by Tami Hoag
“I'm only saying there are other possibilities. What about this hired hand of Lucy's who disappeared after she was killed? Kendall Morton. By all accounts, he was a shady character.”
“That isn't against the law in Montana, miss.”
“But did you check him out?” Mari badgered. “Did you at least check his criminal record?”
“I can't divulge that kind of information,” Quinn said, color creeping up his thick neck into his face. “We did all that was necessary—”
“Necessary?” Mari scoffed, her hold on her temper slipping. “You hung a misdemeanor on a socialite and sent him back to Beverly Hills to liposuction the fat out of rich women's butts. Did you even consider any other suspects? What about Del Rafferty? He took a shot at me yesterday!”
Quinn didn't bat an eye. He went on as if people getting shot at was as ordinary as grass growing. “But he didn't kill you, did he? If Del wanted you dead, we wouldn't be having this conversation.”
“Maybe he wanted Lucy dead.”
“Because he wanted this directory of attorneys so he could hunt them all down and kill them too?”
“Don't patronize me, Sheriff,” Mari snapped, leaning ahead in her chair. “Del Rafferty's elevator stops well short of the top floor. He shot at me for coming into his territory. He might have thought he had reason to get rid of Lucy altogether.”
She felt like a traitor for saying it. Automatically she thought of J.D., of the way he protected and defended his uncle. She thought of Del. He had scared the hell out of her, but the look in his eyes kept coming back to her, tearing at her heart. Hell was his state of mind.
Quinn fixed her with a look of cold anger. “Listen, Miz Jennings: Del isn't quite right in the head. Everybody knows that. But he don't go around killing people. And if he somehow accidentally shot that woman—which is next to impossible—he would have 'fessed up. No Rafferty I ever knew would let an innocent man take the blame for something he did.”
Defeated, Mari held up a hand in surrender. Quinn would settle for nothing less than a smoking gun. He wasn't about to make his life any harder by opening a case for which he already had a conviction. “Okay, I give up. I can see this is pointless.”
“Yes, ma'am,” Quinn said, rising to his full height, jaw set in affront. “I believe it is. I'm sorry your friend was killed. I'm sorry you were attacked. Believe me when I say I wish to God it hadn't happened. I especially wish it hadn't happened here.”
Which was his not-so-subtle way of saying he wished she and Lucy and all of their kind had never come to New Eden.
Mari stood slowly and looked Quinn square in the eye. “I wish that too, Sheriff. With all my heart.”
“What are you doin' with that colt?” J.D. demanded.
Will, who was turning twelve that very day, was already in the saddle. The Appaloosa gelding was just two and wild as a cob. He'd run loose his whole life, had never felt the hand of man until Chaske ran him down from the hills three weeks before. J.D. had taken a shine to him instantly. The young horse had a fine way of carrying himself and a smart look in his eyes. He was a copper chestnut with white legs and blanket of snow white over his hindquarters. J.D. had been working him in the round pen with Chaske's help, trying to get the colt used to people, then to a saddle. He hadn't been ridden more than twice.
As Will took a short hold on the reins, the colt danced, his head sky high. He rolled his white-ringed eyes back, trying to see the unfamiliar person on his back.
Will shot J.D. a smug grin. “I'm gonna ride him.”
The feeling that burst through J.D. was jealousy, pure and simple. The colt was his. He had a natural talent with horses, and that was one thing his snot-nosed little brother couldn't horn in on. Except now he was. Nothing was sacred.
“You're gonna get dumped on your bony little butt, shithead. Get off him.”
Will took a tighter hold on the reins. The colt danced around in a circle, blowing through flared nostrils. The color was gone from Will's face, but he showed no other sign of losing his nerve. “I can ride him if I want, John Dopeface. You don't own him.”
“I own him more than you do,” J.D. shot back. He jumped up on a rail on the corral fence and reached for the colt's bridle. The horse shied sideways, beyond trusting anyone. “Get off before you ruin him!”
Will ignored him, his attention snagged by the sound of Sondra's voice as she and some of her town friends came down across the yard toward the corral. She was laughing and talking, her voice like the sound of water tumbling down a mountain stream. She dressed like a town lady, which J.D. hated, but then, he hated most everything about Sondra and Sondra's snotty friends. He was too busy glaring at them to notice that Will was taking the colt out through the gate.
Everything seemed to happen at once then. Will said something to catch his mother's attention. She turned toward him, smiling brightly, and raised a hand to wave. The colt went off like a rocket. He shot straight up in the air, all four legs coming off the ground. Will's eyes went as round as silver dollars, then squeezed shut as the horse came down, driving his head down between his knees and jerking him halfway over the animal's neck in the process.
There was nothing to do but watch the wreck happen. J.D. stayed on the rail, his fingers digging into the rough wood. Sondra was screaming. Her lover went running to find help, but there was no helping Will. He would be the victim of his own stupidity. So would the colt.
J.D. watched, sick at heart, as the colt pitched and squealed, wild with fright. Will somersaulted off and hit the dirt with a sickening thud. The colt wheeled and ran away from the crowd and straight into the corral fence. He hurled himself up against it, trying desperately to clear the high rail, tangling his forelegs between the bars in the process.
As the townspeople crowded around the groaning Will, J.D. went to the aid of the horse, talking to him softly, trying to calm him, praying the animal wouldn't break a leg in his scramble to free himself from his predicament. The colt's copper coat was nearly black with sweat and flecked with lather. Blood ran down the white stockings on his forelegs, where he had scraped the skin away against the bars of the fence.
Chaske came and took the horse, frowning darkly at the damage that had been done to the animal—physically and mentally. Every bit of work they had done was ruined that quickly, that carelessly. J.D. started to follow him toward the barn, but the old man shook his head and shot a meaningful glance at the crowd gathered around Will.
“See to your brother first.”
J.D. started to protest, but bit the words back as Chaske stared at him long and hard.
Will was alive and moaning, soaking up the sympathies of the townspeople like an obnoxious little sponge. J.D. was more worried about the colt. Getting dumped was a common enough occurrence; people seldom died of it and it was generally their own fault anyway. The colt, on the other hand, might never lose his mistrust of people now. And that was all Will's fault.
He took up a stance where he could scowl down at Will. Sondra glared up at him through her tears. She kneeled in the dirt beside her baby, cradling his head in her lap, stroking his cheek as he cried softly and held one arm against his middle. “How could you do this!”
J.D. all but jumped back at the attack. “It wasn't my fault! I told him he'd break his stupid neck!”
“You should have stopped him. My God, J.D., you're sixteen. Will's just a little boy! Don't you have any sense of responsibility at all?”
She couldn't have hit him any harder with an ax handle. Responsibility? What would she know about responsibility? She was the one who had left her family for her own selfish reasons. She didn't know spit about responsibility. And she'd bred a son in her own selfish image. J.D. knew without question that Will would turn the story around so that none of the blame would rest on his own head. It would all be J.D.'s responsibility—like the chores and the house and every job Dad ignored because he was too busy pining away for a wife who was as faithless as a bitch in heat. And J.D. wou
ld take it and bear up and never say a word to anyone, because he was a Rafferty, and that was his biggest responsibility.
J.D. brought himself back to the present, shaking his head at the fog that had shrouded his brain. It wasn't like him to look back. What was done was done. It didn't matter anymore.
But as he looked across the pen at Will, he knew that wasn't true. It did matter. It mattered a lot. The stakes had only gotten higher and higher with the passage of time, until now everything hung in the balance. The ranch sat on the pinnacle, teetering precariously. Will was the weight that could tip it either way.
They hadn't spoken a word since the scene outside the Hell and Gone. J.D. hadn't trusted himself. He knew his temper only made things worse, but he could hardly look at Will these days without seeing red. From the beginning he had been the one who loved the ranch, worked the ranch, fought tooth and nail for the ranch, yet Will had the power to lose it for him. Between his gambling and his womanizing, he seemed hell-bent on doing just that.
The idea of not being in control of his own destiny made J.D. furious and terrified in a way nothing else could. All their futures—his, Del's, Tucker's, Chaske's—were sliding into the hands of a man who had never taken responsibility for anything in his life.
Will leaned against the side of the barn, bent over at the waist, drinking from the hose. He had shown up in time for breakfast, refused everything but black coffee, which he drank in silence, leaning back against the kitchen counter. Mirrored aviator sunglasses shaded eyes that were most probably bloodshot. He took them off now and sprayed himself in the face with the water.
They had spent the day finishing inoculations and all the other miscellaneous checks on the steers and heifers. As predicted, the corral was a sea of mud, churned deep by the hooves of thousand-pound animals. J.D. was covered with muck to his waist. He could feel flecks of it drying on his face and the back of his neck. Pushing himself away from the rail, he made his way toward the hose.
Will handed it to him, then stood back, settled his sunglasses into place, and slicked his dark hair back with his hands, turning his profile to the setting sun. He looked like a movie star bathed in golden light. Tom Cruise come to play cowboy for a day in Hollywood's newest fun spot. The analogy only fueled J.D.'s temper. He used the hose to douse it, letting the cold well water pour over the back of his head and down the sides of his face.
Tucker had already gone to the house to see about supper. Chaske was doing the chores. The day was winding down, the sun sliding toward the far side of the Gallatin range. Down the hill from the pens, the cattle dogs were hunting mice, bounding through the bluebells and needlegrass, setting the tall stalks of beargrass bending to and fro like the stems of metronomes. Somewhere in the woods beyond, a wild tom turkey gobbled, advertising for a date.
J.D. turned the water off and straightened slowly, taking in all of those things, feeling a sharp pang of longing in his chest, as if they were already lost.
“We need to talk,” he said quietly.
Will regarded him from behind the one-way glass of his aviator lenses. There was no infamous grin, no joke, no dimples cutting into his cheeks. “Translate that for me, J.D. You want to talk with me or at me?”
“We need to talk about Samantha.”
He shook his head, turned, and looked out at the meadow where the dogs were chasing each other. “I don't want to have this conversation.”
“Neither do I.”
The grin cut across his face then, as sharp as a scimitar. “Then let's skip it.”
“And pretend nothing's wrong? You don't want to deal with it, so we should ignore it?” J.D. shook his head, struggling to hold his temper when what he wanted to do was wrap his hands around his brother's throat and choke him until his eyes bugged out. “Do you have any idea how serious this could be—her falling in with Bryce's crowd? Do you even have a clue, Will?”
“Yeah, I've got a clue,” Will sneered. “She's my wife. How do you think I feel?”
“I can't imagine. You act like you don't give a damn what she does. You're off to the Hell and Gone every night, trying to nail anything in a skirt. Am I supposed to think you're heartbroken?”
“You don't understand anything,” Will said bitterly, and started across the yard for his truck.
J.D. grabbed his arm and hauled him back around. “Don't pull that act with me,” he growled, jabbing an accusatory finger in Will's face. “You're not the innocent victim here; you're guilty as hell! You married that girl, then you dumped her. Now she's in a position to cut all our throats, and all you do about it is get drunk and go dancing!”
“What am I supposed to do?”
“Get her back. Face up to your responsibilities. Act like a man for once.”
“Why should I?” Will taunted, his own temper simmering in an oily mix of pain and inadequacy. “Why should I, when you're man enough for the whole fucking state of Montana? I could never measure up in your eyes no matter what I did, so why should I bother?”
“Jesus. Is that all this is about for you? Who's got the biggest dick? Some shithead case of sibling rivalry? I'm talking about our lives here, Will!”
“That is our life,” he spat back. “Haven't you been paying attention for the last twenty-eight years?”
J.D. stepped back with his hands raised as if to ward off the entire conversation. “This is unbelievable,” he muttered more to himself than to Will. “We could lose the ranch and all you want to do is sulk over a whiskey because you were born second! Christ almighty, don't you have any pride at all? Don't you have an ounce of self-respect?”
Will stared at him long and hard from behind his disguise, sure that J.D. could see right through it, as he always did, always had. He stood there, feeling stripped bare. The eternal screwup, fooling everyone with a wink and a grin. Except J.D. Never once had he fooled J.D. Now the act was wearing thin all the way around. The curtain wasn't just coming down, it was coming unraveled, and he was scared as hell that when it was over, there would be nothing left to hide behind and nothing left to hide.
“No,” he said quietly, stunned by the truth of it. “I don't.”
This time when he started for his truck J.D. let him go. He stood there by the side of the barn, completely still, drained of everything but fear. Around him was the only life he had ever wanted. The ranch. The mountains. The horses and cattle. The coolness and the quiet that crept out from under the trees as the sunlight drained away. The squealing call of a bull elk. The eerie whirring sound of a nighthawk diving through the twilight for its prey.
This was all he had ever allowed himself to want, all he had ever loved. It hung now by a thread, swinging in the breeze.
CHAPTER
16
MARI SAT on the glass-topped table, staring down at the valley bathed in the soft velvet tones of twilight. She sat there as the sun went down, staring, thinking, her fingers moving almost absently over the strings of her old guitar.
Quinn didn't believe her. Did it matter? Lucy was dead. Dead was forever. Nothing could bring her back. If someone had killed her because she had been blackmailing that person, wouldn't the story end there? No more Lucy, no more blackmail. End of plot. Mari didn't know anything about Lucy's schemes. She didn't want to know.
But what if Kendall Morton had killed Lucy? He was still at large.
And if Del killed Lucy? He had motive, means, opportunity. God knew, he had the temperament for killing. The government had trained him to kill.
Oh, Del.
Oh, J.D. . . .
He loved his uncle. He protected his family. A rough-edged knight on a big sorrel cow horse. The defender of his kingdom. The last man of honor. So tough, so impenetrable. So vulnerable.
Not smart, Marilee. He's a lot harder than he is soft.
She didn't know why she was even thinking about him. He didn't want her around; he wanted her only in bed. She liked to think she was more liberated than to go for a man like that. She liked to think she would have bec
ome a nun before she went for a man like that.
What a shock that would have been to her mother, seeing as how the Jennings clan were devout followers of the show-up-Sunday-in-a-killer-outfit-no-one's-ever-seen Episcopalian church.
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, started a new song, a new train of thought.
Old train of thought.
Quinn didn't believe her. The odd pieces of truth and suspicion she had collected over the last week didn't add up to anything when he looked at them. Mari felt as if she were looking at an abstract painting and only she could see the zebra represented by the incongruous slashes of color. It stood out to her more and more, the lines of it becoming bolder, stronger, while everyone else saw only a jumble of unrelated brush marks. More bits of information floated up from the depths of her memory, adding detail and definition to the zebra.
Contusions, abrasions, broken bones. The notes from the brief coroner's report flashed through her mind for the hundredth time that day. She had blocked it all out after reading it that first day, but now the details came back to her again and again. Cuts, bruises, a broken nose. Injuries that may have been incurred in the fall from Clyde, but Mari had taken that same fall and come away with nothing more than a few bruises.
She closed her eyes and visualized the grisly scene as it must have happened—the bullet striking Lucy in the back, pitching her forward, the mule bolting out from under her, Lucy falling headlong. Into a deep cushion of meadow grass. Where had the cuts come from? How had she broken her nose? She might have landed on a rock, but that still didn't explain the cuts or the dirty, broken fingernails.
After a brief nap plagued by disturbing dark images, Mari had spent much of the afternoon tracking down the county coroner to see if he could answer any of her questions. As it turned out, he was a veterinarian who had never wanted to take the job of coroner. No one in the county wanted the job. It was traditionally passed down as a booby prize to the newest person in the county with medical training—which was, he had pointed out defensively, better than in some counties, where the coroner ran a filling station or feed store. The job didn't require a diploma of any kind. It was an elected position no one ever wanted to run for. His job was to view corpses and fill out forms. He did not perform autopsies. If one seemed necessary, the unfortunate victim was shipped off to the medical examiner in Bozeman. He hadn't found it necessary in Lucy's case. A half-wit could have seen what killed her.