Shifting Calder Wind

by Janet Dailey

  “I could.” But doing so would only answer whether or not he was Chase Calder. It wouldn’t solve anything else. If anything, his situation might be worse. His killer would know he was alive, but he wouldn’t know who that man was.

  “You could, but you won’t,” Laredo guessed.

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Hattie looked up from the article, the reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. “Why not? Think what your family is going through right now,” she protested.

  He experienced a twinge of guilt, but it didn’t change his decision. “I regret that, but—”

  “You regret it! That is the most heartless thing I have ever heard.” She glared her disapproval.

  “Maybe it seems that way, but I think it’s best for now,” he replied calmly.

  Hattie stared at him long and hard, her lips pressed tightly together. “And as long as you think it’s best, that is all that matters, isn’t it?”

  “This isn’t the time to come forward.” It was a gut decision. Right now his instincts were the only thing he could trust.

  “It could take months for your memory to return,” Hattie warned.

  “And in the meantime,” Laredo spoke, “there’s a man out there who wants him dead. For all he knows it could be a member of his own family.”

  That possibility had clearly never occurred to Hattie. It showed in the sudden doubt that flickered in her expression. “Still,” she began, “you must be curious about your family. Don’t you want to know if you have a wife? Children?”

  “Of course I do.” Impatience riddled his voice, but it was born of his inability to remember for himself.

  “I can find out the answers to those questions.” Laredo pushed off the chair and stood up. “Hopefully without raising too much suspicion.”

  Gratitude tinged the look he gave Laredo. He was fully aware of how much he already owed this man. But, in addition to that, there was a connection between them that he couldn’t fully explain. Perhaps it was the sense of mutual regard.

  The irony of it wasn’t lost on him. He was a man with no memory, seeking his identity. Laredo, on the other hand, sought to conceal his identity under an assumed name.

  “I don’t know where you plan on going,” Hattie said, “but you aren’t leaving this house until you’ve had breakfast.”

  “I wondered how long it would take before you offered me some of those bacon and eggs you served him.” Laredo walked over to the counter and helped himself to some coffee.

  By midday the temperature had climbed to well over ninety degrees, and it felt even hotter than that on the concrete streets and sidewalks of Fort Worth, signaling the onset of another scorching Texas summer.

  Inside the hotel lobby, the air was cool. Comfortably ensconced in a leather chair facing the hotel entrance, Laredo pretended to peruse the newspaper he held open while keeping one eye on the front door. He was playing the odds that the arriving family members would stay at the same hotel Calder had used. An early morning trip to the newspaper archives had turned up a photo of Chase Calder. There was no more doubt they were one and the same man.

  As busy as the lobby was, with people coming and going and meeting, no one took any notice of his presence even though Laredo had been sitting there close to an hour. He figured he had another hour before someone from hotel security came around to “talk” to him.

  A man and woman came through the front door, followed by a porter with their luggage. The man was tall and lean, with jet black hair partially covered by a black Stetson. His gaze made a thorough sweep of the lobby, noting people and details with the watchful alertness Laredo had usually observed in those in law enforcement.

  Laredo lifted the newspaper a little higher and shifted his attention to the petite woman at the man’s side. She had a face and figure that any male would notice. Laredo had an odd longing to see her smile, but her face was expressionless, almost stony and lifeless. At first he wondered if the two had had a fight. Then another possibility occurred to him.

  After folding up the newspaper, Laredo stood up and drifted closer to the registration desk to covertly observe the pair. The woman stood to one side, staring sightlessly at the floor, while the man arranged for their hotel room. She looked up once, straight in Laredo’s direction, yet she didn’t appear to be looking at anything.

  Her eyes were green, and full of more pain than he had ever seen in a woman’s eyes.

  Intent on the couple, Laredo didn’t notice the woman who entered the hotel. His first awareness of her was when she glided into his vision.

  “Cat, darling, I am so sorry.” She reached out to the petite brunette to clasp her hands. “I just heard about Chase. How horrible for you.”

  Chase. Laredo hid a smile at the name. His instincts about the pair had been right; they were part of the Calder family.

  “Tara.” Surprise registered briefly in the woman’s face before her expression dulled again. “How did you know we would be here?”

  “After Brownsmith called me with the news, I phoned the ranch,” the woman called Tara explained. “Sally told me that you and Logan had left this morning and planned to stay here. As soon as I learned you hadn’t checked in yet, I came right down. It’s foolish of you to spend the night in a hotel when I have that big old house with all those empty guest rooms. Let me take you to my place. You shouldn’t be staying in a cold, impersonal hotel, not at a time like this.”

  “I—” The Calder woman didn’t appear to be too thrilled with the invitation.

  “I insist, Cat.” The other woman used her most persuasive tone. “No one knows better than I the agony you are going through right now. It hasn’t been that long ago that I lost my own father. Believe me, I know how deeply you are hurting.”

  This woman called Cat was the daughter, Laredo realized, and made a closer study of her so he could describe her later to Duke. Correction, Chase Calder.

  When the man joined the two women, the daughter turned to him. “Tara wants us to stay at her place.”

  “Too late. We are already registered, and our luggage is on its way up. But we do appreciate the invitation, Tara.” His refusal was warmly polite but firm.

  The Tara woman took it better than Laredo had expected. She made a small moue of regret and looked at Cat with genuine empathy. “As much as I would like to argue against your decision, I won’t. This isn’t the time for family to be squabbling.”

  So Tara was some sort of relation to Calder as well, Laredo filed away that piece of information.

  “Good,” Cat stated. “Because I simply don’t have the strength to argue.”

  Tears welled in her green eyes, and her lower lip quivered with the strain of holding her emotions in check, but she kept her chin high. Maybe she didn’t resemble her father in looks, but she had clearly inherited some of his grit.

  To Laredo’s surprise, a delicate teardrop slipped down Tara’s cheek. Gracefully she wiped it away, showing him a flash of her discreetly manicured nails.

  Smiling in a forced show of composure, Tara asked, “Have you been to the funeral home yet?”

  “No,” the man answered. “We came straight to the hotel from the airport.”

  “In that case, I have my car here. Let me take you.” When she saw their joint hesitation, she rushed, “Please. I would like to help in some way. You and Ty were here for me when my father died. Let me return the kindness you showed me.”

  “Of course.” The woman named Cat seemed to regret her initial hesitation in accepting the offer. “It will be much more convenient than relying on taxis.”

  “I’ll have the valet bring my car around.”

  The man stopped her. “Not just yet,” he said. “First Cat and I need to go to our room and freshen up a bit. It was a long flight. We’ll meet you down here in, say, forty-five minutes to an hour.”

  “Of course. I’ll wait for you in the bar,” Tara replied, then hesitated, a look of grief sweeping over her expression. “Oh, Cat.
I just can’t believe Chase is gone.”

  Briefly the two women embraced in a moment of shared pain and loss. The wetness of tears glistened on the cheeks of both women. With his arm circled around her, the man led Cat to the elevator bank. Tara watched them for a moment, then pivoted in a graceful turn and headed toward the hotel bar.

  After allowing a span of seconds to pass, Laredo followed her. Tara sat on a tall stool at the bar, managing to project a certain aura of innate elegance. At this hour there were few customers. Laredo picked a seat a few stools away, closer to the bartender.

  In a low voice intended for the bartender’s hearing only, Laredo said, “I’ll pay for the lady’s drink. I’ll have a beer, whatever is on tap.” He withdrew a twenty-dollar bill from his wallet and laid it on the counter.

  The bartender glanced at the money and nodded. When the man set a glass of chilled white wine in front of Tara, she said, “How much do I owe you?”

  “The gentleman paid for it already, ma’am.” He nodded in Laredo’s direction.

  She stiffened, throwing him a cool look of suspicion. Laredo lifted his beer glass in a salute to her. “My sympathies, ma’am.”

  His remark dissolved her coolness in an instant, leaving her puzzled and uncertain. “I’m sorry. Do I know you?”

  “No, ma’am. But I happened to see you out in the lobby a minute ago with some of the Calder family.”

  “Do you know the Calders?” she wondered with the beginnings of curiosity.

  “Only Chase Calder,” Laredo answered truthfully. “The news of his death was a real shock.”

  “To everyone,” she agreed and sighed deeply.

  “Are you related to them?” He injected an idle note into the question.

  “I was married to his son.” She lifted the wineglass and took a dainty sip.

  He caught her use of the past tense and guessed that at some point they had gotten a divorce. “To tell you the truth, I half expected the son would be the one who came to claim the body.”

  “Don’t you know?” Anguish deepened the velvety darkness of her eyes. “Ty was killed nearly two years ago.”

  “Killed?” He made no attempt to mask his surprise. “How?”

  “He was murdered.” Her voice trembled with a tightly controlled anger tinged with bitterness.

  He thought immediately of the attempt on Chase’s life. “Did they ever catch his killer?”

  “Yes.”

  Her clipped, one-word response served only to feed his suspicions. “Was any motive established at the killer’s trial?”

  “There was no trial. Ballard was killed by Buck when he tried to stab Chase.”

  “Who is Buck?” Laredo was determined to gather as much information as possible to help Chase fill in some of the blanks and possibly trigger the return of his memory. And if that didn’t work, he would at least know some of the players in his life.

  “Buck Haskell. He works for me.”

  He arched an eyebrow in confusion. “Don’t you live here in Fort Worth?”

  “Yes, but I also have a summer home on the Triple C. Buck looks after it for me when I’m not there.” She seemed to realize the incongruity of her statement. “I know it must seem strange that I would keep a home there after our divorce, but I still regard the Calders as my family. Cat is like a little sister to me. And there are the twins. They are as precious to me as if they were my own.”

  “The twins,” he repeated, not sure if these were more of Chase’s children.

  “Yes. They are Ty’s by his second marriage. A boy and a beautiful little girl.”

  “Chase’s grandchildren.” Laredo nodded as if remembering them only at that moment. “What are their names again?”

  “The little girl is Laura and the boy is Trey. Actually, Trey is named Chase Benteen Calder, after his grandfather. But Chase referred to him as his little ‘trey spot’ almost from the moment he came home from the hospital. And the name Trey stuck.” She swirled the wine in her glass. “It’s probably just as well that it did. It would have become confusing to have two people called Chase in the house, especially for the child.”

  “It certainly would.” He took advantage of her willingness to speak about the family, recognizing that people found it easier to open up to a stranger. “I don’t mean to sound nosy, but I can’t help wondering why you seem so sure that this man Ballard killed Chase’s son when he never came to trial. I know it’s logical to think that, since he made an attempt on Chase’s life, but . . .” He let the sentence hang with a question mark.

  “Because Ballard admitted it to Jessy before he died.” Something in her expression told him that Ty’s death was a subject she found particularly painful. Was she still in love with the man, or was there another reason for it?

  “Who is Jessy?” he asked, shifting the focus.

  “Ty’s second wife.” Her voice had an edge to it. Clearly Jessy was not popular with her, but few ex-wives did like the women who supplanted them in their husband’s affections.

  “I guess the Calder ranch will pass into the daughter’s hands,” Laredo remarked, seeking information without asking for it.

  “As I understand, Jessy will be in charge.” The dislike in her voice thickened.

  “Really?” He arched an eyebrow, suspicion sharpening. “Whose idea was that?”

  “Actually, it’s what Chase wanted.” She took a big swallow of wine as if washing down a bad taste.

  “Really,” Laredo murmured, much less skeptically. “I guess he would know whether she was qualified to run it or not.”

  “Oh, she has the qualifications,” Tara agreed with an undertone of sarcasm. “She was born and raised on the ranch, just like her father and his father before that.”

  “Sounds like a clannish bunch.” His comment evoked only silence from her, which served as a kind of confirmation. Laredo wondered how welcome Tara had felt coming there as a new bride. And he also wondered how tolerant this elegant woman had been of the ranch hands. No doubt she was more at home in Fort Worth society than a ranch setting. “When will the funeral be? Have they said?”

  “It’s tentatively planned for Tuesday.” She ran her glance over his face, curious and measuring. “Do you plan to attend?”

  “I was thinking about it. What’s the closest airport?”

  “Commercially? That would be Miles City.”

  “Do you usually fly into there?”

  “No. My company has a landing strip at Blue Moon. I use it,” she explained. “It’s much closer to the ranch. I imagine most people will make use of the airstrip at the Triple C.”

  “I forgot. The ranch has its own landing strip, doesn’t it,” he guessed.

  “Yes.” Idly she held the wineglass by its stem and swept a skimming glance over his boots, jeans, and hat. “What business are you in? Cattle or oil?”

  “In Fort Worth, it’s usually one or the other, isn’t it?” He smiled, deflecting the question. “Wasn’t it Amon Carter who said: ‘Fort Worth is where the West begins. Dallas is where the East peters out.’ ”

  “Something like that,” Tara agreed with a clear lack of interest. “So which is it? Cattle?”

  “Yup,” he lied. “I met Chase several years ago at a function of the cattlemen’s association.” He downed a quick swallow of beer and pushed off the stool. “I’d best be going or I’ll be late for my appointment. It’s been nice talking to you. Pass on my sympathies to the family. Maybe I’ll see you again at the funeral.”

  He left the hotel bar before she could ask his name, a plan of action beginning to take shape in his mind.

  The windmill’s long blades went round and round, pushed by a strong south breeze. Each rotation was punctuated by a grinding squeak, a sure sign it needed oiling.

  Too restless to remain in the house and too weak to venture very far, Chase sat in an old high-backed wooden rocker on the front porch. The steady breeze kept the afternoon heat from becoming too unbearable and brought the familiar smells of the lan
d to him. His gaze wandered over the Texas landscape with its high, rolling hills covered with sun-seared grass. Trees were few, confined mainly to watercourses.

  Idly he studied the cattle grazing in the fenced pastures. For the most part they were crossbreeds, a mix of Brangus and Black Baldies. None were branded, only ear-tagged. The observation prompted him to glance again at the old branding iron hanging on a porch post as decoration of sorts.

  On impulse, he pushed out of the rocker and wandered over to the post, lifted the branding iron off its nail, and turned it upside down. C- was the brand. He had the odd feeling it should mean something to him, although he didn’t know why a Texas brand should be familiar to him, not when he was supposed to be from Montana.

  He decided it was the letter C. Maybe he really was Chase Calder, even though the name sounded as alien to him as Duke. He sighed, frustrated by the damnedable blankness of his mind.

  Off to his left, Hattie elbowed the screen door open and walked onto the porch carrying two tall tumblers. “I thought you might like a glass of lemonade.”

  “Sounds good.” He hooked the branding iron back on its nail. “Where did you find the old iron?”

  “In an old shed—and I mean old—that used to sit where the barn is.” Hattie paused beside the post and gazed at the branding iron in a remembering way. “When we were hauling stuff out of it prior to bulldozing it down, I grabbed up a stack of old feed sacks that I thought I might use for something, and the branding iron was sandwiched among them.” Turning, she flashed him a wry smile. “I ended up throwing the feed sacks away and keeping it.”

  “It’s been well used.”

  “Yes. If only it could talk, I’ll bet it would have a lot of stories it could tell about the old days.”

  He knew he must have stories of his own to tell, but he couldn’t remember them. He downed a long swallow of the tartly sweet lemonade, his glance running to the dirt lane, seemingly on its own accord.

  Lowering the tumbler, he pondered aloud, “I wonder when Laredo will be back.”