would only make it worse. But Keith had asked to see the balance sheets, and Tory had let him review everything, inwardly pleased that he had grown up enough to care.
* * *
DEPUTY WOODWARD ARRIVED shortly after ten. Tory had been in the den writing checks for the month-end bills when she had heard the sound of a vehicle approaching and had looked out the window to see the youngest of Paul Barnett’s deputies getting out of his car. Slim, with a thin mustache, he had been hired in the past year and was one of the few deputies she had never met. Once, while in town, Keith had pointed the young man out to her.
When the chimes sounded, Tory put the checkbook into the top drawer of the desk and answered the door.
“Mornin’,” Woodward said with a smile. “I’m looking for Victoria Wilson.”
“You found her.”
“Good. I’m Greg Woodward from the sheriff’s office. From what I understand, you think someone’s been taking potshots at your livestock.”
Tory nodded. “Someone has. I’ve got a dead calf to prove it.”
“Just one?”
“So far,” Tory replied. “I thought maybe some of the other ranchers might have experienced some sort of vandalism like this on their ranches.”
The young deputy shook his head. “Is that what you think it was? Vandalism?”
Tory thought about the dead calf and the clipped fence. “No, not really. I guess I was just hoping that the Lazy W hadn’t been singled out.”
Woodward offered an understanding grin. “Let’s take a look at what happened.”
Tory sat in the passenger seat of the deputy’s car as he drove down the rutted road she had traveled with Trask less than twelve hours earlier. The grooves in the dirt road were muddy and slick from the rain, but Deputy Woodward’s vehicle made it to the site of the clipped fence without any problem.
Rex was already working on restringing the barbed wire. He looked up when he saw Tory, frowned slightly and then straightened, adjusting the brim of his felt Stetson.
As Deputy Woodward studied the cut wire and corpse of the calf, he asked Tory to tell him what had happened. She, with Rex’s help, explained about Len Ross’s call and how she and Rex had subsequently discovered the damage to the fence and the calf’s dead body.
“But no other livestock were affected?” Woodward asked, writing furiously on his report.
“No,” Rex replied, “at least none that we know about.”
“You’ve checked already?”
“I’ve got several men out looking right now,” Rex said.
“What about other fences, the buildings, or the equipment for the farm?”
“We have a combine that broke down last week, but it was just a matter of age,” Tory said.
Woodward seemed satisfied. He took one last look at the calf and scowled. “I’ll file this report and check with some of the neighboring ranchers to see if anything like this has happened to anyone else.” He looked meaningfully at Tory. “And you’ll call, if you find anything else?”
“Of course,” Tory said.
“Does anyone else know what happened here?” the young man asked, as he finished his report.
“Only two people other than the ranch hands,” Tory replied. “Len Ross and Trask McFadden.”
The young man’s head jerked up. “Senator McFadden?”
Tory nodded and offered a confident smile she didn’t feel. Greg Woodward was a local man. Though he had probably still been in high school at the time, he would have heard of Jason McFadden’s murder and the conspiracy of horse swindlers who had been convicted. “Trask was visiting last night when Rex got the news from Len and came up to the house to tell me what had happened.”
“Did he make any comments—being as he was here and all—or did he think it was vandalism?”
Tory’s mind strayed to her conversation with Trask and his insistence that the animal’s death was somehow related to the anonymous letter he had received. “I don’t know,” she hedged. “I suppose you’ll have to ask him—”
“No reason to bother the senator,” Rex interjected, his eyes traveling to Tory with an unspoken message. “He doesn’t know any more than either of us.”
Deputy Woodward caught the meaningful glance between rancher and foreman but didn’t comment. He had enough sense to know that something wasn’t right at the Lazy W and that Senator McFadden was more than a casual friend. On the drive back with Tory, Woodward silently speculated on the past scandal and what this recently divulged information could mean.
When the deputy deposited Tory back at the house, she felt uneasy. Something in the young man’s attitude had changed when she had mentioned that Trask had been on the ranch. It’s starting all over again, she thought to herself. Trask has only been in town two days and the trouble’s starting all over again. As if she and everyone connected with the Lazy W hadn’t suffered enough from the scandal of five years past.
* * *
TORY PARKED THE pickup on the street in front of the feed store in Sinclair. So far the entire day had been a waste. Deputy Woodward hadn’t been able to ease her mind about the dead calf; in fact, if anything, the young man’s reaction to the news that Trask knew of the incident only added to Tory’s unease.
After Deputy Woodward had gone, Tory had attempted to do something, anything to keep her mind off Trask. But try as she might, she hadn’t been able to concentrate on anything other than Trask and his ridiculous idea—no, make that conviction—that another person was involved in the Quarter Horse swindle as well as his brother’s death.
He’s jumping at shadows, she told herself as she stepped out of the pickup and into the dusty street, but she couldn’t shake the image of Trask, his shoulders erect in controlled, but deadly determination as he had stood in her father’s den the night before. She had witnessed the outrage in his blue eyes. “He won’t let up on this until he has an answer,” she told herself with a frown.
She pushed her way into the feed store and made short work of ordering supplies for the Lazy W. The clerk, Alma Ray, had lived in Sinclair all her life and had worked at Rasmussen Feed for as long as Tory could remember. She was a woman in her middle to late fifties and wore her soft red hair piled on her head. She had always offered Tory a pleasant smile and thoughtful advice in the past, but this afternoon Alma’s brown eyes were cold, her smile forced.
“Don’t get paranoid,” Tory cautioned herself in a whisper as she stepped out of the feed store and onto the sidewalk. “It’s not as if this town is against you, for God’s sake. Alma’s just having a bad day—”
“Tory.”
At the sound of her name, Tory turned to face Neva McFadden, Jason’s widow. Neva was hurrying up the sidewalk in Tory’s direction and Tory’s heart sank. She saw the strain in Neva’s even features, the worry in
