Crime Scene at Cardwell Ranch (14 page)

“Why tell me now?” Dana demanded. “Why not tell me five years ago before you ruined everything?”

“I couldn’t. I was scared. I’m still scared, but I can’t live like this anymore.” Stacy looked up, her gaze meeting her sister’s. The fear was as real as the anguish, Dana thought. “I’ve hated myself for what I did. No matter what happens to me now, I had to tell you. I couldn’t live with what I did.”

“What do you mean, no matter what happens to you now?”

Stacy shook her head. “I used to be afraid of going to jail, but even that is better than the hell I’ve been in these past years. I’m not strong like you. I couldn’t stand up to them.”

Them? “Jail?” Dana repeated. For just an instant she flashed again on the memory of Stacy’s face that morning five years ago. Stacy had looked scared. Or was it trapped? “Are you telling me someone was threatening jail if you didn’t go along with setting Hud up?”

The kitchen door banged open and Clay appeared, panicked and breathless. “It’s Dad. I think he’s having a heart attack!”

Lanny Rankin was anything but happy to see Hud take the stool next to him at the bar.

The lawyer had two drinks in front of him and was clearly on his way to getting drunk.

“What do you want?” Lanny slurred.

“Just thought I’d have a drink.” Hud signaled the bartender who brought him a draft beer from the tap. He took a drink and watched Lanny pick up his glass and down half of what appeared to be a vodka tonic.

“Bring Lanny another drink,” Hud told the bartender.

Lanny shoved his glass away and picked up the second drink and downed it, as well, before stumbling to his feet. “Save your money, Marshal. I’m not drinking with you.”

“I hope you’re not driving,” Hud said.

Lanny narrowed his gaze. “You’d love to arrest me, wouldn’t you? She tell you about us? Is that what you’re doing here? Tell you we’re engaged? Well, it’s all a lie. All a lie.” His face turned mean. “She’s all yours. But then again, she always has been, hasn’t she?”

He turned and stumbled out the back door.

Hud quickly pulled an evidence bag from his jacket pocket and slipped both of the glasses with Lanny’s prints on them inside. He paid his bill and went outside to make sure Lanny wasn’t driving anywhere.

Lanny was walking down the street toward his condo.

Hud watched him for a moment, then headed for his office. If he hurried, he could get both glasses ready for Liza to take to the crime lab in the morning.

He wondered if Liza had any trouble getting the Cardwell clan’s fingerprints.

Just the thought of the family meeting going on at the ranch made him uneasy. Maybe he would swing by there after he’d sent the glasses to the lab.

Back at his office, Hud got the drink glasses with Lanny’s prints ready and locked the box in the evidence room with the .38 Liza had taken from Angus’s pickup.

As he started to leave, he remembered the list of registered owners of .38 pistols in the county Liza had left on his desk. The list was long. He thumbed through it, his mind more on the family meeting going on at the Cardwell Ranch than the blur of names.

This list had probably been a waste of time. There was a very good chance that Liza had already found the murder weapon and it was now locked in the evidence room. By tomorrow, Hud worried that he would be arresting Angus Cardwell. He didn’t even want to think what that would do to Dana.

He folded the list and stuck it in his pocket. As he
started leave, planning to go out and check on Dana, no matter how angry it made her, he heard the call come in on the scanner. An ambulance was needed at the Cardwell Ranch.

“H
OW’S
D
AD
?” Dana asked when she found Jordan and Clay in the waiting room at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital. She hadn’t been able to get any information at the desk on her way in and the roads down the canyon had been icy, traffic slow.

Clay shrugged, looking miserable and nervous in a corner chair.

“The doctor’s in with him,” Jordan said, pacing the small room, clearly agitated.

“Where’s Stacy?” she asked. Earlier Dana had glanced through the open living room doorway and seen her father on the floor, Jordan leaning over him. She’d let out a cry and run into the living room. Behind her she’d heard Clay on the phone calling for an ambulance on the kitchen phone.

It wasn’t until later, after the ambulance had rushed Angus to the hospital and Dana began looking for her keys to follow in her pickup, that she’d realized Stacy was gone.

“When did Stacy leave?” Dana asked, glancing around.

Both brothers shrugged. “After I called 9-1-1 I turned around and I noticed your back door was open and when I went out to follow the ambulance, I saw that her car was already gone.”

“Stacy just left?” Dana asked in disbelief. Why would her sister do that without a word? Especially with their father in the next room on the floor unconscious?

Stacy’s words echoed in Dana’s ears. “No matter what happens to me now.” Was it possible her sister was in danger because she’d told Dana the truth?

Dana couldn’t worry about that now. “What were you and Dad fighting about?” she asked Jordan.

“This is not my fault,” Jordan snapped.

“I’ll get us some coffee,” Clay said, and practically bolted from the room.

Jordan and Angus couldn’t have been arguing about the sale of the ranch. Her father had said he wasn’t going to take sides, but he did add that he felt the ranch was too much for Dana to handle on her own.

“Sell it, baby girl,” he’d said to Dana. “It’s an albatross around your neck. Your mother would understand.”

“That’s how you felt about the ranch, Dad, not me,” she’d told him, but he’d only shook his head and said, “Sell it. Some day you’ll be glad you did. And it will keep peace in the family.” He’d always been big on keeping peace in the family. Except when it came to his wandering ways.

“I heard the two of you yelling at each other in the other room,” Dana said. “What was going on?”

Jordan stopped pacing to look at her. “The stupid fool thinks I killed Ginger.”

Ginger Adams, the woman whose wrist he’d broken in an argument. The woman who’d ended up in the
Cardwell Ranch well. The floor under her seemed to give way. “Why would Dad think that?”

“Who the hell knows? He’s always been a crazy old fool.”

Dana bristled. “Dad is a lot of things. Crazy isn’t one of them.”

Jordan’s look was lethal. “Don’t play games with me. Dad told me you knew about me and Ginger. What’s crazy is that he thinks I took his gun.”

She stared at him. “The missing .38?”

“Turns out it wasn’t missing,” Jordan said. “It was under the seat of his pickup and now the cops have it. He thinks I took the gun and then when Ginger’s body was found, I put it under the pickup seat to frame him for her murder.”

Dana felt her heart drop to her feet. Hadn’t Hud told her that the gun was used in both Ginger’s murder and Judge Randolph’s? What motive could Jordan have to kill the judge though? “Jordan, you didn’t—”

Jordan let out a curse. “You think I’m a murderer, too?” His angry gaze bore into her. “Not only a murderer, but I framed my own father, as well?” He let out a scornful laugh and shook his head at her. “I guess I didn’t realize how little you and Dad thought of me until now.” He turned and stormed out of the waiting room, almost colliding with Clay who was carrying a cardboard tray with three cups of coffee on it.

What bothered Dana was the guilty look in Jordan’s eyes before he left.

“Thanks,” she said as she took one of the foam cups
of hot coffee Clay offered her and stepped out in the hallway, fighting the terrible fear that had settled in the pit of her stomach.

At the sound of footfalls, she turned to see her father’s doctor coming toward her. She froze. All she could think about was the day of her mother’s accident and the doctor coming down the hall to give her the news. She couldn’t lose another parent.

H
UD SPOTTED
D
ANA
the moment he walked into the Bozeman hospital emergency room waiting area. Relief washed through him, making his legs feel boneless. She was all right.

She was talking to the doctor and he could see the concern in her face. He waited, studying her body language, fear closing his throat.

Her shoulders seemed to slump and he saw her hand go to her mouth, then brush at her tears. She was smiling and nodding, and Hud knew that whatever had happened, there had been good news.

She saw him then. He tried not to read anything into her expression. For a moment there she’d actually looked glad to see him.

She said something to the doctor then walked toward him. He caught his breath. Sometimes he forgot how beautiful she was. Her eyes were bright, cheeks flushed from crying, her face glowing with the good news the doctor had given her.

“Dana?” he said as she closed the distance. “What’s happened?”

“Dad. He had a heart attack.” Her voice broke. “But the doctor says he’s stable now.” She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “I have to talk to you.”

“Okay.” He couldn’t help but sound tentative. She hadn’t wanted to lay eyes on him—let alone talk to him. “Did you want to talk at the office or—”

She glanced around, making him wonder where her brothers were. And Stacy. “Could we go back to your place?”

His place? “Sure.” Whatever she wanted to talk to him about was serious. “You want to follow me?”

She shook her head. “I need to stop by Stacy’s. You go on. I’ll meet you there.”

Whatever that was about he didn’t want to know. But at the same time, he didn’t like the idea of her going alone.

“I could go with you,” he said.

She shook her head again. “I’ll meet you at the cabin you’re renting.” She knew where he lived?

“I’ll see you soon,” he said.

She nodded distractedly. “Soon.”

As he got into his patrol car, he tried not to even guess what this was about. But he had a bad feeling it could have something to do with her father’s gun now locked in his evidence cabinet at the office.

The night was clear, stars bright dots in the crystalline cold blue of the sky overhead. Snow covered everything. It sat in puffy white clumps in the branches of the trees and gleamed in the starlight like zillions of diamonds on the open field across the road.

The drive home was interminable. He kept looking in his rearview mirror, hoping to see the headlights of Dana’s pickup. She’d said she needed to make a stop by Stacy’s. He wished he’d asked how long she might be.

He parked in front of the cabin, the night darker than the inside of a gunny sack. In the cabin, he straightened up, built a fire and put on some coffee.

A wind had come up. It whirled the light fresh snow in a blizzard of white outside the window. He should have insisted she ride with him as upset as she was. But he’d had no desire to go to Stacy’s, and Dana hadn’t wanted him along.

The sky over the tops of the pines darkened as another storm moved in. He’d forgotten how dark it could be in the dead of winter.

He watched the road—what little of it he could see through the swirling snow. Surprisingly he really had missed winters while in Los Angeles. Missed the seasons that were so dramatic in Montana. Especially winter. Two feet of snow could fall overnight. It wasn’t unusual to wake up to the silence and the cold and know that something had changed during the night.

Dana should be here by now
. He began to worry, thinking about what he’d heard in her voice. She’d been upset about her father. But that hadn’t been all of it. Something had happened. Something she needed to talk to him about. But first she had to see Stacy.

Hud was to the point where he was ready to go looking for her when he spotted headlights through the drifting snow.

She pulled in beside his patrol car and got out, seeming to hesitate. She was wearing a red fleece jacket, her dark hair tucked up under a navy stocking cap. A few strands whipped around her face as she stared at the cabin.

He opened the front door and stood looking at her. A small drift had formed just outside the door and now ran across the porch. The steps down had disappeared, the snow smooth and deep.

He met her gaze through dancing snowflakes, then reached for the shovel. But before he could clean off the steps, she was coming up them, all hesitation gone.

To his utter shock, she rushed to him. He took her in his arms, now truly afraid.

“I’m sorry.” Her words were barely audible over the howl of the wind across the roof. “I’m so sorry.”

He held her, his heart in his throat. He hugged her to him, breathing in the smell of her. God, how he’d missed that scent. But what could she possibly be sorry about?

Holding her felt so good, he hated it when she stepped from his arms and went inside the cabin. He followed, closing the door to the wind and snow.

She had walked to the fireplace. When she turned, he saw the tears. Dana crying. He could count on one hand the times he’d seen that. His fear escalated.

“Whatever it is, I’ll help you,” he said, wanting to hold her again but afraid to step toward her.

She let out a laugh at his words and shook her head. Her face was flushed, her eyes bright. “I haven’t killed
anyone. Although it did cross my mind.” She sobered, her gaze locked on his. “I talked to my sister.”

His heart dislodged from his throat and dropped to his stomach.

She jerked her cap from her head, shaking off the snow as her hair fell around her shoulders. “She told me everything.”

He didn’t move—didn’t breathe. He’d told himself that he’d come back here to learn everything that had happened that night but now he wasn’t so sure he wanted to know.

“You were right. She lied. She was sent to the bar to drug you, get you out of there before the drug completely knocked you out and take you to her place. It was just as you suspected—” her voice broke, eyes shimmering with tears “—nothing happened. You
were
set up.” A tear trailed down her cheek. “
We
were set up.”