Secret of Deadman's Coulee

by B. J Daniels

  She nodded, looking ill.

  “You went down there?” He couldn’t see anything that would have tempted him into sliding down that slope.

  “I heard a moan. I thought there was someone down there.” Her voice broke. “It was just the wind blowing over the metal of the plane.”

  “The plane is in the junipers?” He couldn’t help sounding skeptical.

  She looked down into the ravine. “That’s why it’s never been found I would imagine.”

  He couldn’t believe the chance she’d taken going down there. But Eve wouldn’t have thought about her own safety if she thought there was someone down there injured.

  He had to see the plane and body for himself and that meant going down there. He’d have to be quick. He needed to get her back to her house. He felt badly about putting her through this. But he feared if he had waited until tomorrow, Eve might have changed her mind about showing him where the plane was. Although he couldn’t imagine why.

  “Will you be all right up here?” he asked, worried about her.

  She slid off her horse, practically collapsing as her boot soles hit the ground. “Leave me some water and your hat. I lost mine. I’ll just rest while you’re gone.”

  He dismounted and, pulling down his pack, reached inside for his rain jacket. Rolling it up, he handed it to her. “Put your head on this,” he said, clearing a spot for her on the soft sun-dried earth.

  She did as he said without even an argument. He knew she was simply too exhausted to put up a fight today. Eve hadn’t changed. And that’s what made this so painful. He’d been such a fool to throw her over for a woman like Deena.

  Her eyes opened and narrowed as if she knew what he was thinking. “You still here?”

  “I’ll be right back,” he said.

  She nodded and closed her eyes again.

  Leaving her water and the rest of the candy bars he’d brought, he stepped to the edge of the ravine. He could see faint tracks where she’d slid down and where the rain had eroded the earth even more during the storm last night.

  He glanced back at her, amazed she wasn’t worse off given what she had to have been through. A thought struck him. It had stormed all night. How had she…

  Her lashes fluttered as she opened them again just enough to squint at him.

  And he knew how she’d managed to survive the night in the storm. She’d spent it in the plane with a corpse.

  Chapter Five

  By early afternoon, word had spread throughout the county that Eve Bailey had been found safe and sound.

  It had been all Lila could do not to break down, her relief had been so great. She’d insisted on staying at the center and cleaning up before the sewing group, not wanting to be alone. Also not ready to face her daughter.

  Most of the food had been eaten, but she helped put the rest in the refrigerator for when the sheriff and Eve returned. If they didn’t stop by the community center she would take some over to Eve later.

  Lila knew her daughter. She hated having a fuss made over her, especially concerning something like this where the whole town was involved.

  Eve would send her thanks and go straight home. She’d always been a willful girl, stubborn to the core. Chester used to say she was just like Lila.

  The men from the search party had all gone back to their work and McKenna and Faith had gone on into Whitehorse to their summer jobs.

  This morning there’d been a sense of purpose, everyone busy doing what they could to help. But now things had returned to normal. Well, as normal as this part of Montana could be, Lila thought.

  Now the Whitehorse Sewing Circle could get back to its latest project, making a quilt for Maddie Cavanaugh’s upcoming marriage. A community tradition, every newlywed and every newborn had a quilt made by the women who sat around the center quilting by hand.

  There were the usual members in attendance today: Wanda Wilson—Errol’s wife, Alice White, Ella Cavanaugh, Geraldine Shaw, Arlene Evans and Lila. Carly Matthews was visiting her sister in Great Falls.

  Pearl Cavanaugh was the only one of the longstanding quilters missing. She had been admitted last night with walking pneumonia. She’d sent word, though, that she was feeling better. Lila worried that her visit yesterday evening with Pearl had caused her to get sicker. Lila felt sick herself.

  There wasn’t much talk as the women pulled their chairs up to the quilting frame and busied themselves threading their needles.

  Lila went right to work, hating that her fingers were trembling as she made her first stitch. Relief had left her weak and worn-out, worry had made her queasy.

  She knew the other women must wonder why she didn’t go home to wait for her daughter. Wasn’t that what a mother would do after having such a scare? But Lila Bailey had had many scares in her life. A life of tedious day-to-day routine with moments of sheer panic.

  That was how it was when your life was built on lies.

  Her fingers shook as she made neat, careful stitches in the colorful cloth. If only she could stitch her life back together as easily.

  “You’re especially quiet today,” Arlene commented.

  Lila’s head shot up only to find that Arlene wasn’t talking to her. Instead, Arlene was staring at Geraldine Shaw.

  “Geraldine?” Arlene said as she inspected the size of the stitches Alice was putting into the quilt. “Are you all right?”

  Geraldine looked up and blinked as if she’d been miles away. She was a sturdy middle-aged woman, born of Scandinavian stock, thick of body with watery blue eyes and a plain round face. Her graying hair was cut as if a bowl had been placed on her head, the ends chopped just above her slack jaw.

  “I’m fine,” Geraldine said, forcing her down-turned mouth into a smile before her face went slack again.

  For an instant, Lila met the woman’s gaze across the quilting frame. She thought she saw something in Geraldine’s eyes. Something she recognized. Fear.

  “How are the wedding plans coming along?” Lila asked, turning back to her quilting.

  “Fine,” Arlene said and seemed a little too intent on her quilting.

  “Your son getting cold feet?” Ella asked Arlene.

  “I just think they’re too young to be getting married, if you must know,” Arlene said.

  Lila noticed that no one disagreed. Maddie, who had just turned eighteen, had given up a scholarship to the university in Missoula to marry Bo. And as far as Lila could tell, Bo, who still lived at home at twenty, didn’t have any means of employment.

  “I got married young,” Alice said. “It all worked out just fine.” Alice was nearly ninety and was married almost sixty years when her husband passed away.

  “I heard Maddie’s been helping over at your place, Geraldine,” Arlene said with an edge to her voice that made Lila look up.

  Geraldine Shaw let out a cry as she stabbed her finger with her needle. She dropped the needle to suck the blood from her finger, her eyes downcast and bright with tears.

  “Did you stick yourself, Geraldine?” Arlene asked.

  “It’s nothing,” Geraldine replied, and picked up her needle again, all her attention on her work.

  “I think it’s wonderful that Maddie helps you out around the place now that Ollie is gone,” Ella said.

  Geraldine only nodded and kept quilting.

  Arlene looked as if she had something more to say but fortunately Alice jumped in and told a story about her granddaughter.

  Lila hated the undercurrents she felt at the table and wished sometimes that she could just gag Arlene Evans to shut her up.

  “Did you see that man who’s renting the old McAllister place?” Arlene asked, moving on to greener pastures. “Bridger Duvall. That can’t really be his name. He stopped in earlier as if looking for someone.” She raised her eyes, taking in each woman at the table, stopping on Lila.

  “I heard he’s writing a book about Whitehorse,” Alice said. “Including Old Town.”

  “Really?” Arlene sounde
d skeptical. “I don’t know why, but I got the impression he was looking for Eve.”

  Lila stared at Arlene, too dumbstruck for a moment to speak. “You’re obviously mistaken,” she said, jamming her needle through the cloth. “He was probably just wondering what was going on with all the vehicles parked outside.”

  Arlene lifted a brow. “All he had to do was ask.”

  “Well, if he was looking for Eve he would have been with the search party, now wouldn’t he,” Lila said logically.

  Logic always stumped Arlene, who thrived on gossip. Unfortunately, she often got it wrong. Why would the man be writing a book on Whitehorse? Or looking for Eve?

  CARTER TOOK THE ROPE from his pack and tied it to the saddle. His brother, Cade, had bought some land north of Whitehorse with a rodeo grounds on it. When Carter wasn’t acting as sheriff, he calf roped at the arena. He liked being on the back of the horse the way his father apparently liked being in a plane high in the air.

  “I should warn you,” Eve said without opening her eyes. “That first step into the ravine is a lulu.”

  Well, he couldn’t take the time to find a better way down. He tightened his gloved hands around the rope, pulling on it until he felt resistance from the horse and stepped off the edge of the ravine.

  Just as he’d known it would, the top level of the steep incline began to avalanche downward with him.

  The horse, trained for roping cattle, kept the line taut as he rappelled down the steep slope. He tried to imagine Eve doing this without a rope. Without a net. The woman was fearless. Crazy, too.

  When he reached the rock ledge, he tied off the rope, then worked his way cautiously along the junipers, imagining Eve doing the same. The woman really was something else, he thought as he peered back over the rim of the ledge. Eve had always been afraid of heights, but that hadn’t stopped her when she thought there was someone in the junipers who needed her help.

  He was beginning to suspect that Eve had been mistaken about this being the ravine when he caught the glint of sun off metal. It shocked him how well hidden the plane was. It was conceivable that the craft wouldn’t have been found even if it had been reported missing. Not that he believed it had, given what Eve said was inside the cockpit.

  One wing had plowed into the side of the ravine, completely burying it. The other was lost in the juniper branches and, after all these years, woven into the new growth to make the plane impossible to see from above.

  It still amazed him that Eve had seen it.

  As he moved closer, he saw that she was right. The plane had been there for a long while.

  “It’s a Navion,” he said out loud in surprise as he moved closer. A friend of his father’s had one down in Florida. Only about two thousand were built, most back in the 1940s, and none had been built since. They were now popular with collectors because they had held up well, being one of the first metal private planes from that era.

  “Wow, it’s in fantastic shape given where it ended up.” He realized he was talking to himself, something he’d been doing a lot of lately.

  As he moved to the cockpit, he held his breath. It was just as Eve had described it. The plane had been well preserved. The sliding canopy—the only way into the cockpit—had remained intact, the windows unbroken but dirty. A strip of torn red cloth was caught in the edge of the canopy. The fabric hung down the side, still wet from the storm.

  He could see where Eve had wiped away some of the grime to look inside. He bent closer.

  The pilot seat and front passenger seats were empty, but stained as if the occupants might have been injured in the crash. The corpse was strapped in the rear seat, the body mummified over the years. The skin was dried and brown, shrunk to the skeleton, the eye sockets hollow. The shirt was threadbare, even the bloodstain from the wound faded, the jeans in surprisingly good shape, the boots looking like new.

  Carter had heard of bodies mummifying under certain conditions but this was the first he’d seen. Eve had said the last entry in the logbook was February. The body would have frozen, then thawed slowly as the months warmed and not decomposed like it would have if the plane had gone down in the summer.

  Stuck between two ribs, just as Eve had said, was a hunting knife, the handle grayed with age.

  “Damn,” Carter said under his breath.

  He could see where Eve had climbed into the cockpit. He swore again, imagining her spending the night in there, the storm raging around her, a mummified body in the seat behind her.

  He stared at the plane, then at the only way out of here, down a minefield of boulders. Had anyone from the plane gotten out alive?

  Carter felt the air around him change. A storm was blowing in again. He had to see to Eve. The last thing he wanted was for her to get caught in another storm, and storms came up so fast out here.

  He didn’t want to leave the crime scene, but he had no choice. After all, the plane had apparently been here for thirty-two years. What was another day?

  As soon as he could get to a landline, he would call the crime lab in Missoula. His cell wouldn’t work out here. He could barely get service in Whitehorse.

  It was all he could do not to slide back the plane’s canopy and have a look around in the cockpit. But the crime scene had been disturbed enough.

  He tried to imagine himself spending the night in the close quarters of the cockpit with the mummified murdered man. Eve was more resilient than he’d ever imagined. But then the survival instinct was a strong one. Just like the killer instinct.

  Carter worked his way along the junipers, careful with his footing, too aware of the long drop to the bottom of the canyon below him.

  He untied the rope from the juniper branch, gave it a tug, then another before he felt tension on the line as the horse responded. Slowly, he began to climb out of the deep ravine. He could smell the promise of rain in the air. June in Montana was like spring most other places. Squalls would blow through, biting cold rain and sleet drenching everything, taking the heat and sun with them.

  By the time he reached flat land at the top of the ravine, he was winded, his palms burning from the rope even through his gloves. Just as he suspected, thunderheads loomed on the horizon. A breeze had come up and in the distance he could see a dust devil whirling through the sagebrush.

  Eve was sitting up, watching him as he unhooked the rope from his saddle. The breeze whipped her long dark hair around her face. She squinted at him as if trying to gauge his reaction to what he’d found in the plane. “Well?”

  “The plane is right where you said it was.”

  She nodded. “Any idea who he is?”

  “None.”

  “What happens now?” she asked.

  “I get the techs from the crime lab to come down and retrieve the body and any evidence. Let’s get you back to your house before this storm hits,” he said as he coiled up the rope, worried about her.

  She still had a scared look as she glanced toward home and slowly rose from the ground, clearly hesitant. “You think we’ll ever know who he is?”

  The murdered man in the plane? “Forensics can do amazing things nowadays. I wouldn’t be surprised if they were able to get some DNA on him.” He didn’t add, though, that it would be worthless unless they had a suspect’s DNA to compare it to. “If anyone else in the plane got out alive…”

  Eve looked over at him, as if she’d already considered that. If anyone had gotten out alive, they would have walked to the closest place—her family’s ranch.

  EVE FELT HIS FOCUS ON HER as she swung up into the saddle. Carter made her uncomfortable. Because she felt guilty? Or because just a look from him still made her a little weak in the knees? It infuriated her that she could feel anything for him.

  “I need you not to mention the plane to anyone until I can get the crime lab in there,” he said.

  She nodded.

  “Eve, about this fight you had with your mother yesterday…”

  She blinked, surprised by his sudden change
of subject. For a moment, she’d been so intent on the man that she’d forgotten Carter was also the sheriff. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I don’t know. I’m asking you.”

  She shook her head. “If you’re asking if I knew about the plane, I didn’t. I told you. I wouldn’t even have seen it if the storm hadn’t kicked up.”

  He nodded and glanced toward the horizon. She could see the clouds building up again. They’d be lucky to get back to her place before it hit. She spurred her horse, riding past him and toward home.

  “Do you remember what you might have touched in the plane?” he asked, catching her and riding along beside her.

  “No, I…” Her voice trailed off. It had been a nightmare climbing into the plane and closing the canopy to keep out the cold and sleet. She’d huddled in the seat, the body directly behind her. She could feel his sightless eye sockets fixed on her. Every sound convinced her the body had come alive and was intent on vengeance, starting with her.

  Worse than those nightmares was the fear that it hadn’t been just her bad luck that she’d stumbled across the plane.

  “I don’t remember what I might have touched,” she said finally. “I was cold and scared. I saw the logbook on the floor and picked it up. I think that’s all.” The pin in her pocket bit into her flesh. Liar.

  “OKAY.” Carter couldn’t shake the feeling that Eve was keeping something from him. Yet he had no choice but to take her word for it. At least for now.

  The lab would find her fingerprints. Soon enough he’d know. He stole a glance at her as they rode toward Old Town. She was worrying her lower lip with her teeth, frowning. He wondered what she was worried about. Not that she would ever tell him.

  Cursing himself, he rode in silence. Even if he’d known what to say to her, he doubted she’d want to hear it. And what was there to say? He’d been a damn fool. He’d made the mistake of his life sleeping with Deena, let alone marrying her.