Chapter Seventeen
Lucy awoke hours before the sun came up. She’d slept fitfully through the night, and every hour or so she’d check the time on her iPhone next to the bed. Finally, when she heard stirring in the kitchen, she sat up, wrapped a robe around her, and padded down the hall.
April was there glaring at the coffee maker, as if willing it to brew faster. She was wearing baggy sweats and cowboy boots, and her hair was a bird’s nest.
“I couldn’t sleep,” Lucy said. “I wish I could still blame jet lag, but I know that’s not the reason why.”
“You’re not the only one,” April said. “You’d think I might be used to this sort of thing, but I guess I’m not. This all feels…different.”
“Because it’s Dad,” Lucy said.
April nodded, and resumed glaring at the coffee machine.
“I’ve never done anything like this before,” Lucy said. “I’m scared. I’m nervous about interviewing people on my own.”
“It has to be this way, baby sis,” April said.
“We have to do all three investigations at the same time, and this is the only way to do it. It’s possible that two, or even three, of the ranches were involved.
If the three of us traipsed from one to the other they could tip each other off to what we’re doing. So you have to do your part.”
“Can I have a cup of coffee first?” Lucy said.
“That’s why I’m making it. But don’t expect any of that fine-ass French crap. This is cowboy coffee, the kind us true Americans make in the morning.”
Lucy smiled while she found three mugs in the cupboard.
—
“Do you have a weapon?” April asked Lucy when they were seated at the table.
Lucy held up her phone. “Only this. I plan to record everything.”
“I’m gonna lend you a handgun,” April said.
“I don’t know what I’d do with it. I’m just planning to ask questions, not start shooting people.”
April dug into her large handbag and came out with a small can of pepper spray. “Will you at least take this? You just never know what might happen. I’d feel better if you took this along.”
Lucy sighed and took the can. Then April retrieved a snub-nosed revolver from a drawer in the kitchen.
“This is Mom’s gun,” April said as she opened the cylinder and confirmed that it was loaded with five rounds.
“It’s a .38 Smith & Wesson Ladysmith. No safety to remember, and no hammer to snag on your clothes.
It’s idiotproof. You just point and pull the trigger. ”
“I won’t be needing that,” Lucy said.
April rolled her eyes and returned the weapon to the drawer. “Don’t forget where it is, okay? In case you change your mind?”
“All right, but I won’t.”
“Listen,” April said. “Remember what we talked about last night. Our job is to gather information, to get these ranchers on the record. It’s not to accuse them of anything, or arrest them. When we’ve all done our jobs, we’ll meet back here and compare notes. That’s all.”
“That’s right,” Sheridan said as she entered the kitchen. Unlike her two sisters, she’d already showered and dressed. “When we’ve all compared notes, we need to share what we found with the sheriff. That was my deal with him. And he promised to do the same with us.”
“Oh, yes,” April said with a roll of her eyes. “We must be true to Steve.”
Sheridan ignored the dig. She said to Lucy, “If you feel threatened in any way, you just get the hell out of there. Even if you feel suspicious, you leave.”
“Or if you get one of your famous vibes,” April chimed in.
“Don’t be a hero,” Sheridan said.
“I don’t plan to be.”
“Here,” Sheridan said, tapping quickly on the screen of her phone. “This is Nate’s number. If something bad happens, whatever that is, you have to promise to call him. I made him promise to keep his phone with him for once, and to keep it on.”
Lucy heard her phone chime.
“Sheridan won’t be far away, either,” April said. “And I’ll be at the next ranch down the road. If you need some help ass-kicking, you call one or both of us. Promise?”
“I promise,” Lucy said.
“Of course,” April said, “Sheridan is kind of a physical weakling, as we know. If you need some heads knocked together, call me.”
That made Lucy smile. As Sheridan walked past them to get a mug of coffee, she cuffed April on the top of her head.
—
As she laced on her boots and gathered up her coat in the mudroom, Lucy asked, “Any word from Mom during the night?”
Sheridan and April both checked their phones and said there was no news.
“I take that as a positive,” Lucy said.
“Either that, or she’s too gutted by what might have happened over the last few hours to even talk to us,” April said.
“And on that happy April-like note,” Sheridan said sarcastically, “we’ve got work to do today. Let’s get going and let’s keep in touch with one another.”
—
Lucy had spent over two hours the night before sitting in bed with her laptop, researching Michael Thompson. She’d wished she had access to the law enforcement databases that her mother was privy to, but what she found on her own was intriguing enough.
Michael Thompson was the former CEO of a southeastern telecom company that he’d sold to a conglomerate for hundreds of millions of dollars in the late 1990s.
He’d used his profits to found a hedge fund based in New York and Atlanta, and within ten years he was celebrated in the business and local press as a self-made billionaire.
He owned properties in Atlanta, Hawaii, South Carolina, Switzerland, and of course his ranch in Wyoming.
Thompson had divorced his second wife of twenty-nine years in a high-profile proceeding that was covered in depth by the Atlanta Constitution.
His ex-wife claimed that he’d not only cheated on her in serial fashion but that he’d hidden most of his assets in offshore accounts.
Although the terms of the divorce were sealed, it was assumed by court watchers that the settlement to her amounted to well over five hundred million dollars, plus the compounds in Hawaii, South Carolina, and Europe.
They apparently had no children.
Brandy Thompson, aka Brandy Schwartzkopf, was thirty-two years younger than Michael.
She’d been a cheerleader at South Carolina University before being named runner-up at the Miss South Carolina pageant while still in college.
Michael Thompson was listed as one of the judges of the competition, and that’s apparently where they’d met.
Lucy found a photo of them following the marriage ceremony at the Buckhead Club in Atlanta.
Michael was beaming in a tuxedo, his arm wrapped around Brandy, who had chestnut hair at the time.
She was slim and gorgeous in a full-length white wedding dress sparkling with sequins.
Lucy thought he looked like Brandy’s father.
Since their marriage six years before, Brandy’s name could be found primarily in society items and at prestigious fundraisers on both coasts of the country.
Three years before, she’d launched a cosmetics and yoga clothing line called “Brandy” with a heart replacing the a.
Lucy had never heard of the lifestyle brand before, so it must not have been popular with her college friends.
Lucy assumed it wasn’t doing very well, although the photos in the marketing materials made Brandy look very good indeed.
In the last year and a half, Michael Thompson had been implicated in two scandals that made the news.
The first was a series of #MeToo accusations from former female employees of his companies, who claimed he’d said provocative things to them in the past, and that the atmosphere within Thompson Holdings was toxic.
Several ex-employees claimed Thompson had retaliated against them for not accompanying him on business trips or visiting him at home on weekends.
The accusations had vanished into the ether the year before when, it was speculated, large-scale settlements had been paid to the accusers.
Lucy developed a crude timeline from the articles, and determined that the majority of the accusations had occurred in the last few years of Thompson’s second marriage, and several years after he’d divorced. Then, apparently, he’d met Brandy.
So, Lucy concluded: Michael Thompson was a dog.
The most recent scandal seemed more serious, if harder to understand completely.
A U.S. senator from Arkansas had accused Thompson’s hedge fund company of working hand in glove with several large corporations owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party.
The CCP-owned companies were attempting to secretly buy telecommunications firms in the U.S.
that had access to the personal data of millions of Americans.
Thompson, with his background and connections, was accused of being the secret conduit between the CCP-owned entities and the U.S. firms.
Although he vehemently denied the charges, Thompson was slated to appear before Congress in the coming months.
His lawyers had been able to postpone the hearings several times, but the senator was relentless.
He was quoted as saying that if the charges against Thompson were proven, the man’s hedge fund company could “collapse like a house of cards.”
The U.S. Department of Justice had opened a probe, and a federal judge had ordered that Thompson Holdings’ assets were to be frozen until the matter was fully adjudicated.
Although Lucy had trouble grasping all of the details of the scandal, it appeared that Michael Thompson was a man in serious trouble.
Which, to Lucy, cast the man in an entirely different light. Was he desperate? And if so, how desperate?
—
Lucy had switched out her little car with her mom’s SUV to navigate the gravel surface of Antler Creek Road. She liked the height of the SUV and it certainly blended in better in and around Twelve Sleep County than her little red Camry.