“They’re in the truck, Emmett.”
“The hell you say,” he murmured, momentarily stunned. Recovering, he hustled to the truck, his body pitched forward with his degree of haste. “They belong on the damned wall. Who—”
“Leave them where they are, Emmett. And don’t touch anything else.” Crouching down, Logan examined the right front tire, studying the tread pattern and the bits of dirt and gravel lodged between them.
“Don’t touch it? Why?” He stopped a good three feet from the vehicle.
“I think your truck might have been—borrowed, shall we say?” he suggested with an ironic lift to his mouth.
“Borrowed? You mean, somebody took it without asking first?”
“It’s possible.”
Straightening, Logan began a slow, inspecting walk around the truck, taking special note of the long stalks of grass trapped between the running board and the truck body. At last he came to the rear of the truck and stopped. “What do you use this canvas tarp for, Emmett?”
“What tarp?”
“This one.” He motioned for Emmett to come over and take a look.
“I don’t keep any tarps in that truck. Never had any reason to,” he muttered. Confusion creased his face when he saw the stained and rumpled canvas on the floor of the truck bed. “Why, that looks like one of those paint tarps we used a few years back when we enlarged the store and repainted the walls. I had a half dozen of ’em stacked over here in the corner. I wonder who put it in the truck, and how did it get all that grease on it?”
“I don’t think that’s grease, Emmett.”
“What else could it be?” he scoffed.
“Blood.” Logan saw the color drain from the old man’s face and added, “Cow’s blood. I haven’t looked, but I’d be willing to bet we’ll also find strands of cow hair on that winch cable.”
“You mean…you think somebody butchered a beef and used my truck to haul it away?”
“That’s exactly what I think.” His mouth curved, but the smile didn’t reach his eyes.
“Calder—those cattle of his that got killed—”
“You’re quick, Emmett.”
“And they used my truck to do it.” His expression fell halfway between astonishment and outrage.
“And they didn’t make any attempt to conceal their use of it. On the contrary, they’ve flaunted it,” Logan murmured thoughtfully, recalling the grisly scene of the slaughtered cattle.
“It’s that damned Lath Anderson.” Emmett all but spat the name. “It’s just the kind of dirty stunt that arrogant bastard would pull.”
“You think he did it to implicate you?” Logan arched an eyebrow in skepticism.
“He did it to sign his name to the deed, the same way he slashed those pump hoses and rolled my own tires to the island, drenched ’em in my gas, and set the whole thing on fire.”
Logan couldn’t deny the two incidents bore similar signatures. Still he shook his head. “But what’s the connection between you and Calder?”
“It’s obvious,” Emmett declared. “He’s trying to get even with both of us. Me for closing his ma’s account and Calder for sending Rollie to prison.”
A puzzled line creased his forehead. “How did Calder do that?”
“He didn’t, really, but that’s not the way old Emma Anderson tells it. Rollie caused the accident that killed Repp Taylor. Repp worked for Calder and was fixing to marry his daughter. Rollie was stinking drunk at the time. Emma went to Calder and pleaded with him to speak up for her son and ask the judge to go light on him. Calder must have refused. Rollie got slapped with the maximum sentence and the Andersons ended up losing their farm. She puts the blame for all of it at Calder’s door.”
Logan considered that. “That sounds like a slim reason to me.”
“You wanta talk about slim, what about me?” Emmett turned indignant. “I’ve been carrying that Anderson account on my books for better than ten years while they been paying me ten dollars one month, maybe fifty the next, then only five. Every once in a while I’ll see a hundred dollars, but with them always charging, they never made a dent in the balance. After they lost the farm, the dang thing doubled. What was I supposed to do? It was business, damn it. I had to cut her off.”
“I can see that.”