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Shandra and Jo gave Velma a lift to her house before continuing to the ranch. Shandra glanced over at her aunt wondering what she was thinking. Her own thoughts had been bouncing all over the place and she wasn’t sure how to express what she wanted to say.
“That poor child,” Jo said, out of the blue.
“She didn’t deserve to die that way.” Shandra felt guilty that she’d not recognized Nelly when she saw her in the parking lot. If she had, she could have called her in and she might still be alive.
“Not her, her child. Birdie Bingham didn’t do a good job raising her granddaughter, what makes anyone think she could raise a great-grandchild?” Jo’s lips were in a tight line and her eyes darkened with determination.
“I agree, but from what Velma said, it looks like she’ll end up in foster care.” Shandra didn’t like the idea of the child being placed with people she didn’t know with an unknown future. However, having heard Ryan lament many times over the fate of children because of their parents’ actions, she knew there was little that could be done.
“That’s not a good place,” Jo said again and fell into silence.
They turned down the lane to the ranch. Andy was riding a horse in the corral.
“Did you call home and tell anyone about Nelly?” Shandra asked, parking her Jeep beside her uncle’s pickup.
“No.” Jo slid out of the Jeep and walked toward the corral.
Shandra hopped out and jogged to catch up. She wanted to see her cousin’s reaction and see if he had any ideas about who would want Nelly dead.
Andy reined his horse over to the corral fence. “How did your first day of dance go?”
With everything that had happened she’d forgotten all about learning to dance and the wedding. “Not so good. It didn’t happen.”
“What?” He stared at his mother. “Why not?”
“Nelly Bingham was killed.” Jo’s face reddened, and her eyes snapped with anger. “Someone desecrated the sweat lodge by stabbing her in the sacred area.”
“Nelly?” He shook his head. “Never wanted to see that happen to her. She was getting things turned around. She’d stopped selling—”
“She was selling drugs?” Shandra jumped on what Andy had been about to say.
“She has for years. Her first boyfriend is one of the biggest dealers on the rez.” Andy shook his head. “Never did know what she saw in him. Coop tagged him a slime ball from their first meeting.”
“Where was that?” Shandra asked, wondering if this could be the father of Nelly’s baby.
“At a party at Rebecca Lake.” Andy dismounted and leaned an arm on the fence rail. “Duke is fifteen or more years older than Nelly.”
“Then she was a minor when they met?” If the man was the father of her child, Fawn was better off not knowing him.
Andy nodded. “She thought she was big shit hanging out with an older man, bringing him to the parties. But he was only using her to get in with the partiers and spread his drugs around. Get people hooked. Once he was selling consistently, he dropped Nelly.”
Shandra wondered if he was the true love that dropped her by the wayside that Nelly had mentioned on their previous meeting. “Was she hanging around him when she would have become pregnant?”
Andy nodded. “She accused him of being the father and wanted him to pay for things, but he said, she was a whore and slept around and he wasn’t paying for someone else’s problem.”
“That’s cold.” Shandra didn’t like this man.
“That’s why we can’t have anyone making him take the child,” Jo said, pivoting and hurrying to the house.
“What’s that about?” Andy asked.
“I’m not sure. But your mom is worried about Fawn going into foster care.” Shandra patted the horse’s nose when he stuck it over the rail. “What do you know about a tall, thin, man about Coop’s age who would be arguing with Nelly and drives a jacked-up dark blue pickup?”
“That sounds like Tripp Talman.” Andy grabbed the horse’s reins and walked along the inside of the fence.
“Are, or were, Tripp and Nelly a couple?” Shandra asked, following around the edge of the corral.
“They were together at parties. But Tripp and Wendy are a couple.” Andy opened the gate and led the horse out.
“Wendy and Tripp?” Could that be why Wendy hadn’t been upset hearing about Nelly? Wendy had been absent for a while at the time someone could have stabbed Nelly. Shandra would have to do more digging into the relationships. She didn’t want to believe her cousin could have killed anyone. However, when it came to jealousy, she’d discovered a lot of murders were caused by that emotion.
“Was Nelly seeing anybody beside Tripp and possibly the drug dealer?” Shandra followed Andy and the horse over to the barn.
“You know Nelly. She liked to have a good time and it didn’t really matter who with.” Andy’s cheeks darkened as if the subject embarrassed him.
Shandra studied her cousin. “Were you one of the men?”
Andy glanced around as if he feared someone was near enough to hear what he was about to say. “I hung out with her a time or two at parties.”
Shandra studied Andy. “You knew her reputation.”
“When you’re at a party, things like that don’t matter. You’re lonely and hook up with whoever is willing.” He ducked his head. “I can’t say I’m proud of it. But that’s just the way it is.”
“I’m not judging. Just asking. We need to know who would want to kill Nelly. And why.” Shandra nodded to the horse. “You’re doing a great job with this horse. I’ll talk to you later.”
Shandra wandered to the house wondering about the young woman she had picked to be her first scholarship winner. Nelly had appeared to have been someone thinking about a future to have acquired her GED and applied for the scholarship. She was a young woman who had brought a child into the world alone and was fighting for a better life for the two of them. It had to have been someone she knew that killed her.
She needed to discover what Nelly and Tripp had been arguing about. And she needed to get more information on both Tripp and the drug dealer.
Shandra entered the old farmhouse and found Jo busy baking. She’d learned from her last trip to the reservation that Jo baked when she was upset.
“I didn’t realize you knew Nelly so well,” Shandra said, walking over to the counter where Jo stirred something in a bowl.
Jo glanced her direction then back down to the bowl. “I didn’t know Nelly that well. However, she did bring Fawn to the center quite a bit for children’s activities. She might have been young and had a poor upbringing, but she was mother enough to know her daughter needed to be around other children. Her applying for a scholarship to get out of here... I just feel like her life was wasted, and I don’t want the same to happen to her daughter.”
Shandra put a hand on Jo’s shoulder. “Do we know what will happen for sure?”
Jo shook her head. “I’m not sure what. But Birdie is in no shape to take care of a small child.”
“If the father really is the drug dealer, he has no business having her either,” Shandra added.
~*~
Shandra’s phone jingled a jazz tune as she was getting ready for bed. Without glancing at the phone, she knew it would be Ryan.
She picked up the phone and slid her finger across the screen. “Good evening.”
“Evening, beautiful.” Ryan’s usual greeting always warmed her heart. “How did this first day of learning to dance and wedding planning go?”
“Not so well. We had a little hiccup that changed the events of the day.”
“What do you mean?” Ryan’s voice went on alert as if he were on duty. He was the skeptical policemen, always looking for the worst. Which of course this time it was.
“I told you we picked Nelly Bingham to be the recipient of my scholarship.”
“Yes.”
“She didn’t show up for our meeting today, and the groundskeeper found her.”
“What do you mean, found her?” The timbre of Ryan’s voice told her he already had a good idea how they’d found poor Nelly.
“Someone killed her by the sweat lodge behind the community center. It kind of stopped anything else that was happening today.”
“Shandra how do you always find the bodies?” Ryan had already drifted into his detective mode.
It was one of the things that Shandra loved about the man. No matter what was happening, he could shift into a protector of not only her, but anyone who needed protection.
“I saw her arguing with a young man earlier in the morning. Only, I didn’t know it was her.” She sighed. “I have a feeling my cousin Wendy might be connected to this somehow. She and Nelly were dating the same young man who turns out to be the one that Nelly was having an argument with this morning.” She hoped Ryan could help her make sense of everything.
“You need to be careful. If Nelly was coming to see you, there may be a connection.” His tone was assertive.
“I think it was Tripp, the young man she argued with, or it could be because she had been selling drugs.” She tapped her finger against her chin. This seemed the best direction to consider.
“What do you mean she had been? It’s hard to get out of that racket.”
“She must have. Everyone says she was turning her life around, because I’d offered the scholarship.” It made her proud that her small effort to help a woman on the reservation had made that much of an impact on Nelly. “To have applied for the scholarship she had to go through a drug test. So she wasn’t using.”
“Not all sellers are users. In fact, the smart ones don’t use the stuff at all. They just prey on the weaker users.”
“I believe she had cleaned up all of her life. She deserved the scholarship, and I feel obligated to make sure her killer is found.” Shandra had felt a connection with the woman the first time they’d met and now, knowing how close Nelly had come to getting out of here and bettering her life, Shandra couldn’t let go of the notion she needed to help.
“I know this is falling on deaf ears, but you should stay out of this. Let the police handle it.” Ryan was smart, he didn’t order her, he made a strong appeal to her need to make him happy.
“I can’t promise you I can stay out of it.” She acknowledged his concern but having her first recipient of the scholarship die only hours before it was even announced had shaken Shandra. There was no way she was going to be able to stay away from this investigation. And it looked like she was going to be at the reservation for more than a week.
“Shandra, leave this to the authorities. There is no sense in you getting tangled up in this so close to our wedding.”
“If grandmother comes to me in a dream and gives me clues, there is no way I can stay out of this.” She didn’t want to go against Ryan’s wishes. However, if her dreams revealed clues to help solve the crime, she would follow them, wherever they led her. Ryan had taught her to believe in them.
“We’re about to start a life together. I don’t want something to happen before we can say our vows.” Ryan’s voice had lost his persuasiveness and turned to caring.
Shandra would’ve laughed at how Ryan had shifted gears knowing she would dig in if he ordered her. Even knowing he cared and worried about her, she had to find the truth for Nelly. And Fawn. The little girl would one day grow up and wonder what had happened to her mother. All she would hear would be the rumors and stories of her mother bedding men and going to parties. She wanted the child to learn her mother had been on the brink of changing both their lives by going off to college and beginning a career.
“I can’t make any promises.”
Ryan sighed on the other end of the phone. “I’ll put in for a week of leave. I’ll be there this Saturday.”
“You don’t have to.” Her knight in shining armor was coming to help her solve the murder.
“Yes, I do. Someone has to keep you out of trouble.” His tone was light, but she heard conviction as well.
She smiled. Deep down, she’d known he wouldn’t leave her alone to investigate this. “I look forward to you joining me.”
“See you on Saturday and talk to you tomorrow.”
Shandra turned the phone off, stared at the instrument in her hands, and picked up a notebook to write down everything she knew.