by Alison Kent
He’d been a fool to think so.
Now he sat in Best Bet Realty getting an earful from Anita about Taylor Loft. Her anger was a gift, since she was telling him more than she ought to.
“So, last week, he comes in and wants me to market his office complex for free,” Anita said. “Free. Can you believe the balls on that guy? I’m trying to get established and he wants freebies.”
“Did he give you a reason?” Deck asked.
“Kind of. He claims he’ll be making a killer sale that means he’ll have tons of listings for me down the line.”
“Interesting.” The killer sale could be Callie’s acres. “Did he say anything more about what he’d be selling?”
“Not really. But he waves one of these brochures under my nose.” She pointed at a pamphlet about the ballot measure on the state trust lands. “‘If you’re looking to donate to a cause, this is the one,’ he says. It’s a good proposal, sure, but why does he care?”
“Must be something in it for him.” The ballot measure drafted by a coalition of ranchers, developers and environmentalists would improve how state trust lands were traded and sold, helping cities with infill and giving more money to public schools. Deck had circulated a petition himself to get it on the ballot.
“I’m so sick of his I-have-powerful-friends bullshit,” Anita said. “The man’s an insufferable egotist.”
“Don’t hold back, Anita.” He chuckled. “You think of anything else that might help me, holler, would you?”
“Absolutely,” she said. “This guy needs a takedown.”
“I’m doing my best.” Deck gave a grim smile.
Two hours later, a check of county plat maps proved what Deck suspected. The Triple C backed up to state trust lands. Deck’s county supervisor friend said Loft had been partying with prominent developers in Tucson and Phoenix.
Loft must know something he shouldn’t about the value of the Triple C acres. If there was big money to be made through a sale or trade, it damn well better go to Callie and her father.
Deck would need tangible evidence of any wrongdoing on Taylor’s part. He had an idea Suze Holcomb might know a bit about Loft’s dirty dealings. Taylor’s car was parked in front of town hall, so Deck eased into Ruby’s to wait until Taylor left—early, as was his habit—so Suze would be alone for a chat.
Deck found a stool at the counter. Immediately the pain of Callie hit, as it always did when he had a quiet moment, making his gut ache, his brain burn and his heart jerk in his chest.
“What can I get you?” Ruby asked him.
Callie. Just Callie. “Coffee,” he said.
“What’s up? You look like you lost your best friend and want revenge on the guy who did it.”
“I’ve got things on my mind.”
“Sorry to hear about the fire out at the Triple C. I hear there’s an investigation. How’s everyone doing with that?”
“As well as could be expected. Loft’s scaring the crap out of Callie, pretending he’s got the inside scoop on the investigation.”
Ruby laughed. “Trust me, Taylor is not on the inside of anything. The investigators came in for burgers and I overheard them grousing about having to trip over ‘that local bozo’ all the time. One said if he kept it up they’d file interference charges. They’re sure as hell not confiding in the man.”
“That’s good to hear.” He was relieved to have his theory confirmed. “You hear anything else that Loft is up to? Anything about a big real estate deal?”
“I mostly tune him out, Deck. Sorry.”
The door clanged and Deck looked over to see Tad Renner enter in street clothes. When he caught sight of Deck, he froze, then nodded an uneasy greeting. He took a far booth. The kid wanted to run from him. Had to be a sign of guilt. He’d looked exactly like that when Deck caught him sneaking rides on horses from the Lazy J back when Tad was in high school. Deck hoped to hell he hadn’t cooperated with Loft in some crime.
Deck sipped his coffee. He’d ease over and find out. Watching Tad from the corner of his eye, he saw the waitress bring him a beer, which he slugged back. Not even 5:00 p.m. and the kid was drinking? Something was up. He waited until Tad’s burger arrived, then wandered over and sat across from him.
The kid looked startled. “Deck.”
“Late lunch,” Deck said. “You mind?” He nabbed a fry.
“I was busy earlier.”
“Too busy to eat on your day off? That’s a shame.”
Tad shrugged, then looked down at his food.
“Go ahead and eat,” Deck said. “I was just wondering if you’d heard anything about the fire investigation. The Cummingses are pretty flipped out, as you can imagine.”
Color came into Tad’s cheeks. “It’s an active investigation. I can’t discuss it.” He cleared his throat. “Not that I know anything. It’s not our case.” He looked morose.
His instincts firing like pistons, Deck felt a surge of adrenaline. Take it easy. Go slow. “Sure wish I had something to tell them,” he said slowly. “Calvin’s got heart troubles and Callie’s worked so hard she’s beside herself with worry.”
Tad lifted his gaze, stopped chewing. He swallowed dryly. “I wish I could help, but like I said, we’re not involved.”
“I understand. Except, I heard Taylor pissed off the investigators asking questions. You know why he’s so curious?”
“How would I?” Tad’s eyes flitted away, then back, avoiding Deck’s gaze. “The chief’s cooperating. Trying to be of use.”
“I don’t think it’s that.” Deck had to be very careful here. Tad was loyal to Loft. He wouldn’t even allow Suze to criticize the gold faucets in the station john. But he’d also taken an oath to uphold the law, and that should override his misgivings about ratting out his boss.
“Between you and me, I think Taylor’s up to something.”
Tad swallowed hard. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. He’s been trying to scare Callie, telling her she’s the main suspect for arson on the fire.”
“How would he know…?” Tad blanched and grabbed his beer to suck down the half inch that remained in the bottle.
“Exactly. Why would he want to frighten that poor woman?”
Tad stared at him, not moving.
“That bothered me. So I asked a few questions and it turns out he offered to buy some of the Triple C. To help Callie out, he claims. They were together in high school, you know.”
Tad blinked several times. “Maybe he’s helping her as a friend.” He blinked some more, clearly trying to justify whatever Loft had done in his own mind. He began to tear the label from his beer bottle.
Deck took a deep breath. “That could be. Sometimes we bend rules to help the people we care about. But the chief swore to uphold the laws. If he’s breaking them…”
Tad’s thumbnail stopped tearing. He looked up slowly.
“You’re a good cop, Tad. You have good instincts. You work hard. I know you think the chief did you a favor hiring you, but he was just being smart to snap you up before someone else did.”
Tad shook his head. “I don’t know about that.”
“Trust me, I do. Something’s not right and I get the idea you agree. I’m hoping you’ll help me find it out and fix it.”
Tad’s lips tightened and his jaw muscle rippled.
Easy, Deck warned himself.
Tad went back to shredding the label, more violently now.
“He’s not above the law, Tad. You know it. I know it. He knows it.” Deck hoped to hell he was on the right track. “Deep down he wants to be stopped. Deep down, where he’s a good cop.”
Tad didn’t speak, but he seemed to hold his breath.
“All you have to do here, Tad, is your job. What you swore to do. To uphold the law.”
More silence.
“If you don’t speak up, can you live with the guilt?”
“I might be wrong,” Tad fired at Deck through gritted teeth. “I could wreck his career. He had to be
trying to help.”
“Tell me what happened. We’ll talk it through and figure out what to do about it.” Deck waited, holding his breath. Everything depended on what Tad said next.
15
TAD HUNG HIS HEAD for a long silent moment. Finally he lifted it, looking miserable. “It’s my damn bladder.”
“Excuse me?” Deck said.
“I had to take a leak. That night. The night of the fire. The chief told me I could go home, but I needed to relieve myself so I circled around and pulled over into a stand of trees. While I was at it, I happened to look up and see the chief put something—looked like paint cans—into his trunk. I thought it was odd, but didn’t worry about it. Then the next day, I realized I’d left my tool kit out at the ranch. I went to borrow the chief’s. He was over at the diner, so I opened the trunk with the spare key. Our vehicles are department property. I’d been in the trunk before, so it wasn’t a big deal.” He shrugged, then swallowed hard.
“There were the cans. Completely black with soot, so I knew he’d taken them from the fire. I figured he’d collected evidence….” He shrugged.
“But you didn’t believe that. Not really.”
“It wasn’t procedure. It was…odd.”
“What did you do?”
“I checked later in the day and the cans were gone. I thought maybe he’d turned them over to the investigators.”
“Did you ask?”
“That might have raised questions. There had to be an explanation. I figured it would work out.” But he hadn’t asked Loft, so he must suspect him. “He could have been protecting the Cummingses,” Tad said hopefully.
“He tampered with evidence, good intentions or not. He broke the law. And, for the record, I don’t believe his intentions were good, Tad.”
Numbly Tad nodded. “This job is all I ever wanted.”
“You’re not going to lose your job. Not for doing the right thing. Loft is in more trouble than this, I’m sure, and I’m going prove it. I will need your help.”
Tad looked away, his face going blank as he figured out what he would say. Finally he looked back at Deck. “I’ll do my job,” he said gravely.
“That’s all I ask. I’m going over to talk to Suze, to find out what she knows, as soon as Loft leaves the station.”
“I doubt she knows anything,” he said, looking worried. “She doesn’t like the chief. I don’t want her losing her job because she spoke out of turn, gave opinions, not facts.”
“Come with me, then. We’ll talk to her together.”
“What choice do I have?” Tad seemed resigned to his fate, but not happy about it.
This was good. Deck was closing in on the guy. Whether Loft set the fire and tried to cover his tracks or was trying to set Callie up as a suspect, he was up to no good. Deck figured Loft was trying to push Callie into selling to him.
“Whatever you need,” Suze said once Deck explained what he was after.
“Not so fast,” Tad said, holding her hand. “Only say what you know for a fact, Suze. Don’t speculate. Don’t guess.”
“I know what to say, Tad,” she said. “I don’t like a lot of things going on around here and neither do you. Look at the tires on your car. Bald as hell. And your crummy Kevlar vest couldn’t stop a BB gun.”
“Suze.”
“I think Chief Loft paid for the fix-up in here by faking a Homeland Security grant. He faxed the application and he left it in the machine. I read some of it. It was supposed to pay for new equipment and upgrades that we have yet to see.”
“Can you get your hands on the application?” Deck asked.
“Probably. He never puts anything back. I can check tomorrow as soon as he opens his office door. His in-basket is piled high. And why does he lock his office, anyway? What’s so secret? All the time, he’s in there on the phone with the door closed. I know he does his real estate business on the city clock.”
“I don’t suppose you overheard any of these calls?”
“Not really. But I’ve taken plenty of messages.” She reached over for her message pad. “There are NCR copies of all of them.”
Deck flipped through the pages, noticing several state officials, including someone from the Bureau of Land Management. “This is interesting,” he said. “Can I keep a few of these pages?”
“Take the whole book. I’ll start a new one.”
Deck asked more questions, probing what Suze might have seen that would help them. Finally she remembered noticing a map on Loft’s desk he’d tried to cover with papers when she entered. The corner was sticking out, stamped in big red letters, Proprietary. Not for Release.
She would look for the map, too.
“You have enough from Suze?” Tad asked Deck, putting a protective arm around her shoulder.
“For now, yes, but I’m going to need help from you both tomorrow. Suze, you’ll look for the application and the map. Tad, I need you to check the chief’s trunk for any evidence of the cans. If he didn’t clean up, there should be soot.”
“I’ll photograph what I find and take samples.”
“As soon as you two find what there is to find, I’m going to confront him, bluff enough to get him to confess. I’ll make sure he can’t tell I’ve talked to you two. I’ll record the conversation. It won’t be admissible, but it might lead him to confess and it will be something to get the sheriff interested.”
“I’ll listen through the intercom,” Suze said.
“I don’t want you in any danger,” Tad said.
“I can’t imagine Loft would do anything violent,” Deck said. “You’ll be nearby, Tad, just in case. I’m betting he’ll break right off, but if he doesn’t he’ll try to cover his tracks. Your job is to follow him, see where he goes, who he talks to, what he does. Whatever evidence we have, we’ll take to the sheriff.”
“Why not go there now?” Tad said. “Let them investigate.”
“We don’t have much more than hunches yet. Even if they believed us, they’d need warrants and that takes time. Time Loft could use to destroy evidence. As a citizen I can do and say far more than the sheriff can.”
Tad nodded. “You sure you want to do this, Suze?”
“He’s hurting people, Tad. The Cummingses. You. The department. The whole town. We have to stop him.”
Tad turned to Deck. “Whatever you need, we’ll do.”
“I’ll make sure you don’t lose your jobs,” Deck said. “We’ll nail this guy, I promise.”
Heading home, he decided to wait to tell Callie about Loft until after they’d enacted his plan. With any luck, tomorrow Loft would fold like a bad hand and he could relieve Callie of some of her worries. That and the loan seemed to be all he could do to help her at the moment.
THE NEXT DAY Deck was restless as he went about his ranch duties, listening for the phone. Finally, at noon, Suze called to tell him she’d found the map and the phony grant among Loft’s papers. So far, so good. As soon as Tad had examined Loft’s trunk, Deck would go after the guy.
Two hours later, Tad called. Sure enough, there’d been an ash outline of the cans in Loft’s trunk. Even better, Tad had found the cans themselves. In his arrogance, Loft had tossed them into a Dumpster that hadn’t been emptied yet. Tad had pictures, an ash sample and the cans stashed safely away.
A half hour later, Deck entered the station. Suze’s eyes went wide and she took a jerky breath.
“It’ll be fine,” he said to reassure her. “I’m set.” He patted the small recorder in his pocket. “Leave the intercom on, okay?”
She nodded, then said loudly, “He’s busy, Mr. O’Neill. He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Wish me luck,” Deck said, then marched to Loft’s office and shoved open the door.
Loft was on the phone. He looked up, angry, then told his caller he would call him back.
“I’m busy, cowboy.” He tried to sound fierce, but his eyes jerked around. “What’s so damn urgent?”
“It’s over,�
� he said flatly. “You were seen.”
“Seen where?” The man’s face went utterly still and his eyes went cold. He knew exactly what Deck meant.
“It turns out we had a wandering guest the night of the fire. He happened to see you take the cans out of the rubble and put them in your trunk.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I think you do. He’s been in Europe since then. He called back the investigators who wanted to interview him and they were quite interested in what happened to those cans.”
“That’s insane,” Loft said, his jaw jutting forward. He stood. “Get out of my office, O’Neill.”
“Soon enough. I thought I’d give you a chance to clear this up before I take it to the sheriff. If you turn yourself in, settle this now, you could keep from racking up more charges.”
“You’re full of shit.”
“At first I thought maybe you set the fire yourself and were taking the cans to cover your tracks. You were on the scene pretty damn fast, after all.”
Loft was staring, fiddling with paper on his desk.
“But then I realized you wouldn’t be that stupid. You knew they’d notice the scene had been disturbed, that something had been taken. There would be burn patterns around the varnish cans, but no cans. Why would you do something so obvious?”
“That’s enough. Get out. I don’t have to listen to this.” Loft leaned across his desk, trying to be menacing.
“Then I figured it out,” Deck said. “You were framing Callie. You knew she’d handled the varnish cans. You knew she’d tell the investigators the truth. You tried to scare her by claiming she was a suspect before she was, but even if she didn’t get charged, you would have slowed the investigation long enough to put her in financial crisis. Either way, you’d get the river acres for a song. Maybe even be a hero in her eyes.”
“I would never hurt Callie. My offer was generous.”