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“Does she have a boyfriend?” asked Molly. “Maybe she was cheating on Chris. Love is always a dandy motive too.”
“Put them together and you’ve got a double-whammy, Molly. Suzie and the boyfriend gang up on Chris.”
Molly nodded her red head. “Sounds plausible.”
I hollered for Billy and he came running from the break room. “What, boss?”
“Huge insurance policy on Chris Concordian. I need you on the wife. All visitors, get tags and descriptions. We need to know who the bereaved wife is leaning on in her hour of sorrow.”
“Copy, boss.”
Billy took off for the Concordian residence in Conrad and I told Molly I was going back to the ranch to search again for Tammy.
“Call me if you find her,” said Molly. “I’m worried.”
“Yeah, me too.”
Wild Stallion Ranch.
I drove back to the ranch and searched thoroughly for Tammy one more time. I looked every place I could think of. Places that Billy and I had checked two or three times already and she was not there.
The outdoor thermometer nailed to the back of the woodshed read ten below zero.
“Come on, Tammy. You’re smart enough to get in out of the cold.”
I sucked in a breath hoping she’d come back on her own and moved on to my next call.
Pinsent Residence. Oilmont.
I knocked on the door of a small bungalow in Oilmont and a sleepy-eyed guy with bedhead opened it and stood staring at me. He was dressed in plaid flannel bottoms and a dirty red sweatshirt.
“Sheriff Frost, Charlie. Can I talk to you about Chris Concordian for a couple of minutes?”
“Sure, come on in.” He led the way to the kitchen and we sat at the table. “Did you find him? Suzie said he went hunting and he’d been gone a long time.”
“His wife called you?”
“No. I called her because Chris missed poker night.”
“What night was that?” I asked. “Was he supposed to show up here at your place?”
“Not here. At Jud’s place last Saturday.”
“Last Saturday. Five days ago. Did his wife say how long he’d been gone before that?”
“Nope. Just said he went hunting.”
“And he went out hunting alone a lot?”
Charlie laughed. “Chris was a bit of an outdoor nut. He liked to see how long he could survive out in the wild. He was always doing dumb stuff like that. Talked about his survival skills all the time.”
“Did his wife sound upset when you talked to her?”
“Nope. Suzie was used to the way Chris was. I think she stopped worrying about him surviving a long time ago. He wouldn’t stop doing what he was doing, and there was nothing she could do about it. Chris was Chris.”
“You and Jud ever go with him?”
“Sure, lots of times, but not in this shit weather. We’d go in the summer and in the fall, do a bit of hunting and fishing and have some fun. I’m not going out there in three feet of snow to get my ass frozen off, and neither is Jud.”
