by Adrianne Lee
Strange. Three days ago, Gram, I couldn’t have imagined myself with any man but Tim. Never, ever a man like Jack Starett, Jr. Maybe in my fantasies. But not in reality.
She glanced over at his arresting profile and her breath caught. He was the opposite of Tim in so many ways, obvious ways, subtle ways. Yet, since the first draft of her first historical romance—forever banished to a top shelf of her office closet in Seattle—he was the hero she’d written in every book.
But how did Jack feel about her? Should she tell him she’d broken off her engagement with Tim? That it was him she wanted? Or would that merely embarrass them both?
She considered the night before last, the night she’d thrown herself at him. Oh, sure, he’d responded. Passionately. What healthy heterosexual male wouldn’t have? But his rejection still stung, and her battered heart ached with the realization that it was quite possible Jack’s main interest in her was her ability to bring his father’s murderer to justice, to end his own obsession.
He turned and looked at her. Andy blinked and glanced away.
Jack swallowed hard. Although he’d tried reining in the desire that coursed through his veins with every glance in Andy’s direction, it resisted control. He felt as skittish as a wild stallion. Deliberately, he focused his attention on the countryside whizzing by, but the ugliness of it stirred a different passion.
If only it was raining, or dark. Anything that would hide the seemingly endless slag piles bordering the road—grotesque reminders of the strip mining that was once so popular in this area of Montana. The practice had gnawed away the rolling hillsides and now blocked from view what remained of the natural beauty.
And this area of Montana was beautiful.
The thought gave him an idea. “You did say you could ride a horse, didn’t you?”
The rooftops of Alder Gulch appeared ahead. Andy’s stomach lurched and she gave Jack a tight smile, thinking it odd that she recalled earlier memories, but couldn’t evoke the face of the man who’d killed her parents. “Daddy had me riding at age three.”
“And since then?”
“Gram didn’t like it much, but all through my teens I spent as much time as possible at her friend Charlie’s farm, riding one of his big old geldings. Why?”
The more he thought about it, the more Jack liked his idea. With a horse to concentrate on, Andy would feel less pressured to remember, and on horseback, he knew they’d be more mobile, could—if the need arose—more easily elude any pursuer. “I thought we’d ride out to your old house. Take a picnic lunch.”
Andy brightened. “Yeah, why not?”
But her expression took on a false cheeriness as they drove along Main Street. Jack, too, felt tense. He kept his eyes peeled for their suspects, half hoping Nightmare Man would see him with Andy and know the opposition he faced if he wanted her.
Sheriff Birdsill was standing on the porch of Andy’s cabin as she and Jack carried their luggage up the rise. The sheriff looked disturbed, even more feral than yesterday. One unhappy leopard. The aroma of fried bacon clung to his clothing. “I hoped you hadn’t skipped town.”
Jack’s pulse picked up a beat. “What’s happened, Sheriff?”
Birdsill flicked the bill of his cap with his thumb and forefinger, popping it up and away from his tawny eyebrows. Aggravation glinted in his eyes. “The bullet that killed Virgil Cooper’s been stolen. Dug right out of the wall, probably with a pocketknife. You own a pocketknife, Mr. Starett?”
Jack blanched. “Surely, after what we told you yesterday, you don’t believe I killed Coop?”
“Right now I suspect everyone. Don’t leave town again. Either of you. For any reason. It’s real likely you’ll be telling me that story of yours a couple more times.”
He left them staring at one another.
Andy spoke first. “He can’t be serious?”
“Oh, I’d say he’s serious, all right. We were alone with the body for several minutes before anyone else came on the scene. Come on.” Jack spurred her on to unlock the door, then deposited her suitcase on the bed. The odor of stale coffee grounds hung in the air. He gave the cabin a thorough going-over while Andy fidgeted with something on her desk.
As he came out of the bathroom, he noticed that her face was ashen. “What’s wrong?”
She turned toward him, holding a piece of paper by the edge. “This was on my desk.”
Jack took the paper from her. It was a computerprinted message. “Hi, Lee Lee. Remember me? I remember you. Did you have fun in Butte last night? Soon we’re going to meet face-to-face and talk about old times.”
Cold swept through Jack. So, they had been followed, after all. He dropped the note onto the desk. “Don’t touch it again. I’ll get Birdsill back here. Maybe he can trace it—find out whose printer it came from.”
“No, Jack.” Andy’s voice quavered. “It came from mine.”
“What?”
“Yes, I always use a CG Times font, ten point, for printing draft copies of my manuscript. It saves paper. I can’t imagine the odds of someone else in this town using it.”
Jack crossed the room and pulled her close against him. She let him hold her for a full sixty seconds, then she stepped back, squaring her shoulders, her eyes bright with indignation. “I’m all right.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I’m not going to let him beat us. We have to figure this out.”
“Okay.” Jack considered what she’d told him about the font. “How about another writer? Maybe Gene Mott uses this same font on his laser printer.”
Shaking her head, Andy gave him a look that said she thought he was grasping at straws. “Gene might have a laser printer, and that printer might have this font, but we don’t know that he’d use it.” She lifted a hank of her hair off her forehead. “Besides, how easily could a man in a wheelchair get into my cabin?”
“Hell, whoever did it had all night to get in and out of here.” Jack stormed over to the door. “Now that you mention it, how the blazes did someone get in? The door was locked nice and tight when we arrived.”
Andy watched him examining the door, her twined fingers clutched to her chest. Her heart thudded against the heels of her hands.
Jack glanced at her. “Whoever got in here used a key.”
A shiver zipped down Andy’s spine. The sheriff might have the authority to insist on her remaining in Alder Gulch, but no one could make her spend an other night in this cabin. She suppressed the urge to run across the room and enfold herself in Jack’s protective embrace, forced herself to concentrate on who could have gotten in. One name rose inside her head in giant neon letters. “Minna?”
“Either that or she let someone else in.”
Andy hated thinking she couldn’t trust the friendly motel proprietress. “Maybe someone stole the key.”
“Could be.” Jack’s brows dipped toward his eyes.
“Who knew we’d be gone overnight?”
“Plenty of people.” As if he’d just realized they could be overheard, Jack shut the door and strode toward her, his voice lowered as he counted on his fingers. “Minna could have listened to my conversation with Birdsill. Cliff waved at us when we were driving through town last night. Given his mind-set, he would assume we were—”
Jack broke off. A disconcerted expression seized his strong features, giving him an embarrassed-little-boy look. “You know.”
Andy made a face. She could guess at the gutters Cliffie’s mind rolled through. “And he’d probably tell his uncle.”
Jack nodded. “Duke Plummer could have seen us from the museum as we loaded the luggage into the Cherokee. Red Yager could have seen us from the bar as we drove past.”
Andy hugged herself. Remembering was getting more crucial by the second, but the wall inside her head protecting her from seeing Nightmare Man’s face remained solid.
Jack’s big hand landed reassuringly on her shoulder. “Let’s see what Minna has to say about this.”
Minna was
n’t home. A sign saying “Be Back At One O’Clock” hung in the motel office window. Jack tried the office door. It was unlocked, the keys to the cabins right behind the counter for anyone to help themselves. Jack grunted in frustration. “That answers the question of who had access to the cabin keys. The whole town. Now what?”
Andy snapped her fingers as she was struck by an idea. “Duke Plummer. What with all that’s been going on, until you mentioned him in connection with the museum, I’d completely put out of my mind the way he reacted the day I showed him my father’s photograph. I’m certain he knows something.”
“You showed him your dad’s photo?” Jack rubbed his jaw. “Why?”
“Because it was in an old family album of his that I found a snapshot of the assay office in my photograph. Of course, that was before I realized the man in my photograph was my father. I asked Duke if he recognized the man and that’s when he acted so odd.”
An old family album of Duke Plummer’s? Jack recalled the book he’d seen Duke holding when he’d come across Gene and him in the church. Was that book the same album Andy was talking about? New suspicions tumbled through his brain, pieces falling into place, stirring hope. Could it be this simple? This obvious? “Red mentioned Duke was a taxidermist. Surely that includes birds.”
Reflexively, Andy touched her left wrist. “With three giant talons?”
Jack caught her elbow and they began walking toward the museum. “A condor, maybe?”
An image of that ugly bird, a member of the vulture family, sprang to mind. Andy’s stomach knotted and she knew instinctively Jack was right. If the scar on her wrist was made by a bird’s claw, the bird would have to have talons as large as a falcon or a condor. “I thought all condors were protected—on endangered species lists.”
Jack shrugged. “I’m no expert on condors. I know the California condors are protected, but that’s only been since the late eighties. You were scarred over twenty years ago.”
Andy saw his point. “But how would Duke or anyone else acquire such a gruesome souvenir?”
The sun beat against Jack’s shoulder blades, spreading an uncomfortable warmth through him as they crossed Main Street and headed up the walk to the museum. “Duke spends every winter traveling across the country on his Harley. He might have come by one in the wilderness, or even bought one off some two-bit tourist attraction—presuming he’s our man.”
“If he’s not, then how would one of our other suspects have laid their hands on the kind of bird claw we’re talking about?”
Remembering the scorpion, Jack said, “Duke’s pretty generous with his gifts. Assuming he even secured said item, he could very well have given it away.”
“You don’t sound too convinced that Duke Plummer is Nightmare Man.”
“To paraphrase Birdsill, I’m not ruling anyone out yet.” Jack stopped. “Looks like the museum is closed, too.”
Andy glanced behind them. The morning was rapidly growing hotter. The air seemed heavy, oppressive. The kind of day when tempers flared and emotions raged out of control. She shook off the foreboding creeping over her.
She hadn’t noticed before, but Main Street boasted little foot traffic and no vehicles, as if it was deserted, a genuine ghost town. “I suppose the police investigation squelched the tourist trade for the day?”
“Probably.” Jack also seemed to sense the odd quietude. Scowling, he gazed up and down the street, then glanced at Andy. “What do you want to do? It’s your call.”
“I want to talk to Duke Plummer.”
Jack spun on his heel and guided her back down the walk. “Plummer lives up the hill, two or three blocks off Main Street. It’s more likely we’ll find what we’re looking for at his house than in this dusty old museum.”
Andy agreed. But as they left the dark-windowed museum behind, she felt the skin-prickling sensation of being watched.
Chapter Ten
Duke Plummer lived two short streets up the hill above Main Street. His house, an old, single-story clapboard, had once been a healthy-grass green with snow white trim, but the colors were faded, the paint blistered and chipped. From the home’s wraparound porch Andy could see the roof of the Golden Broom and, across the gulch, the Motherlode Motel.
Jack rapped on the door, waited ten seconds and rapped again. Silence answered.
He peered into the nearest window. It was dark and gloomy and definitely not a place Jack would feel at home. He said sarcastically, “Cozy.”
Andy moved beside him, cupped her hands over her eyes and peered in. The furniture consisted of one armchair, an ottoman and an end table. Instead of a living room, it looked more like a gruesome wildlife sanctuary for the dead fish and fowl that were mounted on the walls, an inhumane graveyard for the glassy-eyed fox posed on the hearth and the grizzlybear rug sprawled nearby. Andy grimaced and pulled her gaze sideways. Two yellow eyes caught her attention and she realized she was staring at an owl.
A hoot owl.
Every muscle in her body tensed as a memory flashed through her mind. She was five again, awakened by a loud screech. A hoot owl? No. A scream. A woman’s scream.
Mommy’s scream.
Heat flushed Andy’s body, instantly followed by a chill, leaving her skin clammy, her stomach unsettled. She stumbled back from the window.
Jack caught her arm. “What’s wrong?”
She gazed up at him, her eyes clearing, the vision fading. She related the memory to Jack, then with a shaky voice told him, “Jack, I recalled something else, too. One of my parents’ friends used to carry a bird claw on his key ring. A large bird claw. He used to brag, ‘A big man needs a big talon.’“
Jack’s brows lifted. “Aside from the sexual innuendo—does that memory recall anything else for you? A face? A voice?”
Frowning, Andy took a step back and shook her head.
Jack leaned his hip against the window frame and crossed his boots at the ankle. “Was the man big—like me?”
As near as Andy could tell, Jack was a big man in every sense of the word, physically and spiritually, but she supposed he was asking about Nightmare Man’s appearance. She squeezed her eyes shut, willing a memory, but it was no use. She sighed. “I was five years old. Everyone was big to me then.”
“The question is—what did ‘big’ mean to him?” Jack rubbed his jaw. “Fat?”
“No…somehow that doesn’t feel right, but ‘big’ could refer to height.” Andy spoke more softly, conscious that they were outdoors and that their voices might carry. “Like Duke Plummer.”
Jack nodded, also speaking more quietly. “But Plummer isn’t our only tall suspect. Just because he’s now in a wheelchair, don’t forget Gene Mott is well over six feet. And he’s ‘big’ in another way, in the famous meaning of the word.”
She sighed as it occurred to her there was yet another way “big” could be defined. “As Red Yager is a big man in a small town?”
Noting her frustration, Jack gave her a warm smile. “You’ll remember. Consider this progress. It confirms yet again that we’re on the right track—and that your memory is returning. Let’s check around back.”
They followed the porch to the back door and peered in the window. “Look,” Jack said. “He has a computer.”
Andy peeked into the window. “And a laser printer.”
“So, he definitely knows how to use them.” Jack knocked again. Apparently Duke Plummer was out.
She glanced toward a garage built against the hillside. It sported the same color scheme as the house. “Do you suppose he’s in there?”
Jack shrugged, then scrambled down the porch steps and across a lumpy patch of sun-browned lawn, calling out, “Plummer?”
When there was no response, Jack yanked open the weathered doors that were hinged at the side edges. Daylight poked through the opening, highlighting dust motes and offering the only illumination into the dark recesses of the building, a huge motorcycle nestled in one corner. “Well, he isn’t off on his ‘hog’ somewh
ere. So he’s probably in town.”
“This is obviously his workshop.” Andy glanced at the plywood slab perched on twin sawhorses in the center of the garage, then at the cluttered metal shelves against one side wall. A dank, musty odor clung to the interior, evoking unpleasant images of the labors performed within.
A tanned animal hide was stretched on the makeshift, plywood worktable, but Andy was more curious about the shelves. She strode closer and inspected their contents, spying spools of thread, needles, animal skulls, antlers, bird feathers, a mason jar filled with teeth, and an old, felt-lined coffee can full of glass eyes. She wrinkled her nose in distaste and despite the warm day, gooseflesh sprang up on her arms and legs.
Jack was right behind her. She started to turn toward him, but her gaze landed on something perched on the edge of the lowest shelf. The hair on the nape of her neck rose. She leapt back and yelped in terror. “Scorpion.”
Jack grabbed her from behind, reflexively pulling her back against the length of his body, pulling her away from the shelves, away from the danger. She felt the wind being sucked from her lungs as his arm tightened around her rib cage. His breath beat hot against her neck and her cheek.
Andy kept her gaze riveted on the scorpion, her pulse roaring in her ears like an ocean wave, her every nerve poised for the attack. The creature stayed as if frozen in place; not even its curled tail twitched. She let out a captured breath and struggled to find her voice, to tell Jack what had only then registered. “It isn’t alive.”
Jack reacted much more slowly to this news than he had to her cry of terror, relaxing his muscles just enough to spin her around so he could see her face and judge for himself that she was all right. But the moment her ripe curves brushed against him, he was lost, lost in the feel of her, lost in the wonderful smell of her clean hair, lost in the invitation in her beautiful eyes.
He tugged her closer and lowered his mouth to her slightly parted one, then boldly dipped his tongue inside for a real taste of her. She melted against him, feeling so good he could not control the speed of his body’s blood-pulsing reaction. He knew she could feel his desire for her, knew he shouldn’t feel this way about this woman, but, God help him, he couldn’t help himself.
