Secret of Deadman's Coulee

by B. J Daniels

  Lila was keeping her voice down, but he could tell by her tone she was trying to persuade Errol Wilson of something.

  A light breeze carried snatches of her voice on the chilly night air. Glen tried to imagine what the two could be arguing about and came up empty. After a moment, Errol grabbed Lila’s arm, but she jerked free.

  “You’d better do something about your daughter,” Errol said angrily.

  “I’m not putting up with you threatening me or my family anymore,” Lila shot back with venom, advancing on him as she did.

  Errol retreated a few steps, his movement awkward, as if he’d been drinking. Errol must have sensed they weren’t alone. He glanced in Glen’s direction.

  Glen made a play of reaching into his pockets, as if looking for his keys. When he glanced back, the man was gone and the door of the community center was closing behind Lila Bailey.

  What had that been about, Glen wondered as he reached for the key in the ignition. It was time to go home.

  As he turned to look behind him before he pulled out, the driver’s-side door of his car swung open. He felt the cold along with droplets of rain from off the car roof as he twisted around in surprise.

  From out of the darkness came what felt like a bolt of lightning. Lights flashed behind his eyes. A thunderous sound echoed in his cranium. He felt the pain as he was struck in the head a second time.

  The last thing he remembered was someone pushing him over, then the sound of his car engine, the crunch of the tires on the gravel and, as crazy as it seemed, the cloying scent of Violet Evans’s perfume.

  Chapter Seven

  After her mother left, Eve sat down with the rhinestone pin cupped in her palms. The stones were cool to the touch. The metal was discolored. As many times as her grandmother had told her the story of the pin, Eve felt as if she was holding something priceless.

  Grandma Nina Mae would pull Eve up on her lap and open her old photo album to the day she got married and say, “This is your grandfather, Charley Cross. He was a fine man, no matter what you hear about him. He never stopped loving me. This is the day we got married.”

  Nina’s voice would soften. She would gently touch Grandfather Charley Cross’s face and say nothing for a long time.

  Then her grandmother would tell her about the pin that she always wore on her brown coat. “Your grandfather gave it to me. It meant everything to me.”

  “What happened to it?” Eve would always ask.

  “Lost. It got lost. That’s why you must always keep what you value close.” And then her grandmother hugged her tightly.

  As Eve studied the pin, she turned it over and saw something that she’d missed before. Several brown threads were caught in the backing of the pin.

  She got up and found a sharp knife and worked the threads out of the base of the pin. The threads were frayed at the ends, indicating that the pin might have been torn off an article of clothing.

  Her heart began to pound like a drum in her chest. They were threads from her grandmother’s favorite old brown coat. If she’d had any doubt about whom the pin belonged to, she didn’t anymore. If she had her grandmother’s brown coat, she could prove it.

  When her Grandmother Nina had gone into the nursing home, Eve had helped pack up all of her things. Her grandmother had saved everything. But Eve remembered the old brown wool coat her grandmother had worn until it was threadbare. Lila had tried to talk Nina Mae into getting rid of it, but her grandmother would have none of it.

  “You throw out my favorite coat, Lila, and I swear I will curse you until the day you die,” Nina Mae had cried. “You know how much that old coat means to me.”

  “Mother, it’s threadbare. I doubt it even fits you anymore,” Lila had argued.

  “It’s mine,” her grandmother had said, angry and hurt. “You of all people should know how much it means to me. I want to be buried in it. Eve, you make sure she buries me in that coat.”

  “I will, Grandma,” Eve had promised.

  Her mother had rolled her eyes at them both, but given up and stuffed the old coat deep in one of the trunks.

  Eve felt her heart race. Grabbing a piece of clean tape, she carefully attached the threads of fabric to a scrap of paper, which she folded and put in her pocket along with the pin.

  Now all she had to do was find the trunk her mother had put the coat in. The attic upstairs was empty. Eve had checked out the whole house when she’d moved in.

  Was it possible her father had taken the trunks to the attic at the ranch? Or had Eve’s mother gotten rid of them?

  It wouldn’t have been the first time. Eve Bailey had been eleven when she found the love letters hidden under the floorboards of her mother’s sewing room.

  She’d found them quite by accident. She’d gone in to use her mother’s good sewing scissors even though she knew she would get in trouble if she got caught.

  She’d dropped the scissors, heard the odd sound they made as they struck the floor and, when she’d knelt down to retrieve them, she’d felt the floorboard move.

  The letters were all addressed to “My Love” and signed simply “Your Love.” It was in one of them that the man had asked whether Lila was ever planning to tell “the child” the truth. And Eve had known the truth had something to do with her—the duckling of the family.

  And this man, Eve surmised, must be her mother’s mystery lover—and probably Eve’s real father. He would have dark hair and eyes and look like her. She had hungered for someone who resembled her.

  She’d heard her mother coming and had quickly put the letters back under the floorboards, too shaken to confront her mother until she’d had time to think about what it all meant. Finding the letters had been a delicious secret that had kept Eve awake most of the night. She didn’t want to give up that secret and she was positive that no one else but her mother and lover knew about the letters under the floorboards.

  The next day, Eve had returned to the sewing room, intent on reading all the letters to see if she could figure out who the man was and what truth her mother hadn’t told “the child.” She fantasized that the man wasn’t just her father but that for some mysterious honorable reason he had to remain a secret.

  But the letters were gone, the space empty.

  She’d confronted her mother only to have Lila tell her that she knew nothing about any old letters but if there had been some, they’d probably been in the house long before either of them was born.

  Eve had cried and told her she knew Chester wasn’t her real father. Lila had sent her to her room, saying she would hear no more of this foolishness and how she was never to say that ever again for it would deeply hurt Chester.

  Without the letters, there was no proof. And Eve hadn’t wanted to hurt Chester.

  Nor could Eve ever be sure the letters really had been her mother’s. Maybe there was no mystery father. Maybe Eve Bailey was just who her mother said she was, the firstborn of Lila and Chester Bailey. And the reason Eve had felt as if she didn’t belong was because…well, because she was foolish, just like her mother had said.

  Or maybe, Eve thought as she looked at the piece of costume jewelry, Lila Bailey had lied to her. Just as she had about the pin.

  But then how much of the other had been lies as well? Had she lied about an affair with Errol Wilson? About the love letters under the floorboards? About Chester being Eve’s father?

  The pin was proof.

  But proof of what?

  IT GOT DARK FAST out in the Breaks. Carter had found a spot out of the wind, pitching his small one-man tent. The storm had moved on, but low clouds still hung over the stark landscape and the air was damp and cool.

  He crawled into the tent fully clothed, leaving the door open. Night fell like a blanket when it came. There was no sign of a light, the darkness complete. No sound, either, other than the occasional rustle of his horse pastured off to the east or the cry of a hawk searching the canyons for food.

  Carter lay on his back staring out thr
ough the open tent door at the sky, wishing at least for stars or even a sliver of moon to break free of the clouds. He’d spent many nights in the Breaks hunting. But tonight felt oddly different.

  Probably because he knew he’d pay hell getting to sleep after everything that had happened today—seeing Eve Bailey again at the top of his list.

  He was still amazed she’d come back. When he heard she’d been buying paint at the local hardware store and was living in her grandmother’s house, he’d felt elated. Maybe she was staying.

  Before that, he thought he’d never see her again except maybe at her wedding—if she had it in Whitehorse. Now, after seeing what she was doing with her grandmother’s house, he wondered if she hadn’t come home to stay.

  Of course that begged the question why?

  Was it just bad luck that she’d been home a couple weeks and discovered an airplane that had crashed in a ravine deep in the Breaks years ago?

  He hated being suspicious. Especially of Eve. Deena had made him leery of women in general, but never Eve Bailey. Yet he couldn’t explain the way Eve had been acting. Acting almost as if she was hiding something.

  A sound. He stopped to listen hard, telling himself he was jumpy because he knew there was a body just over the lip of the ravine. Why else would he feel so vulnerable out here tonight? Hell, he had a weapon and no one knew he was out here.

  Or did they?

  He couldn’t overlook the chance that whoever killed the passenger in the plane was still alive, still living close by. But Carter wondered if the killer must not have known where the plane was. If the craft had gone down in a blizzard in the middle of winter as he suspected, then if anyone had survived, they might not have been able to find the airplane again.

  But the killer would know the plane was out here somewhere. After thirty-two years, though, he wouldn’t expect anyone to find it. He’d—

  This time the sound Carter had heard earlier was closer and he recognized it for what it was, the ring of a horse’s hoof on a stone.

  He slipped out of the tent, taking his flashlight and his weapon as he did. The night was so dark it was like being in a cave, but he didn’t turn on the flashlight.

  He’d been so sure that no one could have survived the plane crash, that the murderer had died trying to get to shelter, his bones scattered to the wind over the past thirty-two years.

  But Carter knew if the killer had reached one of the ranch houses, then someone from this community would have had to have taken him in. And kept it a secret all these years.

  The question was: how far would they go to keep that secret?

  Another clink of a horseshoe against stone. The horse whinnied as the rider approached slowly, almost tentatively, and he realized the rider had to be tracking him using some sort of night glasses.

  Carter moved to crouch just below the hill. Even with night goggles, the rider wouldn’t be able to see him or his tent. With his horse a rise over, the approaching rider would be practically on top of Carter before he realized he was there.

  He held his breath. There was always the chance it was just someone curious about what the sheriff was doing out here. Friend or foe? Wouldn’t a friend have called out by now? But then the rider didn’t know exactly where he was, right?

  As Carter waited, the only sound was the slow click of the horse’s hooves along the rocky terrain as the rider grew closer and closer.

  Still, Carter couldn’t see the horse or the rider. The night was too black. But he could hear both. He shifted the flashlight into his right hand, put his finger over the switch and silently urged the rider to come just a little closer. Carter wanted to see who’d tracked him out here.

  The interloper’s horse whinnied again. The sheriff’s horse answered. All sound stopped.

  Carter held his breath as he readied the flashlight. Just a little closer. He knew the moment he raised up to look over the crest of the hill, he would be a target. He’d be an even better target once he flipped on the flashlight to get a look at the rider.

  The weapon felt awkward in his left hand, but he wasn’t about to fire it unless forced to. If only the clouds would part. Even a little starlight might silhouette the rider—

  Just a little closer.

  The rider’s horse whinnied and Carter’s answered it again. The interloper quickly turned his horse and took off at a gallop the way he’d come.

  Carter swore as he rose and flicked on the flashlight. The beam caught nothing but dust as the horse and rider raced away into the night. He swore as he stood listening to the sound of the horse’s hooves die away in the distance.

  If the rider was who Carter feared it was, then the murderer now knew that his secret was no longer safe.

  VALLEY NURSING HOME was just outside of Whitehorse in a single-story red-brick building.

  As Eve entered the next morning, she heard two women having an argument at the nurses’ station. Both strident voices were easily recognizable, given that the two were usually arguing when Eve visited.

  The large nurse had her hands on her hips, her face and voice calm as she stood between the two elderly women, trying to make peace.

  One of the elderly women was tall and thick with slightly stooped shoulders, cropped gray hair and intense brown eyes.

  The other was petite and ramrod straight with a gray braid down her slim back, startling blue eyes and an attitude that radiated around her like a high-voltage electrical field.

  “Grandma Nina Mae,” Eve said as she approached the latter woman’s back.

  “You’re in for it now,” Nina Mae said, without turning around. “My daughter is here and she’ll settle this right as rain.”

  The nurse shot Eve a compassionate look. “It’s your granddaughter Eve, Nina Mae.”

  “Don’t you think I know my own daughter?” Nina Mae snapped, still not looking at Eve.

  Eve reached for her grandmother’s elbow, hoping to distract her. Nina Mae had her good days and bad. Today was obviously one of her bad ones.

  Nina Mae jerked free to glare around the nurse at the other elderly woman, her once best friend—before a man had come into the picture. And long before old age and dementia had set in.

  “You sneaky, underhanded—”

  Eve got a better hold on her grandmother and steered her down the hall as the nurse took an irate Bertie Cavanaugh in the opposite direction.

  “What’s going on, Grandma?” Eve asked as Nina mumbled unintelligibly under her breath.

  “Tried to steal him again. Thinks I don’t know. A woman’s husband isn’t safe around here.” She glanced at Eve and frowned. “You aren’t my daughter.”

  “I’m your granddaughter Eve.”

  Nina didn’t look as if she believed that, but clearly had other things on her mind. “That woman always wanted him, you know.”

  Eve knew. She’d heard the story enough times over the years to recite it verbatim. Bertie and Nina Mae had been in love with the same man, Charley Cross. Nina had gotten him for more than thirty years of marriage, although he’d turned out to be no prize. And while Charley had taken off before Eve was born—and not with Bertie Cavanaugh—Nina Mae had never forgiven her friend for trying to steal Charley.

  It amazed Eve that even at eighty-six, her grandmother still carried all the old grudges. Clearly time and advanced age didn’t heal all wounds. And while her grandmother couldn’t remember what had happened two seconds ago, parts of her past were as alive and real for her as if it were yesterday.

  “That woman would steal the gold out of your teeth,” Nina Mae grumbled as Eve steered her grandmother down the hall to her room and helped her into a chair.

  Eve glanced around the room. “Where is your photo album?”

  “You sound just like my daughter, Lila, but you don’t look a thing like her.”

  “Isn’t that the truth,” Eve said, spying the photo album tucked under her grandmother’s bed. She pulled it out, sat down on the bed and, her fingers trembling, began to leaf
through it, looking for the photograph taken on her grandmother’s wedding day.

  Eve saw at once that some of the photographs were missing. “Where are your wedding pictures?” she asked her grandmother, who was fidgeting in her chair by the window. “Did you put them away somewhere?” It would be just like her to hide them.

  Her grandmother raised her head and for a moment Eve thought she saw understanding in the older woman’s eyes. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Eve, Grandmother.”

  “Eve?” The name meant nothing to her. Just like the face. Eve couldn’t imagine what it must be like to have chunks of your life, as well as people, erased as if they never existed—and yet her grandmother couldn’t seem to forget that Bertie Cavanaugh had wronged her years ago.

  Eve had wished for that kind of memory loss when Carter had broken her heart. Unfortunately…or maybe fortunately, she could remember quite well.

  “She and that other one steals things.”

  “What other one?” Eve asked. But her grandmother’s mind had moved on to a loose thread on the sleeve of her blouse.

  Bereft, Eve watched her grandmother, remembering when she smelled of lilac and would envelop Eve in her arms, holding her in a cocoon of warmth and safety. Her house had smelled of warm bread and she would lift Eve up on the counter and slather butter onto a thick, rich piece and together they would eat the freshly baked bread and Grandma Nina would tell stories between bites as sunlight streamed in the window.

  “Grandma?” Eve said, closing the photo album. The photos she remembered were gone. Either someone had taken them. Or her grandmother had hidden or, worse, destroyed them.

  Eve reached into her pocket. “Have you ever seen this before?” She cradled the pin in the palm of her hand as she closely watched the elderly woman’s expression.

  Was there a flicker of recognition?

  Nina Mae reached for the pin and took it in her arthritic fingers, turning it to brush her fingertips across each rhinestone, stopping on the one Charley Cross had replaced after her grandmother had lost the stone.