Death Rides Again (A Jocelyn Shore Mystery) (32 page)

“If they give it to us,” Kel answered cautiously. “But even if they don’t, the lawsuit will be dropped. We’ll be fine.” He squeezed Elaine’s hand.

She squeezed back, then looked across the room to the corner where Ruby June was talking with Kris. The two had their heads together and looked like the pair of teenagers they still were.

“It’s been a terrible thing, but Ruby’s back and the girls are safe. That’s what matters.” She smiled at Kyla and me, and if the smile did not quite reach her eyes, I could hardly blame her. I had my own thoughts about Ruby June and Kris.

Might as well get it over with, I thought, rising.

“Ruby June, want to help me in the kitchen a sec?” I asked in that special teacher tone that so clearly indicated it was an order, not a request.

She obediently rose. I felt Kris’s kohl-encircled eyes following us with suspicion and mild alarm.

In the kitchen, I closed the door behind us. Ruby June looked at me with studied nonchalance, the half smile on her face attempting to give the impression that she was just waiting to be of service.

“So, are you using?” I asked her bluntly.

She blinked, a moment of genuine surprise, quickly replaced with calculated evasiveness. I suspected the only real surprise was that I had asked the question.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said with an air of offended virtue.

“You do.”

Her eyes narrowed, and I could practically see the hamster wheel she called a brain beginning to turn. I quickly held up a hand.

“Don’t bother. Let me tell you what I think instead. I think that you were Eddy’s partner in most, if not all, of his dealings with Carl Cress—especially the drugs. I saw Eddy selling under the bleachers at the rodeo, and I’m guessing the two of you were the main source for all of your buddies at Sand Creek High School. After all, you both graduated only a year ago, and I’m sure you still have friends there. And I’m sure those friends have friends. Probably a pretty good business for the two of you, even with the cut that Carl took.”

While I talked, Ruby June reddened, then grew pale, and finally settled down into a sullen defiance.

“You don’t know anything,” she said.

“So you won’t mind if I send Sheriff Bob over to your house to take a look around.”

She swallowed hard. “It’s just weed.”

“It’s just accessory to murder after the fact,” I said coldly. This sounded quite official. I was pretty sure I’d heard it on a cop show, which must make it a real thing.

“What do you mean?” she squeaked. “I didn’t…”

“I’m embarrassed by how long it took me to figure it out,” I said. “But let’s be fair—the timing threw me. After all, we thought you’d vanished before Eddy’s murder. But you were just getting ready to leave town, weren’t you? Probably visiting friends, maybe trying to make a few final sales to get some cash? Then, you found out that Carl had killed Eddy, and you were afraid you were next. And instead of going to the police, you hid at T.J.’s.”

She sat down abruptly on a kitchen chair in a posture that reminded me strongly of the way she’d huddled at this same table while her father threatened her husband. Not a fighter, I thought.

“He woulda killed me if he found me,” she said in a low voice. “What would you have done?”

“Call the police! You knew he was a killer, and you knew he was going to come after you.”

“Like Sheriff Bob could have done anything!” she said scornfully. “He would just have arrested me for the drugs.”

“If you’d gone to the police, Carl wouldn’t have had a chance to shoot Travis Arledge, who’s going to make it by the way. And Carl would still be alive himself. In jail, true, but alive.”

“Now why would I want Carl Cress alive?” she asked. “You have no idea what he was like. I guess I’m sorry about the jockey, but that was not my fault. What the hell do you want me to do about it all? Are you going to turn me in?”

This was the real question. With Eddy and Carl both dead, unless I said anything, I doubted very much if Sheriff Bob would pursue drug charges against a nineteen-year-old widow even if he suspected her involvement. He had enough on his hands with the Los Zetas.

“No,” I said at last. “I won’t turn you in … on one condition. No more drugs. Not even ‘just weed.’ And if I hear you’ve been giving or selling to anyone in our family, I will not only tell the police, I’ll tell your parents. And you can bet I’m going to be saying a word in Aunt Gladys’s ear to keep an eye on Kris. I know the two of you have been smoking.”

Her face reddened, but she just nodded. I turned on my heel and left her.

As I returned to the living room, the sound of an engine made everyone turn their heads, and I hurried to the window in time to see a green Jeep rumbling down the hill. Colin had finally arrived, thank goodness. I grabbed Kyla’s coat from the peg and ran out to meet him, slamming the door behind me in what I hoped was a meaningful way. The north breeze hit my face, and I knew I was going to miss my own coat. Even if the blood hadn’t ruined it, the memories had.

I waved at Colin as I ran. “Don’t get out—you have to take me away from here,” I called.

He earned major points by slipping back behind the wheel and restarting the engine without question. I jumped in the front seat, and he pulled away just as the front door opened and my relatives boiled forth like bees from a hive. He reversed in front of them as I waved, fake smile pasted on my face, then we were off, and I heaved a sigh of relief.

“You know, in the future when we’re around my family, you should always back in to a parking spot to facilitate a quick getaway,” I advised him.

“Duly noted,” he laughed. “It’s good to know there’s going to be a future,” he added, glancing at my face before returning his eyes to the road.

I felt the warmth of a blush rise in my cheeks, but somewhat to my surprise I realized I didn’t want to take it back.

“So where to?” he asked.

I looked around. We were approaching the first gate. To the left, the pasture sloped gently down toward the dry creek bed, the yellow grass bending gently in the breeze. Brown cattle were scattered as far as we could see, like ships on a flaxen ocean. A few of them raised their heads to watch us, probably wondering if we had any feed cubes. On the other side, the rising land became increasingly rugged, dotted with cactus and mesquite, gray rocks breaking through the weeds like the bones of some enormous prehistoric creature. A pair of doves streaked across the sky, moving fast as though blown by the north wind. Dusk was falling over a harsh, beautiful country.

“Can we just pull over for a minute?”

He obligingly stopped the Jeep and cut the engine.

I opened the door and got out long enough to pop the seat forward and crawl into the back. Colin laughed, and did the same on his side. Together on the narrow bench seat, I slid into his arms, slipping my hands under his shirt to feel the warmth of his chest, breathing in the outdoor scent clinging to his jacket, the faint hint of soap and sweat and man on his skin. I’d missed him, I’d longed for him, and holding him now reminded me how very, very glad I was to be alive. We kissed for a very long time, but, fortunately or unfortunately, there was no room for anything else. At last, I rested my head on his shoulder and waited for my heart to stop pounding.

“Might I suggest that you give more consideration to the size of the backseat when purchasing your next car?” I said.

“As a matter of fact, I’ve been thinking about that very thing quite recently,” he answered solemnly.

I chuckled, and he pulled me closer, stroking my hair and kissing the top of my head. I touched the cast that ran from wrist to elbow. “Does your arm hurt?”

“Not too bad.”

“Are you just being manly?”

“Yeah. It aches like a son of a bitch.”

I raised his other hand to my lips and kissed his wrist. He stroked my cheek.

After a few moments, he said in a more serious tone, “I have some news for you.”

I stiffened, then tilted my head to look up at him, but all I could see was the line of his jaw and the pulse beating at the base of his throat.

He took my silence for the invitation it was. He said quietly, “T. J. Knoller didn’t make it. He died about an hour ago.”

A sharp pang of guilt and regret shot through my chest. “I knew I shouldn’t have moved him, but I was so afraid that if we left him, the gang would kill him. If I’d just waited until you got there…”

Colin shifted and held me tighter. “You can’t think like that. You were trying to save his life, and getting him to the hospital as quickly as you did at least gave him a fighting chance. I figured you’d be blaming yourself, so I asked the doctor. Nothing could have saved him. The bullet had done too much damage.”

I said nothing, knowing his words were meant to be comforting, but not feeling comforted. I thought of T.J. telling Kyla to hide in the barn loft, of stepping between me and two armed killers. I reminded myself that he was also the man who’d pointed a gun at both of us, which helped a little. However deserved or undeserved, he had brought his death on himself. Nevertheless, I was sorry.

I said, “It’s such a terrible thing. Will we ever know what really happened?”

“I think we’ve got a pretty good idea. T.J. came around for a while in the hospital and talked. He knew he was dying.”

I sat up then, turning in the uncomfortable seat so I could see his face, resting my legs across his lap. “What did he say?”

“He gave us names and details about the gang. Not enough to make up for the pain he caused, but enough to make some arrests, and more than enough to shut them down—in this county at least. He wanted to get rich, and he didn’t mind cheating or stealing to do it, but I don’t think he was a killer by choice. By the time things turned violent, he was in too deep to back out.”

“Do you think he was being truthful when he said Carl was the one who killed Eddy?”

Colin nodded. “I do. He said it again in the hospital, and by then he had no reason to lie, and he knew it. Eddy wanted out and made the mistake of asking Carl for money to keep quiet about it. If he’d asked T.J., he’d probably be alive today.”

“But why would Carl leave him where he could be found? And on our ranch?”

“That was sheer bad luck. It was easy for Carl to persuade Eddy to go to T.J.’s place and kill him there. When T.J. found out what Carl had done, he was horrified and demanded that Carl take the body somewhere else. Your uncle’s caliche pit was close, and just across a barbed-wire fence. Of course, Carl should have buried Eddy right then, but instead he decided to go into town to establish his alibi. He spent the rest of the evening living large and buying rounds in R.T.’s BBQ and Sports Bar. By the time he sneaked back to finish the job, we’d already found the body.”

I frowned. “If he’d just buried the body, he wouldn’t have needed an alibi.”

“If criminals always did the smart thing, we’d never catch them,” Colin said. “In this case, I expect that killing his friend and then moving the body in the darkness shook up old Carl more than he’d expected. I think he panicked, and couldn’t bring himself to dig a shallow grave with Eddy just lying there. At least not without a stiff drink or two.”

I shivered a little and decided I could hardly blame Carl for that bit. “Okay, fine. That explains Eddy. But what was the plan with the racehorses?”

“Ah, now that’s where things get interesting. T.J. needed a way to launder money for Los Zetas. He’d never been involved in the drug-selling side of the business, but he was actually quite clever with money. He was running a series of real-estate deals in about six counties, selling one property, buying another, always moving the money into different banks. I don’t envy the investigators who have to figure out that mess. The thing is, Los Zetas were making more drug money than ever, and T.J. decided that horse racing would be an amusing way of laundering large sums of cash. He and Carl had already tested it once by buying a racehorse in New Mexico, racing it a couple of times, and then ‘selling’ it for quite a bit more than it was worth. They enjoyed the racing so much—acting like rich owners and betting—that they decided to invest in a local track and run horses here. The purse they managed to finagle was big enough to tempt any gambler, and they decided to stimulate the bettors by a very public rivalry between their two horses. They agreed that whoever won, they’d split the pot, sell both horses, and pass some, but most definitely not all, of the proceeds on to their Los Zetas associates.”

“Then Carl got greedy?” I asked.

“More like T.J. got scared. Remember, he’d never wanted Eddy dead, and he was afraid that suspicion was going to fall on Carl and from there onto him. Plus, I think that Manuel was starting to become a factor.”

I said, “How in the world did someone like Manuel get involved? He was always so nice and quiet, and he’d worked for Carl for years. Heck, he’d pretty much been Carl’s slave for as long as I’ve known him.”

“We’re still trying to sort that out. We think Manuel started acting as the liaison between T.J. and Los Zetas. As you say, no one would ever suspect him, and he might have had a relative in the gang, or he might just have started making himself useful. In any event, it’s pretty clear that the gang leadership was giving him more authority. I think he was putting pressure on T.J. who had decided that it wasn’t safe to be skimming money from the gang.”

“And that’s when Carl sold the horse to Uncle Herman.”

“Right.”

I frowned, struggled, and finally admitted, “I don’t get it.”

Colin laughed. “You’re not alone there. It was an idiot move, and even T.J. wasn’t sure about all the details. I talked about it with Sheriff Bob. After putting together all the pieces, including that paperwork you found in Carl’s house, we came up with a theory. Carl was furious with T.J. for reneging on the money they planned to skim. He had proof that the land T.J. was suing your family for really did belong to Herman, and he figured it must be worth a lot of money if T.J. was willing to sue for it. It’s also likely that he was tired of being the hired hand, so to speak. He wanted a bigger piece of the money-laundering action, and maybe he thought he could cut T.J. out altogether if he had enough leverage. So, he traded the horse to Herman for the rights to the land.”