Charlie now checked his watch with a frown. Time to leave. He was picking Grace up at ten for William’s funeral. After the ceremony was over, they were driving into Oklahoma City to visit Hope. It was going to be a grim, long day.
He left the ranch and headed toward Grace’s place. Charlie felt that tingle of excitement, a crazy swell of emotion in his chest—the same feeling he’d always gotten when he knew she was coming into Oklahoma City for the weekend. He would spend the entire week before filled with eager anticipation, half sick by wanting the days of the week to fly by quickly. By Saturday night, he’d be sick again, dreading the coming of Sunday when she’d return to Cotter Creek. He’d never asked her for more than what she gave him, was afraid that in asking he’d only push her away from him.
He shoved these thoughts out of his head as he pulled up in front of her house. She was waiting for him on the porch, a solitary woman in an elegant black dress. He got out of the car as she approached, and his heart squeezed at the dark, deep sadness in her eyes.
“Good morning,” he said, as he opened the car door to let her in. “Are you ready for this?”
“I don’t think you’re ever ready for something like this,” she replied.
He closed the door, went back around to the driver’s seat and got in. “You look tired,” he said, as he headed toward the cemetery. The wake had been the night before and was followed by an open house at Grace’s place.
“After everyone left last night, I had trouble going to sleep,” she said. “I’m sure I’ll sleep better once the funeral is over and I get a chance to see that Hope’s okay.”
He nodded. “Zack turned over copies of William’s financial records to me. I spent last night going through them looking for any anomalies that might raise a flag.”
“Let me guess, you didn’t find anything.”
“Nothing that looked at all suspicious.” He felt the weight of her gaze on him.
“We aren’t doing very well at coming up with an alternate suspect,” she observed.
“Unfortunately it isn’t as easy as just pulling a name out of a hat. I intend to make a case that Justin is responsible.”
“Then why hasn’t he been arrested?” she asked. “Zack has made it pretty clear he thinks Justin was involved.”
“Thinking and proving are two different things. Unfortunately Justin’s roommate has provided him with an alibi for the time of the murder.” His roommate, Sam Young, certainly was no paragon of virtue. Sam worked in a tattoo parlor and had a reputation for being a tough guy.
They fell silent for the rest of the drive to the cemetery. When they arrived, the parking lot was already filled with cars, indicating that there was a huge turnout of people to say goodbye to William Covington.
The Cotter Creek Cemetery was a pretty place, with plenty of old shade trees. Wilbur Cummins, the caretaker, took particular pride not only in maintaining the grounds but also in making sure that all the headstones were in good shape. A plethora of flowers filled the area.
As they waited for the ceremony to begin, people walked over to give their regards to Grace.
“I’m so sorry for your loss,” Savannah West said, as she reached for Grace’s hand. Savannah worked for the Cotter Creek newspaper and was married to one of the brothers who ran West Protective Services.
“Thanks.” Grace turned and looked at Charlie. “Savannah is one of my best customers at the shop.”
Savannah shoved a strand of wild red hair away from her face. “Still no arrest in the attempted robbery and assault?”
Grace shook her head. “I wasn’t able to give Zack any kind of a description, so I’m not expecting any arrest.”
“The criminals are running amuck in Cotter Creek. Zack is just sick about it and about what’s happening with Hope,” Savannah said.
Charlie felt the wave of Grace’s despair as she nodded stiffly and her eyes grew glassy with tears. Savannah grabbed Grace’s hand once again. “Zack was against making the arrest, but that ass of a prosecutor Alan Connor insisted.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Charlie said. “Hope is innocent, and we’ll prove it where it counts, in a court of law.”
Grace placed a hand on his arm and smiled gratefully. Then it was time for the service to begin. As the preacher gave the eulogy, Charlie scanned the crowd.
Grace was right. Other than Justin, they hadn’t managed to come up with a single lead that would point them away from Hope.
It was an eclectic crowd. Ranchers uncomfortable in their Sunday suits stood beside men Charlie didn’t know, men who wore their expensive power suits with casual elegance. He assumed these were business associates of William’s, and he noticed Zack West had those men in his sights as well.
Was it possible that William had been working on a business deal nobody knew about? Something that might have stirred up a motive for murder? At this point, he was willing to grasp at any alternative theory to Hope being a murderer.
Lana and Leroy Racine stood side by side, Leroy’s big arm around his wife’s shoulders as she wept uncontrollably. Certainly they had nothing to gain by William’s death; rather, it was just the opposite. They stood to lose both their jobs and their home.
The only people who had a lot to gain by William’s death were Grace and Hope, both of whom Charlie would have staked his life were innocent. But how had Hope gotten drugged? Who had managed to get into the house without breaking a window or a door? Who had killed William?
What he hoped was that Zack was doing his job and would give him a heads-up if he discovered any leads. Right now, coming up with a reasonable defense for Hope seemed impossible.
Grace remained stoic throughout the funeral, standing rigidly beside him. An island of strength, that was how he’d always thought of her. An island of a woman who took care of herself and her own needs, a woman who had never really needed him. And he was a man who needed to be needed.
When the ceremony was finally over and the final well-wishing had been given, most of the crowd headed for their cars, and Charlie gently took hold of Grace’s arm.
“You ready to go?”
She nodded wearily. “I loved him, you know. He was as loving and kind a father as I could have ever asked for.” She leaned into Charlie.
They were halfway to the car when a tall, gray-haired man who greeted Grace with a friendly smile stopped them. She introduced him as Hank Weatherford, William’s closest neighbor.
“I was wondering if we could sit down together when you get a chance,” Hank said. Grace looked at him with curiosity. He continued, “I’ve been trying to talk William into selling me the five acres of land between his place and mine. It’s got nothing on it but weeds and an old shed. Now that he’s gone I thought maybe you’d be agreeable to the idea.”
Charlie narrowed his eyes as he stared at the older man. Interesting. A land dispute over five acres hardly seemed like a motive for murder, but Charlie smelled a contentious relationship between Hank Weatherford and William.
“Mr. Weatherford, I’ll have to get back to you. I haven’t decided yet what I’m going to do with the estate,” Grace said.
He nodded. “Just keep in mind that I’d like to sit down and talk with you about those five acres.”
“I’ll keep it in mind,” Grace agreed.
“That was interesting,” Charlie said once he and Grace were in his car. “What’s the deal with these five acres?”
“William always talked about having it cleaned up and maybe putting in a pool or a tennis court, but he never got around to it. I imagine Hank is tired of looking at the mess.” She shot him a sharp glance. “Surely you don’t think Hank had anything to do with William’s death.”
“Take nothing for granted, Grace. You’d be amazed at why people commit murder.”
From the cemetery they went to her place, where they both changed clothes for the drive to Oklahoma City. Charlie had brought with him a pair of jeans and a short-sleeved light blue dress shirt, and he changed in
her guest room.
She changed from her somber dress into a pair of jeans and a peach-colored blouse that enhanced the blue of her eyes and her blond coloring.
By one o’clock they were on the road. They hoped to get to the detention center by three, which would let them visit with Hope for an hour.
Grace seemed a million miles away as they drove. She stared out the window, not speaking, and she had a lost, uncertain look that was so unlike her, and it broke Charlie’s heart just a little bit more.
She was still in his heart, as deeply and profoundly as she had been when they’d been seeing each other. He didn’t want to love her anymore and knew that she certainly didn’t love him, but he didn’t know how to stop loving her. Over the past week it had become the thing that he did better than anything else.
He’d known when he’d gotten involved in this case that it was going to end badly. He could live with a broken heart, but if he didn’t figure out how to save Hope, he knew he’d break Grace’s heart once again. Charlie wasn’t sure he could live with that.
As Grace stared out at the passing scenery, she was surprised to realize she was thinking of her mother. There were times when she glanced at herself in the mirror and saw a glimpse of the woman who had deserted them.
How could a woman who’d been a loving mother and good wife just pack her bags and leave without a backward glance?
And how long did it take before thoughts of her didn’t hurt anymore?
She hadn’t told anyone about Elizabeth, although she was sure most people in town knew about the vanishing act. Now she wanted to talk about it, especially to Charlie. She turned to look at him.
He looked so amazingly handsome, so cool and in control. She knew it was a façade, that he was worried about Hope, about her.
“You’ve asked me several times over the last couple of days about my mother.” She tried to ignore the coil of tension that knotted tight in her stomach.
He shot her a quick glance. “You said she was out of the country.”
She twisted her fingers together in her lap, fighting both the anger and despair the conversation worked up inside her. “The truth is I don’t have any idea where she is.”
He said nothing, obviously waiting for her to explain.
She sighed and stared out the window for a long moment, then looked at him once again. “Two years ago while William was at a meeting and Hope was at school, my mother apparently packed a couple of suitcases and left.”
Charlie frowned. “And you don’t know where she went?”
“Don’t have a clue.” Grace tried to force a light tone but couldn’t. She heard the weight of her pain hanging in her words. “I don’t know where she went or why she left us without an explanation.”
“And you haven’t heard from her since?”
“Not a letter, not a postcard, nothing.” She twisted her fingers more tightly together. “I don’t mind so much for me. I mean, I’m a grown woman, but how could she walk out on Hope?”
“What did William have to say about it?” he asked.
“He said they’d had a fight the night before. At first he thought she’d just gone to a friend’s house to cool off and would be back before nightfall. But she didn’t come home that day, or the next, or the next. He was utterly heartbroken.”
“Did you go to the sheriff?”
“Yeah, but a lot of good it did us. Jim Ramsey was the sheriff at the time. Did you know him?”
He nodded. “I know there was a big scandal about his involvement in a murder and that Zack stepped into his shoes.”
“William went to file a missing persons report, but Ramsey insisted there wasn’t much he could do. Mom was of legal age. She’d taken her clothes and things with her, and if she didn’t want to be a wife and mother anymore that was her right.”
She’d had no right, Grace thought. She’d left behind three broken hearts that would never heal. “William hired a private investigator to search for her, but he never had anything to report, he never had a lead to follow.”
Charlie was quiet for a long moment. “Why didn’t you tell me this when we were seeing each other? It must have happened right before we met.”
“Oh Charlie, there were a lot of important things we didn’t talk about when we were together. We talked about whether we wanted to go out to dinner or stay in. You talked about your work and I talked about mine, but we didn’t talk about what was going on with our lives when we were apart.”
“You’re right,” he said flatly. “And it was one of the biggest mistakes we made. We should have talked about the important things.”
Too late now. Grace looked out the window once again while a plethora of thoughts whirled through her head. It seemed as if the last two years of her life had been nothing more than a continuous journey of loss. First her mother, then Charlie, then William. And if something didn’t break the case against her sister wide open, then Hope would be another loss.
A black, yawning despair rose up inside her. She’d been strong through it all, focused on getting from one day to the next without allowing herself any weakness.
At this moment, sitting next to the man who’d betrayed her trust, with thoughts of her mother and Hope heavy in her heart, she felt more alone than ever before.
“If I lose Hope, I won’t have anything else to hang onto,” she said. “My entire family has been ripped away from me, and I don’t understand any of it.”
“I’m going to see what I can do to find your mother,” Charlie said.
She looked at him in surprise. “How are you going to do that?”
“I doubt if Jim Ramsey ever did anything to find her. It’s tough for somebody to just disappear. She had a driver’s license and tax records. With her Social Security number, we can start a search.”
Grace frowned thoughtfully. “At this point, I’m not sure I care about finding her. Betrayal is a tough thing to get past.”
He flashed her a quick glance. “Forgiveness is the first step on a path to healing.”
“Forgiveness is for fools,” she exclaimed with a touch of bitterness.
They didn’t speak again for the remainder of the drive. The Beacon Juvenile Detention Center was on the south side of Oklahoma City. Set on twenty acres of hard, red clay, the building was a low, flat structure surrounded by high fences and security cameras. The place had a cold, institutional look that Grace found horrifying.
As Charlie parked in the lot designated for visitors, a lump formed in Grace’s throat as she thought of her sister inside.
Hope had never been anywhere but in the loving environment of William’s home. How could she possibly cope with being locked up in this place with its barbed wire and truly bad kids?
“She doesn’t belong here, Charlie,” she said, as the two of them walked toward the entrance. “She isn’t like the other kids in this place.”
“I know, but right now there’s nothing we can do about it.” He reached for her hand, and again she was struck by how he seemed to know exactly what she needed and when.
She clung tightly to his hand, feeling as if it were an anchor to keep her from going adrift. The afternoon heat radiated up from the concrete walk, and Grace kept her gaze focused on the door.
Once inside, Charlie identified himself as Hope’s lawyer and Grace as her sister. They were told to lock up their personal items, including Charlie’s belt, and then were led to a small interview room with security cameras in all four corners and a guard in a khaki uniform outside the door.
Grace sat at the table with Charlie at her side and waited for her sister to be escorted inside. “We need to go back to the house, Charlie. We need to tear apart both William’s and Hope’s rooms to see if we can come up with something that will exonerate Hope.”
“The sheriff and his men have already been through everything at the house,” he said.
“Maybe they missed something.” She heard the despair in her own voice. Being in this place made her feel desperate,
for herself and for her sister. “You’ve got to do something, Charlie. I can’t lose Hope.”
“Grace, look at me.” His eyes were dark, his gaze intense. “Right now we can’t do anything to get Hope out of here. What I have to do is be prepared for when her trial comes up and make sure I do my job then. You told me when you came to me that it was because you needed a sneaky devil, and I was as close to the devil as you could find. You have to be patient now and trust that when the time is right, this sneaky devil will do his job.”
Grace drew a tremulous sigh, the hysteria that had momentarily gripped her assuaged by the confidence she saw shining in Charlie’s eyes.
At that moment the door opened and Hope walked in.
Charlie could tell the hour had passed too quickly for the two sisters, but at least Grace was leaving with the knowledge Hope was physically all right, although she was frightened and depressed.
It twisted his heart seeing the two of them together, how they’d clung to each other. Grace had remained calm and confident in front of Hope, assuring her that everything was going to be all right. It was only as they left the place that she seemed to wilt beneath the pressure and remained unusually silent.
They stopped on the way home for dinner at a little café that advertised itself as having the best barbecue in the state. The boast was vastly exaggerated. It was a quiet ride back, and Charlie could tell Grace’s thoughts were on the sister she’d left behind. The sun was sinking low in the sky as they reached the edge of Cotter Creek.
He’d been stunned by what she’d told him about her mother. Charlie knew about grieving for a mother. He’d been devastated by the loss of his mother, and he’d had four years of preparing himself for her death. The death of a woman with cancer was understandable. The disappearance of a mother was not.
Hope was all she had left, and if he didn’t manage to somehow come up with a defense for the young girl, then Grace would be truly alone and would probably hate him all over again.
He couldn’t let that happen. As they drove down Main Street, he finally broke the silence that had grown to mammoth proportions. “We’ll go back to the house tomorrow. I’m not sure we’ll find anything helpful, but we’ll search those rooms and see if anything turns up. I’ll call Zack tomorrow and see if he’s come up with anything new. We’ll talk to Justin’s roommate again and try to find a crack in the alibi.”
The Rancher Bodyguard Page 8