Ms. Demeanor (Mystery Christmas Book 4)

by Danica Winters

  On the other hand, maybe his brother was right. Rainier could check his anger now, but how long would he be able to? And what if he saw his birth father again or he was put in a situation like before? He couldn’t honestly tell himself, or anyone else for that matter, that he would make a different decision than the one he had. Maybe he really hadn’t changed, after all.

  “Wyatt,” Laura said, “you’re right. I have learned a lot on my job. I have learned that some people are incapable of change, but I know that your brother is different. He has a chance. But he won’t if he has to fight against the people who are supposed to love him the most. When people don’t have a soft place to land after prison, if they aren’t given the tools to succeed, that’s when they find trouble. You want your brother to succeed, don’t you?”

  The tight, ferocious lines around Wyatt’s lips softened and he seemed to relax. He sighed as he glanced at Rainier. “Look, I don’t want to stand in your way. You know I don’t. You know I love you. And you have to know that I understand that we all make mistakes. Given, mine haven’t been the same caliber of yours, but—”

  “You’re putting him down again,” Laura said. “You’re not helping.”

  “You’re right,” Wyatt said. “Rainier, I’m sorry. That wasn’t intentional. It’s just... It’s going to take me some time to get over this.”

  Rainier couldn’t believe the words that came out of his brother’s mouth. No matter what he would have said to Wyatt, it wouldn’t have been nearly as effective as Laura’s cool, calm and logical approach. He was impressed with her, and it made him wonder how her parolees tended to fare compared to those of other parole officers.

  “Thanks, man. I totally get it. And know that I truly am sorry for making you go through crap. I didn’t realize... I hadn’t realized how much it had affected you.”

  “If you want me to get past this, you need to promise me that you will do everything in your power not to get into trouble again,” Wyatt said.

  Rainier’s thoughts moved to the investigation and the lie that he and Laura had told. He could only imagine what his brother would say if he learned the truth. “I promise, from this moment on, I’ll do my best.”

  Laura smiled, and it made him wonder if she had thought about their lie, as well, or if she was smiling simply because she had heard his careful maneuvering around it. Or if she wasn’t thinking like he was at all, and was simply happy that the brothers were once again back on square footing. Whatever was making her smile, he was glad to see her do it. She was so beautiful when she smiled. Even her blue eyes seemed to sparkle a little bit more when she was happy. He stared at her, unable to look away. It wasn’t that she was just breathtakingly beautiful on the outside, with all of her wonderful and luxurious curves, but her soul was equally as intoxicating. She truly was the most enchanting person he’d ever laid eyes on.

  And yet she was completely untouchable.

  Wyatt threw the dirty rag over his shoulder and ran his hands down his face as he let out an exasperated breath. “By the way, Gwen told me about the letter.”

  “Good,” Rainier said, relieved. “I mean not good, but I’m glad she told you,” he said, trying to make up for his mistake.

  “How did the meeting with your father go?” Wyatt asked.

  Laura gave Rainier a look that made it clear she wasn’t exactly sure what to tell him.

  “I think it’s best he knows the truth, even if our parents don’t. He’s the only other one who can really help us,” Rainier said, urging her on.

  “Wait. What are you guys talking about? What happened?” Wyatt pressed.

  “Let’s step into the barn,” Rainier said, suddenly all too aware that Lyle and Steve may have been listening.

  They followed Wyatt into the barn, and Rainier walked over to the first stall, where his favorite horse, Clark, stood with his head sticking out in greeting. He ran his hands down the horse’s cheeks and scratched under his chin. “How’s it going, old boy?” he asked as the horse sniffed at him, taking in his scent.

  “So what did the lawyer say?” Wyatt pressed.

  Rainier turned back. “He feels the same way about me that you do, or did. He thinks that Laura is making a mistake getting wrapped up with me and this place. And, well, he doesn’t think that he can help us go up against William Poe with everything that’s stacked against us.”

  Wyatt leaned against the table at the front of the barn. “So, we can get another lawyer.”

  “When it comes to tax law,” Laura said, “there’s no one better in the state than my father. His firm is fantastic. They can make anything go away. You want him. And besides, according to him, no one else is going to touch anything that goes against Poe. You know what kind of pull he has in the county. No one wants to go toe-to-toe with him.”

  “That man needs to disappear...” Wyatt said, half under his breath.

  Rainier laughed. “Don’t say that too loud. People around here are already questioning us. If Poe died...you know every law enforcement agency, including yours, would be down here and taking us all into custody. And even if he did disappear, that wouldn’t mean that our tax problem would.”

  “I suppose you’re right. We need to fix one major catastrophe at a time,” Wyatt said, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Let’s start with this body. Do you think we can just sweep it under the rug?” Rainier asked.

  “Not after today...” Wyatt paused. “This morning we found the person’s skull. From what I know about forensics, it looked like a man...a man with a gunshot wound to the head.”

  The breath seeped out from Rainier. No. This couldn’t be happening. Not now. Not when they needed to put this behind them.

  “If he had a gun with him,” Laura said, “couldn’t it be possible that the guy committed suicide?”

  “Or the killer threw the gun into the hole when he buried the body,” Wyatt said. “I mean, a person couldn’t bury himself. There had to be someone else involved.”

  His brother was right. Rainier couldn’t believe he had missed such an obvious thing.

  “Did you find anything else? Anything that could date it?” he pressed, though he knew he was grasping at straws.

  “You want to take a look? I was just bagging it up to send it to the lab,” Wyatt said, motioning toward the bag that was sitting on the workbench.

  “Sure,” Laura said, surprising Rainier with her willingness to see something that could potentially be gruesome.

  Wyatt grabbed the bag and, opening it, carefully withdrew the skull. Parts of it were covered in a thin layer of mud, which made it look like something from a movie and less macabre than Rainier had anticipated.

  “So if you look right here...” Wyatt turned the skull and pointed to a small hole near where the right ear would have been. “See this?”

  Rainier nodded. It was about the size of a dime and the bone around it had been stained an ashy black.

  “I’m no expert in forensics, but from what I know about gunshot wounds, I would say that when the gun was fired it had to have been close. I mean, look at these margins,” he said, indicating the edge of the wound. “Look at this internal beveling.” He turned the skull so they could peer inside the cranium. He pulled out a flashlight and, turning it on, shone it into the empty space where the man’s brain had once been. “And if you look here, see this collection of fracturing? That’s from the increased pressure that occurs when the bullet moves through the skull.”

  “What does that all mean? As far as the shooting goes?” Rainier asked, staring at the hairline fractures.

  “It’s all proof that whoever did this was standing close. Very close.”

  “So someone executed the guy?” Laura asked, motioning toward the skull.

  Wyatt shrugged. “It’s hard to say. But what I do know is that if this story ge
ts out to John Q. Public, your father is going to be proved right. People are going to be in an uproar. We’ve already had enough death at the ranch lately. This is going to push people over the edge. It’s going to be hard to prove that we’ve just been going through a string of bad luck and nothing more sinister is going on.”

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Rainier said, mostly in an attempt to stop himself from going off the rails. “We still have to wait on the report from the medical examiner, right?”

  “Sure,” Wyatt said. “And who knows, she’ll probably see something I missed. Maybe she can help us make sense of this guy’s death. At the very least, she can probably give us a time line.”

  “How long do you think it’s going to take to hear back from her?”

  Wyatt shook his head, turning off the flashlight and putting it back into his belt. “It’s hard to say. She has the femur and the gun, but until we give her this...” Wyatt shrugged as he set the skull back in the bag. “To be honest, we’re hoping to recover more before we go to her. If we do, we’d have more evidence to go on—maybe even find something to point in the direction of anyone else who was involved.”

  Now all Rainier could hope for was that if someone else was involved in what could have possibly been this man’s murder, it wasn’t anyone in his family. If it was, they would never clear the Fitzgerald name and there would be no going back.

  Chapter Nine

  Laura and Rainier walked out of the barn and toward the parking lot. She felt as though she was in a daze after Wyatt’s findings. This place and all the people in it seemed to be cursed—and not just over the last month, as she had assumed. From the looks of the human remains, the curse had been looming over the place for years.

  It seemed as if no matter what they did, they were never going to break free from the bad luck and torture that the world wanted to put this family through.

  She thought of the old saying “You won’t be given more than you can handle,” and wondered if it was really true. Was this all just a way for Rainier’s family to be tested? Was it some ethereal plan put in place to make the family come together? Or maybe it was nothing more than a string of bad luck. No. There had to be a reason behind the madness. This all couldn’t be due to some cosmic randomness, but had to be happening for something greater—something that would bring the family joy and happiness in the end.

  Or maybe, as her father was always happy to point out, she was being naive.

  A white truck with a Dunrovin brand on the driver’s-side door pulled into the parking lot. A man and woman she recognized as Rainier’s brother Colter, and his fiancée, Whitney, from the ranch’s Yule Night festival were inside the extended cab, and as she looked at them they each gave her a warm smile and an excited wave. Rainier stopped and stared.

  “You okay?” she asked, seeing the way his eyes seemed to darken thanks to his brother’s arrival.

  Rainier nodded. “I’m just hoping he’s a little bit more welcoming than Wyatt. I don’t know if I have any more apologies in me.”

  She reached over and took his hand. “No matter what happens, I’m here for you. And from their smiles, I’m thinking they’re more than happy to see you.” As the words slipped from her, she second-guessed them. If Colter had been happy Rainier was home, he wouldn’t have been MIA for the last day and a half.

  From the scowl on Rainier’s face, he must have been thinking along the same lines.

  “Let’s go say hello,” she said, hoping against all hope that this would go better than he was assuming.

  He said something unintelligible under his breath, but she pretended not to hear him grumbling and instead led him toward the truck.

  Whitney was getting out as they approached.

  “Hey, Whit!” she exclaimed.

  Whitney’s smile widened. “Heya, I’m so glad you’re here. I could use an extra set of hands.” She glanced down at Rainier’s and Laura’s entwined hands with the raise of a brow.

  Rainier slipped his fingers from hers. Laura tried to ignore the awkwardness that suddenly seemed to fill the air.

  “Hey, man. Long time no see,” Colter said. He walked over and gave him a quick hug, complete with a slap on the back, almost as though Rainier had simply been on a long vacation. “Whitney, do you know Rainier?” he asked, letting go of his brother and turning toward her.

  She stuck out her hand. “I’ve heard lots of good things.”

  Rainier looked at his brother as a surprised laugh escaped him. “Really?”

  Colter slapped him on the shoulder. “I always got your back, brother,” he said with a heartwarming smile.

  Standing there and looking at Colter’s and Whitney’s mirrored expressions of joy, Laura could see why the two were getting married. As Colter moved, Whitney shifted closer to him, almost as if they were connected by invisible strings that drew them toward each other. She wanted that same kind of love. The kind that was far more than lust, and ran deeper and made silent promises that would last a lifetime.

  A new sense of longing filled her as she looked at Rainier. Perhaps he could be the man she needed. Maybe they could have a relationship just like Colter and Whitney’s—if they were lucky.

  “I’m sorry we weren’t here to welcome you home,” Colter continued. “We had to run to Spokane to do some wedding shopping. Did you know that there are hundreds of different shades of blue?” He gave Whitney a teasing smile. “And our color is Bondi blue, to be exact.”

  “Bondi blue?” Laura asked. “What is that?”

  “Exactly. You make my point for me,” Colter said with a laugh, just as Whitney gave him a playful jab.

  “No. Don’t get them mixed up in this,” she protested. “Technically, Bondi blue is kind of a blue-green color.”

  “Oh, that sounds beautiful. Is it your only wedding color?” Laura asked.

  “That and a gray called—”

  “Metropolis,” Colter said, finishing Whitney’s sentence. “And did you know that they are not always called the same name? It changes with the brand and the designer. So depending on the store, our gray was also called Ash.” He turned to Rainier. “Holy crap, I think I just felt my man card rip itself from my wallet.”

  Rainier laughed as Colter waved for them to step around the side of the truck. He opened the back door and pulled out a stack of garment bags. “Here, take this,” he said, handing Rainier four of them. “We’ll take ’em to Whitney’s office.” He motioned toward the main office with his chin.

  Laura stepped up, and Colter handed her a box of what looked like the entire contents of a craft store, complete with fake white and blue hydrangeas. For a moment she simply stared at the glittering petals. They were a far cry from the skull that she had just been looking at, and it struck her how, even in moments of peril, there could always be something beautiful just around the corner.

  She walked with Rainier toward the office, and after he opened the door for her, made her way into the back and set the box on the table in Whitney’s office. “I don’t think they have a clue what’s going on. Should we tell them?”

  Rainier peered out the window of the door as if checking how far behind them they were. “They are going to learn soon enough. Wyatt’s there now,” he said, gesturing toward the truck.

  Glancing outside, Laura could see the evidence bag in Wyatt’s hand. Colter’s and Whitney’s smiles disappeared as they spoke. She couldn’t hear their exchange, but from the way Wyatt lifted the bag she had to assume he was telling them what Rainier had feared.

  “Should we go out there?” she asked.

  He stared out for a long moment. As Wyatt continued to speak, Whitney’s face grew more and more stoic and she set the box in her hands down on the hood of the truck.

  Rainier turned away and closed the door with barely a click. “No,” he said, s
haking his head.

  He didn’t need to explain himself further. After everything that had already happened today, Laura couldn’t blame him for turning away from more drama.

  “When were they planning on having their wedding?”

  Rainier shrugged. “I know my mother said something about them doing it around Christmas, but I don’t know when exactly. And now...with everything that’s happened while they were gone, I wouldn’t be surprised if they called it off.”

  She nodded, but she thought of the excited look on Whitney’s face and the way the two had seemed so invested in something as simple as just their wedding colors. She could only imagine how devastated they would be if they had to cancel it. Yet to go ahead with a party on that scale seemed just wrong—almost as if they were trivializing the family’s struggles.

  “Maybe if we can get to the bottom of this, it’s just another thing that can be made right,” she said, her words sounding far more hopeful than she felt. She moved toward the door that led to the yard.

  “How is that?” Rainier asked, staring out the window in the door.

  “Well, if we can solve the murder, my dad can help us solve the tax thing, and then they wouldn’t need to postpone anything. We could turn this into the party your mom always wanted and that they badly need.”

  Rainier ran his hands over his face as he turned away from the door and pulled down the shade, as if by being unable to see them it would keep him at arm’s length from all the issues that came with their return. “Do you always look on the bright side of everything, Laura?” He gave her a serious glance, but her name rolled off his tongue like it had tasted of honey.