Gun-Shy Bride

by B. J Daniels

  He waited until she was inside before he turned around and drove through the darkness, feeling as if he’d been hit by a train.

  His mind was racing. He’d found what could constitute evidence in Buzz’s logbook. Had the sheriff shown it to Buzz? Is that why his uncle had decided to write the confession and kill himself?

  Luke drove toward town, turning it all over in his head. The night was black. No stars, no moon, the clouds so low now it was like driving through cotton. He had his side window down letting the cold night air blow in.

  He didn’t feel the chill, only the intense sense of loss and regret. He kept rehashing his last conversation with Buzz over in his head and blaming himself that he hadn’t seen this coming.

  Didn’t everyone say there were signs? Buzz had been acting strangely, but Luke had thought he was just bored with retirement and worried about Eugene.

  Luke had never believed that a man like Buzz would ever do something like this. Murder? Then suicide? He had a bad feeling that the ones least likely to commit either were the ones who would surprise you.

  For Buzz it might have been a case of the perfect storm: the arrest, his disappointment in Eugene. Suspecting, as Luke did, that Eugene had been using his pickup to poach could have been the last straw.

  A thought crossed his mind. He scoffed at the idea but couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that the thought hadn’t been as crazy as he wanted to believe.

  Luke slowed the pickup on the edge of Whitehorse and headed for the sheriff’s department—and the county jail where his cousin was still locked up the last he’d heard.

  MCCALL FELT NUMB AS SHE stopped on the deck to pick up the blanket she’d left there. The darkness seemed to close in along with the shock.

  Buzz was dead.

  She wrapped the blanket around herself and stood staring down at the river through the deep black of cottonwoods. No starlight filtered past the bare branches. No moon shone in Montana’s big sky.

  The only light was a ghostly glaze that shimmered on the surface of the water as it snaked past.

  McCall shivered and pulled the blanket tighter as a gust of wind moaned through the trees.

  It was over.

  Buzz had killed her father, and while she would never know why, at least she should be thankful that Trace Winchester had gotten justice.

  So why did she feel so empty, she wondered as she leaned against the railing and breathed in the rich scents from the river bottom. It was over.

  Over for some, she thought. Not for Luke, though.

  Suddenly she felt as if icy fingers had brushed across the back of her neck. Her stomach contracted with a feeling she was no longer alone, and that what was waiting for her in the dark wasn’t just dangerous—it was deadly.

  She stared hard into the black cottonwoods, listening for any hint that there was someone out there watching her at this very moment. Eugene? Had he gotten out of jail? The wind moaned through the branches, the limbs moving restlessly against the dark sky.

  Taking a step back, she edged toward the front door of the house, trying to remember if she’d locked it, suddenly filled with a sense of dread.

  She’d only taken a few steps when she remembered the gun Luke had given her. She’d had it earlier on the deck…

  She stopped, her gaze scanning the dark shadows of the deck. She couldn’t see it. Maybe Luke had picked it up. Or maybe they had knocked it off the deck earlier.

  As badly as she wished she could find it, she wasn’t about to take the time to look for it. Turning, she lunged for her front door, that feeling of danger too intense to ignore.

  The knob turned in her hand. She hadn’t locked it. Damn.

  She stepped in, fumbling for the light as she slammed the door behind her, breathing hard.

  There’s no one out there. You’re just spooked over everything that has happened. You’re running scared and it’s not like you.

  McCall reached for the lock but froze. Had it been the soft scuff of a shoe? Or a breath exhaled? Or had she just sensed it as she had on the deck?

  Whatever the reason, even before McCall hit the light switch and spun around, she knew. Someone was behind her.

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Eugene said from his cell bunk when Luke walked in. “You’d better be here to get me out. Because if you’ve come to give me a lecture…”

  Luke gripped the bars. Obviously no one had told him about Buzz yet. “I need to know something, Eugene. I told Buzz that someone was using his pickup to poach deer along the river.”

  His cousin leaned back on his bunk. “When did you tell him that?”

  Luke swallowed back his guilt. “Right before he was released from jail.”

  “And let me guess. You suspect I was using the pickup. What was I doing with the deer?”

  “Selling them to a client in Billings to pay for your gambling debts.”

  To his surprise, Eugene began to laugh. “Doesn’t that sound a little too organized for a worthless ne’er-do-well like me?” his cousin asked, getting up and coming over to the bars. “Huh, hotshot game warden?”

  “What are you trying to tell me?” Luke asked, afraid he already knew what was coming.

  “Buzz. It was his idea. He was bored and if anyone knew how to poach and get away with it, it was Buzz. Why do you think we went to Billings? To unload what we’d killed.” He laughed again. “Don’t look so shocked. Buzz used to poach all the time when he was warden. You didn’t notice how our meat supply never ran low?”

  Luke stared at his cousin, remembering what McCall had said about her mother thinking Trace might have had something on Buzz he was using as leverage. “Did Buzz also mention that Trace Winchester was blackmailing him?”

  Eugene grinned. “Well, if Trace was, I can tell you this much—no one blackmails Buzz for long.” His cousin shook his head, giving Luke a disgusted look. “You always thought you were better than us, didn’t you? Buzz joked that as great as you thought you were, you’d never catch us. Even if you did, Buzz said you’d never arrest us.” He turned to go back to his cot. “When you see Buzz, tell him to spring me from the joint.”

  “I’m afraid Buzz isn’t going to be springing anyone,” Luke said. “He committed suicide tonight after confessing to killing Trace Winchester.”

  “PLEASE DON’T DO ANYTHING heroic,” Sandy said, rising from the kitchen chair where she’d been sitting, waiting.

  Heart hammering, McCall heard the click of the safety being flipped off on the pistol as she stared at Sandy Sheridan. Two thoughts zipped past. What was the sheriff’s wife doing here pointing a gun at her? And Luke wouldn’t be back tonight.

  “How did you get the job with my husband?” Sandy asked as she advanced on her, the gun steady in her hand and pointed at McCall’s heart. “Because you aren’t afraid of anything? Or was it because you could twist Grant around your little finger? He always told me how much he liked you.”

  From the expression on Sandy’s face, that had been a mistake on the sheriff’s part.

  “What are you doing here?” McCall asked, understanding only that she was in serious trouble. That over-caffeinated, frantic look was in Sandy’s eyes, and she held the gun like a woman who knew how to use it.

  Sandy gave her an impatient look. “Don’t try to con me. The moment I saw you standing at my front door, I knew that Grant was right. He said you made a damned good deputy because you were bright and saw what other people didn’t.”

  “You’re both giving me too much credit,” McCall said. Outside, the wind had picked up. It whipped the cottonwoods, a limb scraping against the side of the house and flickering shadows past the window. “I haven’t a clue why you’re here.”

  “Guess,” Sandy said with a giggle.

  A thought worked its way through the panic. “Buzz didn’t kill my father.”

  Sandy laughed, a sound like piano wires snapping. “How can you say that? The man confessed.”

  No doubt at gunpoint.

  McCall t
ried to concentrate, but the wind and trees whipping against the cabin kept distracting her. She felt too tired for this, her mind numb from shock and fear and a deep sense of regret.

  How could she have been so wrong? Buzz had looked so guilty, too guilty. No wonder she’d felt such an emptiness when it had looked as if he’d done it—and taken the easy way out.

  The sheriff was right: she had been too emotionally involved.

  “You aren’t going to tell me you killed my father, are you?” McCall asked. “I thought you loved him.” She was only a few feet away from Sandy, but she knew better than to make a play for the gun.

  “I did love him.” Hatred flared in Sandy’s eyes. “I loved him more than you can ever understand. I would have done anything for him. And what did he do to me? He broke my heart.” She was crying now but still holding the gun aimed at McCall’s heart.

  McCall’s mind was racing again as she tried to put it all together. “Trace felt guilty about what he’d done to you, so of course he would agree to meet you on the ridge to talk.”

  Sandy’s eyes narrowed. “Very good.”

  Trace had been furious with Ruby over her little tryst with Red, so he would have been primed to do anything his old girlfriend asked.

  “But things got out of hand,” McCall guessed.

  “He refused to leave that tramp and you,” Sandy said. “I told him you probably weren’t even his baby. He thought he was just going to get to walk away from me.” Her eyes took on a faraway look that turned McCall’s blood to slush.

  Outside the cabin, something moved across the window. Not a limb. Someone.

  “So you killed him,” McCall said, trying hard not to look past Sandy to the window again. Someone was out there headed for the front door. Luke? But he’d said he wouldn’t be back. Her heart soared then dropped like a stone. Had he seen the sheriff’s wife holding the gun on her? If he hadn’t, he’d be walking into this deadly situation.

  “What did you use? A gun, a knife, a rock?” McCall asked as she took a couple of steps toward the back of the cabin, hoping to turn Sandy so she wouldn’t be able to see whoever was about to open the front door.

  “What are you doing?” Sandy demanded, grabbing the weapon with both hands. “Stop moving.”

  “I just need to sit down,” McCall said, motioning toward the kitchen chair nearby.

  “You’ll be lying down soon enough and for a very long time,” Sandy snapped. “Enjoy standing.”

  “So how did you do it?” McCall asked, forced to be content with having turned Sandy at least most of the way from the door.

  “I shot him if you must know.”

  “With the same gun you’re holding on me?” McCall asked.

  “As a matter of fact. Ironic, isn’t it?”

  The front door eased open. McCall still couldn’t see who it was, but the way it opened, she was sure the person outside had seen what was going on.

  “Then you buried him on the ridge,” McCall said. “Took his rifle—”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I left as quickly as I could, but as we were driving back to town, I passed Game Warden Buzz Crawford and remembered the vendetta he and Trace had going on. I put in a call to Fish and Game saying there was someone poaching on the ridge. I knew once Buzz found Trace dead, he wouldn’t call it in. He knew no one would believe him, not the way he hounded Trace all the time. Everyone would believe he did it.”

  Something Sandy said stopped McCall for a moment, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was before Sandy finished. McCall could imagine Buzz finding Trace’s body. He would know he’d been set up. The smart thing would have been for him to call 911, but Sandy was right. He would have looked guilty no matter what. He had motive and opportunity, and he was standing over his nemesis’s dead body.

  It explained why Buzz had acted so guilty. Everything was starting to make sense. “Buzz buried Trace and got rid of the pickup in the stock pond, then wrote up a poaching ticket to make it look as if my father skipped town because of it.”

  Sandy smiled, clearly pleased with herself.

  Out of the corner of her eye, McCall saw a blurred dark shape slip in through the front door and drop behind the couch. “And you took my father’s rifle.”

  “I thought I might need it someday. As it turned out, I did. Grant was forever boring me to death with talk about his cases. It was too easy to know exactly when to plant the rifle and make sure Buzz Crawford took the fall.”

  “Nice job,” McCall said, horrified and yet at the same time awed by Sandy’s twisted criminal mind. “But Buzz must have wondered who the real killer was.” The answer came to her in a flash. “My mother.”

  That would explain why Buzz hated Ruby Bates Winchester so much. He thought she’d killed Trace and framed him for the murder. That’s why he’d thought McCall had access to Trace’s rifle and had used it to frame him.

  “Bingo!” Sandy said with an unhinged glee.

  “You tied it all up with a nice big bow on top,” McCall said. “If you’d just left it at that, you would probably have gotten away with it. But once you murder me, you will ruin your perfect scheme.”

  “Oh, that’s just it. I’m not quite done yet. But I will be after you write your confession, admitting that in an attempt to protect your mother, you framed Buzz and, racked with guilt, took your own life.”

  “You really don’t think anyone is going to believe my mother killed Trace or that I framed Buzz, do you?”

  Sandy burst out laughing. “Are you serious? Everyone in town has speculated for years that Ruby did it. And all of Whitehorse has questioned having a woman deputy in the sheriff’s department. Everyone knows we’re the weaker sex,” she added with a chortle. “It will break poor Grant’s heart since he is so fond of you. But that’s the price he pays for hiring you in the first place.”

  The dark shape rose behind Sandy, and with a start, McCall saw the man’s face. Sheriff Grant Sheridan?

  That’s when McCall remembered what Sandy had said that had caught her attention. We. She’d said “we were driving back to town” after murdering Trace.

  Sandy hadn’t been alone that day when she’d met McCall’s father on the ridge.

  McCall’s gaze shot to Grant. The sheriff was out of uniform, dressed in a faded long-sleeved shirt, a pair of worn jeans and sneakers. His head was bare. He stood, arms akimbo, his usually forlorn face set in deep ridges of disappointment.

  He stood behind Sandy, his weapon drawn—but pointed at the floor.

  LUKE HAD STARTED DOWN Highway 191 toward his place south of town when he’d passed, first Sandy Sheridan, then moments later, the sheriff.

  Grant was driving his old pickup instead of his patrol car, and he wore a baseball cap pulled low.

  Luke wasn’t sure what had made him curious as he’d watched Grant in his rearview mirror. The sheriff pulled over, leaving his motor running, as if to let a car go by before he fell in behind his wife again.

  He’s following her, Luke thought, as Sandy turned down the river road—and Grant followed a good distance behind.

  Luke swung his rig around and went after them, wondering if something else had happened. Since his talk with Eugene, he’d been so upset he hadn’t been thinking clearly.

  But now as he came around a curve in the road, he saw that Sandy had pulled off at the fishing access closest to McCall’s cabin on the river. If there was one thing Luke knew, it was that Sandy Sheridan was no fisherman.

  Even stranger, the sheriff made a quick turn onto a ranch road, going only a short distance before pulling into the trees and cutting his lights.

  Luke kept going on past the ranch turnoff and the fishing access road. As soon as he knew he was out of sight around a curve, he pulled over, cutting his lights and engine and got out.

  He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then he headed back down the road toward McCall’s cabin, working his way through the trees. Ahead, he saw a dark figure come out of the trees from the
spot where Grant had parked his pickup.

  What the hell was going on? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have anything to do with McCall, right?

  Then how did he explain why the sheriff’s wife appeared to be headed right for the cabin?

  Luke had to hang back to let the sheriff cross the road and disappear into the trees, before he continued to follow the two.

  He lost sight of Sandy near McCall’s cabin. A moment later he saw the sheriff sneaking along the side of the cabin, then disappearing around to the deck door.

  Luke followed, his anxiety growing. When he heard the first shot, he took off at a run. Earlier, during their lovemaking, he’d remembered seeing the pistol he’d lent McCall beside a flowerpot on the deck.

  MCCALL STARED AT GRANT, realizing he must have been the person Sandy was with that day. It seemed odd, but who else could it have been?

  Grant hadn’t moved. He stood with his head down, looking sick, his weapon still dangling from his right hand.

  Sandy still hadn’t realized they weren’t alone. “Your mother ruined my life when you took Trace away from me,” Sandy said. “He wouldn’t have left—if Ruby hadn’t been pregnant with you.”

  McCall saw where this was going. And if Sandy and Grant had killed Trace—

  The front door blew open. Grant apparently hadn’t closed it properly.

  Sandy swung around and saw her husband, Grant. Her finger must have been itching on the trigger because she got off the first shot.

  McCall heard the second shot as she dived for the door. A bloodcurdling scream followed the report of the gunfire. Someone groaned.

  As McCall scrambled toward the front door, she saw Grant trying to get to his feet. He still had the gun in his hand. Was it possible he’d shot Sandy? Or had he been trying to hit McCall?

  “Stop!” Sandy yelled. “I don’t want to shoot you in the back, but I will.”

  The third bullet ricocheted off the wall next to McCall, sending splinters into the air. McCall stopped and lifted her hands as she slowly turned around to face Sandy.

  Grant, she saw, had fallen back on the floor, facedown in his own blood. Sandy had his gun—and her own. Blood bloomed from her left side, but she seemed oblivious of being hit. Grant had shot her? To shut her up? Or keep her from killing McCall?