Storming over to Brick’s pickup, she climbed in and tossed the paper sack Lou had given her onto the seat. It toppled over, spilling some of the contents onto the floor.
Mo saw one photo of her sister, the noose around her neck, and burst into tears. She leaned over the steering wheel, letting it all out. For weeks, she’d used her anger keep her from releasing the pain inside her. Now it overflowed with chest-aching sobs, the dam breaking.
After a few minutes, she gulped and wiped furiously at her face. Finally under control, she leaned down to pick up everything that had fallen. She was shoving it all back into the paper sack when she realized the paper in her hand hadn’t come out of the bag Lou had given her.
She stared down at the sheet of paper. It took her a moment to realize what she was looking at—the flyer Thomas’s associate Quinn had handed her outside the jail. Something caught her eye. She smoothed out the sheet of paper.
Jeffrey Palmer, the self-made man and seminar speaker. JP. She remembered Thomas talking about the wonderful speakers his company always managed to book. Hadn’t Tricia gone to one of these with her husband?
The multimillionaire’s list of accomplishments was a mile long. She stared at his photograph. He had to be pushing seventy with thick gray hair and bushy gray eyebrows. This man couldn’t have been Tricia’s lover, could he?
Jeffrey Palmer was hosting a cocktail party the last night of the conference at his home in Big Sky. She was telling herself that it was just a coincidence that the man had the same initials as Tricia’s lover when she turned the flyer over and froze.
In this photograph, Jeffrey Palmer Sr. stood next to his son, Jeffrey “JP” Palmer Jr. Her gaze dropped to the cutline under the photograph. Palmer and his son had received the governor’s award for a nonprofit corporation they’d started called My Son’s Dream, an animal sanctuary.
Her heart began to pound harder. My Son’s Dream. MSD, Inc. The animal shelter where Tricia had volunteered. Mo remembered a baseball cap with MSD, Inc., on it that her sister had worn to a picnic last summer.
She looked closer at the photo of JP. According to his bio, he was just a year older than Mo. The closer she looked at him, she realized she recognized him. He’d changed considerably since college. He’d filled out, no longer wore thick dark-rimmed glasses, and his dull brown hair was now blond. In college, he’d gone by Junior.
Like Hope, Jeffrey junior had always been at the periphery of the group that she and Tricia had hung out with. So Hope would have known Jeffrey junior, but probably wouldn’t have remembered him by JP any more than Mo had.
Was it possible this was Tricia’s lover? It had to be. It was his animal shelter that Tricia had worked at. She recalled Thomas complaining about how much time she spent down there. That had to be where they’d met, and hadn’t Hope said that Tricia and her lover had shared a soft spot for animals?
Her heart was a drum in her chest. She recalled Hope saying that Tricia and her lover had joked about how much Thomas loved Jeffrey Palmer’s seminars. The pieces of the puzzle fit.
“I’ve got you, JP,” she said as she started the pickup. Now all she had to do was find out why her sister had wanted her to have the papers she’d left for her. They must have meant something to Tricia. Mo had a friend, Elroy, in finance.
Thirty minutes later, she dropped off the papers. Elroy promised to get back to her. She thought about waiting until she got Brick out on bail before she confronted JP, but that would be so not like her, she thought as she drove out to the animal shelter.
Chapter Fourteen
Brick sat on the cot in the cell, worrying about Mo. He knew she could take care of herself. But he also knew how emotionally involved she was in finding out the truth about her sister’s death. That alone could put her off her usual guard. Not to mention, they’d already been shot at. He no longer doubted that they had been on the trail of a killer. A killer who now knew that Mo was after him.
At the rattle of his cell door, he looked up to find a guard standing there. “Phone call,” the man said, not sounding happy about it as he unlocked the door. “Come on.”
In a small office off the cell block, he took the phone that was handed to him. “Hello?” He was hoping to hear Mo’s voice. But his gut told him there could be only one person calling. He closed his eyes at the sound of his father’s voice.
“What the hell, Brick?”
He turned his back to the guard, keeping his voice down. “I was jumped in the alley by three cops. Believe me, I didn’t start this.”
Marshal Hud Savage sighed. “Maybe it’s the best place for you right now.”
“It’s not.” He glanced at the cop standing by the door. “Mo is out there trying to find her sister’s murderer. I’m worried about her.”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Mo will get me out once I see a judge.”
“Brick, if you’re serious about keeping your job—”
“I’ll take care of this.” There were witnesses at the bar when Shane attacked Mo and he had hopes that the other two cops would tell the truth when push came to shove. But this wouldn’t look good on his record if he couldn’t convince a judge of his innocence.
MO REALIZED THAT she would have never connected JP with the young man she remembered from college. Seeing
