by B. J Daniels
He grinned at her obvious surprise as he opened his truck door for her. “It’s your old-fashioned one-room schoolhouse. I think I heard she has five students this year, grades three through eight.”
“I had no idea,” Dulcie said as he slid behind the wheel. “I thought one-room schools were a thing of the past. So she drives to and from Whitehorse every day?”
“The community provides her with a house in Old Town. It’s that cute little white one past the center and down the hill a ways. Why all the questions about the schoolteacher?”
Dulcie shrugged. “I ran into her the other day in Whitehorse. I was just curious who she was.”
He cut his eyes to her, knowing there was more to it.
She gave him an innocent look. “What else could it be?”
His question exactly. Dulcie looked out the side window as they drove to the motel, clearly not going to tell him what her real interest was in Jolene Stevens.
“You never told me what you do,” he said as he pulled up in front of her motel room.
“Do?”
“For work. You do work, don’t you?”
“Why? You think I have so much money I don’t have to work?”
“I’ve heard tell of such a thing.” He hadn’t had to work for financial reasons his entire life, thanks to the Corbett wealth, but he thought everyone needed a job, a goal, something to do.
“I owned a business with a friend. We just sold it. I’m looking around for something else to keep me out of trouble.”
“No small order that,” he said as he got out to open her door. “I enjoyed dinner, especially watching you eat that steak. You are a woman after my own heart,” he said as she stepped out into the starlight.
“Oh?” She cocked her head, grinning at him.
“You aren’t flirting with me, are you?”
Her soft laugh was all music. “Would that be so bad?”
No, he thought, unless he was foolish enough to lose his heart to this city girl. But there was no chance of that. Especially if he didn’t make the mistake of kissing her under the starlight.
Damn, but she was asking for it though.
TINKER GREW QUIET AS HE walked Jolene to her car. She hadn’t been able to get a word in edgewise all during dinner. Tinker did love to talk about himself.
But with the night winding down, she thought this might be the perfect time to ask if he remembered the murder. “So you’ve lived here in Whitehorse your whole life.”
“I don’t like to think about it,” Tinker joked as he leaned against her car and grinned at her. “I just come home now to see you.”
“You don’t have family here?” she asked, surprised.
“My mom,” he said. “She remarried when I was little. My stepfather and I don’t get along. But she loves the bastard so…” He straightened, clearly not wanting to talk about it.
“Do you remember a murder twenty-four years ago outside of Old Town Whitehorse?” she blurted out.
Tinker looked surprised, then annoyed. “Why ask me?”
She wished she hadn’t. For some reason the question had ruined Tinker’s good mood. “It’s nothing. Just something I was curious about.”
He was shaking his head, clearly angry. “That’s a damned odd thing to be curious about.”
“It’s just that I thought you might have known the daughter, Angel Beaumont. She would have been younger than you…”
“Did someone tell you I knew her?” he demanded.
“No, I just—”
“Just heard that my stepfather was the ranch manager on the Atkinson place across the creek,” he said angrily. “Well, he got fired because of Laura Beaumont, okay? We had to move to a run-down old place and my mother…” He shook his head, clearly agitated now. “I don’t know what some busybodies have been telling you—”
“No one’s been telling me anything.”
He glared at her. “Why are you digging up this old crap after all this time?”
She shook her head, at a loss since she couldn’t tell him about the murder story, especially now. “I’m sorry. I—”
“Oh, that’s right, you’ve got Mace in your class.”
Mace Carpenter? Now she really was confused. “Wait a minute, Ben Carpenter is your stepfather?”
“As if you didn’t know that.”
“I didn’t. I swear.” Ronda Carpenter was Tinker’s mother?
He looked away and when his gaze returned to her, there was a coldness to it. “I knew Angel, okay? I felt sorry for her. Her mother was a tramp who didn’t pay any attention to her. I’d already lived through my mother’s divorce and her remarrying Ben. I could relate so I tried to watch out for the kid.”
She didn’t know what to say. Tinker was the friend from the murder story?
“Angel was a sweet little girl. She didn’t stand a chance though. I wasn’t surprised when her mother got herself murdered and Angel…” He shook his head again. “I don’t like talking about any of this.”
“I’m sorry. I really had no idea.” She should have, though, given how small the community was.
He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got to go.”
“Thanks for supper.”
“Sure.” He started to step away, but turned back. “I wouldn’t go talking to anyone else about this if I were you. People around here don’t like you digging up bad memories.” He left her standing beside her car, feeling awful for spoiling their evening out.
But at least now she knew. Tinker had to be the friend in the murder story. He would have been nine, Angel four or five. Why else would he have been so upset?
Still she couldn’t help but feel strange about him telling her not to talk to anyone else about it.
First the Whitehorse Sewing Circle, then Midge, now Tinker. Her conspiracy theory raised its ugly head again. Who were they all trying to protect?
RUSSELL WALKED DULCIE to her motel-room door under a canopy of starlight and just a sliver of a moon. There was no one around, the hot night breathlessly silent.
She made the mistake of looking over at him, their gazes locking. “Thank you, Russell, for—”
He reached for her, bunching a handful of her wild mane at her nape in his fist as he pulled her to him. Her brown eyes fired with a heat he hadn’t seen for a long time—even longer, felt.
Her lips parted. He dropped his mouth over hers, felt the soft remnants of a smile disappear as he kissed her—and she kissed him back.
He encircled her with his arms, holding her as the kiss ended. Slowly, he drew back to look into her eyes. Her gaze was as dark as the night. It stirred a fire in him, sparking a yearning that had lain dormant far too long.
If only it had been with some other woman…any other woman.
He let go of her and started to open his mouth to speak.
“If you say you’re sorry for kissing me so help me I’ll slug you,” Dulcie said, narrowing her eyes at him.
He laughed because that’s exactly what he’d been about to do. He brushed a lock of her hair back from her cheek with his thumb. “What will you do now?”
“Go to bed.”
“No, I mean—”
“I know what you mean.” She looked up toward the heavens. “I never make decisions at night, especially after a big steak and—” she lowered her gaze to him “—an amazing kiss. Can’t trust your judgment at times like that.”
He smiled. “You’re a smart woman.”
“Aren’t I, though? Good night, Russ. Sweet dreams.” She turned and went inside.
He stood smiling after her, then walked to his truck. It wasn’t until he was almost to the ranch that he realized he hadn’t made an offer on her land. He hadn’t even broached the subject.
But then it wasn’t good to make a decision after a big steak and an amazing kiss, now, was it?
WHEN JOLENE STARTED toward school the next morning, she noticed a pickup parked out front and feared there was a problem with one of her students.
The sc
hoolhouse door was propped open. As she approached it, she wondered who in the community had a key besides her.
Titus Cavanaugh was sitting behind her desk, leaning back, eyes closed. For a moment she thought he was asleep.
Titus, a large, white-haired man with a powerful voice and a strong handshake, was pretty much in charge of everything in Old Town Whitehorse.
He opened his eyes as she approached and she saw that he hadn’t been sleeping. “Hello.” He smiled broadly. “I just came by before class to see how you were doing.”
“Fine, I think,” she said, sliding into one of her students’ chairs.
“Good.” He crossed his arms and leaned over her desk to look at her. “No trouble with that Carpenter boy?”
She shook her head. “Should I be having trouble with him?”
Titus laughed. “The last teacher found him…temperamental.”
Jolene debated how much to say. “I did wonder if he might not have some issues at home.”
“Indeed,” Titus said with a nod of his head. “How about his father? The last teacher also had trouble with him.”
“Ben stopped by yesterday to ask how his son was doing in school. I told him Mace was doing fine.”
“Good.” Titus rose to his feet. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t having any problems. Ben can be kind of a bully. If you have any trouble with him, you let me know.” His blue eyes glinted as he smiled. “It sounds as if you’re doing a fine job. Oh, by the way, the door was open when I arrived.”
“I locked it last night. At least I would have sworn I did.” Jolene worried that she’d been distracted and might not have locked it.
“I suppose there could be some keys floating around from former teachers,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. No harm done. It’s not like there is much to steal.”
She walked Titus out. Back at her desk, she noticed that one of the drawers was partially open. Had she left it like that?
Opening the drawer, she glanced at the short stories she’d already read and graded. Someone had gone through the stack.
WHEN DULCIE OPENED THE door to her motel room the next morning, she found Russell Corbett leaning against his pickup, waiting for her. She was instantly reminded of their kiss and felt a pleasurable warmth flow through her bloodstream.
“How do you feel about breakfast?”
She smiled, surprised how glad she was to see him. Last night, she hadn’t told him why she was asking questions about the schoolteacher because she’d seen how scared the teacher had been at seeing her again. Whatever it was about, she felt she needed to keep the teacher’s secret.
Nor was she going to talk about her problems. She only had a few more days here and she wanted them to be pleasant. Russell Corbett made them pleasant.
“I’m for breakfast.”
“Good, because I worked up an appetite standing around out here,” he said, opening her door.
“You could have just knocked on my door,” she said as she slipped into the passenger seat.
“And disturb your sleep? I couldn’t chance that you’re one of those people who’s crabby if she doesn’t get enough sleep,” he said, starting the engine.
She smiled to herself as she studied him, his big hands on the wheel, and with that almost arrogant confidence about him that drew her in spite of herself.
“Okay,” she said later, after she’d put away a large slice of ham, two eggs, hash browns and toast. “Let’s hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“Two meals, compliments and all this chivalry? What’s this about?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Sure you do. This is not how you spend your mornings or your evenings.” She reached for his hand, turning it over to expose the thick callouses. “This time of the morning you’d be working if it wasn’t for me. So why aren’t you? I saw the look on your face. You were upset to see the way I was dressed this morning. If this is about keeping me away from that house—”
“Now that you mention it,” he said, frowning as he pulled his hand back. “I don’t like the idea of you going back there by yourself.”
“That’s sweet, but what does your boss say about you missing work to babysit me?”
He hesitated just a little too long.
“What?”
“I wasn’t completely honest with you about my job. Trails West Ranch is a family-owned operation.”
“And you’re one of the family.” She couldn’t be angry with him, given that she hadn’t originally been completely honest about the businesses she’d started with Renada.
“We’re interested in buying your property if you decide to sell it.”
“So that’s it.” What had she thought? That he might be interested in her?
“Not entirely,” he said, but she was already on her feet.
“You’re more than welcome to make an offer when I sell the land. I’ll let you know. Thanks for breakfast. No, please, stay and enjoy your coffee. I’d prefer to walk.”
“Dulcie—”
The door slammed behind her. “Handled that well,” she muttered under her breath, angry with herself for making it so obvious how much that had hurt.
JOLENE COLLECTED THE short-story assignments herself, counting them as she went. She hadn’t gotten much sleep last night. Her thoughts kept circling around her conspiracy theory about Laura Beaumont’s murder.
Nor did it help to find Titus waiting for her this morning after someone had been in the schoolhouse and gone through the drawer with the stories in it.
When Jolene had gotten back to Old Town Whitehorse last night, she’d been spooked remembering the note she’d found earlier that night on her windshield. She’d gone through her small house, checking all the windows and doors to make sure they were locked and the closets were free of any intruders.
It had felt silly and yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that all this was about more than some aspiring author using her for a free critique of his or her work.
This morning she’d finally admitted her worse fear—that Laura Beaumont’s killer had resurfaced, if he’d ever left to begin with, and now he was writing his story just for her.
Suddenly she stopped in the middle of her classroom and counted the short-story assignments she’d collected. There were only five.
She counted them again. Just as she’d feared, the murder story wasn’t among them.
“Don’t you want that one?” asked her third-grader, Amy Brooks.
Jolene turned and looked at the girl. Amy was pointing at the corner of a table in the back of the classroom where stapled-together papers were lying on it, facedown.
“Does anyone know who left this here?” she asked her class, glancing at each of the five. Blank faces stared back at her. “Has it been here every time you collected the stories?” she asked her students.
Amy nodded. “Isn’t it from your other student?”
“My other student?” Jolene repeated.
“Don’t you have one who can’t come to class and sends things in?” she asked. “You know, like an online student?”
“A ghost student,” her fifth-grader brother, Thad, said with a laugh.
“Yeah, ooooooo,” Luke chimed in. “Ghosts.”
“All right, that’s enough. It’s Thursday so that means we have one more day of writing the middle of the story and then you will have the weekend to complete the end.”
There was a groan from the two fifth-graders.
“You’re about to wind up your story. What else do you need to tell your reader before the ending? That’s what you should think about when you write tonight.”
She picked up the pages from the small desk at the back and turned them over. More of the murder story. She felt her pulse quicken with both relief—and dread. Monday it would end.
But how?
THE SEARING WIND was a demon moving over the lifeless land. With no sign of rain in the forecast, the tension had grown until it was like a wire
strung too tightly. Everyone waited, knowing it was just a matter of time before something snapped.
Among the farmers and ranchers there was a growing sense of panic. The men talked among themselves in quiet desperation. The women tried to keep the children from irritating their fathers.
A silent fear had settled in. If it didn’t rain soon, there would be no crops, no money. They had been through hard times before, but this time might be the final straw that broke the camel’s back.
While she fanned herself and watched the road or slogged through chores that couldn’t be put off, the rest of the community hung on each blistering breath and prayed and cursed and worried.
Not that she was immune to the growing strain in the country and people around her. She was part of it, this pressure that pushed some to the edge, for she had grown bored and restless. Her lover had to sense it and feel another kind of quiet desperation.
The hottest day that spring, she lifted her head as if sniffing the air. An old pickup clattered up the road, the metal pipes he carried in the back humming like a siren call. Did he glimpse her standing at her bedroom window, lifting her long, richly burnished hair from her slim neck?
Or did he first see her on her porch scantily dressed one night as she searched for a cool breeze?
In the days that followed when he tried to work his magic in the pasture near her farmhouse, he watched both the sky and the woman.
How different things might have been if the rainmaker had resisted her. Or if the rain hadn’t come too late.
How lucky though that the little girl had a friend she met at the creek. He was older, one of those lost souls who had seen too much in his young life and expected to see much worse before it was over.
He liked the girl, felt protective of her. He watched the farmhouse and he knew what went on there. That’s why on that horribly hot day he lured the little girl away from the house. Not to help the killer, but to save his friend.
If only he could have kept her from going back to the house, from finding her mother like that, from seeing the killer—and the killer seeing her.
“I TAKE IT YOU DIDN’T HAVE any better luck this morning than you did last night?” Grayson Corbett asked as Russell stalked into the main house, scowling.
