Steel Resolve

by B. J Daniels

  The apartment was done in bright cheery colors that reminded him of Mary. “No, thanks.” He felt nervous now that he was here.

  She motioned to the dining-room table standing in a shaft of morning sun. Through the window, he could see Lone Peak. “Your apartment is wonderful,” he said as he put the shoebox on the table and sat down.

  “Thanks.” Mary pulled out a chair opposite him. “May I?” she asked, and pulled the box toward her.

  He nodded. “I looked at some of it, but truthfully, I didn’t want to do this alone.”

  She took out the diary pages, treating them as if they were made of glass. “There had to be a reason her friend was told to give you this after she was gone.” She picked up one page and read aloud, “‘Friday, I saw him again at Buck’s T-4. He didn’t see me but I think he knew I was there. He kept looking around as if looking for me.’”

  “She met him here in Big Sky!” Mary exclaimed as she flipped the page over. “‘Saturday. I hate that we can’t be together. He hates it too so that makes me feel a little better.’”

  She looked up at Chase. “They were star-crossed lovers right here in Montana.”

  “Star-crossed lovers?” He scoffed. “From what I’ve read, it’s clear that he was a married man.” He raked a hand through his hair. “What if my father has been here in Big Sky all this time, and I never knew it?”

  * * *

  MARY COULD SEE how hard this was on him, just as she could tell that a part of him wasn’t sure he wanted to know the truth. “Are you sure you want to find him?”

  Chase had been fifteen when his mother had gotten sick the first time, and he’d come to the area to work on a neighboring ranch. Later, Mary’s family had put him to work on their ranch, giving him a place to live while he and Mary finished school.

  They’d both believed that he’d been sent to Montana because of one of Hud’s law-enforcement connections. Her father had never spelled it out, but she now realized that both of her parents must have known Chase’s mother back when she’d lived here. She must have been the one who’d asked them to look out for him.

  Mary and Chase had been close from the very start. From as far back as she could remember, he’d been haunted by the fact that he didn’t know who his father was. He’d been born in Arizona. He’d just assumed that was where his mother met his father. He hadn’t known that there was much more of a Montana connection than either he or Mary had known. Until now.

  “Truthfully? I’m not sure of anything.” His gaze met hers. “Except how I feel about you.”

  “Chase—”

  He waved a hand through the air. “Sorry. As for my...father... I have to know who he is and why he did what he did.”

  She nodded. “So we’ll find him,” she said, and picked up another page of the diary. “There has to be some reason he couldn’t marry your mother.”

  He swore under his breath. “I told you. He was already married. It’s the only thing that’s ever made sense. It’s why my mother refused to tell me who he is.”

  “Maybe she mentions his name on one of the pages,” Mary suggested. “If we put them in order.” She went to work, sorting through them, but quickly realized that she never mentioned him by name, only J.M.

  She stopped sorting to look at him. “J.M.? He shouldn’t be hard to find if he still lives here.” She got up and went to a desk, returning with a laptop. “Maybe we should read through them first though. It doesn’t look as if she wrote something every day.” She counted the diary sheets. “There are forty-two of them with days on both sides, so eight-four days.”

  “About three months,” Chase said. “If we knew when the affair started...” They quickly began going through the pages. “This might help,” he said as he held up one of the pages.

  Something in his voice caught her attention more than his words. “What is it?”

  “Christmas Eve.” He read what his mother had written. “‘It was so romantic. I never dreamed it could be like this. But he reminded me that I didn’t have much to compare it with. He said it would get better. I can’t imagine.’”

  Chase looked up. “I was born nine months later.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but it was clear that it mattered a whole lot. “I have to know who he is.”

  She heard the fury in his voice as he told her about the heart-shaped necklace that his mother had never taken off. “Maybe he loved her.”

  He scoffed at that. “If he’d loved her, he wouldn’t have abandoned her. She was alone, broke and struggling to raise his child.”

  “Maybe the answer is in these pages, and we just missed something,” Mary said after they finished going through them.

  He shook his head and scooped up the diary pages, stuffing them roughly back into the shoebox and slamming down the lid.

  Mary wanted to know the whole story. She looked at the box longingly. It was clear that Chase had already made up his mind. Even after reading all the diary entries, she knew it was his mother’s view of the relationship, and clearly Muriel’s head had been in the stars.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked, worried.

  “Find him. J.M. The Big Sky area isn’t that large.” He stepped over to the laptop and called up local phone listings from the browser and started with the Ms. “We can surmise from what she wrote that he’s older, more experienced and married. The necklace he gave her wasn’t some cheap dime-store one. He had money, probably owned a business in town.”

  She hesitated, worried now what he would do once he found the man in question. “I think you should let me go with you once we narrow down the list of men.”

  He looked at her, hope in his expression. “You would do that?”

  “Of course.” She picked up the phone to call her mother. Dana had known Chase’s mother Muriel. That was clearly why Chase had come to live on the ranch at fifteen. “I need to know how Chase came to live with us.”

  She listened, and after a moment hung up and said to Chase, “Your mother worked in Meadow Village at the grocery store. She says she didn’t know who Muriel was seeing, and I believe her. She would have told us if she’d known. She did say that your mother rented a place on the edge of town. So your mother could have met your father at the grocery store or on her way to work or just about anywhere around here.”

  Chase shook his head. “His wife probably did the grocery shopping.”

  “We don’t know that he had a wife. We’re just assuming...” But Chase wasn’t listening. He was going through the phone listings.

  * * *

  GRADY BIRCH HAD been leaving when Hud pulled into the drive in front of the cabin. For just a moment, he thought the man might make a run for it. Grady’s expression had been like a deer caught in his headlights. Hud suspected the man always looked like that when he saw the law—and for good reason.

  It amused the marshal that Grady pretended nonchalance, leaning against the doorframe as if he had nothing to hide. As Hud exited his patrol SUV and moved toward the man, Grady’s nerves got the better of him. His elbow slid off the doorframe, throwing the man off balance. He stumbled to catch himself, looking even more agitated.

  “Marshal,” he said, his voice high and strained before he cleared his throat. “What brings you out this way?”

  “Why don’t we step into your cabin and talk?” Hud suggested.

  Grady shot a look behind him through the doorway as if he wasn’t sure what evidence might be lying around in there. “I’d just as soon talk out here. Unless you have a warrant. I know my rights.”

  “Why would I have a warrant, Mr. Birch? I just drove out here to talk to you about Christy Shores.”

  Grady frowned. That hadn’t been what he’d expected. The man’s relief showed on his ferret-thin face. Grady’s relief that this was about Christy told Hud that this
had been a wasted trip. The man hadn’t killed the barista. Grady was more worried about being arrested for cattle rustling.

  “I just have a couple of quick questions,” Hud said, hoping Grady gave him something to go on. “You dated Christy?”

  “I wouldn’t call it dating exactly.”

  “You were involved with her.”

  Grady shook his head. “I wouldn’t say that either.”

  Hud sighed and shifted on his feet. “What would you say?”

  “I knew who she was.”

  “You knew her well enough to get in a fight over her at Charley’s the night she was killed.”

  “Let’s say I had a good thing going with her, and Chet tried to horn in.”

  “What did Christy have to say about all this?”

  Grady frowned as if he didn’t understand the question. He was leaning against the doorframe again, only this time he looked a lot more comfortable.

  Hud rephrased it. “What did she get out of this...relationship with you?”

  “Other than the obvious?” Grady asked with a laugh. “It was a place to sleep so she didn’t have to go back to her mother’s in Bozeman.”

  “Is that where she was headed that night, to your cabin?”

  Grady shook his head. “I told her it wasn’t happening. I saw her making eyes at Chet. Let him put her up out at his place. I won’t be used by any woman.”

  Hud had to bite his tongue. The way men like Grady treated women made his teeth ache. “When was the last time you saw her?”

  “When Chet told her to scram and she ran into the bathroom crying.”

  “That was before the two of you got thrown out of the bar?” the marshal asked.

  Grady nodded. “So have you found out who ran her down?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Probably some tourist traveling through. I was in Yellowstone once, and there was this woman walking along the edge of the highway and this motor home came along. You know how those big old things have those huge side mirrors? One of them caught her in the back of the head.” Grady made a disgusted sound. “Killed her deader than a doornail. Could have taken her head off if the driver had been going faster.”

  “Christy Shores wasn’t killed by a motor home. She was murdered by someone locally.”

  Grady’s eyes widened. “Seriously? You don’t think Chet...”

  “Chet has an alibi for the time of the murder. Can anyone verify that you came straight here to this cabin and didn’t leave again?”

  “I was alone, but I can assure you I didn’t leave again.”

  Hud knew the value of an assurance by Grady Birch. “You wouldn’t know anyone who might have wanted to harm her, do you?”

  He wagged his head, still looking shocked. “Christy was all right, you know. She didn’t deserve that.” He sounded as if he’d just realized that if he’d brought her back to his cabin that night, she would still be alive.

  * * *

  DILLON WAS HEADED to Grady’s when he saw the marshal’s SUV coming out of the dirt road into the cabin. He waved and kept going as if headed to Bozeman, his pulse thundering in his ears. What had the marshal been doing out at the cabin? Was he investigating the cattle rustling?

  He glanced in his rearview mirror. The marshal hadn’t slowed or turned around as if headed back to Big Sky, and as far as Dillon could tell, Grady wasn’t handcuffed in the back. He kept going until he couldn’t see the patrol SUV in his rearview anymore before he pulled over, did a highway patrol turn and headed back toward the cabin.

  His instincts told him not to. The marshal might circle back. Right now, he especially didn’t want Hud knowing about his association with Grady Birch. But he had to find out what was going on. If he needed to skip the state, he wanted to at least get a running start.

  He drove to the cabin, parking behind it. As he did, he saw Grady peer out the window. Had he thought the marshal had reason to return? The back door flew open. Grady looked pale and shaken. Dillon swore under his breath. It must be bad. But how bad?

  “What—” He didn’t get to finish his question before Grady began to talk, his words tumbling over each other. He caught enough of it to realize that the marshal’s visit had nothing to do with cattle. Relief washed over him.

  Pushing past Grady, he went into the cabin, opened the refrigerator and took the last beer. He guzzled it like a man dying of thirst. That had been too close of a call. He’d been so sure that Hud was on to them.

  “Did you hear what I said?” Grady demanded. “She was murdered. Marshal said so himself.”

  Dillon couldn’t care less about some girl Grady had been hanging with, and said as much.

  “You really are a coldhearted bastard,” Grady snapped. “And you drank the last beer,” he said as he opened the refrigerator. “How about you bring a six-pack or two out for a change? I do all the heavy lifting and you—”

  “Put a sock in it or I will.” He wasn’t in the mood for any whining. “I have my own problems.”

  “The marshal sniffing around you?”

  He finished the beer and tossed the can into the corner with the others piled there. “It’s the marshal’s daughter. Things aren’t progressing like I planned.”

  Grady let out a disgusting sound. “I really don’t care about your love life. I’ve never understood why you were messing with her to start with.”

  “Because she could be valuable, but I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

  His partner in crime bristled. “You know I’m getting damned tired of you talking down to me. Why don’t you rustle your own cattle? I’m finished.”

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Dillon asked, noticing a flyer on the table that he hadn’t seen before. With a shock, he saw that it advertised a reward from local ranchers for any information about the recent cattle rustling.

  “I’m going into Charley’s to have a few, maybe pick up some money shooting pool, might even find me a woman.”

  “You’ve already jeopardized the entire operation because of the last woman you brought out here.”

  Grady turned to look back at him. “What are you talking about?”

  “Where’d you get that notice about the reward being offered by the ranchers?”

  “They’re all over town.”

  “So you just picked up one. Did the marshal see it?”

  Grady colored. “No, I wouldn’t let him in. I’m not a fool.”

  But Dillon realized that he was a fool, one that he could no longer afford. “I’m just saying that maybe you should lie low.”

  “I was headed into town when the marshal drove up. He doesn’t suspect me of anything, all right? I’ve got cabin fever. You stay here and see how you like it.” He turned to go out the door.

  Dillon picked up the hatchet from the kindling pile next to the woodstove. He took two steps and hit Grady with the blunt end. The man went down like a felled pine, his face smashing into the back porch floor. When he didn’t move, Dillon set about wiping any surface he had touched on his visits. He’d always been careful, he thought as he wiped the refrigerator door and the hatchet’s handle.

  His gaze went to the pile of beer cans in the corner and realized that his prints were all over those cans. Finding an old burlap bag, he began to pick up the cans when he saw an old fishing pole next to the door. Smiling, he knew how he could dispose of Grady’s body.

  Chapter Eleven

  Dillon touched Mary’s cheek, making her jump. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just that you seemed a million miles away.”

  Actually only five miles away, on the ranch where Chase was working.

  She couldn’t quit thinking about him, which is why she hadn’t wanted to go out with Dillon tonight, especially after she’d told him that she needed more time.

  “I guess you forgot,” he’d said
. “The tickets to the concert I bought after the last time we went out? You said you loved that band, and I said I should try to get us some tickets. Well I did. For tonight.”

  She’d recalled the conversation. It hadn’t been definite, but she hadn’t been up to arguing about it. Anyway, she knew that if she stayed home, all she’d do was mope around and worry about Chase.

  “You’ve been distracted this whole night.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “But you’re right. I have a lot on my mind. Which is why I need to call it a night.”

  “Anything I can help you with?” he asked.

  She shook her head.

  “It wouldn’t be some blond cowboy named Chase Steele, would it?” There was an edge to his voice. She wasn’t in the mood for his jealousy.

  “Chase is a friend of mine.”

  “Is that all?”

  She turned to look at him, not liking his tone. “I can go out with anyone I want to.”

  “Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

  She reached for her door handle, but he grabbed her arm before she could get out.

  “Slow down,” he said. “I was just asking.” He quickly let go of her. “Like you said, you can date anyone you please. But then, so can I. What if I decided to ask out that barista friend of yours?”

  “Lucy?” She was surprised he even knew about her.

  “Yeah, Lucy.”

  If he was trying to make her jealous, he was failing badly. “Be my guest,” she said, and opened her door and climbed out before he could stop her again.

  She heard him get out the driver’s side and come after her. “Good night Dillon,” she said pointedly. But he didn’t take the hint.

  As she pulled out her keys to open her office door, he grabbed her and shoved her back, caging her against the side of the building.

  “I won’t put up with you giving me the runaround.”

  “Let me go,” she said from between gritted teeth. Her voice sounded much stronger than she felt at that moment. Her heart was beating as if she’d just run a mile. Dillon was more than wild. She could see that he could be dangerous—more dangerous than she was interested in.