Here Comes Trouble (25 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

Joel grumbled, but then opened his eyes as
someone poked him in the shoulder. Rolling over on the hard, thin
mattress he opened his eyes then remembered where he was when his
eyes met those of a uniformed officer. He was in hell, and it was
likely he was going to be there for a long time...because of
Terri.

She thought he'd killed Karen, and she'd told
the police that.

He rubbed his eyes, then said,
"Yeah?"

That was the first word he'd muttered since he
left the ranch yesterday and his throat was raw, his voice
gravelly. Chase had told him his attorney would be waiting for him
when he got here, but he'd been wrong. He'd waited all day
yesterday and last night for someone to come. Nobody had shown up
for him, not his family, and not an attorney. Joel felt lost and
alone, something he was going to have to get used to, because with
a murder rap on him, he wasn't getting out of here anytime
soon.

Hell, maybe his family believed he'd done it
too.

"Your attorney is here, get a move on," the
stern-faced man told him.

Joel sat up and his stomach rumbled then
lurched, and he remembered he hadn't eaten anything since lunch
Wednesday. His supper had been Terri, the sandwiches had never made
it to the menu. After that he hadn't wanted to eat. Arguing with
Karen and worrying about Jenny and the baby had made him sick at
his stomach.

And before breakfast today, the woman he
thought he loved had betrayed him. If not for her spilling her guts
and then some to that rookie Ranger, Joel might not even be here.
The slop they'd tried to serve him for lunch earlier made Joel
think he may never eat again. Maybe he'd go on an involuntary
hunger strike and just put them all out of this misery.

"Get up," his guard demanded again.

Joel nodded then stood and preceded the man
out of the cell.

"Against the wall," the man told him shortly,
and Joel assumed the position while the man cuffed him, then
grabbed his arm and walked him down the brightly lit
hallway.

They continued through a couple of secure
doors, then he was led through a wooden door into a room that had a
table in the middle with two metal chairs. The guard shoved him
into one, then walked back toward the door.

"Cuffs?" Joel asked and flexed his fingers,
which were fast going numb behind his back.

"Stay on, unless your attorney asks me to
remove them," he told Joel, then walked out and shut the door
behind him.

Joel slid down in the chair to rest his head
on the back, and closed his eyes. When the door opened, one of his
eyes did as well, then the other followed, as a beautiful redhead
in a navy power suit walked across the tiled floor, her high heels
tapping a rhythmic tune.

She looked over her shoulder at the guard, her
brown eyes narrowed, and she told him, "Take the cuffs off,
now
."

Calm as you please, she looked back at Joel
and the corner of her lips kicked up. While the guard walked over
to him and jerked him out of the chair then removed the cuffs, the
redhead put her briefcase in the middle of the table and opened
it.

"Thank you, that will be all," she told the
guard as if she were queen of the universe, and he was her
celestial serf. Joel couldn't be sure, but he thought he heard the
man growl before he made his way back to the door and went outside.
Joel liked her style.

She stopped fiddling in her briefcase and
looked up at him. "I'm Veronica Winters, your attorney, and I'm
here to help you, so don't feed me any bullshit and we'll get along
fine," she told him and extended her hand to him.

"Well, hello Veronica," he said and shook her
hand. "I'm Joel Rhodes, and I'm knee deep in bullshit, so I'll be
shoveling not feeding."

She smiled then, and her big brown eyes
sparkled. "Good, then why don't you tell me why you killed your
ex-wife."

Joel's smile fell and he jerked his hand back.
"I didn't kill her," he said shortly. Evidently
everyone
did
think he was guilty, even his attorney. Damn, what the hell had
happened to the American justice system, he wondered. From the
looks of it, he was going to be presumed guilty until proven
innocent.

She snorted then sat down and leaned on her
elbows. "You know I'm just jerking you around, right? I know you're
an attorney, so I'll talk bluntly and not worry about soft soaping
things, will that work for you?"

"Sorry, I'm not in the mood for humor. When
you're locked up in jail for murder, you tend to take things
literally," Joel told her and leaned back in his chair to cross his
arms over his chest.

"Your body language is telling me we're not
getting off on the right foot here, I'm not taking this lightly,
but they don't have a damned bit of hard evidence that you did it.
Everything they have is circumstantial. She was naked and in your
bed, and you had been arguing with her, and whatever else your
girlfriend told them. I haven't had time to go over her statement
yet."

"She's not my girlfriend, she works for me,"
Joel corrected. Terri never would be his girlfriend, or anything
else...he couldn't trust her.

"Oh, yeah?" Veronica asked with a raised brow.
"In what capacity?"

"She's the nurse for my dude ranch."
Was
the nurse for his dude ranch. He was going to rip that
damned contract in a million pieces when he got home, if he got
home.

If he didn't get home, she could just go down
with the Titanic, because his ship was sunk. There wouldn't be a R
& R Ranch anymore. That might happen anyway if word of this
shit got out on the street. With Terri's big mouth, that was a
distinct possibility.

"What were you arguing about?" his attorney
asked.

"She and her boyfriend, my ex-business partner
broke up, and she didn't have a place to stay. She wanted more
money from our property settlement."

"How long have you been separated?" she asked
making notes on the yellow legal pad she'd pulled from her
briefcase.

"Over a year," he said with a frustrated
sigh.

"And you haven't settled yet?"

"She kept putting it off, didn't even file the
final decree that the judge signed. She told her attorney not to
file it yet, because she was trying to reconcile with
me."

"Was that a possibility?" Veronica asked
looking up from her pad.

"Hell, no. She and my law partner had been
having an affair, since right after we got married. I caught them
in my office, when they thought I was out of town."

Veronica groaned and made more notes on her
pad. "That doesn't sound good, Joel. That could be interpreted as
motive, you know that."

"Yeah, this whole thing doesn't look good.
They might only have circumstantial evidence, but it's pretty
damning."

"Okay, tell me what happened last night." She
laid down her pen and crossed her arms over her chest. Her body
language told him that her humor was gone, and she was taking this
a lot more seriously now. Not a good sign for him.

Joel gave her a detailed account of their
argument, Karen's tears, his offer to let her stay in the
bunkhouse, then his trip to the hospital. "When we got back to the
ranch around five in the morning. When I got up a few hours later,
I went to the bunkhouse to give her money to go to a hotel, and she
wasn't there. I heard a scream in the house and ran back to the
house. Terri was in my bedroom trying to give her CPR."

"You got back to the ranch at five in the
morning, slept a few hours then got up to find Karen?"

"Yeah..." Joel confirmed.

"If Karen was dead in your bed, where did you
sleep?" Veronica asked baldly.

Joel felt blood rush up his neck to his
cheeks. He
hadn't
slept, he'd made love to Terri for a
couple of hours then snuck out of her bed to go find Karen, but
Joel pinched his lips and refused to answer.

Her next statement told him that she filled in
the blanks accurately anyway. "So, you had sex with Terri Cassidy
when you got home, which she didn't mention to the police by the
way. Unless you are a total sociopath, or sexual deviant, I find it
hard to believe that you had sex with your girlfriend down the hall
from your wife's dead body. And unless you are Superman, I also
find it hard to believe that you had rough sex with your ex-wife in
your bedroom and killed her before you left the ranch to go to the
hospital, like the Ranger speculated in his report, then wanted sex
again with Terri when you got home at five in the
morning."

"He did
what
?!?" Joel shouted then
stood and slammed his hands down on the table.

Veronica didn't flinch, she smiled. "So Terri
Cassidy
is
your girlfriend, then? And you weren't sleeping
with your ex-wife?"

"Hell no, I wasn't sleeping with Karen," he
said then sat back down.

"But you were sleeping with Terri Cassidy?"
she fired back.

"What the fuck does that have to do with them
thinking I killed Karen?" Joel just didn't get her line of
questioning.

"Terri could have been angry at you, because
she
thought
you had slept with Karen when she found her in
your bed, which could explain her damaging statement. And I can let
them know her statement is missing a few important
details."

Aah, he got it now. "Yeah, I guess..." If that
was the case, Terri Cassidy was a vindictive bitch. It was a
logical explanation though, because he was having a hard time
reconciling that she could have been
that
stupid in her
statement to the Ranger.

Terri Cassidy was a smart woman.

"Who do you think killed Karen?" Veronica
asked him.

"Larry had the motive, not sure about
opportunity. The police didn't even ask that question at the ranch.
They should probably interview him...find out if he has an
alibi."

She made notes on her pad, "What's his last
name and address?"

"Sims and he's in Dallas as far as I know,"
Joel told her then gave her the exact address.

"How did Karen get to the ranch last
night?"

"She drove her car...it's parked behind the
guest bunkhouse at the ranch." A sudden thought hit Joel. "I didn't
tell them that either. It was hidden, so they probably didn't even
see it when they were gathering evidence. For all I know, she
could've been killed out there and brought up to the
house."

"I'll let them know they need to have CSI go
back out there and search for a possible secondary crime scene,"
she told him then put her pen down and crossed her arms over her
chest. "The reason I didn't get here until now is I was trying to
get the judge to set bail for you...no luck. You won't even be
arraigned for a few days. Until the autopsy report comes in next
week, you're a guest here."

Joel groaned then said, "Can't you get that
done quicker? My daddy could call the coroner. He knows everyone
around here." A week away from the ranch and he'd be
bankrupt.

"Your daddy called me, that's the best he's
going to do for now. This is capital murder, and even though you
don't have a record and your family is connected, the judge
assigned is by the book, and the coroner is going to take his time
and make sure his report is clean."

"Fuck," Joel said and shoved a hand through
his hair. A piece of green muck fell onto the front of his shirt
and he picked it up. It must've been in his hair since he was with
Terri at the creek. Memories flooded through his mind, but he shut
them out and flicked it to the floor. He was done with Terri
Cassidy...he was done with
women
. To date in his life,
they'd caused him nothing but trouble.

"Just hang in there," Veronica told him and
stood then put her pad in her briefcase before she shut it. "You've
got the best criminal attorney in Amarillo on your side," she told
him smugly with a wink.

"And the most humble one too," he replied with
a snort.

"Humility never got me anywhere, arrogance on
the other hand..." she bandied and her full red lips kicked
up.

"Yeah, I know the ropes, I was pretty arrogant
myself in the day," he told her.

"I bet you were...why did you quit the law?"
she asked curiously.

"My wife was doing my law partner...remember?
I was sorrier to lose him than I was my ex-wife, it shot my
practice to hell," he told her with a twist of his lips. "I was
burned out anyway."

"But a dude ranch? That's a pretty big
departure from law."

"Not so much," he said and waved his hands
around the room and shrugged.

"The other side of the table, sugar," she
clarified then picked up her briefcase. "You can call me Ronnie, by
the way," she told him as she pushed her chair to the table. "I
think we're gonna be seeing a lot of each other in the next few
weeks."

"Lucky me," he told her with a
wink.

***