Secret of Deadman's Coulee

by B. J Daniels

  Her mother? Had Lila returned for some reason? Or one of her sisters? Eve felt a chill as she remembered that her grandmother hadn’t been the only one in the crashed plane. Along with the dead man, there’d been a pilot. Maybe even another passenger. And one of them was a murderer who could still be alive.

  Eve’s heart raced as she looked around for a place to hide her and the coat. She heard footfalls on the stairs. No time. Someone was headed upstairs.

  The light. Belatedly, she reached for the pull cord and turned it off. Had her mother returned and seen the light on in the attic from the road?

  She remembered she’d left the attic door open. Whoever was coming up would see that it was open.

  She was trapped.

  She quickly stuffed her grandmother’s coat behind a chest of drawers, then looked around for a place to hide herself. The tall highboy. She could hear footfalls on the attic stairs, the tread too heavy to be her mother’s or one of her sister’s. The killer? She recalled that feeling of being watched earlier and knew even before she heard him stop, the top stair creaking, that he’d followed her here and knew she was alone.

  Chapter Ten

  Carter heard a soft rustle deep in the attic. “Hello? Eve?”

  She let out a groan that sounded both relieved and angry as her head appeared from behind a tall bureau.

  “You scared me half to death,” she snapped.

  “I scared you? Why didn’t you answer when I called from downstairs?”

  “I didn’t hear you.”

  “What are you doing up here?” he asked as he glanced past her to where she’d been hiding.

  “Looking for a lamp for my house,” she said a little too quickly. “Not that it’s any of your business.”

  He raised a brow. “Really? In the dark? And I would have thought you’d have driven your pickup over if you were planning to pick up a lamp instead of riding your horse.”

  “Are you spying on me?” she demanded as he snapped on the light.

  “As a matter of fact, I drove down to make sure you were all right. I was worried when I saw you ride off again so I followed you on foot. This lamp you’re after, it must be valuable. Otherwise, why wait for your mother to leave before you sneaked up here to get it?”

  “I didn’t sneak.”

  It was clear to him that she hadn’t wanted anyone to know she was here. Now why was that, he wondered as he noticed a large old wooden trunk, the lid up, the clothes inside it appearing recently rummaged through.

  “What’s going on, Eve?” he asked seriously. “After everything you went through yesterday, why the urgency to get a lamp out of—” He stopped as he heard a vehicle engine followed shortly by the slamming of a car door.

  Eve heard it, too. He saw the fear in her eyes. What the hell was going on?

  Her attention darted to the old trunk with the lid standing open.

  As he heard the front door open and close and footfalls cross the hardwood floor, he reached over and closed the trunk lid and saw relief in Eve’s expression.

  She hurried to snap off the light an instant before he pulled her back behind the high bureau where she’d been hiding before and whispered, “Did I mention I saw your mother head for your house? I think she was looking for you.”

  He felt rather than saw her reaction. She seemed to hold her breath and listen, just as he was doing as they hunkered behind the highboy.

  The footsteps seemed to hesitate at the bottom of the attic stairs. Whoever it was had seen the open attic door, just as he had. A moment later, the attic steps groaned.

  He waited. He could feel Eve doing the same.

  The last stair creaked, then the light snapped on and footfalls moved across the floor.

  Carter peered around the end of the highboy to see Lila Bailey drop to her knees in front of the old wooden trunk, the same one that he’d just closed.

  He glanced over at Eve. She had leaned to the edge of the highboy and was now watching her mother. She didn’t seem surprised as the trunk lid groaned open.

  Lila began to dig frantically through the trunk, then slammed the lid with a curse. “Oh, Eve, what have you done?” she cried. Then she did the last thing Carter expected. Lila put her head down on her arms on the top of the trunk and began to sob.

  Carter felt Eve’s hand on his arm as if she wanted to go to her mother. But then she removed it and stayed behind the bureau with him until her mother’s sobs subsided. Lila dried her eyes, turned out the light and went back down the stairs, shutting the attic door behind her.

  It wasn’t until Carter heard Lila drive away that he stepped out from behind the bureau and turned on the light, his focus going to Eve. “What have you done, Eve?” He could see that she was shaken after what she’d witnessed. “Eve, talk to me.”

  IT WAS HIS SOFT TONE that was Eve’s undoing. She couldn’t pretend that he didn’t know her. Or she, him. Nor could she go on carrying this burden alone.

  Slowly, she reached into her pocket. She’d wrapped the pin in a flowered handkerchief that she’d found in her grandmother’s house. It smelled of lavender.

  She could feel Carter watching with interest as she carefully pulled back the tatted edges of the kerchief to expose the rhinestone pin.

  “It belonged to my grandmother,” she said.

  Carter held out his hand and frowned as she dropped it into his palm.

  “It was a present from my grandfather, Charley Cross,” Eve said. “Grandma Nina Mae wore it on her brown coat at her wedding. She never took it off the coat. She told me that when she lost it, just like when she lost Charley, she never got over it.”

  “Eve, what does this have to do with—”

  “Her pin…” Eve’s throat tightened, her heart aching at even the thought of what she was about to do. She wished she’d never found the plane. Never found the pin. Never recognized it. She swallowed, thinking about her grandmother. “I found her pin on the plane.”

  He stared down at the piece of jewelry in surprise. “You found this on the downed plane in the Breaks?”

  She nodded, close to tears.

  “How can you be sure it’s your grandmother’s?” he asked, the ramifications of what she was saying obviously finally hitting home.

  “A few days before my grandparents got married, Grandma lost one of the rhinestones out of the pin.” Eve had heard the story a thousand times so she knew it by heart, but she stumbled over the words. “Nina Mae was just sick about it. So my grandfather took the pin and, even though it was only costume jewelry, had a jeweler in Great Falls put another stone in. If you look closely you can tell which one it was. The stone never quite matched because it’s a diamond.”

  “Eve, slow down. This doesn’t prove…” His eyes widened. “There’s more.” He let out a curse. “Of course there’s more.”

  She brushed at an errant tear, miserable. “Grandma always wore the pin on her favorite brown coat. Both were in all the old wedding photographs. I found brown fibers on the back of the pin. I checked them. They match. There’s also a hole in the lapel where the pin had been torn free.”

  He glanced at the trunk. “That’s what your mother was looking for?”

  She nodded.

  Carter took a breath and let it out slowly. “Eve, do you know what you’re saying here?”

  She chewed at her cheek, feeling as if she’d just betrayed not only her grandmother, but her entire family. Her grandmother would never know, but her mother…

  Eve was still shaken after seeing her mother cry the way she had. It had taken everything in Eve not to go to her. But she knew that Lila would be horrified to know there had been witnesses to her breakdown.

  Her mother’s reaction to not finding the coat in the trunk pretty much told the rest of the story. Lila Bailey, the queen of secret-keepers.

  Yes, Eve thought, she knew exactly what she was saying. Not only was her grandmother on that plane, but her mother knew about it and had kept Grandma Nina Mae’s secret all these year
s.

  That’s why Eve hadn’t told Carter about the pin the morning he found her in the Breaks. Because she’d feared that if her grandmother had been on that plane, then someone in her family had to have known. And her grandmother knew not only the victim, but also the killer.

  “Eve, a man was murdered,” Carter said. “There is no statute of limitations on murder. Also, there is a law, as you well know, about withholding evidence.”

  “I had to be sure it was Grandma’s.”

  “You said there are photographs of your grandmother wearing the coat and pin?”

  She hated to tell him. “The photos seem to have disappeared.”

  He swore. “And you don’t know anything about what happened to them.”

  “No, I don’t,” she snapped. Not that she could blame him for not believing her. She’d kept the information about the pin from him. And might have kept the coat from him as well. Just as she hadn’t told him about showing the pin to her mother.

  One betrayal per day was enough.

  CARTER WAS STUNNED. He had suspected Eve was withholding information from him, but he’d never dreamed it might be something like this.

  To make matters worse, if she was right and her grandmother had been on that plane, then they might never know the truth—at least not from Nina Mae Cross.

  Nina Mae had Alzheimer’s. Whatever her role was in all this, it was lost somewhere in her deteriorating mind.

  “Who knew you’d found the pin in the plane?” he asked.

  Eve hesitated, but only for a moment. “I didn’t tell anyone about the plane.”

  “But you showed your grandmother the pin.”

  She nodded, looking contrite. “At first she just seemed so happy to see it again, but then she became hysterical and wanted nothing to do with it.”

  Carter shook his head. “I wish you’d told me about this.”

  The answer was in her eyes. She hadn’t trusted him. Given their history, he couldn’t blame her.

  And yet she had told him about the pin. True, he had her cornered in an attic, but maybe she was starting to trust him again.

  “So the coat was in the trunk,” he said, recalling Lila Bailey’s reaction to not finding what she was looking for. So Lila knew about the pin as well. Did it follow that she knew about the plane? And the murdered man?

  How many others around here knew and had kept the secret? He hated to think.

  He looked at Eve and wanted to take her in his arms and hold her. He would do anything to protect her from what he feared would come out of this investigation. She looked pale and scared. He knew the feeling.

  “Even if your grandmother was on the plane, she didn’t kill that man and we both know it. Where is the coat?”

  Eve stepped behind a chest of drawers and pulled out the rolled-up brown cloth. With obvious reluctance, she handed it to him.

  “The coat is threadbare, but my grandmother’s wish was to be buried in it—”

  “I’ll make sure you get it and the pin back,” he said.

  “What happens now?”

  “I’ll have to hang on to both as evidence, Eve,” he said, not any happier about that than she was. He’d known Nina Mae Cross and her daughter Lila Bailey all his life.

  “I’d like to be alone now,” she said.

  He didn’t want to leave her, but he had no choice. As far as he knew, the reporter Glen Whitaker was still missing and he needed to talk to Lila Bailey.

  “Eve, be careful. Whoever killed that man in the plane…well, the murderer might not have gone very far thirty-two years ago. Not very far at all.”

  SICK AT HEART, Eve rode her horse home only to find a note from her mother.

  Eve,

  I have to attend a funeral in Great Falls. I’m not sure when I’ll be back. Please don’t do anything until I return. We need to talk,

  Mom.

  A funeral in Great Falls. Eve didn’t believe it for a moment. Her mother had taken off knowing questions would be demanded of her.

  Eve opened all the windows as if fresh air would chase away the fear, the anger, the concern for both her grandmother and her mother.

  The curtains billowed in the breeze. The day smelled of new grass and sunshine and, soon, the usual—paint.

  She had changed into her paint clothes, needing to do physical labor, needing to forget everything that had happened since she’d come home.

  But as she stood in the middle of the room, paint brush in hand, she had that odd sense again of being watched.

  She moved to the edge of the window and looked down the dirt road. The grass grew tall on both sides. She could hear crickets chirping, smell fresh-cut hay, see birds teetering on the phone lines overhead.

  There was no sign of anyone spying on her, and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling.

  Worse, as she turned her attention back to the mess in the living room, she couldn’t remember why she’d even started this project. She hadn’t planned to stay. She’d only intended to remain here until she had satisfied the questions she had in her mind. Fixing up her grandmother’s house had been just something to keep her busy until she could get to her real reason for coming home.

  And that reason had been to find herself. For as long as she could remember, she’d been restless. Isn’t that why she’d believed there was some secret involving her?

  It had been a series of things that made her still believe that. How different she looked from the rest of her family. Finding those mysterious letters under her mother’s sewing room floorboards that mentioned “the child.” The feeling that she had another family somewhere.

  She’d come home convinced that the answer was here and that she’d never be happy until she found out the truth.

  Now all she wanted to do was leave. To run. She was good at running. Bad at staying and fighting for what she wanted. Only she’d never wanted to run as badly as she did right now.

  She picked up the can of paint and climbed the ladder. She couldn’t run. Not this time. She’d come home to put some matters to rest, including what was going on with her parents. Finding the crashed plane in the Breaks, well, she’d gotten more than she’d bargained for, because that had brought Carter Jackson into her life again—and left her with even more questions about her family.

  She shivered and opened the can of paint. After dipping in the brush, she made a wide swipe of color across the wall, then leaned back a little to consider it.

  The paint was a warm orange shade that complemented the woodwork. It reminded her of sunsets down in the Breaks, when the horizon appeared to be on fire. Color would shoot up into the sky. Pinks and reds and pale yellows.

  Her mother would hate the orange. That alone should have made it perfect. Eve just couldn’t make up her mind. She was edgy, worried, afraid. All the things she’d been that had forced her to come back here.

  She leaned against the ladder, thinking about her mother slumped over the trunk sobbing as if her heart were breaking. But it was her mother’s words she heard now echoing in her thoughts: “Eve, what have you done?”

  What had she done?

  The phone rang. She put down her paintbrush and went into the kitchen, brushing an errant lock of her hair back from her face as she picked up the phone. “Hello?”

  “Eve?”

  “Dad.” She couldn’t believe how glad she was to hear his voice right now.

  “I was wondering if you wanted to come up to Whitehorse for dinner?” Chester Bailey asked, sounding shy and unsure. “I have the day off and I thought…”

  Eve felt a drowning wave of guilt. She hadn’t seen him since she’d come back, although she had talked to him a couple of times on the phone. “Sure, I’d love to,” she said, even though driving to Whitehorse was the last thing she wanted to do.

  She looked down at her paint clothes. “It could take me a while.”

  “No problem. I’ll meet you at the Hi-Line Café.”

  AFTER DRIVING a few back roads, but having no luck finding
the missing reporter, Carter returned to his office hoping there would have been word.

  While Glen Whitaker hadn’t turned up, Carter did find his father waiting for him in his office.

  Loren Jackson fidgeted in one of the chairs opposite his son’s desk. He didn’t seem to hear the door open, giving Carter a moment to study his father.

  Loren Jackson was television-rancher handsome. He was a man who’d always been larger than life, tanned and looking healthy as a horse.

  But there was also something about him that made Carter uneasy. His father was clearly nervous. What had made him fly in so unexpectedly and right after a crashed plane had been found in the Breaks? Something was up with Loren Jackson and Carter had a bad feeling he knew what it was.

  “Dad,” he said, stepping the rest of the way into the room. “Just couldn’t stay away any longer, huh?”

  Loren Jackson stood as Carter held out his hand. The two clasped hands for a moment before Loren pulled him into a quick hug. “It’s good to see you, son.”

  “You, too, Dad.” Carter stepped behind his desk, wishing he hadn’t noticed that the notes on his desk that he’d taken regarding the plane in the Breaks had been moved. “You just get homesick for Montana?”

  His father nodded, but gave no explanation for what he was doing here. “You look good. They keeping you busy?”

  Idle chitchat?

  Carter leaned back in his chair. “What’s going on, Dad?”

  His father gave him a confused look and shook his head. “Can’t I come see my favorite son?”

  “Cade is your favorite son,” Carter said, only half joking. “Find anything interesting in my notes?” he asked.

  Loren shook his head slowly, giving up all pretense.

  “Why the interest?”

  “You know me and planes.”

  “Yeah, I do. I also know there’s more than a good chance that you knew the pilot.”

  “Oh? You’ve found him, then?” Loren asked, sounding surprised.

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  “After all this time, does it really matter?”