Dark Horse & the Mystery Man of Whitehorse

by B. J Daniels

  Just the thought made her smile. “I think I’m in love.” She grinned at her grandmother and thought she saw amusement in Pearl’s gaze. “I know—you’ve heard it all before. Since first grade, huh? But this time, Gramma, I think it’s the real thing.”

  She took her grandmother’s hand. “It has me a little worried, though. I wish Laney was here so I’d have someone to talk to about it. Laney’s still in Hawaii on her honeymoon.”

  Laci thought she felt her grandmother squeeze her hand. “Her husband Nick is really wonderful. He’s a deputy here in town. They’ll be home soon and we’ll all be together again.”

  She just wished they’d be here for Christmas—and the restaurant opening.

  “Oh, did I mention...I’m probably going to be working in a restaurant. My catering company didn’t exactly take off. I think it was fate, my meeting the owner of a restaurant and a man who loves to cook as much as I do. Bridger Duvall is like no other man I’ve ever met.”

  There was no mistaking it: her grandmother’s hand tensed. Laci looked into her grandmother’s eyes and saw...what? Fear? Panic?

  “It’s okay, Gramma.” Her grandmother’s eyes had filled with tears and she seemed to be having trouble breathing.

  Laci reached for the nurse’s call button, alarmed by her grandmother’s reaction.

  A nurse came hurrying in. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. I was just sitting here talking to her.” Laci moved out of the way so the nurse could check her grandmother. “Is she all right?”

  “Her pulse is up. She seems upset. Let’s let her rest now. Maybe you could come back later.”

  Laci nodded, backing out of the room. Her grandmother’s eyes followed her, the fear and panic still there.

  * * *

  IT WAS ONE of those gray days, the clouds low, the light dim like an early dusk.

  Bridger stood outside the old, dilapidated Cherry house, huddling against the brisk wind. It was only weeks from Christmas. What snow had fallen in the middle of November had blown into deep drifts that had filled in the barrow pits and piled up like frozen waves beside buildings and fence lines, leaving the rest of the land clear.

  One such sculpted drift ran along the lee side of the house and stood a good five feet tall.

  He stared out across the wind-scoured land. He’d often wondered what he was doing here. More to the point, why he stayed. As the wind howled along the rotting eave of the house, he thought he knew the answer.

  His adoptive mother had sent him here. He’d been lost. Lost and restless. True, he’d felt he didn’t know himself and wouldn’t until he found out who his birth parents had been.

  Whitehorse had just been a stop-gap. He’d never dreamed of staying here when he’d rented the old McAllister place. Now he had a restaurant that would open in a matter of days, even ahead of schedule.

  He smiled to himself. He’d never believed in fate. He’d always thought he made his own fate, just as he made his own luck. But if he hadn’t come here, he would never have met Laci Cavanaugh.

  Behind him, the deputies unloaded the equipment and the cadaver-sniffing dog from the vehicles.

  “Just stay out of the way,” the sheriff said to him not unkindly.

  Bridger nodded and followed the men toward the front steps of the house, standing back as one of the men removed the sheet of plywood covering the door before breaking open the nailed-shut door to shine a light into the darkness inside, then motioning for them to follow.

  * * *

  LACI WAS SHAKEN as she drove to the restaurant and entered through the back. She couldn’t imagine what had upset her grandmother. It wouldn’t be like Gramma Pearl to get upset over Laci’s change of career plans.

  Not after Laci had changed her major at college a half dozen times.

  She pulled out a pound of butter and cut it into the mixing bowl. Cookies. She would bake something rich and wonderful for Bridger. She was debating which of her favorite recipes to use when the back door opened and she realized she’d been so upset over her grandmother that she’d failed to lock it.

  Spencer Donovan stepped into the kitchen, the door closing behind him. She stared at him in shock.

  “I thought you were in jail,” she cried, backing toward the knife rack. She grabbed a wide-bladed knife and brandished it front of her. “Stay away from me!”

  “Laci, have you gone crazy?” Spencer asked, stopping just inside the kitchen doorway.

  “Get out of here or I’m going to call the sheriff.”

  “The sheriff is down in Old Town and we both know it.”

  “How did you get out of jail?”

  “It pays to have the best lawyer that money can buy,” Spencer said, glancing around as if looking for Bridger.

  “Bridger will be back any minute,” she said.

  “No, he won’t,” Spencer said with a sigh. “He went off with the sheriff down to Old Town.” He stepped toward her. “You have everyone suspecting me now. Even Bridger, the one person who was on my side.”

  “Don’t.” She held the knife in front of her. “Don’t come any closer.”

  He stopped and shook his head as if confused. “Why don’t you listen to what I’m telling you? I didn’t hurt them. I loved them. It wasn’t me. If this doesn’t stop...” His look appeared filled with worry. “It’s not safe.”

  She stared at him, fear making her heart thunder in her chest. The knife in her hand began to shake as a tremor moved through her. Spencer was sick, just as she’d suspected. Why else would he hurt the women he’d supposedly loved? She gripped the knife tighter and stepped toward him. “Get out.”

  His gaze focused on the knife blade. He took a step back. “I never wanted anyone to get hurt. You have to believe me. I’m leaving town. I just wanted to see you and warn you to stop talking to people about me. If you don’t, you’re going to end up like the others.” He mumbled the last words as he backed toward the door.

  She waited until she heard the back door close before she rushed to lock it, shaking from her encounter and more convinced than ever that Spencer Donovan was a dangerous man.

  * * *

  THE POSTER ON the front door warned trespassers would be prosecuted. Bridger followed the others through the open door into the house.

  The smell as he stepped inside wasn’t just that of a closed-up house, that old, musty, vacant odor. This scent was one of decay.

  Bridger glanced over at the sheriff and saw his face was tightened with dread.

  There were piles of old clothes and broken pieces of furniture. The woodstove looked as if it had been used in the last thirty years, which meant a vagrant could have been staying here at one time. Or local kids had been using the place as a hideout.

  “Watch for rattlesnakes,” Carter said as they moved across once-sealed hardwood floors that were now grayed and buckled with age and water and ruin.

  The smell of the house was bad enough. And while he wasn’t afraid of rattlesnakes, Bridger also didn’t much like surprising one, either.

  His biggest fear was that they would find Laci’s mother’s body in this horrible old house. If a place could harbor evil, it was these four walls.

  He didn’t need anyone to tell him that something horrible had happened here. He could feel it. Just as he could imagine old man Cherry taking his wife down to the root cellar. She had to have known what he’d planned to do.

  It didn’t help either that Bridger had never liked small, dark places. His aversion stemmed from being accidentally locked in a trunk while playing with some neighbor kids when he was five.

  They searched the upper floors of the house first, then one of the deputies opened the basement door. A wave of stale, freezing, putrid air wafted up. Bridger saw the deputy look to the sheriff.

  “I’ll go fi
rst,” Sheriff Jackson said, and the rest of them followed him down the creaking wooden stairs, flashlights bobbing into the dark hole of the floorless basement and root cellar.

  Bridger was only thankful that Laci would never have to come down here.

  The basement was full of junk. He thought he heard something slither away into a dark corner. Mice?

  To one side of the basement was an opening that he assumed had once led to the infamous root cellar. The opening had been bricked in.

  “Let’s open it up,” the sheriff said, and two of the deputies removed sledgehammers from their gear and went to work.

  The sound of steel against stone echoed like gunshots through the cold, still basement.

  Bridger stood back, praying they wouldn’t find anything but fearing they would. No one knew why the Cherrys had died down here. Not even the closest neighbors could know what went on behind closed doors.

  Marriages were never as they appeared from the outside. He thought of his own parents. He’d never heard them raise their voices in anger toward each other. Their love for each other gave him strength but also set the bar so high he’d feared he would never have that kind of relationship. Until Laci.

  Except he wasn’t his father’s son. He’d always feared he would never measure up to his father. He didn’t have his adoptive mother’s forgiving heart or his adoptive father’s calm, cool disposition. And for a very good reason, as it turned out.

  The pounding stopped. The bricks lay in rubble beneath a huge dark hole large enough to climb through.

  Carter handed him a flashlight and ordered one of the men to remain there. The other deputies picked up shovels and stepped through the hole after the sheriff. Bridger followed the cadaver dog.

  The first thing that hit him was the smell of something dead. He’d grown up on a ranch, and it was a smell he knew only too well.

  He took shallow breaths as he moved along the wooden shelves filled with dozens of dusty quart jars, the contents murky and indiscernible. Bridger swore under his breath. What a horrible place to die.

  Ahead, the sheriff and two deputies had stopped at a spot where the dirt floor rose in a hump like that of a grave. The dog was already there, leaving little doubt as to what they would find.

  A deputy turned up a spade full of dirt. Bridger heard the shovel strike something on the second attempt and watched with dread as the blade turned up the first bone.

  Chapter Twelve

  “THE REMAINS ARE that of a male, late twenties or early thirties, and they definitely haven’t been there thirty years,” Carter said when Laci arrived at the sheriff’s office. “It’s not your mother.”

  Laci dropped into a chair and closed her eyes, fighting tears. “Then why would someone send me those stupid notes?”

  The sheriff shook his head. “I can only assume the person knew about the bones and thought they were your mother’s. We found another entrance to the basement from the outside that has been used since the root cellar was bricked up.”

  “That would explain the lights people have said they’ve seen inside the house,” Laci said.

  Carter nodded. “Clearly there’s been someone using the old house. From some of the paraphernalia we found, it appears to be drug users.”

  “If the bones aren’t my mother’s, then whose are they?” she asked, drawn back to what had been found in the old Cherry house.

  “I’ll know more after I get the results from the crime lab,” Carter said. “I’m checking missing-persons reports now. The coroner says the remains have been in the root cellar for under ten years.”

  “What can we do if Spencer hasn’t left town?” Bridger asked. “I don’t want him threatening Laci again.”

  “Unfortunately, the way this works is unless he breaks the law, there isn’t much we can do,” Carter said. “Laci can get a restraining order against him—”

  “A piece of paper isn’t going to keep Spencer away from her,” Bridger snapped.

  The sheriff nodded. “If he contacts you again, Laci, I’ll have him picked up. But you’ve seen how long I was able to hold him the last time. Unless he commits a crime...”

  “What about the photo album Bridger found in Dr. Holloway’s house?” she asked, thinking of her mother.

  “We checked the house, Laci, but it’s been thirty years. Any evidence that might have been there is long gone. We didn’t find anything. I’m sorry.”

  “Why would the album be there?” She knew what she wanted him to tell her. She needed a good explanation for her mother leaving the album in an old house in Whitehorse—an explanation other than her mother leaving it behind because she never left town alive.

  He shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine, I’m afraid. I really think you should talk to your grandfather about it. There might be some simple explanation.”

  She got to her feet and Bridger followed suit. She wished she could go back to believing her mother was alive and living somewhere far from here.

  “Well, thank you for letting me know about the bones you found.” She wished she knew what to feel.

  Bridger put his arm around her as they left. “I’m not letting you out of my sight until Spencer is gone for good,” he said once they were outside.

  She rested her cheek against her chest. “Sounds good to me.”

  * * *

  BRIDGER AND LACI spent the next few weeks getting the restaurant ready for its grand opening.

  Bridger was relieved that there had been no sign of Spencer. At Laci’s insistence, the sheriff was doing more digging into Spencer’s past, talking to Patty Waring and others. Laci’s biggest fear was that Spencer would trap another woman in his deadly snare.

  Bridger convinced himself that Spencer would lay low for a while. He would know that he was being investigated even further. That alone worried Bridger, though. He’d seen how upset Spencer had been when he knew that Laci thought he was a killer. Why else had he stopped by yet another time to warn her off?

  But the fear that the investigation would make Spencer return to Whitehorse waned as the days passed. Bridger was starting to believe they would never see Spencer again.

  As the grand opening night of the restaurant drew near, the town of Whitehorse took on the look of the coming Christmas holiday. Bright colored lights adorned the town square, shops sported dancing Santas and snowmen and Christmas music played on the town’s only radio station from morning until night.

  Bridger found himself getting into the holiday spirit. He’d anguished over finding the perfect gift for Laci for weeks now. At his insistence, she’d moved into the apartment over the restaurant with him. That way she was always close by—usually right there in the large restaurant kitchen with him as they planned every detail for opening night.

  Her grandfather Titus hadn’t taken the news well—even after Laci had explained about Spencer. But Titus has been cordial enough since then, and Bridger had begun to think everything might work out yet.

  Spencer was gone if not forgotten. Bridger’s dream of a restaurant was about to come true. And then there was Laci... He smiled to himself at the thought of her.

  They spent much of their time either cooking or upstairs in his bed, making love. Their lovemaking went beyond touch, beyond desire, beyond pleasure. They came together as if it had been destined long before they were born.

  It seemed too good to be true.

  He feared that someone would come along and take it away from him. Spencer Donovan, perhaps.

  Just as his mother had taken away his idyllic memories of childhood when she’d told him he’d been lied to about who he was.

  “You look worried.”

  He glanced up to see Laci standing across the kitchen, studying him.

  “Is it about opening night?” she asked.

  �
�No, it’s nothing,” he assured her as he stepped to her, taking her in his arms. “It’s nothing, really.”

  * * *

  LACI KNEW HE had to be nervous. All this work and finally here it was—opening night.

  She wouldn’t have given anything for the time they’d spent together getting the restaurant ready. The days had flown by as if in a dream. And now, finally, it was opening night. She was determined that nothing would spoil this for Bridger.

  Laci had been baking cookies for several days now and freezing them for the holidays. She would miss her sister and Maddie. Christmas wouldn’t be the same. But she would be spending the holidays with Bridger and she was crazy about him. So it would all be fine.

  She realized as she leaned into Bridger that she hadn’t thought of Spencer in a long time. She felt a stab of guilt. That also meant she hadn’t thought about Alyson. She knew she’d done everything she could. Not that it had helped.

  “Don’t worry,” she told Bridger. “Tonight will be a night you’ll never forget.”

  He chuckled. “Let’s hope that’s because it’s a success and not a disaster.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly. With my desserts, how can it miss?” she joked.

  He drew back to look at her. “I know I should wait until Christmas...”

  She felt her heart kick up a beat.

  “...but I have a little something for you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small red envelope.

  Her fingers trembled as she took it.

  “This is just the first part of your Christmas present.”

  She smiled uneasily as she ripped open the envelope and took out the single sheet of folded red paper. A check fluttered to the floor, dropping like her heart. “My paycheck?” She’d thought they were in this together. Now she realized he saw her as just an employee. And a lover.

  “Read the note,” he said as if sensing her disappointment.