Warrior Son

A wave of disappointment hit him, but he tamped it back. No use wondering. It hadn’t happened.

Footsteps sounded, and Mama Mary waddled in carrying a tray with a coffee craft, two mugs and a plate of cinnamon rolls. She set them on the coffee table, handed him a plate with a cinnamon roll on it, then served them both a mug and offered cream and sugar.

“Black is fine,” he said as he cradled the warm mug in his hand. Even the coffee cups had an M on them for McCullen, another reminder that if his mother had married Joe, that would have been his last name, too.

Mama Mary studied him with a frown. “All right, what’s really going on, Deputy? Maddox is after Romley and we know that he worked for Boyle Gates, the man Maddox put away for cattle rustling. I’m aware you all looked into his cousin Bennett. Do you have new information?”

He sipped his coffee, choosing his words carefully. “We’re still hoping that Romley will give us a confession regarding the fires.”

“So why are you here?”

Roan nodded. “The last few months Joe was sick, Dr. Cumberland came often to check on him?”

She nodded, then stirred sugar into her coffee. “Almost every day. He and Joe went way back. He even delivered Joe’s boys.”

Except for him. And Bobby. But they obviously didn’t count. “Joe and Boyle Gates had trouble?”

Mama Mary sighed. “Well, I guess you could say that. Boyle tried to get Joe to sell some of his land to him. He wasn’t happy at all when Joe refused.”

“Did Gates visit Joe while he was sick?”

Mama Mary nodded. “A couple of times. I couldn’t believe he kept persisting. He must have thought that Joe was weak and would give in, but Joe was adamant that his ranch belonged to the McCullens and didn’t intend to let any of it go.”

Gates would have had to have administered the poison more than twice for it to show up in the tox screen. Maybe he hired someone to sneak it into Joe’s food or drink?

“How about other visitors?”

“Well, a few of the hands dropped by. The foreman and Joe were close. He stopped in at least once a week.”

“You said they were close? Did he have any trouble with Joe?”

“No, Joe was always good to him. They were more like brothers than employee-employer.” She made a clicking sound with her teeth. “Why are you asking about Mr. Joe’s visitors?”

“I’m trying to get the full picture of anyone involved with the ranch or Joe. It’s possible Gates paid someone other than Romley to sabotage the ranch.”

She chewed on her bottom lip and looked away. “Mr. Brett already checked out the hands. Romley turned out to be dirty, and Maddox found out he was working with another hand named Hardwick. They were both on Gates’s payroll.”

“What about visitors outside the ranch? Other than Dr. Cumberland, who came to see Joe while he was sick?”

She set her coffee on the tray and rubbed at her knee as if it hurt. “Barbara stopped by a few times, always when Maddox wasn’t around. Once I heard her up there crying over him. I tried to stay out of the way when she was here. She didn’t much care for me.”

“She was bitter,” Roan said. “Did she bring Joe any gifts or food when she visited?”

Mama Mary’s face crinkled as she scrunched her nose in thought. “Sometimes she brought him cookies. Said they were his favorites, that she made them for him the first time they met.”

“Did Joe eat them?”

“One or two here and there. To tell you the truth, he wasn’t into sweets that much. He was a meat and potato man.”

Still, she could have poisoned the cookies.

“What about Bobby? Did he visit Joe?”

She scoffed. “That boy was like vinegar, sour and bitter as they get. He came some, but I stayed out of his way. He upset Mr. Joe. Sometimes I could hear them shouting all the way in the kitchen.” She made a sound of disapproval. “When Joe took sick, you’d have thought Bobby would have softened and been nicer. But one night I heard him asking Joe when he was going to tell the other boys about him. He was always demanding money, too.”

Roan’s pulse jumped. “What about Joe’s will? Did Bobby know he was included?”

“Joe hinted that he’d included him, but more than once he told Bobby if he wanted any part of the McCullen land, he had to get help.”

Roan considered their argument. “Did Joe ever talk about changing his will?”

Mama Mary glanced down at her fingers where she was knotting the apron in her lap. “He did. I told him once he should take that boy out. He was ungrateful and a mean drunk, and he didn’t deserve what Joe had worked so hard for.”

“Did Joe talk to the lawyer about it?”

“I honestly don’t know,” Mama Mary said with a sigh.

There was one way to find out. Roan had to talk to Joe’s lawyer Darren Bush.

* * *

MEGAN SPENT THE rest of the afternoon working on the autopsy of a car crash victim.

By late afternoon, she was so concerned about the doctor that she phoned him to make certain he didn’t need medical attention, but his voice mail kicked in. Her phone buzzed a second later.

Thinking it was him, she quickly snatched up the phone.

“Dr. Lail, this is Deputy North in Laredo. I got the results for that autopsy on Morty Burns.”

“Yes.”

“Did you find any forensics?”

“I’m afraid not,” Megan answered. “But the bullet that killed him was from a .45.”

“Hmm.”

“Something bothering you about the report?” she asked.

“Not the report per se. But I talked to Sheriff McCullen from Pistol Whip. Apparently Morty Burns was married to a woman named Edith Bennett.”

“Yes, I saw that,” Megan said.

Deputy North grunted. “Well, her brother is Arlis Bennett, a man the sheriff suspects is working with Boyle Gates.”

There was the name Bennett again. “Has Burns’s wife been notified of his death?” Megan asked.

“Not yet,” the deputy said. “I phoned and there was no answer at her place. She lives near Pistol Whip, not Laredo.”