“He said the family was having some financial problems and he didn’t want to get their hopes up until he knew if I was interested in the project.”
Something seemed shady about the way Wilson and Zach had been going about it. “I see. So did you discuss it with Tyler after Mr. Nichol’s death?”
“Actually, I didn’t. I need to run a feasibility study and talk to my partners back home before approaching Tyler. If we decide not to go forward, there’s no reason to share the project details with him now.”
This still sounded backwards to her. “I’d think you’d want to involve the landowners prior to doing the work of a study. What if they don’t want to sell? You would have done all that work for nothing.”
Zach grimaced. “Wouldn’t be the first time. Besides, from what I understand, the land will be for sale one way or another.”
Mattie figured she already knew what he was talking about, but she wanted to determine how much Zach knew. “How so?”
“Wilson said the land would be for sale either by owner or through a bank foreclosure.”
Mattie started to get a sick feeling. Zach had confirmed her suspicion—Wilson Nichol, a friend of the Redman family, had been acting on his own, circling the land along with the bankers, like buzzards waiting to pick it off.
Why would Wilson instigate a plan to subdivide the property without involving the family? Did he hope to offer them a way out of their financial problems, or did he hope to make money off their misfortune? The answer might have died with him, but Mattie would have bet her monthly wage on the latter.
She pressed on. “To your knowledge, are any of the other Redman family members aware of you discussing the possibility of subdivision with Mr. Nichol?”
“I’ve never discussed the project with anyone but Wilson. I don’t know who he might have involved.”
The fact remained that Zach Irving’s burner phone had called Wilson Nichol prior to his murder. “Why did you call Wilson Nichol late Sunday afternoon?”
Zach’s eyes widened, and he shook his head. “I didn’t call Wilson this weekend. Our last conversation was Friday, and that was in person, right after he showed us the ranch property.”
His surprise seems genuine. “By us, you mean you and Mr. Underwood?”
“Right.”
She decided to pursue more information in a roundabout way. “Where did you get the cell phone you had on you?”
“That’s not my phone.” He shrugged as if answering her question was of no matter to him. “Eve Redman gave me that phone yesterday.”
Eve? Kasey’s sister?
Yesterday meant she’d given Zach the phone on Monday, not Sunday when Wilson had been killed. Did that mean Eve had had the phones in her possession on Sunday afternoon? Did it mean she’d been the one to call Wilson? Mattie’s scalp prickled.
“She handed them out to all of us,” Zach went on. “One to me, one to Ben, and one to Tyler. She said she’d programmed the numbers and showed us how to contact each other.” Though he kept walking, Zach turned his head to look at her fully. “Eve’s up here, you know. Back at the camp.”
Was this his way of diverting suspicion, or was he just being honest? Given the way he’d opened up while talking about the potential real estate transaction, Mattie believed he was telling her the truth. Her pulse quickening, she fell back a few steps so she could observe him while she considered this new information.
Eve had passed the GSR test the night of Nate’s murder, but a good jacket, gloves, and a shower would have done the trick. And Eve was a tall, slender girl; her shoe size would probably match the prints left at Wilson’s crime scene. Was it possible that she’d killed Wilson? After all, she’d seemed hostile toward him when Mattie had observed her at the ranch.
But then what about Nate? What would be Eve’s motive to kill her own brother-in-law?
Kasey’s passionate statement to Stella that none of the kids would ever consider selling the ranch—it was their home, their heritage—resonated with Mattie. Eve probably felt the same way toward the ranch as her sister. Nate’s gambling and inability to pay back the Redmans had jeopardized their home and their livelihood. And Wilson had plotted to take that away as well.
As they breached the last rise and could look down at the scene where Cole and Glenna were working on the tiger, Mattie knew what she was going to have to do. She needed to find that campsite and apprehend Eve Redman so that the girl could be interrogated for the murders of Nate Fletcher and Wilson Nichol.
And unlike Robo, she would have no satisfaction at all when the job was completed.
TWENTY-EIGHT
By the time Mattie reached the others, Brody had made his two men dismount and they were huddled together on a log a short distance away from where Glenna, Cole, and Flint were still working on the tiger. Robo escorted Zach over to join them while she checked in with Brody. Then she pulled Tyler aside for a private conversation.
“Tyler, was this fiasco your doing?” she asked, fully aware that it was not but hoping to put him on the defensive.
“No!” His denial was adamant. “This was all Nate’s idea.”
She’d hoped challenging him with her question would start him talking. “So how did you get involved?”
“Kasey asked me to do this.” Tyler started off all blustery, but quickly fizzled as he realized he’d just implicated his sister. “She didn’t plan it either, but Nate had already collected money from these yahoos, and she couldn’t afford to refund it.”
Mattie pulled the cell phone she’d confiscated from Zach out of her pocket and held it up. “Did you set up these cell phones so you could all communicate with each other?”
He stared at the phone for a moment, and she could see his wheels turning, trying to figure out if she was trying to trap him in a crime.
She reassured him. “There’s no crime connected with providing these cell phones for the group, Tyler. It’s a simple question. Are you the one who prepared the phones?”
He shook his head. “No. Eve did that.”
“Did she have the phones this Sunday before you came up here on Monday?”
“As far as I know.” His eyes widened slightly, and Mattie thought he might be thinking about his sister. “Eve had nothing to do with this, but she came up to help cook and take care of camp. We left her there this morning because she didn’t want to come with us. She was upset. Said she didn’t have the stomach for what was going on.”
Didn’t have the stomach to hunt down the tiger, but what about killing two men in cold blood? “Why did she come on this trip, then?”
“To help Kasey.” Tyler’s tone was impatient. “Maybe you don’t get it, but we’re a family. We help each other when times are tough.”
That dig about family hurt, even though Tyler would know nothing about her or her history. “And times have been tough for your parents lately, haven’t they? What do you know about Wilson Nichol asking these guys to take a look at buying your parents’ ranch?”
Tyler scowled, and she realized it was more in anger than in surprise. “Wilson wanted to offer Mom and Dad a way out, but I told him to forget it. We’re working on a way to pay off the bank. We’re going to find a way to save the ranch.”
Like Nate’s life insurance policy? “How?”
“Selling the calf crop early, for one thing. And Eve is looking into wind technology to see if we could set up windmills on our land. We have plenty of space, and lots of wind blows through that valley.”