ShotgunRelations (11 page)

“Jack. If it’s one of the Laughing Wolf’s
cowhands will you defend him?”

“I don’t do much criminal defense, honey.”
He couldn’t imagine himself defending a gang of rustlers. That would certainly
dilute the respect he’d earned by doing legal work—mostly civil stuff—for local
ranchers. His conscience whispered that every accused criminal deserved
competent defense and that everybody was innocent ’til proven guilty, but he
tried to ignore that annoying voice in his head. “If one of your employees is
accused of rustling cattle, I can hook him up with a lawyer who’s more into
that type of work.”

“Do you think Karen would defend them?”

Jack turned Liz to face him and looked
sternly at her. “Honey, you’re way ahead of yourself. First, we don’t know
anybody who works for you has anything to do with this. Let’s go one step at a
time. Logically speaking, it wouldn’t be good for an accused rustler of Bar C
and Laughing Wolf cattle to be defended by either me or Karen—she’s too
connected to the Bar C as Bye’s wife and I’m too connected to your ranch
because we’re together.” He started to tell her Four was his father but he
needed privacy and plenty of time for that revelation.

“I hadn’t thought of that. Please stay,
though, and not just because Mom and I may need your legal advice. Just having
you here with me makes this seem a lot less scary.”

Chapter Seven

By afternoon Liz was exhausted. She’d
checked off name after name as the sheriff’s deputies had called them out
against the Laughing Wolf’s payroll records. Nobody so far had sported a
gunshot wound and no one had admitted to seeing either a wounded cowboy or
Patches. She’d dealt with her mom’s hysteria over her missing horse until Mavis
had taken to her bed hours ago after downing the better part of a bottle of
Gray Goose.

“How many are still not accounted for?”
Sweat glistened on Jack’s bare head. He looked as wilted as she felt when he
came back onto the porch after checking in with Sheriff Atkins down at the
horse barn.

“Two. Frank says he fired Yancey Cole this
morning, so I guess that just leaves Dale Cavanaugh.”

“Everybody’s accounted for then unless it’s
Cole whose body deputies found out in the cow pasture near the highway a few
minutes ago.” Jack paused, and from the look on his face Liz guessed that he’d
rather be tortured than say whatever else he had to say. Finally he cleared his
throat, held both of her hands and met her gaze. “Atkins wants to know if you
can identify the body.”

Liz caught herself before she keeled over
but she felt so lightheaded she had to sit down on one of the old-fashioned
porch rockers. Jack knelt in front of her. “Come on, honey. Breathe deep.
That’s right. I wish to hell I could do this for you, but I haven’t met even
half of the people who work for you.”

“It’s okay. I know all the Laughing Wolf
hands when I see them.” She shuddered at the prospect of looking at a dead body
and wondered if it would resemble what the man had looked like in life. “I’ve
never seen a dead person except at visitation at a funeral home.”

“Neither have I. I don’t imagine it will be
a pretty sight, but I’ll go with you if you want me to. This will be over soon,
I promise.” Jack didn’t look as confident as he sounded. “Four called Atkins.
They’re about finished with checking out the parts of the Bar C that border
your place. He’ll probably be coming over here to check on your mom.”

“Good. Maybe he will be able to get her
mind off Patches. Where are we going to go to identify this body?” She tried
not to sound as terrified as she felt but she wasn’t sure she’d succeeded.

“Here in the driveway. They’re loading the
body and stopping here on the way to the medical examiner’s office in Lubbock.”
As Liz was digesting what Jack had just said, she saw a dark-green sheriff’s
van come down the driveway.

“Lubbock? Doesn’t the Justice of the Peace
for Caden County sign off on death certificates?” she asked Jack.

“Usually. But not when an autopsy’s
necessary. Since the county doesn’t have a medical examiner, it contracts with
the office in Lubbock to handle cases where the cause of death isn’t natural or
isn’t obvious.”

Liz shuddered. She kept breathing deeply.
No way was she going to faint and prove what Frank always said—that she didn’t
have the stomach to run the Laughing Wolf. “I can’t do this by myself. Please
come with me.” She got up on unsteady legs and managed to get down the short
steps from the porch to the ground.

“I’m right beside you and I’ll be here as
long as you need me. I called my office and asked Mary Ellen to go grab me a
change of clothes from my house and send them out here.” When Jack squeezed her
hand, she felt reassured that he’d take care of her.

At least he’d take care of her as much as
anybody could. “Thank you, Master. I can’t tell you how much I’m counting on
you to help see us through this nightmare.” As they moved toward the sheriff’s
van, she worked up the courage she needed for whatever horror she’d see inside.

When a deputy opened the van’s rear doors and
unzipped the black body bag, she saw Dale Cavanaugh’s bloated, blackened
features and gasped out his name before everything went black.

* * * * *

A rare autumn storm was brewing as dusk
enveloped the ranch house in shades of gray. Feeling drained even though he’d
showered and changed out of his torn T-shirt and grimy jeans, Jack shifted his
gaze from a window overlooking the barn and paddock to Liz. She finally had
fallen asleep on the living room sofa after Doc Baines had come and given her a
sedative.

“Jack?”

When he looked up he saw Four. “What did
they find at the Bar C?”

“Nothing on the ranch itself except Mavis’
horse. He was still saddled and his reins were trailing on the ground.
Apparently nobody ever trained him to ground-tie, because he was running loose
in the pasture where Manuel had been when he fired the shot. Damn good thing he
didn’t fall over the reins and hurt himself. We caught him, put him in one of
the Bar C’s trailers and brought him home. Diego unloaded him a few minutes ago
and let him loose in the paddock.”

Jack smiled. “Maybe now Mavis will calm
down.”

“Maybe.” Four grinned but then his
expression turned serious. He pulled a chair up and spoke quietly enough that
only Jack could hear. “The deputies found Yancey Cole’s body in a ditch on the
farm road right-of-way that passes through the Bar C. He had a bullet hole in
his left shoulder and another one in his skull.”

So Cole was the one who’d taken Mavis’
favorite riding horse. “I hope to God Atkins doesn’t want Liz to identify the body.”

“Frank Williams ID’d him. He swears he
fired Cole around four this morning when he caught the man skulking around the
stables and says he never saw him after that. I don’t believe him but we’ll
wait and see what the medical examiner has to say. My bet is that the bullet in
Cole’s head came from a different gun than the hunting rifle that Manuel fired.
All our wranglers carry rifles that shoot .30-06 ammunition, and it was
probably a .22 bullet that left one small, neat hole in the man’s head.”

Jack glanced down at Liz to be sure she was
still sleeping. “Very likely. I imagine a .30.06 would have blown the guy’s
head off. Do you know how long it will take to get the medical examiner’s
report?”

Four shook his head. “I’m going to call in
some favors in Lubbock and try to get the autopsies given priority. That may
speed things up unless Lubbock County has had a rash of unexplained deaths
lately. They get priority when it comes to getting autopsies done by their own
ME. Our county apparently is low man on the medical examiner’s totem pole
because we so rarely have to ask for his help.”

Jack had a feeling the Rangers’ task force
would have more to do with expediting the autopsies than Four’s call to his
political crony, but he wouldn’t burst the old man’s bubble. “On behalf of Liz
and Mavis I’ve formally asked Sheriff Atkins to keep some deputies here. I plan
to stay here too, but this ranch is too big for me and a few cowhands that Liz
trusts to watch over.”

“I’ve persuaded Atkins to keep an eye on
Frank as well. If a gang of rustlers have infiltrated this ranch, I give odds
he’s behind it. It’s too bad he has Mavis buffaloed, or Liz could fire him
based on nothing but a hunch.”

Jack thought for a minute about whether he
should say it but decided to go ahead and voice his unfounded suspicion. “Do
you think it’s possible Mrs. Wolfe’s sleeping with Frank? I don’t know her that
well but she seems irrational when Liz suggests disciplining her foreman in any
way.”

“I doubt that. Frank isn’t Mavis’ type.
Besides, he has a wife who lives in the foreman’s house right here a stone’s
throw from the back porch of this place. I’m pretty sure he and Mavis are both
smart enough not to carry on in their own backyard so to speak.”

You’re thinking they’re as sneaky as you
were, asshole.
Jack had to bite his tongue to keep
from saying that out loud.

Four’s brow creased as he apparently
considered Jack’s suggestion. “It’s more likely that Frank may have something
he’s holding over her head, because it doesn’t seem she’d back him over Liz so
adamantly because of what she thinks he means to the ranch operation. She’s
never involved herself with the nuts and bolts or even the accounting for the
Laughing Wolf.”

“What do you think Frank may be holding
over her?” Anything significant would certainly explain Mavis’ irrational
championing of the surly foreman over her daughter.

“I haven’t a clue. Mavis has done some
pretty strange things over the years, especially since Bill passed away. It
could be she thinks she’s got precious minerals somewhere on her land, or she
found something on the ranch that she believes is worth a ton.”

“Why wouldn’t she just exploit anything
like that?”

Four looked at Jack as though he thought
Jack was crazy. Then he laughed. “You don’t know, do you? The Laughing Wolf
doesn’t belong to Mavis. Bill left it to Liz because Mavis is such a dingbat.
He showed me his will before he died. That could be what Frank knows that he’s
holding over Mavis’ head.”

“You mean Liz owns the ranch but doesn’t
know it?” Jack figured that was possible since she’d still been a child when
her father had died. It was even likely that her father’s will, or more likely
a codicil to it, had stated that she not be told of her inheritance until she
became an adult, but the estate’s attorney should have notified her at that
time.

“It’s possible. More than possible, I’d
say. Bill always used Dan Merriman as his attorney—the old man who died not
long after Bill, not the son who sold the practice to you. Danny was a drunk,
lost half of his daddy’s clients before he got disbarred and sold you what was
left of the practice. I wouldn’t be surprised if Danny didn’t forget all about
the fact that he’d need to notify Liz about her inheritance once she turned
eighteen—that is if he ever bothered to look through his father’s files.”

If that was so, then Jack probably had the
papers somewhere in the storeroom full of jumbled files that had come with the
practice. It had been no picnic, locating old paperwork on the few occasions
clients had asked him about long-ago deeds, contracts and such. “Shit. If you
aren’t angling to annex the Laughing Wolf, what are you doing going after
Mavis?”

“Would you believe me if I said Mavis has
always made me see the lighter side of things? We dated back in high school
before Bill caught her eye. I wouldn’t mind it at all if we got together now.
We’re both alone and getting older every year, and she’s an easy woman to be
with.”

For a minute Jack wanted to scream that
Four had already had a mistress before his wife had died—Marianne. Then he
realized that whatever good traits his mother might possess, she was anything
but easy to be around. “I thought—”

“Yes, I know. You had some justification
for thinking what you thought. Over the years Caden men have swallowed up a
good many parcels of land into the Bar C via marriage.” Four sounded
practically apologetic. “What we need to do now is set aside our differences,
at least long enough to work together while this nonsense is going on.”

Jack agreed. He shook Four’s outstretched
hand, then looked down at Liz. “I don’t intend to let her out of my sight until
everything’s settled. She’s a strong woman but these killings have got her
doubting her ability to take care of things right now. I may be calling to ask
your advice on ranch issues that she’s always relied on Frank to handle. I
don’t trust that man as far as I can throw him, but I know nothing about
running a spread like this one. I can tell a cow from a bull, but that’s about
it.”

Four stood and offered his hand to Jack.
“Any time. I’m sure Bye will be glad to lend a hand as well, when he and Karen
get back from their honeymoon. I’m going up now to let Mavis know we found
Patches and brought him home safe and sound.”

* * * * *

The next morning Liz looked up from the
ranch accounts she’d been working on, at Frank’s flushed face. She noticed his
belligerent stance and the evil-looking sneer on his face made her tremble.
Jack stood behind the older man, looking as though he was ready to pounce with
the slightest provocation, and his presence bolstered her confidence.

She met the foreman’s angry gaze. “What do
you want, Frank?”

“Tell me you don’t expect me to take orders
from this idiot lawyer. I’m no wet-behind-the-ears cowpoke who needs somebody
standin’ over him all day long.” Frank slammed his fist down on Liz’s desk,
sending her pen bouncing onto the floor.

Liz sighed. She’d been afraid of
this—afraid Frank would see through her request for Jack to shadow him today on
the pretense of learning his way around the ranch. “As I told you before, Jack
is sticking with you because I asked him to, so he can learn the routine around
here.” She wished Sheriff Atkins had just put a deputy on him to watch his
every move, but she guessed that was too much to expect from the lawman who’d
considered Frank his friend since they’d been classmates years ago. “He’s not
there to order you around, so get off your high horse. We’re all on edge after
what happened yesterday but that’s no excuse for acting like a jerk.”

“How long is it gonna take for them to
figure out who killed Dale and Yancey? The hands are all skittish as yearlings
in the branding chutes.”

Jack moved behind Liz’s desk and rested his
hands on her shoulders before speaking directly to Frank. “Autopsies generally
take a week or so. Meanwhile the sheriff will continue his investigation. I
suggest you tell the cowhands that, and let them know there will be deputies
underfoot 24/7 until he has some answers. I’m keeping an eye on you because
Mrs. Wolfe didn’t want to undermine your authority with the workers by asking
the sheriff to have one of the deputies keep you under surveillance.”

“Don’t tell me Sheriff Atkins thinks I may
have had something to do with those murders. I’ve known ol’ Todd since we were
little kids.”

Liz met Frank’s shifty gaze. “Jack didn’t
say that. Sheriff Atkins told us he’s keeping tabs on everybody until he gets
some answers. Mother’s the one who suggested it would look better to the men if
Jack stayed with you instead of having a deputy follow you around.”