Stone of Vengeance

by Vickie Britton

  Struck with a horrible thought, Kate felt suddenly reluctant to turn it over. In the silence she recalled Jeff’s words, how Kingsley had once filed a restraining order against Ty. She had thought at the time that Ty had merely been trespassing on Kingsley’s land, but now it occurred to her that he, not Slim, could have been Mary Ellen’s long-lost boyfriend.

  Kate hesitated. If she lifted the frame, would she see a younger version of Slim Barton, or Ty as he had looked when he had worked for Swen many years ago? Carefully she raised the small heart and turned it around. She stared down at a teenage boy, a rebellious-looking youth with shaggy hair and a surly expression.

  Kate drew in a gasp. She stared in amazement at a face she recognized, but one she hadn’t expected to see. Even though the man’s outer appearance had altered from the sullen teenager in the picture: his hair with sandy cast instead of dark, the bold eyes remained the same. Jake Pierson, now a curator at the local museum, had undergone a great change from the wild adolescent Kingsley had prohibited his niece from marrying years ago. This discovery, this connection, made all the information Kate had gathered about the case snap together.

  ‘What are you doing in my room?’

  Mary Ellen entered cautiously, placing on the dresser some object wrapped in a tan sweater. She was dressed in the same outfit she had worn when she had visited Pierson at the museum. Her chic clothing and carefully styled hair contrasted sharply with the unflattering glasses, that today she had not changed to contacts.

  ‘You have no right snooping in my room.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were leaving today,’ Kate said, laying the photograph on the bed beside the suitcase. As she did, her eyes lighted on the package wrapped in brown paper she had noticed earlier. This time she noted the shape of it, oblong, like a sheet of paper, the exact size of the frame downstairs that held the famous Tom Horn document.

  ‘So you’ve come to say goodbye,’ Mary Ellen said snappishly. ‘How sweet. But as you can see, I’m busy packing. Jake will be here in a few minutes, and we’re leaving together. For good.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’re going to have to stay a while longer,’ Kate returned.

  Mary Ellen gave an irritable wave of her hand as if trying to brush Kate’s words aside. ‘I have to be ready when he gets here.’

  Kate stood poised over the suitcase. ‘First I want to see what’s in that package.’

  ‘What are you searching for? You’ll find nothing in there.’

  ‘Then you won’t mind if I take a look.’ Quickly Kate snatched up the package, ripped the brown paper away, and revealed the framed document. ‘This is the original invitation to Tom Horn’s hanging. The one on the wall downstairs is a fake, a fake made by your boyfriend Jake Pierson.’

  Mary Ellen looked stunned and lost, her large eyes draining of light and becoming singularly empty. ‘Jake was always so smart,’ she said in a quiet little voice. ‘He loves everything that has to do with history, especially the legend of Tom Horn.’ She added mournfully, ‘That’s what caused all the trouble for us years ago. Jake got drunk one night and broke into the house so he could steal it. But my uncle caught him and told him he was never to set foot on Rocking C property, and that he was never ever to see me again. If he so much as called me, my uncle was going to bring charges against him.’

  ‘But he did return here.’

  ‘He came back three years ago, so changed I would scarcely have known him. He had gone back to school, said he wanted to be able to offer me security so we could marry.’ She drew herself up in a proud, but pathetic way. ‘People around here think I don’t have a life, but I do. Jake and I picked up right where we left off so many years ago.’

  ‘I wanted to marry him right away, but because of Uncle Charles’ heart condition, Jake insisted that we wait. He said after all I’d put up with I deserved to inherit Uncle Charles’ ranch.’

  ‘The day he died, your uncle called you from Casper telling you he’d got married over the weekend.’

  ‘He married her just to spite me,’ Mary Ellen spat out. ‘He’d found out Jake had come back to town and that I was seeing him again. After all the time and work I put in here, he planned to just disinherit me, to marry that floozy downstairs and cut me out with nothing.’

  Kate waited, afraid that any prompting from her would stop the explanations that seemed to be pouring automatically from Mary Ellen’s lips.

  ‘I called Jake and told him what Charles had done and that I was going up to Casper to talk to him that evening. When Jake heard I’d been disinherited, he flew into a rage, said Uncle Charles had wrecked all of our plans again.’

  Kate edged closer. She needed to be in a position to restrain Mary Ellen, if it came to that. Mary Ellen, aware of her plan, stepped back, maintaining the same distance between them.

  ‘So Jake decided to steal for a second time what he had always had his eye on,’ Kate said, ‘that invitation to Tom Horn’s hanging. Jake broke in to rob the Western collection while you were both gone. He didn’t know that Mr Kingsley had come back to the ranch to talk to you before you had a chance to start for Casper. Kingsley heard Jake breaking in and came downstairs. Jake had worked at this ranch before, knew about the loaded weapon in the drawer and shot him with his own gun.’

  ‘Jake didn’t mean to kill him. He said Charles attacked him. It was really self-defence.’

  ‘So Jake put the stone he’d used to break the door window and placed it under your uncle’s head in order to implicate Swen. Then before you had a chance to identify him, he fled.’

  ‘Jake couldn’t face me with what he’d done, but when I talked to him about the robbery,’ Mary Ellen admitted, ‘he confessed. I told him not to worry, I would help him cover up the crime.’

  ‘You and Jake did all you could to place the blame on Swen. The first thing you did was destroy the folder concerning the pending lawsuit against Swen so he’d be the natural suspect.’

  ‘Some lawsuit. All my uncle had were a few photos of Swen in his corral, trespassing.’

  Kate noted the girl was becoming more and more agitated. She feared what would happen next, but she knew the only way to break her down was to keep her talking. Kate’s voice rose, sounding to her own ears harsh and accusatory. ‘You stole Swen’s truck and rammed it into my squad car. You wanted me to think it was Swen trying to stop me from investigating him. You planted Jennie’s earring and wrote her phone number on Swen’s map in order to implicate her, too.’

  ‘You’re right. I found her earring in Charles’ blue truck and came up with the idea. I hate Jennie more than I ever hated him. She’s just a worthless gold-digger.’

  ‘Did you know Jake was rustling cattle from both ranches?’

  ‘Not until that night he confessed. He showed me his map, the places where he and Slim stole the cattle. But he promised that was all over, he wasn’t going to steal anything ever again.’

  ‘Then you were the one who wrote those x’s on Swen’s map along with Jennie’s phone number. You found the gun Jake used, too, buried in the gazebo and hid it in a place where we couldn’t find it.’

  Stillness, sombre and heavy, hung between them. Mary Ellen took a step backwards. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Don’t you see, we’re not really to blame.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Mary Ellen, but I’m going to have to take you in.’

  Mary Ellen gave a little moan. She seemed to reel at Kate’s words. She stumbled towards the dresser as if intending to use it to catch herself. Too late, Kate realized what she was doing. She freed the object she had brought with her into the room from its covering of sweater: a revolver, the Hawes .22, the gun that Pierson had used to murder her uncle. She aimed it directly at Kate’s heart.

  This swift action took Kate totally by surprise. She stood motionless, caught off guard, the way Charles Kingsley must have been right before Pierson had pulled the trigger.

  In spite of the gun Mary Ellen looked like a frightened little girl. ‘I’m leaving the Rocking
C with Jake. No one can stop us.’

  ‘You’ll never get out of Belle County.’

  Kate had no weapon. Only she, Mary Ellen, and Jennie were in the house, and she had left Jennie alone in the study, lost in her own world. If she screamed or made a sound, Jennie would start up the stairs and she would be in danger, too.

  Muffled voices drifted up to them from downstairs. They both looked towards the door. ‘She’s in her room packing,’ Jennie was saying. ‘Just go on up.’

  The creak of floorboards sounded as Jake Pierson’s steps drew closer. Pierson appeared in the doorway, drawing to a halt when he saw the gun.

  ‘What’s going on here?’

  Mary Ellen stammered, ‘She knows everything, how you killed Uncle Charles and how I helped you cover up.’

  Pierson’s expression changed, merging in Kate’s mind with the image of the boy in the photograph. Yet the sullenness had been replaced by a poisonous wrath.

  Kate should have made the connection between Pierson and Slim Barton the day she had seen them together at the Lazy Z. ‘You’re willing to let Slim Barton take the fall for the cattle rustling.’

  ‘It’s all in his name. There’s no proof to tie it to me. He knew what he was up against when I hired him.’

  ‘Who shot me? You or Slim Barton?’

  ‘Slim’s the one who shot you. Then when you and Garrison went back to look for evidence, he was following. He saw you pick up the bullets, but I’m the one who got the proof you found back. I couldn’t let Slim get caught and ruin our operation.’

  So Jake Pierson had been the man in the ski mask who had waylaid her on the way to the sheriff’s office. He had used Hal Barkley’s car, which Slim had spotted the day she had run into him out at Barkley’s place.

  From the corner of her eye Kate saw Mary Ellen, her hand on the gun.

  ‘I did it all for Mary Ellen.’

  ‘You tried to steal Kingsley’s Western collection and when you failed, you still wouldn’t give up. You made that forgery of the invitation to Tom Horn’s hanging and talked Mary Ellen into switching it for you. You were just using her because you wanted everything Kingsley had.’

  ‘But all I really wanted was Mary Ellen.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Kate said. ‘Money always came first with you, not Mary Ellen.’

  Kate knew after the words left her lips she should never have spoken them. Pierson’s cold eyes narrowed with hatred. Kate could do nothing but make a final plea to Mary Ellen, try to make her understand his treachery. ‘For all your declarations of love, you have never cared about anyone but yourself and the Kingsley fortune. You even kept on rustling Kingsley’s cattle after you had killed him.’

  ‘But you promised me you had quit.’ The gun lowered in Mary Ellen’s hand, then lifted to Kate again.

  Kate, seeing an advantage, pressed on, ‘That greed is what ruined you. The x’s Mary Ellen marked on Swen’s map to mislead us, instead led us directly to the rustling sites.’

  Pierson glared at Mary Ellen. ‘After all I did for you, you go and mess it up. Now we don’t have a penny.’

  ‘We still have each other, Jake. And we have that Tom Horn relic, which will give us enough money to make a new start. Let’s tie her up and get out of here. Now!’

  His eyes shifted back to Kate. ‘We can’t leave any witnesses.’ He added, his voice deadly quiet, ‘Give me the gun, Mary Ellen.’

  Mary Ellen stared at him, realization pouring over her, as if she had just been struck by the fact that her uncle had been right about Jake Pierson all along.

  Kate waited immobile, her breath catching in her throat.

  Mary Ellen’s hand shook as the revolver wavered between them. She took several uncertain steps toward Pierson, then with a sob turned and pressed the gun into Kate’s hands.

  ‘We never would have caught Pierson, Kate, if you hadn’t noticed that forgery,’ Ben said, munching happily on a doughnut. He had been released from the hospital with orders for a strict diet that Kate was pretty certain didn’t include chocolate-tops.

  Ben finished his pastry, took a sip of coffee and said, ‘Jake Pierson masterminded all these crimes. He used Mary Ellen and Slim for his own purposes.’

  ‘That boy was always a bad egg,’ Lem responded. ‘Even though he had left that girl alone for years, once he heard about Charles’ ill health he decided to step right in and court Mary Ellen again. He had pretended to go straight, got that job at the museum. He didn’t care whether Charles recognized him or not.’

  ‘And that was his first mistake,’ Kate said. ‘The minute Kingsley found out Pierson was seeing his niece again, he changed his will. He couldn’t stand by and let his empire fall into the hands of a man like that.’

  ‘The trouble started years ago when Pierson tried to get his hands on that invitation to Tom Horn’s hanging. When Kingsley caught him red-handed, it was a blow to his pride. He never got over wanting that bit of paper, which in his mind was linked to the loss of his girlfriend and his chance of ever becoming a cattle baron like Kingsley.

  ‘He intended to steal the invitation even after he had shot Kingsley, but Mary Ellen’s being home that night prevented it. Still he couldn’t let it go. When he found out Jennie was never going to sell the collection, the idea occurred to him to make a forgery. He insisted Mary Ellen make the switch and that’s what caused him to get caught.’

  ‘How did you know that Tom Horn invitation was a forgery, Prep?’ Jeff asked with a tinge of admiration.

  ‘It was too perfect. The forgery had a crease and an inkblot that wasn’t on the original. He used authentic paper he got from the museum’s storage room and a special type of ink formula used in the late 1880s and early 1900s. The documents specialist we called in ran ultraviolet and infrared light examinations, so when the case comes to trial, we’ll have definite proof of what he did.’

  ‘Jake Pierson was too smart for his own good.’ Ben laughed. ‘That’s what trips up most criminals.’

  ‘How did you make the link between this crime and Mary Ellen’s old boyfriend?’ Jeff asked.

  ‘I knew the criminal had to have an in-depth knowledge of Wyoming history; moreover a familiarity with the layout of both ranches and the long-established rivalry of Swen and Kingsley. Because he had worked for Kingsley once, Mary Ellen’s old boyfriend sprang to mind. I got to figuring he must have returned, but I suspected he was Slim Barton, not Jake Pierson.’

  Kate continued, ‘Pierson made a threatening phone call to me the night of the cook-off. He heard me asking questions about Mary Ellen’s old boyfriend and knew if I kept looking I’d soon be able to identify him.’

  ‘I can’t help but feel sorry for Mary Ellen,’ Lem said. ‘Probably when she was real young, Pierson did all he could to poison her mind against her uncle. Of course she resented Kingsley for keeping them apart all these years. What do you suppose will happen to her now?’

  ‘She wasn’t involved in the cattle rustling and she had no part in the Kingsley shooting,’ Ben said. ‘But she will be charged with aiding and abetting a criminal.’

  ‘She saved my life,’ Kate spoke up. ‘My testimony might help her.’

  Jeff rose, saying, ‘It’s time we got back to work, Lem.’ At the door, he turned to Kate. ‘Prep,’ he said with a slow smile, ‘I’m going to admit it. From the first, you were right and I was wrong.’

  ‘Would you write that down and have it notarized?’

  ‘Not likely,’ Jeff said with a chuckle.

  ‘No wonder you believed Swen was guilty. Pierson did everything possible to make him the fall guy, even to placing that stone under Kingsley’s head. To me that was Pierson’s big mistake. He should have made it look like an ordinary robbery instead of a crime of vengeance.’

  Lem followed Jeff out of Ben’s office. Kate started to leave, too, but was stopped by Ben’s words. ‘Not so fast.’

  Jeff had told Kate her future with the department depended entirely on Ben Addison. Dread filled her. She
had made big mistakes whilst working this case, and from the sheriff’s tone she was going to pay for them now. He would either dismiss her or at the very least hit her with a long suspension. Disobeying orders was something Ben would never let slide.

  Kate paused, her hand on the doorknob. For a moment she felt tearful. It would be hard to leave the job she loved so much, to bid farewell to Rock Creek, Wyoming.

  Steeling herself, she turned to face him. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘Well, let’s see.’ Ben reminded her of Jeff and the way he began recounting her misdeeds. ‘You disobeyed orders, you stubbornly pursued the case long after you should have stopped.’ He gave her a long look. ‘In other words, you did exactly what I would have done.’

  She gazed at him, unable to believe his words. ‘I’m sorry for all the mistakes,’ she said sincerely.

  ‘We’re all human.’ Ben studied the carton of doughnuts before him, then remembering the doctor’s orders, with all the willpower he could muster, pushed them away. ‘You do the best you can. That’s all people can ask of you.’

  ‘Then you’re not firing me?’

  ‘For what? For making the Belle County sheriff’s department look good?’ He leaned forward slightly, his heavy weight causing a protesting squeak. ‘Deputy Jepp,’ he said, ‘we never could have solved the Kingsley murder case without you.’ He reached into the drawer beside him and slid her gun and badge across the desk, then using the exact words Kate had spoken to him in the hospital, he reminded her, ‘Not everyone gets a second chance.’

  Copyright

  © Vickie Britton & Loretta Jackson 2008

  First published in Great Britain 2008

  This edition 2012

  ISBN978 0 7090 9586 6 (epub)

  ISBN978 0 7090 9587 3 (mobi)