Reining in Murder (33 page)

“You know, of course, that that voice message was a cut-and-paste job.”

She stated it as a fact, not a question. Annie wanted Dan and in fact the entire Sheriff's Office to publicly admit to her that Todos had concocted the initially damning evidence and that Marcus was totally vindicated in the matter of Hilda's death.

“We do now,” Tony admitted. “And it was pretty clever the way he did it. We know Hilda's voice mail password was weak, and I'm not surprised Todos was able to break it. He'd downloaded onto his laptop every voice message from Marcus to Hilda over a six-month period, right up to February 14, when he apparently got the best one to do the job. It would have been easy for him to forward the messages to his own phone, then transfer to his computer.”

Tony pulled out a slip of paper from his shirt pocket. “I know you'd want to know what Marcus actually said, Annie, so here goes:

“
I will try to understand your needs, Hilda. But please don't destroy this relationship now because we're fighting. It's not dead yet. You're a good woman, Hilda, and I love you. I'll be with you before you know it.'”

Annie sat, lost in thought. He really had loved Hilda. What was she thinking? Had she ever really had a chance? She looked up.

“How about the last sentence—the one about ‘consider yourself warned'?”

Tony folded up the piece of paper and put it back in his pocket. “That was the easy one. Todos took that from a previous message, where Marcus actually said, ‘Consider yourself warned.' But it was said in an entirely different light. Hilda had been urging Marcus to learn how to ride. He left her a message back in January where he told her he might do that. Those were his parting words.”

“But Todos was even smarter than that,” Dan added. “Remember, he'd planted Travis's correspondence in Hilda's desk. The words Todos chose to implicate Marcus had an eerie resemblance to one of Travis's last letters to Hilda. I guess Todos was hoping that we'd think Travis was a suspect in the case. Got to hand it to the guy. Most killers don't leave us with not one, but two false suspects to look at. Although it wasn't to rule out Travis once we'd interviewed him,” Dan added hastily.

“I'm still happy to submit to a polygraph,” Travis said drily, and everyone laughed.

Annie stood up. “One more question, Dan, and then I'll let Lavender serve dinner. I know everyone's hungry, and I'd sure hate for anyone to drive home now after all that scotch you've consumed.”

“Ask away, Annie.”

“Did you talk to Juan? And is he involved in any way?”

“Nearly forgot about him. Good question. We talked to him this morning. I've only had a chance to question him once with an interpreter, but it appears that Juan saw Todos hauling the bear cutout into the woods behind Hilda's place. It was all quite by accident, mind you, and, of course, Juan didn't have the foggiest idea what Todos was doing. But he could see that Todos was angry, and he decided not to stick around to see where that anger might get him. Who knows, Juan might have seen something else, too, that implicates Todos in Hilda's death and . . . um, well, Hilda's death.”

Everyone was tiptoeing around the subject of Marcus. Annie found it infuriating. “Look, I know what you're all thinking—that Todos killed Marcus, too. It's okay. You may all be right. But until you find a body, I'm not going to give up on the idea that somehow he's still alive. We all know now that he's completely innocent. Maybe now he'll be found. I hope so.” She said the last words almost to herself.

Travis walked over to Annie.

“I hope Marcus is still alive, too. But even if he is, I understand you have eighteen horses for sale. I've decided to look for another property for my project in Alex's memory. Can we talk in the days ahead?”

“Absolutely.”

Annie suddenly felt ravenous, even for Lavender's cooking.

It was a glorious spring day—the kind that made people glad they lived in the great Northwest. The breeze was light, and the temperature hovered around sixty-five degrees, downright balmy for the Peninsula. Annie was astride her pinto, Sam, watching Johan Thompson load the last of her ewes into her now-thoroughly-habitable sheep pasture. The long line of woolly white ovines waddled in, baaing like fools, as if they'd never seen the place before even though it had just been six months since they'd last grazed here. The pregnant ewes looked immense, but they were all walking well, and, judging by the sounds of solid crunches on the wet green grass, none of their appetites had dampened yet. Annie knew that when the ewes began to eschew food, their lambs were soon to follow.

Thanking Johan, she secured the gate from Sam's back and checked to make sure the steady click-click of the electric charger was unobstructed by weeds or twigs. Satisfied, she turned toward home. Wolf trotted by Sam's side.

Two weeks had passed since her nightmare experience at Hilda's ranch. She'd survived the now-predictable rush of television and other media reporters quite nicely, mostly by spending her days working in the sheep field, making the acreage ready for her flock. For all intents and purposes, Annie simply was never home. She'd parked her truck at her neighbor Chris's place just to complete the deception. Apparently no one in the media realized that farmers and ranchers sometimes worked beyond the circumference of their homes. Well, that was their problem.

Eddie Trueblood had cracked. Against the advice of his attorney, but interestingly, at the urging of his parents, he'd told Dan all about Todos's scheme to kill the bay that Hilda had so thoughtlessly purchased, although Todos had never said anything to Eddie about killing Hilda, and Dan was inclined to believe him. Eddie was now looking at a single charge of Murder 1, which carried with it a twenty-year-to-life sentence, although with Eddie's complete cooperation and mental-health issues, Dan suspected Judy Evans would offer a plea that gave him far less time in prison. And, if the defense's psychologists were persuasive enough, perhaps a sentence served at Western State Hospital, where the criminally insane were housed. Dan was fairly confident the latter would never happen. He told Annie that the people of the great state of Washington tended to pooh-pooh insanity and diminished-capacity defenses.

Annie was just sorry that Eddie refused to admit shooting at her two days before she had her “tango with Todos” as she now lightly called it.

As Sam trotted up to the stable hitching post, Annie glanced over at her round pen, where her newest project was now awaiting its first lesson. She was a gorgeous Walker, 15.3 hands tall, jet-black, with a small white diamond in the middle of her forehead. At the moment, she was following Trotter around like a moonstruck teenager, yet another equine with flawless breeding who had fallen head-over-hooves in love with a donkey.

It was time to get the mail. Annie unsaddled Sam, rubbed him down, and let him loose in the pasture with a handful of carrots as thanks for assisting her that morning. She walked up the graveled driveway, cursing her boots, but too lazy to take them off for this small chore. Western boots were great for riding and looking good in cowboy bars; for all other purposes, they fell short.

She reached into the mailbox and pulled out an assortment of flyers and bills. Then she spotted a postcard. On it was a photo of two horses on a beach, galloping along the sand. Who among her small circle of friends had the time and money to take a vacation? No one. She turned it over. In Marcus's distinctive handwriting, it read:

A million thanks to Fern Michaels, who convinced me I had a sellable story and gave me the courage to submit my manuscript to Kensington. Another million go to Sandy Dengler, whose eagle-eye editing, suggestions on plot and character development, and advice on how to create a compelling mystery were essential to its creation. Everyone should have a writer friend like Sandy, and I'm glad she's one of mine. Ken Kagan made sure my interpretations of WA criminal law and courtroom procedures were accurate and plausible; if I screwed up,m it's not his fault. Robert Schwager made my first draft a whole lot better. My equine vet, Dr. Cary Hills, took time out of his busy schedule to make sure I got equine dentistry right. I am exceedingly grateful to both of them. I am not a horse trainer or member of a horse rescue team, but feel fortunate that I know many women who excel in these fields. I give special thanks and all my love to my husband, who encouraged me to write, read my work many, many times, and is my greatest cheerleader. He was a bit jealous of Marcus in the beginning, but should know by now his only real competition is grazing in our pasture.

Annie will return in . . .

 

SADDLE UP FOR MURDER
A Carson Stables Mystery

 

A Kensington mass-market and e-book on sale
November 2016!

Leigh Hearon began her own P.I. agency, Leigh Hearon Investigative Services, in 1992. Her cases have appeared on
In the Dead of Night
,
Forensic Files
,
48 Hours,
Court TV
, City Confidential
,
Unsolved Mysteries
,
America's Most Wanted
, and
CBS Evening News with Connie Chung
. Hearon was an avid rider of horses throughout her childhood. She currently has a Saddlebred mare, Jolie Jeune Femme, and enjoys watching Jolie and two rescue mares cavort on a fifty-five-acre farm she shares with her husband. Visit her on the Web at leighhearon.com.

To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

 

KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

 

Kensington Publishing Corp.
119 West 40th Street
New York, NY 10018

 

Copyright © 2016 by Leigh Hearon

 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

 

If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

 

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ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0033-9
ISBN-10: 1-4967-0033-3

First Kensington Mass Market Edition: April 2016

ISBN: 978-1-4967-0033-9

First Kensington Electronic Edition: April 2016