Elusive Echoes (33 page)

His laugh sounded even more
insane than Denny's had. "I didn't sell the brat. You were so
useless you couldn't even birth a baby right. Thing stopped
breathing and turned blue. No way I could sell
that
."

Breath backed up in her lungs, and Mel
grabbed the end of the bed to keep from falling. Suddenly, Justin
was at her side, his arm around her waist, helping her steady
herself.

"What's this?" DeVayne pointed a bony finger
at Justin. "He your latest mark? He's old enough to be your
father."

"And he makes a better one than you ever did
to either me or Denny." Drawing strength from Justin, Mel
straightened her spine. "I want to know where my daughter is. What
did you do with her?"

DeVayne laughed again.
"That's what I'm saying. You don't
have
a daughter, girlie. You even
screwed up a simple thing like having a baby. We were on the way to
the man who was going to buy her when she stopped breathing. We
left your dead baby in the trash at a rest area outside Oklahoma
City." His laughter turned to serious wheezing. "All these years
you thought you had a little piece of yourself out in the world?"
His maniacal laughter echoed after her as she left the room. "Hey,
you see my boy, you tell him to stop in."

Melanie left the building with Justin on one
side, Ricky on the other. Shock chilled her and her steps were
automatic. She blinked in the harsh mid-morning sun. Remnants of
snow from the night before lay glistening where the gardens edged
the sidewalk. Mel saw them and pictured the cold lifeless body of
her child.

"All these years," she said softly, to no
one in particular. "I thought of her as happy and loved. And all
this time, she was dead." She looked at Joe. He was blurry through
the tears in her eyes. "She wasn't even buried or mourned. He just
dumped her in the trash."

As they got to Joe's four-door pickup, she
dimly registered that her three protectors suddenly seemed
uncomfortable. Finally, Justin placed a hand on her arm and pulled
her into his embrace, cradling her head against his chest.

"Aw, girl, I'm sorry. None of us thought
we'd find this at the end of the search."

It was just one more loss. And it hurt that
it was Sean's father holding her and not her fiancé. It hurt that
he'd listened to the things her brother had said the night before
and apparently believed them. Believed she was capable of doing
anything that would hurt him, especially something like keeping him
distracted so her brother could burn a stable filled with horses.
Believed those things without even questioning the validity of the
accusations.

She couldn't deal with him now. If he got
over it, figured out he'd been wrong . . . maybe. But he hadn't
been able to hold her gaze the night before. The look in his eyes
just before he'd turned away from her had been a combination of
hurt and hatred, and Mel hadn't known where one left off and the
other began.

"Take me home, please." Her brittle-sounding
voice shattered the uneasy silence. "Take me to my place in town. I
don't want to see Sean."

She curled up into a ball on the back seat
of the truck. Ricky sat next to her, his eyes soft with caring.

When they reached her apartment, Mel thanked
them automatically and climbed slowly from the truck.

Justin hugged her hard. "It doesn't feel
right leaving you here, girl."

"I'll be okay. I promise. I just want to be
alone to do some thinking." She kissed him on the cheek. "Thank you
for everything."

As she started up the stairs, a car turned
in to the parking lot. Charlie. Mel had nearly forgotten they would
be opening soon. So much for her alone time. Charlie stopped to
talk to Justin. As Mel watched, Justin said something that made
Charlie laugh. She laid a hand on his arm and looked up at him, her
eyes sparkling. Justin seemed to go seven shades of red at the
contact.

Mel turned away, unwilling to let the bite
of her tears interrupt such a sweet moment. She was just at the top
of her steps when Ricky hailed her.

"I'm staying to work my shift. Miss Charlie
and I will be in the kitchen if you need anything."

Mel waved and nodded. She understood they
didn't want her to be completely alone, but they would let her have
her privacy.

****

"You sending for the medical record on
Devil's Advocate raised a few flags, Mr. McGee." Carlton Windsor
was tall and slender, somewhere in his forties. He'd identified
himself as being with the California Racing Commission,
investigating possible fraud.

He seemed to be the spokesman for his two
companions, Michael Martin, a sixty-something balding man with the
California Breeder's Association and FBI agent Julia Bronson, a
slender woman with wavy auburn hair that fell almost to her waist.
She looked like she should still be in high school, not
investigating a case of fraud for the FBI.

This mess Mel and her brother had started
was passing headache status and heading strongly for a royal pain
in the tush. Sean led the trio to where he'd stabled Devil's
Advocate. He wondered how long Mel had known what was going on, how
deep she was in this thing. The horse had sure responded to her the
times she'd been out visiting, almost as though he knew her.

Sean's brain kept replaying how Mel had
taken pains to tell him some of the specifics about her life of
grifting. She'd stressed more than once that she had been part of
the DeVayne family unit.

"I haven't had a chance to read through his
medical records," Sean explained as they walked. "They only came in
yesterday, and we had the fire last night. Thing is, though, I
can't imagine racing this horse at all, let alone seeing him with
so many wins. He's got such a severe case of bench knee, it's a
wonder he hasn't broken bones."

Devil's Advocate hated the racing officials
on sight. Ears back, he reared and kicked, threatening with his
teeth.

"Sorry." Sean pulled a lead from the wall
and moved into the roomy box. "North—that is, DeVayne tranqed him
to haul him here, and he never has had a good temper that I've
seen. The only person he flat-out hated more than this was DeVayne
himself."

After several tries, Sean was finally able
to clip the lead in place. He calmed the horse enough for the
officials to take pictures, check his conformation, and check his
mouth tattoo.

"Tat's been altered. One of the threes has
been changed to an eight." Windsor spoke softly, but whether he was
trying to keep the horse in a calm frame of mind or if he cared
about the animal's feelings, Sean couldn't have said. Windsor read
the number off while Martin entered it into a hand-held electronic
device.

"That the real number?" asked Martin.

"Yeah." Windsor stepped back and out of the
paddock. Pulling a folder out of his briefcase, he opened it and
showed Sean the top picture. "This is Devil's Advocate at his last
win, the Santa Anita Derby last April."

It took Sean less than a minute to spot the
differences. "Good conformation, well-aligned front legs. Deeper
chest. Looks about the same height and he has the same shape to his
head, though. Color's a bit lighter but that could be the lighting
in the picture. Might be more even, too, but it's hard to tell with
this guy's burns."

"Comes back as Dark Angel's Opportunity,"
said Martin. "Never-starter, different dam, same sire." He looked
up and met Windsor's eyes with a pointed look. "Los Mirabelle
Stables."

"That's the owners I've been dealing with,"
said Sean.

Chills ran from his neck down his spine in
waves and settled in the small of his back. This was turning out to
be a huge fraud and conspiracy case. Just how deep was Mel in this
thing? Could he protect her if it came down to her needing
protection?

Would he?

"I need to ask you some questions, Mr.
McGee." FBI Agent Bronson finally spoke up.

Sean sighed. This wasn't going to be good.
He could feel it. For the first time since the whole thing began,
he was unsure of himself.

"Will you be filing an insurance claim?"
asked Agent Bronson, opening a small black notebook.

Sean pulled in a long breath and puffed out
his cheeks. "Yeah, I suppose we will. I'm only part owner of the
Cross MC, though the horse rehabbing is my venture here."

"You've had trouble here on the ranch
before." It was a statement, not a question; nonetheless, Sean felt
compelled to defend his family.

"That was a totally unrelated matter."

"Yes." She lifted her head from her notes
and regarded him with a measuring stare. "I was just thinking that
trouble does seem to find you."

"Not by choice, I assure you," said Sean
dryly.

She looked at her notebook again. "Los
Mirabelle Stables contacted you, Mr. McGee?"

"Yeah." Sean frowned, trying to remember the
name of his contact. "A Mr. Hector, I think his name was. But I've
been dealing with Enrique Chavez since. I gather they're
partners."

"Do you know why they contacted you, Mr.
McGee?"

"Me specifically?" Sean shook his head. "No.
But there are only a handful of horse rehabilitation facilities,
and I've got a high percentage rate for psychological rehab."

Agent Bronson tilted her head back and
stared him down. "You have no idea how much like a scam that sounds
to me."

Sean stepped back and looked the tidy agent
up and down. Everything about her screamed city. "Don't know much
about horses, do you, Agent Bronson? You want to look through my
records? Am I being accused of a crime here for taking on what I
thought would be a simple paying job?"

"Actually, it's your relationship with Mr.
DeVayne's sister that's raising my concern." The agent consulted
her notebook again.

Sean breathed in sharply. His stomach
flip-flopped like a beached fish. He instilled a necessary chill
into his voice. "My fiancée has been estranged from her family for
several years, which would include her brother."

"You're sure about that?" asked Bronson. "He
says he's been in touch with his sister for several months now. We
found letters to her saved in his computer files. Sheriff Cooper
has corresponding letters to her in physical custody, which he says
he got from Ms. Mitchell."

Mel's explanation floated
through Sean's memory.
This is a paper
trail . . . deletes from the computer . . . ditches the computer. .
.
Only Denny hadn't killed the trail. Why
not? Had he kept it alive for insurance? And if so, insurance for
what? To control Mel? Had he been concerned she'd double cross
him?

Agent Bronson's voice brought Sean back to
the current conversation. "He claims the sole reason for choosing
you was his sister's relationship with you, and he has implicated
both Ms. Mitchell and you in this scheme."

"That's ridiculous. Mel would never get
involved in anything like this." Even as he bit off the words, Sean
wished he believed them.

"What about you, Mr. McGee?" Bronson turned
another page in the notebook. "Did you really only request the
medical record for Devil's Advocate because you suspected something
was wrong? Or were you going to rehab this horse into his
brother?"

"Well now that would have been impossible,
Agent Bronson." Sean crossed his arms over his chest and met her
accusing stare with a measure of defiance. "Because you just can't
take a horse's benched knees and make 'em straight."

"I guess that would be the point of losing
the horse in a fire then, wouldn't it?"

Sean cocked his head and
flipped her a half smile. "Except we didn't lose
any
horses in that fire,
Agent Bronson. You're slinging horse crap in the wrong
direction."

"Maybe." The FBI agent angled her head. Her
mouth thinned and her eyes hardened. "And maybe I'm only slinging
back what's being tossed out there to hide the real story."

Chapter Nineteen

Saturday night, Mel succumbed to her
partner's bullying and stayed in her apartment while Sandy took the
shift. Sean never called.

The sounds of the band playing the closing
number two hours early again filtered into Mel's consciousness. She
didn't know why she cared. More than likely she'd have to desert
the partnership and leave town. No way could she live in Orson's
Folly if Sean broke things off with her, let alone be in a
partnership with his sister-in-law.

A soft knock on the door startled Mel out of
her introspection. At midnight, she could only think of Sean. She
opened the door quickly, ready to do anything to make amends.

"Sandy."

"Hey, Mel. I saw your light on and just
wanted to check on you before Ricky and I took off for home." Sandy
stepped inside and closed the door against the chill. "I think
Bertie makes a great waitress. Good call on hiring her. She has a
friend we can interview next week."

"Oh. Okay."

Sandy sighed. "He didn't call?"

"I don't blame him," Mel said quickly. She
moved into the kitchenette and opened the fridge. Seeing nothing
appealing, she closed the door again. "I should have told him as
soon as I knew Denny was pretending to be Northrop."

"Exactly when did you know?"

"Earlier last night. Sean saw me talking to
Denny and mentioned he was Northrop. Before I could tell him that
was my brother, I, ah . . . I passed out." Mel turned to meet
Sandy's look. "I wasn't keeping it from him. I wouldn't do that. We
kept getting interrupted. I was telling him as we pulled in to the
ranch and noticed the stables were on fire."

Sandy nodded. "Give him some time. He'll
figure things out."

"He thinks I was in on it with Denny,
doesn't he?"