“You have any idea how many older model pickups there are in this county?” Yarrow asked. “But I agree that the keys probably go to a truck since there are more trucks in this country than cars. You know what this means. We need to see everyone’s key rings that we’ve already interviewed.”

  He’d been thinking the same thing. That and how much easier it might have been if there had been a fob on the key ring or something to identify the owner. “These don’t seem like someone’s primary keys. They don’t look like they’ve hardly been used at all.”

  “I’ve thought of that,” Yarrow said. “I also thought of what Dave Tanner told you. He had to pull some of the drinkers’ keys the other night. McCabe used the extra set of keys to drive home since there was no one at the bar at that hour to let him in for the keys he uses all the time.”

  Jaxson was already nodding. “You’re thinking someone else might have left there original keys somewhere like the bar and were using their extra set. I’ll show Dave the drawing. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

  “There is something else,” Yarrow said. “Berg left a note with the keys drawing, saying he remembered smelling something that morning in the storage area of the general store. He thought it might have been horse liniment.”

  Jaxson raised a brow. “That doesn’t narrow it down given how many people around here have horses. Both the Price and Eaton ranches raise them.”

  Yarrow nodded. “But added to the video, the keys and what we know, it’s another clue. I think we’re getting close.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  DAVE STUDIED THE drawing for a few minutes under the lamplight in his office at the bar before shaking his head. “The keys might be familiar, but I don’t recognize them.” He handed back the drawing.

  “You’re sure they can’t be a set that you’ve confiscated at closing before?” Jaxson asked.

  “Could be,” the bar owner said. “I’ve definitely held on to keys that look like these. But most are newer vehicles with key fobs rather than keys. You don’t see many car keys like this except for older models, right? I guess General Motors is still making a few models that require keys, Honda and Toyota on their lower-end models. That probably doesn’t help.”

  “These keys don’t look worn at all as if seldom used,” Jaxson said.

  Dave nodded. “If I had to guess, I’d say the keys belong to someone who owns an older model pickup. Which is an easy guess since there are a lot more pickups around these parts than cars and a lot of them are at an age where they are still running just fine but might look their age.”

  “Like some of the ranch trucks around that ranch hands drive into town,” Jaxson said.

  “Those for sure,” Dave agreed. “But also some of these ranchers just refuse to spend what it costs for a new pickup as long as the old one still runs.”

  Jaxson knew that was true. “Well, thanks for the help.” He started for the door, anxious to see if Luna was back from her horseback riding date, when Dave stopped him.

  “I was just thinking that picture of those keys,” the bar owner said as if it had just come to him. “You know, the ones you keep in a drawer when you can’t remember where you put your other keys.”

  “Or when the bar owner took your first set so you couldn’t drive home drunk and you had to bring in your old extra set,” Jaxson said, seeing where Dave was going with this. “Do you have any keys that the vehicle owner hasn’t picked up yet?”

  Dave turned toward his drawer, opened it and dug around inside for a moment. The drawer appeared to have a variety of items that had been left at the bar sometime or another. He pulled out a single glove, a cigarette case, a pair of glasses and tossed them aside before he dug in the back of the drawer and held up a set of keys. “I have no idea how long these keys have been in that drawer.”

  Jaxson pulled an evidence bag from his jacket pocket and held it open for Dave to drop the keys in. There was probably little hope of getting a clear print off the keys from the owner. Not to mention it was a long shot that the keys matched the ones Johnny Berg had seen lying on the floor just feet from Vi’s dead body.

  Laying the closed bag down on the bar, Jaxson saw that there were four keys on this ring. A house key? The other smaller key could have been to anything. The two other keys were older model vehicle keys.

  Holding his breath, he compared them to Berg’s drawing.

  They matched perfectly.

  He felt a jolt of excitement. Unfortunately there was nothing on the metal ring that gave any indication as to what vehicle—or driver—they belonged to.

  * * *

  LUNA RETURNED JAXSON’S call on her way into town. “I’m on my way to my apartment if—”

  He cut her off. “I’ll meet you there.”

  By the time she reached town, he was waiting in his patrol SUV behind her apartment and salon building in the shade. It was cool in the shade and yet her skin prickled with heat. Or was it fear? She’d heard the urgency in his voice. Had the crime lab matched the DNA and identified Amy Franklin?

  “What’s happened?” she asked the moment he stepped from his patrol SUV, all long-legged and handsome even with his worried expression. She felt such a tug at her heart that her eyes burned with tears.

  “I’ll tell you upstairs,” he said, glancing around the alley nervously.

  Luna led the way, scared now. It had to be bad, given Jaxson’s behavior. Once in the apartment and the door closed, she turned to him. “What’s wrong?”

  She watched him take a breath and let it out slowly before he demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me that you were out on the sidewalk in front of your salon the morning Vi was murdered?”

  Luna stared at him as she sat down, her legs too weak to keep standing. “What?”

  He stepped to her, dropping to his haunches to squat in front of her, his hands on her knees. “You don’t remember going outside in front of the salon that morning?”

  She could hear it in his voice. Fear. She frowned and tried to concentrate. The morning Vi was killed. The morning her father called with the bad news about Jaxson. It came back slowly. Pruning the dead blossoms, her cell phone to her ear. “I did go out to my flowerpot that morning.”

  Jaxson rocked back before rising to pull a chair over next to her and sit down heavily. “Carson McCabe saw you out on the sidewalk tending your flowers. From where you were at the edge of the sidewalk, you could have seen both ways down the highway. You could have seen anyone who came out of the general store at that hour.”

  “What are you saying?” she asked, suddenly afraid.

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone. “The security camera down at the filling station picked up this.” He handed her the phone.

  She started the video, surprised to see herself on it, though some distance away. There she was pruning her flowers, phone to her ear. It brought back the shock of that morning’s news from her father. While a painful memory, what she’d learned since was even more upsetting.

  Suddenly on the video, she’d looked up as a semi passed through town. That’s when she saw the person in a stock coat, the collar turned up against the wind and the coming spring squall. The person had turned to look down the highway—straight in Luna’s direction.

  To her shock, she saw herself looking right at the person. For a moment, she couldn’t breathe, let alone speak. She handed back the phone. “I saw the killer?” Luna shivered and hugged herself, remembering the same figure standing across the street in the dark, staring up at her apartment a night later. Staring up at her. “But I don’t remember seeing anyone that morning and it’s too far away to recognize the person.”

  “McCabe said you looked right at him as he was pulling out from the bar parking lot, but he got the feeling you didn’t really see him.”

  She shook her head. “I was on the phone with my father, and he was telling me...” She glanced up at him.

  Jaxson groaned. “That I’d lied to you.”

  She nodded. “I was in shock. I was just going through the motions. I hadn’t even remembered going out there that morning.”

  He turned away for a moment as if he had more bad news. When he turned back, she caught her breath, terrified of what he was going to say.

  “The deliveryman who found Vi’s body, he’s just a teenager, barely old enough to get hired for the job,” Jaxson said, sounding tired and disgusted and as scared as she felt. “He was attacked. The coroner thinks it was attempted murder.”

  She felt her eyes widen in alarm. “No, that’s horrible. You don’t think...”

  “That Vi’s killer saw him at the store the morning of the murder and was afraid he’d seen something and would remember? As it was, he did. Turns out he saw a set of keys on the storage room floor. He saw them on the way into the store out of the corner of his eye but hadn’t remembered them until later. By the time he found the body and left, the keys were gone. The killer apparently had picked them up.”

  “I thought he didn’t remember seeing anything. How do you know this?”

  “He was scared that the killer might come after him,” Jaxson said. “He left a drawing of the set of keys and a note with a friend that if anything happened to him...”

  Luna sank down into a chair. She could see how upset Jaxson was. He’d met the teenager Vi had once called Johnny on the Spot. She’d said it with some affection, which wasn’t normal for Vi.

  The killer had seen Johnny Berg and now Johnny was in a coma. The killer had seen her too and since Luna had looked right at the person...

  “I think you should go stay with your dad for a while.”

  Luna stared at him. She was scared, but she wasn’t going anywhere. “I’m not leaving.”

  “Your life is in danger,” he said, sounding angry. “You have to go.”

  She shook her head. “If I leave town, that will only convince the killer—if I did see him or her—that I know more than I do. The killer tracked down the deliveryman. You think the killer can’t find me at my father’s?” She rose from the chair and started past him, but he reached for her hand.

  “Then I’m staying here with you.”

  She looked from his hand holding hers to his handsome face and gave him a warning look. He hadn’t earned the right to try to run her life—even if it was to protect her.

  He let go of her hand. “I know. I pretty much blew it with you. But your anger and disappointment at me aside, you know I’m not dangerous.”

  She raised a brow, but she didn’t move away from him. He had no idea how dangerous he was to her heart. Just his touch had sent a bolt of electricity through her. Being this close to him was killing her. She couldn’t bear the thought of him staying in this small apartment with her.

  “Luna, I’ll sleep on your couch. Just until the killer is caught. Just until I prove to you that I can be trusted with your heart.”

  She desperately wanted to argue that she didn’t want or need him sleeping on her couch for numerous reasons—her desire for him being at the top of the list. She also liked to think she could take care of herself.

  But she remembered the dark figure standing out in the storm as it had started to rain. It was the same person from the video, which meant if it was the killer, then the killer had seen her and was still watching her.

  She thought about telling Jaxson, but knew that would only make him more adamant about her leaving town for her own safety. “Just find Vi’s killer.”

  * * *

  KEN DIDN’T KNOW how much longer he could keep this case. The governor was demanding that the state crime investigators be brought in if Vi’s murder wasn’t solved in the next forty-eight hours. Apparently Vi Mullen had been a large contributor to his campaign—just like the previous governor of the same party.

  Forty-eight hours? He couldn’t imagine solving this case that quickly since he and Gray had been working long hours and had little to show for it. But he also couldn’t imagine that the state investigators would be able to solve Vi’s murder any faster either.

  What he desperately needed was a suspect. A viable suspect to appease the governor and buy himself more time before this case was taken away from him. If he could prove that Vera Carter or Axel Mullen arrived in town before the murder, then he would make an arrest. Unfortunately he thought the two might actually be telling the truth—that they hadn’t reached Buckhorn until Vi was already dead.

  He studied the video clip and the photos Gray had taken at the store of the Hate Board, as the said locals called it. There was some nasty stuff on there. Was one of these residents Vi’s killer and Berg’s attempted killer?

  But after a few minutes of cross-checking the names of the most-incensed residents who’d posted, he hit another dead end. Several were in wheelchairs or used walkers, and others had already been interviewed by either him or Gray, including Lynette Crest. Her son AJ’s insufficient-funds check was still on the board.

  His cell phone rang. Gray. “What’s up?” He listened while the deputy told him what he’d learned from Dave Tanner at the bar about the keys. Ken had hoped that the drawing of the keys would be the lead that broke the case wide open.

  Now it sounded like the drawing had only helped find another set of the same keys that had been in a drawer at the bar for who knew how long. Clearly they must go to a vehicle that wasn’t driven a lot—or the driver had forgotten where he or she had left the other set of keys.

  All the keys did was connect Berg’s attacker to Vi’s murder. Ken knew he should be glad that he had probably only one killer—and not two—running loose.

  “You’re saying that the keys Berg drew are a second set and the keys found in the drawer were the originals,” he said. “Then this person been driving all this time with the second set?”

  Gray shrugged. “Whoever left their keys at the bar hasn’t bothered to pick them up for who knows how long. Maybe they have another vehicle they drive most of the time and this is a spare car—just like the keys. All we have to do is find the vehicle. If the keys fit...”

  “Yeah,” Ken said. “Hang on to the keys, but in the meantime, they released that suitcase that was found under the floorboards. You interested in seeing what’s inside?”

  * * *

  THE SMALL FLOWERED suitcase lay in the middle of a sheet of plastic as Jaxson was let into the motel room.

  “You up to this?” Yarrow asked. “You’re looking a little green around the gills again.”

  “I’m fine,” Jaxson said. But he was far from it, as the acting marshal threw him a pair of disposable gloves.

  “I don’t suspect we’ll find anything of interest. We can only hope there will be some clue as to who this girl was since no purse was found with her remains.” Yarrow turned to him. “Open her up.”

  He could feel the older man’s gaze on him as he reached across the plastic. He’d expected to find the zipper rusted, but mummification, he’d learned, required a dry closed-in space. Like under floorboards. The zipper made a purring sound as he unzipped his way around the bag and then lifted the lid.

  An old musty smell rose from the suitcase. He recognized the blouse lying on top and quickly took it out and laid it on the plastic. There wasn’t that much in the suitcase, but then again Amy hadn’t brought much to his house when she’d conned her way in. It seemed that she hadn’t gone home for more clothes before disappearing.

  A pair of worn jeans, a black skirt, several pairs of underwear, no bra other than the one she’d been wearing apparently. There was an old sweatshirt of his, the Blackfoot Athletic Department logo so faded it was unreadable.

  He set it aside. There was only one more item in the suitcase. He picked up the T-shirt; one Katie had given him. It was navy with the silhouette of a football player going up for a touchdown catch on the front.

  Jaxson had a sudden flash of the day she’d given it to him. He’d just found out he was being offered a full ride to one of the colleges he’d hoped to attend. He remembered the tears in Katie’s eyes as if she knew that once they went away to college, the two of them would be over. As it was, they had ended even sooner.

  As he carefully lifted the T-shirt from the suitcase, something inside it rustled. He froze, and his gaze shot to Yarrow who was standing over this scene, arms folded. Reaching inside, he pulled out several notepad sheets of paper that Amy had obviously hidden there. He got a glimpse of Amy’s swirly handwriting and was about to set them on the plastic when Yarrow reached for them.

  As the acting marshal read what was written, he let out a curse. “These are blackmail notes.”

  Jaxson rose, his heart a sledgehammer in his chest. He tried to breathe as Yarrow handed him the top one. Amy’s curlicued handwriting was at odds with the threatening nature of the notes. He let out a breath. It looked as if Yarrow was right and she’d been practicing writing blackmail notes.

  To his father? With a relief that made his knees weak, he saw that she hadn’t written anyone’s name at the top of the sheets. Who had Amy been trying to blackmail for five-thousand dollars—the same amount Jaxson’s father had allegedly been paid by Tom Eaton?

  * * *

  AGAINST JAXSON’S PROTESTS, Luna got some extra bedding out for him and put it on the couch. She’d given him an extra key to the door downstairs and to her apartment without further argument.

  All the time she’d tried not to think about what it would be like having him this close. If she’d dreamed about him last night, tonight would be worse.

  Jaxson had insisted on making dinner, frying up the rainbow trout she had taken from the refrigerator along with sweet potato fries, Luna’s favorite, and a small salad. They’d eaten on the couch, watching the local news.

  She’d gotten the feeling that neither of them wanted to talk about the murders or the future. She tried not to think about the video he’d shown her and the person she’d looked right at and hadn’t really seen the morning of the murder. There was no doubt it was the same person who’d been standing across the street, watching her apartment.