Redemption by B.J. Daniels Read Free Book Online

put this off. You might be the last person to see him alive—other than the killer.”
    “Or Kate LaFond at the café was,” he said, and remembered seeing someone walking down the street that night as he’d driven past in his pickup. The cowboy had been right by the café—if he was the same person. Tucker hadn’t been paying any attention, just anxious to get home before Mary started calling the bar for him.
    “You have to call the sheriff and tell him what you know.”
    “I’m sure Kate’s already told the sheriff—”
    “Tucker? Call the sheriff. Has anyone seen Kate since that night? What if something has happened to her as well?”
    He sighed. “I’m sure if the café hasn’t been open someone would have noticed. But I’ll call the sheriff if it will make you happy, all right?”
    * * *
    S HERIFF F RANK C URRY had spent the morning at his office researching online for information about horsehair hitching, and waiting to see if the photo in the newspaper generated any clues.
    Until it did, all he had to go on was the murder weapon—the length of hitched horsehair rope found about the victim’s neck.
    Frank took out the evidence bag holding the horsehair rope. Could this length of hitched horsehair help him solve this murder? He sure hoped so.
    Jack said he didn’t think the pattern was from Montana State Prison. Frank finally understood what Jack had meant. Apparently there were only four prisons where this old Western art form was practiced still: Deer Lodge, Montana; Rawlins, Wyoming; Walla Walla, Washington; and Yuma, Arizona; and each had their own designs and colors. The painstaking art was popular in prisons, where inmates had nothing but time.
    From the bright colors used in the rope, it sounded as if there was a good chance the rope had been made in the Yuma prison. The colors apparently were the result of the Mexican influence at the prison there.
    So if it was true that each prison had its own designs and colors and no two hitched ropes were ever identical, then the rope found around the dead man’s neck, along with his morgue photo, might be used to identify either him—or his killer.
    Frank had just left a message for the Yuma warden when Tucker Williams walked into his office.
    “You’re sure it was the man in the sketch?” the sheriff asked after listening to what Tucker had to tell him.
    “Positive. It was right behind the bar under that outside light, so I got a good look at him.”
    “And he was asking about Kate LaFond?”
    “Not by name.” He took off his hat and scratched his head as if trying to remember the conversation. “The man described her and said he’d heard she was running the café. Now that I think about it, I don’t think he knew she owned it.”
    Frank nodded. “So you told him where he could find her.”
    “Yeah. I mean, I didn’t think anything of it, you know?”
    He could tell Tucker felt badly about that.
    “Is she all right? Mary’s worried.”
    “She’s fine.” But now that he thought about it, he had noticed a bruise on her cheek that she’d tried to cover with makeup the morning the body was found. “Thanks for calling and letting me know. I appreciate your help.”
    “I hope it helps.”
    “It does.”
    * * *
    K ATE COULDN’T WAIT until the café emptied out. She kept moving, afraid to stop, let alone reread the note in her apron pocket. She could feel Jack French’s gaze on her. Had he seen her pick up the folded sheet of paper from the table?
    She’d felt him watching her all morning. But she couldn’t worry about that. She had much bigger worries than that long, tall cowboy. She had felt like such a fool when his fingers had brushed hers earlier. It had been a shock, like the time she’d gone swimming in the creek and had raced back to her father’s travel trailer. The moment her bare, wet foot touched the metal trailer step, electricity had shot through her. She’d felt that same kind of jolt when Jack had brushed her