by B. J Daniels
Hayes nodded. “I’ll get right on it.”
“What can I do?” Laramie asked.
“Financials on everyone involved including Allie’s friend Belinda Andrews and her stepsister, Megan Knight, as well as all of the Taylor family. Nick and his brother, Drew, were partners in a construction company called Gallatin Canyon Specialty Construction.”
“You got it,” Laramie said. “What about Allie herself?”
“Sure, and Nick, just in case he had something going on that she didn’t know about,” Jackson said.
“Wait a minute,” Tag said. “What about me?”
“You, brother dear, are getting married. You just concentrate on your lovely bride-to-be,” Jackson told him. Tag started to object. “If you’re going to be hanging around the ranch here, then do me a favor. Keep an eye on Drew Taylor. He’s apparently doing some repairs here.”
Jackson stopped by the barn to find Allie and Megan hard at work putting together centerpieces for the tables. Allie pretended she needed something from her van and got up to go outside with him.
“No more trouble last night?” he asked, seeing worry in her gaze.
“None. I’m just having a hard time believing any of that happened last night.” She glanced around as if she expected Nick to materialize before her gaze came back to him. Or maybe she was worried about her brother-in-law, Drew, seeing them together again. “I can’t believe Belinda or Megan—”
“Have you seen Belinda?”
“She had to go into Bozeman. She left about twenty minutes ago, why?”
He shook his head. “You better get back inside. Try not to let on that you’re suspicious.”
She sighed. “You don’t know how hard that is.”
“I can imagine.” He gave her an encouraging smile. “Just be your usual sweet self.” He loved it when she returned his smile and those gorgeous dimples of hers showed.
As she went back into the barn and rejoined Megan, he headed up the hillside. Belinda was staying in the last guesthouse to the east. Each cabin was set away from the others in the dense pines for the most privacy.
A cool pine-scented breeze restlessly moved the boughs over his head as he walked on the bed of dried needles toward Belinda’s cabin. He could hear the roar of the river and occasionally the sound of a semi shifting down on the highway far below. A squirrel chattered at him as he passed, breaking the tranquility.
He was almost to her cabin when he heard the crack of a twig behind him and spun around in surprise.
His brother Hayes grinned. “I would imagine the cabin will be locked,” he said as he stepped on past to climb the steps to the small porch and try the door. “Yep, I know your lock-picking skills are rusty at best.” He pulled out his tool set.
Jackson climbed the steps and elbowed his brother out of the way. “I told Dana I was locked out. She gave me the master key.” He laughed and opened the door.
“You know I do this for a living, right?” his brother asked.
“I’d heard that. But are you any good?”
Hayes shot him a grin and headed for the log dresser in the room with the unmade bed.
Jackson glanced around the main room of the cabin and spotted Belinda’s camera bag. He could hear his brother searching the bedroom as he carefully unzipped the bag. There were the usual items found in a professional photographer’s large bag. He carefully took out the camera, lens and plastic filter containers and was about to put everything back, thinking there was nothing to find when he saw the corner of a photo protruding from one of the lower pockets.
“What did you find?” Hayes asked as he returned after searching both bedrooms.
Jackson drew out the photos and thumbed through them. They were shots taken with apparent friends. Each photo had Belinda smiling at the camera with her arm around different friends, all women. He was thinking how there wasn’t one of her and Allie, when he came to the last photo and caught his breath.
“Who is that?” Hayes asked.
“Allie’s husband, Nick, and her best friend Belinda Andrews. Allie said that Nick never liked Belinda.” The snapshot had been taken in the woods along a trail. There was a sign in the distance that said Grouse Creek Trail. Nick had his arm possessively around Belinda. Both were smiling at each other rather than the camera the way lovers do.
“Apparently, they liked each other a lot more than Allie knew,” Hayes said. “But you know what is really interesting about that photo? That trailhead sign behind them.”
“Let me guess. Up that trail is where Nick Taylor was believed to have been killed.”
* * *
WHEN THEY’D FINISHED the centerpieces, Allie sent Megan into Bozeman for an order of wedding items that had been delayed. It had been difficult working with her and suspecting her of horrible things. Allie was relieved when she was finally alone in the barn.
Everything was coming along on schedule. It had been Dana’s idea to start days early. “I don’t want you to feel any pressure and if you need extra help, you just let me know,” Dana had said.
“No, I’m sure that will be fine.”
“I want you to have some free time to go for a horseback ride or just spend it on the ranch with your daughter.”
“You are so thoughtful,” Allie had said.
“Not at all. I just know what it’s like with a little one, even though Natalie isn’t so little anymore,” she said with a laugh. “I promise I will keep your daughter busy so you can work and not have to worry about her having a good time.”
Dana had been good to her word. Allie stepped outside the barn now to check on Natalie only to find her on the back of a horse about to take a short ride up the road for another picnic with Dana and the other children.
“Come along,” Dana encouraged. “Warren would be happy to saddle you a horse. You know what they say about almost falling off a horse, don’t you?” she asked with a smile. “You have to get back on.”
Allie laughed, thinking that was exactly what she was doing with her life, thanks to Jackson. She was tempted to go on the ride until she saw him headed her way. “Next time.”
“We’re going to hold you to it,” Dana said. “In fact, we’re all going on a ride tomorrow before the rehearsal dinner. Plan on coming along.” With that they rode off, the kids waving and cheering as they disappeared into the pines.
Jackson waved to his son, making the same promise before he continued on down the mountainside toward her.
When she saw his expression, her heart fell. He’d discovered something and whatever it was, it wasn’t good.
“Let’s go up to my cabin,” Jackson said as he glanced around. “We can talk there.”
They made the short hike up the mountainside. His cabin faced the river, sheltered in the pines and was several dozen yards from the closest cabin where his brothers were staying together.
“What is it?” Allie asked the moment they were inside.
Jackson handed her a snapshot in answer.
She looked down at her smiling husband and her best friend. There was no doubt what she was looking at but still she was shocked and found it hard to believe. For more than six years Belinda and Nick had acted as if they couldn’t stand each other. Had it been a lie the entire time?
“When was this taken?” she asked.
Jackson shook his head. “There isn’t a date. I found it in her camera bag with a lot of other photos of her with friends.”
Allie raised an eyebrow. “You aren’t going to try to convince me that they are just friends.”
He shook his head. “You weren’t at all suspicious?”
She laughed as she made her way to the couch and sat down. The ground under her feet no longer felt stable. “Nick always said I was too trusting. Belinda was the only friend who could put up with N
ick. So I guess a part of me suspected that Nick liked her more than he let on.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I stopped loving Nick Taylor the year we got married. If I hadn’t gotten pregnant with Nat...” She tossed the photo on the coffee table in front of her.
“She was the only one you told about your plans to leave Nick?” he asked as he took a seat across from her.
Allie let out a laugh. “So of course she told him.”
“More than likely,” he agreed. “There’s more.” He took a breath and let it out as he studied her. “You sure you want to hear all of this?”
She sat up straighter. “Let me have it.”
“I got my brothers to help me. They have the expertise in their chosen fields that we needed. Hayes talked to the cops who had a copy of Nick’s file with reports from the hiker who found the backpack and rifle to the warden who investigated the initial scene. He reported that there was sufficient evidence to assume that Nick was dead based on the shredded backpack and the amount of blood soaked into the pine needles.”
“So...he’s dead?”
“Or he made it look that way,” Jackson said. “No DNA was tested at the scene because there didn’t appear to be a need to do so. But there are still a lot of questions. No shots were fired from the rifle, leading the investigators to believe he didn’t have time to get off a shot before he was attacked by the bear. Or he could have staged the whole thing. But the incidents you’ve been having with things disappearing and reappearing, those can’t be Nick. If he’s alive, he has to keep his head down.”
“So we’re back to my in-laws and Belinda and Megan.”
“I’m afraid so. Belinda, if involved with Nick, would be the obvious one. Was she around before any of the incidents happened?”
Allie thought back to when her keys had ended up in the bathroom sink at the Mexican restaurant. She’d left her purse at the table, but then Sarah and her mother had been there, too. She sighed, still refusing to believe it, even after seeing the photo. “Yes, but Belinda wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t have an affair with your husband behind your back?”
“She’s been so worried about me.”
Jackson raised a brow.
Allie hugged herself against the thought of what he was saying. Belinda had apparently betrayed her with Nick. Maybe Jackson was right. Then she remembered something. “Belinda has a new man in her life. I know the signs. She starts dressing up and, I don’t know, acting different. The man can’t be Nick. That photo doesn’t look recent of her and Nick. Why would she be acting as if there was someone new if it was Nick all these months?”
“Maybe he’s been hiding out and has only now returned to the canyon.”
That thought turned her stomach. “If he’s come back...”
“Then whoever has been gaslighting you must be planning on stepping up their plan,” Jackson said.
She turned to look at him as a shiver raced through her. “The psychic. Maybe this is their grand finale, so to speak, and they have something big planned tonight to finally send me to the loony bin.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t go—”
“No. Whatever they have planned, it won’t work. They’ve done their best to drive me crazy. I know now what they’re up to. I’ll be fine.”
“I sure hope so,” Jackson said.
* * *
“WHAT IS THE lowdown on the Taylor family?” Jackson asked Hud after dinner that evening at the ranch. They’d had beef steaks cooked on a pitchfork in the fire and eaten on the wide porch at the front of the house. The night had been beautiful, but Jackson was too antsy to appreciate it. He was worried about Allie.
She’d dropped Natalie by before she and Belinda had left. He hadn’t had a chance to speak with her without raising suspicion. All he could do was try his best to find out who was behind the things that had been happening to her.
“Old canyon family,” Hud said. “Questionable how they made their money. It was rumored that the patriarch killed someone and stole his gold.” Hud shrugged. “Mildred? She married into it just months before Bud Taylor died in a car accident. She’s kept the name even though she’s been through several more husbands. I believe she is on number four now. Didn’t take his name, though. He’s fifteen, twenty years older and spends most of his time with his grown children back in Chicago.”
“And the daughter?”
“Sarah?” Hud frowned. “Never been married that I know of. Lives in the guesthouse behind her mother’s. No visible means of support.”
“The brothers had a construction company together?”
“They did. Nick was the driving force. With him gone, I don’t think Drew is working all that much.”
“Just between you and me, Allie was planning to leave Nick Taylor before he went up in the mountain and disappeared,” Jackson said, taking the marshal into his confidence.
Hud looked over at him. “What are you getting at?”
“Is there any chance Nick Taylor is alive?”
Hud frowned. “You must have some reason to believe he is.”
“Someone has been gaslighting Allie.”
“For what purpose?”
“I think someone, probably in the Taylor family, wants to take Natalie away from her.”
* * *
“YOU SEEM BETTER,” Belinda noted on the drive out of the canyon. She’d insisted on driving Allie to the psychic’s house, saying she didn’t trust Allie to drive herself if the psychic said anything that upset her.
Allie had been quiet most of the drive. “Do I seem better?” Did her friend seem disappointed in that?
“Maybe this isn’t necessary.”
That surprised her. “I thought you were the one who said I had to talk to this psychic?”
“I thought it would help.”
“And now?” Allie asked.
“I don’t want her to upset you when you seem to be doing so well.”
“That’s sweet, but I’m committed...so to speak.”
Belinda nodded and kept driving. “Seriously, you seem so different and the only thing that has changed that I can tell is Jackson Cardwell showing up.”
Allie laughed. “Just like you to think it has to be a man. Maybe I’m just getting control of my life.”
Her friend looked skeptical. “Only a few days ago you were burning Nick’s favorite shirt so it didn’t turn up again.”
“Didn’t I tell you? The shirt did turn up again. I found it hanging in the shower this morning. Now I ask you, how is that possible?”
“You’re sure you burned it? Maybe you just—”
“Dreamed it?” Allie smiled. That was what they wanted her to think. She looked over at Belinda, worried her old friend was up to her neck in this, whatever it was.
Allie fought the urge to confront her and demand to know who else was behind it. But Belinda turned down a narrow road, slowing to a stop in front of a small house with a faint porch light on.
Showtime, Allie thought as she tried to swallow the lump in her throat.
Chapter Nine
Belinda’s apartment house was an old, five-story brick one a few blocks off Main Street in Bozeman.
Laramie waited in the car as lookout while Jackson and Hayes went inside. There was no password entry required. They simply walked in through the front door and took the elevator up to the third floor to room 3B. It was just as Allie had described it, an apartment at the back, the door recessed so even if someone had been home on the floor of four apartments, they wouldn’t have seen Hayes pick the lock.
“You’re fast,” Jackson said, impressed.
Hayes merely smiled and handed him a pair of latex gloves. “I’m also smart. If you’re right and Nick Taylor is alive and this becomes
a criminal case... You get the idea. It was different up on the ranch. This, my brother, is breaking and entering.”
Jackson pulled on the gloves and opened the door. As he started to draw his flashlight out of his pocket, Hayes snapped on an overhead light.
“What the—”
“Jackson,” his brother said and motioned toward the window. The curtains were open, the apartment looking out onto another apartment building. While most of the curtains were drawn in those facing this way, several were open.
Hayes stepped to the window and closed the curtains. “Nothing more suspicious than two dudes sneaking around in a woman’s apartment with flashlights.”
He had a point. “Let’s make this quick.”
“I’m with you,” Hayes said and suggested the best place to start.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you’d done this before,” Jackson joked.
Hayes didn’t answer.
In the bedroom in the bottom drawer of the bureau under a bunch of sweaters, Jackson found more photos of Belinda and Nick, but left them where he’d found them.
“So you think I’m right and Nick is alive,” Jackson said.
Hayes shrugged.
Jackson finished the search of the bedroom, following his brother’s instructions to try to leave everything as he had found it.
“Find anything?” he asked Hayes when he’d finished.
“She recently came into thirty-eight thousand dollars,” Hayes said, thumbing through a stack of bank statements he’d taken from a drawer.
“Maybe it’s a trust fund or an inheritance.”
“Maybe. Or blackmail money or money Nick had hidden from Allie,” Hayes said as he put everything back. “Laramie would probably be able to find out what it was if we had more time. Did you put the photos back?”
“All except one. I want to show it to Allie. It looks more recent to me.”
Hayes looked as if he thought that was a bad idea. “You’re messing with evidence,” he reminded him.
