“I was set up. Framed. Caleb Swaggert said as much, right? Wasn’t he paid to finger me?”
Lucy reappeared with the drinks and Ross said, “Run a tab. The lady’s buying.”
“That’s right,” Katrina agreed, her interest piqued, though she thought McCallum was shooting blanks.
“You got it.” As hidden speakers from the jukebox began playing an old Patsy Cline hit, Ross took a swallow from his drink and Lucy, spying new patrons entering the White Horse, hurried back to the bar.
“Okay, I’ll bite,” Katrina said, swirling her drink and watching a single maraschino cherry bob between the ice cubes. “Who killed Ramón Estevan?”
Ross didn’t bat an eye. “Nevada Smith.”
“Wait a minute. He was working for the Sheriffs Department at the time. It was his truck you were in, and what possible motive would he have?”
“He hated Estevan. The old man had a bad temper. Everyone in town knew that.”
Katrina sipped her Coke. Waited.
“Well, before Smith got involved with Shelby Cole, he was hanging around the Estevan house, seeing Ram6n’s daughter.”
“Vianca.”
“Yep.”
“So—” Katrina prodded as Patsy crooned and the smoke in the bar seemed to thicken.
“The old man didn’t like the fact that Nevada basically dumped his daughter for Shelby Cole.” Ross took a long swig from his beer and frowned. “Estevan had a temper. If you don’t believe me, ask anyone in town.”
This she already knew. Caleb Swaggert had alluded to Ramón Estevan as being a “hot-headed Mexican,” and a few of the other townspeople Katrina had interviewed had seemed to agree, though it was hard to tell.
“So Nevada Smith and Shelby Cole were dating about the time Ramón was killed.”
Ross’s eyes slitted. “Yep.”
She did the math quickly and figured Nevada Smith was the father of Shelby’s child. Well, wasn’t that interesting? The very man Ross McCallum was trying to blame for the murder, the one who had seen that Ross took the rap for Estevan’s death, was the father of Shelby’s child. “Curiouser and curiouser,” she muttered, taking a sip from her glass. “You have any proof?”
“No more than he did when he set me up.”
“Wait a minute—‘set you up’? You mean that he framed you?”
“Call it anything you want.” Ross finished his beer and motioned to Lucy for another. “Now, listen, have we got a deal or not?” He leaned forward, elbows on the table, empty glass between meat hooks of hands. “I ain’t spillin’ my guts without gettin’ paid. At least as much as what you were givin’ Swaggert.”
McCallum’s eyes flared, and Katrina thought he wasn’t bad looking. Of course he dressed like a hick in his faded T-shirt, worn jeans and scruffy boots, but it was his attitude, the rage that simmered just beneath the surface of his skin, that stole whatever leanings he had toward handsome and made him appear malevolent.
“I’ll see what I can do,” she promised. “What’s your number? I’ll call you.”
Ross’s smile was slow and evil. “Don’t have a phone, but don’t worry, honey. I’ll catch up ta you again.” He offered her a wink that made her blood run cold.
“Good,” she said, fishing in her purse and finding a twenty-dollar bill that she left on the table. Her fingers brushed the barrel of her little gun and she wondered if she’d ever have the guts to use it. “Until then.” She managed a grin to match his, but walked out of the bar on legs made of rubber.
She knew, without a moment’s hesitation, that Ross McCallum belonged behind bars.
Chapter Sixteen
“I don’t care what you have to do, Levinson, just help me find my kid,” Nevada growled into the telephone. He was hot, tired and as frustrated as hell. Two of his mares were off their feed, the tractor had died in the south paddock and he thought he’d seen Shep Marson’s truck rolling out of the next drive—the lane to the Adams place, now his property—yesterday afternoon. But he hadn’t been sure. The sun had been wicked. Low, harsh, blinding rays had glinted off the pickup’s fender. By the time Nevada had put his old truck through its gears chasing after the intruder’s rig, the truck had been little more than a speck in front of a wake of dust.
Nevada had been left with the feeling that something bad was about to happen. Worse yet, he was worried sick about Shelby. Sure as shootin’, she was gonna get herself into trouble. That thought nagged at him and he took it out on Levinson. “There’s got to be a way to find her.”
“Doin’ my level best.” Levinson’s tone was flat. Noncommittal.
“So am I.” Nevada had visited the hospital where Elizabeth had been born, bribed an administrative aide into finding out who had been working in the maternity ward that week, talked to as many doctors, nurses and aides as he could locate, but no one had been on duty the night Shelby Cole delivered her baby. Or no one was talking.
“I’ll keep workin’ on it.”
“Do. And check out some of these people.” Nevada listed the names of the hospital workers he hadn’t been able to locate-people who might have been working on the night Shelby gave birth.
“Will do.”
“And don’t forget Ross McCallum.”
“Oh, I won’t,” Levinson said with a smile in his voice. “I intend to find out everything about that ol’ boy that I can.”
“Good.”
There was a pause; then the private investigator said, “While I’m at it, I thought I might try to locate your mother.”
Nevada’s jaw turned to granite. “Don’t bother.”
“I just thought, seein’ as you’re tryin’ to locate your daughter, it might be a good time to—”
“Forget it.” Nevada was firm. The woman who’d borne him had walked out the door when he was too young to remember her. He could only figure that she just plain hadn’t wanted him—for what reason, he couldn’t imagine. As a boy he’d tried to understand her rejection, and deep in the darkest regions of his soul he suspected that somehow he hadn’t been good enough, though in his rational mind he knew there were more concise, concrete reasons that she’d left. She’d been young. Her husband had been a drunk. She’d had to escape to survive.
But she’d left Nevada.
As far as he knew, she’d never looked back. She could be dead. Wasting away in a nursing home. Living the high life in a villa on the Mediterranean. It didn’t much matter. She wasn’t a factor in his life, but she was one of the singular reasons that he intended to find and connect with his own child.
If Elizabeth and whoever had adopted her would let him.
If he even found her. His left fist curled in frustration as his right clenched around the receiver.
“Let me know if you change your mind,” Levinson said.
“I won’t.”
Nevada hung up and felt restless, like an anxious stallion who senses an invisible predator lurking nearby. Shoving his fingers through his hair, he told himself that he was just imagining things, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something bad was about to go down. And there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it.
“Blast it all to hell,” he growled, wishing he had a Marlboro, though he’d given up the habit years before. He needed something to settle him down. Being in the same county with Shelby, knowing she was close by, worrying for her safety, knowing McCallum was up to no good and not being able to find his kid were driving him out of his mind.
The phone rang and he tensed. Probably the damned anonymous caller again. He grabbed the receiver and barked a gruff, “Hello.”
“Smith?”
He recognized the voice. The tension in his shoulders tightened. All his attention focused on the conversation as he leaned a jean-clad hip against the counter. “Judge Cole.”
“I think we should meet,” Shelb
y
’s father said without preamble.
“Why?”
“You’ll find out when you get there.”
“Get where?”
There was a second’s hesitation, and Nevada wondered what Red Cole had up his sleeve. Nevada looked through the torn screen to the back porch where Crockett lay, ears cocked, on a rag rug.
“My office downtown,” the Judge decided. “Ten o’clock tonight.”
Nevada glanced at his watch. It wasn’t quite eight. “Why don’t you just tell me whatever you want to over the phone?”
“Don’t ask questions. Meet me there.”
“Don’t see why.”
“It has to do with Shelby. And Ross McCallum.”
The warning hairs on the back of Nevada’s neck prickled upward; then he reminded himself whom he was dealing with. He wouldn’t put it past Red Cole to play the melodramatic trump card just to force the issue. “And you can’t tell me over the phone?”
“Nope.”
“Look, Judge, I’m not buying into all this cloak-and-dagger crap. Whatever it is you have to say to me, just spit it out.”
“I will. At ten.”
The phone line clicked, then went dead.
Nevada hung up and checked his watch. He had two hours to kill before his date with the devil.
“I need to talk to you.” Vianca’s voice had been firm on the phone. Though Shep had been at the office, he’d felt the top of his ears turn red and had imagined everyone within earshot could hear her. He glanced nervously around the room with its once-green walls. Where there used to be a wide-open space littered with desks, now the room was chopped up by cubicles made of portable and supposedly soundproof walls.
“It is ... it is concerning my father’s murder,” Vianca had said, and he’d recognized the hesitation in her voice.
“I’ll be right there.” Just the sound of her voice had caused his spirits to rise. The paperwork he’d been going over was instantly forgotten.
“No! I am still at the hospital. Come later. To the house.”
His foolish pulse had skyrocketed.
“Now I must work at the store, then see to
Madre.
She is coming home from the hospital today.”
Shep’s inflated ego nose-dived. So the old lady would be there. No chance of being with Vianca alone.
Yet Vianca’s request had hung with him the rest of the day, flitting through his mind while he’d visited the lab and gone over the case files of the Estevan murder.
Now, as he nestled his truck against the curb across the street from the Estevans’ bungalow, he smiled inwardly. He was about to get lucky—one way or another. He could feel it, like the sizzle of lightning in the air.
He’d taken the time to shave, even gone so far as to brush his teeth and put on a clean shirt before driving across town and fighting with his conscience. He had business here, true enough. Even if Vianca hadn’t called, he needed to interview all the members of Ramón’s family yet again. But the reason his boots gleamed, his breath was fresh and he’d even gone so far as to spray on a couple of shots of Right Guard wasn’t because of his job. Nope. It was because he wanted Vianca to see him for the man he was.
He glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror and slicked down the ends of his moustache, frowning as he noticed more gray than red in the bristles. Hell, he was pushin’ fifty. His gut hung over his belt, his hair was thinning and he’d never in his life cheated on Peggy Sue. Never thought he would, what with her being so pretty and all, but here he was, feeling like a schoolboy again. All because of Vianca.
To be honest, Peggy Sue had changed. Lost interest. Was always too tired for a quick roll in the hay and somehow, over the fifteen years they’d been married, had forgotten how to laugh.
Shep sighed and wondered if he was about to screw up the rest of his life. He knew he had a reputation for being a mean sum-bitch when it came to his job, and in all fairness, it was deserved. Something he’d once been proud of. Hell, he’d cracked more heads, punched more bellies, snapped his share of guilty spines with his billy club often enough. He’d even gone so far as to “adjust” the evidence if he needed it to convict the right man and had looked the other way when one of his friends had broken the law.
He had his own set of rules and they were flexible. For the right price. He didn’t see it as a bad thing to take a few dollars off a friend for a favor. Hell, if he hadn’t cleaned up that mess when the Johnson kid, who, all liquored up and pissy, had been shooting at stop signs and somehow killed old man Cowan’s prized bull, the kid would’ve ended up in jail and probably never would have finished college. Shep had talked to him hard, slapped him around a little, told him what a piece of shit he was, then accepted a token of appreciation from his father.
It had all ended up fine. Cowan’s bull was insured and the Johnson kid became an accountant—a straight-arrow, even married a Methodist girl and had him a set of twins. And Shep’s oldest son, Timmy, had gotten the braces he needed.
The Johnson thing had worked out. Had it been payola? A bribe? Who the hell cared? In Shep’s mind, justice had been served, it hadn’t cost the taxpayers a dime and the worst thing about the whole business was that old man Cowan had eaten the thickest, toughest steaks this side of Amarillo.