“Back to these two cases,” Colt continued. “Did any red flags come up that could be connected to Gambil?”
“Nothing that immediately jumps to mind.” She paused. “I’ll have a second look, though. But this seems a little extreme for someone who might just be upset over a background check that I’m doing on them for a job.”
Ah, he knew where this was going.
Right back to his family.
Colt was about to remind her that he and his brothers were all lawmen and not into witness intimidation, but there was another possible player in all of this. Best to stick to business rather than snarky comments that he really wanted to make.
“Could Gambil be connected to Buddy Jorgensen, the tenant who gave you all that trouble?” Colt asked.
She hesitated again as if surprised by the turn in the conversation. Another head shake. “I haven’t heard from Buddy in nearly two weeks.”
That didn’t mean it wasn’t connected. “He was furious about you moving back and threatened you.”
And not just a threat. He’d tried to buy the place for double its value, but Elise had refused.
The rumor Colt had heard was that she planned to make the old place a small working ranch again where she could raise and train cutting horses. Ironic since Elise had been in such a big hurry to get off that ranch and out of town when she’d turned eighteen.
In a hurry to get away from him, too.
“After all of that happened, I did a background check on Buddy myself,” Elise explained. “There wasn’t anything that popped up that would indicate he has violent tendencies toward other people. Obviously, he didn’t have quite that same level of respect for property because he spray painted graffiti on some of the walls.”
Yeah, Colt had read the report that she’d filed after the incident.
Colt figured the background check on Buddy Jorgensen had been thorough since it was Elise’s job. When it’d first come up that she’d be moving back to town, he’d checked on her job and learned she did investigations on potential high-level employees for several large companies. She had a solid reputation for identifying people who could be risks.
That, however, didn’t mean she hadn’t dropped the ball with Buddy.
And that’s the reason Colt had already sent a text to Cooper, his brother, who was also the town sheriff. Cooper planned to get Buddy in for questioning first thing in the morning. In the meantime, Colt would look for some kind of connection between Buddy and Gambil.
“Have you found out anything else about the explosion?” she asked.
“Not yet. The registration for the truck leads to a dead end. No known address. But they were able to get Gambil’s prints.” From a couple of fingers, anyway. “Reed’s already sent them to the Ranger lab, and they’ll be analyzed. We might be able to get a match and find out if Toby Gambil was his real name.”
Well, they would be if the prints were good enough. The explosion had done a lot of damage not just to the truck but to the man himself. Still, maybe the crime lab would be able to come up with something.
The front door flew open, bringing in a gust of the bitter-cold air and a leaf that went skittering across the floor. A man came right in with it, his pricey leather shoes crushing the leaf to bits.
Their visitor was Robert Joplin.
His mother’s attorney and not someone who should be paying a visit to the sheriff’s office this time of night. Judging from the scowl that he sent Colt’s way, this was not going to be a pleasant conversation. Of course, pleasant and Robert Joplin had never gone together so far, and Colt figured that wasn’t about to change.
“Elise,” Joplin said like a concerned father. He hurried to her, plopped down his equally pricey briefcase next to her chair and caught onto her shoulders. “How badly were you hurt?”
“I’m okay, really.” And she stood, easing away from him before she stepped back.
Colt didn’t miss the shift in her body language. Not only had she put some distance between Joplin and her, but she also folded her arms over her chest. Like Elise, Colt had known Joplin his entire life and had no doubt seen Elise with him before, but this was the first time Colt had witnessed them together since she’d come back to testify for his mother.
Something that had pleased Joplin to the core, of course.
Before Elise and her statement, Joplin had to have known that he was defending a client who would almost certainly be found guilty. And probably still would be. However, Elise and what she’d supposedly witnessed on that day twenty-three years ago was now a game changer.
That made Elise Joplin’s star witness.
But from the looks of it, an uncomfortable one.
Ditto for Joplin. His mouth tightened after she backed away from him. “I heard someone tried to kill you.”
Elise lifted her shoulder. “A man tried to run me off the road, but he’d dead now.”
Joplin aimed his index finger at Colt. “This is your fault. Yours and your family’s. You’ve created a hostile atmosphere in Sweetwater Springs that’s now made Elise a target.”
Since things were about to turn real ugly, real fast, Colt got to his feet, but Elise stepped between them.
“I was mistaken when I called you earlier and told you that Colt was watching me,” she said to Joplin. “It was this other man, Toby Gambil. He dressed like Colt and drove the same kind of truck.”
So, that likely explained the weird body language from both Joplin and her. Joplin thought he had some kind of proof of Colt’s wrongdoing, and Elise was eating a little crow.
“It doesn’t matter that Colt didn’t do the deed himself,” Joplin challenged. “He probably stirred up some of his cowboy friends to do this.”
Colt moved out from behind Elise so he could face this idiot head-on. “I didn’t stir up anybody. I damn sure didn’t encourage anyone to kill her.”
“You don’t want her testifying for your mother.”
“True enough. But that’s only because I don’t think the memories of a nine-year-old kid are reliable enough to tip the verdict of a murder trial. Especially since she didn’t even tell anyone about those memories for twenty-three years.”
“I didn’t tell anyone what I saw because I didn’t think it was important,” Elise snapped, and when she swiveled toward Colt, there was some fire in her eyes. “It was only after Jewell was charged with Whitt Braddock’s murder that I remembered what I saw that day.”
“And what she saw was your father coming out of the Braddock cabin.” Joplin punctuated that with a satisfied nod that made Colt want to smack him.
This was old news now, but it ate away at him just as it did when he’d first heard it two months ago. According to Elise, she’d been playing by the shallow creek near her grandmother’s house and had seen Colt’s father, Roy, leave the very cabin that all these years later would be labeled a crime scene. It’d taken that long to have all the evidence retested, the DNA identified, and the district attorney had used that to reopen what had been a missing person’s case.
But now Whitt Braddock was officially dead.
Murdered.
And the only suspect had been his mother. Only her DNA and Whitt’s had been found in the cabin. But Elise’s eyewitness testimony could put his dad there, too.
Yeah, it ate away at him.
Because a lawyer like Joplin could maybe convince a jury that his father had just as much motive to kill Whitt Braddock as his mother did. With Elise’s testimony putting his father at