Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch - B.J. Daniels [70]
All the color drained from her face.
"Before she died, she tried to crawl out," he said.
A cry escaped Zoey's lips. She covered her mouth, her eyes wide and filled with tears.
"Ginger wanted desperately to live. Whoever threw her down that well was trying to get rid of her for good. If this man she was going to marry really loved her, then he would want you to tell me everything you knew."
Zoey pulled a napkin from the container on the table and wiped at her eyes. "What about the baby?"
"Baby?"
Zoey nodded. "She was pregnant. Just a few weeks along."
That explained why there hadn't been another skeleton in the well.
Ginger hadn't been far enough along for there to be any evidence of a baby in a pile of bones at the bottom of a well.
But Hud realized it did give the father of the baby a motive for murder. "Did Ginger tell the father about the baby?" Zoey looked down. "Let me guess, he didn't want the baby."
"He did," Zoey protested, head coming up. "Ginger said he promised to take care of her and the baby."
"Maybe he did," Hud said solemnly. "Didn't you suspect something was wrong when you didn't hear from her again or she didn't come back for her things?"
"She took everything she wanted with her."
"Didn't she have a car?"
"She sold that."
"But didn't you think it was strange when you didn't hear from her?" he persisted.
"I just thought when things didn't work out that she was embarrassed, you know?"
He stared at Zoey, all his suspicions confirmed. "What made you think things didn't work out?"
She saw her mistake and tried to cover. "I never heard that she got married so…"
"You know things didn't work out because you knew who the man was. He's still in town, isn't he, Zoey? He never left his wife. He killed your friend and her baby and he got away with it."
Her face filled with alarm. "He wouldn't hurt her. He loved her." Her expression changed ever so slightly. She'd remembered something, something that made her doubt what she'd just said.
"They fought?" he guessed. "He ever hit her?" Hud was pretty sure he had, given what he suspected the man had done to Ginger at the end.
"Once. But that was just because he didn't want her wearing the engagement ring until…you know…until he was ready for them to announce it," she said. "Ginger forgot to take it off and was wearing the ring around town."
"Engagement ring?"
She nodded. "They fought about it. He wanted her to give it back so she didn't forget and wear it in public again. She refused. He hit her and tried to take it back."
Hud thought of the crime lab's report on the broken fingers of Ginger's left hand.
"What did this ring look like?" he asked, trying to keep the fear out of his voice.
"It was shaped like a diamond only it was green," she said. "He told Ginger it was an emerald, a really expensive one. It looked like it really was. And there were two diamonds, too. So don't you see? He wouldn't have given her an expensive ring like that unless he loved her, right?"
Chapter Thirteen
Dana pulled into the yard in front of the ranch house and parked, relieved to see no other vehicles. She'd worried she would come home to find Jordan searching the house again.
She wondered what he'd been up to all day since apparently he hadn't visited their father in the hospital. Why had Jordan lied about when he'd gotten into town if he hadn't been the one who'd put the doll in the well, who'd left the chocolates, who'd been trying to drive her from the ranch?
Getting out of the pickup, she walked to the porch. Someone had shoveled the steps. Hud no doubt.
Joe came around the side of the porch from his doghouse wagging his tail. He was pretty much deaf but he still seemed to know when she came home.
She rubbed his graying head and climbed the porch, digging for her keys she'd tossed in her purse after forgetting she was locking up the house now.
But as she shoved open the door and looked inside, she wondered why she'd bothered. Someone had ransacked the place.
She cursed and looked down at Joe. He seemed as perplexed