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From his den window, he watched Duffy and Pickett drive up. Earlier, they’d taken off together to go into town. It had seemed strange that Pickett was leaving already, since the ranch hand had seemed so anxious to get back to work.
“Accept it,” his attorney said. “You’d be a fool not to. There are no strings attached. I’ve checked it out.”
He did want to know where the money came from—and why now. He might have had the attorney hire someone to dig deeper if he hadn’t heard about Pickett visiting the hotel recently. Someone had seen him coming out of room 403. At first, he’d thought the ranch hand had a lady friend.
But then he’d found out that the woman in 403, Sarah Johansen, was too old for Pickett. Also, her address had been New York City—the same place the ranch hand had left for, saying his father was dying.
And now a huge endowment for the ranch? Of course he was suspicious and yet he still didn’t know how to broach the subject with Pickett. But he would talk to him, he told himself.
He turned at the sound of footfalls and saw his daughter, Bailey, heading for the door. “Bailey,” he called. “A minute of your time?”
She looked as if she was trying to come up with an excuse to keep going, but changed her mind and stepped in.
“I have hardly seen you lately,” Holden said. “What have you been up to?”
“Why would you think I’ve been up to something?” she asked.
He studied his beautiful daughter. Her long, dark hair was wavy more like her mother’s than his own. Her eyes were definitely his shade of blue, though, and he recognized himself in the wild, free-spirit streak she kept well hidden.
She’d been so secretive lately, always on her phone, coming and going without any explanation. He’d always known that she would be impossible to control. He’d had a few wild horses like her.
Now he told himself he should just be glad that she’d come home from the university after six years and a degree in English. She seemed content enough staying in the Powder River Basin, though he worried about what she did all day.
“Is there someone in your life?” he had to ask. Someone she didn’t want him knowing about was what he was really asking.
She frowned. “Are you asking if there is a lover in my life? Really, Dad?” She laughed and turned toward the door to leave again. “There are some things you are better off not knowing.”
With that, she was gone, leaving him thinking she was probably right.
He wondered if that could also be true of this large amount of money the ranch had suddenly come into.
COOPERHADDROPPEDTilly off at her apartment after lunch and was headed for the ranch. He’d had enough wedding planning talk for a while. He was tired after making a quick trip out to Oregon to pick up the bull. He couldn’t wait for this damned wedding and would have gladly eloped. Not that he could deny his bride-to-be anything, even a wedding that he feared was more about her mother than the two of them.
His cell phone rang. “How was Oregon?”
Cooper heard something in his friend’s voice. “A long quick trip. What’s going on?”
“Something happened while you were gone,” the sheriff said. “A pickup was found in a reservoir on one of the ranches. It belongs to Rory Eastwood. That name mean anything to you?”
“No, should it?”
“You never met the man?”
Cooper pulled over to the side of the road. “Am I being interrogated right now? Who the hell is Rory Eastwood?”
“A former gas company employee and possibly the mystery man Leann Hayes planned to run away with.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Supposedly, he’d mentioned at the bar that he was leaving town with a woman he’d fallen in love with. It was all hush-hush because she had a boyfriend.”
“I wasn’t her boyfriend.”
“Right. But you had been sleeping with her.”
Cooper groaned. “He never said he was leaving with Leann?”
“No, but he was never seen again after that night. His pickup was full of his belongings.”
