Agent Daddy Page 13

  A few minutes later, he pulled up to the loading gate of the feed store and went inside to place the ranch order for dietary supplements and supplies to be delivered on Monday. Though it didn’t take long, he was so curious about what was going on with David Lee he could barely concentrate. He picked up a bag of rolled oats for Buttercup and left the store as soon as he could.

  Faith got out of the truck when she apparently saw him coming with the grain bag slung over one shoulder. She darted around to the back, opened the gate and threw up the canopy door.

  “Shall I push this tarp aside?” she called.

  “No, spread it out in case the truck bed is wet.”

  “What about what’s inside it?”

  “There’s nothing inside it,” he told her as he strode past the driver’s door.

  She peeked her head around the left side and said, “Yes there is. Something is rolled up in the green one. Here, I’ll just pull it free.”

  She ducked back around as he breasted the rear of the vehicle and looked inside, confused about the tarp because it should have been blue and folded, not green and rolled. It didn’t make sense.

  In the next instant, Faith managed to push and shove a corner of green canvas away revealing a hank of long red hair wrapped around a woman’s head. The faint odor of decay wafted past his face as Faith screamed.

  He dropped the grain sack and caught Faith as she stumbled backward toward the loading dock, workers from inside spilling out as the hair slipped away from the dead woman’s face.

  Gina was no longer missing.

  Chapter Twelve

  Faith sat in the feed store, wrapped in a heavy blanket the owner had found somewhere. It smelled strongly of moldy hay, but she didn’t care.

  If she strained her neck and twisted her head, she could look out the window and see Trip standing with his back to her. Surrounded by lawmen, he was the only one not in a uniform, and yet commanded attention just by the way he stood, the quiet way he listened, his focus.

  It was much easier to think about Trip than that poor woman in the back of the truck. Faith covered her mouth as bile pushed up her throat. She’d never forget Gina’s waxy white skin or the filmy gaze of her eyes.

  At least now they knew what had happened to the babysitter. But who had killed her and how had her body wound up in Trip’s truck?

  “Can I get you something, miss?” the owner asked. He was a short man with a double chin and a receding hairline. He couldn’t quite hide his excitement at all the commotion happening around him.

  She stood up and shook off the blanket, folded it and handed it back to him. She’d answered questions for the sheriff, the first to show up, and then from the chief of police. She was tired, and the beginnings of a headache throbbed in her temples. But she was tired of not knowing what was happening, and steeled herself to go back outside.

  “I’m fine,” she told the owner, “thanks for everything.” The wind caught the door when she opened it and she pulled her hood up around her face. Snowflakes were beginning to stick to the pavement. As she walked across the slushy parking lot, an ambulance siren split the afternoon air, and a second later the vehicle itself pulled into the parking lot. The police waved it over to Trip’s truck.

  Trip turned to watch the ambulance’s approach and saw Faith. He immediately started out to meet her, catching her shoulders when he was close enough. “Faith—” he began but she cut him off.

  “Don’t try to protect me, Trip. I have to know what’s going on. Do they know how she died?”

  “It’s unclear. There’s a cut-off rope around her neck and ligature marks around her throat and the one wrist the coroner could see. They won’t unwrap her from the tarp until they get her to the morgue.”

  “Then she was tied up?”

  “It looks like it.”

  “How did she get free and how did she wind up in George’s truck? She wasn’t alive when she was put in there, was she?” The image of a sick or drugged woman suffocating while they drove around was too dreadful to live with.

  “No, she’s been dead for a while. Not four days, so the question is where was she kept and why.”

  They both fell silent as EMTs moved the body bag from the back of Trip’s truck onto a gurney and into the back of the ambulance. Snowflakes glittered against the black plastic.

  “I called Paul to come get you,” Trip said. “The police are going to impound this truck.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’ll stick around and catch a ride with the sheriff.” He pulled his Stetson even lower on his brow and shoved his bare hands into his pockets. “I don’t understand why the killer chose this truck to dump her body.”

  “Did George know her? Was this aimed at him?”

  “I don’t know. He tends to drive this truck, but it has a Triple T logo on the door, and any number of people use it.”

  “So, who knew you were going to the auction instead of George?”

  “Everyone on the ranch and everyone related to everyone on the ranch. It wasn’t a secret.”

  “But you just found out this morning.”

  “No, I knew last night. I just didn’t mention it to you. Frankly, I got a little distracted.”

  He smiled and she remembered the lovemaking that had been the distraction. “I told Mrs. Murphy about our plans and she told Colin and Noelle’s grandparents,” Trip added. “Who knows who they told.”

  “Remember when Peter Saks said Gina had a crush on you? If he hurt her, might he stick her body in your truck to either implicate you or shove his power over her in your face?”

  “It’s possible,” he said. “This was risky. I mean, think about it. Gina’s body wasn’t in the back of the truck this morning at the ranch, and you would have felt someone put her in there if it was done here at the feed store because you were sitting in the cab. That means she was dumped while we were at the restaurant or at the auction yard. Either place had lots of traffic and it had to take a few minutes to do the transfer.”

  “Then maybe someone saw something. Maybe a security camera picked something up. Wait, didn’t the waitress this morning say Peter Saks was in custody?”

  “No, she said he’d been questioned. Chief Novak had nothing to hold him on. If there are security tapes, we’ll find them. I mean, the police will find them.”

  “Yes,” she said, once again aware of how big a part crime played in Luke Tripper’s life.

  “This is a rural town,” he added, “full of wide-open and desolate places where a body could be stashed with little risk. But instead the killer went to all the trouble to put her where someone from the Triple T, probably me, would find her.”

  A chill ran down Faith’s spine. In the end, she’d been the one to find the poor woman. She met Trip’s gaze.

  “I won’t let anything happen to you,” he said and she could see he believed it. But things happened and murderers didn’t play by the rules. She instantly chastised herself. Who knew these facts better than Trip?

  “There’s one man who wants to get back at you,” Faith said softly. “Neil Roberts. What if he’s here somewhere?”

  “I don’t think a stranger could hide in a town this small for this long,” Trip said. “Plus this isn’t Roberts’s signature.”

  “What do you mean? I thought at least one of the women disappeared from her car.”

  “That’s his M.O. His method of operation. That can change as circumstances and experience change. But his reason to kill and what he needs to take from the kill psychologically, that stays constant.” He continued bluntly. “Roberts likes to sodomize and then he likes to stage. Gina wasn’t presented the way Roberts presents a corpse. Trust me on this. This doesn’t feel like his work.”

  Faith looked down at her feet. She wasn’t used to having this kind of conversation, and the semidetached tone of Trip’s voice alarmed her. Every broken bone she’d suffered, every internal organ that had been smashed and repaired, even the scars on her face and body throb
bed with reawakened memories of their own.

  “Chief Novak said his deputy stopped David Lee today for speeding,” Trip said. “He’s got an outstanding warrant so they took him to jail.”

  Too many scary men, too many unknown motives, too many threats. One dead woman, one missing. Faith needed to get away. When the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot it seemed to signal a change. Everyone grew restless; a tow rig backed up to Trip’s truck.

  As another vehicle bearing the Triple T logo rumbled into the lot, Trip moved closer and lowered his voice. Snow had gathered on the brim of his hat, on the wide breadth of his shoulders. “The kids’ grandparents offered to keep them tonight. Mrs. Murphy is going to go stay with her aunt. Let me get you a hotel room.”

  “No.”

  “But—”

  “No, please, I’ll be fine. The ranch is a fortress, just let me go home with Paul Avery. I’ll lock myself in my cabin. My head is throbbing—I just want to be alone for a while.”

  He studied her. “Faith, I wish you’d let me—”

  Sheriff Torrence turned from the other men and said, “Trip, can I get you to come back over here and give us your opinion on something?”

  Novak glared at Trip. “We don’t need—”

  “Yes, Chief, we do,” Torrence interrupted.

  “You go ahead,” Faith said.

  “Faith, listen to reason.”

  She put a hand on his cheek for the briefest of moments, aware the combined law enforcement of Boyton County was watching. “I need to get away from all this, Trip, and I can’t accept more charity.”

  The door of the Triple T truck opened. Faith didn’t look back as she crossed the lot and climbed into the cab.

  THE RATTLE OVER THE cattle guard was beginning to signal home for Faith, and this time, when that thought crossed her mind, she didn’t fight it. Home was where you hung your hat, and for now this was it. Paul dropped her off at the cabin and she watched his taillights disappear toward one of the outbuildings.

  The ranch house looked kind of forlorn, with no lights glowing from within, no sounds of children or Mrs. Murphy. An armed guard strolled past and murmured a greeting. It was snowing harder on the ranch than it had been in town, due, no doubt, to the higher elevation. Several inches had gathered atop fence posts and porch railings.

  Faith let herself into the cabin and locked the door. The view of the construction outside the window reminded her there were more dangers to be reckoned with than an intruder. A well-placed match and the cabin would go up like kindling.

  There was no point dwelling on such morbid thoughts, and she closed the drapes against the twilight. A blinking red light on the phone signaled messages and, with a pang, she recalled she was supposed to be hiring a babysitter.

  First things first. The cabin did not have a bathtub, but it did have a shower. She stripped off her clothes and stood under the hot water until she was as pink as a tourist on her first day in the tropics. She dressed in warm sweats and dried her hair, letting it fall forward on her face to add additional warmth. Even with the thermostat turned way up, she couldn’t seem to get warm.

  The first call was from her brother, Zac. Faith listened to both what he said and what he didn’t say. On the surface he was telling her he and Olivia and all four babies would leave the next day to fly to Hawaii for the wedding.

  Underneath, she could hear Zac’s concern and guilt. Guilt his life was working so well and hers wasn’t; concern that she was okay. The background sounds of fussing babies and Olivia’s voice calling Zac to lunch just made Faith all the more homesick.

  She called him back, keeping her voice light and the conversation general. He was excited about the coming trip and she once again assured him she was too busy to get away. She couldn’t tell if he knew she was hiding something—she hoped not—and they stopped talking after a few minutes.

  The next five messages were hopeful babysitter applicants, and she sat at the counter making notes of their telephone numbers. Once the news of Gina’s death hit the morning paper, would any of these women show up for an appointment?

  The last call had been placed while Faith was in the shower and it was a familiar voice.

  “This is your lucky day,” Ruby Lee said around the clatter of ice cubes in a glass. “It’s a hell of a lot more than you deserve, that’s for sure. I got me a new renter lined up, but he wants the place first thing tomorrow. Get your stuff out of here by ten o’clock tonight and I’ll give you a refund.” The click of the phone served as a punctuation mark.

  A refund meant money and money meant independence. She did some quick calculations in her head and felt one of the bands of worry loosen a little. She hated being almost broke and without options. The refund wasn’t a fortune, but it would help.

  It was dark, though. She only had two or three hours to make this happen. David was in jail. Faith knew she could be in and out of there in less than an hour if she got Ruby to help her get the one heavy chest into the back of a truck.

  She grabbed her coat, gloves and a knit hat. Using the key Trip had given her, she entered the ranch house and went to the laundry area where the well-marked keys to the various ranch vehicles were stored in a cabinet. She chose those to Trip’s truck because it was parked right out front and had big old tires with studs in them. She wrote him a note in case he got home before she did.

  For a second she paused by the phone. The prudent thing to do would be to call him and ask him to meet her there. Barring that, she could wander around outside until she ran into one of the ranch hands and get them to come with her. The memory of the uncomfortably silent trip back with Paul Avery stopped her. Or maybe it was the last shattered vestige of pride that reminded her she wanted so much to stand alone.

  It was a truckload of furniture, for heaven’s sake. She made up her mind as she locked the door behind her. Once inside the truck, she popped in one of the CDs she found in a case, expecting country and western music to go with the cows and the ranches she drove past, getting instead Tchaikovsky. Listening to the stirring orchestration was oddly soothing, like listening to a raging storm while tucked safely into a warm bed.

  It was also haunting music. She thought of Trip listening to it as he drove to and from the ranch, a fish out of water, drawn back to a life he’d purposely left behind. She thought of him trying so hard to do what was right despite his inclinations and his heart. Tears burned her eyes. Tears for lost dreams, but also tears of respect for the courage it took to play the cards life dealt.

  The tears blurred oncoming traffic and she pulled the truck into the diner parking lot. Images of Trip bombarded her. Little vignettes. The first time she’d seen him, standing in the classroom, holding Colin. Reading to Noelle. Stroking Buttercup. The way he looked and talked, the way he made love and held her. His humor, his wit, his steady gaze…

  A smile tugged on her lips and she peered across the dark cab, almost expecting to find him staring back. The day had started out so perfectly, the time in his arms breathtaking and exciting. The auction had actually been fun. Learning about his family had revealed more of his past. Everything had been going along so well until poor Gina.

  But sympathies for Gina and ugly images aside, there was no denying one basic truth: she cared for him deeply.

  She reached for her shoulder bag and dug in the depths until her hand closed over her cell phone. She didn’t use it very often and tended to forget to charge it, so she was relieved to find it had battery power. Still, she hesitated making that call.

  What, exactly, did being independent mean, and why was she having such a hard time defining it? She’d borrowed Trip’s truck, so why was it difficult to admit she wanted to borrow his time? Why did it seem weak and selfish?

  It was dark outside. It was cold and she was on edge. Was it wrong to crave his presence, given the day they’d shared?

  She placed the call and settled back in the seat. His message machine clicked on without delivering a single ring. Suddenly s
hy, she told him where she was headed and that she would see him later at the ranch. And she knew when she did see him it would be different. Not for him—things hadn’t changed for him—but they had for her.

  A few minutes later she drove past Ruby Lee’s house. The lights were on. She drove slowly, scanning the driveway and street parking for a sign of David’s old car, relieved when she didn’t see it. She circled the block and at the last minute decided not to alert her landlady she’d come to collect her things. Instead, she’d load up and present the move as a fait accompli. She all but coasted down the steep drive, the truck handling what little snow had accumulated with no problem.

  The apartment was as she’d left it—dank and depressing. She could barely wait to get out of there. She turned on every light in the place, banishing shadows.

  There were a half-dozen pieces of furniture: a rocking chair, two small tables, a bookcase, a lightweight pine desk and the last piece, a chest of drawers. Making several trips, she loaded everything but the chest into the truck. After a few test lifts, she decided she could manage the chest by herself if she took the drawers out first.

  Pushing and shoving the main part of the chest, she slid it across the linoleum floor. The threshold at the front door took some maneuvering, but once outside it was a short trip to the open gate of the truck.

  The thing weighed a ton. What she needed was a rope, and she’d seen one in the tool closet. She went back inside the apartment and through the rooms, checking to see if she’d forgotten anything.

  The closet was in the back bedroom, which she’d used for storing boxes and furniture. Now that she knew what to look for, she easily found the door leading to the inside staircase, hidden behind a false panel just as Trip described. She left the panel open to expose the door. She wanted Ruby and David to know she knew about it.

  The rope appeared long enough to do the trick, so she grabbed the coil off the hook. As she turned back into the room, the lights went out. Not just in the bedroom, but all through the apartment, plunging it into darkness. Adjoining houses, glimpsed through windows, appeared unaffected.