Читать книгу Hard Rain - B.J. Daniels - Страница 12

CHAPTER FIVE

GRACE HAMILTON WATCHED the young lovers cross the pasture arm in arm.

“That conniving bitch.”

“Grace,” JD said in that reprimanding, disappointed and impatient way of his. He put all his disgust into her name so he didn’t even have to bother to say more.

Her husband was always taking up for that woman her foolhardy son had brought into their home as his wife. Not for long, though, if Grace had anything to do with it.

“Give Sarah a chance,” JD said. “Buck loves her. Isn’t that good enough?”

“His name is Buckmaster. If I had wanted him called Buck, I would have named him Buck.”

Her husband gave her a weary look.

“You may be fooled by her because she’s pretty and nauseatingly coy, but believe me, there is nothing sweet or helpless about that woman. She knew exactly what she was doing when she married our son.”

“I don’t have the energy to argue with you about this,” JD said. “I’m going to ride up into the Crazies and fish for a while.” He stepped to her and planted a kiss on the top of her head.

She clutched his arm, desperately wanting back the man she’d married. She felt JD slipping out of her grasp as he pulled away to leave. He’d been pulling away now for what? Months? Or was it years?

“I didn’t mean to—”

“Grace, please try to make our son and his bride feel welcome here in our home. I’m begging you.” He turned and left before she could respond—no doubt why he’d left so quickly.

She turned back to the window. Buckmaster and his bride had stopped in the pasture to embrace. She watched them kiss and then draw apart. Sarah Johnson Hamilton looked back toward the house as if sensing she was being watched. Could she see Grace standing before the window?

Grace didn’t think so until she saw Sarah give her a self-satisfied smile before turning back to Buckmaster.

Her heart began to pound harder. The woman was evil. Grace had felt it the moment she’d met her. There was something dark and...broken in Sarah. Why didn’t JD believe her?

Because JD prided himself on seeing the best in everyone. Because her husband was a fool—just like her son, she thought uncharitably.

She watched her son and his wife head back toward the house. She had tried to talk to Buckmaster, but, like his father, he’d cut her off, saying she just needed time to get to know Sarah. Not wanting to alienate her son, she’d backed off.

But now as she hurried down to her room, closing the door behind her, Grace knew she had to find a way to save her son from this woman. And she would have to do it alone since she couldn’t depend on JD to help her.

In fact, she wasn’t sure she could depend on JD anymore at all. He’d promised that he would never leave her, but a part of him had already left to be a senator, she thought as she moved to the window in time to see him ride away toward the mountains.

First her son, and now she was losing her husband.

* * *

SENATOR BUCKMASTER HAMILTON got the call in the middle of a staff meeting. He’d put his phone on vibrate, pulling it out almost unconsciously since he had no plan to answer it. The primaries were coming up in June. That didn’t give him much time to secure his place in the race for president.

Listening to his advisers on what else needed to be done, he glanced at his phone to make sure it wasn’t one of his daughters calling. When he saw that it was the sheriff calling from Montana, he excused himself and took the call out in the hallway.

“Frank?” he said into the phone. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing to do with your daughters,” he told the senator quickly. They’d had a lot of calls like this lately. Buckmaster’s only concern had always been the same. Were his girls all right? “I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent...incident on your ranch from Harper.”

“Incident?” He had talked to Sarah earlier but only briefly. When he’d told her he was in a staff meeting, she’d said it was nothing and he’d promised to call her later.

“Harper didn’t tell you about the remains she and Brody McTavish found on the ranch?”

“I haven’t spoken with Harper. What’s this about remains? On my ranch?” His first thought was a homeless person traveling through on the rails.

“I wanted to give you a heads-up,” Frank was saying. “Based on what she was wearing when she disappeared and other evidence, the remains appear to be Margaret McTavish’s. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”

Buckmaster blinked a couple of times. At first the name rang no bells. Then it hit him. Maggie. Maggie McTavish. He swore silently. “I don’t understand.” But he feared he did.

“She’d been buried in a wooden box on that hillside next to the McTavish place. Buck...” Just the use of his first name by the sheriff told him the news was about to get worse. “We’re investigating this as a homicide. As a professional courtesy, I wanted to call you myself. We should have a positive ID soon. But you know me well enough that I don’t believe I have to tell you I intend to find her murderer, no matter where that trail leads.”

He didn’t hear anything Frank said for a few seconds. Maggie McTavish. Murdered... Buried on Hamilton Ranch...? Dear God, no.

“...so I’m going to need to talk to you, and Sarah, as well.”

Buckmaster shook his head as what the sheriff was saying finally registered. Frank was warning him. He swore again. What was the point of an investigation? There wasn’t a person in the county who wouldn’t have already dug his father up and hanged him for the murder. “Sarah and I don’t know anything. That was years ago.”

“Thirty-five this fall,” Frank agreed. “But with most everyone else who was connected with Maggie gone...”

“You mean with my father dead.” He leaned against the hallway wall and closed his eyes. “You can’t believe that he had anything to do with this.” Even as he said it, though, he realized how little he had known about his father. Maybe JD Hamilton had a side that he’d kept hidden from all of them.

“Quite frankly, I don’t know what to believe.”

“How was it that her body turned up now?” he demanded. With him so close to winning the primary election, it felt as if his opponents had to have literally dug this up.

“We had a bad storm the other night. The body had been buried in a wooden box up on a hill near the fence between the properties. The rain must have loosened the earth... Harper happened to be riding her horse in the area when—”

“Wait.” Buckmaster opened his eyes and pushed off the wall. “You say my daughter found the body?”

“She and Brody McTavish.”

“What the hell were those two doing together?” The words were out before he could call them back. He heard a door open.

“You’ll have to ask your daughter,” the sheriff said.

One of his advisers motioned that they were waiting on him.

“I’ll do that. In the meantime, you’ll keep me informed on your investigation.”

“Of course. Are you planning to be home soon?” Frank said quickly, as if hearing in Buckmaster’s voice that he was anxious to get off the line. “I really do need to talk to you. I’ll call Sarah—”

He didn’t want the sheriff talking to Sarah alone. “I’ll fly home. Don’t bother Sarah with this until I get there.” Silence. “She doesn’t know anything anyway.” When the sheriff still didn’t say anything, he swore. “No matter what you suspect about my...” He almost said wife, but he caught himself before he did. Even though he thought of her as his wife, he and Sarah weren’t married. Not yet anyway. “Sarah, she isn’t strong.”

“Like your mother,” Frank said.

Buckmaster could hear in the silence that followed that the sheriff hadn’t meant to say that. “My mother is a suspect, as well as my father?” He swore.

“Everyone is a suspect until I find out who killed her. Call me when you get in,” Frank said.

Buckmaster disconnected and started back toward his meeting. His stomach roiled. He straightened his tie and reached for the doorknob. For years he’d been following in his father’s footsteps. First senator, now a candidate for president...

His father’s damned legacy, he thought with a bitter laugh. He’d thought any secrets had been buried with JD. What did you do, Dad? What the hell did you do?

* * *

STILL REELING FROM the morning she’d had, Harper called the one person she’d always been able to count on—her older sister Ainsley. She quickly told her about their gruesome discovery.

“Oh, Harper, I am so sorry. Are you all right?” Her sister had quit law school to find locations for movie sites in Montana. Their father hadn’t been happy about it, Harper had heard that much at least on the family grapevine. But Ainsley seemed happy and swore it was only temporary.

“It was awful, but I’m okay. I’m just glad Brody was there.”

She heard a smile in her sister’s voice. “I am, too.” They fell silent for a moment. “Do they know whose body it is?”

“The sheriff said they won’t know anything definite until the autopsy,” Harper told her.

“So it could have been there for years?”

“Apparently it was. You should have seen it,” she said. “It was the creepiest thing I have ever seen. I haven’t told Dad. Mother wanted to do it. I don’t know if she was going to wait until we knew something definite or not.”

“Probably a good idea. No reason to upset him until she has all of the facts,” Ainsley agreed. “He has enough going on. I’m sure if there is something to worry about, the sheriff will let him know.”

Harper thought about that. “I had a visitor when I returned today. Ariel Crenshaw, the sister of the private investigator Angelina hired to dig up something on Mother.”

Ainsley groaned. “Angelina. That woman, rest her soul. Why would the PI’s sister come by to talk to you?”

“She’s looking into her sister’s death. She said some members of an anarchist group called The Prophecy were connected to both Angelina’s death and that of her sister, the private investigator Angelina hired to look into Mother’s past. Did you know about this?”

“No. Angelina thought Mother was involved with this group?”

“Apparently. She hired the PI to find out something about Mother’s college years, in particular, the late seventies.”

Ainsley was quiet for a long moment. “That is odd.”

“I can’t believe we didn’t hear something about this.”

“There must not have been anything to it,” Ainsley said. “So, was it nice seeing Brody again?”

* * *

SARAH HEARD SOMETHING in Buck’s voice when he called to tell her he’d already heard the news about Maggie McTavish. She braced herself. With the primaries coming up, she knew the kind of stress he was under. He didn’t need this. Worse, he didn’t have anyone he could lean on in DC.

She couldn’t be with him and that worried her. The problem was that she knew Buck only too well. He was already having second thoughts about his run for president. With this latest news, he would start having even more doubts. He could still pull out before the primaries. She couldn’t let that happen. Somehow, she had to give him the strength to continue, because she knew how much the country needed him. And how much he needed this, even if he was starting to question it.

“I’m flying in tomorrow morning. Meet me at the airport,” he said to her surprise. “It will give us extra time to talk. I can’t stay away long.”

“I thought you were in meetings with your advisers for the next few days?” That he wanted her to meet him at the airport was odd. He always left his SUV at the airport. Unlike a lot of politicians, he didn’t have a staff car or hire limos to take him places. He drove himself because, at heart, he was a Montana rancher. No private jet. No driver. No expenses that would raise eyebrows from his constituents.

“What’s this about a body Harper found on the ranch? I assume that’s why you called me earlier.”

“I didn’t want to upset you and since there is nothing you can do here—”

Buck swore. “Frank says the remains are Maggie McTavish’s. He wants to question the two of us in connection with murder.”

Something hard and cold settled in her stomach. “Question us? About what?”

“What the hell do you think?” he snapped. “I knew all this was going to come back someday and bite me in the ass, but I never expected this. Pick me up at the airport. We need to get our stories straight before we meet with the sheriff.”

* * *

BRODY HAD HEARD his father’s pickup engine rev and knew he was on his way over to his brother’s place to give him the news. He’d hurried around the shop building, but he was too late. He realized as he saw his father racing toward his brother’s house that if he needed him to come along, he would have asked him.

Of course, Finn would want to tell his brother the news alone. Brody couldn’t bear the thought of how his uncle was going to take it. From what his father had told him, Maggie had been Flannigan’s pride and joy. This news would break the old man’s heart—as if Maggie hadn’t done that when she was alive.

He hurried to his pickup. What would happen now? He hated to think. But he needed to talk to his dad and uncle. It wouldn’t be long before the news was all over the county. He needed to know what they were going to do about getting Maggie justice.

His uncle and dad had started the ranch, but their hearts had always been in the blacksmithing part of the operation. When he turned twenty-one he’d taken over the ranching and farming. They’d both been at the age where they were happy to hand over the reins. He had tried to make their lives easier, since both of them had worked hard their whole lives.

Now as he drove down the road toward his uncle’s place, he wished there was a way to spare them what was coming. Turning into his uncle’s place, he passed the sheriff and drove a little faster, worried.

As he pulled up in front of his uncle’s house, he spotted his father sitting on the porch alone. “What’s going on?” Brody asked as he joined him. His uncle was nowhere in sight. Brody felt his heart lodge in his throat as he saw his father’s expression. “Is he all right?”

“The sheriff was here,” Finn McTavish said. While only in his midsixties, he looked older suddenly, his face drawn and haggard. “He told your uncle that the body was Maggie’s and that it was now a murder investigation.”

“Where is he now?” Brody asked, thinking he shouldn’t be alone.

“Inside the house.”

He started in that direction but his father stopped him.

“Leave him be. He’ll come out when he’s ready,” Finn said.

“The sheriff... So it’s Maggie, just as I’d feared.” He’d grown up wanting to believe that the beautiful cousin he’d never known had run away to make a better life for herself. He’d actually looked for her in late-night movies since from the photographs he’d seen of her, she was so striking that she could have been an actress or a model. She could have been a lot of things.

A wave of nausea washed over him. He’d heard stories about his cousin since he was a boy. In fact, his first fistfight in grade school had been over what Billy Loring said his father had said about her. At that time, he’d never seen more than photos of her that his uncle kept on the mantel, but she was family and family was worth defending even if Billy Loring was older, bigger and stronger.

“When Harper and I found her horse... The rain had washed the wooden box down the hillside. She was buried on Hamilton Ranch, just yards from our land,” Brody said, and turned as the screen door was flung open and his uncle stepped out. Flannigan McTavish looked as if all the air had been knocked out of him.

“Uncle Flan—”

“I don’t want to hear another word about my Maggie.” His uncle’s green eyes flashed with anger. “Nor do I ever want to hear you’ve been with that Hamilton girl.”

With that, he descended the porch steps and walked across the yard toward the shop.

“Let him go,” his father said. “You heard him. He needs to grieve in his own way.”

Growing up, neither his father nor his uncle had liked to talk about Maggie, but when pushed, his father had told him that Flannigan had doted on his only daughter and “that was part of the problem.”

“Nor does he want to hear about Harper, it seems,” Brody said, realizing that he’d known this would be the case. “Don’t you think I heard the rumors growing up about Maggie and JD Hamilton? But even if it’s true and JD killed her, it’s no reason to hold it against the rest of the Hamiltons.”

His father looked toward the shop. Flannigan had stopped and turned to look back at them. Brody saw the two men exchange a glance.

“Or is there another reason the two of you don’t want me with Harper?” he asked.