The Virgin Beauty

by Claire King

“No.” She felt a burst of frustration, of apprehension. She’d driven straight through from Washington, after spending three revealing days and two sleepless nights there. She was on the fine edge of exhaustion, and the man in front of her helped calm her not at all. The pain behind his moss-green Cash eyes was palpable. “Frank, please. Answer my question.”

  When he didn’t, Grace reached out a long, slender arm and grabbed him, squeezing his bicep. “Frank, are you high right now?” she asked sharply.

  “No.”

  She let loose of his arm at his suddenly intense expression and stepped back. “Was the week Daniel got caught cheating the same week you went up to visit him at W.A.S.U.?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” Frank repeated dully. “Why was I there?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well,” he answered slowly, “I told him I was up there because I wanted to talk to him about selling the ranch.”

  He went to the fireplace to shove another log past the chain screen onto the fire; a spark popped onto his hand and he brushed it away, not seeming to notice its heat.

  Grace stared at the back of his head. Despite her suspicions, her mistrust of him, she could see how beaten he was, how his wide shoulders seemed to bow, unlike Daniel’s, under the weight of destiny. She fought back pity, brought forward the doubt and distrust that had pushed her from Washington. “But that wasn’t the real reason, was it, Frank?”

  He turned, straightened. “No, it wasn’t.”

  She felt that apprehension again; this time it shivered up her spine and lodged at the back of her neck. She reached up to rub there and realized her hands were freezing. The storm had taken her by surprise; she’d had nothing but a light spring jacket with her when the flakes had started hitting her windshield.

  She did not take her eyes off Frank’s. They were almost of a height, and she tried to take courage in that.

  “You went up there to frame him for cheating on his exams.”

  He gaped at her. “What?” he managed to strangle out after a moment.

  “You went to W.A.S.U. to frame him. I spoke with all his professors. I looked up a couple of his classmates who were still practicing in the area. They told me he was an exemplary student, gifted and scrupulously ethical. They also told me his brother visited him the week he was suspended for cheating. That you were clearly loaded the whole time you were there, that you even hit some of them up for drugs.”

  Frank nodded, his mouth twisting wryly. “I don’t remember much about that time in my life, but that sounds like something I might have done.”

  “He didn’t cheat on that exam, Frank. You and I both know that. Someone framed him. All these years he’s thought it was one of his classmates. But they investigated his classmates after he left, on order of the dean. They didn’t find anything.” She frowned at him. “He never considered it was you. When he told me about it, he never even mentioned to me that you were there.”

  “I was there. But I didn’t frame him.”

  She searched his face, found it difficult to not be swayed by that intensity, that anguished passion. But what other explanation was there?

  “Then why were you there, Frank?”

  Frank pushed his fingers through his hair, a gesture so habitually Daniel that Grace was a bit taken aback. He slumped onto the short, plump sofa, worn to the stuffing at the armrests. He rested his elbows on his knees, put his head in his hands. Grace stood over him, unable to determine her role. She’d come on Daniel’s behalf, as an avenging angel, to find the truth for him as one last gift before she left.

  But now she was uncertain. She didn’t feel much like an avenging angel at the moment; she felt very much more as if she were the aggressor and Frank the victim.

  “I was married.” He spoke into his hands. “Did Danny ever tell you?”

  “Lisa did.”

  “That figures. My wife and little boy—” His voice hitched, and Grace felt sudden, unexpected tears sting at her eyes. He couldn’t even speak of his child, three years later, without that hitch. How terribly sad. Frank cleared his throat. “They’d died a few months earlier. Danny had left school, of course, when it happened, but he’d gone back. I missed him. I needed him. When he was scheduled for spring break, I went up there so I could be with him.”

  “Frank—”

  “The whole family was pretty worked up about it, worried about me. I didn’t want to worry Daniel any more, so I told him I’d come up to talk about selling the ranch.”

  “Do you want to sell the ranch?”

  Frank barked out a small, bitter chuckle. “Not much chance of that now, is there? But yeah, the idea grew on me. I don’t want to be here anymore. This is where Sara and Cody and I lived. I wanted out. I still want out.”

  “Badly enough to frame your brother?”

  “No, Grace.” He looked up at her. “Not badly enough for that. I was there when it happened. I could see what it did to him. Danny was always the confident one, the one with all the gifts. It was damned hard on him to fail out of school, and for such an unjust reason. Then, when Julie left him, it nearly destroyed him. Not that he loved her so much, as far as I could tell. It was just another betrayal, another failure.”

  “You didn’t do it.”

  “I didn’t do it, Grace.”

  “And you didn’t sabotage the cattle?”

  He was quiet for a minute. “You know what’s funny?”

  “What, Frank?”

  “I can’t even be angry at you for thinking it. I’ve let my whole life go to hell. Sara would be so mad at me.” He got up, took her hands in his, tried to rub some warmth back into them when he found they were ice-cold. “I didn’t sabotage the herd, Grace. I want out, but not this way. I would have left it all behind, the money, the security, before I did this. I love my brother, Grace.”

  “So do I.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Frank nodded. “Okay. Grace?”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you know I went up to W.A.S.U. that weekend with Lisa?”

  Grace stared at him, felt the air leave her body. Of course. Of course. “No. She wasn’t on the visitor registration log.”

  “She drove up with me. When Danny was suspended, she drove the ranch pickup back. I stayed with Danny for the inquiry, then came home with Danny and Julie after he was expelled.” His eyes narrowed. “Well, with Julie until we got close enough to an airport.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “Does she have access to your laboratory supply company?”

  “Mrs. Handleman does. She’s been training Lisa to take over.”

  Grace’s mind was spinning scenarios like a movie pitchman, and every one of them was possible, doable, with Lisa at the center. “But she’s smart, Frank. Mrs. Handleman told me she picked everything up in a couple days. She could very well have figured out how to do what she needed to do.”

  “Could Lisa have got hold of whatever the hell it is that’s been showing up in our cattle?”

  “The anthrax, yes. It’s not too difficult to get with a vet stamp. It’s used for research, and my lab is licensed to receive it because I’m the official vet for Nobel County. They would have shipped it if she forged my signature, gave them confirmation over the phone. Yes.”

  “What about the brucellosis?”

  “That’s easy enough to get, too. Does she have access to the cattle?”

  Frank shrugged. “She lives out here, Grace. No easier access than that.”

  “But the cow. She must have injected it, because if she’d put anthrax in a water tank or in the feed, it would have spread. I called the Ag boys on my way home today. They said so far the rest of the herd is clean.”

  “It’s easy enough to run a cow in. All she’d have had to do was wait until both Danny and I were off the ranch, run it into the catch pen and shoot it.”

  Grace chewed on the inside of her cheek, considering. “She must have gotten i
nto my lab, that Friday night after I set up the cultures, and contaminated the blood serum results on your heifers.”

  “And when the state cleared us of that,” Frank said, finished her thought, “she infected the cow with anthrax.”

  Grace slumped to the couch this time. “But would she have?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe this. What could be her motive?”

  Frank sat beside Grace. “Grace, I have a drug problem.”

  Grace turned her head, surprised by the turn in the discussion. She nodded slowly, watching his grim, gaunt profile. “I know.”

  “Lisa is my supplier.” At Grace’s blank look, he sighed, impatient. “My dealer.”

  Grace was stunned. “What?” she whispered.

  “I got high with her the first time about three days after the funeral. She came to the house. I could barely get out of bed. I was still in shock. She told me it would help me, make it all seem less painful for a while. She was right.” He bit his bottom lip. “The last time was the night you came out to quarantine the ranch. Before that, I’d been clean for a couple weeks.”

  “But she doesn’t display any symptoms of drug abuse.”

  “She doesn’t use, really. Just recreational. She mostly deals. It’s how she had enough money to make an offer on my shares of the ranch.”

  “With money you gave her.”

  Frank lifted his shoulders. “I wanted what she had to sell. Pretty much had to have it, in fact.”

  “Does Daniel know this?” Grace shook her head, sighed. “No, of course he doesn’t. Why the hell didn’t you tell him any of this?”

  “I’ve just about disappointed him as much as I can stand, Grace. And I honestly didn’t think about whether Lisa had any connection to any of this until you mentioned our trip to W.A.S.U.”

  “Why would she have done it? Not for the money, because the way she went about it all, none of you will have any money when it’s all finished. And what possible motive could she have had for framing Daniel for cheating all those years ago? What possible motive can she have had for any of this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “She seems so cheerful, so open and…ingenuous.”

  Frank’s lips thinned. “Part of her charm,” he said shortly.

  “Where’s Daniel?”

  Frank grabbed her arm as she shot off the sofa. “He’s on the spring range, rounding up some strays we haven’t been able to get to yet.”

  “Let me go. I have to talk to him.”

  “Forget it. It’s snowing like a son of a bitch out there. Besides, Grace, you don’t have anything in the way of proof. All you have are a couple people who told you Daniel wouldn’t cheat on his exams and a school investigation that turned up nothing. If Daniel was going to suspect Lisa or me of framing him, don’t you think he would have brought it up by now? And this whole thing about the cattle is conjecture.”

  She wrenched her arm out of his grasp. “Do you know what he thinks now?”

  “That you’re incompetent. Or worse.”

  “Did he tell you that?”

  “No. But that man looks just about sick every time he sees you, and I see his lights burning all night long. I know, because I’m not sleeping much, either. He’s trying damned hard to stay away from you, and the only reason I can think of for him to do that is he thinks you’ve screwed this up ten ways from Sunday.”

  “Yes. He does.”

  “Maybe you have.”

  Grace took a deep breath. “Maybe I have. But maybe I haven’t. And I can’t live with myself, not knowing.”

  Frank rose, seemed to take her measure. “He took the big gray up to Catbird Spring. He was going to head from there to The Wash, at the northwest corner of the ranch. Do you know where that is?”

  “I know where The Wash is. And I have a B.L.M. map in my truck.”

  “Start from there and you’ll find him.” Frank shot a brief glance out the window. “Do you have chains?”

  “Yes. And four-wheel drive. I’ll be fine.”

  “Why don’t you just wait until he gets here?”

  Grace straightened her shoulders, pulled herself up to her full height. She saw Frank take in her determination. “I’m a good vet, Frank. If this was all done to ruin yours and Daniel’s ranch, I have to find out. Because it’s ruined me, too.”

  Where the hell was Catbird Springs? She’d been driving this winding, godforsaken desert road for hours. At Frank’s suggestion, she had started out from The Wash and driven slowly north, looking for Daniel and the sight of his pretty brown Herefords against the deepening snow.

  She hadn’t found them; hadn’t even found tracks, though that was no surprise. She could barely see the depression in the snow where the deep ruts of the old road had kept the mounding snow from completely obscuring her path.

  The sky, little help to her in the first place, with its dim, flat, snowy light, grew less cooperative as evening fell. She hitched up the heater a notch and stared blearily ahead.

  Damn.

  She stopped the truck. It was hopeless. She’d never find Daniel now. He must have veered off, taken a different route home.

  She shoved her gearshift into reverse. Shame she wasn’t as smart. She’d never make it back to the ranch before nightfall. She could only hope the snow wouldn’t obscure her tracks before she could get back at all. A cold night sleeping in her pickup did not appeal to her much.

  She made just a mile or so in thirty minutes. As the temperature started to drop, the snow became denser, colder, heavier. Thirty minutes later it was dark and her windshield wipers could no longer keep up with the flakes. The tracks she’d made coming in were almost gone. She stopped the truck, afraid if she didn’t she’d go flying off a cliff or end up in Seattle or something.

  She didn’t relish it, but it didn’t worry her overmuch, being stuck out on a night such as this. She’d lived in eastern Washington all her life. Sudden spring snowstorms were notorious there, as well. Mostly for dumping piles of snow one day and turning off warm as June the next.

  She’d wait for daylight and get herself out of this mess. In the meantime, she had a blanket and water in her emergency pack in the vet box. She’d be uncomfortable, but she was in no real danger. Not her body, anyway.

  Her heart, if Daniel didn’t trust her this last time, was a different matter altogether.

  Frank came into the barn as Daniel was unsaddling the gray.

  “Where’s Grace?”

  Daniel hefted the saddle from the horse’s back, lugged it over to the saddle tree. He was wet through, and his saddle stunk from the snow and the sweat from his horse. He wanted a shower and little quiet so he could obsess about his vet; he did not want to have to deal with Frank tonight.

  “I don’t know. Where’s she supposed to be?”

  “With you.”

  Daniel’s hand stopped in midair. He’d taken a curry comb off a hook in the old barn wall but he didn’t so much as give his gray horse a whisk with it.

  “What?”

  “She came out today, needed to talk to you. I saw you ride in a few minutes ago. Where is she?”

  “Stop asking me that! I haven’t seen her.”

  “I told her you were coming in through The Wash from Catbird.”

  Daniel dropped the comb on the floor of the barn. “I didn’t. Rub down my horse.”

  Frank caught him at the barn door, swung him around. “I’ll help you rub down your horse, then we’ll both go after her.”

  “I can’t look for her and worry about you at the same time, Frankie.”

  Frank set his jaw. “You won’t have to.”

  Daniel studied him for a second. “Fine. And after we find her, remind me to beat the crap out of you for letting her go out in a storm like this.”

  Frank grinned fleetingly. “You don’t know your girlfriend very well.”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Daniel growled. “And what’s that supposed to mean, I don’t know her very well?”

  “
It means, Danny boy, that she’s not the type to allow any man ‘let’ her do anything.”

  Grace was freezing when she woke. Shivering from her boots to her hair. In her exhaustion, she’d curled onto the bench seat of her truck fetal position, and tucked her hands under her arms. She unbent herself now, not an easy task considering the disparity between the length of the seat and the length of her legs.

  “Ow, ow,” she muttered between chattering teeth. She was stiff as a corpse and nearly as cold. She considered starting the truck to warm it up but decided since she had no idea how long it would take her to get back to the ranch, or anywhere else for that matter, in the morning, she’d better conserve the fuel she had left. Besides, she had the emergency blanket in the back. All she had to do was step out, unlock the vet box and get it.

  She shoved at the door. It stuck, frozen shut, and she had to kick it open with both feet, bracing herself against the dash and the seat. When it opened, she stumbled out into the snow. It didn’t seem to be coming down with that impenetrable density anymore, but damn, it was cold. Her fingers could barely work the key into the lock of her vet box, and she realized the lack of coordination indicated more than just shivers. She was looking at hypothermia if she didn’t warm up soon. Well, fuel shortage or not, she thought as she gathered her supplies and shut the box, she’d start the pickup again and warm up. She could wait until Frank realized she was missing and sent someone after her if she ran out of gas.

  She clutched the emergency supplies with one hand and grabbed the steering wheel with the other to hoist herself into the cab of the truck. But as she stepped up she put her smooth-soled boot on the ice that had kept the door stuck hard to the frame of the truck and fell backward into the snow

  Wonderful, she thought. Soaked to the skin now. Just great.

  She propped herself up on her elbows and snagged the blanket and water and started to rise, disgusted with herself and her whole stupid predicament.

  But she found she couldn’t rise. Because when she stepped on her ankle, it sent a shooting pain through her leg all the way up to her skull.

  “Hell,” she muttered. She bent double, palpated the ankle through her boot. Sprained, at least, she thought as she hissed out a breath. Dammit.