Big Sky Lawman

by Marilyn Pappano

  As the chief began talking, Sloan’s gaze settled on the Montgomerys. Ellis looked pretty ragged. First his wife’s death, then this. He’d aged years in the past few months.

  As for Max, Sloan didn’t know him well and doubted that anyone in Whitehorn did, including Ellis. He’d graduated from high school about the time Sloan had entered junior high, had gone on to college and then traveled around the world overseeing his father’s business interests. Four years ago he’d settled in town once again, taking over the presidency of the Whitehorn Savings and Loan when Ellis was elected mayor. Whether he was happy with the change was anyone’s guess. What he’d done besides work in those four years was also, as far as Sloan knew, anyone’s guess. If there was one thing Max Montgomery did well, it was keep to himself.

  He certainly hadn’t bothered himself with his troubled sister. Neither had his father or his other sister Rachel, who’d come home from Chicago to be with the family through the crisis. Maybe if one of them had shown this much concern for Christina six months ago, she wouldn’t be missing now.

  But it wasn’t Sloan’s place to judge. People made mistakes—the Montgomerys, Crystal’s parents, his own mother. Hopefully, they learned from them. Hopefully, some people—like James—suffered for them.

  There was a lot of talk at the meeting, but not much was said. Terry Wilkins and Mark Blakely, the two detectives who were primarily in charge of the police department’s side of the case, were checking out leads. Officially, so were the two investigators handling it for the sheriff’s department, though Sloan knew for a fact they had no leads. He suspected the detectives’s leads were nonexistent, as well. Just so much talk for the benefit of the mayor and his son.

  “All we need is for one of those ‘leads’ to lead to the rez,” Eugene Elkshoulder, a young Cheyenne deputy, murmured. “Then the BIA police and/or the FBI can come in, and we’ll see just how many people can B.S. at these conferences.”

  Sloan responded with a nod, but he didn’t think that was a remote possibility. The Bureau of Indian Affairs police had jurisdiction over the reservation, and the FBI could come in at their invitation, but he didn’t think Christina had made it to the rez that night. If Crystal and Winona were right, and she had given birth in the clearing, she would have had to walk miles through the forest to reach the reservation boundary, and then where would she go? The nearest house was several more miles, and Christina was neither physically active nor accustomed to hardship. She never would have had the strength of spirit to make it.

  So where had she gone? Deeper into the woods? Back down the trail to the parking lot? And how had she gotten to the woods in the first place? Why? To meet someone? To get away from someone?

  This was his least favorite kind of case. Too many questions and not enough answers.

  Once the meeting broke up, Sloan waited where he was for the crowd to clear the doors. Elkshoulder had the same idea. “I hear the Montgomerys are putting pressure on the sheriff and the chief to make an arrest.”

  “Can’t make an arrest without a suspect and probable cause, and we don’t have either,” Sloan replied.

  “I think Christina’s living in luxury someplace laughing at all the trouble she’s caused.”

  “Her bank accounts haven’t been touched, and her credit cards haven’t been used. How is she paying for this luxury?”

  Elkshoulder needed a moment to find an answer to support his theory. “The baby. She sold it to some black-market adoption ring. Rich folks will pay fifty thousand and up for a healthy infant these days.”

  For a healthy white infant, Sloan thought. Considering the makeup of the county’s population, there was a good chance Christina’s baby wasn’t as white as its pretty chestnut-haired, blue-eyed mother.

  But Elkshoulder’s theory was as viable as anyone else’s. Stranger things had happened. And selling an unwanted baby was a definite step up from abandoning it.

  Abruptly shifting gears, the deputy grinned. “Hey, was that Crazy Cobbs’s niece at the Hip Hop?”

  Sloan had heard the nickname before, but this time it rankled. “Winona Cobbs is a whole lot saner than you and me, son. And seeing that she’s one of the citizens who pay your salary, it might be a good idea for you to refer to her as Ms. Cobbs.”

  “Aw, I didn’t mean nothing by it. But you gotta admit, the old woman is a little shy of a full load. She sees things that aren’t there and thinks she can tell fortunes, for Pete’s sake. Anyway, about her niece—”

  “She’s taken.”

  Elkshoulder’s look was both rueful and admiring. “How the hell’d you do that? Jeez, today’s only the second time I’ve even seen her.”

  Seeing that the exit was clear, Sloan pushed away from the wall, then gave the deputy a pat on the shoulder. “You can see her all you want—from a distance. But don’t get too close. I’m a mite territorial these days.”

  He left the conference room and headed through the crowd toward the front doors. They were blocked, though, by the police chief and his two detectives. “And what would be his reason for this?” the chief was asking as Sloan waited for officers coming into the building to pass so he could go around the ones talking.

  “When has he ever needed a reason for anything?” Wilkins asked impatiently. “He’s nuts. Isn’t that reason enough?” He broke off and glared at Sloan when he finally managed to get around him. Sloan didn’t care. He didn’t like the detective, anyway, and he wasn’t the least bit interested in his business.

  He did wonder, though, as he walked to his truck, who they’d been discussing. Blue River County’s list of people considered to be nuts was a long one, and varied depending on who you asked. Obviously, Deputy Elkshoulder thought Winona was off her rocker, and Crystal feared that everyone would think she was delusional if word of her vision got out.

  Maybe she was right. Maybe foolish people like Elkshoulder would give her her own nickname, or maybe they would just stick with Crazy Cobbs, One and Two. Elder and Junior.

  He’d be damned if he would let that happen. Even if her vision had to become a part of his report, he would make sure there was no name-calling. She deserved that much.

  But he intended to give her so much more.

  Seven

  It was late Friday afternoon when Crystal hung the picture on her bedroom wall, then stepped back, her head cocked to one side, to study it. It was a bit crooked, but she didn’t bother straightening it. When you lived in a forty-year-old trailer house, things hung on the walls tended to wind up crooked. She was just getting a jump on it by starting out that way.

  Of all the photographs she’d found in the moving carton she’d brought over from the back room, this, a hauntingly lovely shot of a giant live oak, was the only one she wanted to hang. She’d picked it up at an arts and crafts festival in Atlanta for ten bucks, then spent another hundred framing it. With its branches draped with Spanish moss and the cascading purple blooms of an ancient wisteria vine, the tree reminded her of what was good about home.

  The rest of the photographs in the box reminded her of what was bad.

  As a knock rattled the closed door, she nudged the carton aside with her knee so the door could open. “Come on in,” she called, and he did.

  Sloan.

  He stood in the doorway, looking from her face to the hammer in her hand, then back again. “I think my pistol beats your hammer,” he teased.

  “My hammer’s bigger.”

  “My pistol’s deadlier.”

  She set the hammer down, then swept up an armful of frames to drop into—to hide inside—the box. “What are you doing out this way?”

  “I had a call a few miles from here. Since I’ve already put in an hour overtime, I thought I’d stop by and see my favorite girl.”

  “Sorry, Skye’s not here,” she said flippantly, even as she wondered if she had ever been anyone’s favorite girl before. Not that she could recall. It had a nice, old-fashioned ring to it, and she was developing a new appreciation for the old-
fashioned.

  He gave her a smirk before glancing around the room. “Doing a little redecorating?”

  She glanced around, too, though she already knew how bad the mess was. Boxes and their contents covered all the floor space and most of the furniture, too. She would have to clear a path to the bed tonight and another to the closet in the morning. “I’m unpacking a few things,” she said, stating the obvious.

  That brought his gaze back to her, with a decidedly pleased look in his eyes. “Decided to stay awhile, did you?”

  “Yeah. Have a seat, if you can find a place.” She perched on the end of a primitive pine bench, weathered to silvery gray, that she’d claimed from the shop for her own as he cleared a few inches of space on the bed.

  “I thought I’d see if I could persuade you to have dinner with me.”

  “You mean, like a date?”

  “The first one went well enough. Why not try a second?”

  With another good-night kiss? The mere thought was enough to curl her toes, but all the wrapping paper and bubble wrap on the floor hid the reaction from his view. “Where I come from,” she said primly, “dates are usually scheduled in advance.”

  “Is that what Rich-man did? Of course it is. And what else did he pencil into his schedule? Asking you to marry him? Making love to you? Breaking your heart?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, yes and yes.” Her tone was cooler than she meant it to be. She honestly wasn’t offended or upset or hurt. She had just realized how right he was. Everything she and James had ever done together had been scheduled—by him, by their parents, by his campaign advisors. Everyone had had a say in her life except her. She’d wanted to keep the peace, to keep her parents happy with her, and so she had gone along. She’d been the most docile little fiancée in the whole state of Georgia.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so…”

  “Right?” she supplied dryly. “You are, I’m sorry to say.”

  “Then you’re not mad? You’re still considering dinner with me tonight?”

  “Yes. I would like to have dinner with you.” The satisfaction in his grin warmed her as she got to her feet. “Give me five minutes to change, and I’ll be ready.”

  As he stood, the top picture in the carton chose that moment to slide over the side and onto the floor. Well aware exactly which photo it was, Crystal held her breath as he bent to pick it up. It would be human nature for him to turn it over—would she pass up the chance to examine the pictures of his life?—but she fervently hoped he would resist, just this once.

  He didn’t. Looking at the picture, he slowly sat back on the bed. For a long time he studied it in silence before making one quiet comment. “You don’t look like a woman in love.”

  She sat beside him, pulling the elaborate frame from his hands. The photograph had been taken at her engagement party. The day had been hot and muggy, but a person would never guess it to look at all the cool, collected faces. The grounds of James’s grandparents’ plantation home had been filled with beautiful people in beautiful clothes, beautiful flowers, beautiful food and beautiful music.

  She had worn a peach silk dress, and James had worn a cream-colored suit. Peach and cream had been her colors—too precious, she’d thought then and now—chosen for her by her mother and his. The dress had been chosen for her, too, and the party planned around her, the wedding planned without her.

  James had never been more handsome than he was that day—or more smug, or overbearing. And why not? The ring—the ring, the ostentatious Johnson-family-heirloom rock—was on her finger, and their engagement was officially announced. He’d known that Marabeth would move heaven and earth to ensure that the marriage went off without a hitch.

  He’d known that Crystal didn’t have the backbone to call it off.

  “Whose house?”

  She didn’t glance at Sloan. “His grandparents’. When they die, it will be James’s. That’s why he wanted our engagement party there.”

  “Are these your parents?”

  “Marabeth and Andrew Cobbs, in their proudest moment.”

  “And his parents?”

  She nodded.

  “And James.”

  He was as fair as Sloan was dark, as overtly white as Sloan was Indian. Blond hair, blue eyes, country-club tan. Elegant and sophisticated, the result of two hundred years of selective breeding. Handsome, intelligent, ambitious, charming, and, not surprisingly, self-centered. And not real.

  Sloan was real.

  “And you…” he said quietly, then repeated with just as much conviction, “you don’t look like a woman in love.”

  She didn’t, she admitted. She looked…desperate. Desperate to please, to do the right thing, to not disappoint. Desperate to make their engagement work, to make the marriage work, to never let on to anyone, not even herself, that it was a mistake. That she wasn’t in love with James. That she didn’t want to marry Georgia’s next governor.

  She’d been so damn desperate, and afraid, and powerless.

  Brushing her fingertip lightly over her own image, she whispered, “The things we do for love.” For her parents’ love, she would have gone through with it. She would have lived the rest of her life, deceiving everyone and most especially herself. She would have sacrificed herself, her future, everything, for her parents’ love and acceptance.

  And it all would have been an illusion.

  After a few seconds, or a few minutes, he took the frame from her, turned it facedown again and returned it to the box. Then he pulled her to her feet and turned her in the direction of the closet. “Find a way over there, get changed and let’s go.”

  Dinner, she remembered. “Dressy or jeans?”

  “Whatever you want, darlin’.”

  He closed the door behind him, and she sorted through the clothes in her closet, settling on a green sweater, black jeans and black boots. She changed quickly, ran a comb through her hair and touched up her makeup before joining Sloan at the front door. “Does Aunt Winona know I’m leaving?”

  “Not unless she preminisced it. I stopped in, looking for you, and she sent me on over here. By the way, what are you doing in your bedroom with the door closed and the front door unlocked? Anyone could have come in without you hearing.”

  “Someone did,” she said with a grin as he helped her with her coat. “I’ll lock the door next time. Scout’s honor.”

  “Aw, you were never a Scout, were you?”

  “No. But I would have liked to have been.” She locked up, then they hurried across the yard to the shop. According to the thermometer mounted outside the Stop-n-Swap, it was thirty-four degrees, but the northwest wind made it feel much colder. She wondered when they would get their first snow and hoped she was up to the challenge of dealing with it. Georgia’s worst winter on record couldn’t begin to compete with Montana’s average.

  But this was her home now. She would adapt.

  Before the bell above the door echoed into silence, Winona asked, “Where are you going for dinner?”

  Crystal felt Sloan’s glance. He was being a good sport about it, but their foreknowledge still took him by surprise. It wasn’t an easy thing to get used to. She’d been trying for twenty-six years.

  He cleared his throat—and probably his mind—before answering. “I thought we’d check out Neela’s, if it’s not too crowded.”

  “It won’t be, at least not until later. Have a good time.” With a big smile, Winona winked at them. “I won’t wait up.”

  “Good night, Aunt Winona.” Crystal leaned across the counter to hug her before following Sloan out again. “Who or what is Neela’s?” she asked as they settled out of the wind again in his sheriff’s department Jeep.

  “It’s both a who and a what. Neela Tallbear came off the rez and went to Paris to cooking school. She worked in New York, San Francisco and St. Thomas, then got homesick and came back to Whitehorn. She opened her own restaurant about five years ago, serving local beef, and it’s doing well.”
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br />   “So a French-trained chef can find happiness running a steak-house in the wilds of Montana,” Crystal said with a chuckle.

  “Why not? A snooty Chatham Prep grad is learning to find happiness working in a junk store and living in a trailer in the wilds of Montana.”

  And dating a Cheyenne deputy sheriff, she silently added. Before him, she’d been satisfied, more or less. Since getting involved with him, she’d realized she could be happy. She could make friends, make a life, fit in. She could be accepted, liked, wanted, and maybe even loved exactly the way she was. No pretending, no phoniness, no hiding her abilities. She could be just Crystal, and that was enough for him.

  And that was more than enough for her.

  Their first stop in town was the sheriff’s department, where they traded the Jeep for his own truck. Next they went to his apartment so he could change out of his uniform. It wasn’t much different from her own apartment back in Atlanta—a little bigger, definitely neater. Either he was a better housekeeper, someone took care of it for him, or he spent little time in the place.

  She waited in the living room with its balcony that provided a nice view of the Crazy Mountains, barely a shadow now in the darkening evening. There was a sofa and chair made for sprawling, a rocker with its share of dings, a television and compact stereo and one entire wall of bookcases filled with—surprise—books. She scanned the titles, ranging from old college texts to works about the Cheyenne people, from biographies and histories to fiction. The fiction was diverse, as well—blockbuster bestsellers, mystery, science fiction, Westerns and obscure literature.

  “What do you know?” His teasing voice came from behind her as she browsed the shelves. “He’s charming, he’s handsome, he kisses like the devil, and, hey, he can read, too.”

  When she turned to face him, if she hadn’t already been smiling, she would have smiled then. He’d changed into jeans faded a soft, comfortable blue and worn to a soft, comfortable, body-hugging fit. His button-down shirt was scarlet and tucked in to reveal an intricately tooled leather belt. “Nice belt.”