Mattie felt herself choke up again. With a glance, she threw the lead back to Stella.
“Other than his old street gang, can you think of anyone else who might have harmed William?” Stella asked.
“Not anyone in our lives now.”
That’s the problem, Mattie thought. This has to be connected to Timber Creek.
“I want to see him,” Tamara said. “If I come out there, can I see him?”
Mattie flinched and didn’t know what to say.
“Do you have someone near you who can stay with you this evening?” Stella asked.
“My sister. I’ll call her.”
Stella avoided a direct answer. “Let me find out some details about the time of the autopsy and call you back later.”
Mattie knew that Stella wanted Tamara to have a support person in place before sharing the grim details of William’s condition.
Stella provided her own contact information and finished up the call. After disconnecting, she leaned back in her chair and stared at Mattie. “What are you thinking?”
Mattie gave her head a slight shake, trying to jiggle her thoughts into some kind of order. “We’ve got to find the connection between California and Timber Creek. I’m wondering if our mother showed up or something, but that doesn’t make any sense. And this person that he met with last Sunday? It couldn’t have been a friend of the family. Our family didn’t have any friends.”
“I think he said that to avoid the truth, whatever it is.”
“Probably.”
“I’ll call his place of employment and see if the detective out there can help us work the local angle. Then I’ll check back with Tamara and make sure her sister’s with her. I need to let her know why it’s not a good idea for her to rush out here to view his remains.” Stella studied Mattie with a critical eye. “Why don’t you finish up here and go home and get some sleep? You look about done in.”
“I need to help you with these leads, or at least make that next call to Tamara.”
“You’ve done all that you need to for today. Who knows what tomorrow will bring? Go home and get some rest while you can.”
Stella was picking up the phone while Mattie woke up Robo and led him out of the office, closing the door quietly behind them.
Turning, she spied Rainbow striding across the lobby, a frown of concern etched on her face. “What happened, Mattie?” she asked as she approached.
Mattie knew she couldn’t avoid telling her friend about the latest development in this case. Noticing that they were the only ones in the lobby, Mattie swallowed the lump in her throat and told her that they’d discovered the identity of their latest victim—her own brother.
The expression of dismay on her friend’s face was almost her undoing. She made an excuse that she needed to complete her paperwork and clock out, and then escaped to the staff office. She needed to be alone to think through the details and try to remember anything from her past that she had forgotten.
Anything that might help solve her brother’s murder.
FOURTEEN
All through dinner, Cole worried about Mattie. He’d asked her to phone him when she left work, but she hadn’t yet called. He’d also sent a couple of texts but received no response. He was afraid that her brother’s death might make her withdraw from him the way she had after last Christmas, something he wanted to avoid.
When they’d finished eating, he told Mrs. Gibbs and his daughters about Mattie’s brother. He hated having to do it, but they needed to know, and after everything that had happened this past year the kids were becoming experts at handling bad news. They talked it over for a long while, mostly about their concerns for Mattie, and then Angela left to go upstairs to do homework.
He had just finished getting Sophie started on hers at the kitchen table when his cell phone jingled in his pocket. Mattie? He checked caller ID and was disappointed to see a number he didn’t recognize.
He answered it. “Timber Creek Veterinary Clinic. This is Dr. Walker.”
A male voice came from the receiver. “Hi, I’m Bret Flynn. I have a horse with a cut on his hind leg. Looks like it needs stitches.”
Bret Flynn. Must be Riley’s dad. “Hi, Bret. Can you bring him in or do I need to come to your place?”
“I can trailer him in.”
Cole gave him directions to the clinic and arranged to meet him in ten minutes. After disconnecting the call, he turned to his housekeeper who was wiping the kitchen countertops. “I’ve got an emergency at the clinic, Mrs. Gibbs. Can you do homework supervision until I get back?”
“Why, sure. I’ll have my coffee here with Miss Sophie.”
Sophie tipped her head up from the papers spread out in front of her. “When I finish this, Dad, I’ll make a card for Mattie.”
He placed his hand on her small shoulder. “She’ll like that, Little Bit.”
She bent over her worksheets and put pencil to paper, a look of concentration on her face. Cole gave her a quick hug and said goodbye before rushing off to open up the clinic. When he heard the rattle of truck and trailer coming down the lane, he rolled back the double door to open up the equine treatment room. Flynn parked close, exited his truck, and went to the back of the trailer to unload his horse.
Of average height with a broad chest and shoulders, Bret Flynn had the same dark eyes and hair as his daughter. He wore his hair long, almost to his shoulders, and gray strands intermingled with the brown. He looked to be in his fifties, older than Cole had expected. Flynn led a blaze-faced sorrel gelding toward the clinic, the horse limping on his bandaged left hind leg.
Cole unlatched the gate on the stocks—a metal stanchion designed to hold a horse still while being worked on. “Bring him on in here,” he called.
The sorrel’s shod hooves clopped in an uneven gait on the concrete floor of the treatment room as he entered the stocks without a fuss, letting Cole swing the side panel shut to secure him within the rectangular space. After settling the latch at the rear, he introduced himself to Flynn and received a firm handshake in return.
“I met Riley last night,” Cole said. “She ate dinner with us.”
“Thanks for that.” Flynn made a slight grimace as he met Cole’s gaze. “I was out later than I thought I’d be. She mentioned that she was over here, and she had a good time.”
Cole gestured toward the sorrel’s bandaged leg. “Did this happen yesterday?”
“Yeah, I had to work today so this was the earliest I could bring him in.”
Cole placed his palm on the sorrel’s stifle and slid it downward toward the hock as he squatted, moving slowly and letting the horse know where he was to avoid spooking him. The nicely wrapped bandage had been affixed with vet tape.
“What happened to him?”
“Scraped it on a rock.”
Cole thought of the rocky trail he’d been on that day. Cuts of this type happened on trail rides. A shod hoof could slip from a rock, which in turn caught the lower leg with a sharp edge and scraped it. That’s why he always packed a first aid kit; it looked like Flynn had been prepared, too. “Where did you go?”
“West of town. Scouting out some places to hunt this fall.”
The mention of hunting made him think of the dead ram. “What do you hunt?”
“I haven’t hunted much lately. We moved here from California, and I didn’t have horses out there. Used to hunt deer here in Colorado when I was a kid, so I’m happy to get back to this way of life again.”
“You grew up around here?”
“On the western slope near Palisade. My parents had an orchard there.”