“Want help with that gate?” the cowboy said as he brushed against her.

“Thank you.” Dulcie ducked out from under his arms and stood back to watch him drag it out of the way. He wasn’t just tall, she realized. His shoulder muscles bunched, stretching the fabric of his Western shirt across broad shoulders. And as he opened the gate, she got a good look at his backside.

“Mind if I ask what you’re planning to do here?” He gestured toward the house.

“Having a look around.”

He leaned against the gatepost, studying her. “I hadn’t taken you for one of them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The morbidly curious.”

Dulcie felt something in her tense. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t you? A woman was murdered in that house.”

About the Author

BJ DANIELS wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out, received a 4½ star review from Romantic Times Book Reviews magazine and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and numerous nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis.

Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA, or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her webpage at www.bjdaniels.com.

SMOKIN’

SIX-SHOOTER

BY

BJ DANIELS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Chapter One

“There must be some mistake.” Dulcie Hughes shifted in her chair, anxious to flee the lawyer’s office. “We’ve covered everything my parents left me in their estate.”

“Not this particular part of your inheritance,” he said and cleared this throat. For years Lawrence Brooks, Sr., had been her parents’ attorney, but upon his death his youngest son, Herbert, had taken over his father’s law practice.

Herbert was in his early thirties, only a few years older than Dulcie herself, a tall, prematurely balding man with tiny brown eyes and a nervous twitch.

Today though he seemed even more nervous than usual, which made her pay closer attention as he handed her the documents.

“What is this?” she asked, frowning. Her elderly parents had discussed all their financial arrangements with her at length for years. She’d never seen this before.

“You’ve been left some property in Montana.”

“Montana?”

He tried to still his hands as he waited for her to read the documents.

“My parents never mentioned anything about having property in Montana.” She read the name. “Who is Laura Beaumont?”

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head. “I’ve never heard the name before. This is all the information you have?”

“Apparently Laura Beaumont’s estate was being held for you in a trust until their deaths, taking care of the expenses. That’s all I can tell you.” He stood abruptly, signaling an end to their business.

Dulcie didn’t move. “Are you saying this is all you know or this is all you’re allowed to tell me?”

“If you want to know more, I would suggest you obtain an attorney of your own to look into the matter further,” he said, tapping his fingertips on his desk as he waited impatiently for her to leave. “Or go to Montana yourself.” He made the latter sound imprudent.

“Maybe I’ll do that,” Dulcie said, rising to her feet and tucking the papers into her shoulder bag.

“As your parents’ attorney, that completes our business,” Herbert said, sounding glad of it.

For the past four months, she’d been grieving the loss of her parents and not in the least interested in dealing with the financial aspects of that loss.

As the only heir of Brad and Kathy Hughes, she’d known she would be inheriting a sizable estate. Not that she needed it. Straight out of college, she and a friend had opened a boutique that had taken off.

After establishing more than a dozen such shops across the country, she and Renada had sold the businesses six months ago and made enough that she would never have to work again if she invested the money wisely, which of course she had.

She’d been trying to decide what to do next when her seventy-two-year-old father had taken ill. Her mother had never been strong, suffering from a weak heart. But to lose both of them within a few weeks had been crushing.

Now, months later, she felt even more at loose ends.

As she left the lawyer’s office, her cell phone rang.

“So it’s over?” asked her friend and former business partner tentatively. Renada had wanted to come along with her to see the lawyer, knowing how hard this was for her. But Dulcie had needed to do this on her own. She needed to get used to doing a lot of things on her own.

“All done,” she said, patting the papers she’d stuffed into her shoulder bag.

“Up for lunch?” Renada asked.

“Absolutely. I’m starved.” And she was, she realized.

It wasn’t until after they’d eaten and she was feeling better for the first time in months that she told her friend about the Montana property.

“It’s very odd,” she said, digging out the papers the lawyer had given her. “I’ve been left property in Montana from someone named Laura Beaumont.”

“Seriously? How much?”

“Apparently a hundred and sixty acres just outside of Whitehorse, Montana.”

“Where is that?”

“I haven’t a clue.”

“Aren’t you curious about this Laura Beaumont?”

“Yes, but it’s so strange that my parents never mentioned this woman or anything about the property, even though Laura Beaumont left it to me years ago.”

“Your parents never even went to Montana to see what you’d been left?”

“Apparently not. We went to Yellowstone Park one summer. Wouldn’t you think they’d have mentioned the property?”

“Or taken you there. Unless it’s in the middle of nowhere and they had no interest in it. You are going to check it out, aren’t you?”

Dulcie knew her friend had been worried about her, urging her to come up with another business venture to help get her through her loss. “Do you want to go with me?”

Renada shook her head ruefully. “I’d love to, but I can’t leave right now. I just agreed to teach some clothing design classes at the community university.”

“Good for you,” Dulcie said, excited for her friend. Renada had always talked about doing something like this when she had the time. Their boutiques had kept them so busy she’d never gotten the chance. Now there was nothing keeping her from it.

“It’s funny,” Dulcie said as they walked out of the restaurant together. “I got the feeling from the lawyer that there was something unusual about this inheritance.”

“Unusual how?”

“Something he couldn’t talk about. Or wouldn’t.”

“A secret?” Renada said on an excited breath. “Maybe this land is worth a small fortune. Or Lewis and Clark left their names carved in the stones on the property.”

Dulcie laughed. “Don’t get your hopes up. I’m sure it’s just a piece of property that is so inconsequential that it skipped my parents’ minds.”

“A hundred and sixty acres in Montana inconsequential?” Renada scoffed. “Still, it does seem odd since you’ve never heard of this Laura Beaumont. So when are you going to Montana?”

“Right away, I guess,” Dulcie said, feeling as if this was a decision that had been taken out of her hands a long time ago.

A HOT, DRY WIND WHISPERED in the curtains as the weather vane on the barn turned restlessly, groaning and creaking.

The air in the house was so hot it hurt to breathe. The parched land outside the old farmhouse with its ochre dried grasses seemed to ache for a drink in the undulating heat waves that moved across the prairie as far as the eye could see.

Like the land, she’d forgotten the smell of rain, the feel of it soaking into her skin. she thirsted for the sound of raindrops on the roof, the splash of mud puddles as a pickup drove past.

She lay naked on the bed in the upstairs bedroom, the hot wind moving over her lush body, leaving it glistening with perspiration. Too young and ripe to be widowed, she ached for more than a cool breeze to caress her flesh.

The noise of the whirling fan across the room covered the creak of the slow, deliberate footsteps on the stairs. While she didn’t hear anyone, she must have felt a change in the air that told her she was no longer alone in the house.

“Is that you, sweetie?” she asked without expending the energy it would take to open her eyes. “I thought you’d gone down to the creek with your little friend.”

No answer.

A chill skittered over her, dimpling her flawless skin. Her eyes flew open in alarm as if she heard the blade cutting through the oppressive heat.

The first stab of the knife stole her breath. She tried to sit up, but the next blow knocked her back. The attacks came more quickly now, metal to flesh to bone, burning deep as blood pooled on the clean white sheets, the blood as hot as the breathless air around her.

By the time the knife finally stilled, its wielder panting hard from the exertion in the close heat of that second-story bedroom, she lay with her head turned toward the door, eyes dull with death, the face of her killer reflected accusingly in her dark pupils.

JOLENE STEVENS DROPPED the neatly printed pages and let out the breath she’d been holding. She glanced past the glow of her desk lamp to the door of the Old Town Whitehorse one-room schoolhouse.

The door was open to let in what cool night air might be had this late spring day. Like the beginning of the story she’d just read, the heat had been intense for weeks now. There wasn’t a breath of cool air and little chance of rain, according to the weatherman.

Jolene fanned herself with her grade book as she looked down at the pages again. On Friday she’d given her students an assignment to begin a short fictional story that would be told in six segments. She’d told them they didn’t have to put their names on their stories, thinking this would make them less self-conscious.

Each story was typed, double-spaced, on the student’s home computer so all of the stories looked the same.

While she’d instructed her students to start their stories at an exciting part and introduce an interesting character or intriguing place or event, she hadn’t expected anything this disturbing.

Mentally, she envisioned each of her five students: Amy Brooks, the precocious third-grade girl; the two goof-off fifth-grade boys, Thad Brooks and Luke Raines; the sixth-grade cowgirl, Codi Fox, and the eighth-grade moody boy on the cusp of becoming a man, Mace Carpenter.

She couldn’t imagine any of them writing this. Picking up the assignments, she counted. Six? Five students and yet she had collected six short-story beginnings? Was it possible one of them had turned in two stories?

For the first time since Jolene had come to Old Town Whitehorse to teach in the one-room schoolhouse, she felt uneasy. She’d been hired right out of Montana State University to fill an opening when the former teacher ran off and got married just before the school year ended, so all of this was new to her.

She rose and walked to the door to look out. Night sounds carried on the breeze. Crickets chirped in the tall dried grass of the empty lot between the school and the Whitehorse Community Center. No other sound could be heard in the hot Monday night since little remained of the town except for a few old buildings.

Her bike still leaned against the front of the school where she’d left it. Past it she could make out the playground equipment hunkered in the dark inside the old iron fence.

Beyond the playground, the arch over the cemetery on the hill seemed to catch some moonlight. She’d been warned about strange lights in the cemetery late at night. Talk was that the place was haunted.

Jolene had loved the idea, loved everything about this quaint rural community and her first teaching job. She loved the rolling prairie and even the isolation. She was shy, an avid reader, and appreciated the peace and quiet that the near-ghost town of Old Town Whitehorse afforded.

But the short-story beginning had left her on edge. She shivered even though the night was unbearably hot. Nothing moved in the darkness outside the school-house. The only light was one of those large yard lights used on ranches, shining from down the road by the small house that came with her teaching position.

Jolene closed the door, locking it, and stood for a moment studying the tables and chairs where her students sat. Light pooled on her desk, illuminating the rest of the opening scenes waiting there for her to read.

Tomorrow her students would turn in their next segment of their short stories, the assignment to run for another five days, ending next Monday. Would there be more of this story?

Earlier she had decided to stay late and read the first of the stories here where she’d thought it might be cooler. Now, with the murder story too fresh in her mind, she changed her mind and, stepping to the desk, scooped up the assignments and shoved them into her backpack.

An owl hooted just outside the open window, making her jump. She laughed at her own foolishness. She’d been raised in the country, and having been a tomboy, nothing had scared her. So why was she letting some fictional tale scare her?

Because she couldn’t believe that any of her students had written it, she thought, as she zipped her backpack shut and turned out the lamp. She moved through the dark schoolroom to the door, unlocked it and stepped out.

The heat hit her like a fist and for a moment, she had trouble catching her breath. The weather this spring was too much like the short story, she thought, as she climbed on her bike and rode down the hill to her small house.

Once inside, she turned on all the lights, feeling foolish. What was there to be frightened of in this nearly deserted town in the middle of nowhere? The murder in the story had just been someone’s vivid imagination at work. vivid, gruesome imagination at work.

She made herself a sandwich and sat down with the rest of the stories. They were all pretty much what she’d expected from each of her students and she’d easily recognized each student’s work.

Just as she’d suspected—none of them had written the brutal murder story. But one of them had to have turned it in. Why?

The answer seemed obvious.

Someone wanted her to read it.

Chapter Two

Dulcie Hughes brought the rented car to a stop in front of a boarded-up old farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.

This was it? The mysterious Montana property? She couldn’t help her disappointment. She hadn’t known what to expect when she’d flown into Great Falls and driven across what was called the Hi-Line to White-horse.

The small Western town hadn’t been much of a surprise, either, after driving through one small Western town after another.

She had driven under the train tracks into White-horse, telling herself she understood why her parents had never brought her here. There wasn’t much to see unless you liked cowboys and pickup trucks. That seemed to be the only thing along the main street.

A few bars, churches, cafés and a couple of clothing stores later, she had to backtrack to find a real-estate office for directions to her property.

A cute blonde named April had drawn her a map and told her she couldn’t miss it. Of course that wasn’t true given that the land and all the old farmhouses looked alike. Fortunately she had the GPS coordinates.

The difference also was that her farmhouse had apparently been boarded up for years. Weeds had grown tall behind the barbed-wire fence. Nothing about the house looked in the least bit inviting.

“How do you feel about bats?” April had asked.

“Bats?”

“Whitehorse is the northernmost range for migrating little brown bats. They hibernate down in the Little Rockies and Memorial Day they show up in White-horse and don’t leave till after Labor Day. They come for the mosquitoes. I hope someone warned you about the mosquitoes. And the wind.”

“Don’t worry, I won’t be staying long. I’ve just come to see the property for myself before I put it on the market.”

“So you don’t think you’ll be falling in love with it up here and never want to leave?” April joked.

Dulcie wondered all the way across the top of the state why anyone in their right mind lived here.

“I thought there would be mountains and pine trees,” she had said to April.

“The Little Rockies are forty miles to the south. There’s pine trees down there. Ponderosas. Your property isn’t far from there.” She’d grinned. “I guess you missed the single pine tree on the edge of town and the sign somebody put up that reads, Whitehorse County National Forest.”

Funny. But stuff like that was probably all they had to do around here for fun, Dulcie had thought as she had taken the map and thanked April for her help, promising to get back to her about listing the property.

For Dulcie, who lived in Chicago, the pine trees and the mountains had been farther than she thought—about twenty miles away.

She grabbed her cell phone, unable to wait a moment longer to call Renada and give her the news. But as she flipped it open, she heard the roar of an engine and looked into her rearview mirror to find a huge farm machine of some kind barreling down on her.

Fumbling for the key in the ignition, she let out a cry and braced herself for the inevitable crash as her rental car was suddenly shrouded in a cloud of dust.

She must have closed her eyes, waiting for the impact, because when she opened them, she found a pair of very blue, very angry eyes scowling in at her.

Turning the key, she whirred down her window since the cowboy hunkered next to her rental car seemed to be mouthing something.

“Yes?” she inquired, cell phone still in hand in case she needed to call for help. “Is there a problem?”

He quirked a brow. “Other than you parked in the middle of the road just over a rise? Nope, that about covers it.”

“I’m sorry. Let me pull off the road so you can get around.”

“Going to take more than that to get a combine through here on this narrow stretch of road, I’m afraid.”

A combine. How interesting.

“You lost?” he asked, shoving back his battered gray Stetson to glance over the top of her rental toward the farmhouse, then back to her.

He had the most direct blue-eyed stare she’d ever seen.

“No.” Not that it was any of his business. “I think I’ve seen all I need to see here so I’ll just go on up the road.”

“The road dead-ends a mile in the direction you’re headed,” he said. “But if that’s what you want to do. I’m only going another half mile. I can follow you.”

Oh, wouldn’t that be delightful.

“I believe in that case I’ll just pull into this house and let you go by,” she said and started to open her door.

“Want help with the gate?” he asked with a hint of amusement as he stepped back to let her slide from the car.

“I’m sure I can figure it out.” She straightened to her full height of five-nine, counting the two-inch heels of her dress boots, but he still towered over her.

Turning her back to him, she walked to the barbed-wire gate strung across the road into the house. She could feel his gaze appraising her and wished she’d worn something more appropriate.

Renada had joked that she needed to buy herself a pair of cowboy boots. She had worn designer jeans, a blouse and a pair of black dress boots with heels. As one of her heels sank into the soft dirt, she wished she’d taken Renada’s advice.

The gate, she found, had an odd contraption at one end, with a wire from the fence post that looped over the gatepost. Apparently all she had to do to open the gate was slip the wire loop off that post.

The gate, though, hadn’t been opened in a while, judging from how deep the wire had sunk into the old wood. The wire dug into her fingers as she tried to slide it upward.

“You have to hug it,” the cowboy said, brushing against her as he leaned over her to wrap one arm around the gatepost and the other around the fence post and squeezed. As the two posts came together, he easily slid the wire loop up and off.

“Thank you,” she said as she ducked out from under his arms and stood back to watch him drag the gate out of the way. He wasn’t just tall, she realized. His shoulder muscles bunched as he opened the gate, stretching the fabric of his Western shirt across his broad shoulders, and she’d gotten a good look at his backside.

The only cowboys she’d seen in Chicago were the urban types. None of them had this man’s rough-and-tough appearance. Nor had their jeans fit them quite like this cowboy’s did, she couldn’t help noticing.

“I’d be watching out for rattlesnakes if I were you,” he called after her as she turned to head for her car.

He’s just trying to scare me, she told herself but made a point of walking slowly back to her rental car and hurriedly getting inside—much to his amusement.

She revved the engine and pulled into the yard of her property, glad when she would be seeing the last of him. As she did, something moved behind a missing shutter at an upstairs window.

“Just leave the gate,” Dulcie said, cutting the engine and getting out of the car. “I might as well have a look around while I’m here.”

He leaned against the gatepost studying her. “Excuse me for saying so, but I don’t think that’s a good idea. I wasn’t joking about the rattlers, especially around an old place like this. Not to mention the fact that you’re trespassing and people around here don’t take kindly to that. You could get yourself shot.”

This last part she really doubted. “I’ll take my chances.”

He shrugged. “I hadn’t taken you for one of them.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The morbidly curious.”

Dulcie felt something in her tense. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“A woman was murdered in that house.”

She shook her head, not trusting her voice.

“Change your mind about hanging out here?”

“No.” The word came out weakly.

He tried to hide a grin. “Then I should probably warn you that if you get into trouble that cell phone you’ve been clutching won’t be of any use. There’s no coverage out here.”

She lifted an eyebrow. She’d never had trouble getting coverage with her cell phone carrier. The man didn’t know what he was talking about. She snapped open her phone. Damn, he was right.

When she looked up he was walking back toward his combine, shaking his head with each long stride. She could hear him muttering under his breath. “Got better things to do than stand around in this heat arguing with some fool city girl who doesn’t have the sense God gave her.”

“So much for Western hospitality,” she muttered under her own breath, then turned toward the house and felt herself shiver despite the heat.

JOLENE STEVENS GLANCED at the clock on the school-house wall. The hot air coming through the open windows and the sound of the birds and crickets chirping in the grass had all five students looking wistfully toward the cloudless blue sky and the summerlike day outside.

“Hand in your writing assignments and you may go home a few minutes early,” she said, giving up the fight to keep their attention. “Don’t forget you have another part of your story to write tonight. Tomorrow we will talk about writing the middle of your story.”

The air was close inside the schoolhouse, the breeze coming through the open window as hot as dragon’s breath against the back of her neck.

Jolene lifted her hair as she waited for her sixth-grader, Codi Fox, to collect all the assignments. She tried not to let any of her students see how anxious she was, not that they were paying attention. As Codi put the stack of short stories on the corner of her desk, Jolene made a point of not looking at them.

Instead she watched as her students pulled on their backpacks, answered questions and wished everyone a nice evening. None of them seemed in the least bit interested in the short-story assignments they’d just turned in.

If one of the students was bringing her the extra story, wouldn’t he or she have been anxious to see Jolene’s reaction? Apparently not.

After they’d all left, she straightened chairs, turned out lights, picked up around the schoolroom. The small, snub-nosed school bus came and went, taking three of her students with it. She waved to the elderly woman driver, then stood in the shade of the doorway as the parents of her last two students pulled up.

As soon as the dust settled, Jolene went back inside the classroom to her desk. Her hands were actually trembling as she picked up the short-story assignments, afraid the next installment of the murder story would be among the pile—and afraid it wouldn’t.

She quickly counted the individual stories. Six.

With a sigh of relief and an air of apprehension, she sorted through until she found it.

IT HAD BEEN ONE THOSE hot, dry springs when all the churchgoers in Whitehorse County were praying for rain. The small farming community depended on spring rains and when they didn’t come, you could feel the anxiety growing like a low-frequency electrical pulse that raced through the county and left everyone on edge.

Everyone, that is, but her. She wasn’t worried that day about the weather as she hung her wet sheets on the line behind the old farmhouse and waited—not for rain but for the sound of his truck coming up the deadend road.

JOLENE SWALLOWED AND looked up, afraid someone would come through the school’s door at any minute and catch her. Reading this felt like a guilty pleasure. Gathering up her work, she stuffed everything into her backpack and biked home.

Once there, she poured herself a glass of lemonade and, unable to postpone it any longer, picked up the story again.

THE SWELTERING HEAT ON the wind wrapped her long skirt around her slim legs, and lifted her mane of dark hair off her damp neck as she stared past the clothesline to the dirt road, anticipating her lover’s arrival.

She’d sent the little girl off to play with her new friend from across the creek. A long, lazy afternoon stretched endlessly before her and she ached at the thought, her need to be fulfilled by a man as essential as her next breath.

Over the sound of the weather vane on the barn groaning in the wind and the snap of the sheets as she secured them to the line, she finally heard a vehicle.

Her head came up and softened with relief, a clothespin between her perfect white teeth, her lightly freckled arms clutching the line as if for support as she watched him turn into the yard.

Dust roiled up into the blindingly bright day, the scorching wind lifting and carrying it across the road to the empty prairie.

She took the clothespin from her mouth, licking her lips as she secured the sheet, then leaving the rest of her wet clothes in the basket, she wiped her hands on her skirt and hurried to meet the man who would be the death of her.

JOLENE TOOK A BREATH and then reread the pages. She had no more clue as to who could have written this than she had the first time. Nor was she sure why the submission upset her the way it did. It was just fiction, right?

Why give it to her to read though? All she could think was that one of her student’s parents always wanted to write and was looking for some encouragement.

“All my daughter talks about is the short story you’re having the students write,” Amy’s mother had told her. “The other students and their families are talking about it as well. You’ve excited the whole community since I’m told the stories will eventually be bound in a booklet that will be for sale at next year’s fall festival.”

Was that how the author of the murder story had found out about the assignment? Which meant it could be anyone, not necessarily one of her student’s parents. But one of the students had to be bringing it in to class.

Jolene got up and went to the window, hoping for a breath of fresh air. Heat rose in waves over the pale yellow wild grass that ran to the Little Rockies.

What did the writer expect her to do with this? Just read it? Critique it? Believe it?

She shuddered as she realized that from the first sentence she’d read of the story, she had believed it. But then that was what good fiction was all about, making the reader suspend disbelief.

Even though she knew how the story ended since the writer had begun with the murder, she had the feeling that the writer was far from finished. At least she hoped that was the case. She couldn’t bear the thought that whoever was sending her this might just quit in the middle and leave her hanging.

She looked forward to seeing the next part of the story Wednesday morning and didn’t want to think that she might never know who or why someone had given it to her to read. As disturbing as the story was, she felt flattered that the writer had chosen her to read it.

As she stood looking out the window, she had a thought. Had such a murder occurred in this community? The old-timers around here told stories back to the first settlers. If there had been a brutal murder around here, she was sure someone would be able to recall it.

Especially one involving a young widow with a daughter living in an old farmhouse one very hot, rainless spring.

Jolene glanced back up the road to the Whitehorse Community Center. Several pickups and an SUV were parked out front for the meeting of the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. If anyone knew about a murder, it would be one of those women.

DULCIE WAITED UNTIL THE dust settled from the combine and the cowboy before she turned back to the house. Her gaze was drawn to the second-floor window again and the pale yellow curtain.

She was sure the color had faded over the years and she couldn’t make out the design on the fabric from here, but something about that yellow curtain felt oddly familiar.

Careful to make sure no rattlesnakes had snuck up while she’d been waiting, she took a few tentative steps toward the house. Had she seen this house with its yellow curtains in a photograph? Surely her parents had one somewhere.

Boards had been nailed across the front door and the lower windows. There would be no getting into the house without some tools. But did she really want to go inside?

She noticed a sliver of window visible from beneath the boards and moved cautiously through the tall weeds to cup her hands and peer inside.

She blinked in surprise. The inside of the house was covered in dust, but it looked as if whoever had lived here had just walked out one day and not returned.

The furniture appeared to be right where it had been, including a book on a side table and a drinking glass, now filled with cobwebs and dust, where someone had sat and read. There were tracks where small critters had obviously made themselves at home, but other than that, the place looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed in years.

Since the murder?

Dulcie felt a chill and told herself the cowboy might have just made that up to scare her, the same way he had warned her about rattlesnakes.

According to the documents, Dulcie had been left the property twenty-four years before. She would have been four.

Who left property to a four-year-old?

Laura Beaumont apparently.

Dulcie drew back, brushed dust from her sleeve and started to turn to the rental car to leave when she heard a strange creaking groan that made her freeze.

What sent her pulse soaring was the realization that she’d heard this exact sound before. She found her feet and stepped around the side of the house to look in the direction the noise was coming from.

On top of the barn, a rusted weather vane in the shape of a horse moved in the breeze, groaning and creaking restlessly.

Dulcie stood staring at it, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. She had been here before. The thought filled her with a horrible sense of dread.

She wiped at the tears, convinced she was losing her mind. Why else did a pair of yellow curtains and a rusted weather vane make her feel such dread—and worse—such fear?

Chapter Three

Russell Corbett drove the combine down the road to where he’d left his four-wheeler. He hated trading the luxury of the cab of the combine with its CD player, satellite radio and air conditioner for the noisy, hot four-wheeler.

He much preferred a horse to a vehicle anyway, but he couldn’t argue the convenience as he started the engine and headed back toward Trails West Ranch.

As he neared the old Beaumont place, it was impossible not to think about the woman he’d almost crashed into earlier, sitting in the middle of the road. Fool city girl, he thought, shaking his head again. Thinking about her took his mind off the heat bearing down on him.

He hadn’t paid that much attention to her. Even now he couldn’t recall her exact hair color. Something between russet and mahogany, but then it had been hard to tell with the sunlight firing it with gold.

Nor could he recall the length, the way she had the weight of her hair drawn up and secured in the back. He idly wondered if it would fall past her shoulders should the expensive-looking clip come loose.

He did remember her size when he’d bent over her, no more than five-six or seven without those heels, and recalled the impression he’d gotten that while her body was slim, she was rounded in all the right places. He’d sensed a strength about her, or maybe it had just been mule-headed stubbornness, that belied her stature and her obvious city-girl background.

Realizing the path his thoughts had taken, Russell shook them off like water from a wet dog. He must be suffering from heatstroke, he told himself. No woman had monopolized his thoughts this long in recent memory.

He told himself he wasn’t even going to look as he passed to see if she was still parked in front of the old farmhouse as he passed. It was too hot to save her from herself, even if she had wanted his help.

But he did look and told himself it wasn’t disappointment he felt at finding her gone. It was relief that she wasn’t in some trouble he would have to get her out of.

He slowed the four-wheeler as he noticed the fence lying on the ground. With a curse, he stopped and got off to close it. The woman had a lot to learn about private property and leaving gates open, he thought.

Glancing at the house, he was glad to see that nothing looked any different. Not that the woman could do much damage to the place. No way could she have broken into the house—not with those manicured fingernails of hers.

He’d never paid much attention to the old Beaumont place, although he’d passed it enough times since the land just beyond it was Corbett property and seeded in dry-land wheat.

Standing next to the gate, he stared at the old house, recalling someone had told him there’d been a murder there and the house had been boarded up ever since. People liked to make houses seem much more sinister than they actually were, he thought. He was surprised he hadn’t heard rumors of ghosts.

But even if nothing evil lurked in that house, it made him wonder what the woman had found so interesting about the place since, from her surprised expression, she hadn’t known about the murder.

Hell, maybe she’d never seen an old farmhouse before.

As if he’d ever understood women, he thought, as he climbed back on his four-wheeler, just glad she hadn’t befallen some disaster. If all she’d done was leave the gate open then he figured no harm was done. By now, she would be miles away.

Still he couldn’t help but wonder what had brought her to his part of Montana in the first place. She certainly was out of her realm, he thought with a chuckle as he headed back to the ranch.

THE WHITEHORSE SEWING Circle was an institution in the county. Jolene had noticed that when the women who spent several days a week at the center making quilts were mentioned, it was with reverence. And maybe a little fear.

Clearly these women had the power in this community. Jolene got the impression that a lot of decisions were made between stitches and a lot of information dispersed over the crisp new fabric of the quilts.

It was with apprehension that she walked over to the center and pushed open the door. She’d been inside before for several get-togethers since she’d been hired as the community’s teacher. This was where all the wedding receptions, birthday and anniversary parties, festivals and funeral potlucks were held.

The wooden floors were worn from years of boots dancing across them. It was easy to imagine that hearts had been won and lost in this large open room. A lot of events in these people’s lives had been marked here from births to deaths and everything in between. If only these walls could talk, Jolene thought, wondering what stories they would tell.

As the door opened, sunlight pouring across the floor, the women all looked in her direction. They were gathered toward the back around a small quilting frame. A baby quilt, she realized, as she let the door close behind her.

“Hello,” Pearl Cavanaugh said, smiling her slightly lopsided smile. Pearl had had a stroke sometime back and was still recovering, Jolene had heard. Pearl’s mother had started the Whitehorse Sewing Circle years ago, according to the locals.

“I just thought I’d stop in and see what you were making,” Jolene said lamely. How was she ever going to get to her true mission in coming here?

She knew she had to be careful. For fear the story might stop, she didn’t want the author of the story to find out she’d been asking around about the murder.

“Please. Join us,” Pearl said.

The women looked formidable, eyes keen, but their expressions were friendly enough as she pulled up a chair at the edge of the circle and watched their weathered, arthritic hands make the tiniest, most perfect stitches she’d ever seen.

“The quilt is beautiful,” she said into the silence. She could feel some of the women studying her discreetly.

“Thank you,” Pearl said, clearly the spokeswoman for the group. Her husband, Titus, served as a sort of mayor for Old Town Whitehorse, preaching in the center on Sundays, making sure the cemetery was maintained and overseeing the hiring of teachers as needed.

“You have all met our new teacher, Jolene Stevens,” Pearl was saying. “She comes to us straight from Montana State University.”

“So this is your first teaching assignment,” a small white-haired, blue-eyed woman said with a nice smile. “I’m Alice White.”

“I recall your birthday party,” Jolene said. “Ninety-two, I believe?”

Alice chuckled. “Everyone must think I’m going to kick the bucket sometime soon since they’re determined to celebrate my birthday every year now.” She winked at Jolene. “What they don’t know is that I’m going to live to be a hundred.”

Jolene tried to relax in the smattering of laughter that followed. “This area is so interesting. I’m really enjoying the history.”

“I’m sure everyone’s told you about the famous outlaws who used to hide out in this part of the state at the end of the eighteenth century,” a large woman with a cherubic face said. Ella Cavanaugh, a shirttail relation to Pearl and Titus, as Jolene recalled. Everyone seemed to be related in some way or another.

“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as well as Kid Curry,” added another elderly member, Mabel Brown. “This part of the state was lawless back then.”

“It certainly seems peaceful enough now,” Jolene commented. “But I did hear something about a murder of a young widow who had a little girl, I believe?”

She could have heard a pin drop. Several jaws definitely dropped, but quickly snapped shut again.

“Nasty business that was,” Ella said and glanced at Pearl.

“When was it?” Jolene asked, sensing that Pearl was about to shut down the topic.

“Twenty-four years ago this month,” Alice said, shaking her head. “It isn’t something any of us likes to think about.”

“Was her killer ever caught?” Jolene asked and saw the answer on their faces.

“Do you sew, Jolene?” Pearl asked. “We definitely could use some young eyes and nimble fingers.”

“I’m afraid not.”

“We would be happy to teach you,” Pearl said. “We make quilts for every baby born around here and have for years. It’s a Whitehorse tradition.”

“A very nice one,” Jolene agreed. She had wanted to ask more about the murder, but saw that the rest of the women were now intent on their quilting. Pearl had successfully ended the discussion. “Well, I should leave you to your work,” Jolene said, rising to her feet to leave.

“Well, if you ever change your mind,” Pearl said, looking up at her questioningly. No doubt she wondered where Jolene had heard about a twenty-four-year-old unsolved murder—and why she would be interested.

As Jolene left, she glanced back at the women. Only one was watching her. Pearl Cavanaugh. She looked troubled.

DULCIE DROVE BACK INTO town, even more curious about her inheritance. She returned to the real-estate office only to find that April was officiating a game at the old high-school gym.

The old gym was built of brick and was cavernous inside. Fortunately, the game hadn’t started yet. She found April in uniform on the sidelines.

“I’m sorry to bother you again,” Dulcie apologized. “Who would I talk to about the history of the property?”

April thought for a moment. “Talk to Roselee at the museum. She’s old as dirt, but sharp as a tack. She’s our local historian.”

The small museum was on the edge of town and filled with the history of this part of Montana. Roselee turned out to be a white-haired woman of indeterminable age. She smiled as Dulcie came through the door, greeting her warmly and telling her about the museum.

“Actually, I was interested in the history of a place south of here,” Dulcie said. “I heard you might be able to help me.”

Roselee looked pleased. “Well, I’ve been around here probably the longest. My father homesteaded in Old Town Whitehorse.”

Even better, Dulcie thought.

“Whose place are we talking about?”

“Laura Beaumont’s.”

All the friendliness left her voice. “If you’re one of those reporters doing another story on the murder—”

“I’m not. But I need to know. Was it Laura Beaumont who was murdered?”

Roselee pursed her lips. “If you’re not a reporter, then what is your interest in all this?”

“I inherited the property.”

The woman’s eyes widened. She groped for the chair behind her and sat down heavily.

Dulcie felt goose bumps ripple across her flesh at the look on the woman’s face. “What is it?” she demanded, frightened by the way Roselee was staring at her—as if she’d seen a ghost.

The elderly woman shook her head and struggled to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.” She picked up the cane leaning against the counter and started toward the back of the museum, calling to someone named Cara.

“If I come by some other time?” Dulcie said to the woman’s retreating back, but Roselee didn’t respond.

What in the world, she thought, as a much younger woman hurried to the counter and asked if she could help.

“Have you ever heard of a woman named Laura Beaumont?” Dulcie asked.

Cara, who was close to Dulcie’s age, shook her head. “Should I have?”

“I don’t know.” Dulcie felt shaken from Roselee’s reaction. “Do you have a historical society?”

The young woman broke into a smile. “You just met the president, Roselee.” She sobered. “Wasn’t she able to help you?”

“No. Is there someone else around town I could talk to?” She dropped her voice just in case Roselee was in the back, listening. “Someone older who knows everything that goes on around here, especially Old Town Whitehorse, and doesn’t mind talking about it?”

Cara’s eyes shone with understanding. She, too, whispered. “There is someone down south who might be able to help you. Her name is Arlene Evans. She’s…talkative.”

JOLENE GLANCED AT HER watch as she left the Community Center. If she hurried she could make it into White-horse before the newspaper office closed.

Now that she knew there had been a murder, she was anxious to go through the Milk River Examiner newspapers from twenty-four years ago to find out everything she could about it.

Back in the schoolhouse, she went to her desk and opened the drawer where she’d put the stories. All six were there. She had yet to read the other five, so she stuffed them all into her backpack.

Turning to leave, she was startled to find a dark shape filling the schoolhouse doorway.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Ben Carpenter said as he stepped inside. He was a big man who took up a lot of space and always made Jolene feel a little uncomfortable. She suspected it was because he seldom smiled. Ben was at the far end of his forties and the father of her moody eighth-grader, Mace.

“I was just finishing up for the day. Is there something Mace needed?” The boy resembled his father, large and beefy. Jolene had only once seen his mother, Ronda, but recalled she was tiny and reserved.

“I stopped in to see how Mace is doing,” Ben said. “I ask him, but he doesn’t say much. You aren’t having any trouble with him, are you? If you are, you just let me know and I’ll see to the boy.”

Jolene didn’t like the threat she heard in Ben’s tone. “He’s doing quite well and, no, I have no trouble at all with him.”

“Good,” Ben said, looking uncomfortable in the small setting. “Glad to hear it. His mother has been after me to find out.”

Jolene doubted that. Ronda Carpenter seemed like a woman who asked little of her husband and got even less. “Well, you can certainly reassure her. Mace is doing fine.”

Ben nodded, looking as if there was more he wanted to say, but he changed his mind as he stepped toward the door. “Okay then.”

Jolene was relieved when she heard his truck pull away from the front of the school. She felt a little shaken by his visit. Ben always seemed right on the edge of losing his temper. His visit had felt contrived. Was there something else he’d come by for and changed his mind?

Was it possible he was the author of the murder story? It didn’t seem likely, but then some people wrote better than they spoke.

Locking up behind her, she biked to her little house. Then, with the installments of the murder story in her backpack, she got in her car and headed toward Whitehorse.

She took the dirt road out of town. Old Town White-horse had been the first settlement called Whitehorse. It had been nearer the Missouri River and the Breaks. That was back when supplies came by riverboat.

Once the railroad came through, five miles to the north, the town migrated to the tracks, taking the name Whitehorse with it.

As Jolene drove, she mentally replayed the conversation with the women of the sewing circle and was even more curious why they had been so reticent to talk about the murder.

RUSSELL FOUND HIS FATHER waiting for him when he returned to the ranch. Grayson Corbett was a large man with graying hair and an easygoing smile as well as attitude. Grayson had raised his five sons single-handedly from the time Russell was small and had done a damned good job.

Actually there was little his father couldn’t do. That’s why seeing him like this was so hard on Russell.

Worry lines etched Grayson’s still-handsome face and seemed to make his blue eyes even paler. Russell knew what he wanted to talk about the moment he saw his father and felt his stomach turn at the thought.

“We have to make a decision,” Grayson said without preamble. “We can’t put it off any longer.” Clearly his father had been thinking about the problem and probably little else since they’d last talked.

“You already know how I feel,” Russell said. “It’s a damned-fool thing and a waste of money as far as I’m concerned. What did the other ranchers and farmers have to say at the meeting?”

“Some agree with you. But there are more who are ready to try anything if there’s a chance of saving their crops.”

Russell shook his head, seeing that his father had already made his decision.

“If some of these farmers and ranchers don’t get some moisture and soon, they’re going to lose everything,” Grayson said. “I don’t think we have a choice.”

“So what did you tell them?”

“I told them I had to talk to my son,” his father said. “This is your ranch as much as mine, more actually. You get the final word.”

Russell could see that his father was worried about the others, who had the most to lose. “What choice do we have?”

If he and his father didn’t go along with the rest, he doubted the fifteen thousand dollars needed to hire the rainmaker could be raised. “I’ll go along with whatever decision you make.”

Grayson looked relieved, not that the worry lines softened. They were throwing good money away, Russell believed. But if the ranchers and farmers wanted to believe some man could make rain, then he wasn’t going to try to stop them.

“Thank you,” Grayson said as he laid a heavy hand on his son’s shoulders. “At least by hiring a rainmaker, they feel they’re doing something to avert disaster.”

THE MILK RIVER EXAMINER was the only newspaper for miles around. It was housed in a small building along the main street facing the tracks.

Andi Blake, the paper’s only reporter, a friendly, attractive woman with a southern accent, helped Jolene.

“What date are you looking for?” Andi asked.

Jolene told her it would have been this month twenty-four years ago. “I’m not sure of the exact date.”

“I wasn’t here then, but you’re welcome to look. Everything is on microfiche. You know how to use it?”

Jolene did from her college days. She thanked Andi, then sat down in the back of the office and, as the articles from May twenty-four years ago began to come up on screen, she began to roll her way through.

She slowed at the stories about the drought conditions, the fears of the ranchers and farmers, talk of hiring a rainmaker to come to town. A few papers later, there was a small article about a rainmaker coming to town and how the ranchers were raising money to pay him to make rain.

With a shudder, Jolene thought of the murder story and her feeling that the weather conditions were too much like this year.

The headline in the very next newspaper stopped her cold.

Woman Murdered in Brutal Attack

An Old Town Whitehorse resident was found murdered in her home last evening.

Heart in her throat, Jolene read further, then backtracked, realizing that the article didn’t say who found the body.

The sheriff was asking anyone with information in connection to the murder of Laura Beaumont to come forward.

If this Laura Beaumont was the same woman that the author of the murder story was writing about, she had at least one lover.

Their DNA would have been in the house. But had law enforcement even heard of DNA testing twenty-four years ago? It wouldn’t have been widely used even if they had. Certainly not in Whitehorse.

Jolene continued to read, halting on the next paragraph.

The woman was found upstairs in her bed. She had been stabbed numerous times.

Had her lover found her? Or—

Sheriff’s deputies are searching for the woman’s missing young daughter.

Missing?

Angel Beaumont is about four or five years old with brown hair and eyes. It is unknown what she might have been wearing at the time of her disappearance.

Jolene quickly flipped to the next weekly newspaper and scanned for an article about the murder. The girl was still missing a week later?

Searchers are combing the creek behind the farmhouse for the girl’s body, but with no sign of the daughter. If anyone knows of the child’s whereabouts or has information about the killing, they are to contact the sheriff’s department at once. All calls will be confidential.

A few issues later, Jolene found the news article about the daughter.

DULCIE GRABBED SOMETHING to eat at a small café downtown and debated if she should call this Arlene Evans woman or drive out to her place. She opted to drive out unannounced and talk to her face-to-face.

As she was leaving the café, her mind on what she would say once she reached the Evans place, Dulcie bumped into a young woman coming out of one of the local businesses.

“Pardon me,” Dulcie said as the woman, slim, dark-haired and pretty, dropped the folder she’d been carrying. Papers fluttered across the sidewalk. “I’m so sorry.”

Dulcie hurried to help her pick up the scattered sheets, noticing that they were copies of newspaper articles. One headline caught her eye. Investigation Continues in Murder Case.

“Thank you,” the young woman said, clearly upset as she hurriedly stuffed the copies back into the folder and rushed to her compact car parked at the curb.

Murder? Dulcie wondered how many murders they had in a town like this and what were the chances the article could have been about Laura Beaumont. She told herself that when she had more time and information, she’d come back and have a look at some old newspaper stories.

As she climbed into her rental car, she put the incident out of her mind and drove south to the Evans place outside of Old Town Whitehorse.

Like everything else in this part of Montana, the houses were few and far between, with a lot of prairie and gullies and sagebrush to fill the spaces.

It was late and Dulcie wasn’t sure what approach to use when she knocked on the farmhouse door.

“Arlene Evans?” she asked the tall, rawboned ranch-woman who answered the door. Her hair was short in a becoming style that made her appear younger than Dulcie had expected.

“Yes?”

“I’m looking for some information and I was hoping you could help me.”

“I’ll certainly try. Why don’t you step in out of the heat? I just made some lemonade. Would you like a glass?”

Dulcie blinked in surprise at how easy it had been to get inside this woman’s home. Had this been Chicago and a stranger knocking on Dulcie’s door…well, she wouldn’t have opened it, let alone invited her inside for lemonade.

Dulcie noticed photographs on the wall of what appeared to be Arlene’s grown children. The oldest looked to be in her thirties and rather frumpy. A woman in her early twenties was posing with a baby in her arms and a young man, presumably her husband, standing next to her. They looked as if they were crazy about each other. The third photo was of a handsome young man, but there was something sneaky in his gaze.

“Is this about my rural online dating service?” Arlene asked from the kitchen. “Have a seat,” she said, motioning to the adjacent living room as she came in, and handed Dulcie a tall glass of lemonade.

It looked so good she took a sip before she sat down in the immaculate house. “This is wonderful,” she said, licking her lips.

Arlene Evans smiled as she sat down across from her. The house was surprisingly cool, considering how hot it was outside.

“An online rural dating service? That does sound interesting, but I’m here about something else,” Dulcie said. “Let me be candid with you. I am up here looking at a piece of property.” It was the truth. Just not as much truth as she’d told Roselee at the museum. She didn’t want another reaction like that one.

“Property?” Arlene repeated.

“I’m trying to find out the history of the place. I understand you’ve lived here all your life and might be able to help me.”

“Well, like I said, I’ll certainly try.”

Dulcie noticed the ring on Arlene’s finger as she put down her lemonade glass on one of the coasters on the coffee table. “That’s a beautiful ring.”

“Thank you. I’m getting married in a few months. A Christmas wedding.”

“Congratulations.” The diamond was extraordinary, and Dulcie wondered if Arlene was marrying some rich rancher from around here.

“So where is this property?”

“It’s outside Old Town Whitehorse. I believe the last occupant of the place was named Laura Beaumont?”

“Oh, my gosh.” Arlene’s expression told her that she’d hit paydirt.

“Did you know Laura?”

“Not personally. I knew she was widowed. She wasn’t from around here and wasn’t here all that long. I heard the land belonged to her husband’s family and was all that she had, so she had no choice but to live here after her husband died. She leased all of the farmland. Clearly she had no interest in farming or living in the country.”

Arlene seemed to catch herself. “I shouldn’t be saying anything because I didn’t know her. You know how rumors get started.”

Apparently Arlene was trying to live down her reputation as a gossip. “Do you know where Laura moved from?” asked Dulcie.

“California. That was another reason it was odd. Californians move to Montana all the time, just not this part of Montana, if you know what I mean.”

She did. California though? Not the Chicago area. So how was it that her parents knew this woman?

“Can you tell me what happened to her?”

“You don’t know?”

Dulcie wanted to hear it from Arlene. “Please, I really need you to be honest with me. I heard she might have been murdered?”

“Well, it’s not like I’m carrying tales. Everyone knows. She was murdered in one of the upstairs bedrooms twenty…oh, my gosh, twenty-four years ago this month!”

Did that explain why Roselee at the museum had gotten so upset? “Murder must be rare in this part of the country,” she said, thinking of the woman she’d run into earlier with the copies of the newspaper clippings about a murder.

“It is rare, but this murder.” Arlene shook her head. “It was quite vicious. She was stabbed to death over a dozen times and the killer was never caught.”

Dulcie was trying to take this all in when Arlene said, “What made it all the more horrific was her daughter.”

“Her daughter?”

“She was just a little thing, four or five, as I recall. They discovered her bloody footprints in the bedroom where she’d come in. She must have seen her mother lying there and ran.”

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