Page 52 of Killer on the Homestead
It grated for a wide variety of reasons because it was both untrue and…true. When it came to certain people, she couldn’t keep her defenses up and hard outer shell in place. Certain people, likeall men, had always been easy to harden herself against.
But she couldn’t seem to manage with Duncan.
Which was going to get her hurt, and she knew it. So she wanted toavoidit because she wasn’t a masochist.
Apparently, except when it came to him.
He didn’t try to make conversation on the walk over to the bunkhouse, and she told herself she was grateful for it. Silencewas great for thinking, and she needed to be thinking about what she was looking for.
Something…Something. Anything that might give her even half an idea to go on. Because this was just getting more and more confusing as more terrible things happened.
Duncan unlocked the front door and gestured her inside. She’d been in this room before, when they’d talked to Owen the day of the murder. So, that wasn’t what she’d come for today. “You know which room is Owen’s?”
“No, but I might be able to figure it out.” He moved through the common area, back to a long hallway with lots of doors. Only one of them was open. Duncan gestured to it. “This would be my guess.”
Rosalie brushed past him and stepped inside. It was in disarray. There were muddy boot prints from more than one person—probably the paramedics and cops. So, yeah, Owen’s room. There were two beds in it—one on either side. “Did he share a room?”
“Not sure, but I can find out.”
“Probably with Hunter, if he did,” she said, more to herself than to Duncan, trying to get in the right frame of mind. Because investigating was her job, and she was damn good at it. She’d searched plenty of rooms before. She’d found evidence of theft, affairs, abuse.
She had to keep an open and agile mind. She had to think like the person she was investigating.
“What exactly are you looking for?” Duncan asked.
“I’m not sure. The police confiscated the pills. I’m sure they searched the area. Took pictures of what they found so they can connect it to your case. I don’t know that I can magically unearth something they didn’t, but I want to look. Get a sense of things.” She pulled a pair of latex gloves out of the cross-body bag strapped to her chest and began to pull them on.
Since Duncan was giving her a funny look, she gestured around the room. “Don’t touch anything. The police might come back to take prints, like they did at your place.”
“Fingerprints,” Duncan said, frowning. “Right.”
“Having second thoughts, Ace?”
He sighed. “No, but I can’t say that means I’m comfortable with all this.”
“You can always leave me to it.”
He shook his head, but he stayed there, hovering closer to the door than anything else. Rosalie started on one side of the room. She studied walls, baseboards, furniture. There wasn’t much. Even the little closet just housed some clothes, a few pairs of boots, and little else. Nothing really personal.
It made her feel even more sorry for Owen in the hospital. Hunter, dead without ever having a chance to have a life that was more than this…impersonal holding pattern. She went through a nightstand, but it was empty. Hunter’s likely, because the police would have confiscated any of his personal effects for their investigation.
She moved to the next nightstand and found more items in there. A few receipts—from a gas-station convenience store for what looked like a fountain drink and some snacks, a Rightful Claim bar tab from before Hunter’s murder, and some fishing bait. Nothing that stuck out as important, but she made sure to commit it all to memory so she could transfer it to her notes later.
There was a book under the receipts. A bible. Suspicious, Rosalie lifted it out of the drawer, flipped through it, then held it over the bed, pages down, and shook.
A little square of paper tumbled out of the book and onto the bed. Rosalie set aside the bible, picked up the paper, and began to carefully unfold it.
It was a map of the ranch. Boundaries were marked, and there were little hash marks where the different cattle herds were.
It was similar to the one Duncan’s mother had made, but not identical. Which meant it was Owen’s own map, outlining exactly what Rosalie had wanted outlined to see if they could connect the murder to the missing cattle.
Rosalie’s heart sank. She shouldn’t have any feelings about it, but she felt…bad. Bad for poor Owen. Bad for Hunter. Just a bad sign that maybe, just maybe, all her instincts about this case were wrong.
She moved over to Duncan and showed it to him. His expression went very hard.
“That doesn’t look too good for Owen, does it?”
She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t look good.” She looked around this little room. Why would he have this? Why would he have anything to do with the cattle? Murder was one thing, but the missing cattle?
