Page 45 of Cowboy Don't Go

“The withdrawals were significant amounts and fairly regular. Like payments. But nobody pays bills in cash. They could have been gambling money, but he apparently wasn’t that careless until he thought he’d gotten away with it. My theory? Someone was onto his rustling scheme and was blackmailing him.”

“Blackmailing? Who?”

“Don’t know yet. And it’s just a theory. But if the cops were suspicious of those withdrawals, the man known as Evan Clulagher died before they could either prove or disprove that they went directly to your father.”

“My father? It wasn’t him. He knew nothing about this scheme before he was arrested.”

A long silence stretched on the other end of the line.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Cooper said.

“I do, actually,” Trey said. “But it doesn’t matter what I believe. It only matters what I can prove.”

Cooper switched his cell to his other ear. “Wait, but do we really need him to prove that my father wasn’t on those initial accounts? Won’t that clear him now that we’ve uncovered these records? Surely once we can prove that his partner is alive and operating under—”

“In a perfect world, that would be enough. Unfortunately, the evidence against your dad was quite effective, and that money did pass through his business accounts. Unless we can prove that his partner framed him, made those deposits himself, Ray is still implicated. Whether they ultimately catch his partner or not. To the prosecutors, the fact that his partner scammed everyone is simply not enough to prove his innocence. We need the man himself.”

Cooper dropped down onto the stone retaining wall that surrounded the front garden. “Then we have to find him.”

“I am working on that, my friend,” Trey told him. “Don’t lose heart.”

*

His father’s reaction to the news, wasn’t what Cooper expected. Not anger, not even surprise. Instead, his father’s response was a long-distance stare out to the field of horses beyond their kitchen window.

“What am I missing?” Cooper asked him after a long moment. “This is good news, isn’t it? It means that maybe we can finally clear your name.”

“Not that simple. The good news,” his father replied, “has less to do with me and my case, and more that Evan blew the fortune he embezzled and is a hunted man again. Maybe this time, he’ll get caught before he can disappear again.”

“You always knew he was alive.” Cooper sat down at the table beside his dad.

“Not for sure. But I suspected it. Disappearing had to have been his plan from the start. But the sheriff was too invested in me to get sidetracked by it. Anyone who could pull off what he did with the rustling, the money laundering, and keeping his two partners in crime silent could make himself disappear without a trace.”

Indeed, the two men who had enabled Evan’s operation had also implicated Ray instead of Evan in the investigation leading up to trial once they’d been found to have taken part in the cattle rustling operation. No doubt they’d been well paid for their silence. One man would skim the head count of cattle getting loaded onto the trucks, the other would do the same at the other end of the ride after off-loading a percentage of cattle before arrival onto a different truck. Often, before the GPS ear tagging came into full use, the ranchers, moving cattle from one range to another, were none the wiser until much later as their own head counts during the shipping process were more estimates than accurate counts. Each prime steer was worth thousands of dollars on the beef market. All of it made Evan Clulagher a very rich man.

“Oh, he left a trace. We found it. Took some digital digging, but he left a trail of bad dealings behind him. But if we can find him, we can bring him to justice. Trey thinks Evan was being blackmailed. If we can find out who was—”

“That’s a dead end,” Ray said firmly. “Leave it alone.”

“Why? What makes you say that?”

Ray stood and walked to the sink where the window overlooked the Hardesty home and land. “Just let it go, Cooper. I have. You need to, as well.”

“Just when we finally have a lead? If someone knew what he was doing, was blackmailing him, then maybe we can find them. Force them to talk. To clear your name. It couldn’t have been Dumb and Dumber, the two who went to prison for him. They were in on it while those payments were being made. No doubt they had more waiting for them on their release.”

Ray shook his head. “It wasn’t them.”

Cooper angled a look at him. “You know who it was?”

“No. How could I?” Ray’s hands were shaking as he reached for a glass of water and filled in in the tap. He took a long drink and turned back to Cooper. The fire in the electric fireplace flickered in the dim light of evening, drawing lines of stress across Ray’s face. “I’m thinking it’s time to go back home.”

“What? Don’t try to change the subject here.”

“I’ve burdened them enough. You can stay. I’ll be fine.”

“You-you don’t even have a car, Dad. And why are you pushing to let this whole thing go? Is it someone you’re . . . protecting?” Cooper himself was the only person Ray Lane had ever protected since his mother’s death. The only other person he could think of for Ray to feel protective of eight years ago was—

“Is it . . . Sarah Hardesty?”

---