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“No sir.” Trey helped himself to some coffee. “The ranch has put together a team to compete in the wild horse race, and I’m one of the members of that. Ropin’ is more my line than rough stock.”
“Quint mentioned the two of you used to do a lot of team roping events,” Avery remarked.
“We were a hard pair to beat.” There was no boast in his words, just a statement of fact. “But with Quint heading up the Cee Bar Ranch down in Texas for us, that’s past history.”
The reference to Quint served to redirect all their thoughts to the matter at hand. It was at Quint’s suggestion that the investigation had been started some five months ago after Rutledge’s efforts to force a sale of the Cee Bar Ranch had extended to infecting the Cee Bar cattle with anthrax.
At the time, all the evidence against Rutledge was circumstantial. As a former ATF agent for the Treasury Department, Quint hoped an investigation would uncover something more concrete. He had also recommended that all of Rutledge’s past and present activities be scrutinized for other evidence of wrongdoing.
“Shall we get started?” Avery suggested, pulling a folder from his briefcase.
At a nod from Jessy, he started his report with a summary of all the information obtained. When there was documentation, such as laboratory tests that identified the anthrax as a manufactured strain, he produced it.
Most of it Trey had heard
before. His thoughts soon strayed to Sloan, wondering where she was and what she was doing. He had asked her to have a late lunch with him, but she had vetoed the idea, reminding him that she needed to be at the rodeo grounds as soon as the parade was over and that she’d probably grab a quick bite there.
“We’re ninety-nine percent sure,” Walters was saying, “that we know which laboratory was the source of the anthrax spores that infected your cattle. We can link Rutledge’s son, Boone, with one of the technicians working there, but we can’t find any tie to Rutledge himself. The few people in the area who were willing to talk to us about it all pointed fingers at Boone as the one giving the orders. In my opinion, Rutledge got to all of them and turned his dead son into a scapegoat. As much as I hate to admit, Jessy,” he said with a wry grimace, “when it comes to the trouble you had at the Cee Bar, we’ve come to a dead end.”
“What about his other activities?” A thoughtful frown creased her forehead.
“It isn’t much better. You can fill her in, Doug.” Walters leaned back in his chair to let his associate take over.
“We can document hundreds of incidents where his tactics have been heavy-handed, and all of it right on the borderline of being illegal. When we dug deeper into his past business activities, I thought we had found something. Remember when all those savings-and-loan scandals erupted in Texas a few years back? Well, Rutledge was implicated in a number of them, but the Feds hit a stone wall when it came to proving it, which is why he was never indicted. It was a cold trail, but we followed it anyway. Unfortunately, it soon became obvious that those who might have been able to implicate Rutledge were all dead. Some died in prison and others of natural causes.”
“I know Chase isn’t going to like hearing this, Jessy, but we’ve pretty well run out of leads to follow,” Walter concluded.
“You’re right. He won’t like it.” Jessy agreed. “He’s convinced Rutledge represents a potential threat to the family. Like Quint, Chase was hoping you would find something that we could hold over his head.”
“So far we’ve struck out. But we’ll keep digging if that’s what you want.”
“It’s what Chase wants,” she replied, leaving little doubt that while she ran the Triple C operation, Chase Calder still ruled it.
“Any particular avenue you want us to pursue?” Walters asked, then turned toward Trey. “You haven’t said much during this, Trey. Have you got any thoughts?”
Conscious of being the cynosure of all eyes at the table, Trey had to scramble for an answer. Personally, he didn’t share his grandfather’s concern about Rutledge. But that wasn’t the Calder line.
“I’d concentrate on the anthrax angle,” he said. “If Rutledge has paid somebody to keep his mouth shut, then that person came into some cash, a new job, college tuition for his kids, or an operation for the wife. Something changed hands somewhere.”
“You’re right. We looked for the obvious cash trails, but there are always others.” Walters glanced at the other investigator, a gleam of new possibilities in his look.
A discussion followed, going over the options. But with little of substance that could be added, the meeting began to break up.
Trey made his exit at the first opportunity, a fact Jessy was quick to note. She stayed to the last, shaking hands with both men as they left.
Seconds after the door closed behind them, Laredo slipped into the room. His eyes made a quick skim of the room, verifying she was alone, then made a thorough examination of her expression. He cocked his head to one side. “How’d it go?”
“After five months, basically they have nothing.” Jessy scratched her name across the credit card chit and slipped a copy of it in her pocket before turning to him. “Somehow Rutledge has succeeded in shifting all the blame to Boone. Convenient, isn’t it?”
“Very.” Seeing the frustration in her face, he decided a change of subject was in order. “I noticed Trey left early.”
Jessy pulled in a quick, cleansing breath and nodded. “He said he had to get to the fairgrounds. Why, I don’t know. The team race isn’t until later.”
“I have a feeling a certain blue-eyed brunette might be the reason.” When Jessy looked at him in surprise, Laredo added, “He saw her last night at the street dance, and I suspect he had breakfast with her this morning.”
The significance of that wasn’t lost on Jessy. Having grown up in a man’s world, working cattle side by side with men her entire life, she had few romantic illusions about them. In her experience, rare was the man who cared to see the same woman in the morning that he’d been with the night before. Her own son was no different. Obviously, this woman was.
“Who is she? What’s her name?” She was immediately curious.
