by B. J Daniels
Her grandmother moved to stand by her, staring out at the ridge in the distance.
“This is a copy of what I found where those bones had been buried.” McCall handed her the copies of the hunting license and the antelope tag. “The license and tag were protected because they were still in the plastic folder he carried them in.”
Pepper’s hands trembled as she took the pages and looked at the printing on them. She seemed to sway, but when McCall reached toward her, she quickly straightened.
“The bones can’t be my son’s,” her grandmother said, her voice breaking. “You’ve made this up as an excuse to—”
“I had a DNA test run on the bones.”
Pepper’s gaze narrowed. “Comparing them to whose DNA?”
“Mine. The remains in that grave were my father’s and assuming you’re through denying I’m Trace Winchester’s daughter…”
Her grandmother stared at her for a long moment before she moved like a sleepwalker over to one the leather chairs and sat down heavily. She motioned impatiently for McCall to sit, as well.
“Why hasn’t the sheriff called me about this?”
“He will be calling you to request a sample of your DNA to run a comparison test,” McCall said.
“These bones—”
“Were buried in a shallow grave on the ridge. The rainstorm the other night washed them down into a gully. The hunting license was buried in the mud in the grave.”
Her grandmother’s hand holding the copy of the license began to tremble again. She quickly stilled it. “You’re telling me that someone killed my son.”
McCall nodded. “Twenty-seven years ago.”
“Who?”
McCall shook her head. “It will be next to impossible to find his killer after all this time.”
Her grandmother bristled at that. “I’m sure the sheriff—”
“Grant Sheridan will turn the case over to the state crime lab but with a case this cold…”
Pepper recoiled with a shudder. “If you’re saying I’ll never know who killed my son…Trace will get justice if it takes my last dying breath.”
She’d hoped that would be her grandmother’s attitude. “Then help me find his killer.”
“You?” Pepper scoffed at that. “You’re a deputy. And you haven’t even been one that long.”
McCall had only a moment to wonder how her grandmother had known that.
Pepper shook her head and pushed herself to her feet. “I will hire the best private investigator that money can buy.”
“And you will be wasting your money.”
Her grandmother’s eyes widened in surprise.
“You know the people in this part of the state,” McCall said quickly. “You think anyone will talk to an outsider? People up here, even if they weren’t all related, are close-knit. They’re even suspicious of other Montanans let alone someone from out of state. Good luck with that.”
“You are certainly a brash young woman.”
Like my grandmother. “I intend to find out who killed my father no matter what the sheriff or the crime lab does or doesn’t do,” McCall said. “But I need your help. I need to know what my father was involved in twenty-seven years ago.”
Her grandmother was shaking her head.
McCall rushed on. “I might be the only person who can find out the truth. Don’t you see that? I’m a local, I have some training and he was my father.”
“What makes you think anyone will talk to you?”
McCall smiled. “I’m the black sheep of the Winchesters. Everyone feels sorry for me because I’ve been treated so badly by my own grandmother.”
The dagger found its mark. Her grandmother looked ashamed, but only for a moment. “You seem to have done fine without me.”
“I need to know everything about my father—no matter what it is,” McCall continued. “Are you willing to help me or not?”
“Why don’t you ask your mother?”
McCall didn’t even bother to answer that. “Are we going to keep pretending that I’m not Trace Winchester’s daughter?”
Her grandmother moved to the window to gaze out in the direction of the wind-scoured ridge again. “I’ve just found out that my son is not only dead but that he was murdered and buried within sight of my ranch.”
She turned to look at McCall, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “I’m not up to satisfying your curiosity about him right now.”
“I’m sorry I had to bring you this news,” McCall said. “But I knew you’d want to know right away.”
Something softened in her grandmother’s face, letting her grief show through.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” McCall asked.
Her grandmother straightened, that moment of vulnerability gone. “You needn’t concern yourself with me.”
McCall nodded. “Let me know when you’re ready to help me.” She felt sorry for her grandmother as she left and wondered if she’d ever hear from her again. Doubtful. She was on her own finding her father’s killer.
As she climbed into her pickup, she didn’t see Enid, although she suspected the woman wasn’t far away.
Driving away, McCall turned her thoughts to her mother and realized she had no idea how Ruby would take the news about Trace’s murder.
Chapter Nine
On the way back to Whitehorse, McCall called the café. Her mother was scheduled to work a double shift. “Is Ruby still there?”
“She just stepped outside to sneak a cigarette,” Leo, the cook, told her. “It’s slow, so I think she’s going to leave early. You want me to give her a message?”
“No, that’s all right. I’ll catch her,” McCall said, and hung up as she came over the rise and saw the Milk River Valley—the town of Whitehorse at the heart of it.
As she drove into town, she spotted the small figure of her mother coming down the street from the café toward her vehicle. McCall swung to the curb and reached over to open the passenger side door.
Ruby leaned her head in through the open doorway.
“Hop in.”
Her mother looked startled but didn’t argue as she slid into the seat and slammed the door. “Shouldn’t you be working?”
McCall had figured by now it would be all over town about her getting suspended.
She drove out of town headed north just because that was the way she was pointed. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ruby glance out the window then shoot her a questioning look.
“I got suspended for two weeks. I’ll probably get fired.” She looked over at her mother. “I withheld some evidence.”
“You must have had your reasons. I’m sure if you talk to Grant—”
Something in the way her mother said the sheriff’s first name…“That’s right. You used to date Grant.”
Ruby swore. “If this is why you picked me up, then just let me out now. I’m in no mood to have you give me crap about my love life or quiz me about your father.” Her mother reached for her door handle. “I’m serious. Just let me out.”
McCall glanced over at her mother. There was no good way to say this. “Trace didn’t leave you. He never left Whitehorse at all.”
“What are you talking about?” Ruby snapped. “Of course Trace left town. I wasn’t serious about his mother hiding him all these years. Unless she locked him up in one of those rooms at the ranch.”
“You heard Rocky found some bones south of town? They’ve been identified.” She could feel her mother freeze. “Trace didn’t leave you. He’s been out there all these years.”
PEPPER HADN’T BEEN UP THERE in twenty-seven years. Small spaces terrified her, and she wished she felt up to climbing the ladder to the third floor room instead of being forced to take the old elevator.
No one had been in this wing in years judging by the footprints she was leaving in the dust. This was the only other access and the walk here had worn her out. After McCall left, she’d retrieved her cane, hating that she needed it.
She stopp
ed in the dark hallway. Years ago the light bulbs must have burned out. Only faint shafts of light cut through the shuttered windows as she touched the secret panel on the wall to reveal the old elevator.
The metal was cold as she pulled back the gate. Something skittered away in the elevator shaft making her shudder. She hesitated, then stepped into the tiny, cramped space, telling herself she should be more worried about the elevator’s working condition than her claustrophobia.
As a newlywed, she hadn’t understood the purpose of the room or why she had been told it and the elevator were off-limits to all but her husband, Call. She would later understand only too well.
The elevator smelled just as Trace’s room had, old and musty, filled with ghosts from the past. As she closed the gate, she was bombarded by a barrage of memories that made her sick to her stomach.
Her breath came in gasps, her fingers trembling. She pushed the button that would take her up to the locked room.
“Pepper, why would you want to go up there again?” asked the voice in her head, a voice that sounded exactly like her husband, Call’s. “What if you get trapped up there and no one finds you until the house is torn down or just falls down someday?”
Enid and Alfred were in the far wing of the house. They wouldn’t have heard the elevator. Nor would they hear her cries for help. Eventually they would find her but by then—
The elevator groaned and clanked and for a moment she thought it wouldn’t rise. Then with a jerk it began to ascend.
She pressed the hand holding the cane against the wall to steady herself, the other to her mouth to keep from crying out as the elevator inched upward.
In the small, isolated space she thought she could hear voices trapped from all those years ago. The screams of her children. The incessant crying and pleading. The empty finality when the elevator stopped.
Pepper reached for the metal gate, terrified the elevator might suddenly drop as she took a step out. Miraculously it didn’t move as she stepped off to find herself standing at the edge of the small room.
The room was soundproof. Not even the bulletproof window opened. Anyone sent here could not be heard outside these walls. Nor seen through the one-way glass.
The only openings were small. Just large enough for a gun barrel to fit through.
“Why in God’s name did you have this room built?” Pepper had demanded when Call had once caught her snooping. She’d been pregnant with their oldest child, Virginia, at the time.
Call had been furious with her. “It’s for protection.”
“Against whom?”
He’d only shaken his head and escorted her from the room.
It wasn’t until later that she and her children learned that the room was also for punishment.
This room was where Call had locked her the day she’d tried to leave him.
RUBY BEGAN TO CRY QUIETLY. McCall wondered what her mother was thinking, what she was feeling. Was she relieved? Angry? Or just saddened by the news? McCall couldn’t tell.
Ruby hid so much. Her only passion seemed to be men. It was the only time she let her emotions out. Over men she cried, swore, broke things, poured out her soul.
Except when it came to Trace Winchester. Maybe he really had been the love of her life, just as she claimed.
McCall turned off on the road to Sleeping Buffalo Resort and drove down to the hot springs, parking in front of the bar.
“I thought you might need a drink,” she said to her mother.
Ruby wiped her eyes and opened her purse to pull out a wad of ones. “I’ll buy if you’ll go in and get us something.”
McCall wasn’t much of a drinker. “What do you want?”
“Tequila. Get a pint and something to chase it, okay?”
Tequila was the booze of preference for Ruby after a breakup. It seemed appropriate given the circumstances.
McCall took the wad of ones and got out. As she closed the pickup door, she saw her mother roll down her window and light a cigarette, her fingers trembling.
When she returned with a quart of orange juice, a pint of tequila and two paper cups, her mother stubbed out her cigarette. The pickup smelled of smoke and grease and sweat.
McCall handed everything to her mother and drove down by the lake, parking in the shade of a large old cottonwood.
Ruby busied herself making them both a drink. They touched cups, eyes meeting for a moment. McCall felt the impact finally.
Her father was dead. Murdered. Nothing would ever be the same. Especially if it turned out that Ruby had killed him.
Pepper started to step farther into the room when she was startled by movement. Something small fluttered in the far corner, making her stumble back. As she tried to still her racing pulse, she realized that the slight breeze coming up through the elevator shaft had rustled the small paper objects in the corner.
Frowning, she stepped closer. Paper party hats? They were faded with the years, but still recognizable as the tiny ones she’d purchased for Trace’s birthday party. She’d bought the tiny ones for the grandchildren and had been upset when she’d seen them wearing them long before the party.
She remembered yelling at the bunch of them to get out of the house. They had scampered away.
She stared at the paper hats discarded like trash on the floor of the room, realization making her weak. They’d been in this room that they’d been forbidden to enter.
Pepper felt her anger rise as she counted the hats. Five? Had there been five children in here that day? She remembered how noisy they’d been, her two grandsons, Cordell and Cyrus, and the nanny’s boy, Jack. Had they taken extra hats or had someone been with them? She hadn’t invited any other children. But that didn’t mean that those two horrible neighboring ranch girls hadn’t sneaked over.
As she started to rise, she saw something that stopped her heart stone-cold still before it took off like a wild horse.
What she’d first thought were cracks in the plastered wall, she now saw were words. Tiny, scrawled words scratched into the walls. They were everywhere—within child height.
Pepper closed her eyes unable to bear reading what her children had written up here while imprisoned in this horrible room.
The room had always been empty. No furniture. “It’s no punishment if you fill the room full of toys or make it comfortable,” Call had said.
When she’d tried to stop Call from using this room to punish their children, he’d told her he’d raise them his way, the way he’d been raised. “It’s like breaking a horse. If you can’t stand to watch, don’t.”
She couldn’t stand to watch so she’d stood by helplessly for years, she thought with a shudder.
That was until Trace had come along and she’d sworn Call wasn’t “breaking” this one. Trace was seven when she’d decided to leave Call, taking her youngest son and fleeing.
Call had caught her and locked her in this room for three days.
Not long after that, her husband had gone off for a horseback ride and was never seen again.
She hadn’t been able to save the others. As she opened her eyes again, she felt faint and thought she might have to sit down. She grabbed hold of the windowsill and looked out at the ridge in the distance where her son’s body had been buried all those years. The same spot where he’d died?
This is why she’d had to come up here. She had to know if she could see the ridge from this room.
But now she saw that it would have been impossible to see what had happened on that far ridge at this distance. She’d been foolish to think there might have been an eyewitness, someone in the family who had inadvertently seen Trace’s murder.
Suddenly the full weight of her loss hit her. She felt her knees give way, and even the cane couldn’t support her as she dropped to the floor.
She lay there for a few minutes, letting the dam of tears burst and fall. She wept as she had the time she’d been locked in this room and cursed her son’s killer.
Finally the tears s
ubsided. She sat up feeling dizzy and light-headed. She shuddered at the thought that she was so weak or that the past was so strong.
As she started to get to her feet, anxious to leave this horrible room and the memories within these walls, she saw a small hole behind the window ledge. Someone had dug out the chinking from between the logs and made a space just large enough apparently to hide something.
In this case, a small pair of binoculars.
With a start she worked the binoculars from the hole, wiping them free of dust with her sleeve before raising them to look out at the ridge.
Her heart caught in her throat. She fought to keep down her lunch. She could see the ridge clearly right down to the crime scene tape flapping in the wind around her son’s grave.
“TO TRACE,” RUBY SAID and took a drink.
To you, Dad. McCall felt the kick of the tequila. She looked out at the sky-mirrored water. From here she could barely make out Buzz Crawford’s house across the lake.
“I suppose by the time we get back to town everyone will know,” Ruby said as she made herself another drink.
“Count on it.” This was the biggest news to hit town in some time. “Are you going to be all right?”
Ruby laughed. “Hell, yes. The bastard didn’t leave me.” She laughed again and lifted her glass before downing half of it. “He might have stayed, you know. Things could have been different.”
She nodded. Or they might have ended the same. They would never know.
But McCall liked to think her mother and father would have made it work and stayed together. She tried to imagine having a normal family. Whatever normal was.
As it was, history would have to be rewritten. Twenty-seven years of stories based on one false assumption. McCall thought of all the whispered rumors she’d heard about her father over the years.
Trace Winchester hadn’t run out on them. True, he probably would have, given what McCall had learned about him and her mother. But he hadn’t and that’s what counted.
A murderer had deprived her of ever knowing her father and had broken Ruby Bates Winchester’s heart. That alone was reason enough to find his killer. That and all the lost possibilities.
