Ms. Calculation

Seriously, it was like she could read his mind sometimes and it scared the bejeezus out of him. As it was, however, with her warm hand on his, he would take whatever he could get. It was better than having her angry.

He took her hand in his. “I do mean it. Sort of.”

“You don’t believe in that stuff, remember?”

He shrugged. “What I believe doesn’t matter. What matters is that your sister was a good person. If there is any justice in this world, her soul will rest in peace, maybe where she can watch down on you and help keep you from finding yourself in too much trouble.” He smiled, trying to lighten the mood. He hated talk of death.

“If there was any justice in this world, Wyatt, she wouldn’t have been killed. And I wouldn’t be standing in the middle of the crime scene.”

“Actually,” a woman said, her voice cutting through the tension, “you aren’t really standing in the middle of the crime scene. Bianca died inside the stall.”

He turned to see Alli standing there, Winnie in hand, staring at them. Gwen pulled her fingers from his, and as much as he loved Winnie, he silently wished they hadn’t been interrupted.

“Heya, Alli. You’re right, but this is still part of the scene,” he said. “Come here, Winnie-girl.”

Winnie let go of her mother’s hand and scampered over, and he picked her up. She was heavy in his arms in a way that made him wish, for half a second, that he had a child of his own.

Gwen looked over at him and smiled, but the action was short-lived.

“You know, Wyatt, you don’t have to give Winnie a treat every time you see her,” Alli grumbled. “She’s getting spoiled. Soon she’s going to be a brat if you keep it up.”

He lifted Winnie so he could look up into her face. He turned her from right to left as though he was inspecting her. “Yep. Nope. Don’t see a brat here. Just see a few bats in the cave.”

Winnie giggled, the sound was infectious and he caught himself laughing with her.

“What, don’t you ever pick those boogies?” he teased.

Winnie reached up and stuck her finger in her nose. She lifted her finger for him to see. “Look, I get them boogies!” she answered excitedly.

“You’re just like your brother,” Alli said, her tone heavy with dislike. She reached over and grabbed Winnie and set her back on the ground. “Go wash your hands, girl.”

Winnie gave him a backward wave as she escaped the confines of the barn and the castigation of her mother.

“The gardens looked good this year,” he said, trying to make small talk with Alli.

She shrugged. “I’ll do better next year. It was just too dry a summer.”

He’d tried to work in the gardens one year, as his family sold their vegetables and fruits at the local farmer’s market every Saturday in the warm months, but he’d found in a single month that he had a brown thumb rather than a green one. Though, admittedly, he had been working there with their old gardener, Bernard, who’d had even less of an amicable nature than Alli. Not all professional gardeners he’d met were light on personality, but it seemed like the last couple his mother had employed were no Bob Hopes.

Then again, his mother hadn’t really hired Alli so much as been forced to bring her into the fold when Waylon had eloped with her. Now Wyatt’s brother had been gone for almost three years, but here they were stuck with the only part of him that he’d left behind.

Alli hadn’t always been rough to be around, but the day Waylon left everything likable about Alli had gone with him.

“How were the tomatoes this year?” Gwen asked, in what he assumed was some kind of olive branch.

“Not as good as I woulda liked, but I did pretty good at the market. The people in Kalispell ate them up. Get it?” She laughed at her own pun.

Gwen gave a light, polite laugh.

“That’s great.” He tried not to sound too dismissive, but with everything going on he wanted to get moving instead of getting stuck making small talk with the woman who betrayed his brother. “Do you know who cleaned up the stall? I’d like to talk to them.” He dipped his chin in the direction of the bleach jug that sat in the corner near the front door.

She looked in the direction and frowned. “I dunno. People have been coming and going ever since your crew came through and took the body out.” She turned to Gwen. “I’m sorry for your loss. It’s always hard losing someone you love.”

Gwen nodded in acknowledgment. “By chance, did anyone see a bag around here?” She stuck out her hands in measurement. “It was black, about yea big?”

“I didn’t see nothing. I ain’t been around here too much. Just saw your car out front and Winnie was munching on the candy. Put two and two together and thought I’d come say hi.” She shrugged. “If you’re looking for something specific, you might want to ask your mom, Wyatt. She’s been poking around in here.”

It didn’t surprise him that his mom would have been spending her time in here after everything had gone down—of all the folks at Dunrovin, she’d taken Bianca’s death the hardest. She had a soft spot for the vet.

“I’ll chat with her,” he said, all too aware that in the next conversation he had with his family he would have to tell them what direction the investigation had headed.

The news wouldn’t come without blowback. And that was to say nothing about what the death would do to the tourism that kept the ranch afloat. If anyone caught wind that this was a possible murder case, it would undoubtedly hurt his parents’ bottom line.

“Do you know where they dumped the hay from the stall?” Gwen asked, pulling him from thoughts of his family.

“Oh, yeah,” Alli said, her sullen frown returning. “They always take that out to the gardens. It’s high in nitrogen so I’m always making it into compost for the beds. Why?”

Gwen gave him a look, a look that told him that no matter how crappy he thought some of his investigations had been, they were going to be heading to entirely new levels.

“No, Gwen.” He shook his head. “The team already went through the stall before. They didn’t find anything. There’s no point going through...anything.”

“If you don’t want to get your hands dirty, Wyatt, that’s fine,” she said, but her tone told him there would be worse things than horse manure to deal with if he didn’t play along. “But this wasn’t their sister. I need to do everything in my power to figure out what exactly happened to Bianca. You loved her once too. I know. We both owe her to try our damnedest to solve her murder.”

Alli visibly twitched. “Murder?”

No. He hadn’t been ready for the rest of the world to learn what they had started to uncover.

He shook his head violently...almost too hard to be convincing. “No, not murder. Bianca wasn’t murdered.”

Alli raised an eyebrow. “Then what happened to her?”

He took Gwen by the hand and led her toward the back door of the barn and the gardens. “I don’t know yet, Alli...but that’s what we’re hoping to find out.” Even if it meant getting his hands dirty.

They grabbed a couple of pitchforks from the wall of tools and made their way from the barn.

“Good luck,” Alli called from behind them.

He couldn’t blame her for not joining them. Right now, he wished he was anywhere—even the prisoner transfer in Alaska—rather than here and having to do what needed to be done.

As they approached the mound of compost, Gwen pulled a bandanna out of her pocket and tied it over her face in what Wyatt assumed was an effort to save herself from breathing in the scent of manure for the next hour.

“Are you sure that you really want to do this?” he asked, sticking in his pitchfork and flipping through a frozen pile of the detritus. He could think of a thousand things he would rather being doing than going through a pile of compost for evidence they weren’t going to find.

She gave him a glance and her face was pinched tight, as though she was as disgusted by this as he was. “Just look.” She scraped at the pile.

He followed her lead, but all he could think of was how close they were and how much he’d rather be anywhere else with her.

He worked his way through the hay as diligently as he could, given the circumstances. After ten minutes, the cold had started to nibble at his fingertips. They were never going to find anything.