Cullen recognized both of them and had even gone to school with Vance. He didn’t know Dawn as well, but one of her brothers worked on the Triple R, and he did a good job. Hardly an endorsement for his cop sister’s abilities, but at least Cullen hadn’t heard anything bad about her.
“We’ve got a DB in the master bedroom at the back of the house,” Leigh explained. “Dawn, I need you to go there and secure the scene until the CSIs and ME arrive.”
“Rocky told me it was Alexa Daly?” Dawn said.
Leigh spared her a confirming nod before she shifted back to Rocky. “You will not contact Jeb again about this investigation.” She kept her voice low, but Cullen still heard her. He heard her warning tone, too. “Understand?”
“But—” Rocky started.
“You will not contact Jeb,” Leigh interrupted. “Now, go to the front porch and direct the EMTs here.” Ignoring Rocky’s huff, she turned to Vance. “I need you to check the grounds. We’re not sure how the DB got here so take down the license plates of any vehicle you see. Jamie lives here at the ranch?” she asked.
It took Cullen a moment to realize that tacked-on question was meant for him, and he nodded. “He lives in the bunkhouse.”
Leigh shifted her attention back to Vance as Dawn and Rocky left. “Then check there, too, and see if anyone knows what Jamie was doing on the patio.”
Good question. The bunkhouse was a good quarter of a mile away from the main house, and Cullen couldn’t think of a good reason why Jamie would be here in this particular spot. But he could think of a bad reason if the ranch hand had indeed helped Alexa. Help that maybe someone had objected to because Cullen doubted that Alexa had bashed Jamie on the head and then sneaked into his bedroom to have her own encounter with a killer. Then again, maybe that was exactly what’d happened.
Vance nodded at Leigh’s order and stepped away, but not before giving Cullen the same kind of cop’s eye that Rocky had. This time Cullen didn’t even bother with a glare because his own phone rang.
Since he didn’t recognize the number, Cullen started not to answer, but then he realized it could be one of the ranch hands trying to contact him. Not a hand though because it was Austin.
“It’s me,” Austin immediately said. “I don’t have my phone so the clerk here at the gas station let me borrow his.”
Normally, Cullen wouldn’t have minded a call from the man he considered a close friend, but it’d been less than an hour since Austin had left the party, and Cullen wasn’t in the mood for a chat.
“I figured you’d be home by now,” Cullen remarked, hoping to put a quick end to this conversation.
“I was heading that way, but the roads are bad so I was going slow. I nearly ran out of gas, too, so I stopped, and I overheard the clerk talking about his girlfriend getting called out to the Triple R. He said she was a CSI.”
Cullen sighed and stepped back into the bedroom to deal with this call. This was the downside to living in a small town. Gossip, especially gossip about bad news, didn’t stay hush-hush for long.
“Alexa’s dead,” Cullen said. “And no, I didn’t kill her. I don’t have a clue who did.”
Austin cursed. “What the hell was she doing there?”
“Don’t know that, either. In fact, I don’t have answers to much of anything right now.” Cullen watched as the EMTs hurried toward the patio to tend to Jamie. “But we might know something soon. Did you see anyone at the party who shouldn’t have been there?” Cullen asked.
Austin paused, probably giving that some thought. “No. Are you telling me that someone came into your house and killed Alexa?”
“It looks that way.” Cullen dragged in a long breath. “Maybe you could ask Kali if she saw anything? Kali got here early to make sure I didn’t need any help so she might have noticed something off.”
Austin paused again. “Yeah, I’ll call her and ask.”
Cullen’s forehead bunched up. “She’s not with you?”
“No. After she left the party, she went back to her folks’ place for the night. I think she and her mom are doing some wedding stuff first thing in the morning. But I can tell you that if Kali had seen anything off, she would have said something to me about it. She was right by my side most of the night.”
That was true, but most wasn’tall. “You stepped outside for a smoke a couple of times,” Cullen reminded him. “Did you see anything then?”
“Just one smoke,” Austin corrected. “And I didn’t see a thing that sent up any red flags.”
Cullen pushed a little harder. “Were you anywhere near the guest room patio or the patio off my bedroom?”
“No.” Austin’s answer was firm and fast. “Is that where you think the killer was?”
“Yeah, along with being in my bedroom. Any chance you were in the hall outside my suite at any time during the night?”
Austin cursed. “This is beginning to sound like an interrogation, but no, I didn’t go anywhere near that hall. No reason for it. Ditto for staying outside very long when I went out for that smoke. It was too damn cold.”