Lone Star Winter (27 page)

“Good luck to her. He's still in love with his wife. And he's not quite as gullible as Jordan.”

“Jordan wasn't so gullible,” he defended his former boss. “When a woman that pretty turns up the heat, most normal men will follow her anywhere.”

She lifted both eyebrows. “Even you?”

He grinned. “I'm not normal. I'm a cowboy.”

She chuckled and sipped her iced tea. “They're still looking for Janet. I've had an idea,” she said.

“Shoot.”

“What if we advertise our property for sale in all the regional newspapers?”

“Whoa,” he said. “We can't sell it. We don't have power of attorney and the will's not even in probate yet.”

“She's a suspected murderess,” she reminded him. “Felons can't inherit, did you know? If she's tried and convicted, we might be able to get her to return everything she got from Daddy's estate.”

He frowned, thinking hard. “Do you remember Dad telling us about a new will he'd made?”

She blinked. “No.”

“Maybe you weren't there. It was when he was in the hospital, just before he died. He could hardly talk for the pain and he was gasping for breath. But he said there was a will. He said he put it in his safest place.”
He frowned heavily. “I never thought about that until just now, but what if he meant a new will, Libby?”

“It wouldn't have been legal if it wasn't witnessed,” she said sadly. “He might have written something down and she found it and threw it out. I doubt it would stand up in court.”

“No. He went to San Antonio without Janet, about two days before he had the heart attack,” he persisted.

“Who did he know in San Antonio?” she wondered aloud.

“Why don't you ask Mr. Kemp to see if his private detective could snoop around?” he queried softly.

She pursed her lips. “It would be a long shot. And we couldn't afford to pay him….”

“Dad had a coin collection that was worth half a million dollars, Libby,” Curt said. “It's never turned up. I can't find any record that he ever sold it, either.”

Her lips fell open. In the agony of the past few months, that had never occurred to her. “I assumed Janet cashed it in….”

“She had the insurance money,” he reminded her, “and the property—or so she assumed. But when we were sorting out Dad's personal belongings, that case he kept the coins in was missing. What if—” he added eagerly “—he took it to San Antonio and left it with someone, along with an altered will?”

She was trying to think. It wasn't easy. If they had those coins, if nothing else, they could make the loan payment.

“I can ask Mr. Kemp if he'll look into it,” she said. “He can take the money out of my salary.”

“I can contribute some of mine,” Curt added.

She felt lighter than she had in weeks. “I'll go ask him right now!”

“Finish your sandwich first,” he coaxed. “You've lost weight, baby sister.”

She grimaced. “I've been depressed since we had to leave home.”

“Yeah. Me, too.”

She smiled at him. “But things are looking up!”

 

She found Kemp just about to leave for the day. She stopped him at the door and told him what she and Curt had been discussing.

He closed the door behind them, picked up the phone, and dialed a number. Libby listened while he outlined the case to someone, most likely the private detective he'd hired to look for Janet.

“That's right,” he told the man. “One more thing, there's a substantial coin collection missing, as well. I'll ask.” He put his hand over the receiver and asked
Libby for a description of it, which he gave to the man. He added a few more comments and hung up, smiling.

“Considering the age of those coins and their value, it wouldn't be hard to trace them if they'd been sold. Good work, Libby!”

“Thank my brother,” she replied, smiling. “He remembered it.”

“You would have, too, I expect, in time,” he said in a kindly tone. “Want me to have a talk with the bank president?” he added. “I think he might be more amenable to letting you and Curt back on the property with this new angle in mind. It might be to his advantage,” he added in a satisfied tone.

“You mean, if we turn out to have that much money of our own, free and clear, it would make him very uncomfortable if we put it in the Jacobsville Municipal Bank and not his?”

“Exactly.”

Her eyes blazed. “Which is exactly where we will put it, if we get it,” she added.

He chuckled. “No need to tell him that just yet.”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Mr. Kemp, you have a devious mind.”

He smiled. “What else is new?”

 

Libby was furious at herself for not thinking of her father's impressive coin collection until now. She'd watched those coins come in the mail for years without really noticing them. But now they were important. They meant the difference between losing their home and getting it back again.

She sat on pins and needles over the weekend, until Kemp heard from the private detective the following Monday afternoon.

He buzzed Libby and told her to come into the office.

He was smiling when she got there. “We found them,” he said, chuckling when she made a whoop loud enough to bring Mabel down the hall.

“It's okay,” Libby told her coworker, “I've just had some good news for a change!”

Mabel grinned and went back to work.

Libby sat down in the chair in front of Kemp's big desk, smiling and leaning forward.

“Your father left the coins with a dealer who locked them in his safe. He was told not to let Janet have them under any circumstances,” he added gently. “Besides that, there was a will. He's got that, too. It's not a self-made will, either. It was done by a lawyer in the
dealer's office and witnessed by two people who work for him.”

Libby's eyes filled with tears. “Daddy knew! He knew she was trying to cut us out of the will!”

“He must have,” he conceded. “Apparently she'd made some comments about what she was going to do when he died. And she'd been harassing him about his health, making remarks about his heart being weak, as well.” His jaw clenched. “Whatever the cause, he changed the will in your favor—yours and Curt's. This will is going to stand up in a court of law and it changes the entire financial situation. You and Curt can go home and I'll get the will into probate immediately.”

“But the insurance…”

He nodded. “She was the beneficiary for one of his insurance policies.” He smiled at her surprise. “There's another one, a half-a-million-dollar policy, that he left with the same dealer who has the will. You and Curt are co-beneficiaries.”

“He didn't contact us!” she exclaimed suddenly.

“Yes, and that's the interesting part,” he said. “He tried to contact you and Janet told him that you and Curt were out of the country on an extended vacation. She planned to go and talk to him the very day you made the remarks about Violet's father and having
locks put on your bedroom doors. She ran for her life before she had time to try to get to the rest of your inheritance.” He chuckled. “Maybe she had some idea of what the seller was guarding and decided that the insurance policy would hold her for a while without risking arrest.”

“Oh, thank God,” she whispered, shivering with delight. “Thank God! We can go home!”

“Apparently,” he agreed, smiling. “I'm going to drive up to San Antonio today and get those documents and the coin collection.”

She was suddenly concerned. “But what if Janet hears about it? She had that friend in San Antonio who called and tried to get us off the property…” She stopped abruptly. “That's why they were trying to get us out of the house! They knew about the coin collection!” She sat back heavily. “But they could be dangerous….”

“Cash Grier is going with me.”

She pursed her lips amusedly. “Okay.”

He chuckled. “Nobody is going to try to attack me with Grier in the car. Even if he isn't armed.”

“Good point,” she agreed.

“So call your brother and tell him the news,” he said. “And stop worrying. You're going to land on your feet, Libby.”

“How's Violet?” she asked without thinking.

He stood up, his hands deep in his pockets. “She and her mother are distraught, as you might imagine. They never realized that Mr. Hardy had been the victim of foul play. I've tried to keep it out of the papers, but when Janet's caught, it's going to be difficult.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

He smiled. “Take them a pizza and let Violet talk to you about it,” he suggested. “She misses working here.”

“I miss her, too.”

He shifted, averting his gaze. “I offered to let her come back to work here.”

“You did?” she asked, enthused.

“She's going to think about it,” he added. “You might, uh, tell her how shorthanded we are here, and that the temporary woman we got had to quit. Maybe she'll feel sorry for us and come back.”

She smiled. “I'll do my best.”

He looked odd. “Thanks,” he said stiffly.

T
he very next day, Kemp came into the office grinning like a lottery winner. He was carrying a cardboard box, in which was a mahogany box full of rare gold coins, an insurance policy, a few personal items that had belonged to Riddle Collins and a fully executed new will.

Libby had to sit down when Kemp presented her with the hard evidence of her father's love for herself and Curt.

“The will is legal,” he told her. “I'm going to take it right to the courthouse and file it. It will supersede the will that Janet probably still has in her possession. You should take the coins to the bank and put them in a
safe-deposit box until you're ready to dispose of them. The dealer said he'll buy them from you at market value anytime you're ready to sell them.”

“But I'll have to use them as collateral for a loan to make the loan payment…”

“Actually, no, you won't,” Kemp said with a smile, drawing two green-covered passbooks out of the box and handing them to her.

“What are these?” she asked blankly.

“Your father had two other bank accounts, both in San Antonio.” He smiled warmly. “There's more than enough there to pay off the mortgage completely so that the ranch is free and clear. You'll still have a small fortune left over. You and your brother are going to be rich, Libby. Congratulations.”

She cried a little, both for her father's loving care of them even after death and for having come so close to losing everything.

She pulled a tissue out of the pocket of her slacks and wiped her red eyes. “I'll take these to the Jacobsville Municipal Bank right now,” she said firmly, “and have the money transferred here from San Antonio. Then I'll have them issue a cashier's check to pay off the other bank,” she added with glee.

“Good girl. You can phone the insurance company
about the death benefit, too. How does it feel, not to have to worry about money?”

She chuckled. “Very good.” She eyed him curiously. “Does this mean you're firing me?”

“Well, Libby, you won't really need to work for a living anymore,” he began slowly.

“But I love my job!” she exclaimed, and had the pleasure of watching his high cheekbones go ruddy. “Can't I stay?”

He drew in a long breath. “I'd be delighted if you would,” he confessed. “I can't seem to keep a paralegal these days.”

She smiled, remembering that Callie Kirby had been one, until she'd married Micah Steele. There had been two others after her, but neither had stayed long.

“Then it's settled. I have to go and call Curt!”

“Go to the bank first, Libby,” he instructed with a grin. “And I'll get to the courthouse. Mabel, we're going to be out of the office for thirty minutes!”

“Okay, boss!”

They went down the hall together and they stopped dead.

Violet was back at her desk, across from a grinning Mabel, looking radiant. “You said I could come back,” she told Kemp at once, looking pretty and uncertain at the same time.

He drew in a sharp breath and his eyes lingered on her. “I certainly did,” he agreed. “Are you staying?” She nodded.

“How about making a fresh pot of coffee?” he asked.

“Regular?” she asked.

He averted his gaze to the door. “Half and half,” he murmured. “Caffeine isn't good for me.”

He went out the door, leaving Violet's jaw dropped.

“I told you he missed you,” Libby whispered as she followed Kemp out the door and onto the sidewalk.

 

Libby and Curt were able to go home the next morning. But their arrival was bittersweet. The house had been ransacked in their absence.

“We'd better call the sheriff's office,” Curt said angrily, when they'd ascertained that the disorder was thorough. “We'll need to have a report filed on this for insurance purposes.”

“Do we even have insurance?”

He nodded. “Dad had a homeowner's policy. I've been keeping up the payments, remember?”

She righted a chair that had been turned over next to the desk her father had used in his study. The filling cabinet had been emptied onto the floor, along
with a lot of other documents pertaining to the ranch's business.

“They were looking for that coin collection,” Curt guessed as he picked up the phone. “I'll bet anything Janet knew about it. She must be running short of cash already!”

“Thank God Mr. Kemp was able to track it down,” she said.

“Sheriff's department?” Curt said into the telephone receiver. “I need you to send someone out to the Collins ranch. That's right, it's just past Jordan Powell's place. We've had a burglary. Yes. Okay. Thanks!” He hung up. “I talked to Hayes. He's going to come himself, along with his investigator.”

“I thought he was overseas with his army unit in Iraq,” she commented.

“He's back.” He glanced at her amusedly. “You used to have a case on him, just before you went nuts over Jordan Powell.”

She hated hearing Jordan's name mentioned. “Hayes is nice.”

“So he is.” He toyed with the telephone cord. “Libby, Jordan's having some bad times lately. His association with the Merrills has made him enemies.”

“That was his choice,” she reminded her brother.

“He was good to us, when Dad died.”

She knew that. It didn't help. Her memories of Jordan's betrayal were too fresh. “Think I should do anything before they get here?”

“Make coffee,” he suggested dryly. “Hayes's investigator is Mack Hughes, and he lives on caffeine.”

“I'll do that.”

 

Sheriff Hayes Carson pulled up at the front steps in his car, a brightly polished black vehicle with all sorts of antennae sticking out of it. The investigator, Mack Hughes, pulled up beside it in his black SUV with a deck of lights on the roof.

“Thanks for coming so quickly,” Curt said, shaking hands with both men. “You remember my sister, Libby.”

“Hello, Elizabeth,” Hayes said with a grin, having always used her real first name instead of the nickname most people called her by. He was dashing, with blond hair and dark eyes, tall and muscular and big. He was in his mid-thirties; one tough customer, too. He and Cash Grier often went head-to-head in disputes, although they were good colleagues when there was an emergency.

“Hi, Hayes,” she replied with a smile. “Hello, Mack.”

Mack, tall and dark, nodded politely. “Let's see what you've got.”

They ushered the law enforcement officers inside and stood back while they went about searching for clues.

“Any idea who the perpetrators were?” Hayes murmured while Mack looked around.

“Someone connected to our stepmother, most likely,” Libby commented. “Dad had a very expensive coin collection and some secret bank accounts that even we didn't know about. If that's what they were looking for, they're out of luck. Mr. Kemp tracked them to San Antonio. Everything's in the bank now and a new will we recovered is in the proper hands.”

Hayes whistled softly. “Lucky for you.”

There was a sudden commotion in the front yard, made by a truck skidding to a stop between the two law-enforcement vehicles. A dusty, tired Jordan Powell came up the steps, taking them two at a time, and stopped abruptly in the living room.

“What's happened?” he asked at once, his eyes homing to Libby with dark concern.

“The house was ransacked,” Hayes told him. “Have you seen anything suspicious?”

“No. But I'll ask my men,” Jordan assured them. He looked at Libby for a long time. “You okay?”

“Curt and I are fine, thanks,” she said in a polite but reserved tone.

Jordan looked around at the jumble of furniture and paper on the floor, along with lamps and broken pieces of ceramic items that had been on the mantel over the fireplace.

“This wasn't necessary,” Jordan said grimly. “Even if they were looking for something, they didn't have to break everything in the house.”

“It was malicious, all right,” Hayes agreed. He moved just in front of Libby. “I heard from Grier that you've had two confrontations with Julie Merrill, one of them physically violent. She's also been implicated in acts of vandalism. I want to know if you think she might have had any part in this.”

Libby glanced at Jordan apprehensively.

“It could be a possibility,” Jordan said, to her dismay. “She was jealous of Libby and I've just broken with Julie and her father. She didn't take it well.”

“I'll add her to the list of suspects,” Hayes said quietly. “But I have to tell you, she isn't going to like being accused.”

“I don't care,” Curt replied, answering for himself as well as Libby. “Nobody has a right to do something like this.”

“Boss!” Mack called from the back porch. “Could you ask the Collinses to come out here, please?”

Curt stood aside to let Libby go first. On the small back stoop, Mack was squatting down, looking at a big red gas can. “This yours?” he asked Curt.

Curt frowned. “We don't have one that big,” he replied. “Ours is locked up in the outbuilding next to the barn.”

Mack and Hayes exchanged curious looks.

“There's an insurance policy on the house,” Libby remarked worriedly. “It's got Janet, our stepmother, listed as beneficiary.”

“That narrows down the suspects,” Hayes remarked.

“Surely she wouldn't…” Libby began.

“You've made a lot of trouble for her,” Jordan said grimly. “And now she's missed out on two savings accounts and a will that she didn't even know existed.”

“How did you know that?” Libby asked belligerently.

“My cousin owns the Municipal Bank,” Jordan said nonchalantly.

“He had no business telling you anything!” Libby protested.

“He didn't, exactly,” Jordan confessed. “I heard him
talking to one of his clerks about opening the new account for you and setting up a safe-deposit box.”

“Eavesdropping should be against the law,” she muttered.

“I'll make a note of it,” Hayes said with a grin.

She grinned back. “Thanks, Hayes.”

He told Mack to start marking evidence to be collected. “We'll see if we can lift any latent prints,” he told the small group. “If it was Janet, or someone she hired, they'll probably have been wearing gloves. If it was Julie Merrill, we might get lucky.”

“I hope we can connect somebody to it,” Libby said wearily, looking around. “If for no other reason than to make them pay to help have this mess cleaned up!”

“I'll take care of that,” Jordan said at once, and reached for his cell phone.

“We don't need—!” Libby began hotly.

But Jordan wasn't listening. He was talking to Amie at his ranch, instructing her to phone two housekeepers she knew who helped her with heavy tasks and send them over to the Collins place.

“You might as well give up,” Hayes remarked dryly. “Once Jordan gets the bit between his teeth, it would take a shotgun to stop him. You know that.”

She sighed angrily. “Yes. I know.”

Hayes pushed his wide-brimmed hat back off his
forehead and smiled down at Libby. “Are you doing anything Saturday night?” he asked. “They're having a campaign rally for Calhoun's supporters at Shea's.”

“I know, I'm one of them,” she replied, smiling. “Are you going to be there?”

He shrugged. “I might as well. Somebody'll have a beer too many and pick a fight, I don't doubt. Tiny the bouncer will have his hands full.”

“Great!” she said enthusiastically.

Jordan was eavesdropping and not liking what he heard. He wanted to tell Hayes to back off. He wanted to tell Libby what he felt. But he couldn't get the words out.

“If you two are moving back in,” Hayes added, “I think we'd better have somebody around overnight. I've got two volunteer deputies in the Sheriff's Posse who would be willing, I expect, if you'll keep them in coffee.”

She smiled. “I'd be delighted. Thanks, Hayes. It would make me feel secure. We've got a shotgun, but I don't even know where it is.”

“You could both stay with me until Hayes gets a handle on who did this,” Jordan volunteered.

“No, thanks,” Libby said quietly, trying not to remember that Jordan had already asked her to do that.
No matter how she felt about the big idiot, she wasn't going to step into Julie Merrill's place.

“This is our home,” Curt added.

Jordan drew in a long, sad breath. “Okay. But if you need help…”

“We'll call Hayes, thanks,” Libby said, turning back to the sheriff. “I need to tidy up the kitchen. Is it all right?”

Hayes went with her into the small room and looked around. There wasn't much damage in there and nothing was broken. “It looks okay. Go ahead, Libby. I'll see you Saturday, then?”

She grinned up at him. “Of course.”

He grinned back and then rejoined the men in the living room. “I'm going to talk to my volunteers,” he told Curt. “I'll be in touch.”

“Thanks a lot, Hayes,” Curt replied.

“Just doing my job. See you, Jordan.”

“Yeah.” Jordan didn't offer to shake hands. He glared after the other man as he went out the front door.

“I can clean my own house,” Libby began impatiently.

Jordan met her eyes evenly. “I've made a lot of mistakes. I've done a lot of damage. I know I can't make it up to you in one fell swoop, but let me do what I can to make amends. Will you?”

Libby looked at her brother, who shrugged and walked away, leaving her to deal with Jordan alone.

“Some help you are,” Libby muttered at his retreating back.

“I don't like the idea of that gas can,” Jordan said, ignoring her statement. “You can't stay awake twenty-four hours a day. If Janet is really desperate enough to set fire to the house trying to get her hands on the insurance money, neither you nor Curt is going to be safe here.”