“Seven?” she exclaimed. “One child wears me out!”
“It was actually kind of fun having a houseful of kids. Not that I would’ve admitted it at the time. I was still deep in my surly teen rebellion.”
“I have a hard time picturing you being surly or . . .” She broke off. “I guess I can see the rebellious part. You did become a rodeo clown, after all. How did you get into that career, anyway?”
“Dillon went through an ugly divorce a few years back and needed a change of scene. He took a job with a major rodeo company to provide veterinary care for the cattle and horses on the circuit. He found out they needed a doctor for the cowboys and Hank had just gone through an even uglier divorce, so Dillon hooked him up with a job. When I decided I needed a change of scene in my own life, I thought it would be cool to travel with them and I took a job as a bullfighter.”
“What kind of training did you get?”
“I spent a few months shadowing an experienced guy who taught me how to read bull body language and then I became part of a crew. Bullfighters work in teams of two to four guys. The more rank the bulls, the more bullfighters are necessary for safety.”
“What’s a rank bull?” Lily piped up.
“It means they’re grumpy and unpredictable,” Reno answered.
“I’m rank sometimes,” Lily said wisely.
Reno grinned and Grace laughed out loud.
Lily talked excitedly the rest of the way to school about all the cool things she could see from this high up.
He waited at the curb as Grace walked Lily inside, and then they drove straight to the police station. Sheriff Wheeler and Cooper Lawton were waiting for them in a conference room with an old rotary phone sitting conspicuously on the table. Reno noted the row of lights mounted on the side of the phone, indicating it was an encrypted and secured phone.
Wheeler brought Cooper up to speed quickly on the note, finishing with, “We’re calling Sam Vela as soon as Grace is ready. She tells us the phone number she has for him goes to his work cell phone, which will be fully secure and encrypted.”
Cooper nodded. “Standard issue for Special Forces types.”
“May I see the note?” Cooper asked Grace.
She handed it to him and Cooper studied the paper.
Reno saw a very slight twitch of recognition in the muscles of Cooper’s cheeks. But then, Reno had years of experience watching witnesses testify and was an expert at catching miniscule tells of truth, stress, and lies. He leaned forward and said quietly, “You recognize the word Tigris. Can you tell us what it refers to?”
Cooper’s gaze snapped to his, surprised. “How . . .”
He shrugged. “I’m good at reading people.”
Cooper sighed. "Yes. I’ve heard the name. But I can't tell you anything about it. It’s highly classified. If Liam and this Vela fellow were anywhere near it, Vela will deny having ever heard of it."
"That actually helps," Wheeler said.
"It does," Reno agreed. "It tells us the security around whatever it is remains tight. Which means the dude harassing Grace isn’t likely associated with Liam’s note."
Cooper set the paper down and looked at Wheeler. "You want me to run the call?"
"Please."
Reno interjected, “If you don’t mind my asking, how do you plan to play the call?” He refrained from mentioning he was by far the most experienced interrogator in the room, including the sheriff.
Cooper replied, "I'll start by telling Vela I was a Ranger out of Benning, am now a sheriff’s deputy in Montana, and I don’t want him to share any operational information that civilians don't need to know about. That should drop the temperature about ten degrees off the top. Then I'll put Grace on the line, and the widow of his swim buddy will tell him she’s been having some trouble with an anonymous person harassing her, and then ask him about a note she found recently in her dead husband's writing. After that, I expect he’ll tell us what he can, which will probably be enough to rule out the note as the source of Grace’s problems."
Wheeler asked Cooper, "What’s your working theory on what the note actually is?"
"Liam O’donnell was tying up something from his military career in the months before he died, a thing his wife never knew about because he kept his work and his marriage separate, the way men in that line of work tend to. The note has nothing to do with the bakery . . . or the Shoemacher fire, or anything else in this valley."
"And if Vela tells us the paper does have to do with events here?"
Cooper shrugged. "Then I’ll be very surprised, and we’ll adjust."
