LATE THE following morning, Mack drove out to pay a visit to a few folks. There was too much he didn’t know, and he was determined to get some answers. As he drove, he hummed to himself, something he hadn’t done in a long time. Happiness was a great thing, but he knew it could be fleeting, even more so if he didn’t get to the bottom of whatever the hell was happening. His humming died away when he reached the drive he was looking for and pulled in.
“Cal,” Mack called once he was parked and got out of the cruiser.
“What are you doing out here? I didn’t do nothing,” Cal said quickly as he limped toward him.
“Are you sure?”
“Is this about what happened at Maggie’s Roadhouse? Van Der Veen started it. I was only defending myself.” Cal put his hands on his hips in order to puff himself up and seem threatening. It didn’t work.
“No one said anything to us, so whatever happened must have been worked out.” Mack stepped closer. “When are you going to grow up?” He looked around. Maybe Cal was spending too much time at the bars and not enough at home taking care of business.
“I’m fine,” he argued.
“This place isn’t and you know it. What the hell happened?”
“Martha left and went to her sister’s.” Cal deflated like a balloon. “The worst part is that I didn’t do what she thinks I did.” He sounded more like a wounded little boy than a man who threw hundred-pound sacks of feed around like they were nothing.
“What does she think you did?” Mack asked.
“Someone told her I was having an affair with that real estate agent who was killed. I never cheated on Martha, and I know who said something too. Erickson is trying to push the pile of shit off his doorstep and onto mine.”
“Andy Erickson was seeing Renae Montgomery?” Mack asked, his mind turning fast. That changed everything and would give Erickson a definite motive for murder.
“Yeah. I saw them together two weeks ago. They were riding out of town in his truck. I pulled to a stop next to them and saw her trying to hide. But I knew it was her, and Erickson looked like he’d been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Marlene at the diner saw them together too, and she said they were too close and too giggly to have been there just as friends. Then Erickson told Martha that Renae and I were seeing each other, and Martha took off to her sister’s.”
“And you went to the Roadhouse, drank too much, and got into a fight?” Mack shook his head and got back to why he came. “I want to talk to you about where you were last Monday afternoon.”
“When that troublemaking bitch was killed? I was here working. So was Art Wenzel. He delivered cattle feed.” Cal became animated. “Wait, I can prove it.” He pulled open the door to his truck and fished through some papers on the passenger seat. “Art always puts the time of delivery on his receipts because he says he needs it for his records. I don’t know why, but…. Here it is!” Cal returned, pressed the paper into Mack’s hand, and pointed to the time in Art’s chicken scratches. “We finished unloading the truck at four, and it took over an hour. Art stayed for some ice tea after we were done. I offered him a beer, but he said he was driving. You can check with him, but I was here working and I didn’t shoot her. Why would I?”
Mack put the receipt in a plastic bag and labeled it. “I’ll give this back when I’m done.” The receipt put Cal here on his ranch during the most likely time of Renae’s murder and well after. Not that he suspected that Cal had actually done it, but it was good to officially eliminate him, and he now had another great lead. “Cal, call Martha and tell her what happened.”
“She won’t talk to me.”
“Then make her listen. I suggest you clean this place up, get some flowers, and then go over and see her. If you love Martha, then show her.”
“But what if she doesn’t believe me?”
“Cal, did Renae ever make a pass at you?”
He shook his head. “She never even spoke to me other than to ask who someone else was.”
“Then maybe there’s something else behind this other than Renae. Talk to Martha and find out. Maybe she isn’t happy, and if that’s the case, you need to know so you can fix it. Maybe think about her more than you do about going out to the Roadhouse all the time.” Mack patted Cal on the shoulder. “She deserves a full-time husband who cares for her more than he does a beer or his buddies.” Mack got back into his car. He pulled out and saw Cal getting to work. He really hoped Cal did something because there was no way on earth he would ever find someone else as good as Martha.
Mack left the ranch and did another pass in front of Brantley’s, pulling in to make sure everything was okay and then going the country miles around to the Erickson ranch.
“Mack,” Erickson said as he came out of the house.
“This isn’t a social call,” Mack said tersely. “I need to talk to you.”
“I’m busy at the moment.”
“Then we’ll do this the hard way and I’ll take you into the station for questioning.” Mack was tired of playing around. “You lied to me, and I intend to get to the bottom of this.” He unlatched his gun, ready to go for it at any second.
Erickson nodded and walked over toward the nearest paddock, and Mack followed, keeping a safe distance between them.
“Why didn’t you tell me about you and Renae? Was it a one-time thing or had the two of you been carrying on for a while?”
“I met the bitch at the Watering Hole one night when I’d had too much to drink, and I ended up fucking her. It was stupid, and she tried to blackmail me with it. I told her to go ahead, I was going to tell Grace about it anyway, but then I find out that she’s dead. I was so relieved, and I figured she’d done to someone else what she tried to do to me and it got her killed.”
“Where were you Monday afternoon?”
“Like I told you before, I was here working, trying to get water to the cattle so they didn’t fucking die on me. Grace was home, and she knows where I was and that my truck didn’t leave.”
“It would have been a hike, but you could have walked over and killed her.”
“Fine. If you don’t believe me, then you can check out my guns. I have nothing to hide. She wasn’t worth this much trouble,” Erickson said, and Mack wanted to smack him.
“She was a person just like anyone else, and she may have liked her fun, but she didn’t deserve to die for it any more than you do. Maybe we should ask Grace and get her opinion?” These people’s secrets were a bunch of crap—too many secrets.
“No. I’ll get the guns.” Erickson went inside, and Mack tensed, ready at a second’s notice to take him out. Andy came out carrying a rifle and a shotgun, both in cases. He handed them to Mack, who looked inside and checked them out.
“This is it?”
“Yeah, Grace hates the things and only lets me keep the two for hunting. And they have to be locked up. She’s scared to death our boy will get into them. You know about what happened to her brother?”
“That was a shame.” Mack understood. Grace’s brother had killed himself when he was eight years old, playing with one of their daddy’s guns. It had been the ultimate gun-safety lesson for the entire county. “He was in my class.” Mack handed the shotgun back to Andy. It was the wrong type and caliber. The other one he put in his trunk. “I’ll check this out, and it better not match. And if you decide to take any trips, I will come after you.” The evidence he had was circumstantial, but it was mounting.
“I didn’t kill her or anyone,” Andy said again forcefully. “I know I have a temper, but I don’t go around shooting people.”
“Let’s hope not,” Mack retorted, wanting to keep Andy a little unbalanced. “I’ll be in touch.” He got back in his car and pulled out of the drive, heading back toward town. He would need to test fire this gun and see if the bullets were close to the ones they’d recovered. It wasn’t as exact as if he had his own crime lab, but if he did it himself, it wouldn’t take weeks either.
Somehow he felt like he was getting closer. Even if Andy proved innocent, he had eliminated one more suspect and could move on. This was the thing about police work that he liked to think he was best at—he was dogged. He took things one step at a time and didn’t look for the easy answer or expect things to simply fall into his lap. Solving cases required determination, and that was something he had plenty of.
On his way in, he pulled into the drive at home and hurried inside. His dad was in his usual spot, in front of the television, napping, and Brantley sat on the sofa with his computer on his lap.
“Someone’s smiling. Does that mean you found something?” Brantley asked.
Mack leaned closer, inhaling deeply just to get a good whiff of Brantley’s earthy scent. After last night, it was hard for him to concentrate. His mind kept traveling back to Brantley and his intense eyes and warm smile. Not to mention the other parts of him that he had to push from his mind for fear of complete embarrassment. “I did. At least I hope so. This case is turning out to have more twists than I expected.” He sat down next to Brantley. “Andy had a fling with Renae. That’s what he was holding back. He says he didn’t kill her and that his wife can verify at least part of his story.”
“Does she know?”
“Andy says no, and it’s up to him to tell her. I tend to believe him, but I’m checking further into it as well.”
“What about my other neighbor?”
“It seems Andy tried to throw him under the bus, and I have to check his alibi, but I don’t think he did it either.”
“So we’re back where we started.”
“Maybe. If Renae had a fling with Andy, I wonder who else she did the horizontal hula with. I’m going to check her appointment book.” Mack paused. There was something else he wanted to tell Brantley. “William Turner, the vagrant we picked up crossing your land, turned out to just be a man down on his luck. We got him in touch with one of the local churches, and they’re taking him under their wing to try to get him back on his feet.”
That got a smile. “Good.” Brantley looked at his screen and then back at him. “Do you want some help?” he asked, setting his computer aside. “I’m getting so tired of sitting here all the time. Not that Lew isn’t good company.”
His dad snored even louder, as if to prove Brantley’s point. “Okay. You’re the one who says he likes puzzles, so maybe you can make heads or tails of her appointment book. She seemed to have a code that she used for some of the entries.”
“Okay.” Brantley closed his computer and put it back in his bag. He gathered the cord as well. “Tell your dad where we’re going, and then let’s go.” He was already heading for the door.
Mack chuckled to himself. Brantley must have been bored. Mack hated to wake his dad, but did anyway and explained where they were going. His dad nodded and shooed them along. He was half back to snoring again when Mack locked the door and they headed to the station.
The station was quiet since the deputies on duty were out patrolling. The building had been built some fifty years before, and it looked it. Most of the desks were old sixties gray metal, but they were serviceable and the budget didn’t allow for replacements. Mack liked to joke that if they kept them much longer, they’d be antiques and he could sell them to pay for the replacements. “Have a seat, and I’ll get the appointment book.”
Mack went into the evidence locker and pulled out the red leather-covered book and returned to the desk. Brantley had already set up his computer, and Mack helped him log on to the Internet. “Okay. Some of the entries are pretty clear, with names, addresses, and times. I expect those are showings, and I was able to match them with recent sales. But there are these others that are just initials. I thought they were the men she was with, but I’m not so sure now.”
Brantley took a look and worked his way through some of the pages. “Maybe the names of the men didn’t matter,” he suggested. “If Renae was out for a good time, maybe the guys were notches on her bedpost. So maybe these are certain characteristics that she liked.” He began running through the book. “Did you ever find her phone?”
“No. But I got records. She did a lot of texting, but I don’t have the messages.”
“Hmmm.” Brantley went through the book page by page. “This could be something that only meant anything to her, and if that’s the case, we may never figure it out. But there is a pattern. See, there are only these entries on Saturdays and Wednesdays. Did she only go out those nights?”
“I hadn’t noticed that,” Mack said. He wondered if once he cleared Andy, he could ask him exactly when they had their tryst. He should have gotten that information when he talked to him.
“I think some of these are her version of texting abbreviations. She never expected anyone else to see this.”
“So, what, these are conquest entries?” Mack asked.
“Why not? From what I’ve heard, Renae was a cougar, and she was up for a little sexual adventure. She was attractive and seemed like a strong, independent woman. If she wanted male companionship, why shouldn’t she have it? If the roles were reversed, we’d say the guy was a stud.”
“So what does T.I.B. mean?”
“It could be something as simple as Tiger in Bed. I don’t know.” Brantley continued to look through the book. “Here’s one: D.F. I like Dead Fish for that one.” He chuckled. “Unfortunately I don’t really know. They aren’t texting abbreviations in common use. So they’re something she made up. It isn’t like she put a codex in here.”
“Why is it that nothing in this case makes sense? The three people to whom your land would be most valuable don’t seem to be the ones who are trying to scare you off,” Mack observed. “And the victim is telling us very little. I wish we had her phone. There could be something of value on it.”
“Unless it was locked, and then we’d have to break into it.”
Mack rolled his eyes.
“Okay.” Brantley put the planner aside. “This is getting us nowhere. We made an assumption that I was being scared away because of the water on my land. But what if that isn’t true? What if there’s something else?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know,” Brantley said.
Mack groaned. “I’m going to verify these last alibis and check on this gun. I also need to call Andy’s wife to confirm the number of guns he has.” He stood and walked to his office. The whole thing was making his head hurt.
“Do you have a land plot map of the area?”
“Sure,” Mack said. “Gloria can get it for you. She’s able to get her hands on anything and everything.”
“Thanks.” Brantley headed over toward where she sat at Dispatch, and Mack went to work making calls. He got in touch with Grace Erickson, and she confirmed that her husband only had two guns.
“What’s this about, Mack?”
“Just not leaving a stone unturned.” He tried to reassure her and then hung up. He was able to confirm Cal’s feed delivery, and that pretty much left him out. The list of suspects kept shrinking, and Mack wasn’t sure where to go from there. Renae’s planner had yielded nothing at all and remained just as mysterious as it had when he’d initially found it. Mack hung up from his last call and stared at his wall of notes, hoping like hell that something would jump out at him.
“Mack,” Brantley said after knocking on his doorframe. “Can you take a look at something for me?”
“Sure.” He wasn’t getting anywhere fast.
Brantley put the plot map on his desk. “Look at this. The spring originates here, right at the western edge of my property, and then flows east. It’s quite robust, and I suspect that in the springtime there’s quite a torrent flowing down it.”
“Yeah, there is. Sometimes it floods when there’s a large snowpack and it melts quickly. That run handles drainage for all the land downstream. Why?”
“Look at the curves. It flows here and makes a sweeping bend before it leaves my land and crosses onto Erickson’s for a brief stint. Then it pretty much flows straight for a long way, at least to the end of this plot map.”
“All right. I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“I don’t know for sure. But what if they aren’t after the water itself, but what’s in the water?” Brantley bounced from foot to foot. “What if the stream has laid something bare or brought up something from deeper in the earth that someone wants.”
Mack leaned closer. “You mean, like, gold?”
“Maybe. The thing is, if there are minerals in the stream bed, they’ll show up right here, in the inside of this bend. It’s where sediment would be deposited, and anything heavy that came up through the aquifer would be deposited right there because the water would lose force and drop what it’s carrying.”
“So you’re saying you want to go out there and dig around?” Mack asked skeptically.
“Sure, why not?”
“Because there could be nothing.”
“Or it could be the key to everything. What if someone discovered something out there? Maybe they didn’t have the money to buy the land before I scooped it up. But if they scare me off, people might think twice before buying it from me, and maybe then they can get the ranch for a song, and whatever is out there would be theirs for the taking. We’ve eliminated the people who’d most likely want the land for the water. So it’s worth a shot to see if someone might want it for a different reason.”
“If you think so. I’m willing to go out there with you and take a look.” Hell, what would it hurt? He didn’t believe there was anything out there at all. In this drought, the water was the most valuable commodity there was, and if they didn’t get rain soon, even the springs would begin to run dry. “We can take a look tomorrow.”
“Okay,” Brantley said and took the plot map. “I’ll get out of your way.”
“You’re fine. I’m not getting anywhere very fast on this.”
“I know you think this is a wild goose chase,” Brantley said. “And you don’t have to go with me. I can do this on my own.”
Mack narrowed his eyes. “You sure as hell will not.” He stood quickly and nearly knocked over the chair. “You’ve already been shot at, and I’m pretty sure you’ve been watched and followed. If you think I’m letting you go out there alone with little cover, you’re crazy. I’m not particularly keen about going out there at all, but you damn well aren’t going alone. I wonder if there’s an army somewhere I can rent.”
“Mack… I….” Brantley looked taken aback at Mack’s protectiveness.
“I don’t particularly like it, but it could be worth a look. There has to be some reason for all of this, and like you said, we’ve pretty much eliminated the water-rights angle. And you’ve helped Erickson out anyway. Something is going on that we don’t know enough about, so we can see if there’s anything there.”
“Okay. I’m going to take a look and see what’s been found in the area in the past. Maybe that will give us a clue.” Brantley turned to leave the office, but Mack stopped him with both hands on Brantley’s shoulders, then wheeled him around, kissing him possessively, taking what he wanted.
“I will not let anything happen to you.”
Brantley shivered as Mack deepened the kiss, enfolding him into his arms. Mack pushed Brantley back until he reached the wall. Mack stifled a smile as more of his weight settled against Brantley. It was heady knowing he could buckle Brantley’s knees with a kiss. Someone walked by the office, footsteps tapping on the floor, but he ignored it and Brantley did as well. Mack was too intent on kissing Brantley’s breath away to stop now.
Once Mack pulled back, Brantley blinked a few times as though his mind was trying to make sure it had been real. The tingling on his lips reinforced to Mack that he’d just kissed him within an inch of his life, possessively, and he was damn proud of it.
“Mack…,” Brantley breathed.
Mack didn’t move away, staring intently into Brantley’s eyes. “I have to know. Was last night just a sex thing for you?”
Brantley shook his head.
“Good. Fucking good. Because it wasn’t for me either. So if we go out there, you’ll do this my way and without argument. I said I’d do my best to keep you safe, and you damn well better do your part.”
“Why are you acting like a bear with a thorn in its paw?” Brantley demanded.
“Because I don’t want to lose what I just found,” Mack answered and then backed away farther, his hands falling away from where he’d held Brantley’s shoulders to the wall.
“When are we going?”
“Tomorrow,” Mack reminded him. “If there’s something out there, we need to know, and if there’s not, then we’re back to the drawing board.”