Page 54 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

He’d have to tell Colonel Crawford that part himself.

I’d call the colonel to say Jardos was alive and in police custody, the rest was up to the sergeant.

Shelton turned around and glared at us. A beat. Three beats. Seven.

Shelton finally turned and followed Richard and Jardos toward the official vehicles.

Still, Mike kept his voice low when he asked me, “Do you believe he didn’t talk to anybody else?”

“I do.”

“Because his denial was sharp enough to say he hadn’t wanted to involve anyone else?”

“That contributed, but mostly, who would he have talked to? Connie? She might have been a good choice, but we know from her that he didn’t. Hiram Poppinger? No way.”

“The vets?”

“I don’t see it. He sees himself as taking care of them. Probably the same reason he didn’t confide in Connie. The one person I could imagine him turning to, with his wife dead, is Colonel Crawford.”

“And if he had, Crawford wouldn’t have come to you,” Mike said.

“More accurately, to Shelton.” I expelled a breath and turned to my husband-to-be. “Tom—”

“You want to talk to Victor and Zeke again. I’ll see what I can do.”

* * * *

Before I called the colonel, I had a question for Tom.

He was driving me to the western edge of the Circle B, hoping for another encounter with the vets.

Mike was heading back to the station.

I’d already made a quick call to Zeb and Iris, asking them to bring Shadow to a meeting point on our route.

Time to ask Tom, “Did Jardos contact you?”

“No. Got an idea yesterday and followed it up.”

“You could have told me—”

“Wasn’t sure. Couldn’t test it until this morning. Didn’t know if my idea was right. Didn’t know if he’d talk to me. Even after he did, didn’t know if he’d stick when I drove out to get enough signal to call you, then Wayne Shelton.”

Somewhat mollified, I asked, “How’d you get the idea?”

“Talking to the vets one time about the land, I mentioned a few other places around the county they could consider. A couple were interested. I thought one of them might’ve been the guy they called Nance, though there weren’t what you’d call formal introductions.

“You were starting to talk about Nance maybe being connected to this business . . . Tell you the truth, thought I’d waste my time and not find anybody. Wasn’t going to waste yours, too. When I came in and saw somebody here, figured it was Nance—”

“A disturbed veteran who might have killed Jardos — and you went there alone and—?”

“Scouted it out first, Elizabeth. Only made myself known when I saw it was Frank.”

Who still could be a murderer.

Scratch that about being mollified.

“We will talk about this more,” I said with dignity.

“Uh-huh. Shouldn’t you call the colonel now?”

His assumed humility did not fool me. And we would talk about it again.

But I did call the colonel.

“I knew he didn’t commit suicide,” Colonel Crawford said when I’d finished the pertinent outline. “Why the hell he didn’t come to me— But he and I will talk about that.”

A lot of that going around.

That might have me quaking in my boots, but I doubted it would even furrow the sergeant’s brow more than it was permanently.

“Thank you,” the colonel added.

“Don’t thank me yet. There are a lot of questions to be answered.”

“Good.”

* * * *

Same clearing.

Victor and Zeke with the same two dogs coming out of the woods. But I was sure those added shadows amongst the trees behind them were more men.

Shadow thought so, too.

This time I didn’t wait for them to advance to me. I closed eighty percent of the distance between us.

“The sergeant—?” Victor started.

“Is alive, but in custody.”

“He didn’t kill Nance,” Zeke said.

Victor spoke to a suspicion I wasn’t entertaining. “We all figured it was probably Nance who was killed. Logical. Talked after you were here last time. Nance not around. Him and the sergeant about the same size. Fire’d make it hard to tell. One turns up, we expected it’d be the other one dead.”

“Nance,” Zeke said. “Sucks.”

Victor explained. “Nance worked it out so a share of each guy’s pay will go into an account that pays the museum, like a mortgage. Only the museum holds the mortgage instead of a bank. James Longbaugh set that up based on an idea of Nance’s. That’s why when he drifted away . . .”

They’d felt bad he was missing out on being part of the group buying the land.

“I need to speak with the guys who thought something was off with Nance.”

He nodded slowly. “See the logic. But they don’t talk much. Especially to strangers.”

“A woman.” Zeke added the anti-cherry to a sundae nobody wanted.

“I’ll take my chances.”

“One chance. Maybe.”

Got it. It was make or break.

Victor turned toward the tree line.

Most of the shadows retreated.

One stepped forward, then sat on the ground.

Victor and Zeke headed toward him, with Shadow and me next. The two dogs were the rear guard.

First Zeke, then Victor peeled off to the side.

I kept going until I was directly in front of this third man sitting on the ground with his arms wrapped around his knees.

He looked up. Not at me, at Shadow.

I looked at Shadow, too. And waited.

Shadow put his chin on the man’s knee. The man rested his hand on the dog’s head.

Shadow’s eyes slowly closed.

I heard the man’s breathing slow, regulate.

Along with one chance, I might get only one question. Make it general and hope he ran with it? Not likely. Make it specific and hope he filled in around it? Even less likely?

“You’re one of the guys Sergeant Jardos said thought Nance wasn’t doing okay when he came back? He said you were right and he wasn’t,” I added, belatedly realizing my question might have sounded like criticism.

“Yeah.” Either he didn’t hear it as criticism or didn’t care. “Maybe they’re not as sharp about the signs as us that see it in ourselves.”

The back of my eyes prickled. My voice held steady. “What did you see?”

“When he came back and had his stake, he was twitchy. Said everything was okay. But if it was, not twitchy.”

That made sense.

“Said he’d get to the bottom of it. Over and over, said he’d get to the bottom of it.”

“Bottom of what?”

Head shakes from all three.

“Did he say anything else? Anything at all?”

Another round of head shakes from Victor and Zeke.

“Said he was going to the library and to see a woman,” the third man said.

“Why?”

“Don’t know about the library, but he wanted to date the woman. Name of Kam.”