James was headed back into town from the Appleton house when he got the call from Lori. He heard it at once in her voice. “What’s wrong?”
“I need to see you.” The quaver in her voice sent his pulse rocketing.
“Are you all right?” She had him scared.
“Just meet me at your office, okay?” Her voice broke. “It’s important.”
“I’m headed there right now,” he said and sped up. “Just be careful.” But she’d already disconnected.
As he pulled into the alley behind their buildings, she climbed out of her SUV and started toward him. The look on her face made him rush to her and pull her into his arms. She leaned into him for a moment, resting her head on his shoulder, before she pulled back.
He saw the plea in her eyes. Whatever was wrong, she needed to get it out. “Let’s go upstairs,” he said as he opened the door. He felt a draft, accompanied by a bad feeling. Slowly he began to climb upward, hesitating just before the top to peer down the hallway. Empty. But he could see the door to his office standing open.
Moving closer, he could see that the wood was chewed from where the lock had been jimmied. He wanted to send Lori back to her car. Or into her shop, but he also didn’t want to let her out of his sight.
“Stay behind me,” he whispered as he pulled his weapon. A cone of light from inside the office shone golden on the hallway floor. He watched it as they moved quietly toward it. But no shadow appeared in the light. No sound of movement came from within the office.
At the door, he motioned Lorelei back for a moment before he burst into the office, his weapon raised and ready to fire. He saw no one and quickly checked the bedroom and bath. Empty.
Turning, he saw Lori framed in the ransacked office doorway. “Who do you think did this?”
“Someone worried about what I’ve discovered in the case,” he said without hesitation as he holstered his gun and, ushering her in, locked the office door and bolted it. Turning to her, he said, “Tell me what’s happened. I can see how upset you are.”
She reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. A moment later, he heard Karen Wilkins’s voice—and her stepdaughter’s.
WHEN THE RECORDING ENDED, Lorelei turned off her phone. At some point, she’d taken the chair James had offered her along with the paper cup of blackberry brandy.
“So, when Billy came face-to-face with your stepmother he screamed and ran into the storm. She didn’t go after him. She didn’t see him again.”
She nodded. “You heard her. She swears it’s true. She took the dead coyote into the trees and then she walked back to her car and drove home.”
“Billy was killed in the same block from where your stepmother said she’d pulled off the road. I have a witness who saw her car there. Unfortunately, there were no video cameras in that area because of the empty lots and construction going on at the time. The witness killed the coyote just after ten that night. I need to know what time she saw Billy. And what time it was when she returned to her car and where she went after that. She didn’t go home until daylight. Sean was at her house waiting for her. He said that she’d fixed her hair and wasn’t wet from the storm. So where had she been?”
Lorelei shook her head, drained her blackberry brandy and rose. “I need to go home and try to get some rest. I have to work early tomorrow.”
“I’m sorry you got dragged into this,” James said as he got to his feet as well. “You look exhausted.”
“I am. I knew she was hiding something.” She met his gaze. “I honestly don’t know what to believe. I thought she and my father had a good marriage. I was wrong about that. I was wrong about so many things. I thought I knew her. Now... I’m not even sure she’s telling me the truth. What will you do now?”
“I’ll talk to her. I’ll tell her what you told me. I won’t tell her about the recording. If I can establish a time sequence...”
“You think she did it, don’t you?”
“I think she might have blotted it out of her memory. As she said, she wasn’t in her right mind. Picking up a dead young coyote and carrying it down the street to play a mean joke? Clearly she wasn’t herself.”
“But upset enough to run over a little boy on her way home and not remember?” Lorelei shook her head. “We’ve already established that she’s dishonest about at least her love life. We both know there is a part of her story that she’s leaving out.”
He stepped to her and took her shoulders in his big hands. His touch felt warm and comforting. She wanted to curl up in his arms. “I’m going to find out who killed Billy. Please, I need you to be careful. Someone doesn’t want me to know the truth. I doubt they found what they were looking for in my office. I’m afraid of how far they might go to cover up their crime. I don’t want you involved.”
She smiled sadly. “Too late for that.”
“But promise me you won’t do any more investigating on your own.”
She was too tired and drained and discouraged to argue.
“I’ll see you tomorrow?” he said, meeting her gaze.
She nodded numbly and he let her go but insisted on walking her down to her car. He’d wanted to follow her home, except she wasn’t having it. It was flattering that James cared, but she wasn’t some helpless woman who relied on a man. She wasn’t her stepmother. Lorelei wanted a man in her life, but she didn’t need one.
“I’m fine,” she assured him. “I’m more worried about you.”
“Indulge me. Please. Call me when you get home, so I know you made it okay. Promise me?”
JAMES DIDN’T CARE what Lori said. He was going to follow her home to make sure she was safe. He felt as if he’d dragged her into this. Just being associated with him could be bad enough. Add in her stepmother...
As she drove away, he reached for his keys and swore. He’d left them upstairs in his shock at finding his office broken into and ransacked, not to mention the information Lori had gotten on her stepmother.
He turned and rushed upstairs in time to hear his phone ringing. The phone and his keys were on his desk. He scooped up the phone, thinking it might be Lori. It was Gilbert Sanders, the arsonist investigator. He glanced at the time and had a feeling the man wouldn’t be calling now unless it was important.
He picked up the call on his way out the door.
“I was thinking about what you said about your father wanting to talk to me about a hit-and-run case he was working on,” Gilbert said after a few pleasantries were exchanged. “I couldn’t imagine why he’d want to talk to me about anything but a fire. But then I remembered. I did talk to him. He told me he was working on a case about a young boy who’d been killed, right?”
“Right. Billy Sherman.”
“But that wasn’t why your father called me. He wanted to know about a house fire. One fatality. The wife.”
James frowned. “Whose fire?”
“His own. Del Colt wanted to know about the fire that killed his wife.”
“I don’t understand,” James said as he reached his pickup and stopped. “My mother died of cancer.”
“It was his first wife.”
James couldn’t speak for a moment. “His first wife.”
“I’m sorry, you didn’t know that your father had been married before?”
“No. What did you tell him about the fire?”
“Just that it had been ruled an accident, a faulty lamp cord. But I wasn’t the one who handled that investigation. It was my uncle, the man I was named for, Gilbert T. Sanders, who did the investigation. Your father asked me to look into it for him. Something must have come up in his investigation of the hit-and-run that made him believe the fire that killed his first wife had been arson and was somehow connected to his case.”
This made no sense. “Did you look into the fire?” James asked as he climbed into his pickup. Lori would probably be home by now and probably trying to call him.
“I did. I think your father might have been right.”
“Wait, right about what?”
“The fire that killed his first wife,” Gilbert said. “My uncle suspected it was arson, but there were extenuating circumstances. An eyewitness swore he saw the lamp ignite the living room.”
“Who was the eyewitness?”
“Sheriff Otis Osterman. He was the first person on the scene. But I saw in my uncle’s notes on the case that there was a string of small fires that summer around Lonesome. There was a suspect at the time.”
James felt all the air rush from his lungs as Gilbert said, “Freddie Bayard, now Senator Fred Bayard. Freddie had apparently been a firebug since he was little. But there was no proof and his father, also a senator, made Freddie untouchable. The boy was sent away to a private school where his father promised he would get him the help he needed. In the report, there was also mention of Del and Fred being at odds, some rivalry that went back years.”
“How is that possible?” James asked. “I didn’t think Fred moved here until about ten years ago.”
“His grandparents lived here and he stayed with them more than he stayed with his parents. His father was in DC a lot of the time and he and his mother weren’t close. I’m not sure how any of this will help with your investigation.”
“Me either, but thank you for letting me know.” James pulled in front of Lori’s house. No lights on. No Lori. She hadn’t come straight home or she would be here by now. Fred Bayard was involved with Karen Wilkins and Lori was involved because of it.
He felt a tremor of fear. Why hadn’t Lori gone straight home like she’d planned? Had her stepmother called? Had something happened?
He started to call Lori’s cell when he knew where she’d gone. Making a sharp U-turn in the middle of the street, he headed toward her stepmother’s house.
As he drove, he couldn’t get what Gilbert Sanders had told him out of his mind. He called his brother Davey only to get voice mail. He tried his brother Tommy. Same thing. He was about to give up when he realized the brother he needed to ask was his eldest brother, Willie.
“What’s up?”
“Did you know Dad was married before?” he demanded.
Willie hesitated before saying, “Who told you that?”
“You just did! And you never said anything?” James couldn’t believe this.
“Why would I? It had nothing to do with our family,” Willie said. “Also, it was too painful for Dad. I wanted to protect him. They were married less than a month when she was killed. Luckily, he met our mom.”
“Protect him from what?” James demanded.
“Heartbreak. He blamed himself for her death. Like us, he was on the rodeo circuit all the time. He’d left her alone in a house that had bad wiring. He didn’t need to be reminded of the past. That’s why I didn’t tell you or the others.”
“How did you find out?” he asked as he pulled up in front of Lorelei’s stepmother’s house.
“Otis Osterman told me. He was the cop who investigated the fire. He threw the fact that Dad left his wife in a house with faulty wiring in my face the first time he hauled me in on some trumped-up charge. I told him that if he ever said anything like that to me or my family again, I’d kill him. Apparently, he believed me.”
“I’m getting another call,” James said, hoping it would be Lori. “We’ll talk about this soon.” He disconnected from Willie and said, “Lori?”
Silence. He realized that the other call had gone to voice mail. He listened, still hoping it had been Lori. It was one of the out-of-town body shops he’d called inquiring about a vehicle being brought in from Lonesome nine years ago after Billy Sherman’s death. He didn’t bother to listen to the message. Right now he only cared about Lori. He couldn’t shake a bad feeling that she was in trouble.
LORELEI HAD GRUDGINGLY promised to go straight home and call James when she arrived. Her intentions had been good when she’d left him. Until her stepmother called crying and hysterical.
“What’s wrong?” Karen didn’t answer, just kept crying. “Mom.”
Calling her mom seemed to do the trick. “We broke up.”
It took Lorelei a minute to realize that she must be talking about the senator.
“Why?”
More awful sobbing, before her stepmother said, “It was all based on a lie. How could I have ever trusted that he was really in love with me? Or that he wasn’t just marrying me so I couldn’t testify against him?”
At those words, Lorelei felt shaken to her soul. Marry her so she couldn’t testify against him? “What are you talking about?”
“That night on the road. Billy.” She was sobbing again. “I left out that part. When I was walking back to my car, Fred picked me up. On the way to my car...” More sobbing. “He ran over something in the road. It didn’t seem like it was anything. I told him about the coyote... He didn’t stop to check but he did look back in his side mirror. I saw his expression. I knew it wasn’t a coyote.”
Lorelei felt her blood run cold. Her stepmother was sobbing.
“I was so upset and freezing and there didn’t seem to be any damage to his vehicle.”
“He took you to his house,” Lorelei said, seeing now how it had happened with her mother and the senator.
“He was so kind, so caring. I wanted to believe in him.” More uncontrollable bawling.
She didn’t need her stepmother to tell her what had happened after that night. Fred had been afraid that Karen could come forward with what she knew. He must have seen how much she’d needed a man in her life. He became that man to protect himself. Until Karen finally admitted the truth—and not just about the night Billy Sherman had died.
Lorelei had known women her own age who went from one man to the next, desperate to have someone in their lives. She’d felt sorry for them. She felt sorry for her stepmother. Karen would have been flattered at the senator’s attention. She’d been lonely, had needed a man so desperately, that she would rather live a lie than admit the truth about her relationship with Fred Bayard.
Until now.
“You told him what you told me,” Lorelei said.
“I knew you were right,” her stepmother wailed. “James was going to find out. Fred became so angry. It’s over.” She began to cry harder.
Why hadn’t she noticed how unhappy Karen had been? Why hadn’t she known what her stepmother had been going through? Because Karen had seemed happy. And because Lorelei had been busy living her own life, seeing what she wanted to see.
“Mom, I’m almost to your house.” But she didn’t think Karen heard her. “Mom?” She kept hearing her stepmother’s words. I knew it wasn’t a coyote.
She could hardly make out her stepmother’s next words, “Someone’s at the back door. It can’t be Fred. He’s promised to go to the sheriff...” Then Karen’s voice changed, and Lorelei knew her stepmother was no longer talking to her. “What are you doing here? I thought—”
Lorelei heard what sounded like the phone being knocked out of Karen’s hand. It made a whishing sound as it skittered across the hardwood floor.
She couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded like Karen and a man arguing. Then to Lorelei’s horror, she heard her stepmother scream followed by a painful cry an instant before she heard the sound of what could be a body hitting the floor.
“Mom?” she cried into the phone. Silence. Then footfalls. The line went dead.
Her hands were shaking so hard on the wheel that she had to grip it tightly. She was calling 911 as her stepmother’s house came into view and she saw the smoke.