Linda Lael Miller Montana Creeds Series Volume 1: Montana Creeds: LoganMontana Creeds: DylanMontana Creeds: Tyler

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I’m full of surprises,” Dylan replied. “You happen to know if Logan arranged to have my house fixed up after that last breakin?”

  “Took a crew over there and did it myself. Logan asked me to have Briana’s and the boys’ stuff picked up and moved here, and I did that, too.”

  That was something, anyhow, Dylan thought, still unaccountably disappointed that Logan wasn’t home. He and Bonnie could get some groceries and move right in. Cassie had made them welcome, but her place was small and he didn’t want to impose any longer than necessary.

  “This must be old home week,” Dan went on, just as Dylan was about to shift gears and drive overland to his place to figure out what he and Bonnie would need besides groceries. “I just saw Tyler. He’s holed up in that old cabin of his, out there by the lake, and he asked me not to tell anybody he’s around. Don’t figure he’d mind your knowing, though.”

  Dan figured wrong, but Dylan saw no reason to say so. “I’ll stop by and say howdy,” he answered easily. If I’m lucky, little brother won’t run me off with a shotgun.

  “Starting on the house next,” Dan said, with a nod toward the venerable old place. “Putting in some pretty fancy rigging—new master bathroom and a state-of-the-art kitchen to start.”

  Dylan grinned. Logan still expected to stay on, settle down, raise a pack of kids with Briana.

  He’d believe it when the last of the bunch grew up and got married.

  But, then, considering how he felt about his own child, it was possible Logan really had set his mind to “making the Creed name mean something,” as he put it.

  “Be seeing you,” Dylan told Dan, because that was what you said, in the boonies, when you wanted to make a polite but speedy exit.

  Dan nodded, executed a half salute and went back to work.

  Dylan headed for his own place.

  “Potty,” Bonnie said solemnly, as they bumped and jostled across the field, going around the orchard and the cemetery.

  Sooner or later, he’d have to visit Jake’s grave, but that was way down on the list.

  “Hold your horses,” Dylan answered, his tone affable. “We’re almost home.”

  *

  “IT’S JUST PLAIN SILLY to get all bent out of shape just because Dylan Creed showed up at story hour with absolutely the most gorgeous child in the universe,” Kristy told Winston, long about sundown as, standing on the top rung of a folding ladder, she swabbed sunshine-yellow paint around the framework of the archway between the kitchen and dining room.

  Winston, having just devoured his usual feast, groomed one of his forepaws meticulously and offered no comment.

  “I mean, it isn’t as if he’s ever had any trouble attracting women,” Kristy went on, wiping a splotch of paint from her nose with the sleeve of the oversize men’s shirt she’d bought at Goodwill for messy jobs.

  “Meow,” Winston said, halfheartedly.

  “It’s just that it was sort of a shock, that’s all.”

  Bored, Winston turned, fluffed out his bushy tail and hied himself to the living room. He liked to curl up on the antique bureau in front of the bay windows and watch the world go by. Slow going, in Stillwater Springs. Hours could pass before a car putted past.

  “Typical,” Kristy said to the empty kitchen. “Nobody listens to me.”

  In the next instant, somebody rapped at her back door, and Kristy nearly fell off the ladder, she was so startled. What was the matter with her, anyway?

  “Come in!” she called, because that was what you did in Stillwater Springs.

  When Sheriff Book opened the door and stepped across the threshold, she was surprised, though not enough to take a header to the linoleum.

  “You shouldn’t just call out ‘come in’ like that,” Floyd said, taking off his sheriff hat and setting it aside on the counter. “I could have been some drifter, bent on murder and mayhem.” A little grin twitched at the corner of his mouth, softening his otherwise stern expression. “This isn’t the old days, Kristy.”

  Kristy set her wet paintbrush in the aluminum tray of sunshine-yellow and climbed down the ladder, smiling. “Coffee?” she asked.

  Floyd shook his head, sighed. “Trying to cut down,” he said. “Keeps me awake at night.”

  Kristy stood there, waiting for him to get to the reason for his visit.

  “You mind sitting down?” the sheriff asked, sounding tired.

  Uh-oh, Kristy thought. Here comes the whammy.

  Once she was seated at the table, Floyd took a chair across from her. “I guess you know the bank finally untangled that probate mess over the ranch,” he said quietly. “And Freida’s got that movie-star fella all set to buy it.”

  Kristy’s throat thickened. She nodded. “She told me it was going up for sale now that all the legal processes are complete.” She was curious as to why Floyd had dropped in to tell her something like that.

  “It’s an old ranch,” Floyd went on, his expression downright grim. “A lot happened out there, over the years.”

  Kristy felt an uneasy prickle in the pit of her stomach. “Floyd, what are you getting at?”

  “I think there might be a body buried on the place,” Floyd said.

  Kristy’s mouth dropped open, and her heart stopped, then raced. The monster-memory stirred in the depths of her brain. “A body?”

  Floyd sighed. “I could be wrong,” he said, but the expression on his face said he didn’t think so.

  “Good God,” Kristy said, too stunned to say anything else and, at the same time, strangely not surprised.

  The sheriff looked pained. “There was a man—worked for your daddy one summer when you were just a little thing. Some drifter—I never knew his name for certain. Men like him came and went all the time, stopping to earn a few dollars on some ranch. But one night, late, Tim woke me up with a phone call and said there was bad trouble, and I ought to get out there quick. He didn’t sound like himself—for a moment or two, I thought I was talking to a prowler. Turned out he’d caught this drifter fella sneaking out of the house with some of your mother’s jewelry and what cash they had on hand, which was plenty, because they’d sold some cattle at auction that day. There was a fight, that was all Tim would tell me. That there’d been a fight. I dressed and headed for the ranch, soon as I could. And when I got there, your dad changed his story. Said the drifter had moved on and good riddance to him.”

  Dread welled up inside Kristy, but she said, “That must have been the truth, then.” She’d never known her father to lie about anything, however expedient it might be.

  But Sheriff Book shook his head again. His eyes seemed to sink deeper into his head, and there were shadows under them. “I took his word for it, because he was my best friend, but there was more to the story, and I knew it. Tim looked worse than he’d sounded on the phone. It was a cold night, but he was sweating, and he had dirt under his nails, and on his clothes, too. You know he always cleaned up before supper, Kristy, and this was well after midnight.”

  Kristy couldn’t speak, couldn’t bring herself to ask the obvious question: Did Sheriff Book think her father had killed a man?

  “Few days later,” the sheriff went on, clearly forcing out the words, “on a Sunday morning, I came by the ranch for a look around, when I knew you and your folks were at church. And I found what I figured was a freshly dug grave in that copse of trees over near where Tim’s property and the Creed place butt up.”

  Kristy felt a surge of relief—he’d seen Sugarfoot’s grave that morning, not that of a human being—but it was gone in a moment. Back then, Sugarfoot had been alive and well.

  Floyd reached across the table, squeezed her ice-cold hand. “I asked Tim what was there. He said an old dog had strayed into his barn and died there, and he’d buried the poor critter in the midst of those trees.” He thrust out another sigh. “I was the sheriff. I should have done some digging, both literal and figurative, but I didn’t. I wanted to believe your dad, so I did, but I’ve always wondered, an
d now that I’m about to retire, I’ve got to know for sure. It isn’t just the coffee that keeps me up at night, it’s certain loose ends.”

  Kristy thought she was going to be sick. “You’re going to—to exhume—”

  Floyd nodded. “I know Sugarfoot’s buried there, Kristy,” he said gruffly, hardly able to meet her gaze, “and I’ll do my best not to disturb his remains too much. But I’ve got to see, once and for all, if there’s a dog in that grave with him—or a man.”

  “You seriously think my father—your best friend—would murder someone and then go to such lengths to hide the body?” Now, Kristy was light-headed. Her heart pounded, and the smell of paint, unnoticed before, brought bile scalding up into the back of her throat.

  Don’t remember, whispered a voice in the shadowy recesses of her mind, where migraines and nightmares lurked. Don’t remember.

  “I think,” Sheriff Book said quietly, “that there was a fight, and things got out of hand. If Tim did kill that drifter, it was an accident, and nobody will ever convince me otherwise. He’d have been real upset, Tim, I mean, with you and your mother in the house—that would have made the fight one he couldn’t afford to lose. In Tim’s place, I’d have been scared as hell of what that fella might do if I wasn’t up to stopping him.”

  Kristy got up, meaning to bolt for the bathroom, then sat down again with a plunk. “But Dad called you,” she muttered. “Would he have done that if he’d killed somebody?”

  “He was in a panic, Kristy. He probably called first and thought later.”

  “Dad’s gone, and so is Mom. You’re about to retire. Can’t we just let this whole thing…lie?”

  “If we can live with knowing what we do. I don’t think I can, not anymore—I’ve got an ulcer to show for it as it is. Can you just go on from here like nothing was ever said, Kristy?”

  She bit down on her lower lip. “No,” she said miserably.

  If there were human remains buried with Sugarfoot—more likely beneath him—the scandal would rock the whole state of Montana. Tim Madison’s memory, that of a decent, hardworking, honorable man, would be fodder for all sorts of speculation.

  How would she handle that?

  “Why now?” she asked, closing her eyes briefly in the hope that the room would stop tilting from side to side. “After all this time, Floyd, why now?”

  “I told you,” he replied gently. “My retirement. And with that land going up for sale, and some jerk from Hollywood bound on bringing in bulldozers to make room for tennis courts and whatnot—”

  Kristy froze. She’d known, of course, that someone would buy Madison Ranch eventually. It was prime real estate. But not once had she considered the possibility that that someone might destroy poor Sugarfoot’s grave.

  Tears filled her eyes, and all the old wounds opened at once.

  “I’m sorry,” Sheriff Book said.

  “When he died,” Kristy murmured, “Sugarfoot, I mean—I wanted to die, too. Crawl right into that grave with him and let them cover me with dirt.”

  “You’d just lost your mother then,” Floyd reminded her. “And your dad was already sick. It was a lot for one young girl to bear up under. But you did bear up, Kristy. You kept going, kept living, like you were supposed to.”

  A long, difficult silence fell. Kristy broke it with, “You do realize what an uproar this is going to cause, if you find—find something.”

  Grimly, Floyd nodded. “Might be I’m wrong. There’s no need to get the community all riled up if there’s really a dog sharing that grave with Sugarfoot. I can keep the whole thing quiet, Kristy, at least for a while. But this is Stillwater Springs, and folks are always flapping their jaws. Word could get out, and that’s why I came over here to talk to you first. So you’d know ahead of time, in case—well, you know.”

  Kristy nodded.

  The sheriff stood to go. “You going to be all right?” he asked. “I could call somebody, if you want.”

  “Call somebody?” Kristy echoed stupidly. Who? Who in the whole wide, upside-down, messed-up world would drop everything and rush over to hold the librarian’s hand?

  Dylan, she thought.

  “Maybe you oughtn’t to be alone.”

  “I’m fine,” Kristy said. Stock answer.

  Major lie.

  “Lock up behind me,” Floyd said.

  Kristy nodded.

  But he’d been gone a long time before she even got out of her chair.

  *

  THE HOUSE WAS HABITABLE, as it turned out, if sparsely furnished. Dylan figured he and Bonnie could live there, in comfort if not style, but he’d need to rig up some kind of bed for her, get her a dresser.

  More shopping, he thought unhappily.

  And with a two-year-old.

  “Whoopee,” he muttered.

  “Potty,” Bonnie said.

  “Learn another word,” Dylan replied. The little pink toilet was still at Cassie’s place, so he had to lift Bonnie onto the john again, bare-assed, and wait it out.

  In the end, Cassie offered to babysit at her place while he laid in grub and the other necessities.

  He bought Bonnie a miniature bed, one step up from a crib, with side rails that could be raised and lowered. It was white, with gold trim—French provincial, the saleswoman at the only furniture store in Stillwater Springs called it. The piece, she said, was designed to grow with the child.

  Dylan paid cash and the woman promised an early-morning delivery. He still needed some other stuff, but since he meant to tear down the house anyway, he couldn’t see torturing himself by buying a decent couch and a new dinette set right then. He could get all that later—or maybe the trailer he meant to lease and set up on the property as temporary digs would have some rigging in it.

  But the kid would need milk in the morning, to put in her sippy-thing, and cereal, too.

  So he braved the grocery store in town.

  Once he’d carted everything back out to the ranch and put it away, he headed back to Cassie’s to pick up Bonnie. She could sleep on the bed that night—it had been there when Briana moved in—and he’d take the lumpy old couch.

  At least they’d be in their own place, he and Bonnie. It was a start.

  As he drove past the casino, his truck wanted to pull in, but for the time being, he was out of the poker business. He was, after all, a father.

  He had responsibilities now.

  And strange as it seemed, he liked the feeling.

  It was all good—except for the potty thing and the flying spaghetti.

  He definitely needed a wife, if he was going to pull this thing off.

  He immediately thought of Kristy.

  “Oh, sure,” he told himself out loud. “Just walk right into the library, one fine day, and suggest letting bygones be bygones because, lo and behold, you’ve got a two-year-old daughter and you could sure use a hand raising her.”

  Put like that, it sounded pretty damn lame.

  And Kristy would probably bash him over the head with the nearest heavy book.

  Still, Bonnie needed a mother, and he couldn’t think of a better candidate than Kristy Madison, with her soft storyteller’s voice and her calm practicality. If he’d had to get somebody pregnant, why couldn’t it have been her, instead of Sharlene?

  Now there was a useless question.

  After what had gone down the day of Jake’s funeral, Kristy had crossed him off her list, gotten herself engaged to Mike Danvers. Good old solid Mike, student body president, Boy Scout and future owner of his dad’s Chevrolet dealership.

  He wouldn’t get arrested for fighting with his own brothers after a family funeral, not Mike. No sir, he was the original solid citizen, not a hell-raising Creed. One word from Kristy and he’d probably beat feet down to the jewelry store to make a down payment on that honking diamond he’d given her.

  Since Dylan was thinking these thoughts, and some that were even worse, when he pulled into Cassie’s yard, it took him an extra second or two to realiz
e that the big white Cadillac SUV parked next to the teepee probably belonged to Tyler.

  The rodeo insignia in the back window clenched it. Only champions had those silver-buckle decals, and Tyler had been a world-class bronc-buster, among other things.

  He did TV commercials, too, and posed for cowboy calendars, half-naked. Taking a page from Dylan’s book, he’d done some stunt work, too, though mercifully they’d never wound up on the same movie set.

  Dylan was flat-out not ready to deal with his younger brother just then, but leaving wasn’t an option, either. For one thing, he didn’t run from confrontations, unless they were with women. He’d come for Bonnie, and he wasn’t leaving without her.

  So he got out of the truck and walked toward Cassie’s front door.

  Best get it over with. He’d pass the word to Tyler, if Cassie hadn’t done it already, that Logan had been trying to get in touch with him, get Bonnie and all her assorted gear, and leave.

  Tyler was on the floor when Dylan walked in, on his hands and knees, with Bonnie on his back, one hand gripping the back of his shirt collar, the other raised in the air, bronc-buster style.

  And she was laughing as he bucked, careful not to throw her.

  She was a Creed, all right. Thank God she was a girl, or she’d probably end up on the circuit, risking life and limb for a rush of adrenaline and some elusive prize money.

  Of the three Creed brothers, Tyler was the youngest, and the tallest, and the one with the hottest temper. His hair was as dark as Cassie’s, and he wore it long enough to brush his collar.

  He turned his head, saw Dylan and stopped bucking. Eased Bonnie off his back and got to his feet.

  His deep blue eyes were arctic as he straightened to his full height.

  As a kid, he’d had music in him, so much that it flowed out through the strings of his cheap guitar and just about everything he did. Between Jake’s drunken escapades and his mother’s suicide when he was still young, though, something had shut down inside him and never started up again.

  “Logan wants to talk to you,” Dylan said, because with Tyler, even “hello” was shaky ground.