Out for Justice

by Susan Kearney

  “What else did the sheriff say?” Wade demanded.

  “If I tell, you’ll let me go?”

  Wade reached into his pocket, pulled out his wallet and slipped out a few bills as if he was going to pay Rudy. “Depends on what you have to say.”

  “The sheriff told the mayor that Kelly McGovern was stirring up trouble, and if she wasn’t careful she might get herself killed.”

  Kelly’s eyes went round. Wade shook his head slightly, signaling for her to remain silent.

  Rudy shook off Wade’s hand on his shoulder and tried to snag the cash.

  Wade pulled the money just out of reach of Rudy’s fingertips. “What else?”

  Rudy eyed the bills hungrily but dropped his hand to his side. “Ain’t that enough?”

  Wade tried to draw out more information from the kid. “When the sheriff was talking did he sound worried or did he sound like he was making a threat?”

  The kid hesitated as if deciding which answer would earn him the money faster.

  Wade shook his shoulder. “I want the truth.”

  “I don’t know.” Rudy’s voice was surly. “They kept their voices way low.”

  “Where did you hear this conversation?”

  “At the mayor’s headquarters.”

  Wade wished they had more to go on. The sheriff’s remark could have been perfectly innocent. The man could be legitimately worried over Kelly’s safety, especially after the tow-truck incident yesterday. And then again, his words could also have more sinister implications. Either way, Wade didn’t have time to fool with Rudy.

  “This money is to pay for the window you broke.” Wade stuffed the money into the boy’s hand, grateful the broken pane had been a small side panel of glass and not the main one. “Now go pay for the damage. We’ll be watching.”

  “Wait.” Kelly stopped the boy. “If you hear anything else I might be interested in, you come to me and I’ll reward you for your time. Understand?”

  Wade’s admiration for Kelly spiked up another notch. She hadn’t interfered with his holding the kid against the wall. She’d kept her mouth shut at the right time. Yet she might have gained them a snoop, one whom no one would suspect.

  He only hoped that the boy’s avaricious nature didn’t put him in danger. But Rudy was a street-smart kid and would protect himself first and foremost. He knew how to stay really quiet so that people didn’t notice him. And if he’d been hanging out around campaign headquarters, his presence there a second time wouldn’t be suspicious.

  Rudy licked his lips greedily. “Yeah, lady. I understand. You’re in even more trouble than me.”

  Chapter Seven

  Think positive.

  Kelly tried to put the kid’s words out of her mind as Wade opened the door to Mayor Daniels’s campaign headquarters for her. Red-white-and-blue banners, buttons, posters and literature dominated the formerly unleased storefront. Inside, a surprising amount of activity hummed. Three people manned phone banks. A fax machine spat out paper. A man ran copies and a group of women congregated around a coffeepot in a makeshift kitchen.

  A kid like Rudy wouldn’t have been noticed among all the bustle, and his words haunted Kelly. Had he been telling the truth? Kids exaggerated. Yet ever since he’d mentioned the sheriff and the mayor’s discussion, she’d felt unsettled. Even Wade’s teasing her about Shotgun Sally on the ride over hadn’t distracted her from the possibility that Andrew might have been involved in something that other people didn’t want known. Something for which he’d been murdered.

  “It’s hard to tell who’s in charge.” Wade walked over to a woman wearing a button that read Vote for Daniels.

  The harried redhead looked up with bleary eyes from the newspaper ads spread out on a folding table and appeared to recognize that they didn’t belong here. As if on cue, she smiled politely. “Hi. I’m Rebecca. Are you two here to deliver flyers?”

  Wade kept his voice low. “We’re looking for Jonathan, Johnny Dixon. Is he around?”

  Rebecca shook her head. “He didn’t come in today.”

  “Do you know where we can find him?” Kelly asked.

  “Not only is Johnny absent today, he didn’t call, either.” Rebecca frowned. “And that’s not like him.”

  “Ma’am, do you have his phone number or home address?” Wade asked.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t give out that kind of information. However, if you’d like to leave a message, I’ll give it to Johnny when he arrives.”

  Mayor Daniels walked out of the back room, and the flurry of activity in the room heightened as everyone busied themselves. At fifty, his signature gray hair and friendly green eyes had won him many votes. Popular with both the townsfolk and the ranchers, the mayor would likely be reelected for the fourth time.

  He stuck out his hand to welcome Kelly. To add warmth, he clasped his other hand over hers, too.

  Kelly didn’t know if the combination of sympathy and warmth in his eyes was genuine, but played along as if he was an old friend of the family. In truth, she didn’t know the mayor well. But her daddy did, and Daniels had been at Andrew’s funeral with most of the other of Mustang Valley’s leading citizens.

  “Welcome, Kelly.”

  Rebecca left them with the mayor and returned to sorting newspaper ads. Mayor Daniels shook Wade’s hand in the same friendly manner as he had hers. “Wade. Have you two come to volunteer for my campaign?”

  “I’m afraid not.” Kelly understood why the man was so good at his job. After she turned him down, he didn’t show any disappointment. Instead he maintained the same expression as she continued, “But we could use your help.”

  “What can I do?” he offered, his lips narrowing just a bit.

  “We’re looking for an old friend of my brother Andrew’s. Johnny Dixon.”

  “He’s a great kid. Hard worker.” Daniels peered around the room. “He doesn’t seem to be here, but Rebecca can tell you where she’s sent him.”

  “Rebecca just told us that he hasn’t come in today,” Wade said.

  The mayor’s eyes shifted from Wade to Kelly and back around the room, almost as if he were acting. She wondered if the mayor already knew that Johnny wasn’t there, and wondered if he had any reason to lie.

  Kelly leaned forward and touched the mayor’s arm. “We were hoping you could give us his phone number and address.” At the hesitation in his eyes she repeated, “Johnny was a friend of Andrew’s.”

  “I know.” The mayor lost his smile. “Andrew introduced us, but you aren’t going to do anything dangerous, are you?”

  “You heard about someone running us off the road yesterday?” Wade asked.

  “Yeah. The sheriff doesn’t think it was an accident, and we’re both concerned about you two playing amateur detective. One unexplained death in this town is already one too many. Mustang Valley is a safe place, and we don’t need a reputation for violence. It’s not good for the residents or the corporations thinking about investing here, and it’s not good for my campaign.”

  “Gee, Mayor. I’d hate to get myself murdered and hurt your campaign,” Kelly muttered.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to sound that cold and you know it. I don’t approve of you putting yourself in danger. Let the sheriff do his job.”

  He sounded concerned. But he was a polished politician, and his voice was probably trained as well as an actor’s and could convey whatever he wished.

  Kelly forced herself to keep her tone light. “I just wanted to talk to Johnny about law school. I’ve been accepted for fall semester.”

  Daniels’s grin came back. “Congratulations.”

  Kelly wondered if his cheeks hurt from all his smiling or if the muscles were accustomed to it. At least she seemed to have turned the topic away from her investigating and the danger. “I’d always figured that Andrew would be around to show me the ropes, but…”

  She let her sentence dangle in the air between them unfinished, feeling not the least bit guilty for misleading the ma
n after almost dying yesterday. A girl had to do what a girl had to do. And right now, everyone was a suspect.

  Wade put a protective arm over her shoulder. “You’ll be fine.”

  The mayor headed for a file cabinet. “I guess Johnny won’t mind my giving out his address to the sister of his old friend.” He fingered through file tabs, stopped and read. “It’s 22 Mustang Road. Apartment 1C. It’s that brick building on the corner with the flat roof across from the gas station.”

  “Thanks. I know where it is.” Wade offered his hand to Daniels.

  Daniels shook it. “Johnny’s phone number is under new listings in the phone book, but I’ll save you the trouble.” He wrote on a piece of notepaper and handed it over.

  Kelly folded the paper and slipped it into her pocket. “Thank you so much.”

  “I hope you find what you’re looking for.” Daniels started to step away and then turned back. “And, Wade?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  Daniels’s tone hardened. “Keep her out of the way of Sheriff Wilson’s investigation.”

  “I’ll try, sir.”

  Kelly smiled sweetly at the two men towering over her. “Did you two forget what century this is?”

  “Huh?” Wade muttered.

  “What are you saying?” Daniels asked.

  “Women have voting rights these days,” she pointed out.

  Wade scowled at her. The mayor recovered more quickly. “Of course they do. I’ll be counting on your vote.”

  WADE DIDN’T LIKE politicians. He supposed it had something to do with someone else earning a living off his hard-earned tax dollars. In addition, Daniels’s smooth-talking ways irritated him. He couldn’t read the man and therefore didn’t trust him. Which probably meant that Daniels was simply very good at his job.

  As they walked down the sidewalk back to her car, Kelly plucked from her purse the cell phone her parents had given her before she’d left their house. Wade didn’t blame her folks for wanting to keep tabs on their daughter and reminded himself to replace his own ruined phone. Between keeping his business afloat during his absence and investigating Andrew’s murder with Kelly, Wade hadn’t had much free time. Nor did he have any family members to worry about him.

  His mom had split when he was just a kid. His father had drunk himself into an early grave. An aunt and uncle had taken him in and tried to raise him but by then he’d been accustomed to complete freedom and doing things his way. He now regretted what a tough time he’d given them. After their deaths in a car accident, he’d inherited the Hit ’Em Again and that had probably saved him.

  He’d been forced to take on the responsibility of running the business or lose the roof over his head. And he’d worked damn hard to make the place a success. At least he had a good manager to stand in for him. Since he hadn’t taken off more than one day a week since he’d inherited the saloon, Wade figured he was due a vacation. If he chose to spend that time with Kelly, and check in once in a while, that was his call—one of the advantages of the self-employed.

  Kelly unfolded the paper with Johnny’s telephone number and dialed. She held the phone to her ear but didn’t say a word for a minute, then snapped it shut with a sigh.

  “No answer?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “No answering machine or voice mail, either.” Kelly plucked the car keys from her purse and tossed them to Wade. “Would you mind driving?”

  He snatched the keys out of the air. “Yeah, it’s such a chore to drive a Jaguar.”

  “Very funny.”

  She didn’t wait for him to open her door for her but slipped into the plush leather seat and donned her seat belt. The lady had something on her mind and he couldn’t quite peg her mood. Was she considering the mayor’s suggestion that they quit? He didn’t think so. Ever since she’d left Cara and the Mustang Gazette, her temperament had been…pensive.

  She didn’t even ask him where he was driving, but since they had a little time to kill until they tried Johnny’s phone number again, he headed out of town, leaving the traffic behind. He drove past suburban areas until the houses were farther and farther apart and they finally headed onto a dirt road. When he stopped to open a barbwire gate, she seemed to come out of her trance. To open the gate, he slipped out of the Jag before she asked any questions, but when he returned, she had a what-are-we-doing-here look in her eyes.

  He turned down the radio. “Since Mustang Valley doesn’t have a gun range, I though we might do some shooting out here.”

  “Whose property is this?” she asked, taking in the crooked fence posts, the sagging barbwire and the shed on the north quarter of the parcel.

  “Mine.”

  She looked around curiously at the flat, empty acres that had once held cattle but now stood empty. “You planning on doing some ranching?”

  He snorted. “I don’t fancy going broke, but my father had big dreams. This place is the only thing he left me and it’s pretty worthless. But I pay the county fifty dollars a year in taxes to keep it, anyway.”

  “You never talk about your family.” He heard the toned-down interest in her voice.

  “Not much to say. Didn’t know my mother. She ran off and never looked back. Dad drank himself into the grave.”

  He caught the pity in her blue eyes before she stared at the horizon. But she kept her tone casual. “You don’t any have cousins, aunts, uncles? No one?”

  “You don’t miss what you’ve never had.” The last thing he wanted was her sympathy or to speak of the aunt and uncle who’d raised him. He threw the Jag into gear and eased over the bumpy, overgrown pasture.

  She seemed to realize he didn’t want to pursue the subject. He didn’t mind when she tipped back her head on the seat and closed her eyes. A soft little smile played across her mouth, and he would have given tonight’s take at the bar to have known her thoughts right then.

  He headed for the shed his father had built almost four decades ago. The structure needed a paint job, but last summer Wade had reshingled the roof. The timbers were sturdy and the chained doors kept out vandals—not that there was all that much inside worth stealing—just a few guns and ammunition, a worn-out saddle and bridle and crates of assorted junk that he’d never thrown away.

  “So you’re going to give me shooting lessons?” That mysterious grin was back on her lips. He wondered exactly what had so amused her.

  “I hope you never have to use the weapon your father gave you, but you should know how.”

  “Okay.”

  At least she didn’t seem to mind that he’d taken a detour from their investigation. He stopped the car by the shed, opened the combination lock and pulled back the doors. Kelly peered inside, her eyes alight with interest, her golden hair gleaming in the sunlight. If she’d been any other woman he would have considered taking out the blanket he kept in a storage trunk, spreading it over a thick patch of grass and…

  Don’t go there.

  She’s Andrew’s sister. Untouchable.

  “Why don’t you take your gun out of the glove compartment?” he suggested, not liking the way the gentle breeze carried her scent to him. A light floral scent that reminded him of orange blossoms and rain-kissed flesh. Reminded him of a hot summer night when he and Andrew and Kelly had seen a movie and shared a bucket of popcorn. Her lips had been the same color of pink that night as they were this afternoon, and just as unkissable, he reminded himself.

  While he gathered milk crates, empty milk jugs and set up targets, she returned to the car, retrieved her gun and rejoined him. She held the weapon pointing downward between her thumb and pointer finger, her nose squinched up as if she were holding a dead skunk.

  He restrained a laugh. Apparently, not even the ridiculous pink holster could make the weapon an acceptable accessory. She was right in one respect. Kelly was all lean, soft curves and feminine delights. The hard metal gun in her hands was almost jarring.

  He took the weapon from her fingers, surprised at the weight. “This gun is no Sat
urday night special.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a 9 mm semi-automatic Beretta.” He should have known that while Mr. McGovern didn’t know enough not to give his daughter a gun without instructing her how to use it, he wouldn’t buy anything cheap, either. Only the best would do when it came to Kelly McGovern.

  Wade didn’t blame her father. The woman had aroused Wade’s protective instincts, too. And he wouldn’t allow her to shoot herself in the foot because he hadn’t bothered to teach her how to use the weapon.

  “So it’s a good gun?” Kelly asked.

  “Yeah.” He took the gun away from her so she wouldn’t drop it in the dirt and get sand in the clip. “I have plenty of ammo.”

  She shuddered. “You mean we’re going to shoot it more than once?”

  “Why don’t you like guns?”

  Kelly looked up at the sky and rolled her eyes. “Who said I didn’t like them?”

  He checked the safety, which was on, then slipped out a fully loaded clip which slid smoothly into his hand. The gun seemed well oiled and good to go. He checked the chamber. Empty.

  He turned his attention to her. “Let’s get you out-fitted.”

  She smoothed her blouse, tightening the material over her breasts. “I don’t like the shoulder holster. I tried it on for Halloween once, since I thought it would go with my Annie Oakley costume I had made in a special pink leather to match the holster, but the weight made me lopsided, creased my blouse and was just danged uncomfy.”

  He pictured her as Annie Oakley in a Stetson hat, a short pink leather skirt and vest with matching fringed boots and restrained another grin. “I meant we need to wear protective gear.”

  “Protective gear?” She frowned at him. “Are you afraid I might shoot you?”

  He chuckled. For a smart woman she could be amazingly dense. He handed her a set of sound-deadening ear protectors. “Here you go.”