Chapter 28 #2
A short twelve minutes after Wyatt leaves, Marcus’s Suburban rolls up the driveway for the second time today.
He climbs out and takes the porch steps with his usual unhurried ease. “Wyatt called, sweetheart. Said he was picking up June and didn’t want you out here on your own.”
“I’ve got a seventy-six-year-old bodyguard and a locked screen door.” I smile wryly. “I think I’ll survive.”
“Stubborn as his daddy.” Marcus shakes his head with fond exasperation as we reach the kitchen. “Mason wasn’t home anyway, so I’m all yours. You want a fresh pot on?”
“I’ll do it.”
“You go on and sit down. I know where everything is.”
I sit down at the table while he fills the pot and sets it going.
“Saw Dave’s truck by the equipment barn.” Marcus leans against the counter while the coffee maker starts to gurgle. “That old F-250 still giving him trouble?”
“He’s been out there all morning. I don’t think he’s come up for air.”
Marcus chuckles. “Dave and that truck have been arguing for longer than most marriages last.” He pulls two mugs from the cupboard. “He out there by himself?”
“As far as I know. Why?”
“No reason. Just don’t want the old fool up on a jack stand alone at his age.”
He pours the coffee, slides mine across black, and adds one sugar to his own. “Black, no sugar. Just like your daddy.” He shakes his head with a soft smile. “Man always said cream was for people who didn’t really like coffee.”
My hand tightens around the mug. “You remember that?”
“Sweetheart, your father said that to me about a thousand times.” He chuckles fondly before reaching up and tapping his temple with his index finger. “Some things just stick.”
Then he settles into the chair opposite, both hands around his mug. “So… What’re you workin’ on? Anything I can help with?”
“Just going through some notes. Background stuff for the article.”
“You need financial records or anything from the ranch books, you just go ahead and ask. Wyatt’s already given me the green light to share whatever you need.”
“Thanks, Marcus. I might just take you up on that.”
“So how’s the article coming along?” Marcus settles into his chair. “The Hartleys behaving themselves for you?”
“Well, Colt gave me three hours.” I take a sip of coffee. “Sadly, most of it was completely unusable.”
Marcus laughs so hard he has to set his mug down. “That boy could talk paint clean off a barn, and never once get to the point.” He shakes his head before a crease appears between his brows. “Between you and me, most of that charm is armor. But don’t tell him I said that.”
He drains his coffee. “Mind if I use the bathroom?”
“Of course. I’m sure you know where it is.”
He disappears down the hall, and I hear the bathroom door close right as my phone rings. The number isn’t saved, but I recognize the area code as being local. Hope surges in my chest as I swipe to answer.
“Hello?”
“Miss Monroe?” The voice is high and unsteady. “It’s Alma Cutter. Can you talk?”
“Alma, I’m so glad you called.” I glance toward the hallway, noting the bathroom door is still closed. “Yes, absolutely. I can talk.”
“I’m sorry to call like this. I know I said I’d…” She trails off, and I can hear her breathing, ragged and too fast. “Something’s happened. I—I need to tell you something and I don’t have much time.”
“Okay. I’m listening.”
“My son. Stan.” Her voice cracks on his name.
“We had an argument this morning. A bad one. He told me he’s going to do something for my uncle.
He wouldn’t tell me what, but he said it would clear his debts and then we’d be left alone.
Stan’s never said that before. ‘Left alone.’ That’s not how this works, Miss Monroe. Debts like his don’t end.”
Every nerve in my body fires at once. “And who’s your uncle, Alma?”
“Marcus Donnelly. Glacier Ridge’s accountant. He grew up next to my daddy, like an uncle my whole life. They’re brothers in everything but name.”
My hand goes white on the edge of the kitchen table as my stomach roils. Down the hall, I can hear the tap still running.
“Alma, I need you to focus. What does Marcus have to do with my father?”
“Everything.” The word comes out strangled. “I worked commercial accounts at the bank back then and your father paid me fifty thousand dollars for records I had.”
“Records of what?”
“Two accounts Marcus opened there. Whitmore and Associates, and Mountain West Acquisitions. He signed for both of them himself, and nobody questioned it because he was my uncle and an upstanding citizen of the town.”
“What was going through them?”
“Money. In from Glacier Ridge to Whitmore every quarter for eleven years, out to Marcus’s personal account by the end of the week. Land-sale money into Mountain West, out to Marcus the same way. I kept copies of three years’ worth of statements.”
“And my father?”
“He came to me. He had invoices from Whitmore for consulting work nobody could remember Bill ever approving. I had the bank side; he had the ranch side. We put it together on my kitchen table in forty-five minutes. He paid me cash because I asked him to. For Stan.”
Her voice breaks as she tries and fails to withhold a low sob.
“The accident happened before he could use what I gave him.” She pauses. “Marcus has been part of our family my whole life, but he’s been holding my son over my head for three years to make sure I never open my mouth.”
“Holding him how?”
“Stan owes money. To people who don’t negotiate.
” Her voice goes flat in a way that tells me she’s said these words to herself a thousand times.
“Marcus covers the debts. And in return, Stan does whatever Marcus asks. That break-in at your cabin? That was Stan. Marcus told him what to take and when to do it.”
Bile rises at the back of my throat, and it takes everything in me to push it down.
“Alma.” I keep my voice steady. “You worked commercial accounts at the bank. Were you working the morning my father died?”
I’m met with silence.
“Were you on the desk when someone called Wyatt Hartley about some kind of error on the ranch’s account?”
“It wasn’t a standard error.” Her voice is small. “That’s not the kind of thing he’d stay on the phone for. It was flagged as a concern on the operating loan. Something that needed signing off on, or the account would freeze.”
“Did you make the call, Alma?”
“No.” The word is barely above a whisper. “Marcus told me to arrange it. Told me to have one of the girls make the call, not to do it myself, and to make sure they asked for Wyatt specifically.”
She inhales a shaky breath. “He was the ranch accountant. It sounded routine. I didn’t think twice about it until after, when I put the timing together. Wyatt was on the phone for twenty minutes, and that’s how long it took for your father and Bill to die on that road.”
“Alma. What are you telling me?”
“I’m telling you what I know. Marcus asked me to make that call happen, and twenty minutes later, two good men were dead. And I’m tellin’ you I’ve spent three years trying not to count those minutes in my head, and I still can’t make them add up to an accident.”
Her voice drops almost below a whisper. “But I never saw anything. I never heard him say it. I’d swear it in a courtroom tomorrow and I’d still just be a woman with a feeling.”
The bathroom door opens, and then there are footsteps in the hall. A floorboard creaks as he gets closer, and panic swells up inside me, but I force it down by sheer force of will.
Keep it together, Monroe. You can do this.
“That’s really helpful, thank you so much.” I switch to my brightest, most professional journalist voice. “And roughly what year would that have been?”
There’s a pause on the line. Thankfully, Alma is smart enough to hear the shift in my demeanor. “Someone’s there.”
“That’s right.”
She gasps. “Oh God. Is it him?”
“Mm-hm. Go on, I’m listening.”
Marcus appears in the kitchen doorway, rubbing his hands together. He tilts his head at me with a questioning look, and I hold up one finger, giving him a polite smile that takes every ounce of control I have.
He nods and goes to the counter to top up his coffee.
“Stan told me he’s meeting Marcus somewhere today. I don’t know where.” Alma’s voice is barely above a whisper. “But you need to get away from him.”
“Mm-hm, I agree. I’ll do my best.”
“I’m going to call the sheriff right now. Then I’ll call Mr. Hartley—”
“Other way around.” I cut her off, unable to keep the words behind my teeth. Wyatt Hartley is the only person I trust right now. “Please.”
“I’ll do it straight away.”
Marcus takes his seat across from me, settles back, and smiles at me the way he’s always smiled at me as the words I spoke to Wyatt not even an hour ago reverberate through my mind.
Someone we sit across a table from every day. Someone who smiles at us and asks how we’re doing and means it, right up until the moment they don’t.
“That would be wonderful. Thank you so much. I’ll follow up with you soon.”
I hang up and slip my phone into my jeans pocket, then I pick up my coffee and take a sip.
“That sounded important.” Marcus smiles at me. “Source for the article?”
“Background research.” I’m amazed at how steady my voice sounds because inside, every cell in my body is screaming at me to run. “You know how it is. Chase ten leads, maybe one pans out.”
“Your dad was the same way.” He takes a sip of his coffee. “Always said the truth had a way of surfacing if you gave it enough time.”
I wrap both hands around my mug so he can’t see them shaking.
“He did say that,” I manage. “He really did.”
Marcus reaches across the table and pats my hand, and it takes all my willpower not to recoil.
“He’d be so proud of you, sweetheart.”