All the Lost Little Horses (A Desperation Creek Novel Book 2) Page 4

  Before they mounted, Karin led them to a wide swath of trampled ground and some tracks that Jed was damn sure were made by a stock trailer. With the weather as dry as it was, even she didn’t suggest trying to make casts of the impressions.

  Leaving Karin and her crew to lay out a wider grid and go over the area with meticulous care, Jed and Grant rode the property. They found some steers and a few cows that probably hadn’t come up pregnant, but not a single calf and none of the mommies, either. Both the back fence and one that bisected the land had been cut. Apparently Gary Webb had taken heed of the news and brought the most vulnerable part of his herd into the pasture nearest the house. Whether he’d branded the calves, Jed didn’t know. With luck, a neighbor would.

  Back in the barn, Grant dismounted, freed the cinch and hefted the saddle from his borrowed mount’s back, placing it on a stand. “We need to find out when he moved his cows and calves. The raid would make more sense if he did it in the last day or two.”

  “It would.” Jed led his borrowed gelding to a stall. “I can’t believe they thought they could drive those cattle through the cut fences and out onto federal land without Gary hearing something.”

  “They came armed, which means they were willing to kill if they had to. You’d think if they were shaken by what one of them had done, they wouldn’t have driven their damn trailer right past his body and loaded the animals this close to the house.”

  “That was cold, all right. They had to know he lived here alone.”

  “If that’s true, they also knew he had kids. What if Hayden or his sister had been home for a visit?”

  Jed didn’t have to answer what wasn’t really a question.

  Grant had already told Jed that Webb’s wife had died some ten years back and that neither of their two children lived in the state anymore. Now he opened a stall door and unclipped the lead rope as the horse he’d ridden headed for his manger.

  “We need to catch these fuckers,” he said grimly.

  Waiting in the aisle, Jed only said, “Amen.” He hadn’t known Gary Webb or his son or daughter, but he was as angry as his friend and boss.

  *****

  After a quick shower, Linette braided her wet hair with the ease of long practice. She thought how much easier it would be to cut it short, but the southern girl in her insisted she hold onto some last evidence of femininity. She had memories from when she was a child of her mother sitting on the bed beside her brushing her hair. The bristles felt so good on her scalp, the even strokes soothing. It was the time of day when Mama was her softest, too. Linette could say things she wouldn’t dare when Mama was snapping out orders and expecting her daughter to jump to her bidding.

  And then there was Jed. He’d loved her hair. Running his fingers through it, he’d more than once begged her never to cut it. Her scalp tingled at the memory of his rough fingertips massaging her scalp, his hands gentle when he unbraided her hair with an expression of fascination on his face.

  She made a soft sound.

  Linette snapped back to the present to meet her own eyes in the mirror. What, she was mooning over a man who had no interest in every touching her again?

  Jed was all the more reason she should march into the salon in town and have the whole mass chopped off. She could donate it to be made into a wig for a cancer survivor. Her good deed, and just think! All she’d have to do in the morning was finger-comb her hair and be done with it. She’d feel light besides, all that weight gone.

  Trying to believe she’d actually do it the next time she had to go to town, Linette went downstairs already thinking about the day’s chores. She’d make her breakfast quick, since Troy would be here anytime. Her only excuse was that she’d had trouble falling asleep last night. Too often these days, she found herself unable to settle down easily, instead straining to hear any sounds in the night. Of course, then she’d sleep like a log, which made dragging herself out of bed a whole lot harder.

  Seemed like every morning she expected the kitchen to have improved during the night. Every morning, she was disappointed. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen hadn’t been remodeled since the 1970s and badly needed an update. It and the bathrooms looked the worst. Well, it could all wait. She had her priorities.

  Linette frowned at the strong smell of manure. Apparently, she’d left the sash window above the sink open a few inches, as she often did. The house was rarely downwind from the manure pile, but it happened. Lucky she’d spent enough time shoveling horse shit, she could ignore the stink while eating a quick breakfast.

  Like so much in her life now, she always went about her tasks in a certain order. She filled her tea kettle and put it on to boil first – she’d never learned to like coffee – took a mug from the cabinet and a teabag from a canister, then added a spoonful of sugar to the mug. Now when the water boiled, she could just pour.

  Some days she scrambled or poached a couple of eggs and had them with toast. Instant oatmeal was faster, especially since she was already boiling water. She dumped a couple of packets into a bowl and took a spoon from the silverware drawer before going to the refrigerator for milk. She took a second longer than she should have to see what was inside her formerly spotless refrigerator.

  Manure. Several shovelfuls of it. Spilling off shelves, pungent yellow-green liquid dripping down the white sides of the refrigerator.

  Linette gaped, letting the cold air pour out. It took the shrill of the tea kettle to yank her from her shock. She thrust the door shut and whirled to lift the kettle with a hand that shook and pour boiling water into her mug and bowl. Then she closed her eyes and willed anger to replace the shock. That was one of the most useful things a psychologist had taught her. She didn’t have to accept having shit thrown at her – and wasn’t that a fine way of thinking about it. She could fight back.

  After a few deep breaths, the anger settled in, available if she needed it.

  Unfortunately, now her kitchen smelled like a barn.

  Where was the food that had been in the refrigerator? she wondered belatedly. On the manure pile near the barn? Maybe, but it would have been easier for someone who’d sneaked into her house to—

  Linette opened the oven door to find it crammed full with a carton of milk, a pitcher of lemonade, margarine, leftovers in containers, fruit and veggies, meat she’d been defrosting and the condiments that tended to take over the shelves on the door.

  Nobody could have climbed in the window, she knew that; the wood casing was so swollen, wrenching it up two or three inches was all she’d managed. She closed the oven and went straight to the back door. Unlocked. She’d checked all the locks last night before she went to bed, she’d swear she had. As paranoid as she’d been this past week, she wouldn’t have skipped making those rounds. She’d known how worthless push-button locks were, though, and should have already added a dead-bolt on this door. Would have added one, if she hadn’t been trying so hard to convince herself she was imagining noises in the night that didn’t belong or the skin-crawling feeling of being watched.

  She marched through the entire downstairs, re-checking all the windows and the front door locks.

  The worry that she’d somehow done this when sleepwalking came and went. It was all too…too elaborate. Too nonsensical.

  An icy chill crawled down her spine, reminding her that this “prank” was more than nonsensical. Along with being creepy, even threatening, it was just plain disgusting.

  Maybe she ought to wish she was responsible. Because otherwise, someone had been in the house last night while she slept, utterly vulnerable.

  This time, she was calling the cops – and trusting that a deputy would show up, not the one and only detective in the sheriff’s department.

  *****

  Jed didn’t love fast food, but he stopped for a burger and fries anyway on his way back to town. It gave him time to think back over the couple of hours he had spent canvassing Gary Webb’s neighbors.

  Chet Jones to the east of the WBB hadn’t
heard a thing, but he did shake his head when Jed asked about the branding.

  “He was aiming for later this week. Needed to get some help in.”

  The first report of cattle rustling had come in late April, the second days later, in the first week of May. Word of both incidents had spread fast. Gary Webb had been killed a week after Walt Whitney’s ranch had been hit. Damn it, how long did it take to hire the same men Webb would have used whenever he did the branding?

  Walking Jed out to his pickup truck, Chet said, “Can you get me Hayden’s phone number? I’ll take over feeding what herd is left along with the horses, but I’d like his permission. Or is he coming home right away? Do you know?”

  “I don’t.” Jed hadn’t thought to ask Grant. “I’ll call you later today with the number. It’s good of you to take charge of the animals for now.”

  Chet only shrugged. That’s what neighbors in these parts did.

  The driveway almost directly across the road from the WBB belonged to a local veterinarian who moonlighted breeding and training dogs for search and rescue. Jed had heard that Dr. Knappe only worked part-time at his clinic now, although he still owned it. He and some volunteers who owned S and R dogs were available any time when the police in a several county area needed their services. Dr. Knappe himself and a yellow lab named Snoopy had found a three-year-old girl who’d wandered away from a campground on Desperation Creek last summer, shortly after Jed’s arrival in town.

  An energetic, fit man in his late fifties, Knappe must have heard Jed’s truck because he had walked out of a barn converted into kennels to meet him.

  “Detective Dawson. I might not remember you except that you seem to make it into the Courier pretty regularly.”

  Jed winced. “I think Cassie Ward knows how much I hate having my picture in the newspaper, so she thinks of excuses even more often.”

  Knappe grinned, but then sobered right away. “I saw the activity over there.” He nodded toward the road fronting his property. “Figured Gary got hit by these sons-of-bitches stealing cattle.”

  “He did, but it’s worse than that. He was fatally shot. Our best guess right now is that he heard something he didn’t like, grabbed his rifle and went out to confront the trespassers.”

  “Jesus.” The veterinarian rubbed a hand hard over his jaw. “He’s dead?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  On being questioned, Knappe admitted that the barking of his dogs had awakened him at just after four a.m. Regret deepened the lines on his well-used face. “They were carrying on, but I didn’t hear anything else. My wife always said I sleep like the dead.”

  “May I speak to her?”

  “No, she’s gone now. Almost three years ago.”

  After offering his sympathy, Jed left his card in case Dr. Knappe remembered anything else

  No one else within a mile either way of the Webb ranch had heard a thing or noticed any traffic.

  Having pulled over in the burger chain parking lot to eat, he now wadded up the wrappings and stuffed them in the bag. He intended to stop at several more ranches this afternoon, but wanted to switch to a department vehicle from his own pickup. He’d update Grant while he was at headquarters, too.

  As he was crossing the parking lot behind the sheriff’s department, the back door swung open and a young deputy he didn’t much like came out. Far as he knew, Chris Jarman hadn’t actually screwed up, but his chronic smirk rubbed Jed wrong.

  “Kiger horses,” he said, seeing Jed. And there was the smirk. “That’s something I never heard of.”

  Jed stiffened, although from long practice he kept his expression neutral. “Kiger mustangs are descendants of the horses the Spanish conquistadors brought to America. It’s a registered breed, discovered right here in Oregon. What brought them to mind?”

  He didn’t much like Jarman’s shaved head, either, he realized. Or the way he liked to keep his hand resting on his belt right beside his holstered service weapon.

  “Took a call out to a Kiger ranch.” His grin grew. “Lady out there got up to fix breakfast and found a whole lot of shit in her refrigerator.”

  “Shit? Literal?”

  Maybe his self-control had slipped, because Jarman’s smirk died. He looked wary and not as if he liked the feeling.

  “Manure. Her food was all in her oven, and some horse shit found its way into the fridge. Hell of a cleaning job she’ll have.” He shrugged. “Looked like a practical joke to me. She has a kid working for her. He says he didn’t have anything to do with it, but he’s likeliest. Can’t blame him for being pissed if she shut him down. She’s one hot woman.”

  Jed’s molars were going to crack any second. “Did you ask Deputy Brown to take fingerprints?”

  “For something like that? I told the woman, no harm, no foul, and advised her to do a better job locking her doors.” He grinned. “Foul. Get it?” Without waiting to see if Jed was amused, Jarman said, “I gotta get back out on the road.” He flipped a hand and swaggered over to a patrol car.

  Jed didn’t know what stupid thing he might have done if he hadn’t gotten lucky just inside and saw their young woman deputy slash budding crime scene investigator in a small conference room poring over what appeared to be a textbook while she ate a salad from a plastic bowl.

  He walked in and she immediately looked up, her eyes widening. He guessed he must have crossed over from impassive to implacable where facial expressions were concerned.

  “Deputy Brown, I wonder if you could do a favor for me. This…is a little above and beyond…”

  “What is it?”

  He explained what Linette Broussard had discovered this morning in her kitchen. “Detective Jarman chose to dismiss it as unimportant. I’m concerned that someone got into a single woman’s house during the night to do this. It may be too late, but I’d appreciate it if you’d call Ms. Broussard and, if she hasn’t already scrubbed her refrigerator and stove, go out and do some fingerprinting.”

  “Oh.” Erin Brown beamed at him. “Sure! Except…” She hesitated.

  “I’ll clear it with the sheriff.”

  “Okay!”

  She opened her laptop to look up the number for the LB Kiger Ranch. Jed continued down the hall to the sheriff’s office, no larger than his own.

  Even before he reached it, he heard Grant talking to someone. The tone was polite, but his expression when Jed stopped in the doorway was anything but. He grimaced and waved Jed in.

  “I do understand your point of view—” He listened for what had to be a minute before he said, “I’m sorry you feel that way, but I don’t think you’re hearing me, either.”

  Jed sat in the comfortable chair across the desk from his boss and quit listening. Instead, he did battle with the instinct that wanted him to get out to Linette’s place right now. Fighting it with reason didn’t help. Tension vibrated through his body. Some creep had been in her house during the night, playing a nasty trick on her while she was asleep. Had he gone to her room and watched her sleep? Did he smirk, too?

  Jed closed his eyes, remembering how often he’d laid awake just to watch Linette sleep. She was always beautiful, but sleep softened her face, easing wariness or worry he hadn’t consciously recognized then, but in retrospect had identified. Whatever the cause of those shadows, he wouldn’t be around long enough ever to see her free of them. Knowing that had made his heart hurt. Now, thinking about how vulnerable she was in her own home felt like an iron-shod hoof smacking his breastbone.

  “Detective Dawson?”

  He stood and went out into the hall, where Deputy Brown hovered.

  “I spoke to Ms. Broussard, and unfortunately she’d already scrubbed her refrigerator and stove. Although she’s afraid she may have to throw out the refrigerator.”

  Jed could imagine. “Thank you,” he said.

  She nodded. “Ms. Broussard also said her back door was locked when she went to bed. Oh, and that this isn’t the first weird thing that’s happened.” Her lips parted
again, then closed, and she shifted as if she wanted to say more but wasn’t sure she should.

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “Well, more wondering. Would I be stepping on toes if I stopped by to talk to her?”

  Relief brought him back from the edge. “If you don’t mention it to Jarman, I won’t either. I imagine she’ll prefer talking to another woman.”

  Her face brightened again. “I’ll do that this afternoon then. Thank you, sir.”

  She bustled away. As he watched her go, Jed became aware of the silence in Grant’s office. His boss raised a dark eyebrow when Jed returned to his seat.

  “Are you sure she’s not eighteen?” Jed asked.

  Grant laughed. “Driver’s license says twenty-four. Old man.”

  “She’s so…hopeful.” That was the closest he could come, however unfamiliar he was with that particular emotion.

  “She’s doing a fine job. People react favorably to her.”

  “They do to kittens and puppies, too. What if she gets into trouble?”

  “Happens to every cop sooner or later.” Pause. “You want to tell me what that was about?”

  God, no, was Jed’s first reaction. But he just about had to, in case Jarman made trouble.

  He explained about his conversation with Jarman and his discomfort with the deputy’s attitude and how little good he’d done a woman who called 911 because she’d been scared. He didn’t say, I know the woman. He especially didn’t say, If I’ve ever loved anyone in my life, it was her. Because Grant would then want to know why the hell he wasn’t burning rubber on the way out to her ranch right now.

  Because I’m not good for her.

  The answer was familiar. It just sounded a little weak right now.

  Grant’s studied him, expression unreadable. Finally, all he said was, “You know I need to talk to Jarman about this.”

  Jed shrugged. “If you’re asking whether I mind you telling him I’m the one who ratted on him, feel free. I can handle him.”