CHRISTMAS AT THE CARDWELL RANCH

by B. J Daniels

She was so deep in her thoughts that she didn’t even notice the large black SUV parked next to her on the driver’s side. Nor did she hear the back door of the SUV open or the man jump out directly behind her.

  Lily didn’t even have time to scream as something wet and awful smelling was clamped over her mouth and she was dragged into the black pit of darkness in the back of the massive SUV.

  Chapter Ten

  Hud got the call on his way from the hospital. He’d gone by to see Harlan Cardwell only to find that the man had left without anyone having seen him leave.

  The marshal listened to the news on the other end of the line with the same sinking feeling he’d had earlier. Another young woman’s body had been found.

  “I’ll be right there,” he said, hung up and turned on his flashing lights and siren. If he could have gotten his hands on Harlan Cardwell right now...

  Last night at the hospital he’d demanded to know more than the information he’d been given yesterday at the ranch.

  “We think it’s possible Mia passed information to someone when she knew she was in trouble,” Harlan told him. “She and Teresa Evans were apparently friends. Teresa would be the most likely person to give the data to if she was in trouble, which could explain Teresa’s disappearance.”

  Hud had shaken his head in frustration.

  “I wish I had an answer for you. They tried to kill me earlier. If Tag hadn’t come along when he did...”

  “Aren’t you getting too old for this?”

  Harlan had chuckled even though it must have hurt him. “I only got involved again because of Mia.” His voice broke. He cleared his throat. “I just talked to the coroner a few minutes before you came in. Mia had been drugged. We can only assume one of the patrons at the bar stuck her. She must have realized it too late to get the item to me. I’m sure she did everything she could to finish her mission.”

  “If Mia gave whatever this information is to Teresa Evans, then they have it.”

  Harlan shook his head. “Apparently Teresa didn’t have it. They’re still looking for it. At least that’s what I’m hearing.”

  “How many more are they going to kill to get it?” Hud had demanded, and seen the answer in Harlan’s eyes.

  So the call that a young woman had been found on the ice at the edge of the Gallatin River hadn’t come as a surprise—just another blow. Hud felt helpless for the second time in his life. The other time, just months ago, was when he realized a psychopath had his wife and children.

  * * *

  TAG GLANCED AT his watch and then tried Lily’s cell phone again. It went straight to voice mail just as it had done the three times he’d tried before. He didn’t leave a message.

  He’d been trying since he’d gotten her cryptic message.

  “Tag, the list is decoded. There’s a name on here...you need to see. Call me. It’s urgent.”

  When Lily had mentioned that she thought the thumb drive had two lists of names on it, he’d thought of his father. Was his father’s name on it?

  Tag thought of the ransacked cabin. His hand went to his pocket. He closed his fingers over the small computer flash drive. He’d thought taking it would protect Lily. But now she’d decoded it and had found a name. A name that had put her in danger?

  Earlier he’d driven down to the Corral Bar, but the bartender said he hadn’t seen Angus or Harlan since yesterday. He didn’t seem that surprised, which Tag took to mean both men disappeared occasionally.

  It baffled him as he drove back toward Big Sky.

  Like a lot of Montana winter days, this one was blinding with brilliance. The sun hung in a cloudless robin’s-egg-blue sky and now shone on the fresh-fallen snow, turning it into a carpet of prisms.

  As he pulled up in front of the Canyon Bar and climbed out, he sucked in a lungful of the freezing air. Nearby pines scented the frosty breeze. He didn’t see Lily’s car, but he figured her brother would have heard from her by now. The fresh snow creaked beneath his boot soles as he crossed to the bar.

  The front door was open even though the bar wasn’t scheduled to open for another hour. As the door closed on the bright winter day behind him, Tag stopped just inside to let his eyes adjust to the semidarkness.

  “We don’t open for another...” Ace’s words died off as he looked up from behind the bar. “Tag, come on in. I forgot to relock the door after Lily left.”

  “So you’ve seen her today?” Tag asked as he walked over to the bar.

  Ace’s expression changed into one of mild amusement. “She looked better than I’d seen her looking in a long time.”

  “Then she told you about Gerald.”

  “Gerald didn’t put those roses in her cheeks,” he said with a laugh. “What can I get you to drink?”

  “Nothing, but thanks. I was looking for Lily.”

  “Like I said, she was by earlier. Gerald called her. She went to see him.” Ace stopped in midmotion, a bar glass half-washed in his hand. “You met Gerald, right?”

  “Last night.”

  “Then you know he’s all wrong for her.”

  Tag didn’t feel he could weigh in on that.

  “I hate it, but she went to hear him out,” Ace said with a disgusted shake of his head. “I was hoping we’d seen the last of him. I’m afraid she’ll go back to him. Maybe already has.”

  That would explain why Lily wasn’t answering her phone. “Maybe I will have that drink, after all,” Tag said, and took a stool. “Just a draft beer.”

  Ace laughed and reached for a clean glass as the bar door opened again and a large silhouette filled it.

  * * *

  HUD PARKED AT the edge of the fishing access road a few hundred yards from the river and walked. His head ached, his stomach felt oily. It took all his mental strength not to stop and throw up in the fresh snow at the edge of the road.

  He could see the flashing lights ahead. The coroner had been called. Second time in two days. Another dead young woman.

  The body lay on the edge of the thick aquamarine-blue ice in a bed of snow. At first glance it appeared the woman had lain down in the snow to make a snow angel. Her arms were spread wide, facedown, legs also splayed. He’d guess she’d been thrown there and that was how she’d landed. Which meant she’d been dead before she hit because she hadn’t made a snow angel. She hadn’t moved.

  “What do we have?” Hud asked the coroner after giving a nod to his new deputy, a man by the name of Jake Thorton. He’d come highly recommended but hadn’t been tested yet. Nor had Hud made a point of getting to know the man. Jake seemed to keep to himself, which was just fine with his boss.

  “Looks like strangulation,” the coroner said. “Maybe that combined with hypothermia. Won’t know until the autopsy. But she didn’t die here.”

  Hud nodded. “Do we have an ID?”

  “Found her purse in the snow over there,” Deputy Thorton said. “Her name, according to her Montana driver’s license and photo, is Teresa Marie Evans, the missing woman last seen at the Canyon Bar.”

  Teresa had a winter scarf tied too tightly around her neck—just like Mia. “Tire tracks?” Hud asked Jake.

  “The road hadn’t been plowed. Didn’t look as if any vehicles had been down it. But there were tracks. I saw that she was dropped by snowmobile,” he said. “I took photos.”

  Hud nodded at the young handsome deputy, thankful he was on the case since his own mind was whirling. All his self-doubts seemed to surface in light of another death. Dropp
ed by snowmobile just like the last one.

  “I’ll let you handle this, notify the family, do what has to be done,” he told Jake, and looked at his watch. Police officer Paul Brown’s funeral was in two hours. Hud wasn’t sure how much more death he could take.

  * * *

  AS THE MAN stepped into the Canyon Bar, the door closing behind him, Tag saw that it was Gerald, Lily’s former fiancé. Or should he say now current fiancé? Had Lily gone back to him?

  He waited almost expectantly for Gerald to approach the bar. The beer he’d downed turned sour in his stomach as he braced himself for the news. Like her brother, Ace, Tag thought this man was all wrong for the woman he’d made love to last night. He reminded himself that Lily had regretted their lovemaking. Had that alone driven her back into this man’s arms?

  “Lily left this,” Gerald said, and dropped a torn sheet of paper on the bar.

  Tag’s first thought was that she’d left a note for her brother.

  “What am I supposed to do with this?” Ace asked after giving it a cursory glance and tossing it back on the bar.

  “I wonder why I wasted my time,” Gerald said with a shake of his head, and turned to leave.

  Tag shifted on the stool to see what was on the sheet of paper. He recognized Lily’s neat script. His pulse took off like a rocket when he saw the familiar array of letters from the thumb drive.

  He quickly picked up the partial sheet of paper. It had been torn. Only a few of the original letters from the thumb drive were on the sheet. Next to them were other letters that made...names.

  He didn’t recognize any of them and frowned. Lily had been upset on the phone. “Tag, the list is decoded. There’s a name on here...you need to see. Call me. It’s urgent.”

  She’d wanted him to see a name, but it wasn’t on this portion of the original sheet of paper.

  “Wait a minute,” he called to Gerald’s retreating back. “Where’s Lily?”

  Gerald stopped, impatience in his stance, and then turned with a sigh. “You’re asking me?”

  “You’re the one she went to see,” Ace interjected.

  Lily had solved the code. Whatever name had upset her wasn’t on this sheet. Tag slid off his stool and moved quickly to Gerald. “Where’s Lily?”

  Gerald gave him a smug, satisfied smile. “The last time I saw her she was leaving my motel room.”

  “Did you see where she went from there?”

  He looked angry. “If you must know, I wasn’t paying any attention.”

  Tag turned back to the bar and Ace. “Lily’s message earlier said it was urgent I see these names, but I don’t recognize any of them. Where are the rest of them?”

  “What does it matter?” Gerald asked sarcastically but he stepped back toward the bar.

  “Trust me, it might be a matter of life or death.”

  “Don’t tell me she’s in trouble because of what is written on that paper,” Ace said as he leaned across the bar to take the scrap of paper in Tag’s hand.

  “Lily was convinced these letters had something to do with Mia Duncan’s murder.”

  Ace let out a curse.

  “That list of names?” Gerald asked. “Murder? This was exactly what I feared when Lily insisted on working in a...bar.”

  “Gerald,” Ace said in clear warning. “Don’t make me come over this counter and punch you.” He turned to Tag. “What do we do?”

  “If Lily’s right, then I know who I need to talk to,” Tag said. “If things go badly, though, can I depend on you to bail me out of jail?”

  “I’m going with you,” Ace said only seconds before a bunch of skiers came through the door and headed for an empty table. “I’ll close the bar and—”

  “No. Lily might come back here. Or you might be contacted. Anyway, you can’t get me out of jail if you’re in there with me.” Tag scribbled his cell phone number on a bar napkin. “Call me if you hear anything.”

  Ace nodded as another group of patrons came through the bar door. Reggie showed up then in jeans and the Canyon Bar T-shirt, like the one Lily had been wearing the first night Tag met her. The night he’d also met Mia Duncan.

  “I suppose you’re both going to just assume I would be of no help?” Gerald asked.

  “Call the bar if you hear from Lily,” Tag told him, thinking Lily might contact Gerald before either him or her brother. “Ace will pass along the message.” He started for the door.

  “That scrap of paper in your hand. That has only some of the names on the lists Lily showed me,” Gerald said. “I can’t imagine how it could matter, but I’m the one who helped her decode them. If you have the thumb drive...”

  Tag stopped at the door and turned. His hand went to the thumb drive in his pocket. “How do you know about that?”

  Gerald rolled his eyes. “How do you think? Lily asked me to help her finish decoding the names.”

  So it was like that, Tag thought. Lily wouldn’t have told him about the thumb drive or asked him unless she trusted him, unless she had gone back to him.

  “Ace, can we borrow your computer?” Tag asked, and led the way to Ace’s office.

  Gerald sat down behind the desk, then held out his hand. Tag dropped the thumb drive into it and sat as Gerald went to work. It didn’t take him long. When he finished, he printed out a sheet with the names on them and handed both it and the thumb drive back to him.

  Two lists of names, just as Lily had suspected. The names began to jump off the page at him. This was why Lily had wanted him to see them.

  Mia Duncan’s name was high on the list.

  Not far under it was the name Harlan Cardwell. Directly under that was Marshal Hud Savage.

  KYLE FOSTER

  GEORGE MOORE

  FRANK MOONEY

  LOU WAYNE

  CLETE RAND

  RAY EMERY

  PAUL BROWN

  MIA DUNCAN

  CAL FRANKLIN

  LARS LANDERS

  HARLAN CARDWELL

  HUD SAVAGE

  What the hell is this? He had no idea, but he was all the more worried about Lily. “You’re sure you don’t know where Lily went after she left your motel room?” he asked Gerald.

  “I thought she must have left with you.”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Because she left her SUV in the parking lot.”

  “What parking lot?” Tag demanded, feeling his heart slamming against his rib cage. The names on the list. While he had no idea what they meant, he had a terrible feeling that they had gotten Mia Duncan killed, his father beaten to within an inch of his life and both Mia’s and his father’s homes ransacked. And now Lily appeared to be missing.

  “The Happy Trails Motel down the highway,” Gerald said.

  Tag headed for the door at a run, praying he was wrong and that there was an explanation other than the one that had him terrified.

  “I’ll drive up to her house and check there,” Gerald said to his retreating back. “You better not get her killed, Texas cowboy.”

  Tag didn’t have time to go back and slug the suit or he would have.

  The drive to the motel, although only half a mile, seemed to take forever.

  He was in sight of it when he heard the news report on the radio. He hadn’t even realized the radio was on, droning in the background, until he heard the announcement come on.

  “A woman’s body has been found along the Gallatin River two miles sou
th of Big Sky. The name of the victim is being withheld pending notification of family. If anyone has any information, please call the marshal’s office....”

  An eighties song came on the radio.

  Not Lily. No, it couldn’t be Lily.

  Ahead, he saw Lily’s SUV parked off by itself. His stomach dropped. As he jumped out, he could see where another vehicle had pulled in next to it. And in the snow that the plow had left, he could see that there’d been a struggle.

  Lily’s boot-heel prints had made a short trail from her SUV driver’s-side door to whatever had been parked next to it.

  Chapter Eleven

  As Tag drove straight to the marshal’s office, he kept remembering the marshal and his father, heads together, arguing about something before his father gave Hud an envelope. Money? A bribe? A payoff?

  Whatever it was, it had something to do with Mia Duncan—and if he wasn’t wrong, the damned thumb drive in his pocket and the names on it.

  He didn’t know his cousin Dana’s husband. This trip to Montana had been the first time they’d met. Was it possible Hud was crooked?

  Tag hoped not for his cousin’s sake. But look how she’d turned a blind eye to whatever Harlan and Angus did when they left the canyon. Would she be the same way if her husband were on the take?

  All Tag knew was that he didn’t trust the marshal. But right now he needed to know who had been found near the river. He glanced at the list again, surprised by the one name that seemed to be missing. Teresa Evans. How did she fit into all this? Or did she? He’d heard that she was missing. Was it her body that was found by the river?

  He had to know.

  Just as he had to know why both his father’s and Hud’s names were on the list. He had no idea what to make of that. Or how this list from the thumb drive could have anything to do with what was going on. Why would anyone be ransacking residences at Big Sky, let alone killing people for it?

  All he could assume was that the names were important. Why else had Mia put the thumb drive in his pocket? he wondered as he stormed into the marshal’s department and demanded to see Marshal Hud Savage. How important? He was about to find out since Hud Savage’s name was on one of the lists.