Strenuous Deception

CHAPTER 3

April stared at the closed office door and debated going in and trying to reason with her mother. Julie was a smart, reasonable woman, except when it came to those she loved. Sighing, April turned the knob and went inside.

"Is he gone?" Julie swiveled her chair to face her daughter.

"Yes. Mom, you had no reason to treat him that way. He's just doing his job."

"The job is all that matters to men like him. Didn't I tell you?"

Yes, her mother had told her. Over and over again, until April had believed her.

"Just be thankful you didn't marry him," Julie said. "It would have been the biggest mistake of your life."

Not all cops are like Grandpa. But April only thought the words. Her mother's father, a Denver police officer who had died in the line of duty, had, according to her mother, always put his work before his family, leaving his wife and daughter alone even while he was still alive. "I thought I saw something like those pictures he showed us in the shop a couple of weeks ago." April sat on the corner of the desk, her tone deliberately casual. "Rusty was putting it in the locked cabinet in the back room." They kept the most valuable items there, viewed by appointment only.

"We've never had anything like that in our inventory." Julie tapped her desk. "Everything in this store comes through me."

"Maybe Rusty picked up some items on one of his buying trips and forgot to tell you about them."

"That's not how we work. The two of us are a team. It's the only way to have a business partnership, or a marriage." Julie's expression softened. "It's what I want for you one day, and why I'm glad you didn't marry Lance. The two of you would have always lived in two separate worlds."

Thinking about the future she might have had with Lance still hurt. They had loved each other so much. If she had been braver—if she hadn't listened so much to her mother—could the two of them have been happy together?

##

"This has Richard Prentice's stink all over it," Lance said. He and the other members of the Ranger Brigade had gathered for their daily briefing.

"Why do you say that?" Carmen Redhorse, the team's representative from the Colorado Bureau of Investigations asked.

"There's a lot of money to be made in the sale of artifacts like these," Lance said.

"He's got money," Border Patrol agent Michael Dance said. "He's a billionaire."

"And I don't believe for a minute he earned all that money legitimately," Lance said. "But besides the money, Prentice loves to thumb his nose at the federal government, particularly us. He'd like nothing better than to steal something from under our noses." Prentice had made a name for himself as an anti-government activist, and was the force behind most of the bad press the Rangers had received, claiming they wasted taxpayers' money and harassed innocent citizens.

"Prentice has an extensive collection of Native American art and artifacts." Team leader Graham Ellison, with the FBI, spoke up. "But we don't know he didn't assemble the collection legitimately."

"We don't know that he did, either," Lance said.

"We're going to need more than our suspicions to nail him," Bureau of Land Management Ranger Randall Knightbridge said. "It's the same problem we have with every other crime we suspect Prentice of orchestrating. We think he supplies the funds and directs the operation, but he puts a lot of intermediaries between himself and the actual crimes, and pays them well to keep their mouths shut."

"If Rusty Webber is working for Prentice, I think I can get him to talk," Lance said.

"What about his wife and daughter?" DEA Agent Marco Cruz asked. "They might be involved, too."

"Not the daughter." Lance shook his head. "No way would April do something like this."

"How do you know?" Carmen asked.

"She told me she thought she had seen one of the pictographs in the store. She wouldn't volunteer that if she was involved." April had wrecked their chance for happiness, but she wasn't a criminal.

"We still need more to go on before we can bring Webber in for questioning," Graham said. "We need something definite, so we can pressure him."

"We need an eye-witness to say he definitely saw one of the items for sale in his store," Michael said.

"I could do it," Carmen said. "He doesn't know me. I could be a Native woman who married money and is now collecting my heritage."

"Good idea," Graham said. "Lance, you go with her as backup, but stay out of sight."

"Rusty is supposed to be back in tomorrow," Lance said. "We can try then."

The meeting broke up a few minutes later. Lance went to his locker to fetch his backpack. If he got the chance later, he wanted to hike out to the pictograph site.

"Is there something going on between you and April Webber?"

He almost dropped the pack and whirled to face Carmen. "What makes you say that?"

A smile played at the corners of her mouth. "Something in your eyes when you defended her. So I'm right? You two are involved?"

"Were involved. And it's April Morningstar. Rusty Webber is her step-dad."

"How involved were you?"

"Does it matter?" He unzipped the top of the pack and pretended to check the contents.

"I think it still matters to you."

Was he really so transparent or was Carmen, the only woman on the team, especially perceptive? "We were engaged," he said. "Breaking it off was her idea." He glanced around. "Keep quiet about it, okay?"

"Okay. But are you okay with working this case with me? What if her stepfather, or her mother, does turn out to be involved?"

"I can do my job." He zipped up the pack and shouldered it. Wasn't that what Julie accused him of—putting his job first? But that was the way it had to be. He couldn't put personal considerations above doing his sworn duty to uphold the law.

##

"Rusty, could I talk to you for a minute?" April approached her stepfather hesitantly, still unsure what she would say.

Rusty Webber, a big bear of a man with streaks of gray in his red hair, looked up with a smile. "Sure, hon. What do you need?"

"I guess Mom told you Lance was by here, wanting to talk to you."

The smile dissolved, and his whole face sagged. "She told me. I've got nothing to say to him."

"That's terrible, about those people taking those pictographs from the canyon," she said. "Why would they do something like that?"

"Collectors will pay a lot of money for art like that." He shuffled papers on his desk. "I'm really busy, hon. Lots to wrap up from my buying trip."

"I'm just asking because a couple of weeks ago I thought I saw something that looked a lot like the images in the photos Lance showed us. It was in the locked case in back."

Rusty buried his head in both hands, then looked up at her, his face pale.

"If you care about me at all, you won't mention this to you mom or anyone else again. You especially shouldn't say a word if you still care anything for that cop."