by B. J Daniels
“Where are you taking me?” she asked, sounding as if it really didn’t make any difference.
“You’ll see. How was your day?”
“Fine.” She opened her eyes and looked over at him. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
He glanced at her, saw her expression and said, “Okay.”
She closed her eyes again and they drove in a companionable silence until he slowed for the turnoff to the ranch.
She sat up. “Trails West Ranch?” Glancing over at him, she asked, “Are you sure this is a good idea?”
It was a terrible idea for a lot of reasons, he thought. “I thought you’d like to meet my family.”
“If this is about buying my property—”
“This is about getting you a good meal,” he said. “Nothing more.”
She cut her eyes to him as he parked in front of the main house.
“I hope you like margaritas,” he said as he got out and led her toward the front door.
DULCIE STEPPED INTO THE cool, inviting ranch house and was drawn to the voices and muffled laughter. She breathed in the smell of tantalizing Mexican food cooking somewhere close by and could almost taste the sharp, tangy salt on the rim of a margarita as Russell took her arm and called out, “I brought a friend for supper.”
The night passed in a pleasant blur of good food, drink and company. The Corbetts were a handsome and charming bunch and she liked their stepmother, Kate, a lot. She complimented Juanita on her amazing culinary masterpieces and thanked Kate and Grayson for allowing her to join them.
“You should have warned me,” Dulcie said on the way back to her car after the evening was over.
“Would you have gone with me if I had warned you about my family?”
“You know I didn’t mean your family,” she said, humor in her voice. “You’re one of those wealthy ranchers I’ve heard about.”
“I work.”
“I know you do,” she said, taking his right hand from the wheel and running her fingertips along the callouses. “That’s one of the things I like about you.”
“One of the things?”
“You? Fishing for compliments?” she said, shoving his hand away with a laugh. “I wasn’t exactly honest with you either about my work.” She told him about Renada and the boutique they started that grew into a wildly successful enterprise.
“What will you do now?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Not sit idle, that’s not me. But truthfully, I’m out of ideas at the moment. This thing with the property and that house…”
“I visited this morning with someone who used to own the property behind yours by the creek.”
“Where your rainmaker is working.”
His rainmaker. He grimaced inwardly. “John and Midge Atkinson. They moved into town after the murder, I think. I was hoping to get some answers for you, but…”
“But people don’t want to talk about it, do they?”
“No.”
“Doesn’t that tell you something?” she asked, glancing over at him, her face intent in the glow of the dashboard lights.
“What it tells me is that people don’t like talking about the brutal murder of a young woman who lived near them, someone they knew. I get the impression that Midge Atkinson was a friend of hers.”
Dulcie started. “Midge Atkinson? No wonder the name sounded familiar. An M. Atkinson painted angels on the wall in Angel Beaumont’s bedroom upstairs. Do you know if Midge paints?”
“Could be. All the borders were painted at her house. But if she was a friend, then that could explain why some people don’t want to talk about the murder.”
“Maybe they don’t want to talk because the killer was never caught…and he’s someone in this community and they’re all covering for him.”
Russell shot her a look. “Is that what you think?”
“I’M NOT THE ONLY ONE who thinks that.” Dulcie regretted the words instantly.
“Someone told you that?” He slowed as her car came into view.
“I’m sorry I said it.”
“But not because it wasn’t true.” He stopped the pickup and looked over at her. “Dulcie, you’re scaring me. If you know something, you have to go to the sheriff. Or talk to my brother Shane. You met him tonight. He’s a deputy sheriff. He’ll help you.” Shane had left just before them for his late shift.
“I don’t know anything, that’s the problem. It’s all speculation.”
He studied her openly in the dashboard light. “You aren’t going to let this go, are you? Then let me help you. I don’t want you to have to do this alone.”
“Thank you. For the offer. For supper. For including me in your family tonight.”
“I’m serious about helping you,” he said.
It was tempting to accept his help. But what could he do? The locals weren’t apt to talk to him any more than they were to her. Russell hadn’t been here long enough that he knew the community’s secrets. Maybe you had to go back five generations for that.
“I know you are serious about helping me and I appreciate that. I just don’t know how you can help me right now.”
“You’re going back to the house tomorrow.”
She nodded. It was all she had.
“Then let me come with you. I’ll scare away the snakes and do whatever you need.”
“And make sure your rainmaker doesn’t come back?”
“That, too.”
She shook her head. Tomorrow she planned to cross the creek and talk to the rainmaker. After reading the murder story Jolene had given her, Dulcie had some leverage to use with him. The only way she might get the rainmaker to talk to her, though, was if Russell Corbett was nowhere around.
“If I need you, I’ll let you know.” She opened the passenger’s-side door. “I liked your family.”
“Well, that was only because they were on their best behavior tonight.”
“Oh?” She hadn’t meant to sound so suspicious.
“My father and I are the only ones who discussed purchasing your land—if and when you put it up for sale.”
“So why were they on their best behavior?” she asked.
“It’s embarrassing.”
“They thought I was your girlfriend?” She laughed. “They must be horrified. You and a fool city girl? I heard what you muttered under your breath the first day we met.”
He leaned back, smiling over at her. “Now I am embarrassed.”
“No, you’re not. Anyway, it’s true. I am a fool city girl out here and gone in the wilds of Montana.” She glanced away for a moment. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”
“Looking for answers.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. But I’m not sure I want to hear the answers.”
“Then why keep looking? You can walk away right now.”
She laughed at how outrageous that was.
“I’m serious.”
“I know you are, but nothing could get me to quit at this point. I have the feeling that the reason my parents didn’t tell me about this property was because this was something I had to do myself and they knew it.”
He shook his head. “This is no way to find it out about a murdered woman and her dead child.” He sounded angry.
“You didn’t know my parents.”
“Did you?” he shot back.
She started to step out of the pickup.
“I’m sorry, you’re right, I didn’t know your parents. I should keep my opinions to myself.”
She couldn’t be angry with him. Russell had been there for her when she’d needed him and she hadn’t forgotten when they’d made love in the house.
But he couldn’t solve this for her—as much as he wanted to. “Thank you again for this evening. I can’t tell you how much I needed it but then I think you knew that, didn’t you?”
“You give me too much credit.”
“No, I don’t.” She thought about leaning back into the pickup’s cab and kis
sing him. But she knew how dangerous that would be. The two of them being intimate again wasn’t a good idea.
Instead, she smiled, stepped out of the truck and closed the door.
He waited, just as she’d known he would, for her to start her car and drive down the road before he turned around and headed back to the ranch.
She didn’t let herself think about the copy of the murder story Jolene Stevens had given her until his pickup’s taillights disappeared from her rearview mirror. Shuddering, she glanced over at the story stuffed in her shoulder bag.
Was it just fiction? Or was Jolene Stevens right? Could it be a confession? But why write it for the teacher of the one-room schoolhouse?
And where, if anywhere, did that leave Dulcie?
The headlights came out of nowhere. One minute there was no one behind her. The next a pickup was tailgating her, its bright lights blinding.
Dulcie slowed a little, pulling to the side to let the impatient driver pass.
The pickup started past her, then swerved into her rental. The loud crunch of metal filled the car as she was thrown against the door. Her car veered to the right. She fought to keep it on the road as it swerved wildly.
At first she thought the truck had hit her accidentally until the driver swerved into her again, jarring her vehicle in a roar of engine and screaming metal.
Ahead the road narrowed, dropping off steeply on both sides. The truck swerved away from her after the impact, but she could see it heading for her again.
She sped up, knowing her only chance was to outrun the driver.
The pickup fell in behind her, the lights filling the cab as it stayed with her. The road dipped and rose. The car caught air over a rise and came down hard.
Behind her, the truck came off the top of the rise airborne. It was going so fast that for a breathtaking instant, she thought it would land on her.
The pickup came down in a cloud of dust directly behind her. She felt it slam into the back of her car, shooting her forward before the truck started to fishtail in some loose gravel on the edge of the recently graded road.
In her side mirror she saw the truck leave the road, barreling down into the barrow pit and back up the other side. It hurtled through a barbed-wire fence before coming to rest in a mushroom cloud of dust in the middle of a wheat field.
Dulcie sped up, racing toward town. In her rearview mirror she saw the truck’s headlights sweep around as the driver headed back toward the road.
Fear had her gripping the wheel and continuing to glance at the rearview mirror. She was driving as fast as she could without going off the road herself, afraid any moment the pickup’s headlights would appear again over a rise.
But a few turns in the road, she looked back and saw nothing but darkness behind her. Either the pickup hadn’t been able to get out of the wheat field. Or whoever had tried to run her off the road had given up, having successfully sent their message.
She didn’t slow until she reached the outskirts of town. Her heart was still pounding as she drove down the main drag looking for the sheriff’s department.
The office was in a small, brick building. She was glad to see Shane Corbett as she rushed in.
“What’s wrong?” he asked as he saw her face.
“Someone just tried to run me off the road.” She motioned toward her rental car parked outside.
“Let me have a look. Stay here.” And he was gone. A few minutes later he returned. “Come into the office and I’ll take your report.”
By then she wasn’t shaking anymore and was able to tell him what she could about the truck. “Dark colored.” She saw by his expression that the description wasn’t going to help. “There are a lot of dark-colored trucks around here, aren’t there?”
He nodded. “But the driver left some paint on your rental car. The pickup was brown and I would imagine you left some bright red paint on his pickup. We’ll look for it and have the body shop watch for it.”
She doubted the truck would be turning up. The driver would be a fool not to park it in his barn and leave it there.
“Any reason someone would want to run you off the road?”
“No.” Even as she said it, she wondered if she was wrong.
“Did the driver appear to be drunk?”
“Not really.”
“I guess what I’m asking is if you were going too slow and taking up the road?” he said, looking embarrassed.
“You mean being a city girl?” She sighed. “No, I was going normal speed and I even pulled over to let him go around and he wouldn’t.”
Shane nodded. “Didn’t mean to insult you. Just trying to figure out why anyone would want to run you off the road.”
“I haven’t been here long enough to make enemies, but I have been looking into Laura Beaumont’s murder.”
He nodded slowly. “Russell mentioned that. You know—”
“You aren’t going to tell me that I might be putting myself in danger by doing that, are you?”
Shane smiled. Those Corbett men really were good-looking. “I might have thought about warning you that sometimes locals don’t take kindly to a newcomer butting into their business.”
“That’s what I thought. But isn’t it more likely that, since the murder was never solved, I’m making someone nervous?”
“A twenty-four-year-old murder? The killer’s gone free all this time? Seems kind of stupid for him to try to run you off the road and give himself away when you don’t have any evidence against him, right?”
He did have a point.
“Not yet,” she admitted.
“Yeah, that’s the part that makes me nervous,” he said. “What exactly are you thinking of doing to find this evidence?”
“Just doing a little more digging.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You think that’s a good idea?”
“Someone is trying to scare me off. That means there is something to find and I don’t scare off easily.”
“I’m beginning to see why my brother is so taken with you—and why he’s equally as worried.”
“He’s taken with me?” she asked with a grin.
“You tell him I said that and I’ll deny it. Seriously, we’re a small sheriff’s department. There’s no way we can protect you.”
“But you could help me,” Dulcie said. “You could let me see the file on Laura Beaumont’s murder.”
SHE RAN BLIND FROM HER mother’s bedroom, leaving bloody footprints. The killer raced after her, calling her name, as she ran down the stairs and burst out the front door.
She could hear the killer behind her as they both disappeared into the darkness. It wasn’t until she reached the road that she realized she’d run the wrong way.
Had she run toward the creek, she could have hidden in the trees. Or called her friend for help. He would’ve saved her.
But instead she’d run to the road.
She looked back, hearing the killer coming behind her, knowing now that she didn’t stand a chance of getting away. The killer was almost to the open gate. On the road the killer would have no trouble catching her.
Lights came over the small hill, blinding her. She closed her eyes at the screech of brakes and thrown gravel as the vehicle skidded to a stop. She was caught in the headlights like a deer about to be slaughtered.
The door opened. “Angel? My God, Angel, is that blood on you? Where’s your mama? Tell me where your mama is, girl. Stop your crying and pulling away, I’m not hurting you. Tell me what’s happened. Stop it and tell me what your mama has done now.”
It rained the day of Angel Beaumont’s funeral. She was buried on the hill overlooking Old Town Whitehorse. The whole county turned out, huddled under a sea of black umbrellas, as Titus Cavanaugh read from the Bible and prayed over the poor helpless child.
During the funeral the rainmaker drove by in his beat-up truck, his magical pipes singing against each other. The mourners dispersed soon after. A few days later, the community had joined again at the
cemetery to lay to rest the mother now beside the child, just as they had lain to rest the truth.
JOLENE LOOKED UP AT HER Friday class, heart pounding. All but one head was bent over the math assignment she’d handed out. Her unruly fifth-grader, Thad Brooks, was chewing on the end of his pencil and staring out the window, daydreaming.
She cleared her throat, catching his attention. He ducked his head and went back to work. She read the pages again.
Last night she’d tossed and turned for hours, afraid she’d made a mistake by giving Dulcie copies of the murder story. She’d been anxious this morning to get the next assignment, equally afraid the author would find out what she’d done and quit sending it.
Now she’d been given another piece of the puzzle and she couldn’t wait to see what Dulcie thought about it.
When her students had finished their math assignment and turned it in, Jolene said, “Monday is the last day of your writing project, which means you have to wind up your story. Today we’re going to talk about endings. Can someone tell me what we need to do to make a satisfying ending?”
“What if we can’t end it?” Mace Carpenter asked. “Cuz it has no ending?”
“For this assignment, you need to end it,” she said. “The ending of your story must satisfy all the questions the person reading your story might have. For instance, the reader will want to know what happened to your character. Why it happened. And feel satisfied that the character will be all right in the future.”
“That’s called a happy ending,” Codi spoke up. “Which means your character can’t die, isn’t that right, Miss Stevens?”
“For this assignment I think it best if your characters continue living, yes.” She wasn’t sure why she’d just told them that the stories had to have a happy ending. They didn’t. Maybe because she hoped there would be a happy ending to the mystery in the murder story.
At recess, Jolene made a decision. She called the cell phone number Dulcie had given her, planning to leave a message. She was surprised when Dulcie answered and said as much.