Page 21 of Deputies Under Fire (Renegade Canyon #2)

Since Ike had clammed up, Eden used her phone to text Detective Vernon to ask him to check on the alibis for Helen and Diedre. Even if they had them, the women would need to be brought in for another round of interviews.

Eden tried not to be frustrated that the investigation seemed to be going in circles.

Three murders, and they still hadn’t managed to positively ID or arrest the killer.

With her and Rory’s names on that hit list, the pressure was skyrocketing for them to put a stop to this, especially since the killer knew about Tyler.

Rory returned to the cruiser, and he slid in behind the wheel, automatically studying her face. No doubt to see if Ike had said anything in his absence.

“Ike wants his lawyers,” Eden informed him.

Rory huffed but didn’t seem surprised. Nor did he discuss the murder.

Probably because Ike would have been able to hear every word.

He just started the cruiser, then drove past the other responders and straight into town.

It took them less than two minutes to reach the police station, a reminder of just how bold the killer had been to leave Carter’s body practically right on their doorstep.

They led Ike inside, where Livvy was already waiting for them. “His phone’s been taken into evidence,” Rory informed her. “So he’ll need to use the landline to contact his lawyers.”

Livvy nodded and volleyed glances at the three of them. She was probably trying to figure out what the heck was going on. Sadly, Eden and Rory were doing the same thing.

“I can let him use the phone on my desk,” Livvy said. “And then I can take him to interview room one. Do you also want me to get the contact info for the victim’s next of kin so they can be notified?”

“Yes, do that. And thanks,” Rory told her.

Livvy tipped her head toward Grace’s office. “You two have a visitor, and he’s insisting on talking to you.”

Eden looked in that direction and saw Frank Mott. So, apparently, he had surfaced after all. Since the man hadn’t returned their calls and no one had seen or heard from him, Eden had thought he might have met the same fate as Carter.

Frank came to the doorway of Grace’s office, doling out a scowl to Ike. And Ike scowled right back.

“Are you the one setting me up?” Ike snarled.

Frank lifted his shoulder as if the question had been about something mundane rather than about murder.

“Frank,” Rory greeted as they went into the office. “We’ve been trying to contact you.”

The man nodded. “Yes, I was out at my fishing cabin on the lake. No cell service. I didn’t get your messages until I got home late last night. I figured rather than call you so late, I’d just come and see you face-to-face.” He paused. “Did Ike kill that man?”

“How did you know someone was dead?” Rory countered.

Frank shrugged. “Hard not to hear something like that. The two deputies were hurrying to the scene when I got here. Why did you want to talk to me?” he quickly added, and Eden didn’t think it was her imagination that he was trying to curtail any more discussion as to how he’d learned about Carter’s death.

Rory gave him a long, hard look before he went to a laptop on the desk and he pulled up the photos that Carter had given them. The lab had already enhanced them so that the images were much clearer now. Rory pulled up the shot of Frank and turned the laptop so the man could see the screen.

“What? Where was that taken…?” But Frank’s voice trailed off when he must have recognized the surroundings. “Who took that photo?” he demanded.

Rory didn’t give him the answer. “Want to explain to me why you were there and what you were doing?”

A flash of panic went through his eyes. “Am I under arrest? Do you think I killed that man?” He didn’t wait for Rory to respond. “Because I didn’t. I thought you were trying to get in touch with me about something else…” Again, his words slowed to a crawl, and he squeezed his eyes shut a moment.

“What’s the something else you thought I’d want to know?” Rory demanded, and he was all cop now. Then, he held up his hand. “Let me go ahead and read you your Miranda rights.”

Frank shook his head as if not believing this was happening, but he didn’t speak when Rory read him his rights. Nor did he lawyer up at the end of it.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Frank blurted the moment Rory had finished. He motioned toward the photo still on the screen. “And I was there because, uh, I’ve been seeing Diedre.”

“Seeing?” Rory queried.

Frank swallowed hard. “I’m in a relationship with her. Or at least I was, but she broke it off a couple of days ago.”

Interesting. “Before or after Brenda’s murder?” Eden asked.

“Before,” Frank muttered. “I didn’t want things to end between us so I drove to her place to talk to her, but I parked and watched the house for a little while so I could see if she was alone. Helen is there sometimes.”

Eden was sure she had a puzzled look in her eyes. Rory had one as well. “Explain that,” Rory insisted.

Frank certainly didn’t jump right on that. He took a couple of moments and groaned under his breath, as if this wasn’t something he wanted to spill. “Diedre wanted to keep our relationship a secret.”

Again, Eden was puzzled. “Why?” she persisted. “You’re both single, aren’t you?”

“We are, but then there’s Helen.” Frank’s groan turned to a loud huff. “Helen and I saw each other for a while—”

“Wait,” Eden interrupted. “You told us you hadn’t been romantically involved with Helen.”

“I told you we hadn’t been when I was a teenager,” Frank snapped out. “Back then, I was seeing Mellie. And, no, I didn’t bring that up when she was killed because it was a hell of a long time ago.”

Eden folded her arms over her chest. “You didn’t think it was pertinent to tell us that you had a romantic history with a woman who was murdered in the very barn where you two used to work?”

“No.” He stopped, scowled. “It wasn’t relevant,” he insisted.

“Mellie and I dated for a couple of months, and we broke up. It was just teenage stuff, definitely nothing serious. I got involved with Miranda shortly thereafter, and Mellie inherited the place she eventually turned into the foster ranch. Mellie and I moved on with our lives.”

“And then became enemies,” Eden reminded him.

He shot her a stony look. “Yeah, we did, but that was on Mellie. You were raised in that foster home, and you know what some of those kids were always doing to my property. Knocking down fences, letting the livestock out. Hell, even taking some of my horses for joyrides.”

All of that had indeed happened, and while Eden didn’t believe any serious damage had been done, she could understand why Mellie and Frank had butted heads over the years.

Mellie had been trying to raise kids, and Frank had been trying to run his ranch.

However, she had to wonder if their past had played into the ferocity of some of the conflicts.

Eden recalled plenty of loud arguments between the two and heated threats from Frank.

Frank was obviously experiencing some of that anger now, but he didn’t make any threats. He just stood there a few moments as if steadying himself. Eden did the same, and she shifted the conversation back to the original topic.

“Helen,” she stated. “When did you get romantically involved with her?”

“Romance,” he muttered, as if that wasn’t anywhere close to the truth.

“We hooked up for the first time right before she left for college. That’s continued over the years.

Not while I was married. I never cheated on my wife,” he insisted.

“But a couple of years after she passed away, Helen and I ran into each other, and we…reconnected. We still have what I guess you’d call an open-ended arrangement. ”

Eden wondered if that was his way of saying friends with benefits.

“Look,” Frank went on, shifting his attention to Rory, “Helen has had it in for Diedre since your mom died. And, yes, I understand that, what with Diedre having an affair with her sister’s husband, but Helen seems to have finally put that behind her.

She’s not trying to make Diedre’s life miserable. ”

“Had Helen been doing that?” Eden prompted when the man fell silent.

“Definitely. Helen and Ike were essentially doing the same thing. Dissing Diedre to potential clients, taking every opportunity to badmouth her. It put Diedre under a lot of stress, and I don’t want her to have to go back to that kind of relationship with Helen.

” He stopped and seemed to have a debate about what he was going to say.

It took him a couple of moments to continue. “At times, Helen can be very scary.”

“Scary?” Rory repeated, and it was very much a question.

“Yes.” Another pause. “Last month she asked me about explosives.”

That grabbed Eden and Rory’s attention. “What specifically did she ask?” Rory asked.

“She wanted to know if I had any experience with them when I was in the military. I didn’t. I was a cargo pilot,” he explained. “When I pressed her as to why she wanted to know, she said she was considering donating to a foundation that helped veterans injured by IEDs.”

Rory kept his intense gaze on Frank. “Did you believe her?”

Frank shrugged, hardly a wholehearted confirmation that he thought she’d told him the truth. “Like I said, Helen can be scary, and that’s why I don’t want you to mention that I’ve been seeing Diedre. Don’t say anything about it to Ike, either.”

Once again, Eden was surprised. “Why not? Why would he care if Diedre had been with you?”

Another shrug from Frank. “I think some of the badmouthing that Ike does is because he still has feelings for Diedre. I have no proof of that,” Frank said quickly, “but Diedre is a very desirable woman, and she dumped Ike. He’ll say it was the other way around, but it wasn’t.

She dumped him, and he wasn’t ready for things to end. ”

Eden wasn’t sure it mattered who’d been the one to break things off. And she didn’t believe Ike’s venom for the woman was seeded in him still having feelings for her. Of course, it was possible. She just couldn’t see that as a motive for the murders.

“You also didn’t mention that you knew Brenda,” Rory mused.

Frank seemed to freeze for a moment. “I didn’t know her. Not really.”

“Not really?” Eden repeated and waited to see if he was going to mention Brenda calling him about going to the I-hate-Ike luncheon she’d arranged.

“Not really,” he snapped. “The woman was a pest, wanting me to team up with her to take Ike down. I declined. I told her to let karma deal with Ike.”

Frank didn’t seem like a karma-believing sort of guy. But Eden could see Brenda pressing him to join the group she was assembling. Could see Frank declining, too, especially if he didn’t want to be in the same room with Helen and Diedre.

“Did you ever go to Brenda’s house?” Rory asked.

“No,” Frank responded. “But she dropped by mine once. I didn’t even let her in. So, no, her DNA won’t be at my place, and mine won’t be at hers. You’re barking up the wrong tree, deputies. I have absolutely no motive to kill Mellie or Brenda.”

That wasn’t true in Mellie’s case. Bad blood was often a motive for murder. But Eden couldn’t see that bad blood extending to Brenda. Yes, she’d seemingly pressured Frank into joining her anti-Ike group, but turning her down wasn’t a reason to kill her.

“I need to go,” Frank insisted, checking the time. “I’m meeting someone for breakfast.”

“Sorry, but I’m going to need you to make a formal statement about that photo,” Rory explained. “Go down the hall to interview room two and wait. I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

Frank glared at both of them for a long time, and for a moment Eden thought the man was going to refuse. He didn’t. He stormed off, taking out his phone, maybe to call a lawyer.

Rory didn’t add anything else until Frank was out of hearing range. “I can’t tell if he just threw Helen under the bus so we’d think she’s the killer, or if he’s truly worried she could be behind the murders.”

“Same,” Eden agreed. But either way, Frank was now solidly a suspect.

Rory turned to her. “I can take his statement solo if you want to find out what’s going on at the latest crime scene.”

She nodded, already coming up with a mental list of things she needed to do. Touching base with the bomb squad was a high priority. But she also wanted to check Frank’s military service records to see if he did indeed have the explosives experience that he had denied.

However, Eden had barely made it a step toward her desk when Rory’s phone rang, and she stopped when she heard him say, “It’s Detective Vernon.”

She turned back into the office, and he answered the call. He didn’t put it on speaker, but after just a handful of seconds, Eden knew something was wrong. She prayed there hadn’t been yet another murder.

“All right, do that,” Rory said to Vernon after a couple of snail-crawling moments—moments that Eden spent on edge. “And have the lab contact me as soon as they know.”

He ended the call and looked at her. “The CSIs searching Diedre’s house found a Swiss Army knife.”

Eden immediately thought of the incident that Dutton had witnessed. The one where Helen had threatened Ike, and he’d snatched the knife from her. That one had been a Swiss Army knife.

“Is it the murder weapon?” she asked, wondering how it’d gotten from Ike to Diedre’s.

“Maybe. The lab will have to determine that. There are no prints on it, the handle has been wiped clean, but the CSIs thought they spotted something at the base of the blade, so they did a preliminary test on scene.” Rory stopped and gathered his breath. “It tested positive for human blood.”