I Gave You My Heart, but You Sold It Online Read online

  “Her and her friend both are a pair to draw to, aren’t they?” Tag looked down, then up again. “Allison’s here, too.”

  “Who?” Quint asked.

  “Allison Barker. She knew Monica, knew her family.”

  “Hell, I forgot about that.”

  Silence fell again.

  “I sure appreciate your coming, Tag,” Quint said at last, looking away. “Means a lot to me.”

  “Don’t mention it. You’d do the same for me. I just wish there was more I could do.”

  “You going back to Midland today?”

  “Uh, um, no, thought I’d stick around a few days. I haven’t been out of the restaurant more than eight hours in a day since it opened. I can take some time off.”

  “There’s no need to stay on my account.”

  “I came upon Allison having car trouble and gave her a ride into Haskell. I hate to leave her without—”

  “I’m thinking you just plain ol’ hate to leave her. Am I right?”

  “Something like that,” Tag said, looking at his friend. “I never planned—”

  “Forget it. Allison and I never really had anything going on. Besides, I got bigger problems than that to worry about.”

  “Thanks. Uh, guess I’ll see you tomorrow in court, eh?”

  “You coming?”

  Tag smiled, hoping to reassure him. “Wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Well, you won’t be able to miss me.” Quint raised his arms, showing his jail garb. “I’ll be the one in the black-and-white stripes.”

  Tag made a phony laugh at his friend’s effort at humor.

  “Listen,” Quint said, “I’ll be posting bail, so can you pick me up after the hearing? I don’t know where my truck is.”

  “You bet. One of the reasons I’m here is to help you out.” He started to leave his chair, but thought of something. “I forgot to ask. You were arrested the next morning, right? Who found the girl?”

  “That’s one of the strange parts. A 911 call was made that night from a public phone reporting a woman was dead.”

  “Man, that’s important news. They tape those calls. Can’t they tell from the recording that it wasn’t you?”

  “That’s part of the problem. This is rural Texas, remember? They probably don’t have the best equipment. Not only can they not determine the caller wasn’t me, they’re not even sure if it was a man or a woman.”

  SUNDAY EVENING FOUND Allison at Haskell’s only funeral home and mortuary. Dunnam’s Funeral Home & Landscaping Ser vice had set up a registry book and now housed the forest of flowers that had been pouring in all day. She had been here since Tag dropped her off around mid afternoon. It would be a private service.

  Allison’s return held a note of nostalgia. Haskell was half the size it had once been. As the government had paid more and more of Haskell’s farmers to quit farming, the old-time families moved to urban areas. In some cases, the government checks amounted to more than the farmers had ever made farming. Ranchers, finding it harder and harder to meet their expenses, had quit ranching and sold their land to bird hunters.

  In the struggle for survival in a declining economy, the Dunnams had added a landscaping service to the mortuary business. It seemed like a natural follow-on, since they already had all of the equipment. The result was that the small town of Haskell had an incredibly beautiful cemetery shaded by trees not typically seen in West Texas.

  Growing up, Allison had been inside the funeral home when it was a crumbling Victorian mansion. In those days it had been the residence of a childhood friend, a descendant of one of Haskell’s founding families. That family, too, had sold out and left the area.

  The Dunnams hadn’t found it necessary to spend much effort or money changing the mansion into a funeral parlor. The exterior already resembled a haunted house.

  Inside, what was once the dining room was now the viewing room. The living room was furnished with chairs and couches of every form and fashion for the comfort of the bereaved. Also for the bereaved, the kitchen had been kept functional. Allison wondered how her former friends’ old bedroom was being used, but decided not to think about it. Nor did she want to think about the current use of the other rooms in the house.

  By nine o’clock, a horde of mourners had made their way in and out, paying their respects. Many she knew from the time she had lived here, many she had never seen.

  With the dwindling crowd, she was finally able to sit alone with her thoughts. She couldn’t keep them from drifting to Tag and the passionate night they had spent together. What was the matter with her? Here she was, engaged in a vigil for an old friend and her mind was lusting after a man.

  She thought about the ride into Haskell after he had rescued her from the side of the highway. Unexpectedly he had reached across the space between them and taken her hand in his. “I’ll take care of your car, Allison. Don’t worry. I’ve got a friend outside of Abilene who’s a mechanic, a real mechanic. I’ll call him and have him tow it back to his shop. He’ll have it good as new by the time you’re ready to go back to Salt Lick.”

  Allison opened her mouth to tell him she couldn’t afford to have anything else done to her car, but as if he had read her thoughts, he said, “Don’t worry about the cost. He owes me more money than he can repay in a lifetime. I’ll just tell him to put the cost against that. I won’t be out a dime. I was never going to see that debt paid anyway.”

  “I don’t know how to thank you, Tag.”

  “You don’t have to,” he had said. “Let’s just say I’m doing it for Jill.”

  The memory made Allison bite her lip. This trip to Haskell had been unplanned. She’d had neither time nor opportunity to put together her return to her hometown in a manner that reflected huge success. But here she was.

  She had come back in the company of a handsome, successful man, something every woman dreamed of. And she was falling in love for the first time in her life.

  Maybe she had returned in grand fashion after all.

  “I THOUGHT WE discussed dressing serious,” Debbie Sue said to Edwina when she stopped to pick her up well before daylight Monday morning.

  “I don’t even know what that means,” Edwina replied. “So, what? You don’t want me going with you?”

  Debbie Sue sighed. She was decked out in her knife-pleat Lady Wrangler dress khakis, starched white shirt, and a navy-blue blazer. She had pulled her long hair back and secured it at her neck with a red silk scarf. In her opinion, she looked every bit the professional investigator. “I just meant that we want to look like serious professionals.”

  “Hell, I’m wearing black. How much more serious can you get?”

  Indeed. Edwina had on black capri pants and a black sweatshirt blaring the comment in pink capital letters I FOUGHT THE LAW AND THE LAW WON. As usual, her footwear of choice was matching black platform shoes.

  “You’re fine,” Debbie Sue said, unable to erase the ring of resignation in her voice. “But could you just wear some different earrings?”

  The two-inch miniature pistols hanging from Edwina’s earlobes seemed inappropriate somehow.

  “Abso-fuckin’-lutely. Just give me a minute.” Edwina stalked into her mobile home and came back wearing two-inch silver hoops with a dozen dangling pink beads. “How’re these?”

  Debbie Sue sighed again. At least they were an improvement. “Great.”

  Once they were under way, the inevitable question came from Edwina’s mouth. “How’d Buddy take it when he found out what we’re up to?”

  “He’s trying to be understanding, but he doesn’t like the idea of his wife getting involved in a murder investigation. You remember how he was about Pearl Ann.”

  What she didn’t say was that as she had dressed this morning, Buddy had looked at her with a skeptical eye and reminded her he had been right about Quint: wherever the ex-rodeoer went, trouble followed. But at least he hadn’t ordered her to stay home. When she and Edwina solved the mystery of who killed Monica Hunter,
thereby saving Quint, Buddy would have to take them seriously as detectives.

  “Did you tell Vic? What did he say?”

  “He was more direct. He said, ‘You stumble across any useful information, you pat yourself on the back, take it straight to the police, then get yourself back home.’”

  Debbie Sue gave a sarcastic huff. “Men.”

  They didn’t talk until she pulled onto the interstate. The pride swelling in Debbie Sue’s chest could no longer be restrained. “How ’bout this, Ed? The Domestic Equalizers are on another murder investigation. Maybe we should give up shadowing cheating spouses. Maybe murder is our calling.”

  “Hmmph, let’s just hope we don’t end up being its calling. We don’t know what we’re getting into. So what’s the plan?”

  “Well, first thing, we’ll have to locate the sheriff’s office and talk to him directly. He probably knows Buddy, so I’ll be sure to tell him I’m Buddy’s wife. Networking, you know. Then he’ll want to see some identification and credentials so he’ll know we’re on the up-and-up. We should tell him we’ve been retained by Mr. Matthews. Remember that word, retained.”

  “Good idea,” Edwina said. “If we say we’re Quint’s friends, he’s liable to think we’re there to snoop or break him out of jail. I’d hate for us to get tossed out on our keisters.”

  “So then, we just start talking to people. Follow leads. You’ve been through the courses. You know the drill.”

  Her intention was to remind Edwina that they knew more than she was acknowledging. They had taken classes and passed tests to obtain investigators’ licenses.

  “Look, hon,” Edwina said, “I know this is important to you. But snooping around and finding out if somebody’s tearing off a little on the side is a lot different from tracking down a murderer. You don’t want to forget that Alex Martinez might have put a bullet in you if Buddy hadn’t arrived in the nick of time.”

  And Debbie Sue hadn’t forgotten. Sometimes in the middle of the night she woke up thinking of the killer of her former friend and customer Pearl Ann Carruthers and how he had forced her into the West Texas desert at gunpoint. When she had those bad dreams, Buddy would hold her and pet her all night, telling her over and over she should leave chasing down bad guys to him.

  But how could she? Solving the mystery of Pearl Ann’s murder had launched Domestic Equalizers. “This is just another mystery. No different from what we did when we solved Pearl Ann’s murder.”

  “Hmm-hmm. I’m thinking. Now, when are we gonna stop and get something to eat?”

  A few hours, a lot of food, and several Dr Pepper and bathroom stops later, Debbie Sue and her reluctant partner entered Haskell. Since the sheriff’s office was in the basement of the courthouse on the town square, they found it easily. Debbie Sue was glad to see the sheriff’s car parked in its designated spot. She was anxious to get started and didn’t want to waste valuable time chasing down the chief law enforcement officer of Haskell County.

  When she and Edwina opened the door leading to the office area, they encountered two men, both wearing badges. The larger, round-bellied man she took to be the sheriff. He appeared to be reading the riot act to a much smaller man who stood with his head bowed. The hefty man glanced in their direction and held up one finger, indicating he would be with them momentarily.

  “Merle, do you understand what you did was wrong?” he asked the smaller man, talking softly and slowly. Debbie Sue thought of the days when Buddy had been Salt Lick’s sheriff and Billy Don Roberts had been his deputy.

  “Yes, Sheriff Mike, I understand. But Jimmy said he had to get home and feed the cows. I didn’t want them animals starving to death.”

  “Jimmy tricked you, Merle. You know he hasn’t hit a lick of work in years. Poor ol’ Justine does all the work around that place. No matter what the reason, don’t ever unlock the cell door and let a prisoner out again.”

  “Even if he has to feed cows?”

  “Even if he has to feed cows. Or kids or anything. You promise me, okay? ’Cause if you don’t promise and if you do it again, I’ll have to take back your badge and your radio.”

  “I promise, Sheriff Mike. Don’t take away my badge. I do a good job for you, Sheriff Mike. Don’t I?”

  “Yes, you do, Merle. Now, run on. I’ll talk to you later.”

  On his way out, the smaller man stopped, gave Debbie Sue and Edwina a furtive look, and tipped his Lone Ranger straw cowboy hat, almost catching the sissy string on his chin.

  The sheriff came over. “Sorry about that. I don’t usually meet with people in the front office, but I’m acting as my own receptionist. The real one’s running late today. Merle’s a good man, but when I start explaining something to him, if I don’t finish, he’ll forget.” He offered Debbie Sue his right hand. “I’m Sheriff Mike Jackson.”

  Debbie shook his hand enthusiastically. “How do you do, Sheriff Jackson. My name’s Debbie Sue Overstreet. You may know my husband, James Russell Overstreet Jr.? He’s a DPS trooper, but he used to be—”

  “I know Buddy. He’s a fine officer. I see him from time to time in my county.” He offered a hand to Edwina. “Miss?”

  “It’s Mrs.,” Edwina said, shaking his hand. “Edwina Perkins-Martin. My husband’s a retired navy SEAL. He liberated Kuwait.”

  “I see,” the sheriff said, continuing to look at her.

  “Did I hear right?” Debbie Sue asked. “Your deputy let a prisoner go free? Isn’t that dangerous?”

  Sheriff Jackson released Edwina’s hand and turned back to Debbie Sue. “Trust me, Merle will never do it again. His main objective in life is to do a good job here. Now that he’s been told that what he did was wrong, he’ll never do it again. Luckily, Jimmy was only in jail for peeing in public. Again.”

  “Merle seems real nice,” Debbie Sue said, for lack of anything else to add.

  “You’ll never find better. He’s not a fully appointed deputy. He’s my assistant and my wife’s cousin. He’s a little slow. But if there’s anything unusual going on in town, he’s the first to let me know. I wouldn’t trade him. Now, how can I help you ladies?”

  Debbie Sue took the floor, explaining their presence. She finished by saying they had been retained by Quint and asking to see him.

  “Lady detectives. Sure, I heard about y’all. I was just going upstairs for Matthews’s bond hearing. You’re welcome to come if you want.”

  They tramped up aged steel-stepped stairs with baroque wrought-iron railings and walked along the wide, high-ceilinged hallway of the old court house, their voices echoing and their steps causing the well-seasoned oak floor to creak.

  “I won’t stop you from doing what you think is your job here,” the sheriff said, “but I gotta tell ya, this case against Matthews is airtight. It’s a heartless thing he did to that poor girl.”

  For the next few minutes the sheriff filled them in on the details. “So you see,” he said in conclusion, “he was there during the time frame when the death occurred. He had the opportunity and I believe he had the motive.”

  “You didn’t mention witnesses. Did someone place him at the crime scene?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Old Harry Perkins was walking his dog around nine-thirty. As Matthews was leaving the decedent’s home the two of them had a conversation.”

  “Is Mr. Perkins an upstanding citizen?” Debbie Sue asked. “How did he know he was talking to Quint?”

  “Oh, heck, don’t ask me to vouch for upstandingness.” The sheriff chuckled, causing his round belly to jiggle. “When you’ve done this job as long as I have, you learn that even the best of folks have a few dark little secrets. Ma’am, there’s no doubt Matthews was at the scene.”

  “And you know that because…?” Debbie Sue said, pushing the issue.

  “He gave Harry an autograph. Got it right here in an envelope.”

  The sheriff picked up a manila envelope from the receptionist’s desk. He reached inside and pulled out a sealed plastic bag containing a piece of p
aper embossed with From the Desk of Quint Matthews, World Champion Cowboy III. It took Debbie Sue a few seconds to make out the scrawling signature Quint Matthews.

  For the first time in a while, Edwina opened her mouth. “Great day in the morning. That boy’s ass is toast.”

  Debbie Sue glared at her.

  Sheriff Jackson arched his brow and nodded. “Could be.”

  In the courtroom Quint gave a loud “not guilty” when asked how he pleaded. The judge set bail at $3 million. Quint spoke to his attorney and, within the hour, walked out of the jail a temporarily free man.

  Tag Freeman was waiting out front in his Navigator. No one paid them any heed, which was a blessing, Debbie Sue thought. If the townspeople knew Quint was the accused murderer of one of their own, things could play out differently. Before they could drive away, Debbie Sue arranged to meet them for coffee at Esther’s Café.

  They spent the next hour in a sober discussion of events. The only thing close to an alibi that Quint had was the man walking his dog. When Debbie Sue had first learned Quint had left an autograph behind, she had been dismayed, but thinking on it more, she was glad. What kind of idiot would commit murder, then stop and sign an autograph on his way out of the victim’s house?

  She brought up the point. Quint dashed her euphoric moment by saying his attorney had told him that the prosecuting attorney would make an issue of that also—just before he sold the jury on the notion that that was exactly what the perpetrator had counted on.

  Throughout the conversation, Quint refrained from tossing out the usual sexual innuendos. He had no glib quips to offer. He just wasn’t himself. Debbie Sue couldn’t help but feel sadness.

  twenty-five

  Allison awoke to the enticing aroma of coffee and the muffled sounds of Dr. Sinclair and his wife, Dot, talking in the kitchen. Good grief, what time was it? The funeral-home director had driven her back to the doctor’s house at nine-fifteen. She must have fallen into a deep sleep. She put on her robe and slippers and entered the kitchen.