Читать книгу Hard Rain - B.J. Daniels - Страница 11
ОглавлениеJD HAMILTON SQUINTED in the sun as he cast his fishing line into the crystal clear lake. This high-mountain lake was his favorite one in the Crazies. It was where he came when life below these mountains started getting the best of him. He thought of himself as a reasonable man, but lately his life seemed to be spinning out of control.
He and Grace had argued again this morning. As he reeled in his line, he couldn’t help but remember some of the things she’d said about Buck’s bride.
“For hell’s sake, Grace, they’re married. Can’t you just accept Sarah?”
“Never. If you weren’t so blind, you’d see that she took advantage of him. You can bet it was her idea to elope. She trapped our son, the gold-digging—”
“Grace! When did you become so hateful?” he’d demanded as he’d stared at a woman he no longer recognized. Sarah, their son’s bride he’d surprised them with only days before, reminded him of Grace as she’d been when they’d first met. Both were petite blue-eyed blondes.
“Hateful?” Grace had laughed. “When do you think I changed?” He’d seen the tears in her eyes only moments before she’d left the room. Her son’s elopement had hit Grace hard. He’d been her baby, the true love of her life. And now he could see that she felt he’d betrayed her.
A fish struck his line as he heard the sound of a horse whinny nearby.
Reeling in the cutthroat, he turned to see a bay horse come out of the trees being ridden by a young woman. He recognized Maggie McTavish and thought of the gangly girl who used to ride across the pasture next to his ranch. She’d always ridden hard and fast as if running from something.
Over the years, he’d watched her go from pigtails to ponytails and finally the thick single braid that swung against her slim back as she thundered past. She’d changed from gangly to sleek and beautiful, and still she seemed to be running either from something or toward it. He never knew which.
He just knew that one day she wouldn’t ride past and that he was going to miss seeing her.
She reined in now, slipping off the horse with graceful ease. That she was beautiful was only part of the young woman’s appeal. There was something strong and determined in the way she held herself. Almost defiant.
“Nice trout,” she said as he brought the cutthroat the rest of the way in. “Dinner?”
Grace didn’t like him to bring fish home. She said they stank up the house when he fried them.
“Not tonight,” he said, and held up the beautiful fish. The colors caught in the sunlight as bright and multihued as a rainbow. “You interested?”
She shook her head and looked toward the lake. “I didn’t mean to disturb your fishing.” She turned as if to leave.
“Don’t leave on my account,” he said as he carefully lowered the fish into the water at the edge of the lake and watched it swim away in a ripple of clear water. “I have to get back. You can have the place to yourself.”
She turned to look at him then, her green eyes luminous. Her long plaited red hair hung down almost to her waist. She reached back to unbraid it. Waves of crimson fell around her slim shoulders. She was even more beautiful up close.
“If you’re sure,” she said.
He nodded and began to break down his rod so he could pack it and his gear into his saddlebag.
“This is where I come when I need to think,” Maggie said, gazing out at the lake. “There is something so peaceful about this place.”
He looked past her to the small mountain lake ringed in huge boulders left by the last ice age. Mirror Lake was so clear he could see submerged rocks down a good ten feet, then nothing but bottomless dark water.
“I’ve been dreaming of a swim all morning,” she said turning back to him.
“Swim?” He laughed. “Do you know how cold that water is?”
She smiled and for the first time looked like the teenager she still was. There was something timeless about her. But when he gazed into those green eyes, he saw an old soul, a young woman wise beyond her years. What had made her that way? he wondered. Or had she been born knowing truths that should have been saved for much later in life?
He watched her sit down on a nearby rock and pull off her boots and socks. As she reached to unbutton her jeans, he turned away to finish loading his horse for the ride back to the ranch. In truth, he wasn’t ready to leave the lake. The thought of going back to that house, back to Grace and her anger and hatred, back to the decision he’d been putting off for weeks...made him want to stay here forever.
But he felt uncomfortable being here with Maggie. She made him feel old and full of regrets, as if he’d wasted his life.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her slip out of her jeans and drop them beside her boots. She was unbuttoning her shirt when she said, “Dare you to go in with me.”
That made him laugh and turn toward her. She stopped unbuttoning her shirt for a moment to give him a challenging grin. “Chicken?”
“I don’t think—”
“So don’t think. Just do. We all think way too much.” She peeled off her shirt. Barefoot and down to her underwear, she ran up the smooth surface of a large boulder at the edge of the water. There she stopped to look back at him. “You really don’t know what you’re missing.”
He might have argued that, but she didn’t give him a chance. She dived off the rock. He would always remember her long sun-browned body clad only in white bra and panties caught in an arc over the glistening water. She looked like a sea nymph, her long red hair floating out behind her as she sliced through the clear water.
JD felt such a moment of supreme loss that his heart ached with it. He wanted desperately to jump in with her. He wanted to feel young and free like her. He wanted to feel that jolt of ice-cold to awaken the man he’d been.
Instead, he stood on the bank and watched her glide through the water. At that moment, he knew that life was captured in fleeting moments, choices taken and not taken, opportunities lost. As he watched her swim, he knew he’d just made a choice he would regret.
“You shouldn’t swim alone up here,” he called to her.
“I know. There are a lot of things I shouldn’t do,” she called back.
* * *
RUSSELL MURDOCK CHECKED his phone, turned it off and replaced it in his pocket. “I’m sorry, you were saying?”
The elderly woman sitting in the chair next to him raised her head and looked around as if not recognizing her surroundings. Millie blinked in the bright sunshine before giving him a radiant smile.
“You know, I can’t remember what we were talking about,” she said with a laugh. “It happens more and more all the time.”
“Don’t feel bad, it happens to us all,” he said. She was a slim, pretty woman with white wispy hair that covered her head like a protective cloud. Her hair was in stark contrast to the vivid blue of her eyes. Her face was soft, her skin only lightly creased. She looked like a kindly grandmother.
“We were talking about Dr. Venable. He rented from you when he worked at the clinic outside of town.”
She frowned and looked around the courtyard as if again wondering how she’d gotten there.
“Ralph,” he suggested.
She turned toward him then, her face brightening. “He was such a polite man. Nicest tenant I ever had. He would bring me little treats,” she said confidentially as she leaned toward him. “Don’t tell my children. They worry about my health. He knew I loved chocolate.”
Russell saw that he’d lost her again. She seemed to have been transported as if by time machine to twenty-five years ago. He tried to imagine what Dr. Venable had looked like back then. According to Russell’s calculations, he would be close to Millie’s age now, seventy-two. But unlike Millie, maybe he wasn’t now suffering from dementia.
“Did he ever talk about his work?” Russell asked. He desperately wanted to ask about Sarah Hamilton and if Ralph had ever mentioned her. “When Ralph brought you treats, chocolate, did he mention his patients?”
He wasn’t sure which word did the trick, but Millie was back. The nurse had told him she was having a good day and might be able to help him.
“He liked helping people,” Millie said. “He hated to see them suffering. When I told him about my nightmares after my husband died, he got tears in his eyes. He told me he could help me forget.” She shook her head.
“You weren’t interested in having your memories erased?” Russell said, trying hard not to sound too eager.
“No, our memories are all we have at the end. We don’t get to pick or choose. The bad ones make us stronger—at least that’s what I tell my children.” She smiled sadly. “You know he lost his wife. So tragic. Suicide is a terrible thing for those left behind. He said he tried to take away the bad in her life, but had failed. He swore on her grave that he wouldn’t let it happen to anyone else.”
“So he succeeded?”
She seemed to wander away from him again and he’d thought he’d lost her, when she said, “I don’t think he could get rid of anyone’s bad memories any more than he could get rid of his own.”
Russell disagreed. He would bet his life that Dr. Venable had stolen Sarah’s memories and he was going to prove it or die trying.
* * *
WHEN HARPER RETURNED to the main ranch house after seeing her mother, the guard at the gate buzzed to tell her she had a visitor. The name didn’t sound familiar.
“Did she say what it was about?” Harper asked suspiciously. Often the media would try anything to get inside the house for a story.
“She says she has information about your mother.”
Still annoyed with her mother’s attitude toward Brody, she told the guard to let the woman in. If it turned out the visitor was lying, she could call the guard and have him escort her away.
Harper felt anxious. She’d gone to her mother’s hoping for some reassurance after the grisly scene she’d witnessed earlier; instead, she had left even more upset.
Now she opened the door to find a young, pretty woman standing there. “I’m Ariel Crenshaw.” When Harper didn’t react, she added, “I’m Ace’s sister.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know who Ace is,” Harper said, wondering now if she had been too quick to let in a complete stranger. Since her father had joined the race for president and her mother had returned, they’d been inundated with reporters. Harper hated that they had to have guards at the front gate. She yearned for the days when they came and went without being under such scrutiny.
“Addison ‘Ace’ Crenshaw, the private investigator your mother hired,” the woman clarified.
Her mother had hired a PI? “I’m sorry. This is news to me.” Harper was just beginning to realize how much her family kept from her. “Won’t you come in,” she said, moving aside. “You say my mother hired your sister?”
“Before she was killed,” Ariel said. “My condolences, by the way.”
“Wait, no. You’re referring to my stepmother, Angelina.”
“My mistake. I’m so sorry.” Ariel had stopped in the middle of the large living room as if not sure what to do next.
Harper wasn’t sure there was anything she wanted to know about the Ice Queen, as she and her sisters called Angelina. They had never been close to the woman their father had married. She had always treated them as if Buck’s six daughters were a burden she had to bear.
“Let me start at beginning,” Ariel said. “My sister was murdered. I’m trying to find out why. It seems to have had something to do with an anarchist group called The Prophecy?”
Harper shook her head. “I’ve never heard of it.”
This surprised Ariel. “Your father didn’t tell you that two members of the group have been implicated in the death of my sister, as well as the death of your stepmother?”
She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I was out of the country, but the last I heard, it was an accident.” She motioned the young woman into a chair. “Would you like something to drink?”
Ariel declined but took a seat. She sat on the edge and leaned eagerly toward Harper. “My sister was investigating a woman by the name of Sarah Johnson. Is that anyone you know?”
Harper hesitated. “That is my mother.”
“Oh.” Ariel sat back, wariness replacing the earlier eagerness. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. This is all quite confusing.”
Their family had been in the news for months, especially because of her mother. “You must not read newspapers or watch the news.”
“I had been working with my church group in a remote part of Africa until my sister’s death. We had neither newspapers nor television and little news filtered in from outside.”
Harper didn’t like talking about her family’s situation since her mother’s return, but this young woman had lost her sister possibly because Angelina had hired her to dig up dirt on Sarah.
“I grew up believing my mother was dead,” Harper explained. “She drove into the river when I was only a few months old and drowned. At least that’s what we all thought. Apparently, she was trying to kill herself for some unknown reason and failing that, she disappeared for twenty-two years. She suddenly reappeared a year ago. What makes it even more bizarre is that she swears she doesn’t remember anything from the birth of my twin and me until she ‘woke up’ in the middle of a dirt road outside of Beartooth. According to her, she has no idea where she’d been those twenty-two years.”
“She still hasn’t remembered?”
Harper shook her head. “Not that I know of.”
“That’s interesting, but it doesn’t explain why my sister was looking into not those missing years your mother lost but your mother’s college years.”
“Really?”
The young woman nodded. “All her inquiries were from the mid– to late–nineteen seventies.”
Harper had no idea and said as much. “So where does this anarchist group come in?”
“The Prophecy? Apparently, my sister thought that your mother had been part of the group and that’s what got her killed. Back in the seventies they blew up some government buildings, killed some people. A couple of the group went to prison. The others were never caught, until recently. The leader was believed to be the only woman in The Prophecy, a woman who resembled your mother, Sarah Johnson.”
She stared at Ariel in shock. “I had no idea.” She’d been kept in the dark. Who else knew about this? Her father obviously. But did her sisters? “If my mother really was part of the group...”
“That’s just it. Turns out apparently that some members of The Prophecy were trying to only make your mother look like she was the one called Red. Another woman confessed to being Red when some of the male members were caught. Another one was killed.”
“Wow, I’m beginning to realize how much I’ve missed being away at college and then abroad all these years,” Harper said. She wondered what else her family hadn’t told her and instantly thought of Brody and his family—and the body buried on the ranch.
“I know I should let it go, but it just feels...unfinished,” Ariel said as she got to her feet. “I was hoping someone in your family might have heard more about this anarchist group and how investigating your mother might be tied to my sister’s death.”
“Your sister didn’t leave any information?”
“No. The file on your mother was incomplete. That was another reason I was suspicious. My sister took copious notes on her cases.”
“That is odd.”
“Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you with this.” She reached into the side pocket of her purse. “If you don’t mind, can I leave my card with you? Should you hear anything...”
“I’ll let you know. I’m so sorry about your sister.”
“Thank you.”
Harper glanced at the card. It only had Ariel’s name and number on it. She walked her to the door. “So, are you a private investigator, as well?”
Ariel laughed and shook her head. “Good heavens, no. I’m a community planner. It was bad enough having a father and sister as gumshoes.”
Ariel stopped and pointed to a photograph of Buckmaster and Angelina. “I recognize your father. He’s running for president.”
Harper nodded. “That’s my stepmother with him. We don’t have any photos of my mother.” She knew that was odd and saw that Ariel did, too. “We think my stepmother got rid of all of them when she married my father.”
Ariel raised a brow.
“There was no love lost between them, even before my mother came back from the dead.” She saw the change in the young woman’s expression. “But I’m sure my mother had nothing to do with Angelina’s death or your sister’s. Like you said, it turned out she wasn’t a member of The Prophecy.”
“Right.” Ariel looked skeptical. “But if your mother had been, given the apparent animosity between her and your stepmother, she might have wanted to get rid of her competition.”
* * *
BRODY FOUND HIS father in his blacksmithing shop. A blast of heat hit him the moment he opened the door. Silhouetted against the fire that burned hot in the furnace was Finn McTavish. Finn was smaller than his older brother, Flannigan, with a shock of dark hair and lightning-blue eyes. He was also a gentle man with a hearty laugh and an affable personality.
The three of them lived on the McTavish Ranch, which would someday be Brody’s. It was large enough that they each had their own homes some distance apart. While Brody worked the cattle part of the ranch, his father and uncle worked as blacksmiths, their family trade.
Hearing him enter, his father shoved back the helmet he wore and laid down the piece he’d been working on. Motioning for him to follow, he stepped out the back door. Brody walked through the blast furnace of the shop into the cool of bright spring sunlight outside. His father had pulled up an old crate and sat down. He motioned for Brody to take one.
As he pulled up a crate and lowered himself onto it, he could feel the older man’s gaze on him. He’d never been able to hide anything from his father. Finn McTavish had second sight. At least that’s what the family said about him. Brody believed that his father “saw” things that other people didn’t because he paid attention.
“What’s wrong?” Finn asked.
Brody met his father’s gaze. “We uncovered something on that stretch of land we lease between the ranch and the Hamiltons.”
“We?”
“Harper Hamilton.”
Finn nodded. “One of the twins.”
Brody said nothing. He’d done his best to hide how he felt about her. She’d been too young for him for years. Now that she was home and age didn’t matter so much... He was sure his father knew what he’d hoped but appreciated him not saying anything.
“We...ran into each other.” He saw no reason to get into the whole story. He was embarrassed enough by it. “Her horse had gotten away. When we found the mare...we also found a grave that had been uncovered. Rain had washed it down, the wooden casket breaking open in the pines.”
His father said nothing as he turned to look out at the Crazies in the distance as if imagining the scene. This early in the spring, the mountains were still deep in snow. The rain that had unearthed the corpse had turned to snow in the high peaks of the Crazy Mountains. They stood brilliant white against the blue of the Montana sky, as inaccessible as Harper Hamilton now was to him.
The melt hadn’t started yet this year. Soon the rivers and streams would be swollen and brown with silt and the valleys would green up as if overnight. Spring brought a newness to the land. The green was almost blinding under the warm sun and the clear blue sky. Brody loved this time of year. It had always felt as if anything was possible in the spring. At least until this spring.
“The body?” Finn asked without looking at him, as if he already knew.
“A woman.”
His father’s gaze shifted back to him. Tears welled in that sea of blue, eyes so much like his own. “The sheriff identified her yet?”
He shook his head. “But it’s her. It’s Maggie, isn’t it?”
Finn got to his feet and headed back inside his shop. As he passed his son, he put a big hand on Brody’s shoulder and gently squeezed. There was sorrow in his eyes, and pity. His father knew somehow that his son had been in love with Harper Hamilton for years. He also knew how impossible it would be for the two of them to be together now.
But Brody wasn’t thinking about that right now. His thoughts were with his uncle and the unbearable news he was about to receive. Maggie had been his only daughter, the sunshine of his life.
Shaken, Brody stood as the door closed behind Finn. He heard him inside shutting down the furnace. How long had his father known it would end like this? Brody hadn’t wanted to believe it and yet the moment he’d seen the broken casket, the body of the woman, he’d known. Just as he’d known who had killed and buried her there.
Brody was born after Maggie disappeared. But he’d learned about Maggie when he got older, even though his uncle and father didn’t like talking about her. He shook his head, anger making him fist his hands at his sides as his heart ached. For thirty-five years the dirty secret had lain as silent as Maggie’s grave. But the McTavishes had known the truth. Now, what JD Hamilton had done would come out. Both families would suffer. He didn’t want to think about how his uncle would react. Maggie’s name would be dragged through the mud. But so would the Hamiltons.
Brody thought of Harper. All these years of waiting for her to grow up and now this. He was a damned fool for thinking the two of them stood a chance. Not a Hamilton and a McTavish.
* * *
AFTER DIGGING OUT the old missing persons report, the sheriff no longer deceived himself that the body that had been found could be anyone but Margaret “Maggie” McTavish. The clothing she’d been wearing the last time she was seen matched exactly the clothing found on the remains.
Frank knew he couldn’t wait until the autopsy report came back to notify next of kin. Because the remains had been mummified, Charlie had called in several doctors to assist. That meant that the autopsy would take longer than normal.
“Not that many doctors get to do an autopsy on a mummy,” Charlie had said. “Because of the ancient ones that have been found and autopsied, we have some techniques available that we didn’t have that many years ago. But it will take time.”
Time was the one thing Frank didn’t have. Word had gotten out, just as he’d feared it would. He’d already received several calls. He’d put them off with the usual “we won’t know anything until the autopsy results are in.”
Not wanting to give this kind of news over the phone, Frank drove out to Flannigan McTavish’s home to tell him before he heard it from someone else. Charlie Brooks had offered to make the trip, since the coroner was often the person who delivered news of a death. But the sheriff couldn’t put this on anyone else.
Flannigan was a big Irishman who’d come to this country as a teenager with his parents and much younger brother, Finn. His family had settled in the valley, farming and ranching and blacksmithing. When Flannigan’s wife left him, he’d raised their only child, Maggie, alone.
By the time his brother, Finn, had married and was expecting their first and—as it turned out, only child, Brody—Maggie had already disappeared.
Frank had been a deputy when the call had come in that Maggie McTavish was missing. He hadn’t been assigned to the case. The sheriff at the time had handled it himself. But he remembered seeing the eldest McTavish after Maggie’s disappearance. Flannigan had looked like a broken man.
The man who walked from his shop out to the patrol car as Frank parked and exited looked strong as a bull moose. He’d aged well, as if determined not to let what had happened defeat him. Or maybe he wanted to live because in his heart he had to believe that Maggie would come home one day.
If so, Frank hated to think what this news would do to him.
“Sheriff,” Flannigan said, extending his hand. As they greeted each other, Flannigan glanced in the backseat of the patrol SUV as if expecting to see someone there. Pushing eighty, his face was weatherworn and wrinkled, but like his work-strong body, the keenness in his piercing green eyes belied his age.
“Flannigan, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
The older man nodded. “It’s Maggie, isn’t it?” he asked as if he’d been expecting this news for the past thirty-five years.
“We don’t have a definitive identification yet, but based on what she was wearing the day she disappeared and other evidence found at the scene, it’s her. We’re investigating her death as a homicide.”
Flannigan took a step back before slumping against the vehicle. Frank started to reach for him, but the older man waved him off. After a few moments, Flannigan pulled himself together.
“I’d like to ask you some questions, but those can wait,” the sheriff said. “I understand, though, that her room was left as it was thirty-five years ago. I’d like to take a look in it, if you don’t mind.”
To his surprise, Flannigan shook his head. “No reason to talk about it that I can see. No reason to go snooping in her room, either. What’s done is done.” He started to turn away.
“I’m going to need your help to find her killer. If there is anything you know about what happened to her, now is the time to tell me,” the sheriff said.
“Just let me know when I can bury my daughter,” Flannigan said.
“I’m not sure how long it will take after the autopsy.”
He spun back around, his once-handsome face a mask of fury. “She hasn’t been through enough? You’re going to let them cut her up?”
“We’re looking for evidence that will—”
“Bring her killer to justice?” Flannigan spit out the words. “Her killer is dead and buried. There is no bringing him to justice.”
“We don’t know who killed her without—”
“Everyone knows who killed her and why,” the big man erupted. “You’re looking for a way to save him—and his senator son.”
“You’re wrong. If her killer is dead, it may seem like hollow justice to you. But I’m determined to find your daughter’s murderer. That’s why I need your help. You were one of the last people to see her alive. If you—”
“I already said no.” The elder McTavish shook his head and walked away. Over his shoulder, he said, “You’re on private property, Sheriff, and it’s time for you to leave. My daughter’s been through enough. Please leave before I do something I might regret.”
In the distance, Frank could see a pickup headed this way, moving fast. He recognized it as one driven by Finn McTavish, Flannigan’s younger brother. The sheriff waited a little longer, watching the staggering steps of Maggie’s father, not wanting to leave the man alone. Then he got into his patrol SUV and drove away as Finn pulled up in the yard.
Frank only got a glimpse of the man’s face. Finn already knew. Which could only mean Brody knew the victim’s identity the moment he’d seen the body.
