The Cowgirl in Question

by B. J Daniels

  Rourke smiled. “Some of us just don’t play well with a liar and a cheat.”

  Kelly’s face flushed. “Watch what you say, McCall, you’re on VanHorn land now. If I pick up that phone, I can have a dozen men here within minutes. I don’t think you want me to do that.”

  Rourke moved to the desk with such speed, Kelly rolled the chair back a few inches before he realized what Rourke had in mind.

  Rourke picked up the phone and handed it to the foreman. “Better make that call, Kelly.”

  The older man just stared at him. “What is it you want, McCall?”

  “You’re never to deal another hand to any member of my family. If I hear you do, I’ll be back and it will be the last hand you deal.”

  “Don’t you come in here threatening—”

  “Here.” Rourke took out the roll of cash he’d picked up at the bank on his way out of town. He counted out twenty-five hundred dollars, five hundred more than Brandon said he owed, onto the edge of the desk and raised a brow at Kelly. “Will that cover it?”

  Kelly nodded and reached for the money. Rourke grabbed his hand, bringing the man out of his chair with a cry of pain. As Rourke came around the end of the desk, Kelly took an awkward swing at him with his left. Rourke grabbed that hand as well in a little grip he’d learned while behind bars.

  “Which hand is it you use to deal from the bottom of the deck?” he asked Kelly quietly, putting pressure on both sets of fingers, forcing the man to drop to his knees. “The extra five hundred is for information. Did Forrest Danvers owe you money?”

  Kelly groaned in pain.

  “Yes or no,” Rourke demanded.

  “None of your damned business.”

  Rourke increased the pressure.

  “Yes. He owed me over a grand in gambling debts.”

  “How did Forrest get into you for a grand? That’s not like you, Kelly. He was just a ranch hand. It would take him months to pay you off.”

  Kelly looked up at him with hatred. Rourke applied a little more pressure to his hands and Kelly howled before blurting out, “Forrest had something going on the side. He would show up with a fat roll of money. I took him for at least ten grand.”

  “What was Forrest into for that kind of money?”

  “I don’t know. I swear.”

  Rourke put more pressure on Kelly’s fingers.

  “Gavin Shaw. Forrest and Gavin had something going on the side. That’s all I know.”

  Blaze’s stepbrother Gavin? Rourke let go of the foreman’s hands. Kelly fell back against the wall beside his chair, cradling his hands in his lap as he bent over them. “You had Forrest killed for a thousand lousy dollars?”

  “Hell no,” Kelly said, finding his voice as feeling came back into his hands. “I’d have had him beat up or his legs broke. You know how I operate.”

  Rourke nodded solemnly. “I remember it well. But maybe this time you’d already beaten him up and he wasn’t cooperating.”

  “Forrest was too big of a sucker. He would have come up with the grand and a whole lot more,” Kelly said.

  That’s why the card shark would never have had Forrest killed, Rourke realized. Not the goose laying the golden eggs. “Who else would want Forrest dead?”

  Kelly glared at him. “Besides you? How would I know?”

  His eyes narrowed as if he were just catching up. “If you really didn’t kill him—” Kelly sneered, his teeth dark from years of tobacco “—someone framed you and you thought it was me?” He laughed, his expression mean as the rattlesnake’s. “I wish I had thought of it.”

  “Seen any rattlesnakes lately?” Rourke asked.

  Kelly quit smiling, confusion taking its place. “Rattlesnakes?” He glanced around as if he thought Rourke might have let one loose in the office.

  “Never mind. Where can I find Gavin,” Rourke asked, and thought for a moment that he’d have to use force again to get Kelly to cooperate. But all the fight seemed to have gone out of the man. At least temporarily.

  “Palmer Ranch,” Kelly said, as he got up from the floor, rubbing his sore fingers as he did and watching the floor. He didn’t seem to like the idea of rattlesnakes. Definitely not the type to put one in a gunnysack behind someone’s pickup seat.

  As Rourke left, he half expected Kelly to put in that call, but the VanHorn Ranch foreman preferred an ambush, not face-to-face confrontation. Also Rourke suspected Kelly didn’t want trouble on the ranch. He didn’t want his boss to know. What Mason VanHorn didn’t see, Mason VanHorn let slide. There was no way Mason hadn’t known for years about all the ranch hands Kelly had swindled. VanHorn had just turned a blind eye to it.

  But not even Mason VanHorn could turn a blind eye to murder. Assuming Rourke was right, and Kelly was too greedy to kill his golden goose over a thousand bucks, then Kelly hadn’t killed Forrest. At least not for money. But Kelly also didn’t have the patience or the brains to frame him. Nor any reason to. More and more, Rourke was beginning to think Cassidy was right, and this wasn’t about framing him but about Forrest, and Rourke was just an easy scapegoat.

  If Forrest was into Kelly for a grand, then he might have had other debts, other enemies who weren’t as charitable. Also, how was a ranch hand with no education or much ambition coming into so much money? Not legally, Rourke was sure.

  So what was Forrest up to? And why did it have to be Blaze’s stepbrother Gavin he’d been up to it with?

  HOLT VANHORN LOOKED around his almost empty apartment and began to throw a few things into a suitcase. He didn’t have much to pack. Everything had already been pawned in Billings, a couple hours away. People didn’t know him down there and didn’t ask questions.

  He had what clothing he would need in the suitcase when his cell phone rang. He thought about letting it ring. But maybe it was his father. Maybe the old son of a bitch had had a change of heart. Not likely, but Holt had to take the chance. He was broke and he knew he wouldn’t get far on what little money and gas he had in his car.

  “Hello?” he asked hopefully.

  “Do you have my money?”

  “I told you I can’t get any more money.” Holt glanced around the room. He was busted and there was no way he could get more money from his old man.

  “Then I guess I’ll have to pay a visit to the cops.”

  Holt closed his eyes tight. “Tomorrow.” He’d be long gone by tomorrow. “I’ll get your money by tomorrow.”

  “You wouldn’t be thinking about skipping out on me, would you, VanHorn? Because if you do that, I will go to the sheriff and then I’ll go to your father. I wonder which one of them would track you down the fastest? We both know which one would be the hardest on you, don’t we.”

  Holt slumped down on the edge of the bed. “I’ll get your money.”

  “Damn straight you will. You can always rustle some more of your old man’s cattle, right?”

  “Give me until day after tomorrow,” he said.

  “Look out your window, Holt.”

  He froze for a moment, then moved slowly toward the window facing the street. As he pulled back the curtain, he heard laughter on the other end of the phone.

  “I’m going to be your shadow until I get my money. Cross me and your father will be the first to know your secret.” The line went dead.

  Holt hung up the phone before he emptied out his suitcase. What was he going to do? He’d run out of places to get money and even if he got a job…

  There was another way. At the mere thought, he began to shake. He closed his eyes and fought back the nausea that came with even the thought of blood.

  Chapter Nine

  Cassidy couldn’t imagine how she could help Rourke find the person who had killed Forrest Danvers. It seemed impossible. The killer had remained hidden for eleven years.

  And yet someone had put a rattlesnake in Rourke’s pickup.

  After the afternoon coffee break crowd cleared out, she told Arthur she had to run an errand and drove south out of Antelope Flats t
oward the Wyoming border.

  There was no road sign that marked the border between Montana and Wyoming. The only way she knew she was in Wyoming was when the narrow two-lane highway turned red abruptly. From there to Sheridan, the road had been built with red earth.

  She followed the red highway a few miles to the old Danvers place. Cecil Danvers lived in a small, old log cabin down by the river. His rusted-out pickup was parked in front and smoke curled up from the stovepipe sticking out of the roof.

  The late summer air smelled of dried leaves and wood smoke as she walked to the front of the cabin and knocked on the weathered door. When there was no answer, she knocked again, a little harder.

  The day was warm enough but she figured Cecil had built a fire in the woodstove because the cabin would be cold inside. She felt a sudden chill skitter up her spine and turned to find Cecil standing directly behind her.

  Startled, she let out a cry of alarm.

  He smiled, obviously pleased that he’d scared her. “What do you want?”

  His brother Forrest hadn’t been a bad-looking man, tall and slim with classic features. Cecil, though, was short and squat, thick-necked with a broad face, a predominant nose and thin lips stretched in a straight line across his stingy mouth.

  “I was hoping to have a few words with you,” she said, trying not to let him rattle her. Cecil had always made her a little nervous. She was questioning what had possessed her to come here by herself.

  “I’m working,” Cecil snapped. “I don’t have time.” He didn’t look as if he’d been working, but she didn’t argue the point.

  “Maybe you could take a short break.”

  Cecil studied her a moment, then reached past her to open the cabin door. She could smell alcohol on his breath as he shoved the door open and moved past her. “Make it quick.”

  He went straight to the fridge and took out a beer. He didn’t offer her one as she entered the dark cabin. Not that she would have taken it. The place was a mess, clothes strewn everywhere, dirty dishes on the counter and table and the smell of rotten food in the trash.

  Cecil didn’t offer her a chair, either. Even if there had been one that was cleared off enough to sit on, she wasn’t staying that long. Now that she was here, she wasn’t sure how to broach the subject of Forrest’s murder.

  “I know what you want,” he said. “I heard you were helping Rourke try to pin my brother’s murder on someone else.” His laugh gave her a chill. “Good luck.”

  She wondered who would have told him, given that Rourke had only asked her to help him this morning. Blaze? She must have told him about Saturday night. It surprised her, but who else knew about Rourke’s plan?

  “I just wanted to ask you about that night. You were standing at the bar with Holt VanHorn, Easton Wells and Gavin Shaw when I walked in. You said something like, ‘Now’s your chance with Rourke. Blaze is dancing with Forrest.’”

  Cecil took a long drink of his beer, avoiding her gaze. “I don’t remember saying anything to you. You weren’t even old enough to be in the bar. Les had no business letting you stay.”

  “A few minutes later the fight broke out and you left.”

  “I left before that.” Not according to his testimony at the trial and collaboration by witnesses.

  Cassidy realized this had been a total waste of time. Cecil couldn’t even remember what he’d said under oath.

  “Did you see anyone in the parking lot when you left?”

  “I didn’t see nobody.”

  “The killer could have been hiding in the parking lot when Forrest left and followed him up Wild Horse Gulch.”

  He snorted.

  “Why didn’t you wait for Forrest to give you a ride home?” It was something she’d wondered about for years.

  He took a drink of his beer and belched loudly. “I didn’t feel like waiting around for him. You’re wrong, there weren’t nobody in the parking lot when we left.”

  We? “We? You just said when we left. I thought you hitchhiked home?”

  He looked around the room as if something in it would help him out, then he made a resigned face and said, “Blaze gave me a ride as far as the turnoff to her daddy’s ranch. So what of it?”

  This isn’t what he’d said at the trial. Was he lying now? Or eleven years ago?

  “Blaze didn’t leave until after the fight,” she said.

  “I was out in the parking lot smoking a cigarette,” Cecil said defensively. “But I’d left the bar, all right?”

  “You must have heard the ruckus inside.” She hadn’t meant to make her tone so accusatory.

  His eyes narrowed. “It wasn’t any of my business if Forrest wanted to get the piss kicked out of him. Didn’t have nothing to do with me.”

  So much for brotherly love, she thought.

  Cecil downed the last of his beer, smashed the beer can in his large paw of a hand and chucked it in the direction of the trash, missing. The can clattered to the dirty linoleum floor, not the first. Or the last.

  He moved toward her and the door. “Time for you to go. McCall killed him and eleven years ain’t near enough payment. If you were smart you’d mind your own business.”

  She backed up, slipping out the door. She could feel Cecil’s cold, hateful glare drilling into her back like a steel bit as she walked to her car.

  When she looked back over her shoulder, he was standing in the doorway, his eyes reminding her of the rattlesnake’s in Rourke’s pickup. As she got into her car, she hurriedly locked the doors and started the engine.

  Cecil Danvers could have put the snake in Rourke’s pickup. For that matter, Cecil could have killed his brother. Unless he had an alibi. Blaze. Was it possible she really had given him a ride as far as her father’s ranch? But Blaze had been living in an apartment in town. Why had she gone out to the ranch? Maybe that hadn’t been her destination. The next turnoff was Easton’s family’s place and the next—Cassidy felt a chill skitter across her skin. The next road past the ranch was Wild Horse Gulch.

  BLAZE HEARD the faint tap on the window and looked up to see Yvonne Ames peering into the ADC office.

  Blaze groaned, wishing she could have hidden before Yvonne saw her, but the woman was already going around to the front door.

  Blaze had gone to school with Yvonne, but they’d never been friends, not that Blaze had had girl-type friends. Yvonne was one of those girls who’d always been chubby and unpopular with boys unless she put out.

  “Hi,” Yvonne said shyly as she opened the door to Blaze’s office. “Got a minute?”

  No. “What’s up?” Blaze asked, motioning her in. She glanced at her watch to let Yvonne know she didn’t have a lot of time.

  Yvonne nervously took a chair across from Blaze’s desk, dropping her purse, spilling the contents, then frantically trying to get everything back inside.

  Blaze sighed and waited impatiently. “If this is about business, Easton will be back—”

  “No,” Yvonne said. “I wanted to see you.” She got everything back inside her purse, clutching it to her, fingers nervously kneading the soft leather. “I heard Rourke McCall was back? I knew you’d see him when he got back.” Yvonne swallowed. “I wondered if he said anything about me.”

  Was the woman serious? “Why would he say anything about you?”

  She gave a slight shrug of one shoulder. “I just wondered.”

  “No, he didn’t mention you at all.” Yvonne must be losing her mind. Rourke wouldn’t look twice at her.

  Yvonne got to her feet. “I heard he was looking for the person who really killed Forrest,” she said, still kneading her purse with nervous fingers.

  “Of course, that’s what he would say,” Blaze snapped. “He has to make a show of proving his innocence.” Rourke had lost her loyalty.

  Yvonne’s eyes widened. “You think he killed Forrest?”

  Blaze shrugged. “I hate to think that any man I ever dated could be a killer….”

  “Rourke wouldn’t kill anyone
,” Yvonne said.

  As if anyone cared what Yvonne thought. “Why would you think Rourke might be asking about you?” Blaze asked, unable to let that go. “It wasn’t like you were even at the Mello Dee the night of the murder.”

  Yvonne nodded and stepped toward the door. “I wrote him a couple of letters while he was in prison and sent him some cookies a few times, that’s all.”

  Blaze stared at her. Why was Yvonne lying?

  “Gotta go,” Yvonne said, and made a hasty departure.

  What was that about? Why would Rourke ask about her?

  Blaze frowned as she watched Yvonne walk by the window. Yvonne shot a look back at the office. Yvonne looked as if she’d just put one over on her.

  Blaze let out a curse. Cassidy had sworn on the witness stand during the trial that she’d overheard Forrest on the pay phone at the Mello Dee talking to a woman after his fight with Rourke, after Blaze had left, right before he left and was later murdered up Wild Horse Gulch.

  The prosecutor had argued that Cassidy had no way of knowing if Forrest had been talking to a man or a woman. Cassidy had said Forrest called the person on the line “honey bun.”

  Blaze swore again. Forrest always called her honey bun, so she’d just assumed Cassidy had been lying to try to implicate her in the murder.

  Now Blaze realized there had been another woman. What other reason would Yvonne have to stop by to ask if Rourke had inquired about her? Forrest had been two-timing her the night he was murdered? With Yvonne Ames? “You sorry bastard.”

  ON THE WAY THROUGH TOWN, Rourke stopped at the sheriff’s office to see his brother.

  “Dad just called,” Cash said when Rourke walked in. “He wants everyone at dinner tonight. No arguments,” he added before Rourke could decline. “And no I don’t know what it’s about, just that it must be a big deal or he wouldn’t insist on having us all together in the same room.”

  Rourke knew the truth in that. He remembered too many meals that had turned into near knock-down-drag-out fights. Funny, but he almost missed them. He thought about how strangely his father had been acting today when he’d seen him and Dusty. His sister had said Asa hadn’t been feeling well. “I’ll be there. What time?”