Chapter Twenty-Nine
The Bennet Ranch
“It isn’t meddling to just go up there with some brownies and offer an ear,” Aly said, wrapping the baked goods she’d made late last night when she hadn’t been able to sleep. “It isn’t like Jill to cut off communication this completely and for this long. I’m worried.”
Landon stood in between the mudroom and the kitchen wearing a winter coat, his boots, and a disapproving scowl. She’d kind of hoped to be out of the house before he got back from his first round of morning chores.
He was early, like he knew what she was up to. Which might have been sweet if she weren’t currently being thwarted. Except she refused to be thwarted.
So Aly didn’t look at him, because she wasn’t going to be talked out of this, so his disapproval didn’t matter.
“It’s not even six in the morning.”
“Yes,” Aly agreed.
The world outside the windows was dark for the most part, but there’d be a little light in the east that would only grow. So it wasn’t insane.
“I don’t know Jill as well as you do,” Landon began patiently. “But I doubt very much she’s up and ready for visitors at six in the morning.”
“We are.”
“We are ranchers.”
She knew he was right, and she’d figured she’d take a horse up to the cabin instead of her truck, take her time. Not arrive right at six. But she quite literally couldn’t focus on anything else for another day.
Maybe Jill wasn’t ready to talk about it, but they didn’t have to talk. Aly just had to check on everything and make sure Jill and Glenda were okay. If they sent her away, she’d go, but that didn’t mean she shouldn’t reach out.
“Aly, you have left her messages and texts. She isn’t ready to talk, or she would have returned any of those.”
Aly really hated when Landon was reasonable. Couldn’t he support her being unreasonable even just once? “Not everyone keeps all their problems to themselves.”
“And not everyone needs a sounding board.”
Aly huffed out a breath and glared at him, because he wasn’t wrong, and that was so annoying. “I am worried about my friend.”
“I know. I’m not saying you don’t make your way up there at some point today.”
She raised an eyebrow at him. “You’re not?”
He sighed. “I’d like to, but what would be the point? You think it’s the right thing to do, so you’re going to do it. Fine enough. But at least let the woman sleep, Al.”
Aly sniffed, but before she could mount any more arguments, or just acquiesce that she was indeed being a little overzealous at this hour, she heard the muffled sound of a car door slamming. And then another. Then two more.
All thoughts of Jill left, because it was six in the morning. It was too early for anyone to be here at the ranch this early.
“Maybe it’s a hand,” Landon said, but he was moving toward the front door, and she knew he didn’t think that any more than she did. Because maybe one hand might drive up to the main house this early, but it wouldn’t account for all the door slams.
They both made it to the living room, but before they made it to the door, the knob turned. It had to be Cal—he was the only one with a key.
When he stepped inside, she was surprised to find him … rumpled. She almost worried he’d spent the night drinking.
“You look like you haven’t slept,” was all she could think to say.
“Yeah, I haven’t. We haven’t.” He gestured behind him. Not just Sam and Nate following him inside, but that Detective Hayes—who Aly couldn’t decide if she liked or not.
In this moment, she knew that all of them being here at six in the morning would make the liking or not irrelevant.
To give herself time to steel herself for whatever this was going to be, she took a step back toward the kitchen. “I’ll … put on some more coffee.”
*
Landon helped Aly with coffee and feeding people while Cal and Jake explained everything that had happened.
Sam didn’t say a word, and Nate didn’t take his arm off of her.
Landon had never been one for puzzles. He didn’t like things that didn’t add up.
Mr. Everly sending Cal and Jake on a wild goose chase to Kalispell and Sam stumbling on an apparent suicide did not add up. Threats against Cal and Jill’s unusual silence toward Aly seemingly unrelated, but…
No, he hated the way this all felt wrong. Like after Sandy, Dad’s girlfriend last year, had been murdered here on their property, and all the cracks with his father had begun to be visible. All the ways that everything they had grown up believing had crumbled.
Because they’d been missing something then—that his father was downright evil—which meant they were missing something now.
Landon could get lost in feeling sorry for himself about having more secrets set to upend his life, but…
Well, he looked at the four people at his table. His table. His house. His wife moving around the room making sure everyone’s coffee was topped off. Maybe this wasn’t his mystery, but it had ended up in his house and involved Aly’s friend and someone Cal had some weird connection to.
So instead of hiding his head in the sand, he took control. These people had come here for something. He intended to give it.
“So, this guy you found, Sam. He was the police officer who would have responded to Gerald’s death?”
“Far as I can know,” Sam said.
She sat stiffly in the chair, staring at her hands. Landon wasn’t sure she’d made eye contact with anyone. He’d never seen her like this, and they’d been through a lot together at this point.
“I was just going to ask him if he remembered it. I can’t find any report, and there had to have been one.
Even if Glenda took Gerald to the hospital herself, there has to be a report.
” Her eyebrows drew together. “The medical examiner was retired, and she didn’t remember for sure, but she thought it was this guy.
So I thought I’d go ask him some questions, but he…
” She shuddered and Nate moved his chair a little closer.
“I asked some questions of the first responders,” Jake interjected. “The initial theory is that he’d been there a few days. It’s too early to have more details than that.”
Landon ran a hand through his hair. Another suicide. Even though it was a stranger, the timing of it didn’t sit right or well. “Okay, so how does this connect to Mr. Everly and Kalispell?”
“It doesn’t,” Cal said, toying with his mug but not taking any sips. “It just all seems to be coming to the same head at the same time.”
Landon couldn’t decide what was worse. A clearcut answer and connection or … this. All these unknowns.
At least they had options when it came to shitty knowns.
“So, we set Gerald’s stuff on one side. Then on the other side is Mr. Everly protecting whoever is threatening you by claiming the art was done by someone it wasn’t. If it’s not his nephew, it has to be someone he cares about. That’s why you protect someone.”
“That’s why you protect someone, Landon,” Cal said.
“He’s right though,” Nate chimed in. “At least partially. There’s a reason Everly lied.
I’m going to look into him today and see if it leads us to a reason, but…
” Nate looked around the room. “I think we need to confront Glenda. This has gotten out of hand. She has answers—maybe not all of them. Maybe nothing about Cal’s threat, but all these threads … touch.”
“It’s a small town,” Sam pointed out. “Sometimes touching is just coincidence.”
“Sometimes, and sometimes it’s because they were braided together a long time ago.
She knows something about something here.
Maybe it was fair at the time for her to keep her secrets to herself.
Maybe she’s got every right to keep this a secret, but not if Cal is getting threats.
Not if…” Nate trailed off, but his hand was rubbing up and down Sam’s back.
“We can’t just all go charging up there at this hour and demand answers,” Aly said gently. “No matter what’s happening, she’s a traumatized woman with a health condition.”
“That’s why we stopped here first,” Cal said. “To try and figure out how to approach this. I don’t want to push Glenda, but I’m with Nate. This feels like it’s spiraling out of our control. Maybe this guy’s suicide is a coincidence, maybe the threats don’t connect, but…”
Hadn’t they all learned coincidences weren’t for them? And it had started fifteen years ago, when their father had murdered their mother. Everyone in this room had something to do with that.
Except one.
He turned to the odd man out here. “Well?”
Detective Hayes eyed him warily. “Well, what?”
“You’re the cop here.”
Hayes looked at Landon, then around the room. After a moment, he wiped a hand over his mouth, and Landon thought it might be the only time he’d ever seen Detective Hayes look anything but detached and sure.
“As a detective, I have to caution you all on taking any action. The police will investigate the threat to Cal, the suicide Sam stumbled over. Answers will, eventually, be found. Probably.”
Cal snorted at the probably.
Hayes’s expression sharpened then, turned into something far more determined.
“But I am not here as an officer of the law,” he said, looking at Cal.
Then Sam. “I’m here because everything since my father’s death was brought up after twenty-five years of barely thinking about the guy has been fucked.
And none of it’s criminal, besides the things I previously mentioned.
So, we could go to the police, but for what? ”
“Guess there is a reason to have private investigators after all,” Sam said, clearly some attempt at a joke.
But Jake didn’t even crack a smile when he looked at her, and she wasn’t smiling either. Still just staring blankly at her hands.
“I want to know what Glenda knows. Maybe it’s a fat lot of nothing, but damn, I doubt it.”
“Aly, we thought you’d know best how to approach them,” Sam said, her voice soft. She still hadn’t looked up. “What would feel like an ambush. Who she’d be the most comfortable confiding in. Maybe you could ask Jill?”
Aly flicked a glance at Landon. She clearly didn’t want to mention that Jill hadn’t been responding to her calls or texts.
“I think … I think the answer is obvious.”
Landon braced himself for Aly suggesting herself, alone, and he’d be damned if that was going to happen. But she surprised him. “Cal.”
*
Cal shifted in his seat. Yeah, he’d had a bad feeling that was where Aly would land. He had a bad feeling it was the only real answer.
Glenda still probably wouldn’t confess anything she didn’t want to, but if she was going to … for whatever reason, she seemed to let him in more than anyone. No matter how much he wished she wouldn’t.
Before Cal could decide what to say, Nate was charging into the conversation, like he had a say.
“Not alone,” Nate said. “Not with these threats against him. Cal’s got to have someone with him at all times. Me or … Jake.” He added the last name on with a grimace. “Which one’s best?”
“Wait. I’m on that list too,” Sam said.
For the first time, she looked up to glare at Nate. She finally looked like … well, Sam, instead of that fragile version that had been masquerading as her since Cal and Jake had met Nate and Sam at Honor’s Edge.
It was almost a relief. “One of the investigators or the detective should go with him. I’m in that group.” She looked stubbornly at Aly. “Cal plus me, Nate, or Jake. What do you think?”
Aly surveyed the three people. She was clearly taking the question very seriously and certainly taking her time. Cal took a big drink of the coffee even though it had gone cold.
He hadn’t slept. By the time they’d gotten back, Nate and Sam had been waiting with Sam’s news. They’d all decided to come out here together. He felt revved, wired, but certainly not clear-headed enough to face down Glenda.
Too bad, he supposed.
“I … think Sam would be the best option,” Aly said after really taking her time to consider it.
Nate made a rude noise.
“It’s just … definitely not Detective Hayes, I’m sorry,” Aly said, throwing the apology toward Jake. “When you questioned her over the trial, she didn’t give anything, really, until Cal was involved.”
“He’ll be involved now,” Jake pointed out.
Aly nodded. “Yes, but … I think you’d be too intimidating. You could arrest people if it came to that, and hopefully it doesn’t, but it should be Nate or Sam, and if we’re going by people she’s said things to … Sam edges out Nate.”
“Why?” Nate demanded.
“Because at the wedding, she told Sam some secrets were sacred. It was admitting there are secrets. It’s closer than most of us have gotten.”
“It was more warning than admission,” Sam muttered.
“And we didn’t take the warning, did we?” Aly replied.