First of State by Robert Greer

Author:Robert Greer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781504043205
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2016-11-08T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

CJ’s trip back to Denver took a full three hours and had him knifing the Jeep into forty-five-mile-per-hour crosswinds strong enough to have overturned a semi loaded with sugar beets on a desolate stretch of I-76 between Sterling and the town of Brush.

Inching past a flagman and three state patrol cars before finally reaching the sprawled-out tractor-trailer with its eighteen wheels poking up like stubby rubber feet, CJ found himself trying to size up Cheryl Goldsby. She clearly wasn’t the sad, dutiful, grief-stricken niece. Nor was she the loving, grateful recipient of her uncle’s generous bequest. What she was was a calculating, bitter woman who, by virtue of a little luck and her bloodline, had squirreled away a nice little windfall. She’d played cat-and-mouse with him the whole time he’d been at her ranch, no question about that, inferring one moment that she wanted her uncle’s killer caught and suggesting the next that she couldn’t care less and might in fact be the killer herself.

She certainly wasn’t an antique collector in the truest sense, and he still couldn’t figure out why she’d agreed to his visit other than apparently to appease her lover. No matter. He intended to check both Goldsby and Lepsos out from stem to stern and determine whether Cheryl’s little footlocker of treasures had been incentive enough for either woman to kill Ames and Chin.

Moving past the wreckage, CJ found himself wondering whether Ames had left behind other footlockers full of valuables, and whether he might have been not merely his niece’s benefactor but also her fencing partner.

What he needed to do was dig a little deeper into what Ames had left behind, and if there was anyone who might know the true value of Wiley Ames’s estate, it would be Harry Steed. Although Steed had always been pretty closemouthed about Ames, seemingly wanting to be loyal to his friend’s sympathetic image, CJ suspected that if pressed, Steed would be more forthcoming.

Picking up speed and watching snow clouds gather to the west, he settled on a game plan. He’d talk to Harry about Cheryl Goldsby and Ramona Lepsos the next morning, get Harry’s take on just how big a fencing operation Ames and Chin might have been spearheading, determine whether Ames might have left behind a larger estate in the way of additional footlockers, and then, with Petey Greene’s help, move on to Gaylord Marquee.

As he sped past Brush, he decided that the rest of the day belonged to Willis and Mavis Sundee. He’d bought a new Stetson, vest, and sport coat for his symphony outing that evening, which he needed to pick up on the way home, and he had Petey Greene and a less-than-eager Rosie Weeks staking out Mae’s Louisiana Kitchen for any sign of Walt Reasoner. With the feeling that he’d covered his bases, he accelerated into the stiff southeasterly wind and turned up the Jeep’s radio, not to the sounds of Motown but to eastern plains Colorado country western.

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