High-Caliber Christmas

by B. J Daniels

  Just as she’d thought. There had been something between this woman and Jace.

  Ava tried not to hate her. But she knew the type. Blond, blue-eyed, girl next door. A cute little cowgirl. What was the story between the two of them? she wondered as she watched her finally start her vehicle and pull out.

  Ava pulled out behind her, following her through town, then north into the country. It was one of those beautiful blue-skied days, the sun coming warm through her windows. She knew she shouldn’t even be in Whitehorse, let alone following this woman, and yet it felt right.

  Something had brought her here, something more than Jace Dennison.

  Ahead, the cowgirl slowed, then turned down a narrow road. Ava could see a farmhouse set back against a hillside. Several large old cottonwoods framed the picturesque place.

  How handy, Ava thought as she realized that this woman lived just down the road from Jace Dennison—according to the address on the letter from his mother.

  Ava drove on past, turned around up the road and headed back to town. She slowed just enough at the mailbox on the highway in front of the cowgirl’s house to read the name. K. Mitchell.

  She chose a motel on the far edge of town. In the room, she pulled out a phone book. There was only one Mitchell listed. Kayley Mitchell.

  Ava was more convinced that the woman wasn’t married. Didn’t the woman know that most women living alone didn’t put their full names in the phone book?

  Apparently Kayley thought she was safe living out there all by herself.

  While she had the phone book open, she looked up Dennison. She found two numbers, one for an Audie Dennison and another for Marie, the same name as the one on Jace’s letter from his mother. She memorized the phone number for his mother before closing the book.

  JACE WAS MORE DETERMINED than ever to get out of town as quickly as possible. After he’d watched Ava Carris drive away, he’d turned back and saw the Milk River Examiner office.

  He’d heard that the editor-owner of the paper had written an obit for both Marie and Audie. He was just waiting for Jace’s approval before running it. Marie had gone to school with the man, and Jace knew he was just trying to make things easier for him.

  As he stepped inside, Jace spotted a young woman on the phone. She had a Southern accent, and when she turned toward the door, she seemed surprised and a little wary.

  “Is Mark Sanders around?” Jace asked as the woman hung up.

  “He’s out on calls,” she said, definitely looking nervous. “I’m the reporter, Andi Jackson. The newspaper’s only reporter.”

  Jace blinked. “Jackson. Are you…”

  “Cade’s wife.”

  Cade Jackson, his one-time best friend. “It’s nice to meet you, I think. I’m—”

  “Jace Dennison.” She swallowed. “I was the one who wrote the stories about you.”

  He’d figured Mark would have tried to keep it out of the newspaper. But apparently Cade’s wife had written about it anyway.

  “Everyone in town was talking about it,” she said. “The rumors were worse than the truth.” She’d been staring at him and now shook her head. “How could anyone not have known you were a Winchester?”

  Apparently quite a few people knew. “I’d like to see the papers.”

  She nodded and went into the back, returning after only a few minutes. “I heard you were back. I have them ready for you. Also, there are the obits Mark wrote.”

  Jace reached for his wallet.

  “They’re on me,” she said.

  He thought she might apologize for putting his life on the front page of his hometown newspaper. When she didn’t, he said, “You were just doing your job, right?”

  “Yes,” she said raising her chin. “And I’m damned good at it.”

  Jace had to smile. He liked her, which surprised the hell out of him. Cade had done all right. “I like a woman who stands up for what she believes in,” he said and gave her his cell phone number. “Tell your husband hello for me.”

  As Jace left, he glanced across the street, half expecting to see Ava Carris parked on the other side again. But there was no sign of her. He felt an uneasiness as he climbed into the SUV and headed out of town. Maybe there was a reasonable explanation for what she was doing in town and why she was driving a vehicle apparently identical to the one he’d rented.

  He glanced over at the newspapers on the seat next to him. One of the headlines caught his eye, and he quickly looked away. Was he really up to reading them?

  It dawned on him that Ava Carris could be a reporter who hoped to mine his story further. She could have made up that story about him looking like her husband.

  Or she could be a private detective working for the Winchesters.

  Neither seemed likely when he thought about the petite, slight woman. But he planned to make a point of asking her the next time he saw her. And he feared there was a damned good chance he’d be seeing her again.

  MCCALL DROVE OUT TO THE Winchester ranch, needing to bring the news in person. She hadn’t seen her grandmother since Pepper had come into town to help her pick out flowers for the wedding.

  The wedding was now just weeks away. McCall couldn’t believe how quickly the time had gone. A Christmas wedding for her and Luke at Winchester ranch. Sometimes she had to pinch herself. It hadn’t been that long ago that she’d never set foot on the ranch, never seen her grandmother, never been accepted as a Winchester.

  Nor had it been that long ago that Luke wasn’t in her life. But he’d come back to town, taken the game-warden job and started building a house south of town with apparently only one goal in mind—getting her back.

  McCall smiled, glad the man was persistent. She couldn’t wait to marry him. Her only hesitation was that her grandmother might have an ulterior motive in wanting her to get married at the ranch. That and just the thought of her grandmother and mother in the same room.

  She pushed those thoughts aside now as she drove under the wooden arch that read Winchester Ranch. Just over the hill she slowed, never tiring of seeing the massive ranch lodge. It was built much in the same fashion as the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone Park and looked of that era.

  As she parked and got out, she noticed that her grandmother’s old Blue Heeler didn’t get up, didn’t even growl, as she walked to the door. The dog just watched her as if uninterested.

  Before she could knock, Enid opened the door. Her sour look was more accusing than usual.

  “It’s been hell here,” the old housekeeper snapped. Enid was one of those broomstick–thin, brittle old women with a nasty disposition.

  Everyone in the family wondered why Pepper Winchester kept her on. Most figured Enid had something she held over the matriarch’s head—and they didn’t want to know what it was.

  “Pepper and Virginia have been at each other’s throats,” Enid said as she led the way inside.

  Nothing new there, McCall thought. From down a long hallway, she heard the sound of her grandmother’s cane tapping on the old hardwood flooring.

  Pepper Winchester was a tall, regal-looking woman. What had struck McCall the first time she’d seen her was how much she resembled her grandmother. Since then she’d seen photographs of Pepper at her age. There had been little doubt that McCall was a Winchester.

  As usual, her grandmother had her salt-and-peppered dark hair pulled back in a braid that snaked over one shoulder. What was unusual was that her grandmother wasn’t wearing black.

  For the past twenty-seven years, Pepper had been a recluse, locked away in this big place with just Enid and Enid’s husband, Alfred. Her grandmother had worn black the entire time.

  Today, though, she wore jeans, a Western shirt and moccasins. She looked younger than her seventy-two years and actually smiled as she approached.

  “I’m sure Enid complained to you,” she said as she motioned toward the lodge parlor.

  A small fire burned there, taking the chill off the November day. McCall took one of the leather
chairs and watched her grandmother lower herself into the other one in front of the fire.

  “How is Aunt Virginia?” McCall asked.

  Pepper made a face. “Angry, sad, bitter. Pretty much what you would expect.”

  McCall thought of Jace’s reaction to the news. “Jace Dennison is back in town for his mother’s and uncle’s funerals.”

  “You told him?”

  McCall nodded. “He didn’t take it well.”

  Pepper chuckled. “He wasn’t glad to be a Winchester?” she asked with a wry smile. “Imagine that.”

  “I doubt he’ll be in town long. Just long enough to get his business done, and then he’ll be gone, probably for good.”

  Pepper nodded. “I have no idea what Virginia is thinking. She’s still angry at me. All these years she suspected I had something to do with her baby dying.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You suspected that I had something to do with the babies being switched.”

  McCall didn’t deny it. “I can’t imagine what I would be feeling if I found out that the child I gave birth to didn’t die but is alive—and thirty years old.”

  “Marie will always be Jace’s mother,” Pepper said.

  “Don’t you think Virginia wants to see him? I could talk to her.”

  “Talk to me about what?” Virginia said from the doorway. She was tall like her mother, with the Winchester dark coloring, but lacked Pepper’s beauty at her age.

  “Jace Dennison is in town for the funerals,” Pepper said to her daughter.

  Virginia’s gaze settled on McCall. “You’ve seen him?”

  “He’s definitely a Winchester.”

  “Handsome?” she asked almost hopefully.

  “Very. Stubborn. Independent. And probably impatient just like all the Winchesters,” McCall said.

  Virginia smiled ruefully. “You’re trying to tell me that he isn’t going to want to see me.”

  “It isn’t up to him,” Pepper snapped. “Do what you want. Just don’t expect miracles.”

  “Thank you, Mother,” she said sarcastically.

  When McCall looked up, Virginia was gone. She got to her feet. “I should get back to town.”

  “I’m glad you took my advice and ran for sheriff.”

  McCall laughed. “No one else wanted the job.” She studied her grandmother. “Why does it matter so much to you?”

  “I told you. You’re good at what you do. The county needs someone like you.”

  McCall wasn’t so sure about that. “Does this desire you have for me to be sheriff have anything to do with my father’s death?”

  “We would have never known he was murdered if it wasn’t for you,” her grandmother said. “One of his killers is dead because of you.”

  McCall caught the “one of his killers.” “We don’t know that his killer didn’t act alone.”

  Her grandmother gave her an impatient look. “Don’t we?”

  McCall sighed. “What are you planning to do?”

  “Nothing. I know you will find out the truth. That’s why you make such a good sheriff.”

  McCall looked at her grandmother and saw there was no reason to waste her breath arguing with her. So she just picked up her hat, kissed her grandmother on her cheek and left.

  But as she drove away, she couldn’t help but glance back in her side mirror. Her grandmother stood at the door, watching her leave, an expression of determination etched into the woman’s weathered face.

  Pepper Winchester was a force to be reckoned with, and she was convinced that someone in her family had betrayed her—and was a coconspirator in her youngest son’s murder. Clearly, she wouldn’t rest until she found out the truth.

  McCall feared what that truth would do to her grandmother.

  JACE QUICKLY FORGOT about Ava Carris. Running into Kayley after all these years had him reeling. She’d been the love of his life.

  Back in high school he’d thought she always would be. All he’d wanted was to marry her. They’d already started their family—Kayley had been a couple of months pregnant.

  He had been so excited about being a father.

  Then tragedy had struck. His father died. Two weeks later, Kayley lost the baby. It shattered his picture of the future. Suddenly all that loss had changed everything. Jace knew he had been running from all that pain when he’d left Kayley, left Whitehorse.

  He’d hated himself for running out on her, knowing she was in as much pain as he was. But he’d desperately needed space and time. He’d joined the Marines and later left to join an undercover special-ops government program.

  He hadn’t looked back. He couldn’t let himself.

  The familiar drive north along the Milk River through a landscape devoid of all color seemed surreal. Winter up here meant a monochromatic palette, everything dulled somewhere between white and brown. The drab landscape mirrored his feelings. He would get his mother and uncle buried; then he would put all of this behind him.

  He hadn’t gone far when he spotted the mailbox with Dennison on it and slowed to turn down the tree-lined narrow dirt road. The house was an old two-story farmhouse, white with blue shutters.

  His treehouse was still in one of the largest old cottonwoods down by the creek. A tire swing hung from one of the larger branches. It moved restlessly in the breeze, reminding him of summer days spent daydreaming in it.

  As he pulled in, nothing moved. He half expected his mother to appear in the front doorway. Marie, he thought with no small amount of resentment. She wasn’t the only thing missing. No dog. Jace figured a neighbor must have taken his uncle Audie’s collie. No Audie, either.

  He sat for a moment, swamped with memories of a childhood free to wander in the fields and river bottom that ran for miles behind it. A childhood with the little girl who lived down the road.

  “It hasn’t all been bad, has it?” Kayley had asked him that last day before he left twelve years ago.

  “No,” he’d said. It hadn’t been bad at all. Just the ending.

  Getting out, he grabbed the overnight bag he’d brought and walked toward the house where he’d grown up. He wasn’t surprised that the front door wasn’t locked or that the house was spotless. His mother had always kept it that way. He took his bag up to his room.

  His mother had left it just as it had been. He stood for a moment in the doorway, before moving down the hall to the guest room.

  As he dropped his bag on the double bed, he stepped to the window to look out. He could see his uncle’s house down the road. He would have to sell it, as well.

  Back downstairs, he checked the fridge. One of the neighbors must have cleaned it out, just as they had probably been keeping the house up.

  He stood for a moment in the empty house and listened, hearing nothing but his own breathing until he couldn’t take it anymore and headed for town. He’d go to the grocery store to stock up on just enough food to last him until he could get the hell out of here.

  AVA HAD SPOTTED THE STACK of local newspapers in the office when she’d checked into the motel on the edge of town. They had been piled next to a fireplace, no doubt to be burned.

  She’d gone back after she’d settled into the room and asked the girl at the motel desk if she could look at them. Methodically, Ava had gone through them, reading the articles. She was interested in Whitehorse, this town where Jace Dennison was from.

  But she was also interested in anything about Kayley Mitchell.

  The newspapers went back a good couple of months. Fortunately, they were only a few pages, so it didn’t take long to work her way through them.

  She hadn’t gone far when she found a photograph of Miss Kayley Mitchell and her kindergarten class. The cowgirl was an elementary-school teacher? Could she look any sweeter standing there with an arm around two little girls in her class?

  Ava wadded up the paper and sailed it across the room before continuing her search. She was shocked when she found the front-page story about two babies being switche
d at the hospital thirty years before—and how a recent murder tied in. Jace Dennison had been one of the switched babies!

  The thought gave her chills. She kept reading, completely engrossed and even more convinced coming here had been destined. Jace needed her.

  When she found the funeral notice for Marie and Audie Dennison in the most recent newspaper, she saw that the funeral was tomorrow. She was so glad she hadn’t missed it. She glanced toward her clothes hanging in the closet and smiled. How providential that she still had the black dress she’d worn to her husband’s funeral.

  JACE WAS STANDING IN the grocery store checkout aisle when he saw her. “Ava?”

  She jumped at the sound of her name, and he thought for a moment she might run out of the store.

  He stepped out of line to block her exit just in case she thought about taking off again.

  “Jace? Jace Dennison, right?” she said quickly, getting her composure back.

  “I thought that was you,” he said, not buying for a moment that she didn’t quite remember his name.

  She’d been looking down another aisle when he’d spotted her, as if searching for something. Or someone.

  “I hadn’t realized we were headed for the same town in Montana,” he said.

  “Small world, isn’t it.”

  Not that small. “Are you here alone?” he asked, glancing down the same aisle she had been looking down even though he suspected he was the person she’d been looking for.

  “Yes. That is, I’m in town visiting some friends.” She seemed flustered.

  “Oh, who are you visiting? I know most everyone around here,” he said. It wasn’t quite true. He’d been gone so long that he hadn’t recognized anyone since he’d been in town. Except for Kayley. And McCall.

  “My friends aren’t from Whitehorse,” she said. “They’re just passing through, so I decided to meet them up here. They love dinosaurs, and with the Leonardo museum nearby… We’re all staying at the same motel. I was just getting a few snacks for later.”