by Diana Palmer
“What was that?” Cash asked carefully.
She hesitated. “Hob Downey lives on the border of our north pastures,” she told him. “He saw a black pickup truck with a rust spot on a fender, a thin red stripe and homemade cattle gates sitting next to my fence. He said two men got out of it and were looking at the fence. Hob couldn’t tell if they cut it.”
Cash had whipped out a pad and pen. “Hob Downey,” he said, checking the spelling. “Has he got a phone?”
“No. Poor old thing, he can’t even afford heat. He has a wood stove. He’s living on his Social Security, and it isn’t much.” She gave him directions to Hob’s house. “Why are you so interested?”
He studied her and grimaced. “I can’t tell you,” he said finally. “I’m sorry. This is something I’m not at liberty to talk about.”
She grinned. “Have I helped you crack a case without knowing it?”
He put the pad away. “I’ll let you know, the minute I can, if you have,” he promised.
She sipped her coffee. “You were very rude to Miss Moore,” she said. “You don’t like her at all, do you?”
“She reminds me of my stepmother.”
“She reminds me of a redheaded serpent,” she murmured without looking at Cash. “I feel like I don’t even live there anymore. I can’t go in my own house without tripping over an actor or a piece of equipment.”
“Seen Judd lately?”
Her face tightened. “He drives down from Victoria every afternoon when he gets off work to pick up Miss Moore and take her to her hotel. She doesn’t like riding in the bus with the lesser people,” she added with a wicked grin.
He studied her curiously over his coffee cup, seeing through the humor to the hurt. “Judd isn’t naive. She’s a novelty. She’ll wear off.”
She laughed without humor. “Think so? I’ve never seen him so animated.”
“Any man appreciates a pretty woman.”
“Not you,” she blurted out. Her eyes searched his intently. “She couldn’t believe you weren’t head over heels with her at first glance.”
“I’ve seen a hundred like her over the years,” he said coldly. “Selfish, vain, unaware of anything that goes on around them. She must be twenty-six or twenty-seven, and her days as a model are numbered. If she doesn’t make it in films, she’s going to be unemployable in a few years.”
“Don’t sound so happy about it,” she chided.
“Brains last. Beauty doesn’t.”
“Funny, that’s just what Maude said,” she recalled as she finished her coffee. “Maybe it’s like in school, where the popular girls are always the prettiest ones. But they don’t like the really nice boys, who aren’t quite as handsome and well-known as the sports heroes.”
“Hero and sports are two words we can do without combining,” he said, waving a finger at her.
She grinned. “I know who the real heroes are,” she assured him. “The whole country does, now.”
He nodded grimly. “Hell of a way to have to learn it.”
“Stop being so grim,” she murmured, placing a gentle hand on his forearm. “You’ll scare people.”
He slid his own hand over hers and smiled at her. “You’re a novelty in my life, did you know? I can’t remember ever having a woman for a friend.”
Her dark eyes sparkled. “We all need someone to talk to,” she said. “Think of me as a man with earrings and dress sense.”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I know men who wear earrings. In fact,” he added, “I used to wear one.”
“How exciting! Why did you stop?”
He glowered. “My cousin Chet didn’t think it was dignified for an assistant chief to encourage younger officers to break his dress code in the Jacobsville department,” he said disgustedly.
She slid her free hand over his. “You’ll do, as you are. Thanks for rescuing me from the film maniacs, by the way. Sometimes I wish I could move to a quieter house.”
“They’ll leave by Christmas.”
“Think so?” She sighed. “I hope you’re right. If I have to play Santa Claus, I know a redheaded model who’s getting her own five foot live rattlesnake under the tree.”
He chuckled, and so did she. From a distance, they looked more intimately involved than friends would. Judd Dunn saw that as he hesitated in the doorway with mixed emotions, the foremost of which was a sudden, inexplicable urge to knock Cash Grier through the front window of the restaurant.
6
Christabel and Grier were so involved that they didn’t notice Judd until he pulled out a chair noisily and straddled it beside them. They both glanced at him with surprise.
Her heart jumped, but she tried to hide it. He was angry. Very angry.
“What have I done now?” Christabel asked with studied carelessness.
He glared at her. “What did you say to Tippy? She was in tears when I left.”
She was too unsettled by the bold question to answer it.
Cash wasn’t. His dark eyes flashed. “Crissy didn’t say anything to her. She came up and started flirting with me, and I snubbed her,” he told Judd. “I don’t like models. If she was upset, it was my fault, so don’t blame Crissy.”
Judd’s eyebrows rose. “What have you got against her?”
“Nothing, personally.”
He stared at Cash with open curiosity. “I had to bring her back to the hotel in town. She couldn’t work. The assistant director is furious.”
“Damn, I really hate it for him,” Cash said without inflection. His face tautened. “You can tell him for me that I don’t pander to the egos of spoiled brats of any age.” He got up. “Crissy, I’ll run you back to the ranch. I want to follow up on this lead.”
She stood up, caught between Cash’s anger and Judd’s agitation, without a way to turn. She’d wished that she’d brought her own truck with her.
“You can ride back with me,” Judd said, “and save Cash a trip.”
Great, she thought, I won’t have any lungs left by the time we get there, I’ll be pickled in that expensive perfume Tippy wears. Probably Judd’s vehicle was saturated in it.
“I don’t mind driving her,” Cash said pointedly.
Judd moved closer to the older man. He didn’t blink. His wide-brimmed hat was cocked low over one eyebrow, and there was aggression in every taut line of his powerful body. He was spoiling for a fight.
Cash knew it, and had sense enough not to let it escalate. “Okay,” he said easily. “Crissy, I’ll phone you next week and we’ll take in a movie on my day off.”
“Great,” she said, grinning at him. “Thanks for lunch.”
He shrugged. “I enjoyed it. See you, Judd.”
Judd nodded and Cash moved around him nonchalantly, as if he didn’t perceive the visible threat of Judd’s stance.
Crissy knew he was upset. She supposed it was because of what Cash had said to his model. She picked up her small shoulder bag and slung it over her arm.
He turned and looked down at her disapprovingly. “You could have changed clothes before you came into town looking like that.”
Her eyebrows lifted. “If you don’t like the way I look, then you go out and move cattle and ride fence lines and check water holes, and put out feed and muck out the stalls and...!”
He held up a hand and sighed angrily. “I know we need more men. I don’t like you having to be one of them.”
“I’m a rancher’s daughter,” she reminded him. “I’m not doing anything I haven’t done since Dad first put me on a horse.”
He searched her big, dark eyes, and noted the circles under them, the new lines of strain in her face. “They’re getting on your nerves, aren’t they?” he asked.
She didn’t have to ask who he meant. “I couldn’t change clo
thes because they had my bedroom blocked,” she said flatly. “I’d already made the assistant director mad by leaving my books on the kitchen table. I had to put them back in the truck until he got his scene filmed. He didn’t say anything, but steam was coming out his ears. It’s my house and I have to have permission to use the bathroom. Of course they’re getting on my nerves!” She took a slow breath. “But we need the money. So everything’s okay.”
He turned and went out. She followed him to his big black SUV. He waited until they were both inside, strapped into their seat belts, before he started the engine and spoke again.
“Yes. We need the money,” he agreed quietly. “I hate to keep stressing that, but it’s true. I want you to graduate before you start taking on more work.” His glance at her was eloquent. “You should be going to parties and dancing and having fun, like other women your age, instead of doing the dirtiest jobs on the ranch.”
“I see,” she nodded. “You’re encouraging me to commit adultery so that you can hit me for alimony when you divorce me.”
He hesitated and then burst out laughing. “Damn it!”
She grinned, glancing out over the fields as he drove. “I’ll make up for lost time when it’s all legal. Meanwhile, I’ll kick around with Cash and keep it all low-key.”
“Is it?”
She turned her head toward him. “Is it what?”
“Low-key.”
“Cash is my friend, Judd,” she said. “I know you think I’m disgustingly old-fashioned, but I took a vow and I’m keeping it until I don’t have to anymore.”
His eyebrow jerked. He hated the pleasure the statement gave him. He shouldn’t care if she dated. He wanted his freedom. Even Tippy didn’t threaten that. But Christabel did. She made him light up inside. When he was in the darkest moods, she could bring him out of them with a quip, with a grin, with that outlandish humor of hers. He’d never known anyone else who made him feel...whole. The idea of losing all that to some other man made him uneasy. He kept dreaming about her in a red negligee...
He shrugged off the idea. He wasn’t opening that can of worms. He was recalling something Cash had said, just before he left.
“What lead was Cash going to follow up on?”
“Beats me,” she said with determined carelessness. “He jerked out a pad, jotted something down, and said he had to track down a lead.”
“Oh.”
“You still don’t believe our bull was poisoned?”
He shook his head and then glanced at her. “Get Nick to work on that clover in the pasture that caused the bloat. If we’re going to feed grass to cattle, it needs to be just grass.”
“I will.” She sat beside him without speaking, wishing that she could talk to him the way she talked to Cash, that he’d listen to her ideas and not brush them off as if they were so much dust.
“Why do you think it was poisoned?” he asked suddenly.
She wanted to pour it all out—the cut fences, the pregnant heifers that almost got loose, what Hob had told her, what she’d told Cash. Fred Brewster’s dead bull. But she had no real evidence, and she didn’t want to find herself watched like a hawk every time she rode out alone from now on. She could investigate this. It wasn’t a big deal. Besides, she rationalized, Judd had enough on his mind lately with that brutal, senseless murder he was investigating. She knew that he must have seen the victim. It was probably wearing on him heavily.
“Just something I heard,” she said after a minute. “It was probably just talk, connected with the Clark brothers. They aren’t well liked around here.”
“Tell me about it,” he agreed, diverted. He turned onto the ranch road, whipping up dust. “They’ve been fired from half a dozen jobs in the past year. They don’t stay anywhere long.”
“Where are they from?” she asked curiously.
“Haven’t a clue.”
That was something she might check on herself. She toyed with the window button. “Do you still have that old mock .45 that shoots .22 caliber ammunition?”
“Yes. Why?”
“How about cleaning it up and getting me some bullets for it? I’ve got a yen to take up target shooting.”
“Why?”
“You’re full of questions today.”
“You’re lacking in answers.”
“Cash said he’d teach me to target shoot,” she said, and hoped he wouldn’t get her in trouble by asking Cash to confirm that lie.
“I could teach you,” he said, bristling. “I’m a better shot than he is.”
“I know that, but you’re so busy lately....” She almost bit her tongue for saying that. He was touchy about the investigation of the killing. He hated to talk shop with her, with anyone, because what he had to see was so gory. He didn’t like having his sensitivities exposed.
There was a very long pause.
“I’m not trying to invade your privacy,” she said at once. “I know what you’re having to help investigate, and that you hate talking about it. I wasn’t prying. I read an article about how hard it is for law enforcement people to handle homicides. I know it bothers you, deep inside where it doesn’t show.”
He looked at her intently as he slowed for a turn. His eyes went back to the road. “You know too much about me,” he said inexplicably.
She shrugged. “I’ve lived most of my life around you.”
He laughed hollowly. “I have to look at things that no human being should ever have to see. I’m a lawman. It shouldn’t upset me. I should be able to handle anything that comes along.”
She nodded. “That’s in the article I read,” she said unexpectedly. “That’s why it’s so hard for law enforcement people to admit they need counseling, or even talk to someone about things that bother them. You’re all tough guys and gals. It shouldn’t even dent you, because you’re made of steel.” She turned in her seat, as far as the seat belt would allow, and met his curious eyes. “But you’re not. Part of you is very human, and it hurts to look at people when they’ve been killed. That only means you feel compassion, not that you’re weak.”
He seemed less strained. He stared out the dusty windshield as they approached the ranch house.
She smiled. “Of course, we both know that you can chew up ten penny nails,” she added with a wicked grin.
He let out a chuckle as he braked behind the big truck that was permanently blocking the driveway and went around it on the grass.
“I can’t do that,” she remarked, wincing as she saw the ditch barely two inches from the passenger-side tires. “I just know I’ll run off into that gully if I try.”
“With that attitude, you would.” He pulled up at the front porch. It was strangely deserted. “Why does Cash hate models?” he asked her bluntly.
She hesitated. But her loyalty to Judd was stronger than her loyalty to Cash. “His stepmother was one,” she told him. “She split up his family.”
“Tough.”
She nodded. “He can chew up ten penny nails, too,” she offered.
He didn’t smile. His hand reached out and tugged at a long wisp of blond hair that had escaped from her bun. “You should be wearing pretty clothes and hanging out at the mall.”
She made an insulting noise. “Don’t stereotype me.”
His eyebrows arched. “Was I? I thought young women your age liked those things.”
“I like bulls,” she said. “Beautiful Salers bulls and young Hereford bulls, and crossbreed calves that other ranchers would envy, raised organically.”
He shook his head.
“So do you,” she pointed out.
He chuckled. “Maybe I do.” He twisted the soft hair around his thumb and studied it. His whole face clenched. He hesitated, but only until he saw the quiet compassion in her expression. “This victim was just twenty-five,” he
said abruptly. “She was pregnant. She was lying in the dirt, off the highway in tall grass. She looked so alone, so vulnerable, so helpless, lying there nude except for a ripped blouse. She’d been stabbed repeatedly and mutilated as if the person who did it hated her femininity. I wouldn’t have told her husband how bad it was, but the media reported every gory detail. He ended up being sedated in the hospital.”
Ignoring the certainty that she shouldn’t touch him, involuntarily her fingers touched the strong hand holding her hair. “You’ll catch the guy who did it,” she said firmly.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Guy?”
“She was found in a ditch, and the crime scene was ritualistic. Her hair was haloed around her head, she was lying with her face up and her eyes open in a spread-eagled position. There was a handful of dirt in her mouth. Everyone in law enforcement said that it had all the earmarks of a vengeance killing, as if the killer hated her. Could it be a serial murder? Most serial killers are white men between the ages of twenty and thirty-five, loners, they...”
“Good Lord!” he muttered. “How do you know that?”
“Cash has been keeping me posted and I’ve read all about the crime scene. I like to read about profiling, too,” she said. “And there are lots of these real-life detective shows on TV about how murders are solved. Since I know somebody in the business of catching crooks, it doesn’t hurt to know a little.”
He laughed. “Not scared I’ll come home in a box one night?”
Her fingers caressed his strong hand. “You can take care of yourself,” she said softly. “You’re quick-witted, and you don’t trust people.” She sighed. “But I do say a lot of prayers when you’re working on a case like this.”
He smiled tenderly at her. “That’s nice.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Just don’t get shot, okay? Or if you do, get shot just a little.”
“I’ll do my best,” he promised.
She searched his black eyes slowly. “My quality of life would diminish without you. Even if you marry some hotshot international model.”
Both eyebrows went up. “Marry?”
“Right. Dirty word.” She removed her fingers. “God forbid you should ever put on a ring that isn’t attached to a grenade or something.” She reached for the door handle.