All the Lost Little Horses (A Desperation Creek Novel Book 2)

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The sheriff nodded. “What’s up with Deputy Brown?”

  Jed told him that, too, and wasn’t surprised when Grant nodded his satisfaction.

  “If somebody is set on scaring the hell out of a woman who lives alone, we need to nail him.”

  Jed could not agree more.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “If we’d just have some rain,” the young female deputy complained, “we might have found footprints. At least that would have been a clue.”

  Linette appreciated Deputy Brown’s visit and her evident enthusiasm for doing her job, but couldn’t see that a boot print by the back door would have been much help. As it was, she’d already called a locksmith to come out and replace the house locks on the front door and add a deadbolt to the back door. She was more concerned about her horses, and while she did use chains and padlocks on gates, she knew how easily those chains could be cut – or the whole gate removed. Oh, hey – how hard would it be to bypass the gate altogether and knock down a section of fencing?

  The two women reached the patrol car. Linette saw Troy watching from the shadows of the barn, but when he realized she’d seen him, he backed out of sight.

  “I feel better now that you dusted for fingerprints,” she told the deputy, although she suspected the only fingerprints on the doorknob or handle of the shovel would be hers. Still, people didn’t always think. “You’ll let me know if you get a name?”

  “You bet.” Petite, with her light brown hair cut pixie short, Deputy Brown made a face. “I wish I could tell you there’s any likelihood we’ll identify him from his fingerprints, but really it’s a long shot. Even if the intruder didn’t wear gloves, he has to have committed a crime before or there won’t be a match. Or we might get a match to another crime, but no name because he wasn’t caught.”

  If Theo was responsible for these tricks, there’d be a match. Linette was sure the police in Georgia would have taken his fingerprints when he was convicted of ‘family violence’ after beating her. He’d served five months in jail for that. Not enough, in her opinion, but sooner or later he’d do the same to another woman, and that would be counted as a felony and earn him something like five years in prison.

  Maybe he was in prison right now. Deputy Brown would be able to find out, Linette assumed. But the chance that he’d followed her out here so many years after they’d parted ways was so low, she couldn’t bring herself to admit she’d been a battered woman.

  She did say, “I had the impression the deputy who responded this morning considered my call a nuisance. I’m surprised but grateful that he sent you out here.”

  An uncomfortable expression showed on a face that seemed too open for a police officer. “I actually haven’t spoken to him,” Deputy Brown said. “Detective Dawson heard what happened and asked for fingerprints.”

  Electrified by the casual mention of Jed’s name, Linette wasn’t sure why she felt so much. When she first saw his face in the weekly newspaper, she’d been stunned. Angry, hopeful and everything in between. He’d followed her here; that was the only explanation for his appearance in a sparsely populated county far from their native south. Even now, she felt a painful clench in her chest.

  She forced herself to say pleasantly, “Well, pass on my thanks to him instead, then.”

  All but paralyzed, she stood stock still as the deputy drove away.

  Jed Dawson had heard what happened and insisted the department go the extra mile to reassure her. But he hadn’t called, hadn’t come out here himself. In fact, it appeared he’d sent a message by doing his job but not making any personal contact.

  Don’t expect to hear from me.

  Yes, she thought that was exactly what he’d intended to convey. In fact, he had made his point rather bluntly.

  And that was why she felt so sick. She hadn’t known she had held onto any hope at all, but the treacherous emotion had apparently hidden itself in dark corners of her psyche.

  Well, no longer. Feeling a chill that would eventually result in numbness, she turned and walked toward the barn. It wasn’t as if she’d wanted ever to see the man again.

  *****

  Jed attended Gary Webb’s autopsy the next morning. Grant had offered to go in his place, but as much as Jed dreaded the duty, at least he hadn’t known the guy. He could better focus on the science and block out the humanity.

  Since Hayes County didn’t boast a hospital large enough to have a pathologist, the round-trip drive ate up half Jed’s day.

  The instant he walked into Grant’s office to report on the results, his boss grimaced.

  “Maybe it’s my imagination, but I just got a whiff of eau de morgue.”

  Jed lifted his arm to take a sniff of his shirtsleeve. “My sense of smell hasn’t come back yet, but I’ll take your word for it and make a stop at home for a shower and change of clothes.”

  “Good idea. Did you learn anything?”

  “Nothing unexpected. There was a lot of plaque in his arteries, but otherwise his health was good. Gunshot wound killed him. It nicked his heart, and he bled out fast.”

  “I want to catch this guy,” Grant said grimly.

  “You and me both.” Tension gripped Jed’s neck and shoulder muscles. Maybe the hot shower would help with that, too. “Did Deputy Brown submit those fingerprints from Ms. Broussard’s house?”

  “Most were the homeowner’s. There were a few partials that probably belonged to people who lived in the house previously. Which suggests the intruder wore gloves.”

  “Because he knew his fingerprints would have popped.”

  “Very possibly,” Grant agreed. “You have a special interest?”

  Jed ruthlessly schooled his expression. “Jarman’s attitude irritated me.”

  “Uh huh.”

  Aware he hadn’t convinced Grant, Jed threw out a smoke screen. A couple of weeks ago, he’d asked the deputies to pull over cattle trailers that stood out for some reason, night or day.

  “Aguilar stopped a pickup pulling a stock trailer at four this morning. The driver was an Oren Calderon, who apparently has a spread in Crook County. Said he always got an early start when he made a trip to the stockyard. Got huffy when Aguilar wondered if he could look at the brands, so he backed off.”

  “Don’t know the name. You ask around about him?”

  “Not yet. I figured you know all.”

  Grant flashed a grin. “Only within my own county.”

  “Gotcha.” Jed stood. “I’m off to shower and have lunch.” In fact, on his way out of the building, he called Walt Whitney.

  “Oren? I’ve met him at Cattlemen’s Association Conventions,” he said immediately. “The name kind of catches your attention. Older fellow?”

  “So I’m told.”

  “I was stuck at his table during one of the banquets. He did a lot of complaining. Said he has a big spread, but then bitched about the calves he’s lost to a local wolf pack. He insisted the damn wolves were about to put him out of business.”

  “That doesn’t seem likely.”

  “No, it doesn’t. Nobody likes losing a calf, but he sounded as if he has a pack denning on his land, dining freely at his expense.”

  Jed slammed the car door and reached for the seatbelt. “Anything else occurs to you about him, I’d appreciate a call.”

  He talked to two other local ranchers during the short drive to his rental house. The more helpful was Alex Burke of the Arrowhead Creek Ranch. After his older brother, Travis, had been killed this winter, their father came back out of retirement, at least for the short term, and was living in the big house at the ranch, but it was Jed’s impression that Alex was the acknowledged head of the operation now. Travis had focused on the horse breeding and training side, while Alex always had been in charge of the cattle.

  “Oren? Don’t like him,” he said without hesitation. “I wouldn’t have taken him for a man who’d steal from his neighbors, but…” The silence hummed before he continued, “It wouldn’t totally surprise me
, either. Farmers and ranchers aren’t often happy, you understand. Today might be sunny, but we’re all too well aware that a blizzard tomorrow might wipe us out. Even so, Oren takes it to an extreme. He’s one of those guys who never accepts responsibility when things go wrong.”

  “Doesn’t have any shortcomings himself, I take it.”

  “Not to hear Oren tell it. Still…damn. He’s got to be in his sixties. Is he really sneaking around in the middle of the night cutting fences and herding cattle in the dark?”

  Jed agreed that seemed unlikely, although privately he speculated that Oren’s role might be providing pasturage for stolen cattle, maybe hauling some to stockyards. His chronic discontent could easily have drawn the attention of the conspirators. If he weren’t directly involved in stealing the cattle, he could convince himself what he was doing wasn’t so bad.

  When Jed parked in his driveway, he decided he’d call the Crook County Sheriff’s Department and find out if somebody would pay a visit to Calderon’s ranch, possibly take a look around. It would be almost impossible to recover the stolen calves that hadn’t been branded. Altering a brand wasn’t easy, however, and was one of those things employees at reputable stockyards watched out for. Crook County undoubtedly had a deputy who’d know what kind of anomalies to look for.

  Jed felt a surge of satisfaction. Finding one person involved in these thefts would lead him to the next and right on up the line.

  Still, it wasn’t cattle rustling he thought about while he stood in the shower with hot water pounding down on the back of his neck. If Linette had any more trouble…he didn’t know if he could stay away.

  *****

  Craning her neck to see ahead over the line of parked cars, Cassie said, “That doesn’t sound good.”

  With his greater height, Grant had already focused on a cluster of men in the parking lot outside Ralph’s Steakhouse. This being Saturday, it had seemed reasonable for him to take off the afternoon and evening. With their wedding scheduled for June, barely a month away, the two of them had taken a second look at a house for sale they’d both liked at the first go-through. He was not in the mood for trouble, but there it was, right up ahead.

  “Don’t feed me that bullshit!” a man snarled. “A month ago, you couldn’t have afforded to walk onto the car lot and look at a fifty-thousand dollar truck, and now you own one?”

  Several men chimed in with, “Yeah! You better have an explanation.”

  “Or I’m taking the value of my cattle out of you in blood,” the first speaker threatened.

  “God damn it,” Grant muttered. He grabbed Cassie’s wrist and waited until she met his eyes. “You stay back.”

  He saw the unwillingness on her face. Insatiably curious and reckless despite her near-death experience in February, the woman he loved, a journalist to her bones, never held back.

  But after a reluctant moment, she nodded.

  “Gun,” somebody called in warning.

  “Wonderful.” He jogged the last few feet and said, “There’d better not be a gun out here.”

  He wouldn’t have been surprised to see Mason Thayer or his buddies Gene Baxter and Brian Warring, given their usual belligerence, but the apparent owner of a new pickup truck was Duane Hathaway, whose sister Grant had dated sophomore year in high school.

  The men surrounding him were even more unlikely. Blair Greenough ran some cattle on his acreage, but was also an auto mechanic and married man with two kids. Denny Everson was a firefighter, Bill Pollard a county employee in the roadworks department. Neither had been hotheads in Grant’s memory. He didn’t know several of the men, but was less surprised to see an angry Austin Jackson.

  “Duane, you put that gun away or I get the cuffs out,” Grant warned.

  Face flushed, he held his ground. “These dickheads threatened me.”

  “I’m not repeating myself.”

  Jackson said urgently, “You make him tell us where he got that much money. All we did was ask a simple question.”

  And all Grant wanted was to sit down to eat dinner with his fiancée and take a look at the photos Cassie had taken with her phone of the house they were considering buying.

  “Back off!” he snapped, turning an icy stare on each of the other men in turn before focusing again on the one with a revolver cocked and ready to fire. “Last chance.”

  Duane holstered the gun in a short, violent motion. “It’s none of their fucking business how I bought a new truck!”

  Grant relaxed only slightly. Two of the other men were carrying in plain sight, handguns in holsters at their hips. From long practice, he noted lumps under denim jackets that told him two of the strangers were armed, too. For all he knew, they might all be.

  “You and you.” He pointed at the two who seemed to be wearing shoulder holsters. “Let me see what you have under your jacket.”

  They didn’t like it, but followed his order.

  Sure enough.

  “Now I need to see your driver’s licenses and concealed carry permits.”

  A few guys on the edges of the group were easing away. Since he hadn’t heard any of them speak out, he decided to let them go.

  “Ah…” one of the two began. “I don’t know if I have it on me.”

  “Start with the driver’s license.”

  Both presented them. The second guy did have a Washington state concealed weapon permit but an Oregon drivers license.

  A Fort Halleck PD car rolled up a few feet away and an officer Grant recognized but didn’t know well climbed out and sauntered forward with his thumbs hooked on his heavy belt. “What seems to be going on here?”

  Grant identified himself and gave a terse summation. He let the officer – Bill Wheeler – decide whether or not to confiscate weapons and/or cite anybody, while he led Duane Hathaway to one side.

  Vibrating with hostility, Austin stepped right in front of them. “You’re not just letting him go, are you? He hasn’t lost any cattle, but he’s suddenly a whole hell of a lot richer? That suggests he’s one of these fu—”

  “Out of my way,” Grant snapped. “If that’s a question I need to ask, I’ll ask it, and if it’s not, I won’t. You go home.”

  Their gazes locked, Austin’s gaze breaking away first, settling as a glare on Hathaway. “You intend to stay around here, you better have an explanation.”

  Grant moved fast, shoving Austin against the side of an SUV, getting right up in his face. “Was that a threat?”

  “You know I’m right!” he yelled.

  “Was it a threat?”

  “No!”

  Grant shook his head in disgust and stepped back. “Go home. If anybody gets hurt, I’ll look at you first. You understand?”

  With an inarticulate sound of rage, Austin Jackson flung himself to one side. His boot heels rapped hard on the asphalt as he stalked away. Instead of veering to avoid Cassie, he bumped her with his shoulder in passing.

  On a spike of fury, Grant started forward, but she shook her head at him. He stopped, took some deep breaths, and turned back to Duane.

  The guy wasn’t quite as skinny as he’d been back in high school, but his Adam’s apple was still too big and he might have been ten years younger than Grant knew him to be. His voice shook. “I’m lucky you came along.”

  “Yes, you are.” Grant sighed. “Until we make some arrests, tempers are going to stay hot.” More so than he’d realized. He needed to call Chief Seward and suggest his officers keep a closer eye on the bars and taverns in town.

  “I’d be mad if those damn thieves had hit me,” Duane said fairly.

  Grant nodded. “I think you’d better tell me about the truck.”

  “My old one was a ’97. Falling apart, you know.” He looked down at his cowboy boots, old but buffed to a shine. “Thing is…my dad ran out on us when I was eight. I didn’t see much of him after that, but he got in touch six months or so ago and we’ve been talking.” He swallowed, the effect startling with that skinny neck. “After a lot of h
ard years, he’s doing real good. He said he wanted to buy me the truck and it wasn’t a bribe. Kathy and her husband couldn’t buy a house because they didn’t have the down payment, and he handed them a check, too.” Finally he lifted his head, his expression strained but the honesty painful to see. “I haven’t been saying much about it, because maybe I shouldn’t have taken anything that expensive from a man who left us that way. But life’s been hard, and Mom… Well, you wouldn’t know, but I wished I didn’t have to live with her, either.”

  Grant said, “You have nothing to be ashamed about. He owed you and your sister, and he must know it. Maybe part of you is glad to see him, while part of you wants to spit in his face, but I don’t see any reason you can’t enjoy the truck, and to hell with that crowd.”

  Duane’s fleeting smile was quickly replaced by what Grant suspected was more usual anxiety.

  “Will you get the word out that I didn’t steal anything to get the money?”

  “I will.” Grant clapped him on the shoulder. “You on your way in or out?”

  “Out.”

  “Well, I need to feed my fiancée.”

  “Ah…thanks again.” He retreated, nodded in Cassie’s direction then hurried to a shiny red crew-cab, full-size pickup.

  Cassie joined him to watch the guy back carefully out of the parking spot and make his way to the street. She tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “Well, that was fun. Nice to know half the citizens are carrying guns these days.”

  He shook his head as they walked toward the restaurant door. “Don’t piss anybody off right now.”

  She laughed. “Now come on. You know that’s my specialty.”

  Grant groaned.

  *****

  Even at night, the treehouse was perfectly situated for surveillance. So perfectly, Linette had to wonder whether the child for whom it had been built had wanted to be able to keep an eye on both the house and the barn.

  No, she already knew that, while an adult had helped build this fort, the child had done part of the work. She’d climbed up here when she first moved in, although not since. There’d been so much to do to get set up, she had barely given the treehouse a thought. But she remembered that many of the wood cuts were sharp and professional while others were ragged. Most nails had been driven straight in, but others were bent. For some reason she pictured a father and son doing the work, the father patient, explaining each step, accepting of mistakes.