Page 8 of Killer on the Homestead (Bent County Protectors #2)

Duncan wouldn’t say he’d caught Rosalie off guard with his intention to help, but she didn’t have a quick answer for that. In fact, when she did speak, it was with a question of her own.

“Where’d all the ranch hands go?”

“The detective said they could go back to their bunks, but no one is supposed to leave the property. They’ll be back in a few hours with more questions.”

“More questions and search warrants, I imagine. They’ll want to go through all the buildings. Bunks, stables, the house. I don’t know how long it’ll take Gracie to determine time and cause of death.”

“Gracie? Gracie Delaney?” He knew he’d recognized the woman. They’d gone to high school together. Though he couldn’t remember much else about her besides the name and the vague look of Delaney —the family that had run Bent, more or less, back then.

“Gracie Cooper these days,” Rosalie said offhandedly. “She’s the coroner.”

Coroner. Death. Murder. “I’m guessing the cause of death had something to do with the way his head was blown to hell.”

Rosalie slid that pretty, blue gaze to him. “Noticed that, huh?”

“Hard not to.” And yeah, it was going to haunt the hell out of him for a very long time, no matter how tough he tried to act.

“They’ll want to find a murder weapon. It was a gunshot wound to the head, so they’ll do what they can to identify a murder weapon, get search warrants and the like for anything that might match.”

“You don’t think one of the other ranch hands did it, do you?” The thought filled him with different kinds of dread for all sorts of reasons. The toll it would take on his parents. The danger they all might be in with a murderer running around.

What on earth had he come home to? At least he was home. This was the first time he was truly grateful for the timing. Because his parents would need him.

“Impossible to say just yet,” Rosalie returned. She surveyed the crime scene, the rest of the ranch. “Let’s go talk to Owen. See what he had to say about his friend.”

Duncan hesitated. The poor kid had just stumbled upon his murdered friend and already answered a bunch of questions from the police. Should he let Rosalie pile on?

“Look, Duncan, you can either spare everyone’s feelings or you can find the truth, but let me tell you from experience, you can’t do both.”

She said it kindly enough, but he felt judged all the same.

“Let’s get the truth.”

She nodded, then started striding away from the house. Since it was in the direction of the bunkhouse, he figured she knew where she was going. Though he wondered why she was so well-acquainted with the layout of the ranch. He followed her.

“Your shoulder holding up okay?” she asked pleasantly enough as they walked. She wasn’t even looking at him, but he knew it wasn’t a casual question. She’d noticed him wincing or something. And now she was slowing down, like he needed someone to slow down for him.

He focused on walking without showing any pain, and walked faster just to prove all was well. “I’m fine.”

“Not what I asked.”

He supposed it wasn’t, and he didn’t particularly care for her calling him out on it. So he grinned at her. “Worried about me, Red?”

She snorted, shook her head. “I’m worried about murder , Ace.”

He blew out a breath. He was still trying to live in denial about that . “Yeah.”

Once they got to the bunkhouse, Rosalie waited for him to knock. The door opened, and an older ranch hand stood in the opening, crossing his arms over his chest. Blocking the entrance.

Terry Boothe had been on the ranch since Duncan had been a kid, and Duncan was pretty sure he remembered Dad saying Terry was foreman now.

“Duncan,” Terry greeted. He looked at Rosalie with suspicion and did not greet her.

“We just want to talk to Owen,” Duncan said, hoping to offset some of the suspicion and distrust Terry was aiming Rosalie’s way.

“Didn’t he already—”

“I know he answered the detective’s questions,” Rosalie said, in a clear, polite tone that Duncan was sure he hadn’t heard from her before. “And I’m sure he’s broken up about this, but I have some questions that might help us figure this out that the cops aren’t going to ask.”

Terry’s suspicion didn’t lift. “What makes you better than the cops?”

“Not better. Different,” Rosalie said, in that same even tone.

“I’m a private investigator. Licensed, mind you.

I’ve got rules and laws to follow, but I don’t have a whole county with its bureaucracy breathing down my neck.

The sooner we get to the bottom of this, the safer we all are. And Owen will be able to grieve fully.”

Terry moved his hard gaze from Rosalie to Duncan. “Your parents okay with this?”

“Yeah,” Duncan lied. He hadn’t run it by them, but he couldn’t imagine them having a problem with Rosalie helping. “Rosalie’s a friend of the family. She just wants to help.”

Terry grunted but he led them inside. The first room was the kitchen and dining area, open and wide, with a few tables. No one was in there right now, but Terry gestured them to a table. “I’ll get him. You wait here.”

They did just that, but Duncan noted that Rosalie was looking around the room like she was filing every detail away, like every dirty plate or can of soda was something that might answer a very simple question.

Who killed Hunter Villanova?

When Owen shuffled in, the poor guy was red-eyed and clearly overwrought. But he still walked over. Rosalie pushed a chair out for him, and he slumped into it.

Rosalie smiled at him, her look soft and reassuring. “Hi, Owen. My name’s Rosalie Young. I live on the ranch just across the way. You probably know my sister, Audra, if you do anything with the agricultural society.”

Owen seemed to struggle to take that all in, but eventually he nodded. “I know Audra.”

“I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I just want to ask some questions about what happened today.”

Owen looked down at the table and nodded.

“I know some of what the detective already asked you, and I know it’s frustrating to tell different people the same thing, so if you don’t want to answer, you just go on and tell me that. No harm, no foul.”

Owen blinked, looked up at her. Something like hope and trust flickered over his face. “Yeah, okay,” he said, almost eagerly.

“Hunter and you came here from Bismarck?”

“Close enough. My mom and Mr. Kirk are related somehow. Mom said I had two choices. Get out of her house and make my own way or come on down here and work. I was getting in some trouble, and she was tired of it. Hunter…” He sucked in a breath, and it hitched.

“I just don’t understand what happened.” He looked up at Rosalie, like maybe she could explain it to him.

“Can you tell me some things about him?” Rosalie asked gently. “Whatever you think might be important.”

Duncan watched in fascination as Rosalie was…

really, really sweet with Owen. She let him babble, and carefully would bring him back around to the main point—which seemed to be who would want to hurt Hunter, and what kind of people he was mixed up with.

She didn’t write anything down, like the detective had, but somehow Duncan knew she was filing every last point away.

Like the fact that Hunter had brothers who sold drugs. Which seemed like petty criminal nonsense, but he supposed with murder in the mix, you never knew.

When Owen started to get emotional again, big fat tears sliding down his cheeks, Rosalie rubbed her hand up and down the kid’s back and offered to call his mom once she was done asking questions.

“Nah, Aunt Nat was going to do it for me.” Owen looked up at Duncan. “I know he was trouble, but he really did want to get out of it. It was his idea to come with me. He wanted to get away from it.”

Duncan nodded, wanting to reassure this guy he didn’t even really know in some way. Just like Rosalie was doing. “I’m sure he did.” He wasn’t sure at all, but it seemed the right thing to say to this devastation.

“Thank you, Owen. I really appreciate it, and I’m going to do my best to help the detectives get to the bottom of it.

They’re going to keep asking you questions, and it’s going to be hard, but you’re going to get through it, because every answer is a chance for making sure whoever did this to Hunter pays. ”

Owen nodded as a few more tears fell. When Terry came back into the room, Rosalie gave Owen’s shoulder a squeeze as she got up, then followed Duncan out of the bunkhouse and back into a shockingly sunny early afternoon.

They walked onto the pathway that led to the main house. Almost in tandem, they let out slow breaths and took deep ones of the summer sunshine.

“Hell, I feel old,” Duncan muttered. “Back when I was twenty-two, I thought I was such an adult. Now I look at him and think what a kid he is. Shouldering all this.”

“Yeah, we’ve all got things to shoulder. Life doesn’t discriminate much, does it?”

“Guess not.”

“Besides, you are old,” she offered, with some forced cheer he knew was meant to be an attempt to lighten the mood.

And since he figured they both needed it, he went along with it. “Too old?” he replied, flashing a grin.

“Obviously,” she replied, but she was smiling. Nah, not too old.

She sighed. “I’m going to head to my office, do some paperwork on this. When Detective Beckett comes back with search warrants and questions, I want you to pay attention. What the search warrants are for, what questions they ask. Record what you can if you don’t have a good memory.”

“I’ve got a good memory.”

“Excellent. I’ll be in touch.” She started to march toward her truck, those short legs eating up the distance in quick time. A completely different person than she’d been back there at the bunkhouse.

Or was it different? Because she was taking on a case no one would pay her for. Out of concern for her sister, maybe, but she’d treated Owen like… Well, like he figured anyone would want to be treated in such an awful situation.

Duncan couldn’t have managed that on his own.

“Rosalie.”