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TRAINING SALES LESSONS
CODY & TULSIE PARCELLE
Annie pulled in and parked at the end of the barn next to a white Chevy pickup with rust eating at the wheel wells. A motley pack of dogs of all sizes came running, announcing her arrival at the top of their lungs with barking and yipping and the mournful bay of a coonhound.
She sat for a moment, gathering her thoughts, fighting off thethreat of nerves. She was only there to check on Tulsie and to make Cody Parcelle aware that he wasn’t living in a bubble. The plan was to drop in early in the day, to make her presence known, then quickly move on. She wasn’t there to push or prod, accuse or threaten. This was just an appearance, a courtesy call or a reconnaissance mission, depending on point of view.
There shouldn’t have been any danger involved, but domestic situations could be unpredictable and volatile. She knew that firsthand. She knew of more than one law enforcement officer who had been shot answering a domestic call. She herself had witnessed a prim-and-proper churchgoing woman shoving a chef’s knife into the belly of her abusive ass of a fiancé, as smooth as you like, as if she was just passing him something.
She could have skipped coming there. Tulsie Parcelle had not asked for her help. In fact, she was not liable to be happy to see Annie. But Annie wanted her to know that help was available just a phone call away, that she wasn’t being abandoned to her fate in a bad marriage to a bad guy.
Her choice to come there had not been popular with Nick for the obvious reasons. He would have rather sent someone else, or no one at all, arguing that Annie had made her point with Tulsie at the ER and that her focus needed to be on Robbie Fontenot.
She had debated not telling him she was going, playing her conversation with Deebo Jeffcoat over and over in her mind. Would it have been a good lie or a bad lie, this lie by omission? Did it matter? A lie was a lie, and she didn’t want that between them, no matter how valid her motivation might have been.
She texted Nick then—At Parcelles’—and got out of her vehicle. The dogs came wiggling and jumping, yipping and sniffing. They would likely be the only ones there happy to see her.
Country music was blasting in the barn. “Hell on Heels,” a fierce anthem of mercenary female independence by Miranda Lambert and the Pistol Annies. A pitchfork full of pine shavings and horse shit sailed out of an open stall door into a waiting wheelbarrow inthe barn aisle. Annie went in that direction, careful to stay out of the line of fire.
The person cleaning the stall was small with short dark hair and an angular jaw. Since they were in jeans and boots and a T-shirt that revealed taut, muscular arms tattooed in kaleidoscopic colors, it took Annie a second to realize it was a woman in her early twenties. She paused mid-lift of the pitchfork and stared at Annie with large dark eyes.
“I’m Detective Broussard with the sheriff’s office,” Annie said. “Is Tulsie around?”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see her.”
“Did something happen?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” the young woman said with a shrug, sticking the pitchfork business-end down and leaning on the handle. “Cops don’t usually stop by with good news, do they?”
“I suppose you’ve got a point there,” Annie conceded easily. “I saw Tulsie at the ER yesterday. I just wanted to check and see if she’s doing all right. And what’s your name?”
“Izzy Guidry.”
“Guidry? Where you from?”
“Eunice.”
“You related to any of the Guidrys around here?”
“I don’t have no family,” she said bluntly. “Tulsie’s down in the arena.”
“On a horse?” Annie asked, incredulous. “She shouldn’t be doing that with that shoulder.”
The girl looked at her like she was stupid. “Horses don’t ride themselves.”
Annie didn’t know what to say to that. True that the Parcelles were running a business here. This ranch was no hobby, and horses were not toys that could just be put away to wait for a convenient time to ride them. But still.
“Is Cody around?” she asked, now wanting to give him a piece of her mind about letting his wife ride with a shoulder injury when he was a big strapping young man, perfectly capable of doing his share of the work and his wife’s as well if necessary.
“He’s gone to Houston,” Izzy said, pointing across the aisle to a poster tacked up on the wall advertising the tenth annual East Texas Performance and Stock Horse Auction. “His uncle runs that sale. It’s a big deal. He’ll be down there all week.”
“When did he leave?”
“Sunday. He’ll be back next Tuesday or Wednesday.”
