B.J. Daniels the Cardwell Ranch Collection

by B. J Daniels

She closed the magazine, studying him. “You aren’t from around here.”

  He shook his head. “But I’m looking for someone from around here.”

  Her eyes widened a little. “I figured you were just lost. Who are you looking for? I know most everyone since I was born and raised right here.”

  That had been his hope. “Maybe you know them, then. Richard and Camilla Northland?

  The woman’s expression soured in a heartbeat. She leaned back as if trying to distance herself from his words. “Well, you won’t find them around here.”

  “Actually, I’m looking for their aunt, the one who raised them after their parents died.”

  “Didn’t die. Were murdered.” She shook her head. “What do you want with Thelma?”

  “I have some news about her nephew.”

  “There isn’t any news she’d want to hear except that he’s six feet under,” the woman snapped.

  “Then I guess I have some good news for her.”

  * * *

  HILDE TRIED NOT to go down to the shop the next day, but Ronnie called to say there was a problem with the new sewing machine invoice and the deliveryman wasn’t sure what she wanted him to do.

  “I’ll be right there.” She was thankful for the call. Sitting around waiting to hear from Colt was making her all the more anxious. She was also thankful that the sewing machines hadn’t arrived before Dee vandalized the shop.

  Once at the shop after taking care of the problem, Hilde showed Ronnie some of the ideas she had for quilting classes, and they began to work on a wall hanging for the sewing room.

  Hilde loved the way the shop was coming together. She’d long dreamed of a place where anyone who wanted to learn to quilt could come and sew with others of like mind. Quilting was a restful and yet creative hobby at any age. She had great plans for the future and was so excited about them that she’d almost picked up the phone and called Dana to tell her.

  Dana still had money invested in Needles and Pins. Hilde realized that might change now. She should consider buying her out if their friendship went any further south. The thought made her sad. If only they could prove that Dee wasn’t her cousin.

  She was mentally kicking herself for not thinking to take Dana’s toothbrush as well as Dee’s, when the bell over the door jangled and she turned to see Dana walk into the shop.

  Hilde felt her face light up—until she saw Dana’s expression. Her stomach fell with the memory of what had happened yesterday. Dana must be horrified. But how could her once best friend not realize that Hilde could never beat up anyone?

  She felt a spark of anger, which she quickly tamped down as Dana stepped into the shop. Letting her temper flare was a surefire way to make herself look more guilty.

  “Could we talk alone?” Dana asked quietly.

  “Ronnie, would you mind watching the counter for a few minutes?” Hilde called. Ronnie said she’d be happy to. Hilde led Dana into the break room and closed the door. She didn’t want Ronnie hearing this. But the news was probably all over town anyway. The shop had been unusually slow today.

  “I don’t know what to say to you,” Dana said.

  Hilde stepped to the coffeepot, fingers trembling as she took two clean glass cups and filled each with coffee. She handed one to Dana, then sat down, ready for a lecture.

  Dana seemed to hesitate before she sat down. Hilde didn’t help her by denying anything. Instead she waited, relieved when Dana finally took a drink of the coffee and seemed to calm down some.

  “How long have we known each other?” Hilde asked.

  Dana looked up from her cup in surprise. “Since you came to town about...six years ago. But you know that.”

  “So for six years we’ve been close friends. Some might even have said best friends.”

  Dana’s eyes suddenly shone with tears.

  “Would you have said you knew me well?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Remember that spider in my kitchen that time? I couldn’t squish it. You had to do it.”

  “You can’t compare killing a spider to—”

  “Dana, what if Dee wasn’t your cousin?”

  “That’s ridiculous because she is my cousin.”

  Hilde wasn’t going to argue that. Not right now anyway. “What if she was just some stranger who ended up on your doorstep and things began happening and the next thing you knew you and I were...” She couldn’t bring herself to say where they were. “Would you take a stranger’s word over mine?”

  Dana put down her cup. “She said you would say you didn’t attack her.”

  Hilde sighed and put down her own cup. “That you came here today makes me believe that there is some doubt in your mind. I hope that’s true, because it might save your life.”

  “It’s talk like that, Hilde, that makes me think you’ve lost your mind,” Dana said, getting to her feet. “Why would Dee want to hurt me?”

  “So she could have Hud.”

  Dana shook her head. “Hud loves me.”

  “But if you were gone...”

  Dana reached into her jeans pocket and took out a piece of paper. Hilde recognized it as a sheet from the notepad Dana kept by the phone. “I called around. This is the name of a doctor everyone said was very good.” When Hilde didn’t reach for the note, Dana laid it on the table. “I think you need help, Hilde.” Her voice broke with emotion.

  “She doesn’t just want you out of the way, Dana. Your children will have to go, too.”

  Dana’s gaze came up to meet hers.

  Hilde saw fear. “Trust me. Trust the friendship we had. You’re in trouble. So are your babies.”

  A tear trailed down Dana’s cheek. She brushed at it. “I have to go.” She hurried out, leaving Hilde alone in the break room.

  The moment she heard the bell jangle, Hilde got up, took a plastic bag from the drawer and carefully bagged Dana’s coffee cup.

  “What are you doing?”

  She turned in surprise to find Dana standing in the doorway. She must have started to leave, but then changed her mind.

  “I asked you what you were doing.”

  Hilde knew there was no reason to lie even if she could have thought of one Dana might believe. “I need your DNA to check it against Dee’s.”

  The shocked look on Dana’s face said it all. That and what she said before turning and really leaving this time: “Oh, Hilde.”

  * * *

  COLT DROVE OUT of Tuttle, took the third right and pulled down a narrow two-track toward a stand of live oak. He hadn’t been in the South in years. Oklahoma wasn’t considered the South to people from Georgia or Alabama, but anywhere that cotton grew along the road was the South to him.

  He followed the directions the woman at the grocery and gas station had given him until the road played out, ending in front of a weathered, stooped old house that was much like the elderly woman who came out on the porch.

  He parked and climbed out. Thelma Peters was Richard and Camilla Northland’s aunt on their mother’s side of the family, PJ Harris had told him.

  “Everyone’s called me PJ since I was a girl,” the elderly woman at the store had told him. “Not because it has anything to do with my name, which by the way is Charlotte Elizabeth. No, I got PJ because that’s what I was usually wearing when I would come down here, to this very store, in the morning so my father could make me breakfast. My mother had died when I was a baby, you see. He’d pour me a bowl of cereal, ask me if I wanted berries. I always said no, then he’d pour on some thick cream.” Her eyes had lit at the memory. “I can still taste that cream. Can’t buy anything like it anymore.”

  He’d finally managed to turn her back to Richard and Camilla’s aunt.

  “Thelma Peters. She’s an old maid. I can see where having those two in her house turned her against ev
er having any of her own children.” PJ had studied him again then. “Don’t be surprised if she comes out on her porch with a shotgun. Don’t take it personally. Just make sure she knows you aren’t that no-count nephew of hers. I’d hate to see you get shot.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” he’d promised.

  “I’m here with some good news,” Colt called out now to the elderly old maid holding the shotgun.

  “If you’re preaching the Gospel, I’ve already found the Lord. You wasted your gas coming out here,” she called back.

  “I’m a deputy marshal from Montana,” he called to her. A slight exaggeration at the moment. He saw the change in her as if she was bracing herself for whatever bad news he was bringing. “Your nephew Richard has been killed.”

  Thelma Peters nodded, then took a step back and sat down hard in an old wooden chair on her porch. The barrel end of the shotgun banged against the worn wood flooring at her feet, but she held on to the gun as she motioned him to come closer.

  Colt walked up to the house, shielding his eyes against the sun. The yard was a dust bowl. The weeds that had survived were baked dead. “I’m sorry to bring you the news.”

  She looked up then and, from rheumy but intelligent blue eyes, considered him for a long moment. “You certainly came a long way to give it to me.”

  “I need to ask you about Camilla.”

  Thelma let out a cough of a laugh. “You cross her path, too? Best say your prayers.”

  “I don’t know if I’ve crossed her path or not. Do you happen to have a picture of her?”

  The woman looked at him as if he was crazy. “Not one I keep out, I can tell you that.”

  “I sure would appreciate it if you could find one for me. I’m worried about a family in Montana that this woman has moved in with.”

  She grunted and pushed herself to her feet, using the shotgun like a crutch. “Better step inside. This could take a while.”

  * * *

  WHEN DANA CAME back from town, she was clearly upset.

  “You didn’t go see Hilde,” Dee said, wanting to wring her neck. She’d begged her to stay away from her former friend. “Dana, what were you thinking?”

  Hud, who’d come home to watch the kids while she ran to the store, seconded Dee’s concern.

  “I had to see her,” Dana cried, then shook her head.

  Dee had been so excited when Dana had told her that Hud was coming home to help her watch the children. She knew that neither of them wanted to leave the little darlings with her. She’d made it clear she knew nothing about kids, especially babies.

  But all the time Hud had been home, he’d been so involved with the children that he wasn’t even aware Dee was in the room.

  “I hope you didn’t listen to Hilde’s crazy talk,” Dee said, worried that that was exactly what Dana had done. She’d felt Dana pulling away from her. Worse, Hud was doing the same thing, she feared.

  If only Hilde had just drowned that day under the raft.

  Dee touched her sore black eye. “You’re just lucky you didn’t end up like me.”

  Dana glanced at her, wincing at the sight. Dee had to admit she looked like she’d been run over by a truck. But she’d wanted to make a statement and she had. Dana had been so thankful when she’d dropped the charges against Hilde. Even Hud had seemed relieved when he’d come home that night.

  “It’s worse than I thought,” Dana said and looked at Hud. “I sat down and had a cup of coffee with her at the shop...”

  Dee gritted her teeth in anger. How could Dana do that after seeing what Hilde had done to her cousin?

  “She seemed calm, even rational...” Dana glanced at Dee then back at Hud.

  Dee felt her heart begin to race. Hilde had gotten to Dana. She’d started believing her.

  “Then I got ready to leave, made it as far as the door, thought of something and went back.” She stopped and took a breath. “Hud, she was bagging my coffee cup.”

  Dee let out a silent curse that was like a roar in her ears.

  “I demanded to know what she was doing,” Dana continued now in tears. “She told me she was going to check my DNA against Dee’s. I’m sorry, Dee,” Dana said, turning to her again. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be. Clearly Hilde has had some sort of psychotic episode. How can she think I’m not your cousin? We look so much alike.”

  Dana nodded, still obviously upset.

  “I’d ask who she thought she was going to get to run the tests, but I’m sure Colt is helping her,” Hud said. “I can’t imagine what he’s thinking.”

  “I thought you said he went to Denver to see his brother?” Dee asked.

  “That’s what I heard, but I have my doubts. I can’t see him leaving Hilde alone now. He must be as worried about her as we are.”

  * * *

  THELMA PETERS’S HOUSE was small and cramped. She left him in a threadbare chair in the living room and disappeared into a room at the back. Periodically he would hear a bump or bang.

  He looked around, noticing a picture of Jesus on one wall and a cross on another. A Bible lay open on the table next to his chair. He picked it up, curious what part she’d been reading. She had a passage underlined—Acts 3:19. Repent therefore, and turn again, that your sins may be blotted out.

  “Here is the only one I could find.” Thelma came back into the room with a snapshot clutched in her fingers. “I haven’t seen Camilla in years, so I don’t know what she looks like now. But this is what she looked like at sixteen.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Colt looked down at the photo. His heart sank. The photo was of two people, a young man and a girl with long dark hair. The young man was the same man still at the morgue in Montana—Rick Cameron, aka Richard Northland.

  The girl—was definitely not Dee.

  He told himself it had been a long shot, but now realized how much he’d been counting on Dee being Camilla Northland. Maybe Rick really was her boyfriend. Maybe she didn’t even kill him.

  “This isn’t the woman in Montana,” he told Thelma.

  “Like I said, she was only sixteen. I have no idea what she looks like now.” She took the photograph back. “You look disappointed. You should be thankful the woman in Montana isn’t Camilla. You should be very thankful.”

  “Were she and her brother really that bad?” he had to ask.

  The old woman scoffed. “They killed their parents. Burned them to a crisp. That bad enough for you? They tried to poison me. Camilla pushed me down the stairs once no doubt hoping I would break my neck. I hate to think what they would have done if I’d broken a leg and needed the two of them to take care of me. I finally ran them off.” Still clutching the photo, she sat down in a chair across from him and patted her shotgun. “I’ve always felt guilty about that.” Her gaze came up to meet his. “But I couldn’t have killed them even knowing what I was releasing on the world.”

  He felt a chill at her words as she looked from him to the photograph and seemed startled by what she saw.

  “I grabbed the wrong photograph. This isn’t Camilla. This is that awful girlfriend of Richard’s.” She pushed to her feet, padded out of the room and returned a moment later.

  This time she handed him a photo of Richard and a girl standing on the porch outside. The girl’s face was in shadow, but there was no doubt it was the woman who called herself Dee Anna Justice.

  At sixteen, she already had those dark, soulless eyes.

  * * *

  DEE HAD BEEN WAITING, so she wasn’t surprised when Dana finally asked.

  “I know nothing about your father,” Dana said, as she was making dinner. “Do you have any idea why our families separated all those years ago?”

  Mary and Hank were making a huge mess building a fort in the living
room. The twins were in dual high chairs spreading some awful-looking food all over themselves and anything else within reach.

  Dee moved so she wasn’t in their line of fire. Dana had put her to work chopping vegetables for the salad. Now she stopped to look at the small paring knife in her hand. She tried to remember exactly what she’d told Stacy.

  “I really have no idea,” she said, thinking that if she had to cut up one more cucumber she might start screaming. Hud hadn’t been around all day. Spending “free” time with Dana and the kids was mind-numbing.

  “Can you tell me what your father was like?” Dana asked as she fried chicken in a huge cast-iron skillet on the stove. The hot kitchen smelled of grease. It turned Dee’s stomach.

  “He was secretive,” Dee said, thinking of his daughter. The real Dee Anna had never talked about her family, her father in particular, which had been fine with her because she wasn’t really interested. She liked her roommates to keep to themselves, just share an apartment, not their life stories.

  “Secretive?” Dana said with interest. “And your mother?”

  Dee gave her the same story she’d given Stacy. She had actually met Marietta Justice, so that made it easy.

  “That surprises me. I can’t imagine why my family wouldn’t have been delighted to have Walter marry so well,” Dana said.

  “Maybe they didn’t want him leaving here and they knew that was exactly what was going to happen,” Dee said, as she chopped the last cucumber and dumped it into the salad. The entire topic of Dee Anna’s family bored her. If Dana wanted to hear about an interesting family, Dee could tell her about hers.

  “Tell me more about your side of the family,” Dee said, knowing Dana would jump at the chance. She tuned her out as she ripped up the lettuce the way Dana had showed her and thought about her plan. She felt rushed, but she had no choice. In order to make this happen, she had to move fast.

  Hilde had done a lot of damage, but Dee was sure that after Dana and the kids were gone, Hud would lean on her. Eventually.

  She thought of the man she’d met on the airplane. He was still over on the Yellowstone River for a few more days. All she had to do was pick up the phone and call him. She could walk away from here and never look back. All her instincts told her that was the thing to do.