His fingers gripped the steering wheel tight, but after a moment they loosened and he glanced over at her. “At first, I was like you—you were the only thing I knew. I loved you with all my heart. I didn’t understand why you did what you did. I still don’t. For being so young, we really were good together.”
“We were.” She nodded.
“Do you remember the barn?” he asked with a light laugh.
She thought back to the dozens of nights they had found themselves meeting up in his family’s main barn at Dunrovin. They would sneak up into the hayloft and make out. He never pressured her for more, even though she had known exactly how badly she left him aching.
Her gentleman.
“What about the barn?” she asked with a wiggle of her brow.
He chuckled, and the sound made some of the heaviness in her disappear.
Yes, she just needed to let things be. What would happen would happen and she would have to accept their connection for what it was, not what she wanted it to be. If she didn’t, she would be lucky if they even ended this investigation as friends.
Wyatt shifted slightly in the seat. “You remember the night we carved our initials in the post?”
She smiled. “That was the night of the Sadie Hawkins dance, right?”
He nodded. “Bianca went with us. Wasn’t that when she was going after Rainier?”
She laughed as she thought back to the days when she and her sister had dreamed of marrying the brothers. “How life changes...”
“It was too bad they didn’t work out.”
Those had been the days before her father’s death. The days they had still been innocent and untouched by tragedy. The days when her mother had still been functional.
“But she and Rainier...” he continued. “If you want to talk about two people who were completely different.”
She laughed at the thought of her preppy sister dating their county’s infamous bad boy. As soon as her parents had found out about their relationship, her father had put an end to it.
“Their relationship had some fireworks.”
His eyebrow quirked as he looked over at her and smiled. “You mean like ours as of late?”
“I wouldn’t consider this a relationship.” She gave him a coy glance.
Wait. Did he?
“True, but...seeing you in that towel... You definitely brought out the animal in me.”
She tried to restrain her grin. “Really?”
His smile widened. “I haven’t been that turned on in a long time. You have no idea what you do to me.”
She reached over and sat her hand between them under the police-issued computer on the console. He let go of the steering wheel and slipped his fingers between hers.
They weren’t anything beyond friends, but within her there was a glimmer of hope. Regardless of what she did to him, he had no idea what he did to her—or her heart.
Chapter Nine
The clinic was locked and someone had taped a closed sign to the door in between two plastic Santa decals. Wyatt was surprised at the lack of activity. He would have thought that, even with Bianca’s death, the show would have needed to go on at her clinic. Animals always needed tending and phones would always ring. Yet the place was eerily quiet.
“Is this how the place normally is?” Wyatt asked as Gwen stopped beside him.
She shook her head. “No, but with everything that’s been happening...someone must have let the employees know they weren’t to come in.” She walked around the side of the building toward the barn that normally housed the large animals that her sister couldn’t see in the small clinic. “Even the barn’s empty. That’s strange.”
“She had been working, right?”
Gwen shrugged. “As far as I know, but lately Bianca had been off. And the more and more I see, I guess I can understand why.”
“You think it’s possible someone just came in and cleared out the animals after they found out what happened?”
“For sure, but I don’t know where they would have taken the animals that were in more serious condition. But maybe she didn’t have any super serious cases or something.”
Wyatt nodded. There was something wrong about the place. If some well-meaning person had taken the animals, he would have thought they would have left a note or something, but there was nothing besides the sign on the front door to let anyone know what was going on.
“I think you should wait in the car,” he said, motioning toward his patrol unit. “Let me clear the building, then I’ll come get you.”
“There’s no way I’m going to let you go in there alone. Besides, there’s nothing to worry about.” She peered in the front picture window with her hand over her eyes in an attempt to shield the evening sun from her eyes.
“Anything?” he asked as she turned back to him.
“I can’t see.” She shook her head. “Hold on,” she said, reaching down into her pocket and drawing out a key ring that was chock-full of a variety of brass and aluminum keys. “I think she gave me a key in case I ever needed it. I don’t think this is what she had in mind at the time, but...” She flipped through the keys and stopped at a brass one the same color as the doorknob.
She slipped the key into the lock and clicked it open. The door opened with a long, shrill squeak. For a moment, Gwen stood there just staring. Wyatt moved closer to her, trying to see what she was looking at.
“Holy...” he said, looking in.
There was dog food strewn across the floor, and all the papers that normally sat on the counter were thrown around the room. Every picture was crooked or had been taken off the wall and tossed on the floor. The receptionist’s computer screen was cracked and the keyboard was hanging over the edge of the desk by its cord—it made the shrill tone of a phone that had been off the hook for too long. Even the waiting room chairs were overturned and pulled away from the walls.
Whoever had come into this place wasn’t there just to steal; they had been there to destroy. They must have hated Bianca and her work. Was it possible that whoever was behind this had been a jilted customer or someone who had felt that she had done them wrong?
Monica came to his mind. Could she have found out about Bianca’s affair with William? Perhaps she went to Bianca’s cabin, then here to take her down? Maybe when she didn’t find Bianca she had gone to the ranch. Or maybe she had come here first and had stolen the Beuthanasia and then gone to Bianca’s cabin.
Gwen walked toward the back of the clinic, pushing past the half door that led to the back.
“Don’t touch anything,” he called. “I want to get my team in. Maybe they can pull some prints.”
Gwen stopped and turned around. “Oh, I’m sure they can pull hundreds of prints. There are normally at least a hundred people in and out of this building in a single working day. You could probably pull most of the people’s prints from this town—everyone comes to my sister for their livestock.”
Whoever had done this had put thought behind what they wanted to do and how they wanted to do it. This was a crime of anger and perhaps revenge, but it wasn’t one done carelessly.
Regardless, he had to get his people in here and give it a shot. He couldn’t call the game until it had been played.
“Don’t go back there alone, Gwen,” he said, motioning for her to stay put. “I need to clear the place before we go poking around. We don’t want to surprise anyone if they are still here.”
Even as he spoke, he knew he was being overly protective. It was unlikely anyone else was in the building, but he had to keep Gwen safe and, if they got their hands on the perpetrator, he would have to have all his ducks in a row for the prosecuting attorney. He wouldn’t be able to look himself in the mirror if whoever was behind all this got to walk on a technicality—something every defense attorney
loved.
He moved after her down the hall and took the lead. The front had been a mess, but the back of the clinic was even worse. Every cupboard was opened and a medley of supplies from gauze to bottles of Betadine were torn off the shelves and scattered through the hallways and rooms. There was a room filled with cages, for what he assumed was for the small animals that came through the clinic, but the pens were empty and half of them stood open.
Bianca’s office sat next to that small room. Every drawer of her black metal desk was open and the one on the right bottom sat crooked, like someone had pulled on it just a little too hard. Broken glass littered the top of her desk and an empty, bent frame was thrown on top of her nameplate.
“Do you know what picture she had on her desk?” he asked, pointing toward the frame.
“Sure, that was one from this year’s Fourth of July. We had a big barbecue at the ranch. Everyone was there and we got a photo. It was one of the best parties we’ve ever had.”
“Could you name some of the people from the picture?”
She tapped on her lip and looked toward the ceiling like she could pull the faces out of the air. “Well... We were there, Mom, Bianca and me. Then there were some people from around town—a lot of my mom’s friends from the bar. There was the staff from here. And your brother’s ex-wife, Alli, with her sister, Christina, and Winnie. Just about everyone we knew came.” Her mouth went into an O shape. “And the Poes were there... William and Monica.”
“Were they in the picture?”
She nodded. “I’m sure.”
He sighed. Everything came back to the Poes. There was no question they were involved in this, but it was up to him to figure out exactly how deep their connections lay.
“Did everyone at the party get a picture? Or did your sister post it to Facebook or anything?”
“I don’t think so. And Bianca doesn’t do the whole social media thing.”
He didn’t either. And to be honest, he didn’t mind it. Many of the PFMAs he was called on seemed to involve one or more of the social media sites. It was a testament to the times that so many feelings could be hurt with just a few mistyped words or an inferred slight that originated on a screen.
Was it possible that this case had something to do with a slight? Maybe someone besides Monica had found out about William and Bianca’s affair and had grown jealous.
It seemed like a stretch. Monica and William seemed like the most likely suspects. In cases like these, most often the wife had found out and and had come after the girlfriend. And usually deaths perpetrated by women were just like Bianca’s—passive kills—murders that involved a poison or some kind of implement that wasn’t as brutal, and one where the killer didn’t have to actually watch the person die.
The signs were beginning to point more and more in the direction of a woman as the killer, but that didn’t take William off the suspect list. He was just the kind of guy who would also commit a passive murder. He didn’t want to get his hands dirty, but maybe he would if the conditions were right—like if Bianca was blackmailing him.
There were still so many missing elements keeping Wyatt from fully understanding this case, but as he walked out of Bianca’s office, for the first time since they started, he knew he was getting closer to pinning the perpetrator down.
In the back of the clinic there was a refrigerator. Its door was ajar, and medications had spilled out of it. He moved closer. In the open cupboard next to the fridge, there was a lockbox.
“Is this where your sister would have kept the scheduled medications?” he asked, pointing toward the box.
“What’s that?” Gwen asked, stopping beside him.
“Those are the drugs that the DEA deems dangerous and addictive if not used properly—you know, like the Beuthanasia.”
“Oh, you mean is that where she keeps—er, kept—her narcs?” she asked.
“Not all scheduled meds are narcs, but yeah. Is that where she kept them?”
Gwen nodded. “I think so. Why?”
He knelt down by the box. “It’s still locked, which means one of two things. Either the perp took the drugs from the cabinet while it was still open, which means they wouldn’t have had to turn the place over. Or, what I believe, is that they took the drugs from Bianca’s bag at Dunrovin. But if I’m right, we’re going to have to prove it.”
“Let’s say you’re right. Let’s say they took the drugs from her bag in the barn. What does that change?”
He smiled as he felt another piece of his investigation fall into place. “If they didn’t take the drugs while they were here, maybe it means they weren’t really planning on killing her. Maybe they were following her, watching her work. When she went to see the mare, a mare that she may have been prepared to put to sleep, the perp saw an opportunity to make the kill—and they took it.”
“I’m not following,” Gwen said with a frown.
“If they hadn’t been planning to kill her, maybe they were a little less prepared. Maybe they made a mistake in their haste. Maybe they forgot to wear gloves when they went through her bag. And Bianca was probably the only other one to touch it, which means maybe we can get the prints we need.”
Gwen sucked in a breath.
“We need to find your sister’s vet bag.”
“Alli said your mother had been in the barn after your team had been through. Maybe she found it somewhere, or can at least tell us whether or not she saw it.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and dialed his mom. He walked back to his car, took out the camera he kept in the trunk and made his way back into the building.
His mom answered on the second ring. “How’s it going, sweetie?”
No matter how old he got, his foster mother would always call him “sweetie,” and as much as it probably would have bothered other men, it was one of the many things he loved about her. She was the kind who always put everyone else ahead of herself, sometimes to a fault. She had a habit of bringing on employees who had dark pasts—pasts that usually came back to bite her in the butt.
Once, Eloise Fitzgerald had hired a felon—the man had worked in the guest quarters, cleaning and taking care of the rooms. Two weeks after he’d been brought on, he’d broken into one of the rooms, stolen the guest’s keys and made off with their car. The ranch’s insurance had taken a hit, and the car had later been found abandoned at the Canadian border. They didn’t talk about it and she hadn’t hired another known felon since, but she was still a sucker for sob stories.
“Good.” He started to take pictures of the scene. “I was calling because Alli mentioned that you had been in the barn after Lyle and Steve went over the scene. By chance did you see Bianca’s bag lying around anywhere? They didn’t report finding a bag, but there should have been one on scene.”
“Didn’t you look when you were there?”
He hadn’t come in until later, and when he’d arrived on scene it had been busy thanks to the coming and going of Lyle and Steve. It was only because he’d volunteered to notify the next of kin that he had even gotten the case. “I did, but Lyle and Steve took point.”
“Lyle and Steve are lucky they found the barn. You do know that, right?” his mother said with a sharp laugh. “I mean those two men... How are they working at the same department as you? I can’t believe you aren’t just flying up the ranks over there.”
She wasn’t wrong about Steve and Lyle, but he couldn’t control the only men who were his department’s acting forensics team. The only things he could control were what he did with this case and how he could help the woman whose life it impacted the most.
“Mom, the bag. Did you see it?” he asked, trying to avoid falling into the chatting trap with his mother.
It had been a while since he’d seen or spoken to her, and no doubt she was chomping at the bit to hear about the case a
nd how it was playing out. She was kind and smart, but she was also probably worrying about the impact the case would have on her business—not that she would bring it up to him.
“What did the bag look like?” she asked in a way that he couldn’t decide if she was being coy or if she really had no idea what he was talking about.
“Don’t play, Mom. You know. It’s black. Kind of like a doctor’s bag. Likely full of vet supplies.” He looked over at Gwen, who was mimicking the shape with her hands.
“Oh, that?” his mom said. “I assumed you all must have been done with it, so I dropped it off at the Widow Maker a couple of hours ago.”
“Widow Maker?” He thought of Carla and her penchant for tossing raw eggs. He could only imagine how she would treat his mother—a woman Carla hadn’t spoken to since the day of her husband’s funeral. “You went to the Widow Maker? Why didn’t you just leave it for me?”
Gwen’s mouth opened with surprise. “She did what?”
There was a slight pause on the other end of the phone. “Sometimes the most honorable thing isn’t the easiest, Wyatt.”
It was a lesson his mother had drilled into him a long time ago, but he never grew above hearing it.
“This isn’t about being honorable, Mom—”
“Besides, Carla was quite nice,” his mother continued, cutting him off. “She even invited me in for a cup of joe. I think she’s very lonely and hurt with Bianca’s death and... Well, you know.”
She didn’t have to remind him of their battered pasts.
“Are you sure she didn’t invite you in so she could poison your coffee? Or was she drunk again?”
“She’s still a drunk?” his mother asked.
He glanced over at Gwen. She was shaking her head as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “It doesn’t matter. Did you go in the house?”
“I chatted with her a bit on the porch, but there was work that needed tending to at the ranch. With that mare down and everything up in the air with...things, well, I just didn’t feel good being gone for too long. She seemed to understand. But it might be nice if you stopped by and visited with her for a bit. She wanted to talk about you.”
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