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“We’re always curious what brings folks to the ranch,” I said.
Soren crossed his arms over his chest, still leaning against the post. “We get worried when a guest asks one of our employees a bunch of nosy questions.” Leave it to Soren to get right to the point.
“Excuse me?” Cutter sat forward, still gripping his beer bottle. “I don’t follow.”
“Finley said you were unusually curious for a guest,” I said. “Leaving us wondering why.”
Cutter rose up from the chair—all muscular six feet of him. “What’s it to you?”
“We’re wondering what you’re doing here,” I said. “Are you looking for someone?”
He blinked. “Why do you ask?”
“We looked you up, and we know you’re a private detective,” Soren said. “We don’t want any trouble here at our place of business.”
“I see, you think I’m here investigating,” Cutter said. “Can’t a private dick take a vacation? Anyway, all my questions were a sorry attempt at flirting with Finley. I’m not very good at it, obviously. I didn’t mean to scare her.”
Neither Soren nor I said anything. Cutter tugged at the collar of his shirt and shifted weight from one foot to the other.
Cutter set his empty beer bottle on the railing of the porch. “Guess that begs the question—why are you interested in what I do for a living? Do you interrogate all of your guests?”
I felt a twinge of embarrassment. Why were we harassing this poor guy? He probably had no connection to any of us. “You’re right. My apologies.”
“Are you looking for a detective?” Cutter asked. “I might be of some help. If you’re in need of my skills.”
“What kind of services do you provide, exactly?” Soren asked.
“Mostly I work for women who suspect their husbands are having an affair. Bread and butter, so to speak. Sometimes it’s men suspicious of their wives, but it’s less likely.”
“How did you get into this line of work?” I asked.
“Same way you got into ranching, most likely. My dad was a PI. Guess you could say I inherited the business and the knack for sniffing around.” Cutter looked from one of us to the other. “Which one of you suspects your spouse is having an affair?”
“Neither of us is married,” Soren said.
“Okay, cool, something different.” Cutter’s eyes lit up. “What do you need to know? I’m happy to look into something for you.”
An uneasy feeling brewed in the pit of my stomach. Was this guy here on vacation, or had he come looking for Sammie? If he were searching for her, he’d found her. In addition, that meant he’d probably already sent the Underwoods word. The family could be on their way now to hurt her or turn her over to the police. The only way to deal with this was to ask him a direct question.
“Did the Underwoods hire you?” I asked.
Cutter tried to hide it, but the truth flashed in his eyes for long enough that I saw it. So did Soren, apparently, because he moved closer to the porch.
“What do you know?” I asked.
Cutter sank back into his chair. “Fine, yeah, the Underwood family hired me to look for Sammie Wilson. I’ve been looking for her the better part of a year. She did a darn good job of disappearing.”
Wilson. She hadn’t told me her real name, I realized now. She was still Sammie, though, even with a different last name.
“Have you told them you found her yet?” Soren asked, a threatening tone in his voice.
“No.” He reached into the small cooler by his feet and took out another beer. “I haven’t.”
“Why not?” I asked, nearly out of my mind. Could it be any harder to get information out of this guy?
“Because I didn’t know she had a kid,” Cutter said. “That fact changes things for me.”
“You mean to tell me they never mentioned her daughter?” Soren asked. “That seems unlikely.”
