Proof of Innocence: Yesterday's Lies / Devil's Gambit

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

AS 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...

* * *

THE 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...”

* * *

TORY 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.

It had taken a lot of convincing to get Keith to leave the ranch, but in the end he had gone into town with some of the single men who worked on the Lazy W. It was a muggy Saturday night in early summer, and Keith had decided that he would, against his better judgment, spend a few hours drinking beer and playing pool at the Branding Iron. It was his usual custom on Saturday evenings and Tory persuaded him that she wanted to be left alone. Which she did. If what Keith had been saying were true, then she wanted to meet Trask on her own terms, without unwanted ears to hear what promised to be a heated conversation.

The scent of freshly mown hay drifted on the sultry breeze that lifted the loose strands of hair away from her face. The gentle lowing of restless cattle as they roamed the far-off fields reached her ears. She squinted her eyes against the gathering night. Twilight had begun to color the landscape in shadowy hues of lavender. Clumps of sagebrush dappled the ground beneath the towering ponderosa pines. Even the proud Cascades loomed darkly, silently in the distance, a cold barrier to the rest of the world. Except that the world was intruding into her life all over again. The rugged mountains hadn’t protected her at all. She had been a fool to think that she was safe and that the past was over and done.

The faint rumble of an engine caught Tory’s attention. Trask.

Tory’s heart began to pound in anticipation. She felt the faint stirrings of dread as the sound came nearer. He’d come back. Just as he’d promised and Keith had warned. A thin sheen of sweat broke out on her back and between her breasts. She clenched her teeth in renewed determination and her fingers clenched the arm of the swing in a death grip.

The twin beams of headlights illuminated the stand of aspen near the drive and a dusty blue pickup stopped in front of her house. Tory took in a needed breath of air and trained her eyes on the man unfolding himself from the cab. An unwelcome lump formed in her throat.

Trask was just as she had remembered him. Tall and lean, with long well-muscled thighs, tight buttocks, slim waist and broad chest, he looked just as arrogantly athletic as he always had. His light brown hair caught in the hot breeze and fell over his forehead in casual disarray.

So much for the stuffy United States senator image, Tory thought cynically. His shirt was pressed and clean, but open-throated, and the sleeves were pushed over his forearms. The jeans, which hugged his hips, looked as if they had seen years of use. Just one of the boys... Tory knew better. She couldn’t trust him this night any more than she had on the day her father was sentenced to prison.

Trask strode over to the porch with a purposeful step and his eyes delved into hers.

What he encountered in Tory’s cynical gaze was hostility—as hot and fresh as it had been on the day that Calvin Wilson had been found guilty for his part in Jason’s death.

“What’re you doing here?” Tory demanded. Her voice was surprisingly calm, probably from going over the scene a thousand times in her mind, she thought.

Trask climbed the two weathered steps to the porch, placed his hands on the railing and balanced his hips against the smooth wood. His booted feet were crossed in front of him. He attempted to look relaxed, but Tory noticed the inner tension tightening the muscles of his neck and shoulders.

“I think you know.” His voice was low and familiar. It caused a prickling sensation to spread down the back of her neck. Looking into his vibrant blue eyes made it difficult for her not to think about the past that they had shared so fleetingly.

“Keith said you were spreading it around Sinclair that you wanted to see me.”

“That’s right.”

“Why?”

His eyes slid away from her and he studied the starless sky. The air was heavy with the scent of rain. “I thought it was time to clear up a few things between us.”

The memory of the trial burned into her mind. “Impossible.”

“Tory—”

“Look, Trask,” she said, her voice trembling only slightly, “you’re not welcome here.” She managed a sarcastic smile and gestured toward the pickup. “And I think you’d better leave before I tell you just what a bastard I think you are.”

“It won’t be the first time,” he drawled, leaning against the post supporting the roof and staring down at her. His eyes slid lazily down her body, noting the elegant curve of her neck, the burnished wisps falling free of the loose knot of auburn hair at the base of her neck, the proud carriage of her body and the fire in her eyes. She was, without a doubt, the most beautiful and intelligent woman he had ever known. Try as he had to forget her, he had failed. Distance and time hadn’t abated his desire; if anything, the feelings stirring within burned more torridly than he remembered.

He had the audacity to slant a lazy grin at her and Tory’s simmering anger began to ignite. Her voice seemed to catch in her throat. “Leave.”

“Not yet.”

Righteous indignation flared in her eyes. “Leave, damn you...”

“Not until we get—”

“Now!” Her palm slapped against the varnished wooden arm of the swing and she pushed herself upward. “I don’t want you ever to set foot on this ranch again. I thought I made that clear before, but either you have an incredibly short memory, or you just conveniently ignored out last conversation.”

“Just for the record; I haven’t forgotten anything. And that was no conversation,” he speculated. “A war zone maybe, a helluva battle perhaps, but not idle chitchat.”