Stripped Bare

by Shannon Baker

  “Oh dear.” She must have jumped to the conclusion that Danny and Carly were together. When I’d seen him in town yesterday, I thought Carly was at Susan’s. He’d said Carly wanted him to meet her. Was there any truth in that? “He hasn’t been back to school since Eldon’s death.”

  “Okay, thanks.” I exited at North Platte and gunned the pickup through the green-tinged hills. With one eye on the road and other on my phone, I searched for Rope and Nat’s phone number. Maybe Danny was at home.

  Bright sunshine made reading the display difficult. April was giving us big doses of precipitation and sun, perfect to grow grass to feed the pregnant cows all summer. I ought to be pleased with that but I couldn’t generate enthusiasm.

  I lost the signal, gained a few bars at the top of the hill, and tried again. Frustration mounted as I got voice mail giving me a cell number to try. I sailed down another valley and I had to wait. The pickup struggled to the top of the hill and I dialed.

  Nat answered on the first ring. She sounded alarmed to hear from me. “Is something wrong?”

  The speedometer quivered just under ninety. “I need to talk to Danny. Is he at the ranch?”

  She spoke so quietly I could barely make out her words. “No. No one is home. We’re away. Broken Butte. Not home. So sorry.” She clicked off before I could ask more.

  Still driving way too fast, and thrumming with fear for what might be a baby I was putting at risk with my reckless driving, I wrangled my phone again and punched Dial.

  Milo answered. “Howdy, Kate. I hear you been traipsing all over with Roxy, trying to clear Ted’s name.”

  I don’t know why it surprised me that he knew about that. “You can’t really believe Ted killed Eldon.”

  He sucked on his teeth. “I haven’t charged him as yet.”

  I felt like a traitor, but I felt desperate. “Carly is missing.” The words stuck in my throat. “Can you help me find her?”

  Milo hesitated. “Why do you suppose she’s gone?”

  I wish I knew. “Overload of grief?” I should sound more sure.

  A shriek of a spring rang out, indicating that Milo had leaned back in a desk chair. “This don’t look particularly good for someone who was recently suspected of murder.”

  “I can’t tell you who killed Eldon, but I can tell you it wasn’t Ted or Carly.”

  He wheezed into the phone. “Maybe. But Ted confessed and Carly is missing.”

  A jab to his belly with my spurs would feel good. “Can you file a missing persons report or issue an APB or a BOLO or something?”

  He hesitated. “I can do that. I wouldn’t mind finding that girl, myself.”

  I still hadn’t come up with a plan, twenty minutes later, when I forced myself to slow down through Hodgekiss. I was probably heading back to Broken Butte to talk to Ted, because I didn’t know what else to do. Carly was gone. Someone was trying to stop me from finding the real killer. The clues had to be in Ted’s head, and I wasn’t above knocking them out, if that’s what it took.

  I swung my gaze up Main Street as I buzzed by on the highway, then slammed on the brakes. Good thing it was Hodgekiss and not Lincoln, because there wasn’t any traffic behind me to smash into my tailgate.

  I squealed tires as I pulled a left and gunned the pickup into a parking place. I’d seen Nat’s thinning brown-gray waves entering Dutch’s Grocery. She wasn’t in Broken Butte. She was right here. And she’d lied to me.

  I flew from the pickup and yanked open the glass door, searching the first aisle. Aileen Carson was at the checkout, visiting with the checker. She greeted me as I rushed past. Since there were only five aisles, I had no trouble spotting Nat at the end of the last one, studying Dutch’s meat case.

  “Nat,” I hollered, while I rushed toward her.

  She swung her head around and started to run away.

  I lunged toward her and grabbed her arm. “Why did you lie to me?”

  “I…” She faltered, and her face turned the color of a ripe tomato. “It’s. I.” She finally stopped.

  “Where’s Danny?”

  She didn’t look at me, and her voice shook. “He’s got such a soft spot for Carly. There’s nothing he wouldn’t do for her.”

  This wasn’t what I wanted to hear. “They’re together?”

  She slid her focus to the meat in the counter, the canned green beans on the shelf behind me, the display of bread on my right. “I understand how it is when your kids get into trouble. It’s like my Mick. He was a good boy. He didn’t mean to hurt anybody.”

  He might not have meant to, but he’d shot a convenience store clerk in Omaha for meth money.

  Her voice was a whiny buzz. “Carly’s like that, too. She loves that ol’ ranch so much. Might have made her do bad things.”

  “Nat.” Rope’s voice sounded like a slap. His boots crashed like thunder as he strode toward us.

  She lowered her hands and they started to pull and rub against each other. She whimpered and shrank into herself.

  The fury of a spring blizzard was nothing compared to Rope’s face. He closed a rough hand on my upper arm and jerked me down the aisle. “What are you doing to her? You leave her alone. Do you hear me?”

  Aileen and the clerk gaped at us, but they didn’t protest Rope dragging me past them. He shoved the door open, the bell struggling to stay attached. He didn’t stop until he had me in the alley next to Dutch’s and had bounced me against the side of the building. He stood in front of me, huffing like a freight engine.

  Snow was trying to accumulate on the sidewalk, but the temperatures hovered too high.

  He put a finger in my face and spoke with a voice as full of threat as it was quiet. “Natty gets upset easy. You got any questions about Danny or Eldon or any other fool thing, you talk to me. Leave her alone.”

  I’m not about to say he didn’t scare the bejesus out of me. But this was about Carly. I gave him my meanest glare. “I want to know where Danny and Carly are.”

  Fat snowflakes landed on his hair and melted immediately. He stepped back and exhaled in frustration. “How would I know? Gone. Just gone.”

  “Why? Where? You must know something.”

  His lips curled back like a dog’s right before it bites. “What I know is what Baxter told you last night. That he’d find Carly.”

  It felt like a slap across my cheek. Baxter. Roxy had told him she couldn’t make a decision without Carly’s opinion. Baxter wanted the Bar J as soon as possible. He had the resources of private investigators and maybe even a custom police force. He’d find Carly.

  And when he did, he’d try to convince her to sell the Bar J.

  Carly was all that stood between Glenn Baxter and the buffalo common.

  I barreled past Rope on my way to the pickup.

  27

  The road stretched black against the gray clouds pressing in on all sides. Heavy, expectant air smothered the pastures on either side of the highway. The speedometer on the pickup only dipped below ninety when I navigated the tightest corners, and still I felt like a sailboat stuck with no wind.

  I sped past the Bar J turnoff, three miles north to a rutted, two-track trail road. Fresh tire tracks marked one side of the road. Baxter’s electric car with its itty-bitty wheelbase would need to ride one side in the road, the other side on the grassy rise separating the tracks.

  I raced down the road and around the first bend. Damn it. I slammed on the brakes. This seldom-used pasture didn’t warrant an expensive AutoGate. A three-wire fence stretched across the road, and there was no Roxy to open it.

  I ran to the wire gate and pulled the metal lever to unhook it. The steel froze my palm. He may drive a toy car and be a city slicker, but Baxter knew to keep the gates closed at least. I didn’t take the time to relatch it behind me. This might be the first time I had ever left a gate open. Some things are more important than keeping cattle in the right pastures.

  With every ounce of willpower, I prayed Baxter wasn’t the monster I feare
d he could be. Carly was smart. Maybe survival instincts would lead her to appease Baxter. Maybe she’d figured out a way to stay alive.

  The pickup ate up the rough road better than Elvis ever would, but the only time anyone used this route was to check windmills during the summer months. I couldn’t believe Baxter had managed to drive his golf cart of a rental car out here, and at every turn I expected to come across it buried in sand.

  I hadn’t thought I’d ever see Glenda’s house again. But I kept the gas pedal down, gripped the wheel, and bounced down the rough road, barely keeping in the tracks. I climbed the last hill and then descended into a narrow gully and around a tight curve. The cabin crouched in a sliver between two hills, hidden until the last few yards.

  I roared around the curve, my back wheels sliding out. Too fast. The road in front of me had washed out. A four-foot gash interrupted the two tracks, the sand borne away by a summer flash flood. I slammed on the brakes. The world slowed so that I had time to anticipate the crash, my head driving through the windshield, and my skull shattering. Or the steering wheel impaling me and perhaps the new life I carried. I couldn’t save Carly. Ted would spend his life in jail. All because a sudden summer storm had ripped the road apart. I clenched my teeth, my hands, my whole body, waiting for the impact to batter and kill me.

  The front tires fell over the edge. Airborne for maybe two seconds, but feeling like a slow motion eternity, the pickup flew into the ditch and the grill banged into the other bank.

  Warm liquid ran from my nose and I reached up to the sudden stinging. My hand came away covered in blood. I’d bashed my face into the steering wheel in the crash. But that was the extent of the damage.

  Water filled my eyes and I blinked away tears with the pain. I placed my palm against my belly. “If we make out of this in one piece, I promise you, I won’t drive over twenty-five miles an hour until you’re born.” I waited a second. “If you’re in there, I mean.”

  I grabbed a leather glove from the console—the only thing handy—and wiped at my bloody nose. With most of the goo smeared away, I pinched my nose closed, shut the engine off, and jumped from the pickup.

  The pickup was good and stuck. I might be able to rock it into the washout and drive down the sandy gully until I found a way out. But it would take time.

  Still pinching my aching nose, I shambled up the side of the wash and down the road. My ears and fingers tingled in the frosty air. The cabin was only fifty yards away, but it remained hidden around one final turn.

  Five years of neglect hadn’t helped the old house. Glenda and I had dug flower beds around the wood-sided cabin. Dead brown weeds drooped where happy snapdragons and cornflowers used to bob in the breeze. Large chips and gashes marred the sunny yellow paint I’d helped Glenda slap on the house, which was now faded to the color of a smoker’s teeth. The seven-foot roof that covered the front steps was missing a support and hung at a crazy angle, clinging to the house and relying on one narrow pillar to stay upright. Sand and mud covered the concrete steps, nearly burying the bottom one.

  Baxter’s car was nowhere in sight. I hurdled the steps and exploded into the house. “Carly!”

  I don’t know what I expected. She wasn’t chained to the plaid couch. The old rocker was empty. The bathroom door stood open, revealing nothing but the stained pedestal sink and stool. From where I stood, in the middle of the front room, I could see into the kitchen and out the window above the sink. A coffee cup and a mess of papers spread across the spindly kitchen table. “Carly!” I shouted, even though I knew no one was there to answer.

  I banged my shin on the pressed-wood coffee table, on my short trip to the bedroom, the only other room in the house. The sage-green chenille bedspread covered no body shape. The mirror above the chipped dresser showed only my wild curls and blood-smeared face. My eyes swept across the room, which was barely big enough for the double bed, dull light from the overcast sky creating gloom.

  “Carly!” I screamed, whirling around, not knowing where to go. Where are you?

  The dark figure in the bedroom doorway froze the blood in my veins.

  Baxter raised a pistol and trained it on my chest. He kept that characteristic smooth expression and wore his stupid Hopalong Cassidy getup. “What are you doing here?”

  I wanted to fly at him. “Where is she?”

  Baxter grimaced at my face. “What happened to you?”

  I gritted my teeth to keep from attacking him. “Where is Carly?”

  Baxter’s hand wavered slightly, as if the gun were too heavy. “You tell me.”

  Baxter was taller, but I wagered that, since he sat behind a desk all day and I worked a ranch, I was tougher and stronger. If I hit him before he shot me, I could wrestle him to the ground and grab the gun. But it would take less time for him to twitch his finger on the trigger than it would for me to lunge across the room. “What did you do with her?”

  He strained to hold the gun on me. It wasn’t like the pistol I owned to ward off weasels in the henhouse; this puppy was more like something the Lone Ranger would carry. I guess if you’re rich, you can afford authentic Colt revolvers, probably owned by General Custer. “Leave Carly alone,” he said.

  I clenched my hands, frustrated that they weren’t around his throat. “If you’ve hurt her, I’ll kill you.”

  He drew his head back, still looking over my battered face. “I didn’t hurt her.”

  “Just tell me where she is.”

  I stayed standing, wondering what kind of game he was playing. Would he pull the trigger if I moved? I took a chance and lunged for him.

  He pulled the gun up, steady enough to put a hole in me at this range. Ridiculous Saturday morning cartoon outfit, oversized showpiece of a gun, but deadly intent.

  I held my palms open in a stopping motion. He scowled and swung the gun back and forth, motioning me to the kitchen. He kept the pistol trained on me while I took slow steps to the table and lowered myself into a chair.

  He propped himself against the counter, keeping the gun on me. He looked even grayer than he had before. We stared at each other for several seconds, and then he shook his head and asked in a quiet voice, “Why did you do it?”

  I started to rise and he thrust the gun toward me. I sank down again and tried to figure out his question. Why did I come after Carly? “Because she’s my niece. She’s family. Do you even know what that means?”

  He seemed taken aback by my vehemence. “Of course I know about family. That’s why I’m here. I’ve known Brian since we were fourteen, at Kilner. We were brothers in every sense of the word, except blood. Brian loved Carly. He was her family.”

  If Brian was so much like family, why would Baxter threaten Carly? “Yes. He was.”

  Baxter’s face hardened. “Then why did you kill him?”

  I dropped my jaw. “What?”

  He wagged the gun. “Was it the money? Where did it come from?”

  I studied him. He didn’t look crazy. Angry, yes. Dangerous, certainly. “You’re going to have to back up and tell me what you’re talking about. But first I need to know, is Carly is safe?”

  The gun wobbled. He was too frail for a cannon that size. “You tell me.”

  My nose throbbed and I was sure blood still oozed. I swiped my sleeve along my upper lip, no doubt smearing a grisly mess across my cheek. “She’ll sell you the ranch. Hell, she’ll give it to you. Just don’t hurt her.”

  Sweat beaded under his nose and ran from his temples. “I don’t want the ranch.”

  “Then let her go.”

  He raised his voice for the first time. “I don’t have her!”

  His shout echoed, and snow started falling beyond the kitchen window. He didn’t have Carly. Where was she? “What’s going on?”

  He panted with effort, and sweat dribbled down the side of his face. “I’m trying to find Carly. I’m afraid she’s in trouble.”

  A cold wave of fear crashed over me. “You thought I would hurt her?”

&n
bsp; He assessed me for a moment longer, then lowered the gun and placed it on the counter. “Yes. Or no. I don’t know.”

  He looked ready to pass out, but his eyes burned into me. “I’m a good judge of character. You don’t get to this level of success unless you can read people.”

  He didn’t wield the gun, appeared to have very little physical strength, and yet he seemed controlled and capable.

  “And what does Carnac the Magnificent have to say about me?” I asked.

  “I trust you.” He said it with finality.

  “You don’t make mistakes?”

  He shook his head. “Rarely.”

  Well, happy day. “So I don’t seem like a psychopath who would hurt someone I love?”

  He almost smiled. “I don’t think you’d hurt Carly. I’m not sure about the psycho part.”

  “Now that that’s settled, why don’t you fill me in on why you’re here.”

  Baxter closed his eyes, as if drawing on strength reserves. “All I know is that Eldon feared for her.”

  “Eldon? What?” This guy talked in riddles.

  He rubbed his hands on his thighs. “Here’s what I know. And it’s not much. Eldon called me a few months ago. He asked me to come out here and try to buy up land. He wanted me to make a big show, hold meetings, be visible.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  Baxter shuffled toward me and eased himself into the other spindly chair. “Eldon knew me from Kilner, when Brian and I were close. He called me up out of the blue. He had this idea that Brian had gotten involved with some bad people and that maybe his death hadn’t been an accident.”

  I could only stare at him in shock and wipe at the dribble of something warm from my nose.

  Baxter inhaled with effort. “I know Brian and Eldon had an uneasy relationship. It was Eldon’s belief that giving children land or money would make them lazy and spoiled. He wanted Brian to learn to work for what he had. Brian always felt slighted.”

  Glenda had never let on that Brian wasn’t happy with Eldon, though Roxy had a few things to say about it. “What’s this got to do with Carly?”