Gambling On A Dream. Sara Walter Ellwood
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Название: Gambling On A Dream
Автор: Sara Walter Ellwood
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Colton Gamblers
isbn: 9781616507350
isbn:
Yesterday, he’d called her therapist and mentioned that he was afraid she might be having thoughts of hurting herself. He hated doing it, feeling like he was somehow tattling on his baby sister, but damn it all to hell, if she committed suicide, he’d never forgive himself.
“Wyatt, wait up.”
Turning at the voice, he stopped.
Chet Hendricks came out from behind his desk in the communal area of the station and headed toward Wyatt. “I hoped you’d be up for a beer over at the Hardware Bar. I wanted to talk to you.”
“I’m headed home.” Wyatt dug his truck keys from his jeans pocket. “Can it wait until tomorrow?”
Chet shifted his feet and hiked up his service belt. “Actually, no it can’t. It’s about Talon Blackwell.”
Wyatt glanced toward the glowing glass panel of the office door on the other side of the room. The gold painting and block letters still proclaimed his friend, Zack Cartwright, sheriff, but that office was Dawn’s domain.
“What about Talon?” Wyatt faced Chet.
The deputy’s dark eyes brightened, and his lips twitched as if he was fighting off a smile. “Not here. I’ll tell you at the saloon.” He patted Wyatt’s shoulder with a bony hand. “I think you’ll find this interesting.”
As they moved down the aisle to the back door, with Chet waving and tossing out “good nights” to the other deputies still at work, Wyatt got the feeling he was being herded. He stopped. No one herded him. “I’m not interested in a drink, Chet. If this is about the murders, out with it. Otherwise, I’m going home.”
Chet flattened his lips into a tight line and rubbed the back of his neck. But the displeasure lasted only a second. His half smile was back. “Okay. Here’s what I think. Talon Blackwell is guilty as sin and Dawn knows it. We all know she testified that her brother wasn’t an addict when he was caught and thrown in jail in Amarillo. Well, the evidence suggested otherwise. I looked up the reports. Talon not only was charged with using and possession of cocaine, but three witnesses testified they saw him dealing as well.”
Wyatt needed to look at those reports, but something about considering Talon didn’t sit right with him. “We have no evidence implicating him in either one of these murders.”
Circumstantial evidence was all they had. He’d been a cop too long to fall for the circumstantial. Occasionally, it provided the breadcrumbs through the forest to the real McCoy, but not often enough. Mostly, those breadcrumbs lead to dead ends or nothing at all.
He thought about the responses made by Justin’s uncle during his questioning. Kenny Vaughn mentioned Talon stopping by his farmer’s market on several occasions to buy apples for his stallion, and he would often talk at length with Justin, the last time being Tuesday morning. But Kenny had no idea what those conversations entailed.
Wyatt also knew Talon had always had a soft spot for the underdog. Despite the changes in his old friend, he still believed that part of Talon was there. Justin definitely qualified as someone stuck on the fringes of society, much as Talon himself always had been. Justin’s mother had been a classmate of his and Talon’s and got pregnant when she was seventeen. No one ever knew who his father was and the rumor had been that it was their high school band instructor. She ended up raising the kid on her own until breast cancer had taken her life four years ago, which had been when Justin’s addiction problems started.
Wyatt wouldn’t have been at all surprised if Talon saw Justin as something of a kindred spirit and wanted to help the kid out.
Chet rubbed his neck again. “Look. I know you and Talon were friends, but he’s into some bad shit these days. I think he’s getting rid of his competition.”
“What do you want, Chet?”
Shifting his feet, Chet cleared his throat. “I would like you to campaign for me. We all know Dawn isn’t the right person for sheriff. She’ll run this office as crooked as her father did.”
He narrowed his eyes at the deputy, then slipped his gaze to the others shifting in their chairs, pretending they hadn’t heard. The last thing he wanted was someone like Chet Hendricks in the sheriff’s office. The glow from Dawn’s office door window caught his attention again. Despite all of his bad feelings for her, and hatred of what she had done to him, she was the right choice for sheriff.
As he set his hat on his head, he met Chet’s expectant brown eyes again. “Tom is and was a good man. Yeah, he got a few kids out of trouble now and again, but when it mattered, he shot straight and true. Dawn will make a good sheriff for this town.”
Chet’s too-thin, boney face melted a bit. His was a day past a five o’clock shadow, and some of the scruff was coming in gray to match the patches of nearly white in his dark hair. The man was aging fast and not in a good way. Hard to believe Wyatt and Chet were the same age.
“Are you going to question Blackwell?” Chet put his hands on his skinny hips.
Wyatt reached for the knob of the back door to the parking lot. “Yes, but tomorrow is another day.”
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