Free A Killing in the Valley by JF Freedman

discovered on her ranch, so now she was being dragged into the muck, even though the forensic detectives were almost positive that the murder had not been committed where the remains had been discovered. The preliminary investigation indicated that the girl had been killed somewhere else, then brought there. This was a remote location; a good place to dump a body you didn’t want found. If the ranch foreman hadn’t been out there surveying the property, the vultures and flies would have picked the corpse clean before it was discovered, and then it might never have been found. Regardless of where the girl had been killed, however, the body had turned up here. Mrs. McCoy was going to be in the limelight. Not something to wish on an older woman, particularly one of her stature in the community.
    Juanita walked the detectives outside, shielding her eyes against the high midday sun. “I hope you catch the killer soon,” she said. “I don’t like all these people tramping around out here.”
    “So do we,” Watson answered tightly. “And we’ll do our best to keep our incursions to a minimum. But we do have a murder to solve.”
    “I understand,” Juanita answered. She went back inside, after promising to call them if she thought of anything that might be helpful.
    “It’s so pretty out here,” Rebeck commented, looking past the barn to the pasture. “The authentic old Santa Barbara.”
    Watson, oblivious to the beauty around him, said darkly, “This is going to be a bitch.”
    “Tell me about it,” Rebeck answered, her partner’s morose objectivity bringing her down to earth with a thud. “We’d better come up with somebody who saw this chiquita the day she disappeared. She was a social butterfly, there have to be witnesses.”
    The detectives walked to their department-issue Crown Victoria. Watson slid in behind the wheel. He turned the ignition, but didn’t put the car in gear. “There’s one thing that doesn’t compute.”
    “What?” Rebeck asked, as she fastened her seat belt.
    “The gate on the road that leads there. If I’m trying to dump a body, I’m going to look for a place that’s more accessible.”
    Rebeck nodded thoughtfully. “Maybe it wasn’t locked that day. I’ll bet they don’t check on it that often.”
    “Anything’s possible,” Watson agreed glumly. He lightly banged on the steering wheel. “We’d better get lucky with a witness or we’re going to be up shit’s creek.”

8
    R IVA GARRISON, STEPPING OUT of the shower, glanced over at her husband, Luke, who was trimming his goatee with a battery-powered trimmer. “The gray’s beginning to overtake the brown, big boy,” she observed acutely, if not kindly. “You’re starting to look like Willie Nelson.”
    “I’m not braiding my hair, if that’s the direction you’re pushing this conversation,” he replied. “It isn’t nearly long enough. And there aren’t that many gray ones, comparatively.” He squinted into the steamed-up mirror. “I’d say no more than ten percent.”
    It was six-thirty in the morning. Luke had already been out for his run. Now he stood naked in front of the mirror, a cup of coffee on the sink, peering at his foggy image.
    Riva wrapped her own long, luxuriant, mink-brown hair in a towel and began drying off with another. “And aren’t you about due for your annual eye exam?” she asked.
    He rolled his eyes in mock-exasperation. “When did you start channeling Don Rickles?”
    “Just stating the facts, counselor.” She sat on the toilet lid and began drying off her legs. She nudged his bare tush with her toes. “Man turns fifty, it’s like he becomes someone else. What is that?” she teased.
    Three months ago, Luke had celebrated his fiftieth birthday. Riva had thrown a balls-out party for him. Everything was done up perfectly: she had a big tent erected in the backyard, where a caterer grilled New York steaks, baby back ribs, and Maine lobsters for two hundred of Luke’s