To Protect Their Child Page 3

  “Bobby always liked it when you came home for a visit. He kept all the letters and cards you wrote.” She bit her lower lip to keep from blurting that Jodi had collected all the postcards Ric had mailed from exotic locales. No need to bring the child into the conversation. “So, uh, how long are you staying? Where are you going from here?”

  He scratched the back of his head and pulled a face. “I don’t know where I’m going. I’m out of the army.”

  “What? Why?” She was genuinely shocked. She also worried. The last place she wanted Ric Buchanan was in McClintock, Colorado, where keeping him and Jodi apart might prove difficult. Where separating past from present could prove impossible. Ric’s presence added to the swirling confusion in her overwrought brain.

  He tapped a crutch. “Medically retired.”

  “Oh, Ric, I’m so sorry. Walt never said a word.”

  “I didn’t tell him. Not until I got home. No sense worrying him.”

  Sadness tightened her throat. Walt Buchanan was the only family Ric had. She couldn’t imagine being sick or hurt and not having family swarming around, offering comfort. “You always were the lone wolf. Never needing anyone.”

  He averted his gaze. “Let’s not talk about me. I just wanted to see how you’re doing. Offer my condolences. Walt brought some home-baked bread for your mother. She looks pretty shell-shocked. So do you.”

  He didn’t know the half of it. She’d managed to get through the funeral; how, exactly, she wasn’t sure. During the eulogy for her father, she’d been braced for someone to leap to his feet and denounce Del Crowder as a murderer. Now she waited for Uncle King to make an official ruling about the deaths. If the sheriff’s department found evidence of foul play, then Mama would be devastated worse than she was now.

  Ever since she’d read that horrible note, it felt as if a massive weight held by a slender thread were hanging over her head. A weight that would destroy her entire family.

  “I miss Bobby so much. I just can’t believe he’s gone.”

  “Mommy?”

  Elaine lurched off the desk, knocking over a pile of papers and sending them scattering across the burgundy rug. Her daughter stood in the doorway. With her shoulders hunched and her face down, Jodi was a picture of woe.

  Ric stared at the girl. Elaine feared that he might see the resemblance to himself.

  “I want to go home, Mommy.” She sounded like a cranky three-year-old instead of the self-assured eleven-year-old that she was. Her whine grated Elaine’s ears; Jodi never whined.

  “Not now, baby. I promised Grandma we’d stay for a few days.”

  “I want to go home.”

  Elaine flashed an apologetic smile at Ric then hurried to her daughter’s side. She urged the girl down the hall, out of Ric’s view. She smoothed golden hair off Jodi’s face and tucked it behind her ears. “Grandma needs us right now. We need her, too. Family should stick together.”

  “My tummy hurts.”

  Jodi never complained either. Especially not in this whiny way. Elaine enfolded her in a hug. “Go on in the kitchen, baby. Greta made some soup. Mr. Walt is visiting. You can say hi to him.”

  “I want to go home.”

  Racked with despair, Elaine swayed, rocking her child, and herself. Jodi’s adoration of Bobby had been unwavering—the epitome of a Daddy’s girl. As terrible as Elaine’s own grief felt, she imagined it must be a hundred times worse for Jodi. “Okay, baby, we’ll sleep at home tonight. You have to eat something first. Okay?”

  Jodi nodded against Elaine’s shoulder. She headed down the hallway, then stopped and turned around. “Maybe we should stay with Grandma. She needs us.”

  Elaine pinched the bridge of her nose, shutting off tears before they began. “You eat, then we’ll decide.”

  Nodding, the girl slouched away.

  “Poor kid,” Ric murmured when Elaine returned. “I feel so bad for her. Bobby always talked like they were real close.”

  “She worshipped him.” Jodi had worshipped her grandfather, too. He’d never tired of her endless questions. He’d never lost his patience or temper with her. He puffed with pride whenever Jodi claimed that when she grew up, she was going to be Grandpa’s partner at Crowder Realty.

  Ric whistled softly, snagging her attention—she’d zoned out again. He balanced on the crutches. “Time to go. Call me if you need anything.”

  What she needed was the truth. Ugly questions lodged like huge black worms beneath her diaphragm, gnawing at her insides. Yet, that Ric said nothing meant he knew nothing. He’d hated her father, and with good cause. If he knew the awful thing Bobby had caught her father doing, there was no better revenge than for Ric to tell everyone about it. Her secret was safe, for now.

  “I mean it, Elaine, call. I’m staying with Walt.”

  She couldn’t look at him. The love they once shared was over and done with, ancient history. The only thing that could come out of any dealings with Ric was irreparable harm to Jodi.

  “Sure,” she said, ambiguously. Avoiding a person in a small town was almost as difficult as keeping a secret. Elaine had no choice except to do both.

  RIC STOPPED in the foyer, arrested by an oil portrait of Del Crowder hanging on the wall. Murderer, he thought, as he studied the noble face with its I’m-superior-to-thou expression.

  Elaine knew. When her sister said Elaine had been hiding away in Del’s office, and then Elaine looked like a kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar, Ric guessed she was searching for evidence. He wondered what Bobby had told her.

  The shooting appeared to be an accident. Bobby had been shot through the heart with the gun Del carried in his car. Paramedics who’d been at the lodge claimed Del was covered with Bobby’s blood, as if he’d been administering CPR when the heart attack hit. Despite Del’s efforts, Bobby had been dead when he hit the floor. A tragic accident.

  Ric believed it was a tragedy, but in no way accidental. Elaine knew it, too.

  He didn’t consider himself cowardly. He had a chest full of medals, including a Silver Star, proclaiming his bravery and valor. But he’d rather charge a machine-gun nest than confront Elaine with what Bobby had told him.

  “Ric?” Walt asked. “You coming?”

  The housekeeper held the front door open. Clammy-cold air seeped inside.

  He shifted his attention to the opposing wall. A painting showed Lillian McClintock Crowder smiling down from the back of a palomino horse. Dark hair shining, brown eyes bright and lively, her mouth quirked as if she were about to burst into laughter. In the portrait she was about the age Elaine was now. Mother and daughter looked so much alike that Elaine could have posed for the painting.

  “Always the lone wolf,” Elaine had said. “Never needing anyone.”

  Not true. He’d needed her. Seeing her again had driven a hard truth home. For all she’d done to him by marrying his best friend and denying him his child, he’d cut off his own head before hurting her.

  He swung the crutches forward, placing them carefully on the rose marble floor. He followed his uncle out of the big ranch house. There was nothing he could do here. Nothing anyone could do except grieve and go on.

  Del Crowder was dead and buried. Justice was done.

  “WHERE’S THE JUSTICE?” Tom Greene’s cry accompanied a blast of frigid December wind and snow. Wind rattled the light fixtures in the wood shop and stirred up sawdust.

  Ric put down the sanding block he’d been using on a cabinet door. After weeks of lazing around his uncle’s house, the need to relieve boredom grew greater than the need to avoid pitying stares and whispers of speculation. Walt had endured one day of Ric’s loafing, then put him to work. It felt good being useful again, even if he was slow and clumsy. He loved the smell of cut lumber and loved even more bringing out the beauty of fine wood through sanding, varnishing and waxing.

  Bobby’s father stood rigidly right inside the door. He clutched a crumpled issue of the Bugle, the town’s weekly newspaper. Melting snow dripped f
rom Tom’s hat.

  Ric had accompanied Walt on a few visits with the Greenes. While Walt and Tom talked, Ric would sit in Gwen’s kitchen, watching her cook or work needlepoint, as if by chopping, stirring, kneading or compulsively pushing a needle through cloth she could somehow ease the pain of losing her only child. He loved Gwen; she’d always been kind, motherly to a motherless boy. He loved Tom, too, though the man had never been easy to like. Hard, taciturn and serious, he’d had little patience for boyish antics. He’d taught Bobby and Ric how to be horsemen, tend livestock and work like men. On the rare occasions he told a boy, “Good job,” it was the highest of compliments.

  Tom seemed to be disintegrating. Under fluorescent lighting, a patch of whiskers he’d missed shaving glittered like glass. He had the sunken, bruised eyes of an insomniac. He looked eighty years old and perhaps a little mad.

  Walt shut off the planer-jointer, pulled off his goggles and swiped sawdust off his hands. “Hey, buddy, what’s the matter with you?”

  Tom rattled the newspaper. “Did you see this? Did you see?”

  Walt took the paper, read the article Tom pointed out, then without a word handed it to Ric.

  Double Tragedy, the front page headline read. After a nine-week investigation, the sheriff had made his ruling about the shooting at the lodge on McClintock Ranch. The death of Robert James Greene was ruled accidental; Delbert George Crowder had died of a massive heart attack. King McClintock was quoted: “An unfortunate fact of life is, when firearms are present, accidents are always a possibility.” Case closed.

  Lies, Ric thought, incredulous, but wondering why he should be surprised. King McClintock had been Del Crowder’s brother-in-law.

  “King is covering up murder!” Tom plopped onto a stool. He slumped over, his hands dangling between his knees. “Ain’t no way in hell that shooting was accidental. Walt, you know it wasn’t an accident.”

  Walt pushed the snowy hair off his brow, hemmed and hawed, pulled his beard, then shrugged. “That old Del could be a slick-talking aggravating man, but I can’t see him killing anyone on purpose. Especially Bobby. He loved that boy.”

  “You know how Del was about guns,” Tom insisted. “Hell’s bells, he’s been a hunter all his life. Had all them trophies, the competition medals. You ever see him act careless with a firearm? And why was Bobby up to the lodge anyway? Lillian kept my boy hopping so much with ranch business, he didn’t have no time to run up to the woods to jaw-jack at Del’s hidey-hole.”

  “Have you talked to King?” Walt asked.

  “Struttin’ banty rooster,” Tom growled. “Says there ain’t sign one of foul play, but he didn’t even look. No sir! He locked up the lodge and filled out a bunch of papers—” he pointed a shaky finger at the newspaper, “—and that’s it. I talked to the boys who ran the ambulance up there. They say King didn’t take pictures and wasn’t nobody taking fingerprints or nothing. Says they did their business, then King hustled them out like they was hoodlums at a school dance. He wouldn’t even let his own deputies go inside for a look-see. He’s covering up cold-blooded murder.”

  Ric’s jaw tightened so much his teeth ground. Bobby hadn’t said what the problem was, or even if it had to do with Del. What Ric did know was that Bobby must have confessed about Jodi because he meant to confront his father-in-law.

  He lacked the heart to tell Tom what he knew. It would mean revealing that his grandchild, the only grandchild Tom and Gwen would ever have, wasn’t his. He couldn’t do it.

  “I can’t let this ride,” Tom said. “What am I going to do?”

  “There is nothing to do,” Ric said, earning a harsh look that threatened to burn holes in his head. As a kid, a look like that would have sent him running triple-time to do whatever he was told. Right now it made him sad. “Even if it is murder, what’s the point of pushing it? You can’t send Del to prison.”

  “Bobby deserves justice. Folks gotta know the truth.”

  “Folks like Jodi?”

  That shut Tom’s mouth.

  “I agree with you, I think Del’s fully capable of murder. But pushing this will hurt people. It sure won’t bring Bobby back.”

  “How am I supposed to face my boy in Heaven if there’s no justice?” On that plaintive note, Tom stormed out of the shop.

  Walt grabbed a coat off a peg and went after his friend.

  Guilt rose up fresh and sore within Ric. Bobby had been a good man, decent and generous. Before Elaine had come between them, they’d been closer than brothers. Bobby did deserve justice. But at what cost? So Lillian’s husband could be branded a killer? So folks could whisper when Elaine and Jodi passed by?

  Walt soon returned. “I’m worried about that man. Going to end up having a heart attack.” He swiped snow out of his hair and beard.

  “You know that day I went to see Bobby?”

  Walt nodded. “You was in a state. I figured you had a spat.”

  Ric smiled ruefully. One of Walt’s most sterling qualities was that he never gossiped or pried. He minded his own business, and didn’t pass judgment. “He told me he had a problem. That he found out something ‘shabby.”’

  “About Del?”

  “He didn’t name names. Or give any details.” His throat felt thick and funny, but he had to get it off his chest. “He did say some information was going to come out and I needed to hear it from him first. I’m Jodi’s biological father.”

  Walt ambled to the jointer and picked up the piece of oak he was planing. He eyeballed the edges. “Ironic ain’t it, how history repeats.”

  Ric winced at the rebuke, gentle as it was. His mother, Walt’s sister, had been an alcoholic who went off with any man willing to buy her booze. Ric didn’t know who his father was; he doubted if his mother had known. He thought he’d been careful with Elaine, but he’d been twenty years old and relatively inexperienced; she’d been eighteen with no experience at all.

  “I never knew. Never suspected. I don’t know what to do now.”

  “About Del being up to no good? Or Jodi Greene?”

  “Either one.”

  “I did my best growing you into a man. Army did even more. Reckon you can figure out what needs doing.” He settled goggles on his face, and flipped the switch on the jointer. Its high-pitched whine drowned out further conversation.

  ELAINE PARKED at the curb in front of Crowder Realty. Up and down Main Street, Christmas lights twinkled amongst plastic garlands strung around light poles. Windows sported canned snow snowflakes and paintings of Santa Claus and decorated trees. The orange tide of seasonal hunters had departed the valley. Tourists in ski togs replaced them. They crowded into gift shops and boutiques in search of local crafts. Happy people, their faces pink with cold and their arms laden with purchases, strolled the sidewalks.

  Coming into town was hard for Elaine. Even though Uncle King had ruled the shooting accidental, there were people—Bobby’s father especially—who accused the sheriff’s department of covering up murder. Elaine tried not to hear the rumors and whispers. It was impossible, just as it was impossible to not hear the suspicions plaguing her mind.

  She’d searched her parents’ home top to bottom. She’d found an ancient adding machine, an old Victrola and a pump-action vacuum cleaner, but no typewriter. Out of sheer relief she would have given the note to Uncle King and insisted he find out who typed it, except she’d found an earring in her father’s car. A piece of junk jewelry she was positive did not belong to her mother. Perhaps she could dismiss it as belonging to one of the many real estate clients who’d ridden in Daddy’s car, but she’d remembered something odd Bobby had said a few days before he died. He’d said he wouldn’t haul trash from the realty anymore because Bardie Hoff had caught him and accused him of cutting into his livelihood. When she spoke to the trashman, and apologized for Bobby, Bardie had denied any knowledge of the incident. It was as if Bobby had witnessed something so awful at the realty that he felt compelled to lie about it.

  Elaine refused to
believe her father had been stupid enough to cheat on her mother. Nobody played Lillian McClintock Crowder for a fool and escaped with hide intact. If he were cheating and had been caught…

  Daddy was dead; he couldn’t defend himself. The people who were hurt the most by suspicions and rumors were her mother and Jodi.

  “Mommy?”

  Elaine startled. She sat as if braced for a crash. Her gloved hands clutched the steering wheel so tightly her fingers were aching.

  “Are you okay, Mommy?” Jodi asked.

  She had no choice except to be okay. “I was just admiring how pretty the street is.”

  “Looks junky,” the girl muttered. She stared at the bridle on her lap. “Like this dumb old bridle. It’s junk.”

  “We can get it fixed. I promise.” She left the Jeep and stepped over slushy puddles. She gathered a pile of wrapped gifts from the back seat. Presents for Axton Cross, Linda the office manager, Kay the receptionist, and the agents who sold real estate. Usually Del and Lillian hosted a huge Christmas party, inviting all the people who worked for them. There would be no parties this season. Maybe there never would be again.

  Barely able to see around the boxes, she picked her careful way to the sidewalk. Jodi slung the bridle over her shoulder and took a few packages from Elaine’s arms.

  She paused at the door, struck by a rise of panic. She hadn’t been inside the realty office since her father died. She’d found nothing incriminating among Del’s papers in his home office. She didn’t know what she’d do if she walked into the realty and there was evidence right there, out in the open for all the world to see.

  It was absurd. An attorney was handling the probate of Del’s will. If Del had been doing something illegal, it would have been discovered by now.

  Unless Bobby caught Del cheating on Mama and—

  “Elaine!”

  Her heart gave an unpleasant jitter. Across the street, Ric Buchanan waved to her. He looked right and left, then stepped off the sidewalk. He used a cane instead of crutches. She couldn’t help checking him with an anxious eye. He’d looked so awful the day he visited her mother’s house.