The Sporting Club
Chapter 1

I probably would have stayed in town a little while longer if I'd known what I was in for when I got back to the Vaca Grande.

My ranch is just outside the little town of La Cienega, which in turn lies about thirty minutes north of Tucson. While some might think the drive an inconvenience, I really don't mind it at all. It gives me a chance to shake out the cobwebs in my head and some of my best thinking is actually done on these solitary drives. Business had been a little slow - I'm a private investigator - and on the home front fall roundup hadn't started yet. The grass was still good and the calves were gaining, so I didn't have a lot of heavy thinking to do.

Until I got home.

In November we lose our sun early so it was almost dark by the time I pulled into the ranch. The blackened windows of the little adobe where Juan Ortiz lives, reminded me that he left yesterday to visit one of his daughters in Sonora and won't be back until right before Thanksgiving when he'll help with roundup.

The lights were on in the bunkhouse though where Juan's son, Martin, my ranch foreman, lives. While he always feeds all of the ranch horses, tonight he'd also fed Dream and Gray, my personal horses, along with the chickens and the ducks.

Mrs. Fierce and Blue, my two dogs, greeted me warmly and we all dashed into the house in an effort to escape the evening chill. The coffee had just finished brewing when there was a knock at the
kitchen glass door.

Martin opened it when he saw he had my attention. "Chiquita, got a minute?"

Even if I hadn't had one, I would have said yes just because of the way he looked. His deep brown eyes were rimmed in red, like he'd been crying, or maybe hadn't had much sleep. The last time I'd seen him looking like that was when I was twenty and he'd been eighteen. Instinctively I knew the same thing that had set him off then, was rearing its ugly head again.

"Sure."

Taking off his battered cowboy hat as he crossed the threshold, he sat it on the counter, crown down, threw his lined Levi jacket on one of the wall hooks and took a seat at the old scarred wooden table. That table is like a member of the family. It soaked up my tears when I was told about my father's death when he was killed in a head on collision years ago along with Martin's brother Memo and sopped up my sorrow when an aneurysm took my mother, who was half Apache, a short time later. It's supported
countless small animals for minor surgeries, been pounded on by angry fists, including a month long bout years ago before I finally said adios to my cheating ex-husband and cradled my head when I've fallen asleep late at night doing the ranch books. The old table has held countless meals and, although laden to the point of collapse during numerous parties and roundups, it has never asked for a repair. Judging from Martin's face this evening, I knew the table was about to share yet another burden.

I poured two mugs of sluggish black decaf and set one in front of him before pulling up my own chair. Picking up the mug, I blew on the steaming coffee and looked at Martin who was studying his calloused
brown hands. Neither of us said anything for at least two minutes.

"Cori," he began.

His forearm, clad in an old denim work shirt, swiped at his eyes before he continued.

Whatever it was, I knew it was going to be hard for him. And, I'd been right, the same problem that plagued him years ago, had come back to haunt him.

Haunt him? Hell, she was probably asleep in the bunkhouse.

Martin had taken a well deserved vacation last spring, spending a month in Mexico. While he had spent a week here and there away from the ranch, he'd never before asked for an entire month. He'd looked tired and haggard before he'd left so I really had no trouble at all encouraging him to take the time off.

But I wouldn't have been nearly so supportive had I known what he was going to bring home.

Corazon Elena Figueroa de la Fuente Orantez.

She was known as Cori Elena and we all knew her. Her father had worked on the Double A Drag up near Oracle and we'd had a joint childhood. While ranch kids always have to find ways to amuse themselves, since their parents are usually too busy to get down on the floor and play Monopoly or other games with them, as the years went by, Martin and Cori Elena had found a new diversion. They'd fallen in love.

All through high school the two of them had gone steady. It was kind of a given that after graduation they'd marry and Cori Elena would come to the Vaca Grande and set up house with Martin.

But it never happened.

Graduation night, Martin had presented his true love with a miniscule diamond ring and his pledge of undying devotion to her.

And Cori Elena had responded with her own pledge of sorts. Ranch life was too tough, she loved him, but she could never, ever see herself as the wife of a dirty shirt cowboy.

And that was it. She left the Double A Drag and Martin's broken heart behind and went to work for Valley National Bank in Tucson.

Within weeks she met a night club owner, Lazaro Orantez from Magdalena, Sonora. With his bright red Cadillac convertible, gold neck chains and gravid wad of cash, he'd immediately turned her head. Very
quickly the rest of her body followed, and when she was noticeably pregnant, a lavish wedding had been held at the Senora de Santa Maria de Magdalena Catholic church in the town of the same name. 

None of us had been invited.

For some reason, her husband hadn't wanted us there.

Although Martin and I had always been close, he hadn't said much since he'd brought Cori Elena home. In fact, I hadn't seen much of his house guest either. Although she'd arrived with a broken leg, courtesy of Senor Orantez, the cast had come off months ago and she'd still been avoiding me. It was, however, apparent from her current residency, that Light Heart and her husband were having serious marital problems.

Concerned that she would break Martin's heart again, I'd tried to talk to Cori Elena several times, but she was having none of it. She'd only said that she had some things to work out and then had tried to assure me that she truly loved Martin and would never, ever do anything to hurt him again.

Right.

I'd noticed that she was still wearing her wedding ring. Maybe, in spite of his abuse she still loved Orantez, or maybe she just didn't want to give up the two carat sparkler that graced her left hand. Whatever her reason, I didn't view the ring as a good sign. Hell, that was the first thing I'd chucked.

"I don't need to lay this one on you," he said, pushing his mug aside as he rose.

"Sit down, Martin." I knew if he didn't let his problem out tonight it would be like having an old cactus thorn getting infected until it finally burst open. "Talk to me."

He dropped back into the chair.

"Querida, you know how important you are to me."

This was totally out of character for him. While we'd been raised together and spent most of our grown up years working long hours on the ranch, he never waxed poetic about our relationship, nor did I. My
connection with the entire Ortiz family had always been solid, one of the few things on the ranch that I took for granted. My mind briefly flirted with the possibility that Martin was going to quit.

I searched beyond his red rimmed eyes and found the steady pools of brown, flecked with gold, that were so familiar to me.

"Remember that time when Chapo fell on me and broke my leg?"

I nodded. We'd been up in the Catalina Mountains riding a fence line in rough country when a mountain lion had jumped out of the brush, spooking Martin's horse down the hill. The gelding had lost his balance in the rocks and fallen on Martin. Entangled in the fence, the situation had quickly gone from bad to worse. Every time the horse tried to get up, he fell back down on Martin. Finally after thirty minutes of explaining things to the horse and cutting the fence I was able to untangle the two of them.

Somehow Martin had gotten back in the saddle and he'd ridden down the mountain without a single word of complaint. His x-rays had disclosed a double compound fracture.

"This is kind of like that," he said by way of explanation.

"Entanglement, or the pain?"

"Both," he forced a smile. "And I need the boss lady's advice."

I laughed. Martin and his father Juan made as many decisions as I did on the ranch. But when there was one that we wanted to avoid making, or wanted to put off, our excuses ran from my, "I'll check with my foreman," to Martin's, "gotta check with the boss lady." Of course it was all rubbish since the ranch was really under a joint command. The only difference was that I owned the place.

"Cori..." Martin started again, "The baby..."

Baby? What baby? God, I hadn't thought of that. Martin had just turned 41 and I knew she was a few months younger. God, had he been that stupid?

Martin's hands clutched his coffee mug so hard I thought it would pop out of them.

"Quinta...," he stammered.

What was he hoping for? I waited.

"Is mine."

"Quinta?"

"Cori Elena's girl."

"Is yours?"

He looked up at me as a smile slowly spread across his tortured face. "Martin," I began, "are you telling me that when Cori Elena married Lazaro that she was pregnant with your baby?"

He nodded.

"Oh shit." I knew there was no way I could pull out the wire cutters and free him this time.

"She usually makes coffee the night before, but had a headache last night. I found a letter from Lazaro in the cannister and then she admitted it.”

Damn her hide. She kept that from him for all these years. Why the confession now?

"Congratulations," I offered, not really knowing what else to say.

"Chiquita, she hasn't told the girl."

I did some quick mental calculations. The "girl" had to be at least twenty-two.

His lips hovered over the coffee mug. The bruises and cuts on his face that he'd come home with, along with Cori Elena, had healed months ago.

"I'm a father," he said, as a look of disbelief overtook him. "And I never even knew it."

"Where's Quinta?"

"In Mexico. With him."

Remembering Cori's broken leg, I asked, "Did he...?"

"She says not."

We talked for another thirty minutes. Cori Elena had told him last night about Quinta's paternity and he'd been awake all night thinking of the daughter he never knew he had. The problem was that not only had Cori Elena never told the girl about Martin, she had no intention of ever doing so.

His bloodshot eyes sought mine.

"I don't know what to do."

I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. I knew there was nothing I could suggest that he hadn't already thought of. My nausea was soon overtaken by anger. How in the hell could Corazon Elena do this to him? To Martin? My Martin? The man I'd grown up with and loved like a brother. The man who had never intentionally hurt anything in his life, who, even when branding calves, did it with a sure and steady hand, applying the brand only long enough to leave its mark.

Martin was strong and tough. One time he'd had a toothache when he'd been out rounding up cattle, miles from the ranch or a dentist, and he'd pulled his own tooth with a pair of pliers.

And now he sat hunched over the old wooden table, his eyes misting as he spoke of the daughter he never knew he had. By the time he walked slowly out the kitchen door, we had solved nothing. Our lives had just become more complicated, that was all.