attitude,” she told Sophia. “Maybe the drama coach will think outside the box.”
    Sophia nodded. “Whatever happens, it’ll be fun.” She peered over her mother’s shoulder at the computer screen. “Whatcha working on? Not that I’d understand, even if you explained it to me. God, Mom, the shit you have to deal with sometimes. I don’t know how you do it.”
    That makes two of us, Kate thought. She had to find a way off this treadmill.
    Sophia grabbed her backpack. “See you later. Do you have school tonight?”
    “Afraid so,” Kate said apologetically.
    “No big deal,” Sophia assured her. “You’ll be home by nine. I’ll wait to eat with you.” She kissed her mother on the top of Kate’s head. “You need new shampoo, Mom. I’ll stop by the mall later and get you something that doesn’t have a ton of chemicals.”
    She walked out the door, closing it behind her. Kate luxuriated for a moment in her daughter’s lingering aura before getting back to her workload.
    Keith Morton crisscrossed Rancho San Gennaro in his vintage Jeep Wrangler. He was beginning his biannual survey of the ranch. It would take weeks to cover the entire property, but that was all right, there was no hurry.
    Keith was the ranch foreman. He and his wife, Esther, lived in a small house on the opposite side of the property from Juanita McCoy’s house. Keith had the right personality for running a ranch—he loved rural life, he was patient, he was comfortable with his station in life. He was good at fixing almost anything that needed fixing on a ranch: machinery, fences, painting, plumbing, working with livestock. A good rider, and good with weapons.
    Esther complemented his skills with her own—canning, gardening, animal husbandry. A childless couple in their mid-forties, they had been living and working on the ranch for over two decades; first Keith by himself, then Esther with him, after they got married. They were throwbacks to an earlier time, when a cowboy could have a life living on a ranch. Juanita was thankful to have them; not many people wanted this kind of life anymore.
    Keith’s Jeep maneuvered over the bumpy ground. As he came over a low rise, the ancestral ranch house came into sight in the distance, its west-facing windows reflecting the late afternoon sun. Off to the side, about half a mile from the house, he spied some turkey buzzards circling overhead, their small, ugly, naked red heads protruding from their bony shoulders. Keith hated buzzards. They were disgusting creatures, flying hyenas feasting on rotting meat. Usually when he saw a flock hovering like this, he would get a cold feeling in the pit of his stomach, because it almost always meant one of their calves had been killed by coyotes or wild dogs. Or a mountain lion. Five years ago, a rogue puma had gone marauding on the ranch, killing off two calves before he tracked it down and shot it. You were supposed to notify the state Bureau of Fish and Game if a predator killed your livestock, but nobody did. You killed them, then reported it. Maybe.
    He stopped twenty yards from where the buzzards were clustered on the ground. Grabbing his shotgun from behind the seat, he got out and walked toward them. When he had halved the distance between his Jeep and the carrion-eaters, he fired a shot into the air. The sound reverberated across the hills. The buzzards flew up in a flurry of beating wings, cawing raucously, angry at having their meal disturbed.
    He approached the spot where the birds had congregated—a low ravine,