by Alice Sharpe
Robert was taller than his father and though he possessed much the same aristocratic bearing he was obviously stressed. He offered Cody a quick handshake. “We met briefly at Grandma’s wake,” he said.
They hadn’t exactly met, but Cody let it go and shook the man’s hand.
Robert turned his attention to Cassie. Nodding toward his family, he said, “I’m sorry about that.”
“It’s not your fault.”
“She can be harsh.”
Cassie didn’t respond. “What are you all doing here?” Cody asked.
“That damn Gibbons,” Robert growled. “He had us all trot over here as some sort of show of family solidarity. And because we all came from slightly different locations, we had to bring four different cars. What a waste of gas. They won’t even let us see him—they say we can wait until this afternoon when he’s back in Cherrydell.” He drew his hand through his hair as though he’d done it a dozen times already. “I don’t have time for this.”
Cassie regarded him with concerned eyes. “Are you okay?”
“Just angry. Dad really screwed up. What was he thinking? Never mind, I know what he was thinking. He was thinking poor old Grandma was too addled to know he was robbing her blind.”
Cody was a little surprised at the volume and voracity of Robert’s speech. Surely he knew his whole family could hear him?
“This hasn’t been easy on you, either,” Robert added, glancing down at Cassie. “Donna told me what happened out at your house. She said someone shot you.”
“The day I got home. Listen, Robert, the deputy yesterday gave us all the impression they were considering additional charges against your father. Do you know anything about that?”
“Gibbons says he thinks the DA is doing his best to build a case against Dad for murder. And he should have reported his gun was missing at the time he found out.”
“Your grandmother wasn’t shot.”
“No, but you were.”
Cassie took a step back. Robert seemed to sense her alarm and took a deep breath. Running a hand through his hair again, he sighed. “Frankly, I can’t believe Dad had anything to do with trying to harm you. What would he have to gain? There has to be another explanation.”
“Did you see him the day before yesterday?” Cody asked.
Robert shook his head. “No, but that’s not unusual. I don’t live at the house, and I spend most of my time at my restaurant.”
“It’s a beautiful place,” Cassie said. “Your grandmother was so proud of your success. The time she and I went there still sticks out in my memory, every detail of it. She was just beaming at how all your customers loved you.”
“Grandma was special,” he said, as he plunged his hands in his pockets.
“Yes, she was.” Cassie hesitated a second before adding, “I have to ask you something that’s been troubling me. Remember the night we searched for something to support what your grandmother thought she witnessed through her window? Your mother was out at the gate. Did she tell you what she was doing out there?”
“I didn’t ask her,” Robert said.
“But in light of what your grandmother thought she saw, and then what happened to her two days later—”
“Wait a second,” Robert said. “We found nothing out there to support Grandma’s claims. The police have torn the place apart since her death, and there’s never been any indication of a murder out by the fountain or anywhere else. Well, except for Grandma, of course.”
“There was a body recovered from the river downstream a few days after her death,” Cassie said. “Who?”
“I don’t know. A man apparently too decomposed to identify right away. It was in the paper. I checked the internet this morning and they still haven’t identified him. Don’t you think that’s suspicious?”
He stared at her a second, then kind of laughed. “Yikes, you aren’t pulling any punches, are you? You’re accusing my mother of murder. And are you suggesting she then turned around and killed her own mother, too?”
“No,” Cassie said. “No, that’s not what I meant.” She sighed heavily and shifted her weight. “It’s just that Cody and I have sworn to be honest with each other, and that means we’re going to tell the sheriff everything we know. A threat to me is a threat to our baby.”
Cody stared at her a second, surprised and unbelievably pleased with her words and the passion with which they were spoken. It felt great to finally be on the same page about something. He would have kissed her right then if they’d been alone.
“So, I’m just suggesting you have a genuine dialogue with your mother,” she added, “especially in light of your father’s predicament, because I’m going to tell the officials everything I know. That’s the only way out of this for me, I see that now. Tell her that. It will be better if she’s up front and honest, too.”
“Well—”
He didn’t get any further because at that moment, a new group of people erupted into the waiting room from the outside. This time it was Adam and Echo, the sheriff and the blond teenage boy Cody recognized as Dennis Garvey.
“I didn’t do nothin’,” Dennis grumbled. With a little nudge from the sheriff, he slumped into a nearby chair.
“Shut up, boy,” Inkwell said.
Adam hitched his hands on his waist and stared at the kid and then looked around the room, his gaze skim ming past the Banners and doing a double take when he connected with Cody.
Meanwhile, Robert squeezed Cassie’s hand. “I’m going to go talk to my mother right now. I’m going to repeat everything you said word for word.”
“I don’t think you have to,” Cody said. “Your whole family has been listening to everything you two said until my family came in here.”
“That’s your family?” he asked, turning to stare at the newcomers.
“Yes.”
After Robert had left, Cody and Cassie moved toward Adam and Echo. “What’s going on?” Cody asked.
“The boy made some threats,” Adam said.
“What kind of threats?”
“Let’s just say he’s toying around with avenging the loss of his family’s good name.”
“Great,” Cody said without asking the obvious: What good name?
Dennis’s hands clenched in his lap. “I was just talking.”
The sheriff looked from Adam to Echo. “You folks bringing charges?”
Echo and Adam exchanged meaningful glances as Dennis’s gaze fastened on Cassie, in particular her pregnant belly.
“What do you think?” Adam said.
Echo blinked her black eyes and sighed. “I hate to get him in more trouble.”
“You sure?” Inkwell barked.
“Yeah, we’re sure.” Adam looked at Cody and added, “The trial is over. The jury was out all of thirty minutes. Hank Garvey is going away for a while. Dennis was just letting off steam. Right, Dennis?”
Dennis glowered at the world.
“I should charge him for disrupting court,” the sheriff said, but Cody could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Dennis grew very still as the sheriff added, “Okay, Dennis, instead of jail, you and me are going to have ourselves a nice little chat.” Inkwell looked at Cody and added, “You and Cassie mind giving me an hour or so before we talk about your predicament?”
“No problem,” Cody said.
“We could go grab an early lunch,” Adam suggested. “Echo’s car is parked right outside.”
“Sounds good to me,” Cassie said. “We had to park Cody’s big truck down in front of the church.”
As the two women discussed restaurant choices, Cody glanced at the Banners.
He wasn’t surprised to find Victoria Banner’s gaze locked onto Cassie. He wasn’t even surprised to see Donna darting pointed looks.
It was the depth of their antagonism that staggered him.
Chapter Ten
Cassie sank into the bucket seat, grateful to be getting out of Woodwind at last. It had been a long afternoon. An hour with the she
riff, who had chastised them for not coming forth with information about the shooting when it first happened, then another two answering questions from Deputy Tucker. There had been times during the interviews where she’d wondered if she was going to wind up in jail after all.
On the plus side, it sounded to her that no one thought she had admitted a killer into Mrs. Priestly’s room.
On the minus, there was the fact that she’d been caught with a whole lot of very pricey jewelry that didn’t belong to her. That jewelry was part of Mrs. Priestly’s estate and as such was being assessed and probated along with everything else.
Plus, it was of interest because of the older woman’s murder.
The deputy had informed her that the emerald ring wasn’t the only piece still missing. Six diamond necklaces, worth thousands, could not be accounted for.
They wanted her back in Idaho. Her fate was totally up in the air.
Cody’s thoughts were obviously running along the same lines as hers. “Why do they keep expecting you to know about this damn jewelry? Isn’t it obvious someone at that house is screwing around with it? I can’t believe Inkwell told you to go home and search everything you took from the house to try to find the missing pieces. And Deputy Tucker looked like he wanted to slap handcuffs on you when you told him about the explosion at the apartment.”
She’d explained how she’d been forced to grab her handbag and run for her life. Both officers had looked at her extended midsection as though trying to picture her fleeing in that manner.
“Fear of death is a great motivator,” she’d told them.
The deputy had known about the explosion at the Cherrydell apartment. Thanks to the power of the blast, little evidence had survived the explosion and so it had been racked up to a heater malfunction—not that uncommon an event. Now he said he would inform the fire department, but his square jaw had clenched as though he were trying to figure out if she was telling the truth or lying up a storm. Even if the fire department could determine the explosion had been intentional, how would they know who did it? And Tucker had also pointed out that the landlord had filed an insurance claim, which would mean additional legal issues…
“Deputy Tucker said Emerson Banner is insisting his wife bring charges against me for theft,” Cassie said with a shudder. The snowflakes had gotten bigger since they left Woodwind and were beginning to stick.
Cody gunned the engine to climb the upcoming incline and didn’t respond until they’d started down the other side. “I guess we’ll go through your purse again. It would be great to get this resolved and get these people off your back.”
“What did you think when the sheriff admitted the gun Mr. Banner says was stolen is capable of firing bullets like the ones fired at me?” she asked.
“I guess I wasn’t surprised. And the fact he says he spent the day you were shot out hiking by himself looks suspicious. At least now he’s behind bars.”
“Yes,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Maybe the worst of it is over.”
“I hope so.”
Fallow fields spread out to the right. To the left, heavily forested land came practically to the roadside. They would climb out of this meadow in a few minutes, then travel up a steep hill and make a series of hairpin turns before reaching Open Sky land, which would spread before them with welcoming arms…?.
“Let’s go cut a Christmas tree,” Cassie said impulsively.
Cody darted her a glance. “Before Thanksgiving? I thought you hated doing that.”
“Not this year. Let’s have it all set up for when Pierce and Analise get home. We’ll get Adam and Echo to come with us, and maybe Sassy Sally and her veterinarian fiancé.”
“Do you really think it’s a good idea to go up into the mountains?”
“I’ll have you to keep me safe. Besides, Emerson Banner is back in Idaho by now. Time for a little normalcy, don’t you think?”
“I was thinking of the baby.”
“It’ll be okay. We’ll take the snowcat and we won’t go as far as usual and Echo knows about emergency baby birthing. It was part of her training.”
“I don’t know why that doesn’t comfort me,” he said, his voice hesitant. “I guess it’s because having a baby in a snowcat seems like a really bad idea.”
“I’m not due for almost a month. Please.”
“Well, you’re right in that a little normalcy would be a welcome respite.”
The sound of the tires against the wet pavement was almost hypnotic, and Cassie laid back her head. Normalcy. Would she even know it if she ran into it? It had been a while…
She was close to drifting off when a wobble in the truck shook her back to full consciousness.
She opened her eyes in time to witness a deer jump out of the verge ahead and land on the road in front of the truck. She gasped loudly as Cody yanked the wheel to avoid hitting it. The startled animal disappeared from view as the truck swerved violently into the empty lane beside them. The front dipped, and a terrible grating sound filled their ears. They shot toward the field on the far side of the road.
Air bags deployed the minute the truck hit the ground after jumping the ditch. Cassie was pinned back against her seat, hands clutching the door handle on one side and the back of Cody’s seat on the other. She braced herself as well as she could, expecting the truck to continue to fly across the unobstructed land. But it didn’t. Instead it plowed ahead, grinding its way along, earth and metal battling each other for supremacy, the contents of the cab flying until at last it all culminated in a heart-jarring stop.
For a second Cassie sat still, waiting for a sign she and Cody—and most of all, their child—had survived yet another violent incident.
And then a hot poker of anger blazed through her shock. This was an accident, what else? But coming on the heels of an explosion and a shooting, it was too much. It was as if fate was wrestling her for her own future, punishing her, even. She fought against the air bag until suddenly aware her door had creaked open just a foot or so. Cody leaned inside as far as he could and pushed the now-deflated bag out of the way.
“Come on, Cass, let’s get clear of here. It’s going to be a tight fit. Can you make it?”
She hadn’t realized until the blast of cold air hit her face that she was crying, sobbing, the tears blurring everything except her determination to get out of the truck. With his help and a do-or-die attitude, she was able to angle herself through the opening at last, and once again snagged her handbag as she departed. She erupted into the cold Wyoming dusk, grabbing the side of the truck to steady her wobbly knees.
Already snow was beginning to accumulate on the deep furrow the truck had made as it churned its way across the field. Cody lowered the back gate of the wildly tilted truck, took off his coat and set it down, then helped Cassie climb up to sit on top of it where she perched gratefully, still too shaken to think. He patted her over quickly, his hands coming to rest on her bulging stomach as she continued to cry without totally understanding why.
“I feel something move,” he said at last, and the relief on his face touched her so deeply it stopped the tears. She threw herself against his chest and he held her, his solid warmth a balm, more real to her than the earth and the stars. He kissed her forehead then her lips, and she forgot about the snow and just about everything else.
Finally the cold got to her. “Cody? What happened? Did we hit the deer?”
“I don’t think so,” he said. “We lost a tire, that I know. That’s why we plowed through the dirt instead of rolling over it. You’re okay?”
“A little shaken.”
“And Junior is rolling around in there okay?”
She smiled as her hands rested on the bulge. “Yes.”
He nodded once and strode off to circle the truck, pausing near the passenger front end, kneeling down and continuing his perusal as she looked down to brush snow off her tummy. When she glanced back at him, she caught him staring at her, and there was something in his eyes…?.
<
br /> Pauline had said Cassie was Cody’s salvation but at times, like right this second, it was hard to feel like anything more than a giant burden. She’d spent her youth trying to ease her mother’s sadness, and then at the end she’d nursed her through a terminal illness while holding a full-time job managing a feed store office. She’d prided herself on being strong and resilient, and perhaps even more than that, she’d prided herself on being content.
She was not going to live a life of despair, so caught up in disappointments that the years sped by without even being acknowledged as the miracles they were.
And that was why she’d really stayed away when discovering she was pregnant. Coming home to witness Cody’s disappointment at the new direction his life had to take would have been too much to bear, too familiar in some gut-wrenching way.
He pulled a phone from his pocket and placed a call as he walked back to her. A minute later, it was obvious he was talking to Adam. He explained where they were and what had happened and asked someone to come fetch Cassie right away. “And get Mike to come out here with a tow rig,” he continued.
He listened for a second and shook his head. “Okay, well, then, can you come? I want to haul the truck back to the ranch tonight.”
“Why can’t Mike come?” Cassie asked, as he hung up.
“He fell off his horse today and hurt his back. No riding for a week.”
“Can’t the truck wait until tomorrow?”
“No. Even before the deer, I knew something was wrong.”
She blinked away snowflakes. “What do you mean?”
“The steering was loose. There was a shimmy. I was going to pull over and then the deer showed up and we swerved—”
“Cody—what are you saying? This was an accident. The deer…”
He caught her shoulders in his hands. Looking hard into her eyes, he shook his head. “I don’t think so, Cass. I think someone tried to kill you—again.”
“I’M SORRY, CODY, BUT there’s no proof anyone tampered with the tire,” Adam said. He was crouched on the barn floor studying the front end of the truck, which he and Cody had towed to the ranch after the crash while Sassy Sally fetched Cassie.