“He’s okay. Home and settled for the moment.” She met my gaze for a brief second, then her blue irises dropped to my shoulder. She stood stiff, her forehead furrowed. There were dark circles under her eyes and the normal flush to her cheeks was missing.
“Did you sleep at all?”
“Not really.” She shook her head, then squared her shoulders and straightened. “I need to talk to you about something.”
“Okay,” I drawled. “About?”
“Your uncle.”
“Briggs? Did something happen?”
She nodded. “I’m going to bring him in for questioning.”
“Questioning? For what?”
“I went to see him yesterday.”
I blinked, trying to wrap my head around this. I’d been worried about her, thinking she was at the hospital with Covie. Thinking about her at home alone, trying to get some sleep. But she’d been on the ranch. My ranch. “You went to the cabin. Yesterday, after the hospital. Without me?”
“I told you weeks ago I was going to talk to him.”
“Yeah, but you could have warned me.” Weren’t we at the point where we shared this sort of thing?
“I needed to do this alone.”
“Alone.” What the hell? I took a step back and crossed my arms over my chest. “Why?”
“There’s a rumor that he has a history of violence toward women.”
“A rumor.” I scoffed. “Now I get it. You were listening to Frank’s poison. There was no abuse. Briggs’s wife left him because she was a spoiled bitch. She thought he’d take over the ranch and get the money. When she realized he had no interest in running this place and was going to let my dad take it all, she skipped town—with all of his money, by the way. And before she left, she decided to fuck up his reputation first.”
Everyone who knew Briggs knew the truth. He would never have hit his wife. He’d adored her, and when she’d left him, it had broken his heart.
“You should have come to me first,” I snapped. “For the truth.”
Winn tensed. “I’m coming to you now.”
“To what? To tell me that you’re going to haul my uncle in for questioning on a marital dispute from decades ago?”
“I’m bringing him in to talk about Lily Green and Harmony Hardt.”
My heart stopped. “Why?”
“When I was at the cabin, I found a purse and a wallet. The purse was Harmony’s. Her mother confirmed it for me yesterday afternoon. The wallet was Lily’s.”
“You searched my uncle’s cabin.” She might as well have slapped me in the face.
“No. He invited me in and I saw the purse on his bookshelf.”
The bookshelf that was always so clustered and full of junk I hadn’t really noticed what he’d kept on it. The contents changed constantly, and the only times I paid it much attention were when I’d go to the cabin and find the shelves organized.
“The wallet was inside,” she said. “He gave me permission to look.”
Was that supposed to make me feel like she hadn’t betrayed me?
I shook my head, my molars grinding together so tight my teeth hurt. “I can’t believe you’d do this.”
“I’m doing my job.”
“You’re taking Frank motherfucking Nigel’s opinion over mine.”
She flinched. “No, I’m not.”
“I told you once that the bastard hates my family. I’ve known him my entire life and he’s always treated me like shit beneath his shoe.” If she was going to get pulled into the rumor mill, then she might as well get some facts to balance out the bullshit. “Did you know the reason he’s such a prick to Talia is because he hit on her when she was eighteen and she told him to fuck off?”
Winn blinked. “I, um . . . no.”
“Or how he goes into the coffee shop when Lyla is the only one working and makes her feel uncomfortable? Did he tell you how she’s had to excuse herself into the back room twice to call Knox to come over so she’s not alone with Frank?”
“No. He . . .” She shook her head. “What? Frank? I’ve known him my whole life. Maybe he’s a flirt but he’s harmless.”
“So is Briggs.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it, taking a moment to weigh her words. “I just wanted to give you a heads-up.”
“A little too late, don’t you think?”
While I’d been worried about her yesterday, thinking she was distraught over Covie’s heart attack, she’d been on my property, talking to my uncle when she knew we had family shit happening with him at the moment.
“I didn’t have to come here at all.” Her expression hardened. “By all rights, I shouldn’t have told you, but because of our relationship, I didn’t want you to hear it from anyone else.”
“Our relationship.” I clenched my jaw. A relationship that I’d thought was serious enough that she’d come to me before believing Frank’s bullshit.
Winn held up her hands. “I need to go.”
“Fine.”
I refused to look at her as she returned to the SUV, reversed away and disappeared down the road. When the sound of her engine was drowned by distance, I kicked a rock. “Fuck.”
This was going to be a mess. A real fucking mess. What if Briggs said the wrong thing? Why would he have Harmony Hardt’s purse? And Lily Green’s wallet?
I wouldn’t get the chance to ask him first. Winn was probably already on her way to the cabin. And the minute she brought him into the station, the entire town would know. One of the officers at the station would talk, and before my family and I had answers, Briggs would have earned yet another black mark on his reputation that would last the rest of his days. Just like the one his ex had delivered.
Decades later, there were those who still believed he’d beat her. And people like Frank, those who didn’t like that our family was so ingrained in Quincy, only made it worse.
The rumor mill was about to spin out of control.
“Fuck!” I shouted, then spun and jogged for the house. I swiped my keys off the counter and hustled to my truck.
Its wheels left a trail of dust as I sped along the gravel road to Mom and Dad’s.
We could have talked at the cabin. Winn could have questioned him there with one of us present. Why was she insisting on dragging him into town?
Briggs had most likely found the purse and wallet on one of his hikes. Much like Lily’s boots. The day I’d taken those to her office, she’d told me she was going to talk to Briggs. As she should. But was it really necessary to bring him into the station?
I stomped the gas pedal.
If Briggs was having an episode, if he wasn’t as sharp as he normally was, what would he say to her? It felt like she was handing the man a shovel and telling him to dig his own grave. All because she had questions to ask.
Her damn questions. Winn had been so against calling Lily’s death a suicide. But we all knew it was suicide. The whole town. So why wouldn’t she just let it go?
This was nothing more than a case of lost and found. A purse and a wallet. Hell, that purse had probably been out on a trail for years collecting dust and rain.