Frank started to stammer, his nerves getting the better of him. “I—I—I don’t know nobody named Aoife.” But the way her name slid off his tongue with a perfect Gaelic pronunciation said otherwise. For a second, Jade wondered if the sexual fantasies of shapeshifters took the form of envisioning a female as a wolf or a woman, but her prurient line of silent inquiry was interrupted by the sound of Biggy smacking the tabletop with the flat of his hand.
“Shut up, Frank,” Biggy bristled, before turning to look directly at Jade. “You don't need to tell this bitch anything. She can’t hold us.”
Jade glanced down at her fingernails, nonchalantly checking her manicure. “Actually I can.”
“You can what?” Frank asked.
Tilting her head up, she fixed Frank with a piercing look. “Hold you. I absolutely can hold you. You both have outstanding warrants.”
“W—warrants?” Frank looked to his cousin for direction.
“We ain’t got no warrants in Broken Wheel.” Biggy laughed triumphantly. He turned to Frank. “Shut up, you eejit, she’s bluffing.”
Jade stood up and opened the door. She sang out in a lilting voice, “Douglas—could you please bring me that special file you put together this morning?”
A moment later, Dougie was at the door. He scratched his short beard thoughtfully with one hand as he passed Jade the manila folder. “I never would have thought these two nincompoops could be up to so much. It pays to have peacekeeping friends in Bozeman, Idaho City, and Cheyenne.”
Frank dropped his head and picked at his pant leg as Jade opened the file and began reading, “Drunk and Disorderly, Contributing to the Delinquency of a Minor, Simple Assault, three more Drunk and Disorderlies, Operating a Motor Vehicle with Defective Equipment, Fraudulently Obtaining Telecommunication Services, Aggravated Cruelty to Animals, Failure to Appear in Traffic Court, Trespassing and Failure to Close Gates on Private Property, Shoplifting an Item less than $1000, and my personal favorite, Driving Without Insurance While Indecently Exposed and Throwing Burning Substances from a Car.” Jade arched an eyebrow. “That last one is like Class Four Arson combined with two separate misdemeanors.” She looked at Dougie. “It’s not often we see that kind of talent around here.”
Dougie nodded in agreement as he stepped out of the little room, whistling a little while pulling the door closed behind him. Biggy eyed Jade with a sullen glower. With Dougie out of the room, Jade decided to try her bluff. “Now, Mr. Lemmons—Aoife O’Hara. Or do you want to step it up to a class one felony like kidnapping?”
Frank panicked and blurted, “We din’t kidnap Aoife.”
Jade smiled indulgently at Frank. “But it seems, you do know her.” Drumming her fingers thoughtfully on the file, Jade added, ‘If you didn’t kidnap her, why do we have witnesses reporting that the last time Aoife O’Hara was seen, she was with the Lemmons?” Jade hoped one of them would take the bait.
Losing patience, Biggy cuffed Frank in the side of the head with an open hand, and squeezed his eyes into little steely slits. “We didn’t kidnap anybody. We don’t know who killed Duke Minton, and we haven’t killed any wolves in the last coupla of months. I don't know where you are getting your information, but clearly your sources suck. Now unless you are charging us with something, Frank and me are leavin’.” He grabbed Frank by the upper arm, yanking his cousin up from the chair as he stood.
Jade scowled a little; hopefully they were spooked enough to run to their Alphas so that Conall and Don could follow. She motioned toward the door. “Get out of here.”
The moment they left, she shut the door again and dialed Conall. “They are going to step out on Main Street at any moment. I think I’ve got them worked up enough that they’ll be wanting to get in touch with their Alphas.” Before she could say anything else, though, Conall had hung up, and she knew the hunt was on.
Returning to her desk, Jade wondered what else she could do to tie the Carey clan to Duke Minton’s murder—and thus also to Claire’s.
“You get anything useful out of them?” Dougie pushed his chair back a little from his desk, spinning to face Jade.
“I don’t know…they’re hiding something.” Jade looked past Dougie as Wilson appeared in the door of his office. He had changed into a charcoal gray, three-piece suit, freshly polished cowboy boots, white dress shirt, and a bolo tie with a small turquoise and silver slide.
“I’m going to go pick up Peggy and Rosie and get over to the Methodist Church for the funeral. I’ll let you know if anything there makes me sit up and take notice.”
Jade and Dougie nodded glumly. Then Dougie added, “Just…keep your eyes open for anyone you don’t recognize—something about this OEW Productions angle has got me wondering if the Mintons aren’t exactly the picture-perfect citizens that they seem.”
Wilson chewed at a toothpick he held in one hand. “What is it the kids are saying these days, ‘I feel ya?’” Tossing the toothpick into a garbage can, he adjusted his bolo tie and repeated his response in the affirmative, his voice just above a whisper, “I feel ya.”
***
It had been an hour and a half since the Lemmons had left the department, and Jade felt antsy that she hadn’t heard anything from Conall. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad and wished someone would use their wolf superpowers—if they had them—to clue her into what was going on. Her fidgeting must have gotten annoying, as she suddenly felt herself pelted by an eraser.
“What is wrong with you, girl? You are wound tighter than an eight-day clock.” Dougie tilted his head a little as he studied his colleague.
“What’s wrong with me? The fact that somebody murdered a Sunday school teacher in our tiny town isn’t enough to put you on edge?” Jade hurled the eraser back.
“Okay, you have a point. Let’s brainstorm for a minute, then.” Dougie leaned back in his chair, his eyes focused on their old, stamped tin ceiling. “What types of businesses might not want too much attention from government or law enforcement?”
“Well, drugs are the first thing that come to mind.” Jade twirled a little in her chair.
“What else?” Dougie pulled at an ear. “Legitimate businesses—maybe casinos, right? There’s a lot of crime that gets tied up with casinos—fraud, money laundering, even petty theft like pickpocketing.”
“And prostitution—don’t forget the hookers. Where are you going with this?”
“I keep thinking about ‘OEW Productions.’ Maybe it’s a casino corporation, maybe one of the Mintons had some kind of gaming problem.”
“The nearest casinos are almost three hours away—don’t you think people would have noticed if Duke Sr. or Duke Jr. had been running off to gamble? They’d have to be at the casinos a lot to get in big trouble.” Suddenly, a switch clicked for Jade. “What if OEW Productions is an escort service?”
“You think Duke Sr. stepping out on Evelyn is more plausible than him having a gambling problem?”
Jade shook her head. “Not Duke Sr.— what if Duke Junior has been getting his axle greased by someone other than his good little wife, Lori?”
“Okay, that’s at least somewhat plausible, but what’s the scenario that ends up with Duke Sr. dead?” Dougie tugged at a tuft of his chin hair as he thought. “Remember: means, motive, opportunity.”
“Maybe upstanding, moral citizen Duke Sr. was threatening to tell his daughter-in-law if Duke Jr. didn’t clean up his act.”
“Yeah, but you’re thinking like a woman; a guy would probably say, ‘screw it,’ and just get a divorce. Maybe Duke Sr. was threatening to take him out of his will or something.”
“Or maybe he wasn’t having vanilla sex with his hookers. Maybe he has some kind of really embarrassing kink—some kind of fetish he didn’t want the town to find out about.”
“Why Jade Lundgren, whatever made you think of that?” Dougie pretended to be shocked, and then laughed. “Money is typically a more common reason for murder and mayhem, but I’ll give you an ‘A’ for originality on the motive.�
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“I still don’t like Duke Jr. for killing his own father, though,” Jade shook her head.
“Murder for hire then.”
“Then what’s with the dead wolf up there in the pasture with Duke Sr.?”
“Uh, d’uh…they were covering up the murder for hire by trying to make it look like a wolf attack.”
“Then these hit men aren’t very professional. Doc Edmo said it was plain as day that the wolf had been shot at a distance by a high-powered rifle, and not at short-range.”
“So maybe Duke Jr. hired some less-than-skilled operators. Haven’t you ever hired a bad plumber or electrician before?” Dougie reasoned. “It’s not like you can go on Yelp or Angie’s List and check the reviews for hit men.”
A thought bubbled up in Jade’s mind; what if Biggy was trying to work his way up to become an Alpha in the Carey pack? Maybe a murder for hire was meant to impress the Alphas that he did have the necessary sociopathic tendencies. And botching the job up? That was exactly the sort of thing she’d expect from a guy who was arrested for Driving Without Insurance While Indecently Exposed and Throwing Burning Substances from a Car.” They had to establish a connection between Biggy and Duke Jr. though, if she wanted to prove anything in court—and they had to know why Duke Jr. was writing checks to OEW Productions.
She glanced at the big clock on the wall of their office; time was creeping by, and then she remembered her promise to phone Boomer. Just because a bunch of magical shapeshifters needed her help while she was trying to solve the murder of a beloved local rancher was no reason to neglect her love life.
***
Jade wasn’t quite sure exactly how it had happened, but by the time she hung up the phone with Boomer, they had a date to join the Page family for Sunday dinner. She chewed at her lower lip a little; bringing Boomer to Sunday dinner with Wilson, Peggy, Nicolette, and Harlan, meant that everyone would expect her to bring him to the wedding as her “plus one.” And at that point, she might as well take out an ad in the Broken Wheel Gazette announcing that they were ‘serious’ about one another. Something about her relationship going public made her uncomfortable, but she couldn’t find any reason to not let things with Boomer move full steam ahead. Just because Conall needed her help didn’t mean that he was a viable candidate for her affections.
Jade put her head down on her desk; Dougie had gone out to grab some lunch, but the Kate Spade look-alike bridesmaid dress meant that she was on austerity mode until the next paycheck. They always kept crackers and peanut butter, instant oatmeal, and microwave popcorn in the office, but none of that sounded appealing. The fact was, she felt a little nauseated, but she blamed that on nerves. What were the Careys doing with Aoife and Colleen? They would use them to try to trap Conall and Don, but in the interim would they try to break them with physical abuse or worse? Jade remembered how sweetly Colleen and Don had regarded one another over breakfast. She’d never seen Conall and Aoife together, but they must love each other, she tried to convince herself, if they were going to be mates for life. But the image from her dream came back to her: the beautiful red wolf standing over the black wolf the Careys had killed. Had that been Aoife’s mate? Perhaps Aoife and Conall had no more in common than Riona, murdered mates, and a sense of duty to the clan.
Jade sighed as she rested her head on her arms; the fatigue of having been up for most of the night was catching up to her. Her eyelids felt heavy, and she decided that a catnap might be the best thing if she was going to push through the rest of the day. She set the alarm on her phone for twenty minutes, and let her weariness swallow her.
When the alarm went off, Jade woke up with a start. Her mind was clear and sharp, and so were the images that had come to her while she slept. Again, she had seen the image of Aoife, bound and bruised, but this time Colleen was with her. Despite her small stature, Colleen’s face was an unflinching as Aoife’s, although blood trickled from the corner of her mouth where her lip had been split. Clearly neither of the women had submitted to the Careys without a fight. There were other things Jade saw in her dream: the silhouette of a woman, the booted feet of a man, and the branding iron she had glimpsed in her dream that morning. This time, though, she could see it clearly: it was rusty and clearly hadn’t been used in years. Then she recognized the symbols and their stunning truth: Bar Double Star.
Hastily, Jade left Dougie a vague note that she was out on a call, before grabbing her coat, hat and gloves, and heading toward her trusty old Bronco at a run.
Once on the road, Jade kept dialing Conall as quickly as could with one hand, in between shifting and steering, but he wasn’t answering his phone despite her repeated attempts. Next she tried calling the firehouse, since the paramedics were also housed there, and explained she needed to reach Don Redmond on sheriff’s department business. One of the firefighters on duty found his mobile number for her, but dialing that proved as fruitless as trying to reach Conall. She smacked the steering wheel in frustration; the lives of at least two women were at stake, and if the Careys and the O’Faoláns truly went to war, dead wolves would be littered all over the county, while a suspiciously large number of local citizens simply disappeared. Perhaps the Carey Alphas had issued their challenge; perhaps even now Conall and Don were engaged in a battle, not only to save Aoife and Colleen, but also to preserve their pack.
A feeling of helplessness swept over Jade. What should she do? What could she do? If the dream were true, and it was a message from Aoife, Colleen and Aoife were being held somewhere on the property of the Bar Double Star Ranch. She had been in the Minton’s main barn, though, and it was modern and new—shiny corrugated metal and freshly painted clapboard, the kind of place to inspire confidence in their dude ranch guests. The place in her dream was weathered and worn; it was a much smaller and decaying outbuilding.
The sensible thing was to call Dougie for backup, but she didn’t know where to tell him to go. Besides, it might not bode well for keeping the O’Faoláns’ secret, if more and more people got involved. She glanced at the clock in the Bronco’s dash; Duke’s funeral should be over. The next number she dialed was Carson Winter’s.
“Well, hello, Jade! You missed a beautiful service. Not a dry eye in the house. Hey— what’s this I hear about you and that bomb tech fellow?”
“Carson, we can talk about that later. I need your help on a couple of things, sheriff’s department business.”
“Sure, anything.”
“Where’s everybody from the funeral right now?”
“I’d say about 90% of the population of Broken Wheel is in the Methodist Church Community Hall having coffee and eating pimento cheese sandwiches and pineapple upside down cake.”
“Does that include Duke Jr.?”
“Yeah, of course, Harlan and the Pages, too. I just stepped out for a little fresh air.”
“Was there anything weird about the funeral?”
“Weird? No, I just said it was a lovely service.”
Jade expelled a breath, trying not to let her sense of urgency make her impatient. “No, I don't mean the service. Was there anybody there who seemed out of place?”
“No, but now that you mention it, Lori wasn’t there, which seemed odd.”
“Duke Jr.’s wife Lori?” Jade reiterated, baffled.
“What’s going on, Jade? You’re not making a lot of sense.”
“You and Duke Sr. always help each other during calving season, right?”
“Yeah…but…what’s that got to do with the funeral and Lori?”
“Probably nothing, but I need to know where the Mintons keep their branding equipment.”
“Back in the old days, when we were roping and wrestling, Duke had a shed way up on the north end of his property where he stored stuff. We’d brand when the calves were a couple of months old and turn them out to pasture for the summer up there. But that’s old school, now we use a calf table, it’s easier on us and the cattle—”
Jade cut Carson off before she got a t
hirty-minute discourse on modern ranching methodologies. “Thanks, Carson. I gotta go.” She tossed her phone into the seat next to her as she punched the gas. At least now she had a destination, but she wasn’t sure what she would do when she got there.
***
The Bar Double Star seemed eerily still as Jade pulled up; not even a curl of smoke from the woodstove floated over the Mintons’ house. Evelyn’s sensible sedan was gone, and Jade quickly surmised that Duke Jr. had driven his mother in it to the funeral. The light and heavy-duty pick-ups were there, but the four-wheel drive SUV that Lori usually drove was missing.
Jade got out, pondering the vehicles. Where was Lori? The only acceptable explanation for her not being at the funeral was for her to be really very ill. If she were home with the flu, though, the woodstove would have been burning and—of course—her car would be there.
Jade climbed the steps to the porch, knocked, then opened the unlocked door and called in for Lori, but the only response she got was a lot of tail wagging from the Mintons’ dog. Closing the door again, Jade chewed on her lower lip. Her gut told her that Lori’s odd disappearance was somehow related to that of Aoife and Colleen, but how? Why would Lori be mixed up in a shapeshifter dispute…unless…she was a wolf, too?
The bells began going off in Jade’s head. She’d known Biggy and Frank for years without any inkling that they were wolves, and she’d worked alongside Colleen at a dozen incidents without the faintest notion the woman was anything other than a nice person and a skilled paramedic. Could Lori be hiding the same secret too? More importantly, was she a Carey or an O’Faolán, a perpetrator or a victim?
Shutting the door behind her, Jade realized that the sound of her Bronco coming across the pasture would make it impossible for her to sneak up to the old branding shed to see what was really going on. And given that the north end of the pasture was at least three miles away, walking was going to take far too long. That left only one option.
Broken Wheel Wolves: Boxed Set (The Complete Collection, Books 1-6) (Werewolf Romance - Paranormal Romance) Page 14
