Dark Horse & the Mystery Man of Whitehorse

by B. J Daniels

  “I am talking to myself. I just don’t like the answers I’m getting.” Laci could hear her sister get up, then the sound of glass doors opening and closing as Laney took the phone outside. She could imagine the view of the ocean, the smell of salty sea air, the lull of the surf below the balcony and the cries of the gulls. Every woman she knew was on her honeymoon.

  “How was Alyson’s wedding?” Laney asked after a big yawn. But she sounded more awake. And it wasn’t as though Laci would have let her go back to sleep—and she would know that.

  “It was...nice.”

  “Nice?” Laney asked. “Okay, what happened? You didn’t do anything you shouldn’t have, did you?”

  Now that she had her sister on the phone, Laci wasn’t sure she wanted to tell her. It sounded too nuts, even for her. “Of course not. Look, it’s nothing. Really. Sorry I woke you up. I should let you go.”

  “Oh, no, you don’t. What is it?” her sister demanded.

  Laci groaned. “You’re going to think I’ve lost my mind.”

  “I already think you’re nuttier than peanut brittle,” Laney said, repeating something their grandmother Pearl always used to say before a stroke had left her incapacitated in a nursing home.

  “Okay, something did happen. At least I think it did. It was probably just my imagination. I’m sure it was.”

  “Laci!”

  “It’s Alyson’s husband, Spencer.”

  “Do not tell me he made a pass at you at the reception.”

  “No,” Laci said. It was much worse than that. “I caught him looking at Alyson strangely.”

  “How strangely?” Laney asked, sounding as if she was taking this seriously.

  Laci realized she’d hoped that her sister would tell her what a fool she was and relieve her mind. “He looked as if he couldn’t stand the sight of her. As if he hated her. As if he wanted to harm her.” The words were out and she wished she could call them back. She felt as if she was being disloyal to her best friend. “I know it sounds round the bend—”

  “How was he acting right before that?”

  “That’s just it. He was laughing and smiling and dancing with her as if he couldn’t believe how lucky he was to have married her. I’m sure I must be mistaken.”

  She groaned, remembering the look Spencer had given her when he’d felt her watching him. He’d been upset, hadn’t he?

  “That is really odd,” Laney said. “You’re sure he was looking at Alyson?”

  “No. But since he doesn’t know anyone else in town, who else could he have been looking at? Like I said, it was just for an instant. I’m probably wrong.”

  She waited for her sister to agree, but instead Laney asked, “Have you seen Alyson since?”

  “No. Right after that they left on their honeymoon.” She recalled the way Spencer had hustled Aly off. “Just tell me that I’m silly to be worried about her.”

  Her sister seemed to hesitate. “You’re silly to worry about her.”

  The words lacked conviction but Laci felt better. “Speaking of honeymoons...”

  “Yes, I probably should get back to mine,” Laney said, a smile in her voice.

  “You know that I will always suspect that you eloped so you wouldn’t have to ask me to cater your reception,” Laci said.

  Laney laughed. “I eloped because I’ve decided to become more impulsive, like you.”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Laci said in all seriousness. “One of us has to be the stable one. I like it when it’s you.”

  “Eloping was the first impulsive thing I’ve ever done. You’re the one who always told me to go with my feelings instead of being so analytical.”

  “I don’t know why you would take advice from me.”

  “Maybe we’ll have a reception when we get back,” Laney said. “And you can cater it.”

  “Okay,” Laci said but without her usual enthusiasm. Her mind was back on Alyson.

  “We can talk more when I get home. It won’t be that long, which is why I’m resuming my honeymoon now,” Laney said, and Laci could tell by her sister’s tone that Nick had joined her on the balcony. Nick was gorgeous and crazy in love with her big sister. “’Bye, sis.”

  “Oh, Laney, I forgot to tell you. Alyson and Spencer are spending their honeymoon in Hawaii, too. Maybe you’ll run into them.” But Laci realized her sister had already hung up.

  * * *

  AFTER WRITING UP an offer for the building, Bridger Duvall spent the rest of the day digging through old newspaper archives, looking for any mention of Dr. Holloway, the Whitehorse Sewing Circle or Pearl Cavanaugh.

  As he searched, he thought of Pearl’s granddaughter Laci and their chance meeting at the wedding. Fate? Not likely given the size of Whitehorse, Montana. Laci lived five miles south of town in what was locally known as Old Town. The now near ghost town had once been Whitehorse. That was, until the railroad came through in the 1800s and the town moved north to the rails, taking the name with it.

  He recalled the first time he’d seen Old Town. If a tumbleweed hadn’t rolled across the dirt street in front of his car, he wouldn’t have slowed and would have missed the place entirely.

  Little was left of the small ranching community. At one time there’d been a gas station, but that building was sitting empty, the pumps long gone. There was a community center, which was still called Whitehorse Community Center. Every small community in this part of Montana had one of those. And there was the one-room schoolhouse next to it.

  There were a few houses, one large one that was boarded up, a Condemned sign nailed to the door, an old shutter banging in the wind.

  For years the community had been run by Titus and Pearl Cavanaugh, both descendants of early homesteaders and just as strong and determined as the first settlers.

  Titus was as close to a mayor as Old Town had. He provided a church service every Sunday morning at the community center and saw to the hiring of a schoolteacher when needed.

  Pearl’s mother Abigail had started the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. The women of the community got together a few times a week to make quilts for every new baby and every newlywed in the area.

  The old cemetery on the hill had also kept the Whitehorse name. The iron on the sign that hung over the arched entrance was rusted but readable: Whitehorse Cemetery.

  Bridger had learned a lot about the area just stopping at a café in Whitehorse proper, five miles to the north and the last real town for miles. All he’d had to do was ask about Old Town Whitehorse and he got an earful. The people were clannish and stuck to themselves. The old-timers still resented the town moving and taking the name. And, like Whitehorse proper, both communities were dying.

  A lack of jobs was sending the younger residents to more prosperous parts of the state or the country. The population in the entire county was dropping each year. People joked about who would be around to turn the lights out when Whitehorse completely died.

  While Bridger had learned a lot, he hadn’t gotten what he’d come here to find. Not yet, anyway.

  And now he’d made the acquaintance of Pearl’s granddaughter, Laci. She was a cute thing, fair skinned, slender, with short curly blond hair and blue eyes.

  Life was strange, he thought as he continued to search the old newspapers. In a way, his life had started here. And now here he was, thirty-two years old and back here in hopes of finding himself.

  The one thing he’d learned quickly was that being an outsider was a disadvantage in a small Montana town. Not that he’d expected to be accepted immediately just because he lived here and was now opening a restaurant.

  But he’d found it was going to take time. Fortunately, time was the one thing he had plenty of.

  His eye caught on a notice in one of the old newspapers he’d been thumbing through. A
city permit for a fence at a house owned by the late Dr. Holloway.

  Bridger felt a rush of excitement. For months he’d been trying to track down his birth mother after finding out that he was adopted.

  Not just adopted—illegally adopted. The story his adoptive mother told him on her deathbed involved a group of women called the Whitehorse Sewing Circle.

  Thirty-two years ago, his parents, both too old to adopt through the usual channels, had gotten a call in the middle of the night telling them to come to the Whitehorse Cemetery.

  There an elderly woman gave them a baby and a birth certificate. No money exchanged hands. Nor names. Bridger had surmised over his time here that the woman in the cemetery that night was none other than Pearl Cavanaugh.

  How a group of women had decided to get into the illegal adoption business was still beyond him. Nor did he know how many babies had been placed over the years.

  He’d come to town months ago, rented an old farmhouse just outside of Old Town and begun his search.

  Unfortunately, his quest had come at a high price. Most of the people involved were now dead. The doctor who Bridger believed had handled the adoptions—Dr. Holloway—had been murdered by one of his coconspirators, his office building burned to the ground, all records apparently lost.

  The woman he believed to be the ringleader, Pearl Cavanaugh, had suffered a stroke. Another key player, an elderly women named Nina Mae Cross, had Alzheimer’s. Both women were in the nursing home now. Neither was able to tell him anything.

  But Bridger was convinced Holloway was too smart to keep records of his illegal adoption activities with his patients’ medical records at the office. So he held out hope that the records would be found elsewhere.

  But where would the doctor have hidden them to make sure they never surfaced? Maybe in this house Bridger had discovered.

  Or maybe no records had been kept. Certainly no charges had been filed against anyone involved, for lack of evidence.

  But even if Bridger found proof, not one of the women in the original Whitehorse Sewing Circle was less than seventy now. None would ever see prison. The only thing he could hope for was learning his true identity.

  “Even if you had proof that would stand up in court,” the sheriff had said, “you sure you want these women thrown in jail? If they hadn’t gotten you and your twin sister good homes, neither of you might be alive today.”

  Bridger knew he probably owed his life to the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. The women had taken babies who needed homes and placed them with loving couples who either couldn’t conceive or were ineligible to adopt because of their age.

  Also, something good had come out of his quest: he’d found his twin sister, Eve Bailey. Eve had grown up in Old Town and suspected from an early age that she was adopted. She’d come back here also looking for answers and, like him, had ended up staying.

  As he copied down the address of the house that Dr. Holloway had owned, he felt a surge of hope. The doctor had lived in an apartment over his office. So what had he used the house for?

  Bridger tried not to get his hopes up, telling himself that if he didn’t find anything at the house, there was always Pearl Cavanaugh’s granddaughter.

  One way or the other, maybe he’d finally get lucky.

  * * *

  LACI JUMPED WHEN the phone rang and picked it up before even checking caller ID. She’d been thinking about Alyson, so she’d just assumed it would be her.

  “Laci?”

  “Maddie?” She realized she hadn’t heard from her cousin in weeks, not since Maddie Cavanaugh had moved to Bozeman to attend Montana State University. “How are you?”

  “Great. Really great,” Maddie said, sounding like her old self again.

  Laci couldn’t have been more relieved. Maddie had been through so much, not the least being suspected of murder. But probably the hardest was her breakup with her fiancé, Bo Evans.

  The hold Bo had on Maddie was still a concern. Laci feared that Maddie might weaken and go back to that destructive relationship.

  “So tell me about your classes,” Laci said, and Maddie launched into an enthusiastic rundown. She sounded so happy that Laci began to relax a little.

  Counseling and college seemed to have helped Maddie put Bo Evans and a need to punish herself behind her.

  Maddie asked about Laci’s catering business, and Laci quickly changed the subject. Her lack of business was the least of her worries right now, but she didn’t want to get into the Alyson and Spencer situation with her cousin.

  “I have a test first thing in the morning, so I’d better go,” Maddie said after they’d talked for a while. “I wanted to let you know that my roommate has invited me home for Christmas. She’s from Kalispell, so...”

  Laci tried to hide her disappointment. Maddie had planned to spend Christmas with her. Laney and Nick had already made plans to have Christmas with his family in California. “Oh, you’ll have a great time. What a nice invitation.”

  “You don’t mind?” Maddie asked, sounding relieved.

  “Of course I will miss you, but I’m so glad you’re enjoying college and making friends.” Laci knew that Laney would now insist she come to California—the last thing she wanted to do. Christmas required snow. Christmas was Montana. Also, she couldn’t leave her grandfather alone for the holidays.

  “I’m really proud of you,” Laci said. “You’ve been through a lot.”

  “You know us Cavanaugh women,” Maddie said with a laugh. “I’m excited about the future.” Her cousin sounded surprised by that. After everything she’d been through, it was no wonder.

  Laci hung up, relieved that Maddie hadn’t asked about Bo Evans. Maybe she was finally over him. Laci would rather believe that than believe Maddie hadn’t wanted to come home for Christmas because she was afraid to see Bo again. Either because she feared she might be tempted or because she was scared of the Evans family. Laci could understand being afraid of that family.

  * * *

  ARLENE EVANS COULDN’T believe the mental hospital wouldn’t let her see her daughter Violet.

  “I told you they wouldn’t let us in,” Charlotte said as she inspected the ends of her long blond hair.

  Arlene glanced over at her younger daughter as she put the car into gear. More and more, Charlotte was starting to annoy her. The whiny voice. The obsession with her split ends. The way she’d put on weight since the “incidents.”

  Arlene insisted the family all refer to the attempts on her life as “those unfortunate incidents” if they had to refer to them at all. She would just as soon forget the whole thing. But that was a little difficult since the entire country had heard about her three children trying to kill her.

  It had almost cost Arlene the farm in lawyer fees to get her two youngest off. It had cost her her husband. Floyd divorced her and ran off with some grain seed saleswoman. Good riddance. She’d leased out the land and would be just fine now that her Rural Meet-A-Mate internet dating service was doing so well. Being on national TV hadn’t hurt.

  Whatever the cost, it had been worth it to get Charlotte and Bo cleared. In her own mind, Arlene knew where the blame for the whole mess lay: her old-maid daughter Violet. Violet had always been the problem child. Charlotte, barely eighteen, and Bo, now twenty, would never have even contemplated the terrible things they’d done without Violet as the ringleader.

  Alice Miller, that old busybody who lived down the road, had suggested the children were fed too much sugar. The woman really needed to turn off the talk-show television and take care of her own business.

  Fortunately, Arlene had been able to hire a good lawyer for Charlotte and Bo and got them probation. The judge had insisted they come home and live with her so they could begin to heal. Arlene wasn’t sure that’s what had been going on at the house, though.

 
Bo stayed in his room listening to that horrible music and barely had a civil word for her, except late at night when he went out doing who knew what. Charlotte, restricted from going into town on Saturday nights because of those other unfortunate incidents involving strange men, hung around the house and ate.

  Half the time, Arlene couldn’t stand the sight of her own children. Now there was an episode for the talk shows.

  The only way she’d been able to stay sane was to concentrate on her business. Her internet rural dating business had taken off after she’d been interviewed on one of the national morning TV shows. But many locals were still wary of the internet. She’d been forced to remove some people’s profiles who hadn’t asked to be put on her Web page. The ingratitude of people still amazed her.

  Like the Cavanaughs. The whole bunch of them blamed Bo for Maddie’s problems. All Arlene could say was good riddance to that one, too. She hated to think what Bo’s life would have been like if he’d married that girl.

  Arlene couldn’t believe the injustice in the world. That’s probably why, when she got to the point that she found herself finding fault with Charlotte and Bo, she would turn all her anger and frustration on the one person who really deserved it—her oldest daughter, Violet. On the fast track to thirty-five and insane, Violet had little chance of ever getting married now. And wasn’t it just like everyone to blame the mother for it.

  “I’d love to give Violet a piece of my mind,” Arlene said as she left the mental hospital, tires spitting gravel. She’d even hired a lawyer, but the hospital hadn’t budged, saying that it would not be in Violet’s best interest to see her mother. As if Arlene gave a fig about Violet’s best interest.

  Did Violet appreciate all the years Arlene had labored tirelessly to try to get her married off? No. How did Violet pay her back? She’d tried to kill her own mother and had drawn in her younger sister and brother as accomplices.

  “Sometimes I just don’t know why I try,” Arlene said and sighed as she drove toward Old Town Whitehorse. Beside her, Charlotte pulled a candy bar from her jacket pocket, at least her third this morning.