Confessing to the Cowboy

chapter 2



Cameron sat in his office alone and sipped a cup of strong coffee, hoping for an adrenaline rush that would get him through the day. It was just after seven in the morning and he hadn’t gone to bed the night before until well after midnight.

He’d just collapsed onto the king-size bed when he heard a faint scratching on a door down the hallway and remembered he was now, at least temporarily, a pet owner.

He’d jumped out of bed and opened the laundry room door. Twinkie exploded out and raced to the front door, obviously in desperate need of a potty break.

Cameron opened the door, and watched the little mutt as she sniffed the grassy area until she found a place she liked. When she’d finished her business she came back inside and looked up at Cameron expectantly.

“Good girl,” Cameron had said, and Twinkie’s tail had wagged in response, then she raced straight to Cameron’s bedroom and placed her front paws on the edge of the mattress.

“Oh, no, little girl. That’s my bed.” Cameron got the four-poster bed from the laundry room and set it next to his. “This is Twinkie’s bed.”

The dog had looked at it as if she’d never seen it before in her life. Cameron ignored her, got into bed and turned out the bedside lamp. The whine began low in Twinkie’s throat as her front paws tap-danced on the side of the mattress.

After fifteen minutes of trying to be firm, Cameron had given in and pulled the pup on top of his bed. Twinkie immediately curled up at Cameron’s feet, her body warmth radiating through the blanket.

A spoiled tiny dog wasn’t exactly what he thought about when he considered bedmates, but for now the furry dog was all he had.

He’d awakened at dawn after a night filled with haunting visions of dead women, each of them pleading for justice. His nightmares had been a strobe-light event with the dead reaching out to him.

Now here he sat in his office, sipping coffee and waiting for it to be time for the staff meeting he’d called with all his deputies that would occur in another twenty minutes.

While the coffee sent a jolt of caffeine-driven adrenaline through him, it did nothing to make his thoughts any more clear as to solving these crimes. He didn’t expect his team to have anything to report to him to answer either of those questions. He reared back in his chair and released a sigh of weary frustration.

At some point today he needed to get out to his parents’ place. It had been a full week since he’d been there and he knew there would be things that needed to be done. Since his brother, Bobby’s, death, Cameron had been trying to help them around the ranch to fill in the shoes of the child they had lost.

The relationship between him and his father had become strained long ago when Cameron had decided to run for sheriff instead of staying home to help with the family ranch. With Bobby’s death the relationship had only become more difficult.

He sat for another fifteen minutes, then swallowed the last of his coffee and stood. Now wasn’t the time to think about family dynamics or anything else that didn’t pertain to murder. It was time to meet with his team and see if they could figure out how to stop this killer before he struck again.

Minutes later he stood at the head of a long table in the conference room, six deputies seated on each side of the table. They were an even dozen, all good men who made up the law in Grady Gulch and the surrounding area. Thankfully they were in charge of a small county.

“Morning, gentlemen,” he said. “Let’s get down to business.”

For the next hour the men reported what had been done so far in the investigation into Dorothy’s murder. The neighborhood had been canvassed, friends had been interviewed and, just as he’d suspected, they had little to report.

Her neighbors had heard nothing throughout the night, friends indicated that they couldn’t imagine Dorothy having any enemies. Yada-yada-yada, Cameron thought. It was the same song, just a different victim.

No forensic evidence had been left behind, no fingerprints to process, no dropped glove or footprints to cast, this killer was definitely smart enough to cover his tracks well.

“There’s no question now that this killer is targeting the waitresses at the Cowboy Café,” Cameron said when the others were finished with their meager reports. “That’s the only connection that’s obvious between the victims.” He instantly thought of Mary and wondered if she was in danger, as well.

In her capacity as owner of the café she rarely worked the floor, but she did work behind the counter often and could be considered a waitress.

“Adam, I want you to check and cross-check the personal lives of these women and see if there’s anyplace else they connect besides their work at the café. Maybe they go to the same hairdresser or use the same gym. I want to know anyplace these women’s lives might intersect besides the café.”

“Ben,” Cameron said, directly his attention to Deputy Ben Temple, who he considered his right-hand man. “I want you to spend the next couple of days hanging out at the café. See if you notice anyone acting strange, if you see anyone who appears to be focused in on a particular waitress. The rest of you divide up and I want every friend and every neighbor or acquaintance from the previous victims reinterviewed.”

It was work that had already been done, but Cameron was grateful and proud that nobody on the team complained. Half the men he dismissed to go home and sleep, the other half who worked the day shift he dismissed to begin their work.

Once the meeting was finished, Cameron went back into his office and pulled on his jacket and his hat. He knew that it was important for him to be seen around town this morning, to assure the public that he and his men were working overtime to catch the evil that was at work in their town.

It wasn’t something he was particularly looking forward to doing. People would want answers, and unfortunately he had none to give. He believed it was important to delegate the investigation work to his deputies, but he’d learn what they discovered every step of the way. He was a puzzle guy, he liked to gather pieces, and then attempt to put together the puzzle that would eventually solve the crime.

The last murder that had occurred in Grady Gulch had been two years before, when Jeff Davie had shot his wife, Cheryl, in a domestic dispute. It had been an open-and-shut case as Jeff had confessed to his crime.

Cameron had never had anything like this to take care of before...the murder of three women. He wanted to believe he and his team were up to the task, but if things got too dicey he’d have to request help from the FBI, thus undermining he and his team’s ability in the face of the people in town.

As he stepped outside, the blustery air half stole his breath away. Only early November and already he could smell winter in the air. Thankfully the cold wind had chased most people off the streets.

He walked alone down Main, waving into shop windows as he passed. Why now? Why in the last three months had the murders begun to occur? There had to be a trigger of some kind, either that or the murderer had moved here in the past couple of months. There had been several new families and single men who had moved to Grady Gulch in the past year or so. Cameron made a mental note to check each of them thoroughly.

What he’d like to do was head to the café and check on Mary. When he’d told her about Dorothy the night before and she’d fallen onto the sofa and began to weep, there had been nothing Cameron wanted to do more than pull her up into his arms, hold her tight against him in an effort to comfort.

But he wasn’t sure that she’d welcome his touch, his closeness. She definitely gave him mixed messages. Although she’d told him a dozen times that she didn’t need or want a man in her life, occasionally he caught a whisper of longing in her eyes as she looked at him, a yearning that made him want to believe her eyes and not her lush lips.

He steeled himself as George Wilton walked out of the hardware store and nearly bowled him over. Wearing a thick, long black coat and a hat with huge ear muffs that flapped against his gray whisker-grizzled cheeks, he looked prepared for the snowstorm of the century.

“Heard Dorothy Blake was murdered last night,” he said with a scowl, which wasn’t unusual. George always found something to scowl about.

“Heard right,” Cameron replied.

“Craziness, that’s what’s taken over this town. You gonna find this creep before he kills all the waitresses from the café?”

“That’s my plan, George.”

“Yeah, well, my plan is to marry some twenty-three-year-old hottie who thinks I hung the moon, but that ain’t happening anytime soon. Hope your plan works out better than mine. You know I take most of my meals at the café. What will I do, where will I eat if this creep manages to kill all the waitresses and Mary has to close down?”

Leave it to George to think about his own creature comforts rather than the loss of the three women. “Mary isn’t going to close down the café and we’re going to catch whoever is responsible for these crimes,” Cameron said with a confidence that didn’t quite make it into his heart.

George’s scowl deepened. “Well, you’d better hurry up about it,” he said as he moved past Cameron and headed in the opposite direction down the sidewalk.

Hurry up about it. How Cameron wished he could do just that. Snap his fingers, speak an ancient incantation, wiggle his nose and magically have the guilty party behind bars. But he knew from experience that it was going to take hours of pounding pavements, talking to people and seeking any minute detail that might have been overlooked that could break the case wide open.

As the day passed, Cameron found himself unable to get Mary out of his head. Outside of the families of the dead women, Mary would be the person most touched by their deaths. Not only because they worked for her, but because she considered the people who worked at the café her extended family.

In one of their late-night talks she’d told him she had no family, that Matt’s father had been killed in a car accident when Matt had been just a baby. She and her husband had both been only children of parents who had passed away. In her isolated grief over her husband’s death she’d taken Matt and left her hometown in California and wandered until the wind had blown her into Grady Gulch.

Somebody was killing the waitresses at the café. Was it possible that it wasn’t some enemy that the women shared, but rather somebody trying to hurt Mary? Maybe he was making too big a leap, but it was a possibility that had to be considered, along with a dozen others.

The day passed far too quickly, with far too many questions remaining unanswered. A noon meeting with his men yielded nothing worthwhile and a quick stop at his parents’ ranch reminded him that he’d never be the son his father had wanted, that the son he’d loved was gone and he wasn’t even a pale substitute in his eyes.

The weight of discouragement and frustration pressed heavily on his shoulders as he stopped by the house to let Twinkie out of the laundry room. The little dog danced with excitement at the sight of him and licked the underside of his jaw when Cameron picked her up his arms. Cameron suddenly understood why people had pets.

Twinkie didn’t care that he had no clues to the three murders, didn’t care that he couldn’t be the son his parents wanted. All Twinkie needed from him was food and water and love, and the love was returned unconditionally.

If only people were more like dogs, he thought as he watched the little pooch leaping through the grass like a tiny gazelle in the yard. He called the dog’s name, and she came running back to Cameron and followed him back through the front door.

He started to lock Twinkie back up in the laundry room and then changed his mind and decided to give her the run of the house. He almost felt guilty leaving the little pooch alone again, but his day was far from over.

Twinkie needed a home where somebody could spend time with her, he thought as he headed toward the café. She was definitely a social butterfly and would thrive where there were people to appreciate her friendly nature.

It was late, almost ten, and he knew that on Wednesday nights ten was closing time at the café. Mary would probably be waiting for him with a last cup of coffee ready to pour. She’d have questions he couldn’t answer and he had questions for her, as well.

With three Cowboy Café waitresses dead, he couldn’t help but believe in the possibility that Mary was somehow in the center of the storm.

* * *

Minutes before ten, with the café empty and Mary ready to call it a night, Cameron walked in the front door. He flipped the sign on the door to Closed and then hung his hat on a hook.

She hadn’t been sure he’d make his usual stop given the fact that he had a fresh murder to investigate, but she couldn’t help the way her heart beat just a little more rapidly at the sight of his handsome face. And she couldn’t help but recognize her beating heart was a combination of pleasure and a faint edge of dread as she studied his grim features.

“Bad day?” she asked.

“Bad life,” he replied and sat on one of the stools at the counter.

She turned to pour him a cup of coffee and tried to ignore his spicy cologne scent that always shot a hint of warmth through her. It wasn’t a particularly unusual fragrance. She’d smelled it on other men, but it didn’t affect her in the same way when worn by anyone else.

“No leads?” she asked as she placed the cup of strong hot brew in front of him.

“Nothing to brag about. Dorothy’s sister is flying in sometime tomorrow from back East.”

Mary looked at him in surprise. “I didn’t know Dorothy had a sister. She never mentioned having any family.”

Cameron took a sip of his coffee, his hazel eyes more brown than green. “Younger sister. Apparently the two weren’t close, so I doubt that she’ll have any information that would be helpful to the case.”

The weary lines that creased his forehead did nothing to take away from his sexy features. Mary had been drawn to him since the first day she’d met him, like a moth to a flame that would quickly burn her to death.

“Did you talk to Winneta Baker? She and Dorothy were close friends,” she said, trying to stay focused on the conversation rather than her desire to stroke her hand across his brow to somehow ease those lines of stress.

He nodded and raked a hand through his thick hat-tousled dark brown hair. “Adam spoke with her. She provided the only information that might prove to be a clue. Apparently the night before her murder Dorothy saw somebody skulking around in her yard.”

Mary leaned forward, her heart beginning a new rapid beat. “Casing the place?”

“Possibly. Unfortunately Dorothy couldn’t tell who it was in the dark. All she told Winneta was that she thought it was a big man.”

“Gee, that narrows the suspect pool,” Mary said wryly. “You-all grow them big here in Grady Gulch. At least half the men around here would be considered big.”

He took another drink of his coffee, his eyes narrowed above the cup as he looked at her. Something in that gaze clenched a knot in her stomach.

He doesn’t know, she told herself. He can’t know. I covered my tracks too well. It’s been too many years. Still the intensity of his gaze made her feel as if he could see right through her, straight through to her soul and all the secrets she’d kept there for so long.

He lowered the cup once again, his gaze still holding hers. “I think we have to talk about the possibility that somehow these murders are related to you.”

A gasp escaped Mary. Even though in her darkest nightmares she’d worried that somehow she was a part of the madness that had been taking place, that somehow she was responsible for the deaths of the three women, hearing her fears spoken aloud by him horrified her.

“Me? You mean the café. It’s obvious the murders are tied to the café,” she replied.

“No, I mean you personally.” He leaned forward, as if aware of the impact his words had on her, as if he wanted to somehow touch her, to reassure her that everything was going to be all right. “We have to consider it, Mary,” he said softly.

“I know.” She pulled up a stool on the opposite side of the counter and sat. “I’d already considered the possibility when Shirley Cook was murdered. Now, with Dorothy’s murder, the possibility that somebody is killing my waitresses in an attempt to hurt me and the café is even stronger.” She was aware of the slight tremble of her voice.

“Has somebody given you any trouble over the last couple of months? Have you fired somebody who might have a grudge against you? Have you sensed any ill feelings coming from any of your customers or friends or even the people you’re working with now? Has anyone expressed interest in buying the café?” He was all lawman now, the questions firing from him like bullets from a gun.

She held up a hand to stop the questions as her brain felt as if it might explode. “Trust me, I’ve racked my brain all day, Cameron, trying to come up with a name, the face of anybody who would want to hurt me, but I’ve come up completely empty. Since I’ve owned this place nobody has ever mentioned anything about wanting to buy the café and I haven’t had problems with anyone.” The only person who’d ever wanted to hurt her was gone forever. She’d seen to that personally.

There was no way she could believe this attack on the waitresses had anything to do with the life she’d lived before the one she’d built here in Grady Gulch. There was no reason for her to tell him anything about the horrors she’d suffered in that previous lifetime, the sins that she’d committed to protect all that she held dear. It was history and that particular part of her history couldn’t ever hurt her again unless somehow Cameron discovered what she’d done.

Cameron sighed, the lines across his forehead cutting deeper than usual. “I figured that would be your answer. I’ve tried and tried to think about who might hold a grudge against you, but I can’t think of anyone, either. As far as I know you’ve only made friends here in town, no enemies that I’m aware of.”

Before he could say anything more, the back door of the café opened and Junior Lempke came running in. “Junior!” Mary said in stunned surprise. She’d given the mentally challenged man a key to the back door six months before, but he’d never used it before.

“Mary, Mary.” He raced toward her, his moon-shaped face radiating happiness. “Look, look what I have.” He held out a cell phone. “Mom got it for me as a surprise. It’s just for me.”

“That’s wonderful, Junior,” Mary replied. Junior was thirty-two years old but had the capabilities of a twelve-year-old. A lack of oxygen at birth had resulted in his diminished capacities. Mary had hired him as a busboy over a year ago and now had him doing some of the prep work and cooking.

“Sheriff Cameron, it’s my very own phone,” Junior said as he turned his attention from Mary. “My mom programmed it for me. If I punch one I call home. If I punch two I call Mary.” He flashed her a bright smile. “And if I punch three I call 911.”

“That’s great, Junior. Your mother must think you’re very responsible,” Cameron said with a smile at him.

“I am responsible. I am, aren’t I, Mary?”

“You’re one of the most responsible workers I’ve ever had,” Mary agreed with a gentle smile.

Junior nodded, obviously satisfied and proud of her answer. “Okay, I’ve got to go back home now. I’ll lock up behind me because I’m responsible.” Without waiting for replies, Junior turned and headed back to the kitchen door he’d come through.

Mary found herself smiling after him. She’d taken a chance on hiring him and discovered that people had underestimated his abilities and his need to feel productive. She turned back to look at Cameron, whose eyes were narrowed in thought.

“Wonder what Junior does at night. I know his mother pretty much lets him come and go as he pleases.”

Mary turned back to look at him in surprise. “Surely you don’t think Junior is capable of such crimes. He doesn’t have the cunning, he doesn’t have the mental capacity to make plans and assure escape without detection. Besides, Junior loves me and he loves the women who work here.”

“What about Rusty?”

“What about him?” Mary realized her tone had become slightly defensive. “You know Rusty has worked for me for years. Yes, he has a temper, but he also has a strong protective streak when it comes to the waitresses.”

“But what do you know about his past?” Cameron persisted.

“Enough. I know he lost his wife and child in a house fire years ago. I know that he drifted from place to place, eaten up by grief and drinking too much for a long time and he finally wound up here working for me. Cameron, you’re looking at the wrong people.”

“I have to look at everyone,” he replied. “I’ve got to either dismiss them completely as suspects or put them on my list of potential suspects.”

“You have a list of potential suspects?” she asked hopefully.

His lips curved up in a slow, rueful smile. “I’m working on it. Right now I have a list with every man in town on it and I’m trying to weed it down.”

“Maybe it’s a woman,” Mary said.

Cameron stared at her in surprise and leaned against the back of the stool. “To be honest, we hadn’t even considered the possibility.”

“But there have been no sexual overtones to the murders, so a woman could have been responsible, right?”

Once again Cameron worried a hand through his hair, and for just a moment Mary wondered what that brown richness would feel like beneath her fingertips.

“Thanks, you just put all the members of town over twelve years old on my potential suspect list.”

She smiled sympathetically. “Sorry, it was just a thought.”

“Unfortunately it’s a viable thought. Even though Dorothy told Winneta she saw a large man outside her house the night before her murder, it could have been a big woman or a normal-sized person casting a large shadow in the moonlight.” He raised his cup and drained the last of the coffee. “Walk me to the door?”

She nodded. In another lifetime she would have walked with him to her bedroom. They would have made beautiful love that would banish all thoughts of murders and evil. But in this lifetime she walked him to the front door of the café.

He grabbed his hat from the hook and set it on his head, looking every inch an intelligent, sexy man. Instead of reaching for the door, he placed his hands on her shoulders, his eyes lightening to a more golden-green hue.

She wanted to fall into that light, an illumination that whispered of desire and safety and all the things she dreamed about at night. But she knew it was a false light, a mirage that would disappear if he knew about her past.

“I’m worried about you,” he said softly.

“About me?”

His hands slid down her arms and then back up again to her shoulders. “You might be the owner of this café, but that makes you the head waitress and somebody is killing waitresses and we don’t know if that somebody might consider you the ultimate prize.”

His words shot a shuddering chill down her body. Until Dorothy’s murder nobody had been sure what was driving the murderer. Now they could make an educated guess that whoever it was had a thing for waitresses.

“But I’m different,” she said, her voice a faint whisper. “I’m different than the other waitresses who have been killed. I don’t live alone and I have Matt.”

“And we don’t know how this killer might escalate.” He raised a hand to her cheek and she found the impulse to lean into him and instead took a step back, away from his touch. He dropped his hand and instead shoved both of his hands into his coat pockets. “I’m just saying you need to be careful, Mary.”

“I promise I will be. Doors and windows firmly locked and I’ll sleep with one eye open,” she said in an effort to lighten what had suddenly become a tense tone.

“I’m not kidding. Life wouldn’t be the same for me without you in it.” He frowned as if irritated with himself. “Grady Gulch wouldn’t be the same without your famous apple pie. Lock up after me,” he said.

“Always,” she replied.

When he’d stepped out the door she carefully locked it, then turned out all the lights except the dim security ones over the long counter and went back to her living quarters. Her cheek still burned from his touch and the desire she’d had to lean into him.

She stopped at Matt’s bedroom door, surprised to find him still awake. “Hey, buddy, why aren’t you asleep?” She eased down on the edge of his bed as he sat up, his blond hair tousled with the beginnings of a bed head.

“I heard what Sheriff Evans said and I just want you to know that I’ll never let anyone hurt you.” His voice held all the vehemence a ten-year-old could hold. “I’ll protect you always.”

Mary’s heart squeezed tight and she reached out and shoved a strand of his pale blond hair off his forehead. “Thanks, but that’s not your job. That’s the sheriff’s business. Your job is just to be my favorite son.”

He eyed her with a small smile. “Mom, I’m your only son.”

“Well, then, that makes your job easy.” She rose from the bed and kissed him on the forehead. “Don’t worry, Matt. Sheriff Evans is a good sheriff and he’s going to get the bad guy and nothing bad is going to happen to me.”

“You promise?” Matt asked, this time his voice filled with youthful concern.

“I promise,” she replied firmly. “Now, get to sleep. I don’t want you snoozing through math class in the morning. If you can’t go back to sleep right away, then think about what you want to do for your birthday on Saturday.”

Matt’s tension wafted away as a smile touched his lips. “My birthday...yeah, I’ll think about that,” he said and then dutifully closed his eyes. Within minutes he’d fallen asleep, hopefully to dreams of birthday cake and colorful balloons, and Mary moved away from his door and fell onto the sofa in the living room.

The left side of her head suffered a faint pounding that spoke of the beginnings of a headache. Three dead women...not just employees, but also friends.

She’d scarcely had time to grieve for Dorothy as the café had buzzed with business all day. Weddings and deaths brought people out of their isolation and into the café to talk with friends and neighbors.

Now, in the quiet of the room, she still couldn’t find the grief that Dorothy deserved. Instead the only emotion she could tap into was a simmering anxiety that bordered on terror.

Was Cameron right? Were these murders really about somebody trying to get to her? Was somebody toying with her?

Destroying the people she loved, the business she’d built before finally killing her?

Why? And who? She’d never gotten any negative vibes from anyone who had entered the café, the people she visited with day after day.

But Mary knew better than most that monsters could wear smiling faces. They were chameleons who could blend into any setting, who appeared like ordinary human beings. They could be charming and make you believe any of their lies.

Oh, yes, Mary knew very well about monsters. A little over thirteen years ago she’d married one...and then she’d killed him.