by B. J Daniels
“You all right?” Jack asked, as he gave her a push. The rope tied to the limb overhead creaked loudly.
Josey jumped off and turned as if he’d scared her.
He remembered the rope burn on her neck and mentally kicked himself for being so stupid. “I’m sorry, I—”
“No, it’s just that I get motion sickness on swings.”
Right. “Dinner was fun,” he said sarcastically, to change the subject.
“Wasn’t it.” She stepped from under the canopy of cottonwood limbs and turned her face upward. “Have you ever seen so many stars?”
“You don’t see many where you live?”
She didn’t look at him. “No. I live in the city.”
He found the Big Dipper, one of the few constellations he knew. He wanted to know more about Josey, but he knew better than to ask. Whoever had hurt her made her afraid to trust. He could understand that.
“HOW DID YOUR TALK GO with your grandmother?” Josey asked, afraid he was about to question her.
“She talked a lot about Trace, my uncle who was murdered.”
“What was that she asked yesterday about some room that is off-limits?” Josey asked.
He turned to look back at the house and pointed. The room was barely visible from this angle, as it was on the far wing set back against the hillside—the wing that had been boarded up. It was an odd wing, she noticed. If had been built back into the side of a hill and appeared to be much older than the original structure. As an afterthought, a room had been added near the back.
“That’s the room?” she asked.
“That’s it.”
“What’s in it?”
“Nothing. A window.” He shook his head. “Nothing else. It’s soundproof.”
“Soundproof?” She realized he’d been in the room, just as his grandmother had suspected. “Why is whether or not you were in the room such a big deal to your grandmother?”
Jack looked like he wished she hadn’t asked. “Between you and me? She thinks one of us might have seen my uncle Trace murdered.” He nodded at her surprised reaction. “There were a pair of binoculars in the room. I never touched them, but the others were looking through them. She thinks one of them witnessed the murder. The alleged murderer confessed, but was killed. My grandmother believes there was an accomplice, someone from the family, and that’s why Trace was murdered within sight of the ranch.”
“Well, if one of you kids had seen something, wouldn’t you have told?”
“Maybe the kid did, and maybe whoever he told was the accomplice.”
“That’s horrible.”
“It’s also why she is getting us all back here, to interrogate us individually to get at the truth.”
Josey jumped as she realized Enid was standing in the shadows off to the side.
“I guess you didn’t hear me call to you,” Enid said, stepping toward them. “I wanted to see if there was anything I could get you before I turned in.”
“No,” Josey and Jack said in unison.
“Well, fine then,” the housekeeper said. She turned on her heel and headed for the house.
“That woman is the worst eavesdropper I’ve ever come across,” Josey whispered. “I don’t trust her.”
“Me, either.”
“The way she treats your grandmother, it makes me wonder.”
Jack nodded solemnly. “It’s almost as if she and her husband have something on Pepper, isn’t it?”
Josey realized she was getting chilly. She started to head for the house when Jack touched her arm, stopping her.
“Thank you for being here. I mean that. No matter what, I’m not sorry.”
“I hope you never are,” she said, knowing he would be soon enough as they walked back to the house and their bedroom. Jack curled up in his chair. Josey thought she’d never be able to sleep, but, still tired from the long horseback ride that day, she dropped right off.
JACK WOKE TO A SCREAM. He bolted upright in the chair, momentarily confused. The scream was coming from the bed.
He shot to his feet and stumbled in the dark over to the bed. “Josey.” He shook her gently, feeling the perspiration on her bare arm. “Josey,” he said, shaking her more forcefully.
The scream caught in her throat. She jerked away, coming up fighting. She swung at him, both arms flailing wildly.
“Josey!” he cried, grabbing her arms and pinning her down. “It’s me, Jack. You were having a bad dream.” He released one of her wrists to snap on the light beside the bed.
She squirmed under him, then seemed to focus on him. He felt the fight go out of her, but her face was still etched in fear and she was trembling under him, her body soaked in sweat.
He let go of her other wrist and eased off of her, sitting up on the edge of the bed next to her. He could hear her gasping for breath.
“That must have been some dream,” he said quietly, thinking of the rope burn on her neck. Whatever had happened to her was enough to give anyone nightmares.
“I’m okay now.”
He wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince him or herself. “If you want to talk about it…” He reached over to push a lock of dank hair back from her face.
“I can’t even remember what it was about.” She shifted her gaze away.
“That’s good,” he said, going along with the lie. He stood. “If you want I can leave the light on.”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“No problem.” He doubted he’d be able to go back to sleep, but he returned to his chair, glad Enid had put them at the end of the wing away from everyone, so no one else heard the screams.
Josey turned out the light. He heard her lie back down. The darkness settled in. He listened to her breathe and thought about how a man would go about killing a bastard like the one who’d given Josey such horrible nightmares.
He also thought about how a man might go about keeping Josey in his life.
IT WAS WHILE HE WAS EATING in the kitchen at the house at Mobridge that RJ spotted the phone hanging on the wall.
He’d had to break into the house and had been surprised to find that it appeared someone still lived here.
That was good and bad. The good part was that they weren’t home and he’d been able to find some clean clothes, a warm coat, boots that were only a little too big and some drugs to tide him over.
He’d also been able to find food. Not much in the refrigerator so he suspected they’d gone into town to shop. He made himself some soup, ate the canned meat straight from the can along with the canned peaches he’d found, leaving the empty containers on the table. It wasn’t like they wouldn’t figure out someone had been here.
It appeared a man and woman lived in the house, both older from the clothing he’d found. He’d gone through the woman’s jewelry box. Nothing worth stealing. But he’d managed to scare up almost a hundred dollars from a cookie jar in the kitchen and the man’s sock drawer.
He got up, searched around for a phone book and finally found one in a drawer. It had doodles all over the front along with an assortment of numbers.
He pulled a chair over so he could sit and opened the phone book to Whitehorse, the town up the road in the direction the yellow Cadillac convertible had been heading when the driver picked up Josey. There were only a few pages, so it didn’t take long to find the numbers he needed. He started with gas stations. With towns so few and far between up here, the driver of the Cadillac would have filled up before going any farther up the road.
Three gas stations. He called each, coming up with a story about trying to find his brother-in-law. The clerks were all friendly, that small-town trust that he had a growing appreciation for with each call.
No luck there. He began to call the motels on the chance that the Caddie driver had dropped Josey at one.
He got lucky on his fifth call.
“I remember seeing a yellow Cadillac,” a clerk at one of the motels told him.
RJ tried not
to sound too excited. “There at the motel?”
“No, over in front of the clothing store.”
RJ frowned. “You saw the guy driving it? Was there a woman with him?”
“No. Just a man when I saw him and the car.”
He was disappointed. Maybe the guy had already gotten rid of Josey. It just seemed odd the guy would be shopping for clothing, unless…
That damned Josey. She probably cried on the guy’s shoulder and suckered him in. RJ could understand being smitten with her. She was one good-looking woman. He’d wanted her himself.
Should have taken her, too, when he had the chance. He’d planned to, but Celeste had thrown a fit when he suggested the three of them get together. Once he’d given Celeste that engagement ring she was no fun anymore.
So let’s say Josey got the driver of the Cadillac to buy her clothes. Then what else would she get him to do for her?
He tried the last motel, convinced he’d find Josey curled up watching television and thinking she’d gotten away.
“I saw the car,” the male clerk said. “Sweet. One of those vintage restored jobs.”
RJ couldn’t have cared less about the work done on the Caddie. “So she’s staying there at the motel?”
“The woman with him? No.” The guy sounded confused. “I saw the car when I was getting gas at Packy’s.”
That was one of the numbers he’d already called. “Did you happen to notice if there was a woman with him? A woman with long, curly, reddish-blond hair, good-looking?”
The clerk had chuckled. “Good-looking, but she had short, curly, dark hair. And she wasn’t with him then. I saw her in the car later.”
“Wait a minute. So he didn’t have her with him at the gas station, but you saw him with this woman later?”
“That’s right. I passed the Cadillac. The cowboy was driving and the woman was in the passenger seat. I didn’t get a really good look at her. She was kind of slumped down in the seat. But I saw she had short, curly, dark hair.”
What? Slumped down in the seat? The answer came in a rush. Josey had changed her appearance. He wasn’t sure how or when, but that had to be the explanation.
“Did you see which way they went when he drove out of town?”
“South.”
“South?” Why would the driver go back the way he’d come? “On Highway 191 toward the river?”
“No, they took the Sun Prairie road. I was thinking I wouldn’t take a car like that down that road.”
RJ could only be thankful the cowboy hadn’t been driving some nondescript sedan or this clerk would have never noticed him. “What’s down that road besides Sun Prairie?”
The clerk laughed. “Well, there are some ranches, Fort Peck Reservoir, but they didn’t look dressed for fishing. Mostly there’s just a whole lot of open country.”
RJ rubbed his temples. His head felt like it might explode. “So there is no way of knowing where he was going.”
“Well, there wouldn’t have been if he hadn’t asked me for directions when we were both getting gas in our rigs.”
This clerk was on RJ’s last nerve, plucking it like an out-of-tune guitar string. If this discussion had been in person, that jackass would be breathing his last breath shortly. “Directions?”
“To the Winchester Ranch. Didn’t I mention that?”
Chapter Eight
Josey woke a little after one in the morning to find Jack’s chair empty.
She sat up, listening. A breeze stirred the limbs of the large cottonwood tree outside the window. Shadows played on the bedroom floor, the curtains billowing in and out like breath.
Where was Jack? She slipped out of bed and went to the window. For a moment, she didn’t see him. But just as he had the night before, he moved stealthily along the edge of darkness, staying to the deep shadows. He was headed like before toward the closed wing of the lodge.
She frowned and realized it was time she found out what her “husband” was up to. She feared that, whatever it was, if his grandmother found out it would get them kicked off the ranch. She wasn’t about to admit that she was worried about Jack.
Grabbing the robe Jack had bought her, she shrugged into it, failing to talk herself out of what she was about to do.
At her door, she listened. No sound. Opening it, she crept out, carrying her cowboy boots. At the top of the stairs, she stopped. A dim light shone downstairs. It seemed to be coming from the kitchen.
Josey listened but hearing no sound tiptoed down the stairs to the front door. Easing it open, she stepped out, closing it behind her.
She hesitated on the front step to pull on her boots. Then she followed the same path Jack had taken, keeping to the shadows until she reached the far wing of the lodge.
It was an odd wing, she noticed. It had been built back into the side of a hill and appeared to be much older than the original structure. The doors and windows had been boarded up, but someone—Jack?—had removed the boards from the doorway.
The breeze picked up, the door blowing open a little wider as she stepped into the darkness of the boarded-up wing. The air was much colder in here and smelled musky, as if the wing had been closed up for some time.
Josey waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. She didn’t move, hardly breathed as she listened. The only light bled in from the doorway. She’d left the door open, thinking it might be the only way she could find her way back.
At first she heard nothing but the sound of the breeze in the trees outside. Then her ears picked up a fainter sound coming from inside, a scratching noise that could have been mice. Or something larger.
She hesitated. Was it that important she find out what Jack was up to?
The answer was yes, she realized. She moved toward the noise, feeling her way along the dark hallway until she saw the shaft of light coming from under one of the doors.
Mice didn’t carry flashlights, she told herself. She moved cautiously forward, stopping in front of the door. She listened to the scratching sound for a moment before she tried the cold knob.
It turned in her hand.
She took a breath. Was she sure she really wanted to know Jack’s secrets? She eased the door open a few inches.
In the glow of his flashlight resting on one of the shelves, Josey saw Jack standing in front of a rock wall. Jack had a crowbar in his hand and was scraping mortar from between the stones.
The room appeared to be a root cellar with rows of shelves. There were dozens of old jars covered with dust, their contents blackened with age.
Jack worked feverishly, as if desperate to see what was on the other side of that wall.
Josey only had a moment to wonder about what she was seeing when a door slammed down the hall.
JACK FROZE, all his instincts on alert. Heavy footfalls echoed down the hall. The hall light flashed on. He swore under his breath and grabbed the flashlight, snapping it off as he turned to look toward the door.
The door was open. A figure was framed there. His heart caught in his throat. He knew that particular figure anywhere. Josey, dressed in only a robe and cowboy boots.
He started to take a step toward her, but she motioned him back as the heavy footfalls grew louder. Jack sank back into the dark shadows of the room, but there was no escape. He was caught. And so was Josey.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” boomed Alfred Hoagland’s easily recognizable, raspy old voice. Through the doorway, Jack saw Alfred grab Josey by the arm.
Without a thought, he stepped toward the door, going to her rescue.
A giggle, high and sweet like a child’s stopped him cold. What the hell? It took Jack a moment to realize it had come out of Josey.
“Are you daft?” Alfred demanded, letting go of her and stumbling back.
Josey seemed to come awake with surprise. She stumbled back into the wall, closing the door partway as she caught herself. “What…where am I?” She sounded both surprised and scared.
“Something wrong with
you?” Alfred demanded, sounding a little afraid himself.
Josey let out a sob. “I can’t have been sleepwalking again.” She began to cry, covering her face with her hands. Jack had seen her cry and wasn’t fooled.
Alfred cleared his voice, visibly uncomfortable. “You should get back to bed.”
“I don’t know where—”
Alfred let out a curse. “I’ll take you.” Jack could hear him grumbling to himself all the way down the hall as he led Josey out.
Jack waited until he heard the door close before he turned on his flashlight again. He couldn’t chance that Alfred might get suspicious and come back. Taking some of the boards from the cellar shelving, he covered the spot where he’d been working. With luck, Alfred wouldn’t notice if he did come back.
Jack knew he had Josey to thank for covering for him tonight, but he was furious with her. She’d taken a hell of a chance. She had no idea how much danger she’d put herself in.
As angry as he was at her for following him and butting into his business, he was also grateful and more than a little awed. Who was this amazing woman? It made him wonder what he saved her from on the highway. Had she felt she owed him? Well, they were even. He’d make sure she wasn’t that foolhardy again.
But even as he thought it, he realized his aunt was apparently right about one thing. He and Josey were definitely a pair.
JOSEY HAD BEEN IN BED when Jack returned to the room. She pretended to be asleep, listening to him slip in and undress in the pitch blackness of the room.
Finally, he settled into the large chair.
She lay awake, listening to his breathing, knowing he, too, was still awake and just feet from her. She thought about rolling over and offering to share the bed with him. For the first time since they’d gotten “married,” she felt they really were in this together.
But she remained mute, not daring to say the words because she knew right at that moment she was feeling scared and alone and would have given anything just to be held in his strong arms.