Gun-Shy Bride (4 page)

“Fifty grand.”

He let out a low whistle. “How the hell did you—”

“You’re starting to sound like Buzz,” Eugene said in a warning tone.

“Sorry, but that’s a lot of money.”

“You think I don’t know that? I just made a few bad bets down in Billings and now they’re threatening to kill me.”

It was Luke’s turn to swear. “How long are they giving you to come up with the money?”

“Six weeks, but that was two months ago,” Eugene said. “I’ve heard they’re looking for me.”

“I don’t have that kind of money.” Luke had invested most everything he had in the house and land.

“You could put this place up. It’s got to be worth a bunch. How many acres do you have here, anyway?”

Luke felt as if he’d been sucker punched. He waited until his initial anger had passed. “I can’t do that,” he said, turning to leave. He wasn’t stupid enough that he didn’t know what would happen if he put up his place for the money. “There are already two mortgages on it.”

“Even ten thou would help,” Eugene said, pleading. He didn’t seem to notice the tip of his rod bend as a fish took the bait.

The fish was the only one taking the bait today. “Sorry.” This was one mess Eugene would have to get out of on his own.

“Yeah, sure you’re sorry,” Eugene said bitterly.

Luke’s cell phone rang. He checked it and groaned inwardly. “I have to take this.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

Luke hated leaving things this way between them. He wished there was something more he could say. But the only thing Eugene wanted to hear was that Luke was going to bail him out, just as he had done too many times in the past.

Instead, as he left he pointed to his cousin’s pole. “You have a fish.”

M
C
C
ALL WAS ON THE OUTSKIRTS
of Whitehorse when she got the call on her cell phone. The moment she heard the sheriff’s voice, she knew.

“Where are you?” Grant asked.

“On the edge of town. Something up?” She hadn’t
heard anything on her radio. There was little crime in Whitehorse. The weekly sheriff’s reports consisted of barking dogs, checks on elderly residents, calls about teens making too much noise and a few drunk and disorderlies.

The sheriff seemed to hesitate. “Pepper Winchester phoned me.”

McCall had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. Still, it hit with a thud that set off her pulse. Hadn’t she known this would happen? And yet, she’d hoped blood really was thicker than water.

“Pepper seemed to think you were on sheriff’s department business, investigating her son’s disappearance,” Grant said. “I assured her that wasn’t the case. I can understand how you might have wanted to see her.”

McCall said nothing, hating the pity she heard in his voice. He thought the only reason she’d gone out there was to see her grandmother.

He cleared his throat. “She said if you came back she’d have you arrested for trespassing. I’m sorry.”

McCall bit back an unladylike retort. Her grandmother was turning out to be everything she’d heard she was, and the sheriff’s sympathy wasn’t helping.

“It might be a good idea to stay away from the Winchester Ranch,” Grant said before he hung up.

As she pulled into Whitehorse, McCall’s two-way radio squawked. She listened for a moment as the dispatcher said there’d been a call about a disturbance at the Mint Bar.

She started to let the other deputy on duty pick it up since she was off the clock.

But when she heard who was involved, she said she’d take the call and swung into a parking space outside the Mint.

She heard Rocky’s voice the moment she opened the bar door. A small crowd had gathered around the rock collector. As she walked in, she recognized most of the men. One in particular made her regret she’d taken the call.

Rocky was at the center of the trouble but in the mix was Eugene Crawford. At a glance, she saw that both men were drunk. Eugene as usual looked as if he was itching for a fight.

“Excuse me,” she said, easing her way into the circle of men around Rocky. Closing her hand around Rocky’s upper arm, she said, “It’s time to go home.”

“Well, look who it is,” Eugene said. “It’s the girl deputy.”

Eugene had been the school bully and she’d been his target. It was bad enough in grade school, but in high school it had gotten worse after she turned him down for a date.

“If you gentlemen will excuse us,” McCall said, drawing Rocky away from the fracas.

“What’s this about some grave Rocky found south of town?” Crawford demanded.

“Probably just a fish story like the one you told when you came in,” one of the men ribbed Eugene.

McCall led Rocky toward the door. He was being the perfect docile drunk. A few more feet and they would be out of the bar.

“I asked you a question,
Deputy,
” Eugene said, coming up behind her and grabbing her arm.

“Let go,” she said as he tightened his grip on her. “Let go now, Eugene.” He smelled of fish and sweat and meanness.

“Or what? You going to arrest me?” His nails bit into her flesh. “Try it,” he said and gave her a shove, slamming her into the jukebox.

She staggered but didn’t fall. “Going to need some backup,” McCall said into her radio as Rocky leaped to her defense.

Before she could stop him, Eugene coldcocked Rocky, who hit the floor hard. Eugene was turning to take on the others who’d jumped in when the bartender came over the bar with his baseball bat.

It took McCall, Deputy Nick Giovanni and the bartender to get Eugene Crawford restrained and into handcuffs. Nick took Eugene to the jail while McCall drove Rocky home. He was quiet most of the ride.

“Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked as she walked him to his front door. “I’d feel better if I took you by the emergency room at the hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Rocky said, looking sheepish. “I guess I have a glass jaw, as they say.”

“Eugene hit you awfully hard.”

Rocky seemed to have sobered up some. “You know that was a grave I found, don’t you?”

McCall said nothing.

“I know I said I thought it was old, but it wasn’t. And it wasn’t no Indian grave like Eugene was saying, and I think you know that, too.”

She patted his shoulder. “Get some rest.” As she turned toward her pickup, all she wanted was to go home and put this day behind her.

But as she drove the few miles out of town and turned down the river road to her small old cabin beside the Milk River, she saw the pickup parked in her yard.

She slowed as she recognized the logo on the side of the truck. Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks. She felt her heart drop as she pulled alongside and Game Warden Luke Crawford climbed out.

L
UKE HATED THE WAY HE FELT
as he watched McCall walk toward him. He was again that awkward, tongue-tied, infatuated seventeen-year-old—just as he’d been the first time he’d ever kissed McCall Winchester.

A lot of things had changed in the years since, but not that.

“Luke?” She stopped in front of her pickup. One hand rested on her hip just above the grip of her weapon. She was still in uniform except for her hat. Some of her long dark hair had come loose from the clip at the nape of her neck and now fell over one shoulder.

He tipped his hat. “Sorry to bother you.”

She frowned, clearly waiting for him to tell her what the hell he was doing here. She had to have heard he was back in town.

“I got another call tonight about some poaching down in the river bottom,” he said.

“On my property?”

He pointed down into the thicket of tangled willows and cottonwoods. “On the place down the river, but I believe they used the river road to get in and out so they had to have gone right past your place. I was wondering if you heard anything last night? Would have probably been between two and four this morning.”

“I pulled the late shift last night so I wasn’t around. Sorry.”

He nodded and asked who else knew her schedule.

“You saying the poachers knew I would be gone last night?”

“It crossed my mind. Your place is the closest.”

She leaned against the front of her pickup, clearly not intending to ask him inside. The Little Rockies in the distance were etched a deep purple against the twilight. He noticed in the waning light that she looked exhausted.

“Rough day?” he asked, feeling the cool air come up out of the river bottom.

“You could say that.” She was studying him, waiting as if she expected him to tell her the real reason he was here.

But he’d said everything years ago and she hadn’t believed him then. No reason she’d believe him now.

He closed his notebook. “I’d appreciate it if you kept an eye out and gave me a call if you see or hear anything.”

She pushed herself off the front of her pickup. “You bet.”

“The poachers are driving a pickup, probably a half ton or three-quarter-ton four-wheel drive.”

“Like half the residents in this county,” she said.

“Narrows it right down for me.” He smiled, hat in his hand, thinking that even as exhausted as McCall was she’d never looked more beautiful. He told himself to just get in his truck and get out of there before he said something he’d regret.

She smiled, a tired almost sad smile. “Well, I hope you catch ’em.”

“Me, too.” He put on his hat, tipped it, and turned toward his pickup. As he slid behind the wheel, he saw that she’d gone inside her cabin. The lights glowed golden through the windows. He sat for a moment, wishing—
Mentally he gave himself a swift kick and started the truck, annoyed for going down that old trail of thought. From the beginning he and McCall hadn’t stood a chance, not with the bad blood between their families. He’d been a fool to think that they did.

But for a while, she’d made him believe they were destined to be together, star-crossed lovers who’d found a way. They’d been young and foolish. At least he had, he thought as he left.

He didn’t dare glance back, knowing he was wasting his time if he thought she cared a plugged nickel for him.

If he had looked back, though, he would have seen her standing in the deepening shadows of her deck, hugging herself against the cool of the night, watching him drive away.

The next morning, McCall woke blurry-eyed to the sound of a vehicle driving up in her yard. She pulled on her robe and padded out to the living room as she heard someone coming across the deck, making a beeline for her front door.

It was too early for company. Had something happened?

She thought of Luke. Not him again, she hoped. Seeing him waiting for her last night had been the last straw after the day she’d had. She’d had a devil of a time getting to sleep last night and it was all Luke Crawford’s fault. What the hell was he doing back in Whitehorse, anyway?

Usually, she found peace in her cabin on the river. The place was small, but the view from her deck made up for it. She loved to sit and listen to the rustle of the cottonwood trees, watch the deer meander through the tall grass along the river’s edge and breathe in the sweet scents of the seasons.

Last night, though, after she’d watched Luke drive away, not even a beer and a hot bath had soothed what ailed her.

Now she realized she hadn’t locked the door last night. The knob turned, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father’s hunting license on the kitchen counter where she’d left it last night.

She quickly snatched up the license and, lifting the lid on an empty canister on the counter, dropped it inside.

She’d barely dropped the lid, when the door was flung open.

“What in the world?” she bellowed as her mother came busting in.

Her mother stopped in midstride, a cigarette dangling from one corner of her mouth. “Did I forget to knock?”

“Do you know what time it is?” McCall demanded. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to see you before I went to work,” her mother snapped back. “You might remember I work early.”

Before McCall could wonder what was so important that it had her mother here at the crack of dawn, Ruby enlightened her.

“I can’t believe you went out to the Winchesters’. What were you thinking?” her mother demanded. “Now that old woman is threatening to have you arrested? It’s all over town.”

McCall leaned against the kitchen counter. “Why is it that anything I do is always all over town within minutes?”

Ruby waved a hand through the air as if it was too obvious. “You’re a
Winchester
.”

McCall sighed. “Only by name.” A name she’d often regretted.

“You’re
Trace
Winchester’s
daughter
.”

As if that were something to celebrate, McCall thought, but was smart enough not to voice that senti
ment to her mother, especially in the mood Ruby was in. No matter what Trace had done to her, Ruby would defend him to her death.

“As
Trace
Winchester’s daughter, I should have the right to visit my grandmother,” McCall said instead and motioned at her mother’s cigarette. She didn’t permit smoking in her cabin. Not after inhaling her mother’s secondhand smoke for years.

“Don’t you want to know how I found out?” Ruby asked, looking around for an ashtray.

“Not particularly.”

“That bitch Enid. She must have called everyone in town this morning, announcing that her boss was going to have you arrested.”

“I wasn’t arrested.” But she could be soon for interfering in a murder investigation. She tried not to think about that right now, though.

Ruby, not seeing an ashtray, opened the cabin door and started to flick the cigarette out, then apparently thought better of it.

“That old harpy,” she said, stepping outside and leaving the door open as she ground the cigarette into the dirt. “I thought she’d be dead by now. She’s got to be a hundred. Mean to the core.”

McCall poured yesterday’s coffee into two mugs, put them in the microwave and handed her mother a cup as she came back in. Taking the other cup, McCall curled up on one end of the couch.

The coffee tasted terrible, but it was hot and she needed the caffeine. Her mother sat down at the opposite end of the couch. She seemed to have calmed down a little.

“I just don’t understand why you would go out there after all these years?”

“Maybe I finally wanted to see my grandmother.”

Ruby eyed her. “Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“And?”

“And I saw her. End of story.”

“Did she even know who you were? Of course she did. One look at you and she’d see the Winchester in you.”

“You never told me I looked so much like her.” She hadn’t meant it to sound so accusatory.

Ruby shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. Her mother was so used to drinking bad coffee she didn’t even grimace. “So what did she say to you?”

“It was a short conversation before she showed me the door.”

Ruby toyed with the handle on her coffee mug. “Are you going to see her again?”

Was she worried McCall would be accepted by the Winchesters when Ruby hadn’t been? The idea would have been laughable if it hadn’t hurt so much.

“She called the sheriff on me. Does that answer your question?”

Ruby was ablaze, cursing Pepper Winchester clear to Hades and back, not that it was anything new.

“I’m sorry, baby,” her mother said. She finished her coffee and got up to rinse the mug in the kitchen sink. “But don’t feel too bad. It isn’t like she was close to any of her kids or her other grandkids. She’s just an evil old crone who deserves to live like a hermit.”

McCall didn’t tell her mother that she felt a little sorry for Pepper Winchester—anyone who’d seen the
hope in her eyes at the mention of Trace’s name would have been.

Ruby checked her watch. “I’m going to be late for work.” She looked at her daughter as if she held McCall responsible. “Promise me you won’t go back out there.”

McCall was saved by the ringing of her cell phone. She found it where she’d dropped it last night and checked caller ID. “It’s my boss.”

“Then you’d better take it,” Ruby said. “Stop by the café later.”

“If I can,” McCall said and waited until her mother disappeared out the door before she took the call, fearing that her morning was about to get worse.

“Y
OU’RE UP EARLY
,” Buzz Crawford said from the deck of his lake house as Luke joined him.

“Haven’t you heard? Poachers never sleep.”

Buzz chuckled. “You’re right about that. Catch any lately?”

He’d spent the night down in the river bottom patrolling. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway after his visit to McCall. This morning he’d caught a few hours’ sleep before coming by his uncle’s.

“A few,” he said, distracted at the thought of McCall.

Buzz shook his head. “You’re too easy on the bastards. These guys around here aren’t afraid of you. When I was warden, they knew if they broke the law I’d be on them like stink on a dog.”

Luke had heard it all before, way too many times.

“So how’s the fishing been?” he asked to change the subject. It was one of those rare April days when the
temperature was already in the fifties and expected to get up as high as seventy before the day was over. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue, cloudless and bright with the morning sun.

Buzz, who was sitting in one of the lawn chairs overlooking Nelson Reservoir, said something under his breath Luke didn’t catch and was thankful for it.

“Help yourself to some coffee, if you want,” Buzz said, handing Luke his cup to refill.

“Thanks.” Luke stepped into the kitchen and poured himself a mug, refilling his uncle’s before returning to the deck.

A flock of geese honked somewhere in the distance and he could see the dark V of a half-dozen pelicans circling over the water. The ice had only melted off last week leaving the water a deep green.

“Walleye chop,” Buzz said as Luke handed him his coffee, indicating the water’s surface now being kicked up by the wind. “The fish’ll be bitin’. Since you’re not going to catch any criminals anyway, you might as well come fishing with me.”

Luke ignored the dig. “Can’t.” But spending the day fishing did have its appeal. “I have to work on the house or it will never get finished.” He had a couple of days off, and he planned to get as much done as possible.

“I’ve never understood why you bought that place back,” Buzz said, shaking his head. “It was nothing but work for your father. I’d think you’d want to start fresh. No ghosts.”

Is that how Buzz saw the past? Full of ghosts? It surprised Luke. The old homestead was his mother’s family’s place. He’d lived there his first seven years
with his parents before their deaths and cherished those memories.

“You hear about those bones found south of town?” his uncle asked, then swore when Luke said he hadn’t. “You never know what’s going on,” Buzz complained. “Anyway, it seems Rocky Harrison found some bones and was going on about them at the bar and somehow Eugene got arrested.”

No mystery there,
Luke thought. Eugene getting arrested had long ceased to be news.

“Rocky swore the bones were human. Probably just some dead animal. I thought for sure you might have heard somethin’.”

Luke watched a fishing boat against the opposite shore, the putter of the motor lulling him as he wondered idly why his uncle would be so interested in some old bones.

P
EPPER STOPPED IN FRONT
of Trace’s bedroom door, the key clutched in her hand. She’d had Enid lock the room, wanting it left just as it was the day her youngest son left it.

Had she really thought he’d return to the ranch? He’d been a day short of twenty the last time she saw him. He’d promised to come to the birthday party she was throwing for him. All of the family would be there and had been warned to be on their best behavior. She had planned the huge party and, even though the two of them had fought, Pepper had been so sure he wouldn’t miss his party for anything.

“You old fool,” she muttered as she slipped the key into the lock. She’d had her first child at seventeen. Trace had come along unexpectedly after her doctor
said she couldn’t have any more children. She had thought of Trace as her miracle child.

She realized she hadn’t thought about her other children and grandchildren in years. They’d resented Trace and her relationship with him. Their jealousy had turned her stomach and finally turned her against them.

With a grimace, she realized she could be a great-grandmother by now.

The door to Trace’s room opened. Air wafted out, smelling stale and musty and she could see dust thick as paint everywhere as she stepped in.

The bed was covered in an old quilt, the colors faded, the stitching broken in dozens of places. She started to touch the once-vibrant colored squares but pulled her hand back.

Her eyes lit on the stack of outdoor and hunting magazines piled up beside the bed. Trace had lived and breathed hunting. He’d been like his father that way.

Her husband, Call, came to mind. She chased that memory away like a pesky fly, wishing she could kill it.

The door to the closet was open, and she could see most of Trace’s clothes still hanging inside it, also covered with dust just like his guitar in the corner, like his high school sports trophies lined up on the shelves and his wild animal posters on the walls.

Pepper stood in the middle of the room feeling weak and angry at herself for that weakness. No wonder she had avoided this room, like so many others, all these years.

But as she stood there, she realized there was nothing of Trace left here. There was no reason to lock the room anymore or to keep what her son had left behind.

Trace Winchester was gone and he wasn’t coming back.

That realization struck her to her core since she’d held on to the opposite belief for the past twenty-seven years.

Tears blurred her eyes as she looked around the room realizing what had changed. She’d become convinced her son was never coming home the moment she’d laid eyes on his deputy daughter.

M
C
C
ALL MENTALLY KICKED
herself for the position she’d put herself in as she pulled into the sheriff’s department parking lot. If she’d told the sheriff up front about what she’d found and her suspicions—

When he’d called this morning, he hadn’t said why he wanted to see her, just that he did, even though it was her day off. He had only said it was important.

The best thing she could do was confess all.

Except as she got out of her pickup, she knew she couldn’t do that. Not yet. Once she told Grant about the hunting license, the news would be all over town.

Right now she had a slim advantage to find the killer because he didn’t know she was after him yet.

Even if the killer—who she was assuming still lived in Whitehorse since few people left—had heard about the discovery of the bones, he would still think he was safe. He’d taken everything that identified the body—even her father’s boots, his wallet, his pickup and rifle—all things that could have identified the body.

The killer just hadn’t known about the hunting license in one of Trace’s pockets, apparently.

As McCall started toward her boss’s office, she hesitated. She was jeopardizing more than her job by inves
tigating this on her own. Once she started asking questions around town, the killer would know she was on to him and she would be putting her life in danger.

But if there was even a chance that Trace Winchester wouldn’t have run out on them, that he’d have stayed and made them a family, then she owed it to all of them to find out who had taken that away.

“Thanks for coming in,” Sheriff Grant Sheridan said as she tapped on his open door. He motioned to a chair in front of his desk. “Please close the door.”

She stepped in, shutting the door behind her. Grant leaned back in his chair. He was a stocky, reasonably attractive man, with dark hair graying at the temples, intense blue eyes and a permanent grave expression.

A contemporary of her mother’s, McCall had heard that the two had once dated back in high school, but then who hadn’t her mother dated?

“How are you this morning?” Grant asked as McCall sat.

“Fine.” She hoped this wasn’t about her visit yesterday to the Winchester Ranch but maybe that was better than the alternative.