The Girl with the Golden Spurs (25 page)

Furtive glances flew, but nobody said anything. Lizzy watched Cole run his hand briefly through his black hair.

“Ms. Lane didn’t drown. She—like Ms. Scott—was raped and strangled,” the detective continued.

Leather and wood creaked as people shifted uneasily in their chairs. Again, they glanced at one another warily.

“Besides the murders, there have been a number of accidents
on this ranch. I think Caesar Kemble is the key to all this. His brother died in an accident, too, which is how Caesar came to power. Now, Caesar himself is
conveniently
dead.”

He shot Joanne and Cole an ironic smile.
Conveniently
cremated, too
.

“If anybody here today knows anything or thinks he knows anything and wants to talk, call me.” He waited a few seconds for his words to sink in. When nobody said anything, he pulled several business cards from his jacket pocket and flung them onto the library table.

“Call me,” he repeated, leaning over the table so that he was on eye level with them. “Your name could be next on the killer’s hit list.”

A trace of a smile crossed Uncle B.B.’ s mouth. Under his breath he said, “For a cop, he damn sure has a flair for the dramatic.”

Aunt Mona laughed.

A cold chill gripped Lizzy. She remembered gunshots peppering the tree trunks behind her as she’d run for her life through the brush. Only yesterday she’d stood beside Cole as Star’s stiff gray carcass had been loaded onto the bed of the huge truck and hauled away.

Was she next on the killer’s hit list?

“W
e need new leadership. Strong leadership. Now.” Uncle B.B.’s hard gaze bored into Lizzy, who was standing beside Sam.

“You gave us ninety days,” Cole said, moving to the other side of Lizzy.

“And what the hell have you accomplished? Cherry Lane’s body in your cattle tank. An expensive quarter horse dead. We’ve got lawsuits to fight. Not to mention Sheldon Oil and gas.”

“Yes! Even though gas prices are up, has it made one bit of difference in my royalty check?” Aunt Nannette demanded.

“We’re still being paid old gas prices for new gas,” Uncle B.B. said.

“We have a team of accountants and lawyers on this problem right now,” Leo said. “Sheldon Oil offered to settle, but we think we can do better.”

“You didn’t get on to this until I told you to. We need somebody at the helm who is willing to lead. Not an ignorant girl.”

Lizzy bristled.

“Someone like you?” Cole placed a protective arm around her waist.

There wasn’t a sound in the room. Uncle B.B. straightened his tie. Then he glanced at his rapt audience. “All right. Yes. Someone like me. Someone who wouldn’t be so set on sinking as much capital into a losing investment like ranching.”

“Maybe we’d be better off with a professional running the ranch—rather than another family member,” Lauren Capp blurted. When everybody looked at her, Lauren blushed and hid her face. “Oh, I—I probably shouldn’t have said anything. I don’t know much about ranching.”

Lauren was a younger cousin of Lizzy’s who lived in Colorado and worked in an art gallery in Denver. Like a lot of Kembles, she’d never dared to speak at a meeting before, and Lizzy felt a little sorry for her.

But Leo’s face was grave as he contemplated her suggestion. “I agree with Lauren. Not that I don’t think Lizzy’s up to the job. Also, she’s Caesar’s daughter, and that has a lot of symbolic meaning.”

“At the same time, I think the position may have become too dangerous for any family member to hold,” Cole said. “Especially for Lizzy,
because
she is Caesar’s daughter. This thing is beginning to have the feel of a private vendetta.”

Lizzy gasped.

“Sorry, Lizzy, but I agree,” Sam said.

Stunned, Lizzy whirled on them. “What if I don’t want to step down? My father wanted me in charge. He wanted
me!
Not some stranger. Not Uncle B.B.”

“We don’t have to decide today,” Leo said calmly. “I hear your dissatisfactions and opinions. I say we go on as we are until the celebration and museum opening are behind us. We’re only talking about a couple of weeks. Asking Lizzy to resign would just cause more unfavorable publicity.”

To Lizzy’s surprise nobody objected.

“Before we adjourn,” Leo said, “Detective Phillips asked me to hand out a questionnaire. He wants an hour-by-hour accounting of your time on the two days before as well as the day Cherry’s body was discovered in the pond. It’s a fill-in-the-blank situation.”

When everybody had their papers and had begun to write, Lizzy noticed Cole staring at his paper almost angrily, his pen jabbing a hole in the paper. Then he wadded it up and left the room.

Why didn’t he write something like everyone else? Didn’t he know where he’d been?

Furious, she wondered what his real motivation for wanting her to step down was.

Her heart began to pound in her throat.

Lizzy sighed nervously as she picked up the phone in her bedroom and dialed. She didn’t have the slightest idea what she’d say if Mr. Jamison or one of his clerks starting asking why she was suddenly so curious about her Uncle B.B.’s purchases or told her his doings were none of her business.

Jamison answered in his gruff, no-nonsense voice, and she forced herself to speak.

“Mr. Jamison, I—I was wondering what my uncle B.B. bought in your store yesterday.” She hit her forehead. Why hadn’t she asked him how he was or how his wife Mabel was? Anything to soften him up?

“Shotgun shells. Bullets. Nails. A wrench. Why do you want to know?”

“I—I found a receipt. I was trying to figure out if his purchases were tax write-offs…or if I could just throw it away. I—I hadn’t seen him. I—I didn’t realize he was at his lease.”

“It wasn’t Uncle B.B. that came in. It was your aunt
Mona. Hey, isn’t he out there for the memorial service? How come you don’t just ask him yourself?”

Aunt Mona?

Wing Nut left Joanne’s side and dashed headlong down the golf cart path to the aviary after a small brown rabbit. Joanne whistled and yelled his name. Vanilla clapped her hands as she toddled gleefully after the big dog. When the rabbit disappeared into a hole, the black Lab barked and pranced excitedly around the dark mouth in the earth as if entreating the animal to come back out in play.

Joanne was glad to have escaped the house. She’d felt like she was suffocating during the memorial service and the meeting afterward. When the rabbit stayed put, the dog sniffed around the hole for another minute. Then tail wagging, he sprinted back to Joanne and jumped up, muddying her jeans and windbreaker with his enormous paws. Not that she cared.

His sudden return had caused Vanilla, darling Vanilla, who’d been following him so trustingly to plop onto the short, clipped grass too hard. Joanne flew to catch the baby in case she cried, but Vanilla, who was as tough as Mia had been, looked up at her grandmother and smiled. Then she began to clap, pleased to find herself the center of utter adoration.

“Oh, my darling. My darling.” Joanne knelt and picked up a brown oak leaf.

“Leaf. Leaf,” she said, looking into Vanilla’s huge, blue eyes.

Vanilla grabbed the leaf and turned it over clumsily.

With rapt attention, Joanne watched her study the leaf and then set it down and smash it with her tiny fist and then pick it up again. Joanne had never loved anything or anyone as she did this baby. Was that because Vanilla was all she had
left of Jack and Mia? Or was this just the natural love she would have felt for her first grandchild?

“Leaf,” she whispered as she hugged the child again fiercely.
Oh, darling, if it weren’t for you, what would I do?

Being with Vanilla after the memorial service and the meeting made Joanne feel almost sane again. As she’d stood beside Lizzy and placed Caesar’s spurs beside Jack’s on the Spur Tree, she’d thought about Electra and Jack. Then she’d rethought her whole life.

Had it all been for nothing? Were all lives for nothing? She’d married the wrong man, a man who’d betrayed her on every level. She’d tried and failed to mother his daughter.

Then in the library when Phillips had hinted Caesar might have had something to do with Jack’s accident. She’d started shaking so badly she’d been afraid someone would see.

She remembered the first time that idea had entered her head. She remembered who’d said the words that had filled her own heart with doubt about her husband.

Until then she’d believed what Caesar said—that he had loved and admired his brother and had grieved for him as she had, that he had given his own life to the ranch, that the good of the ranch was what he cared about.

Until then she’d had such high hopes for their marriage and what they would accomplish together. Until then she’d tried to be a real mother to his daughter.

Yes, she remembered the exact words that had been said to her to plant the seeds that had made her see that her marriage was an illusion. She’d been standing companionably under the Spur Tree with Aunt Mona, someone she’d trusted, even if they didn’t get along perfectly.

“The history of this ranch is soaked in blood,” Mona had said as the spurs had jingled in the wind.

“All that was a long time ago.”

“Was it? Jack was killed under mysterious circumstances, wasn’t he?”

“Jack? I never thought so before. He was breaking a horse,” Joanne had said a little too passionately.

“He rode out one day and the horse came back lame without him. Caesar found him, didn’t he? There was a single blow to the head. It was
assumed
he’d fallen, but they’d always been rivals, hadn’t they? Their father had forced them to compete, to make men of them,” she’d said. “Caesar came into power because of that accident, didn’t he?”

Doubt and dread had filled Joanne. “What are you implying?”

“Nothing.” Aunt Mona had laughed. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.”

Joanne had turned and stalked back to the house abruptly. But the damage had been done. The doubt had festered over the years.

She had tried never to think about that conversation again. But what one decides not to think about is sometimes the very thing that shapes ones life in a new and terrible direction. Doubt became a poison inside her. She had gone cold in Caesar’s bed, and that had proved fatal for their marriage.

She stroked Vanilla’s dark hair. Did she really regret her marriage?

She’d grown up a poor rancher’s daughter, motherless but ambitious. She’d loved the outdoors, animals, nature. When Jack had fallen in love with her, she’d known marrying him would be like marrying royalty. And she’d wanted that. Even after he’d died, she’d still wanted it. God help her, but she had. But had she sold herself to the devil to get it?

The baby’s skin was so soft, as was her hair. Joanne smiled. Vanilla had been born with the thickest head of hair, and Joanne had been conceited about Vanilla having such beautiful hair even as a small baby.

Vanilla. Thank goodness for Vanilla. Vanilla calmed her, made her feel that she still mattered.

She picked the baby up and carried her to the aviary where they stood outside together and talked about the birds. Or rather, Joanne talked and Vanilla watched and listened to her and the birds, lending the awful afternoon the magic of her trusting innocence.

The birds were peaceful as was the wind in the tops of the trees. Joanne wanted to teach the baby to love everything that she did. When Joanne opened the screen door, the white birds soared above Vanilla and her.

“Birds,” she said. “Birds. Aren’t they wonderful, darling? God is in each and every one of them.”

Joanne lifted her gaze and watched them, her eyes filled with as much awe as Vanilla’s.

The detective had scared her badly. He had warned of more killings. Would someone in the family talk to him? Tell him what he wanted to know?

She hadn’t gotten around to reading the rest of Electra’s hateful journal yet. Just skimming it that first day and reading about the twins had upset her too deeply. She hadn’t wanted to lug it to the hospital, and when she’d come home at night to Gigi’s, she’d been too exhausted.

Then Caesar had died. Since then, she hadn’t had time or the emotional energy.

But she’d brought it with her to the ranch to read, and had hidden it in her lingerie drawer.

I’ll read it later. Maybe tonight after I put Vanilla to bed
.

Lizzy felt Cole’s eyes on her as she pushed his bedroom door open and entered without knocking. He got up from his computer and came toward her. “Lizzy?”

She swallowed. Despite his having humiliated her at the family meeting by suggesting she should step down, his
husky voice saying her name warmed her through. He’d supported her more that most of her family had. She’d overheard Aunt Nanette complaining about money, which she needed for plastic surgery and for remodeling her own ranch house. And Joanne had told her Uncle B.B. wanted to impress Aunt Mona, who felt he’d been passed over too often.

Too late Lizzy realized she should have tackled this conversation in a less intimate setting than his bedroom.

She brought her chin up. “Why did you turn on me like that—in front of everybody?” Not wanting to, she glanced toward his bed.

“All right. I felt weird tensions in that room. Somebody tried to shoot you. Two women are already dead. What if you’re next on a madman’s hit list? I don’t want to find you strangled and raped. You’ve got to leave the ranch until I figure out what’s going on.”

“Until
you
figure out? Caesar put
me
in charge.”

“I held Cherry’s stiff, icy hand thinking it was yours. Do you have any idea what that was like?”

“I hope I am next. I can use that to trap—”

“You’ll get yourself killed,” he said. “That’s what you’ll do.”

She backed away from him. “You still think I’m a scared, incompetent, little girl.”

“Your father would want you gone. He’d want you safe.”

“He wanted me here.”

“Why can’t you see I’m right,” he said.

“Why can’t you see this is something I have to do?”

“This isn’t a career move you can mess up on.”

“Oh, so that’s what you think I’ll do?”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he snapped. “This is life and death.
Your
life.”

“You want me gone, just so you can be in charge?”

“Damn you. Sometimes you’re the most stubborn—”

“Me? All you’ve ever wanted is the ranch.”

“Maybe…in the past. But now I want you alive. I want a future with you.”

“I refuse to step down.”

“Then marry me, Lizzy, so I can protect you.”

When she didn’t answer him, he grabbed her. “I don’t want to lose you. Not when I’ve lost everybody else.”

Something hot in his eyes leapt from his soul to hers, and still she couldn’t trust him. Even as his mouth came closer, a voice warned her not to let him kiss her or take her to bed.

But when his lips touched hers and her arms wrapped around his waist, a power beyond herself made her his for the taking. Her skin tingled all over. A few blazing seconds later, she was naked on his bed. He stripped, and she watched him as avidly as he’d watched her. Then she held out her arms and pulled him down on top of her.

She circled his neck with her hands, and soon, long before he entered her, she was melting, moaning. As always, when they made love, everything felt wonderful and right and true.

“Marry me,” he said a long time later when he could breathe again.

“What happened to the gentleman in New York who wouldn’t bed me when he thought I was drunk and not thinking clearly? Now I’m drunk on your kisses.”

“This is different. I love you. And you love me.”