Page 26 of Lawless Ride

“Do you know her boyfriend, Grant Andrews?”

“Not her boyfriend. Grant is her brother. Josie was an Andrews before Tory married her.”

“Interesting. So, Josie wasn’t seeing anyone outside her marriage?”

Ray shrugged. “Might have been. I wouldn’t know that. If she was, Tory never mentioned it. Not once.”

“How long had Tory been involved with Tanya Boyd?”

“Umm…let’s see.” Ray tossed his butt into the toilet, leaned on the new vanity, and lit up a fresh smoke. “Six months, but that’s just a guess. He didn’t talk about it much at first, but that’s all he talked about after Josie found out. That’s when things went all to hell for him, and Josie started using real heavy. She cleaned out their bank balance and spent all their money on fent.”

“Huh,” I said. “Any idea who her supplier was?”

“She wouldn’t have to look too far,” said Ray. “Grant is hooked in with those assholes hanging around Peterson’s garage. There’s about four of them working out of the service center.”

I was surprised Ray knew about the drug guys. “Any idea where those guys are getting their goods?”

He shrugged. “Probably Great Falls, but that’s just a guess. Nowhere else for them to get it but the city.”

“Thanks for talking to us, Ray.” I handed him one of the office cards with phone numbers on it. “Appreciate your help.”

“Am I gonna get called to testify in court?”

“Not sure. I guess we’ll see how this all shakes out.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Pellegrino Ranch. Shelby.

I drove out of Shelby heading for Marilyn’s ranch. “What did you think of Ray?”

“Nice on the surface, but I think he’s a really good liar. Lots of truth mixed in,” said Harlan, “but some of it was lies.”

“What was he lying about? Could you tell?”

“All the stuff about Josie taking drugs and her texting Tory was probably true.”

“And the lies? Could you sort them out?”

“Give me a minute.”

“We need his phone,” I said, “to look up the poisons she names in the texts.”

“Let’s go back and search the house tomorrow,” said Harlan.

“Yeah, we will. What part do you think Ray was lying about?”

“When he was talking about Tory and the boss’s wife. He was having trouble with that part. It was making him mad to talk about it.”

“How’d you get good at the lying thing?”

“Everybody lies in Juvie, and you have to be careful. They lie to get you into trouble when they did something. You got to know when they’re lying to the guards and the wardens, or you go down for what they did.”

“Yeah, I guess you’d have to be watchful.”

Harlan doesn’t talk about all the time he spent in detention.

I put the blinker on and turned into Marilyn’s long laneway.

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