Cold Wind - C. J. Box [131]
He tried to smile, but couldn’t. He said, “I saw Bud Jr. and Sally today on their way to move in to their new digs. You don’t actually expect them to live there and work it, do you?”
A flash of terror—finally!—shot through her eyes and her nose flared. She didn’t breathe for a moment. Then, almost as quickly, she raised her chin and set her mouth with bitter resignation. “No,” she said, “I expect them to sell it back to me after a reasonable length of time. The old place was appraised at six million dollars, you know.”
Joe said, “You probably could have bought their silence for less than that.”
“Probably,” she said. “But Bud told them the price, and I suspect they’ll hold me to it.”
Joe nodded. He said, “It’s just you and me here. You can’t be retried for murder, and we both know it. So walk me through how it all worked.”
She looked at him as if she was determined not to give an inch.
He said, “When you decided to make your last upgrade, your last trade-up, and get rid of Earl, you contacted Bud. You knew he’d take your call because for some reason he still loves you, despite everything. And you offered him his ranch back if he’d take Earl out of the picture. After all, you still had this place and all the other property holdings you and Earl combined when you got married. You probably even hinted that the two of you could get back together someday. Am I right so far?”
She rolled her eyes.
Joe said, “And Bud said of course, he’d do it. But he was sick. He didn’t know at the time how bad off he was, and it turned out he wasn’t sure he was physically capable of pulling it off. But he sure wanted that ranch back, if not for him, then for his kids. He always wanted them to have it.”
She shook her head and said, “Even though they shit on him all their lives, he still wanted them to have it.”
“That kind of selflessness just doesn’t work for you, does it?” Joe asked.
Her eyes drilled into him. “Some children these days can be so ungrateful. They feel entitled to things they didn’t earn.”
Joe ignored her and continued, “So you and Bud talked it over, back and forth, for a month or so. He wanted to help you out with your Earl problem and get the ranch back, but you were running out of time. Was it at that point you figured out Earl had consolidated all his assets and put everything into the wind farm? I bet that didn’t make you very happy.”
“It was reckless and irresponsible,” she said, her anger palpable. “Taking everything we had together and leveraging it to build that idiotic thing out there on the ridge. He was not only risking everything he had, he was risking everything I’ve spent my life trying to get—and had finally achieved. And for what? He had no right to do that.”
“Plus he wanted to get rid of you,” Joe said. “That must have hurt.”
“It did,” she said simply.
“You found yourself in a dilemma, though,” Joe said. “Bud was in it with you, but he couldn’t perform. And you couldn’t risk him talking about it, either. So you told him you’d let him set you up with the sheriff and you’d have it done as long as he’d wait until the trial to take the rap. He agreed to that, but you could never be absolutely sure he’d follow through when crunch time came. In the back of your mind, you must have worried that Bud might screw you the way you screwed him. That must have made for some sleepless nights.”
She didn’t react, but stared at Joe with ice-cold eyes.
“In the middle of your discussions with Bud, you both realized that you’d tried to contact Nate to work for you along the same lines, but Nate refused. Which meant there was another person out there who knew what you were capable of. You urged Bud to tell that woman Laurie Talich where Nate lived to get Nate out of the picture. It almost worked, too. But Alisha Whiteplume was killed instead of Nate. I hope that’s on your conscience, too. If you have one.”
“I had nothing to do with that,” she spat back. “Bud did that on his own. He thought it would please me, I guess.”
Joe shrugged. He said, “Nate would have never talked,