Hitched!

by B. J Daniels

  “Then she must have known she was going to come into some money,” McCall said.

  “It does give her more motive for killing Ray Sr.,” Diaz agreed. “The battle she was waging in court was for control of her mother, which means control of her mother’s money.”

  “Ray Sr. wouldn’t have wanted that to happen.”

  “Nope,” Diaz agreed. “But then neither would his son, RJ.”

  Chapter Eleven

  On the way to the Winchester Ranch, Ray popped some of the pills he’d stolen and realized he felt better than he had in days. He could hardly feel his shoulder and he was thinking clearly, maybe more clearly than he ever had.

  He’d realized how crucial it was to his plan that he found Josey. He wanted the money in that backpack, but more important he needed to make sure she never surfaced.

  Once she was dead, he would inherit his father’s money—which was the Vanderliner money. His father had been broke when he married Ella Vanderliner. It had been a godsend when she’d gotten into that car wreck and he’d gained control over all her money—including Josephine’s, as luck would have it.

  RJ laughed, wondering if his old man had planned it that way. Maybe the acorn hadn’t fallen that far from the tree after all. But if that was the case, Ray Sr. had been holding out on him all these years.

  Worse, he’d had to put up with this father’s lectures every time he’d gotten in trouble when it was possible his old man was just like him. Hell, wouldn’t it be something if he’d gotten his predilection for rough sex from Ray Sr.? That would explain why his mother had taken off years ago and why his old man had paid to keep her in the style she’d become accustomed to, until she drowned in her fancy swimming pool.

  RJ realized with a chill that his father might have been behind that accident, as well. But if true, then he really hadn’t known his father at all.

  He wheeled his train of thought back to his own problem: Josey Vanderliner. His fear now was that a judge would put Ella’s care in Josey’s hands. Unless Josey was arrested for murder, of course.

  But RJ wasn’t willing to put his life in the hands of a jury. He hated to think who would be more believable on the stand. That sweet-looking Josephine Vanderliner with the mother who was practically a vegetable. Or himself.

  No, Josey had to disappear off the face of the earth. This was one body that could not be found.

  Then he would surface and blame all of it on Josey. With her fingerprints on the weapon that had murdered his father, he didn’t think he’d have that much trouble selling his story to the police. At least not in California.

  It would be harder to explain the rest of what had happened. He thought he could sell the cops on a story that Josey had taken him and Celeste hostage. He had the bullet wound to prove that Josey had shot him. The rest he could say he didn’t know anything about. He could say Josey had knocked him out and he came to underwater in the car. Let them try to prove he had anything to do with Celeste’s death or that of the rancher.

  Once he was cleared of any wrongdoing, he would be in charge of Josey’s mother’s care—and her money. He’d put the old lady in the cheapest rest home he could find, one that cost even less than the one his old man had stuck her in. She wouldn’t know the difference anyway.

  “TALK TO ME, JOSEY,” Jack said. He took her hand and led her over to the bed. As he sat down on the edge, he pulled her down next to him.

  “I should never have involved you in this.”

  “It’s too late for that,” he said quietly. “You knew this woman they found, didn’t you?”

  Josey closed her eyes for a moment. “Her name was Celeste. I didn’t know her last name. I’d never laid eyes on her before a few days ago.”

  Jack could feel Josey trembling and see the terror in her eyes, the same terror he’d seen the day he’d picked her up on the highway. He tried hard to hide his own fear as he asked, “Did you have anything to do with what happened to her?”

  “No,” she said with a shudder. “But I was there. I saw RJ unraveling. I saw it coming and I knew what he was capable of. I’d seen him…” Her voice broke.

  “Why don’t you start at the beginning.”

  She stared into his eyes for a long moment, then nodded slowly. He waited while she collected herself.

  “You aren’t going to believe me. I hardly believe it myself.”

  He squeezed her hand. “Don’t worry. I’ll know if you’re lying.”

  She smiled at that. “You think you know me that well?”

  “Yeah,” he said simply. “I do.”

  Josey took a breath and let it out slowly. “I guess it starts with my family. My father was Joseph Vanderliner.”

  Jack’s eyebrows shot up. “The Joseph Vanderliner of Vanderliner Oil?”

  She nodded. “That’s the reaction I’ve been getting all of my life.”

  “I knew you came from money, just not that much money,” he said. “I read that your father died a few years ago, and your mother…”

  “She took my father’s death hard. She was never a strong woman. I hadn’t realized how weak she was until she married my stepfather, Ray Allan Evans Sr.”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “At first I thought he was all right. Until my mother had a car accident. The police said she’d been drinking, but she didn’t like alcohol. She never had more than a glass of wine and usually not even that.”

  “This accident. Was your mother…”

  “She survived, but she suffered massive head trauma. She will never recover.” Her voice broke again. “Ray Sr. put her in a nursing home and took over her finances, which included my own. My father had died suddenly and hadn’t updated his will, so my inheritance was still tied up with my mother’s. I had a job at Vanderliner Oil, but when Ray Sr. took over he had me fired. I sued him, because I desperately needed to get my hands on my inheritance so I could take my mother out of that horrible rest home he’d stuck her in and get her proper care.”

  Josey rubbed a hand over her forehead. “My father’s will was just ambiguous enough that my stepfather had control over not only all of my mother’s and my money, but Vanderliner Oil, too. And he was spending the money as if there was no tomorrow.”

  She let go of his hand and stood up, pacing in front of the bed. “I should have been suspicious when my stepfather called and said he wanted to settle out of court, no lawyers. He had arranged, he said, to give me part of my inheritance as a show of faith. All I could think was that if I could get my hands on enough money I could help my mother. I should have known it was a trap.”

  MCCALL HUNG UP from her call to Detective Diaz and heard the fax machine buzz. She walked down the hall and checked. Sure enough, it was the phone logs she’d been waiting for from Frank Hanover’s house.

  Her gaze went to the most recent calls, her heart starting to pound. There were five calls made during the time Frank said he and his wife had been in Billings.

  All but one of the calls had been to Whitehorse, Montana numbers. McCall took the list back to her office, picked up the phone and dialed the out-of-state number first. A rest home? Hadn’t Detective Diaz told her that Josephine’s mother was in a rest home?

  After she’d established that Ella had been in that rest home, she hung up, wondering why RJ had called there.

  McCall dialed the first Whitehorse number.

  “Packy’s,” a woman answered.

  Why would RJ call a convenience mart?

  McCall hung up and checked the other numbers. A call to the other two convenience marts in town. The rest were to motels in town.

  She stared at the list. RJ was looking for someone.

  She called the next number and recognized the woman’s voice who answered at the hotel. “Nancy, it’s McCall Winchester. Did you get a call from someone inquiring about a woman?”

  Nancy Snider laughed. “Is this a crank call?” she joked.

  “I have two missing persons, both considered armed and dangerou
s, and it seems one of them is searching for the other one. Help me out here. According to my phone log, the call would have come into the motel at eight-forty last night.”

  “Sorry. Now that you mention it, I did get a call last night.”

  “Man or woman calling?”

  “Man. He asked if his girlfriend was staying here.”

  “Did he describe her?”

  “Long, red-blond hair, curly, carrying nothing more than a backpack. Said they were supposed to meet up, but she got mad at him. Said he was worried about her.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Said I hadn’t seen her. Then he asked about some guy driving a yellow Cadillac convertible. Said she might be with him.”

  “A yellow Cadillac convertible?”

  “Said it was one of those old ones with the big fins,” Nancy said. “Told him I hadn’t seen it, either.”

  But McCall had.

  JOSEY CONTINUED TO PACE the bedroom, too nervous and upset to sit still. “When I got to the house, my stepfather was waiting. I could tell at once that he’d been drinking.” She hesitated.

  “He made a pass at you.”

  She laughed nervously. “How did you—”

  “I know people.”

  “I slapped him. He became angry. I picked up a bronze statue he had on his desk in his library. He backed off and went to the wall safe, opened it and showed me the stacks of money—my money.”

  “How much money are we talking?”

  “A little over a million in the safe,” she said, and saw Jack’s eyes widen.

  “And the rest of your inheritance?”

  She’d known he would realize she had more than that coming. “He had a letter releasing the rest of my inheritance to me. It was…sizable.” She swallowed. “Ray said, ‘Come get it, then get out.’ I was wary. I said, ‘Do you have something I can put it in?’ He’d laughed and called out, ‘RJ, get the lady something to put her money in.’”

  “RJ,” Jack repeated.

  “Ray Allan Evans Jr.” She swallowed again, her throat dry. “He appeared and I realized he’d been waiting in the next room.”

  Jack swore under his breath. “The two of them had set you up.”

  “RJ brought in an old backpack. It’s the one I had when you picked me up on the highway. He tossed me the empty backpack and I moved to the safe just wanting to get the money and get out of there.”

  Jack listened, holding his breath.

  “As I started loading the money into the backpack, I heard Ray Sr. order his son to get him a drink.”

  She took a breath and let it out slowly, remembering how everything had happened so fast after that. “I saw RJ. He had gone to the bar but he’d come back with only a bar rag. His father had taken a step toward me, saying something I didn’t hear or just don’t remember because of what happened next.”

  She was breathing hard now, the memory making her nauseous. “I had put the bronze statue back on Ray’s desk. RJ walked past the desk, picked up the statue using the bar rag and struck his father in the back of the head. He hit him twice. I felt the spray of blood—” She was crying, remembering the way Ray Sr. had fallen at her feet.

  Jack nodded as if he’d seen it coming. So why hadn’t she? She’d known they were up to something, but she’d never dreamed…

  “I must have been in shock. The rest is a blur. RJ was saying that his father never planned to let me leave with the money—or the legal document freeing up my inheritance. He shoved me aside. I was just standing there, staring down at Ray Sr. I could tell he wasn’t breathing. The bronze statue was lying next to him covered with his blood. There was so much blood. RJ was frantically loading the money into the backpack. I saw it was splattered with Ray’s blood.”

  “Let me guess. He wouldn’t let you call the cops,” Jack said.

  “No. He said the only prints on the bronze statue were mine and that he would swear I’d killed his father for the money. Everyone knew about the legal battle I had been waging against my stepfather.”

  Jack swore. “They set you up and then he double-crossed his father.”

  Josey nodded. “I refused to go anywhere with him, but he pulled a gun and dragged me out of the house by gunpoint. When we got outside, he shoved me into the back of a car I had never seen before. That’s when I saw that there was a woman in the car who’d been waiting for him.”

  “Celeste.”

  Josey nodded slowly. “She drove us to a secluded place while RJ held a gun on me. I thought they were going to kill me right there. I’d seen RJ kill his own father in cold blood. I knew he would shoot me without a moment’s hesitation.”

  “Surely this Celeste woman—”

  “She was excited, as if this was some great adventure. She didn’t seem to notice the blood on RJ’s clothing or that he had a gun. But he didn’t kill me there. While he duct-taped my mouth, my wrists and ankles and shoved me into the trunk, she showed me the diamond ring RJ had bought her. He’d told her they were going to get married and then go on a long honeymoon.”

  “My God.” Jack rose from the bed and took her in his arms.

  “Oh, that was only the beginning,” Josey said, as she leaned into his broad chest. “And now RJ is out there somewhere looking for me.”

  Chapter Twelve

  RJ thought about taking a page out of Josey’s playbook and drastically changing his appearance. But his last haircut and highlighting job had cost him a bundle and he wasn’t about to ruin that with some disgusting dye job.

  He decided he would just have to wear the farmer’s straw hat to cover up most of his blond hair. His bigger concern was gasoline.

  There was no way he could chance stopping at a station once he left Billings. There were only two towns between there and Whitehorse—Roundup and Grass Range, both small—and he’d heard on the radio that people were looking for him.

  So he bought a gas can, put it in the trunk of the car he’d borrowed from behind the bar and filled it in Billings. Fortunately, the car had a large gas tank. The last thing he wanted to do was run out of gas before he found the Winchester Ranch.

  His plan was to get to the ranch early enough that he could watch the comings and goings. He had no way of knowing how many people were on the place or how to find Josey. Once he had her, she would tell him where the backpack was with the money in it. At least the money better be in it, he thought.

  There was always the chance that she wasn’t even on the ranch anymore, but if the yellow Cadillac was there, then he would at least be able to find out where Josey had gone.

  The drive was a lot longer than the clerk who’d given him the directions had led him to believe. This place was from hell and gone on miles of narrow dirt road. He was getting annoyed, the drugs he’d taken starting to wear off, when the right rear tire blew.

  JACK COULD SEE how hard this was for Josey, but he had to know everything. It was the only way he was going to be able to help her. And no matter what she told him, he knew he would help her any way he could.

  He’d never planned to let himself become emotionally involved with this woman, especially knowing from the get-go that she was in some kind of trouble.

  But she’d brought out every protective instinct in him, and somewhere along the way he’d found himself falling for her.

  “I realized he’d framed me for his father’s murder, and the only reason he didn’t dump me beside the road was because he needed to make it look as if I’d taken off with the money. I knew something else.”

  “He couldn’t let you live,” Jack said.

  She nodded. “With his father dead and my mother unable to take care of herself, RJ would be in charge of everything my father had built. I knew he would destroy Vanderliner Oil, spend until he lost it. But I was more worried about what would happen to my mother.

  “RJ was all drugged up, flying high, thinking he’d just pulled off the perfect crime. I had no idea how far he’d driven before he stopped. I thought he was going to
kill me then, but he just let me out long enough to go to the bathroom, give me some water and a little something to eat. Apparently, he didn’t want me dying in his car and smelling it up.”

  “He didn’t give you any idea where you were headed?”

  Josey shook her head. “I asked him to let me ride in the backseat and promised I wouldn’t cause any trouble. I wanted to know where we were. I also didn’t stand a chance of getting away bound up in the trunk. With my wrists taped behind me, what could I do anyway?”

  “So he agreed.”

  “I think he did it because he was already over Celeste,” Josey said. “She was complaining about everything, especially about having to guard me whenever we stopped for gas or he had to run in and get food. At one point, she told him she wasn’t going any farther unless he dumped me.”

  Jack shook his head in disbelief. “She was as cold-blooded as he was.”

  “The money was part of the appeal. At one point, they thought I was sleeping, and I heard him explain to her that he had to make sure no one found my body and that was why they were going to a place he and his father had hunted in Montana.”

  “You had to be terrified.”

  “I watched for an opportunity to get away, but as drugged up as RJ was, he never let down his guard. He seemed ultraintuitive to even the slightest movement by me. By the time we reached Montana I realized he was going to get rid of not only me, but also Celeste. Unfortunately, she hadn’t figured that out yet.”

  MCCALL GOT THE CALL about a possible suspect sighting in Billings and hoped the recent incidents down there were RJ’s doing only because it would mean he was nowhere near Whitehorse or the Winchester Ranch.

  “We had a drugstore break-in,” the cop on duty told her. “He sprayed something over the video camera, but missed a small spot. It was definitely a white male. Could be this Ray Allan Evans Jr. you’re looking for.”

  “We believe he was injured at the scene and might be in need of medical supplies.”