Justice at Cardwell Ranch

by BJ Daniels

  “Obviously he must have talked to someone locally. One of them knew where he was going last night and killed him.” Jordan said nothing as the waitress served their breakfasts. He picked up his fork. “Look, do we have to talk about this while we eat? I feel like I got him killed.”

  “You can’t blame yourself, or worse, try to take the law into your own hands.” She eyed him for a long moment. “Why would I suspect that’s what you’re planning to do?”

  He chuckled. “If you talked to my brother-in-law he would have told you that I’m not that ambitious. Anyway, you’re the deputy marshal. I’m sure you’ll find his killer.”

  She took a bite of toast, chewed and swallowed before she said, “You contacted Tanner’s girlfriend from his senior year in high school.”

  Jordan took her measure. “Why, Liza, you’ve been checking up on me. I contacted Shelby before I went up to the falls last night. She said she had nothing to say to me about Tanner. That was high school and so far back, she barely remembers.”

  “You didn’t believe her?” Liza asked between bites.

  Jordan laughed. “High school was Shelby’s glory days. Just check out our yearbook. She is on every page either as president or queen of something. Not to mention she was dating Tanner Cole, the most popular guy in school. She was in her element. I’d bet those were the best days of her life and that nothing she has done since will ever compare.”

  Liza considered that for a long moment before she asked, “So you talked to Shelby before last night. Before the only word Alex got out after he was shot was her name?”

  “Like I said, she and Tanner dated.”

  “When you talked to Shelby, did you mention Alex or where you were meeting him?”

  He gave her an exasperated look. “Do you really think I’m that stupid? Alex was acting terrified. I wasn’t about to say anything until I talked to him.”

  “And yet you called Shelby.”

  “Yeah. I just told her I was in the area as if I was here for the twenty-year reunion and worked Tanner into the conversation. I didn’t realize then that anything I might do could put anyone in danger, including her.”

  “That’s so noble. But I thought you didn’t like her. In fact, I thought you were instrumental in breaking up her and Tanner.”

  He shook his head and took a bite of his breakfast. “You’re determined to ruin my appetite, aren’t you?”

  “Is it true?”

  “I couldn’t stand Shelby and that bunch she ran with. But you’re wrong. I had nothing to do with breaking her and Tanner up, no matter what Hud thinks, as I’m sure that’s where you got your information.”

  Liza lifted a brow. “You weren’t the one who snitched on her?”

  “Wasn’t me.” He met her gaze. “Why keep questioning me if you aren’t going to believe anything I say?”

  “I don’t want you involved in my investigation,” she said. “That includes asking about Tanner among your old friends—and enemies.”

  He smiled. “What makes you think I have enemies?”

  She smiled in answer as she smeared huckleberry jam on a piece of her toast.

  He watched her eat for a few moments. He liked a woman who ate well and said as much.

  “Does that line work on women?” she asked.

  He laughed. “Every time.”

  They finished their breakfast in the quiet of the upper mountain. She was right about it being peaceful up here. He liked it. But once winter came, all that would change. The parking lots would be packed, all the lifts would be running as well as the gondola. The mountain would be dotted with skiers and boarders, the restaurants and resorts full. He recalled the sounds of people, the clank of machinery, the array of bright-colored skiwear like a rainbow across Lone Mountain.

  Tanner had loved it when Big Sky took on its winter wonderland persona. He’d loved to ski, had started at the age of three like a lot of the kids who grew up in the shadow of Lone Mountain.

  With a start, Jordan found himself looking high up on the peak, remembering one of the last days he and Tanner had skied the winter of their senior year. Tanner had always been gutsy, but that day he’d talked Alex and him into going into an out-of-bounds area.

  They hadn’t gone far when Tanner had gone off a cornice. The cornice had collapsed, causing a small avalanche that had almost killed him.

  “Hey, man. You have a death wish?” Alex had asked Tanner when they’d skied down to find him half-buried in the snow.

  Tanner had laughed it off. “Takes more than that to kill me.”

  * * *

  “I THOUGHT YOU’D BE HAPPIER down here,” Hud said as he opened the curtains in the sunroom. “You can leave the door open so you can see everything that is going on.”

  Dana shot him a look. Seeing everything that was going on was his not-so-subtle way of saying he wanted her to keep an eye on her sister.

  They’d all gathered around her bed after breakfast. Stacy hadn’t made any attempt to leave. Just the opposite, she seemed to be finding more things she wanted to do before she and Ella packed for the rest of their trip.

  “Is there any chance you could stay another day or so?” Dana asked her now as Stacy picked up her breakfast tray to take to the kitchen.

  Her sister stopped and looked up in surprise. Her face softened as if she was touched by Dana’s offer. “I’d love to. I can cook and help with the kids. Hud has this murder investigation—”

  “My deputy marshal is handling all of that,” Hud interrupted, shooting Dana a what-could-you-be-thinking? look. “Plus the crime techs are down from Missoula. I am more than capable of taking care of Dana and the kids and—”

  Dana had been holding Ella since finishing her breakfast. She quickly interrupted him. “Stacy, that would be great if you can. I know Hud won’t mind the help and I love having you and Ella here.”

  Her husband sent her a withering look. She ignored it and looked instead into Ella’s adorable face.

  “Is Auntie Stacy going to stay, Mommy?” Mary asked excitedly.

  “Yes, for a few more days. Would you like that?” Both children cheered.

  “Auntie Stacy is going to show us how to make clay,” Hank said. “You have to put it in the oven and then paint it.”

  Stacy shrugged when Dana looked at her. “I found a recipe on the internet. I thought they’d like that.”

  “That was very thoughtful,” she said and shot her husband a see?-everything-is-fine look. “I know Hud will want to check in with the murder investigation, and there are animals to feed.”

  He tried to stare her down, but Dana had grown up with three siblings. Having to fight for what she wanted had made her a strong, determined woman.

  “Fine,” Hud said as he left the room. “Stacy, if you need me, Dana has my number. I have animals to feed.”

  “He’ll check in with Liza,” Dana said. “He can pretend otherwise, but he won’t be able to stay away from this case.”

  “Are you sure it’s all right if I stay?” Stacy asked. “Hud doesn’t seem—”

  “He’s just being territorial,” she said. “He can’t stand the idea that anyone might think he can’t take care of his family.” Dana reached for her sister’s hand and squeezed it. “I’m glad you and Ella are here.”

  * * *

  LIZA FIGURED JORDAN CARDWELL had lied to her at least twice during breakfast.

  “I need to know everything you can remember that led up to Tanner’s death,” she said when they’d finished their breakfast and the waitress had cleared away their plates and refilled their coffee cups.

  The scent of pine blew down on the breeze from the mountain peaks. She breathed in the fall day and pulled out her notebook. They still had the café deck to themselves and the sun felt heavenly after so little sleep last night.

  “We were seniors.” Jordan shrugged. “Not much was going on.”

  “Who did Tanner date after his breakup with Shelby?”

  “A couple of different g
irls.”

  “Who was he dating in the weeks or days before he died?” she asked.

  “Brittany Cooke.” The way he said it gave him away.

  “You liked her?” she asked with interest.

  His shrug didn’t fool her.

  “You used to date her?”

  He laughed, meeting her gaze. “You got all that out of a shrug?”

  “Who were you dating at the time?” she asked.

  “I don’t see what—”

  “Humor me.”

  “I can’t remember.”

  She laughed and leaned back in her chair to eye him. “You don’t remember who you were dating the spring of your senior year? Give me a break.”

  “I wasn’t dating anyone, really. It’s a small community, cliques. There weren’t a lot of options unless you dated someone from Bozeman. I was just anxious to graduate and get out of here.”

  “Shelby and Brittany were in one of these cliques?”

  “Not Brittany. Brittany and Shelby got along, but she was never really one of them. But Shelby, yeah. She was the leader of the mean girls—you know the type. Too much money, too much everything.”

  Liza knew the type only too well. “So what happened when Brittany went out with Tanner?”

  “I’m sure Shelby would deny it, but her and her group of friends closed Brittany out.”

  “What did Tanner think about that?”

  “He thought it was funny. Believe me, that wasn’t why he killed himself. Don’t get me wrong, Tanner liked Shelby. He went with her a lot longer than any other girl. But once he found out she’d been trying to get pregnant to trap him, it was all over. He wasn’t ready to settle down. He’d worked two jobs all through high school while getting good grades so he could do some of the things he’d always wanted to do. Both of us couldn’t wait to travel.”

  “And get out of the canyon,” Liza said.

  “Tanner not as much as me. He would have come back to the family ranch. He was a cowboy.”

  “He wasn’t from Big Sky resort money?”

  “Naw, his folks have a ranch down the canyon. They do okay, just like everyone else who still ranches around here. As my sister is fond of saying, it’s a lifestyle more than a paying career. Tanner loved that lifestyle, was happiest in a saddle and not afraid of hard work.”

  “He sounds like a nice, sensible young man.”

  “He was.” Jordan looked away toward the mountains for a long moment. “He worked a lot of odd jobs throughout high school. That’s how he ended up at that cabin on the mountain. He talked his folks into letting him stay there because it was closer to school. He traded watching the landowner’s construction equipment for the small cabin where he lived that spring.”

  “He didn’t want to live at home?”

  Jordan grinned. “Not his senior year. His parents were strict, like all parents when you’re that age. Tanner wanted to be on his own and his folks were okay with it.”

  “So who were the mean girls?”

  “Shelby, the leader. Tessa, her closest ally. Whitney. Ashley. They were the inner circle.”

  “And Brittany?”

  “She was always on the fringe. Last I heard Brittany had married Lee Peterson and they have a bunch of kids. I think I heard they live in Meadow Village. Shelby married Wyatt Iverson. She’d started dating him after she and Tanner broke up. Wyatt’s father was a contractor who built a lot of the huge vacation homes. It was his maintenance cabin where Tanner stayed with his equipment.” He stopped, a faraway look coming to his gaze. “Shelby has a yoga studio near the Gallatin River.”

  For a life he’d put behind him, Jordan certainly knew a lot about the players, Liza thought as she closed her notebook.

  Chapter Five

  Yogamotion was in a narrow complex built of log and stone, Western-style. Liza pushed open the door to find the inside brightly painted around walls of shiny mirrors.

  According to the schedule she’d seen on the door, the next class wasn’t for a couple of hours. A lithe young woman sat behind a large desk in a room off to the side. She was talking on a cell phone, but looked up as the door closed behind Liza.

  “You should be getting the check any day. I’m sorry, but I have to go,” she said into the phone and slowly snapped it shut, never taking her eyes off the deputy marshal.

  “Shelby Iverson?”

  As the woman got to her feet she took in Liza’s attire, the boots, jeans and tan uniform shirt with the silver star on it. “I’m Shelby Durran-Iverson.”

  “Liza Turner, deputy marshal.” Big Sky was small enough that Liza had seen Shelby around. The canyon resort was situated such that there were pockets of development, some pricier than others depending on where you lived.

  Shelby lived in a large single-family home on the north side of the mountain on the way to Mountain Village, while Liza lived in a condo in Meadow Village. She and Shelby didn’t cross paths a lot.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions,” the deputy said.

  “Me?” The catch in her throat was merely for effect. Shelby Durran-Iverson had been expecting a visit from the marshal’s office. Everyone within fifty miles would have heard about Alex Winslow’s murder at the falls last night. Word would have spread through Big Sky like a fast-moving avalanche.

  Liza had to wonder though, why Shelby thought she would be questioned. “It’s about the shooting last night.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” she said.

  “But you knew Alex.”

  “Sure. Everyone from around here knew him.”

  “You went to high school with him?” Liza asked pulling her notebook and pen from her pocket.

  “Do I need a lawyer?”

  “You tell me. Did you shoot Alex?”

  “No.” Shelby sounded shocked that Liza would even suggest such a thing.

  “Then I guess you don’t need a lawyer. I just need to ask you a few questions so I can find the person who did shoot him.”

  “I still can’t see how I can help.” But she motioned Liza to a chair and took her own behind the desk again. Liza could tell that Shelby was hoping to learn more about the murder, getting more information out of her than she provided.

  Settling into a chair across the desk from her, Liza studied Shelby. She was a shapely blonde who looked as if she just stepped out of a magazine ad. Her hair was pulled up in a sleek ponytail. Everything about her seemed planned for maximum effect from her makeup to her jewelry and the clothes on her back. She wore a flattering coral velvet designer sweatsuit that brought out the blue of her eyes and accentuated her well-toned body.

  “I understand you used to date Tanner Cole,” Liza said.

  “Tanner? I thought you were here about Alex?”

  “Did you date Alex, too?”

  “No.” She shook her head, the ponytail sweeping back and forth. “You’re confusing me.” She flashed a perfect-toothed smile, clearly a girl who’d had braces.

  “I don’t want to confuse you. So you dated Tanner how long?”

  She frowned, still confused apparently. “Till just before Christmas of our senior year, I guess.”

  “But the two of you broke up?”

  “I can’t understand how that—”

  Liza gave her one of her less-than-perfect-toothed smiles. She’d been born with a slight gap between her front teeth that her parents had found cute and she had never gotten around to changing. “Humor me. I actually know what I’m doing.”

  Shelby sighed, making it clear she had her doubts about that. “Fine. Yes, I dated Tanner, I don’t remember when we broke up.”

  “Or why?”

  The yoga instructor’s eyes narrowed in challenge. “No.”

  “Here’s the thing, I’m trying to understand why Tanner killed himself and why now one of his friends has been murdered.”

  “I’m sure there is no possible connection,” Shelby said with a mocking laugh as if now she knew Liza didn’t know what she was doing.
/>   “So Tanner didn’t kill himself over you?”

  “No!”

  “So you weren’t that serious?”

  Shelby fumbled for words for a moment. “It was high school. It seemed serious at the time.”

  “To you. Or Tanner?”

  “To both of us.” She sounded defensive and realizing it, gave a small laugh. “Like I said, it was high school.”

  Liza looked down at her notebook. “Let’s see, by that spring, Tanner was dating Brittany Cooke? Wasn’t she a friend of yours?”

  Shelby’s mouth tightened. “Tanner was sowing his oats before graduation. I can assure you he wasn’t serious about Brittany.”

  “Oh? Did she tell you that?”

  “She didn’t have to. She wasn’t Tanner’s type.” Shelby straightened several things on her desk that didn’t need straightening. “If that’s all, I really need to get back to work.”

  “I forgot what you said. Did you date Alex?”

  “No, and I’d lost track of him since high school.”

  “That’s right, he’d moved down to Bozeman and had only recently returned to Big Sky for the class reunion?”

  “I assume that’s why he came back.”

  “You didn’t talk to him?” Liza asked.

  Shelby thought for a moment. More than likely she was carefully considering her next answer. If Liza had Alex’s cell phone in her possession, she would know who he called right before his death—and who’d called him.

  “I might have talked to him since I’m the reunion chairwoman. I talked to a lot of people. I really can’t remember.”

  “That’s strange since you talked to Alex five times in two days, the last three of those calls just hours before he was killed.”

  Shelby didn’t look quite so put-together. “I told you, it was about the reunion. I talked to a lot of people.”

  “Are you telling me he didn’t ask you about Tanner’s alleged suicide?” Liza said.

  “Alleged suicide?”

  “Apparently, Alex had some questions about Tanner’s death.”

  Shelby shook her head. “I might have heard that, but I wouldn’t have taken anything Alex said seriously.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice even though they were the only two people there. “I heard he had some sort of breakdown.” She leaned back and lifted a brow as if to say that covered it.