Cowboy Swagger Read online

  “Had she been diagnosed with a life-threatening condition?”

  “No. Our visit turned into a true-confessions session for which I was totally unprepared. I knew living with Dad’s belligerence wasn’t easy. He and I had clashed on many occasions, but he never seemed to get to Mom the way he did me. That’s why I was totally unprepared for the bomb she dropped on me.”

  “The divorce bomb?”

  “How did you guess?”

  “I witnessed it more than once in the service with guys who had never seen it coming. One day they’re telling you about the wonderful wife and kids back home, the next they’re reading Dear John.”

  “Mom said that she’d had all she could take of my father and that she’d only stayed with him the last few years because of me. She wanted me to graduate and be on my own before she left him.”

  Which basically made Collette the scapegoat for her mother’s bad marriage. Talk about piling on the guilt. And Dylan could imagine all holy hell breaking out when Glenn McGuire found out he was being dumped.

  “How did the sheriff react to the prospect of divorce?” he asked her.

  “Mom hadn’t told him and didn’t plan to until she was ready to walk out the door. She said she knew he would explode and that there would be no living in the same house with him after that.”

  “So you were the first to know?”

  “I think so, but that wasn’t the half of it. She said my brother was conceived out of wedlock and that even after Dad had said he loved her and asked her to marry him, he’d still been writing to an old girlfriend begging her to take him back.”

  “How did she discover that?”

  “Apparently the woman returned all the letters to Dad with a note asking him to stop writing. Mother found them in the attic when she was going through some of Dad’s college yearbooks. The letters were important enough to him that he kept them all those years, and believe me, Dad is not the sentimental sort.”

  “What did he say when she confronted him?”

  “She didn’t. That’s my Mom. She hated conflict and avoided it at all costs, but I think the letters were the real impetus for deciding to leave him. She insisted I read the letters.”

  “And did you?”

  Collette shook her head. “They were Dad’s property. I wouldn’t have felt right. I refused to take them, but she stashed them in my luggage without my knowing it before I went back to UT.”

  “What did you do with them?”

  “I still have them. I’ve thought of returning them to Dad, but that would mean having a conversation with him about them, and I’ve never wanted to deal with that.”

  “How do the accident and strokes fit in with her wanting a divorce?”

  Collette’s shoulders sagged, and she dropped her head to stare at the toe of her right boot that she was twisting as if putting out a lit cigarette.

  “I only know the rest from what Dad told me. I heard about the accident just as I’d finished my last final. Dad had gone in to work early that day to deal with a case of vandalism at the high-school football stadium. He’d gotten caught in a sudden spring thunderstorm and had gone home to change into dry clothes. When he got there, Mom was packing her bags.”

  Rotten way to find out your wife was leaving, Dylan thought. He wouldn’t even wish that on a hardheaded, cantankerous guy like the sheriff. Not that he was taking sides.

  “Dad confronted her and they had an argument. His story is that he tried to grab her arm to keep her from leaving before they had a chance to talk things out. She slung a duffel at him and slipped in the process, falling down the steps and banging the back of her head against the heavy antique bell stand in the corner of the landing. When they got to the hospital the doctors told him she had a concussion. From there it went from bad to tragic.”

  “Was your mother conscious?”

  “No, and when she was still unconscious the next day, they did a CAT scan that showed brain contusions. I rushed home from Austin, though they were still telling us she’d be okay.”

  Collette’s voice grew shaky. Her hands had grown clammy, and she pulled them from his and wiped them on her jeans.

  “We can finish this conversation later,” Dylan said. “I should have never asked when you have so much else to deal with.”

  “I’d like to finish it now,” she said, her gaze straight ahead. She pulled her arms tight around her chest. “I’ve never talked about this with anyone else, not even Bill. I think maybe it’s time.”

  “Then I’m glad I’m here.”

  “Thanks.” She propped her elbow on the arm of the bench and supported her head with her hand. “Mom remained in the ICU and they kept her sedated so that her brain could rest. When she came to, she recognized me and Dad and talked to both of us, though she avoided mentioning her fall or the divorce. But then, so did we. It didn’t seem the right time for it.

  “I left the hospital that night, thinking all was well, but then she slipped into a coma during the night. An MRI the next morning indicated vasospasms.”

  “I’m not familiar with that.”

  “Constriction of the blood vessels that limit blood to the brain. As a result of that there were clear signs that she’d suffered multiple strokes.”

  Dylan had known several guys who’d had brain contusions, both on his high-school hockey team and in the service. None had ever had strokes or any lasting complications. “Are strokes normal after brain contusions?”

  “No, the neurologist said he’d seen it occur after aneurysms, but it’s extremely rare after contusions. But it does happen. It did happen. Mom never recovered. She died a few days later.”

  Collette’s head fell against his shoulder, and she cratered against him as the emotional strain drained her body of strength. The friction between her and her father made sense to him now. She blamed him for the accident and her mother’s resulting death. She had never let herself forgive him.

  Dylan was far from an expert on family dissension, but he’d lived with it for years. That’s how he knew that family ties could hold against most anything the world threw at them. Those ties were why he was back in Mustang Run. They were why he was trying to find some way to connect with his father.

  They were why Collette needed to let go of the blame and hostility and go on with her life. Unless she believed the fall wasn’t an accident.

  “I know Dad didn’t intentionally push Mom down the stairs,” Collette said, as if reading his mind. “But—”

  Her cell phone rang, yanking them both back to the problem at hand. “It’s Dad,” she said, sitting up straight and pushing her back against the wooden slats of the bench. She answered the call with a question. “Have you found Eleanor’s attacker?”

  Dylan didn’t have to hear the answers to get the gist of them. Disappointment and frustration were written all over Collette’s face. Sitting around, doing nothing while they waited for the next attack was never good battle strategy.

  Fortunately, Dylan had a plan.

  IT WAS JUST AFTER two-thirty when Collette and Dylan pulled up in front of her house. They’d stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant on the way back from the hospital. As usual, she’d nibbled at her meal, leaving more than half of the Texas-size bacon/jalapeño burger on the plate.

  Dylan had devoured all of his along with a side of onion rings, and washed it all down with a tall glass of iced tea. She liked watching him eat. He did it with such relish.

  In fact she liked everything about him. It was completely out of character for her to fall this hard, this fast. But then she’d never met a man like Dylan Ledger.

  Tough as nails, yet thoughtful. Protective, but not domineering. And so incredibly sexy and virile that he took her breath away even in a crisis.

  “We can just pick up your appointment book and take it back to the ranch if you’d rather clear out of here,” Dylan said.

  She pushed her key into her front-door lock. “I usually keep it with me, but in all the confusion, I forg
ot it when I changed handbags yesterday. I’m fine to work here. I don’t see Sukey’s car, so she must be done with the cleaning.”

  Collette opened the door, and they were greeted by a house that was so clean it sparkled and was fragrant with the fresh scent of flowers. She didn’t have to look far to find them. A huge bouquet of spring blossoms in brilliant pink, snowy white and vivid red sat in the middle of the antique chest that served as coffee table. She recognized the vase as one of her own.

  “Alma must have sent the flowers with Sukey,” Collette said, walking over for a better look at the bouquet. “It’s not something Bill would think to do.”

  Dylan grabbed her arm as she reached for the card.

  “Let me get that for you.”

  “I’m not help—” She broke off the sentence as she saw him carefully touch only the edges of the card. He thought they could be from the stalker. But the man had never sent flowers or gifts before.

  Dylan murmured a couple of choice sentiments under his breath. That told her all she needed to know. “They’re from him, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah. He’s either a complete psycho or there’s method to his madness.”

  “Which would you guess?”

  “The latter,” Dylan admitted.

  He held the card so that Collette could read it without touching it, just in case there were fingerprints. She doubted there were. The man had outfoxed them at every turn. No reason to think he’d screw up now.

  So sorry about your friend. I can’t sleep for thinking it could have been you. I couldn’t bear to see you in pain. Take care, my sweet Collette. We’ll talk soon.

  Her blood boiled. “I can’t believe his gall to just walk in and out of my house like this.”

  “Wait here,” Dylan said.

  Her pulse quickened as he rushed past her and to the back of the house. Did Dylan think the stalker was still here? What if he was?

  What if he’d come straight here from the hospital and arrived while Sukey was cleaning? What if Dylan found her lying on the floor in a pool of blood?

  Collette rushed toward the kitchen. Dylan caught her on his way out and pulled her into his arms.

  “It’s okay,” Dylan said. “Everything’s in place. There’s no sign that he’s been inside the house. Do you have Sukey’s phone number?”

  “No, but I can get it from Alma.”

  “Do it and then call Sukey and see if the flowers were here when she cleaned.”

  “Maybe they were delivered while she was here,” Collette said. “If he delivered them himself, she could have seen him.”

  “Don’t count on that.”

  “We’re past due for a break.” She called Alma on her cell phone, interrupting a pedicure. A few minutes later she had Sukey on the phone.

  “The house looks great,” Collette said, not wanting to alarm her.

  “Thank you. I dropped your key off with Mrs. McGuire when I finished.”

  “Thanks. I’ll get it from her.” After a moment’s hesitation she asked, “Did someone deliver flowers while you were here?”

  “They were sitting by your door when I got there and were starting to wither. I put them in the vase of water for you and tied the pretty pink ribbon that held them around the vase. They looked better right away.”

  “Yes, they’re lovely. I just thought you might have seen the man who delivered them.”

  “No, but whoever sent them must like you a lot. It’s a really big bouquet.”

  Someone must really like her, all right. They’d like her dead. They must also think she was a moron.

  She disconnected the call after thanking the woman again, then turned to Dylan. “Could this man possibly be so arrogant that he believes a bouquet of flowers will make me think he’s not the man who attacked Eleanor?”

  “You wouldn’t know it with such certainty if we hadn’t discovered that the last call was made from the hospital. No reason for him to think he’s not still calling with impunity.”

  “And free to roam the hospital conniving to get into Eleanor’s room and kill her.”

  “Maybe not,” Dylan said. “He may have found out that she’s been talking to the sheriff and assumes she’s already given a description of him. But we still need to move quickly.”

  “Agreed. I’ll get my daily planner. We can work at my kitchen table. That will give us more room to spread out.” Besides, she couldn’t avoid the room forever just because it reminded her of the attack.

  Dylan followed her down the narrow hallway and explained his plan. “I’ll start going through the phone records and circle all the ones that could be from the stalker. Hopefully we’ll find a pattern between his calling and where you’d been and who you’d seen on those days.”

  And if there was a pattern, that would at least give them a place to start. If the pattern involved a specific location—stores, banks, offices—the sheriff’s department could confiscate the appropriate security footage and see if anyone appeared to be following her.

  Success was iffy, as Dylan had said when he’d proposed his plan, but doing something was far better than waiting for the next vicious drama to unfold. Or for the results of the DNA testing.

  A minute later she returned to the kitchen and set her planner on the table near Dylan’s elbow. “I’m having a diet cola. Would you like one?”

  “No, thanks, but water would be good,” he said, circling in red another suspect call from the list of numbers.

  She got him a glass of water and then pulled the soda from the fridge and popped the cap.

  “Did you make note of the dates or times of any of the stalker’s calls?” Dylan asked as she slid into a chair next to his.

  “I didn’t the first few times, but I started keeping track of all of them about three weeks ago. I received the first call from him around the middle of March.”

  “How about March twelfth at ten-thirty in the evening?” Dylan asked. “That’s the first indication I see of a call from a number that can’t be traced to an individual account.”

  “The time sounds right. I know I was working late in my studio the first time he called.”

  She checked her calendar for that day. “I had a sitting with the Clerys for their adorable daughter’s first-birthday pictures, a consultation with the Aldings of Marble Falls for an upcoming wedding, and I’d gone to Betts Cummings’s real-estate office to photograph her at her desk for a new Web site she was having designed.”

  “You do stay busy.”

  “And I can’t keep canceling appointments the way I’ve done this week. Let’s see, there was also a late-afternoon dentist appointment for my semiannual cleaning.”

  She checked the date for the following weekend. The gallery showing was marked and highlighted in yellow.

  “That could have well been the date of his first call. I know I was framing some photos I’d taken of lightning bolts during a recent storm.”

  Dylan looked up from his list. “You take pictures of storms?”

  “Sometimes. I’d been experimenting with various shutter speeds and that night I got it right. The clarity of the streaks of light was remarkable. One of the Austin galleries was having a big show that coming weekend and had asked to include some of my nature photographs so I was working extra late.”

  “I’d love to see some of your work.”

  “The first chance we get, as long as you promise to be duly impressed by my offerings.”

  “I can’t imagine not being impressed by anything you do.”

  A preposterous burn crept to her cheeks. At twenty-seven, she shouldn’t blush at a casual compliment. Had the comment come from anyone but Dylan, she’d have paid it no mind. This was just more of the sensually decadent effect he had on her. And reason enough to keep her mind on the task at hand.

  “If I’d any idea the calls would lead to this, I would have kept excellent records. But who expects this kind of trouble in Mustang Run?” She realized as soon as the words were out of her mouth that Dylan w
as not the person to have said that to, not after what had happened to his mother in this town. And that had been when the population was much smaller than it was now.

  “Nowhere is totally safe these days,” Dylan said. “If someone’s motivated to commit crimes, they find a way.”

  Motivation was the key. What was the motivation for stalking her or for wanting her dead?

  “What about March eighteenth?” Dylan asked. “You received another suspicious call on that day, this one at 1:10 p.m.”

  She checked the calendar. “That was a Saturday. My to-do list says pick up nails to fix a loose shutter and meet Melinda and Eleanor in Austin for an early dinner.”

  “Where did you shop for nails?”

  “At Knight’s Hardware. It’s just a couple of blocks from my studio.” Her memory kicked in with a gasp of insight. “That’s also where I got the bronzed metal paint for the frames I made for the lightning bolts. I stopped by there on my way back to the studio that night. Mr. Knight was just locking up, but he waited for me to purchase what I needed.”

  “How often do you visit Knight’s Hardware?”

  “Maybe once a month, but I pass it every time I walk down to Abby’s or Joyce’s Soups and Salads for lunch. That’s at least a couple of times a week.”

  “Tell me about the employees at the hardware store.”

  “There’s usually just Larry Knight, his nephew Kingsley and sometimes Larry’s wife, Jane. Larry’s the owner.”

  “What do you know about Larry?”

  “Larry Knight is a family man, hardworking, active in his church and works with the Boy Scouts. I was photographing his son Carl’s wedding the night Eleanor was attacked. Believe me, Larry has not been stalking me. Besides, I know his voice.”

  “What about Kingsley?”

  “He’s still in high school, a senior, I think. He only works part-time. He’s always friendly and helpful when I go in, but he’s never been into any trouble that I know of. Again, I know his voice and his cheerleader girlfriend. You can rule him out, too.”

  “Do they have security cameras inside the shop?”