Читать книгу Corralled - B.J. Daniels - Страница 8

Sheriff Buford Olson hitched up his pants over his expanding belly, reached back into his patrol car for his Stetson and, closing the door, tilted his head back to look up at the hotel-size building called the Main Lodge.

Buford hated getting calls to come out to the Grizzly Club. It wasn’t that he disliked the rich, although he did find them demanding and damned irritating.

It was their private security force, a bunch of punk kids, who made his teeth ache. Buford considered anyone under thirty-five to be a kid. The “club” had given these kids a uniform and a gun and turned them into smart-ass, dangerous punks who knew diddlysquat about law enforcement.

Buford always wondered why the club had to call him in if their security force was so capable. It was no secret that the club liked to handle its own problems. The people who owned homes inside the gates didn’t want anyone outside them knowing their business. So the whole idea was to sweep whatever trouble the club had under one of their expensive Persian rugs.

Worse, the folks who owned the club didn’t want to upset the residents—or jeopardize new clientele—so they wanted everyone to believe that once they were behind these gates they were safe and nothing bad could happen.

Buford snorted at the thought, recalling how the general manager had asked him to park in the back of the main lodge so he wouldn’t upset anyone. The guard at the gate had said, “Sheriff Buford, right? I heard you were here for a complimentary visit.”

A complimentary visit. That had made him contrary enough that he’d parked right out front of “the Main Lodge.” Now, though, as he started up the wide flagstone steps, he wished he hadn’t been so obstinate. He felt his arthritis bothering him and, worse, his stomach roiling against the breakfast his wife had cooked him.

Clara had read in one of her magazines that if you ate a lot of hot peppers it would make you lose weight. She’d been putting hot chile peppers in everything they ate—and playing hell with his stomach.

The general manager he’d spoken to earlier spotted him and came rushing toward him. The diminutive man, whose name Buford couldn’t recall at first, was painfully thin with skin that hadn’t seen sunlight and piercing blue eyes that never settled more than a second.

“I thought I told you to park in the back.”

Buford shrugged. “So what’s the problem?” he asked as he looked around the huge reception area. All the leather, antler lamps and chandeliers, thick rugs and gleaming wood floors reminded him of Clara’s designer magazines.

Montana style, they called it. The Lodge Look. Buford was old enough to remember when a lot of places looked like this, only they’d been the real McCoy—not this forced Montana style.

“In here,” the general manager ordered, drawing him into a small, claustrophobic office with only one window that looked out on the dense forest. The name on the desk read Kevin Andrews, General Manager.

Kevin closed the door and for the first time, Buford noticed how nervous the man appeared. The last time Buford had been called here was for a robbery inside the gates. That time he’d thought Kevin was going to have a heart attack, he’d been so upset. But once the missing jewelry, which turned out only to have been misplaced, was found, all was well and quickly forgotten.

Buford guessed though that it had taken ten years off Kevin’s life from the looks of him. “So what’s up? More missing jewelry?”

“This is a very delicate matter. I need you to handle it with the utmost care. Do I have your word?”

Buford felt his stomach roil again. He was in no mood for this. “Just tell me what’s happened.”

The general manager rose from his chair with a brisk “come with me.”

Buford followed him out to a golf cart. Resigned that he had no choice but to ride along, he climbed on. Kevin drove them through the ritzy residence via the narrow paved roads that had been hacked out of the pines.

The hotel-size houses were all set back from the road, each occupying at least ten acres from Buford’s estimation since the buildings had to take up three of those acres with guest houses of another half acre. Each log, stone and glass structure was surrounded by pine trees so he only caught glimpses of the exclusive houses as Kevin whipped along the main road.

Finally he pulled down one of the long driveways, coming to a stop in front of a stone monstrosity with two wide wooden doors. Like the others, the house was all rock and logs with massive windows that looked out over the pines on the mountainside and Flathead Lake far below.

Buford saw with a curse that two of the security force’s golf carts were parked out front. One of the garage doors was open. A big, black SUV hunkered in one of the three stalls. The others were empty.

Getting off the golf cart, he let Kevin lead him up to the front door. Bears had been carved into the huge wooden doors, and not by some roadside chainsaw artist. Without knocking, Kevin opened the door and Buford followed him inside.

He was hit at once with a familiar smell and felt his stomach clutch. This was no missing jewelry case.

With dread, he moved across the marble floor to where the walls opened into a football field–size living room with much the same furnishings as the club’s main lodge. The two security guards were standing at the edge of the room. They had been visiting, but when they saw Kevin, they tried to act professional.

Buford looked past them to the dead man sprawled beside the hearth of the towering rock fireplace. The deceased was wearing a white, blood-soaked velour robe and a pair of leather slippers on his feet. Apparently nothing else.

“Get them out of here,” Buford ordered, pointing at the two security guards. He could only guess at how many people had already tromped through here contaminating the scene. “Stay back and make sure no one else comes traipsing through here.”

He swore under his breath as he worked his way across the room to the fireplace and the dead man. The victim looked to be in his late fifties, but could have been older because, from the tightness of his facial skin, he’d had some work done. His hair was dark with distinguishing gray at the temples, a handsome man even in death.

It appeared he’d been shot in the heart at point-blank range. An expensive handgun lay on the floor next to the body in a pool of drying blood. Clearly the man had been dead for hours. Buford swore again. He’d bet that Kevin had contacted the Grizzly Club board before he’d called the sheriff’s department.

Around the dead man were two different distinct prints left in his blood. One was a man-size dress shoe sole. The other a cowboy boot—small enough that Buford would guess it was a woman’s. It was her prints that held his attention. The woman hadn’t walked away—she’d run—straight for the front door.

AT THE MOTORCYCLE, BLYTHE tied up her hair and climbed on behind the cowboy. She didn’t think about what she was doing as she wrapped her arms around him. All she knew was that she had to escape, and wherever Logan was headed was fine with her. Even better, this Whitehorse place sounded like the end of the earth. With luck, no one would find her there.

She reminded herself that she’d thought this part of Montana would be far from the life she wanted so desperately to leave behind. But she’d been wrong.

Running didn’t come easy to her. She’d always been a fighter. But not today. Today she only wanted to forget everything, hang on to this good-looking cowboy on the back of his motorcycle, feel the wind in her face and put her old life as far behind her as possible.

An image flashed in her mind, making her shudder, and she glanced down at her cowboy boots. She quickly wiped away a streak of dark red along the sole as Logan turned the key and brought the Harley to life.

She felt the throb of the engine and closed her eyes and her mind the way she used to tune out her mother when she was a girl. Back then it was to close out the sound of her mother and her latest boyfriend arguing in the adjacent room of the small, old trailer house. She had learned to go somewhere else, be someone else, always dreaming of a fantasy life far away.

With a smile, she remembered that one of her daydreams had been to run away with a cowboy. The thought made her hold on to Logan tighter as he shifted and tore out of the café parking lot in a shower of gravel.

Last night dancing with Logan she’d thought she was finally free. It was the best she’d felt in years. Now she pressed her cheek into the soft warmth of his leather jacket, lulled by the pulse of the motorcycle, the feel of the wind in her hair. She couldn’t believe that he’d found her.

What had she been thinking giving him that damned key? She’d taken a terrible risk, but then she’d never dreamed he would come looking for her. What if he had gotten into the Grizzly Club this morning before she’d gotten out of there?

She shook off the thought and watched the countryside blur past, first forest-covered mountains, then wide-open spaces as they raced along the two-lane highway that cut east across the state.

She’d gotten away. No one knew where she was. But still she had to look back. The past had been chasing her for so long, she didn’t kid herself that it wasn’t close behind.

There were no cars close behind them, but that didn’t mean that they wouldn’t be looking for her.

For a moment, she considered what she’d done. She didn’t know this cowboy, didn’t know where he was taking her or what would happen when they got there.

This is so like you. Leaping before you look. Not thinking about the consequences of your actions. As if you weren’t in enough trouble already.

Her mother’s words rang in her ears. The only difference this time was that she wasn’t that fourteen-year-old girl with eleven dollars in the pocket of her worn jean jacket and her only possession a beat-up guitar one of her mother’s boyfriend’s had left behind.

She’d escaped both times. That time from one of her mother’s amorous boyfriends and with her virginity. This time with her life. At least so far.

That reckless spirit is going to get you into trouble one day. You mark my words, girl.

Wouldn’t her mama love to hear that she’d been right. But mama was long dead and Jennifer Blythe James was still alive. If anything, that girl and the woman she’d become was a survivor. She’d gotten out of that dirty desert trailer park where she’d started life. She would get out of this.

“WHO’S THE VICTIM?” Sheriff Buford Olson asked, sensing the Grizzly Club general manager hovering somewhere at a discreet distance behind him.

“Martin Sanderson,” Kevin said. “It’s his house.”

Buford studied the larger bloody footprint next to the body. At a glance, he could see that it didn’t match the soles of the two security guards or the general manager’s, and unlike the other smaller print, this one headed not for the door, but in the opposite direction.

As he let his gaze follow the path the bloody prints had taken, Buford noted that the man had tried to wipe his shoe clean of the blood on an expensive-looking rug between the deceased and the bar where he was now lounging.

Buford was startled to see the man making himself at home at the bar with a drink in his hand. How many people had those dumb security guards let in?

“What the hell?” the sheriff demanded as he pushed himself up from where he’d been squatting beside the body. The “club” gave him a royal pain. He moved toward the bar, being careful not to step on the bloody footprints the man had left behind.

Buford didn’t need to ask the man’s name. He recognized Jett Akins only because his fourteen-year-old granddaughter Amy had a poster of the man on her bedroom wall. On the poster, Jett had been wearing all black—just as he was this morning—and clutching a fancy electric guitar. Now he clutched a tumbler, the dark contents only half full.

The one time his granddaughter had played a Jett Atkin’s song for him, Buford had done his best not to show his true feelings. The so-called song had made him dearly miss the 1960s. Seemed to him there hadn’t been any good music since then, other than country-western, of course.

“Mr. Atkins found the body,” Kevin said from the entryway.

Jett Atkins looked pale and shaken. He downed the rest of his drink as the sheriff came toward him. Buford would guess it wasn’t his first.

“You found the body?” he asked Jett, who looked older than he had on his poster. He had dark hair and eyes and a large spider tattoo on his neck and more tattoos on the back of his hands—all that was showing since the black shirt he wore was long-sleeved.

“I flew in this morning and took a taxi here. When I saw Martin, I called the club’s emergency number.” His voice died off as he looked again at the dead man by the fireplace and poured himself another drink.

Buford wanted to ask why the hell he hadn’t called 911 instead of calling the club’s emergency number. Isn’t that what a normal person would do when he found a dead body?

He turned to Kevin again. “How many people were in this house?”

“Mr. Sanderson had left the names of six approved guests at the gate with the guard, along with special keys for admittance to all the amenities on the grounds,” Kevin said in his annoyingly official tone. “All of those keys have been picked up.”

“Six people? So where are they?” the sheriff demanded. “And I am going to need a list of their names.” Before he could finish, Kevin withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and stepped around the sunken living room to hand it to him.

“These are the names of the guests Mr. Sanderson approved.”

Buford read off the names. “JJ, Caro, Luca, Bets, T-Top and Jett. Those aren’t names.” He had almost forgotten about Jett until he spoke.

“They’re stage names,” he said. “Caro, Luca, T-Top, and Bets. It’s from when they were in a band together.”

Stage names? “Are they actors?” Buford asked, thinking things couldn’t get any worse.

“Musicians,” Jett said.

He was wrong about things not getting worse. He couldn’t tell the difference between women’s or men’s names and said as much.

“They were an all-girl band back in the nineties called Tough as Nails,” Jett said, making it sound as if the nineties were the Stone Age.

“You don’t know their real names?” Buford asked.

“They are the only names required for our guards to admit them,” Kevin said. “Here at the Grizzly Club we respect the privacy of our residents.”

Swearing, Buford wrote down: Caro, Luca, T-Top and Bets in his notebook.

“What about this JJ?” he asked. “You said he picked up his key yesterday?”

“She.”

Buford turned to look at Jett. “She?” he asked thinking one of these women account for the woman’s cowboy-boot print in the dead man’s blood.

“JJ. She was also in the band, the lead singer,” Jett said.

The sheriff turned to the club manager again. “I need full legal names for these guests and I need to know where they are.”

“Only Mr. Sanderson would have that information and he … All I can tell you is that the five approved guests picked up their amenities keys yesterday. This gentleman picked his up at the gate today at 1:16 p.m.,” he said, indicating Jett.

“Which means the others are all here inside the gates?” Buford asked.

Kevin checked the second sheet of paper he’d taken from a separate pocket. “All except JJ. She left this morning at 10:16 a.m.”

Buford glanced over at the body. 10:16 a.m. That had to be close to the time of the murder, since the dead man’s blood was still wet when a woman wearing cowboy boots appeared to have knelt by the body, then sprinted for the front door.

Blythe pressed her cheek against Logan’s broad back and breathed in the rich scents on the cool spring air. The highway rolled past in a blur, the hours slipping by until they were cruising along the Rocky Mountain front, the high mountain peaks snow-capped and beautiful.

The farther Blythe and Logan traveled, the fewer vehicles they saw. When they stopped at a café in the small western town of Cut Bank along what Logan said was called the Hi-Line, she was ravenous again.

“Not many people live up here, huh,” she said as she climbed off the bike. A fan pumped the smell of grease out the side of the café. She smiled to herself as she realized how much she’d missed fried food. All those years of dieting seemed such a waste right now.

“You think this is isolated?” Logan said with a chuckle. “Wait until you see where we’re headed. They say there are only .03 people per square mile. I suspect it’s less.”

She smiled, shaking her head as she tried to imagine such wide-open spaces. Even when she’d lived in the desert there had been a large town closeby. Since then she’d lived in congested cities. The thought of so few people seemed like heaven.

Blythe could tell Logan wanted to ask where she was from, but she didn’t give him a chance as she turned and headed for the café door. She’d seen a few pickups parked out front, but when she pushed open the door, she was surprised to find the café packed.

One of the waitresses spotted her, started to come over, then did a double take. She burst into a smile. “I know you. You’re—”

“Mistaken,” Blythe said, cutting the girl off, sensing Logan right behind her.

The girl looked confused and embarrassed. “I don’t have a table ready. But you look so much like—”

Blythe hated being rude, but she turned around and took Logan’s arm. “I’m too hungry to wait,” she said as she pulled him back through the door outside again.

“Did you know that waitress?” Logan asked, clearly taken aback by the way she’d handled it. “She seemed to know you.”

She shook her head. “I must have one of those faces or that waitress has been on her feet too long. I didn’t mean to be abrupt with her. I get cranky when I’m hungry. Can we go back to that barbecue place we passed?” She turned and headed for the bike before he could press the subject.

“You sure you’ve never been to this town before?” he asked as he swung onto the bike.

“Positive,” she said as she climbed on behind him. It wasn’t until he started the bike that she let herself glance toward the front windows of the café. The young waitress was standing on the other side of the glass.

Blythe looked away, promising herself that she would make it up to her one day. If she was still alive.

She shoved that thought away, realizing she should have known someone would recognize her even though she looked different now. It was the eyes, she thought, and closed them as Logan drove back to the barbecue joint.

It wasn’t until later, after they’d settled into a booth and ordered, that she tried to smooth things over with Logan. She could tell he was even more curious about her. And suspicious, as well.

“When I was a little girl I used to watch old Westerns on television,” she said, hoping to lighten both of their moods. “I always wanted to run away with a cowboy.”

“So you’re a romantic.”

She laughed softly as she looked across the table at him. There were worry lines between the brows of his handsome face.

“Or was it the running away part that appealed to you?” he asked.

“That could definitely be part of it. Haven’t you ever wanted to run away?”

“Sure.” His Montana blue-sky eyes bore into her. “Most people don’t have the luxury of actually doing it though.”

“Good thing we aren’t most people,” she said, giving him a flirtatious smile.

“Oh? You think we’re that much alike? So tell me what you’re like and I’ll tell you whether or not you’re right about me.”

“No big mystery. I like to dance, drive fast, have a good time and I’m always up for an adventure. How else could I have ended up living that little-girl fantasy of running away with a cowboy?”

“How else indeed,” Logan said, but he was smiling.

“HAS ANYONE LOOKED IN this house for the four approved guests who are unaccounted for?” the sheriff demanded.

Kevin was reaching for his phone to check with his security personnel when Buford caught a glint out of the corner of his eye. Turning toward Sanderson’s body, he saw something glittering on the lapel of the dead man’s robe that he hadn’t noticed before.

Stepping over to the body again, he crouched down next to Sanderson and inspected the lapel. Someone had attached a safety pin to the left-hand lapel of the dead man’s robe. As Buford looked closer, he found a tiny piece of yellow paper still attached to it.

The killer had left a note? Or was it possible that Sanderson had left a suicide note?

The thought took him by surprise. He’d been treating this like a homicide. But what if it had been a suicide, complete with note?

If so, then why would anyone take it? To protect Sanderson? To purposely make it appear to be a homicide?

A history buff, Buford thought of a famous death that perplexed historians still. Captain Meriwether Lewis of the famed Lewis and Clark Expedition through Montana had suffered from depression that was thought to be the cause of his apparent suicide. But there were still those who believed he’d been murdered.

Very perplexing, Buford thought as he moved to a small desk in the kitchen. On it was a yellow sticky note pad. The top sheet had been torn in half horizontally, leaving the glued piece and a ragged edge. The paper was the same color as the tiny scrap still caught on the safety pin.

A blue pen lay beside the pad. Unfortunately there was no slight indentation on the pad. Whoever had written the note had ripped the scrap of paper off first before writing the note.

“Did anyone remove something that had been pinned to the deceased’s robe?” he asked. Both Kevin, the two guards and Jett swore they hadn’t. From their surprise at the question, Buford suspected they were telling the truth.

But someone had taken the note.