Cardwell Ranch: The Next Generation ; Justice at Cardwell Ranch

by B. J Daniels

  “So you came for the reunion,” she said, smiling as she unscrewed the lid on her water bottle.

  He smiled at that and dug his sandwich out of the bag and took a bite.

  “Wow, it’s been so long.”

  “Twenty years,” he said between bites.

  “I guess you heard about Danny and me.” She sighed. “But I’ve put it behind me.”

  Too bad the look in her eyes said otherwise. He suspected the slightest thing could set her off if asked about her marriage. Unfortunately, he could remember how he was right after Jill had left him. He didn’t want to go there again.

  “So wasn’t that awful about Alex?” she said. “Were you really there?”

  He gave her points for getting right to what she really wanted to talk to him about. He nodded and took another bite of his sandwich. She hadn’t touched her salad.

  “When I heard, I just couldn’t believe it. How horrible. Do they know who shot him?” she asked when he didn’t answer. “I heard it could have been a stray bullet from a hunter.”

  “Really?” he said. “I heard it was murder. Someone wanted to shut Alex up.”

  “Who told you that?” she cried.

  He said nothing for a moment, letting her squirm. “The state crime lab trucks have been up at the falls since last night looking for evidence to track them to the killer. I thought you would have heard.”

  Tessa fiddled with her water bottle, looking worried. “Why would anyone want to kill Alex?”

  He shrugged. “Probably because he’d been asking a lot of questions about Tanner’s suicide. But you’d know better about that than I would.”

  “Me?”

  “I’m sure Alex talked to you.” He wasn’t sure of anything except that he was rattling her. “If you know something, I’d suggest you talk to Deputy Marshal Liza Turner. Alex was murdered and there is an investigation into Tanner’s death, as well. It’s all going to come out.”

  “I don’t know anything.” She squeezed her plastic water bottle so hard it crackled loudly and water shot up and out over the table. She jumped up and grabbed for a stack of napkins.

  He watched her nervously wipe up the spilled water, almost feeling guilty for upsetting her. “Then I guess you have nothing to worry about. But I wonder if Alex said the same thing.”

  “This is all so upsetting.” She sounded close to tears.

  He reached across the table and put a hand on hers. “Tessa—”

  “Please, don’t,” she said, snatching back her hand. “I told you. I don’t know anything.”

  He put down his sandwich to study her. Why had she come looking for him? Why was she so scared? “You and Shelby have always been thick as thieves. What don’t I know about Alex’s death? Or Tanner’s, for that matter.”

  She shook her head. “How would I know? Shelby wasn’t even dating Tanner then.”

  “No, but she’d conned you into breaking up with Alex to go out with me. I thought you were just playing hard to get when you wanted to always double date with Brittany and Tanner. I should have known Shelby put you up to spying on him.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said. “But I do remember you didn’t mind double dating. It was Brittany you wanted to be with. Not me.” She got to her feet, hitting the table and spilling some of her salad.

  “Brittany,” he said under his breath. “Thanks for reminding me of that prank you and your friend Shelby pulled on her.” It was straight out of a Stephen King novel.

  Tessa crossed her toned arms over her flat chest, her expression defiant. He’d expected her to stomp off, but she didn’t. Whatever the reason that she’d wanted to see him, she hadn’t got what she’d come for apparently.

  That spring of their senior year was coming back to him after years of fighting to forget it. Hadn’t he had a bad feeling he couldn’t shake even before Alex had called him? “Did Shelby send you to find me?” He let out a laugh. “Just like in high school. What is it she wants to know, Tessa?”

  “I have no idea what you mean.”

  He laughed. “Still doing her dirty work even after all these years.”

  Tessa snatched up her water bottle from the table with one hand, the untouched salad with the other. “I know what you think of me.”

  “I think you’re too smart to keep letting Shelby run your life.”

  She laughed at that. “Run my life? Don’t you mean ruin my life? She practically forced me to marry Danny Spring. It wasn’t until later that I found out her husband was trying to buy some land Danny owned and thought my marriage would get it for Wyatt.” She smiled. “It did.”

  “Then what are you doing still being friends with her?” he demanded.

  “Seriously? Because it’s much worse to be Shelby’s enemy, haven’t you realized that yet? My life isn’t the only one she’s destroyed. Clearly, you have forgotten what she’s like.”

  “No, I don’t think so. I know what she did to Tanner.”

  “Do you?” she challenged.

  “She got pregnant to trap him into marrying her. If she hadn’t miscarried, he probably would have married her for the kid’s sake.” Something in Tessa’s expression stopped him. “She did have a miscarriage, didn’t she? Or did she lie about that, as well?”

  Tessa looked away for a moment.

  Jordan felt his heart drop. My life isn’t the only one she’s destroyed. The thought came at him with such force, he knew it had been in the back of his mind for a long time.

  “She didn’t do something to that baby to get back at Tanner, did she?” he asked, voicing his fear.

  “I have to go,” Tessa said, glancing toward the parking lot.

  He followed her gaze, seeing her fear as a white SUV cruised slowly past. He recognized Shelby Durran-Iverson behind the wheel. She sped up when she saw Tessa hurry out of the sandwich shop, barely missing her as she drove away.

  Jordan stared after both of them for a moment before he wrapped up his sandwich. He’d lost his appetite. Worse, he wasn’t sure what his best friend would have done if he’d found out Shelby hadn’t miscarried early in the pregnancy, but waited as long as she could, then aborted his baby to hurt him.

  He realized it was possible Tanner really had killed himself.

  Chapter Six

  The ski shop Brittany Cooke Peterson and her husband Lee owned on the mountain was still closed for the season.

  But Liza found her at the couple’s condo in Meadow Village. Brittany answered the door wearing a black-and-white polka-dot apron over a T-shirt and jeans. Her feet were bare and her dark hair in disarray. She brushed a long curly lock back from her face, leaving a dusting of flour on her cheekbone. In the background a 1960s hit played loudly. As Brittany’s brown eyes widened to see the deputy sheriff at her door, Liza caught the warm, wonderful scent of freshly-baked cookies.

  “Don’t touch that pan, it’s hot,” Brittany said over her shoulder after opening the door.

  “Did I catch you in the middle of something?” Liza asked facetiously.

  Brittany laughed. “Not at all.”

  “Mommy, Jake stuck his finger in the icing,” called a young female voice from the back of the large two-story condo.

  Brittany wiped her hands on her apron. “Come on in. We’re baking iced pumpkin cookies.”

  Liza followed the young woman through a toy-cluttered living room and into a kitchen smelling of cinnamon and pumpkin.

  Three small children balanced on chairs around a kitchen island covered in flour and dirty baking bowls and utensils. One of the children, the only boy, had icing smudged on the side of his cheek. Brittany licked her thumb pad and wiped the icing from the boy’s face, took an icing-dripping spoon from one girl and snatched a half-eaten cookie from the other girl as if it was all in a day’s work.

  The two girls who Liza real
ized were identical twins appeared to be about five and were wearing aprons that matched their mother’s. The boy had a dish towel wrapped around his neck like a bandana. He was a year or so younger than the girls.

  “You’d better have a cookie,” Brittany said as she finished slipping warm ones from a cookie sheet onto a cooling rack.

  Liza took one of the tall stools at the counter, but declined a cookie.

  “Just a little icing on them, Courtney,” her mother said to the girl who had the spoon again and was dribbling thin white icing over each cookie as if making a masterpiece. The other girl watched, practically drooling as her sister slowly iced the warm cookies. “Okay, enough sugar for one day. Go get cleaned up.” They jumped down and raced toward the stairs. “And don’t argue!” she called after them.

  With a sigh, Brittany glanced around the messy kitchen, then plopped down on a stool at the counter and took one of the cookies before turning her attention on Liza. “Sure you don’t want one?” she asked between bites. “They aren’t bad.”

  “They smell delicious, but I’m fine.”

  “You didn’t come by for cookies,” Brittany said. “This is about Alex, isn’t it?” She shook her head, her expression one of sadness. “I heard it was a hunter.”

  “A hunter?”

  “You know, someone poaching at night, a stray bullet. It had to be. No one would want to hurt Alex. He was a sweetheart. Everyone liked him.”

  “Not everyone,” Liza said.

  Brittany turned solemn. “So it was murder. That’s the other rumor circulating this morning.” She shook her head.

  “Any idea who didn’t think he was a sweetheart?”

  “No one I can think of.”

  “What about Tanner Cole?”

  Brittany blinked. “Even if he came back from the dead, he wouldn’t have hurt Alex. They were friends.”

  Liza smiled. She liked the woman’s sense of humor. “Do you know why Tanner killed himself?”

  “No. I suppose someone told you that Tanner and I were dating at the time.” Brittany chuckled as she realized whom. “Shelby. Of course.”

  “She did mention that if anyone knew, it would be you. Did Tanner seem depressed?”

  “Far from it. He was excited about graduating. He had all these plans for what he was going to do. I think he already had his bags packed.”

  “He was planning to leave Big Sky?”

  “Oh, yeah. He’d been saving his money for years. He wanted to backpack around Europe before college. He had a scholarship to some big college back east.”

  “What about you?”

  “I was headed for Montana State University.”

  “Weren’t you upset that he was leaving?”

  She shook her head as she helped herself to another cookie. Upstairs, Liza could hear the kids squabbling over the water and towels. “It wasn’t like that between me and Tanner. I liked him. A lot. But I knew from the get-go that it wasn’t serious.”

  “Had it been serious between him and Shelby?”

  Brittany stopped chewing for a moment. She sighed and let out a chuckle. “If you talk to Shelby it was. She was planning to marry him, apparently. She loved his parents’ ranch and used to talk about when she and Tanner lived on the place, what their lives were going to be like.”

  “She must have been upset when he broke it off and started dating you.”

  Brittany laughed. “Livid. But Tanner told me he’d just gone through a scare with her. She’d apparently gotten pregnant.”

  “On purpose?”

  “Tanner thought so. He said he’d dodged a bullet when she miscarried...” Brittany seemed to realize what she’d said. “So to speak. Anyway, he didn’t trust her after that, said he didn’t want anything to do with her. They broke up right before Christmas. She’d been so sure he would be putting an engagement ring under the tree for her.”

  “How could Shelby have thought that was going to happen?” Liza asked. “Surely she knew what Tanner was planning to do once they graduated.”

  “Sure, she knew, but Shelby was so used to getting what she wanted, I think she’d just convinced herself it was going to happen.”

  “Maybe she thought a baby would be the tipping point,” Liza suggested.

  “And it probably would have been. Tanner loved kids. He wanted a bunch when he settled down. If she had been pregnant, I still don’t think he would have married her, but he would have stuck around to help raise his child. He was that kind of guy. But he was over Shelby. Nothing could have made him go back to her.”

  “Did she know that?” Liza asked.

  Brittany broke a cookie in half and played in the icing for a moment. “I think she did. She really was heartbroken. She cried hysterically at the funeral. I’d never seen her like that. I actually felt sorry for her.”

  “But you didn’t feel sorry enough not to go out with Tanner.”

  Brittany shrugged. “It was high school. Tanner asked me out. He was a nice guy and a lot of fun. Shelby knew it wasn’t serious. She didn’t blame me.”

  “But she did Tanner?”

  Brittany smiled. “Let me put it this way. If Shelby was the kind to make voodoo dolls and stick pins in them, she would have had one with Tanner’s name on it. But she moved on quick enough. Tanner was barely in the ground before she was dating Wyatt Iverson. One thing about Shelby, she seems to bounce back pretty fast.”

  “Wyatt Iverson of Iverson Construction?” Liza said. “Isn’t that the same construction company that Tanner was working for at the time of his death?”

  Brittany nodded and got up to go to the bottom of the stairs to yell up at the kids to quit fighting. When she came back she began to clean up the kitchen. “Wyatt was four years ahead of us in school, so I didn’t really know him. But later that summer his father went bankrupt, shot Harris Lancaster and went to prison. Malcolm was never the same after that, I guess. He died in a boating accident. At least that’s what they called it. He drowned up on Canyon Ferry. Everyone suspected he killed himself. I’ve gotten to know Wyatt a little since then. He never got over what happened with his father. That’s one reason he’s worked so hard to get the construction company going again.” She looked up. “Sorry, that’s probably a whole lot more than you wanted to hear.”

  “You like Wyatt.”

  Brittany smiled at that. “Like might be a little strong. He and Shelby are cut from the same cloth. Both go after what they want and the rest be damned.” She frowned. “Why all the questions about Tanner?”

  “Tanner was Alex’s friend.”

  “And now they’re both dead,” Brittany said with a nod.

  “With all Tanner’s plans, he doesn’t sound like someone who would commit suicide before graduation. Was anything else going on in his life that you knew of? Maybe with his parents, his friends?”

  Brittany shook her head. “His parents are still happily married and still live on the ranch. His friends were fine—well, that is, they were until last night.” She sighed. “There was the vandalism, though.”

  “Vandalism?” Liza asked.

  “Tanner was staying in the cabin at the construction site in payment for watching over Malcolm Iverson’s equipment. There was a party at the cabin one night. The next morning, Malcolm discovered his equipment had been vandalized. Tanner blamed himself.”

  “Enough to kill himself?”

  “I didn’t think so at the time. Wyatt didn’t even blame Tanner. The party hadn’t been his idea in the first place. Tanner was really responsible, but everyone showed up with beer and things must have gotten out of hand. But who knows. Maybe Tanner was taking it harder than any of us knew. Wyatt talked his father into letting Tanner stay at the cabin even after the vandalism. So I really don’t think that had anything to do with Tanner’s death.”

  “Well, thank you for the information,�
�� Liza said.

  “It’s kind of strange though. I heard Jordan Cardwell was back in the canyon—and that he was at the falls when Alex was shot?”

  “Why is that strange if they were friends?”

  “Because he and Alex had a huge falling-out the night of the party.”

  Liza felt her pulse quicken. “Over what?”

  “I never knew. I just remember Tanner refused to take sides. He said they’d work it out.”

  “Did they?”

  “Not that I know of. Jordan left right after graduation and seldom came back. I’m not sure he and Alex ever spoke again.”

  “Could it have been over a girl?”

  Brittany laughed. “Isn’t it always?”

  “So who would that girl have been?”

  “If I had to guess, I’d say Tessa Ryerson. Shelby’s BFF.”

  Liza laughed. “Best friend forever? Is that still true?”

  Brittany nodded and crossed her fingers. “Shelby and Tessa, they’re like this and always have been. I was surprised when Jordan went out with Tessa since he never could stand Shelby.”

  * * *

  DANA HAD DOZED off for a while, she realized. She woke to find Hud lying on the bed next to her. Listening, she could hear the sound of their children’s voices coming from the kitchen along with that of her sister’s. She placed a hand on her stomach, felt her two babies and tried to relax. Nothing seemed to be amiss and yet, when she’d awakened...

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, turning her head to look at her husband.

  Hud was staring at the ceiling. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”

  “I’ve never thought you were anything but completely sane in all instances,” she joked.

  “I’m serious,” he said, rolling over on his side to look at her.

  She saw the worry etched in his handsome face. “What?”

  “You aren’t going to want to hear this.”

  “Hud!”

  “Something’s wrong,” he said. “I feel it.”