Springwater Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  “I counted seventeen,” J.T. answered. “Probably strychnine.”

  “God almighty,” Purvis said.

  “Yeah,” J.T. agreed. He glanced around at the glare of headlights coming from seven or eight pickup trucks. “These ranchers,” he said, “are on the edge.”

  Purvis nodded. “Half of them are hotheads. They’re likely to pick out a suspect for themselves if we don’t come up with one soon, and they won’t be overly concerned with little things like due process.”

  “We’d better think of some way to calm them down. And quick.”

  Again, Purvis nodded. Then he turned to face the gathering mob. He was, J.T. thought, with no little admiration, a brave man.

  “Enough’s enough,” growled an older rancher, a tall guy J.T. vaguely recollected from the Cattleman’s Association meetings he’d attended with his dad. Fists knotted at his sides, the cowman stormed toward Purvis.

  J.T. moved in a little closer, but he kept his hands in his pockets. He wasn’t armed, and neither was Purvis, but every one of the ranchers was either carrying a rifle or sporting a gun belt with a pistol in the holster. It might have been a scene from an old movie, J.T. reflected, but it was all too real.

  “Now, Ed,” Purvis said to the other man, “you just hold your horses now. J.T. and me, we want to find the bastards who did this just as bad as you do. Last thing we need is a bunch of vigilantes getting in the way.”

  Ed looked like he might have a stroke on the spot. Before he could blow his top, though, Purvis’s cell phone rang. Evidently, it was the sheriff calling back.

  Purvis answered a bunch of questions, then flipped the phone shut again. “They’re sending some forensics people out, along with a few deputies.”

  “Good,” one of the ranchers yelled, out of the engine-thrumming glare. “Maybe we’ll get some action!”

  Ed was shaking his finger under Purvis’s nose. “You listen to me,” he ranted. “Don’t you go thinkin’ the Cattleman’s Association can’t ask for your badge and get it, because we can. And we will, damn it. We will, if you don’t put a stop to this yesterday!”

  Again, J.T. admired Purvis’s restraint. He’d have been tempted to pop the guy one himself, just to get his attention, which only went to show that he really wasn’t cut out to be a cop. Maybe he never had been.

  Purvis held both hands out, palms forward. “We’ve got to work together on this, Ed,” he said. “We can’t accomplish much of anything by fighting among ourselves.”

  J.T. thought of Maggie again, standing beside him at the sink. Their hips had touched a couple of times, purely by accident, of course. At least, it had probably been an accident on Maggie’s part. J.T. was a take-charge kind of a guy, especially in situations like that one.

  “Just exactly what are you proposin’ to do?” demanded yet another rancher. “So far, we’ve seen plenty of nothin’!”

  This raised derisive cheers from the crowd. J.T. kept his mouth shut, though it wasn’t easy. This was still Purvis’s show.

  “I want all of you to go on home, back to your own ranches,” Purvis called out. “For the time being, you’d better put whatever spare men you have to watchin’ your herds.”

  “You’re goin’ to have to do better than that,” Ed challenged, shaking his fist.

  “Go on home, Ed,” Purvis said patiently. “It’s late, and we got work to do.”

  Pete Doubletree spoke up. “We’re calling a special meeting of the Cattleman’s Association,” he said, shouting so the whole crowd could hear. “Tomorrow night, six o’clock, in the back room at the Brimstone!”

  There was another rallying cry, but one by one the ranchers got back into their trucks and drove off, with a lot of tire-spinning and gear-grinding.

  “We’re on your side,” J.T. said, when it looked as if Doubletree was going to tie into Purvis again.

  The rancher, younger than most of his colleagues, subsided a little. “This is going to ruin me,” he said. Then he turned and walked over to crouch beside one of his lost cattle.

  “See anything that might give us a clue who did this?” Purvis asked, out of the corner of his mouth.

  J.T. shook his head. “If there were any tracks,” he said, “they’re gone now. Nothing like half a dozen pickups to tear up a crime scene.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Purvis breathed.

  “At least one,” J.T. agreed. It was going to be a long night, and he felt about twenty years older than he had when he left Maggie behind at the Station.

  Purvis sighed, glanced toward the car. The woman got out, came toward them, hugging herself, picking her way through mud, grass, and cow manure.

  “It’ll be awhile until I can take you home,” Purvis said to her.

  She nodded, glanced at J.T., nodded again, this time in greeting.

  “Nelly Underwood,” Purvis said. “This is my friend and deputy,

  J. T. Wainwright.”

  “Hello,” J.T. said. Interesting, he reflected. He hadn’t known Purvis was dating, and the thought cheered him considerably. It would seem that, after all these years, Purvis Digg was having a near-life experience.

  7

  It was 3:47 in the morning when J.T. got home from Stonecreek Ranch and immediately fell into bed, wondering how the hell he was going to get through a full day on a little better than an hour and a half of sleep. Then the matter was taken out of his hands— the telephone rang.

  Muttering, he raised himself up onto one elbow and fumbled for the light switch. He squinted at the caller I.D. readout, recognized the number as Annie’s, and snatched up the receiver on the third ring. “Hello?” he rasped. His life as a big-city cop had made him more than a little paranoid, particularly where his son Quinn was concerned. A call at that hour, made from his ex-wife’s number in Atlanta, almost certainly meant trouble.

  “Dad?” Quinn’s voice was small, quavery.

  J.T. closed his eyes for a moment, dazed with relief that it wasn’t Annie calling to say Quinn was sick, hurt, missing, or any of the thousand and one other bad things that could happen to someone you loved when you weren’t around to protect them, and sometimes even if you were. He willed his heart and respiration rates to slow down to normal, and when he figured he could strike the right note, he spoke. “Hiya, buddy,” he said. “How are you?”

  Quinn was six, and he’d been the main reason J.T. had held on to life immediately after he’d been shot. Every time he’d wanted to just give up and go under, to let the pain swallow him, he’d seen Quinn’s face, heard his voice, the way he was hearing it now. Remembered that a boy needed a father, even the long-distance variety. “Mostly I’m all right,” the kid answered. He sounded the way J.T. felt—close to tears. It was hard, living so far from his only child, but he’d had some time to get used to it. When Annie’s second husband, Brad, an engineer, had accepted a major construction project based in Atlanta, well before the shooting, J.T. had agreed that Quinn should go along. Annie was an exceptional mother, if a little on the fussy side.

  J.T. wound the phone cord around an index finger and worked up a smile, hoping the kid would hear it in his voice and be reassured somehow. “What’s up?”

  “They’re fighting.”

  “Who?” J.T. asked, though of course he knew.

  “Brad and my mom. I think they might get divorced.”

  “Hey,” J.T. said gruffly, “people disagree sometimes. You know that. Wait and see—they’ll kiss and make up tomorrow.”

  Quinn’s voice wobbled. “You and Mom used to fight. And you got divorced.”

  “Yeah,” J.T. said, shoving a hand through his hair, “but that was different.”

  “Why?”

  J.T. paused for a beat. “It just was. You’re going to have to trust me on that one, Bud, at least until you’re a little older.”

  “She said she wasn’t about to drag a little kid all the way to South America,” Quinn confided, lowering his voice in case of spies. “And he said the two of us can damn well
stay here, then, for all he cares, but it’s a big promotion and he’s going. Then he went out and slammed the door. He drove away really fast.”

  J.T. took a few slow, measured breaths. Brad was a good guy, a solid nine-to-five type and a decent stepfather, and J.T. didn’t re-ally care what went on between him and Annie, but when Quinn got caught in the cross fire, that was something else. “It’s gonna be all right, buddy,” he said finally. Then, carefully, he added, “Why don’t you go find your mom? I’d like to talk to her.”

  “I can’t. She’s sleeping now. She cried a lot, Dad. I heard her.”

  “O.K.,” J.T. said. He sat up, put his feet on the floor, and resigned himself to getting no sleep at all. “How about if I give her a ring later on this morning?”

  Quinn didn’t hesitate. “She’ll be glad if you call.”

  “Right,” J.T. said, rubbing his eyes with a thumb and forefinger.

  “I want to come out there and live with you. If Mom goes to South America with Brad, I mean.”

  J.T.’s heart cracked and then split right down the middle, like a block of seasoned wood struck with a sharp ax. “No promises, pal,” he said. “Not before your mother and I talk, anyway.”

  “You’ll call her for real? First thing?”

  J.T. smiled. “First thing,” he confirmed. “In the meantime, we’ll have to hang tough, you and I. You got your pajamas on?”

  “Yes,” Quinn said, in the tone of voice usually accompanied by an eye roll. “It’s only six o’clock in the morning here, and I don’t have school because it’s summer.”

  “Well, then, since you’re dressed for sleeping, why don’t you go back to bed for a while?”

  Quinn sighed. “I can’t do that, Dad,” he explained. “It’s light outside.”

  J.T. glanced at the darkened window opposite his bed and smiled again, ruefully this time. Holding the receiver to his ear with one hand, he scrounged on the floor for last night’s clothes. He’d feed the horses after he’d finished talking with Quinn, then come back inside, shower, put on clean jeans and a fresh shirt, if he had any, nuke himself a frozen breakfast sandwich, and go rouse Purvis. Getting to the auction early would mean extra time to look over the livestock. “So how do you like the new neighborhood? Made any friends yet?”

  “I don’t want any friends here,” Quinn said. He could be stubborn as hell, and he came by it honestly. Annie’s skull was every bit as thick as J.T.’s own, so genetically, the kid had never had a chance. “They’re all geeks.”

  “Nah,” J.T. answered, stepping into his jeans, pulling them up, and buttoning the fly. He’d learned to dress quickly, while doing four other things, early in his law enforcement career. “You just don’t know them yet, that’s all. And they don’t know you. Give them a chance, Q.”

  “They’re scuzz-head-robo-zoids.”

  J.T. shrugged into his shirt, grinning. “Quinn.”

  “Well,” Quinn insisted, with growing spirit, “they are.”

  How to win friends and influence people, J.T. thought. “You think we don’t have scuzz-head-robo-zoids out here in Montana?”

  “I wouldn’t care. I’d be with you.”

  The words jabbed into J.T.’s throat and stuck there, hurting. “Remember what I said, Q. Nothing is settled until your mother and I have talked this through. Got that?”

  “Got it,” Quinn said. “Dad?”

  J.T.’s voice went hoarse again. “What?”

  “I love you.”

  J.T. squeezed his eyes shut, hard. Opened them again. Cleared his throat. “I love you, too, pal. Don’t forget that, O.K.?”

  “O.K.”

  “Look, I’ll pick up a cell phone today and call you right away with the number. Then, whether you get to come out here to the ranch or not, you’ll be able to get in touch with me twenty-four-seven. That work for you?”

  “It works.”

  “Good. Now, go back to bed.”

  There was a grin in his son’s voice. “Dad.”

  “O.K., then just stay out of trouble till your mom’s on her feet and able to defend herself.”

  “Don’t forget to call me with your cell number.”

  “I won’t forget, bud. I promise.”

  “O.K. Bye.”

  “Bye, Q.”

  The line went dead. J.T. fumbled, hanging up the phone, and it took a couple of attempts just to set the receiver in place. In those moments he missed his son with such acute desperation that the emotion all but blinded him. He staggered into the bathroom, bent over the old-fashioned pedestal sink, and splashed his face with cold water until he’d at least partially regained his senses. Then he brushed his teeth, ran a brush through his hair, and headed for the back stairs. In the kitchen, he flipped on the lights, pushed the start button on the coffeemaker, and went to the barn.

  A slow shiver spilled down his spine as he crossed the backyard; it was the kind of chill he used to get in the city sometimes, when something was about to go down. He ascribed it to imagination and a lack of sleep and kept walking, but the hairs on the nape of his neck stood on end for a long time afterward.

  “They found us a baby!” Daphne blurted, bursting into Maggie’s office at the Station, later that morning, her eyes big.

  “Already?” Maggie asked, laying aside her glasses.

  “There’s an urgent need for foster homes,” Daphne said, pushing the office door closed behind her and leaning back against it. Her face was glowing, as if she’d given spontaneous birth only minutes before. “We’re getting a little girl, Mags. Her name is Tiffany, and they think she’s about two. The social worker is bringing her over from Maple Creek this afternoon.”

  Maggie stood, crossed the room, hugged her friend. “‘They think’ she’s two?” she asked.

  “Nobody knows for certain,” Daphne confided, looking solemn for a moment.

  Maggie raised her eyebrows, waited for further explanation.

  Daphne seemed charged with energy again, almost manic with excitement. “I’ve got to go shopping,” she said. “We don’t have a crib or the right kinds of food or clothes or toys—”

  Maggie was nothing if not a realist, and she knew that foster children were often shunted from Point A to Point B, and then back again, for a variety of bureaucratic reasons. It seemed that her friend had become attached to this little one already, even before meeting her, and that kind of emotional vulnerability was a dangerous thing. She didn’t want to see Daphne get hurt.

  “Daph,” she began carefully, and then stopped, not knowing how to go on.

  Daphne knew her well and guessed at her misgivings. “Stop worrying,” she said softly. “I’m taking in a baby who needs a home, temporary or otherwise, not crossing a minefield.”

  Maggie nodded. She might have pointed out that there were other kinds of minefields besides the physical ones, but Daphne was a grown woman, intelligent and well-educated. She didn’t need Maggie to tell her that this was a major emotional risk. “Go,” she said. “Cindy and I can hold down the fort alone for the rest of the day.”

  Daphne’s eyes were shining. “I’ll call Ben. Maybe he can take a couple of hours off.”

  “Good idea,” Maggie answered, indicating her office phone with a gesture. Daphne hurried in and snatched up the receiver.

  Cindy, who had gone out on an errand, returned just as Daphne was coming out of the office, quelling an expression of disappointment as she approached. “Ben’s tied up,” she said, seeing that she hadn’t been quick enough. Maggie had seen the look on her friend’s face, and she was troubled. “Well, I guess that’s to be expected. He’s in the middle of a workday. See you later.”

  “Where’s she going?” Cindy asked conversationally, laying a roll of stamps, a bag of office supplies, and a cash register receipt on Maggie’s desk.

  “Shopping,” Maggie said. “She and Ben are getting a foster child this afternoon.”

  “Oh,” Cindy said, and seemed to sag a little.

  “Sit down,” Magg
ie told her, gesturing toward the chair in front of her desk.

  Cindy sat, with a heavy sigh. She looked overwrought and very tired. Perhaps the job was proving to be too much for her.

  “Are you all right?” Maggie asked.

  “Yeah,” Cindy said, attempting a smile and falling a little short. “I just feel kind of sad all of the sudden, that’s all. You know, to think about that baby’s mom and how she must feel, having to let somebody else step in and take over.”

  It wasn’t difficult to see why the concept would trouble a pregnant young girl, especially one who had been married such a short time, and under less than idyllic circumstances. “It must be very hard,” she said, feeling sympathy not only for Tiffany’s unknown mother and father, but for Cindy and Billy, too.

  Cindy nodded, hands resting on her protruding belly, unconsciously shielding her child, but her face brightened slightly. “I’m starved. What if I make us some lunch?”

  Maggie smiled, feeling more cheerful herself. “Good idea,” she said. “You’ll find the makings of sandwiches in the refrigerator.”

  “I’m on it,” Cindy said.

  Maggie went back to her work at the computer. The Springwater Station Web site was already generating inquiries about the B & B, and even a few reservations, and she needed to tend to business. Cindy brought her a tuna sandwich and some diet cola a few minutes later.

  Hours later she was alone, still working at her desk, having progressed to a preliminary financial report by then, when she raised her eyes and saw J.T. standing in the doorway, leaning with one shoulder braced against the door frame. He was wearing jeans, a work shirt, boots, and a denim jacket, and his hair was rumpled, as if he’d been combing it with his fingers. A 5 o’clock shadow darkened his jaw and there was a hollow look in his eyes that suggested serious sleep deprivation.

  “You look like five miles of bad road,” she said, not unkindly, assessing him over the rims of her reading glasses.

  He chuckled. “Golly gee, ma’am. Is that any way to talk to a hardworkin’ cowboy and peace officer like myself?”

  Maggie suppressed a smile as she set her glasses aside and pushed back her chair to stand and stretch. “I trust you wiped your feet before you walked on my clean floor?”