by Gina Welborn
“Thank you,” Emilia whispered back and was pleased her tone sounded sincere. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Mrs. Watson sighed. “When I look at you, I see so much of myself. Hard to believe it’s been ten years since I left the ranch.” After one final squeeze of Emilia’s hand, she turned and walked to the door.
“You forgot your basket.”
“It’s for you. Apple pie. Welcome to Helena!”
Emilia stared at the door long after Mrs. Watson was out of sight.
Luci appeared from around the cupboards. “That woman seemed creepy to me. What did she whisper to you?”
“I think, a sales spiel.”
“Humph.”
At the sound, Emilia turned to Sheriff McCall, standing at Luci’s side. Something wasn’t right. Something raised an inner alarm, something she hadn’t felt since Mr. Deegan had informed her of the debt they owed for the tenement repairs. For the last two Sundays Mrs. Watson could have walked over and introduced herself. Instead, she and her husband skedaddled out of the church after the last amen. Everyone knew women bearing apples shouldn’t be trusted—at least in the Bible and in fairy tales. Was that why Emilia felt wary?
She gave some thought to the exact wording, rolling the question in her mind until she knew exactly what she wanted to ask.
She refocused on Sheriff McCall. “Considering the number of Helena businessmen who have offered to buy the ranch, and the eight marriage proposals I’ve received in the last three weeks, do you think it’s possible someone was willing to kill Finn for his land?”
Chapter Thirteen
“That, ma’am, is why I wanted you to stay on the train.” Emilia stared at Sheriff McCall, rendered speechless by his admission. His brusqueness, his irritation at her for not accepting the tickets, his insistence on guarding the cabin that first night—it all made sense. Now. If someone had killed Finn for his land, his wife became the next target. She became the next target. Although a man didn’t need to kill her to gain possession of her land. Marriage would do that. And it would eliminate the risk of losing the land in a sheriff ’s sale to a higher bidder.
“Why didn’t you tell me—” She fell silent as his gaze shifted to the store’s opened door. Anyone could walk in and overhear. She touched her sister’s arm. “Luci, would you go tell Mr. Gunderson that I’m locking up?”
Luci gave her a look that clearly said, We’re going to talk later. And then she nodded and headed to the back office, trailing her fingers on anything she could touch.
Emilia hurried to the front door. She moved the brick keeping it propped open. Once it was bolted, she turned around . . . and gasped. Sheriff McCall stood there. She could barely catch her breath looking up at him.
He was staring at her most intently, his gaze soft. Contrite. “I should have told you. The day you arrived, not twenty-four hours earlier, I’d buried the man who was a brother to me.”
Who was also her husband.
But it wasn’t the same. She’d only known Finn through letters. She never experienced the sound of his voice or his laughter. He had. Even if Sheriff McCall had shared with her the degree of his loss that first day, she would have stepped off the train. She had to. She couldn’t go back to Chicago. Her future was here. Even without Finn.
Sheriff McCall’s future was here, too.
Without Finn.
She reached out and curled her hand around his. “I have failed to express how sorry I am for your loss,” she said softly. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize the extent of it the day I arrived.” The movement was small—a flinch perhaps—but she felt it. “You shouldn’t have had to deal with us that day. Or any day. We’re nothing but a reminder of Finn. For that I am also sorry.”
He looked to where their hands joined, his expression pained.
Emilia’s cheeks warmed. She released his hand. How could she have been so bold and imposing when she knew how uncomfortable he’d first been when Luci hugged him? The man didn’t like to be touched.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, studying her face. “I had no idea Luci was afraid of dogs. I figured you needed something to raise an alarm, if necessary.”
“You had the right intentions.”
He swallowed. “To think what could have happened to—”
“Nothing did,” she rushed to say. He was making himself the villain, she could see that. But he shouldn’t. “Luci adores Needles as much as the dog adores her now. Jakob worked a miracle.”
A muscle under his eye flinched. “It should have been me.”
Something nudged at her to ask why do you care? But her heart was pounding again, her stomach in knots. Why did he care so deeply? In no way had he inherited Luci or any of them by way of his friendship to Finn. He wasn’t bound to them. Except . . .
He believed they were.
As long as she remained Finn’s widow, that was what they would be to him. The only solution was to marry someone else in town. But what man would want a woman who came with the burden of family and debts? A man who cared.
Or one who wanted her land.
Her land of milk and honey. Her albatross.
His gaze shifted from her to something—to nothing in particular. He looked tired. And lonely. Did he have anyone to confide in now that Finn was gone?
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, drawing his attention.
His brows rose in a silent question—for what?
“Your deputy warned me you were in a dark mood.” Emilia released a breath, the action ebbing the tension in her shoulders. “I should have waited and I’m sorry I didn’t. It wasn’t the best moment to have that—any—conversation with you.”
“I’m sorry I was terse.”
“I’m sorry I—” Emilia chuckled. “We’re quite a sorry pair, aren’t we?”
He grinned. “Indeed, ma’am, we are.”
Emilia didn’t respond. Not yet. This—a camaraderie between them—was too nice not to pause and enjoy the feeling. She nipped at her bottom lip. “I have a couple of things to finish here before I can leave. You’re welcome to follow us home. Jakob likes to help Roch catch some fish before he returns to Helena. You can eat with us, and then I can show you where I found the—”
“Can’t,” he cut in. “I have work to catch up on.”
“Tomorrow would be fine.”
“How about Saturday midmorning?” he suggested.
“Could you come earlier? Around eight instead? The Palmers invited me to the bride’s tea,” Emilia reminded him. “Is there a reason you look surprised?”
He shook his head. “Eight marriage proposals. Jakob helping at the ranch. You attending a tea. A lot has happened while I was away.”
Emilia didn’t reply. She couldn’t tell by his voice if he was bothered or merely remarking upon facts, so she said, “Because Finn’s creditors agreed to the payment schedule, I didn’t feel a hasty marriage was a needed solution to—”
“Emme! Emme!” Luci dashed through the shop. “Mr. Gunderson said I could borrow a croquet set and bring it back Monday.” She stopped next to the wooden box she’d been examining with Sheriff McCall. “I don’t know which one to pick.”
“Excuse me, Sheriff.” Emilia stepped around him. They didn’t need a croquet set. None of them knew how to play. Nor did they have time to waste playing. She stopped next to Luci, placing her palm against the wooden box, stopping her from picking it up. “We can’t borrow anything from Mr. Gunderson.”
“Why not?”
“You know why.”
Luci’s lips pinched. “Fine.”
“How about if I buy it for you?” offered Sheriff McCall.
“Thank you,” Emilia put in before her sister could accept, “but please don’t. I know you mean well. I do. But I need you to stop trying to fix our problems.”
His confused gaze shifted from her to Luci, then back to her. “Understood.” He gave Luci’s arm a gentle squeeze. “Come by my office whenever you like.” He slid his hat back on his head, m
uttered, “Ma’am” in Emilia’s direction, and headed to Mr. Gunderson’s office, presumably to use the building’s back exit.
“Emme?” Luci’s voice was soft.
She turned to her sister. “Yes?”
“I don’t think Mr. Gunderson expected anything in return for letting us borrow the croquet set.”
“Not immediately,” she explained, because Luci needed to hear the truth Mama had drilled into her, the truth confirmed every day she’d worked at Spiegel. “One day he will need a favor and he will remind us of when he loaned us the croquet set. Until then, we owe him and, in a way, that means he owns us. Best not to place ourselves under any debt.”
“Can’t people do things just to be nice?”
Emilia opened her mouth to say of course not, then stopped, the denial dying in her throat. Maybe, in the world somewhere, there were people who did nice things and never expected anything in return. Maybe. She’d never met anyone like that. No one was that kind.
Were they?
* * *
Mac arrived at the ranch bright and early on Saturday morning. As soon as he dismounted to tie Thunder’s reins to the porch beam, two things greeted him: zealous barking and the scent of fresh-baked biscuits.
His stomach rumbled despite the steak-and-egg breakfast he’d consumed before leaving town. Assuming Emilia Collins was like most women, she’d offer him something to eat within a few minutes of his arrival and—after seeing how much weight she’d lost during his three-week trip—there was no way he was taking food off her table. Given that Luci appeared to have gained all the weight her sister had lost, it seemed there was enough of that going on out here. Was the woman giving her siblings larger servings?
Mac stepped onto the porch and raised his hand to knock.
The door flew open. “Mac!” Luci launched herself into a hug.
He wrapped his arms around her shoulders, looking over her head to see an approving smile on her sister’s beautiful face.
His stomach did another roll—only this time from attraction rather than pretend hunger. Other women had smiled at him, some going so far as flirting, but none ever twisted his insides.
Mac nodded at her. “Mrs. Collins.”
“Sheriff McCall.” She bent to pick up the frenzied Needles. “Quiet!”
The dog stopped yapping but continued to voice his distrust of the intruder with low growls.
“Seems your dog doesn’t like me.” Mac eyed the white ball of fur wriggling in her arms.
Mrs. Collins’s lips twitched. “Serves you right, I’d say.”
A chuckle bubbled in his chest at her sass before he caught himself. This was his best friend’s widow. A woman he found far too appealing and who invaded his thoughts often enough without their bonding over shared jokes. If he’d thought of her once, he’d thought of her a thousand times in the last two days, wondering who the eight men who’d offered proposals were and wanting to shoot every last one of them for daring to bother her when she still loved Finn.
Luci pulled away from the hug, grabbing Mac’s arm to tug him inside. “Do you want some biscuits? Emme and I baked them this morning. They’re delicious.”
“No, thanks.” He took off his hat and stepped over the threshold. A braided rag rug covered the bloodstained floorboard and a third chair sat next to the pine table. Gifts? Or purchases from what little money the family had?
Whichever it was, Mrs. Collins and her siblings had made the cabin more of a home in a month than Finn had in almost seven years. Far from what Mac imagined, the family was . . .
Thriving seemed too strong a word. Adjusting? Making due? Being resilient in the face of long odds?
Those were all good things, so why did they congeal in his gut like cold oatmeal?
Luci grabbed the plate of biscuits and held it under his nose. “We made extra to take to the auction at church tomorrow. Are you sure you don’t want any?”
They smelled even better up close, but Mac shook his head. “What church auction?”
Mrs. Collins set Needles on the floor. “For the widows and orphans fund.”
He pressed his lips together. If the family wanted to contribute to the very fund meant to benefit them, he didn’t need to point out the irony—no matter how much he wanted to.
“Let me show you where I found that thingamajig.” Mrs. Collins reached back to untie her faded, calico apron, then tossed it on the yellow cupboard.
“Can I come?” Luci sent a pleading glance at her sister, who shook her head.
“No, you promised to take lunches out to Roch and Jakob.” Mrs. Collins swung her attention to Mac. “They’re out cutting more wood for the new corral.”
He didn’t care where they were as long as Jakob Gunderson was supplying his own food. Mac stepped back and opened the door a little wider. After Mrs. Collins passed through, he sent a smile at Luci. “See you at church tomorrow.”
She brightened and scooped Needles into her arms without hesitation—which should make him less irritated with Jakob, not more. “Be sure to bid on our basket. You’ll recognize it.”
Meaning it was the one they’d brought from Chicago. How had it survived Roch’s petulant dumping that first day?
“We’ll see.” Mac shut the door and followed his best friend’s wife down the porch steps. They made it halfway to the barn before his resolve to stop fixing things wavered. “It’s kind of you to donate to the auction.”
“Kindness has nothing to do with it.”
The statement surprised him so much, Mac stopped walking. “Then what does it have to do with?”
She turned around and looked at him as if he was the one not making sense. “Obligation. Last Sunday, the reverend’s wife gave us four jars of apple butter, so etiquette dictates that we give something back in return. Since Mrs.—oh, I can’t remember her name.”
“Neven?” He supplied the reverend’s last name.
“Yes. Since Mrs. Neven asked if we would like to participate in the charity auction, I figured donating a basket would make us even.” She started walking again, reaching the barn door before he recovered.
He jogged to catch up. “So, let me get this straight. You think you need to pay back every kindness extended to you?”
“Of course.”
Uh-oh. The ladies from the church were a generous lot. They’d likely overwhelmed her with welcome gifts, condolence gifts, and sorry-I-haven’t-done-this-sooner gifts, like Mrs. Watson’s pie on Wednesday night. If she felt obligated to—
Wait! Was marrying Finn a repayment of sorts?
Mac recalled a line from one of her letters, the ones he’d read and reread looking for clues to solve Finn’s murder. I’m so grateful we are equally matched. Mac had thought she meant in personality and scoffed. No one knew someone’s true character through correspondence. But what if she’d meant equal in what they brought to the marriage? Finn’s wide-open ranch got her out of a squalid tenement that stank of butchered pigs—the ones she’d written about in so many of her letters—and she eased Finn’s loneliness by providing him with not just a wife but a whole family.
No indebtedness, because they were even.
“Are you coming inside?” Emilia—Mrs. Collins poked her head out of the barn.
“Yes. Give me a minute.” Mac pulled in a deep breath. Time to focus on facts. The barn, the nickel-plated oval screw, the hat. What story did they tell? He closed his eyes to picture how the barn looked on the day of the murder.
Floor swept.
Hat on a nail hook on the right side about halfway back.
A pile of dirty hay near the door, rake and broom propped beside it.
Wheel tracks in the mud outside.
Wagon with fresh mud on the wheels inside.
With the picture in his mind, he stepped into the barn.
Emilia waved him closer to one of the horse stalls on the left side. “Here’s where I found it.” She bent down to point at the base of the door. “It was covered with hay.”
> Mac knelt to get a better look. He pictured the swept floor again.
Why swept? Why not just raked? And if Finn was going to be fastidious enough to sweep a dirt floor, why would he leave stray piles of hay along each side of the barn’s center aisle?
Mac pivoted and scrutinized the dirt floor. Nothing he could see, but it wasn’t as clean as it had been that day. Standing, he looked where the broom had been. It wasn’t there. Just the rake. “Where’s the broom?”
“I needed it in the house.”
Right. Finn always kept it propped against the yellow cupboard. So why, on the day he was murdered, was it out here along with his hat? Mac’s skin prickled. He was on to something. He turned to face her. “Would you get it for me?”
“Why? What are you thinking?”
“Not sure yet. I promise to tell you what I find.”
She shook her head. “You’ll promise to tell me what you’re thinking.”
Hmm. Might be more than she bargained for. “Deal.”
After a quick nod, she picked up her skirts and raced out the open barn door, looking more like a twelve-year-old girl than a twenty-one-year-old woman.
Twenty-one. Same age as Isaak and Jakob Gunderson.
Now why did that make his skin prickle, too?
Mac pushed the thought aside and wandered around the barn, looking for any clues he’d missed. Four nail hooks offered a place to hang a hat, two by the big door, one in the middle on the right, and one in the back. So . . . whatever Finn had been doing was most likely near the center of the building. He wandered to the exact middle. What happened here? Was Finn’s murder a straight-up land grab?
If so, Charles Cannon fit the bill. His latest get-rich-quick scheme was buying property—like Finn’s forty acres—on the edges of Helena’s boundaries, putting up cheap houses, and lobbying the city council to expand the city limits. But the ranch was too far outside Helena, and Cannon was hardly the type to murder someone. Nor would J. P. Fisk. Right? And while at least five men and Chicago Joe had offered to buy the ranch, it was Watson’s wife who’d made Emilia suspicious.