Corralled

by B. J Daniels

  “Won’t someone miss you?”

  “I really doubt it.” She moved her food around her plate, pretending to still be interested in eating, and fortunately he let the subject drop. As soon as she could, she excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she returned, Logan was up at the counter paying for their meal.

  The girl at the counter was staring at her again as if it wouldn’t take much to place where she knew her from. She had to get that stupid song off her phone.

  Blythe glanced toward the booth. She couldn’t see the scrap of notepaper. Nor could she get down on her hands and knees to look for it without raising all kinds of questions.

  Not to worry, she assured herself. The note would get swept out with the garbage tonight. What had she been thinking hanging on to it anyway?

  That was just it. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d just been running for her life.

  BUFORD CAUGHT JETT MAKING a call on his cell. “Hey, I don’t know who you’re trying to call, but don’t. You’ll get a chance to call your lawyer, if I decide to arrest you.”

  “Arrest me?” Jett said pocketing his phone. “I didn’t kill him.”

  Buford heard a noise from down a long hallway toward the back of the house. He turned to see three women headed toward the sunken living room—and the murder scene.

  He moved quickly to cut them off as the tall blonde in front glanced at his uniform and asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I’m Sheriff Buford Olson,” he said introducing himself and shielding the woman from Martin Sanderson’s body. “Where did the three of you come from?”

  “The guesthouse out back,” the blonde said frowning. “Where’s Martin?”

  “I need to speak to each of you.” Buford turned to the club’s general manager, amazed Kevin and his security force hadn’t thought to search the house, let alone the guesthouse out back. “Kevin, can you suggest a place I can speak with these women?”

  “Mr. Sanderson’s library. Or perhaps his office?”

  The sheriff motioned for Kevin to lead the way. They backtracked down the hallway toward the back of the huge house, the same way the women had come. Buford left the general manager in the plush library with instructions to say nothing to the other two women, while he took the blonde across the hall to Sanderson’s office.

  “What is this about?” she wanted to know.

  “If you would have a seat,” he said. “I need to ask you a few questions, beginning with your name.”

  She sat down reluctantly and looked around as if searching for something. At his puzzled frown, she said, “I was hoping there would be an ashtray in here.” She pulled out a pack of cigarettes, seemed to think better of it and put them back into her jacket pocket.

  Buford studied her as she did so. She said her name was Loretta Danvers, aka T-Top because of a hairdo she’d had ten years ago when she played in the band Tough as Nails. She was thirty-something, tall, thin and bleached blond. In her face was etched the story of a hard life.

  “So what’s this about?” she asked again.

  “Martin Sanderson is dead,” he said and watched her reaction.

  She laughed. “Isn’t that the way my luck goes? So the reunion tour is off? Or was it ever really on?”

  “The reunion tour?”

  “He was putting our old band together for a reunion tour. At least that’s what he said.” She pulled out her cigarettes, shook one out and lit it with a cheap lighter. “Guess he won’t care if I smoke then, will he.” She took a drag, held it in her lungs for a long moment and then released a cloud of smoke out of the corner of her mouth away from him. “With JJ onboard, we could have finally made some money. I knew it was too good to be true. So who killed him?”

  “Do you know someone who wanted him dead?”

  She laughed again. “Who didn’t want him dead?”

  You, apparently, Buford thought, since with Sanderson gone, so apparently was any chance of a reunion tour.

  LOGAN DIDN’T START HAVING real misgivings until after Blythe’s phone call. He hadn’t even realized that she’d brought her cell phone until it had gone off. It wasn’t until then that he’d recalled that she’d said she would have someone pick up the car she’d left beside Flathead Lake, but he hadn’t seen her call anyone. In fact, he’d gotten the impression when the phone began to play that song that she hadn’t even remembered that she had the phone with her.

  Who had been calling? Someone she hadn’t been interested in talking to. Even the ring tone with that pop-rock-sounding song didn’t seem like her. Was it even her phone?

  He’d realized then too that Blythe hadn’t only left an expensive sports car convertible behind. She’d apparently left her purse, as well. What woman left behind her purse in a convertible beside the road? Or had she left it at the Grizzly Club?

  After recalling the way she’d come flying out of club, he couldn’t shake the feeling that maybe she wasn’t as freewheeling as he’d originally thought—and instead was running from something serious. What did he really know about this woman he was taking back to Whitehorse with him?

  Every time he’d started to ask her anything personal, she’d avoided answering one way or another. When he’d seen her reach for her cell phone, he’d noticed that she’d dropped something under the booth. He saw her look for it, then, as if changing her mind, go to the restroom. He had waited until the door closed behind her before he’d retrieved what she’d dropped.

  It was nothing more than a crumpled scrap of paper from a yellow sticky notepad. He felt foolish for picking it up from under the booth and, as the waitress came by to clear the table, he’d hastily pocketed it without even looking to see if anything was written on it.

  He’d been at the counter paying for the meal when Blythe had come out of the restroom. He saw her glance toward the booth. No, glance down as if looking under the booth to see what she’d dropped? Or hoping to retrieve it?

  The woman intrigued him. Not a bad thing, he told himself as they left the café and climbed back on his motorcycle. He’d take her to Whitehorse and, if he had to, he’d buy her a bus ticket to wherever she needed to go. All his instincts told him that she needed to get away from something and he was happy to oblige. Chisholm men were suckers for women in trouble.

  As she wrapped her arms around him and leaned into his back, he started the motor and took off. He tried to relax as the country opened. He felt as if he could breathe again. Whatever was up with this woman, he would deal with it when the time came.

  A few hours later when he crossed into Whitehorse County, he’d forgotten about the scrap of paper in his pocket. He was too busy breathing a sigh of relief. He liked leaving, but there was nothing like coming home.

  He breezed into the small Western town, thinking it would be a mistake to take her out to the house until they’d talked. At the very least, shouldn’t he know her last name? He had always preferred not to take a woman to his house. Actually, he’d never met one he liked well enough to take home.

  It didn’t take but a few minutes to cruise down the main drag of Whitehorse. The town had been built up along the railroad line more than a hundred years ago. He waved at a few people he knew, the late afternoon sun throwing dark shadows across the buildings. He pulled into a space in front of the Whitehorse Bar and cut the engine.

  “Could we just go to your house?” she asked without getting off the bike.

  He looked at her over his shoulder. She had the palest blue eyes he’d ever seen. There was something vast about them. But it was the pain he saw just below the cool blue surface that took hold of him and wouldn’t let go.

  “You sure about this?” he asked.

  She held his gaze and nodded. “Haven’t you ever just needed to step out of your life for a while and take a chance?”

  He smiled at that. Born a cowboy, riding a horse before he could walk, and now astride a Harley with a woman he probably shouldn’t have been with. “Yeah, I get that.”

  She smiled bac
k. “I had a feeling you might.”

  All his plans to get the truth out of her evaporated like a warm summer rain on hot pavement. He started the bike, flipped a U-turn in the middle of the street and headed out of town, hoping he wasn’t making his worst mistake yet.

  BUFORD ASKED FORMER DRUMMER Loretta Danvers to return to the guesthouse for the time being until he could talk to the others. Then he called in the next woman.

  “Which one are you?” he asked the plump redhead.

  Bets turned out to be Betsy Harper. He quickly found out that she’d played the keyboard in the former all-girl band and hadn’t been that sorry when the band broke up. Now, the married mother of three said she played the organ at church and kept busy with her sons’ many activities.

  She looked relieved more than surprised when he told her that Martin Sanderson was dead.

  “Then there isn’t going to be a reunion tour,” she said nodding. “I can’t say I’m sorry about that. I was dreading being away from my family.”

  Both women had mentioned the tour. “You don’t seem upset by Mr. Sanderson’s death,” Buford said, surprised since of the three, Betsy Harper had a more caring look about her.

  “I feel terrible about that,” she said. “But Martin wasn’t a nice man.”

  She didn’t ask how he’d died, nor did she offer any suggestions on who would want him dead. Her only question was when she would be able to return to her husband and kids.

  Buford sent her back to the guesthouse and brought in Karen “Caro” Chandler, former guitarist and singer.

  She was a slim brunette with large soft brown eyes. She was the only one who looked upset when he told her that Martin Sanderson was dead.

  “How did he die?” she asked, sounding worried.

  “He was shot.”

  She shuddered. “Do you know who…?”

  “Not yet. It’s possible he killed himself.”

  She looked so relieved he questioned her about it. “I was just worried that JJ might have…done something to him.”

  The elusive JJ. “Why would you say that?” he asked.

  “Everyone in the business knew she was trying to get out of her contract.”

  The business being the music business, he guessed.

  “Then there were those accidents onstage during her most recent road tour,” Karen said. “Martin made it all sound like it was a publicity stunt, but I saw JJ interviewed on television. She looked genuinely scared. I was worried about her.”

  “You kept in touch with her over the ten years since the band broke up?”

  “No,” she said quickly with a shake of her head. “I’m sure the others told you that we didn’t part on the best of terms. The band broke up shortly after JJ left. She was obviously the talent behind it.”

  Both Loretta and Betsy had made it clear they hadn’t been in contact with JJ since the breakup, either.

  “Not that I blamed JJ,” she said quickly. “Who wouldn’t have jumped at an opportunity like that if Martin Sanderson had offered it to them?”

  BUFORD SENT KAREN TO THE guesthouse after the interview. All three had claimed the same thing. They’d all arrived by taxi together and had been together the entire time—except for when they’d gone into separate rooms in the guesthouse to sleep.

  They said Martin had told them to relax and take advantage of the club’s facilities. He would meet with them the next afternoon at two. He had said he had other business to take care of this morning and didn’t wish to be disturbed.

  All said they had come to Montana because Martin Sanderson was paying their expenses and promising them a reunion tour of their former band.

  “What about this morning?” the sheriff had asked each of them. They had gone to bed early, had breakfast in the guest quarters and hadn’t heard a sound coming from the main house.

  The blonde, Loretta, said she’d been the first one down to breakfast but that she’d heard the showers running in both rooms as she’d passed. The other two, Betsy and Karen, had come down shortly thereafter.

  The three hadn’t been apart except to go to the bathroom since then.

  Buford figured any one of them could have sneaked out to go to the main house and wasn’t ruling any of them out if Martin Sanderson’s death was found to be a homicide.

  “Where is the other member of your former band?” Buford asked and checked his list. “Luca.”

  “Dead,” the blonde said. “Talk about bad luck. Stepped out in front of a bus.”

  “How does Jett fit in?” he’d asked Betsy.

  “Didn’t he tell you? He used to hang around the band, flirting with all of us, but in the end, he left with JJ when she left the band. As far as I know, they’re still together. At least according to the tabloids I see at the grocery checkout. I don’t read them, mind you.”

  All of them swore they hadn’t seen JJ and claimed they weren’t even aware that she had arrived yet. When he’d checked the other rooms of the house, he found a guest room at the far end of the house where someone had obviously spent the night. The room was far enough away from the living room that Buford suspected a gunshot couldn’t be heard.

  He waited until the coroner and crime scene techs took over before he interviewed Jett Atkins. By then, Jett had had enough to drink that he was feeling no pain.

  “So did one of them confess?” he asked with a laugh. “I didn’t think so. They know who killed Martin. JJ.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Jett looked shocked. “It’s been in all the trades for months. JJ wanted out of her contract. Martin refused. We all knew it was coming to a head. Why else would he threaten to put her old band back together?”

  “Threaten? I thought he flew everyone up here to make arrangements for the tour,” the sheriff said.

  Jett howled with laughter. “There is no way JJ would ever have agreed to that. No, he was just trying to bring her back in line. Those women hate JJ. She not only broke up the band, she also became successful. I would imagine JJ went ballistic when Martin told her that either she played ball or he would force her into doing a reunion tour with women who would have stabbed her in the back just as quickly as looked at her.”

  “Martin Sanderson could make her do that?”

  “He owned her. He could do anything he wanted. The only way she could get out of that contract was to die. Or,” Jett added with a grin. “Kill Martin.”

  “Do you think this JJ knew that Martin had already flown the band members to Montana?” Buford asked. All except Luca, whoever she had been.

  “Doubt it, since apparently he had them staying in a separate guest house,” Jett said. “I can’t say I blame JJ for killing him. He really was a bastard.”

  “What about you?” Buford asked.

  “What about me?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Martin invited me.” He grinned. “More leverage. I’m sure he planned to leak it to the press. He wanted it to look like JJ and I were back together.”

  “You weren’t?”

  He shook his head. “It was just a publicity stunt. Martin loved doing them. But JJ and I would have had to go along with it, since he held our contracts.”