Whirlwind - Janet Dailey Page 0,75

that she’d gotten out of bed, dressed, and left on her own. But she hadn’t taken her purse, which hung on the closet doorknob, or her phone, which lay on the nightstand, plugged into the charger.

Dread raised goose bumps along Tess’s arms and up her spine. She left the bedroom and made one more check of the kitchen before striding outside again.

Ruben was waiting on the porch, a grim expression on his stoic face.

“I can’t find her.” Tears of frustration burned Tess’s eyes. “I can’t find her anywhere.”

“Look.” He turned and pointed in the direction of the ranch’s north boundary, where it joined Aaron’s land. There, above the deep arroyo where the young bull had fallen earlier, black wings flocked and circled against the morning sky.

No. It couldn’t be Callie. It just couldn’t be. But Tess’s instincts told her otherwise.

“Come on,” Ruben said. “We can take the ATV.”

Moments later, with the foreman driving the open, four-wheeled vehicle, the two of them were roaring up the narrow dirt road toward the arroyo. The black wings circled higher as they stopped a few yards from the rocky edge and climbed out.

Sick with dread, Tess forced herself to walk forward and look down. What she saw was even more shocking than she’d imagined.

Callie’s body lay sprawled and broken on the rocks below. Lying next to her lifeless hand was an open box of rat poison.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“LORD, I NEVER WOULD’VE FIGURED CALLIE FOR THE ONE DOING that deviltry.” Aaron stood next to Tess, behind the yellow crime scene tape, watching the recovery team hoist the stretcher bearing Callie’s body.

Still in shock, Tess forced herself to reply. “I still can’t believe it. She was like a mother to our family. We loved her, and I thought she loved us. Why would she do those awful things?”

Aaron thrust his hands into his pockets and squinted into the cloudless sky, where a single vulture still soared and circled. “I know a few things,” he said. “Callie never let on to you folks, but she was pissed about Bert’s will. All those years of raising his family and nursing him through cancer, and all he left her was a few thousand in cash. The rest—the whole kit and kaboodle—went to his kids. Can’t say as I blame her for lashing out.”

“But Callie understood—at least I thought she did—that the ranch belonged to our mother’s family, and it was to be passed down to her descendants. It was part of the agreement Dad signed with our grandfather when he married her.”

“Well, Callie may have understood it, but she didn’t have to like it.” Aaron fell silent as the stretcher came up over the rim of the wash, with the body on it—an impersonal, lumpy shape, already zipped into a black bag.

Tess had called 9-1-1 after finding the body. The sheriff and his deputies had arrived from Ajo an hour later in their white crime scene van. They’d taped off the area, taken photos, bagged the rat poison, and interviewed everyone at the scene before bringing the remains up. Tess had sent Ruben and the two boys off to finish the chores. Only Aaron had stayed.

Your family owes me. Tess remembered the words on the note Lexie had thrown away. They fit with what Aaron had just told her. But Callie couldn’t have put the note on Lexie’s windshield. She’d been at home all day.

Of course, there were other ways. She could’ve paid someone else do it. Still, for Tess, it was impossible to believe that a sweet, loving woman like Callie could be responsible for the awful things that had happened on the ranch. But the evidence argued otherwise.

“How do you suppose it happened?” Tess asked, thinking out loud.

“Her falling, you mean?” Aaron watched as the body was loaded into the back of the van. “I’m guessing she decided to throw the poison into the arroyo—maybe got too close to the edge in the dark. That’s about the only thing that makes sense—unless she jumped.”

“Either way, it’s hard to believe.”

With their work done, the crime scene team was ready to leave. The sheriff, a middle-aged man with the weary look of someone who’d seen it all, walked over for a few last words with Tess.

“The medical examiner’s report will take a few days—longer if the state lab gets involved,” he said. “I’ll let you know what we find out. Will you be wanting the body when it’s released?”

“Yes. I’ll make arrangements,” Tess said. “Whatever the real story is, she