by Meryl Sawyer
“I’ve never slept with a sheriff before,” Vanessa mused. “Tell me about him. He isn’t married, is he?”
“No,” she answered, wondering if his parents’ tragic marriage made Zach unwilling to tie the knot. Or was he just content to tom-cat around?
Vanessa’s eyes sparkled with wicked delight. “Come on. Details. I want details.”
“There’s not much to tell,” Claire said, but she really meant there was a limited amount she was willing to disclose. “Zach grew up right here in Taos. His father owned the local photography studio, and his mother, well, she had a drinking problem.”
“We have a lot in common. My papa got tipsy now and then, too.”
Tipsy did not describe the down-and-out drunk Zach’s mother became, but Claire didn’t elaborate. “Zach ran wild. He got into a lot of trouble … especially after his father was killed in an automobile accident.”
“Tragic,” Vanessa said, but Claire knew it was only a word to the actress. The accident was truly tragic. It changed both their lives forever. It wasn’t something she discussed with anyone, least of all a woman interested only in a hot affair.
“The day after Zach graduated from high school, he disappeared. No one heard a single word from him, and everyone thought he’d landed in jail somewhere.”
“What about his mother? Didn’t he call her?”
Claire couldn’t meet the actress’s inquiring gaze. It was a disgrace to the entire town that Melanie Coulter had been buried in a pauper’s grave, nothing but a wooden cross, carved by her son, to remind the world that she had once lived and loved. And had borne a son who’d stuck by her right up to the end—the night she’d passed out in an alley and had frozen to death.
Even now, more than a dozen years later, Claire could still remember standing at the bank’s door, a twenty-dollar bill clutched in her hand, her father blocking her way. Down the street she saw Zach, his back stiff with pride as the blizzard swirled around the only coat he owned, a thin windbreaker. No one would lend him enough money to properly bury his mother.
“Zach’s mother died halfway through his senior year.”
There must have been something in her voice or expression that telegraphed the guilt Claire still felt. Twenty dollars wouldn’t have been enough to purchase a headstone, but it would have shown Zach that someone cared.
Vanessa gazed at her, openly curious, asking, “Are you involved with him?”
“No, of course not.” She did not count the summer long ago when they’d been together every day. Their relationship might have developed into something, but the automobile accident and her father’s obsessive behavior put an end to it.
“So how did he become sheriff?” Vanessa asked.
“The elected sheriff died unexpectedly and Zach applied for the job. He hadn’t been in prison. He’d gone to the West Coast and joined the San Francisco Police Department. Later he became a homicide detective. We don’t get law officers with those credentials. He was appointed to fill the vacant position, but he’ll have to run for office next year.”
“San Francisco … my favorite city. Why would Zach leave such an exciting city for—” Vanessa clapped a hand crowned by coral nails over her mouth. “You know, I love Taos—in small doses. I like doing summer theater while my show’s on hiatus, and I like the skiing. But I can’t imagine someone like that wolf being happy living here.”
Claire agreed, knowing most people in town also wondered about Zach Coulter. Many had been shocked at the bad boy’s audacity in returning. Others had openly taken bets on when he would leave, but it was almost three years since his return, and Zach showed no signs of heading back to the city.
Vanessa eyed Claire suspiciously. “Why was the sheriff here?”
“Duncan Morrell was murdered last night.”
All the color leached from Vanessa’s face, leaving two patches of coral blush across her sculpted cheekbones. “No. I can’t believe it.” She sagged against the display case and stared out the window at the plaza, slack-jawed. She squeezed her eyes shut, but tears slowly crept over her long, silky black lashes and trembled on their tips before silently cascading down her flawless cheeks.
Vanessa cried silently for a few minutes while Claire struggled with what to say. She despised Duncan but she was sorry he’d been killed. Even so, she couldn’t imagine someone like Vanessa, a famous actress, caring so much about a major sleaze like Duncan. Maybe it was just acting; Vanessa tended to be overly dramatic at times.
Finally, Vanessa spoke. “Duncan was just in Los Angeles. I bought a dozen lithographs from him for an investment. He was so alive, so …”
Now was not the time to tell Vanessa that Duncan had probably sold her phony prints. Obviously the actress knew Duncan better than Claire had thought. News of his death had hit her hard.
Claire realized she should feel terrible about someone dying, but all she felt was hollowness and disbelief. Duncan Morrell considered her a rival from the day she reopened the gallery, and he’d promised to ruin her. He’d almost succeeded, and he might still—from the grave. Luring away her best artist, Nevada, had brought her to the brink of bankruptcy. If the gallery didn’t have a great season this summer, she would have to close it.
“If only I hadn’t missed my plane last night,” Vanessa said, dramatically fighting a fresh wave of tears. “I might have seen him, and prevented this. We were planning to spend last night together.”
Last night. The words kept echoing through Claire’s head. Once they’d had a sensual, erotic ring to them. Now they were truly ominous.
Three
Zach Coulter sped down Kit Carson Road, still smiling. He had Claire Holt right where he wanted her. Okay, not exactly right where he wanted her. Beneath him, her wild blond hair spread across his pillow would be perfect. She belonged on her back looking up at him—not looking down her nose at him.
“Claire can be a real bitch,” he told Lobo, and the dog sitting beside him cocked his head as if he understood.
Zach hadn’t worked so damn hard to make something of himself just to let Claire Holt act like he was white trash. Those days were over, finished. He refused to allow anyone to treat him like shit—least of all her. Things had changed. This time Claire wasn’t going to blow him off. This time he had the winning hand. She needed him.
“Claire’s in real trouble, but she hasn’t figured it out yet,” he said, deliberately speaking out loud. Lobo was remarkably well trained, yet the call of the wild still ran in his blood. Talking to him was Zach’s way of reminding Lobo that he was man’s best friend, not a wild animal. He gave the dog a quick pat, thinking about Claire.
She was a ballsy chick—stubborn and impulsive as hell. Showing up at Hogs and Heifers had been like waving a red flag in front of a bull. Bam Stegner was bound to blame Claire for Khadafi’s disappearance. She’d raised a ruckus, showing everyone pictures of Stegner’s half-starved bear. People were outraged, but there wasn’t a damn thing that could be done—legally.
Of course, that hadn’t stopped Claire.
He rounded the corner on two wheels, remembering the way she’d looked this morning. Blond hair dragged back into a ponytail. Her usually sparkling green eyes weary from lack of sleep. Her sensual mouth alluringly tilted upward at the corners even when she couldn’t conceal how pissed she was to have to deal with him.
He checked the rearview mirror and saw a rooster tail of dust appear as he drove onto the gravel road that led to the station. “I’m not going to pamper Claire the way everyone else does. I’ll be as crude as I damn please and she can just deal with it.”
Lobo cocked his head as if to say: you were pretty rough on her back there.
Zach patted the dog’s head. “You’re right. I was tough. I learned the hard way that only the strong survive. Let’s see if Claire can handle it.”
He had his pick of women, and had since he could remember. He’d spent more nights than he cared to recall in different women’s beds. But certain women were
like a tune, once they were in your head, it was impossible to get rid of them. Something about Claire Holt sang to him.
And always had.
His family had been dirt poor, even though his father tried hard to earn a good living. Zach had envied Claire’s fairy tale existence. Her father owned the biggest bank in Taos while her mother ran a prestigious gallery.
Claire had been polite, but she had an attitude that dared anyone not part of her inner circle to approach. Zach had been powerless to resist the challenge. He still couldn’t.
“She hasn’t changed much since high school,” he told Lobo as he turned down the side road leading to the station. “Except physically.”
Claire’s leggy body had matured, leaving subtle curves in all the right places. She had a waist he could circle with his hands—and high, full breasts. Not wet T-shirt material, for sure, but sexy as hell.
Her unruly hair was still the same dark blond with shifting shades of lighter color and just a hint of red. Her eyes were the same vibrant green flecked with gold—and full of the devil. She had a woman’s body now, but he sensed the same recklessness that had allowed him to lure her away from her friends and her parents.
For one memorable summer.
He drove into the station parking lot and pulled into the space marked Sheriff Coulter. Usually, he looked at the sign with pleasure. He’d made something of himself, a feat most people in town would have sworn was impossible. Coming home, assuming a position of importance gave him immense satisfaction, a sense of pride represented by the sign.
But today he barely gave the sign a glance. Instead he jumped out and Lobo leaped out behind him. The small building wasn’t much to brag about. The sheriff’s station looked like an updated log cabin—exactly what it was. Once it had belonged to the division of the Forest Service responsible for the Kit Carson National Forest.
At the rear of the building was a small booking area that still used an old ink blotter to fingerprint, and an ancient Polaroid for mug shots. His buddies on the police force in San Francisco would have laughed at the antiquated equipment. They would have rolled on the floor if they could have seen the jail. Two cells and a drunk tank with six cots.
“Let them laugh,” he said to Lobo.
Zach hated the big city with its endless parade of criminals. In Taos the most men he’d put in jail was after a brawl at The Neon Cactus when the Steelers beat the Cowboys. He’d booked eight of the drunks to keep them from killing themselves while attempting to drive home.
Crime in Taos was rare. Until now. Someone had been brutally murdered. Zach had something to prove to himself, to Claire, to the whole damn town. He was going to catch the son-of-a-bitch who’d killed Duncan Morrell.
“Here, Zach.” Mildred, the dispatcher handed him several message slips the second he swung open the thick plank door. “T-Bone’s back. He needs to see you.”
“Thanks.” Zach planted his Stetson beside T-Bone’s dusty cowboy hat on the ram’s horn hat rack, another legacy of the Forest Service.
He went into his office with Lobo at his heels. Mildred followed, a mug of steaming coffee in her hand. As much as he tried to discourage her, it was impossible to keep the older woman from trying to mother him.
“I dusted the murder scene. The prints are on the way to Santa Fe,” T-Bone announced as he same through the door. Instead of his usual gap-toothed smile, his deputy’s freckled face was dead serious. “They’ll check them against the DMV’s print files.”
Zach dropped into his chair, weary at the thought of all the work ahead of him. He needed a few hours’ sleep, but he wasn’t going to get it. “Half the people in Taos are rich folks with homes in other states. They’ll have drivers’ licenses from out of state.”
T-Bone brushed back a hank of red hair. “I hadn’t thought of that.”
“It’s a start, though. We might just catch the bastard.”
Zach reminded himself that he’d been sick of the city. This was the price he had to pay. Instead of a crack homicide team, he had a green kid for a deputy. Worse, Taos was too small to have its own lab or forensic team. He had to rely on the State Police facilities in Santa Fe.
There were no cell phones in Taos either, and there weren’t any high-tech computers linked to the squad cars. This was basic police work without the cutting edge of technology that big-city law enforcement officers relied on.
“I want you to go out to Stegner’s place. Talk to the bartender and the waitresses. Get a list of people who were there last night,” he told T-Bone. “See if you can discover who was in that room with Morrell. This morning I couldn’t find anyone who’d even seen him at The Hideaway until he turned up dead. But you might uncover a new lead. Leave Seth Ramsey and Angela Whitmore to me. I’ve already questioned Claire Holt.”
“Right.” T-Bone turned to go.
“One other thing. I don’t want any leaks. Not one word to anyone—even your wife—about the investigation. Don’t mention the wallet we found next door to the crime scene.”
T-Bone assured him that he wouldn’t discuss the case and left. Zach picked up the phone, asking himself why he bothered to protect Claire Holt. Let her damn father find out that she wasn’t a little angel.
Alexander Holt.
The name alone still had the power to make his guts twist. The bastard had done his best to ruin his life. Why? Because Zach Coulter was the spitting image of his father. And because he’d dared to touch the little princess, Claire Holt.
At sixteen, Zach had lost his father in a fiery crash that became the biggest scandal since D. H. Lawrence had hit town. Little more than a kid himself, Zach had been saddled with a mother who loved booze. They’d had no money. Zach was forced to work after school. Every time he managed to land a job, Holt found a way to get him fired.
Zach dialed the coroner’s office, thinking of how hard Holt had tried to block his appointment as sheriff. But now he wasn’t a young kid. Zach’s credentials had been too good for the commission to turn down. Tohono’s backing hadn’t hurt either.
The balance of power had shifted considerably in the years Zach had been away. Once, the Native Americans had less say in local politics, but the popularity of the casino they’d built on their land had given them political clout. When Tohono, governor of the Taos pueblo, said he wanted Zach appointed sheriff, people didn’t like it, but they’d been forced to accept it.
Zach had at least a dozen good reasons to hate Claire’s father, but one stood out in his mind above the rest. His mother. She had a proper headstone now, and fresh flowers on her grave each week, but he’d never forget what a son-of-a-bitch Holt had been. Zach had promised to sweep the bank at night and keep the toilets clean for a year, if Holt would lend him the money to bury his mother. Holt had flat refused.
Claire had stood by, silently watching.
“Doc Reilly,” he said when the coroner’s office finally answered. He waited, still thinking. He’d get his chance to pay back Alexander Holt. Patience wasn’t his long suit, but he was forcing himself to play the waiting game.
“Hey, Doc,” he said when Reilly came on the line. “Did you establish a time of death yet?”
“Well, I can’t rightly say. It was cold last night and both windows in that room were wide open. Cool air slows down rigor mortis. Morrell could have been dead a lot longer than I first figured.”
“What about lividity?” Zach asked, knowing blood flowed to the lowest point after death. Often the amount of blood on the underside of the corpse helped establish time of death.
“That head wound caused severe blood loss. I couldn’t get any lividity calculations.”
“Come on, Doc. I need some idea of when Morrell was killed.”
“Wel-l-l … I’d say sometime between midnight and 6:00 A.M.”
“Christ! Can’t you get any closer than that?”
“No siree.”
Zach hung up, asking himself why he gave a damn about Claire Holt’s alibi. She hadn’t been there for hi
m when he’d needed her. She’d been staring down at her shoes—a habit she still had—when he’d walked out of the bank, not knowing how he could possibly bury his mother.
Okay, that had been years ago. Claire had been a teenager, suffering over her mother’s death. She was easily influenced by a father who still managed to dominate the town. He understood, but some small part of him couldn’t quite forgive Claire, especially when he’d come back to town a success and she’d snubbed him.
Shortly after Vanessa Trent left the gallery, the part-time assistant came in and Claire went out for lunch. She walked slowly across the centuries-old plaza with Lucy beside her. Brick pathways crisscrossed the square shaded by enormous cottonwoods and flanked on all four sides by adobe buildings. The pueblo-style structures housed galleries, Indian jewelry shops, restaurants, and the T-shirt stores endemic to every tourist mecca.
Centuries ago, the plaza had served as a meeting place for Indians and traders, but now the square catered to visitors flashing Visa cards. As usual craftsmen from the Taos pueblo sat on hand-loomed blankets with silver belts, jewelry or pottery, spread out before them. Huddled around were clusters of tourists, bargaining.
This was the beginning of the tourist season, which was extremely short, lasting from late June to September. The success of Claire’s gallery depended on these visitors who were just beginning to filter up from Santa Fe to Taos. She needed them to make enough purchases at The Rising Sun to pull the gallery out of debt.
“Hello, Luz.” Claire waved and the young woman greeted her in Tewa, then returned her attention to the tourists inspecting the silver jewelry she was trying to sell.
Claire took the short cut across the plaza past the Victorian bandstand in the center and sat on a wooden bench under the shade of a stately cottonwood. Lucy settled at her feet, her bum leg stretched out at an awkward angle.
“Are you okay, Lucy?” Claire asked. The dog responded with a wagging tail.
Church bells rang as clear as the midday air that fluttered the leaves on the cottonwoods. The mouth-watering aroma of blue corn tortillas and chiles roasting on a piñon grill drifted over the plaza. Usually Claire would have gone to Tortilla Flats for lunch, but she was too tired.
