by Cassie Miles
“The yellow cat with green eyes is a reference to his older sister, Dorothy, who treated him the way a cat treats an owner.”
“Ignoring him, tearing up his best shirt, pissing on his shoes.”
“I don’t think she ever peed on his personal belongings,” she said, “but that’s the basic gist. Her disdain might even explain the big rift between them twenty years ago.”
“How so?”
“My family had weird inheritance traditions. Dorothy got everything. Dad got a cash settlement. He might have resented being cut out.”
“And she might have ignored him.” That sounded like a motive, but Ty wasn’t sure about the crime. “I’d like to see the Fluffball story.”
“The book is in the library at the Castle.”
He directed their horses through a stand of burnished aspen almost turned to gold, then through other trees and foliage until they were on the Ridge, gazing out across miles of acreage. He acted as tour guide. “In the distance to the west, you can see the outskirts of Greenwell, the population center of Tremont County. And if you follow that road leading away from town, you’ll come to the turnoff for my cabin.”
“I didn’t realize you lived so close to the Castle,” she said.
Mountain topography made it difficult to judge distance. A straight line from his cabin to the Castle was probably only seven miles, but when the ups and downs were factored in and the wasted time going around rocks, rivers, trees and hills, those miles doubled or tripled. If he could fly from home to the Castle, the commute would take only a few minutes. “It’s quicker to get here on horseback than to drive.”
He dismounted, activated a handheld GPS and fed in the coordinates for the first stop on Dorothy’s last ride. He zoomed in on their location. When he’d walked only twenty paces, he hit the spot. “This is where she stopped and got off her horse.”
“How can you tell?”
“Check the notation in the S&R worker’s book.” He reached into the saddlebag and pulled out a computer notebook. “This search team took detailed notes so they could tell where they started and where they left off. In the case of Aunt Dorothy, they had a bunch of volunteers helping.”
Vanessa booted up the screen and read the info. “Thirty-two volunteers searched for ten hours on the day after she went missing.”
He’d worked on similar Search and Rescue projects. “The assumption in a situation like this is that Dorothy had an accident, maybe her horse got spooked and threw her. Or maybe she got careless and fell.”
“How do they find her?”
“The person in charge of the team is usually an expert tracker. He or she studies scuff marks on the ground, broken twigs, footprints and such to determine the direction the lost person went. Their skill set is amazing, better than any satellite photos or GPS or drone.”
“S&R uses drones?”
“In the old days, they used to take helicopters to search for lost hikers. Drones can cover twice the area for half the cost. Search and Rescue operation—especially in a high-class resort area like Aspen—have gotten high tech.” Again, he consulted the GPS. “Dorothy went this way, down the sloping hill from the Ridge.”
“The note says she didn’t fall but descended on foot.” Vanessa hunkered down to peer over the edge. “Why would she go this way? It’s really steep.”
“She could have been looking for something. Or could have lost her balance,” he suggested. “There’s no way of knowing.”
“I’m not interested in falling down the hill to follow.” She straightened. “Can we pick up her trail at the bottom?”
“That’s a plan.”
They returned to their horses and mounted, picking their way along the Ridge until they found a safe descent. While she rode, Vanessa skimmed the information in the notebook. “There’s a lot of detail about her horse pacing back and forth on the top of the Ridge. The animal didn’t appear to be injured.”
“But wouldn’t slide down the hill,” he said. “Smart horse.”
“Could the answer to why Dorothy disappeared be that simple? She got separated from her horse?”
It was frustrating to try on so many possibilities and never know for sure, but he was glad to be here, retracing Dorothy’s route, rather than being locked up in a dusty file room in the courthouse. At the base of the hill, he dismounted and gave his full attention to the GPS. Dorothy’s trail followed a crazy zigzag pattern, moving in a south by southeast direction. “At this point,” he explained, “the volunteers would be called upon. They’d spread out in a web, six to ten feet apart, and look for clues.”
Vanessa followed him, leading both horses by their reins. “The erratic way she was staggering around makes me think she was drunk or on medication. She might have been ill, suffering from a seizure or passed out. Can we get access to her medical records?”
“Do you know her doctor’s name?”
“I don’t, but George Ingram might have something in his notes. We should talk to him about cause of death. I’ll put the Doc on my to-do list.”
Dorothy’s stumbling walk came to an end at the edge of a wide ravine.
She scrolled to another screen in the notebook from S&R. “Oh, my God, Ty. Take a look at this.”
The screen displayed a photograph. The caption gave the location where it was found by one of the volunteers. The gold locket appeared to be identical to the one he still carried in his pocket with the heart and the arrow circle. “That’s proof. We’re on the right path.”
“But we still don’t know what Dorothy was doing out here.” She sat on the edge of a table-sized rock and gazed in all directions. “Was she running toward something? Or away from it? Did the S&R people find indications that she met someone else?”
“Nothing that they made a note about.”
As Vanessa turned her thoughts inward, he saw an impressive depth of concentration. She had separated from her aunt at an early age and had lost track of the woman in later life, but Vanessa’s connection to her family was bone-deep. She was a Whitman through and through. All the other facts and evidence seemed unimportant compared to her DNA memories. Not that Ty believed in psychic powers, but he could see a connection between Vanessa and the dead woman.
“If I had to guess,” she said, “I’d say that Aunt Dorothy was running away from something or someone who followed her to Rattlesnake Ridge. That’s why she slid down the steep slope instead of taking the time to find a safer descent. And it’s why she was charging around in a crazy pattern. She was trying to escape.”
The hairs on the back of Ty’s neck prickled. Was Vanessa right? “You think she was being hunted by someone on the Ridge?”
“The big mistake she made was sliding off the Ridge. Her instinct might have been to put distance between herself and her pursuer, but when she was down here on this wide stretch of grassland, there was no cover. She would have been an easy target for a gunman up here on the Ridge. He could sit back and wait until she was in his sites.”
Her story was all supposition. No facts. And yet, it made sense. He sat beside her on the rock, almost touching but not quite. Only a whisper of open air—a few inches—separated them. “Where is this vision of the past coming from? You seem to be an organized, down-to-earth woman, like your aunt.”
“But I have a wild imagination like Dad. When I get this figured out, I’ll let you know.” She lightly patted his cheek, then she stood. “Does the GPS tell you where she went from here?”
He consulted the finder. “From this point, it’s direct and simple. She ran that way. Toward Buzzard Creek.”
At this time of year, early autumn, there wasn’t much water in the creek. It was only a few feet wide. Dorothy had made her dash a few months later in November. The creek bed would have been almost dry.
He followed Vanessa into a wide ravine where a mere trickle splashed in a winding pat
h through shrubs and a clump of cottonwood trees. If Vanessa’s imaginings were correct and Dorothy had been trying to escape, this would have been a logical direction. In the ravine, she could take cover and hide from the hunter with a rifle.
On the creek bank, Vanessa stopped walking and allowed Coco to take a drink. “Which way did Dorothy go?”
“Both.”
The information shown on his GPS was inconclusive. There were signs that she’d gone one way and then the other. “What does it say in the notes?”
“Pretty much what you said.” She scrolled to a new screen. “Nearly a mile upstream, then she doubled back and went twice that far downstream.”
And then the big revelation. In his head, Ty played a drumroll. “And then, she vanished. There was no clear indication that she’d left the creek or had linked up with someone on horseback. She was just gone.”
Vanessa skimmed the next page in the notebook. “Volunteers went four miles in each direction until it got dark. They found nothing.”
“And the next day, it snowed five inches, four more on the day after that.”
“The perfect storm,” she said. “After the snow and the spring runoff, there wouldn’t have been much of a trail for S&R to follow.”
“But they didn’t give up on Aunt Dorothy. Cops aren’t the only ones who are haunted by a cold case they can’t solve. Throughout the winter and into the spring, search parties combed this area whenever they had spare time.” He watched his handsome stallion approach the creek and disdainfully dip his head to drink. “In March, after the spring thaw, they found her remains in a cave across the river. There was some question about how she’d gotten all the way across the creek and up the hill, but there wasn’t much of her left to figure it out. Just a skull, some leg bones and ribs.”
“Was there any other evidence?”
“Nada.”
He casually stroked the flank of the black stallion and felt a tension under the heavy muscles. The powerful animal jerked his head suddenly as though he’d been startled, and then he looked to the left toward Rattlesnake Ridge. Ty followed the direction of the horse’s gaze and saw the glint of sunlight against metal. The barrel of a rifle?
He snatched his weapon from the saddle scabbard and yelled, “Vanessa, get down!”
From the corner of his eye, he saw her dive behind a clump of leafless bushes. Ty slapped his horse on the rump. Didn’t want the stallion to be accidentally shot.
Raising his weapon, he aimed toward the spot where he’d seen the reflection.
The other gunman fired first.
Chapter Thirteen
Lying on her belly in the dirt beside the creek, Vanessa froze in panic. The gunfire from Ty’s rifle was thunderous. She couldn’t tear her gaze away from him. It was obvious that the man knew how to shoot. His standing form was textbook perfection. Then he dropped to one knee and continued.
She believed in him, believed he would do everything he could to protect her. But the echo of returning gunfire terrified her. Someone was shooting at them. They were the targets, the prey. Was this what Aunt Dorothy had felt when a gunman ambushed her and she couldn’t escape? Or had she imagined the whole thing and ended the confrontation by taking fate into her own hands and committing suicide?
Ty looked over his shoulder toward her and shouted something. She couldn’t understand his words but tried to reassure him by giving an okay signal.
“I’m fine,” she said. Am I? She didn’t think she’d been hit by a bullet but couldn’t feel her legs or arms. She checked herself for wounds by wiggling her toes, patting down her body and scanning for blood. A red smear slashed across her upper left arm and her flannel shirt was torn. She’d been grazed by a bullet and hadn’t even felt the impact.
“Vanessa!” Ty shouted.
“What?”
He tossed his cell phone in her direction. “Hit the speed dial for Gert in dispatch. I need backup. ASAP. If we’re going to catch this guy, we’ve got to move fast.”
With bullets whizzing over her head, Vanessa made the call to Gert Hepple. She’d spoken to the dispatcher a couple of times when she was trying to reach the sheriff to invite him to dinner. Had that been a hundred years ago? She recognized the raspy voice of the feisty older woman.
“Sheriff, I’m guessing you’ve gotten yourself into trouble,” Gert said. “What’s up?”
“This is Vanessa Whitman. I’m with the sheriff, and he needs backup. Send all the deputies. ASAP.”
“How come?”
Seriously? Not the time for a chat. “We’re taking gunfire. I’ve been hit. We’re at Buzzard Creek near Rattlesnake Ridge.”
Vanessa disconnected the call before Gert could ask more questions she couldn’t answer. Vanessa had no idea how she’d gotten into trouble. This was a nightmare. She was an English teacher, a ghostwriter for a celebrity chef. Why would someone shoot at her? Who wanted her dead? Nightmare! Even the names for the local landmarks were threatening: Rattlesnake Ridge and Buzzard Creek. What else? Grizzly Gulch? Murder Mountain? Wolf Rabies Road? Dad had always encouraged her to be more adventurous, but she was sure this wasn’t what he’d had in mind.
Ty lowered his rifle, duck-walked toward her, staying low, and lay down beside her in the dirt. “Are you okay?”
“Been better.” She pointed to the blood on her shirt. “I was shot. I think it’s just a scratch, but I can’t tell.”
He tore off her sleeve to study the wound. “Doesn’t appear to be serious. The bullet just grazed you, but you might want to put a trip to the emergency room on your to-do list. Otherwise, that might leave a scar.”
“What if I want a scar?” What she really wanted was for him to comfort her, to hold her in his arms and stroke her hair. She wanted to thank him for saving her life, but she couldn’t let down her guard and be vulnerable. Instead, she snapped and growled. “A gunshot wound might make me into a more interesting person.”
“You’re plenty interesting.” When he leaned close and kissed her forehead, she felt heat radiating from his body. His neck and upper chest glistened with sweat. “I need to ask you for a favor, Vanessa.”
“Okay.”
“Would you mind if I left you here for a couple of minutes?”
“By myself? Alone? Oh. Hell. No.”
“The guy on the Ridge hasn’t fired his weapon in over two minutes. He might be making a run for it, and I want to stop him.”
Anger flared inside her and burned off her fear and confusion. All her second-guessing was moot. She couldn’t believe that Ty would just take off and leave her here at the mercy of a killer. “Aren’t your deputies supposed to arrive in a few minutes?”
“We’re wasting time,” he said. “I won’t leave if you need me.”
She refused to play the role of wimpy damsel in distress. “I’ll come with you.”
He looked shocked and surprised. The expression on his face was almost worth the risk she intended to take. Moving stiffly, she stood and dusted the front of her jeans. About a hundred yards away, she saw Coco and Ty’s stallion munching on the dull, dry grass in the meadow. When Vanessa whistled and made a clicking noise with her tongue, Coco responded. They’d spent enough time together that they’d developed their own private language. In seconds, the chestnut mare was at her side, impatiently pawing at the dust.
Vanessa handed the phone to Ty. “Looks like your horse isn’t coming.”
From a distance, she heard police sirens. On the road from town, two patrol cars approached with lights flashing. If the shooter hadn’t taken off before now, he was surely on his way.
“He couldn’t have gone far.” Ty whistled to his horse and waved. The stallion turned his head and looked away. A definite snub. “If we can find the shooter’s location, we can determine if he was riding a horse.”
“Or an ATV or a motorbike or maybe he parked on the
road and hiked.” She mounted Coco. “A more efficient approach to figuring out who was shooting at me would be to focus on the limited number of people in this area who know what we’re looking for.”
“Limited number?”
There were the eight dinner guests from last night, the staff that worked at the Castle and the chefs in the kitchen. Added to that were the deputies, the cop from Aspen and the CBI agents. “It might be a fairly long list.”
“And the shooter could be someone you’ve never met, like a hired gun. He could be working for the person who wants you dead.”
This investigation was more complex than she had anticipated. If she went back in time, she could probably remember another dozen or so people who she’d offended or those who had grudges against the Whitmans. Many people might want to shoot her, but most were sane and didn’t act on minor hostility. “Coco and I will ride over and pick up your horse. What’s his name? Diablo?”
“He has kind of a bad rep.”
“Diablo is perfect.”
When she and Coco got closer, Diablo stamped the earth and tossed his head like the demon horse he was. But it only took a small nicker from Coco to calm him. Vanessa took the reins and returned to where Ty was standing with his hat pushed back on his head and his rifle resting on his shoulder. One of the SUV patrol cars had left the road and was driving across the field toward them.
“Here’s what we’re going to do,” Ty said. “You’re going to ride into town in a patrol car with Randall. He’ll take you to the courthouse, and you’ll stay there with Gert. The deputies and I are going to get the horses back to the Castle barn, talk to Agent Morris and do some investigating on our own to see which of our suspects might have been out on the Ridge. Then I’ll come back and pick you up.”
“I can live with that.”
Before he mounted, Ty stroked Diablo’s long nose and whispered, “People might call you a demon, but you saved my life. I never would have seen than gunman if you hadn’t shown me where he was.”
