Читать книгу Redemption - B.J. Daniels, B.J. Daniels - Страница 13

CHAPTER SIX

AFTER TALKING TO BOTH KATE LaFond and Jack French, the sheriff returned to his office. The Yuma prison warden had returned his call, asking for photos of the dead man and the rope used to kill him.

That done, Frank found himself at loose ends. All his deputies were at the fair, keeping the peace. With nothing to do but wait, he was reminded again of his promise to Lynette to find out more about Kate LaFond. He’d always trusted her instincts—except when she’d married that fool, Bob Benton.

Frank shook his head. All these years later he was still mentally kicking himself for not storming that wedding and taking her hostage until she came to her senses.

But then Lynette wouldn’t have the general store. She loved working in that store. He wouldn’t have taken that away from her even if he could turn back the clock.

Things had a way of working out as they were supposed to, he thought with a smile. Bob was long gone and wouldn’t be coming back.

He turned his attention to the new café owner. Kate LaFond was a mystery, Frank had to admit. On the surface, she seemed like a perfectly fine young woman, hardworking, likable. So what if she kept to herself? So what if she didn’t want to share her past?

But Frank had a niggling feeling there was definitely more going on under the surface with the new owner of the Branding Iron.

He called a friend who was a local Realtor.

“I’m curious about the Branding Iron Café up in Beartooth,” he said when his friend answered. “It sold so quickly after Claude died, I guess he must have had it listed long before then.”

“It was never a multiple listing and I can’t remember ever seeing it listed anywhere. You’re sure it wasn’t willed to the new owner?”

Frank had thought of that, but quickly kicked aside the idea. Seemed unlikely since the old bachelor had never had a family. At least not one Frank had ever heard about. And yet according to public records, Kate LaFond owned the Branding Iron.

Picking up his keys, he headed for his patrol truck. Ten minutes later, he was knocking at the door of Claude Durham’s friend and local attorney Arnie Thorndike.

No one would ever take Thorndike for an attorney. Half the time he looked homeless. Like this morning, when he opened his door to find the sheriff standing on his stoop.

Barefoot, dressed in a pair of worn jeans and a flannel shirt that had seen better days, Thorndike raked a hand through his unruly head of blond hair and grinned.

“It’s been too long since I’ve awakened to a sheriff on my doorstep,” Arnie said. “Hell, I must be getting old. I’m not even going to put up a fight.” He held out his wrists, pantomiming letting the sheriff put the cuffs on.

“This is a friendly visit,” Frank said with a chuckle. Arnie Thorndike was an old hippie who’d caught the tail end of the “flower power” movement in California before returning to Beartooth and getting his law degree. “I need to ask you about Claude.”

The grin left the man’s weathered face. “Then I guess you’d better come in. I just made coffee.”

“I need to know about Claude’s will,” Frank said as he followed Arnie into the cluttered kitchen. “He did leave a will, right?”

Thorndike dug out a couple of mismatched coffee mugs, filled both, then motioned the sheriff to a small room off the side of the cabin.

It wasn’t until they were both seated in threadbare recliners, the morning sun coming through the dusty window, that Arnie spoke.

“I miss the hell out of Claude,” he said and took a slurping sip of his coffee. He seemed to relax, his eyes misty. “There wasn’t a day at the café that he didn’t have some joke or story to share. Didn’t matter if the story was true, Claude could spin a yarn like no one I’ve ever known.”

“Did he have any family?” Frank asked.

“Not that I knew of.”

“So he never married? I know he left Beartooth only a few times over the years, but he wasn’t gone long. The café apparently was his family, his entire life.” But Frank had learned over the years of being a sheriff that even a man who appeared to have nothing to hide often had secrets. For all he knew, on those few occasions when Claude had left Beartooth for several months at a time, he had a family hidden away somewhere.

“Any idea where he went the few times he did leave Beartooth?” the sheriff asked. “Claude never seemed to want to talk about it.”

“You know he wasn’t all that healthy.”

That was putting it mildly. Nettie over at the store used to nag Claude like crazy, telling him to quit eating off his own menu. It was no surprise when he’d dropped dead.

“Are you telling me that’s why he left Beartooth those times? Because of his health?”

The attorney took a sip of his coffee. “I think he had a surgery or two.”

“For his heart?”

Thorndike shrugged. “He didn’t like talking about his medical problems.”

“Or any personal ones,” the sheriff said. “Which brings me back to his will, if he had one. I talked to a friend of mine who’s a Realtor. He told me that, to his knowledge, the café was never listed for sale. So how is it that Kate LaFond ended up owning it?”

“Claude left it to her.”

Frank couldn’t have been more shocked. “Why?”

“He just did. It was clear he had his reasons. He didn’t share them with me.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Other than the fact that she is no Claude? The woman doesn’t tell dirty jokes or bitch about anything. The Branding Iron just isn’t the same.”

Frank took a sip of his coffee, pretending not to hear the break in Thorn’s voice. The man had lost his best friend and was clearly struggling with that loss.

“Her coffee isn’t as good either, but I’m adjusting,” Thorndike said, lightening his tone and the mood. “If Claude wanted her to take over the place he loved, he must have had his reasons.”

Frank nodded. But like Nettie, he was even more curious about Kate. What was the connection between Claude Durham, a confirmed cantankerous old bachelor, and Kate LaFond, a young woman no one knew anything about?

* * *

KATE HADN’T PLANNED to go to the Sweetgrass County Spring Fair. But after the sheriff’s visit, she didn’t feel she had a choice. She couldn’t be sure he wasn’t keeping an eye on her, and staying home—or worse, taking off for the hills—would only make her look more guilty. As if that was possible.

One down. Two more to go, though. Better hurry, Kate. Ticktock.

Who’d left her the note? Someone who knew what she was doing in Beartooth, that much was clear. One down. Two more to go, though. Did the writer, like the sheriff, suspect she’d killed the dead man found by the river? Or had the letter writer killed him?

She shuddered as she realized that the note had been taken while she’d been busy with Cilla. Maybe the letter writer had taken it back. But then that meant he’d been watching her and had seen her put it in the apron pocket and later deposit it in the bin.

She realized anyone who’d been in the busy café that morning could have stuck the note under a plate as they were leaving.

As she drove out of town, Beartooth, while darned close to a ghost town on its good days, felt eerily deserted. As much as she hated to admit it, she felt spooked and realized she was glad to be driving into Big Timber.

On the twenty-mile drive through rolling ranch and farmland, she could feel time slipping through her fingers, though. The author of the note was right. The clock was ticking. With winter over, the ground finally thawed and the equipment ready, there was nothing stopping her.

The thought made her laugh. Nothing stopping her? There were so many roadblocks thrown in her way.... She pulled into the fair’s parking lot and killed the engine, pushing away the thought of two more men after her who might be out there right now, watching her and waiting.

She climbed out into the warm spring day, telling herself she could handle whatever was thrown at her. Or at least she hoped she could. She’d had a few curveballs thrown at her in her life, but nothing like this.

The spring fair was everything she’d heard it was. There were barns filled with prize-winning cows, pigs, horses, sheep, rabbits and even chickens. Other buildings held homemade clothing and baked goods, some sporting blue ribbons.

As she moved through the crowds—the men in their jeans, boots, fancy Western shirts and Stetson hats, the women just as duded out—she felt as if she must stand out like a sore thumb.

This was a world apart from where she’d grown up. Everything about Montana, especially Beartooth, felt alien to her and had since she’d arrived. She did what she could to blend in, even wearing boots and boot-cut jeans, Western shirts with snaps instead of buttons, and spending most Sunday mornings on a hard pew at church with the rest of the community.

She laughed at the regulars’ jokes and kidding each morning. She’d learned to drive a stick-shift four-wheel-drive pickup as well as run a café. Last fall, she’d cut firewood for the coming winter and, once the blizzards hit, she’d shoveled snow and stoked the apartment woodstove just to keep warm as if she was a local.

Since moving to Beartooth, she’d done what she had to to survive.

But now with time running out, she felt discouraged. It had taken longer than she’d thought it would to get the café up and running and to settle into this new, strange life. But she couldn’t afford to hire anyone to run the place for her.

Then winter had set in too soon. She hadn’t gotten a feel of the land before the snow had started, the temperature dropping, the ground freezing, making finding what she’d come for impossible.

All she’d been able to do was bide her time. Get the lay of the land, as her father would have said. She thought of Harvey Logan, the only father she’d known. He would have loved Montana. It was rich in history, with lots of stories of outlaws and gold miners, homesteaders and hard winters, along with buried treasure, strongboxes from robbed stages that were never found. Hidden miser’s gold, nuggets the size of her fist, turning up when foundations were dug for one of the many towns that had sprung up overnight.

But what a hard life early settlers had faced. She thought of last winter and couldn’t imagine how anyone had survived a hundred years ago without modern conveniences. She’d wanted to throw in the towel more times than she could count on those days when winter blizzards had rattled the café windows and whirled snow into icy drifts as the temperature plummeted.

She couldn’t help but question if all of this was worth it.

At the thought, she drew on the granite-hard determination that had gotten her this far in life. She deserved to get what was coming to her—no matter what. One day it would all be worth it, she assured herself as she walked past tables of baked goods and handcrafts and women hawking their wares.

The sun beat down on her. She could hear shrieks coming from the carnival rides as she passed a line of canvas tents offering everything from tamales to tractor parts. The smell of cotton candy and corn dogs permeated the air, making her feel a little nauseous.

Kate started to turn back the way she’d come, having had enough. She knew she was still upset over the note and the sheriff’s visit. She was pushing her way through the crowd when she saw him.

Jack French didn’t appear to have seen her, though. At least she hoped he hadn’t, as she quickly ducked into the nearest tent.

The tent was small and dark inside. She froze just inside the door. The strong scent of incense filled her nostrils. She blinked, surprised to find an old woman staring at her with the darkest eyes she’d ever seen.

The woman reached out her bejeweled hand.

It took Kate a moment to realize what she’d stumbled into. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to come in here,” she said, turning back toward the canvas door she’d just stepped through.

“There are no accidents,” the old woman said in a voice as grating as a rusty hinge but strangely captivating. “Don’t you want to know your future?”

She turned back to the woman, shaking her head as she smiled. “I believe in making my own future.”

“Then you have nothing to fear, do you?” The elderly woman beckoned with gnarled fingers.

Kate knew that if she stepped back outside right now, there was a good chance of running into Jack, and it was cool in the tent. Even the scent of incense was better than that of fried food.

What the heck? Humor the old woman, pay her a few dollars. By then the cowboy would be gone and she could sneak out of the fair and back to Beartooth.

“Sit. Give me your hand.”

Kate sat, taking in the dark velvet drapes that lined the small canvas tent. The old woman wore a caftan of equally dark jeweled colors. Her once dark hair was now splintered with lightning bolts of gray, but it was her dark eyes that held Kate’s attention.

She gave the woman her hand, felt the icy-cold, thin skin as the gnarled hand closed around hers.

Kate was instantly startled by the alarm that flashed in the woman’s black eyes. A rattled breath escaped the fortune-teller’s lips. Horror contorted her features.

Kate tried to pull back her hand, but the woman’s grip was like a vise.

“There is something dark. It’s all around you,” the seer said as if the words were being pried from her. “It’s like a curse that has followed you since birth. I see a man, several men—” Her voice broke as the clawlike fingers released hers so quickly Kate’s hand dropped to the small makeshift table. She felt the cool velvet of the table covering as she pushed away from the table and the crone’s distressed look.

The old woman blinked, her eyes seeming to clear. She appeared upset to see Kate still there. Not half as upset as Kate, though.

“You could have just told me I was going to meet a tall, dark stranger who would fall madly in love with me,” Kate snapped as she got to her feet. She hadn’t even wanted to come in here. She certainly didn’t need some dire fortune, let alone that accusing tone.

The woman shook her head. “You have already met him. He is tall. Not so dark.”

Kate thought of Jack French with his blond hair and pale blue eyes.

“But the love affair is cursed because of the danger surrounding you.”

“What kind of fortune-teller are you?” Kate demanded.

“I can only speak what I see.”

“If you think I’m paying for that lousy fortune—”

“I don’t want your money.”

Insulted, Kate opened her purse, threw down a twenty and stalked out. Before the canvas curtain closed behind her, she saw the old woman cross herself.

Kate let the tent flap snap shut behind her as she stepped out into the sunlight, needing warmth to chase away the pall the old woman had cast over her.

But as she stepped into a shaft of warm, golden sunlight, she saw the man she’d been trying to avoid earlier. Jack French was leaning against one of the tent posts, clearly waiting for her.

“Bad news?” he asked. He wore a blue-checked shirt that brought out the blue in his eyes. His jeans, like his boots, looked as new as the Stetson cocked back on his blond head.

She glared at him and had the wild notion that he’d had something to do with what the old woman had told her. She knew she shouldn’t let the cowboy or the fortune-teller upset her. Neither knew anything about her. But she had already been on edge from earlier.

“Were you listening to what she told me?” she snapped.

He shook his head. “Just saw you come out scowling,” he said as he pushed off the tent post to join her.

Obviously she’d wasted her time trying to avoid him. He must have seen her duck into the tent.

“I thought fortune-tellers weren’t supposed to tell you anything bad about the future,” he said.

“She must not have read the fortune-teller manual. Or maybe she foresaw you waiting outside the tent for me.”

He grinned at that and shoved back his hat. “So she did mention me?” He studied her a moment. The grin faded. “You really are upset. Over what some carnival charlatan told you? I thought you were smarter than that.”

She knew her face gave her away. She was upset. It was foolish. Had she really let what the old woman said shake her composure? She was angry with herself for even stepping into the tent to begin with. Of course, that was all Jack’s fault.

“Or are you upset over the sketch of the dead man in today’s newspaper?” His eyes had narrowed, his gaze intent on her.

She unconsciously lifted her chin, bracing herself. “I was shocked.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, still studying her.