“With the same gun you’re holding on me?” McCall asked.
“As a matter of fact. Ironic, isn’t it?”
The front door eased open. McCall still couldn’t see who it was, but the way it opened, she was sure the person outside had seen what was going on.
“Then you buried him on the ridge,” McCall said. “Took his rifle—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I left as quickly as I could, but as we were driving back to town, I passed Game Warden Buzz Crawford and remembered the vendetta he and Trace had going on. I put in a call to Fish and Game saying there was someone poaching on the ridge. I knew once Buzz found Trace dead, he wouldn’t call it in. He knew no one would believe him, not the way he hounded Trace all the time. Everyone would believe he did it.”
Something Sandy said stopped McCall for a moment, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was before Sandy finished. McCall could imagine Buzz finding Trace’s body. He would know he’d been set up. The smart thing would have been for him to call 911, but Sandy was right. He would have looked guilty no matter what. He had motive and opportunity, and he was standing over his nemesis’s dead body.
It explained why Buzz had acted so guilty. Everything was starting to make sense. “Buzz buried Trace and got rid of the pickup in the stock pond, then wrote up a poaching ticket to make it look as if my father skipped town because of it.”
Sandy smiled, clearly pleased with herself.
Out of the corner of her eye, McCall saw a blurred dark shape slip in through the front door and drop behind the couch. “And you took my father’s rifle.”
“I thought I might need it someday. As it turned out, I did. Grant was forever boring me to death with talk about his cases. It was too easy to know exactly when to plant the rifle and make sure Buzz Crawford took the fall.”
“Nice job,” McCall said, horrified and yet at the same time awed by Sandy’s twisted criminal mind. “But Buzz must have wondered who the real killer was.” The answer came to her in a flash. “My mother.”
That would explain why Buzz hated Ruby Bates Winchester so much. He thought she’d killed Trace and framed him for the murder. That’s why he’d thought McCall had access to Trace’s rifle and had used it to frame him.
“Bingo!” Sandy said with an unhinged glee.
“You tied it all up with a nice big bow on top,” McCall said. “If you’d just left it at that, you would probably have gotten away with it. But once you murder me, you will ruin your perfect scheme.”
“Oh, that’s just it. I’m not quite done yet. But I will be after you write your confession, admitting that in an attempt to protect your mother, you framed Buzz and, racked with guilt, took your own life.”
“You really don’t think anyone is going to believe my mother killed Trace or that I framed Buzz, do you?”
Sandy burst out laughing. “Are you serious? Everyone in town has speculated for years that Ruby did it. And all of Whitehorse has questioned having a woman deputy in the sheriff’s department. Everyone knows we’re the weaker sex,” she added with a chortle. “It will break poor Grant’s heart since he is so fond of you. But that’s the price he pays for hiring you in the first place.”
The dark shape rose behind Sandy, and with a start, McCall saw the man’s face. Sheriff Grant Sheridan?
That’s when McCall remembered what Sandy had said that had caught her attention. We. She’d said “we were driving back to town” after murdering Trace.
Sandy hadn’t been alone that day when she’d met McCall’s father on the ridge.
McCall’s gaze shot to Grant. The sheriff was out of uniform, dressed in a faded long-sleeved shirt, a pair of worn jeans and sneakers. His head was bare. He stood, arms akimbo, his usually forlorn face set in deep ridges of disappointment.
He stood behind Sandy, his weapon drawn—but pointed at the floor.
LUKE HAD STARTED down Highway 191 toward his place south of town when he’d passed, first Sandy Sheridan, then moments later, the sheriff.
Grant was driving his old pickup instead of his patrol car, and he wore a baseball cap pulled low.
Luke wasn’t sure what had made him curious as he’d watched Grant in his rearview mirror. The sheriff pulled over, leaving his motor running, as if to let a car go by before he fell in behind his wife again.
He’s following her, Luke thought, as Sandy turned down the river road—and Grant followed a good distance behind.
Luke swung his rig around and went after them, wondering if something else had happened. Since his talk with Eugene, he’d been so upset he hadn’t been thinking clearly.
But now as he came around a curve in the road, he saw that Sandy had pulled off at the fishing access closest to McCall’s cabin on the river. If there was one thing Luke knew, it was that Sandy Sheridan was no fisherman.
Even stranger, the sheriff made a quick turn onto a ranch road, going only a short distance before pulling into the trees and cutting his lights.
Luke kept going on past the ranch turnoff and the fishing access road. As soon as he knew he was out of sight around a curve, he pulled over, cutting his lights and engine and got out.
He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then he headed back down the road toward McCall’s cabin, working his way through the trees. Ahead, he saw a dark figure come out of the trees from the spot where Grant had parked his pickup.
What the hell was going on? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have anything to do with McCall, right?
Then how did he explain why the sheriff’s wife appeared to be headed right for the cabin?
Luke had to hang back to let the sheriff cross
