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“I passed a truck on the road. I figured it was her lawyer, the one she wants me to talk to so they can clear CJ of any wrongdoing.”
Tilly shook her head. “It was the private detective who’s been asking questions about Dixon Malone’s disappearance. You should have seen Mother’s face when he came in and told her who he was and why he was there. From what little I overheard on my way upstairs, apparently, Dixon and Mother are still legally married. She never did the paperwork to have him declared legally dead. But seriously, she looked...guilty as sin. You don’t think...”
“That she believes she’s above the law? Or that she could have killed him?” Oakley shook her head. “I wouldn’t be surprised. I think our mother is capable of just about anything. Except forgiveness.”
“Unless you’re CJ.” Tilly wiped at the tears that spilled down her cheeks. “I need to find a job and a place to live. I’m embarrassed to even tell Cooper about this, let alone Holden. He really hoped that Cooper and I getting married might bring the families together. Instead, it’s going to make things worse.”
“No,” Oakley said. “It’s going to be all right. Let’s get a place together for the time being. I have some money saved. Unless you and Cooper want to elope and skip a wedding.”
Tilly wiped her eyes. “No,” she said emphatically. “I was just thinking about it. I’m not going to let her force me into running away like Cooper and I have done something wrong or have anything to hide,” she said, biting at her lower lip for a moment in anger. “Okay, let’s get a place together. I have money saved as well. Cooper and I will have a real wedding come hell or high water.”
“That’s my big sis,” Oakley said, hugging her again and silently promising that their mother would regret this. “I saw a sign at the café. That upstairs two-bedroom apartment over the general store is for rent. It’s going to be okay.” The words sounded hollow but they made Tilly smile.
“She isn’t going to change her mind. She’ll never let me back on the ranch.”
Oakley knew what a powerful force her mother could be. But soon, Charlotte Stafford would be fighting not just the McKennas, but also her own blood. “In the meantime, we plan your wedding and have some sister time.” Fortunately, she was still able to come and go at the ranch. She had to keep it that way—at least for now.
She didn’t tell Tilly what she was planning to do—or who was going to help her. Things were bad at the Stafford Ranch, but they were going to get much worse. She was thankful Tilly wouldn’t be there—in the middle of it—when everything hit the fan.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THESHERIFFFELTa little better by the time he reached his office. He was anxious to hear from the lab on his blood test. He hadn’t been at the office long when Douglas Burton, the head of CH4, marched in with two large men who looked like thugs. He said they were his security.
Burton seemed to take in the small office, the small sheriff’s department and Stu himself before he removed his coat, told his two flunkies to wait outside and sat down with a heavy sigh. He was a heavy-set man with an air of superiority that made Stu inwardly bristle. He’d seen the way the man had taken in the office and the sheriff himself before dismissing both. Clearly, Burton had come here to kick some butt, starting with the local law.
“What are we going to do about this problem, Sheriff?” the man demanded.
“Given what happened in Wyoming with your company, why wouldn’t there be people trying to stop the drilling?” Stu said. “Residents complaining that their water turned black and smelled like gasoline, orphaned wells by the thousands leaking arsenic and methane into groundwater, cities finding fracking chemicals in their main water supply and taxpayers expected to foot the bill to clean up your mess. And you’re surprised a group of concerned citizens are trying to stop the drilling here in the Powder River Basin of Montana?”
Burton leaned back in his chair. “Well, I think I can see what the problem is now,Sheriff. No wonder you haven’t caught and jailed these vandals. You’re probably one of them.”
“No, Douglas, I do my job as sheriff. Unfortunately, we are short-staffed. As I saw you notice, we are a small department. I believe other gas companies have hired security to keep their drilling equipment safe, but I have to warn you, if your thugs step out of line, they’ll end up in my jail behind bars.”
The gas executive let out an angry breath before getting to his feet. “It’s people like you who are the problem. You want your homes warm in the winter. You use the gas, the oil, but you don’t want the drilling. Wait until it’s forty below and you can’t heat your home, your office. When people can’t afford the gas and want to know why it costs so much, I’ll have to tell them that it’s because I’ve been forced to keep repairing vandalized equipment, forced to hire security to protect that equipment, raising my costs so I can get that gas to them. Then you’re going to wish that you hadn’t made it so hard for me to do my job.”
As Burton stormed out of his office, Stu’s cell phone rang. He picked up and listened as the lab tech informed him that his blood test showed a small amount of a drug that could have knocked him out in a larger quantity, but not enough to definitely say he’d been drugged.
He disconnected and sat for a moment trying to breathe, his mind racing. There was no doubt in his mind that Abigail had drugged him just as he suspected. Why, though? He thought of his keys on the end table farthest from him and the lingering scent of her perfume on them.
His heart began to pound as he looked around his office. Had she come down here last night? She had keys that would have gotten her into the back door, avoiding the dispatcher on duty. Keys to his office.
If so, what was she looking for? He tried to remember if his computer had been on when he’d come in this morning. His brain had still been foggy. With a curse, he remembered that he’d put his latest password on a piece of paper in his wallet.
He pulled out his wallet and caught the lingering scent of Abigail’s perfume on it. It took only a moment to see if his password was still in the wallet. It was, but not where he usually kept it.
Touching his keyboard, his computer screen lit. He moved the cursor to Files and clicked. The sheriff’s department computer program kept track of all files visited, organizing them based on the user. He checked to see which files had been opened and felt his heart drop like a meteor from space. Only one had been opened. At two in the morning.
The file on Leann Hayes’s suicide.
His already upset stomach roiled, making him fear that he would hurl before he regained control. Why would Abigail be interested in Leann Hayes, a woman he’d dated? What had Abigail been looking for to go to such extremes as to drug him?He was the sheriff, damn it. Why take a risk like that? Head aching, he had another thought. Had the office been the only place she’d gone last night?
After picking up his keys and pulling on his winter coat, he left the office and headed home to his nearby house where he’d grown up and now still lived. He’d been tricked, drugged and used. Worse, Abigail was interested in a case that he had hoped would go away. So what was her interest in Leann Hayes? What had she hoped to find in the case file? What in his house—if he was right and she’d gone there as well?
But the big question remained. What was he going to do about it?
CHARLOTTEWATCHEDTHEPI drive away, anger and bitterness and fear making her chest ache. Why hadn’t she had Dixon declared dead? Clearly, she should have. But she’d wanted to forget him, to put it all behind her as if it had never happened. The only reason she’d married Dixon was to show Holden.
Had she really held out hope that after his first wife, Margie, had died that he might come back to her? The thought turned her stomach. When she’d heard that he was with Lulabelle, she’d reacted out of spite by marrying Dixon—and it had come back to bite her in that behind that he had loved so well.
