by Joanna Wayne
Troy had knelt beside Helene, Wyatt’s tiny fingers curled around one of his much larger ones.
Thirteen years and four sons later, Helene had been brutally murdered next to that same hearth. The disturbing comparison made Kelly uneasy as she bent to kiss Jaci good-night.
Jaci hugged her doll to her chest. “I like the ranch, Momma.”
“I know you do, sweetheart.”
Kelly liked it, too.
She liked the whole Ledger clan with their emotion, enthusiasm and the kind of zest for life she’d never experienced in her own family.
Kelly even liked Troy. She liked him a lot, but the murderous secrets hidden inside the house would never let go of him or Wyatt until the truth came out. And if Wyatt did find out that Troy had killed Helene, it would destroy the Ledger family. She wondered if he’d be able to live with that.
Kelly was totally infatuated with Wyatt. His kiss had awakened a need so raw and powerful that she couldn’t think of him now without aching to touch him and to feel his lips on hers again.
Collette was waiting outside the bedroom door when Kelly tiptoed out. “Was Jaci all right with sleeping in a separate room?”
“She didn’t seem to mind at all. I think it was Joey’s telling her that he had his own room when he spent the night here that did the trick. They hit it off well.”
“I noticed. The others left while you were getting Jaci ready for bed. They said to tell you they loved meeting you and Jaci and that they would see you soon. Dylan and I need to be going, too, but I wanted to make sure it was okay with you if we stop by after church tomorrow and help you guys finish off the leftovers. If you’ve had all the Ledgers you can stand for a while, don’t be afraid to tell me.”
“That would be great. There’s enough food left to feed half of Mustang Run. Besides, Dylan is a good buffer between Wyatt and his father.”
“That’s exactly what Dylan said. He understands what Wyatt’s going though. I met Dylan the day he and his father both returned to Willow Creek Ranch for the first time in eighteen years. The first year of that had been while Troy was in jail awaiting trial. The next seventeen was after the conviction.
“They hadn’t communicated in all that time. The strain between them was almost palpable.”
“They’ve come a long way.”
“They have. They talk every day.” Collette made a face as she laid a hand on her extended belly. “Dylan, Jr., has a wicked kick.”
“But it won’t be much longer until he’ll be kicking at the air instead of you.”
“Two weeks and counting,” Collette said, rubbing her belly again. “I am so ready. I’ve had the nursery prepared for months. Dylan refinished the cradle his mother had used with all the boys. It’s at least a hundred years old, intricately carved and beautiful.”
“I’m not surprised. The antique furnishings in the guest room are beautiful.”
“Abby says Helene didn’t have much money to spend on furniture back in those days, but that she had a knack for finding real treasures at garage sales and restoring them to almost museum quality.”
“Helene must have been a fascinating woman.”
“To hear Troy tell it, she walked on water. He didn’t kill her, you know.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“I just know. If you stay in this house long enough, you’ll know he’s innocent, too.”
“How will I know?”
Dylan stepped into the hall. “I’ve got the truck heating so you won’t get cold on the drive home. It’s ready when you are.”
“I’m ready,” Collette said.
“How will I know?” Kelly asked again as Collette turned to go.
Collette held her belly with both hands. “Helene will tell you.”
WYATT KNEW THAT JACI was sleeping in a separate room and yet he hadn’t bothered to stop by to tell Kelly good-night. She’d nervously anticipated that he would. She worried about how to handle the growing attraction between them, knowing how quickly the passion might escalate with no more than his touch to ignite it.
They were still virtual strangers, even though the intensity of both their situations had bypassed the normal get-acquainted period and sped the relationship ahead at a dizzying pace. She was afraid they were rushing into this too fast.
Yet now that he hadn’t stopped in even to say good-night, she worried that the kiss that had rocked her to her soul had meant nothing to him.
Kelly pulled back the covers and was about to climb into bed when Collette’s disturbing statement about the murder pushed into her mind.
Helene will tell you.
What could she possibly have meant by that? It wasn’t as if the pictures they’d looked at tonight could talk, although they did tell a convincing story of the Ledgers’ happy, normal family life up until the point Helene had been murdered.
Helene had seemed happy in every one of the photos, including the candid shots. But even those could have been posed—or altered.
But for what purpose?
More likely Collette’s comment had stemmed from the hormonal shifts during pregnancy that made the photos seem extra revealing tonight.
Kelly walked to the sliding-glass door, pushed the curtain back a few inches and peered into the courtyard. Bathed in shadows and the gossamer shimmer of moonlight, the garden took on an ethereal appearance.
She was about to step away when she spotted Troy. He was sitting to one end of the ornate bench, shoulders stooped, his face buried in his hands. He appeared to be a man in agony, a strange reaction when he’d claimed to be thrilled to have Wyatt home again.
Perhaps the tension between him and Wyatt had come to a head after the others left. Or could it be that he was afraid of the truth his homicide-detective son was determined to discover? Even if he was innocent of the murder, could there be old secrets he didn’t want uncovered?
The wind picked up, creating a ghostly wail. Troy didn’t stir. Gooseflesh popped up on Kelly’s arms as she closed the curtain and checked the lock on the glass door.
She crawled into bed and pulled the covers tight around her. In spite of all of her own problems, it was Helene Ledger who walked through her mind as she finally fell asleep.
KELLY WOKE UP in a pitch-black room, shaking from an icy blast that blew across her with hurricane-like force. The thick privacy drapes at the window fluttered like sails. The door to the outside must have somehow blown open. Only she remembered locking it.
Something creaked like old bones…or aging floorboards.
Kelly was not alone.
Chapter Eleven
Heart pounding, Kelly tried to escape, but the covers entangled her, pinning her to the bed. Then just as suddenly as the frigid wind had begun, it died. The curtain no longer swirled into the room. The creaking transformed into an angelic voice crooning a lullaby.
Diaphanous images appeared and moved across the ceiling. Slowly and methodically, one image emerged from the conglomeration. Helene, rocking her baby and holding him to her breast while she crooned a lullaby. The tune was mesmerizing and soothing.
The words were terrifying.
Family sins can kill. Stay alive. Stay alive.
Mothers always know. Stay alive. Stay alive.
Hold on tight to love. Stay alive. Kelly, stay alive.
The words and image evaporated in a burst of flame. Kelly kicked off the covers and sat up in bed.
She reached to the bedside table and flicked on the lamp. The room was just as it had been when she went to bed.
Her pulse was still racing. Her emotions were overwrought. Her nerves were rattled to the point of collapse, so frazzled that her mind had twisted the pictures from the photograph album into a slide show of mental horror.
But it was only a nightmare.
Still, she climbed from bed and pulled on her robe. She wouldn’t get back to sleep until she assured herself Jaci was resting well and that her room was not too cold.
The house was peacefully quiet a
s Kelly took the few steps to Jaci’s room, turned the doorknob and opened the door. Jaci was fast asleep, her breathing a gentle, reassuring rhythm that calmed Kelly like nothing else could have.
“Sleep well, sweetheart. I love you and I’ll always be here for you.”
But as she crept back to bed, she couldn’t help but wonder if Helene had whispered those same words the last time she’d told her boys good-night.
WYATT STARED IN AWE at the charts, notes and timelines that took up one whole wall of the master bedroom. Whatever he’d expected from Troy’s research, it hadn’t been this. Wyatt had served on serial killer task forces whose investigations hadn’t been this thorough.
“How long have you been working on this?” Wyatt asked.
“I started collecting facts in prison as soon as they granted me access to a computer. I wasn’t this organized then, of course. My supplies were limited to a small notebook and a pencil that I had to be careful with. Sometimes it would take days to get it sharpened once I’d broken or worn away the point.”
“You could have been a homicide detective if…”
The if hung in the air.
“One detective in the family is enough,” Troy said. “And in spite of all the research, I’m nowhere. Dead ends just keep piling on top of more dead ends.”
“Dead ends can be deceptive,” Wyatt said. “It’s like a video game. When you hit a brick wall, you search for that one tiny opening that leads to the next clue.”
“I’ve never played a video game in my life. I’ve watched Joey at it. It only makes me dizzy.”
“Fair enough. Think of it as locating a calf that’s lost in heavy underbrush. There’s always a starting spot and then you keep following the leads until you find it. Equate the sound of the calf’s bleating with motive. Both are always a good place to start.”
Wyatt’s mind raced ahead. Motive was what had led to Troy’s being a prime suspect. That and the fact that the husband is always the first suspect when a married woman is murdered.
“Motive is a problem,” Troy admitted. He picked up a yardstick and used it to point at a posterboard chart thumbtacked to the far left corner of the wall. “I’ve listed everyone Helene had contact with on a regular basis. Not one of them had a problem with her. Everybody liked Helene. That’s why I think her murder had to be a random attack—a crime of opportunity committed by a complete stranger.”
“That’s seldom the case in a murder—”
Wyatt swallowed hard, biting back the word Dad before it slipped from his mouth. He didn’t have trouble referring to Troy as his father. That was the reality of their relationship.
But he couldn’t bring himself to call Troy Dad. Dad had been the person he counted on. The man he’d idolized. The man he’d been sure would always be there for him. That man no longer existed. His brothers had surely felt that same way about Troy when they’d first returned to the ranch.
“Random murders may be rare,” Troy said, “but they happen on a daily basis in this country and they happened back then, too. Maybe the guy stopped by looking for a wrangler job and then decided to break in and steal something when he realized there was no man around. Your mother may have caught him in the house and he shot her.”
“Nothing was missing from the house,” Wyatt reminded him.
“My revolver was taken.”
“Yes, and Mother’s handbag had been in plain sight not six feet from the top of the bureau where you kept that revolver.”
Evidence submitted in the trial emphasized that the weapon wouldn’t have been loaded since Helene Ledger was terrified of having loaded weapons around her young sons.
The bullets for the gun were kept in a cigar box in the top bureau drawer. Whoever killed Helene either knew that ahead of time or found the shells while rummaging through the bureau drawers.
The weapon in question had later been found stuck between some rocks at the bottom of Willow Creek.
Wyatt skimmed the names on the random-killing suspect list. Most had been X’ed out for various reasons.
Three words stopped him cold—
Suspected paid assassin.
Jerome Hurley. Home address was in Mustang Run.
Wyatt tapped the word assassin with his fingertips. “Tell me about Jerome Hurley.”
“Helene wouldn’t have been killed by a paid assassin. She was a rancher’s wife. She took care of you boys and took part in church activities.”
Wyatt agreed. His mother was an unlikely target of a paid assassin. But that would be exactly the type of man Emanuel Leaky might hire to take out Kelly.
Troy used his yardstick to follow the progression to the next column. Hurley was convicted of raping a woman who was home alone on a ranch about forty miles west of the Ledger spread five years after Helene’s murder. The X by his name was followed by the word alibi.
“What was Jerome’s alibi?” Wyatt asked.
“Three people claimed he was having lunch with them at a burger joint in Austin at the time of the murder.”
“Friends of his?”
“The two females were friends. The guy was his cousin.”
“Was there any proof that the friends and cousin weren’t lying?”
“The cousin’s car was caught on a security camera leaving the restaurant parking lot. There were four people in the car. Two males, two females. The only one who showed up well enough for a positive identification was the cousin.”
“Did Jerome have a rap sheet before that?”
“He’d been arrested on burglary and drug-related charges. Most of them didn’t stick. He’d served less than two years combined on all his arrests.”
“Where does the suspected ‘paid assassin’ label come in?”
“That accusation didn’t surface until after Hurley was sent to prison for the rape. It was big news for about a week and then I never saw anything else about it in the local news or on the internet. I just noted it to keep my charts up-to-date.”
“Was he questioned in Mother’s murder?”
“Several times, but he was never arrested. McGuire had already zeroed in on me by then.”
Troy might adore his daughter-in-law Collette, but it was clear from his tone that there were still some hard feelings on his part toward the sheriff.
Troy used the yardstick as a pointer again. “If you follow these arrows, you’ll see specifics on Jerome’s arrest records and his employment records.”
Wyatt scanned the records, once more impressed by the methodical tracking of suspects. At one time or another Jerome had worked as a wrangler at least part-time for almost every major rancher in the area, including the woman he was eventually convicted of raping.
“He was working for Senator Foley at the time Helene was killed,” Troy said. “Of course, Foley wasn’t a senator back then. He was right in the middle of his first campaign for state representative.”
“I vaguely remember that,” Wyatt said. “Was Mother involved in that campaign?”
“No.” Troy tossed the yardstick to the middle of a cluttered desk and stepped away as if he was finished with the discussion. He walked to the sliding-glass doors that opened to the same courtyard garden as the guest room did.
“Ruthanne and Riley both tried to get Helene involved in his campaign, especially Ruthanne. She finally persuaded your mother to drive to Austin and visit Riley’s headquarters.”
“Why did she decide not to volunteer?”
“I think someone must have rubbed her the wrong way that day. When she got home she was adamant that she wanted no part of politics.”
“I can understand that.”
“I’ve wished a million times she hadn’t felt that way. Then she might have been at his campaign headquarters instead of here alone when the killer showed up.”
Wyatt turned away. He didn’t want to be influenced by the emotion tearing at Troy’s voice. He had to depend on cold, hard facts.
“Kelly’s mother was on Riley’s staff,” Troy said.
Troy nodded and then worried the jagged scar on the right side of his face.
“When did you find that out?” Wyatt asked.
“Ruthanne showed up at the horse barn when I was out there with Jaci and Kelly yesterday morning. I introduced them and they talked about it. I got the impression there was not much love lost between Ruthanne and Kelly’s mother. But that’s no surprise. Ruthanne was never fond of any woman Riley spent time with.”
There was a lot about Kelly that Wyatt didn’t know. He probably should leave it this way since what he did know about her scared him to death. She sent his senses spiraling out of control every time she came near him.
Like that kiss yesterday. He hadn’t planned it. It wasn’t the time or the place for it. But his impulse control vanished and the first thing he knew his lips were on hers and she was turning him inside out.
Any cop worth his salt knew you should never get emotionally involved with a woman you were trying to protect. Emotions would make him lose his edge.
But now that kiss would be the proverbial elephant in the room. No matter what else was going on, they’d both be aware that one touch could start the sparks flying again.
Create enough sparks and they would invariably flare up into a wildfire.
“You got awful quiet there when I mentioned Kelly,” Troy said. “You’re not having second thoughts about getting involved with her, are you?”
“I’m not getting involved with her. She needs protection and a place to stay. It seems reasonable to offer that to a homeless woman in jeopardy.”
“I get the feeling she’s been on her own with Jaci for quite a while. What about you? Do you have someone waiting on you back in Atlanta?”
“What if I do?”
“Then I think you may be in real trouble.”
“Why is that?”
“Because I’ve watched four of your brothers fall in love. I know the subtle signs and you’re exhibiting all of them.”
