Cecil looked as if ready to put up an argument.

  The sheriff, realizing how quickly this could go south, gave Cecil a way out. “I’ll wait by my patrol car, as long as you promise me this young woman is safe.”

  Irma Crandell scoffed at even the idea of Molly not being safe in her home. Motioning to her granddaughter, she turned and headed back inside. Over her shoulder, she said, “And put that shotgun down, Cecil.”

  As Brandt returned to stand next to his patrol SUV, Cecil set down the shotgun, but he didn’t go see to his tractor. Instead, he sat down on the porch in a weathered rocker, the weapon within reach.

  Brandt didn’t like anything about this, but under the circumstances, there wasn’t much he could do. He had no evidence that these people had anything to do with Clay Wheaton’s death so there would be no chance of getting a warrant. And he sure as hell didn’t have any control over Molly Lockhart.

  Chapter Ten

  Out of the corner of her eye, Molly had watched Cecil as if he was a snake coiled up to strike. He’d leaned the shotgun against the house, but not before she’d seen his fingers shaking with fury.

  She’d been almost relieved to get past him and inside the cold and dark old house. It didn’t feel that much safer. Shadows seemed to hunker behind the large worn furniture. Irma Crandell led her back through the living room, down a long hallway and finally into the massive ranch kitchen. She followed the woman and the smell of boiled cabbage, her heart in her throat. She’d taken a chance, one the sheriff would be furious about, but she had to know more about her father.

  If the information the sheriff had gotten on the DNA was correct, this jerky-tough, scrawny woman had given birth to him. Molly figured Irma Crandell had to be eighty but looked much older as if weathered by her hard life. As they traveled through the old house, Molly had tried to imagine her father growing up here with Cecil and Irma as his parents.

  Irma motioned her toward a chair at the kitchen table and went back to her cooking at a huge old stove. “Tell me about Seth,” the woman said, her back to Molly.

  She had come here hoping to find out about her father—not to fill his mother in on the past half century. On shaky legs, she lowered herself into a chair. “I didn’t know he was Seth Crandell.” She waited for a reaction; getting none, she continued. “He’d changed his name to Clay Wheaton and became a ventriloquist.”

  The woman stiffened, then turned, clearly surprised. “One of them fellas that throw their voice to make a doll talk?”

  Close enough, Molly thought, and nodded. “After he came out of the military and married my mother, he worked for a while as a mechanic before he became a ventriloquist. I was nine when he left my mother and me. I didn’t know anything about his past.”

  Irma turned back to the stove. “How’d you find us then?”

  She took another shaky breath, let it out. “My father came to Fortune Creek, to the hotel there and was murdered.” No response. “When they ran his DNA, I discovered his real name and his connection to you. I thought he must have come back here to see you.” Still no response. “I was hoping you could tell me about him since I know nothing about the first seventeen years of his life.”

  Irma lifted a lid on a pot, stirred and put down the spoon. She seemed to slump against the stove for a moment. Molly started to reach for her, afraid she might collapse, but the woman quickly caught herself and turned, wiping her hands on her apron again.

  “He was a good boy, so sweet, so gentle,” Irma said, her blue eyes filling. “Cecil...” She shook her head. “Seth didn’t fit in here on the ranch. It was hard on Cecil even before...” She stopped, swallowed, looked away. “Before the trouble in town, before Seth had to leave.”

  “What kind of trouble in town?” Molly asked, her voice almost a whisper as the pots on the stove boiled and burbled, the only sound in the room.

  “That girl.” She waved a hand through the air as if to silence herself. “Where did my son live?”

  “I don’t know. I lost track of him. I was born in New York City. That’s where I still live. I’m a financial analyst. I help businesses invest their money.” She saw the woman’s blank look along with absolutely no interest in her granddaughter’s career. She tried not to let that hurt. What had she expected? Open arms? Any kind of recognition at all?

  She refused to let this woman’s lack of interest in her hurt her any more than her father’s already had. After all, this woman and that man out on the porch had raised her father. Maybe the sheriff was right. Maybe her father could only communicate through a dummy after being raised here in this house.

  “What girl?” she asked.

  Irma shook her head. “Not diggin’ up that old bone.” She turned back to her stove. “New York City huh?” she mumbled under her breath before she said, “You should go. I wouldn’t come back here if I was you.”

  Molly rose, studying her grandmother’s years-hardened brittle frame for a few moments before she headed for the door. On the porch, she passed her grandfather, watching him from the corner of her eye as she tried not to show fear. She walked, head high, to the patrol SUV where the sheriff stood waiting for her. She wasn’t going to let these people get to her.

  “Next time I come out here, Cecil, it will be with a warrant,” the sheriff said. Without another word, they both climbed in. The sheriff started the engine and drove down the road out of the Crandell Ranch. Molly felt a strange numbness, remembering something her mother used to say when she asked about her father.

  Sometimes you don’t want to know the truth.

  * * *

  BRANDT COULDN’T BEGIN to guess what had happened inside that house. He mentally kicked himself for letting Molly go in alone—even as he knew he couldn’t have stopped her. Nor, he reminded himself, Cecil would never have allowed him in the house—not without a warrant. He suspected in the past this family had had other run-ins with the law and mentally made a note to check.

  Glancing at Molly, he tamped down his anger knowing it rose from his worry about her because of the reckless, dangerous things she did. If anything, he felt a rush of sympathy. Whatever had happened in that house, it hadn’t been healing. Her father murdered, her lack of a relationship with him and now finding out that she was the granddaughter of those people back there who he suspected didn’t give a whit about her.

  He couldn’t imagine what she was going through. He tried to read her mood as he drove. She’d just met her grandparents. Not the reunion she’d hoped for, he would bet on that. She couldn’t have expected much given Cecil’s reaction. Hard to tell with Irma, but something told him that Molly wasn’t going to be invited back anytime soon. He gave her time to process it, not pushing, not scolding her for doing exactly what he told her not to do.

  “Okay, that was weird,” Molly said as they reached the main road. She seemed to shake herself as if throwing off whatever had happened inside that house.

  “Are you all right?” he asked, worried about what that old woman might have told her, even as he reminded himself that he had tried to protect her from her family.

  She looked over at him. “Aren’t you going to yell at me for getting out of the vehicle, Sheriff?”

  “Would it do any good?”

  “No.”

  “Then I guess not. Learn anything interesting a sheriff should know?”

  “All she told me was that Seth never fit in on the ranch—Cecil was disappointed in him even before he got into trouble with some girl in town. I’m assuming she meant Eureka—isn’t that the closest town?”

  He nodded. “What kind of trouble?”

  “‘Not diggin’ up that old bone,’ Irma said and then told me I shouldn’t come back to the ranch again. I suspect if she’d been disappointed in her son before, she was more so now. Apparently, she isn’t a fan of New York City nor of ventriloquism.”

  Brandt chuckled, relieved that Molly seemed to be taking the rejection well enough. At least on the surface. She’d felt rejected by her father and now her grandparents. He wished there was more he could do. But there were things he couldn’t protect her from. Maybe herself especially.

  “If one of the family killed him,” Molly said. “Irma didn’t know about it. I got the impression she hadn’t even known he was in the area. But if she finds out who killed her son...well, I think she might hurt them. I got the feeling she loved my father and that she blames Cecil for him leaving.”

  She turned to look at him, determination burning like tears in her eyes. “I want to dig up that old bone and find out why my father was sent away.”

  * * *

  CECIL CAREFULLY PUT his shotgun just inside the door where he always kept it and walked into the kitchen. Irma didn’t acknowledge him as she set the table.

  “You want me to call everyone in for lunch?” he asked. After all these years, he knew this woman better than he knew himself. Just by the set of her narrow slightly stooped shoulders he knew she was furious with him.

  She stepped to the flatware drawer, jerked it open and pulled out a large carving knife before she responded. “Did you see him?”

  The question hung in the air. He studied her grip on the knife, the way her arthritic fingers clutched it until her knuckles turned white. A lie caught in his throat. “Seth?”

  She turned then, knife in hand as she leveled her gaze on him, her warning as clear as the sharp point of the blade. The intensity of her look scared him. Seth had always been her favorite. She’d coddled that boy, and they’d fought about it endlessly until he’d left. Even after what had happened, she’d tried to stop him from signing the papers so the boy could go into the military, saying he was too young, too gentle. Cecil had hoped the army would toughen the boy up, make a man out of him.

  What Irma hadn’t understood was that Seth had to go and not just because Cecil couldn’t bear the sight of his oldest son and she knew it. Her heart had hardened against him the moment he’d signed the papers that would send Seth into the armed service. Then he’d walked out, turning his back on the two of them as he’d silently hoped never to lay eyes on Seth again.

  “He was murdered at the hotel in Fortune Creek,” she said, her voice raspy and yet controlled. Too controlled.

  He shook his head slowly, the lie coming easily at the mere memory of his son, a grown man, with that ridiculous doll. Making the puppet talk and sing, mocking him, mocking his way of life.

  “Murdered?” He slumped into a chair and put an arm over his eyes. He could feel her watching him, almost feel the initial prick of the blade before he imagined the lethal, life-ending pain as the knife was plunged into him. He could see how badly she wanted to end this. He just hoped she would go for his heart, puncture it and let him bleed out here in this house, here on this ranch that had been his life.

  Time seemed suspended. He couldn’t bear to look into her eyes for fear she would see the truth, and nothing could stop her from what he knew she had wanted to do for years.

  “You’d best call the boys in,” she said dropping the knife back in the drawer and slamming it.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cecil left the house feeling the weight of Irma’s fury over him pushing Seth out settle familiarly on his shoulders. He blamed himself for letting her ruin that boy. He should have stepped in sooner when he saw her mollycoddling Seth. By the time he tried to take the boy in hand, it was too late.

  He shuddered at the memory of the man Seth had become. He still couldn’t believe him with that puppet on his arm—let alone the words that had come out of that creature’s mouth. As if Cecil hadn’t known it was his son saying those painful words, pretending the dummy was doing the talking.

  Balling his hands into fists, he recalled his rage. He’d wanted to stomp that ridiculous doll into sawdust and lock his hands around his son’s throat until he strangled the life from him. Why he had ever agreed to meet Seth after all these years was beyond him. He would regret it the rest of his life. If Irma ever found out...

  And now Seth’s daughter was in town asking a lot of questions, stirring the pot.

  His son Gage came out of his house on the property before Cecil could call out to him. Gage’s sons Cliff and Wyatt appeared next to him on the porch, making it clear that they had been watching the goings-on next door even before his son spoke.

  “What was that about?” Gage asked. He sounded worried. Cecil wanted to tell him not to concern himself. “I thought you ran that sheriff off?”

  Gage was the middle son of the three Cecil had been blessed with. He was thankful for Gage since Seth had been a huge disappointment and Ty... He didn’t like to think about Ty who was buried up on a rise behind the house.

  If it hadn’t been for Gage and his two sons, Cliff and Wyatt, Cecil didn’t know how they would have survived and kept the ranch going.

  “Nothing to worry about. I’ll take care of it,” Cecil said and motioned them away from their house and away from their nosey wives inside. “Let’s talk on the way over to lunch,” he said. Every day, he had Irma make lunch for the boys so they could get back to work without a lot of female prattle at the table from their wives.

  He wondered how much they’d witnessed of the sheriff and the young woman. Better to hear it from him than some fool at the feed store. Something like Seth’s daughter showing up around here was bound to go countywide if not further. Still it made him angry. He didn’t like anyone knowing his business, maybe especially his family.

  “It’s about that murder over in Fortune Creek.”

  “Why would the sheriff be asking you about that?” Gage sounded suspicious. Or worried, he wasn’t sure which.

  Cecil swore, stopping halfway between the houses to get this settled. He couldn’t have them talking about any of it in front of Irma. “The man called himself Clay Wheaton.” He saw that they’d already heard.

  “He was one of them who could throw his voice,” Wyatt said nodding. “Had this doll he called Rowdy who could sing. My friend Huck showed me on YouTube. Damnedest thing I ever saw. The man’s mouth didn’t even move.”

  “If you’re through,” Cecil snapped. “He weren’t really Clay Wheaton. He made that up. His real name was...” He took a breath and let it out. “Seth. Seth Crandell.”

  Both of Gage’s sons looked confused until their father said, “He was my older brother.”

  “I thought you said he died in the war,” Cliff said.

  Seth’s name hadn’t been spoken for more than half a century on this ranch. There were no photos of him in the house. The carving on the old tree trunk was the only sign that Seth had ever existed.

  “What about that girl?” Wyatt asked. “The one who went in the house?”

  Cecil growled under his breath. “Seth’s daughter. She needs to go back from where she come from before she stirs up more trouble. Now I don’t want to hear another word about any of this in front of Irma. She’s upset enough. One word and—”

  “Understood,” Gage said as Cecil gave his grandsons a look that made them snap their mouths shut. “Too bad you can’t shut up everyone in the county when this comes out.”

  Cecil grunted, wishing the same thing. He could feel Gage’s questioning gaze on him as if he knew there was more and when it came out...

  He knew only too well what it would mean if Irma learned even half of the truth.

  In the meantime, he couldn’t have Seth’s progeny showing up here again. The question was what to do about Molly Lockhart. He considered what it would take to get rid of her like he had her father all those years ago. Whatever he decided, he knew he’d have to do it himself—and without Irma finding out.

  * * *

  BRANDT KEPT THINKING about what Molly had told him regarding Seth getting into trouble with some girl in town. While it might be what had sent him away from the ranch, the sheriff suspected it wasn’t the reason Seth Crandell had come home.

  But it very well could be what had gotten him killed. It was definitely a place to start by looking into Seth’s past. Fortunately, Molly wanted answers as well.

  “We could go on into Eureka and ask around about your father at the high school,” he said as the patrol SUV idled at the crossroads. Normally, he wouldn’t take a civilian on a murder investigation. But her wanting to know about her father would open doors to them that a badge wouldn’t. Also, he felt the need to keep an eye on her. He had no idea what she might do next.

  “Thought we could stop by the schools, see if anyone remembers Seth or some incident with a town girl about forty years ago,” he continued when she didn’t answer. “I know it’s a long shot, but afterward I’ll spring for an elk burger at Trappers.”

  She nodded as he started to turn left onto the highway toward the small tourist town rather than right toward Fortune Creek. His cell phone rang. It was JP from the coroner’s office. “I need to take this.” Pulling over to the side of the dirt road, he climbed out of the patrol SUV and walked up the road a way before he answered the call. He didn’t want Molly hearing what he knew JP was calling about.

  “I was just finishing up the autopsy,” the coroner said. “You want to wait until I type up my report?”

  “No, what’ve you got?”

  “He appears to have been killed execution style. Shot in the back of the head. The bullet went into his brain. He would have died before he hit the floor.”

  “The other guests at the hotel said they heard a loud thud as he hit the floor. But they said nothing about a gunshot.”

  “He was killed with a .22 caliber handgun. Close range aimed so the bullet entered the brain, powerful enough to pierce the skull and then ricochet around inside the cavity scrambling brain matter, but not powerful enough to exit and make a mess. A nice tidy quiet kill.”