Yesterday's Lies (2 page)

Tory shook her head and forced a smile, hoping to disarm her younger brother. She couldn’t spend the rest of her life worrying about Trask and what he would or wouldn’t do. She had already spent more hours than she would admit thinking about him and the shambles he’d attempted to make of her life. Just because he was back in Sinclair... “Let’s forget about McFadden for a while, okay? Tell Rex I want to try ice-cold poultices on our friend here.” She nodded in the direction of the bay stallion. “And I don’t want him ridden until we determine if he needs a special shoe.” She paused and her eyes rested on the sweating bay. “But he should be walked at least twice a day. More if possible.”

“As if I have the time—”

Tory cut him off. “Someone around here
must
have the time,” she snapped, thinking about the payroll of the ranch and how difficult it was to write the checks each month. The Lazy W was drowning in red ink. It had been since Calvin Wilson had been sent to prison five years before.
By Trask McFadden
. “Have someone, maybe Eldon, if you don’t have the time, walk Governor,” she said, her full lips pursing.

Keith knew that he was being dismissed. He frowned, cast his sister one final searching look, pushed his hat lower on his head and started ambling off toward the barn on the other side of the dusty paddock. He had delivered his message about Trask McFadden. The rest was up to Tory.

* * *

T
RASK
PACED
IN
the small living room feeling like a caged animal. His long strides took him to the window where he would pause, study the distant snow-laden mountains through the paned glass and then return to the other side of the room to stop before the stone fireplace where Neva was sitting in a worn rocking chair. The rooms in the house were as neat and tidy as the woman who owned them and just being in the house—Jason’s house—made Trask restless. His business in Sinclair wasn’t pleasant and he had been putting it off for more than twelve hours. Now it was time to act.

“What good will come of this?” Neva asked, shaking her head with concern. Her small beautiful face was set in a frown and her full lips were pursed together in frustration.

“It’s something I’ve got to do.” Trask leaned against the mantel, ran his fingers under the collar of his shirt and pressed his thumb thoughtfully to his lips as he resumed pacing.

“Sit down, will you?” Neva demanded, her voice uncharacteristically sharp. He stopped midstride and she smiled, feeling suddenly foolish. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “I just hate to see you like this, all screwed up inside.”

“I’ve always been this way.”

“Hmph.” She didn’t believe it for a minute and she suspected that Trask didn’t either. Trask McFadden was one of the few men she had met in her twenty-five years who knew his own mind and usually acted accordingly. Recently, just the opposite had been true and Neva would have had to have been a blind woman not to see that Trask’s discomfiture was because of Tory Wilson. “And you think seeing Tory again will change all that?” She didn’t bother to hide her skepticism.

“I don’t know.”

“But you’re willing to gamble and find out?”

He nodded, the lines near the corners of his blue eyes crinkling.

“No matter what the price?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Neva stared at the only man she cared for. Trask had helped her, been at her side in those dark lonely nights after Jason’s death. He had single-handedly instigated an investigation into the “accident,” which had turned out to be the premeditated murder of her husband. Though Trask had been Jason’s brother, his concern for Neva had gone beyond the usual bounds and she knew she would never forget his kindness or stop loving him.

Neva owed Trask plenty, but she couldn’t seem to get through to him. A shiver of dread raced down her spine. Trask looked tired, she thought with concern, incredibly tired, as if he were on some new crusade. His hair had darkened from the winter in Washington, D.C., and the laugh lines near his mouth and eyes seemed to have grown into grooves of disenchantment. His whole attitude seemed jaded these days, she mused. Maybe that’s what happened when an honest man became a senator....

At that moment, Nicholas raced into the room and breathlessly made a beeline for his mother. “Mom?” He slid to a stop, dusty tennis shoes catching on the polished wood floor.

“What, honey?” Neva stopped rocking and rumpled Nicholas’s dark hair as he scrambled into her lap.

“Can I go over to Tim’s? We’re going to build a tree house out in the back by the barn. His mom says it’s okay with her....”

Neva lifted her eyes and smiled at the taller boy scurrying after Nick. He was red-haired and gangly, with a gaping hole where his two front teeth should have been. “If you’re sure it’s all right with Betty.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tim said. “Mom likes it when Nick comes over. She says it keeps me out of her hair.”

“Does she?” Neva laughed and turned her eyes back to Nicholas. At six, he was the spitting image of his father. Wavy brown hair, intense blue eyes glimmering with hope—so much like Jason. “Only a little while, okay? Dinner will be ready in less than an hour.”

“Great!” Nicholas jumped off her lap and hurried out of the living room. The two boys left as quickly as they had appeared. Scurrying footsteps echoed down the short entry hall.

“Remember to shut the door,” Neva called, but she heard the front door squeak open and bang against the wall.

“I’ll get it.” Trask, glad for the slightest opportunity to escape the confining room, followed the boys, shut the door and returned. Facing Neva was more difficult than he had imagined and he wondered for the hundredth time if he were doing the right thing. Neva didn’t seem to think so.

She turned her brown eyes up to Trask’s clouded gaze when he reentered the room. “That,” she said, pointing in the direction that Nicholas had exited, “is the price you’ll pay.”

“Nick?”

“His innocence. Right now, Nicholas doesn’t remember what happened five years ago,” Neva said with a frown. “But if you go searching out Tory Wilson, all that will change. The gossip will start all over again; questions will be asked. Nick will have to come to terms with the fact that his father was murdered by a group of men whose relatives still live around Sinclair.”

“He will someday anyway.”

Neva’s eyes pleaded with Trask as she rose from the chair. “But not yet, Trask. He’s too young. Kids can be cruel.... I just want to give him a few more years of innocence. He’s only six....”

“This has nothing to do with Nick.”

“
The hell it doesn’t!
It has everything to do with him. His father was killed because he knew too much about that Quarter Horse swindle.” Neva wrapped her arms around her waist as if warding off a sudden chill, walked to one of the windows and stared outside. She stared at the Hamiltons’ place across the street, where Nicholas was busily creating a tree house, blissfully unaware of the brutal circumstances surrounding his father’s death. She trembled. “I don’t want to go through it all again,” Neva whispered, turning away from the window.

Trask shifted from one foot to the other as his conscience twinged. His thick brows drew together into a pensive scowl and he pushed impatient fingers through the coarse strands of his brown hair. “What if I told you that one of Jason’s murderers might have escaped justice?”

Neva had been approaching him. She stopped dead in her tracks. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe there were four people involved in the conspiracy—not just three.”

“I—I don’t understand.”

Trask tossed his head back and stared up at the exposed beams of the cedar ceiling. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt Neva. She and the boy had been through too much already, he thought. “What I’m saying is that I have reason to believe that one of the conspirators might never have been named. In fact, it’s a good guess that he got away scot-free.”

Neva turned narrowed eyes up to her husband’s brother. “Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“This isn’t some kind of a morbid joke—”

“Neva,” he reproached, and she had only to look into his serious blue eyes to realize that he would never joke about anything as painful and vile as Jason’s unnecessary death.

“You thought there were only three men involved. So what happened to change your mind?”

Knowing that he was probably making the biggest blunder of his short career in politics, Trask reached into his back pocket and withdrew the slightly wrinkled photocopy of the anonymous letter he had received in Washington just a week earlier. The letter had been his reason for returning—or so he had tried to convince himself for the past six days.

Neva took the grayish document and read the few sentences before shaking her head and letting her short blond curls fall around her face in neglected disarray. “This is a lie,” she said aloud. The letter quivered in her small hand. “All the men connected with Jason’s death were tried and convicted. Judge Linn Benton and George Henderson are in the pen serving time and Calvin Wilson is dead.”

“So who does that leave?” he demanded.

“No one.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“But now you’re not so sure?”

“Not until I talk to Victoria Wilson.”
Tory.
Just the thought of seeing her again did dangerous things to his mind. “She’s the only person I know who might have the answers. The swindle took place on some property her father owned on Devil’s Ridge.”

Neva’s lower lip trembled and her dark eyes accused him of crimes better left unspoken. Trask had used Victoria Wilson to convict her father; Neva doubted that Tory would be foolish enough to trust him again. “And you think that talking with Tory will clear this up?” She waved the letter in her hand as if to emphasize her words. “This is a prank, Trask. Nothing more. Leave it alone.” She fell back into the rocker still clenching the letter and tucked her feet beneath her.

Trask silently damned himself for all the old wounds he was about to reopen. He reached forward, as if to stroke Neva’s bent head, but his fingers curled into a fist of frustration. “I wish I could, Neva,” he replied as he gently removed the letter from her hand and reached for the suede jacket he’d carelessly thrown over the back of the couch several hours earlier. He hooked one finger under the collar and tossed the jacket over his shoulder. “God, I wish I could.”

“You and your damned ideals,” she muttered. “Nothing will bring Jason back. But this...vendetta you’re on...could hurt my son.”

“Even if what I find out is the truth?”

Neva closed her eyes. She raised her hand and waved him off. She knew there was no way to talk sense to him when he had his mind made up. “Do what you have to do, Trask,” she said wearily. “You will anyway. Just remember that Nicholas is the one who’ll suffer.” Her voice was low; a warning. “You and I—we’ll survive. We always do. But what about Nick? He’s in school now and this is a small town, a very small town. People talk.”

Too much,
Trask thought, silently agreeing.
People talk too damned much.
With an angry frown, he turned toward the door.

Neva heard his retreating footsteps echoing down the hall, the door slamming shut and finally the sound of an engine sparking to life then rumbling and fading into the distance.

CHAPTER TWO

A
S
DUSK
SETTLED
over the ranch, Tory was alone. And that’s the way she wanted it.

She sat on the front porch of the two-story farmhouse that she had called home for most of her twenty-seven years. Rough cedar boards, painted a weathered gray, were highlighted by windows trimmed in a deep wine color. The porch ran the length of the house and had a sloping shake roof supported by hand-hewn posts. The house hadn’t changed much since her father was forced to leave. Tory had attempted to keep the house and grounds in good repair...to please him when he was released. Only that wouldn’t happen. Calvin Wilson had been dead for nearly two years, after suffering a painful and lonely death in the penitentiary for a crime he didn’t commit. All because she had trusted Trask McFadden.

Tory’s jaw tightened, her fingers clenched over the arm of the wooden porch swing that had been her father’s favorite. Guilt took a stranglehold of her throat. If only she hadn’t believed in Trask and his incredible blue eyes—eyes Tory would never have suspected of anything less than the truth. He had used her shamelessly and she had been blind to his true motives, in love enough to let him take advantage of her.
Never again,
she swore to herself.
Trusting Trask McFadden was one mistake that she wouldn’t make twice!

With her hands cradling her head, Tory sat on the varnished slats of the porch swing and stared across the open fields toward the mountains. Purple thunderclouds rolled near the shadowy peaks as night fell across the plateau.

Telling herself that she wasn’t waiting for Trask, Tory slowly rocked and remembered the last time she had seen him. It had been in the courtroom during her father’s trial. The old bitterness filled her mind as she considered how easily Trask had betrayed her...

* * *

T
HE
TRIAL
HAD
already taken over a week and in that time Tory felt as if her entire world were falling apart at the seams. The charges against her father were ludicrous. No one could possibly believe that Calvin Wilson was guilty of fraud, conspiracy or
murder
, for God’s sake, and yet there he was, seated with his agitated attorney in the hot courtroom, listening stoically as the evidence against him mounted.

When it had been his turn to sit on the witness stand, he had sat ramrod stiff in the wooden chair, refusing to testify in his behalf.

“Dad, please, save yourself,” Tory had begged on the final day of the trial. She was standing in the courtroom, clutching her father’s sleeve, unaware of the reporters scribbling rapidly in their notepads. Unshed tears of frustration and fear pooled in her large eyes.

“I know what I’m doin’, Missy,” Calvin had assured her, fondly patting her head. “It’s all for the best. Trust me...”

Trust me
.

The same words that Trask had said only a few days before the trial. And then he had betrayed her completely. Tory paled and watched in disbelief and horror as Trask took the stand.

He was the perfect witness for the prosecution. Tall, good-looking, with a proud lift of his shoulders and piercing blue eyes, he cut an impressive figure on the witness stand, and his reputation as a trustworthy lawyer added to his appeal. His suit was neatly pressed, but his thick gold-streaked hair remained windblown, adding to the intense, but honest, country-boy image he had perfected. The fact that he was the brother of the murdered man only added sympathy from the jury for the prosecution. That he had gained his information by engaging in a love affair with the accused’s daughter didn’t seem to tarnish his testimony in the least. If anything, it made his side of the story appear more poignantly authentic, and the district attorney played it to the hilt.

“And you were with Miss Wilson on the night of your brother’s death,” the rotund district attorney suggested, leaning familiarly on the polished rail of the witness stand. He stared at Trask over rimless glasses, lifting his bushy brown eyebrows in encouragement to his star witness.

“Yes.” Trask’s eyes held Tory’s. She was sitting behind her father and the defense attorney, unable to believe that the man she loved was slowly, publicly shredding her life apart. Keith, who was sitting next to her, put a steadying arm around her shoulder, but she didn’t feel it. She continued to stare at Trask with round tortured eyes.

“And what did Miss Wilson confide to you?” the D.A. asked, his knowing eyes moving from Trask to the jury in confidence.

“That some things had been going on at the Lazy W...things she didn’t understand.”

“Could you be more specific?”

Tory leaned forward and her hands clutched the railing separating her from her father in a death-grip.

The corner of Trask’s jaw worked. “She—”

“You mean Victoria Wilson?”

“Yeah,” Trask replied with a frown. “Tory claimed that her father had been in a bad mood for the better part of a week. She...Tory was worried about him. She said that Calvin had been moody and seemed distracted.”

“Anything else?”

Trask hesitated only slightly. His blue eyes darkened and delved into hers. “Tory had seen her father leave the ranch late at night, on horseback.”

“When?”

“July 7th.”

“Of this year—the night your brother died?”

The lines around Trask’s mouth tightened and his skin stretched tautly over his cheekbones. “Yes.”

“And what worried Miss Wilson?”

“Objection,” the defense attorney yelled, raising his hand and screwing up his face in consternation as he shot up from his chair.

“Sustained.” Judge Miller glared imperiously at the district attorney, who visibly regrouped his thoughts and line of questioning.

The district attorney flashed the jury a consoling smile. “What did Miss Wilson say to you that led you to believe that her father was part of the horse swindle?”

Trask settled back in his chair and chewed on his lower lip as he thought. “Tory said that Judge Linn Benton had been visiting the ranch several times in the past few days. The last time Benton was over at the ranch—”

“The Lazy W?”

Trask frowned at the D.A. “Yes. There was a loud argument between Calvin and the judge in Calvin’s den. The door was closed, of course, but Tory was in the house and she overheard portions of the discussion.”

“Objection,” the defense attorney called again. “Your honor, this is only hearsay. Mr. McFadden can’t possibly know what Miss Wilson overheard or thought she overheard.”

“Sustained,” the judge said wearily, wiping the sweat from his receding brow. “Mr. Delany...”

The district attorney took his cue and his lips pursed together thoughtfully as he turned back to Trask and said, “Tell me what you saw that convinced you that Calvin Wilson was involved in the alleged horse switching.”

“I’d done some checking on my own,” Trask admitted, seeing Tory’s horrified expression from the corner of his eye. “I knew that my brother, Jason, was investigating an elaborate horse swapping swindle.”

“Jason told you as much?”

“Yes. He worked for an insurance company, Edward’s Life. Several registered Quarter Horses had died from accidents in the past couple of years. That in itself wasn’t out of the ordinary, only two of the horses were owned by the same ranch. What was suspicious was the fact that the horses had been insured so heavily. The company didn’t mind at the time the policy was taken out, but wasn’t too thrilled when the horse died and the claim had to be paid.

“Still, like I said, nothing appeared out of the ordinary until a company adjuster, on a whim, talked with a few other rival companies who insured horses as well. When the computer records were cross-checked, the adjuster discovered a much higher than average mortality rate for highly-insured Quarter Horses in the area surrounding Sinclair, Oregon. Jason, as a claims investigator for Edward’s Life, was instructed to check it out the next time a claim came in. You know, for fraud. What he discovered was that the dead horse wasn’t even a purebred Quarter Horse. The mare was nothing more than a mustang, a range horse, insured to the teeth.”

“How was that possible?”

“It wasn’t. The horse was switched. The purebred horse was still alive, kept on an obscure piece of land in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The way Jason figured it, the purebred horse would either be sold for a tidy sum, or used for breeding purposes. Either way, the owner would make out with at least twice the value of the horse.”

“I see,” the D.A. said thoughtfully. “And who owned this piece of land?”

Trask paused, the corners of his mouth tightening. “Calvin Wilson.”

A muffled whisper of shock ran through the courtroom and the D.A., while pretending surprise, smiled a bit. Tory thought she was going to be sick. Her face paled and she had to swallow back the acrid taste of deception rising in her throat.

“How do you know who owned the property?”

“Jason had records from the county tax assessor’s office. He told me. I couldn’t believe it so I asked his daughter, Victoria Wilson.”

Tory had to force herself not to gasp aloud at the vicious insinuations in Trask’s lies. She closed her eyes and all the life seemed to drain out of her.

“And what did Miss Wilson say?”

“That she didn’t know about the land. When I pressed her she admitted that she was worried about her father and the ranch; she said that the Lazy W had been in serious financial trouble for some time.”

The district attorney seemed satisfied and rubbed his fleshy fingers together over his protruding stomach. Tory felt as if she were dying inside. The inquisition continued and Trask recounted the events of the summer. How he had seen Judge Linn Benton with Calvin Wilson on various occasions; how his brother, Jason, had almost concluded his investigation of the swindle; and how Calvin Wilson’s name became linked to the other two men by his damning ownership of the property.

“You mean to tell me that your brother, Jason, told you that Calvin Wilson was involved?”

“Jason said he thought there might be a connection because of the land where the horses were kept.”

“A connection?” the district attorney repeated, patting his stomach and looking incredulously at the jury. “I’d say that was more than ‘a connection.’ Wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t know.” Trask shifted uneasily in his chair and his blue eyes narrowed on the D.A. “There is a chance that Calvin Wilson didn’t know exactly what was happening on the land as it is several miles from the Lazy W.”

“But what about the mare that was switched?” the D.A. prodded. “Wasn’t she registered?”

“Yes.”

“And the owner?”

“Calvin Wilson.”

“So your brother, Jason McFadden, the insurance investigator for Edward’s Life, thought that there might be a connection?” the D.A. concluded smugly.

“Jason was still working on it when the accident occurred.” Trask’s eyes hardened at the injustice of his brother’s death. It was just the reaction the district attorney had been counting on.

“The accident which took his life. Right?”

“Yes.”

“The accident that was caused by someone deliberately tampering with the gas line of the car,” the D.A. persisted.

“Objection!”

“Your honor, it’s been proven that the engine of Jason McFadden’s car had been rigged with an explosive device that detonated at a certain speed, causing sparks to fly into the gas line and explode in the gas tank. What I’m attempting to prove is how that happened and who was to blame.”

The gray-haired judge scowled, settled back in his chair and stared at the defense attorney with eyes filled with the cynicism of too many years on the bench. “Overruled.”

The D.A. turned to face Trask.

“Let’s go back to the night that Victoria Wilson saw her father leave the ranch. On that night, the night of July 7th, what did you do?”

Trask wiped a tired hand around his neck. “After I left Tory, I waited until Calvin had returned and then I confronted him with what Jason had figured out about the horse swapping scam and what I suspected about his involvement in it.”

“But why did you do that? It might have backfired in your face and ruined your brother’s reputation as an insurance investigator.”

Trask paused for a minute. The courtroom was absolutely silent except for the soft hum of the motor of the paddle fan. “I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

Trask’s fingers tightened imperceptibly on the polished railing. “I was afraid for Jason’s life. I thought he was in over his head.”

“Why?”

“Jason had already received an anonymous phone call threatening him, as well as his family.” Trask’s eyes grew dark with indignation and fury and his jaw thrust forward menacingly. “But he wouldn’t go to the police. It was important to him to handle it himself.”

“And so you went to see Calvin Wilson, hoping that he might help you save your brother’s life.”

“Yes.” Trask glared at the table behind which Tory’s father was sitting.

“And what did Calvin Wilson say when you confronted him?”

Hatred flared in Trask’s eyes. “That all the problems were solved.”

At that point Neva McFadden, Jason’s widow, broke down. Her small shoulders began to shake with the hysterical sobs racking her body and she buried her face in her hands, as if in so doing she could hide from the truth. Calvin Wilson didn’t move a muscle, but Tory felt as if she were slowly bleeding to death. Keith’s face turned ashen when Neva was helped from the courtroom and his arm over Tory’s shoulders tightened.

“So,” the D.A. persisted, turning everyone’s attention back to the witness stand and Trask, “you thought that because of your close relationship with Calvin Wilson’s daughter, that you might be able to reason with the man before anything tragic occurred.”

“Yes,” Trask whispered, his blue eyes filled with resignation as he looked from the empty chair in which Neva had been sitting, to Calvin Wilson and finally to Tory. “But it didn’t work out that way...”

* * *

T
ORY
CONTINUED
TO
rock in the porch swing. A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the aspen trees and whispered through the pines...just as it had on the first night she’d met him. All her memories of Trask were so vivid. Passionate images filled with love and hate teased her weary mind. Falling in love with him had been too easy...but then, of course, he had planned it that way, and she had been trapped easily by his deceit. Thank God she was alone tonight, she thought, so that she had time to think things out before she had to face him again.