Unexpected Protector Read online

  “Maybe she decided she wanted to be really rid of him,” Finn countered. “In any case, I want you to go talk to the ex-wife. Find out if she has an alibi for the time your brother was murdered.”

  He should have seen that coming. “Okay, will do,” Carson told him. “You heard the man, Justice,” he said to the dog. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Since her divorce from Bo Gage two years ago, Darby Gage had been forced to stitch together a number of part-time jobs just to make ends meet.

  Carson found her at the diner where she worked the morning shift as a waitress.

  It might have been his imagination, but his ex-sister-in-law seemed to tense up when she saw him coming into the diner.

  Putting on a cheerful face, Darby walked up to him with a menu and said, “Take a seat, Detective Gage. We’ve still got a few empty tables to choose from.”

  Carson picked a table that was off to one side. Parking Justice there, he sat down.

  “What can I get you?” Darby asked.

  He could see that the cheerfulness was forced. It probably unnerved her to see him here, he guessed. “Answers,” he told his ex-sister-in-law.

  Her blue eyes swept over him. In his estimation, she looked nervous. She gave up all pretense of cheerfulness. “Is this about Bo?”

  His eyes never left her face. His gut told him that she didn’t have anything to do with Bo’s murder, but he was here so he might as well do his job.

  “Yes.”

  Darby sighed as she shook her head. “I don’t know what I can tell you.”

  “Let me be the judge of that,” Carson told her.

  He’d found that saying something like that took the reins away from the person he was interviewing and put them back into his hands.

  Carson kept one eye on Justice, watching for any sort of a telltale reaction on the dog’s part. All the German shepherds on the K-9 force were initially bred and then trained by Bo or one of the trainers employed at Red Ridge K-9 Training Center. That was actually where his brother had met Hayley, who was one of the trainers.

  Bo had made his living breeding the dogs for the police department as well as for other clients. Darby had been part of that business until the divorce and even now, one of her part-time jobs was cleaning the kennels at the training center.

  In Carson’s experience, German shepherds were exceedingly sensitive when it came to certain character traits and if Darby had somehow been involved in Bo’s murder, maybe the dog would pick up on that.

  But Justice’s response to his former trainer’s ex seemed favorable. So much so that when Darby absently stroked the top of the dog’s head, Justice wagged his tail.

  Taking that into account, Carson still pushed on. “Where were you around 6:30 p.m. the night Bo was killed?” he asked Darby. Then, realizing the waitress might play dumb about the date, he started to add, “That was on—”

  “I know when Bo was killed,” Darby said, cutting him off. “I was just leaving the kennels after cleaning up at the training center.”

  Technically, he already knew that because he had got her schedule by calling the places where she worked. But he wanted to hear what she had to say. “Anyone see you?”

  “Other than the dogs?” she asked.

  He couldn’t tell by Darby’s expression if she was being sarcastic or just weary. Given that Bo had put her through the wringer and was the reason why she had to hold down all these various jobs just to keep a roof over her head, for now he let the remark slide.

  “Yes, other than the dogs.”

  She thought for a moment. “I think one of the handlers, Jessop, was still there. He might have seen me. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d need an alibi so I didn’t make a point of having someone see me leave.” And then she suddenly remembered. “There’s a time card I punched out. That should be proof enough for you.”

  He knew that there were ways to manipulate a time card. But since, in his opinion, Darby wasn’t the type who could even hurt a fly, he nodded and said, “Yes, it should.” Getting up from the table, he dug into his pocket and took out five dollars. He put it down on the table. “Thanks for your time, Darby. I’ll get back to you if I have any other questions.”

  Darby picked up the five dollar bill and held it up for him to take back. “You can’t leave a big tip, you didn’t buy anything,” she pointed out.

  Carson made no attempt to take the money from her. “I took up your time,” Carson answered.

  With that he and Justice left the diner.

  Chapter 6

  Bo hadn’t done right by Darby.

  That was the thought that was preying on Carson’s mind as he drove away from the diner.

  They might have been brothers, but he was aware of all of Bo’s shortcomings. His older brother had always been the typical playboy: self-centered and careless with anyone else’s feelings. He was making good money with his German shepherd–breeding service and could have seen to it that Darby had got a better settlement in the divorce—at least enough so that she wasn’t forced to take on so many part-time, menial jobs in order to keep a roof over her head.

  But Bo’s lawyer had been a good deal sharper than the lawyer Darby had been able to afford to represent her, so Bo had wound up keeping almost everything. He got the house, the business and most of the bank accounts, while Darby had clearly got the very short end of the stick.

  In his opinion, the ultimate humiliation was when Bo had tossed her that crumb by letting her earn extra money cleaning out the kennels at his breeding operation.

  If his brother hadn’t written Demi C on the pavement with his blood, Carson might have looked a little more closely at Darby as a possible suspect in Bo’s murder. He certainly couldn’t have blamed her for being bitter about the treatment she’d received at Bo’s hands both before and after the divorce.

  But Darby hadn’t seemed bitter to him, just closed off. And decidedly weary.

  She probably wasn’t getting enough sleep, given the various conflicting schedules of the jobs she held down, Carson thought.

  “What do you think, Justice?” Carson asked the dog riding in the passenger seat beside him. “You think Darby might have got fed up and decided to teach Bo a lesson for treating her so shabbily?”

  Justice barked in response to hearing his name and Carson laughed.

  “That’s what I thought. You like her, don’t you, boy? Back to Demi, then,” Carson agreed.

  About to drive back to the station, Carson abruptly changed his mind as well as his direction.

  He was heading back to the Double C Ranch.

  Something had been bothering him about Serena Colton’s testimony. Why was she so convinced that Demi hadn’t killed his brother despite what could be considered a deathbed testimony? Why was she so certain that her cousin wasn’t capable of killing someone even though everyone knew the bounty hunter had a bad temper.

  He’d once seen Demi take down a man at The Pour House who was twice her size and obviously stronger than she was. Thin and wiry, the woman was nonetheless a virtual powerhouse. Ever since that day, he’d regarded Demi as being rather lethal.

  Given that and her unpredictable temper, he’d never thought it was a good idea for his brother to have taken up with her. Demi Colton wasn’t the type of woman to put up with being treated the way Bo obviously treated women he was no longer interested in seeing exclusively.

  Carson couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something that Serena had held back last night when he’d questioned her.

  He had no idea if that “something” was significant or inconsequential, but he knew it was going to keep eating away at him until he found out exactly what it was that Serena wasn’t telling him. He might as well get this out of the way before he followed up on some of Bo’s business dealings and talked to the women he’d romanced and discarded.
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br />   * * *

  When he arrived at the Double C mansion, Carson debated leaving Justice in his car when he went in. After all, it was January and if he left the windows partially opened, the dog would be all right. However, he regarded Justice as his partner and under normal circumstances, he wouldn’t have left his partner just sitting in the car, twiddling his thumbs while he went in to reinterview someone connected to a case.

  “You’re on your best behavior, boy,” he instructed, taking the leash as Justice jumped down out of the passenger seat.

  Alma, the housekeeper who opened the front door when he rang the bell, looked far from happy to see him. The older woman cast a wary eye in Justice’s direction.

  “I’m sorry, Detective. Mr. and Mrs. Colton are not in,” she informed him formally.

  “That’s all right,” Carson replied politely. “I’m not here to see them. I’m here to talk to Ms. Colton.”

  The housekeeper raised her chin as she asked defensively, “Which Ms. Colton?”

  The woman knew damn well which one, he thought. She just wanted to make things difficult for him. She was being protective of the people she worked for.

  “The older one. Serena,” he specified.

  The housekeeper frowned. “I’m afraid that she’s not here, either.”

  Just as the woman was about to forcibly close the door on him, Serena’s voice was heard calling to her from upstairs. “Alma, I’m going to need you to watch Lora for me for a few hours while I’m working with the horses.”

  Carson’s eyes met the housekeeper’s. “Looks like she came back. Lucky me,” he commented.

  “Yes,” the older woman responded icily. “Quite lucky. I will go upstairs and tell Miss Serena that you want to see her.”

  “That’s all right,” Carson said, moving past the housekeeper and entering the foyer. “Don’t trouble yourself. I can go tell her myself. I know my way.”

  And with that, he and Justice headed toward the winding staircase.

  Carson took the stairs two at a time with Justice keeping pace right behind him.

  * * *

  About to go back into her suite as she waited for the housekeeper to come upstairs, Serena was more than a little surprised to see the detective make his way up to the landing in the housekeeper’s place.

  Now what? Serena thought impatiently.

  “Did you forget something, Detective?” she asked, doing her best to sound polite and not as irritated as she felt.

  “No,” he answered, reaching the landing, “but you did.” He signaled for Justice to sit and the K-9 did.

  Her brow furrowed a little as she tried to make sense of what he’d just said. “Excuse me?”

  “When we talked last night, I got the feeling that there was something you were holding back, something you weren’t saying,” he told her. “The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I was right. I figured I needed to get back to you to find out just what that was.” He looked at her expectantly.

  Alma had just managed to make her way upstairs. The woman was struggling not to pant. “I’m sorry, Miss Serena. He refused to leave.”

  “Apparently he’s very stubborn,” Serena said, looking coldly at the invading detective. She drew herself up, moving away from the bedroom doorway. “Alma, if you don’t mind looking after Lora, I’ll see if I can’t put the detective’s mind at rest once and for all, so he can be on his way and we can all go on with our lives.”

  He waited until the housekeeper picked up the baby from her crib and left with Lora before saying anything to Serena.

  “Have I done something to offend you, Ms. Colton?” he asked, referring to her rather abrupt tone.

  He had gall, she’d give him that. “You want that alphabetically, chronologically or in order of magnitude?” she asked the detective.

  “Tell you what, I’ll let you pick,” Carson said magnanimously.

  He didn’t think she was going to say anything, did he, she thought. Well, he was in for a surprise.

  Serena launched into him. “You come storm trooping into my house at an ungodly hour—”

  “You were up,” Carson reminded her.

  “That’s beside the point,” Serena retorted. “I was feeding Lora. But that still didn’t give you the right to burst in here—”

  “The chief knocked,” Carson corrected her. He could see she was getting really frustrated. The fire in her eyes was really rather compelling to watch. “And he is your brother as well as the police chief.”

  Exasperated, Serena switched to another tactic. “You not only accused a relative of mine of an awful crime but already convicted her in your mind, refusing to even entertain the very real possibility that she wasn’t the one responsible for killing your brother.”

  “I might have ‘convicted’ her a little too readily,” he allowed, “but you absolved her just as quickly despite evidence to the contrary.”

  “That wasn’t actual evidence, it was circumstantial evidence,” she insisted.

  She was beginning to get to him, not to mention that she was obscuring the real reason why he had returned to the Double C Ranch. “I didn’t come here to argue with you.”

  Serena gave him a knowing look. “You could have fooled me,” she retorted.

  “I’m not here to do that either,” he informed her curtly, just in case she was going to go off on that tangent. “All I want to know is what you’re holding back, Ms. Colton.”

  She could feel herself losing her temper. “I’m not holding anything back,” she protested a little too vehemently.

  Carson had no intention of dropping this until he had his answer. “Last night, when you told me that you hadn’t seen Demi since the day before—”

  “I hadn’t,” Serena reaffirmed in case he was going to go in that direction.

  Ignoring her, he pushed on to get to his point. “You were convinced that cousin of yours wasn’t capable of murder.”

  “She’s not,” Serena insisted. She was prepared to say that as many times as it took to convince the detective—because she believed with all her heart that it was true.

  He wished she’d stop interrupting and let him get to the heart of his case. He glared at her and continued talking.

  “When I asked you why you were so certain that she hadn’t killed Bo Gage, you looked as if you were going to say something, but then you didn’t. You just repeated what you’d already said. What is it that you actually wanted to say?”

  “You’re imagining things,” Serena told him dismissively.

  Carson’s eyes met hers. Immovable, he held his ground.

  “No, I’m not,” he told her. “Now, one more time. What is it that you were going to say?” He saw the stubborn look that came over her face. She was digging in, he thought. He tried another tactic. “Convince me, Ms. Colton. Why couldn’t Demi kill my brother?”

  Serena shook her head. “I don’t—”

  “Why?” Carson repeated, more forcefully this time. He gave no sign of relenting or backing off until she gave him an answer.

  Serena glared at him, but inside, she was beginning to relent.

  It wasn’t as if, if she remained silent, all of this would eventually just go away. It wouldn’t. There was a very viable piece of evidence of Bo’s connection with Demi that wasn’t about to be erased. It was only going to grow more prominent with time.

  She of all people knew that.

  Taking a breath, Serena finally gave Carson what he was after, albeit reluctantly. “Because she wouldn’t kill the father of her baby.”

  “Baby?” Carson repeated, completely stunned. He was definitely not expecting something like this. Maybe he’d misunderstood. “What baby?”

  Was he really being this dense, or did he just want her to spell it out for him, Serena wondered, feeling her anger mounting.

&n
bsp; “Demi’s baby.”

  He thought of the woman he had seen not that long ago. Demi Colton had no children. Carson shook his head. “Demi doesn’t have a baby.”

  “Not yet,” Serena agreed, feeling as if she had just betrayed the other woman, “but she’s pregnant.”

  He continued to stare at Serena. When he saw her, Demi had been as thin as one of those swizzle sticks they used in bars a class above The Pour House. Was the chief’s sister jerking him around, trying to win sympathy for her cousin?

  Or was she telling him the truth?

  “Demi’s pregnant?” he finally repeated.

  Serena nodded grimly. “Yes.”

  He felt like someone trying to find his way through a foggy swamp. “And it’s Bo’s baby?”

  “Yes!” she cried, feeling like a game show host who’d painstakingly led a contestant to the right answer after a number of wrong turns.

  Although Bo had been a womanizer, he had never actually bragged about his conquests or talked about them in any sort of detailed manner. To his recollection, Bo had never said anything about getting Demi—or any other woman—pregnant. He would have definitely remembered something like that.

  “Did my brother know she was pregnant?” he asked Serena.

  “She didn’t want to tell him.” She saw the quizzical look on Carson’s face. “Your brother was going to be marrying another woman. Demi wasn’t about to say anything about the baby until after she actually gave birth. She felt that saying something now, right before his wedding, when she wasn’t even showing yet would make her look desperate and pathetic in his eyes. Like she was just trying to keep him for herself. Demi had way too much pride for that.”

  All this sounded somewhat far-fetched to him. “You’re sure about this?”

  Serena didn’t hesitate with her answer. “Very.”

  She was obviously missing what was right in front of her, Carson thought. “Seems to me that your friend had a very good reason to kill my brother. It’s called revenge and it’s right up there as one of the top two reasons people kill people,” he told her.