Rugged Defender

“It wasn’t you, was it?” He had to ask.

She laughed. “No, maybe if I’d thought of it and known she was looking into Drew’s death. So you didn’t know.”

“No, but I’ll make a point of asking her what she thinks she’d doing when I see her. Thanks.” He disconnected as he entered Whitehorse and headed for the house where Chloe and her sisters had grown up.

* * *

CHLOE WALKED INTO Monte Decker’s office at the bank and closed the door. Monte was a forty-something rangy former Eastern Montana farm boy with a small bald spot in his short dark hair. He wasn’t bad looking in his expensive suit, although as he tugged at the neck of his shirt she got the feeling he wasn’t comfortable with his position. Or maybe she just had that effect on men, because he had a strangled look when he glanced up from the paperwork on his desk and saw her.

“You probably don’t know me,” she said as she took a seat. Other than papers strewn across his desk, there was a framed photo of Monte holding a huge walleye. From the background, it seemed he’d caught it at Nelson Reservoir. Why it caught her attention was because it was the only framed photo on his desk. No wife and kids. No favorite old dog. Just Monte and a fish.

“I’m Chloe Clementine.”

“Clementine? Frannie’s...”

“Granddaughter. I’m an investigative reporter.”

Before that, he’d looked as if he’d expected her to ask for a loan. Now though, he leaned back and took her in, clearly speculating on why she was sitting in his office.

“What was your relationship with Drew Calhoun?”

The question startled him. He glanced out through the glass partitions that formed his office as if worried about who was watching them.

Monte began to perspire. He tugged at his collar. “What kind of question is that?”

“I know you played poker with him, that you caught him cheating and that you lost a lot of money to him.”

Monte looked around as if he wanted to run. “I don’t know where you got your information but I really don’t have time for this. Drew is dead. Why are you asking questions about him?”

“Because I believe he was murdered and not by Justin Calhoun.”

Monte opened his mouth, closed it and opened it again. “I—I thought it was an accident.”

“You must have been angry when you caught him cheating,” she said.

Realizing there was no place to run, he took a deep breath and said, “This really isn’t the place to talk about this.”

Chloe reached back and closed the door of the small glassed-in office. “Help me out here. You had reason to want Drew dead if you lost a lot of money to him and then realized he’d been cheating.”