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Roy prepared a generous spread for breakfast the next day and they took it outside so that they could enjoy the view of the work being done on Roy's ranch. Bo and Lamar had dropped by earlier to grab a quick meal before returning to where they had been unloading bales of hay in the barn.

Matt dug into his omelet having arisen early and gotten in an early run to get some much needed exercise to soften his rough edges before returning to shower before breakfast. C.J. had already been dressed and ready to go out but Matt slowed her down long enough to convince her to eat some food before they went about the business of proving her innocent of Dylan's murder and going after the real killer.

After taking a few bites, she agreed with his judgment and ate the delicious breakfast in front of her.

"So what's on the schedule this morning," Roy asked them.

Matt sipped his juice.

"Well Nadine wasn't much help yesterday," he said, "I think she knows more than she's telling but we won't be able to get anything more out of her for a while."

Roy nodded.

"She both loved and hated her husband."

Matt listened to his uncle's simple matter of fact statement about his ex-girlfriend if she could be called that.

"You might be right."

C.J. knew that Roy had hit the mark on the head but knew it hadn't been as incidental as it sounded.

"Their marriage was in trouble before I came back to town," she said, "She always believed he was cheating on her and she might have been right."

Matt finished up his omelet.

"Nadine had a wandering eye of her own," he said, "Maybe Dylan found out."

C.J. shrugged.

"He would have been convinced that she was cheating whether she did or not."

Matt looked at her, his brows raised.

"Did she ever say anything to you?"

"She and I didn't get along," C.J. said, "but she did accuse me of coming after her husband a time or two but not after he disappeared."

"Did she ever say where she thought he might have gone?"

C.J. paused.

"No…but then you knew her better than I did."

"She hit on me several times when I came back to town," Matt said, "She didn't appear to miss her husband all that much."

"It was pretty turbulent between the two of them," C.J. said, "But she just hit on you yesterday so she still doesn't miss him."

Matt wondered if Nadine had married him for the money but then it occurred to him he hadn't really known that much about Dylan except mostly what he had heard from others. He did know he hadn't liked the guy.

"What did Dylan do for a living anyway," Matt asked.

"He worked as a reserve deputy," C.J. said, "and he freelanced when he got tired of being a ranch hand but no one knew exactly in what."

"He sure looked like he was living well from what I'd heard," Matt said, "But Nadine complained even after he was gone that she didn't see much of it."

C.J. remembered that all too well but then again, Nadine had complained about her husband a lot but never did anything about it. Unless, the thought occurred to her, she had killed him after all.

"He bought a fancy lifestyle with it," she said, "but he didn't seem to clue her in on that because she might have spent it."

Matt certainly knew that. After all, that was what had attracted Nadine to him. She had always been after him about his daddy's money during the short time they had been together. But he knew something else about Dylan.

"Which means there could have been another woman or two in the picture."

C.J. nodded.

"That wouldn't surprise me," she said, "then that might explain why he tried to hide it from his wife. He did attract some women around him."

"Some of Nadine's crowd if I recall."

"But if he had spent money on them," C.J. said, "Nadine would have gotten wind of it. How could he have hidden it?"

Matt sighed.

"That must have been difficult," he said, "given Nadine's penchant for the finer things in life which mostly involve money."

"He got angry with her I know that," C.J. said, "He thought she was seeing someone else too."

Matt rubbed his forehead.

"Did he or she ever say who?"

C.J. thought about it, and then shook her head.

"Not that I know," she said, "but for the most part, I kept my distance from them."

Matt heard the edge in her voice and wondered about it. C.J. had been back in Wild Fork some months before he returned from California where he had been recovering from his war injuries with Christina.

"All this intrigue must have happened before I got there."

C.J just looked at him but said nothing, playing with the remnants of her breakfast.

"I guess it did," she said finally.

"C.J. what is it that you're not saying…"

The doorbell rang at that moment and she sighed in relief. Roy went to answer it and returned with Rusty. Both Matt and C.J. looked up at him.

"What's going on," Matt asked.

"They want C.J. to come down to the sheriff's office for some questioning."

Matt and C.J. looked at each other.

"Why didn't they do this before they charged her with murder," Matt asked.

Rusty sat down at the table.

"I don't know," he said, "This whole thing seems to be a bit backwards to me."

C.J. looked back at him.

"Me too, but then there's not much in this town that's any different."

The two of them finished up their breakfast and then headed off with Rusty to the Sheriff's Department. They left their cars and walked inside the small structure which served as the town's field office. Sheriff Bailey hardly ever spent time there but there were a contingent of other deputies and some civilian clerks. One of them, a tall woman, took their names and then had them sit in the lobby and wait for the investigators talk to them.

"You don't have to answer their questions," Rusty said.

"I know," C.J. said, "But I do want to know what kind of investigation they conducted and how I got wrapped up in it."

"We'll do our best to get that information," Rusty said, "It's certainly overdue."

"You would think that the department would have done more homework on one of their reserve deputies," Matt noted, "because I don't think they knew Dylan very well."

"What do you mean," Rusty asked.

"C.J. and I were talking about how he had all this money," Matt said, "But reserve jobs don't pay anything and it's much more than a ranch hand could ever make."

Rusty's brows rose.

"You mean unlawfully gotten gain."

Matt nodded.

"Possibly," he said, "I sure would like to find out and if so, where he got it."

"Nadine wasn't much help?"

Matt and C.J. looked at each other.

"She told half the town that she dropped by your uncle's last night to see you."

Matt had forgotten that she had loved to talk as well, spreading any news to anyone within earshot.

"She didn't say much," he said, "but with her, it's always what she didn't say."

The clerk then notified them that the investigators were ready to speak with them and they followed her into a conference room where she and Rusty sat at a table with the two investigators.

One of them looked up from a notepad, the other fiddled with a recording device. They laid out the ground rules for the interview and Rusty interjected some of his own.

"My client wants to know why you charged her with murder," Rusty began, "and frankly, the thin slip of a folder you gave me with discovery is inadequate."

The two men looked at each other. Finally the one who called himself Cal spoke after perusing a thicker file. The other, Denny just watched, and took notes.

"There was evidence found with the body pointing at Ms Parsons."

"DNA?"

He shook his head.

"Jewelry."

Rusty looked at C.J. but she didn't know.

"What did you find," he said, "Can you be more specific?"

"A necklace," Cal said, "with a mustang."

C.J. remembered the necklace that Matt had given her not long before he had left for the military. She had never taken it off but there had been one night she had noticed it had been missing. After…but she kept silent.

"I had one just like it," she said, "but I lost it some time ago."

"Do you know when," Denny asked.

She shook her head.

"It would be very helpful to our investigation if you could answer that Ms Parsons…"

Matt folded his arms.

"It seems to me that your investigation ended some time ago," he said, "Somewhat prematurely."

Rusty looked over at Matt who had sat there watching the investigators obviously not impressed with them.

"Listen, you haven't given us any real evidence," he said, "to implicate my client in anything let alone murder."

Cal just looked back at him.

"We've got enough," he said, "There are eye witness statements of the confrontation between the victim and suspect…and it was more than just words."

C.J. sighed.

"We did have an argument," she said, "He was drinking and upset about his wife because she had been complaining about me."

"What about you," Cal asked.

C.J. took a deep breath.

"That I was after him which couldn't have been further from the truth," she said, "I wanted nothing to do with him."

"You were working for the District Attorney at the time," Denny noted.

"Yes I was," C.J. said, "and the only time I saw Dylan, he was talking to Jack's secretary except one night…"

"Yes?"

C.J. bit her lip and decided to change directions. Matt looked over at her and she just focused back on the investigators.

"Is this all you have against my client," Rusty asked, "because if so, you've just wasted our time. We'll see you at the prelim hearing."

"What happened with you the last time you saw Dylan," Cal pressed.

"He was alive I can assure you of that," she said, "I didn't kill him."

Rusty nodded.

"She's innocent and this is a sham of an investigation," he said, preparing to leave, "and this interview is over."

Cal shrugged.

"Okay have it your way," he said, "but if I were you Ms Parsons, I wouldn't leave town any time soon."

"I have no reason to do so."

"You better not even take one step over the county line…"

Rusty sighed.

"Are you finished with the threats?"

Cal stood up.

"You're the one who ended this interview," he said, "If you have a change of heart and want to get something off of your chest; you know how to reach us."

C.J. and Matt joined Rusty in walking out of the office, leaving the investigators to probably report back to Bailey that they hadn't gotten anything useful from her.

"Is he up for reelection too," Matt asked.

They nodded to the clerk and left the building.

"He's always up for election," Rusty said, "or thinking about it but he's not as focused on it as Jack."

Matt wondered where Jack hung out these days. It certainly wasn't at his office in Wild Fork, not that he ever had done that even when C.J. worked for him. They walked Rusty back to his car. C.J. paused sticking her hands in her pocket.

"About what I said earlier," she said, "I didn't want to go further with it because I don't know who to trust here."

"That's pretty smart," Rusty noted, "This town's rotten to the core and my guess is that Dylan got caught up in something way over his head."

"I heard his voice one night when I was at Jack's office," she said, "He was talking to Jack and acting like he wanted some money or…"

"Or what," Rusty said.

"It sounded like blackmail to me," she said.

Matt thought about that, after all Jack had been the perennial politician just like his father had been and he had wanted to improve on the original model.

"Maybe he had some secrets he didn't want the voters to find out," he said, "It would be just like Dylan to dig him up and then threaten to spill them."

Rusty considered that.

"But would anyone kill him to keep him quiet?"

Matt sighed.

"I don't know if Jack's capable," he said, "His daddy was one of mine's closest friends. They used to go fishing together."

C.J. knew that from the photo she had seen at that lake resort they had stayed at years ago.

"He was pretty determined to stay in office," she remembered, "He had made some promises to some of his political partners."

Matt furrowed his brow.

"Favors?"

She grimaced.

"Sometimes I think his backers wanted him in office more than he wanted to keep it."

"That can get a politician in a lot of trouble," Rusty noted, "I remember his daddy and his backroom deals."

So did Matt, his own father sat in some of those meetings. When he had been in town and Matt had noticed that he began staying away.

"He had a lot of late night meetings," C.J. said, "I only stayed late enough to see some of his partners arrive. They were county supervisors, maybe a councilman or two."

"It's been like that since way back in Wild Fork's history," Rusty said, "Certainly your father must have told you Matt."

"He didn't share very much of his life with me," Matt said, "Except what he wanted me to do with my own."

"But when you returned here…"

Matt sighed, scratching the back of his neck.

"Look, I had just gotten back from a combat injury, my cousin was dead or so I thought and I had a girlfriend waiting for me back in California."

C.J. remembered that time very well. Matt had wound up staying much longer than he had planned and she had wound up moving to California with him. She didn't really feel like reliving those days.

"Besides Dylan was already out of the picture by that point," Matt said.

Rusty looked at the two of them.

"I can do the best I can with what I've got," he said, "but you have to help me."

C.J. nodded.

"I'll do that," she said, "But there are some questions I want answered myself."

Rusty got inside his car and Matt and C.J. headed to theirs.

"He's trying to do the best he can C.J, he told her.

She turned to face him.

"I know that," she said, "and I realize he doesn't believe I'm telling him everything."

"Are you," he asked her.

He saw different emotions battle for control over her face.

"All I can."

"What does that mean?"

He unlocked the car and she got inside of it and he joined her on the other side.

"Houston, back then everything was so complicated," she said, "There was so much going on whether it was wanted or not."

"Meaning…"

She hedged.

"Jack might not have been the only one Dylan blackmailed."

"There were others?"

"Maybe," she said, "I don't know for sure."

"You think one of them might have killed him?"

She remained quiet for a while.

"C.J…."

She looked over at him.

"I don't know," she said, "He had other enemies too."

"Other politicians?"

"You remember what it was like when you returned," she said, "What kind of world you had stepped back into."

"Not a whole lot different than the one I left."

"And how I told you to go back where you came from," she said, "to leave while you could and go back to her."

Christina.

Not that his relationship with her had lasted all that long after he and C.J. moved to California. There had been no reason for Christina to have felt threatened by his relationship with his best friend but it had been a bone of contention between them.

"Yeah I do remember…"