by B. J Daniels
No such luck. This man was barrel big, his face round and beefy, his look murderous. She swallowed back the scream that rose in her throat, tightening her grip on the broom handle, ready to start swinging.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” the man demanded, stopping halfway up the stairs. His face was enflamed with anger. “You have no business being in this house. You’re trespassing and you’re damned lucky I haven’t called the sheriff.”
“You come one step closer and I won’t be responsible for what I do with this broom.”
They both started at the sound of footfalls behind the man.
“Ben? What are you doing here?” Russell asked from the bottom of the stairs as he looked from the big, angry man to Dulcie and her broom.
“I was just asking this trespasser the same thing,” the man said as he shot Dulcie a withering look. “I’m about to take that broom away from her.”
“I’d reconsider that if I were you, since you’re threatening the owner of this place and could end up in jail yourself,” Russell informed him.
Dulcie loosened her grip on the broom, but didn’t put it down as the man retreated back down the stairs. She followed after a moment to find both men standing in the living room, looking at her with anything but pleasure.
“He says you own the place?” demanded the man Russell had called Ben. “You have any proof of that?”
“I do.”
It took a few moments before the man realized she had no intention of showing it to him.
“And you are…?” she asked.
“Ben Carpenter. I was just driving by.”
Russell raised a brow. She could tell he didn’t like the man.
Ben scowled at Dulcie. “You thinking of moving in here?”
The question was so ludicrous even Russell seemed to have a hard time keeping a straight face.
“I’m not sure of my plans,” she said.
Ben shook his head. “Give it some thought. Your kind don’t last long here.”
Her kind?
Russell tensed, all cordiality gone. “I think you’ve said quite enough, Ben.”
“Yeah?” He looked like he might argue, even throw a few punches, but apparently changed his mind. “I guess I’ll just leave the two of you to whatever it is you’re doing,” he said with a nasty sneer before stomping out the door, angling toward an old pickup parked on the road.
“You just make friends wherever you go,” Russell said, shoving back his hat to grin at her.
“It’s a knack,” she agreed. “Who is he?”
“One of your neighbors. He manages a ranch a few miles down the road in the other direction.”
“So he wasn’t just driving by.”
“Nope,” Russell said, rubbing his jaw thoughtfully as he looked out the door after Ben.
As he turned to her again, she said with a grin, “So he probably wasn’t just driving past like you were.”
He smiled and glanced around. “You find what you were looking for?”
“Who said I was looking for anything?”
He chuckled at that. “Have you had dinner, what they call supper up here?”
She shook her head. “The kitchen’s a mess,” she joked.
“I know a place that cooks up a pretty good steak in town. Unless, of course, you’re one of those vegetarians.”
“Do I look like a woman who can’t handle her beef?”
“No siree, you look like a woman who can handle most anything. But what exactly were you planning to do with that broom?”
JOLENE WAS SURPRISED and delighted when Tinker Horton called to ask her out. She hadn’t expected him back before the weekend.
“I know this is late notice, but I’m in town and I really was hoping you’d be up to having supper with me.”
The thought brightened her day instantly. It had been a terrible day and supper out was always a treat.
“I would love to,” she said with a laugh as she returned the unread short stories to her backpack again. At the rate things were going she wasn’t going to get them read and graded until later tonight.
“Do you mind if we meet in town? I’ve done all the driving I can stand for one day. I’ll make it up to you by taking you to Northern Lights.”
“You’re on. What time?”
They agreed on a time to meet and Jolene headed for the shower to get ready.
She’d met Thomas “Tinker” Horton her first week in Old Town Whitehorse. They’d run into each other at the Whitehorse Community Center when he’d asked her to dance. Tinker traveled from rodeo to rodeo as a bull rider. She got the feeling he didn’t make much money, but that he loved the notoriety since he was famous in this part of the state.
It seemed that he made it back home to Whitehorse more often since they’d met, she thought with a smile.
Tinker was four years older, thirty-three, but he didn’t act it. Nor did she see him as a potential boyfriend. They got along fine and seemed to enjoy each other’s company. But when he was gone, she didn’t miss him and suspected he felt the same way.
Tonight, though, she decided to wear her best dress. It was too fancy for even the Northern Lights, but she was so happy to be getting away from everything for the night, she was going all out.
The dress was the color of autumn leaves. It brought out the reddish highlights in her dark hair. She checked herself in the mirror, pleased. Nothing could ruin this night.
As Jolene went out the door, she grabbed the muffins Midge had brought her. Tinker ate anything when he was on the road. He’d appreciate the muffins and now she’d be able to take Midge’s basket back to her. This was working out well.
As she walked toward her car, she noticed that there was something stuck under the windshield wiper on the driver’s side.
She plucked a small folded sheet of white paper from beneath her wiper. There was just enough light from the overhead farm light to read the crudely written note.
Watch your step.
“YOU CLEAN UP NICE,” Russell said when he picked Dulcie up at her motel.
She smiled. “I could say the same of you.” And just when she thought he couldn’t look more handsome. He wore a pale gray Stetson, a red-checked Western shirt, jeans and boots. While he was dressed much like the first time she’d seen him, there was definitely something different about him tonight.
He looked shy and ill at ease. He didn’t date much, she thought, and she found that charming. So what had made him ask her out, she wondered, amused.
He opened the passenger-side door of his pickup for her, so chivalrous, and went around to slide behind the wheel. She felt as if she was going to her first prom. It gave her an odd, almost old-fashioned feeling.
Country music came on the radio as he started the truck. She was disappointed when he reached over and turned it off.
Whitehorse was hopping tonight and the Northern Lights restaurant was no exception. Dulcie counted a couple dozen pickups parked along the main street. She could hear more country music coming from one of the bars down the street as she and Russell entered the busy restaurant.
It surprised her a little to realize he’d reserved a table for them. But then Russell Corbett didn’t seem like a man who left much to chance.
“So want to tell me what this is really about?” she asked once they were seated and the waitress had taken their orders for two large T-bone steaks, medium rare.
“I wanted a steak?” he said.
She smiled and shook her head.
“I wanted to get to know you better?”
That made her chuckle.
“What if I told you it was a spur-of-the-moment invitation that I regretted the minute I asked?”
She laughed. “That’s more like it.”
He seemed to relax. “I am curious about you.”
“How so?”
“I can’t figure you out. You’re obviously a city girl and yet you’ve got grit. I couldn’t believe it when I saw you with that crowba
r. Not many women would have gone into that house.”
“Confession? I didn’t want to. I almost chickened out.”
“Then why put yourself through it? You can see by looking at that house that it’s not worth anything. Any value is in the land.”
“I wasn’t appraising the place,” she said, looking into his warm, open, handsome face. “It’s hard to explain.”
He seemed to settle into his chair as if he had all night.
There was something about him, a peacefulness, a strength, an old-fashioned integrity and honesty that garnered her trust.
“As I told you, I inherited the property. Where the problem comes in is that my elderly parents, in the years before they both died, insisted I know everything about their estate. They had wanted to make it as painless for me as possible by gifting me as much as they could over the years.”
“They sound like very loving, responsible parents.”
“Exactly. So imagine my surprise when this piece of Montana property comes at me from out of left field.”
“You like baseball?”
She blinked.
“The baseball analogy? I thought you might be a Cubs fan.”
She had to chuckle. “I am. My father took me to many of their games.” She could see by Russell’s smile that he liked her a little better. Being a fellow Cubs fan was all it took?
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your story.”
“That’s just it. There isn’t much more to tell. I inherited the property, apparently from Laura Beaumont, via my parents. I’d never heard of her. Then I find out she was murdered and that she had a daughter. It brought up the obvious questions. Why hadn’t the daughter inherited the property unless she was deceased—or…”
“Or you were the daughter?”
She nodded, glad he was tracking her thoughts.
“Is that possible?” he asked.
“Apparently not, since little Angel Beaumont was found drowned in the creek after she went missing following her mother’s death. So how did I inherit property at the age of four from a woman I’ve never heard of? And why didn’t my parents ever mention it? All I can figure is that there is a connection between me and Laura Beaumont. But what is it and why would my parents keep this from me?”
He shook his head and waited as if he knew there was more.
Dulcie drew out the photograph and handed it across to him. “To make things worse, I found this in the house today. I looked just like the girl in the photo at that age.”
He studied the photo, then her and handed it back. “Is it possible this girl is related to you?”
She shrugged. “I used to have an imaginary friend. I told everyone she was my little sister. I called her Angel.” Dulcie looked over at him, her gaze locking with his as she felt a shudder quake through her. “Just another coincidence? Or is it possible that my whole life is a lie?”
JOLENE TRIED TO FORGET about the stupid note she’d found on her car. Midge had probably put it there.
Except it sounded…threatening. But would she have found it threatening if she wasn’t secretly getting the murder story?
Midge had warned her not to go digging around in Laura Beaumont’s murder. Why would she care unless there was something to find? And what business was it of Midge’s what Jolene did?
Jolene thought back to when she’d tried to question the members of the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. She recalled the way Ella Cavanaugh had looked at Pearl, as if afraid to say something she shouldn’t.
Jolene couldn’t believe what she was thinking as she drove toward Whitehorse. That the whole community might be involved in keeping a secret about the murder. Did they know who killed Laura and had been protecting that person for the past twenty-four years?
That seemed even more far-fetched. Maybe it was just as Midge had said, an unpleasant part of the area’s history that the community didn’t want dug up. So why didn’t Jolene believe that?
Like the books she loved to read, she knew a good mystery when she found one. She also understood that in any good mystery there were clues that needed to be uncovered. In this case, finding those clues meant digging into the murder even further.
Word had gotten out much too quickly in this isolated, small community that she’d been asking about the murder. Anything more she did would be known and even possibly jeopardize her job.
But as she hit the outskirts of Whitehorse, she was thinking about the next segment of the story—and planning to pick up the assignments herself on Thursday in the hope of finding out where the murder story was coming from.
What worried her most was why someone had chosen her to tell their story to—true or not. She couldn’t shake off the feeling that the writer was feeding her information about the murder for a reason other than a critique of the writing.
But why not give the information to the sheriff if the author knew something? Unless the story was actually a confession…
Another thought struck her. What if the author was tired of being part of the conspiracy and had decided to tell an outsider the truth, that outsider being someone safe and trustworthy like, say, the schoolteacher?
Jolene desperately wanted to talk to someone about the murder story and bounce her theories off them. But the moment she saw Tinker’s face, she knew she wasn’t going to mention it to him.
“Hi, beautiful,” he said, brushing her cheek with a kiss. “You look good enough to eat.”
She smiled. “I take it the rodeos went well?” He was always in a good mood when he won the bigger purses.
“Well enough to buy you the best meal this side of Miles City.”
“You’re on, big spender,” she said as she took his arm and let him lead her toward the restaurant.
IT STARTLED DULCIE WHEN Russell reached across the table and covered her hand.
“I can see this has you upset,” he said. “But aren’t you jumping to conclusions without any real basis? A lot of kids resemble each other and aren’t related.”
“Women have a God-given right to jump to conclusions without any basis. Comes with the genes,” she joked, hiding how serious this was for her.
He shook his head. “Not you.”
“And you base that on…?”
“Being around you a total of five minutes.”
She smiled. “Normally, you would be right. But in this case given these feelings I keep having—” She had to swallow the lump in her throat. It was one thing to let her mind run off in this direction, it was another to voice her suspicions.
“What feelings?” he asked as if seeing how upset this had her.
“When I first saw the house, actually when I saw the yellow curtains in the upstairs window, I had this sense of having been there before. In some other areas of the house, I got a horrible feeling of dread, followed almost at once by an irrational fear.”
He was studying her openly.
“I heard that Laura Beaumont’s daughter might have found her body,” Dulcie said, needing desperately to voice her worse fears. “What if she saw the killer?”
She had to take a sip of her wine to steady herself. She hadn’t even told Renada, her best friend, and here she was baring her soul to this cowboy she’d just met.
“That’s a lot of what ifs,” Russell said.
“There must have been evidence taken from the murder scene,” she said after a moment. “If there is any DNA to test…”
“You’re that afraid that you’re Angel Beaumont?”
“It’s the only thing that makes any sense. You understand now why I have to find out the truth one way or the other?”
He squeezed her hand. “I do. But if you’re right, then I’m sure your parents had a good reason for not telling you about this, and that it was done out of love.”
Tears burned her eyes at his kindness and she had to look away not to cry. A young couple had just come in the door. The cowboy was good-looking in a cocky, got-it-all-going-on kind of way. But it was the woman who caught Dulci
e’s eye. She was tall and pretty with a mane of chestnut hair. There was something familiar about her…
“There has to be a simple explanation that will clear this whole thing up.”
“Thank you,” Dulcie said to Russell as she turned back to him and pulled herself together. “I just needed to say all of that out loud. I feel better.”
He grinned at her. “I’m glad I could help.”
Their salads arrived just then and they lost themselves in the food and talking about other things. She asked about Texas and Whitehorse. He asked about Chicago and the Cubs games.
The evening passed in a pleasant blur of good food and equally good conversation. There was a lot more to Russell Corbett than met the eye—and in his case, that was saying a lot.
As they were leaving, she again noticed the young woman whom she’d seen with the cocky cowboy. As Dulcie passed their table on the way out of the restaurant, the woman looked up, a smile coming automatically to her lips, then a look of recognition and surprise.
That’s when it came to Dulcie why the woman had looked so familiar. She was the one Dulcie had run into coming out of the newspaper office—the one who’d dropped the copy of the article about the murder investigation.
What surprised Dulcie was the fear in the young woman’s face at seeing her again.
Chapter Seven
Russell noticed the change in Dulcie as they were leaving the restaurant. “Anything wrong?”
“That young couple we passed as we were leaving, do you know them?”
He’d seen Dulcie hesitate at that last table. “That’s Tinker. You probably don’t follow rodeo. Thomas ‘Tinker’ Horton’s a pretty famous bull rider in these parts.”
“I was more interested in the woman with him,” Dulcie said, surprising him. Most women would have been more interested in Tinker.
“That’s the new schoolteacher in Old Town Whitehorse, Jolene Stevens.”
“Not that tiny school I saw next to the community center?”
