He drove home from the Lone Creek Ranch and headed to his childhood home. His parents had become snowbirds and spent their winters in Arizona. But his sister, Katie, still lived in the family home. She was in the kitchen loading the dishwasher when he walked through the door. She stopped what she was doing when she saw him.
“Hey, there was a lot of commotion over at the Lone Creek Ranch today, huh?”
He shouldn’t have been surprised that his sister had already heard the news. She worked at a bank and news traveled fast with so many people coming and going there.
“How’d you hear about that?”
“Harper Madison came into the bank right after Caleb got back to the station.”
She made no apology for talking gossip at the bank. Katie once told him it was part of her job to listen and make small talk while transacting bank business. A lot like a bartender or hair dresser.
Kas pulled his jacket off and hung it on the hook in the mudroom like they always did as kids. He slipped out of his boots and placed them on the rubber mat by the door and walked into the kitchen in his stocking feet. His parents hadn’t updated the house in over thirty years. His childhood home was so unlike the modern apartment he kept in New York. But this was home. Every kitchen chair with places that had worn polyurethane and every scratch on the kitchen counter was home.
“Levon Taper was killed.”
“I know that part. He got hit in the head with a horseshoe.”
Kas’s sister was so unlike him in so many ways. She liked to dig for answers. It was how she found out her ex-husband had been cheating on her before they were even married and had a child on the way. She knew how to find things out. Their mother used to say she missed her calling as a bank teller. She should have been a detective.
Katie had been shattered by her ex-husband’s betrayal. It had been a whirlwind courtship and a quick wedding. It didn’t take much to figure out why. Within the course of a few months, the SOB drained her bank account. Katie had tried to find a possible excuse for his actions that seemed understandable. The more she dug, the less she found that was forgivable. The marriage ended before the first anniversary and Katie moved home.
She was looking at him as if either she didn’t have enough people to talk to today or the story had become so salacious that she needed to know details to see if it were true.
“There isn’t much beyond what Harper would have told you. I was checking on some investments, or possible investments, and the accident happened. We found him in the barn.”
“Poor Trip,” she said, pulled a kitchen chair away from the table and sat down. “He must be devastated.”
“He is.” He went to the refrigerator and opened it. “Did you make dinner?”
“And when would I have done that? I just got home.”
He glanced over his shoulder at her. She was giving him that look. The one she used to give him right before she pounded him for saying something stupid around her friends.
“I can call for a pizza.”
She crinkled her nose. “No, I’ll make something. I know you’ll eat just about anything so don’t ask what it’s going to be. You’ll know when it’s done.”
“Fair enough.” He chuckled and shut the refrigerator door. “I’ve got to make a phone call and then I’m going to take a shower. Give a holler if you want me to help.”
He went to his room and shut the door before pulling his cell phone out of his pocket. He checked for service. In Sweet, cell phone service was non-existent in most places. You had to be in the bigger cities to get something reliable. He didn’t have a good enough signal to place a call, but he used the wifi on his phone to search for a number in the hopes that he could catch Sean Knight, a veterinarian who was well-known on the rodeo circuit, at his office in Las Vegas. He found the number and then picked up the house phone in his bedroom and dialed.
Sean answered on the first ring and said hello.
“It’s Kasper Dobbs, Sean. You may not remember me from—”
“Sure I do,” Sean said. “You were bull riding when Jesse was still competing in the circuit.”
“If memory serves, you’re based out of Montana, aren’t you?”
“Was. My mom is.”
“Really. Where are you now?”
“Married. My practice it just outside of Las Vegas.”
Disappointment filled him. “Oh, congratulations.”
“Thank you. Was there something I could do for you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Well, now you have me intrigued.” Sean laughed. “What’s on your mind?”
“It may be nothing. I’m investing in some stud stock and trying to breed some horses in Sweet.”
“Okay.”
“But there is an unusual problem happening with some of the animals that has me a bit concerned there may be a problem with infertility.”
“Widespread?”
“I don’t want to get ahead of myself. I just want to look at every possibility.”
He blew a breath out that sounded distorted over the phone. “I’m heading over to my mother’s house for a family thing in a week or two. “I could stop by while I’m in Montana and we could talk more about it.”
“I’d like that. It may be nothing,” he said quickly.
“Or it may be something serious. Better to check it out.”
“Thanks.”
He hung up and stared at the phone wondering how Tabby was making out tonight. It was going to be a hard greeting when Dusty and Hal came back to the ranch to the news that Levon was dead. He wanted to go back over there to see Tabby, but he was not part of them. He wasn’t family. They were even if they weren’t blood related. It was best to leave them be and let them grieve alone.
He’d overstepped
