She shifted so she could take her cellphone out of the holder. She pulled up the picture she’d taken of the tread marks she’d found in the field behind the Dailys’ trailer, then held it up to the tire. The tread pattern was an identical match. As was the red mud.
“No, it couldn’t be,” she breathed. Why would the sheriff want to burn down the Dailys’ trailer? Cal had said the sheriff had never liked him. But burning down their home wasn’t the same as handing out a few parking and speeding tickets. And yet, the mud and tread marks said the sheriff had been in the field behind the trailer park. She needed to figure out why. She snapped a few pictures of the mud in the fender wells. When she was getting a good picture of the tire treads, the sheriff’s voice caused her to freeze.
“What are you doing, Deputy?”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Blistered biscuits, she’d been so excited about her find, she hadn’t heard the sheriff pull into the parking lot. Had he heard the clicks of the phone? Did he know what she’d been doing? Her first thought was to crawl out the other side and get the heck out of there. But good law officers didn’t run with their tails between their legs. They confronted suspects and then arrested them if need be.
But before they did. They called for back up.
“I’ll be right there, sheriff. Just getting the keys I dropped.” She quickly fired off a text to Lincoln telling him what she suspected and that she was at the office with the sheriff. Once it was sent, she slid the phone into her bra and started to shimmy out from beneath the truck. Before she was completely out, she unhooked the safety from her holster and prayed she wouldn’t have to use her gun.
Her prayer was answered.
She didn’t have to use her gun.
Before she could even get to her knees, pain exploded in her head and the world went dark.
Chapter Twenty
Sheriff Willaby lived in a small stucco house a twenty-minute drive from Simple—but only a short hike from where Sam’s truck had been found and towed. The pieces of the puzzle continued to fall into place, and Lincoln now had a pretty clear picture on what had happened that night at Cotton-Eyed Joe’s.
A scared deputy is called out to handle a bar fight. He removes the instigator from the bar but, either in the parking lot or at the jail, the drunk man becomes belligerent and threatens the young deputy’s authority. The scared officer pulls his gun and, in a scuffle, or just due to fear, the officer shoots the instigator. He knows he’s in a lot of trouble—especially if the man he shot didn’t have a weapon—he panics and decides he has to hide the truth. He buries the body on the Double Diamond so if Sam’s disappearance is discovered, he can blame it on the troubled teens. Which would be easy since the entire town blames the delinquent boys for everything. Then he leaves the truck on the side of the road and hikes back to his house. Later, he will have the truck towed. But in his hurry to cover up what he did, he doesn’t realize his hat fell off in the parking lot of Cotton-Eyed Joe’s.
It becomes the only evidence to the crime.
The story made perfect sense. And Willaby would’ve gotten away with it if Maisy hadn’t shown up looking for her father.
Lincoln parked in the front of Willaby’s house and got out. The yard was filled with weeds and there was no sign of the sheriff’s truck or official SUV. But they could be in the big barn-style garage next to the house. Lincoln unhooked the safety on his holster and peeked in through the gaping hole between the two doors. The only vehicle inside was an old truck with two missing tires.
Which meant the sheriff had already headed into town.
For the first time, he was thankful Dixie had turned in her badge. He didn’t want her anywhere near the sheriff until he was behind bars. Willaby might not have started out as a cold-blooded killer, but fear of being caught could turn him into one.
Lincoln pulled back one door of the garage. While he was there, he might as well look around for more evidence. The only thing he found of interest was an empty gasoline can. But there would be no way to prove it had been used to start the Dailys’ fire.
The sound of a vehicle pulling into the yard had him sliding his gun from the holster and moving back against the wall of the garage. It wasn’t the sheriff who came strutting in. It was Maisy. She froze when she saw him standing there with a gun pointed at her.
She held up her hands. “Now’s your chance to get rid of me. Not a soul would suspect a Texas Ranger.”
He holstered his gun. “What are you doing here?”
“I followed you. I’m through waiting for you to tell me what’s going on with my father’s case. If you won’t keep me in the loop, I’ll just tag along after you and be annoying. Which happens to be my specialty. Now why are you snooping around the sheriff’s house?”
“How do you know it’s the sheriff’s?”
“Because I came here one day to ask him if he’d found anything else out about my daddy.”
The thought of Maisy coming out here alone freaked Lincoln out. “Don’t you know that curiosity killed the cat?”
“Only because she wasn’t packing. But don’t worry, cowboy. I’m not going to shoot you . . . yet. So answer the question. Why are you—” She glanced at the gas can in his hand and her eyes widened. “You think the sheriff started the Daily fire, don’t you?”
He had to give it to her. She was a smart little
