by Carolyn Hart
“All right, Will. You stay in charge. Send out search parties. Especially to Castle Rock. Call the Circle Bar M and Burnt Hill and Crazy Horse. They’ll send riders to help. We’ll find Danny.”
“Sure, Serena. We’ll find him.”
Neither of them gave flesh to the specter that haunted their thoughts. They would find Danny, find him alive. They wouldn’t even think it could be any other way.
“Tell the sheriff everything you know, Will. I’ll be home as fast as I can.”
She didn’t stop for breakfast. She grabbed coffee to go in a Styrofoam cup and a doughnut and the Mustang was wheeling north fifteen minutes after Will called. As the road lifted and curved, past scrub brush, sage, and skunkweed, Serena kept looking to the west and thick puffy clouds, like a tufted gray quilt, that hung on the horizon. If those clouds darkened and swelled into oily black mounds, it could presage a New Mexico cloudburst. Danny must be found before then.
All the long way back to the ranch, Serena drove furiously, her face white and set, her thoughts angry and self-recriminatory. She never should have left Danny behind. Never. But she had felt secure with Joe on the lookout. Who would ever have thought Danny might disappear in the middle of the night? Certainly it had never occurred to her. There was no reason to blame Joe. She had warned him to protect Danny against “accidents.” His disappearance couldn’t be considered an accident. It was kidnapping. But to what end?
Serena was terribly afraid she knew the answer.
She drove recklessly across the ranch, dust boiling behind her. She skidded the Mustang to a stop beside a police van parked next to the stables. Sheriff Coulter stood, hands on his hips, his sunburned face creased in a frown, listening to a deputy.
Serena caught the end of the deputy’s sentence “. . . sure as hell looks like an inside job to me, Sheriff.”
Sheriff Coulter frowned. “You didn’t find any sign of forced entry?”
“Nothing. Not a scratch anywhere.” The deputy added a little defensively, “If anybody broke into this house last night, I’ll eat my hat.”
“All right, Tom,” the sheriff said mildly. “If you couldn’t find it, I’d guess it wasn’t there.” He sighed. “Get pictures of the kid’s room. The door. The windows.”
The deputy looked surprised. “But this isn’t a homicide.”
Sheriff Coulter was brusque. “We don’t know what the hell it is. Get the pictures.” He looked past the deputy and nodded to Serena. “I’m glad you’re back, Serena. I want to talk to you. Just a second and let me check on what’s happening.” He poked his head into the back of the van. “Has anything come in?”
“No,” a man’s voice answered. “The search party has reached Castle Rock. They’re poking around in the caves but they haven’t spotted anything to indicate he might be there. Other parties are working their areas but don’t have anything to report.”
“Okay. I’m going up to the house with Miss Mallory. Call me if you hear anything.”
“Yes, sir.”
The sheriff backed out of the van and turned to join Serena. “Do you have a quiet spot where we can visit?”
“My office. Sheriff, I have a lot to tell you.”
He looked at her sharply. “Is it anything that will help the search? I have six parties out there now.”
“No. If I had any idea where he was, I’d certainly tell you. But I may know why he was taken.”
Once in her office with the door closed behind them, Serena told her long story. When she described the plane that the Burnt Hill hand had seen, the sheriff exploded, “Why the hell didn’t you call me?”
Serena looked away from his angry face. “I suppose I was trying to handle it myself because . . . if someone in the family was involved, I thought perhaps I could stop it, scare them away from coming back.”
“Just pretend it never happened?”
Slowly she nodded. “Then when I thought maybe Uncle Dan had been killed—”
“Dan killed?”
Serena explained how she had reasoned it out, Dan McIntire riding out to look again at Castle Rock, someone lying in wait for him, then, as Uncle Dan started to dismount, a rifle shot, a bolting horse, and an “accident.”
“But, Serena, what could the landing of a smuggler’s plane and even Dan’s murder have to do with Danny being kidnapped now?”
So she told him in a dry and brittle voice of how Julie had sent her away from Castle Rock. “But Uncle Dan left it in his will for me to run Castle Rock and take care of Danny. So I came back to the ranch and the next week there was a rattlesnake in Hurricane’s stall.”
“Who could have put it there?”
“Anyone. Everyone. I rode out on Hurricane every day with Danny. Everyone knew that.”
“The rattler didn’t get you.”
“It almost did.” Her voice was shaky.
“Why didn’t you call me then?” he asked angrily.
“Murder by snake?” she asked wryly. “I didn’t think anyone would believe that. But I should have come to you when Danny was hurt. Someone burned the rope.”
“Another accident,” the sheriff said heavily. “Who found the rope?”
“Jed Shelton.”
“Jed Shelton. Isn’t that the new young fellow?”
Serena nodded.
“Wasn’t he flying the Aerocommander when you found Dan’s body?”
“Yes.”
“Was he here on the ranch when the Burnt Hill hand saw that plane take off?”
“Yes.” Then she added stolidly, “So was Will.”
The sheriff shot her a quick little look of surprise and she felt color mounting in her cheeks.
The sheriff lit a cigarette, drew the smoke in deeply. “All right, let’s leave that for the moment. Let’s get back to Danny. Why would anybody take Danny away? What would that have to do with any of the rest of this?”
“It’s simple enough,” she said wearily. “I’m a danger because I know about the smuggling—and I won’t drop it. I think another shipment must be coming in soon and they’re afraid that somehow I will ruin it. If nothing else, they know I’m watching and looking. They want me off the ranch. The rattlesnake didn’t get me. But if anything happens to Danny, the ranch will belong to Will and Julie and Julie would kick me off the ranch the minute she could.”
The sheriff looked at Serena in shocked surprise. “Why?”
She didn’t have any intention of telling the sheriff about Jed and Julie. “For a lot of reasons,” Serena said tautly.
“You think the smugglers know this and they’re willing to kill Danny just to get rid of you?”
“Yes.” Serena buried her face in her hands. “There’s no reason to hope that he’s alive. No reason at all.”
“My God,” the sheriff said bleakly.
“I shouldn’t have left him,” she cried, “not even for a minute. But I thought he was safe. I told Joe. I warned him to look out for accidents. But I never thought of someone taking him.”
The sheriff reached out, gently took her shoulders in his huge hands, and shook her until she looked up at him.
“Serena, you’ve got to tell me. Who’s behind it? You must have some idea. It’s too late now to protect anybody.” His hands tightened. “You have to tell me.”
Serena looked at the sheriff with stricken eyes. “You’re right,” she said huskily. “I can’t protect anyone. It’s Danny’s life, isn’t it?”
The sheriff loosened his grip but he nodded grimly. “If he’s out there alive, Serena, we have to find him soon. The thunderheads are building up. It’s just a matter of time now. And if he’s anywhere on low ground . . .”
He didn’t have to tell her. Serena knew New Mexico, knew the gritty gray dusty arroyos that downpours turned into channels of raging red foam, conduits of water gone mad. When a big storm broke, water swept in blinding sheets, water falling so heavily it bruised and battered, wild and uncontrollable water tearing trees and boulders from the ground.
; If Danny were on low ground . . .
Oh, how they clung to hope. To the idea of Danny, a little boy with sandy hair and green eyes and a happy heart, somewhere alive.
But if the person who had loosed a rattler and tampered with a rope had Danny, how could they hope?
Two images mingled in her mind, that of Danny, open faced and laughing, and that of Jed, his steady eyes looking into hers with what she had thought was love.
She had begun to care for Jed, care more than she ever had for any man. Surely he couldn’t have taken Danny, surely it wasn’t Jed.
But Jed lied when he told her of his past, and he kissed her as if he really cared but all the while he was loving Julie, too. So his tenderness couldn’t have been love at all.
If she was wrong about his feelings for her, she could be wrong about him in so many ways.
A knock sounded on the office door.
“Come in,” Serena called out.
Jed walked in. He nodded at her. “Glad you’ve made it back.” He looked at the sheriff. “Is there any word on Danny?”
“Nothing. How about your search? Did you find anything from the air?”
Jed shook his head. “I’ve flown over the whole ranch. There’s nothing out of the ordinary. No strange cars, no trespassers, nothing. Then the turbulence began to get bad and I came in.”
“The storm’s still building?” Serena asked anxiously.
“Yes,” Jed replied. “It’s coming. I’m going to take one more sweep, then it’ll be too rough.”
Serena looked at Jed and felt her heart breaking. He stood only a few feet from her, but she felt the distance between them was too far ever to be bridged. His face was weary and drawn. You could see the concern and caring in his eyes. But could you, she wondered bitterly? Was what she saw really there or was it emotion of her own making?
He felt her eyes on him and looked toward her.
“I’ve told the sheriff everything,” she said flatly, almost angrily.
Did he look wary, or did she imagine that? He answered equably enough. “That’s good.”
“I told him how you found the rope from Danny’s swing burning.”
Jed waited and now he did look wary.
The sheriff looked from one to the other.
“You warned me that accidents come in threes,” she continued.
Jed’s mouth tightened into a thin grim line.
“You wanted me to go away from the ranch, didn’t you, Jed?” She had started now. She wasn’t going to stop. “You asked Julie to try and talk me into going to Dallas, leaving the ranch.”
“That true, young man?” the sheriff demanded.
Slowly, Jed nodded.
“Why did you do that?” the sheriff asked gruffly.
“I thought Castle Rock was a dangerous place for Serena to be. That’s why.”
“So it was just for my well-being,” she said sarcastically.
“Just that.” Red tinged his cheeks.
“Good of you.”
They glared at each other now, both openly angry.
“If you’d gone, Danny might be okay,” Jed said furiously.
“What do you mean by that?” the sheriff barked.
“I mean someone is damned anxious to get Serena away from here, one way or another. Maybe if she’d gone away for awhile, Danny would be all right.”
“If you know anything about Danny’s disappearance . . .” the sheriff began ominously.
“I don’t know a damn thing more than you do. And I’m trying my damndest to find him.” With that Jed swung on his heel and slammed out of the office.
Serena looked after him with an anguish she couldn’t hide.
“So that’s what you think,” the sheriff said quietly.
Slowly, painfully, she nodded.
“Why, Serena? He looks a fine young man. Why do you think he’s the one?”
“Nothing like this ever happened until he came—and he came from nowhere.”
She told the sheriff how Jed had come to the ranch and about the time she found him looking through Will’s room and how the University of Texas didn’t have him listed as a graduate though he’d said he was.
“That’s enough to make you wonder,” the sheriff agreed. “All right, Serena, I’ll get to work on it, see what I can find out about him.”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “I think you should. And Sheriff, he could be in league with either the Minters or the professors.” She described her suspicions of them all. The sheriff was especially interested in the gun she had seen in the Minters’ closet.
“In a holster?” he asked.
“Yes. It was a big hand-gun. A dark blue one.”
The sheriff looked at her somberly. “I don’t suppose I have to warn you to be careful?”
“No.”
“I’m going to warn you anyway. Don’t trust anyone. If you come up with any other ideas, come to me.”
When the sheriff left, Serena stood for a moment by Uncle Dan’s desk. She held onto the back of his high black chair, wishing so much that he could be there. He wouldn’t let harm come to Danny. Uncle Dan had been so big and strong. But he was dead. If the person who engineered his death was behind Danny’s disappearance, how could Danny still be alive? But she wouldn’t think of that, she wouldn’t let horror take root in her mind and grow. They were going to find Danny. They were.
She slammed out of the office and hurried to the kitchen.
Millie was packing lunches. “I’m so glad you’re back. I thought Joe would come back and help with the lunches but he hasn’t. Can you take the food out to the search parties in the pick-up?”
“Yes, I’ll do that.” Serena began to help wrap the sandwiches. It kept her hands busy. It was something to do, little enough, to help in the search for Danny.
“You haven’t heard anything, Millie?”
“Not yet. But they will find him. Don’t worry, Serena.”
Millie sounded so confident and unworried that Serena looked at her in surprise.
Millie smiled. “Joe told me the Kachinas will look out for Danny. He will be all right.”
The Kachinas. Millie meant the supernatural beings that Hopis call upon to help corn grow and people conceive, to banish illness and fear. The Kachina dolls in her room upstairs represented both the gods and the dancers who impersonated the deities. Serena had grown up going to their dances and she had vivid memories of drumbeats and the clap of gourds and the rattle of silver bells on frosty night air or in midday heat and the stately processions of dancers in their feathers and finery.
Although Millie was moving quickly around the kitchen, intent upon her tasks, hurried, there was an aura of peace, a serenity that for an instant touched Serena with hope. Danny was a living force in that kitchen, alive and, somewhere, safe.
The Kachinas will keep him safe.
God, how she hoped Millie was right.
But the Kachinas were only dolls upstairs in her room or masked dancers at the pueblo. They couldn’t protect a little boy from evil.
It was almost as if she had spoken aloud. Millie turned, her dark face furrowed and uneasy. “Serena, I have to tell you. There is evil here at Castle Rock.”
Serena started to answer that yes, she knew, but Millie was looking carefully toward the door, then she gestured for Serena to come. She unlocked a small door beyond the freezer and led the way into a wood-floored pantry. She walked to the corner and began to pull a green trash sack toward the light. She held the lips of the bag closed.
“I hate to show you, Serena, but Joe said I must when you got back from Santa Fe.”
She opened the sack.
Serena stared down in shock at the stiff body, the legs rigid, the greenish eyes staring upward.
“Mr. Richard,” Serena cried, looking down at the dead cat, his magnificent orange and white fur now limp and pathetic. Danny’s cat. A huge battered-eared tom who had the run of the ranch. He always spent the night at Danny’s feet. Serena looked up at Mill
ie in horror. “What happened to him?”
The Indian woman shook her head. “I don’t know. I found him dead on Danny’s bed when I took up his breakfast.”
Had Danny seen Mr. Richard dead and been upset and perhaps run away? No, she was forgetting. Danny’s leg was broken. He couldn’t run anywhere. But how odd that his cat should die the very night Danny was kidnapped.
Odd?
More than that, of course. It couldn’t be a coincidence. That was asking too much of credulity. No. Mr. Richard, then, hadn’t died a natural death. Serena looked again at the stiff body, trying to understand why and how a child’s pet would be killed. What could possibly be the point of it?
“Millie, what did Joe say about the cat?”
Millie frowned. “He said,” she began slowly, “to be sure and tell Serena that Mr. Richard was killed and to . . .”
“Did he say killed?” Serena interrupted sharply.
Millie thought for a moment, nodded decisively.
“He said to tell you that Mr. Richard was killed and you should be very careful and he would explain later.”
“Where is Joe now?”
“Out with the searchers.”
Serena looked again at the dead cat as if the very fact of his death should speak to her, tell her something, make clearer the obscure and frightening occurrences at Castle Rock.
Millie followed her gaze. “He was fine last night when I took Danny his supper. I had to shoo him away when he tried to eat Danny’s steak.”
Mr. Richard always believed that anything Danny had belonged to him, too. So the cat had been alive and well last night.
When had he died?
It must, of course, have been something in his food.
Serena stood very still, an idea glimmering in her mind. Mr. Richard’s food?
“Millie, when did Mr. Richard eat?”
“In the mornings. ’Course, he always snacked at night with Danny.”
“Millie,” she asked excitedly, “what did you feed Danny last night?”
Millie lifted her chin. “My food is good food, Serena. Nothing I fixed could have hurt Danny.”
