The Truth Seeker (33 page)

She didn’t answer right away. “In one of the scrapbooks that burned.”

Quinn rested his head in his hands. “I’m going to shut my mouth now; I’ve done enough damage for one night.”

“Quinn?”

He looked over at her.

“You did it because you cared. We’re okay. I just don’t want to talk about Andy. There’s nothing more that needs to be said.”

“There’s one thing. What the Richards did was wrong.”

“No it wasn’t. They lost their son. Had I stayed, I would have tried to replace him

and that would have destroyed me.”

There was wisdom in her quiet words.

She pushed herself to her feet and walked over to where he sat. Her fingers brushed his shoulder. “At least there are no more big secrets.

Good night, Quinn.”

“’Night, Lisa,” he said quietly, squeezing her hand. She was wrong; there was one big secret remaining. He was falling in love with her. And it was going to be his secret for a lifetime the way things were going.

She was never going to accept the Resurrection with this in her past.

Just friends. He wanted a freedom he didn’t have to make it something more.

“Show me where your father was killed.”

Quinn turned in the saddle to look at Lisa. After asking her to face Andy last night, he couldn’t deny her right to the tough memories of his own. “Are you sure?”

“I think I’m getting motion sickness,” she muttered, frustrated.

He rubbed her back. “You’re serious.”

“Oh yeah.”

He wrapped her in his arms, hugging her, trying not to laugh “I really am.”

“Good, because you’re about to get a blister in those boots.”

“You don’t want to head back to the house?”

She shook her head and took a step back. “I want to see the area.

“I need to see the scene. If it is somehow related to Amy

”

He nodded, accepting that it was necessary. “It’s farther south.”

“Quinn—”

“It’s okay. I’ve been back here many times.”

“Actually, I was going to ask if we could walk for a while.”

He reined in his horse and laughed. “Sure.”

She slid from the horse with a sigh of relief and rested her head against Annie’s neck. Quinn frowned at the realization that this was more than just too much time in the saddle and quickly swung off his mount to join her. “Lizzy?”

because it was obvious she was feeling awful. “I am so sorry.”

With her head buried against his shirt, her words were muffled.

“Sure you are.”

Marcus said it was near the bluffs?”

“Let me call my foreman, have him come out with a truck. There’s no need for us to walk.”

“Quinn—I’m fine. And if you’re going to fuss, I’m going to get annoyed.”

He moved over to his horse, opened the saddlebag, and retrieved two bottles of juice. “Okay. We’ll walk.” He uncapped one and handed it to her. “Let’s head over to that crest. It will be downhill from there.”

It was a quiet twenty-minute walk. November had arrived and the land was changing to reflect the coming winter, grass becoming dormant.

The bluffs were visible once they reached the rise in the land. Lisa stopped to look over the area. “It’s an awesome vista. Water cut out the bluffs and the ravines?”

“See the streambed? This tributary runs down to the Ledds River.

When the flash floods come, they tear through this land and reshape it.”

“There are caves in the bluffs?”

“Dozens.”

“I would love to explore them someday.”

“Someday,” Quinn agreed quietly. “We can walk down to the streambed. We’ll have to ride from there, but it’s not far.”

The stream had dried to a trickle during the hot summer. They remounted the horses, crossed the stream, and Quinn led the way toward the bluffs.

“I found him here.”

Lisa got down from Annie and retrieved the juice bottle. “You came from there?” She pointed back to the crest they had walked over.

“Yes.”

She slowly turned in a full circle.

“He was shot in the back. From close range?”

“The sheriff figured about ten feet.”

“So he knew the man who killed him, or at least had no reason to be uncomfortable at the idea of turning his back.”

“Agreed.”

“We’re closer to the bluffs than I had assumed. Could a truck come back this far?”

“When my father was killed, the ravine we crossed had water flowing through it from a flash flood the week before. A vehicle would have had to come up from the south to reach here.”

“What’s out that way?”

“Besides rough terrain? About five miles of pasture, woods, and deep ravines.”

She pulled out a piece of paper from her pocket and unfolded it. It

She nodded. “Come here.”

Curious, he dismounted to join her.

“Why did someone kill your father?”

“We have no idea. Possibly because he stumbled across something

was her sketch of the circled names and links they had suspected and proven. Lisa sat down on the ground and reached for her pen.

He recognized the slightly unfocused look on her face. “Have an idea?”

he shouldn’t have.”

He stood at her shoulder, watched her darken the circle around Rita. “We also think she was really killed because she stumbled on proof of Amy’s death.”

Lisa leaned her head back against his knee, squinting against the sun as she looked up at him. “Stumbled on something.” She looked down and darkened the circle around his father. And then she darkened the two lines that flowed into it. One beginning with Grant that ran through Rita to Amy to his father, and the other that began from Christopher and flowed to Rita to Amy and ended at his father. “See it?”

She looked back up at him. “If we can’t prove Amy returned to Chicago, can we prove Chicago came to Amy?”

He blinked. “One of them came to Montana.”

“Time for a break.”

“Not yet,” Lisa commented absently, reading the transcript from Grant’s trial.

Quinn could have predicted that answer. He crossed over to where she sat on the couch and slid the report from her hand. “Yes, now. You said you wanted to see my old rodeo tapes.” It was after P.M. They’d been going through the files ever since they got back from the bluffs, and he knew she still wasn’t feeling that great. She’d been sipping -Up all evening.

“What did Emily find out about where Grant bought his horses?”

“We just asked the question this afternoon. Give her time to find an answer.”

“I know something is there.”

“I think so too. And it can wait a couple hours. Come on.” He pulled her to her feet and directed her toward the living room.

“So what are we watching?”

“The high school national rodeo championships.”

“How’d you do?”

“Let’s just say Montana sent the Lone Star State home without the trophy they dominated for a decade.”

“Do I hear a bit of pride in that outcome?”

“Well deserved. I wore the bruises of victory for weeks.”

She settled down at one end of the couch. “You fixed popcorn?”

“Ask nicely, and I might even share.”

She picked up the bowl. “Ask nicely, and I might give the bowl back,” she replied, eating her first handful.

He slid in the tape, adjusted the volume, and reached for the remote.

“So what did you compete in?”

“Bull riding, calf roping, steer wrestling. I stayed away from goat tying.”

“Goat tying? They have such a thing?”

“Yep. They even give Horse of the Year awards.”

Bull riding was up first. He watched her wince as the first rider appeared, survived six seconds, and was thrown off. Two rodeo clowns worked in tandem to distract the bull while the rider got out of the ring.

“Quinn. You did this for sport?”

“You spend a lot of time training before you ride one of these guys.

Most injuries come from inexperienced riders making basic mistakes in balance and timing. It’s a sport where errors compound quickly. In my case I simply drew a more experienced bull.”

“Please don’t tell me this tape has you getting hurt.”

“No one gets hurt.”

She watched, fascinated. “You get points for yourself and your

“What do you mean?”

“The bulls they use at the high school national championships are the same as the ones in the professional circuit. When you draw a new bull to the circuit, you’ve got a better chance of completing the ride than if you draw one with experience. I had the misfortune of drawing Taggert II. He’d been on the circuit for seven years, seen every move, learned a few of his own.”

team when you compete?”

“Yes.”

Quinn didn’t have to watch the tape to remember the competition.

He settled back on the couch, crossed his ankles, reached over and tugged at the popcorn bowl that Lisa shared but didn’t release.

Love was a bit like a wonderful piece of art. The best pieces were those that grew on him, were interesting for deeper reasons than the surface, became more beautiful the more he looked at them. Lisa was like that.

She glanced at him for a moment and blushed. “You’re watching me again.”

“Guilty.” He loved watching her.

“It’s disconcerting.” She raised her hand to brush down her hair. “It makes me think I’m looking like a dust mop or something.”

He laughed at the image and reached over to still her hand. “You look just fine. The sun gives you a tan and turns your hair blond.”

“Streaky flyaway blond is not pretty,” she muttered.

“It is if I say so.”

“Flattery only works if it has an element of truth to it.”

His dog came to join her.

“Why do I get the feeling I’ve lost my dog?”

She laughed as she offered Old Blue popcorn. “He knows a better thing when he finds it.”

He took a handful of the popcorn.

“What’s this?” she asked, indicating the new event on the tape.

“Calf roping. The calf breaks into the corral, the rider comes through seconds later. Lasso him, get off your horse, toss him onto his side, loop rope around his feet, then throw up your hands.”

“Is it hard to do?”

“Much harder than it looks. Holding flailing legs to get the rope around fast is tough. And getting kicked in the face is more common than you’d expect.”

“I don’t know that I wanted to know that.”

They watched the first several riders try their luck.

He saw the change in her expression, the look of distance appear.

She’d just drifted away to thinking about work.

“Excuse me, Quinn.” She pushed away from him, got to her feet, headed back to the office.

He thought for a moment about joining her but stayed seated. He knew how fragile ideas were until they crystallized.

He reached around for the phone. Despite his words to Lisa to be patient, he was anything but. “Marcus, how’s it going?”

“The same as it was thirty minutes ago.” He partner was not nearly so willing to change the focus from Grant to Christopher. “Give me another couple hours, Quinn. I’ll call as soon as I find anything useful.

Hold on. Lincoln just got here.” His partner muffled the phone for a moment. “He’s got news. Let me pass you to him.”

“Quinn?”

“Hi, Lincoln.”

“Does the name McLinton mean anything to you?”

Quinn’s hand rubbing Old Blue went still. “Yes, it does. They own a ranch to the southeast of here.”

The excavation of Rita’s grave.

She finally shook her head slightly and looked up at him. “What?”

“Grant has been to Montana. Emily found out that he bought three “When?”

“She’s still getting dates.”

Lisa leaned back against the couch, thinking about it. “Grant was

“Grant bought three horses from a Frank McLinton over the lifetime of the stable.”

“Can you get me the dates of those sales, or when he might have been out here to see the horses?”

“Emily’s working on it.”

Until a few days ago this was exactly the news he had hoped to hear. Now it just raised more questions. It put Grant back at the top of the list. “Any word on Christopher?”

“Not yet.”

“Thanks for this. Call whenever you hear anything else.”

“I will,” Lincoln reassured.

Grant had come to Montana.

Quinn hung up the phone and went to find Lisa.

“Lisa.”

She held up one finger, motioning for a moment of time. He crossed over to join her and see what she was studying that was causing the frown.

horses from Frank McLinton, the owner of a ranch southeast of here.”

out here to buy horses. That fits.” She looked up at him. “How did he get the horses back to Chicago? He wouldn’t have flown them back, so did McLinton deliver them or what?”

“Great question. Do you have the phone number of the stable manager?

The Scotsman?”

“Samuel Barberry. It would be in Lincoln’s notes.”

Quinn found it and picked up the phone. It was late, something he would apologize for, but he needed the answer. It took a few minutes to describe what he needed to know.

“Normally I’d take one of the horse trailers from here and go pick up the new horse,” Mr. Barberry explained. “Or if it was a horse coming from a distance, a couple of the stable hands would fly out, rent a horse trailer, and drive the animal back.”

“Do you remember the horses Grant bought from Frank McLinton?”

“Sure. A nice chestnut and two bays. Greg and Danny flew out and brought two of them back, Chris went out to pick up the other.”

“Christopher Hampton?”

“His brother Walter helped him drive it back. They’ve got distant family out that way.”

“Do you remember when that was?”

“, ’? Somewhere around then.”

“I appreciate the help, Mr. Barberry.”

“Anytime.”

Quinn hung up the phone.

“What?”

He looked over at Lisa and took a seat on the chair across from her.

“One of the horses was driven back to Chicago by Christopher and Walter Hampton.”

Her surprise at the news matched his. “Both brothers?”

“Two drivers, they must have driven straight through to Chicago.