An odd reaction to Rusty’s death, she thought, certain she wouldn’t see either of them at the memorial service.
The memorial service. No way could she even think about going without a friendly face beside her. Ever since her grandmother’s funeral, she had developed a genuine hatred for the ritual. Even the cloying scent of gladiolas now made her nauseous.
She’d bribe Victor into accompanying her. Maybe if she had a guy with her, Lucas would keep his hands to himself. As if anyone would believe Victor was her boyfriend. The man dressed better than she did and flirted outrageously with every male in the room.
After tossing and turning for over an hour, Jordan finally fell asleep, although it wasn’t a restful one. She awoke the following morning still thinking about Rusty and wondering what had caused his death.
As soon as her feet hit the floor, the little man with the hammer began pounding in her head, and she cursed the two glasses of champagne she’d had in the limo on the way home. Padding to the kitchen, she made a cup of coffee with her new little one-cup coffeemaker, compliments of Loretta Moseley.
Well sort of. She’d actually bought the machine on sale, justifying the purchase with the extra money she would make as the new Kitchen Kupboard columnist.
Okay, so she had yet to see any extra money, but Egan promised it was coming, and coffee tasted so fresh made one cup at time. She blew out a slow breath and stretched over the sink to get the bottle of ibuprofen on the shelf above. Maybe between the drugs and the caffeine, she could squash the little pest in her forehead.
She opened the cabinet looking for something to fill her stomach. No Pop-Tarts or English muffins. Another Mother Hubbard moment. She moaned, remembering today was grocery day. Snagging the last Hostess Ho Ho, she threw the empty box in the trash and plopped into a chair at the kitchen table.
Rusty continued to weigh heavily on her mind. Turning on the TV, she was disappointed when after fifteen minutes she didn’t hear one word about the freakish death at the society event the night before. She guessed a thirty-something, otherwise healthy man having a heart attack after eating a high-fat meal didn’t warrant the Sunday morning Dallas news. She switched to the Texoma station, thinking a local rancher’s death for any reason would get at least a few minutes of airtime.
Nothing. Apparently, even the local news didn’t think Rusty’s demise was important enough to interrupt the Sunday morning cartoons.
Wishing she had a paper, she decided to run to the 7-Eleven, maybe even grab a breakfast burrito and a bag of powdered doughnuts while she was there. She slipped on a bra under her T-shirt, grabbed her purse, and headed for the door.
Halfway there, the doorbell rang.
It’s Sunday, people. Even God didn’t have to answer the door on the Sabbath.
Thinking about that, she scolded herself for missing church yet another week. After nearly dying twice in the past few months, it would be wise to stay in His good graces.
Annoyed, she flung the door open, fully expecting to go off on some kid about how she had neither the time nor the money for overpriced magazines. One look at the person standing there, his eyes and hair color almost identical to hers and wearing a sheepish grin on his face, made her gasp with pleasure.
“Hey, sis, where you going?”
“Danny, what are you doing here? Does Mom know you’re here?” She pulled him into her apartment and shut the door. “Are you in some kind of trouble?”
Danny McAllister laughed. “You wish,” he said, crushing her in a bear hug. “You’d love nothing better than to call Mom and rat me out.”
“What are you—like twelve?” she asked between gig-gles.
Two years older than her, Danny was her favorite of all four brothers and still lived close to their parents. He’d gone straight from college into the Texas Department of Agriculture where he was basically a gofer.
“I’m starving. I’ve been driving since four this morning looking for this godforsaken place. Why in the hell did you move here, Jordan?” He dragged his five-eleven frame to the kitchen and stared at the empty cupboards. “Okay, give it up. I know you have Ho Hos stashed somewhere. You’d be shaking like an addict if you didn’t.”
She grinned. He knew her so well. “Sorry. Just ate the last one less than five minutes ago. I was on my way out the door for doughnuts.”
His eyes scanned the countertop. “You must be coming up in the world, little sis. This is some fancy coffeepot. Didn’t Dad teach you the best cup of java comes from a percolator?”
“Talk to me after you’ve tasted a cup from this jewel,” she fired back. While she fixed him a cup, she took a few minutes to study her brother.
She hadn’t seen him since last summer, right after Brett dumped her in Dallas, and she’d had nowhere else to go but back home. Of course, she hadn’t told her family about that, or they would never have let her leave Amarillo and return to the big city all alone.
She loved all her brothers, but Danny really was special, probably because he didn’t tease her mercilessly like the other three. In fact, he caught a lot of their teasing himself, so the two of them had bonded.
“What brings you here at ten in the morning?”
He took a sip of coffee, and from his expression, Jordan could tell he was impressed. Not that he would ever fess up.
“I’m on a case.”
“A case? Since when did you get cases? Last I heard, you were working a desk in downtown Amarillo.”
“Yeah, well, you heard wrong. I left that job in September. Didn’t Mom tell you?”
Jordan bit her lower lip to hide her amusement. He looked like a kid who had just been told he hadn’t made the team. “She may have, but your job isn’t a high priority with me right now,” she teased. “Congrats, bro, I knew you’d either piss someone off and get fired, or knock the socks off your employer and have your boss’s job by now. You never could do anything halfway.”
“Oh, like you can?” He flashed an impish grin. “Mom told me what happened to you a few months ago. Freaked her out that you almost got yourself killed. It’s a wonder she didn’t send the McAllister Swat Team down here to hog-tie you and drag your sorry butt home. Sean and Patrick wanted to drop everything, and even Mr. ‘I’m so important’ Tommy told his boss he needed a few days’ personal leave.”
Jordan found herself at a loss for words. Her mother had gone psycho when Jordan’s friends had called from the hospital to assure her that Jordan was all right. This was the first time she’d heard how close her mom had come to sending the band of brothers to drag her out of Ranchero, kicking and screaming.
Lord only knew what might have happened if her parents had known the whole story.
“It was nothing,” she lied, thankful she’d been given nine lives and still had seven good ones remaining. If she’d learned anything from that adventure, it was that she was a reporter and not an amateur sleuth. The bad guys were best left for the police.
“So what’s this new job?” she asked.
“You’re looking at a field officer for TSCRA,” he said, beaming.
“TSCRA?”
“Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association—”
“You don’t raise cattle.”
“I know. For once in your life, will you listen without interrupting?”
When she nodded, he continued. “Like I said, I was sent here on my first big case. I have no idea how long this investigation will take, but I need a place to crash.” He grinned sheepishly. “That’s why they handed me this case. We don’t have a huge budget, and when I said I wouldn’t need a hotel room—voilà! They couldn’t get the case files in my hand fast enough.”
“You still haven’t told me what this big case is.”
His eyes lit up like they had when he told her about the fish he caught the first time he was allowed to go out on the boat with their dad and older brothers.
“You can’t tell anyone,” he said, moving closer. “Did you know some of the biggest ranches i
n Texas and Oklahoma are being hit really hard by cattle rustlers?”
“What? Have you gone loony on me? We’re not talking about the old Bonanza episodes Gramps used to make us watch when he babysat us. This is the twenty-first century, Danny boy.”
“Some things never change. You’re still a smart-ass. For your information, not only have the ranchers already lost millions in revenue this year alone, but they’re also finding themselves in danger. Three weeks ago, one owner caught the thieves in the act and fired at them. They jumped in their pickup and nearly ran him down to get away.”
A sound bite from the toastmaster at last night’s Cattlemen’s Ball replayed in Jordan’s head. The man had raised his glass to “putting all the thieving cattle rustlers behind bars.” She’d had no clue what he meant. Now she did.
“Why you? That doesn’t sound like something for a newbie to undertake.”
Danny frowned. “I may be a newbie, but you’re forgetting how I got all that extra money in college to wine and dine the ladies.” His stern expression turned to amusement. “When they discovered I’d worked at that Lubbock ranch and had a criminal justice degree, they foamed at the mouth to get me.”
Jordan couldn’t stop the grin from spreading across her face. Danny always did have an inflated view of himself, despite the other three brothers’ nearly constant attempts to bring him down a notch. He might not have been the biggest guy in the huddle at the Amarillo High football games, but no one on the other team wanted to get hit by him. His reputation earned him a free ride at Texas Tech, where he still held the record for most quarterback sacks in a single season.
“So they sent you to investigate. Why Ranchero?”
“They sent about six of us all over the state, and one guy even went to Oklahoma. I was supposed to go to Abilene to help out the agent there, but last night something big happened and my plans changed. I was packed and on my way here in less than two hours.”
“Something big in Ranchero? What?” He had her full attention now.
“Not in Ranchero, per se,” Danny explained. “In Fort Worth, but it involved a guy from here.”
Jordan cocked one eyebrow. “You don’t mean Rusty Morales, do you?”
Danny shook his head as if he didn’t hear her right. “You know him?”
“I was the last one to see him alive.”
“Shit, Jordan! Why didn’t you tell me that ten minutes ago? I could’ve been on the phone telling my boss about it and not wasting time jawing with you.”
Jordan took a deep breath, not sure she should ask the next question but too curious to stop. “Why are you interested in a man who died of a heart attack after dinner?”
“Because Rusty Morales has been on our radar for over a month. We think he was the brains behind the biggest cattle-rustling ring in the state, operating right here in North Texas.”
CHAPTER 4
“How are we going to play this, Danny? Since I know these people, I think I should ask the questions,” Jordan said, groaning when the pickup hit a bump on the back road to Santana Circle Ranch and her head connected with the roof. “You think you could slow down a bit? I’m pretty sure Rusty’s not going anywhere anytime soon.” She added an extra touch of sarcasm as she rubbed her head.
“I thought you’d lose that smart mouth when you became a big-time reporter.” He chuckled. “Oh wait—I forgot. You write personals.”
She slapped his shoulder playfully. Too much time had passed since her brother had teased her, and she’d missed it. “I have my own column, loser.”
“Yeah, writing recipes you’ve never heard of and have no clue how to cook.”
“Shut up! At least I didn’t get my job because I came cheap.” She paused and then laughed out loud. “Okay, maybe that is how I got the job, but I still think you should let me do all the talking.”
“No way! I’m the one investigating this cattle-rustling ring. My job, remember?”
“Yeah, but I’m the one who held my date in my arms while he was dying.” She huffed. “And I’m the one who got the invite to come to the memorial service and the luncheon. My original plan was to bring Victor until you whined like you did when you were eight and Mom wouldn’t let you go hunting with Dad and the ‘three musketeers.’” She tsked. “Don’t make me regret my decision.”
Danny pressed his lips together in a move Jordan recognized as his retreat-and-reload tactic. She prepared herself for his zing back.
“You might have a point,” he said, disappointing her a little. She loved the back-and-forth one-upmanship they usually shared. “But for the record, Patrick was only eight when Dad took him on his first hunting trip.”
“Mom always called you the sensitive one. When she thought she’d never get her little girl, she decided to keep you away from all that macho stuff.” Jordan paused, remembering how her mom had shifted all that focus onto her, dressing her in frilly clothes like a baby doll. But she lost that battle when the testosterone in the McAllister house overpowered the estrogen, and her brothers discovered Mama’s little girl could throw a precision touchdown pass in traffic better than any of them.
“Okay, I get it. If any of Rusty’s partners in crime are there today, I’m sure the last thing they want is to get chatty with me.”
“My point exactly,” she agreed. “That’s why we shouldn’t tell them you’re here for an investigation. Let’s just say you’re hanging out with me while you job hunt.”
He made a sharp right turn off the road and stopped in front of an ornate gate with a huge, wrought iron banner swinging above that read SANTANA CIRCLE RANCH.
“Whoa! You said this guy was rich, but you didn’t say how freakin’ big this ranch was.” He pointed to the clumps of black cows grazing to the left of them in a pasture that seemed to extend as far as the skyline.
“You obviously weren’t listening when I said he was one of the biggest cattle raisers in the state,” she said, but even she was impressed.
“And Rusty was his right-hand man?”
“Yes, and from what I gathered at the ball the other night, the two were tight.”
“Hmm. Wonder if Santana was in on the rustling.”
“You don’t even know for sure if Rusty was involved.” Jordan turned to face her brother. “Why would he risk ending up in jail when he had the perfect setup here? It was crystal clear Santana thought of him as more than an employee. And don’t forget the male ego. Most guys would flash that kind of money around to impress a date. He didn’t.” She shook her head. “I’d bet good money he wasn’t involved.”
“Because he didn’t pull out his wallet to impress your skinny bones? Ha! Maybe he wasn’t interested. Did you ever think of that?” He snickered and then got serious again. “Our sources tell us his name showed up on several questionable bills of sale for Wagyu bulls that were probably stolen.”
“Wagyu bulls?”
Danny turned down the gravel road, and a ranch house came into view several miles away. “Wagyu cattle are like the Rolls Royce of cows. Think Kobe beef and go one step better.”
“I thought Kobe beef was imported from Japan.”
“It is, but plenty of ranch owners raise their own around here.”
Danny slowed down near a mass of cars lining the side of the road. After parking the truck in the first available slot, about a mile from the house, he got out. Jordan followed suit, pulling at the hem of the black jersey number she’d worn on her first assignment at the newspaper, swearing it had shrunk. Since it was the only black dress she owned other than the slinky black skirt she’d bought for the Cattlemen’s Ball, she hoped it wasn’t too short for a memorial service.
Nothing says white trash like slutty funeral clothes.
No sooner had they started the trek to the house than an elderly man wearing jeans and a SANTANA RANCH golf shirt pulled beside them in a three-rowed golf cart.
“Hop in,” he said, flashing a smile that covered almost the entire width of his face. “I’m Farley Williams.”
Danny allowed Jordan to step up first, then quickly followed. Once they were settled, the driver sped away with a jolt, causing Jordan to grab the seat in front of her to keep from falling out the side.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized. “Sometimes the gas pedal sticks.”
He rounded a curve in the road without slowing down, but this time Jordan had a grip on the seat in front of her.
“Shame about Rusty,” he said. “I always did like the kid.”
Jordan leaned forward to hear. “I only met him a few nights ago. How well did you know him?”
The old-timer shook his head. “All his life, it seems. I remember when his mother first brought him to the ranch. He couldn’t have been more than a few weeks old. Mr. Santana made an exception to his rule about his employees bringing kids to work because nobody cooked like Maria. That woman made the best damn tamales around, no doubt about it.” He smacked his lips before a long sigh escaped. “I watched Rusty grow into a fine young man.”
“So, does his mother still cook for Santana, Mr. Williams?” When the cart hit yet another bump, sending her momentarily airborne, Jordan decided this man must have a built-in radar system for finding every single pothole in the road.
“Mr. Williams is my grandpappy. Call me Farley.” The old cowboy lowered his eyes, shaking his head. “Maria Morales had a stroke about six months ago. Last I heard she was in a wheelchair and required round-the-clock care.”
“What about Rusty’s father? Does he work for Santana, too?”
“Oh, hell no,” the driver said, drawing out “hell” like it had three syllables. “He and Mr. Santana had a falling out years ago.”
Jordan’s body slammed into the back of the driver’s seat when the golf cart stopped abruptly in front of the big house.
Beef Stolen-Off Page 4
