Rugged Defender Page 7

  He thought about what Justin had said about being more like his father than Drew. That it was true did nothing to alleviate his anger at his son. Maybe that is what hurt the most. He saw himself in Justin when he’d wanted to see more of himself in Drew.

  Shaking his head, he thought of the things Justin had said. Hurtful, painful things. The boy had always been as stubborn as a brick wall. The man was no different. How dare he call him an old man? An old man without anyone. True or not, it wasn’t right.

  So now he was going to find Drew’s killer? The arrogance. And demand an apology? Over his dead body.

  Bert tried to catch his breath. His heart seemed to have taken off again like a wild stallion. He pressed a hand to his chest as there was a knock at the door. If it was Justin—He felt blood rush to his head at the thought, his anger making it hard for him to see let alone breathe. He tried to get to his feet, but realized he couldn’t. Another knock, this one more insistent.

  He tried to call out, but he couldn’t get enough air to do so. Panic began to set in. He couldn’t get up. He couldn’t speak. What if whoever was at the door went away?

  One of his hired men stuck his head in the doorway. “Mr. Calhoun?”

  Bert opened his mouth but nothing came out. He held both hands over his heart, feeling as if it was trying to burst out of his chest. Justin was going to be the death of him, he thought as the hired hand rushed to his side.

  “Mr. Calhoun? Mr. Calhoun!”

  He watched as if from a spot on the ceiling as the man called for an ambulance and then changed his mind. “I’m bringing him in. I don’t think he’ll make it if we have to wait for the EMTs.”

  Bert observed from that misty distance as he was helped to the man’s truck. He didn’t remember the drive into town. He had only a vague memory of being wheeled down a white hallway and thinking he didn’t want to die.

  The last thing he remembered was seeing Mary and her look of disappointment before everything went black.

  Chapter Eight

  Justin drove back into town. He was still shaken from his visit to the ranch and seeing his father after five years. He’d expected him to be like he’d always been—a big, strong, stubborn man who handled things. Handled things not with a lot of finesse but Bert Calhoun never backed down from a challenge or a fight.

  Instead, he saw weakness, something he never thought he’d see. Something he thought his father would never let him see. There was stubbornness and attitude, but so little to back it up.

  He’d known that Drew’s death had almost killed his father. But he’d expected Bert Calhoun to deal with it the way he dealt with everything at the ranch: with a stubborn resolve to succeed and go on at all costs.

  But this time, it wasn’t just Drew’s death. He lost both sons.

  That sounded like his mother’s voice in his head. It definitely hadn’t come from him, he thought with a curse. Drew had been the son. His father had always treated Justin as if he didn’t matter. Drew had been his father’s hope for the future. And now with Drew gone...

  Justin mentally kicked himself for staying away so long. The Calhoun Cattle Company was his legacy. He hadn’t realized how much his father had needed him, whether he liked it or not. He hadn’t been able to stay five years ago because of his father’s accusations. Bert hadn’t thrown him off the ranch, but it was clear that the sight of him made the man livid.

  So Justin had left. He wasn’t proud of that now. He should have stayed and fought. He thought about Chloe and smiled to himself. She was one determined young woman. Nothing stopped her. But that also worried him. If they were right and Drew was murdered, then the murderer was more than likely still around.

  And damned if Chloe wasn’t going to stop until she found him—or her.

  That’s why he had to find her. He couldn’t let her do this alone. It was something he should have done five years ago. Now the trail was cold.

  Sadly, Drew’s death was only one of the reasons he’d come back. What had lured him was the thought of Chloe Clementine. Just the sound of her voice on the phone. He shook his head. All this for a New Year’s Eve dance with a woman he’d kissed once years ago? But it had been some kiss, he thought now smiling.

  Justin told himself that he must be losing his mind. Was he really going looking for a killer? He didn’t care what people said about him. Even his father’s accusations hadn’t been enough to make him want to look for the person who killed Drew. Because even five years ago he hadn’t believed his death was an accident.

  He’d figured Drew had infuriated the wrong person. He hadn’t wanted to dig into the mess his older brother had made of his life. He still didn’t. But when he’d seen the depleted shape his father was in, he had felt responsible. Because he’d left and hadn’t looked back. No wonder his father didn’t think he cared.

  Justin had believed that he didn’t matter because that was the way his father had treated him. The thought that he’d let himself believe that made him angry as hell. And now he’d told his father that he was going to find his brother’s killer.

  How was he going to do that after five years? What if he was wrong? What if Chloe was too? Maybe the sheriff was right and it had been a stupid accident. Or maybe Drew had killed himself.

  As he drove over to her house, he felt sick with a mix of emotions he hadn’t dealt with in five years. He’d loved his brother even as mean as Drew had been to him. Blood was blood. It would have been easier to keep driving and put Whitehorse in his rearview mirror forever.

  But he was enough like the father he’d known growing up that this was one fight he wasn’t going to run from. He couldn’t let Bert Calhoun go on believing that his youngest son was a killer. Just as Chloe had said, it was time he cleared his name and then take Chloe to the New Year’s Eve Masquerade Dance.

  * * *

  WHEN CHLOE TAPPED at Tina’s back door, the woman rushed to open it and froze. She’d clearly been expecting the deputy who’d just left. What surprised Chloe was that Tina had rushed to the door not looking excited or expectant but angry. Had the two had a fight? Because of Chloe showing up?

  “You?” Tina put her hands on her hips. “Let’s have it. You a friend of his? Girlfriend? Or just a nosy neighbor?”

  “I’m not here about your...friend who just left,” Chloe said. “I want to talk to you about Drew Calhoun.”

  The woman looked surprised. “He’s dead.”

  “That’s why I need to talk to you.” She stepped past into the house.

  “Well, come in,” Tina said sarcastically.

  Chloe entered the kitchen, pulled up a chair and sat. She didn’t like Tina and she was losing patience. “Coffee?”

  “For real?” the woman sighed. “A cola is the best I can do since I wasn’t expecting company.”

  Chloe thought about calling her on that, but merely looked at her before saying, “A cola would be delightful. Thank you.”

  Tina put the cola can on the table. “What? You want ice?”

  “I’ll make this do.” She opened the cola and took a drink. All this walking all over town had left her thirsty. “Tell me about you and Drew.”

  “That was years ago.”

  “At least five. When did your ex-husband find out?”

  “You writing a book? What’s all this to you?”

  “I’m an investigative reporter.”

  Tina eyes widened. “If you’re thinking of putting this in the newspaper—”

  “I’m not. I’m investigating Drew’s death for other reasons. Your ex-husband, when did he find out about you two? Months before, weeks, days?”

  Tina pulled out a chair but seemed to change her mind and pushed it back in to continue standing. “A week.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “How do you think he took it?”

  “He threatened to divorce
you, kill you, kill Drew?”

  “Oh, that’s where you’re headed,” Tina sighed. “Have you met my ex-husband? I couldn’t even get him to kill a spider when we were married.”

  “Someone beat up Drew the night he died. Was it your ex?”

  “Ralph?” she laughed. “He blustered but wasn’t about to go after Drew. Drew was half his age and in much better shape.” She shook her head. “Ralph wasn’t going to fight a man like that.”

  “What about shooting him?”

  Tina eyes widened. “I thought he shot himself?”

  “Does your ex-husband own a gun?”

  “Yes, but I thought Drew was shot with his own gun?”

  “Your ex-husband knew how to use a gun, right? Where was he the night Drew died?”

  “Snoring loudly next to me in our bed.”

  “So you could have easily snuck out and killed Drew.”

  The woman laughed. “Kill Drew? Why would I do that? I loved him. I would have left Ralph for him like that.” She snapped her fingers. “But Drew didn’t feel the same way.” Tina glared at her. “If that’s all...”

  “You knew there were others, right?” Chloe asked.

  “Seriously? Did you just come by here to make me feel bad? Ralph divorced me because of Drew. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Drew was two-timing you with Pete Ferris’s wife.”

  The woman swore. “You don’t get it. Drew did what Drew wanted to do.”

  “And it got him killed.”

  “Look, I’ve never fired a gun in my life.”

  “It isn’t that hard to pull the trigger,” Chloe said.

  Tina shook her head. “You’re barking up the wrong tree. Drew was honest with me from the get-go. He told me he hadn’t loved anyone since his high school sweetheart, Patsy Carter.”

  “Where is Patsy now?”

  “She married Blaine Simpson.”

  Chloe heard something in the woman’s voice and frowned. “Was Drew trying to get Patsy back?”

  Tina looked away. “He didn’t tell me he was, but I heard that he’d been out to the ranch a few times and that Blaine Simpson said if he caught him out there he’d kick his ass from here to North Dakota. Blaine’s a big cowboy. In a fair fight, Blaine would have stomped Drew into the dust. What are you going to do with all of this?” Tina asked, suddenly sounding worried.

  “I’m just helping a friend find out the truth about that night,” Chloe said. “How long have you been seeing Kelly Locke?”

  The woman looked startled for a moment before she chuckled. “Not five years if that’s what you’re getting at. He’s a boy. I wouldn’t send a boy to do a man’s work.” She met Chloe’s gaze. “And like I said, I loved Drew. I bawled for months after he died.”

  The woman sighed as she pulled up a chair. She seemed to relax. It had been five years, and Tina hadn’t had anyone she could talk with about Drew Chloe realized the moment the woman began to speak again.

  “Drew tended to make people mad,” Tina said reflectively. “Sometimes he was like an overgrown boy himself. Maybe that was the attraction.” She shrugged. “He wanted what he wanted and when he didn’t get it...”

  “What wasn’t he getting that he wanted?”

  “Other than Patsy? Money. His father had put him on a strict allowance because he’d been dipping into the ranch account. He was anxious for his old man to step down so he could take over the ranch. He thought he could do a better job of running it. The thing is, even if he could have gotten Patsy back, he would have wanted someone else. Drew wasn’t happy.”

  Chloe could see that Tina had hoped she would be the one to make the man happy. There was clearly a lot of pain there. And a part of the woman had to hate Drew. But enough to kill him?

  Interesting that the golden boy wasn’t quite so golden in his father’s eyes if he’d been put on a strict allowance. At least Bert had been smart enough not to turn the ranch over to him. But Drew’s spending had to have been a sore point between them. Even if Bert hadn’t heard about his oldest son’s exploits on the county grapevine, he had been forced to curb Drew’s spending.

  She finished her cola and got to her feet. “Thanks for talking to me.”

  “You aren’t going to tell anyone about—”

  Chloe shook her head. She wasn’t going to tell anyone. “It’s your secret.” She could have warned Tina that secrets have a way of getting out especially in a small town. She could have also warned Tina what a louse Kelly was.

  But the woman should have already known that.

  Leaving, she headed back toward the main part of town just below the hill. Her list of suspects was growing. Tina had known about Pete Ferris’s wife, Emily, and about Patsy Carter Simpson. Tina hadn’t wanted to share Drew. He’d cost her her marriage. But, Chloe thought, remembering Kelly sneaking out Tina’s back door, the woman seemed to manage with Drew gone.

  She had headed down the hill from the housing development and was walking along the edge of a ditch near the park when she hit a stretch of sidewalk that hadn’t been shoveled. The snow was higher than her boots and to make matters worse, the city snowplow had banked the snow up even higher the last time the road was plowed.

  Chloe stepped off the curb into the plowed road. She was questioning what she’d started and what she was going to do next when she heard the roar of an engine. She started to turn, surprised that the vehicle was so close and coming so fast.

  She had only an instant to make the decision. Try to get across the road to the other side of the street? Or jump into the snowbank next to her? She glanced back and caught the glint of the pickup’s reinforced cattle guard bumper a moment before she dove headlong into the snowbank.

  The snow was even deeper than she’d thought. She sank into the icy cold white stuff as she heard the vehicle roar past. It was so close that the exhaust made her cough. She tried to get up in time to see the truck, suspecting it was Tina’s earlier visitor.

  But by the time she could get up enough to see over the snowbank, the pickup had turned the corner and disappeared, leaving her cold and shaken from the near miss. She got to her feet, looking after the truck, as she brushed at the snow covering her clothing. Had the driver purposely put her in the snowbank to scare her? Or worse?

  What if she hadn’t leaped out of the way when she had?

  The driver would have hit her and no one would have seen it, she realized as she looked around the area. Whoever had been driving that pickup had been waiting for her. Deputy Kelly Locke?

  Chapter Nine

  Justin couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He’d tried Chloe’s house, and finding no one around, had kept looking for her. By chance, he’d seen a truck speed by and noticed a woman climbing out of a snowbank.

  He drove over to find Chloe standing at the edge of the road covered with snow. His first thought was that she must have fallen down. He glanced around. What had she been doing in this part of town? He felt his heart drop. What else, looking for Drew’s killer by herself.

  He swore as he watched her brush snow from her pants and shake out her gloves. Pulling up next to her, he whirred down the passenger side window. “Are you all right?”

  She smiled when she saw him, loosening something in his chest. “I am now.”

  “Climb in,” he said.

  “You’re on.”

  He reached over and opened the door. She slid in looking like a snowman. Snowwoman. All woman even bundled up the way she was. “What happened?”

  She hesitated. “I’m afraid someone just tried to run me down.” He listened with growing shock and worry as she told him about the pickup truck. “If I hadn’t jumped off the road when I did...”

  “If I didn’t know what you were up to, I’d say it was just kids,” Justin said. “But since I do know, you need to go to the sheriff.”

  She
shook her head. “I didn’t get a good look at the truck. Dark and dirty won’t cut it. Also I suspect the driver was just trying to warn me off. Hit and run isn’t the most effective way to eliminate someone.”

  He heard something in her voice. She was scared. She should be. He thought about the look in his brother’s eyes the night he found him. If Drew had been afraid of his killer... “Chloe, you have to stop this.”

  “Now I definitely can’t. This started out because I wanted to find out the truth for you and admittedly being between jobs, I was feeling antsy. Now it is clear that someone thinks I’m getting too close to what really happened that night. Also it’s become personal,” she said as she looked down at the snow still clinging to her clothing.

  He groaned as he shifted the truck into gear. “What were you doing in this neighborhood anyway?”

  “Talking to the mayor’s ex-wife, Tina Thomas. Did you know about her and Drew?” His expression must have given him away. “She said she loved him but Drew wouldn’t commit. She also said she’s never shot a gun. But I’m definitely keeping her on my suspect list.”

  “I don’t like the feeling that you’re enjoying this—even after almost being killed.”

  “Don’t worry. I have no desire to die. I’ll just be more careful next time. But I won’t be scared off.”

  “If your plan is to track down all of Drew’s women, then your suspect list is going to get awfully long.”

  “Just the ones who either personally have reason to have wanted him dead—or their husbands who were maybe even more motivated to see Drew gone,” Chloe said.

  “We’re both probably wrong about him being murdered. The sheriff—”

  “Nice try, but I ask a few questions around town and someone calls me and tells me to quit or I’ll regret it. Now someone tries to run me down. We aren’t wrong and you know it.”

  “I thought you said the driver was only trying to warn you off?” He had her there. “Chloe, just because someone has something they want to keep secret, it doesn’t mean they murdered Drew. What it proves is that you digging into all of this is dangerous. Is there anything I can say to make you stop?”