When Justice Rides, page 23
Vera laughed heartily. “First time I’ve been first at anything.”
“If it wasn’t you, then who do you think did it?”
“I wish I knew. I suppose you don’t like having a killer in town, huh.”
Luna finished the cut, added some product and blew the short pixie dry. As she spiked it with her fingers, she asked, “What do you think?”
“I love it,” Vera said. “I’ve needed a change for a long time.”
She wondered if Vera hadn’t left her hair exactly like her twin’s for the shock value when she hit Buckhorn. “You really didn’t get to town until Vi was dead?” she said, handing Vera a mirror so she could see the back of her haircut. “Quite the coincidence.”
Vera studied the back of her head with the hand mirror. “No one believes me that I just had this feeling that I had to get to Buckhorn.” She smiled and handed back the mirror. “I saw you asking that newspaper woman about some photos on your phone?” Luna realized that Vera must have been standing near the open doorway of the salon longer than she’d thought. “Is this about Vi’s murder?”
“No, it’s about a cold case.”
“Well, let’s see them,” the woman said and held out her manicured hand.
Calling up the photo of Amy first, she handed her phone to Vera, who glanced at the girl and handed back the phone. “Don’t know her.”
“This is from seventeen years ago, so you weren’t in town,” Luna said. Still Vera held out her hand to see the other one. She pulled up Owen Henry’s photo, expecting the same result, but clearly Vera was curious—and pushy to boot.
She handed her phone over, wondering why she was humoring the woman. Because Vera Carter didn’t take no for an answer—just like her sister, Vi.
* * *
KEN PUT THOUGHTS of Shar out of his head as he called the dead girl’s mother to give her the horrible news. Naomi Franklin answered on the third ring.
“Mrs. Franklin, I’m Acting Marshal Kenneth Yarrow. I’m calling you from Buckhorn, Montana. I’m afraid I have some bad news. It’s about your daughter, Amy.”
She made him repeat his name. Her voice was rough. A smoker’s voice. “If this is a prank call—”
“It’s not, Mrs. Franklin. Your daughter’s remains have been found.”
He’d expected her to break down. Instead he heard her swear.
“After all this time? After years of wondering where she was, what she was doing? I figured she was dead or she would have called for money, you know? She really is dead?”
“Yes. I’m so sorry to have to give you this news.”
He heard her sniff and then take a drink of something before she asked, “What happened to her?”
“That’s what we are trying to find out. But apparently she was killed not long after she disappeared from Idaho.”
“She’s been dead all these years? Then why am I just hearing about this now?” she demanded.
“Whoever killed her hid her body. It was only recently discovered. I heard today from the crime lab after they matched her DNA that you provided the police with when she went missing.”
“You’re telling me someone murdered my daughter?”
“Given that her body was hidden, we are investigating her death as a homicide,” he said.
“Well, I can tell you right now who did it. That boyfriend of hers. He disappeared right after she did. I figured they were either together or that he killed her and was on the run. Told the police but they had bigger fish to fry. Said my daughter probably just ran away from home. She was always doing that, but this time felt different. I knew the boyfriend did it.” She sniffed. “I knew.”
“What boyfriend was that?” he asked.
“Jaxson Gray. Everyone was so high on him just because he could throw a football. I never trusted him.”
What the hell? Ken thought he’d heard wrong. “I’m sorry, can you spell that name for me?” She spelled both names. No mistake.
“Can you give me a description of him?” He listened as she described his deputy. “You told the police about this when your daughter disappeared?”
“I just told you I did. Like they could have cared.”
“Did they talk to her boyfriend... Jaxson?”
“He swore he had nothing to do with it. Told them some story about her taking off to find his no-count father. Amy always was a handful. Her father and I couldn’t do anything with her. She’d been living over at his house. We just thought, fine, let him deal with her.”
He kept thinking about the deputy’s reaction when he’d seen the mummified body in the hole in the floor. “You assumed he knew where she had gone?” Ken asked, his thoughts falling all over themselves.
“Amy wasn’t legal age. Figured they had run off to get married. Didn’t have to run off—we would have signed. Anything to get her out of our hair. But I guess things didn’t go as planned. Why else would he kill her?”
Good question. If he had. Ken again thought of Jaxson’s reaction when he’d seen the remains and swore silently. Seeing Vi with what looked like a giant fork stuck in her chest hadn’t even made Jaxson twinge. But that girl’s mummified body had sent him looking like he was going to pass out.
Now it made sense. All this time Jaxson had known exactly who was in that makeshift grave. He’d known when they went through the girl’s suitcase. Ken swore. His deputy had kept his mouth shut the whole time. To cover up his crime? To buy himself time? Surely he knew his name was going to come up in the investigation once they had the DNA.
“I’ll have to get back to you, Mrs. Franklin, when her remains will be released for burial.”
“I’m not paying to have her shipped all the way back to Idaho. You just do whatever you do with them. We had to put that girl behind us years ago. There won’t be any burial. She chose the path she took. We’ve been mourning that girl for seventeen years.”
Ken was still in shock as he disconnected. The mother’s reaction alone had his head spinning. But hearing Amy’s boyfriend’s name... Jaxson Gray? Realizing that his deputy had known this whole time... He couldn’t wait to get his hands on Jaxson. Ahead he saw the outskirts of town.
He was half tempted to turn around and drive back to Buckhorn, find Jaxson, cuff him and throw him in the back of his patrol SUV and haul his butt to jail if for nothing more than impeding his investigation.
Calm down. You’re in no shape right now. You’ll do something rash. Better to wait. Jaxson wasn’t going anywhere. If he were going to run, he would have done so the moment he saw the girl’s remains.
Tonight Ken would finish things with Shar, tidy up his personal life. He would deal with Jaxson tomorrow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
LUNA WATCHED VERA smile down at Owen’s photo. “Handsome, huh,” she said, trying not to be annoyed at the woman leering at Jaxson’s father.
“He was my favorite of the two for sure.” Vera started to hand back the phone.
“Excuse me?” Luna said, taking her phone. “Are you saying you know Owen Henry?”
“Not as Owen Henry. Back then everyone called him O.H.”
She stared at Vera. Was the woman pulling her leg? “How did you—”
“O.H. and I were close because we were both black sheep of the family. I hung around Eaton Ranch growing up mostly to stay away from my twin—but also away from work in one of the shops owned by our parents. O.H. and I hung out because his older brother, Tom, was a lot like Vi, always giving him trouble, and once Bethany came into the picture...” Vera rolled her eyes. “You can imagine how she treated her father-in-law’s love child.”
Could any of this be true? “Wait, Owen was an Eaton?” Luna thought about the five grand Tom had given him seventeen years ago. Maybe Owen hadn’t worked for the money. Maybe it had been money to send him on his way again.
Hadn’t Owen told Jaxson’s mother that he had to take care of something with his family and then he’d be back for her and Jaxson? What had happened that he’d never made it back?
“If that’s true, why isn’t his last name Eaton?”
“Because he was the love child of Thompson P. Eaton, Tom’s father.”
Luna still wondered if Vera was making this up as she went along. “Love child? Who was his mother?”
Vera shrugged. “But once O.H. found out that Thompson was his father, he suspected it was Marianne Price from the ranch next door. They were a little too cozy after her husband died. You really haven’t heard any of this? I suppose a lot of it wasn’t common knowledge and it has been years.” Vera settled in, clearly happy to pass on such good gossip.
“I’m sorry, I’m confused,” Luna said. All this was way before her time since she hadn’t lived here long.
Vera spoke more slowly. “Tom’s father, Thompson P. Eaton, brought home a newborn baby that he said he’d found. He didn’t want the infant to have to go to social services, his story, so he pulled some strings and his wife, Linda, raised O.H. along with their son, Tom. They named him Owen Henry. Thompson had wanted to adopt him and give him his last name for obvious reasons since the kid was really his with some woman who’d allegedly worked on the Price Ranch next door. Linda got wise and hit the roof, so the baby was just Owen Henry and they never adopted him. Almost sixty years ago, it was easy to get the kid a birth certificate in that name if you were Thompson P. Eaton.”
Luna was trying to make sense out of all this. “So O.H. is an Eaton.”
Vera continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “O.H. was raised alongside his older brother, Tom, but everyone treated him more like a hired cowhand. Years later he found out the truth. He and his father argued and O.H. left the ranch. He’d already been in trouble with the law, so no one went looking for him. It was all hush-hush. I’m sure Tom was glad to see his half brother go.” Vera narrowed her eyes. “Why are you asking about O.H. now anyway?”
Luna had to think fast on her feet—fortunately it was something she was pretty good at. “Someone told me that they thought he was in Buckhorn seventeen years ago—about the time the new flooring was going down at the store. I thought he might know who did the work.”
“Oh, this is about the remains that were found,” Vera said as if losing interest. “I really doubt O.H. knows anything about that. Vi was never a fan of his. She would never have hired him to do the work.” She rose to leave.
Luna was thinking about what Clarice had told her. “Why wasn’t she a fan of his?”
Vera shrugged. “He wasn’t wild about her either.” Pulling a wad of bills from her purse, she paid Luna and said, “Too bad it wasn’t easy like it is now to get DNA results. O.H. could have hired a lawyer and maybe gotten half the Eaton Ranch and while he was at it, some of the Price Ranch as well, if I’m right about who his real mother was. Not that O.H. would have done it. Tom and his snooty wife, Bethany, would have made his life miserable, and I can’t see either Tucker or Jory welcoming O.H. with open arms. That’s probably why he left and never came back.”
Vera started for the door, but then stopped. She turned, frowning as if she’d thought of something. “Seventeen years ago, you said? That was about the time Thompson died. Maybe O.H. did come back. Everyone knows the ranch was left to Tom, the only son the old fart acknowledged. If O.H. came back wanting his share, I’m betting there were fireworks. Just the hint of a scandal would have sent Bethany into a tizzy.” Vera started as if another thought had struck her. “You know, I bet that’s what happened. It would explain why Bethany turned into a house mouse—afraid to even go outside—about that same time.” She shrugged.
“That’s how long she’s been agoraphobic?” Luna asked in surprise. Vera nodded as if deep in thought. She reminded herself that she shouldn’t trust that Vera had based any of this on fact. Also the woman hadn’t lived here in years. “You know a lot about the people of Buckhorn and the area for someone who’s been gone for so long.”
Vera smiled. “I left, but I kept up with the gossip. I have an inside source at the Eaton Ranch. Want to know what goes on in a household? Ask the housekeeper.” Vi’s twin laughed. The laugh was eerily too similar to Vi’s. “Trust me, Magda hears and sees everything. Someday I bet she will cash in on all she knows. I would love to see Tom’s and Bethany’s faces when she does.” With that, Vera laughed and left.
Luna was seldom shocked by what people told her. This was a first. Jaxson’s family really was from here? Because of that, it made sense why he had returned all those years later after his father died to mend fences with his brother and get his inheritance. What had happened when he’d shown up at the ranch seventeen years ago to find out his father had left him nothing?
She thought of Tom Eaton. How would he have reacted to his half brother’s return? Or Bethany, for that matter? Luna figured the five grand Tom had paid him pretty much said it all. But that didn’t explain why Bethany no longer left the house.
The bell over her door jangled. She turned and smiled, glad to see Jaxson.
* * *
WHEN JAXSON ENTERED the salon, he found with relief that Luna had returned. “I have news,” he said. “Any chance you’re finished for the day?” he asked, not wanting to be interrupted as someone walked slowly past on the sidewalk and waved to Luna.
She told him to lock the door behind him and they headed upstairs.
“I can tell you’re anxious to tell me, so you can go first,” he said, smiling at her.
“I talked to Lars Olson. He remembered Amy. Remembered that flowered dress and her flowered suitcase,” she said excitedly. “She came into the store and talked to Vi. Lars later asked Vi about it and she claimed that Amy had asked for a job. But Lars seemed to think there was more to it.”
“Like what?”
“He wasn’t sure, just that Vi had been upset.” She saw his expression. “What?”
“Who knows what Amy might have said to Vi. Maybe she’d been trying to blackmail Vi.” He told her about what they’d found in Amy’s suitcase.
“Blackmail notes?” she said in surprise. “But what could she have on Vi? She couldn’t have been in town long.”
“Amy could have overheard something. She was clever that way, always working things to her advantage. The blackmail notes were generic, as if she was practicing her blackmail technique.” He raked a hand through his hair as he paced the small apartment. “What if she tried to blackmail my father?”
“About what?”
Jaxson shook his head. “She would have needed money. I doubt she had much and getting to Montana would have drained what cash she had, I suspect.” He saw her change of expression.
“I showed her photo to Earl Ray. He thinks he remembers buying her a meal.”
“She left Idaho a good week before I did. I have no idea how she got here. I drove so it took me one long day.”
“If we knew exactly how long it took to remove the old flooring in that part of the storage area and replace it, we might have some idea,” Luna said. “More than likely Vi would have known. The information is probably somewhere in Vi’s office.”
“From seventeen years ago?” He shook his head. “She probably paid the cowhands in cash so it wouldn’t even be on the books. Even if she didn’t, seventeen years is a long time to keep that kind of information.”
“Once we know who put the flooring down—”
“It might have been Tucker Price and Carson McCabe,” Jaxson said. “They were both young, but Earl Ray says they would have been working with AJ Crest, who was possibly overseeing the job.” He could see this news surprised her.
“Now we just need to know when,” she said excitedly. “But even so, we won’t know exactly when Amy or your father arrived in Buckhorn. Or when your father left. We’re assuming he left right after cashing the check Tom Eaton gave him.”
“Amy couldn’t have been in town that long,” he said. “I came looking for her after graduation—a week or so later. I had a vehicle. She apparently took a bus or hitchhiked. So she couldn’t have been more than a few days ahead of me.”
That he’d missed catching up with her by such a short time made him ache. Maybe everything would have been different if he had.
He looked at Luna. But maybe he would never have met this woman. He would have had no reason to come to Buckhorn, Montana, if his life had gone according to plan.
“If she had been in town long, I would think more people would have remembered her. How long were you in Buckhorn?” Luna was saying.
“Just forty-eight hours, then I heard about a job down south in Wyoming and headed there. Once I saw how small Buckhorn was and asked around about Amy, I knew she wasn’t in town. I figured she’d never made it. Or had gotten sidetracked, hooked up with somebody...” He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have put it past her to forget all about this quest of hers, forget about me, my mother, everything, when it became too hard.”
“Instead, she was here about to blackmail someone,” Luna said.
“If she hadn’t already.” He met her gaze. “I suspect whoever she blackmailed killed her.”
“The question is who and why? What could she have found out about someone in town that quickly?” Luna asked.
“That was the thing about Amy. All she would have to have done is overhear a conversation. She might have met someone on the bus here. She was quick that way. Sneaky. Yet she looked so...innocent. People underestimated her.”
“Still no word on a DNA sample?” Luna asked.
He shook his head. For days he’d been waiting for the axe to fall.
“That must have been hard, going through her suitcase.”
“It was. She hadn’t just stolen what little money we had at the house, I found an old sweatshirt of mine and a T-shirt Katie had given me that she’d taken. The sweatshirt was faded enough that the school logo was hard to make out. But, Luna, eventually it is all going to come out about my connection to her.” He shook his head. “I’m a lawman. I’m withholding important evidence. I wanted time to try to solve this, but time has run out. I need to tell Yarrow.” He rubbed the back of his neck.
