Cardwell Christmas Crime Scene

by B. J Daniels

  “Marietta Pisani. You think she’s hired someone to shoot me? Why now?”

  “I wish I knew. But maybe it’s what your father said. They didn’t know about you and now they do.”

  She shook her head. “They don’t even know me. Why would they want to kill me?”

  He shook his head. “From what Zinnia said, it could involve money.”

  “If that’s true, no wonder my father told me my mother died in childbirth. He was actually trying to spare me. How do you like that?” She let out another bitter laugh as she turned to look at the cowboy. “So now they want me dead.”

  “If your mother died a few months ago, maybe that was when the rest of the family found out about you. It must have come as a shock.”

  “My mother chose her family and their money over me.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t an easy choice.”

  She hated the tears that burned her eyes. “I am their flesh and blood. Wouldn’t they want to meet me before they had me killed?”

  He reached for her, drawing her into his strong chest. She buried her face in his winter coat. “Let’s not jump to conclusions until we know what’s going on, okay?”

  She nodded against his chest. “Why didn’t my father tell me the truth when I showed him the photo?” she asked, drawing back.

  “I’m sure he regrets it. He swears that when you came to him, he didn’t know what was going on.”

  She pulled away. “My father lies.”

  * * *

  BEAU STARED AT her slim back as she swung up onto her horse. She was reasonably hurt by what she’d learned from Zinnia, but she was trying so hard not to show it. “I don’t think he’s lying about this.”

  “Someone else knew about me.” She turned to look at him. “That person sent me the doll and the photo.”

  He hated to tell her that maybe the doll and the photo might merely have been a way of verifying that she was indeed Walter Justice’s daughter. When she’d received the items, she headed straight for the prison—and her father, whom she hadn’t acknowledged in years.

  “But now they’re afraid I’ll go after the money.” She shook her head. “After years of believing I had no family other than my father, now I have so much that some of them have put a price on my head. I don’t know what to say.”

  Beau didn’t, either. “You could contact them, possibly make a deal—”

  “I don’t want their money!” She spurred her horse.

  He had to swing up into the saddle and go after her. The woman could handle a horse. He rode after her, sensing that she needed this release. Her horse kicked up a cloud of snow that hung in the air as he caught up and raced like the wind alongside her.

  Her cheeks were flushed and there was a steely glint in her eyes that told him of a new determination.

  “You’ll help me find out who is behind this?” she asked as they reined in at the barn.

  “You know I will. But first we have to report this.” Swinging down from the saddle, he called the marshal’s office. Hud told them to stay there. Good to his word, he was there before the horses were unsaddled and put away in the pasture.

  Hud sent several deputies up into the woods to the spot Beau told him about. They’d be able to find it easily enough by following the tracks.

  Once inside, he steered them both into the kitchen. “Here,” Hud said, shoving a glass of water into DJ’s trembling hands. “I have something stronger if that would help.”

  She shook her head and raised the glass to her lips, surprised she was still trembling. She’d believed she could take care of herself. Now she was just thankful that Beau had been there. What if it had been she and Dana who’d ridden up into the mountains?

  “I’ll take that something stronger,” Beau said to Hud, and he poured him a little whiskey in a glass. Beau downed it in one gulp but declined more.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” DJ heard herself saying. “It had to have been an accident.” She wanted the men to agree with her. But neither did. She could tell that Beau was convinced this was what her father had feared.

  She listened while Beau told Hud in detail what he knew. Then she said, “If I brought whatever this is—”

  “We’ll get to the bottom of this,” Hud said. “I’ll tell you what Dana would. You’re with family. We aren’t going to let anything happen to you.”

  But even as he said it, DJ could see that he was worried. The last Dee Anna Justice had come here and brought trouble. The real Dee Anna promised herself that wouldn’t be the case this time. She had hoped she’d find the answers she needed in Montana. Now she worried that she was endangering the family she’d just found.

  She would leave as soon as she could get a flight out.

  But even as she thought it, she had a feeling she wouldn’t be leaving alone—if Beau had anything to do with it.

  * * *

  ANDREI GRIMACED IN pain as he finished bandaging his leg in his motel room. The snowmobile accident was just another bad sign, he told himself. And yet he had survived it with minimal damage.

  He’d managed to push the wrecked snowmobile off into a gully where it wouldn’t be found—along with some of the debris that had been knocked off it when he’d hit the tree. He’d gotten away. That alone should have been cause for celebration, since it was the closest he’d come to being caught.

  Had he not missed, the cowboy would have been trying to save his beloved instead of racing on horseback in an attempt to catch her would-be killer.

  He stood now to test his leg and, groaning in pain, sat back down. He wouldn’t be climbing any more power poles, that was for sure. But he wasn’t going to let this mishap change anything. He’d be fine by tomorrow, he assured himself.

  The problem was that now DJ and her protective cowboy would know he was out here. They would be even more careful than they had been at first. He would have to wait—and watch. In good time, he told himself. And he still had time. He could complete this before his birthday, and he would.

  He checked his phone. There were two messages from the man who’d hired him. Andrei didn’t bother to listen to them. Whatever the man wanted, it didn’t matter. This had become personal. Nothing could stop him now.

  * * *

  MARSHAL HUD SAVAGE leaned back in his chair in his den on the ranch to look at Beau. Dana, Stacy and the kids had returned. Not wanting to upset them, he’d suggested the two of them talk in his den. They’d known each other for years—just not well. Their cases had never overlapped until now.

  “So, Dee Anna’s father hired you?” Hud asked.

  Beau liked to keep things simple. He’d learned that years ago when dealing with his father—and the law. He nodded. “He asked me to watch over his daughter.”

  “He wasn’t more specific than that?”

  “No.”

  “And how exactly did he know about you?”

  “I guess he could have looked in the phone book under private investigators,” he said, dodging the truth.

  Hud nodded. “Seems odd, though, asking you to keep an eye on her while she’s here where her cousin’s husband is the marshal.”

  “Not really.” He softened his words with a wry smile. “Walter Justice is in prison. It could be he doesn’t trust law enforcement.”

  The marshal chuckled at that. “Point well-taken, given what we know about Walter.” He studied Beau openly for a moment. “You had taken DJ for a horseback ride.”

  “To talk. DJ’s trying to find out more about her family.”

  “Dana said the three of you went to visit Walter’s high school girlfriend, Zinnia Jameson?”

  Beau nodded. “DJ knows nothing about her father’s past. We were hoping Zinnia could provide some answers.”

  “That’s what you had to talk to DJ about?�
�

  He could tell that Hud was suspicious, since it had been Beau who’d taken her to a spot where a shooter had almost killed her.

  “We needed to talk about what we’d learned, but also, I had to give her some bad news. Her father was shanked in prison.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. I get the impression from Dana that DJ and her father aren’t close.”

  “No, but he’s still her father.”

  Hud sighed. “There’s something about your story... Tell me again what the two of you were doing right before you heard the shot and felt the bullet whiz past.”

  Beau laughed. He had great respect for the marshal. The man had sensed he hadn’t told him everything. “I was about to kiss her. I’d pulled her closer...”

  The marshal nodded smiling. “You were trying to kiss her?”

  He grinned. “Unfortunately the shooter took a potshot at us before that could happen.”

  “So, this is more than a job for you?”

  Beau didn’t want to get into the whole story of the first time he saw DJ and how he’d never forgotten her. “There’s been some attraction from the start.”

  “I can understand that. It’s those Justice women.” He turned serious again. “You didn’t get a good look at him?”

  “No. Nor the snowmobile. Earlier I thought I heard one in the distance, but I didn’t think anything about it. It’s December. Everybody and his brother have one of the damned things, and the mountains around here are riddled with old logging roads.”

  “But you’re convinced the bullet was for DJ?”

  “Depends on how well the man shoots. If he was aiming for me, he can’t hit the side of a barn. But if he was aiming for DJ, he’s good. Really good. If I hadn’t drawn her toward me when I did...”

  “You’re thinking a professional?”

  “I am.”

  “You have any idea why someone would want Dee Anna Justice dead?”

  Beau hesitated. He understood why Hud had wanted to talk to him alone. DJ was Dana’s family. Hud would have done anything for his wife.

  “It might have something to do with her mother’s family,” Beau said after a moment. “I’m going to shadow her until we find out what’s going on. I don’t have much to go on.” He told the marshal the names of both mother and grandmother.

  Hud wrote them down. Marietta and Carlotta Pisani. “Why would her own flesh and blood want to harm her?”

  Beau shook his head, thinking of Cain and Abel. He couldn’t help but wonder about DJ’s half sister. “There might be money involved.”

  * * *

  “GRANDMAMA, YOU’RE SCARING ME. Tell me what you’ve done,” Bianca demanded as her grandmother hung up the phone. “I’m assuming that was Roger you called. He hired someone to find my sister and then what?” She shook her head as if too disappointed in her grandmother to talk for a moment.

  Ester had dropped into a chair across from them.

  Marietta looked at her precious granddaughter. Her heart was in her throat. What if the man Roger had hired had already accomplished what he’d paid him to do? Now she realized that she could lose the one person who mattered to her.

  “Do you have any idea how much I love you, how much I have tried to protect you—”

  Bianca’s look stopped her cold. “What have you done?”

  “It might not be too late.”

  “Too late for what?”

  Marietta waved that off and tried to rope in her thoughts. Roger would already have called if it was done. Of course he’d stopped it. Roger was too smart to go against her wishes on this. She reminded herself he was so smart that apparently he’d been stealing from her for years. She was the matriarch of this family, but Roger was a man she’d leaned on since her husband had died all those years ago.

  “Listen to me. I’m trying to make this right.” Her fear of losing Bianca’s love, though, was a knife lodged in her chest.

  “Tell me everything you know about her,” Bianca said, sitting down next to her.

  There was no keeping it from her now. “I don’t know very much, just what your mother told me. Her name is Dee Anna Justice.”

  “So after Mother told you, did you try to reach her? You just said it might be too late.”

  So Ester hadn’t told her everything. Marietta thought she still might stand a chance of regaining Bianca’s love, her trust. “You have to understand. Your mother was very young. She fell in love with this man from Montana who was all wrong for her. Fortunately she realized her mistake...” She almost said, “before it was too late,” but that had been what she’d thought at the time.

  Now she knew that it had been too late. Carlotta had given birth to Walter Justice’s child—and kept the truth from nearly everyone.

  * * *

  ON HER DEATHBED, Carlotta had cried, saying it was Marietta’s fault that she’d had to keep Dee Anna a secret all these years.

  “I wanted my child with me. I needed my child with me. But you had made it clear that if I didn’t come home, forget about Walter and go to Italy to stay with my aunt...”

  “You are going to blame me for this?” she’d demanded.

  “I had to give up my child because of you.”

  No, Marietta had argued. “You gave up your child for money. You knew I would cut off your allowance if you stayed with that man. It was your choice.”

  Had her daughter thought that one day she could just come home with the child and all would be forgiven? Or had she given up on that foolish idea when she’d met the nice Italian man she’d married and become pregnant with his child?

  “Surely Walter Justice would have gladly given up the child had you demanded it,” she had pointed out to her daughter.

  “You’re wrong. He loved me. He loved Dee Anna. He would never have let you get near her, knowing how you felt about him. But, Mother, now you can make up for the past. Now you have a chance to know your first granddaughter.”

  Carlotta must have seen her expression, because her own hardened. “Or not. Whatever happens, it’s on your head now, Mother.”

  * * *

  MARIETTA REALIZED BIANCA had asked her a question.

  “Why did you hate my sister’s father so much?” Bianca asked again, accusation in her tone.

  “He was a crook. All he was interested in was our money.”

  “Money. Why does it always come back to that with you?”

  “He’s serving time in prison. I think that tells you what kind of man he is.” She hated that her voice rose, that she sounded like a woman who’d lost control of her life. A woman who was no longer sure of the stand she’d taken. A woman who would die drowning in regret.

  Bianca rose. “I want to meet my sister.”

  “Stop calling her that!” Marietta snapped irritably. “She is merely your mother’s mistake.”

  Her granddaughter looked horrified at her words.

  She regretted them instantly. “You don’t understand,” she pleaded. “This woman isn’t one of us. If she is anything like her father, she’ll demand part of your inheritance. I know you think you don’t care about the money, about the family legacy—”

  “It is the family curse,” Bianca said. “That’s what mother called it. She used to wish her family was dirt-poor.”

  Marietta wanted to laugh. Her extravagant daughter would not have liked being poor, let alone dirt-poor.

  Bianca’s eyes narrowed. “So this is about money. You’re afraid she will want money.”

  “No, I was willing to give her money. It’s about you, Bianca. I don’t want you to be hurt. Contacting this woman can only—”

  “Tell me how I can find her,” Bianca said, cutting her off.

  She swallowed and looked to Ester. “Why don’t you ask her?” she said, poi
nting to her housekeeper. “She seems to be well-informed.”

  Ester’s gaze met hers, unspoken secrets between them. The housekeeper hadn’t told Bianca about the hit man. But she’d hinted at it. Did Marietta really want her to tell everything she knew?

  “I’m asking you,” her granddaughter said.

  Marietta sighed. She knew when she’d lost. Wasn’t it possible that Dee Anna Justice could already be dead? If so, Bianca would never forgive her. And the family legacy could already be gone, thanks to Roger. She had only herself to blame for all of this. But to lose both Bianca and her fortune would be unendurable.

  “She’s at the Cardwell Ranch near Big Sky, Montana, but—”

  “I’m going to find her,” Bianca said with more determination than Marietta had ever seen in her.

  As she started to leave, Ester said, “I’d like to go with you.”

  Bianca shot a look at her grandmother and seemed to hesitate. “Can you manage alone with your bad heart?”

  “I’ve been on my own before,” Marietta snapped, wondering how she would manage. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “I’ll call when I find her,” Bianca said.

  Everything she cared about was walking out that door. She didn’t think her heart could break further. She was wrong, she realized as she saw Ester’s suitcase by the door and knew that she might not see either of them again.

  * * *

  “WE HAVE TO find out who’s behind this,” Beau told DJ before they left Cardwell Ranch. “I thought we’d go by my office in Bozeman. I should warn you about my assistant. She’s... Well, you’ll see soon enough.”

  He wasn’t surprised when Marge did one of her eyebrow lifts as they walked in. What did surprise him was how quickly she took to DJ.

  Like a mother hen, she scurried around, getting coffee, offering to run down to the cupcake shop for treats.

  “We’re fine. We won’t be here long,” he told her with an amused and slightly irritated shake of his head. He ushered DJ into the office, saying, “I’ll be right back,” and closed the door behind her.

  Turning to Marge, he said, “What is going on with you?”

  “Me?” She gave him her innocent look.