Читать книгу Boots and Bullets - B.J. Daniels, B.J. Daniels - Страница 9

Cyrus stared at the woman as if she were an apparition. Everyone was right. He was losing his mind. Fear turned his skin clammy. He told himself he was seeing things, imagining her the same way he had the murdered woman.

As the young woman looked up then and saw him, she appeared startled. She slowed, looked unsure. He half expected her to vanish before his eyes.

“Can I help you?” she asked, frowning, as she walked toward him. Was it possible she recognized him? Or was she just surprised, thinking she was alone in the building?

As she drew closer, he saw that either his memory was in error or this wasn’t the woman. But she looked enough like the murder victim to be her sister. Her hair was more copper than auburn, her eyes emerald rather than aquamarine and she was shorter than the murdered woman, although about the same age.

She had a small wooden nightstand in one hand and a slat-back wooden chair in the other and she wore blue denim overalls over a white T-shirt, sneakers on her feet. The logo on the overalls read Second Hand Kate.

“Are you all right?” she asked as she plucked out the earbuds.

He knew he must have lost all color. While he’d been getting stronger every day, the shock of seeing her had left him feeling weak and shaky.

He realized how bad he must look when she asked, “You know the hospital moved, right? Do you need someone to drive you up to the new one?”

He could hear the murmur of the music coming from the iPod in her overalls pocket. He shook his head and finally found his voice. “Sorry, I called out as I came in … “

She smiled. It seemed to light up the old building and the sweet innocence in the gesture tugged at his heart. This wasn’t the woman he’d seen murdered in the nursery, but she had to be a relative. Wasn’t it possible she’d seen him at the hospital?

“Do you know me?” he asked.

She looked at him as if he might be joking. “Should I?”

He shoved back his Stetson and smiled sheepishly. “You look familiar. I thought … You don’t happen to have a sister, do you?”

“Sorry.” She was smiling again as if she thought this was a bad pick-up line.

She was definitely not the woman he’d seen. This woman, while the spitting image of the murder victim, lacked the darkness he’d felt in the dead woman. This woman was all sunshine and rainbows.

“Is this for the secondhand shop?” he asked, motioning to the furniture and then to the logo on her overalls, desperately needing to say something that didn’t come out stupid.

She nodded, clearly pleased with the items. “They don’t make furniture like this anymore. I can’t wait to refinish some of these pieces,” she said, her enthusiasm bubbling out.

“So you must be Kate.” Not a nurse. Or even a nurse’s aide here at the hospital.

“The Kate in Second Hand Kate’s.” She set down the chair and wiped her free hand on her overalls and held it out to him. “You aren’t interested in used furniture, are you?”

“I might be,” he said, realizing he was flirting with her. He held out his hand. “Cyrus Winchester.”

“Winchester? You’re not related to—”

“The sheriff is my cousin and Pepper is my grandmother.”

“Oh.” She chuckled. “I see.”

“You know them?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I just moved here, but I’ve heard stories. Your grandmother is pretty famous around here. I’ve always wanted to meet her.”

“Infamous, you mean.” The Winchesters had always provided fodder for good gossip. His grandmother had been a recluse for the past twenty-seven years, his grandfather had ridden off on a horse one day forty years ago and never been seen again—until recently—and one of his uncles had only turned up after a gully washer had washed up his remains.

She turned her smile on him again. “Kate Landon.”

Cyrus felt a gentle shock run through him at her warm, strong touch.

“So you just happened to stop by the hospital to … “

“Return to the scene of the crime.” She laughed and he added quickly, “So to speak. I was brought in a few months ago by ambulance and spent a night here. I

don’t remember much about it. They tell me I was in a coma.”

She instantly sobered. “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

“I’m fine now.” Sure you are. You thought this woman had been murdered just down the hall in the nursery. Or at least her sister had. Except she doesn’t have a sister. “I’m just going to take a look around, if that’s okay.”

“Sure. Just do me a favor, if you don’t mind. This is my last load. Close the doors when you leave? There’s a chain with a padlock on the outside that loops through the door handles.”

He’d forgotten how trusting people were in small towns. “I’d be happy to lock it on my way out.”

“Thanks.” She seemed to hesitate, her green eyes darkening. “Take care of yourself.”

Cyrus knew he was being paranoid, but her words seemed to echo in the still, empty hallway like an omen.

KATE CARRIED the end table and chair out to the truck, put it in the back with the last of the furniture, pushed in the ramp and slammed the rear doors, smiling to herself.

It had been a while since a man had openly flirted with her—let alone a very handsome cowboy. At the memory of the man she’d met inside, her gaze felt pulled back to the old hospital. The interior was deep in shadow, but she thought for a moment she saw movement in the darkness behind the open double doors.

Her friend Jasmine, a Whitehorse native, had kidded her about watching out for ghosts at the hospital. “Seriously, the nurses used to tell stories of feeling something in that old hospital when they worked the night shift and this one nurse swore she saw the ghost of this woman coming down the hall toward her.”

Kate had laughed, figuring Jasmine was just fooling with her. She’d felt a little creepy in the old building alone earlier, but had just turned up her music. Now though, she would have sworn she saw a figure just beyond the doorway.

But when she’d turned to look down the long side of the building, she’d seen a set of white metal blinds flash open at a window in a far room.

Cyrus Winchester peered out for a moment, then closed the blinds again.

She felt a chill, remembering the feeling that someone had been watching her from just inside the hospital doors. It couldn’t have been Cyrus. Had someone else been in there?

“It’s the ghost of that woman,” Jasmine would have said.

Fortunately Jasmine wasn’t with her.

You’re just imagining things. But she decided she would swing by later and make sure no one had gotten locked inside the old building.

As she climbed behind the wheel of her truck, she forgot all about ghosts. It was Cyrus Winchester she couldn’t get off her mind. He had startled her earlier when she’d looked up and seen him standing in the hallway. Blame Jasmine for her darned ghost stories.

Cyrus Winchester had looked nothing like the legendary ghost woman standing there so tall, dark and exceedingly handsome.

Yet there had been something haunting in his eyes …

She shivered at the thought, remembering that when he’d seen her he’d looked as if he was the one who’d seen the ghost. Probably just recovering from his injuries. Still, it was odd, him wanting to return to the scene of the crime, as he’d said. Who visited his old hospital room?

She looked again at the windows where he’d peered out just minutes ago. With the blinds closed, she could see nothing but white metal.

Turning the key, she started the engine and a Christmas song came on the radio. It was too early to be thinking about Christmas. She was still gearing up for her annual Halloween haunted house. She turned the radio dial until she found country and western and turned her thoughts to Halloween.

She planned to transform the basement of Second Hand Kate’s into a haunted house. She’d only been in town for a few months and it was her way of welcoming the community into her new store. The basement of the old two-story, once-a-library building with all its nooks and crannies was the perfect place for chills and thrills.

Fortunately, she’d managed to make a couple of friends who’d offered to help her. Jasmine was sewing some of the costumes and backdrops while Andi preferred working with the blood and guts, turning perfectly normal food into something gross and frightening.

Kate couldn’t wait to hear the children’s shrieks and screams, giggles and gags. She hoped for a good turnout Halloween night. But she still had a lot of work to do and was glad she’d finally gotten the last of the furniture out of the old hospital. There had been no hurry, but she hated leaving anything undone.

As she drove away, her cell phone rang.

“I found the most perfect fabric for the ghost in the pit of horror,” Jasmine said, making her laugh.

“Of course you did. I was just thinking of you.” She’d met Jasmine soon after she’d come to town at where else? A garage sale. The two had realized how much they had in common when they’d both tried to buy the same ugly chair.

“Oh, yeah?”

“I was just leaving the old hospital with the last of the furniture.”

“You saw the ghost.” Jasmine sounded excited. “Didn’t I tell you?”

“What I saw was no ghost. I just ran into Cyrus Winchester.”

“Who?”

“Pepper Winchester’s grandson. You’ve never met him?”

“No. So what is he like?”

“Gorgeous.” She almost added, “and a little strange,” but chastised herself for even thinking it. The man had just come out of a coma.

“Sounds like a Winchester. Black hair and eyes?”

“Uh-huh. Tall with broad shoulders and slim hips that look great in Wrangler jeans.” Kate remembered how good-looking he’d been standing there in his Stetson and boots. Even now she couldn’t put her finger on what it was about him that had left her feeling afraid for him.

“Wait a minute, is he the one who was in the hospital with the coma?” Jasmine and Andi always knew more of what was going on than Kate ever did. Jasmine worked at City Hall so she heard all the good stuff and Andi was the local newspaper reporter.

“Uh-huh.”

“He and his brother are private investigators in Denver. I heard he’s drop-dead gorgeous and that he and his brother are identical twins,” Jasmine said.

“Really?” She felt a chill at discovering Cyrus was a private investigator, but tried to hide her reaction from her friend. She’d never told anyone in Whitehorse about her past.

“What was he doing at the old hospital?” Andi asked.

“He stopped by to visit his room.”

“Seriously? Don’t you think that is a little macabre? Maybe he died there, you know, went toward the light but was pulled back and now he’s trying to call up the other side.”

“Or maybe you’ve been spending too much time planning the haunted house,” Kate suggested.

Her friend laughed. “Swing by and I’ll show you the fabric. I also have some old white curtains I can use for the ghosts, but I want your opinion first.”

Kate was tired and dirty from hauling dusty old furniture, but she agreed. “See you in a minute.” She hung up and on impulse, circled around the block and made a point of driving back past the hospital.

The pickup with the Colorado plates that had been parked behind her truck was still there, which meant Cyrus Winchester was still inside the hospital.

What was he doing in there?

THE HOSPITAL ROOM was exactly as he remembered it. Cyrus had quit asking himself how he knew that. Obviously he hadn’t been unconscious the entire time.

When he’d opened the blinds, he’d seen Kate Landon sitting in her truck. Was she worried he wouldn’t lock up? She couldn’t be worried that he’d steal anything, since clearly there was nothing left in the building to steal.

He’d dropped the blinds and searched the room, not sure what he was hoping to find. Of course there was nothing either in the room or the bathroom but dust. How quickly the building was falling into disrepair.

When he peeked out the window again, the Second Hand Kate’s truck was gone. He had wanted to question her further, but had warned himself not to ask too many questions that would scare her.

She looked too much like the murder victim not to have some connection. He would have to find out what he could about the Landon family.

Leaving his former hospital room, he walked down the hall, his boot heels echoing. The place had taken on an eerie feel. He stopped to listen as if he thought he could tap into the building’s history, feel all the lives that had traveled through here from birth to death and all the broken bones and illnesses in between.

But of course he couldn’t. He wasn’t psychic. He’d seen someone switch two baby boys in the nursery and then become a murder victim. That was a far cry from being able to tell the future.

He thought about calling Cordell and telling him about Kate Landon. But he knew his brother would try to come up with some reason Kate looked so much like the murder victim.

“You must have seen her before you were attacked, before the coma, and unconsciously put her in your dream,” Cordell would say.

Unfortunately, everything that had happened between his last memory of driving to Montana and waking up was lost. Except for what had happened that one night in the old hospital. He knew that alone should be proof the murder was just a bad dream.

At the nursery, he paused. It was just inside there that he’d found the dead woman. He walked a few feet down the hall, found the door into the nursery and stepped in.

Fortunately the power company hadn’t turned off the electricity yet. He snapped on the light and studied the room, trying to picture where the bassinets and other equipment had been in this room that night.

At the back of his mind, a thought nagged at him. Why was the equipment still here that night? Why were there two babies still here if most everything had been moved to the new hospital?

He shoved the thought away. It didn’t make any sense, but then again none of it did.

Cyrus moved to within feet of the spot where he believed the body had been sprawled. The woman had put up a struggle. In the semi-soundproof nursery and the near-empty hospital, it was no wonder no one had heard it.

Crouching down, he studied the worn tile. There were scuff marks, dust, some dirt and a scrape where something heavy had been dragged out. He wondered if the blood would show up in the thin cracks between the tiles with the luminol crime labs used?

Unfortunately, there was little chance of getting the crime lab involved, since the sheriff’s department wasn’t even investigating the murder.

Because there was no murder. No switching of babies in the nursery. No way you could have seen a dead woman because you were in a coma tethered to your bed by tubes and monitors. All this was just a coma-induced bad dream.

Sometimes he wished he had dreamed all of it so he could just quit this. As he started to push himself to his feet, he was blinded by another flash of memory. The woman lying in a pool of blood, him leaning over her, something on her wrist.

A string of tiny silver sleigh bells. A bracelet. One of the bells had come off and lay on its side in the blood next to her clutched fingers. The woman had put up a fight.

HEAD ACHING and even more mystified, Cyrus left the old hospital and drove down to the main drag. He parked in front of the Milk River Examiner, the local weekly newspaper, and climbed out, breathing in the crisp Montana air. The detailed images that kept flashing through his memory were starting to worry him.

Why hadn’t he remembered all of it the moment he’d awakened? Why did it keep coming to him, little pieces that were so clear …. He shoved his worry away and entered the newspaper office.

It was small and sold paper supplies as well as putting out a weekly edition.

He took a current newspaper—and one from three months ago that would have come out the week he was taken to the hospital and the week after that. From the young clerk behind the counter, he also borrowed the phone book long enough to look up the last name Landon.

The nearby towns along the Hi-Line were all small enough that they’d been put into the same phone book. There was only one Landon in the entire the directory. Kate. What had he been thinking? If she had any female relatives here, they could be married and have different last names.

Returning the phone book to the clerk, he paid for his newspapers and stepped outside. Across the street was a small park next to the railroad tracks. He sat down at one of the picnic tables and opened the first newspaper.

The paper had a lot of local news about who was in town visiting and who had a birthday or anniversary. He paused on an ad for Second Hand Kate’s, complete with an address and news about her recent opening—and her first annual haunted house to be held there Halloween night.

Cyrus realized Halloween was only a few days away.

There wasn’t anything else in the paper that caught his eye, so he picked up one from three months ago. Under the sheriff’s department reports he found the incident that had put him in a coma. It was brief, only a few words about a deputy responding to a call at the Whitehorse Hotel where a man had been attacked and taken to the hospital. The suspect was still at large.

He scanned through the rest of the four-page paper and found the obituary for the man who had died in the hospital the same night Cyrus was there. The man’s name was Wally Ingram.

On impulse Cyrus called 411 on his cell and was put through to Wally Ingram’s home number. He was surprised when it rang. He’d been half expecting to hear the line had been disconnected following the man’s death.

“Hello?” The woman sounded young.

Cyrus quickly explained that he’d been in the hospital the same night as Mr. Ingram and wondered if any of the family had also been there.

“My mother stayed with Grandpa that night.”

He felt his pulse quicken. “I’d like to talk to your mother if possible. Is she around?”

“Martha’s gone to Great Falls and won’t be back until late tonight, but you could probably catch her tomorrow morning.”

He left a message to have Martha Ingram call him and hung up, feeling hopeful. Someone else had been in the hospital that night, someone not connected to the staff.

The answer was in this town, Cyrus thought, and felt a strange sense of apprehension. Little scared him, but he knew at the back of his mind, he was beginning to question his own sanity.

CYRUS CHECKED the newspaper from a week after his accident and read about his brother and another private investigator from California, Raine Chandler, catching some child molesters, one of them responsible for putting him in the hospital.

As he walked back to his car, he felt antsy. The air had cooled down some, the day not quite as beautiful as it had been. He wondered if a storm was coming in.

Sliding behind the wheel of his pickup, he didn’t kid himself about where he was going or why as he drove down the street to the address that had been listed in the newspaper for Second Hand Kate’s. He was relieved to see the Open sign in the window.

Getting out, he climbed the steps of the large, old brick building. Over the door, he could make out the faded letters of the word Library. She’d put her shop in an old library building.

The door opened, a bell tinkled and he caught the scent of orange and cinnamon. He breathed in the sweet, rich smell, glad of the warmth inside the shop as the door closed behind him.

He’d expected piles of old furniture—not this decorated, attractive shop.

“Be right with you!” Kate called from somewhere above him. He noticed a beautiful, wide stairway that climbed to the second floor. There was a small sign that read Private.

As he walked around the lower floor, he saw that each room had its own setting, each unique and charming. It felt almost magical, the lighting, the tapestries, the overstuffed chairs, the colors and textures, trinkets and curios. He remembered what she’d said about refinishing the furniture she’d gotten from the old hospital and could see her handiwork throughout her shop.

He could well imagine the condition many of the old items had been in before she’d worked her magic. It surprised him what wonders she’d achieved with a collection of what most people would have discarded as worthless. He could feel Kate’s energy in every room. It was like walking into the woman’s home rather than a shop.

At a rustling sound, he turned to see Kate Landon come down the wide flight of stairs. She’d showered and changed since he’d seen her at the old hospital and now wore a colorful skirt and top with black ballet slippers.

Her hair was still damp and hung around her shoulders, a coppery wave that framed her face and set off her wide green eyes. She was so stunning he stared, completely enchanted with this woman who could turn trash into treasure. As he stared at her, he realized that before, all he’d seen was her resemblance to the dead woman, now …

“Hello,” she said in a lyrical tone. She seemed amused to see him again.

“After meeting you, I decided I’d better see your shop,” he admitted honestly.

She smiled, opening her arms to take in the expansive rooms. “It’s still a work in progress. I haven’t been open all that long. I bought the building at an auction four months ago.”

So she had been in town before his coma. Which meant he could have seen her, just as his brother would have suggested, and that was how she became part of his nightmare.

“Your shop is amazing. You’ve done wonders with it,” he said glancing around although all he really wanted to do was look at her.

“Halloween night the basement is being turned into a haunted house,” she said. “You should come. If you’re still in town.”

“I just might do that.” His gaze locked with hers. “Do you have plans for dinner tonight?” The invitation came out of nowhere, surprising them both.

Her eyebrows shot up.

“I realize we just met and you know nothing about me.”

She smiled. “In a town this size? Are you kidding? Everyone in town knows your life history by now.”

He returned her smile. “I hope what you heard wasn’t all bad.”

“Not all of it,” she teased. “I’d love to have dinner with you, but I’m afraid I have other plans tonight.”

Of course she would have a date, a woman like this.

“I have to help my friend Jasmine sew some props for the haunted house. She sews, I help by providing the food and moral support. But I am planning on stopping by the Fall Festival later this evening. Maybe I’ll see you there if you’re going. There’s going to be frybread. I never pass up frybread.”

“Great.” Cyrus wondered if this woman was why he was supposed to come back to Whitehorse. Maybe it hadn’t been about a murder at all. Maybe he’d been destined to return to meet this woman. He liked the idea much better than the alternative.

It made more sense than any other explanation he could come up with. Which would mean there was no murdered woman in the nursery. No switching of babies. No wandering down an empty hospital hallway. None of that had happened.

Instead Kate Landon had happened. He smiled to himself, desperately wanting to believe she was the reason he was in Whitehorse as he shoved off the doubts that had plagued him, the things that made no sense.

He told that nagging little voice demanding a logical explanation for everything to shut up. It didn’t matter why he’d walked right to the old hospital nursery earlier today, why he’d been able to find his room, why he knew how the tile felt on his bare feet, or the big one, why Kate Landon looked so much like the murdered woman that he’d thought she was the victim’s younger sister.

Couldn’t it be possible that he’d had the dream just to get him back here to meet Kate?

Cyrus felt as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He was freer than he’d felt since he’d awakened from his coma. He told himself that he could let it go.

Those months would always be lost, but he had come out of the coma with apparently no long-lasting side effects. He’d been lucky. He was alive. It was time he started enjoying that fact. Just as Roberta Warren, the hospital administrator, had told him.

But as he turned to leave, Cyrus saw something in a glass cabinet that changed everything.