Page 147 of Timid (Lark Cove 2)

I pushed in my chair, then bent to kiss the top of Willa’s head. “I’m going to see if your mom needs some help.”

She gave me another absent nod before I left them for the kitchen. It was Saturday, over a week since my name had been cleared, and Betty and Nate had invited us all over for the day. We were going to play games, watch college football and then have Betty’s famous pot roast for dinner.

“How goes the battle?” Betty asked as I walked into her kitchen.

I chuckled. “If Willa wins this game, it’s tied at one win apiece. But I’m thinking Ryder might beat them both.”

“Good.” She smiled. “How’s he doing?”

“Better.” I went to the fridge for one of Nate’s cans of Sprite. “Yesterday was rough, but I think he’s just glad to know what happened to her.”

“I’m sorry it was difficult, but I hope you both can find some closure now.”

“Me too, Betty.”

Magee had personally come over yesterday to break the news.

Because of Ryder’s information, they’d found Mom’s killer.

“What else did Sheriff Magee tell you yesterday?” Betty asked, taking a seat by their kitchen island.

I slid into the chair next to her, then glanced over my shoulder. Willa and I had decided not to give Ryder the dirty details about Mom’s murder. We’d explained to him that Christopher, her ex-boyfriend, had killed Mom just as he’d suspected. But we hadn’t told him even half of what the sheriff had explained.

We were protecting him, at least I hoped, because it wasn’t a pretty story.

But it was one I felt comfortable sharing with Betty.

“Christopher was basically supporting Mom and Ryder for the year they lived with him in Las Vegas. Mom met him through a mutual friend. They hooked up. Two weeks later, he moved Mom and Ryder from Iowa to Vegas and right into his house.”

I don’t know if he really loved Mom or not. My guess was yes and the reason she was dead now was because she’d betrayed him.

“Christopher was a bookie,” I told Betty. “And he kept a lot of cash around the house. Mom decided to relieve him of some of that cash when she and Ryder left Vegas for Denver.”

“And that’s when she started to look for you, right?” Betty asked. “Just because she needed a place to drop Ryder?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know. Probably. I think she was also running out of money while they were in Denver. She’d been spending it like crazy, buying a car and living out of a hotel. Plus Ryder was sneaking it away from her. Either way, I’m glad she came looking. Who knows where Ryder would be if she had decided to keep him along.”

I hated to think that he could have faced Christopher’s wrath too.

“So after she dropped off Ryder with me, I guess she went back to Vegas. I assume it was to blackmail Christopher for more money.”

That was what Magee assumed too. He’d been working nonstop to find evidence, though the most condemning pieces were the recordings she’d stashed with Ryder. Once Ryder handed those over, Magee found enough puzzle pieces to make sense of the picture.

Christopher had been skimming from his clients. Mom had found out. Just like she’d probably done with countless other people, she’d made recordings of Christopher admitting to taking extra “fees.”

“It backfired on her,” Betty muttered.

“Yes, it did.”

Instead of getting more money from Christopher, he’d threatened to kill her. She’d fled Vegas again. That could have been the end of it, except Christopher had followed her.

Magee had gotten transcripts of the text messages sent from the phone Mom had falsely registered under Ryder’s name. They showed an exchange between Christopher and Mom, further proving she was alive after I’d left her at the bar.

Thanks to the exchange, Magee knew Christopher had followed her to Montana. He’d likely promised to pay her off for her silence. Mom had sent him instructions of where to meet, down Old Logger’s Road. But instead of giving her a payday, he’d strangled her with his bare hands, then driven her car into a ditch.

We didn’t have proof that Christopher was the one who’d broken into my house. But based on his credit card activity, it looked like he’d been hanging around Montana ever since he’d killed Mom. He’d probably been watching, waiting to see if they’d find her body. And when they did, he must have panicked. He waited for the right time and broke into my house, likely in search of the recordings he’d known Mom had taken.

Or the last of his cash.