Courting Trouble (22 page)

“That’s just Hudd,” Wayne interrupted. “The belligerence doesn’t have a thing to do with the dementia.”

“Right,” Dr. Bob said and bit down on his bottom lip. He nodded his head and steadied his gaze on Cade. “Eventually you may need to consider a placement for Hudd. He’ll wander more, get confused. He may even start to get violent.”

A firmness—a determination, hot and solid, settled in Cade’s chest. “He lives with me,” Cade said.

Cade didn’t like the look that passed between Wayne and Dr. Bob. The look seemed to say he’s emotional, he’s unreasonable, let me talk to him. Well, Wayne could talk until his tongue turned purple and swelled up in his mouth. Cade wasn’t sending his dad to an old-folks’ home. He hadn’t left New York and returned to Powder Springs to shuffle his dad off somewhere to die.

*

“Be reasonable,” Wayne said. He pulled the SUV into his parking spot behind the jail. Sunlight burst through the last few leaves that clung to the trees while a breeze, with a hint of sharp cold, rattled more of the dead from the limbs.

“Me?” Cade’s tone held more than a question—his tone held judgment and sibling disagreement. “You want to send Dad to an old-folks’ home and I’m unreasonable?”

“Eventually you won’t be able to take care of Hudd, even with ‘round-the-clock help. I’m not suggesting we ship him off today but—”

“He thinks he killed Connie McGrath.” Cade’s words shot out fast and true, like hard pellets of hail. He turned his gaze away from Wayne, unwilling to meet his brother’s eyes. Cade ran his fingers through his hair. This wasn’t how he’d wanted to tell Wayne. He took a breath and softened his tone. “That’s why he left the ranch and wandered down Yampa Valley Road.”

The muscle in Cade’s jaw flinched as he fought with his words, his thoughts. He wrestled any uncertainty about his dad’s original story into submission.

Cade turned his gaze back to Wayne. His brother—the town sheriff—sat behind the wheel of his cruiser, his own jaw muscle flinching. His face showed little sign of the jumbled bag of emotions that Cade knew must be creating a chaotic mix of feeling within his brother.

“He told me,” Cade continued, his voice nearly a whisper, “that he saw Connie dead in that ditch and he didn’t understand how he’d just seen her alive at the hospital.”

Wayne turned his head toward Cade. His nostrils flared and a hard look penetrated his eyes. “What do you expect me to do, brother?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Cade said. “Hell, go talk to the DA for all I care.” Cade’s hands flew up from his lap. “He has a diagnosis of dementia.”

Wayne pursed his lips and his eyes slipped away from Cade’s. “Sounds like a confession to me.”

“A confession?” Cade shook his head. “The statement Dad made is the rambling of an old man who is losing his mind.” Anger thundered in his chest. “He confused what
really
happened that night with all the rumors we’ve all heard since Connie died and—”

“What about Tulsa?” Wayne asked.

Wayne’s words stopped Cade—made him pause. His hands fell to his lap. The tension about Hudd deflated with the mention of Tulsa’s name. There was more than just Hudd to consider, more than the truth about Connie—more—always more—in the middle of reality versus rumor, fact versus fiction. In the middle was Tulsa jerking at Cade’s heart—always Tulsa.

“You have to tell Tulsa.” Wayne’s voice was even and without anger, but it was a voice deep with earnest belief. “Her whole life, what she believed, why she left, what people said—”

Cade shook his head. “No.”

Wayne lifted his eyebrow. “Brother, you can’t keep this from her. Secrets have a way of owning out.”

“Did you hear me, Wayne? Dad didn’t do it.”

Cade needed Wayne to understand that Hudd didn’t hurt Connie. According to his alibi, Hudd wasn’t even on Yampa Valley Road that night.

“He’s merged rumors with reality,” Cade said, “but that doesn’t mean I want anyone else to hear him ramble.”

“Brother,” Wayne spoke his words slowly. “I sure wish I was as convinced as you.”

More convinced? What could be more convincing than a solid alibi and no witnesses? They’d both read the police file and there wasn’t evidence that connected Hudd to Connie’s death. Rumors were the only link between Hudd and Connie McGrath.

The words of Cade’s criminal law professor whispered through his head:
The absence of evidence isn’t necessarily evidence of absence
. Plus there was that one inconvenient name that seemed to pop up whenever Connie’s case was mentioned: Wilkes Stevenson.

“Looks like you better get your game face on.”

Cade followed Wayne’s gaze across the parking lot toward Main Street. Tulsa and Ash walked toward McPherson’s Arcade and Games where Bobby waited by the front door. Tulsa came to a stop, but she smiled and held out her hand once Ash gave her father a big hug.

Cade’s heart clutched. Tulsa with her long legs, black hair, and curvy frame—even from a distance she sucked the oxygen from him.

“That face of yours says everything that your words don’t.”

Cade turned toward Wayne and instead of a cocksure, teasing grin, Wayne’s mouth was downsloped and his eyes serious—thoughtful.

“I know what that’s like,” Wayne said. His paw-like hand rested on the steering wheel. “When you don’t stop loving them, but they can’t go on loving you.” He shook his head as if shaking an unwanted thought from his mind. “Such a damned waste.” Wayne looked out his driver-side window. “It shouldn’t have happened the way it did. He shouldn’t have been involved.”

Heat coiled deep in Cade’s belly. Why wouldn’t his brother let it go?

“Hudd wasn’t involved,” Cade said, the frustration that laced his voice more about Tulsa than Hudd.

Wayne squeezed his lips tight and raised his eyebrows. The cruiser creaked as he shifted his body and pushed open the door. Wayne didn’t say another word, but he didn’t need to. His silence, his leaving, was statement enough.

*

Bells rang and buzzers ripped through McPherson’s Arcade. The doughy scent of pizza that’s waited an hour too long under a heat lamp wafted in the air. Tulsa hadn’t heard so much noise or seen so many flashing lights since the last time she’d been to Vegas to visit a client. She stood on the far side of the arcade while Bobby and Ash fought for a win over a tight game of air hockey.

“I used to always beat you at that.”

With the suede of Cade’s voice, the hair on Tulsa’s neck prickled. She’d never get past her visceral response to Cade. She gazed at his sharp cheekbones and full lips. A quick flame burned through her body as her eyes drank in a man she didn’t dare keep. His effect on her body—it was automatic, reflexive, unconditional.

“I remember winning a few games.” A small smile played about her lips. She tamped down the want that shot through her—focusing her gaze on his blue eyes.

He looked tired—deep brown, nearly purple pocketed his eyes. Sadness clung to him. An unfamiliar melancholy skimmed his surface.

She’d heard about Hudd.

At least part of the story. She’d heard the sheriff and the deputies and nearly a search-and-rescue team had been assembled to find the dour old man. She couldn’t say that her heart had hurt much for Hudd when she first heard—she wasn’t that good, that saintly—but for Cade, her heart had been torn. She’d thought of him. Even picked up the phone to call—to offer her help—but what help could she be? How duplicitous would it be to search for Wilkes Stevenson and then offer help to find Hudd? The duality of her wants rattled her—like a window blasted by a sharp mountain gust.

Ash slammed the puck into Bobby’s goal and jumped up and down, thrilled with her win. She pumped four more quarters into the game; it looked like father and daughter would go two out of three.

“I heard that Hudd wandered off.”

Cade was a good attorney, so there was just the tiniest flinch of his jaw muscle with her words. His body didn’t move, but she could feel it—the shift within him—the discomfort that her words caused. Her knowledge of his inner feelings was a sense—a sense that came from knowing him for so long and so well, no matter how many years had elapsed.

“Are you asking me if it’s true?”

Tulsa nodded.

Cade crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his chin toward her.

“He’s losing his mind,” Cade said, just above the din of the noise. “Dr. Bob diagnosed him with dementia. Said it will only get worse.”

Tulsa’s mind lingered on the thought of an incapacitated Hudd. She didn’t like him and more than a tiny part of her—a part she wished didn’t exist but a part she couldn’t deny—had wished ill on the man that she believed responsible for her mother’s death. But she didn’t wish ill on Cade—had never wished ill on him.

Her eyes wandered over his face. The worn look in his eyes, the expression that represented too little sleep and too much worry. She wanted to hug him—help him—she wanted the facts to be different so they were on the same side and she could help Cade through his pain. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head to the side, her face an expression of calm.

“Where’d you find him?”

The skin across Cade’s jaw tightened. He stared beyond her, toward Bobby and Ash, a distance in his eyes. Cade pressed his lips together. He didn’t look at her when he answered and his usually loose-limbed body was held tight.

“Yampa Valley Road.”

A shiver raced up Tulsa’s spine and tingled out into her arms and fingers.

“Far from the house?” Tulsa pressed.

“He got to the Dobson place, not far from mile marker—”

“Seventy-eight Tulsa finished Cade’s sentence. The back of her throat tightened with the words and the noise of the arcade for an instant seemed to drop away, dulled by the thoughts pounding through her head.

“Why would he go to
that
spot?” A rhetorical question, except she wanted an answer. Needed an answer. At the very least she wanted Cade to consider what she thought to be the truth. A truth that Cade fervently denied was anything more than the wisps of rumor he believed them to be.

“Because he’s losing his mind.” Cade’s words ground out hard and sharp-edged. His eyes held no empathy, no doubt—his eyes held only solid seriousness when he turned his gaze toward her. And anger.

Her heart jolted with the expression that simmered in Cade’s eyes. His jaw was angled down, his neck tight.

“He’s merged rumor with reality.”

Tulsa pulled her arms tighter across her chest, across her heart. A heart she’d fought once before to rebuild after it shattered.

“Or he can’t remember how to lie anymore,” Tulsa said. She braced herself against Cade’s words, his anger, against the past, against the future, against the world. “Did he say anything when you found him?”

Something hard and hidden flickered in Cade’s eyes. The shiver passed through Tulsa again.

“Nothing important,” Cade finally said.

And in that moment, Tulsa McGrath knew—beyond any reasonable doubt—she knew that Cade Montgomery lied.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Midmorning light glimmered through the beveled glass in the French doors that led to the backyard. The light spotted the kitchen table with wobbly squares. Earlier that morning, when Ash exited the front door for school and Savannah exited the back door for her workshop, Tulsa felt more than the simple hints of crisp chill in the air. The cold was not yet bitter, but it bore down on the warmth of the sun, nearly ready to eclipse the heat until next summer.

Tulsa clasped her warm coffee cup tighter in her right hand and twirled her pen over the knuckles of her left. She’d listened to the entire morning conference. She’d even added comments, but her mind was barely present. She couldn’t roust Cade from her thoughts.

His demeanor at the arcade after Hudd had turned up wandering down Yampa Valley Road, in the same spot where almost two decades before Connie had been found nearly dead, cast a stain upon her. Cade’s mood had felt like a solid mass of anger—displeasure—something that was cold, hard, and impenetrable. Maybe what she felt seeping from Cade was his denial. Denial that sat like a monolith in his mind—cool and smooth, dark and solid—a giant block that Cade used to deflect past events. Events that seemed so clear to Tulsa. Events that Tulsa wanted confirmed. Events that clamored through her mind and grew louder with the need for the truth.

Many times in her mind, Tulsa constructed the night her mother died. Recreated the deep green weeds that ran beside Yampa Valley Road in the spring. The chill of a night late in April that, after a rain, contained the tiniest hint of damp in the air. The earth squishy beneath Connie’s brown leather boots as she stumbled down the highway in the darkness. Tulsa watched the glimmer of headlights round a curve. The bright lights from the car bounced off Connie’s fair skin and the black curls that fell down her back. Her sharp-cut jaw turning on her long neck, her hands cupping up over her eyes to see the car. The sudden screech of rubber on pavement. The inevitable jerk of the wheel. Then silence.

“Right, Tulsa?”

Tulsa jerked her head up, her movement scattering her thoughts. She looked straight into her computer screen where Sylvia, Emma, and Jo waited for her response.

“Sorry guys,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She cleared her throat. Her mind thick with speculated memories, she shook her head the tiniest bit. “I got distracted.”

“Settlement conference?” Emma asked.

Tulsa nodded. She didn’t want to discuss Cade, finding Wilkes, or Hudd wandering to the exact spot that her mother’s body was found—not yet.

Jo flipped closed the cover of her iPad in acknowledgement that the staff meeting was finished.

“That will be tough.” Emma slipped her gaze toward Sylvia. “What’ll you do while they’re at the conference?”

“Work on the Fuentes brief.”
Or go visit the Powder Springs DA.

Jo clasped her hands in front of her on the table. “Is there anything we can do?”

Tulsa rested her temple on the fist of her hand. “Hope that the tentative agreement gets signed and approved. If Bobby agrees to Savannah keeping sole custody then she’ll agree to Ash getting every other weekend and every Wednesday with Bobby.”