by Jane Graves
Alex looked at her with total disbelief. “Would you tell me how I got to be the stupid one in this scenario? You should be thanking me for trying to keep you from getting your head blown off!”
“Either way, we’re sunk now. The housekeeper knows who both of us are, and she was quick to fill the nine-one-one operator in on that fact.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because she was screaming into the phone that the man who killed Mrs. Reichert had broken into their house.”
“You understood what she was saying?”
“I speak Spanish. Enough, anyway. My mother was Mexican.”
“Oh, that’s just great.”
“Don’t you want to know what I found in the house?”
Alex took a deep breath and expelled it slowly. “Is it something that’s going to get us out of this mess?”
“Not exactly. Not yet, anyway.”
“I assume it wasn’t the rifle, then.”
“No. The man has a good-sized arsenal, but none of his rifles were in the Remington seven-hundred series. A search warrant wouldn’t have helped us. And I was interrupted before I could get a bug planted. Not that it would have done us any good, anyway, since my receiver has to be within three hundred meters to pick anything up. I doubt we’ll be getting that close to the Reichert house again.”
“Then what did you accomplish?”
“I played back his answering machine messages. There was one dated this morning at nine-thirty. To Reichert. From a woman named Angela.”
“Who was she?”
“I don’t know. She was calling from his ranch.”
“Ranch?”
“He has a ranch in southwest Texas, about thirty miles outside a little town called Tinsdale. It’s northwest of San Antonio, not far from the Mexican border. This woman told him that everything would be ready at the ranch by the time he got there tomorrow morning.”
“Ready for what?”
“She said that all eighteen guests had confirmed and would be arriving for the hunt tomorrow morning, and that she’d be sure that the barbecue was set up for the party tomorrow night.”
“Hunt? What kind of hunt?”
“I went through Reichert’s files. Get this.” She opened the door to her van and dug through a backpack on the front seat. She handed Alex a brochure, and after looking over it, he saw that Reichert had quite a profitable business going. For a rather staggering fee, a hunter could come to Reichert’s ranch and be guaranteed to shoot the animal of his choice. And what a choice Reichert offered him.
Wildebeest. Water buffalo. A dozen different kinds of exotic deer and antelope. And whatever Reichert didn’t have, he assured his clients he could get it, whether or not it was indigenous to Texas or even to the United States. If they had the money, he had the means to bring in any animal a man wanted to shoot.
“Kind of turns your stomach, doesn’t it?” Val said. “Do you know if it’s legal?”
“It’s legal, at least in the state of Texas. It’s called canned hunting. I was involved in a murder case years ago that touched on it. Reichert can bring in almost any animal he wants to.”
“But where does he get them?”
“Probably from zoos.”
“Zoos? He steals them?”
“Nope. They sell them. It’s a good source of income for some zoos. Of course, the ones who do it would prefer the public didn’t know about it.”
“Yeah. I can see why.”
“The only animals he can’t legally use are big cats. But if he can find a way to get a rhinoceros out there, it’s within the bounds of the law.”
Val grimaced. “That’s really sickening.”
Alex had to agree with that sentiment. Hunting had never been his thing, even fair hunting. He couldn’t fathom what kind of man would get his kicks by shooting a penned-up animal.
“She also told Reichert that the girls would be there at nine o’clock.”
“Girls?”
“Entertainment, evidently. She said that Lorena was sending over at least a dozen. What do you think? Dancers?”
“Maybe more. I bet Reichert knows how to show his guests a really good time.”
“This man is getting more disgusting by the minute.”
“What else did the woman say on the phone message?” Alex asked.
“She asked him to call her when he got home from the funeral.” Val raised an eyebrow. “And get this. She said, ‘I know you had to go to the funeral to make it look good. But by the time you hear this message, it’ll all be over with.’ And then she said she was dying to see him, and to please get out there as quickly as he could.”
“ ‘Make it look good.’ Do you think she was in on the murder?”
“I think she at least knows that he did it. And it’s pretty clear that Shannon wasn’t the only one in that marriage who was cheating.”
“So Reichert didn’t kill Shannon because she was sleeping with other men,” Alex said. “He wanted her out of the way so he could have another woman.”
“And maybe she knew he was having an affair and was going to take him to the cleaners in a divorce.”
“Then why would he want to take out the man she was cheating with if it wasn’t revenge?”
“Because he was a handy person to take the fall no matter what.”
Alex felt a prickly sensation on the back of his neck, as if they’d suddenly taken a quantum leap closer to the truth.
“And I had another thought,” Val said. “It would be a little dangerous for Reichert to move all those wild animals around. Do you suppose there would be occasions when he’d want to sedate them?”
“Probably.”
“You were shot with a drug that they couldn’t identify on standard tests. Could it have been an animal tranquilizer?”
Alex considered that for a moment and realized that it made perfect sense. “That could explain a lot.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a needle after all,” Val went on. “Maybe it was a dart gun. Suppose Reichert hid and waited for Shannon to bring a man home. Then he used a dart gun to hit you with an animal tranquilizer. You passed out, and he killed Shannon. Then you took the fall.”
A dart gun. That explained how Shannon could appear to be the only one in the vicinity when he was shot.
“I think we’re on to something, Alex. Something we can actually pursue.”
“Pursue?”
“We need to get out to that ranch.”
Alex closed his eyes, willing himself to remain calm. “You didn’t cause enough trouble here? You want to go out to his ranch and cause some more?”
“Hey! If I hadn’t broken into his house, we wouldn’t know all this stuff. So I think it’s about time you shut up about how stupid it was and admit that it was the only way to get us something we could use.”
“So the end justifies the means?”
“Hell, yes! When it’s the only way to find the truth!”
“And if we can’t eventually pin the murder on Reichert, I’ll end up with another charge against me!”
“And if we do manage to pin it on him, you get to stay out of prison, and I get to go on living!”
Alex ran a hand through his hair, his jaw tight with frustration. He hated this, mostly because Val was starting to make sense.
“So what do you propose we do if we go to the Reichert ranch?”
“Bug the house. Hope he says something incriminating. Personally, I think the woman he’s screwing is in on the murder, or at least knows he did it. No telling what the two of them might say when they’re four hundred miles away from Tolosa and they think nobody could possibly be listening.”
“How do you propose we get into the house to plant a bug?”
“We’ll have to figure that out when we get there.”
As much as Alex hated to admit it, Val was right. At least now they had something to go on. And staying in Tolosa meant that sooner or later he’d end up in jail, and that was a place he vowed he’d neve
r go to again.
“Reichert isn’t due to be there until tomorrow morning,” Val went on. “If we leave now, we can beat him there. With luck, it’ll be just this woman in the house and maybe only a couple of other people. Then we can find a way to get inside.”
Alex couldn’t believe what had happened in the past two days. He swore to himself that he’d have nothing more to do with this woman. Now he was seriously considering taking a four-hundred-mile road trip with her to break into yet one more house. Was he crazy?
Unfortunately, it appeared that the answer was yes.
“Okay, Val. Here’s the deal. From here on out, I’m calling the shots. Every damned one of them. If I tell you to do something, you do it, no questions asked. I don’t want you to so much as sneeze without asking my permission. Do you understand?”
He didn’t even bother to wait for her answer, because he knew any yes she gave him today could easily turn into a no tomorrow. Warnings were pointless with Val, but it made him feel better that at least he’d issued one.
He strode over to his car and opened the door. He grabbed his sunglasses and his cell phone, then opened his glove compartment to get a Texas map. He shut the car door and locked it.
“I’m leaving my car here. It can’t be seen from the road, so I doubt anyone will find it. But it doesn’t matter even if they do, because we’ll be long gone. How well equipped is your van?”
“I’ve got surveillance equipment, cameras, flashlights, binoculars. Transmitters, receivers. All kinds of bugs. A costume or two when I need to go undercover. You name it, I’ve got it.”
“Weapons?”
“Two. One on me and one in the van.”
“Give me your keys.”
She did.
“Get in the van.”
“You’re driving?”
“Don’t argue.”
They both got in the van. Alex started the engine.
“I guess this means we’re going to Reichert’s ranch,” Val said.
“Yes. And it’s a crapshoot. Before it’s all over with, we could both end up a hell of a lot worse off than we are right now.”
“But we could also pull it off and walk away. Knowing what we know about Reichert, the odds look pretty good to me.”
Alex had never been a gambler. Never had any desire to fly to Vegas, join a poker game, or even buy a lottery ticket. Questionable outcomes made him tense. Edgy. He’d spent his whole life trying to reduce risk rather than asking for more.
He started the engine. “Ever been to Vegas?”
“What?”
“Vegas. Ever been there?”
“Sure. Hasn’t everybody?”
“Ever play poker?”
“I like blackjack.”
“The jackpot in the Texas state lottery is fourteen million this week. How many lottery tickets did you buy?”
“Only one for the big jackpot. But I won twenty bucks on a two-dollar scratch-off ticket.”
He just stared at her, shaking his head in disbelief.
“What?”
Alex put the van in gear, wheeled it around in a one-eighty, and headed out of the drive-in. He’d vowed that he would do anything to stay out of prison. He’d just had no idea it would be something like this.
chapter eleven
It was early afternoon in the town of Tinsdale, Texas, where the sun beat down on Cedar Street with the intensity of a blowtorch. The pavement was hot enough to melt shoe leather if a person were to linger too long, and anyone who ventured out without the proper precautions was subject to a heavy-duty case of heatstroke. But even the fires of hell couldn’t deter Deputy Stanley Obermeyer from his appointed rounds.
On the sidewalk outside the sheriff’s office, he took a deep breath and tugged on his belt, adjusting his weapon on his hip. Then he touched the brim of his Stetson, cocking it downward until it dipped along his forehead at just the right angle. He pulled his mirrored shades from his pocket and slid them on.
Yeah. It felt just right. He was definitely looking good.
He started down the sidewalk of Cedar Street, the main drag of Tinsdale, a town so small that it occupied only a faint dot in the southwest portion of the map of the great state of Texas. But size wasn’t everything. He told himself that looks were deceiving, that anything could happen at any time, so he had to stay on his toes. A bank robbery. An assault. A murder, even.
At least he hoped for one of those someday.
He patrolled this dinky little town, all the while wishing it were New York or L.A. or Chicago. He’d always dreamed of working the mean streets, where murder happened as often as petty theft everywhere else. A place where cops spent their days and nights chasing down the bad guys, then went for a beer afterward and swapped stories.
That was being a police officer. Handing out parking citations and chasing down stray dogs wasn’t.
He lengthened his stride, hoping he looked like a man on a mission, a man with places to be, a man who was charged with keeping Tinsdale, Texas, safe from the bad guys. As he passed Darnell’s Hardware, he gave his reflection a sidelong glance in the grimy plate glass and decided that maybe he was getting the hang of it. He kept his gaze cocked in that direction as he walked, noting that the saunter he’d practiced, kind of a John Wayne/Clint Eastwood combo, was starting to look pretty good on him. He pulled his shoulders back, setting his mouth into a badass frown, and was pretty sure that if he encountered a criminal right about now, that particular deviant might just think twice about messing with a man like him.
Then he looked farther down the street and saw Glenda McMurray coming his way.
His heart skipped wildly, and it was all he could do to maintain his professional demeanor. Glenda had come to live in Tinsdale three months ago to be near her aging grandmother, and from the first day he saw her, Stanley hadn’t been able to think about much else. He was only five-foot-five, so most women either looked him dead in the eye or towered over him. Not Glenda. She was a tiny little thing, barely five feet tall and lucky if she weighed a hundred pounds. For one of the only times in his life, a woman made him feel big.
As usual, wire-framed glasses framed her pretty brown eyes, and her long brown hair was pulled back in a silver barrette. She was wearing the same kind of long, loose, gauzy skirt and strappy little sandals that she always did, and it seemed to Stanley that one day she just might go floating right up into the clouds. He knew that most of the other guys in town thought she was a little plain, but to him she looked like an angel.
Glenda worked as a reporter for the Tinsdale Weekly, which of course wasn’t anywhere near a full-time job, so she also worked part-time at the Quick Mart. Stanley had taken to dropping by for more cups of coffee and soft drinks and potato chips than he ever had before, and Glenda always had something nice and cheery to say. Still, he tried to play it pretty cool, because he knew that the last thing a woman wanted was to feel as if she were being chased. He hoped maybe his offhand attitude would eventually draw her in for a closer look, though he had to admit that he didn’t seem to be making a lot of headway in that direction.
She stopped in front of him. “Hello, Stanley.”
Oh, boy. Be cool, he reminded himself. Be very, very cool.
“Glenda.”
He said her name matter-of-factly, keeping his chin up, his shades on, and his face impassive, trying to refrain from grinning like some stupid junior-high kid.
“I’m afraid those kids are at it again with the fireworks,” she told him.
Stanley sighed inwardly. The few days before the Founder’s Day Celebration were always such a pain in the ass—every bit as much as the Fourth of July. Kids around here didn’t have much of anything to do in the summer. Setting off fireworks qualified as high-quality entertainment, and shoving lit black cats into the mail slot of the front door of the newspaper office and then running like hell was the most entertaining of all.
Stanley folded his arms across his chest. “Well, I expect I’ll have to have an
other word with them, then.”
“Thank you, Stanley. I’d appreciate that.”
Truth was, he hadn’t had a word with them the first time around when old man Grimstead, the editor of the newspaper, griped yesterday about Tony, Roy Jr., and the other boys and their own special form of vandalism. When those same boys were eleven or so, Stanley had been able to intimidate them, but now that they were fourteen, they were all swagger and arrogance, and about half of them were taller than he was.
But now that it was Glenda asking and not old man Grimstead, he’d have to take a stab at putting them in their places. He couldn’t let her down, because a woman like Glenda would expect any man she’d consider dating to act like one. A big, bad one who could kick some ass whenever the need arose.
He’d found out long ago that women didn’t give a flip about brains or sensitivity in their men, no matter how much they protested to the contrary. Give a woman a choice between a smart, sensitive man and a brainless, demanding Neanderthal and they went prehistoric every time. And since he was tired as hell of losing out to that, he’d finally given in to the old adage: If you can’t beat them, join them.
“Glenda,” he said suddenly, before he lost his nerve. “You. Me. Movie. The Meridian. Saturday night. Yes or no?”
She blinked with surprise. Then her pretty face eased into a warm smile. “Stanley? Are you asking me out?”
Be cool. Don’t let her see you sweat.
He gave her an offhand shrug. “I’ve got a free night.”
Her smile faded. “A free night?”
“Yeah. Now that I’ve cut my evening workouts down to four nights a week”—he cracked a knuckle—“I think I can spare a few hours.”
She raised her eyebrows. Yes. Now he’d gotten her attention.
“I see,” she said, nodding slowly. “Well, then. I guess I know how I’m going to be spending my evening now.”
Stanley brightened, hope gushing through him. “You do?”
“Yes. Watching a Brady Bunch marathon and doing my nails.”
“But—”
“Good-bye, Stanley.”
She gave him a sweet little smile, then turned and walked away, that long skirt swishing around her ankles. She stepped lightly off the curb and crossed the street, looking, as always, as if she were walking on air.
