Her Kind of Cowboy

by Charlotte Douglas

  Ethan raised his eyebrows in question.

  “He’s a police officer.”

  “Good.” He stopped pacing, leaned against the balustrade, and crossed his arms over his chest. “So we wait.”

  Even covered in dirt and obviously distraught, he looked handsome. Too handsome for comfort. Caroline relocated to the swing at the other end of the porch and took a seat. “Exactly where did you find this body?”

  “On the east side of the barn under the compost heap.”

  “Under? You were digging under the compost pile?”

  “I was moving it.”

  “Why?”

  Her question seemed to make him uncomfortable. “It was an eyesore. I’m planning to plant spring bulbs there in the fall. Thought I’d get the ground ready now.”

  Oh, boy. What was more appealing than a one hundred percent male who planted flowers? She shook off the thought that was bound to lead her into trouble and concentrated on the practical. “It’s almost ninety degrees. Why didn’t you wait for cooler weather?”

  “I don’t mind the heat.”

  Of course not, you idiot. He’s a former firefighter, after all.

  She pressed her lips together to keep from grinding her teeth. What was it about Ethan that seemed to disengage her brain?

  “Who was the last person to live at Orchard Cottage?” he asked.

  Caroline thought for a moment. “No one’s lived there for more than fifteen years. Eileen used to have a tenant who managed the orchards, but the Mauneys have taken care of the apple crops for years now.”

  “Do you remember the tenant’s name? The police will want to know.”

  She shook her head. “It’s probably in Eileen’s records. There’s an old secretary in the corner of the parlor filled with ledgers and notebooks. I’ll go look.”

  But before she could enter the house, a cloud of dust lifted near the highway and the sound of tires on gravel announced the arrival of Lucas Rhodes. Within minutes, a black SUV with a light bar on the roof and the shield of the Pleasant Valley Police Department on the doors turned off the road onto the driveway.

  Lucas parked beside Ethan’s truck, climbed out and came up the walk. Tall with rugged good looks, high cheekbones that suggested a hint of Cherokee ancestry and piercing green eyes, Lucas in his crisply starched dark green uniform was the epitome of the handsome lawman, but his attractive face was grim as he approached. Handsome as he was, Caroline noted that he didn’t make her brain go foggy like Ethan did.

  She and Ethan descended the porch steps and met Lucas halfway up the farmhouse walk, and Caroline introduced the officer to her tenant.

  “What’s this about a body?” Lucas fixed his gaze on Ethan and narrowed his eyes with suspicion.

  “It’s at Orchard Cottage,” Caroline said.

  Ethan nodded. “I found it while I was digging in the compost heap. Body is a misnomer. I guess skeleton is a better word. It’s apparently been there a good while.”

  Lucas keyed the mike of the radio clipped at his shoulder. “I’m at Blackberry Farm and going to check out the unidentified body at Orchard Cottage. Contact the sheriff’s crime scene unit and the coroner and have them meet me there.”

  “Ten-four,” Todd’s voice sounded from the radio’s speaker. “You need any backup?”

  “Negative. I’ll secure the crime scene and wait for the forensics techs and the coroner.”

  Lucas turned to Caroline. “Any guess who might be buried there?”

  She shook her head.

  Lucas keyed his mike again. “Check local missing persons records going back several decades and get me a list of names.”

  “Ten-four,” Todd answered.

  “The cottage has been empty a long time. Maybe it was a drifter, a vagrant,” Caroline said.

  Lucas lifted one corner of his mouth in a lopsided grin. “And he buried himself?”

  “Good point.” Caroline felt like smacking herself. Ethan’s proximity really did have her brain out of commission.

  Lucas turned to Ethan. “You’re the guy who knows where the body’s buried. How about leading the way?”

  “Sure. Just follow my truck.”

  “I’m coming, too,” Caroline said.

  “You can ride with me,” Lucas offered.

  She nodded and watched Ethan sprint to his pickup and hop in. The former firefighter was working a spell on her. The sooner she could leave the valley, the better. She’d waited too many years for her ranch to allow any man, no matter how appealing, to slow her down now.

  * * *

  AT ORCHARD COTTAGE, Ethan parked in front of the barn and waited for Lucas and Caroline to join him before he rounded the corner and led them to the gaping hole near the bottom of the compost heap.

  Lucas surveyed the scene. “Why were you digging here?”

  “Clearing the site for planting,” Ethan said. “Got tired of looking from the back porch at a mountain of weeds.”

  Lucas approached the hole, knelt on his haunches and gazed in. Over the cop’s shoulder, Ethan could see the bones, stained the color of strong tea, which had brought an abrupt end to his excavation. Even while studying the grisly scene, he experienced a tingle of awareness of Caroline beside him, her quick intake of breath when she spotted the body, the fragrance of her wisteria shampoo mixing with the aroma of rich loam and the scent of honeysuckle growing on a nearby fence.

  “Once I recognized the skull and realized these were human remains,” Ethan said, “I quit digging. Figured the police would want to do the rest.”

  “Good thinking,” the officer said, not taking his eyes off the darkened bones and scraps of cloth that clung to them.

  “Of course,” Ethan added, “by then I’d already shifted the majority of the compost to the other side of the barn. Sorry if I’ve moved any evidence.”

  “How long do you think it’s been there?” Caroline asked.

  She seemed perfectly calm, except for the slight tremor in her voice and the pallor of her perfect complexion that emphasized the brilliant sky blue of her eyes. Ethan fought against the impulse to lace his fingers through hers to give her hand a comforting squeeze.

  Lucas shrugged and shook his head. “The coroner will have to figure out the time line.”

  He stood, returned to the SUV and withdrew a roll of yellow tape. With practiced efficiency, he began cordoning off the yard alongside the barn where the compost heap had been, as well as the area where Ethan had moved the dirt to the other side of the barn.

  “We’d better get out of his way,” Ethan said. “We can watch from the porch.”

  Caroline followed him up the path he’d trampled through the high grass to the back porch. “Maybe the bones are American Indian,” she said. “From the looks of them, they could be hundreds of years old.”

  “Maybe. But I found them close to the surface, almost as if the body had been left in a shallow trench by the barn and slowly covered with compost to hide its location.”

  She gave a visible shudder and sank into the nearest chair on the porch. “Are you suggesting he, or she, was murdered?”

  Ethan nodded toward Lucas. “Finding that out is his job.”

  Caroline shook her head. “I can’t believe something like that could happen. Not here in the valley.”

  “Bad things happen everywhere.” Ethan slammed his mind shut against horrible memories, recollections he couldn’t yet face, much less talk about. “You want some coff
ee?”

  “No, thanks.” She kept her gaze focused on the cop who was tying crime tape to the gnarled trunk of an ancient apple tree and asked over her shoulder, “You settling in okay?”

  He lowered himself into a chair and propped his feet on the porch balustrade. “It’s everything Eileen promised.”

  Caroline pulled her attention from Lucas and flashed him a smile. “I’m assuming she didn’t promise much. You don’t even have a phone.”

  “No problem. Like I said, I have my cell.”

  She continued to watch Lucas and shook her head. “I’m not sure I’m ready for the responsibilities of landowning.”

  “I thought that’s what you wanted, your own place in Texas. Or was it Montana?”

  “I’m leaning toward New Mexico, but that’s all temporarily on hold.” Her voice was heavy with disappointment, and he wished she wasn’t so anxious to leave.

  “I don’t expect you to honor Eileen’s conditions about feeding me.” His response was reasonable, but not what he wanted to say. If he had his way, he’d share three meals a day with Caroline for the rest of his life. Before meeting Caroline, he’d never been a believer in love at first sight, but now he considered himself a convert.

  “Thanks, but you aren’t the holdup. I still have to find a home for Hannah. And I’m running out of time.”

  “What’s the rush? I thought you were going to take your time to sell this place and scope out western locations?”

  “I am. But I’m hoping to have a permanent place for Hannah before she arrives Monday. The poor kid’s been shifted around enough already. I’d like to spare her an additional move, if I can.”

  He could read the conflict in her voice. As much as Caroline wanted to move away, she hadn’t been immune to the plight of little Hannah. He couldn’t have loved Caroline if she had. Any person who could look at the girl’s photograph and not be touched didn’t have a heart. And Caroline’s empathy was only one of the many things about her that attracted him.

  “So what are your chances of finding someone by then?”

  “I was making a list when you showed up. But so far, it only has one name, and not a very solid prospect at that.”

  “So it looks like Hannah will be at Blackberry Farm for a while?”

  She nodded.

  He struggled to suppress his delight. “Need any help getting the kid’s room ready?”

  She shook her head. “If I can’t find another foster family before she arrives, I thought I’d let Hannah pick a new bedspread and curtains for her room.”

  He remembered Amber when she’d been Hannah’s age and how particular she’d been about her bedroom, insisting everything, from the walls to the bedspread, be lavender. “She’ll like that. Once she’s picked what colors she wants, I’ll help you paint.”

  “Paint?”

  “Didn’t you want your bedroom walls your own special color when you were a kid?”

  Caroline’s eyes clouded with memory. “Blue. I had pale blue walls with billowy white draperies and a white bedspread with a ruffled skirt.”

  “What, no cowboys?”

  She shook her head. “That phase came later.”

  Ethan glanced across the lawn to Lucas’s SUV where the cop had retreated after placing the crime tape to wait for the coroner. “What got you so interested in the Wild West? A vacation trip?”

  Her blue eyes widened. “How did you know?”

  “A lucky guess.”

  “My parents took me to the Grand Canyon when I was fourteen. I didn’t want to go. At that age, all I wanted was to hang out with my friends. But one look at all those wide-open spaces and I was hooked. That and—”

  She flushed and shook her head.

  “What?” he asked, eager to know what made her tick. “A teenage fascination with Westerns?”

  “It sounds silly.”

  “Try me.”

  “That summer I also started reading romances set in the West. Later I branched out into all kinds of books with settings in that part of the country.”

  He nodded with understanding. “Good books have the power to transform lives.”

  “You’re a reader, too?”

  “Used to be.” The last few months his concentration had been so fractured, he’d found reading anything almost impossible. “I loved a good mystery.”

  “And now you have a real one in your own backyard.”

  He grinned, glad to change the subject. “Technically, it’s your backyard.”

  “Maybe you can help me tonight.”

  “Tonight?” he asked, curious to know what she had in mind but excited by the prospect of spending more time with her.

  “After supper.” Her expression held no guile, offering nothing more than her words had indicated. “We’ll go through Eileen’s old ledgers to look for names of everyone who’s lived at Orchard Cottage.”

  He pushed to his feet. “Lucas has everything under control here, and, if there’s no ID on the body, the authorities will want those names as soon as possible. Maybe we should start now.”

  He’d rather Caroline not watch the coroner’s removal of the remains. Such a sight could give her nightmares. As an authority on nightmares, he wouldn’t wish them on anyone.

  He gazed south down the road toward Blackberry Farm. Only the roof of its barn was visible. No other neighbors could be seen from Orchard Cottage. If whoever was buried by the barn had been murdered, the killer had chosen his spot well, isolated and remote.

  “A perfect spot to hide a body,” Caroline said, as if reading his mind.

  “Maybe it was a natural death. If it occurred during the Depression, there would have been no money for a mortuary. Could be the family performed the funeral and the burial.”

  Caroline shook her head. “Whoever’s buried there wasn’t loved.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Would you bury someone you care about under a compost heap?”

  Talk of burials brought a cascade of memories that threatened to suffocate him. “Let’s get started on those ledgers.”

  * * *

  HOURS LATER, Caroline shoved a stack of old, yellowed ledgers to one corner of the table and went to the kitchen sink to wash her hands. She’d been enjoying Ethan’s company far too much. Since they’d almost completed perusing Eileen’s tenant records, the sooner she fed him, the sooner he could leave. And the sooner she could stop thinking about him and return to her list of prospective foster parents for Hannah.

  “It’s getting late,” she said. “I’ll fix us some lunch.”

  Ethan scribbled another name on the pad beside him and closed the ledger he’d been reading. “We’ve gone all the way back to 1950 and only have a few names.”

  Caroline dried her hands and hung the towel on a rack by the stove. “Both Orchard Cottage and Meadow Place have been vacant most of that time. Eileen told me that before World War II, Meadow Place, the other house on the property, was rented to a dairy farmer. Most of the young men in Pleasant Valley enlisted during the war. When Meadow Place’s tenant went into the navy, his wife sold their herd to Joe Mauney and left the valley to live with her mother. The family didn’t return after the war, and Joe still rents Eileen’s land.”

  She rummaged in the refrigerator for sandwich meat, lettuce and condiments, placed them on the counter, and reached into the cabinet for a loaf of bread.

  “Eileen’s husband was killed?” Ethan asked.

  Caroline nodded
. “Died in the Pacific right before the war ended. She has his Purple Heart and Bronze Star around here somewhere. According to my mother, Calvin Bickerstaff was a hometown hero.”

  “And Eileen never remarried?”

  “No.” Caroline began assembling sandwiches on Blue Willow plates. “Maybe while her husband was overseas, she discovered she liked her solitude.”

  “Or she could have been a one-man woman,” he said. “Loved him so much no other man could measure up. That’s how my mom feels about my dad.”

  Caroline pursed her mouth in thought, then shook her head. “I don’t think that’s why Eileen remained single. I don’t remember her ever talking about him.”

  “Maybe his death hurt too much to talk about.”

  She looked up to see the pain in his voice reflected on his face, and her curiosity was aroused. Whom had Ethan lost to cause such misery? Was that loss the reason he’d withdrawn from his life in the busy city of Baltimore to the isolation of Orchard Cottage? Could his grief be the reason he’d expressed such empathy for little Hannah?

  Before she could contemplate further, a knock sounded at the front door.

  “I’ll be right back,” she said to Ethan and hurried down the hall to find Lucas, his uniform hat in hand, waiting on the porch.

  “You can tell Ethan we’re through up at his place,” he said.

  “They’ve taken the body?”

  Lucas nodded. “The coroner will do an autopsy to see if he can determine cause of death.”

  “He can tell that, even after all this time?”

  “I don’t think he’ll have a problem.” Lucas paused as if reluctant to say more.

  “You already suspect something?” Caroline prodded.

  Ethan came up the hall and stood beside her. Lucas nodded to him. “Your place is all yours again.”

  “I can finish moving the compost heap?”

  “Have at it,” Lucas said. “The forensics techs have sifted all the surrounding dirt.”

  “We’re going through Eileen’s records now,” Caroline said. “We’ll have a complete list of former tenants this afternoon. I’ll bring it in to the station.”