Darius took the note from his son, and Damien and Duke crowded closer to read over his shoulder.
Wes braced his hands on his hips. “I’ll need that bullet, too. I’ll start an investigation, if you want.”
“You won’t have to look far. Ask Maisie what she knows about it.”
“Maisie?” Darius asked.
Peter faced the patriarch. “Do you know that she had an affair with my father back in 1995? I have reason to believe Jeremy is my father’s son.”
The women gasped softly, and a murmur of discontent rose amongst the men.
“I’m aware of Maisie’s mistake,” Darius said coolly, confirming Peter’s suspicions. The man’s face remained hard, emotionless.
“What does that have to do with this note?” Wes asked.
“Why don’t you ask her?” Peter divided a dark look between Darius and Wes. “A spurned lover could have reason to murder, to seek revenge. Especially if she’s trying to cover her tracks, hide an illicit affair, the paternity of an illegitimate son.”
An uneasy silence filled the foyer until Darius bellowed, “Maisie!”
The clop of hard-soled shoes sounded in the hall, and Maisie pulled up short when she saw her family clustered around Peter. “What’s all this about?”
Darius thrust the letter in her direction. “What do you know about a death threat sent to Patrick Walsh?”
Maisie stiffened. Her hands balled at her sides. “Why are you accusing me?” her tone grew shrill.
As she shuffled cautiously forward, her brothers and their girlfriends parted to let Maisie through.
Peter regarded Maisie with a narrowed gaze. Disgust and fury churned in his gut. “I think you know. Your secret is out, Maisie. Jeremy is Mark Walsh’s son, isn’t he? Did you kill my father to keep him from telling the world your dirty little secret?”
Maisie drew a sharp breath, her eyes widening in horror. “How did you find out? You can’t—”
In an instant, her shock morphed to rage. With a keening, animalistic wail, she charged at Peter. She attacked him, arms swinging, fingernails raking, feet flailing. A blur of fury and wrath, vicious strikes and battering kicks. “I hate you! I hate you! You’ve ruined everything! You’ll pay for this!”
Wes bit out a scorching obscenity and, with Damien’s help, peeled Maisie off Peter. Finn stepped forward to help subdue Maisie, who fought their hold like a rabid wildcat.
Stunned, but not really surprised by Maisie’s outburst and attack, Peter dabbed at his bloody lip, where Maisie had clawed him with her fingernails. His cheek throbbed, and his shins ached from her assault, and he’d likely have a shiner in the morning thanks to a well-placed jab.
With his brothers restraining Maisie, Wes stepped toward her and pointed to the note with the death threat Darius still held. “Did you send Patrick Walsh that threat, Maisie?”
Her eyes narrowed on Peter with a venomous glare. “Yes!” she hissed. “I hope all of the Walshes die! They’re nothing but heartless animals.”
Wes closed his eyes, and his shoulders drooped wearily. Finn and Duke exchanged guarded looks.
“First Lucy betrays Damien and stomps on his heart,” Maisie continued ranting, red-faced with anger, “then Mark knocks me up and tells me to get an abortion when he finds out. He never really cared about me. He just used me and abandoned me! The cold-hearted rat deserved to die!”
Peter shuddered. He might be bleeding and bruised, but he had what he wanted. The truth.
He turned to Wes with a level gaze. “Your sister assaulted me. She’s admitted to sending a death threat to my son and murdering my father.” He aimed a finger at Maisie. “I want her arrested.”
“What!” she shrieked. “No! Wes, you can’t—”
Wes held up a hand to hush his sister. “I can charge her with battery and sending the threat, but I didn’t hear a murder confession.”
“Neither did I,” Damien added. His brothers shook their heads in agreement.
Peter raised his chin and moved toward Wes. “Sounds like you should add her to your suspect list at least.” He gritted his teeth and cast a side glance to the grim faces around him. “I told you if you’d look at your own family you could solve my father’s murder and the other attacks on my family without your lengthy investigation.”
Wes shot a glance to his sister. “Did you kill Mark Walsh, Maisie?”
“No!” She struggled against the hands that still held her.
Wes arched an eyebrow. “Maisie didn’t kill anyone. This changes nothing about my investigation.”
Peter tensed. “Bring her in for attacking me then. I’m pressing charges for assault.”
Maisie grunted indignantly and cut her gaze to Darius, who stood back, arms folded over his chest, watching the proceedings with a disapproving glower. “Dad, you can’t let him do that!”
“Lily, call my office, please,” Wes said, “Ask them to send a cruiser out here.” He sighed and faced his sister. “Maisie, you have the right to remain silent—”
“Wes, no!” Maisie sent another pleading look to her father. “Daddy, please! Do something! This town owes you. You can’t let them arrest me!”
“You made this bed for yourself. Now lie in it.” Darius shoved the threatening letter toward Wes then strode into the bowels of his ranch house.
Damien squared his shoulders and moved to block Peter’s view of Wes reading Maisie her rights, of Maisie crying and begging her brothers to let her go. “You’ve done enough damage here tonight. I think you should go.” His tone, black glare and rigid stance left no doubt his suggestion was actually an order.
Swiping a trickle of blood from his mouth and rolling the ache of tension from his shoulders, Peter gave Damien a curt nod. “I’ll go. But your family hasn’t heard the last of me. I won’t rest until I know which one of you killed my father and declared war on my family.”
“Planning to railroad through false charges like your family did against me?” Damien asked, his tone bitter.
“No, this time I’ll make sure we get the right person, and I’ll see that the charges stick.” Turning on his heel, Peter stormed through the front door and across the lawn to his truck, parked at the far end of the driveway.
As he passed one of the bunkhouses where several ranch hands had gathered outside for a smoke, the sound of Maisie protesting her arrest to Wes in shrill tones wafted through the November chill. The ranch hands shook their heads, and Peter heard one man say, “Just goes to show—money can’t buy happiness.”
“You can’t pick your family, but I bet ol’ Sheriff Wes sure wishes he could right about now,” another hand added with a scoff.
Peter paused with his hand on the door handle of his truck and looked back up at the main house. The Coltons spilled out the front door as Wes took Maisie out to meet the arriving patrol car.
You can’t pick your family…
Or could you?
As Peter pulled onto the highway that led back to Honey Creek, the old ranch hand’s statement tumbled in his head, tangling with a collage of snapshot memories of his own family. His heartache over Lisa’s choice to end their relationship without giving it a fair chance. Patrick’s haunted expression over the death threat when he’d arrived home this afternoon. Mark Walsh’s womanizing and disinterest in his wife and children. Mary’s and Lucy’s newfound happiness with upstanding men who would love and protect them. Craig Warner filling the role of father for Peter in recent years. Katie’s death as she gave Peter the greatest gift in his life, his son.
Peter hadn’t chosen some members of his family, wouldn’t wish his absentee lothario father on anyone. Yet he’d chosen his young bride, just as Mary had chosen Jake. Lucy had chosen Steve.
He’d chosen to count Craig as a father figure, and Craig treated him like an adopted son.
Adopted.
Peter tightened his hands on the steering wheel, and his heart pounded harder.
We tried to adopt once, and the biological mothe
r changed her mind. The disappointment was devastating. It was the straw that broke Ray.
Earlier today, he’d been so caught up in Lisa’s pain, his own emotions and desperation to change Lisa’s mind that he hadn’t fully analyzed all the ramifications of their situation. He’d been so confident in his own feelings for Lisa, so cocksure about their future that he hadn’t given real thought to how to make it work. Lisa needed that reassurance, not ultimatums.
Peter squeezed his eyes shut and cursed his blindness and stupidity.
He prayed she’d still be at his house when he arrived. They couldn’t leave things unsettled between them.
Jolene met him at the door. Her troubled expression asked what she didn’t verbalize.
“Maisie admitted sending the note,” he told her in soft tones before going inside. “I was right about her having an affair with Dad. Jeremy is his son.”
“Why are you bleeding?” Jolene reached for the cut on his lip, and Peter pulled away.
“She attacked me when I told her the secret was out. She swears she didn’t kill Dad, but her assault on me and the threatening note were enough to have her arrested.”
“Wes allowed his sister to be arrested?” Jolene sounded stunned.
“He’s the one who took her into custody…until his backup arrived.”
Jolene touch a hand to her temple. “I’m so ready for all this drama to be behind us. You know, years ago, the Walshes and the Coltons were friends. I miss those days.” She sighed and shook her head, then raised a firmly loving gaze to Peter. “Enough dwelling on our troubles. Thanksgiving is about counting our blessings. And the Walshes have plenty. Craig is stronger every day. Mary and Lucy have never been happier. And you have a healthy, growing son. And Lisa—”
His heart twisted. Hadn’t Lisa filled his mom in on their break-up?
“Mom, about Lisa…”
Jolene gave him a quelling look and put a finger to her lips. “Shh. Come here. There’s something you need to see.”
Wes rocked back in his desk chair waiting to hear from his deputy that Maisie had been processed, printed and photographed. What a night!
Maisie had always been a handful for their parents. The oldest child and only girl in the family until Joan had come along when Maisie was fifteen, Maisie had been spoiled yet also strangely isolated among all those Colton sons, especially after her mother had died when she was five. With her unrivaled beauty, men twice her age had showered her with the wrong kind of attention at too early an age. Yet Maisie had sought more and more outrageous ways to attract attention from her family. She’d pushed every envelope, courted danger and invited scandal but, to Wes’s knowledge, had never crossed the line of legality. Until tonight.
He rubbed his chest where a raw ache had settled. He hated bringing Maisie in, but what choice had he had? She’d admitted to threatening Peter Walsh’s life, had viciously attacked him. His sister was out of control, headed for a bigger fall if he didn’t intervene.
Like he needed something else to worry about. This mess with Mark Walsh’s murder, Craig Warner’s poisoning, money-laundering schemes that had brought the FBI to his tiny town…the stress wore on him. Something had to break soon.
“Sheriff, your sister is in the interrogation room,” one of his deputies said from the door. “She’s asked to see you.”
Wes nodded. “Thanks.”
Bracing his hands on his desk, he shoved to his feet, feeling far older than his thirty-three years tonight.
Maisie had her head buried in arms folded on the table when he walked in and sat across from her. She raised a teary gaze to him, her luminous aqua eyes rimmed in red, lined with distress and fatigue. Despite her taller-than-average height, his sister seemed smaller tonight, child-like, drawn into herself, vulnerable.
Wes’s chest clenched. “What’s going on with you, Maisie? What possessed you to send Patrick Walsh that death threat against his father?”
She swiped at her cheek and shook her head slowly. “I don’t know, Wes. I was in town earlier today, picking up a few last-minute things for our dinner, getting an early start on my Christmas shopping…” She lowered her gaze to the table where she restlessly twisted a used facial tissue. “Everywhere I went, people told me Peter Walsh had been asking about me last week. Did anyone know who Jeremy’s father was? Did anyone remember who I’d been involved with in 1995? Could Mark Walsh be Jeremy’s father?”
Her hands trembled, and she shredded the tissue into bits. “If I’d wanted people to know the mistake I’d made with Mark Walsh years ago, I’d have told people myself. But I never wanted anyone to know that that cretin, Mark Walsh, was my son’s dad. I never wanted Jeremy to have to live with that burden.”
Wes leaned forward and placed a calming hand over Maisie’s fidgeting fingers. “Go on. What did you do then?”
“I got mad. I’d heard you complain earlier about how he was nosing around in the death of his father and could jeopardize your investigation. I knew he had to be stopped. I knew a warning would be ignored. He hadn’t listened to you after all. So I thought…if I involved Patrick—”
Wes frowned and squeezed Maisie’s hand. “Patrick Walsh is just a kid, Maisie. How would you feel if someone sent a letter like that to Jeremy?”
Her eyes filled with fresh tears. “I’d hate it. I never wanted to hurt Patrick. He seems like a sweet kid—despite being a Walsh. But I didn’t think—”
“Yeah. You didn’t think.” Wes gritted his teeth. “And now look where your temper has gotten you. You’ll have plenty of time to think tonight. I’ve got to put you in the holding cell until your bond comes through.”
As he scooted his chair back and stood, Maisie’s shoulders slumped.
“Wes?” Her voice cracked, high and thin, full of pain.
Wes stopped at the door and faced his sister. “Yeah, Mais.”
“Damien is talking about leaving town. Going to Nevada to start over.”
Wes sighed. He hated to see Damien leave when the family had only just gotten him back. “Yeah, I know.”
“I think that may be what I should do, too.” Maisie lifted her aqua eyes, puddled with tears. “I have a horrible reputation in this town that I won’t soon lose. Being a Colton in Honey Creek is hard. People expect so much, watch your every move, talk about you as if you don’t have feelings. I should move far from here and make a fresh start.”
“Are you sure? You’d be uprooting Jeremy from everything and everyone he’s ever known.”
“Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I don’t want him living under the pressures I’ve known living here.” She tucked her hair behind her ear. “Don’t we have some cousins in Texas?”
“I think so. But…you know you can’t leave town until these new charges against you are settled.”
Maisie closed her eyes slowly and sighed. “I know.” She rubbed her temple and said softly, “Go home, Wes. Lily’s waiting for you.”
Peter followed his mother into the living room. She put her finger on her lips, signaling for him to be quiet, then pointed to his sofa.
Under a shared quilt, Patrick lay huddled against Lisa, his head on her shoulder, her arms around him. They were both asleep.
The touching scene wrenched Peter’s heart. Patrick needed a mother. Lisa needed a child. The solution seemed so obvious, but how did he convince Lisa to step out on faith, to give their love a chance? Her pain was deep and stubborn.
He took a step toward them, but Jolene caught his arm, crooked a finger to motion him to the kitchen. Again he followed, curious.
Jake Pierson and Mary sat at his kitchen table nursing mugs of hot tea, their expressions grim.
Peter wasn’t sure he could take any more bad news tonight. His world was already falling apart, his heart broken, his child terrorized. “What’s going on?”
He heard the shuffle of feet as his mother backed out of the room, giving them privacy to talk.
Jake spoke first. “I hear you paid a visit to the Colt
on ranch tonight.”
“My life had been threatened. My child scared witless. I couldn’t sit back and do nothing.”
“You could have called the authorities, Peter.”
“Not when the authorities are the problem. Wes is a Colton. They’re the ones behind all this. Maisie admitted to sending the note.”
Mary frowned. “Just the same, there are proper channels for this kind of thing, so that citizens don’t go off half- cocked seeking vigilante justice.”
Peter sighed heavily. “So you came to lecture me? ’Cause I’m not in the mood.”
“No,” Jake said. “We came to level with you, before you do real damage to this case.”
Peter tensed, raised his chin. “Level with me?”
Mary nodded. “But you have to keep this in the strictest confidence. Please, Peter. It’s critical to the case that nothing leak about what’s going on behind the scenes. Do you hear me? Do you understand?”
Apprehension stirred a drumbeat in his chest. “Talk to me.”
Jake and Mary exchanged a troubled look.
“Your father’s murder may be related to other crimes that the FBI is investigating,” Jake said. “Same with Craig’s poisoning. You’re right that they are probably linked.”
Peter pulled out a chair and sat without breaking eye contact with Jake. “What kind of other crimes?”
“Money-laundering, real-estate fraud, a whole list of smaller related charges.” Jake turned his mug idly and shook his head. “We don’t know yet how it all fits together, but Wes has been cooperating with the FBI and their undercover investigators now for months.”
“When we started digging, asking questions, we became a target,” Mary said. “Remember when Jake’s partner was killed? We think the murderer was really after Jake. The attempt on our lives a few days later cinched it for us. The case wasn’t worth our lives, not when we’d just found each other and had a chance for real happiness.”
“The FBI has someone in place, an undercover operative who can bust this case wide open in time.” Jake tapped the table with his finger to emphasize his point. “But you have to back off. You can’t interfere. You could ruin everything, right when Wes and the FBI are nearly ready to make arrests.”
P.I. Daddy's Personal Mission Page 18
