Cowboy's Legacy

“Nettie can handle it,” he assured the man. “Jenna like it rough?”

Looking embarrassed, Reiner looked away and said, “I think it was all that pent-up stuff from first her parents and then that straitlaced old man she was married to.”

Frank had to smile to himself. He’d called Anvil Holloway an old man and Holloway was nearly ten years Frank’s junior. He saw that Nettie was amused since even at their ages there was nothing wrong with either of their own sexual appetites.

“What about friends?” Nettie asked. “Surely she had a friend back home that she kept in contact with.”

“Dana,” he said with a nod. “Apparently she didn’t escape Radville. Jenna felt bad for her, talked about helping her out, you know?”

“Like sending her money?” Frank asked.

“She sent her some. I didn’t mind.” He looked defensive. “She didn’t send much. Like I said, I didn’t mind giving it to her.”

“She call her?” Nettie asked.

He shrugged. “A few times. But I don’t see what—”

“We’re going to need Jenna’s cell phone number.”

“She didn’t have one. She used mine.”

“Then we are going to need it and your passcode,” Frank said. “Sorry. We’ll get it back to you as soon as we’re done with it. I can give you money for a new phone.”

Reiner looked as if he might leap up and make a run for it. But after a moment, he reached into his pocket, brought out the phone and laid it on the table with a gesture that said, “I have nothing to hide.” Nettie wrote down the passcode, and turning on the cell, she keyed it in. Seeing that it worked, she pocketed the phone.

“Dana have a last name?” Frank asked.

Reiner shrugged. “I never heard it mentioned.”

“What about friends since the two of you have been living here in Wyoming?” Nettie asked. “Friends from work maybe?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t have a job. We thought it best, you know, under the circumstances.”

“What did she do all day?” Frank asked.

“Hang. Watch TV. She cooked,” he said, brightening. “She was a great cook.” He looked at his watch. “I really need to get to work.”

“We’ll keep in touch, but if you hear from her, call me,” Frank said, sliding his business card and a hundred-dollar bill across the table. “You did good calling the sheriff. We’ll find her.”

Reiner looked like a man badly beaten with regrets. “Right.”

“We’ll mail your phone to your apartment address,” Frank said to the man’s retreating back and got a dismissive wave.

“A waste of postage,” Nettie said. “You know he’s taking off. Won’t be hearing from him again.” She brought up the photo of the man and Jenna on the cell phone.

Frank sighed. “I think we got all we could from him,” he said, watching through the window as Reiner drove away in an old compact car, the back bumper covered with stickers.

The sky was a dull gray as they stepped out of the café and walked toward their SUV. The cold air smelled as if it might start snowing at any moment.

“We need to know more about Jenna,” Nettie said as she climbed into the passenger side of the SUV.

“My thought exactly.” Frank smiled over at her as he slid behind the wheel. They’d always had this wondrous connection. She smiled back. It still amazed him how much he loved this woman and had since he was a boy. He’d lost her to another man for a while, but getting her back was the smartest thing he’d ever done. She fulfilled him in every way. Having her as a partner in their investigative business was just the cherry on top.

So far their business was doing better than even he’d hoped. Which he thought proved it was never too late. Never too late for love, he thought, looking at Nettie. Never too late to take a chance on something you loved doing. And the two of them loved investigating. That was, he did. Nettie loved snooping into other people’s business, he thought with a smile.

“Jenna knew who was after her,” Nettie said after Frank called the Gilt Edge sheriff’s cell, only to have to leave a message. “This man is someone from her past.”

“Some bad history there. You think the man was blackmailing her?” Frank asked, looking over at her.

“Could explain the money she was taking from her grocery budget back in Montana. Might also explain the prison pen pals.” She nodded. “Actually, I’m betting she was looking for someone to take care of the problem for her.”

Frank chuckled. “Where would a woman go to get help with some man she said was terrorizing her? Prison. I like it.”

“Instead she got the brother of one of the men and either decided to leave with him or really was abducted by the man from her past.” Nettie chewed at her lower lip for a minute. “Doesn’t explain the sexy undergarments or the shoplifted makeup unless... She could have thought that she was going to have to give her possibly ex-con hired killer something, and she didn’t have much money, from what Flint has told us.”

“You think she was looking for someone to kill the man after her?”

Nettie shrugged. “At least threaten him.”

As he started the SUV, he chuckled. He loved the way Nettie thought. “That all makes a strange kind of female sense.”

“Women are pretty practical thinkers. If we need something, we try to figure out how to get it. Womanly wiles are usually a last resort.”

“Then I’d say Jenna was desperate, wouldn’t you?”

“Definitely. It would explain why she took off with Reiner. It wouldn’t have taken her long to figure out that he wasn’t tough enough to take care of the man after her.”

“So then what?” Frank said.

“Once she saw the old boyfriend, assuming that’s who the man in the brown van is, she realized Reiner wasn’t going to take care of the problem for her. So what would she do?”

“Run again.”

“Or call his bluff. What do you think the old boyfriend wants?” Nettie asked thoughtfully. “It’s got to be more than money.”

“Love? Revenge?”

Nettie had wrinkled her nose at the first one. “I’m wondering how he found her in Wyoming when law enforcement couldn’t find her even with a BOLO out on her.”

“You’re thinking she contacted him?”

“Or Kurt did. Jenna could have gotten the old boyfriend’s number from her friend Dana. She calls it on Kurt’s phone. He sees a number he doesn’t recognize and calls it, giving away her location. Reiner’s definitely feeling guilty about something. It’s why he called Flint. But it could be because he didn’t protect her. Or it could be because he got scared and didn’t want to be involved in whatever happened next. I would love to have seen his face when he realized she’d taken all his money. If either of them called the old boyfriend, it could be on the phone—or at least the bill.”

“That would be a stroke of luck, but let’s remember we’re just assuming this man is an old boyfriend,” Frank said.

Nettie chuckled. “If Reiner saw a number on his phone he didn’t recognize, called it and a man answered, I’d say that was what he would have assumed, as well.”

“Think Reiner would have been angry enough to hurt her?” Frank asked.