by Joanna Wayne
“Or my barn.”
This time she kissed him.
It was long minutes later when she settled back into the letters. And another hour before she finally noticed a pattern that piqued her interest. She reread one particular letter, excitement building with every word.
“Can you come over here a minute, Clint? I think I may have hit on something here.”
Chapter Thirteen
Clint left the antique metal trunk he’d been perched on and peered over Darlene’s shoulder. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
She handed him a yellowed letter, some of the words smudged from humidity and time. “Read the date on that letter.”
He did. Nothing unusual registered with him. The letter opened with the young Jim McCord saying he was sorry for the time lapse since the last letter. He’d been busy. Clint skimmed the remaining three paragraphs quickly, and then a second time since he found nothing to trigger any excitement.
“He wrote this four months before he lost his leg. He talks about the weather and asks about the local highschool basketball game. That’s all I see. Am I missing something?”
She waved a stack of letters she had clasped in her hand. “McCord wrote his mother faithfully every Wednesday for a year. Long, detailed letters that described the country, the men in his unit, the camaraderie that was developing among them. Every positive thing he could think of. The letters are so engrossing, they’d make a wonderful book.”
“So, he was a dutiful son. How does that fit in with what we’re looking for?”
“There was a span of seven weeks between the last letter and the one I showed you. Seven weeks when he apparently had no contact with his mother.”
“He wrote that he was busy. Did you find something that would indicate otherwise?”
“A pattern that developed—a mood swing that seemed to evolve around a man he referred to as Whacko.”
Clint settled on the blanket beside Darlene, a stir of anticipation sweetening the stale attic air. “Show me what you mean by ‘mood swing.’”
“For nearly a year, the letters were only upbeat, but slowly a touch of negativism crept in. Most of the time his goal in writing seemed to be to reassure his mother, but just before the time lapse, it seemed he was the one who needed reassuring.”
“The perils of war. He was probably seeing more dangerous action.”
“No. At first I thought that. But I read the letters again, and the concern seems to be about the soldier he called Whacko. He asks his mother what would make a man lash out at the people who looked to him for support. And in this one letter...” She shuffled through a sheaf of letters and pulled one from the stack as if she were drawing from an Old Maid hand. Dropping the others to her lap, she carefully slipped another letter from a torn envelope. “This one made me shudder.” She read the letter out loud.
“I can hear the fire from a nearby battle as I write this letter. Men are dying. Yet even while I sit here thinking how fortunate I am to be alive, part of me feels guilty. Why was their life stolen from them and mine spared?
“If I return from the war in good health, I will owe something back to the God who sees me through this. I will no longer be content to live peacefully on my ranch without any thought for the millions of people who are less fortunate than we have always been.”
A choking knot swelled in Clint’s throat as he listened to Darlene. This was a side of McCord he didn’t know. The man when he’d been even younger than Clint was now. The age he’d been right before Clint’s mother had first met him, a wounded soldier coming home from the war.
Darlene cleared her throat, smoothed the wrinkles from the page.
“But death is not what troubles me the most. I fear most what friends do to friends. Not all friends, of course, but one man in particular who turns on his friends for no apparent reason. The name Whacko was given in jest when we first met him, but it was more apt than we’d ever dreamed. The man has gone over the edge, and still we are forced to follow his command or risk a court martial.”
The rest of the letter was an apology for sharing his dark thoughts with his mother. He assured her he’d be fine and that he’d write as soon as the A-Team he’d been assigned to returned from an upcoming mission.
“What do you think, Clint? Could this be the link we’re looking for? It’s far-fetched, I know, but do you think this Whacko could be the man who’s threatening McCord now? The man who attacked me on Glenn Road and tried to kill me in the hospital?”
Clint exhaled—a long, slow, exasperated release—and stretched to his feet. He thought best standing, or, more often, pacing. The cramped attic offered little opportunity for that, but he paraded the small square of open space, his mind wrestling with possibilities.
“Thirty years is a long time to carry a grudge,” he said, more talking things through to himself than making conversation. “But I guess it’s possible. If something happened between the two of them while they were on that mission. Something that stuck in Whacko’s craw and agitated him over the years. Or if McCord’s recent notoriety has angered him, reawakened the bitter feelings and made him determined to put an end to McCord’s bid for the presidency. But what could McCord have done to him to make——”
Darlene sucked in a ragged breath. Her face had turned in seconds from healthy pink to a ghastly white.
Clint knelt and took her hand. “What’s wrong?”
“The hallucination. The soldiers. The jungle. The murder. Could McCord have killed one of Whacko’s friends? Or perhaps he killed Whacko, and one of his buddies has come back to exact revenge?”
She collapsed against him, her heart beating so hard that he could feel it through their clothes. He stroked her hair, wanting to comfort her and not having the slightest idea how. Not when what she feared smoldered in his own mind as well. Had James McCord been a party to murder? And if he had killed someone, had he followed Whacko’s orders or had the deed been his own?
“There’s no use speculating, Darlene. There are records on battles, on who was killed on what dates, on which men were assigned to specific units. It’ll take some digging, but it’s not impossible to find.”
“Something happened on that mission, Clint. I know it did. Something that changed McCord’s life. He didn’t write his mother for seven weeks after that, and when he did finally write, the letters were short and impersonal, almost as if he were writing them to a stranger.”
“Something happened. Now we have to find out what. And hope this incident is related to the problems we’re having in Vaquero.”
“No matter what I saw in the hallucination, I can’t believe McCord is a murderer. I won’t believe it.”
“Such loyalty toward a man you don’t even remember.” Clint massaged her shoulders and the back of her neck. He could feel the tightness of the muscles and imagine the strain she was going through.
“He was my friend. Surely I have better judgment than that. And millions of Americans trust him.” She put her hands on top of his as he massaged. “What about you, Clint? Do you believe he could have committed murder?”
He struggled with his answer. Not to protect Darlene; she didn’t need or expect to be protected from the truth. He wasn’t so sure about himself. “I don’t know, Darlene. I just don’t know.”
She leaned into his hand, trapping it between her cheek and her shoulder. “Then that’s your answer. I hope it’s not based on the fact that he helped me get a position at Quantico. That wouldn’t be fair to him or to me, and is certainly not pertinent to this issue.”
He pulled away at the sound of feet climbing the ladder outside the attic opening.
“Are you two going to stay up here all day? I can’t wait dinner much longer,” Mary called, sticking her head with its tightly coiffed gray hair through the opening.
“You didn’t need to cook for us,” Darlene answered, her voice steady and solid again.
“Speak for yourself,” Clint said, grabbing his hat. “I’m famished, and M
ary’s the best cook north of the Rio Grande.” He shoved a box out of Darlene’s path with the toe of his boot. He was ready for food and action. It set better with him than dealing with McCord’s emotional trappings from the past, and a whole lot better than dealing with his own feelings about a man he’d lost faith in years ago.
In spite of everything, he’d never wanted to believe in any man’s innocence more than he wanted to believe in James McCord’s.
DINNER WAS TO BE SERVED on a glassed-in porch that jutted off from the huge kitchen. Mary headed Darlene in that direction, refusing any help with putting the finishing touches on the meal. The table was set for six, but so far Darlene was the only one present besides the busy cook. Clint had washed his hands and then excused himself to use the phone.
The outside temperature hovered in the fifties, but the sunshine beaming through the window warmed the room so much that Darlene shrugged out of her sweater. Staring through the glass, she absorbed the quiet pastoral scene, and hoped it would still the dark thoughts that were running rampant through her mind.
Grasses, yellowed from a taste of early frost, carpeted the rolling hills. Beyond the pasture and the last row of barbwire, a border of green cedar and maples with a remaining smattering of gold and yellow leaves faded into the russet hues of bald rock.
She turned as Mary entered the door carrying a platter overflowing with fried chicken. “May I help you with that?”
“Not with this,” she said, plopping it down in the dead center of the large round table. She stopped to smooth a wrinkle in the red-plaid cloth. “But I’ve got plenty more in the kitchen that needs totin’ in here. I’d appreciate the help.”
Darlene followed Mary back into the kitchen.
“If you can handle the mashed potatoes and gravy, I can get the rest.”
“You mean there’s more?”
“Not much. The biscuits are browning, and I’ve got winter turnip greens I just picked this morning. Then there’s the banana pudding for dessert.”
“You must have been cooking since daybreak.”
“It didn’t take me any time to put this little meal together. Nothing fancy—not like I try to do when the senator’s here. Not that he complains about anything, but he’s here so seldom, I try to cook his favorites.”
Mary peeked inside the oven and wiped her hands on her apron. A habit, Darlene decided, since her hands were clean and dry.
“I’m so thankful Clint’s here, doing what he can to help the senator,” Mary said, fingering a row of eyelet trim on her apron. “Mr. McCord’s a proud man, and he doesn’t like to ask for help, but he knows what a good lawman Clint is. When Clint used to come over with Levi and her friends—you know, church socials and such—I’d catch Mr. McCord watching him. ‘He’s a fine young man, that Clint Richards.’ That’s what he used to say. If he said it once, he said it a dozen times.”
“But he told Freddie Caulder he didn’t want Clint involved in this.”
“Well, like I said, he hates to admit he can’t handle his own problems. He was quick enough to hire Thornton Roberts to oversee security at the ranch when the media started busting in here and those millennium end-of-theworlders started putting up pickets. But you should have heard him howl when Whitt Emory told him he was hiring a bodyguard for him and that he was to take Bernie with him every time he left the ranch.”
“It looks like Mr. Emory won the argument.”
“He didn’t, but he should have. If the senator had taken Bernie along with the two of you last week, you might not have gotten your head bashed in. You don’t know how sad I was to hear you’d lost your memory for good.”
“Where did you hear that?”
Mary’s face flushed beet red. She grabbed a pot holder and rescued her biscuits from the oven. “I’m not spreading gossip, Darlene,” she said, finally turning back to face her. “I was told it’s common knowledge.”
“You were told by whom?”
“Well, I head it from Susan Peters, and she heard it from Sally at the coffee shop, but she swore she got it firsthand from one of the nurses at the hospital.” Mary stacked the hot biscuits on a plate, her fingers flying so fast that they didn’t suffer from the heat. Not until she was finished did she turn to lock gazes with Darlene. “It is true, isn’t it?”
“If it is, no one told me about it.” Darlene tamped down the aggravation rumbling inside her. Mary meant well. It was senseless to take her anger out on the messenger. She’d save it until she found out who’d started the rumor, and why.
They were spared further conversation on the touchy subject by the arrival of Bernie and Thornton, with Clint a few steps behind them.
“Did someone tell Caulder dinner was ready?” Bernie asked, forking a chicken breast and passing the plate on.
Mary stopped pouring tea into the ice-filled glasses. “I beeped him. He said he’d fix himself a plate later, when everyone was through.”
“Humph. Guess he thinks he’s too good to eat with us. I notice he ran in here fast enough yesterday when that guy Bledsoe showed up.”
Clint sat the bowl of potatoes back on the table with a noisy clump. “What was Bledsoe doing out here?”
“You’d have to ask Caulder about that,” Thornton said. “Some big secret between the three of them.”
“The three of them?”
“Bledsoe, Caulder and McCord.” This time it was Bernie supplying the information. “I’m on the payroll for the specific purpose of protecting McCord, yet he gets hurt and runs off to lick his wounds and plan his payback with his two old army buddies.”
Clint put down his fork. “I didn’t know they were all in the army together.”
“That’s what Thornton told me,” Bernie said.
“I don’t know it for a fact myself,” Thornton cut in, “but I overheard Bledsoe and Caulder talking yesterday when they were trying to be so secretive. They were whispering about some photographs taken in Vietnam. I just took it to mean they’d been stationed together.”
“How did you hear them if they were whispering?” Darlene asked, trying to make sense of the conversation.
Thornton smiled. “I don’t give away my trade secrets, Miss Darlene, especially to FBI agents.”
The conversation veered off to FBI policies and a half-dozen other topics. Darlene listened with half her mind, while the other half tangled with the day’s discoveries and the continuing saga of how she’d gotten dragged into McCord’s mess.
When the meal was over, she helped Mary clean up the kitchen, while the men talked in the other room. Ordinarily she would have loved listening to Mary’s stories about the Altamira and the senator. Today, it was the men’s talk she longed to hear.
DARLENE SAT on the top step of the ranch foreman’s front porch, watching a couple of sassy squirrels playing chase at the foot of a pecan tree. Caulder stood, his back pressed against the wooden column that supported the roof. Clint had made a seat of the porch rail. They each nursed a cup of coffee that had sat in the pot until it screwed your mouth into puckered circles when you tried to drink it.
The appearance was of friends chatting on an early winter afternoon—unless you looked too closely at the faces of the men in question or picked up on the tension that shortened their sentences into darting questions and accusations.
“I promised McCord that Darlene would be on a flight back to the capital this morning,” Caulder snapped, staring at her as if she were the troublemaker in all of this. “You made a liar out of me.”
“I’ll take responsibility for Darlene.”
“No, I take responsibility for the decision not to leave,” she said. “I’m an adult, not a child to be ordered around.”
“Neither of you know what you’re getting into,” Caulder said.
“We’re not ‘getting’ into it. We’re already in it. McCord took care of that when he invited Darlene down here and introduced her to a killer.”
“All the same, I’m warning you, Clint. You can’t stop this m
an. I’m not even sure McCord can.”
“Then why doesn’t McCord ask for help?”
“Because it’s his fight. He didn’t start it, but he’s the one who’ll have to end it.”
“No, Caulder.” Clint slid from the porch rail and stepped closer to the foreman. “You know better. You’re just parroting what McCord told you to say. And this isn’t a deep, dark secret anymore. I know what happened in Vietnam.”
Darlene knew Clint was bluffing, but apparently it worked. Caulder turned to her. “You remembered, didn’t you? I knew that story about your memory being lost for good couldn’t be true.”
“She didn’t remember anything, Caulder. We just dug through some boring war records. We know all about Whacko. Now, I want to know how to get in touch with McCord.”
“I don’t know.” His eyes darted from left to right, as if he expected to find someone sneaking up on them, listening to their conversation. “If you know what’s going on, you know more than I do, Sheriff. McCord won’t tell me nothing. He says this is nobody’s business but his.”
Clint wrapped a fist around the collar of Caulder’s shirt. “Don’t make me arrest you as an unfriendly witness. Tell me where I can find McCord.”
“I don’t know where he is. I swear. He calls me at night just to make sure everything’s all right. That’s all I know.”
“What did Bledsoe want?”
Caulder swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing like crazy. “Pictures. Just some old pictures from McCord’s army days and a notebook with phone numbers and addresses in it—stuff like that.”
Clint let go of Caulder’s collar, but he didn’t back off. “Where did Bledsoe find the pictures McCord wanted?”
“In the top of Bledsoe’s closet. We brought them out here so that we could go through them. The box is in the living room. You can look at them, if you want.”