B.J. Daniels - Dead Ringer

He was a good old boy, the kind who smiled in your face and stabbed you in the back the first chance he got. She didn’t trust him, but she couldn’t fire him without cause. So far, he’d done nothing to warrant it, but she kept her eye on him—and his son, Wade. The minute she caught him stepping over the line, he was gone. As for his son... She’d had hopes for him when he’d hired on, seeing something in him that could go a different way than his father. Lately, though...

Both looked up as if sensing her watching them from the window. She raised her coffee mug in a salute to them. Their expressions turned solemn as they entered the building.

Neither man was stupid. Both were hanging on by a thread, and if the rumors about Wade mistreating his wife could ever be proved, he would be gone soon. But in a small community like this, it was hard to prove there was a problem unless the wife came forward. So far, Abby hadn’t. But now she was in the hospital after allegedly falling off a ladder. Maybe this would be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

McCall’s cell phone rang. She stepped to her desk and picked up, seeing that it was her grandmother. It felt strange having a relationship with her after all those years of never even laying eyes on the woman.

“Good evening,” she said into the phone.

“What are you still doing at work this late?” Pepper demanded.

“I was just about to leave,” McCall said. The day had gotten away from her after she dropped her daughter off at day care and came in to deal with all the paperwork that tended to stack up on her desk. Most of the time, she and Luke could work out a schedule where one—if not both of them—was home with Tracey.

But several days a week, her daughter had to go to a day care near the sheriff’s office in downtown Whitehorse. McCall had checked it out carefully and found no problems with the two women who ran it. Tracey seemed to love going because she was around other children. For a working mother, it was the best McCall could do.

“So is there any truth to it?” her grandmother demanded in her no-nonsense normal tone of voice. “Has one of the McGraw twins been found?”

The question took McCall by surprise. For twenty-five years there had been no news on the fraternal twins who’d been kidnapped. Then a few months ago a true-crime writer had shown up at the McGraw ranch and all hell had broken loose. While some pieces of the puzzle had been found, the twins hadn’t been yet.

Now was it possible one of them had been located?

“I heard it’s the boy, Oakley,” her grandmother was saying. “Apparently your theory about who might have adopted out the children was correct. It was the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. That bunch of old hens. You should arrest them all.” Most of the women involved in the illegal kidnappings were dead now. “On top of that, that crazy daughter of Arlene Evans almost escaped from the loony bin last night.”

McCall hadn’t heard about that, either. It amazed her that Pepper often knew what was going on in town before the sheriff did—even though the Winchester Ranch was miles south of Whitehorse.

“Thank you for all the information. Is that it? Or was the bank robbed?”

Pepper laughed. “You should hire me since I know more of what is going on than you do.” It was an old refrain, one McCall almost enjoyed. Almost.

“Well, let me know when you find out something worth hearing about,” Pepper said. “I’m having lunch with the rest of your family tomorrow. Maybe sometime you can come out.” With that, her grandmother was gone, leaving McCall to smile before she dialed Travers McGraw’s number.

* * *

VANCE ELLIOT WATCHED the landscape blur past and wiped his sweaty palms on his jeans.

“You all right?” the attorney asked from behind the wheel of the SUV. The fiftysomething man wore a dark suit, reminding Vance of an undertaker. No one wore a suit like that, not around these parts, anyway. So Jim Waters must be some highfalutin lawyer who made a lot of money. But then, he worked for Travers McGraw, Vance thought as he saw the huge ranch ahead. Travers McGraw probably paid him well.

“I’m a little nervous,” he admitted in answer to the lawyer’s question. He was about to come face-to-face with Travers McGraw and his three sons. He’d heard enough about them to be anxious. Plus, the attorney had already warned him.

“They aren’t going to believe you, but don’t let that rattle you,” Waters said. “They’ve had a lot of people pretend to be the missing twins, so naturally they’re going to be suspicious. But having the stuffed horse will help. Then there is the DNA test. You’re ready for that, right?”

Right. That alone scared the daylights out of him, but he simply nodded to the attorney’s question.

He watched the ranch house come into view. He couldn’t imagine growing up on a place like this. Couldn’t imagine having that much land or that much money. Nor could he deny the appeal of being a McGraw with all the privileges that came with it.

He knew he was getting ahead of himself. There were a lot of hoops he had to jump through before they would accept that he was Oakley, the missing twin. But at least he could admire the house until then. It was huge with several wings that trailed off from the two-story center.

He’d heard stories about lavish parties where senators and even the governor had attended. That was before the twins were kidnapped, though, before the first Mrs. McGraw went to the loony bin and the second one went to jail.

But the house and grounds were still beautiful, and the horses... A half dozen raced through a nearby pasture as beautiful as any horseflesh he’d ever seen. Horses were in his blood, he thought with a silent laugh. And as Waters turned into the long lane leading to the house, he thought maybe horses were in his future.

“There is nothing to be afraid of,” the attorney said. “Just tell them what you told me.”

“I will.” He swallowed the lump in his throat. Just stick to the story. The attorney had believed him. So Travers McGraw should, too, right? The stuffed horse had opened the door. The DNA test would cinch it.

As Waters brought the SUV to a stop in front of the house, Vance picked up the paper bag next to him and held it like a suit of armor to his chest.

“Try to relax,” the attorney said. “You look like you’re going to jump out of your skin.”

He took a deep breath and thought of his run-ins with the law as a horse thief. He’d talked his way out of those. He could handle this.

Think about the payoff, he reminded himself. This place could be his one day.

* * *

“DAD, I DON’T want you getting upset,” Boone McGraw said as they waited in Travers’s office. “You know what the doctor said.”

“I had a heart attack,” his father said impatiently. “Given the state of my health and why it was so bad, I’m fine now. Even the doctor is amazed how quickly I’ve bounced back.”

Ledger stood by the office fireplace, as anxious as the rest of his family. They all knew that their father had bounced back because even before this phone call, Travers McGraw was determined the twins were alive and that he would see them again.

And now, after releasing more information to the press, maybe one of the twins had come forward. Ledger couldn’t help being skeptical. They’d been here before. Except this time, this one had Oakley’s stuffed horse, which had been in his crib the night he was kidnapped. Would his father finally be able to find some peace?

Or, after twenty-five years, had too much time passed? Oakley would be a grown man, no longer that cute six-month-old baby who’d been stolen. He would have lived a good portion of his life as someone else, with other parents. He would have his own life and the McGraws would all be strangers to him.