Читать книгу Lucky Shot - B.J. Daniels - Страница 11

CHAPTER FOUR

AS HE STUMBLED through the stupor of whatever he’d been drugged with, Max tried to figure out who’d set him up. He knew why he’d been so stupid as to fall for it. He’d wanted someone to celebrate with last night. As much as he loved his job, he got lonely.

Now, though, he just wanted his camera and laptop and the photos on them back. Maybe Tammy Jones—if that had even been her real name—had just planned to pawn them for money. But he suspected that wasn’t the case once he checked his wallet and found he had almost a hundred in cash that she hadn’t bothered with.

His head cleared a little more after a large coffee at a drive-through. He put in a call to the department store where Tammy Jones said she worked as a buyer, hoping he was wrong. He was told no one by that name worked for the company, not in Bozeman, not in Seattle.

He groaned as he disconnected. Whoever the woman had been last night, she had only one agenda. She was after the photos.

But how did she even know about them? He’d made a lot of calls yesterday and quite a few people were aware that he had the shots. All the people he’d called, though, he’d worked with before and he trusted them. That left... No way was that woman from the restaurant hired by the senator to steal the photos. If the future president had known about the photos he would have tried to buy them if not strong-arm him, Max was sure.

That left Kat Hamilton.

He drove back downtown. It was early enough that the gallery wasn’t open yet, but the light was still on in the back. He parked on Main Street and walked down the alley. The rear entrance in the deserted alley had an old door and an even older lock. One little slip of his credit card and he was inside, thankful for his misspent youth.

The first thing he saw was a sleeping bag in one corner of the back area with a battery-operated lamp next to it and a book lying facedown on the floor. The woman clearly didn’t appreciate the spines of books.

He found Kat wearing a pair of oversize jeans and a different baggy sweater. Clearly, this must be the attire she preferred. But he thought about bottled up secrets. Was she hiding under all those clothes? She stood next to a counter in the framing room of the gallery, her back to him, lost in her work. “I want my camera and laptop back.”

At the sound of his voice, she spun around, gray eyes wide as if startled but not necessarily surprised. If he’d had any doubt who’d set him up, he didn’t any longer. She’d known she’d be seeing him again.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked haughtily.

He enunciated each word as he stepped toward her. “The woman you hired to steal my camera and laptop? Tell her I want them back along with the photos of your mother and—”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

He laughed. “Did anyone ever mention that you’re a terrible liar?”

She bristled and looked offended. “I don’t lie. Nor do I like being accused of something I didn’t do.”

“Save it,” he said before she could deny it again. “I show you a photograph of your mother, and hours later my camera and laptop are stolen, and you have no idea what I’m talking about?”

Kat shrugged. “Maybe you should be more careful about who you hang out with.” She turned her back to him as she resumed what she’d been doing. Or at least pretended to.

“Look. Someone is going to get a photo of your mother sooner or later. Why go to so much trouble?”

She turned to face him. “Exactly. If not you, then someone else will get her photo. Do you think I really care that you took a photo of my mother with plans to sell it to some sleazy rag? I didn’t and I still don’t. I’ve lived in a fishbowl my whole life. I’ve had people like you in my face with cameras since my father first ran for office. It comes with the territory. My mother is just another casualty.”

He took off his hat and scratched the back of his neck as he considered whether or not she was lying. He’d been bluffing earlier. “I’m not buying it. I saw your expression when you recognized your mother in the photograph.”

She sighed. “Think what you like.”

“Let’s talk about another woman, the one you set me up with last night.”

Hand on one hip, she turned to study him openly for a moment. “What did this woman look like?”

He described her. “Don’t pretend you don’t know her.”

“I know her type.” She smiled, noticeably amused. “Come on, weren’t you even a little suspicious when she hit on you? She did hit on you, right? That’s what I thought, and you fell for it. Whoever set you up must know you.”

Max laughed. Kat had lightened up, and he liked her sense of humor. “I’ll have you know, women hit on me all the time.”

She rolled her eyes. “Chalk this up as a learning experience and move on.” She started to turn away again.

“You really don’t think I’m going to let you get away with this, do you?”

She sighed and faced him once more. “What option do you have? Even if you had a shred of proof, it would be my word, the daughter of a senator, against your word, a...reporter.”

Okay, now she was ticking him off. “I happen to like what I do, and it puts food on my table.” He glanced at the photos she was working on. “Who keeps food on your table? I doubt your...hobby of taking pictures is your means of support.” He cocked his head at her. “Then again, you don’t need to stoop to having a real job, do you?”

* * *

KAT HAD KNOWN she would see Max Malone again after he’d ambushed her yesterday. He would want a story about her mother. He would use the photos he’d gotten to bargain with her. This wasn’t her first rodeo.

But she hadn’t expected him to come in the back way accusing her of stealing his camera and laptop with the photos of her mother. If she’d known how easy it would have been, she might have considered setting him up just for the fun of it, though.

No, she had expected him to come through the front door and make a scene once the gallery opened. She’d been prepared to threaten to call the police on him.

But he’d surprised her in more ways than one. Not many men did that. So she’d let him have his say, waiting to see what his game was. She’d even found the man somewhat amusing at first, but now he was starting to irritate her.

“I’ll have you know I take care of myself.”

“Is that right? You pay for that fancy SUV you drive?” He laughed. “I didn’t think so. Now about my camera—”

“If you think I’m going to replace your camera— What are you doing?” she demanded as he pulled out his cell phone and keyed in three numbers. She’d planned to threaten to call the police, but she wouldn’t have done it because she didn’t want the hassle or the publicity.

“Calling the cops.”

“They’ll arrest you for breaking in to the gallery.” She heard the 911 operator answer. He was calling her bluff. He knew she didn’t want the police involved.

“I’d like to report—”

“Fine,” she snapped.

He said, “Sorry, my mistake,” into the phone and pocketed it again. He eyed her, waiting.

“But I don’t have your camera or your laptop.”

He studied her for a long moment. “Okay, if you want to play it that way, then what do you have to offer me?” he asked as he leaned against the counter where she’d been working.

She gritted her teeth. Hadn’t she suspected that he hadn’t really lost his camera or laptop and that he was playing her? She no longer found him amusing. It was time to call a halt to this.

“Even though I had nothing to do with the loss of your camera or laptop, I’ll write you a check for new ones just to get rid of you.”

He shook his head slowly, his gaze lingering on her long enough that she could feel heat color her cheeks. He made her feel naked, as if he could see her the way no one else could. “My camera, my laptop, my photos. That’s the only deal on the table, unless you have something more to offer.”

“I just offered you money!”

He shook his head, his gaze warm on her.

She felt her cheeks flush as she realized what he was suggesting. “I have nothing more to offer you.”

He raised a brow, shoved off the counter and closed the distance between them. “Either I get my camera back, or you’re going to have to make it up to me in another way.” He was close, too close, but it wasn’t fear he evoked. She could smell the scent of freshly showered soap on him. Her gaze went from his blue eyes to his lips and the slight smirk there. The man was so cocky, so arrogant, so sure of the effect he was having on her.

As he brushed his fingertips over her cheek, she felt a tingle before she slapped his hand away. “If you think I’m going to sleep with you—”

“I said something that I would like better,” he said.

Better than sleeping with her? “You really are a bastard.”

He shook his head. “Untrue. Both my parents were married and to each other.”

“You’re enjoying this.”

His smile belied his words. “It’s purely business, I assure you. But I appreciate you considering sleeping with me.”

She fought the urge to slap his handsome face. “I never—”

“I’m sure you have never,” he said. “But we can deal with that later. Right now, I suggest we discuss this over breakfast. I’m starved.” He moved away, finally giving her breathing room. “You’re buying.”

“I don’t think so.” She was trembling inside, her stomach doing slow somersaults. The man threw her off balance, and he knew it. That made it even worse. She took a couple of deep breaths, shocked that some reporter could get this kind of primitive response from her.

Finally she turned to face him. He was going through her photos with an apparent critical eye. She wanted to grab them from him. The last thing she needed was a critique from him about her art.

“Call the police.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “If you think you can blackmail me—”

“These are good, really,” he said, turning to look at her as if surprised. “You have a good eye.”

She hated how pleased she was but quickly mentally shook herself. What did he know about photography anyway? Just because he carried around a camera and took underhanded snapshots of people who didn’t want their photos taken...

“I’d hoped we could discuss this over pancakes,” he said as he stepped away from her photos. “I know something about your mother that you’re going to want to hear before you see it in the media.”

“There is nothing you can tell me that I would—”

“Your mother isn’t just lying about the past twenty-two years. She’s been lying since the get-go, and I can prove it.” He smiled. “But first I want breakfast. I’m starved.”

* * *

LYNETTE “NETTIE” CURRY found her husband out by the barn, talking to his crows. The crows, a long line of them, teetered on the phone line, cawing down occasionally as if conversing.

“Am I interrupting, Frank?” she asked.

Her husband, the long-time sheriff in Sweet Grass County, Montana, laughed. He was a big man with graying blond hair, a drooping, old-timey gunfighter mustache and bright blue eyes. She’d been in love with him for more than fifty years and often still couldn’t believe that they’d finally found their way back to each other.

The crows cawed down at her as if in greeting. Ask Frank and he’d report that’s exactly what they were saying. He’d always been fascinated with the birds and clearly loved them. But even as skeptical as she’d been when she’d first moved in, Nettie now believed that they were equally as fond of him.

“I found something I thought might interest you,” she said, flapping the papers she’d printed off the computer. “It’s about that tattoo. The one on Sarah Hamilton’s behind. I might know what it means.”

She saw that she had his attention. Frank had been trying to solve the mystery of not only Sarah’s miraculous and oddly timed return from the dead, but also her missing twenty-two years. The fifty-eight-year-old woman hadn’t just secretly parachuted back into the county, she’d come with no memory of where she’d been, what she’d been or why she was back now. At least that was her story.

All of it, according to Frank, added up to trouble. And that was before he’d found out about the strange tattoo Sarah Hamilton had gotten on her butt cheek during those missing years.

Frank walked her back to the porch and waited until they’d both sat down before he asked what she’d found.

“We agreed that the tattoo appears to be a pendulum that left a circular pattern beneath its point,” she said and picked up papers she’d printed out from the computer. She began to read what she’d discovered. “‘There is nothing new about pendulums since they date back eight thousand years. While often associated with predicting the future, they were used by the Egyptians four thousand years ago for spiritual healing with the energy of that particular pendulum. Not all pendulums have the same energy.’”

When she looked up from her papers, Frank looked about to roll his eyes.

“Bear with me,” she said and hurried on. “‘Along with reportedly detecting imbalances in energy fields for healing, pendulums have been used to find missing objects, unmarked graves, buried treasure, even underground water sources.’”

“So Sarah was using her ass to find water?” Frank laughed and got to his feet. “Lynette, it might be just a stupid tattoo that she really did get while drunk on tequila.”

“Is that what she told you?” Nettie could tell he didn’t believe it any more than she did. “It means something, and I, for one, am going to find out what.”

He shook his head but he was smiling. “I have to go to work.”

“Still no word on that missing reporter?” she asked, putting her papers aside for the time being. Chuck Barrow had been covering the Sarah Hamilton story when he’d disappeared. His car was found at the bottom of a ravine along with his bloody coat. It was assumed that he’d crashed his car, and, hurt and disoriented, he’d wandered away into the woods and died.

“No. I’d hoped either he or his body would have turned up by now.”

“You don’t think he merely took the opportunity to walk away from his life, do you?” It wouldn’t be the first time a person had done that.

Frank shook his head. “I think he’s dead.” He glanced over at her. “It’s just a feeling.” His gaze went to the information she’d printed out. “If you decide to take up pendulum divining, see if you can locate a spot for another well out here on the ranch.” He grinned before leaning down to kiss her.

“Laugh, Frank Curry, but I just might do that.” As she watched him go, she realized that he’d given her an idea. All she needed to do was get back on the computer and find out where she could buy a pendulum.

* * *

FRANK CURRY PRIDED himself on never having an unsolved murder since taking over as sheriff of Sweet Grass County. Homicides were rare in Montana, and yet his county seemed to have had more than its share recently.

And now he had this missing person’s case involving one of the reporters who’d been hanging around outside the Hamilton Ranch. Chuck Barrow had disappeared back in late June. His vehicle had been found later at the bottom of a ravine. A bloodstained coat was found inside, leading him and the other investigators to believe Barrow had been injured when he’d left on foot and apparently had gotten lost in the mountains.

The search had been called off after several weeks, but the lack of a body still bothered Frank. Barrow wasn’t the first man to get lost in the Crazy Mountains. The body of a hunter lost last fall still hadn’t been found either.

Much like the reappearance of Sarah Hamilton, the cases felt like loose ends that he needed to tie up. Only Sarah wasn’t an official case. He’d called in the FBI, and they hadn’t found any reason for continuing investigating her disappearance or reappearance. So Frank had taken it on outside of his official cases.

What made Barrow’s disappearance interesting was, according to the television news department he worked for, he had been going to talk to Sarah Hamilton. Sarah had denied giving the man an interview, but Frank couldn’t shake the feeling that Barrow had found her and, not long after, had met his fate.

When he returned to his office, he called his undersheriff in. “Are you saying you think she killed him?” Dillon Lawson asked after he’d shared his theory with him. “And then she pushed his vehicle into a ravine.”

“After leaving his bloody coat in the rig, yes.” He could see how skeptical Dillon was of his theory. Sarah was fifty-eight years old and, while in great shape for her age, wasn’t capable of dragging the dead weight of a man the size of Chuck Barrow anywhere. “She had help.”

The undersheriff’s eyes widened. “Russell Murdock?”

Frank shook his head. “Someone from her past.”

“Wait a minute,” Dillon said, leaning back in his chair across the desk from Frank. “That would mean that she’s lying about not remembering her past.”

“If she was in on it, yes.”

Dillon frowned. “You think someone from her past is running interference for her without her being aware of it?”

It had crossed his mind. “It’s possible. If, and it’s a huge if, she really doesn’t recall jumping or being pushed from a plane, parachuting into a tree, changing clothes and stumbling out to the road for Russell Murdock to find her...then she might not know she isn’t alone.”

The undersheriff rubbed a hand over his jaw. “This is quite a theory. I suppose you also have a theory about their purpose in doing this.” Before Frank could answer, Dillon said, “The senator.”

“Soon to be our next president if the polls are even partially correct.”

Dillon let out a low whistle. “Say you’re right. If Sarah’s purpose in coming back here, along with her cohorts, is to keep him from being president, then why not stop him now? Or maybe they want him to be president and plan to use him. The bad publicity against Sarah has only strengthened his standing in the race.”

Frank nodded.

“Or maybe Chuck Barrow had a car accident and, injured, wandered off into the mountains to die.”

“Do you know what bothers me the most? Whoever wanted Sarah Hamilton back here could have just dropped her off beside the road. But they dropped her from a plane. They had to know we’d discover that. They wanted us to know.”

Dillon was frowning again. “Why?”

“Because they think they’re smarter than we are.”

“And Sarah? What’s her role in all this?”

“She’s Buckmaster Hamilton’s Achilles’ heel.”

The undersheriff shook his head. “The senator is on the campaign trail, his current wife at his side. I’d say Sarah has lost.”

Frank laughed. “Don’t ever underestimate a woman with a mission, let alone this one. Sarah Hamilton is up to something, you can count on it.”

* * *

MAX DIDN’T THINK the senator’s daughter could surprise him. He told himself he knew her kind only too well. That’s why he didn’t expect to get too far with her. The truth was, he needed her help to prove what he suspected about her mother. He’d bluffed his way this far. He was thinking that if he could convince her he knew more than he did—

“Here, take this,” she said as she came back from getting something out of her SUV. “It’s one of my old cameras I’ve kept as a backup.”

Max stared at the camera bag, too surprised to reach for it.

“I’m only lending it to you until you can afford to replace yours. Sorry, but I don’t have an extra laptop.”

He took the camera bag and peeked inside before his gaze shot up to hers. It surprised him how touched he was by this kind gesture. “This is an awfully nice old backup.”

She shrugged and looked embarrassed. He could see she felt guilty about her privileged life. She shouldn’t have, but he understood. He liked her better for it.

“I still want mine back. It had sentimental value.”

“I’m sure it did,” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

It was hundreds of dollars cheaper than the “loaner” she had given him, and they both knew it. “It was my lucky camera.”

“Like those are your lucky boots?”

He looked down at his worn boots and laughed. “Actually, they are.”

She shook her head. “Maybe you’ll get lucky with this camera,” she said, then instantly regretted it if the color that warmed her cheeks was any indication.

“Maybe I will,” he said with a wink.

She groaned. “Let’s get this over with, though I don’t know why I would care what you have on my mother. But I am hungry and it is time for breakfast.”

“Hey.” She stopped to glance back at him as if to say, now what? “Thanks,” he said, slipping the camera bag strap over his shoulder. “I appreciate it.”

“Take better care of it than you did yours.”

Max smiled at her retreating back. It was a nice rear view. What surprised him was that he was actually beginning to believe that Kat Hamilton hadn’t been behind stealing the photos. Which brought him back to who, then, if not Kat?

He was considering that question as they left by the front of the gallery and started across the street toward the small café next to the hotel. He hardly heard the roar of the big engine; he’d been concentrating so hard on how to get this woman to help him with his story. He was surprised she’d even agreed to have breakfast with him. Maybe he would let her pay.

Or maybe he’d try a different approach. Maybe he’d tell her the truth, which would mean paying for breakfast himself.

The engine roar filled his ears, jerking him out of his thoughts. He looked up as a large SUV came around the corner and headed right for them.