done this?” she
whispered.
Pierce said, “Hopefully my men
will get a lead from something in his trailer.”
Sitting across the table from
him, Cat made eye contact with the trim and fit if seasoned detective, who
looked to be in his early fifties by the creases in his face.
“I knew something was wrong when
George disappeared. I made a complaint to your department,” she reminded
Pierce in a forced-steady voice, “but no one would believe me.”
“I remember. I also remember
asking if you knew who had something against him and you didn’t have any
reason to believe there was foul play. Any new thoughts there?”
George’s body had already been
taken to the morgue, though the evidence technicians were still
investigating the burial site. She and Aidan had already told the detective
in detail how they’d found the body. Just not what they’d been doing while
the dogs had been investigating.
She shook her head. “In the past
three weeks, I’ve gone over and over what could have happened to make him
simply vanish. I got nothing. George was a sweetheart and a hard worker and
he kept to himself mostly.”
“What about when he had to deal
with other people? He was your barn manager, after all. What about his
relationship with your other workers?”
Cat didn’t want to believe one
of her farm employees was capable of murder. She met Aidan’s gaze. He gave
her an encouraging nod and placed a reassuring hand over hers.
Biting back the tears she wanted
to shed, Cat said, “He got along with them fine. Mostly.”
“What do you mean by
‘mostly’?”
“Like you said, he was my barn
manager. Sometimes he had to ride a little hard on someone to make sure the
work got done.”
“Ride on who?” Pierce asked.
“The kids?”
“Vincent and Laura? Yeah, sure,
once in a while, but they want to be here. In addition to their wages, they
get to take out the horses on the trails when their work is done, so they
went out of their way to please George.”
“What about your men, Ayala and
Hansen?”
“Raul’s a good worker. Bernie,
too, but he’s young. He didn’t like being bossed around, that’s
all.”
“Any real
altercations?”
“Physical? No, of course not.
Just a few arguments about how Bernie did things. George thought Bernie cut
too many corners.” Unable to sit any longer, Cat got to her feet and moved
to the sink where she turned her back on the men and quickly swiped the
moisture from her eyes. “I would swear George didn’t have an enemy in the
world.”
“Obviously he had one,” Aidan
said.
Cat’s stomach clutched as she
remembered the shocking way they’d discovered the body, the sickening sight
of the bashed-in head. If Aidan hadn’t been there for support, both moral
and physical, she didn’t know how she would have gotten through
this.
Scribbling something in his
notebook, Pierce then turned his gaze on the Irishman. “What about you, Mr.
McKenna? Any thoughts?”
Aidan shrugged. “I didn’t even
know the man. I only arrived here in Illinois yesterday.”
“To what purpose?”
“To race my colt, Mac Finnian.
He’s in the stable now.” Aidan checked his watch. “As a matter of fact,
we’re due at the track to get everything set up for his move there in a
little more than an hour. Should one of us call and reschedule for
tomorrow?”
“I don’t see that’ll be
necessary.” Detective Pierce thought for a moment, then mused, “Odd that you
found the victim at all, considering where he was buried.”
“Cat was simply showing me the
lay of the land. ’Twas the dogs who found him, as we told you,” Aidan said.
“They wouldn’t come to her command, so she went to fetch them or we wouldn’t
have found the body and the man’s whereabouts would still be a
mystery.”
Pierce nodded and put away his
notebook.
“The question is,” Aidan went
on, “where was the man killed? Surely not in the ravine. A convenient place
to bury him, but what would he have been