by Diana Palmer
“That’s true.” He was curious about her familiarity with the case. “How are you involved?” He wanted to know.
“That’s need to know, and you don’t,” she said, gentling the words with a smile. “I understand that Winnie works as a dispatcher with emergency services. I’m very proud of her. It’s a generous thing she does, working for her living. She would never have to.”
“Yes. How is our uncle concerned with the murder?”
“I don’t know that yet. It’s still under investigation. Messy,” she added. “Very, very messy, and it may involve some important people before it’s over. But it shouldn’t cause any problems for you three,” she added. “The murderer doesn’t have anything to fear from you.” She glanced at her watch. “I have to go. I came down to confer with a friend, and I’m late. I’m sorry I didn’t get to see Clark. What does he do?”
“He works with me on the ranch,” Boone said. He was adding up her attitude and her indifference to their wealth and her sadness. “Someday,” he said, “maybe we need to talk.”
She smiled at him with quiet eyes. “There’s nothing more to be said. We can’t change the past. I made mistakes that I can’t ever correct or atone for. Now, I just get on with my job and try to help where I can. Take care. It was very good to see the two of you, even under the circumstances.” She looked at him for a moment more, so much pain in her eyes and in her face that it made him feel guilty.
Finally, she turned and walked down the steps toward the car. Boone watched her, scowling, his hands in his pockets. She got into the car, spoke to a shorter person in the passenger seat, started the engine and slowly drove away.
Winnie came back down after the car was gone. Her eyes were wet, her face red with bad temper despite Keely’s comforting upstairs. “She’s gone, then. Good riddance!”
Boone was pensive. “I wish you’d told me what Dad did to you.”
She managed a wan smile. “I wanted to. But I was afraid of what he might do. He really hated me. He said that I was the image of my mother, but he was going to make sure that I never wanted to follow in her footsteps.”
“He kept you in church every time it was open,” he replied quietly.
“Yes.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “And threatened every boy who came here to see me. I ended up with a nonexistent social life.” She sighed. “I suppose I’m very repressed.”
“You’re also very nice,” Boone said. He put his arms around her and hugged her fondly. “You know, despite the misery of our childhoods, we’ve done pretty well, haven’t we?”
“You certainly have,” she said, wiping away the tears. She smiled. “I love Keely. She’s not only my best friend, now she’s my sister-in-law.”
He was somber. “You saved her life after the rattlesnake bit her,” he said quietly. “She would have died, and I would have been responsible.” His face hardened. “I can’t imagine why I believed such lies about her.”
“I’m sure your ex-girlfriend’s detective was convincing,” she said. “You shouldn’t look back. Keely loves you. She never stopped, not even when she thought you hated her.”
He smiled. “I was a hard case.”
“Well, we’re all victims of our childhood, I suppose. Dad was tough on you, too.”
“He couldn’t beat me down,” he recalled. “He got furious at me, but he respected me.”
“That was probably what saved you from the treatment I got.” She sighed. “It was twelve years ago when she left. I was ten. Ten years old.”
“I was technically an adult,” he recalled. “Clark was in junior high.” He shook his head. “I still don’t understand why she left Dad for our uncle. He was a shallow man, no real character and no work ethic. It’s no surprise to me that he was dealing drugs. He always did look for the easy way to get money. Dad bailed him out of jail more than once for stealing.”
“Yes.” She looked at the heirlooms lying on the coffee table. “It’s surprising that our mother brought those back. She could have sold them for a lot of money.”
“Quite a lot of money,” Boone said. He frowned, recalling what she’d said about their uncle’s possible connection to people suspected in the local murder. He looked at Winnie, but he didn’t say anything about it. She was too shaken already. It could wait. “I wonder who she had with her in the car?” he added suddenly.
She turned. “A boyfriend, maybe,” she said curtly. “I could tell he was male from upstairs. But he looked pretty short.”
“Not our business,” Boone said. He picked up a brooch with a tiny painting of a beautiful little Spanish girl, in her middle to late teens by the look of her, dressed all in black with a mantilla. Her red lipstick and a red rose in her hair under the black lace mantilla were the only bright things in the miniature. Her hair was long, black and shiny. She had a tiny, strange little smile on her lips. Mysterious. He smiled, just looking at it. “I wonder who she was?” he mused aloud.
“Turn it over. Maybe there’s initials or something,” she suggested, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
He did. He frowned. “It’s labeled with a piece of tape. Señorita Rosa Carrera y Sinclair.” He whistled. “This was our great-grandmother, when she was first married! I should have known, but the portrait of her upstairs was painted when she was older.”
Winnie looked at it, took it from his hands and studied the lovely face. “She was very beautiful.” She laughed. “And she fought bulls with a mantilla! She must have been brave.”
“If what I remember hearing from Dad about our great-grandfather is accurate, she had to be brave.”
“Truly.” She put the brooch down and looked at the other treasures. “So many rubies,” she mused. “She must have loved them.”
“You should pick out some of those to wear,” he suggested.
She laughed. “And where would I wear expensive jewelry like this?” she chided. “I work for Jacobs County dispatch. Wouldn’t the girls have a hoot seeing me decked out in these? Shirley would fall out of her chair laughing.”
“You should get out more,” he said somberly.
She gave him a long, sad look. “I’ll never get out, now. Kilraven is leaving after Christmas,” she said. Her face fell. “I gave him the raven painting at the party. He glared at me as if I’d committed murder under his nose and stormed out without even speaking to me.” She flushed. “Nothing that ever happened to me hurt so much.”
“I thought the presents were anonymous.”
“They were. I don’t know how he knew it was me. I’ve never told him that I paint.”
“He’s a strange bird,” Boone commented. “He has feelings. Sort of like you do,” he added with a grin. “Sending backup when you thought he was going to a routine domestic fight with no weapons involved.”
She nodded. “He was furious about that, too. But it saved his life.”
“You really ought to see Cash Grier’s wife, Tippy. She has those intuitions, too.”
“She knows things,” Winnie replied. “Whatever sort of mental gift this is, I don’t have her accuracy. I just feel uncomfortable before something bad pops up. Like today,” she said quietly. “I felt sick all day. Now I know why.”
“You do look like her.” He was going to add that their mother used to have odd feelings about things that later happened, but he didn’t.
“Yes,” she said curtly. She looked at the jewelry. “I shouldn’t have been so mean. She did a good thing. But it will never make up for leaving us.”
“She knows that. She said she didn’t come for forgiveness.”
She frowned. “Why did she come?”
“She’s meeting someone.”
“A boyfriend here in Jacobs County?” she asked curtly.
“No, she said it was business.” He frowned, too. “You know, she seems to know a lot about that recent murder here.”
“Why would she?”
Boone grimaced. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but it seems our uncle may have
had ties to the case.”
She let out a breath. “Oh, that’s great. Now he’s not just the man who stole our mother, he’s a murderer!”
“No, not that sort of involvement,” he replied. “I think he might have had some connection to the people involved. From what she said, he was a heavy drug user.”
“Not surprising. I never liked him,” she confessed. “He was always picking on Dad, trying to compete with him in everything. It was sort of sad to me at the time because anybody could see he wasn’t the equal of our father at business or ranching or anything else.”
“Our father had some good qualities. Hitting you like that wasn’t one of them,” he added coldly, “and if I’d known about it, I’d have knocked him through a wall!”
“I know that. It was only the one time,” she said quietly, “and he’d been drinking. It was just after he and our mother met that time, when he thought she wanted to come back. It wasn’t long after she’d gone away with our uncle. He came back home all quiet and furious, and he drank like a fish for about two months. That was when he hit me. He was sorry afterward, and he promised never to do it again. But he hated me, just the same, because I looked like her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she said with a sigh. “It sort of turned me against men, at least where marriage was concerned.”
“Except with Kilraven.”
She flushed and glared at him. “He’ll probably never speak to me again, after what happened at the party. I don’t understand why he was so angry.” She sighed. “Of course, I don’t understand why I painted a raven for him, either. It’s not one of my usual subjects. I like to do flowers. Or portraits.”
“You’re very good at portraits.”
“Thanks.”
“You could have made a name for yourself as a portrait artist, even an illustrator.”
“I never had the dedication,” she replied. “I really do love my job,” she added.
“So does Keely,” he replied with an indulgent smile. “It’s not a bad thing, working when you don’t have to.”
“You’d know,” she accused, laughing. “You work harder on the ranch than your men do. That reporter for Modern Ranching World had to learn to ride a horse just to interview you about your new green technology because he could never find you unless he went out on the ranch.”
“They’re putting me on the cover,” he muttered. “I didn’t mind doing the article—I think it helps ranching’s public image. But I don’t like the idea of seeing myself looking back at me from a magazine rack.”
“You’re very good-looking,” she said. “And it is good PR. Not that you’ll ever sell the idea of humane beef cultivation to vegetarians,” she added with a chuckle.
He shrugged. “As long as people want a nice, juicy steak at a restaurant, there’s not much chance that ranchers are going to turn to raising house cattle.”
“Excuse me?”
“Well, you could put a diaper on a calf and bring him inside…”
She hit him. “I’m going to bed,” she said. “And when I get upstairs, I’m going to tell Keely what you just said.”
“No!” he wailed. “I was only kidding about it. She’d actually do it!”
She laughed. “There wouldn’t be room. Bailey’s as big as a calf.”
The old German Shepherd looked up from his comfortable doggy bed by the fireplace and wagged his tail.
“See?” she asked. “He knows he’s a calf.”
He shook his head. He bent to ruffle the dog’s fur. He glanced at Winnie. “You going to be okay?”
“Sure.” She hesitated. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Being my brother. Don’t leave the jewels lying around,” she advised. “If Clark comes home and sees them, he’ll beg some of them for whatever girl he’s crazy over at the moment.”
“Good thought,” he said, grinning. “I’ll put them in the safe and drive them to town Monday and lodge them in the safe-deposit box.”
“She could have sold them and we’d never have known,” she replied quietly. “I wonder why she didn’t? She’s not driving a new car. Her clothes are nice, but not expensive.”
“There’s no telling why,” he said.
“Did she say anything about where she was going?”
He shook his head. “Just that she was meeting a friend.”
“At this hour? I wonder who she knows here?” she mused. “She used to be friends with Barbara, who runs the café. But Barbara told me years ago that she hadn’t heard a word from her.”
“It might be some newcomer,” Boone said. “Not our business, anyway.”
“I guess. Well, I’m going to bed. It’s been a very long day.”
“For you, it sure has,” he said sympathetically. “First Kilraven, now our mother.”
“Things can only get better, right?” she asked, smiling.
“I hope so. Tell Keely I’m going to make a couple of phone calls, and I’ll be up. You sleep well.”
She smiled. “You, too.”
KILRAVEN HAD JUST pulled up in the driveway of his remote rental house in Comanche Wells when he noticed a sedan sitting there. Always overly cautious, he had his .45 automatic in his hand before he opened the door of his car. But when he got out and saw who his visitor was, he put it right back in the holster.
“What the hell are you doing out here at this hour of the night?” he asked.
She smiled. “Bringing bad news, I’m afraid. I couldn’t get you on your cell phone, so I took a chance and drove down.”
He paused by the car. “What’s wrong, Rogers?” he asked, because he knew it had to be something major to bring her from San Antonio.
She didn’t correct him. Her last name had been Sinclair, but she’d taken her maiden name back after she divorced Bruce Sinclair. Now she went by the name Gail Rogers. She leaned against the car and sighed, folding her arms over her chest. “It’s Rick Marquez,” she said. “Someone blindsided him in an alley near his apartment and left him for dead.”
“Good Lord! Does his mother know?”
She nodded. “She’s at the hospital with him. Scared her to death. But he looks worse than he is. Badly bruised, and a fractured rib, but he’ll live. He’s mad as hell.” She chuckled. “Whoever hit him is going to wish they’d never heard his name.”
“At least he’ll walk away,” Kilraven said. He grimaced. “This case just keeps getting more and more interesting, doesn’t it?”
“Whoever’s behind these murders seems to feel that the body count no longer matters.”
“He’s feeling cornered and he’s desperate,” Kilraven agreed. His eyes narrowed. “You watch your back. You’re in as much danger as Marquez. At the very least, they should put you on administrative until we get some sort of lead on what’s happening.”
“I won’t sit at a desk and let everyone around me take risks,” she replied calmly.
“Still…”
She held up a hand. “Give up. I’m stubborn.”
He sighed. “Okay. But be extra cautious, will you?”
“Of course. Has forensic turned up anything interesting about the DB down here?” DB referred to dead body.
“Alice Jones is handling the case. She’s got a piece of paper that they’re teasing secrets out of, but she hasn’t told me anything new. Senator Fowler’s actually cooperating, though. It shook him up when one of his female employees turned up dead. Somebody tried to make it look like suicide, but they didn’t do their homework. Had the pistol in the wrong hand.”
“I heard about that,” she said. “Sloppy. Real sloppy.”
“That’s what worries me.” He bit his lower lip. “I’m going to ask for some time off to work this case. Now that our newest Junior Senator Will Sanders has stopped putting obstacles in our path, maybe we can catch a break. With Marquez sidelined, you’re going to need some help. And I have good contacts.”
“I know.” She smiled. “We might actually solve
your case. I hope so.”
“Me, too.” His face was taut with pain. “I’ve spent the last seven years waiting for something to help crack the case. Maybe this latest murder is it.”
“Well, it’s going to be slow,” she said. “We’re no closer to the identity of the man found dead in Jacobs County, or to the people who killed Senator Fowler’s employee. Now we’ve got Marquez’s attack to work on, as well.” She shook her head. “I should have gotten a job baking cakes in a restaurant.”
He gave her a look of mock surprise. “You can cook?”
She glared at him. “Yes, I can cook. On my salary who can afford to eat out?”
He laughed. “Come work for me. I have an expense account.”
“No, thanks,” she said, holding out both hands, palm up. “I’ve heard about some of your exploits.”
“Lies,” he said. “Put out by jealous colleagues.”
“Hanging out of a helicopter by one hand, firing an automatic weapon, over an ocean,” she related, emphasizing the last word.
“I did not,” he said haughtily.
She just stared at him.
“Anyway, I was not hanging on by my hand.” He hesitated. Then he grinned. “I wrapped one of my legs around a piece of cargo netting and held on that way!”
“I’m going home,” she said with a laugh.
“Keep your doors locked,” he advised firmly.
“You bet.”
She climbed in under the wheel and shut the door. Beside her, a shadowy figure waved. He waved back. He wondered who her companion was. He couldn’t see him clearly in the darkness, but he looked young. Maybe a trainee, he thought. He turned back toward his house.
3
Kilraven felt uncomfortable when he remembered how upset Winnie Sinclair had been at the Christmas party. When he got over his initial anger, he realized that she couldn’t possibly have known about his daughter’s fascination with ravens. After all, who could have told her? Only he and Jon knew. Well, his stepmother—Jon’s mother—knew. But Cammy had no contact with Winnie.