Unspoken

  “Now wait a minute—the gun was at the quarry?” Nevada sounded surprised.

  “In a cave or mining shaft.” The Judge leaned forward, and Shelby’s heart beat like a tom-tom. “It’s your gun, was found on your property, has your fingerprints on it and is already proved to be the weapon that killed Ramón Estevan.”

  “Is that so?”

  “The D.A.’s pressing for an arrest, and you don’t have an alibi.”

  “Or a motive.” Nevada was on his feet. “As I said, Judge, I didn’t kill Ram6n Estevan. My guess is that McCallum did it and got out on a technicality because someone paid Caleb Swaggert to frame him.”

  Her father? Her father had bribed a witness? Shelby’s mind was reeling.

  “Someone came up with five-thousand dollars for the old guy. I figure it was you.”

  Her father stared at Nevada as if he were sighting a gun. “You can figure from now until forever.”

  “And the judge who sent McCallum up the river was an old golfing buddy of yours, wasn’t he?” Nevada was on his feet, leaning over the desk, the denim stretching over his buttocks. “You pull so many strings in this town, Judge, you can’t keep ’em all straight. You’re like a damned puppeteer who’s tangled the strings of all his marionettes.” Jabbing a finger at the older man’s chest, he said, “I didn’t kill Ram6n Estevan, and you and I both know it.”

  “Someone did.”

  “Maybe it was you,” Nevada accused him. “Now get to the point. Why the hell did you think it was so important we meet?”

  “I want you to leave my daughter alone.”

  Nevada visibly bristled. Anger fired through Shelby’s blood.

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t need you complicating her life.”

  Nevada didn’t move a muscle, and the clock ticked over the thudding of Shelby’s heart. “Wait a minute,” he said and dropped back in his chair. “You’ve had it in for me for years, Judge. You always claimed it was because I got into trouble with the law as a kid, but I’ve had the feelin’ that there’s more to it than that, more than you’ve ever admitted.”

  “I only want what’s best for my daughter.”

  “According to you.” Nevada was leaning low on his back, one booted heel resting over the opposite jean-clad knee. “I suspect this goes way back.”

  The Judge looked away.

  “What is it, Red? Why do you hate me so much?” Nevada asked, and the air in the closet was too thick, too tense to breathe. Shelby’s nerves were twisted as tight as guitar strings about to break. “Why do I have the sneaking suspicion that your aversion to me has to do with my mother?”

  The Judge’s face drained of color. Shelby had trouble standing.

  “Don’t tell me you got it on with my old lady?”

  “No!” The Judge’s fist smashed against his desk. Shelby jumped. Nevada didn’t budge.

  “Then what the hell is it?”

  For a long second, Judge Cole stared at his fist and then slowly moved his gaze up to Nevada’s face. “If I tell you, you’ve got to promise to leave Shelby alone.”

  “Can’t do it.”

  “Sure you can, you no-good half-breed. Because no matter what I think of you, I know you want what’s best for Shelby, and you’re just not it. You’re the goddamned hot-blooded son of an Indian whore and a drunk who couldn’t keep his hands off other women, even those above his station.”

  Shelby didn’t move. Couldn’t.

  “Meaning?”

  “My wife, you bastard,” the Judge said. “Why the hell do you think she took her life? Because I had an affair with Nell Hart? Because I fathered an illegitimate kid? Shit, no. She got back at me for that. With your father.”

  Shelby’s ears were ringing, her world spinning out of control, her knees suddenly as steady as pudding. She tried to put the information together. Was her father saying that Nevada was her half-brother? That—oh, God—she was fathered by ... Her stomach turned to acid. It was all she could do not to throw up.

  “It was after that, when Jasmine realized what she’d done, that she ... that she died.”

  “Killed herself,” Nevada clarified and the Judge didn’t answer. “You slimy bastard.” Nevada was over the desk in an instant. Standing above the Judge, looking down on him with fierce, hate-filled eyes, Nevada reached for the older man’s throat, then clenched his hands into the air. “You’re lying.”

  “I wish I was,” the Judge said, his shoulders slumping. He reached into his desk drawer and withdrew his fifth. “But I didn’t call you here to bring this all up. I just wanted to let you know that you’d better cover your ass. Unless I miss my guess, you’ll be charged with Estevan’s murder.”

  “And you care?” Nevada spat out.

  “No, Smith, I don’t really give a shit about what happens to you. I just want to find a way to get McCallum back in prison where he belongs.”

  “And you want me to help you?” Nevada sneered.

  “He raped Shelby once. What’s to stop him now?”

  “Me,” Nevada growled as the Judge twisted off the cap of his bottle of Jack Daniels. “If he so much as looks at her, I’ll kill him.”

  “Talk like that will land you in jail.”

  Nevada leaned closer to his old enemy. “So be it. The only reason I decided to meet you here is that I want to know about my kid.”

  “Yours or McCallum’s?”

  “Doesn’t matter. Where is she, Judge? You know. You paid off Doc Pritchart, saw that he left town and somehow got to everyone who worked the night shift when Shelby delivered. On top of that, you left Our Lady Of Sorrows a nice endowment, just for insurance so no one would dare say anything. But it’s time to come clean, Judge. Where’s the kid?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Like hell,” Nevada muttered, every muscle in his body tense.

  “I found her.” Shelby forced the words from her throat and walked from the closet and into the light of Etta’s office. In three steps she was once again in her father’s sanctuary.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” the Judge thundered.

  “Getting to the truth.” Judge Cole’s face fell.

  “What the hell are you doin’ here?” Nevada repeated.

  “Getting information.” She brandished Maria Ramirez’s file like a sword, slapped it on the desk next to her father’s fifth of whiskey, then stared straight into Nevada’s eyes. “Elizabeth’s being raised by Maria Ramirez.”

  The Judge’s shoulders slumped.

  “Maria’s related to Lydia.”

  “I remember Maria,” Nevada said.

  “Leave it be, Shelby,” her father pleaded.

  “Can’t do it.” Picking up the telephone receiver, Shelby held it under her father’s nose. “Do you want to do the honors, or shall I?”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Determined, she punched out the familiar numbers of Lydia’s home phone. “We’re going to deal with this now. I’m going to call Lydia this very minute and find my child. I’m not going to waste another second. As for all this mess between my mother and your father, we’ll sort it out later. They’re both dead now, so as painful as it may be, it’s over. As for Ross McCallum—believe me, I can deal with him.”

  “You broke in here,” her father accused her as the telephone began to ring on the other side of town.

  “You bet I did, Judge. And I’d do it again.” It was Shelby’s turn to lean across the desk. Sweat dripped onto the top of her father’s humidor from her chin. She didn’t care. Didn’t even notice as she glanced from her father to Nevada and she heard the distinctive click of a telephone being answered. “Come hell or high water, I’m going to meet my daughter.”

  “Ramón, no! Dios, do not! Oh, Holy Father ...”

  Shep sat bolt upright. Reached for his sidearm and wondered where the hell he was when he discovered he was bare-assed naked.

  “Do not, no, no, no—Ramón!”
Aloise was screaming and crying in the next room and he ... oh, shit, he was alone and naked as a jaybird in Vianca’s bed. He must’ve fallen asleep after screwing her from here until tomorrow. The bedroom still smelled of smoke, sweat and sex.

  As the cobwebs cleared from his head, he grabbed his clothes and mentally kicked himself up one side and down the other. The digital clock on the night stand read one-forty-five, soft Spanish music was wafting from the radio and the double bed was empty except for him. What had gotten into him, staying here with Vianca? Peggy Sue would be worried sick.

  How would he explain ... oh, shit. He stepped into his clothes, heard Vianca’s smooth, silky voice trying to quiet her mother and the old woman having none of it. She was upset and her dead husband’s name kept cropping up between the broken, disjointed pieces of conversation and prayers.

  Stepping into his jockey shorts and slacks, Shep discovered his wrinkled shirt tossed over the edge of the bureau. What had he been thinking? His truck was parked outside, and here he was fucking his brains out while Peggy Sue couldn’t get a good night’s sleep and would be up at dawn, fighting morning sickness and dealing with the kids.

  He was a fool. There were no two ways about it. Here he wanted to be the next sheriff, had the Estevan murder about tied up so that he would be a hero, and he’d been willing to throw it all away for a blow job and a quick roll in the hay.

  He was just about finished buttoning his shirt when the moaning stopped and Vianca, wearing nothing but a red, shiny robe, flew into the room. She stopped short at the sight of him fumbling with his buttons. “You are leaving?”

  “I have to.”

  “But it’s early.”

  “No, Vianca. It’s late.”

  Her lips, no longer shiny, drew into a little pout and her eyes, darker with the mascara that had rubbed onto her skin, silently accused him of using her. “I want you to hold me.” She pouted and he sighed.

  “Just for a second.” Opening his arms, he drew her close, sighed onto her crown and wished to holy heaven that things were different. If he was twenty years younger, if he didn’t have a passel of kids with another on the way, if he wasn’t married to a good woman who trusted him, if he’d already been elected sheriff ... He kissed her forehead. “I’ve got to go.”

  “You will be back?”

  He hesitated and saw tears begin to form in her eyes. “Sure I will,” he heard himself say, but she didn’t smile and those dark, suspicious eyes of hers seemed to pierce his very soul.

  Carrying his boots to the front steps, he walked outside to air that was as warm and sticky as honey. Halfway down the steps he heard Vianca lock the door behind him. He had to put all thoughts of her out of his head for the moment. Vianca’s testimony that she’d seen Nevada at the store alone on the night that Ramón Estevan was killed and also in the hospital the day that Caleb Swaggert died was just what he needed to nail Smith’s hide to the cross.

  He had some details to attend to, wanted to write up a report, talk to the D.A. himself and then, if things went as expected, arrest Nevada and charge him with the crime.

  His scalp itched as he crossed the street, and he felt more than one twinge of guilt. This was all too easy and smacked of a setup. Why would everything fall into place so easily now, after all this time?

  Unlocking his truck, he stepped inside. He didn’t much like Nevada Smith, never had. Smith was just too damned cocky and arrogant for the son of a whore and a drunk. But Shep didn’t see him as a cold-blooded murderer either.

  Stranger things have happened,he told himself as he cranked on the ignition and the Dodge’s engine roared to life. He had a job to do and he damn well planned to do it. If Nevada was innocent, he’d get his chance to prove it.

  Shep didn’t much believe that a man was “innocent until proven guilty.” That right was just way too convenient and overused by the bleeding-heart liberals who weren’t out in the trenches fighting the bad guys. Let a man prove he was innocent, rather than the other way around. It was just a damned sight easier, to Shep’s way of thinking. He found his can of Copenhagen, put a pinch under his gum and pulled away from the curb. A final glance at the Estevan house made him smile. Vianca was standing at the window, staring after him, as if she couldn’t wait to see him again.

  Shep felt a moment’s pride, all of his guilt over Peggy Sue and the kids temporarily forgotten. He’d ridden Vianca like a stallion. Of course she’d want more.

  Katrina rubbed her eyes. Criminey, she was tired. Her back hurt, her neck hurt and she didn’t know when she’d be able to get some more sleep. Not that the sagging mattress in this flea bag of a motel could give her a moment’s rest. And forget the fact that the bed, equipped with “magic fingers,” was supposed to, for a quarter, give her a massage. She couldn’t wait to move out of this place.

  She thought of the Judge’s mansion, her father’s house, with its manicured lawns, tile floors, shimmering pool and expensive furniture and art work. What a joke. While her half-sister had grown up privileged, Katrina had been raised in a two-bedroom bungalow in a tiny town near the Oklahoma border. They’d had enough money to scrape by on, but nothing, nothing like the palatial lifestyle of Shelby Cole.

  Katrina had done her research. Shelby had been pampered. Her damned horse—an Appaloosa thing named Delilah-that Shelby had ridden while growing up had cost more than Katrina’s mother’s Chevrolet station wagon. And her little car—a Porsche. Shit.

  Katrina stood and cracked her back. She peered through the blinds of her room at the Well, Come Inn sign and frowned as the first rays of gray light were visible in the eastern sky. Life hadn’t been fair, but it was about to turn around. Big time.

  The story for Lone Star was just the tip of the iceberg. She intended to write a book, an exposé on Judge Cole that everyone who was anyone in Texas would drool over. There were enough skeletons in the old man’s closet to ensure that the pages would be juicy.

  She turned away from the blinds.

  She alone had an interview with Caleb Swaggert, and now she was getting insight from Ross McCallum, who swore he’d been set up—by the Judge, no less.

  “Tsk, tsk, Daddy,” she muttered, rotating her neck and wondering if she could just close her eyes for twenty minutes, then go back to work.

  She’d survived on a couple of hours of sleep last night and large quantities of caffeine. She’d learned more and more as the days had passed and the townspeople of Bad Luck, hicks most of them, had grown more accustomed to her. As a means to her end, she’d even re-adopted that horrid drawl she’d worked so hard to get rid of in college. But it fit here. Fit as well as one of the Judge’s trademark black Stetsons on his aging head.

  “Bastard,” she muttered and wondered when Ross McCallum would call again. The man was a snake with sharp fangs and a coiled body, ready to strike. Yet she needed him. He was the key to the Estevan mystery. She was sure of it. If Ross didn’t call soon, she’d have to tuck her little gun in her purse and go looking for him.

  Her blood turned to ice. The truth of the matter was that Katrina didn’t like dealing with McCallum. He was just plain evil. But she’d swallow back her fear and do whatever it took.

  She turned back to her laptop placed on the motel’s cheesy table. She was just beginning to stretch her notes into story form, the tale of an egomaniac of a Texas judge who would soon rue the day he’d ever cut off his illegitimate daughter. And Shelby-maybe it wasn’t her fault that she was the pampered princess. But face it, the girl was a fool. How could anyone in this day and age get knocked up and believe that her baby had died? Idiot. Shelby was a woman who had the world by the tail and didn’t know it. As far as Katrina could see, Shelby had carved out her own life up in the Northwest. God, why? When everything she could ever want, everything was here. Not only would she eventually inherit unlimited wealth, but she also had a loving father.

  Katrina swallowed hard and blinked fast. She wouldn’t cry, damn it. She picked up her glass, drained the remaining
sip of Mountain Dew from it and crunched on a couple of melting ice cubes. Jerome Cole was a jerk. A man who hadn’t cared one iota for his second-born. A man who hid his granddaughter from the kid’s mother. A man who deserved everything he got.

  Katrina only hoped she was the person who could give it to him.

  Ross slammed his empty glass on the bar. The crowd at the White Horse had definitely thinned, just a few old drunks still hanging around, but the gossip that had fueled most of the conversation still rattled around in his head—conversation concerning the reporter-woman, the Judge and Shelby Cole. Conjecture had it that Katrina was the Judge’s illegitimate kid and she was back here with her own axe to grind.

  Funny, she hadn’t mentioned it to him when they’d had their little chat the other night. Maybe it was time to pay her a visit. But first, he had his own agenda—a little game he played.

  Quickly, he motioned to Lucy and she managed a thin smile. Hell, she’d always liked him. Tonight, Lucy looked shot. Her lipstick had faded, her eye makeup was long gone. She swabbed the bar’s surface as Ross handed her a twenty for the four beers he’d consumed. She made change quickly and he left her a decent-enough tip, but pocketed the coins.

  “Say ‘hi’ to your sister when you see her,” Lucy said, and Ross mumbled that he would. It was a lie. They both knew it. He didn’t much like Mary Beth and she felt the same about him. They’d only banded together because, as kids, they’d only had each other. Workin’ on that old scrap of land for a grandfather who spouted off verses of the Bible as easily as he beat them with his belt, they’d cowered together. Until Ross had noticed Mary Beth was growing titties. Until he’d kissed her and put his hand down her pants at the age of twelve. Mary Beth had screamed bloody murder, Grandpa had beat him within an inch of his life and then taken him down to the irrigation ditch where he’d nearly drowned Ross while the family dog looked on.

  He’d pushed Ross’s head under the water until Ross’s lungs had burned and he’d come up gulping and gasping only to be held down again. “Get thee out, Satan,” Grandpa had yelled. “Get away from my grandson!” Swallowing warm, stagnant water, spitting and coughing, Ross’s head had been dragged upward so that he could see the sky for a few seconds before he was plunged into the ditch again. Over and over again, until Ross had passed out and woken up on his bed, feverish, his grandmother, dark-eyed and sullen, tending to him without saying a word.