After leaving the sandwich shop, James had felt at loose ends. He drove out to his family’s ranch. Ranch was a loosely used term since no one had raised much of anything on the land. It was close to a hundred acres covered with pines. Some of it was mountainous while a strip of it bordered the river.
He and his brothers had talked about selling some of it off since they didn’t use it, but Willie, their eldest brother, talked them out of it.
“Land doesn’t have to do anything and someday you’re going to be glad that it’s there and that it’s ours,” Willie had said.
The remains of the double-wide trailer had been removed leaving a scorched area of ground where it had been. But James could see where grass was already starting to grow. It wouldn’t be long before nature healed the spot.
James stood looking at the rolling hillsides, towering pines and granite bluffs. He was glad Willie had talked them out of selling even a portion of it. This land was all that brought them back here. It was the one constant in their lives. The one tangible in their otherwise nomadic lives.
That and the office building. He thought about Lori wanting to buy it. He still thought of the place as Del’s and felt himself balk at the idea of ever giving it up.
Back at the office, he found several notes tacked to his back door. Word had gotten out that he was in business. One was from an insurance company offering him surveillance work if he was interested. The other was from someone who wanted her boyfriend followed. He laughed, delighted that he had several new PI jobs if he wanted them.
But first he had to finish what he’d started. He drove out to Edgar Appleton’s house some miles from town. Edgar owned a heavy equipment construction company. He and his crew had been working near where Billy Sherman’s body had been found. One of his employees, Lyle Harris, had been operating a front loader that morning. He was about to dump a load of dirt into the ditch when a neighbor woman spotted the body and screamed—stopping him.
Edgar lived on a twenty-acre tract. His house sat off to one side, his equipment taking up the rest of the property. Several vehicles were parked in front of the house when James climbed the steps to knock. He could hear loud voices inside and knocked again.
A hush came from inside the house a moment before the door opened. Edgar filled the doorway. He was a big man with a wild head of brown hair that stuck up every which way. He was wearing a sweatshirt with his business logo on it and a pair of canvas pants. It appeared he’d just gotten home from work.
“If this is a bad time...”
“James Colt,” Edgar said in a loud boisterous voice. “Bad time? It’s always a bad time at this house. Come in!” He stepped aside. “Irene, put another plate on the table.”
She yelled something back that he didn’t catch just a moment before she appeared behind her husband wiping her hands on her apron. “You’d think I’m only here to cook and clean for this man.” She smiled, her whole face lighting up. “Get on in here. I have a beef roast and vegetables coming out of the oven. I hope your table manners are better than Ed’s. I could use some stimulating conversation for once.” Her laugh filled the large room as she headed back to the kitchen.
“The meanest woman who ever lived,” Edgar said so she could hear it. Her response was swift, followed by the banging of pots and pans. “I don’t know what I would do without her.”
“That’s for sure!” she called from the kitchen.
“I can’t stay for dinner. I probably should have called first,” James said.
“Sorry, but you have no choice now,” Edgar said as he looped an arm around his shoulders and dragged him in. “She’ll swear I ran you off and I’ll have to hear about it the rest of the night.”
He had to admit, Irene’s dinner smelled wonderful. He heard his stomach growl. So did Edgar. The man laughed heartily as he swept him into the dining room off the kitchen.
“I didn’t come for dinner, but it sure smells good,” he told Irene as she brought out a pan of homemade rolls. “Let me help you with that.” He grabbed the hot pads on the counter and helped her get the huge pot out of the oven. It was enough food to feed an army, he saw. “Are there other people coming?” he asked as she directed him to a trivet at the head of the large dining room table.
“At this house, you never know,” Irene said. “I like to be prepared. As it is, Ed didn’t bring home half the crew tonight so I’m glad you showed up.”
“Me too,” Ed said as he sat down at the head of the table and began to slice up the roast. Irene swatted him with the dishtowel she took from her shoulder before she sat to his right and motioned James into the chair across from her.
“James, I want to hear it all,” she said smiling as she reached for his plate and Edgar began to load it up with thick slices of the beef. “You know what I’m talking about,” she said, seeing his confusion. “Is it true? You’ve taken over your father’s private investigative business? We’ll get to Melody and what happened to your trailer later.”
“Sorry, I should have warned you,” Edgar said with a laugh. “The woman is relentless.” As he said it, he reached over and squeezed her arm.
For the rest of the meal, they all talked and laughed. James couldn’t recall a time he’d enjoyed more. Seeing how these two genuinely cared about each other was heartwarming and Irene’s dinner was amazing.
“I know you didn’t come by for dinner,” Edgar said when they’d finished and Irene got up to clear the table. James started to rise to help her but she waved him back down.
He explained that he was looking into his father’s last case, the hit-and-run that killed Billy Sherman.
“We were working in that subdivision. You know Lyle, my front-end loader operator, was working that morning,” Edgar said. “He was getting ready to fill in that ditch we’d dug when a neighbor lady came over with some turnovers she’d made for the crew. She saw Billy lying there and started screaming.” He shook his head. “It wrecked us all.” Irene came from the kitchen to place her hand on the big man’s shoulder for a few moments before taking the rest of the dirty plates into the kitchen.
“That was a new neighborhood nine years ago, new pavement,” James said. “Did you see skid marks, any indication that whoever hit him had tried to stop?”
Edgar wagged his big head. “The sheriff, that was Otis back then, said the driver must have thought he hit a deer and that was why he didn’t stop. Plus it was raining hard that night. I reckon the car was going so fast when it hit the boy—he was pretty scrawny for his age—that the driver hadn’t known what was hit.”
“But the driver had to have known it wasn’t a deer, even if he didn’t stop,” James said. “There would have been some damage to the car, a dent or a broken headlight.” Edgar nodded. “I would think the car would have had to have been repaired.”
“You’re assuming the driver was local, but even if that was the case, he wouldn’t have had it repaired in town.”
James thought of the next name on his list that his father hadn’t gotten to: Gus Hughes of Hughes Body Shop in town. But Edgar was right. If it had been a local, then the driver would have gotten the car repaired out of town.
Irene came in and changed the subject as she served coffee and raspberry pie with a scoop of ice cream.
“I can’t tell you how much I’ve enjoyed this meal,” James told her before Edgar walked him to the door.
“I hope you find out who killed that boy,” the big man said, patting him on the shoulder. “It’s time he was put to rest.”
LORELEI WOKE FEELING exhausted after a night of tossing and turning. She kept thinking about her stepmother and going from angry to sad to worried and regretful for the things she’d said. Her stepmother couldn’t know anything about Billy Sherman’s death. So why hadn’t she sworn that? Why had she gotten even more upset and basically thrown Lorelei out of her house?
After a shower, she dressed for work. Owning her own business meant she went to work whether she felt like it or not. She had a couple of women she hired during the busiest seasons to help out, but she’d never considered turning the place over to one of them before this morning.
She reeled her thoughts back. What had she been doing nine years ago when Billy Sherman died? Working in a friend’s sandwich shop in Billings, learning the business. Before that she’d had numerous jobs using her college business degree, but hadn’t found anything that called to her. She’d always known that she wanted the independence of having her own business.
And what had her stepmother been doing nine years ago? Karen had her exercise studio and had been teaching a lot, as far as Lorelei could remember.
Frowning now, she tried to remember if it had been her stepmother who’d told her about Billy Sherman’s hit-and-run or if she’d heard it on the news. Didn’t she remember a phone conversation about it? Her stepmother being understandably upset since it had happened not that far from her house in that new adjoining subdivision.
Lorelei felt sick to her stomach and more scared than she’d ever been. She had to know the truth. But if she couldn’t get her stepmother to tell her...
It was still early. She called her friend Anita and asked her if she wanted to fill in today, apologizing for the short notice. Anita jumped at the opportunity, saying she had nothing planned and could use the money.
“I had already made a list of the specials,” Lorelei told her. “Everything you need is in the cooler. You just have to get the bread going right away. I’ll be in to help as soon as I can.”
Anita said she was already on her way out the door headed for the shop, making Lorelei smile. Her business would be fine. Grabbing her purse, she headed for her car.
WITH THE RISING SUN, James had awakened knowing he was going to have to talk to former sheriff Otis Osterman at some point. He had too many questions about how the sheriff had handled the investigation. According to his father’s notes, Otis had refused to give him any information. James suspected it was one reason his father had taken a case that had still been active.
Del hadn’t gotten along with the former sheriff and James had a history with Otis due to his wayward youth. So, he wasn’t expecting the conversation was going to go well.
After getting ready for his day, he decided he would talk to Gus Hughes first, then swing by Otis’s place out by the river. His father had already talked to Gus, but James thought it wouldn’t hurt to talk to him again.
However, when he went downstairs to where his pickup was parked out back of the office building, he found Lorelei Wilkins leaning against his truck waiting for him.
He braced himself as he tried to read her mood. “Mornin’,” he said, stopping a few safe feet from her.
She looked as if she didn’t want to be there any more than he did. For a moment, he thought she would simply storm off without a word. “I want to hire you.”
Of all the things that he’d thought might happen, this wasn’t one of them. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me,” she snapped, lifting her chin defiantly. “What do you charge?”
Good question. He had no idea. Legally, he wasn’t a private investigator yet. The application and money had been sent in. He was waiting for his license. “If we’re going to talk money, we should at least go somewhere besides an alley. Have you had breakfast?”
“I couldn’t eat a thing right now.”
“Could you watch me eat? Because I’m starved!” He gave her a sheepish grin. Even after that meal he’d had last night, he was hungry. He figured she might relax more in a public place. She also might not go off on him in a local cafe filled with people they both probably knew.
Because, he suspected before this was over, she would want to tell him what she thought of him.
LORELEI ADMITTED THIS was a mistake as she watched James put away a plate of hotcakes.
“You sure you don’t want a bite?” he asked between a forkful.
“I’m sure.” The smell of bacon and pancakes had made her stomach growl, reminding her that she hadn’t eaten dinner last night. But she still couldn’t swallow a bite right now, she told herself. She just wanted to get this over with.
“So, are you going to do it or not?” she demanded.
He finished the hotcakes, put down his fork and pushed the plate aside. She watched him wipe his mouth and hands on his napkin before he said, “What exactly is it you want me to do?”
“I just told you,” she said between gritted teeth. Leaning forward and dropping her voice even though there wasn’t anyone sitting near them in the cafe, she said, “Find out the truth about my...” She mouthed, “Stepmother.”
He seemed to give that some thought for a moment before he said, “Wouldn’t the simplest, fastest approach be for you to ask her yourself?”
“I already tried that,” she said and sighed.
“And she denied any knowledge?”
She looked away under the intenseness of those blue eyes of his. “Not exactly. She asked me to leave her house.”
“Come on,” James said, tossing money on the table before rising. “Let’s go.”
It wasn’t until they were in his pickup that he said, “What is it you think I can do that you can’t?”
“I thought you had some...talent for this.”
“Like what? Throw my magic lariat around her so she tells the truth? Or use my brawn to beat the truth out of her?”
She mugged a face at him. “Of course not. I thought maybe you could break into her house and look for evidence.”
NOW THEY WERE finally getting somewhere, James thought. He disregarded the illegal breaking and entering part and asked, “What kind of evidence?”
She swallowed before she said, “A diary maybe. She used to keep one. Or...maybe a bill from like, say a...body shop for car repairs.”
“What would make you think I’d find something like that even if nine years hadn’t passed?”
“Because,” she snapped, clearly losing patience with him. “If she was the one who hit Billy, then she would have had to have her car repaired, right? Has this thought really not crossed your mind?”
“My father already talked to Gus Hughes at his body shop.”
She waved a hand through the air in obvious frustration. “Are you just pretending to be this dense? She wouldn’t have taken it to the local body shop. She’s smarter than that. She would have taken it out of town. It’s not like she could keep it hidden in her garage for long.”
“But she also couldn’t simply drive it out of town either without someone noticing,” he said.
“Maybe she did it at night.”
He shook his head. “Still too risky. And how does she explain no car for as long as it was in the body shop?”
“It was summer. She always rides her bike to work in the summer. There must be some way she could get the car out of town to a body shop and get it brought back without anyone being the wiser.”
“I have a couple of thoughts on the matter. In fact, I’m talking to someone on my list today about just that. I’ve already made inquiries of a half dozen body shops within a hundred-mile radius.”
She sat back, looking surprised. “So, you have thought about all of this?” He didn’t answer, simply looked at her. She let out a breath and seemed to relax a little. “You still haven’t told me what you charge.”
“Let’s see what I turn up first, okay?”
Lorelei nodded and looked uncomfortable. “I’m starved. Would you mind stopping at a drive-thru on the way back to your office?”
He chuckled and started the engine. Out of the corner of his eye he watched her. She was scared, and maybe with good reason, that her stepmother was somehow involved.
He’d wanted to solve this case for his father. Also to prove something to himself. But right now he wanted to find evidence to clear Karen Wilkins more than anything else because of her stepdaughter. He wanted to put that beautiful smile back on Lori’s face, even as he feared he was about to do just the opposite.