Once in a Blue Moon Page 5

  “Oh, carelessness mostly. I was replacing windowpanes in an empty house, and one of them broke in my hand. It’s not a bad cut, and because it’s in the palm, they just glued the cut rather than using stitches or staples.”

  “It sure scared me,” Alice said. “Dan is my everything.”

  “Ditto, honey,” Dan said. He gave Alice a quick smile and then shifted focus back to Cathy. “I know without a car you’re still afoot. What can we help you do? Do you need groceries or prescriptions filled?”

  “I think I’m okay with all that,” Cathy said. “I had been toying with the idea of leasing a car. I should have acted on the thought sooner.”

  “Can I bring you some supper tonight?” Alice asked.

  “Thank you for the offer, but I already have food. Duke got some for me before he left, and Lovey sent fried chicken and potatoes and gravy for later.”

  Alice smiled. “Lovey is the best, but I don’t like to think about you here all hurt and alone. I want to leave my phone number for you. If I do, will you promise to call if you need anything?”

  “That’s really sweet of you,” Cathy said. “There’s a pad and pen in the kitchen. Duke already wrote his number on it. You can leave yours, too, if you want.”

  “Yes, I want to. A while back, my two kids and I showed up here in Blessings without anything but the clothes on our back. I don’t know what would have happened to us if it hadn’t been for the people of Blessings. And then, of course, Dan came to town and saved us.”

  Dan chuckled. “Well, I fell in love with them first. Then I did the hero thing.”

  Alice poked him on the arm and then went to the kitchen to write down her name and number.

  Cathy was just beginning to realize what a jewel of a place she’d stumbled into. It was beginning to feel like a place to heal in more ways than one.

  “Okay, you have my number,” Alice said, as she came back into the room. “Do you have to go back to the doctor for any kind of follow-up?”

  “Not unless I have problems,” Cathy said. “As soon as I feel like it, I can walk on my ankle, but as you can see, Duke rented this Rollator to make sure I had a way to get around until it heals.”

  “The Talbot family is well thought of in the area,” Dan said. “He’s a good friend to have. Now, if you’re sure we can’t do anything for you, we’ll get out of here and maybe you can get some rest. I’ll lock the door on my way out.”

  “Thank you for coming to check on me,” Cathy said. “I never expected anything like this. I mean…I’m a stranger here.”

  Alice just laughed. “Oh, honey, in Blessings, no one is a stranger for long. Get some rest. Your personal phone number is on the rental application. I’ll call you sometime tomorrow and check in on you, just to make sure you don’t need me to run an errand, okay?”

  “Yes, okay, and thank you for coming,” Cathy said.

  Dan locked the door behind them as they left.

  The house was quiet now, but Cathy didn’t feel so alone anymore. There were people here who knew her name, and who cared about her welfare. It was more than she’d had in almost a year, and the feelings washing through her were overwhelming. She reclined the chair again and closed her eyes, suddenly grateful she’d followed her knee-jerk reaction to winter here.

  * * *

  Blaine Wagner had been AWOL from Vegas for almost a month, cruising on a friend’s yacht along the California coast and then down the Mexican Riviera. They’d spent a week docked in Cabo San Lucas, then Puerto Vallarta, then gone as far as Acapulco before heading back.

  He didn’t realize his ex-wife was no longer showing up anywhere in Vegas until he got home and checked in with Rand Lawrence, the private investigator he’d hired to watch her apartment. The whole time he’d been gone, he’d been trying to decide whether to just let her be or remove the threat of her altogether.

  He woke early, more than anxious to get back to the office and into his normal routine, but in the back of his mind, he wanted an update on his ex.

  He ordered his driver for a nine o’clock pickup, and then showered and dressed before going down to breakfast. After weeks of rich food and more liquor than he’d like to think about, he asked his chef for bacon and eggs and a couple of toasted English muffins, then downed them with multiple cups of black coffee and headed for the office.

  As soon as he arrived, he issued orders to his secretary, checked to make sure the board meeting was still on for the afternoon, and then went into his office.

  The scent of fresh brewing coffee met him at the door, and he poured himself a cup from the coffee bar before sitting down at his desk.

  His computer was on and waiting for him to go through his personal emails, so he spent a couple of minutes scanning what was there before he reached for his phone to call Rand Lawrence, then counted four rings before the PI answered.

  “Hello, Rand speaking.”

  “Good morning, Rand. This is Blaine Wagner. I’m checking in for an update on my ex-wife.”

  “I don’t have much to tell, Mr. Wagner. I haven’t seen her come in or out since you left. I finally put up a security camera in the hall that’s aimed straight at her door, and it hasn’t opened once since I installed the camera.”

  Blaine’s heart skipped a beat. Could he be so lucky as to hope she’d become despondent and offed herself?

  “Do you think she’s still there?” Blaine asked.

  “I have no way of knowing that,” Rand said. “All I know is that I saw her go in weeks ago, and her car is still in the parking garage.”

  Blaine frowned. This was not what he wanted to hear.

  “Do a follow-up and see if she booked any trips. Check airlines for overseas flights. Check cruise ships. She might have gone on vacation somewhere—and get back to me on this ASAP.”

  “Yes, sir,” Rand said.

  Frustrated, Blaine disconnected. He was too impatient to wait for Rand to run all those traces, and thought about checking in with the apartment manager and having them do a welfare check. Then he tried to think of who he knew at her bank that might break FDIC rules for him and see if she’d withdrawn a large amount of money.

  He had a meeting later in the afternoon, but it would freaking make his day if someone found her dead in her apartment. He knew the manager of her complex and made a call to the office. He was put on hold just long enough to tick him off, and then the call was picked up.

  “Good morning, Mr. Wagner. This is Eric. How can I help you?”

  “Morning, Eric. I have a favor to ask. I know it’s a little unorthodox, but I’m a bit concerned about my ex-wife, Cathy. I’ve been out of town for a while, and I come back to all kinds of messages from her old friends that are concerning to me.” It didn’t faze him one bit that he’d just lied, as long as he got the answers he wanted. “She’s in one of your apartments and hasn’t been seen anywhere for some time. Her friends have called without getting answers. Her car hasn’t been moved in weeks, and now they have me concerned. She could easily be vacationing, I suppose. But we’d all rest easier knowing she hadn’t suffered a fall or taken ill and is unable to call for help. Is there any way you could do a kind of welfare check? You surely have spare keys to the apartments, right?”

  Eric Mitchell was immediately on alert. The last thing he needed was for someone’s dead body to be rotting in one of the apartments. It would cost a fortune to strip the place down and fix it after something like that.

  “Yes, yes, I can do that for you. I’ll check my records to get the building and apartment number and get back to you soon.”

  “As soon as possible, please,” Blaine said. “I have meetings this afternoon and can’t be disturbed then.”

  “Yes, just give me about thirty minutes and I’ll call you back.”

  “Thank you so much,” Blaine said, and then disconnected. He glanced up at the clock. I
t was a quarter to ten. He wasn’t in the habit of drinking before noon, but he set aside his coffee and headed for the wet bar, while on the other side of Vegas, Eric Mitchell was scrambling for pass keys.

  * * *

  Eric wasn’t looking forward to this. He could have sent someone else to do it, but Blaine Wagner had asked him personally, and he was stuck.

  He jumped in his car and drove down to the building, then headed inside, rode the elevator up to the eighth floor, and walked down to 802. He paused outside the door and inhaled, but didn’t smell anything resembling a rotting body, so he rang the doorbell and waited. And then waited. Then he rang it again and waited. And waited some more.

  Satisfied there wasn’t going to be an answer, he put the key in the lock and turned it. Only afterward did it occur to him that it could have set off a security alarm, and he breathed a sigh of relief when he was met with silence.

  The air-conditioning was on, so there was no musty smell as he called out.

  “Cathy! Cathy Wagner! Anybody here?”

  Silence.

  At that point, he began walking through the rooms, choosing the kitchen first and going straight to the refrigerator. There were a couple of leftover cartons of moldy food and a partially full bottle of milk that was almost two months out of date. He closed the door and went through the living room and into the office. There was a laptop on the desk, but when he checked, it was off, and the battery had gone dead.

  He moved into the bedroom, and the first thing he saw was her purse sitting on the bench at the foot of her bed. He looked inside, and when he realized everything she would have carried was still in it—her wallet, her ID, credit cards, car keys, sunglasses, even makeup—his heart skipped a beat. No woman willingly left all of this behind. Now he was getting concerned.

  He went straight to the big walk-in closet. It didn’t take but a few moments to notice there were no empty hangers to indicate she’d packed clothes. There was no sign of a struggle or any kind of abduction. She was just gone.

  Eric was still in her bedroom when he called Blaine. He must have been waiting for the call because he answered on the first ring.

  “This is Blaine.”

  “It’s me, Eric. I’m in her apartment, and I don’t really know what to tell you except that she’s not here. There’s food in her refrigerator that has molded. The milk is out of date almost two months. The laptop in her office is off, and when I tried to turn it on, the battery was dead. I’m standing in her bedroom right now, and her purse is here with her wallet, money, credit cards, and ID still in it. Her car keys are in it. I checked her closet. There’s no sign of her packing any clothes because there are no empty hangers. It’s as if she just vanished. Do you want me to call the police?”

  Blaine’s heart skipped a beat. He knew exactly what she’d done. The bitch! She’d walked away from it all to get away from him, and he’d never seen it coming.

  “No. Let me do some more checking first, and for now, let’s keep this between us.”

  “Yes, sir,” Eric said. “So, I’ll just lock it back up as if I was never here. Her lease is paid up until May of next year anyway.”

  “Thank you again,” Blaine said, but he was cursing a blue streak by the time he disconnected.

  The last confirmation he needed would be to check the damn bank account. They wouldn’t tell him where they’d moved money, but he could find out if the account was still active. He just needed to find the right person. Someone with access to viewing those accounts surely needed a little extra something. He banked there as well, and had seen a couple of bank employees regularly in the casinos in which he was invested. If they liked to gamble, he had a feeling they wouldn’t turn down the money to snoop.

  * * *

  It cost Blaine five thousand dollars to get the info he wanted about Cathy’s checking account. There was less than two hundred thousand dollars left, which was more than enough for the automatic withdrawals for her utility bills until her lease ran out. But since she’d left all her credit cards behind, they were useless in trying to trace her.

  Now he had to decide if he wanted to just kiss her absent ass goodbye and consider he’d won by running her out of town, or if she was too much of a threat. But that was for another time. Right now, he was doing lunch with an associate, then going from there to the board meeting being held at the Luxor, so he slid into the back seat of his limo, closed the window between him and his driver, and made a call to a brunette named Angel.

  He smiled when she answered. “Hello, big boy. You’re back. I have missed you and your hot body so much,” she said, and then made a little purring sound that raised the hair on the back of his neck.

  “Missed me enough to go to dinner with me tonight?” he asked.

  “Ooh, yes, baby. And do I get to spend the night? You know how I love waking up next to you.”

  “Absolutely,” Blaine said. “I’ll pick you up at seven. I have dinner reservations at Joel Robuchon’s at the Grand for seven thirty.”

  “Oh yum. You spoil me,” Angel said.

  Blaine laughed. “See you then,” he said, and disconnected.

  * * *

  Duke and Jack were back at the scene of the crime, with Deputies Treat and Butler from the County Sheriff’s office. Butler was taking pictures of the tire tracks and had made a plaster cast of the boot print with the cut in the left heel. They had already taken pictures of where the wire had been cut and of the feed sacks left behind while Jack and Duke were repairing the downed fence.

  “So, you say you’re missing six head?” Butler asked.

  Jack nodded. “Three big steers and two cows, one with a calf.”

  Treat was making notes as Butler asked questions, but he soon popped up with one of his own.

  “Who owns the place that backs up here to yours?” he asked.

  “Mylo Bailey, but his daughter, Rhonda Bailey, who’s a nurse at the hospital in Blessings, had to put him in a nursing home over a year ago. As far as we know, the house and the place have stood empty ever since,” Duke said.

  “Property with no one in residence is a good way to get in and out without being noticed. It’s obvious they came across it because the tracks are visible on the other side,” Treat said. “We’ll be heading over that way as soon as we leave your place. Oh, one other thing. Are your cattle branded?”

  “No, but they all have numbered ear tags and the initials DJT below the numbers…for Duke and Jack Talbot,” he added.

  “Okay. We’ll be checking in with local auction houses, too,” Treat said. “I think that’s all for now. If you own game cameras, it might be a good idea to put some up. If the rustlers make a return trip, you might get lucky.”

  “Good idea,” Duke said, and then he and Jack led the way out of the fields back to their house. The deputies left as Duke and Jack went inside.

  “I’m making coffee,” Jack said, as he went to the kitchen sink to wash up.

  “And I’m going to the office to work. Let me know when the coffee is done, and I’ll come get some.”

  “Oh, I’ll bring you a cup,” Jack said. “Go do your thing. I’m getting meat out to thaw for supper. I don’t know about you, but I’m starved. We missed dinner. Want me to bring you a sandwich to go with your coffee?” he asked.

  “Sure. Whatever we have,” Duke said, then hung his work jacket on the peg by the back door, washed up, and then went down the hall to the office.

  But as soon as he sat down, his thoughts flashed on the little redhead he’d taken home this morning, and he wished he’d had the nerve to ask for her phone number. He wanted to call her just to hear her voice again, but he couldn’t. And then it dawned on him that the hospital might have it in their records, so he turned on the computer. While it was booting up, he sent Hope a text, then pulled up the farm account and began posting the bills and payments. When Jack brought
the sandwich and coffee a few minutes later, Duke stopped long enough to take a bite, then kept working.

  He had finished half of the sandwich and was working on the last half when his phone signaled a text. He wiped his hands, then grabbed the phone to read what she’d sent.

  Dear Brother-in-law, we’re not supposed to give out patient information. Go see her tomorrow and ask her yourself. If she wants you to have it, she will give it to you.

  P.S. I love you, but not enough to get fired. LOL

  Duke sighed. He hadn’t thought that through, and he returned the text.

  My bad. I didn’t think about that. Sorry, Hope.

  Then he added a smiley-face emoji and hit Send, finished off his sandwich, and went to refill his coffee.

  * * *

  Deputies Treat and Butler drove straight to the Bailey property. The empty two-story house looked a bit forlorn. The yard hadn’t been mowed in ages, and there was a layer of dust all over the windows. It was a shame. The house itself had once been a showstopper in the area.

  The central part of the house was two-story redbrick, with white clapboard, single-story wings on either side. It had white shutters in need of paint, and there were a few missing shingles.

  The old barn behind the house was a big two-story with a gambrel roof and a loft opening above the doorway below. It had once been painted white, but was mostly gray now, and the pen built behind the barn appeared to be made of welded pipe that was red with rust.

  It didn’t take them long to find obvious tracks coming and going in the dirt driveway, and after taking more pictures, they matched up the tire treads at the Bailey place to the ones they’d seen at the Talbots’. The kicker was finding the same boot print with the slash in the heel. They photographed it and then walked back to their car.

  “They definitely used the empty property as their access,” Treat said. “I think now we need to question the daughter, Rhonda Bailey, to see if she’s rented out this property to anyone.”

  “The Talbots said she worked at the ER in the Blessings hospital. Why don’t you call and see if she’s still on duty, and if she’s not, get her personal phone number.”