“Like father, like son.” Resignation in Sophie’s voice.
Beau waited inside. Lee took a long look at the sheriff’s SUV, glanced toward the apartment, came up to the door anyway. Sophie let him in, standing at the open door a few extra seconds and sending some kind of non-verbal mom signal to her son.
“Sheriff,” Lee said, slapping dust from his jeans.
Beau asked what his plans were.
“I told you, I want to be near my son. I have as much right to be here as anybody.”
“You do. And legally I can’t make you leave. But, think about it. Is it smart to be here? Jessie’s dead already. I don’t think you or Sophie want you to be next on someone’s hit list. The mood around town is getting uglier all the time.”
Sophie spoke up. “I won’t have you putting Nathan in danger. You can’t stay here in the apartment.”
Rodarte looked as if he wanted to say something, but he glanced at Beau and closed his mouth.
“Look, how about if you got yourself a place in Taos? Close enough to get together with Nathan, but maybe it would be far enough to keep you safe.”
“I’m not—”
Beau raised a hand. “We don’t know that you’re in danger. But we don’t know that you aren’t. And if somebody comes after you, here in this apartment, you will be putting Sophie and your boy in danger.”
“How can I clear my name if I can’t even be here in town?” Lee’s arms crossed over his chest.
“That’s what I’m here for, to try to get to the bottom of all this and find out the truth once and for all.”
Rodarte made a derisive sound.
“Look, I didn’t want to mention this,” Beau said. “But someone’s already been here.” He told them about the burned doll on the front sidewalk.
Sophie’s face went two shades whiter. “That does it. Go! I don’t care where, at this moment, but you can’t be here.” She stepped toward the front door but Lee didn’t budge.
Beau really didn’t want to see this degenerate further. “Lee, take my advice. Please. Leave this town for awhile. Jessie’s funeral is tomorrow and things will surely settle down after that. And my department will keep working on this. We’ll do our best to get it settled. Meanwhile, I’m afraid I have to insist that you leave the apartment. The lady wants you out and it is within my authority to make that happen.”
Rodarte’s belligerent stance wilted. “Sophie . . . come with me? I don’t want to lose you.”
Her dark eyes became liquid pools. “Not now. For Nathan—”
Beau moved to the door and opened it. “Get your stuff. I’ll keep an eye on Sophie and Nathan for awhile. You two can make your plans, but let’s not aggravate the whole situation right now.”
Lee picked up a ratty backpack from behind the armchair, hugged it to his chest and walked outside. Beau followed, cautioning Sophie to keep her son near and to lock all her doors and windows.
“Take a minute with your boy if you want,” Beau offered.
But when Lee approached, the child backed away slightly. Lee gave him a rueful smile and a little knuckle-tap to the handlebar of the bicycle before walking away to stash his pack on the Harley. Beau followed the biker to the edge of town and watched him roar down the highway. Three broken hearts and not a thing he could do to reassure them it would soon get any better.
He cruised back by Sophie’s apartment. The bicycle was chained to a porch railing and the place seemed buttoned up tight. At least one of them was taking his warnings seriously.
Now for the Starkeys.
At the small food market, a raised pickup truck with huge tires sat near the door with two rough-looking men in it. One of the men looked a lot like Joe Starkey. A woman with a cartful of bags rushed to her car and began to toss her purchases inside. Beau slowed, making sure they noticed him, waiting until he saw the woman get safely into her vehicle. Another Starkey male came out of the store with a twelve-pack of Bud and waved at Beau as he joined the others in the truck.
Little signs of trouble continued as Beau drove through town—spray paint on a wall where none had been before, with the words ‘get Jessie’s killer’; two motorcycles lying on their sides, not yet discovered by their owners. He circled the block to the Starkey house where the high pickup truck sat among a cluster of vehicles that had all seen better days. Beer cans littered the space around a large barrel. Clearly, no basketball players in this crowd. Beau parked, radioed his location and stepped out.
“Not too happy to see you takin’ care of that Rodarte scum,” Joe Starkey said, swaggering his way over to Beau.
“It’s my job to take care of everyone in this county,” Beau said. “I just stopped by to see how you all are doing.”
Helen Starkey appeared from beside the house, her face contorted in anger. “Take care of us?” she shouted. “You did a helluva job taking care of us so far.”
Beau took a deep breath. “Helen. I know this hurts. Eventually it’ll get better.”
“Better? My boy is dead and you think this will ever get better?”
Beau started to apologize for his poor choice of words but Helen interrupted.
“My life hit its best point seven years ago. It’s been nothin’ but downhill since then. And your department’s done diddly-shit to make it better. Get out of my sight, Sheriff!”
A younger woman wearing skin-tight jeans and a baggy man’s shirt stepped forward and touched Helen’s shoulder. “Come on inside, Helen. Let’s get you somethin’ to eat.”
Beau surveyed the faces in the crowd of a dozen or more, spotting Bobby’s wife JoNell, who placed restraining hands on the arms of two long-haired teenage boys. This could get real dicey, real fast. He raised a hand in a conciliatory gesture.
“Listen, all of you,” he said, working to stay in command. “We’re doing what we can. I got Lee Rodarte out of town. I’m putting my whole department to work on solving Jessie’s murder. Nobody in town wants trouble and I’m asking all of you to remember Jessie with dignity, not to let this thing get out of hand where somebody else ends up hurt and a lot of folks end up with regrets.” He met the patriarch’s stare, straight on. “Joe? You keep ’em in line?”
Joe Starkey nodded slowly but the sneer on his face didn’t reassure Beau in the least.
“Okay, then. I’ll put some of my men around town, make sure Rodarte doesn’t come cruising for trouble. After the funeral tomorrow I’ll expect everyone to get back to business as usual and do your best to put this behind you and just let us do our jobs.”
A couple of the men shuffled slightly, scuffing toes in the dirt like young bulls, testing. Beau wanted to give a warning about the amount of alcohol at the gathering, but this didn’t look like the time to press his luck. Hopefully the message about extra law enforcement would get through. He touched the brim of his hat and turned toward his vehicle, making a show of getting on the radio before he drove away.
With the order in for teams of deputies to take turns patrolling Sembramos overnight, he made another run past Rodarte’s parents’ old house, Sally Cayne’s, and the few others he knew to be connected. All quiet. So far.
Pulling over in the parking lot of the now-empty elementary school, he used his cell phone to call home. No answer.
He dialed Sam’s cell. “I called the house and you weren’t there. I thought we’d agreed on that.” He realized that, technically, he’d issued orders which she hadn’t exactly said she would follow.
“Sweet shop emergency. I’m on my way home now,” she said.
“We’ll talk about this when I get there.” He hung up without waiting for a response and pulled out onto the two-lane road.
Twenty minutes later he arrived at the ranch. Sam’s red pickup truck sat in its usual place but her bakery van was gone. He fumed, getting out of his cruiser. He’d said he didn’t want anyone on the highway to recognize her truck and give her trouble. Did she have to take his words so literally?
He greeted the border collie and L
ab with pats on their heads and went inside. This whole day was really beginning to wear on him. Pouring a short Scotch into his favorite crystal glass, he carried it upstairs and started the shower. When he emerged, in a mellower frame of mind, he heard sounds downstairs. He also smelled pizza.
“I brought it from Giuseppe’s,” Sam said, pointing to the box with the fantastic smell.
It was, of course, his favorite combo and when Sam launched into the whole story of the crazy lady at the bakery who was about to drive all her employees off the cliff, he held back on the list of warnings he’d been planning. And when, after pizza and a couple glasses of wine, they found themselves in the bedroom, he forgot the lecture altogether.
“I’m sorry I worried you,” Sam said afterward, running a finger down the middle of his sweaty chest. “I didn’t intend that.”
He started to say something about wanting to keep her safe, but the sex had been great and he was in a much more expansive mood now. There was no point in prolonging the discussion and letting it degenerate.
“I could make us a special coffee,” she offered. “Or hot chocolate?”
Sam put on a robe and Beau slipped into his jeans and an old, soft shirt before following her downstairs. He scooped food for the dogs, filling her in on the latest in Sembramos.
“So, do you think Lee Rodarte will stay away?” She located some cookies she’d brought home a few days ago, to go along with the coffee.
Beau shook his head. “No idea. I doubt it. I’ve got deputies assigned to the funeral tomorrow and I’ll try to be there too but, realistically, I think the only way this thing is going to calm down is if I can find out who really did kill Angela Cayne seven years ago. Basically, everyone in that town has taken a side—some on Lee’s, more on the Starkeys, a lot who feel for Sally Cayne and that family’s loss. Everyone wants justice. If I can catch whoever set the whole mess in motion, maybe we can give them that.”
Sam poured coffee and carried mugs to the living room.
“I just wish I had the manpower to devote to a cold case. I don’t know where we’re going to find the evidence we’ll need. And we’ve got new cases all the time. With budget cutbacks, it’s all I can do to serve warrants and handle traffic.”
“So, what if you and I started going through the file, reviewing it? We might come up with something that was missed the first time around. You said Sheriff Padilla didn’t seem to work this one very hard.”
“Yeah, well that was my perception at the time, as a new deputy in the department. It did seem like he raced through it. And I was always uneasy about that confession.”
Sam reached for a notepad and pen. “The file’s here. Let’s do it.”
Beau brought the thick folder to the coffee table and unfastened the metal brads holding it together. “This thing’s impossible to hold on your lap and even more impossible for two people to read at once. Let’s divide it up. The pages are numbered—we’ll just put it back together when we’re done. Besides, maybe looking at it in some other order than the way it is now will give us a few new ideas.”
He handed Sam a half-inch thick chunk of pages and took one for himself.
Sam read two pages and immediately decided she would have to take notes. A half hour later they paused to compare.
“I’m reading Lee Rodarte’s statement after he was picked up,” Sam said. “After Jessie implicated him during the confession. Lee says he had ridden his motorcycle out toward the gorge bridge that night, wanting a little time alone. He said no one was with him, no alibi, but we should find out if anyone was even asked whether they could give him one.”
“Make a note about that—a list of unanswered questions. We may come across the answers as we read, and we could check them off, but I want to be sure everything fits together before this is all over with.”
Beau thumbed through his set of pages. “This section basically describes the crime scene. Angela Cayne was found in a ravine near the creek. She’d been badly beaten and strangled. She’d been there nearly three days before she was found.
“From my interviews in town, she was reported missing within two hours after she was taken, and that seems to fit with the timeline in the initial report. The parents had gone to Taos and she had stayed home. Her grandmother was staying with them at the time but she’d not been feeling well and went to bed early. I met Sally Cayne and can attest to the fact that without her hearing aids she wouldn’t have necessarily heard a scuffle in another room.”
“Lee swears he’s innocent, every time they talk to him, in all the pages I’ve read,” Sam said. “Yet no one seemed to be listening to him. Every question from Padilla comes back at Lee with the fact that Jessie Starkey told them Lee was guilty.”
“Are Jessie’s statements there? With your pages?”
She shook her head. “Haven’t come across them.”
An hour later, Sam’s eyelids felt like they had lead weights attached. “I’m not making sense of this anymore,” she said. “Nothing seems to be filed here in sequential order and my brain isn’t working. It’s been a long day.”
Beau smiled up from his set of pages. “I know, darlin’. Go ahead upstairs—I’m right behind you.”
He didn’t have to suggest it twice. Sam set her pages down and trudged to the kitchen with their coffee cups. She’d brushed her teeth and smoothed the sheets from their earlier visit, and was about to settle herself into sleepy bliss when she heard his footsteps on the stairs.
“Well, this adds an interesting wrinkle,” Beau said, coming into the room. “At the time Jessie Starkey confessed, he tested positive for cocaine.”
Sam gave a puzzled look.
“That little fact never came up at the trial,” Beau said. “And the lab report was shoved between two other pages, in a spot completely unrelated to the confession.”
“So you think someone tried to cover it up?”
“That would be my guess.”
Chapter 10
The revelations in the Angela Cayne case file might have kept Sam awake but that didn’t turn out to be. Her head hit the pillow and she didn’t even roll over until gray dawn began to filter into the bedroom. When she reached out for Beau she discovered that he was not in bed. No light from the bathroom; he must be downstairs. She found him at the dining table with pages from the file spread out in stacks.
“Morning, baby,” she said. “Did you actually settle into bed last night at all?”
“Oh, yeah. A few hours. Kept waking up though. Finally, it made more sense to let you sleep without all my tossing and turning.”
She kissed the top of his head. “Coffee?”
Not waiting for his answer, she went into the kitchen and found that he’d already brewed some, just hadn’t remembered to pour it. She doctored two mugs and carried them to the table.
“I’m trying to organize all this into a timeline,” he said. “It’s almost as if somebody took a dozen little folders and a hundred loose pages and just gathered them up any old which way and stuck them together with a cover over it all. There’s no sequence to it whatsoever.”
“Glad you said that. Last night I was beginning to feel like it was my fuzzy head that wasn’t making sense of it.”
“Wasn’t you.” He paused for a sip of his coffee. “You know, taking over this job, half the time I wonder how much of this stuff was Padilla’s incompetence and how often he might have been purposely covering up something. I find this kind of sloppy work all the time. If the defense lawyers were never given Jessie’s drug test results, that alone could have changed the outcome.”
“If money were no object you could hire a staff just to go through files and organize them all.”
He snorted. Money was always an object and he was lucky his current staff hadn’t been cut further. Two of his older deputies had retired within the last year and he’d been informed that he couldn’t replace them. Let the rest of the department pick up their duties. So, no. Finding someone to go through old case files w
asn’t going to happen.
“How can I help?” Sam offered. “Looks like you have a system going there.”
“Yeah, kind of. Once I get each interview, report, evidence list, etcetera, put into one of these piles, we can both read through them.” He looked up and sent her one of his winning smiles. “Maybe something to eat?”
“You got it.” Food wouldn’t be such a bad idea, Sam decided, thinking to clear her own cobwebby brain.
She found that they were out of eggs, bacon and bread—when was the last time she’d stopped for groceries? But there was pancake mix and enough butter and syrup to make one of Beau’s favorite breakfasts. She heated the griddle and soon had two nicely browned stacks ready; it didn’t take a second call for Beau to show up and take his spot at the kitchen table.
“I just wish I didn’t feel like I was starting so late in the game with this one,” he said halfway through his fourth pancake. “It’s like everyone in Sembramos was there from day one—they know all the history, and I’m the unsuspecting guy who’s just walked into the trap. They’ll tell me only what they want me to know.”
“At least you can’t say that it’s one little town united against the lawman. Nobody in that place seems to agree on anything.” Sam swiped a wedge of pancake through her puddle of syrup. “You know, I remember reading about this in the papers, back when it happened. I wonder, if we had copies of those articles maybe we would get another angle on it?”
“We couldn’t use news reports to build a legal case,” he said.
“I know. But maybe the press talked to someone back then, somebody the sheriff didn’t formally interview. I could go down to the newspaper office and get copies of whatever is in their archives.”
Beau looked a little skeptical but gave a knock-yourself-out approval to the plan. “Meanwhile, it’s late and I better get to the office and find out what new catastrophe is facing me today.”
He carried the dishes to the sink, leaving Sam with her thoughts and her coffee. She ran through her own checklist for the day. Get out to the monster house and try to finish cleaning the windows and floors there—she’d sworn to Beau that she would drive straight through Sembramos without stopping. Go by the newspaper office; check in at Sweet’s Sweets and hope no new disasters had shown up.
8 Sweet Payback Page 8