“Give her my condolences the next time you see her,” Rae said flippantly as she followed Rick out into the main area.
Sully was right behind her.
* * *
Summarizing the events that had transpired, Rick quickly filled in his three deputies, Joe, Gabe and Daniel, about what they needed to do.
Usually able to take most of Rick’s notifications in stride without comment, for once, none of the men appeared stoic when they were told about Warren’s actual identity and the crime that he had possibly committed.
“So we’re not even sure if this dead ranch hand stole the money?” Dan questioned.
Rather than answer the deputy, Rick looked toward Sully. “It’s your story,” he said. “You want to do the honors?”
“Wynters was the likeliest suspect,” Sully answered. “All the information the police have seemed to point to him at least being a person of interest. But the police in Arizona were still working on finding definitive evidence that Wynters actually embezzled the money.”
Rae took advantage of the long pause that followed to interject her own thoughts on the matter.
“Well, until they do,” she said to the men in the room, “I think we shouldn’t mention anything about the possibility that there might be stolen money hidden somewhere around Forever.” She looked at each of their faces before continuing. “Something like that can only bring out the worst in people.”
“She’s right,” Rick agreed after a beat. “The last thing any of us want is to have a town full of people running around, trying to beat out everyone else and be the first one who’s able to locate the missing money—if the money is even here in Forever,” he qualified.
“You might not be giving the town enough credit,” Gabe pointed out.
The sheriff had already considered that and come to a conclusion.
“I’d rather not give them enough credit and be proven wrong than watch upstanding citizens turn their backs on everything they’ve spent years building up just to get a chance of being the one to discover where the money’s hidden or buried,” Rick told his men.
“If it’s even here,” Rae said. When the men looked at her, she reminded them of what else the man could have done with the money, “Maybe he left the money in some safety-deposit box or even deposited in another bank out of the area,” she suggested.
But Sully shook his head. He didn’t see that as a possibility.
“You can’t deposit that much money in a bank without raising all sorts of red flags with the government. Any amount $10,000 or over draws instant attention.”
“Maybe the guy deposits in a lot of different banks,” Joe suggested.
“That would make it too many banks to keep track of, not to mention that it would physically require a lot of time to make deposits of $9,999 until the entire sum had been put away,” Rick pointed out. “Besides, I only interacted with him a couple of times, but Wynters didn’t strike me as being some sort of a master criminal.”
“He had to have something on the ball if he ultimately managed to pull off this embezzlement,” Rae maintained.
“That might be true, but my gut tells me that he’d want to keep that money somewhere close by. That way, he could get his hands on it at a moment’s notice and just take off if he needed to without having to go through all sorts of trouble to get his money,” Sully said.
“So, we’re agreed?” Rick asked, looking around the room at his deputies as well as at Sully and Rae. “We keep the details of this case a secret for the time being. We can just say that Warren met with some kind of an accident and that we’re looking to talk to people who might have seen him that last day so we can piece together exactly what happened to him.”
Every one of the four other men in the room either nodded or gave their verbal assent that they were willing to go along with the sheriff’s version of the events.
Only Rae remained silent, waiting until the others had all given their opinion.
As their voices faded, she finally spoke up and said, “I think we should tell Miss Joan about this.”
Chapter 16
Rae’s suggestion initially met with opposition from two of the three deputies. But in the end, everyone was in agreement that telling Miss Joan the whole truth about the man she had taken pity on and sent to work on the J-H Ranch was the only real option they had.
Since she was the one who had brought the matter up, Rae assumed that she should also be the one who was going to tell Miss Joan this part of what was turning out to be an outlandish story.
Sully said nothing until after their assignments had been given out and he and Rae were almost at the diner. And then he spoke up to say, “I’ll tell her.”
Caught off guard, Rae looked at him. She guessed why he was volunteering. “I don’t need to be protected.”
“Nobody’s saying anything about protecting you,” Sully told her. “You’ve got nothing to do with this. You didn’t get Wynters to embezzle the money, you didn’t make him run and come here, posing as a ranch hand, and you’re certainly not responsible for killing him.” He could see the impatience in her eyes. She was getting ready to argue with him. “Get over yourself, Mulcahy. You are not responsible for any of this. And I’m the one who dug up this secret life of his.”
A hot answer burned on her tongue. But at the last minute, she stopped herself from saying it. Instead, she rethought the situation.
“I know what you’re doing,” she told Sully. In her opinion, he was trying to get her to stop feeling guilty about the man’s murder. Easier said than done, she thought.
“Good,” he declared. “That makes one of us.” Because he was just playing this by ear, he thought.
Sully started going up the stairs to the diner. He didn’t have to turn around to know that she was right behind him.
“I’m coming with you,” she told him in case he had any ideas to the contrary.
He surprised her. He made no attempt to stop her or get her to change her mind and wait for him outside the diner.
“It’s a free country,” he replied. Pulling open the door, he walked in ahead of her.
“Well, you two are certainly getting to be regular customers,” Miss Joan commented before they had even crossed halfway to the counter. Taking a closer look at their faces, Miss Joan glanced over to Marisol, one of the two waitresses on duty that shift. “Take over for me, Marisol,” she said.
Not waiting for the young woman to acknowledge the order, Miss Joan made her way around the counter.
“Last booth,” she told the duo coming toward her. She pointed a bony finger in that direction for emphasis. Under her watchful eye, they turned around and headed toward the booth.
Bringing up the rear, Miss Joan waited until Sully and Rae sat down before she took her own seat. It wasn’t clear if she chose the seat so she could sit next to Rae or if she chose it to face Sully.
“All right, what did you find out?” she asked them. Seeing a look of surprise cross Sully’s face, she said, “You obviously came here to tell me something or you wouldn’t look as if this was the dress rehearsal for the funeral.”
Sully grinned as he marveled at the woman’s inherent intuition. “No wonder Uncle Seamus liked you,” he commented with a laugh.
Miss Joan merely gave him a look from beneath her hooded eyes. “That was not the only reason,” she informed him. “Now talk.”
Sully took the lead. As succinctly as possible, he told the woman about everything that Valri had forwarded to him. When he finished, he expected Miss Joan to express her surprise or display a sense of betrayal, if not both. After all, she had provided Warren/Wynters with a roof over his head and a job while, all along, he’d been a thief looking for a place to hide out.
However, the woman’s expression remained completely unchanged.
When she finally spoke, Miss Joan said, “I had a feeling
that he wasn’t a ranch hand, but I could tell that man definitely needed help, not to mention a place to stay. So I decided the ranch would take a chance on him.” Having said that, the woman seemed to transform right in front of them—her period of mourning, if that was what it could be called, was over.
Miss Joan got down to business. “So where are you with the investigation?” she asked.
“Other than finding out Warren’s true identity and why he had come so far away from his comfort zone, nowhere,” Sully informed her. “We’re planning on talking to everyone who was at your party, see if anyone noticed Wynters leaving and if they did, did they happen to see if there was anyone with him.”
Miss Joan nodded, giving her blessings to the investigation.
“I’m sorry to say that I didn’t see him leaving,” she told her ranch foreman. “I did see him talking to Jackson and Garrett, those two brothers who run the Healing Ranch,” she explained for Sully’s benefit. “I think that was around eight, or a little earlier. I don’t recall seeing him after that. But then,” she added, “I wasn’t exactly looking for him, either. My attention was on Cash and Alma.”
“This is good,” Sully told the older woman. “This helps us build a time line. You’ve been a great help, Miss Joan.”
Miss Joan had never had any use for flattery. She saw it as an entire waste of breath.
“No, I haven’t,” she contradicted Sully, dismissing his words. “Let me know if those two boys say anything useful when you question them. And you—” she turned her sharp eyes on Rae “—don’t forget to have his back when he carries on his investigation.”
Rae flushed. “I really should be getting back to the ranch.” After all, that was what Miss Joan had hired her to do. “I haven’t been there since we found Warren—I mean, Wynters.”
“Don’t worry about the ranch,” Miss Joan told her. “It’s fine. Clint Washburn wound up sending his brother Roy to take care of things until you get back—maybe even for longer than that,” she added. “And he’s worth more than any three ranch hands put together. I want the two of you focused on finding out who killed that man, whatever he called himself. I don’t want to have a killer lurking around in my town,” she said with feeling.
* * *
“I guess that means you’re stuck with me,” Rae told Sully as they left the diner. She wouldn’t dream of ignoring Miss Joan’s instruction.
Sully’s smile was easy—and somehow unsettling at the same time, Rae thought.
“I wouldn’t exactly call it being stuck,” he told her. “Those two brothers Miss Joan said were talking to Wynters, where can I find them?”
“They run the Healing Ranch,” she told him. “It’s located not too far outside of town.”
“The Healing Ranch,” Sully repeated. “That sounds more like some kind of a spa. I thought she said that it’s a ranch for wayward boys.”
“It is,” Rae assured him as they walked over to her truck. “That’s what’s being healed—the boys’ antisocial behavior. Jackson and Garrett use horses to help teach the boys who are sent to their ranch a sense of responsibility.”
“Horses, eh?” He rolled the idea over in his mind as he got into the truck and buckled up. “I guess that sounds like a pretty good idea.” His smile widened as he thought about the possibilities of a ranch like that. “Maybe I’ll run that past my uncles at the next family gathering I go to.”
She’d started up the truck and pulled out. Sully was already making plans for when he left, she thought. The pang she experienced caught her off guard, surprising her. She felt as if there was a sinking pit where her stomach used to be.
“And when will that be?” she asked, trying to sound as if she was indifferent to the idea, one way or another.
She heard him laugh beside her. “Trying to get rid of me, Mulcahy?”
“No, just wondering how soon I’m going to have to look for another ranch hand, that’s all. You might not have noticed,” she said with a touch of sarcasm, “but I’m short one ranch hand already. Two if you consider how lazy Rawlings usually is.”
“Yeah, I noticed something like that,” Sully answered. “For the record, I plan to stick around until this murder gets solved. Maybe longer if you can’t find any extra cowboys to hire.”
She didn’t believe him, at least not about the last part. But for now, she pretended that she did. “I’ll hold you to that,” she told him.
The smile he gave her told her that he didn’t think of that as a threat. It wasn’t exactly anything to take to the bank, she thought, but for now she decided that maybe this meant that he really intended to hang around a little longer.
* * *
Both of the White Eagle brothers seemed to have their hands full when Rae and Sully arrived at the Healing Ranch. Their tremendous success turning around delinquent boys on the verge of being sent to prison, making them useful members of society, had put the brothers and their ranch on the map.
Since the ranch had come into being, the brothers had had to more than double up their efforts, and even that didn’t seem like enough lately. The brothers were looking into expanding the ranch, but only if they could get like-minded people to run it.
Sully managed to corner Jackson first. Jackson was the older of the two and the one who had initially started the school in honor of his late uncle, who had kept him from throwing away his life by going down the wrong path. His uncle had used his ranch to help get the lesson across to the young, hostile Jackson.
The rest, he liked to say, was history.
When Sully questioned him, Jackson recalled the events at the party very clearly.
“Yes, we only talked for a few minutes. To be honest, I didn’t know him very well, just that he was working on Miss Joan’s ranch. He seemed nice enough, though,” Jackson added. “When we finished exchanging pleasantries, he drifted over to toward the Rodriguez brothers.” He thought for a moment. “That’s the last I remember seeing him.” Jackson looked around and spotted his younger brother with one of their latest charges in the corral. “Hey, Garrett,” he called over to him.
Garrett finished giving instructions to the boy he was working with, then came over to where Jackson as well as Rae and Sully were standing.
“Did anything strike you as being strange about Warren at Miss Joan’s party?” Jackson asked his brother. When the latter looked at him, somewhat confused, Jackson explained, “You know, one of the two wranglers working on the J-H Ranch. He went missing some time before the party at Murphy’s was over.”
“Strange?” Garrett repeated, thinking. “I don’t think so. He did look a little nervous just before he went off to talk to the Rodriguez brothers.”
“Nervous?” Rae asked, instantly alert. “Nervous how? Did someone say something to make him nervous?”
But Garret looked at a loss. “I really can’t say. If I was to make a guess, it looked as if Cash made him act fidgety, nervous.”
“Money made him nervous?” Sully questioned, trying to make sense out of what Garrett was telling them.
“What? No, Cash. Cash Taylor,” Garrett emphasized. “At least Warren looked as if he was looking in Cash’s direction when he suddenly turned as white as a sheet. That was when I saw him making his way over toward the Rodriguez brothers really fast.”
“Are you talking about the deputy?” Sully asked. “Gabe Rodriguez?”
Garrett shook his head, “No, no, Gabe’s brothers. I didn’t see Gabe around until later.” One of the boys he’d been working with in the corral called over to Garrett. “Look, do you mind if I go now? I can answer more questions for you later if you want to go on. But I really need to get back to Allen right now,” he said, glancing over toward the teen in the corral.
“Sure, go,” Sully urged. “That’s it for now. Thanks a lot for your help,” he added.
Garrett was already on his way back to the
corral, walking backward so he still faced the two people who had come to the ranch asking questions.
“Sure. Anything Jackson and I can do to help with this investigation, just say the word. I don’t like the fact that someone murdered someone in Forever, even if that person wasn’t one of our own.”
* * *
As it turned out, Cash was out of town on business, so Sully and Rae weren’t able to ask him any questions about why Wynters might have looked nervous when he saw the lawyer—or if Garrett had misread the scene.
Since Cash wouldn’t be back until the next day, Sully and Rae went on questioning some of the other citizens who had been at Murphy’s. Each so-called lead trickled into the next person they interviewed. However, after doing this for the remainder of the day, no tangible information was actually gleaned pointing to anyone.
* * *
“I think my brain hurts,” Rae said to Sully late that evening when they both collapsed onto the worn leather sofa in the living room.
They had been at it all day and finally came back to the ranch long after dark.
Despite having Clint Washburn’s brother Roy—and another ranch hand—pitching in at the ranch and taking care of the horses, Rae felt it was her responsibility to make sure that all was well. This meant going to see things at the stable for herself.
The stalls were all cleaned out with fresh hay spread out in place of the old, and all the horses had fresh feed waiting for them.
Although she was satisfied that the job had been well done, for the first time since she’d been fifteen, Rae felt as if she wasn’t needed.
Sully had stretched out his long, lanky frame next to hers in the living room, looking like someone who had no intentions of moving any more than absolutely necessary any time soon.
“You’ll get used to it,” he told her.
She assumed he was referring to her comment about the state of her brain.
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