Cavanaugh Cowboy

by Marie Ferrarella

  “I’d start by checking the people in the houses that either face Murphy’s or are on either side of the saloon,” Sully told the gathering. “You never know, we might get lucky. Maybe someone who either came back early or didn’t go to the party for some reason was looking out their window and saw something.” And then he looked at the sheriff and realized that in his desire to make some headway, he might have overstepped some boundaries. “Just a suggestion,” he added.

  “And a damn good one,” Rick told Sully as well as the men under him. “All right, you heard the detective. Fan out and start knocking on doors, people.”

  “Sheriff—” Sully cornered the man as the deputies went back out again to question more of Forever’s residents. “Did you get anything new from the medical examiner when he redid the autopsy?”

  “Cause of death was just what we all thought,” Rick confirmed. “Wynters received two fatal stab wounds right to the heart.”

  Sully could see by the sheriff’s expression that there was more. “Anything else?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Rick answered. “The ME also found bruising on Wynters’s arms, and there’s a wide gash on the back of the man’s head.”

  “The killer knocked him out with a rock first?” Rae questioned, trying to get a clearer picture of the events that came just before the man was murdered.

  “Either that, or Wynters fell and hit his head against a rock,” Sully speculated.

  This puts things in a different light, Rae thought. She put the question to the sheriff. “Could that have been the cause of death?”

  “That hasn’t been determined yet,” the sheriff told them.

  Rae was still trying to work things out in her head. “But if that gash on the back of his head does turn out to be the cause of death, then why did the killer stab him, too?” It seemed like overkill to her.

  Sully played with the pieces in his mind. “Maybe to cover up the accident—if it was an accident—make it seem like Wynters was killed during a robbery,” the detective theorized.

  Rae shook her head. That didn’t sound right to her. “I once read somewhere that if you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.”

  “Are you saying that you feel I’m overthinking this?” Sully asked her.

  Rae decided to restate what they already knew to be true. “Wynters embezzled money and took off. When he recognized Cash, he made another run for it. But the money’s missing. The simplest assumption is that someone killed him to get their hands on it.”

  “It sounds plausible,” Sully readily agreed, but there was still something nagging at him.

  “Maybe we’ll get our answers when we find whoever drove Wynters back to the ranch,” Rick said, interrupting the debate.

  “Hey, Sheriff, I might have found someone who can help with that,” Daniel announced as he walked into the office. The tall deputy wasn’t alone. With him was a very tired-looking young woman who looked as if she hadn’t slept in days.

  “Why don’t you take a seat, Edna?” Rick told her, turning a chair around so that all she had to do was drop into it. Which she did. “Did you happen to see anything last Saturday?” he asked, trying to keep his question as vague as possible. He didn’t want to lead the woman to an answer—he wanted her to be the one to offer up the information.

  “My baby is colicky,” Edna began, explaining why she looked as tired as she did. “I’ve been up every night for a week, walking the floor with him. Jim’s working so he needs his sleep,” she explained, referring to her husband and the father of her baby.

  She was getting off track, Rae thought. “You’re a good wife and mother, Edna,” she told the woman soothingly. “You probably feel like you covered a lot of miles walking back and forth with your son, trying to get him to fall asleep.”

  Edna sighed in agreement. “Miles and miles,” the young woman said.

  Rae watched the young mother’s face. “You probably looked out the window, trying to distract yourself while you were doing all that walking,” Rae continued.

  Edna nodded. “I had to. A couple of times I felt like I was losing my mind.”

  “Totally understandable,” Rae told the young mother. Looking at the others, she could see that they were all waiting for her to get the woman to tell them what she saw. “Did you see anything interesting when you looked out your window?” Rae asked, gently trying to steer Edna in the right direction.

  Edna sighed. “There really wasn’t much to see. It felt like everyone in town but me and the baby were at Murphy’s that night, having a good time. Even my Jim went,” she pouted.

  “So you didn’t see anything,” Sully asked, trying to move her along.

  “I didn’t say that,” Edna protested. “I saw this stranger—” She paused for a minute, trying to state this just the right way. “—I think he’s one of Miss Joan’s charity cases—anyway, he got in the middle of the street and waved his hands so he could stop someone driving a truck. He said something to the driver, and then he got in and they both drove off.”

  “Did you see who was driving the truck?” Rick prodded the woman, trying not to sound too excited.

  Like the others, he didn’t want to influence Edna and have her possibly remember something that hadn’t happened.

  Edna nodded, her light brown hair falling into her face. She pushed her hair behind her ear. “It was one of the McGee twins,” she answered. “Couldn’t tell you which one, though.”

  It was obviously all the woman had to offer. Rick helped Edna to her feet, smiling at her.

  “You’ve been a great help, Edna,” he told her.

  She looked pleased, but she was still very tired as she nodded. “I’ve got to get back, Sheriff. I left Jim with the baby. He’s a good husband, but he doesn’t know the first thing about taking care of a crying baby.”

  “Maybe you could show him what to do,” Rick suggested, escorting the woman to the front door. “Men don’t like feeling helpless. All they need is a little guidance.”

  “Where would I find the McGee twins?” Sully asked the minute the door had closed behind Edna.

  “On their family’s ranch would be my guess,” the sheriff said. “They have a spread due east of Forever. It’s a cattle ranch. I’ll drive,” he told Sully as he led the way out the door.

  “I’m coming, too,” Rae announced, hurrying after the two men.

  Rick merely laughed warmly. “Kind of figured you would.”

  * * *

  The McGee ranch wasn’t too far out of town. Driving fast, it took about forty-five minutes to reach it.

  Rick was the first one out of the truck. Striding up to the front door, he knocked on it. The door opened almost immediately.

  “I need to talk to your boys, Jacob,” Rick told the deeply tanned, sun-wrinkled older man standing on the other side of it.

  The senior McGee had just come into the house to wash off some dust from his face and hands a few minutes before the sheriff had pulled up in his truck.

  Jacob McGee did not look happy to be on the receiving end of the sheriff’s greeting. The scowl on his face went clear down to the bone.

  “What’ve they done now?” Jacob asked wearily.

  Jacob’s wife, Peggy, pushed the door open all the way. “Why don’t you let the man talk before you jump to conclusions, Jake?”

  Jacob’s scowl deepened even more as he ignored his wife.

  “I’ll take you to them,” he volunteered, grabbing his hat from a hook by the door as he walked out.

  “Jake—” his wife called after him, her voice laced with frustration.

  Rick paused to reassure the woman. “There’s nothing to worry about, Mrs. McGee,” he told her. “I just need to ask your sons a few questions.”

  “They didn’t do anything,” Peggy McGee called out after the men.

  “That’s just the problem.
They never do anything,” McGee grumbled, putting distance between himself and the woman in the doorway.

  Rather than give them directions where to find his sons, Jacob McGee insisted on driving them to where both his sons were working, along with a couple of other ranch hands.

  Rae couldn’t help thinking how much larger this ranch was in size than the one she ran for Miss Joan and her husband. But then, that ranch wasn’t being run for a profit, the way this one obviously was.

  * * *

  “The sheriff here wants to talk to you boys,” Jacob said to his sons the moment he got out of his truck. “So listen up,” he ordered.

  Jacob’s sons stopped working and exchanged looks. “We haven’t done anything, Sheriff,” one of the twins said defensively.

  At six-three, with wheat-colored hair and green eyes, Bob and Bill were identical twins whose own father couldn’t tell them apart from a distance.

  Rick kept his voice low and friendly as he told the twins why he was there. “Edna Miller said she saw one of you boys pick up John Warren and give him a ride last Saturday. Where did you take him?” the sheriff asked mildly.

  “I gave him a ride to the J-H Ranch,” Bob said, stepping forward. “He flagged me down, so I had to stop.”

  “And you brought him to the ranch?” Sully asked.

  “Sure,” Bob confirmed, adding defensively, “it’s what he asked me to do. It was on my way home anyway. Why?” he asked, looking from the sheriff to the man with him. His brow furrowed. “Is he claiming something different?”

  “Where on the ranch did you drop him?” Rae asked.

  Bob looked at her, obviously confused why he was being questioned this way. “He wanted me to bring him to the bunkhouse. He gave me ten bucks to do it,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  And then he added nervously, “I didn’t see any harm in it, since he worked on the ranch and all. Why? Wasn’t I supposed to? Did you fire him or something?” he asked Rae, aware that she was the one who ran the ranch for Miss Joan, even though it seemed ludicrous to him.

  Although he asked Rae the question, it was Sully who spoke up. “Did you see anyone else around when you dropped Warren off at the bunkhouse?”

  “I wasn’t looking for anyone else,” Bob practically whinnied. He looked from Sully to the sheriff. “What’s this all about?” he asked.

  “Yeah, what’s this all about?” Bill echoed.

  “How about Rawlings?” Rae asked Bob suddenly. “Did you see him there?”

  Bob shrugged, his shoulders moving beneath his gingham shirt like loose rocks searching for a resting place. “I saw somebody in the background when Warren opened the door to go in, but I dunno who it was. I was in a hurry to get home—”

  “That’s ’cause he was trying to sneak in before I saw him, weren’t you, boy?” Jacob accused his son angrily. “Think I don’t know that you’ve been out drinking again? You’re just rotting your liver a piece at a time, you know that, don’t you?”

  Trying to ignore his father’s accusation, Bob looked at the sheriff. “Can I get back to work now?” he asked. “Billy and me still have to brand two more of the calves.”

  “Sure. Go back to work,” Rick said. “And thanks for your help.”

  * * *

  Rae didn’t say anything until she, Sully and the sheriff got back into the sheriff’s truck, although she could barely contain herself.

  The second they were in the truck, it all came pouring out. “Rawlings said he never saw Warren come back from Murphy’s that night. But Bob McGee said he saw someone in the bunkhouse when he dropped Wynters off there.”

  “Which means that one of them is lying,” Sully said with finality.

  “Unless there was someone else at the bunkhouse that night waiting for Wynters when he got back,” Rick pointed out.

  “That’s a possibility,” Rae allowed, then qualified, “except for one thing.”

  Both men looked at her.

  “What?” Sully asked.

  “Rawlings said he never left the bunkhouse all day, claiming that he really enjoyed the solitude,” she reminded the two men.

  The sheriff played devil’s advocate. “He could have been lying.”

  “There was no reason to lie,” Rae pointed out. “He probably assumed that Wynters drove himself back. He didn’t know that someone else drove Wynters back to the bunkhouse and that the driver caught a glimpse of him when he dropped Wynters off.”

  “I’ll bring him in for questioning,” Rick told the other two occupants in the truck.

  “No,” Sully told him.

  “No?” Rae questioned, confused. “Why not? Right now, everything points to Rawlings being the one who killed Wynters for the money. Or don’t you think so?”

  Sully nodded. “From where I’m standing, that sounds like a pretty safe bet,” he said, wanting to make his thinking clear.

  “Well, if you think that, why don’t you want to bring him in?” Rae asked.

  “Give him a few days,” Sully advised. “We’ll have people watching him. If he did it for the money, it’s probably hidden somewhere. If we grab him up now, we might not be able to get him to admit to anything. But if we watch him, odds are that sooner or later, Rawlings is either going to want to check on the money just to reassure himself that it’s still there—or he might decide to get out of town quick, in which case he’s going to pack up the money.

  “Either way, he’ll lead us to the money. But only,” Sully emphasized, “if he doesn’t think that we’re onto him.”

  “What if he doesn’t lead us back to the money?” Rae asked. “What if he decided to wait indefinitely? Just how long are you willing to play the waiting game?”

  Sully laughed softly. “Look at Rawlings,” he told her. “Does he strike you as someone who’s willing to wait six months to a year—or longer—before he takes the money and runs?”

  “He does have a point,” Rick agreed.

  Rae frowned. This whole case had her feeling itchy. Not to mention that she didn’t really want to have to work alongside Rawlings, thinking that he was responsible for killing someone.

  Even an embezzler deserved better than that, she thought.

  “So you’re saying we wait,” she concluded, looking at Sully.

  Instead of answering her, Sully looked at the sheriff. “What do you say, Sheriff?”

  Rick had already made up his mind after hearing Sully out. “I think you’re right,” he told Sully. “I say we wait.”

  Rae sighed. “Then I guess we wait,” she echoed, resigned to the fact.

  But she wasn’t happy about it.

  Chapter 20

  “Boy, I gotta say that I’m glad things are finally going to get back to the way they were,” Rawlings said to Rae the following morning.

  After some last-minute exchange of information and preparation was made, Roy Washburn left with the ranch hand he’d brought with him, heading back to the family ranch.

  Watching them leave, Rawlings was positively beaming. Rae couldn’t recall ever seeing the wrangler looking this happy since Miss Joan had sent him to the ranch over four months ago.

  “I guess I never really appreciated how you ran the J-H until Washburn was here, barking out orders like some damn dictator,” Rawlings confessed.

  “Is that so?” Rae asked as she served breakfast to Rawlings and Sully. She set down the last serving for herself.

  “Yeah, you bet,” Rawlings said with what amounted to enthusiasm, not bothering to swallow before he continued talking. “Washburn couldn’t stop ordering me and the other guy around. But no matter what he did, the guy just couldn’t hold a candle to you.”

  As he talked, the man made short work of the scrambled eggs and ham on his plate.

  Rae wasn’t fooled by the wrangler for a minute. Rawlings was laying it on really thick, be
ing far more flattering than he ever had in all the time that he’d spent working on the J-H Ranch.

  The man was up to something, most likely trying to get her off her guard.

  She supposed that there was a slim chance that it could all be on the level, that Rawlings had realized how tough a foreman could be and appreciated the laid-back way that she usually ran the ranch.

  It could be...

  But, thinking about it for a moment, Rae really doubted it. Something in her gut just wouldn’t allow her to give the other man a pass, especially in light of the way the ranch hand had behaved previously.

  Maybe she wasn’t being fair, but she couldn’t help feeling that this was all an act, a cover, and that Rawlings was just biding his time until it was safe for him to grab the money—wherever he might have hidden it—and run.

  Looking at Sully sitting across from her at the table, she could see that the detective felt the same way she did.

  They just had to wait until Rawlings made his move.

  But waiting was going to be hell.

  * * *

  Things settled back to a routine, the same routine that had been followed when there had only been three of them on the ranch, Rae and the two ranch hands who had worked for her before Sully had joined their ranks. Now it was Sully working with them instead of Warren/Wynters.

  Work seemed to be getting done faster. Oddly enough, Rawlings was now working harder, more diligently now that Warren/Wynters was gone—he was no longer trying to cut corners or finding excuses not to do something.

  Even though Rawlings appeared to have undergone a transformation, Rae couldn’t shake the feeling that she was sitting on a powder keg, waiting for it to suddenly blow up.

  Hopefully not right under her.

  By the time the fourth day under these conditions had come and gone, Rae could feel herself growing progressively more antsy. What she was afraid of was that this could turn into an endless waiting game.