James had a lot of time to think since his spicy lunch had kept him up most of the night. It was a small price to pay, he told himself. He wasn’t sure exactly what he’d done to Lori in high school or since that had her so upset with him. He’d been the high school jock and goof-off who’d gotten by on his charm. She’d been the studious, hardworking serious student who’d had to work for her grades. Why wouldn’t she resent him?
But he suspected there was more to it than even his awkward attempts at flirting with her. He felt as if he’d done something that had made her dislike him. That could be any number of things. It wasn’t like he went around worrying about who might have been hurt by his antics back then. Or even now, he admitted honestly.
He kept going over the conversation at lunch though. She’d tried to pass off her anger as something from high school. But he wasn’t buying it. She hadn’t been a fan of his for apparently some time, but when she’d gotten upset was when he’d said he was looking into his father’s last case, Billy Sherman’s hit-and-run.
Add to that, her stepmother’s name was on his father’s list. Del Colt had been meticulous in his investigations. He’d actually been really good at being a PI. Karen Wilkins wouldn’t have been on that list unless his father thought she knew something about the case.
James was convinced by morning that he needed to talk to Karen. He knew Lori wasn’t going to like it. Best that he hadn’t brought it up at lunch.
But first, he wanted to talk to the person who’d hired his father to look into the hit-and-run after the police had given up.
ALICE SHERMAN GASPED, her hand over her heart, her eyes wide as she stared at James. It seemed to take her a moment to realize she wasn’t looking at a ghost. “For a moment I thought... You look so much like your father.”
James smiled, nodding. “It’s a family curse.”
She shook her head as she recovered. “Yes, being that handsome must be a terrible burden for you, especially with the ladies.”
“I’m James Colt,” he said, introducing himself and shaking her hand. “I don’t think we’ve ever met.” Alice worked at the local laundry. “I was hoping to ask you a few questions.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “About what?” She seemed really not to know.
“I hate to bring it back up and cause you more pain, but you hired my father to look into Billy’s death. He died before he finished the investigation.”
“You’re mistaken,” she said, fiddling with the collar of her blouse. “I didn’t hire your father. My ex did.”
That caught him flat-footed. He’d seen several checks from Alice Sherman in his father’s file and Alice had been the first on Del’s list of names. He said as much to her.
Her expression soured. “When my ex’s checks bounced, I paid Del for his time. But what does that have to do with you?”
“I’m looking into the case.”
Alice stared at him. “After all these years? Why would you do that? You...? You’re a private investigator?”
“No. It was my father’s last case. I’m just looking into it.”
“Well, I’m not interested in paying any more money.” She started to close the door.
“Please, Mrs. Sherman,” he said quickly. “I don’t mean to remind you of your loss. I just want to know more about your son.”
She managed a sad smile. “Billy is always on my mind. The pain never goes away.” She opened the door wider. “I suppose I have time for a few questions.”
As James took the chair she offered him, she walked to the mantel over the fireplace and took down a framed photograph of her son.
“This is my favorite snapshot of him.” She turned and handed it to him. It was of a freckle-faced boy with his two front teeth missing smiling broadly at the camera. “Billy was seven,” she said as she took a seat on the edge of the couch facing him. “Just a boy. He was named after my father who died in the war.”
“You’ve had a lot of loss,” James said as she brushed a lock of her hair from her face. After the accident, it was as if she’d aged overnight. According to his father’s file, Alice would now be forty-five. Her hair was almost entirely gray and there were deep lines around her eyes and mouth. “I’m so sorry. I don’t want to make it worse.”
“Have you found new information on the case?” she asked, her gaze intent on him. He realized that he might have given her the wrong impression.
“No, not yet. I’m not sure where my father had left the case. Had he talked to you about his investigation before his death?”
“He called me that afternoon, asked if I was going to be home. He thought he might be getting close to finding the hit-and-run driver,” she said. “I waited for him but he never showed up. I found out the next day about his pickup being hit by the train.”
“He said he thought he might be close to solving the case?” He felt hope at this news. Maybe he wasn’t playing at this. Maybe there was something he could find after all. “Did he tell you anything else?”
She shook her head. “Unfortunately, that’s all he said.”
This news had his heart hammering. He’d always wondered if his father’s so-called accident had anything to do with the case. If he was that close to finding the hit-and-run driver... Sheriff Otis Osterman’s investigation had ruled Del’s death an accident due to human error on his father’s part. Either Del hadn’t been paying attention and not seen the train coming at the uncontrolled railroad crossing or he’d tried to outrun the train.
Neither had sounded like his father.
The autopsy found alcohol in his father’s system and there had been an empty bottle of whiskey found on the floor of his pickup.
James had never accepted that his father had been drunk and hadn’t seen the train coming. If he was close to solving the Billy Sherman case, there is no way he would have been drinking at all.
Alice had gotten up and now brought over more photographs of her son. He’d been small and thin. A shy boy, not an adventurous one. There’d been two theories of how Billy ended up outside on the street that night. The obvious one was that he’d sneaked out for some reason. The other was that he’d been abducted.
“Is there any reason Billy might have left the house that night after you put him to bed?” James asked cautiously.
“No, never. Billy would have never gotten up in the middle of the night and gone out for any reason. He was afraid of the dark. He hated admitting it, but he still slept with a night-light. He was also terrified of storms. There was a terrible storm that night. The wind was howling. Between it and the pouring rain you could hardly see across the street.” She shook her head, her gaze unfocused for a moment as if she were reliving it. “He wouldn’t have gone out on his own under any circumstances.”
“So, you’re still convinced that someone abducted him?”
“His bedroom window was wide open.” Her voice broke. “The wind had blown the rain in. His floor and bedding were soaked when I went in the next morning to wake him up and found him gone.” All of this he’d already read in his father’s file. He could see it was a story she’d told over and over, to the sheriff, to Del, to herself. “I started to call the sheriff when Otis drove up and told me that Billy had been found a few blocks from here lying in the ditch dead.” She made angry swipes at her tears. He could see that she was fighting hard not to cry.
“The sheriff said he didn’t find any signs of a forced entry,” James said. “According to my father’s notes, you said you locked the window before tucking Billy in at nine. Maybe you forgot that night—”
“No, I remember locking it because I could see the storm coming. I even closed the blinds. It’s no mystery. The only way Billy would leave the house was if his father came to his window that night. Sean Sherman. Not that he’ll tell you the truth, but I know he took my boy. Have you talked to him?”
“Not yet.” He was still working on the angle that Billy, like every red-blooded, American boy, had sneaked out a time or two. Having been a seven-year-old at one time, he asked, “Did Billy have his own cell phone?” She shook her head. “What about a walkie-talkie?”
“Yes, but—”
“Who had the other two-way radio handset?”
He watched her swallow before she said, “Todd. Todd Crane. But he swore he hadn’t talked to Billy that night.”
“I’m just covering my bets,” James said quickly. He gathered that his father hadn’t asked her this. “Did the sheriff talk to Todd?”
“I don’t know. I think your father asked me about Billy’s friends, but my son wouldn’t have left the house that night even for his best friend, Todd.”
James rose to lay a hand over hers as she gripped the stack of framed photos of her son. “Do you mind if I see his room?” Even before she led him down the hall, he knew Billy’s room would be exactly like he’d left it even after nine years.
It was a classic boy’s room painted a pale blue with a Spiderman bedspread and action figures lined up on the bookshelf.
Moving to the window, James examined the lock. It was an old house, the lock on the window old as well. Maybe Billy had been abducted and the sheriff had missed something. But wouldn’t there have been footprints in the wet earth outside Billy’s window? Unless he’d been taken before the storm hit and the prints had been washed away.
James left, promising to let Alice Sherman know if he discovered anything helpful. The look in her eyes was a stark reminder of what he’d set in motion. He’d gotten her hopes up and the truth was, he had no idea what he was doing.
KAREN WILKINS WASN’T HOME. Her car wasn’t parked in front of her freshly painted and landscaped split-level. Nor was it in the garage.
Todd Crane, who would now be around sixteen, hadn’t been on his father’s list. But Del had talked to Todd’s stepmother, Shelby Crane.
Since it was a Saturday, James figured the boy wouldn’t be in school. He swung by the house only a few blocks from Alice Sherman’s. The woman who answered the door was considerably younger-looking than Alice. Shelby Crane was a slim blonde with hard brown eyes.
“Yes?” The way she was holding the door open only a crack told him that Alice might have already called her.
“I’m James Colt and—”
“I know who you are. What do you want?”
“I’m guessing that you spoke with Alice,” he said. “I’d like to talk to your son.”
“No.” She started to close the door, but he stopped her with his palm.
“Your son might know why Billy Sherman was outside that night,” he said, his voice growing harder with each word.
“Well, he doesn’t.”
“If that’s true, then I can’t see why he can’t tell me that himself.”
“He doesn’t know. He didn’t know nine years ago. He doesn’t know now.” Again, she started to close the door and again he put a hand on it to stop her.
“Did he and Billy talk on walkie-talkies back then?”
“My son had nothing to do with what happened to that boy. You need to go. Don’t make me call the sheriff.” She closed the door and this time he let her.
As he started to turn and leave, he saw a boy’s face peering out one of the upstairs windows. Then the curtain fell back, and the boy was gone. He wondered why Shelby was so afraid of him talking to her son.
His phone rang as he was getting into his pickup. Melody? He picked up.
“I just got a call from the sheriff’s department,” she said without preamble. “Carl said you have to get a permit to remove the burned trailer from your land.”
“Why would he call you?”
Silence, then a guilty, “I might have tried to hire someone to haul it away before you got back.”
James shook his head. Did she not realize he would have noticed anyway? The missing double-wide and the burned area around it would have been a dead giveaway. “No problem. I’ll swing by and pick up a permit. Thanks for letting me know.”
He was still mentally shaking his head when he walked into the sheriff’s department.
Sheriff Carl Osterman, younger brother of the former sheriff Otis Osterman, was standing outside his office with a large mug of coffee and the family sour expression on his face. A short stocky man in his late fifties, Carl believed in guilty until proven innocent. Word was that he’d arrest his own grandmother for jaywalking, which could explain why he was divorced and not speaking with his mother or grandmother, James had heard.
“Wondered when I’d be seeing you,” the sheriff drawled. “Suppose you heard what happened out at your place.”
“It was fairly noticeable.”
Carl took a long moment to assess him over the rim of his mug as he slurped his coffee. “You know those meth dealers?”
“Nope. I was on the road. I didn’t even know Melody had rented the place.”
The sheriff nodded. “You need a permit to haul that mess off.”
“That’s why I’m here.”
“What are you planning to do out there?” Carl asked.
James shook his head. “I don’t have any plans at the moment.”
“Heard you were staying in your father’s old office.”
News traveled fast in Lonesome. “My family still owns the building.”
Carl nodded again, still eyeballing him with suspicion. “Margaret will give you a form to fill out. Could take a few days, maybe even a week.”
“I’m in no hurry.”
“That mean you’re planning to stay for a while?”
James studied the man. “Why the interest in my itinerary, Carl?”
“There’s a rumor circulating that you’ve reopened your father’s office and that you’re working one of his cases. Last I heard you weren’t a licensed private investigator.”
He hid his surprise, realizing that Shelby Crane had probably called. “No law against asking a few questions, but now that you mention it, I worked for my father during high school and when I was home from college and the rodeo so I have some experience.”
“You need a year and a half’s worth before you can apply for a license under state law.”
He pretended he always knew that. “Yep, I know. Got it covered. Application is in the mail.” It wasn’t. But damn, he just might apply now.
The sheriff put down his coffee cup with a curse. “Why would you do that unless you planned to stay in town?”
James smiled. He wasn’t planning to. “Just covering my options, sheriff.”
“The state runs a criminal background check, you know.”
He laughed. “Why would that concern me?”
“If you have a felony on your record—”
“I don’t,” he said with more force than he’d intended.
“Good thing they don’t check finances or your mental health.”
James laughed. “Not worried about either.” With a shake of his head, he turned and walked over to Margaret’s desk. Without a word, she handed him the permit application.
“You’ll need to pay twenty-five dollars when you return that permit,” Carl called after him.
OTIS HAD JUST gotten through mowing the small lawn in front of his house. The summer air smelled of cut grass and sunshine. He turned on the sprinklers and, hot, sweaty and tired, went inside. He’d only just opened a can of beer and sat down when Carl called.
“You know what that damned Colt boy has gone and done now?” his brother demanded. James Colt was far from a boy, but Carl didn’t give him a chance to reply. “He’s been going all over town asking questions about his father’s last case. He thinks he’s a private eye.”
He didn’t have to ask what case. Otis was the first one on the scene after getting the call about the boy’s body that was found in the ditch next to a house under construction in the new subdivision near where the Shermans lived. The memory still kept him awake some nights. He’d been a month away from retiring. Carl had been his undersheriff. The two of them had worked the case.
“Legally, James can’t—”
“He’s applied for a state license!” Carl was breathing hard, clearly worked up. “He says his experience working with his father should be enough. It probably is. It’s so damned easy to get a PI license in this state, he’ll get it and then—”
“And then nothing,” Otis said. “He’s a rodeo cowboy. I heard he’s hurt. Once he feels better, he’ll be back in the saddle, having put all of this behind him. Even if that isn’t the case—which it is—he’s inexperienced, the Sherman case is ice cold and we all know how hard those are to solve. And let’s face it, he’s not his father. I’ll bet you five bucks that he quits before the week is out.”
Carl sighed. Otis could imagine him pacing the floor of his office. “You think?”
“You know I don’t throw money around.”
His brother laughed. “No, not Otis Osterman.” He sighed again. “I just thought this was behind us.”
“It is,” he said even though he knew it might never be true. Billy Sherman’s death was unsolved, justice hadn’t been meted out and what happened that night remained a mystery. There were always those who couldn’t live with that.
Unfortunately, Del Colt had been one of them. Him and his damned digging. He’d gotten into things that had been better off left alone.
But Otis had five dollars that said James Colt was nothing like his father. For the young rodeo cowboy’s sake, he certainly hoped not.