Letter to a Lonesome Cowboy

by Jackie Merritt

  “You did what you had to, so don’t go laying any of the blame on yourself,” Sterling said gruffly. “Rand, here’s what I want you to do. Find a big piece of paper, and I mean big. On it, write with one of those heavy black markers, I Found It, You Son Of A Bitch, So Don’t Bother Going In. Sign your name and nail it to that side door. And lock it. That should shake some of the cockiness out of the bastard.”

  Rand chuckled. “That it should. Okay, I’ll do it right away. Thanks, Sterling.”

  “Call anytime, Rand. And listen, I think Reed should make another trip out there when the roads are open. I’ll call him myself.”

  “Good idea. Talk to you later, Sterling.”

  “Oh, Rand? Winona Cobb dropped in to see me this morning. You know who she is, don’t you?”

  “That woman who runs the junkyard outside of town? What’s it called again?”

  “The Stop-n-Swap,” Sterling replied.

  “Oh, yeah. Right.” Rand laughed. “I heard she says she’s psychic or some such bull.”

  “I’m not so sure she isn’t. She’s hit the nail on the head quite a few times in the past, and it couldn’t all be guesswork. Anyhow, she made a special trip to town to tell me that there are dark clouds on the horizon for Whitehorn. Warned me about a disturbance in the town’s aura and mentioned it could encompass some outlying areas. Talked about strangers wearing masks, or some such gibberish, but I immediately thought of the ranch and the strangers you’ve been hiring. There’s nothing you can do about it, but I just thought you should know.”

  “Hell, Sterling, it’s really just more gossip about the trouble out here, wouldn’t you say? That old lady’s nuttier than a fruitcake.”

  “If it was anyone else doing the talking I’d agree, and Winona is surely a strange duck. But, like I said, she’s come up with some pretty accurate predictions in the past. Remind me to tell you about some of the things she said about Mary Jo Kincaid when we have the time. Right now I’m swamped.”

  “Yes, we’ll talk about it sometime, Sterling. I’ll sign off now and let you get back to work. Bye.” Rand grinned a little as he hung up. It was hard for him to believe that a man of Sterling McCallum’s caliber would even listen to psychic mumbo-jumbo, let alone give it any credence. Oh, well, he thought, to each his own.

  After opening a dozen drawers in the desks and cabinets in the room, Rand found a large piece of white pasteboard. He wrote on it what Sterling had told him to write, chuckled again over the message, got into his jacket again, took the sign and went outside to secure it on that side door of the house.

  Walking back to the bunkhouse, Rand felt hunger pangs in his stomach. He also felt so lighthearted, he almost whooped with glee. Not only would he sleep easier tonight, but he didn’t have to tell Suzanne and Mack to leave the ranch. At the bunkhouse, he shed his outside gear and headed for the kitchen and something to eat.

  Suzanne heard him coming and stiffened. She finished drying her hands on a cotton towel and was hanging it up when Rand walked in. His big smile surprised her, but not nearly so much as what he did next. Rounding the counter in three long strides, he put his hands on her waist, picked her up so that her face was on a level with his and planted a warm, squishy kiss on her lips.

  She drew her head back and glared at him. “What on earth are you doing? Put me down, for heaven’s sake! What if someone should come in? Maybe you don’t give a whit about my reputation, but I do.”

  He laughed as though he didn’t have a care in the world, which was exactly how he felt. Finding and burying that dynamite had relieved a ten-ton burden.

  “Good things are happening today,” he declared. “The sun’s out, the snow is melting, the phone’s are working and you’ve been just waiting for me to come in so you could tell me you’re going to marry me, right?”

  Suzanne realized that he was feeling full of the devil, for some reason, and decided to tease him back.

  With a perfectly straight face she said, “How did you know?”

  Probably because of Sterling talking about Winona Cobb, Rand said, “I’m psychic, that’s how.”

  “Yeah, right,” Suzanne drawled. “And I’m the tooth fairy.”

  “I knew that.”

  She couldn’t help laughing. “You big fake. You’re about as psychic as that dishwasher over there. Now, please put me down and I’ll fix you some lunch.”

  Chuckling, Rand lowered her so that her feet were on the floor.

  “What put you in such a good mood?” Suzanne asked as she turned on the burner under the pot of soup she’d left out to warm up for him.

  “Told you good things were happening today.” Rand perched on a counter stool to watch her gracefully move around the kitchen. She seemed completely at home, as though she’d been cooking for a crew of men for months instead of a few days. The word adaptable entered his mind again. Adaptability was a necessary trait for anyone trying his luck with cattle ranching, he believed. The fluctuations of weather and beef prices, the hard work seven days a week, month after month, the way cowhands came and went, and the isolation most ranchers lived with weeded out the weak-willed and unconformable very quickly. Either that or people lived in misery.

  Suzanne didn’t seem at all miserable. In fact, she didn’t even seem worried now, as she’d so obviously been when she got here.

  “You like it here, don’t you?” Rand said.

  Suzanne turned her head to send him a glance. “I don’t dislike it.”

  “Come on, tell the truth. Isn’t there something about this place that makes you happy? You seem happy, you look happy. Shouldn’t I assume you are happy?”

  “I do feel…less stressed out than when I came,” she admitted thoughtfully. “Maybe it’s because I’ve been busy. I always feel best when I have something productive to do.”

  “Maybe you’re feeling good because of me.”

  She brought a sandwich on a plate to the counter and set it in front of him. “And maybe I’m feeling good because of the sunshine. I’ll get your soup.”

  “You won’t face it, will you? Why not, Suzanne? Why can’t you look me in the eye and admit that marrying me would solve all your problems?”

  She was ladling soup into a bowl, and she stopped to send him a raised-eyebrow look. “Is that what you want to hear? All right, I can easily admit that marrying you would solve my financial problems, and probably help out with Mack. Does that answer satisfy you?”

  “Not entirely, but it’s a start.”

  She brought the bowl of soup to the counter. “It’s a bad start, Rand, which you’d know if you had been married before.”

  “Don’t judge what you and I could have on your first marriage, Suz. We have fun together, don’t we? Like we had in the snow this morning?”

  “That’s your problem, Rand. You think marriage is all fun and games. Believe me, it isn’t.”

  He grabbed her hand across the counter and looked into her eyes. “But it could be. With you and me it could be.”

  As she stared into his gorgeous blue eyes, the strangest sensation struck Suzanne. It was a startling flash of insight; if he said one word about having fallen in love with her, everything would change so fast her head would spin. She, it appeared, had fallen in love with him!

  She looked down and tried to swallow the lump that suddenly clogged her throat. How in God’s name had this happened? She hadn’t been looking to fall in love with any man, for certain not with one who thought of marriage as a game. Rand was going to have to learn the facts of life the hard way, by experiencing the realities of marriage himself.

  But not through her. He was going to have to find a woman who thought no more of love than he did. So there was an ache in her chest. She’d get over it. People didn’t die of unrequited love. It wasn’t a disease, after all; it just felt like one.

  “I—I don’t want to talk about this any longer,” she said, pulling her hand from his.

  Rand’s eyes narrowed on her as she busied herself by picking
up pot holders and laying them down again, nervously, it seemed to him. “You sure can run hot and cold.”

  “Maybe I’m not as sweet as you thought,” she said without looking at him. “Eat your lunch. Your soup is getting cold.” Dampening a dishcloth at the faucet, she began wiping down the countertops. Her mind was full of bitter thoughts. She was in love with Rand Harding and she didn’t deserve that kind of heartache. Hadn’t life already played enough foul tricks on her? How much more could she take?

  If her only consideration was herself, she would leave this ranch the minute the roads were plowed. But she had Mack to reckon with, and dare she forget how little money she had? Every day that she worked here would increase the cash she could take with her to Baltimore. It was a crucial factor and not to be overlooked or diminished by emotional distress.

  Rand ate and pondered Suzanne’s changeable moods. At moments he felt so close to her, as though they were functioning on the same wavelength. It had happened in the snow this morning, and it had happened again just a moment ago. Now she looked as distant as the stars. Was it something he’d said?

  Maybe if he got her talking again—any subject would do—she wouldn’t look so cold and forbidding.

  “What did you think of the house?” he asked.

  “The house?” What was he going to do now, chastise her for daring to enter that sacred domicile? If he did, he was going to get an earful, she decided. She was not a child and was not going to meekly accept a dressing down for giving in to simple curiosity.

  “The Kincaid house. What did you think of it?” Rand repeated.

  Suzanne tossed the dishcloth into the sink and put her hands on her hips in a militant stance. “I did not touch one single thing in that house.”

  Rand lowered his soupspoon. “All I asked was what you thought of it. I couldn’t care less if you had touched every stick of furniture and every piece of china in the place. Why would I?”

  “I—I thought…” She took a breath. “Sorry, I thought you were upset because I went inside.”

  “Well, I’m not. The house is normally locked to keep people from wandering through it, but if I’d known you wanted to see it, I would have taken you over there myself. I’ll still do it if you want to take a better look. Wouldn’t bother me a bit.”

  “Rand, that one door was not locked. I swear it.”

  “I know it wasn’t. Do you know how to pick locks?”

  “Of course not. Is that what someone did?”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what someone did.”

  “This is another segment of your ongoing mystery out here, isn’t it? And it must be connected to the Kincaid murders. Why else would someone break into their house? Was anything stolen?”

  Since he didn’t want to tell her about the current rash of trouble on the ranch, he resorted to history. “You’re curious about those murders, aren’t you?”

  “It’s only natural, don’t you think? Did you know the Kincaids?”

  At least she was talking to him again, Rand thought, and he didn’t mind relating what he knew about the Kincaids.

  “No, never met a one of them, except for baby Jennifer. She’s three years old now and the sole owner of this ranch, among other things. Jennifer was adopted by Sterling and Jessica McCallum—he’s a detective with the Whitehorn Police Department—and Sterling and an attorney, Wendell Hargrove, are trustees of Jennifer’s estate.”

  “A toddler owns this ranch? How…strange,” Suzanne murmured.

  “Unusual, at least.”

  “Was she orphaned because her parents were, uh, murdered?” It was a hard word to say now that she was talking about specific people, Suzanne realized.

  “Not exactly. It’s really a convoluted story, and I don’t know all the details. What I do know is that a woman named Lexine Baxter grew up around here, left the area for a number of years and then returned with a face full of plastic surgery and a fictitious name, Mary Jo Plumber. She lured Dugin Kincaid, who was the son of Jeremiah, into marrying her. There was another son, but I heard he died in Vietnam. Mary Jo was a real mental case and ended up murdering her husband, her father-in-law and three or four other people.”

  Suzanne gasped. “On this ranch?”

  “I think only Jeremiah died on the ranch. I’m not real sure about that, though.”

  “And how is Jennifer related?”

  “She’s Jeremiah’s illegitimate daughter. Seems the old guy was quite a ladies’ man.”

  “What happened to his wife? I mean, if he had two legitimate sons…”

  “She died from cancer. I got the impression from people who’ve talked to me about it that her sons weren’t very old when she died. Dugin wasn’t, anyway. I’m not sure about the other one.”

  “That’s terrible and sad, but at least she wasn’t murdered,” Suzanne said with a shiver. “How did Mary Jo die?”

  “I don’t think she did. Last I heard, she was in jail.” By this time Suzanne was hanging on the counter, no more than a foot away and intent on Rand’s every word. He liked her nearness and the fact that he could inhale the subtle scent of her cologne. He wracked his brain trying to remember more about the Kincaids, just to keep Suzanne’s interest.

  “Murder wasn’t the only crime she committed,” he said. “She kidnapped several people, baby Jennifer included.”

  “She kidnapped Jennifer? My God, what was driving her? What was her motive?”

  “Money. I also think there had been some kind of dispute between her father and Jeremiah over valuable land—a sapphire mine, or something. I don’t know all the details, but the Kincaids were very wealthy. She thought she’d gotten rid of all of them and then found out that Jennifer was Jeremiah’s child. In order to secure her own inheritance, she had to get rid of Jennifer, too.”

  “How on earth was she stopped?”

  “It took damned good police work to do it, I can tell you. She might have been demented, but she wasn’t stupid, and she stopped at nothing to cover her tracks. You know, that’s what gives criminals an edge, their total lack of compassion for anyone or anything but themselves.” Rand wondered if he weren’t also talking about the person or persons causing so much trouble on the ranch at the present. If he or they were the same sort as Mary Jo Kincaid, heaven help them all.

  “It’s a horrible story, Rand.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  “And that big house just sits there empty and lifeless. Do you think anyone will ever live in it again?”

  Rand shrugged. “I really don’t know. Sterling said he and his wife want to keep it intact for Jennifer, because it will give her some idea of her birth family.”

  “Her father, anyhow. Who was her mother?”

  “A woman named Marie, uh, Marie something. I can’t remember her last name. She’s dead, too.”

  “Not by Mary Jo’s hand!”

  “Afraid so. That was sort of an accident, though, because Mary Jo was really after a private detective who was getting a little too close on her trail for comfort. She blew up his car and killed Marie instead.”

  Suzanne shook her head in horrified astonishment. “Mary Jo was a monster! Are you positive she’s safely incarcerated? The thought of running into her gives me the creeps.”

  Rand smiled, reached out and tucked a strand of her dark hair behind her ear. “I swear to protect you from any and all monsters that might threaten your well-being.”

  His touch sent a delicious tingle throughout Suzanne’s system. She had become so engrossed in the lurid twists and turns of Mary Jo’s story that she’d completely dropped her guard. Rand was not above taking advantage of her proximity, but she’d already known that and should have stayed on the other side of the room. At the very least she shouldn’t be leaning on the counter with her face practically in his!

  The look in his eyes said that he would touch her for as long as she would let him, and her own body was telling her to stay right where she was and savor the sensation.

  Was she destined to
forever love men who didn’t love her? she thought with a heavy heart. Oh, Les had said all the pretty words, but when push came to shove, and responsibility had caught up to her in the form of her kid brother, Les had shown his true colors by turning into the weasel he must have always been.

  What would Rand turn into if she gave in to his physically exciting pressure and married him? How would he treat both Mack and herself after six months, a year? Mack could try the patience of a saint, and even while admitting love for Rand Harding, if only to herself, she didn’t think he was sainthood material.

  She pushed away from the counter—and Rand’s hand— and saw the light go out of his eyes.

  “Did I offend you?” he asked quietly.

  “No, I just…” She heard a far-off motor noise, and jumped to use it for an excuse. “I just heard something. Listen, don’t you hear it?”

  Rand cocked his head, then grinned. “It’s a snowplow, and it’s passing our driveway right about now!” Getting up, he ran for his jacket and out the door.

  Suzanne stepped outside, but stayed on the stoop. The sound was louder outdoors, and she kept waiting for the elation she had expected to feel when the roads were finally plowed.

  It never came. Rand had disappeared around the building, and she stood there in the fresh, clean air, with the sun beaming down and warming her arms, and thought about it being over with. She could stay on, of course—Rand had made that very clear—and she probably would, just to accumulate a little more money, but it wouldn’t be the same.

  It would never be the same again. Sighing, she went in and closed the door.

  Twelve

  Suzanne lay in bed that night and listened to nothing. There wasn’t a sound inside or out. After sleeping with a howling wind since she got to the ranch, the complete silence was keeping her awake. Even the icicles along the eaves, which had dripped all day, were silent, as they had frozen again when the sun went down.

  She turned one way and then another under her blankets, seeking sleep. She had to get up very early in the morning and needed some rest. After a while she flopped onto her back and admitted defeat. Eventually she would fall asleep, and maybe she was trying too hard to relax and causing the opposite to happen instead.