you knew given what you’ve told me,” Flint said. “But until we get a positive ID...”
“I thought I killed her and the baby. Were her remains all that were found?”
“No sign of a baby. Did she ever show you any proof that she was pregnant?”
“No, but—”
“So you don’t know that what she had in her arms that night was even an infant.” Flint nudged the box on the floor with his boot. “It could have been a doll. It could have even been that doll. Do you have any idea who sent this to you?”
He shook his head. “Someone who wants me to still believe that I killed her. I’m surprised they didn’t try to blackmail me.”
“Tuck, I think whoever sent the box was trying to tell you that it had all been a scam—including the baby. But there is one way to find out.” Flint picked up the phone and dialed.
“There was no note in the box?” the sheriff asked as he waited for an answer on the other end of the line.
Tucker shook his head.
“But they had to know that when the remains were found it would bring you home,” Flint said. “You left town so soon after that night, they might not have known where you’d gone. Or they were so upset about what happened, the game was over—at least for a while.”
“Well, they know where I am now, if that package is any indication.”
Flint seemed to consider that. “The coroner, please,” he said when someone answered on the other end of the line. “Did anyone else know about the two of you?”
“Madeline swore me to secrecy. I never told anyone.” His head was spinning. Madeline hadn’t survived the raging waters of the creek that night just as he’d feared. She’d apparently brought about her own death by misjudging the creek’s current. “When will we know for certain that it’s her?”
“The coroner is having DNA run on the hair follicles. If we knew where she was really from, we could check dental records. You met her in Denton? Then there is a good chance she’s from somewhere around this area. Also, if she has family, they might come forward now.”
“She said she had a father and brother. But she could have lied about that, too.”
“Sonny?” Flint said into the phone. “I have a question for you.”
Tucker hardly listened. He was staring at the box with the doll in it, trying to make sense of everything. It had been a scam. Even the baby, though? But if Flint was right and Madeline hadn’t come alone that night...
His brother hung up. “Sonny says the remains of the woman he has at the morgue never had a child. He can tell from the pelvic bones.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised,” Tucker said and rubbed a hand over his face, his brain fighting to reevaluate what he thought had happened that night. It had always been about money for Madeline. The plan must have been for her to disappear and whoever was working with her to blackmail him all these years. Only Madeline had hit something in the water and died. None of the rest had been real.
“You must think I’m a complete fool,” he said.
“You were young and vulnerable. She targeted you. If the remains are hers, then she was a lot older than she told you, and I’m betting that you weren’t her first—just her last. But her jumping into that creek...” Flint shook his head. “That was gutsy and dangerous. She must have known you were getting suspicious so she pulled out all the stops. But like I said, she couldn’t have done it alone. Someone had to be waiting downstream to fish her out of the water. Except she hit her head and died. Between that and you leaving town, it threw a monkey wrench into their plan.”
“They had me right where they wanted me.”
Flint nodded. “They would have bled you dry with blackmail. There are a lot of limbs hanging over that creek. It’s ironic, but it would appear she got cocky and wasn’t able to pull off her last deception. All this assuming the remains are hers.”
“Still, if the creek hadn’t overflowed, she would have never turned up and I would have gone on waiting, believing I killed her and our son.” Tucker glanced at the box on the floor with the doll inside. “Whoever sent that box knew I would come back to Gilt Edge now.”
“Sure looks that way. If anyone contacts you, thinking they can still cash in, don’t leave me out of the loop this time.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t come to you all those years ago. Before you saw me, I’d gone down to the pay phone at the edge of town and made an anonymous call. I said I’d seen a girl fall into the creek.” Tucker gave his brother a sad smile. “I was scared, filled with guilt.”
“You were just a kid. Nothing you could have done would have saved her. Sonny said she couldn’t have survived her head injury.” Flint frowned. “Now that you mention it, I remember Dad saying he’d seen sheriff’s deputies down at the creek. When they didn’t find a body, they would have assumed your call had been a hoax.”
“Whoever she was working with had already hidden the body and cleared out by the time the sheriff’s deputies got there.”
“Tuck, you didn’t kill her. She jumped in the river trying to get money out of you. Her death was an accident.”
He rubbed the back of his neck for a moment. “Still, I’ve always felt I should have done more or at least done things differently. If I’d just raised the money and given it to her...”
Flint shook his head. “She would have come back for more. You have to realize that. She was a con artist.”
He knew he’d been a damned fool from the moment he’d met Madeline. She’d been his first. She’d made him believe that she loved him as much as he did her. He thought he was going to save her from her horrible family.
And now, if those skeletal remains in the morgue were hers, she was dead—and had been for nineteen years. Not just dead. Caught up in her own scam. But who hid her under the driftwood that night downstream? Whomever she’d been in league with. The man she was really in love with? A man who had talked her into jumping off a bridge into raging water in the dark as part of a con? Or had that been all her idea?
He had felt responsible for her death and the baby’s for so long it was hard for him to let go of the guilt. He’d been played. And not just by the woman he’d known as Madeline Ross. He’d been played by whomever she was working with.
“The worst part,” he said with a bitter bark of a laugh. “Is that I really thought I loved her and would never love anyone else the way I had her.”
But a completely different emotion was bubbling up inside him like a geyser in Yellowstone National Park. If whoever had been working with her thought they could blackmail him... He hoped they would try. He wasn’t that teenager they’d tricked all those years ago. This cowboy was more than ready for them now.
BILLIE DEE RHODES stopped singing to smile as the back door of the
