For Always (A Donovan Friends Novel)

by AC Arthur

  “And who are you?” Alvarez asked Alex.

  “Alexander Bennett and this is my fiancé, Monica Lakefield. Gabriella is my sister. Monica and I arrived in Hobbs Creek yesterday to visit her,” Alex said in a tone that almost dared Alvarez to ask him another question.

  “I think we’re finished here, Sheriff,” Clyde said. “You’ve gotten all the alibis you need.”

  “It would have been better if these two weren’t alibiing each other,” the sheriff stated. “The fact is that Hannah Palmer was killed in your equestrian center between the hours of midnight and three a.m. That means we’re going to question everybody who works here, who has access to this ranch or any reason to be on this ranch. And we’re going to do that until we find ourselves a suspect.”

  “You can do your job as you see fit,” Clyde told the sheriff. “But my clients have fulfilled their duty. Anything else you need to know concerning their whereabouts during that timeframe, you just give my office a call.”

  “We’re not making no damn phone calls! Tyler West killed my daughter and I want him locked up right this minute!” Ted Palmer said as he rushed into the dining room.

  “Dammit Ted, I told you to stay in the car!” the sheriff yelled.

  But it was too late, Ted was headed around the table. Tyler stood before the man could reach him.

  “You’re gonna pay for what you did to her you pampered punk!” Ted yelled in Tyler’s face and grabbed his shirt.

  Ted Palmer was a fifty-eight year old man whose diet had consisted of nothing but fried and greasy foods his entire life. The paunch in his belly told that story even if Tyler couldn’t see it in the pallor of his skin and hear it in the congested sound of his breathing. So pushing the older man off him barely required any effort.

  Jagger and Alex had also stood, ready to do whatever the situation might call for.

  “Get back outside Ted!” the sheriff yelled again. “That’s an order!”

  “He’d better,” Clyde said. “This is private property and he’s trespassing.”

  “I’ve got a security pass,” Ted said and held it up in Tyler’s face before he continued. “You wanted to get your piece of black ass—that was all fine and dandy. I wasn’t gonna mess up my long-time relationship with your daddy and this ranch because of it. But I’ll be damned if I sit quietly and let you and that woman get away with murdering my babygirl!”

  Tyler snatched the pass from Ted’s hand and stepped up to his face. “You can take your business elsewhere, Ted. Westwind doesn’t work with bigots. Now I see where your daughter got her foolish way of thinking. Get off my land now, before I have your ass thrown in jail.”

  “Your daddy is tossing in his grave right now! He didn’t have no blacks here except for the working ones!” Ted spat.

  “That’s a lie, Ted Palmer and you know it,” Dessie added. “Verna was my best friend for more than thirty years. She was the sweetest woman I ever knew and she was not a racist. Neither was George.”

  “Get him out of here, Sheriff,” Tyler said slowly. “Take him off my land before you end up hauling me in for beating the taste out of his racist mouth.”

  Ted lunged then, yelling at Gabriella. “This is all your fault, you little slut! All your fault that my girl’s gone!”

  Tyler stood firm in front of her and pushed Ted back again, this time with more force. The older man stumbled back and Jagger caught him.

  “Time to go old man,” Jagger said as he hauled Ted to the doorway.

  Ted continued to yell profanities and racial slurs until Sheriff Alvarez followed him out threatening to cuff him and put him in a cell if he didn’t calm down.

  “Well,” Monica said when they were the only ones left in the room again. “I think we’re gonna need something a little stronger than orange juice after that performance.”

  “I concur,” Dessie said and headed to the hutch behind the table where there were a few bottles of liquor and glasses. “I’ll pour.”

  * * *

  She’d been thinking about him all afternoon. She’d been thinking about a lot this afternoon. Including the fact that per the sheriff, she was not to leave town because apparently she was still a suspect.

  Hannah Palmer was a hateful, ignorant racist, but the police suspected Gabriella of a crime. How was that for progress?

  Gabriella frowned as she walked across the grass with the sun beaming down on her bare back. Her sundress was light as she held the bottom of it bunched in her hands while she walked. She could move faster that way. And fast was definitely what she had in mind considering she felt like it was the sun’s goal to bake her and anything else that happened to be outdoors today.

  Tyler was where she’d thought he’d be after she’d checked everywhere else—in the east corral with GG. He wasn’t riding the horse, but walked him slowly around the circle. He loved that horse, and the other ones that were now being temporarily housed in the barn. But he loved GG best. From a distance Gabriella watched and wondered what fate had in store for the two of them.

  He waved at her and she stopped staring at him like a starry-eyed schoolgirl and continued her trek towards the corral. Once she was at the fence, she leaned on it and lifted a hand to fan herself.

  “Still not used to the Texas heat, huh?” Tyler asked when he walked GG over to where she stood.

  “It’s hot, I can tell you that,” was her reply.

  He chuckled. “Yeah. It is. But GG doesn’t like the barn too much so I wanted to bring him out for a walk before dinner.”

  She nodded. “I’m sure he appreciates the loving attention you give him,” she said. “What’s he going to do when you decide to go back to your life in L.A.?”

  Tyler held GG’s reins and rubbed down the horse’s neck.

  “Been thinking about that,” he replied. “Been thinking about a lot of things actually.”

  She stopped fanning herself because it wasn’t working. “That makes two of us.”

  “So much has happened since I came here three months ago. I hadn’t expected to be here that long,” he said.

  He wore his brown Stetson today, pulled down low, jeans and a white t-shirt. She wished she’d changed out of this dress and found a pair of shorts instead.

  “You know this was my dad’s horse,” he continued.

  Gabriella folded her arms over the railing and rested her chin on her arms. “He’s beautiful.”

  “Yes, he is. This land is beautiful. I think I forgot that for a while. A long while.”

  He sounded contemplative and looked just a little sad. Gabriella wanted to reach out to him, to take his hand and assure him that despite all that was going on, things were going to work out. But she didn’t. Instead, she just listened.

  “I always felt so bad for being better than Jagger at everything on the ranch. I hated when my dad compared us because I knew it must have made Jagger feel awful. My mom never said much in that regard. She just kept Jagger with her as much as she could. Protecting him, I guess.”

  “Mothers are the best protectors of their children,” she said.

  “And fathers are the best at expectations, I guess.”

  She could have agreed with him, but something told her that wasn’t what he needed to hear right now. His mind seemed pretty made up where his father was concerned.

  “That’s why I didn’t go after Jagger for being with Hannah. I didn’t want to risk sounding like my father, even though Jagger was wrong as two left feet for getting near Hannah. He knew we were together. Everyone in town knew that,” he said vehemently.

  “Hannah knew it too,” Gabriella said. “And considering what I knew of her, I don’t put it past her to have seduced Jagger.”

  “He was still my brother. My blood.”

  “You’re right. They were both wrong as two left feet,” she conceded.

  He gave her a weak smile.

  “Seeing them together was the push I needed. And meeting that scout in the mall, she was the answer. I got out of here as
fast as I could and I never planned on coming back. I feel like I was wrong for that.”

  As much as Gabriella hated her family’s smothering tendencies sometimes, she’d never considered going away from them forever.

  Tyler’s hand moved further back on the horse, gliding slowly over its glistening chestnut coat.

  “This is my home. It’s always going to be my home. I should have come back to help out. Especially when I started to learn more about operating a business. I should have read those reports my dad sent me more closely.”

  “Your father sent you reports on how the ranch was doing while you were gone?”

  “Every year,” he replied and nodded. “When I first came back I read all of them over and over again.”

  “Because you saw something?”

  He nodded.

  Gabriella lifted her head and stared at him. “What did you see?”

  “Just a few minor discrepancies at first. So I brushed them off. But then I hired D&D Investigations,” he told her.

  “You what?” She let her arms slide from the railing and took a step closer to where he stood. “How did you know about D&D?”

  “When you told me about attending that wedding at Basset Banks Winery, you mentioned Bailey Donovan. D&D did some background checks for the company we initially used to produce my DVDs. Bailey Donovan signed off on some of those reports. So when the sheriff didn’t seem to be getting anywhere finding my parents’ murderer, I gave them a call.”

  “The detective who called my family about my car being on fire is the older brother of the other half of D&D, Sam Desdune.”

  “Client confidentiality,” Tyler said as if he knew what she was thinking. “Besides, there’s no reason they would have known to connect us. I’m contracted with the L.A. branch of D&D. But either way, Sam Desdune would not have called his brother one day and said ‘hey, guess who I’m working with’ and Detective Cole Desdune would not have called Sam and said ‘hey, guess whose car just caught on fire’.”

  “But Cole did just that,” she said with a shrug. “Still, I see what you’re saying. They would not have known that we were together. So did they find anything else in the reports?”

  “They found that for about ten years money was slowly being siphoned from the ranch’s main operating account,” Tyler told her.

  “But why would your father have been stealing from himself?”

  “He wasn’t,” Tyler said. “His ranch manager was.”

  “Oh. Okay. So what does that mean?”

  Tyler sighed heavily.

  “I’d rather tell everyone at one time. I think this might be a major clue and like Jagger said earlier, we’re all involved now.”

  Gabriella squinted in the sunlight as she looked up at him. “You think you know who the killer is don’t you?”

  Tyler sighed again. Then he nodded slowly. “Yeah. I think I know who it is.”

  Chapter 16

  The newly designed back patio area was gorgeous. Immediately after dinner they’d gone out to have a look at it.

  “This is a real transformation,” Dessie told Naomi and Gabriella.

  Tyler had invited the ranch manager and his wife for dinner, because what he wanted to discuss afterwards involved Stephen too.

  “It was so exciting to work on,” Naomi chimed in with a huge grin.

  Stephen had stood proudly beside his wife as she talked about what she and Gabriella had accomplished.

  “So we kept the original grill, adding a new covering of Quartzite to bring the design into the contemporary western feel going throughout the house,” she continued.

  “That’s that glossy rock stuff,” Jagger had joked.

  “Yes, it is,” Gabriella replied with an elbow to Jagger’s ribs.

  His brother had undergone a transformation as well, Tyler noted. One that he was liking more and more each day.

  “We used the Quartzite for the grill and the fire pit over there,” Gabriella said pointing to the other side of the patio where a circular fire pit was positioned. “And for the flooring we went with Travertine tiles, with a redwood natural stain on the newly built upper deck area. This same color wraps around to the side of the house for the back deck that’s accessible via the kitchen. And picks up on the new front porch for an even and consistent look to the outside of the house.”

  “It’s gorgeous,” Monica said. “I’d love something like this in our backyard whenever we get around to buying a house.”

  Alex agreed by wrapping an arm around Monica’s shoulders and surveying the work they discussed. “I agree. I especially like this covered area with the same rock materials on the beams and the outdoor lighting. This is like its own separate space, but it’s all still tied together.”

  He was referring to where they all stood on the deck beneath the new structure that was part of Gabriella’s design. The beams on the ceiling of the enclosure met in the center with an ornate chandelier that matched the new one in the front foyer of the house. The patio furniture was a dark brown wicker that actually looked like it could pass for a wood finish, with deep burnt orange cushions and matching end tables. Gabriella said this was a way of bringing the inside, outside with a modern flare. Tyler agreed, it was a great space.

  He just didn’t feel safe with all of them standing out there for too long. So, after a few more comments on the space, he announced coffee and nightcaps and waited until everyone had moved back inside before stepping into the house and closing and locking the new patio doors. He pushed the button to close the automated blinds and waited until the natural colored shield was completely fitted over the door and there was no way anyone could see from the outside into the house.

  Dessie and Naomi insisted on everyone moving into the living room while they went to the kitchen to get trays of coffee, tea and whiskey.

  Once they were situated in the living room, cups filled with the beverage of their choice in hand, Tyler cleared his throat.

  “I wanted to bring us all together tonight to discuss some things that I’ve learned in the past few days,” he said. “For now, this is confidential information. I’m sharing it because it involves all of us on one level or another.”

  Naomi moved closer to Stephen who sat on one of the two matching bannister leather sofas—Gabriella had told him the name when he’d complimented the new stately-looking furniture. She’d changed the paint in this room to a cream color which did wonders to brighten up the space. A coffee table that looked like a short dark wood dresser separated the matching couches while loveseats in the same design filled the two opposite ends.

  Monica and Alex sat on the couch across from Naomi and Stephen. Clyde and Dessie were on one loveseat and Gabriella had joined Tyler on the other. Jagger favored the dark brown recliner that was situated closer to the window and was the closest seat to the bar. When this was all over, Tyler was going to have a talk with his brother about the drinking part of his transformation.

  “What’s going on around here, Tyler?” Stephen asked. “The whole town is talking about Hannah’s murder. The sheriff stopped by my house earlier today. I was still here working, but he talked to Naomi for almost an hour. And he left a message that he wanted to see me as soon as possible.”

  Tyler frowned. “Do you remember back to when you were a ranch hand here, Stephen?”

  “Yeah,” Stephen replied. “It wasn’t that long ago. Two years and eight months to be exact. We were all shocked that old Jessie decided to retire. It was well known around the ranch that Jessie fully intended to croak here at Westwind, meaning we’d have to cart his dead body off the property.” Stephen shook his head. “That seemed a whole lot funnier before all this started happening.”

  Naomi rubbed a hand over her husband’s knee.

  “What does Jessie have to do with this, Tyler?” Clyde asked.

  “There are two names on the ranch’s operating account,” Tyler said. “My dad’s and his ranch manager, Jessie. When Jessie left and Stephen took over the job,
the names on the account were changed.”

  Stephen nodded his agreement to that fact.

  “My dad copied me on all the yearly financial reports of the ranch, as well as all the restructuring and expansion plans,” Tyler continued.

  “And my mother copied me,” Jagger said from his spot close to the window.

  When Tyler looked up in surprise, Jagger lifted his half-full glass of whiskey in a toast to his big brother.

  “I admit to not paying a lot of attention to those reports over the years,” Tyler said, keeping his eye on Jagger. The slow way in which Jagger brought that glass to his lips and took a sip told Tyler his brother was guilty of the same thing. “But when I received news of my parents’ death, I went through them all.”

  He took a deep breath and looked around the room, seeing that Monica and Alex were paying attention, but were also wondering what this had to do with the here and now.

  “I noticed a few discrepancies in some of the earlier statements, but again, admit to not digging deeper into them. Not at the time. After Gabriella’s room at the resort was vandalized and the sheriff still had no leads on the murder or the vandalism that had occurred on the ranch a few weeks after my parents’ funeral, I was angry. So I hired a private investigator,” Tyler told them.

  “Always taking charge,” Jagger stated.

  “He is in charge now that you sold him your part of the ranch,” Dessie interjected. “Now, hush while he talks.”

  “I gave the investigator all the financial reports I had in my possession, plus copies of some things I found in Dad’s office. I also told him everything that had taken place in the past months. I talked to the investigator yesterday and was given some eye-opening news. Jessie was stealing. For almost ten years he stole a total of 3.8 million dollars from the ranch, which is why Mom and Dad felt like they were struggling for a while. But Dad finally figured out what the problem was—his longtime friend and schoolmate, Jessie. I figure that out of respect for that friendship Dad decided to let Jessie retire gracefully, instead of having him arrested for embezzlement and being embarrassed around town.”