by Tami Hoag
“Then maybe you ought to go back to the civilized world,” he sneered. “I sure as hell don't want you here. Go back to California. Stay the hell out of my life.”
Mari gaped at him as he moved away from her to pick up the hat he had lost in the heat of the moment. She blew out three hard breaths, trying to jump-start her tongue.
“Me—? Your—? Oh, that's rich! Like I asked you to get up close and personal with my tonsils! Who the hell do you think you are—”
“J. D. Rafferty,” he growled, jamming his hat down and tipping the brim in a mocking salute. “Del Rafferty is my uncle. He doesn't like strangers, he doesn't like blondes, and he can shoot the balls off a mouse at two hundred yards. Stay away from him too.”
“Yeah, he sounds about as charming as you,” Mari tossed after him as he strode away with his dog at his heels. “How will I ever control myself?”
He didn't even give her the satisfaction of looking back, but climbed into the cab of his pickup, fired the engine, and drove away. The dog stood in the back of the box, staring after her until they turned onto Main Street. Mari watched them drive away and then she just stood there in the moonlight with a hand across her mouth.
How will I ever control myself. . . .
He crouched among the trees, waiting. The moon glowed down on the meadow. Coyotes crooned mournfully, unseen, their hollow cries drifting down the valleys. The silvery pall of death lingered like a sticky mist above the ground. He watched it, hidden among the trees on the hillside, and waited. From the mist the bodies would materialize—the blonde, the dog-boys, the tigers. They would take shape and dance their gruesome dance beneath the half-light of the moon, tormenting him, luring him.
He sat among the ranks of limber pine and Douglas fir, his hands slick with sweat on the stock of his rifle, and he waited.
CHAPTER
6
I'LL TELL you how the sun rose,' ” Mari murmured, the words slipping out of her almost without her awareness.
She sat on the same rock she had chosen the night before to watch the moon rise over the mountains. Now dawn was streaking the sky behind those same peaks in pastel shades that were at once as soft as mist and strong enough to take her breath away. The experience was new, and yet she felt strangely as if she had seen it a hundred times in some other existence. She felt as if she had been waiting forever to see it again. The beauty of it renewed her as six hours of fitful sleep had not. Something essential in her soul drank it in as if it were the elixir of life, and a deep sense of peace flowed in her veins.
“‘I'll tell you how the sun rose,' ” she murmured.
“‘A ribbon at a time,' ” Drew finished the line from Emily Dickinson, his voice soft so as not to break the spell of the moment.
Mari turned to find him standing beside her rock. He was dressed for a workout in second-skin black spandex bike pants and a sweatshirt heralding the Oxford Cricket Club. A mountain bike leaned against his right hip.
“I used to enjoy sleeping in,” he said. “Then I saw this sunrise. I vowed to never miss another.”
Mari pulled her denim jacket closer around her to fend off the morning chill and swiveled around to face him. “Do you ever miss England?”
“Now and again,” he admitted with a candid smile. “But I visit often enough. There will always be an England, as the song goes. This is home now. I love it here.”
“It's not hard to see why,” Mari said, glancing around, soaking it up. She felt it herself, that tickle and tingle of new love. She hadn't known it was possible to feel that kind of rush for a place instead of a person. She tried to imagine Lucy feeling it, but couldn't see her friend falling for something that sounded so corny.
“I always wondered what drew Lucy here,” she said, her gaze sweeping the dew-drenched meadow as she swept a strand of hair behind her ear. “I mean, she always liked to be in the eye of the storm. She had to be in on all the hottest trends and first to know the gossip. I couldn't see her moving to the outback and growing vegetables . . . watching the sun rise. When I knew her, if she saw the sun rise, it was because she hadn't gone to bed yet.”
“She wasn't so different here.” Drew propped his bike on its kickstand and moved to lean against the boulder, his shoulder half a foot from her hiking boots. “Don't let all the natural splendor fool you. New Eden has its secrets and its conflicts. Lucy was always in the thick of it, stirring things up.”
“With Evan Bryce's crowd?”
“Hmm. I dare say, that's a set that runs as fast and flashy as any from her days in Sacramento. Evan Bryce is a powerful man. Powerful men have powerful friends. He always has a host of celebrities of one variety or another tagging after him. Actors, directors, models, politicians, lawyers. Many of them have second homes here as well.”
“What you're saying is that Lucy didn't leave the world behind; she was actually on the cutting edge moving here?”
“Montana is the trendy place to be. Much to the dismay of the local ranchers. One has to sympathize with their plight. Escalating land prices, skyrocketing taxes.” He sighed, his shoulders sagging as if the weight of the moral dilemma were pressing down on them. “But then, Kevin and I are part of the problem, aren't we? We may feel sorry for the poor buggers, but we're not about to leave.”
“Where did Lucy stand?”
The look Drew gave her was knowing and honest. “For herself.”
An ache echoed through her, leaving behind the useless regret that her friend hadn't been a better person.
“You don't seem much like her, luv,” Drew said gently.
A sad smile pulled at the corners of her mouth as she slid down off the rock. “No. We didn't have much in common . . . except that we were friends. That doesn't make much sense, does it?”
He slid a brotherly arm around her shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “It makes as much sense as relationships ever do. I can't say that I found Lucy to be of sterling character, but I liked her as well. She had a rare sense of humor and if she found you worthy of friendship, she would fight to the finish for you.”
“She was just . . . well, she was just Lucy. And now she's gone.”
For several moments, they stayed side by side, leaning against each other as if they had been friends forever instead of a day. The sunlight spilled over the shoulders of the Absarokas like liquid gold, and the valley began to come to life. A meadowlark trilled. Halfway up the side of the mountain an eagle soared above the tops of the Douglas fir and lodgepole pine, wings outstretched to catch the updrafts.
Mari watched in silence, letting the peace seep into her and wash the rest away. She took a deep breath of cool, clean air that was scented with pine and cedar and the soft perfumes of a dozen wildflowers, and let it soothe her as the line from the poem soothed her. I'll tell you how the sun rose—a ribbon at a time.
She was eating breakfast when Miller Daggrepont descended on her. She saw him coming across the dining room and knew with a sense of fatalism that he was homing in on her. Everyone in the dining room paused with forks and spoons in midair as he passed, their expressions ranging from horror to amusement.
He was as wide as he was tall, a virtual cube of a man, with a face like a bulldog's and a shock of ratty gray hair that stood straight up from his head in a style reminiscent of fight promoter Don King. A gold and black brocade vest stretched around his rotund frame over a white shirt, and a black string tie lurked beneath the folds of his wattle. A huge silver belt buckle set with nuggets of turquoise perched at the forefront of his belly like a hood ornament on a Mack truck. The legs of his black trousers were tucked into a pair of snakeskin boots that looked ridiculously tiny beneath his enormous bulk.
Mari froze with a slice of cantaloupe halfway to her mouth, the juice running down her fingertips, as he rumbled up to her table and stopped straight across from her. There was a cigar stub jammed into the corner of his mouth. He looked down on her through Coke-bottle lenses, his dark eyes weirdly magnified behind them.
“Little missy,” he said, his voice booming in the high-ceilinged room. “You'd be Marilee Jennings?”
Her automatic desire was to say no in the hope that he would go away and embarrass someone else, but her head bobbed in affirmation. You're too honest for your own good, Marilee.
He stuck out a hand that resembled an inflated rubber glove, gripping hers before she could wipe the cantaloupe juice off. “Miller Daggrepont, Esquire,” he announced in a voice loud enough to wake the ghost of Madam Belle. “Attorney-at-law and renaissance man. I've got a surprise for you, little lady.”
“I'm not sure my heart can stand it,” Mari said, only half joking.
“Come on along,” he ordered, tugging her up from her seat. “This is important. You can eat anytime.”
He appeared to be an expert on that subject. Stomach grumbling a protest, Mari shuffled after him, thinking that wild elephants probably couldn't drag Miller Daggrepont away from a table. He towed her down the lobby of the Moose and outside, rumbling along like a freight train. Hustling down Main Street, he jaywalked across to First Avenue, and continued on, oblivious of the curious looks people cast their way.
The buildings here, as on Main Street, were a jumble of styles and ages. The shops were a mix of practical and pretentious—a dentist's office, a wilderness outfitter's post, the Curl Up and Dye hair salon. Designer fashions hung in the window of the Beartooth Boutique. Next door an old man sat on one of several riding lawn mowers parked out in front of Erikson's Garden Center.
They turned in at a brick building with an ornate front window. EDEN VALLEY ASSAY arched across the glass in gold gay-nineties-style lettering, but the brass plaque on the door itself read MILLER DAGGREPONT, ESQUIRE. ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.
“This is where I keep my collections,” he said, thumbing through an enormous ring of keys. “I collect everything. Signs, toys, farm equipment, you name it. Never know when the next big rage will hit. I made a killing on Indian artifacts when all the Hollywood types started moving in. They think they're going native when they hang an old horse blanket on the wall. Damned fools, I say—not because of the collecting. Nothing wrong with collecting. They're just damned fools in general.”
He swung the door open and went in, pulling Mari along behind him like a recalcitrant child. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling. A row of low display cases ran down the center of the floor from the front of the room to the back. Old advertising signs and license plates hung by wires from the ceiling. The floor was littered with a jumble of junk. Toward the back of the main room two of the tall cases had been tipped over, dumping a mountain of toys, glassware, tin canisters, wooden boxes, and God-knew-what onto the floor.
“Watch your step,” Miller ordered, grunting his disapproval at the mess. “Some damned drunk broke in the back door last night and turned the place upside down. You know we're just catercorner from the Hell and Gone. Cowboys come into town and they go crazy. It's like bringing a wild pony into the house.”
Mari picked her way along behind him, stepping over the prone form of a cigar store Indian and a woman's straw hat decorated with faded silk cabbage roses. “Mr. Daggrepont, I've worked with lawyers for six years, and I have to say I've never come across an office quite like this one.”
His booming laugh rattled the tin signs overhead. “Well, little missy, I'm not your run of the mill attorney. Like I said before, I'm a renaissance man.”
He led her down a hall and into a smaller room that was an even worse mess than the front had been. An old desk sat in the middle of it all. Somewhere on the desk, beneath a drift of fishing tackle and assorted debris, a telephone rang. Daggrepont ignored it. He let go of Mari to work on the combination lock of an old vault set into the back wall.
“This was the assay office back in the 1860s,” he explained. “Gold was discovered up in the Absarokas. The place went bonkers with gold fever. The town boomed. Didn't last long though. The lode wasn't rich enough and it was too damned hard to get to. Those mountains are rugged sons a'guns.”
Mari had read all about it in her guide books, but she didn't comment on it as she picked her way across the office. He heaved the vault open and she raised up on tiptoe in an attempt to peer over his shoulder. “Uh, Mr. Daggrepont, would it be too much to ask what this is all about?”
He shot her a look of annoyance, his eyeballs swimming behind his thick glasses. “Lucy MacAdam,” he said, cigar stub bobbing above his chins. “I was her attorney. You're her heir.”
The news knocked her in the head like a mallet. Mari swayed a little on her feet and stumbled back. “I'm her heir? That can't be. I mean, why—what—?”
Daggrepont ignored her stammering, searching for the proper file among the boxes on the shelves that lined the vault. “Thank heaven for this vault,” he grumbled. “There'd be hell to pay if some drunk dumped these files. Inez would be sorting paper from now till kingdom come. Ah! Here it is. Lucy MacAdam.”
He pulled the file and herded Mari back out into the office, where he swept off a chair and ordered her to sit. He leaned his bulk back against the desk and told her the gist of Lucy's last bequests.
“She didn't have any living relatives. Left everything to you. Her place, her bank account, this letter—” He held out a sealed envelope to her. Mari took it with limp fingers and held it in her lap. “All subject to inheritance taxes, funeral expenses, and, um, my fees, of course.”
“Of course.”
“But it's all yours as soon as it clears probate. Oh, and there's one other thing. Damn near forgot.”
He trundled back into the vault and came out with a foot-tall old tin replica of Mr. Peanut, which he thrust into Mari's hands. She stared at the smirking peanut, then up at Daggrepont and back again.
“What is it?” she asked at last.
“Why, it's Lucy. She had herself cremated.”
She drove out to the ranch with Mr. Peanut strapped into the passenger seat beside her. Daggrepont had immediately tried to persuade her to sell the ranch. Inheritance taxes would be astronomical, considering how property values had gone up. What would she want with a ranch anyway? She had a life back in California, didn't she?
No, she didn't, but she didn't tell that to Daggrepont or to his weasely real estate buddy who had just happened to drop by. The same way a vulture just happens to drop by road kill. She shuddered at the thought of the pair of them—Shamu in cowboy boots and the Earl Scheib of Montana real estate. I can sell that property for you, little lady. I can sell anything, anytime, anyplace. On the verge of giddiness, she had nearly asked him if he could paint her car any color for $99.95.
“Lucy,” she said, cutting a look at the tin peanut. “You always did have a bizarre sense of humor, but this is really too much.”
The peanut just smirked at her.
She had to get away, to think, to try to sort through it all in her mind. The ranch seemed the best place to do it. Somehow she thought an answer might come to her there. But another part of her knew there would only be more questions, and her stomach churned at the prospect.
By daylight the place Lucy had called home for the last year was as picturesque as anything Mari had ever imagined. The log house was set on high ground overlooking a broad valley with a wide, glittering stream running through it. The hills above were covered with pine and aspen. The valley beyond the stream was dotted with grazing horses. She fell in love with it the minute she stepped out of the car. It radiated a sense of peace, a sense of constancy. Nothing about it struck her as being Lucy's style at all.
She climbed the steps onto the porch and followed it around the side of the house to a broad deck that overlooked the stream. The bent willow furniture and Adirondack chairs had escaped the vandals' zeal. Setting the tin on the glass-topped table, she sank down onto the cushions of a high-backed chair and stared out at the panorama.
It was hers. The idea wouldn't penetrate. It made no sense. She had never even been here to visit Lucy. She had never thought of their friendsh
ip as being something that went so deep as this. They had shared laughs and gripes over a few beers. They had been drinking buddies, comrades in arms against the vicious lawyer hordes who never wanted to pay them and always wanted to get them into bed. The thought that their relationship had meant something more to Lucy left her feeling confused and vaguely guilty, the way she had felt in high school when one of the nerd boys had revealed that he had a crush on her.
Hoping for an answer or at least a clue, she pulled the envelope Daggrepont had given her out of her jacket pocket and opened it with a nail file from her purse. Inside was a strip of green paper folded in half, torn on both ends. Stenographer's notes, a set of hieroglyphics no one but another court reporter would have been able to decipher. How like Lucy to be dramatic even from beyond the grave.
Mari leaned over the letter with her elbows braced on her knees and read the phonograms.
Dear Mari,
If you're reading this, it means I've gone on to my just reward. Do you think I might get a lawyer to plea-bargain a better hereafter for me? Probably not. The bastards always want the best for themselves and the rest of us can go to hell. Oh, well, God knows I was a very naughty girl. I'm sure He does. But that's between me and the Big Guy.
This is about you. You need a life, pal. I'll give you mine. You have to promise to dump that schmuck Bradford. And you have to promise to devote yourself fully to aggravating your family. We all have our calling in life, that's yours. Mine was being a thorn in wealthy paws. I was a champion. It got me where you are today. Or did it get me where I am?
No matter, my peach. Take the bulls by the horns and ride them into the ground. You won't get into Martindale-Hubbell, but my name will live on in infamy and you'll have some fun for once.
Shed a tear or two for me. No one else will.
Raise a glass in my name. Know that you're the only real friend I ever had. And when you bed your first cowboy, think of me fondly before you mount up, then ride 'im, cowgirl.