by B. J Daniels
But how had the killer found them?
Lillie realized with a groan that she must have been followed. She’d been so sure as she left town that no one had been tailing her. Obviously, she’d been wrong and it had almost cost them their lives.
A shudder rattled through her. Whoever had destroyed the cabin had wanted them dead. She could think of only one reason. All her questions about Gordon’s murder had gotten too close to the real killer.
Her thrill of excitement was quickly extinguished by how far that killer would go to remain hidden. They had to find the killer before he found them again, no matter what Trask said.
Lillie thought about the suspects. Any one of them could have bombed the cabin, not to mention the two crazies Emery and Vernon. But those two wanted money from Trask. Killing her and Trask got them nothing.
No, it had to be someone else. She went over the list in her head. Skip Fairchild and J.T. Burrows were at the top of her list. But there was also Caroline Quinn. Maybe it was time to pay her a visit.
As she drove away from the Stagecoach Saloon, she noticed someone watching her leave from the front window.
Brittany. The woman glared at her as she drove past.
* * *
MAGGIE KNEW IT was bad news the moment she saw it was Flint calling.
“I’m so sorry. I have a situation at the office.”
She felt her heart drop but tried to be understanding. “How long do you think it will take?”
“I have no idea. I’m going to have to cancel our date. I can’t tell you how sorry I am.”
Another cancellation. She told herself that was what happened when you were dating the sheriff. “I understand. It’s work.”
“I have to go. I promise I’ll make it up to you.”
She’d heard that before. “Go. Maybe some other time.” But he’d already hung up.
She sat for a long time with the phone in her hand, her disappointment a knife to her heart. She had been so excited about this night. She wanted this, needed this. It felt as if something was always going to come up to stop them from finally making love.
Maggie knew she was being silly. Flint took his job seriously. She loved that about him because she was the same way. But his work wasn’t like hers. When someone called with a hair emergency, it usually wasn’t a real emergency and could be put off until normal working hours.
She told herself that it must be a real emergency for Flint to break their date, knowing how important it was tonight. If they were supposed to be together, it would happen. Unfortunately, that didn’t relieve her mind. If she and Flint did get together, there would be other nights like this. Could she handle having a man who was always on call?
Yes, she thought, if that man was Flint.
Maggie put her disappointment aside and looked around her small house. She’d spend the night cleaning. That would keep her mind off what might have been. But first she had to get out of the new dress she’d put on for her date.
But as she took off the pretty blue dress, she wondered if she’d jinxed her date with Flint by buying it after running into Celeste. She told herself that was crazy thinking. Celeste didn’t have that kind of control over their lives.
But she couldn’t help being scared she was wrong about that.
* * *
LILLIE DROVE AWAY from the Stagecoach Saloon shaken by the venom she’d seen in Brittany’s gaze. She tried to shake it off as she drove out to Caroline Quinn’s house. She wasn’t looking forward to the visit with the wife of the dead man, unsure of what kind of reception she would get.
A few miles down the road, she pulled over, dug her gun from under the seat, where she’d returned it after the day she’d first seen Trask again. Then she exchanged it for the crowbar in her purse and drove on out to the scene of the murder—Gordon and Caroline Quinn’s ranch.
An eerie silence fell over the place as she parked and got out. The night seemed to be holding its breath. Not even a breeze rustled the nearby pine trees, standing black against the evening sky. Even the horses had stopped in the pasture to stare at her.
She walked up to the well-lit house, across the front porch, and knocked. The sound echoed under the porch roof. She knocked again. Out of the corner of her eye she saw the stable door close. She turned to stare at it, sure it had been open when she’d driven up. The wind? Except the air was lifeless, not a breath of breeze.
The huge yard light seemed blinding as she made her way to the stables. Dust rose in small puffs under her boots. “Caroline?” she called a few yards from the stables. She looked back at the house. Caroline’s SUV was parked out front, but she hadn’t answered the door. Maybe that had been her who’d closed the stable’s door. Lillie thought it possible that the woman hadn’t seen or heard her drive up because inside the stables she could hear horses moving around in their stalls.
She pressed a hand against the stable’s door. It was still warm to the touch from the day’s sunlight. She pushed. The door creaked open. Stepping from the bright yard light into the cool darkness of the stables, she was momentarily blinded. Dust motes hung in the air just inside the door. She stopped to listen and give her eyes a chance to adjust to the dim light.
It was cooler in there. The air smelled of horseflesh, hay and fresh manure. Several of the horses moved restlessly in their stalls but then fell silent. “Caroline?” she called, her voice sounded strange to her ears as it echoed back at her.
She heard movement at the other end of the stables and started in that direction. After driving all that way, she didn’t want to leave without talking to Caroline. Lillie felt as if a clock was ticking. It was only a matter of time before Emery or Vernon or someone who just happened to see Trask told Flint that he was back.
Before that, though, the killer could get to him. Or to her, she realized with a chill.
A furtive movement at the other end of the stables caught her attention. A shadowed figure ducked into the tack room. “Caroline?” she called again, her voice sounding weaker. The woman had to have heard her.
She walked along the stalls to the rustle of horses toward the tack room at the end. The cool darkness of the stables made it hard to see, even harder to hear what was going on. She heard what sounded like a fan rotating loudly. No wonder Caroline hadn’t been able to hear her.
Lillie tried to relax. Something had spooked her. A feeling within her? Or something in the air? She tried to shake it off. She was almost to the tack room when a dark figure with a pitchfork rose up from one of the stalls next to her. The figure made a sound like a wounded animal might make.
She lurched away from it, stumbled into an adjacent stall door and fell hard. She’d scraped her arm against the stall door when she’d fallen. Her elbow was on fire as she scrambled to her feet.
The horrible keening sound stopped as abruptly as it had started. She pressed her back against the stall door, preparing to run, when the figure began to laugh.
She froze as she saw the face laughing at her from the shadow of the hooded sweatshirt he wore. Patrick Quinn. Gordon’s son.
He was nine years older than he’d been the last time she’d seen him, which made him twenty. He was tall, broad-shouldered, thick across the middle, his once angelic face pudgy, but his hands holding the pitchfork looked strong. Her gaze went to his eyes. They were the pale green of vast bottomless seas.
As a boy, he’d scared her. There had always been something creepy about him. Something not quite right.
“Scared you,” he said and chuckled as he lowered his hood with his free hand.
“I was looking for your mother,” she said, surprised that her voice sounded almost normal. Her heart was still pounding, her legs still weak, her elbow still burning from where she’d hit it.
“Good luck with that,” he said and sneered. “My mother. Don’t you
mean my stepmother?” He laughed again and stepped out of the stall.
Unconsciously, Lillie pressed harder against the stall door at her back. For a moment he loomed over her before he turned and walked toward the tack room.
She stood for a moment, trying to catch her breath. She’d let her imagination run away with her. But she knew it was more than that. Patrick had enjoyed scaring her. Patrick, Gordon’s strange son.
“Lillie?”
She turned to find Caroline standing just inside the door to the stables. “I was out in the garden. I happened to see your pickup out front...” Her gaze moved past Lillie to where rock music was now coming from the tack room. An odd look crossed her face. She was as uncomfortable in the stables with Patrick as Lillie was. As uncomfortable about her stepson as Lillie was, as well.
“Did you need to see me?” Caroline asked.
“I did.” Lillie tried not to hurry toward the stable door, but her step quickened. Behind her, rock music blared. A horse whinnied and then the stables fell deathly silent.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
FLINT COULDN’T HELP HIMSELF. He winced at the sight of Celeste, bruised and bloodied. He was filled with an urge to go to Wayne Duma’s cell and do the same to him.
Tears filled his ex-wife’s eyes as she looked up. “I’m so sorry,” Celeste said. “I never wanted you to know.”
He sat down, motioning to the deputy to turn on the video recorder. “I need to record this, Celeste. You understand?” She nodded, looking like a broken doll. “Tell me what happened.”
She took a breath, flinched and held a hand over her taped ribs.
“Are you sure you’re up to this?” he asked.
Celeste put on a brave face. “Where do you want me to start?”
“I understand you and Wayne had an argument?”
She nodded. “He came home in a bad mood. I know to stay out of his way when he’s like that, but he was looking for a fight, so I tried to leave. He grabbed me and shoved me back into the house. I fell hard. I don’t remember much after that. I woke up on the floor hurting all over. That’s when I heard him coming back.” She began to cry softly.
“That’s when you called 9-1-1?”
“I never wanted it to come to this, but I was afraid he was going to kill me.”
“Are you saying this isn’t the first time he’s hit you?”
She hung her head.
“I’m going to need you to file charges against him. I’ll have the deputy give you the paperwork—”
Her head came up. “I can’t do that.”
“Celeste—”
“You don’t understand.”
“I do understand. I have a woman missing right now whose husband hit her supposedly only once and now we’re looking for her body.” He’d raised his voice, making her cringe and curl up tightly in the chair. “Celeste, next time he might kill you,” he said more calmly. “Is that what you want?”
“Maybe I deserve it after what I did to you.”
“You’re talking nonsense. This has nothing to do with us.”
She met his gaze, her eyes shimmering in tears. “He’s so jealous of you. If he thought I still cared...” She began to cry harder.
He got up and turned off the video. “I can’t help you if you don’t file charges, Celeste.”
“I can’t.”
“I’m going to go talk to him.”
“No,” she cried. “You will only make it worse.”
“The only way it could be worse is if you’re dead. Celeste, you have to press charges against him.”
She shook her head stubbornly. “I remember now. We were arguing. Gordon shoved me, but I didn’t fall. As he stormed out, I turned and lost my footing. I must have fallen down the stairs.”
Flint stared at her in disbelief. “What the hell are you doing, Celeste?”
“Saving my marriage,” she announced defiantly. “It was an accident. I’m so sorry I bothered you with this.” Celeste began to cry.
He remembered when the sight of her tears turned him inside out. Flint turned and opened the door. “Deputy, would you please see that Mr. and Mrs. Duma get home safely.” With that, he turned and walked out.
* * *
GORDON’S WIDOW WAS tall and slim with a face like a porcelain doll. She had been fourteen years younger than her husband, a trophy wife if there ever was one. She’d been thirty-nine when her fifty-three-year-old husband had died. Now hugging fifty herself, the grieving widow looked as if she’d weathered the past nine years fine.
“Please, sit down,” Caroline said as they entered the living room of the ranch house.
Lillie had been in this room only a couple of times when Trask had been one of the ranch hands working there. Back then it was all dark leather, antler lamps, wagon wheel tables. That had all been replaced with pretty pale colors, warm lighting and a few carefully chosen antiques.
“I’m not surprised to see you,” Caroline said once they were seated. She’d taken a corner of the overstuffed couch. Lillie had taken a wingback chair in the same fabric.
As Lillie studied the woman, she wondered if Caroline had killed her husband. “Why aren’t you surprised?” she asked, since no one knew she was driving out here.
The older woman laughed. “I’ve been expecting you for nine years. You’re here about your boyfriend, Trask, right?”
“He didn’t kill your husband.”
Caroline laughed. “That is exactly what I thought you’d say.” She settled into the couch, kicking off her shoes and tucking her feet up under her. “So if he didn’t, who did?”
“I was just thinking that you might have.”
The woman’s laugh wasn’t quite as bright this time. “Me? Well, I suppose I can see where you might think that. I’m sure you heard that I was in the process of filing for divorce when he was killed. Would I be so stupid as to do that when I knew I was going to kill him?”
“It could have been a crime of passion.”
That got a bitter laugh out of Caroline. “Passion? Honey, there was no passion. At least not for me. All Gordon cared about was making money. When it went his way, he was generous. That’s the best I can say for him. When it didn’t go his way, he was...” Her cinnamon-brown eyes darkened. “Let’s just say he wasn’t nice. But I have to ask, why now? Why come out here professing your lover’s innocence after all these years?”
“I want to clear his name.”
The woman nodded slowly. “Okay, how do you intend to do that?”
“I need to know what happened.”
Caroline looked surprised. “Your brother didn’t tell you the gory details? All right. Gordon was apparently struck from behind. A shovel was found next to him. But what killed him was the pitchfork protruding out of his back.”
Lillie shuddered. “Surely there were fingerprints on the—”
Caroline shook her head. “The killer must have been wearing gloves.”
She thought for a moment. “Who was on the ranch that night?”
“I can only guess, since I wasn’t here, remember? I was in Billings shopping—and visiting my divorce lawyer.”
Convenient, Lillie thought. “Right, you got back in time to see the man you thought was Trask leaving the stables before you found your husband dead.”
The woman smiled. “You think I’m the eyewitness?” She shook her head. “All I saw when I returned were cop cars, coroners and crime scene tape.” She suddenly stood up. “Can I get you a drink?”
“No, I’m fine,” Lillie said as she watched the woman go to a built-in bar.
She poured herself a drink and returned to the couch. “Brittany’s the one who saw Trask.” She met Lillie’s surprised gaze and smiled. “My lovely stepdaughter found her father’s body after see
ing a cowboy she swore was Trask leaving the stables.”
Brittany. Lillie couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Brittany? The woman who’d gone after Trask only to have him turn her down flat? The woman who’d been glaring at her from the front window of the Stagecoach Saloon earlier?
“She’s lying,” Lillie said before she could stop herself.
“Probably,” Caroline said and took a gulp of her drink. She wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. Lillie realized this wasn’t the woman’s first drink. She also realized that stepmother and stepdaughter weren’t close.
“Did you tell the sheriff this?” Lillie demanded.
“Tell him that Brittany lies?” She shook her head. “I figure it will come out at the trial. By then Brittany will have set her sights on some other man. Right now it’s Junior Wainwright. Poor sucker.”
Junior? “I didn’t know they were dating.”
“Dating?” Caroline chuckled. “Is that what you call it?”
“So Brittany was here that night. Who else?” Lillie asked, her head swimming with all this information.
The woman seemed to think for a moment. “Her brother, Patrick.” Caroline’s tone alone told Lillie what she thought of Patrick. “And Gordon, obviously.”
“No other ranch hands?”
“The cattle had been sold, so Trask was the only one we needed. Oh, didn’t you know? Gordon was...liquidating, as he called it. Selling the ranch, lock, stock and barrel.”
Another surprise. “I knew he was talking about getting out of the construction company, but selling the ranch? How did you feel about that?”
“I figured I would get my share and buy my own ranch after the divorce.”
Lillie thought for a minute. “What about Brittany and Patrick?”
“They can buy their own ranches.”
“I mean, how did they feel about him selling the home where they’d grown up?” Caroline had been Gordon’s second wife. When he’d divorced his first wife, he’d kept the ranch and the kids. Apparently, that had been fine with her.