Hard Rain (8 page)

“Red,” Harper said, wondering if anyone would have told her if Ariel Crenshaw hadn’t. “So what did they do that was so terrible?”

“They blew up buildings, killed innocent people.”

She was having a hard time believing her mother had been involved. “If that is true, then why isn’t Mother in jail? Why would this other woman confess?”

“Her name is Virginia Handley and it turns out she was involved in social unrest in the seventies. I’ve recently found out that she is dying of cancer.”

“You think she took a bullet, so to speak, to save Mother.”

“Crudely put, but yes.”

“How could they get some random woman to confess to such a thing if it wasn’t true?” Harper asked.

“She wasn’t random. According to Dad, Sarah knew her. They...resembled each other and had lived in the same dorm at college. The woman was an activist and tried to get Sarah involved, but according to Sarah, she had refused. At least, that is her story.”

“This is why you don’t call her Mother?”

“I feel more comfortable calling her Sarah.”

“You think she’s lying. What does Dad think? Never mind—he believes her, doesn’t he? But you can’t think she would have been involved in killing innocent people.”

“Max and I visited the prisons where two of The Prophecy are locked up. If you had seen their expressions when they saw me—because of my resemblance to Sarah at that age... I hadn’t wanted to tell you this. But you need to know. Digging in the past is...dangerous. Take it from me.”

“Wait a minute. You talked to two members of the group who are in prison? They told you Mother was one of them?”

“Not in so many words, but they did tell us that they aren’t finished. They have something planned and they led us to believe that...Sarah is in on it.”

Harper shook her head. She thought of the woman who’d returned to them. Their
mother
. She couldn’t be involved. This was all crazy. “Why would these people...” She didn’t finish her question as it came to her. “
Dad.
This is about him running for president? Wait, they wouldn’t have known that when Mother was in college. And what could it have to do with Maggie McTavish’s death?”

“You might recall that our grandfather was also planning to make a run for president—shortly after Sarah came into the family. Dad admits that Sarah encouraged him to run. We think JD was actually her first target.”

Harper stared at her sister. “You and Max are still trying to prove Mother is Red.” The thought shocked her. “And, what, now
Dad
is her target?” She felt sick to her stomach.

“You see why I want you to stay out of Maggie’s murder? And don’t bother Cassidy with any of this,” Kat warned. “Not about Maggie McTavish’s body being found buried on the ranch or rumors about our grandfather and her, let alone what we suspect about Sarah.”

“We used to be a family without any secrets,” Harper bemoaned.

Her sister laughed. “You are so naive. We have always been a family of secrets. If you don’t have one, you’re the only member of this family who doesn’t.”

It wasn’t until after Kat had left that Harper stood at the window looking in the direction of the burial site she and Brody had uncovered, thinking about her own hard-kept secret.

* * *

S
ARAH
WAS
RELIEVED
when Buck suggested they stop by her house on the ranch before calling the sheriff. She made them each a cocktail and carried the sweating glasses to the porch, where she found Buck staring out at the ranch.

“I keep thinking about back then,” he said as he accepted the glass she offered him. She watched him take a long drink before he looked at her. “Do you remember how it was between my parents?”

She gave a little laugh and took the seat next to him. “I was so head over heels in love with you that I wasn’t paying any attention to anyone but you.”

As she looked past him in the direction of the main house, she wished she
couldn’t
remember. Buck had seemed in denial back then, as if he didn’t want to admit what was going on.

“I’m sure you were too busy running the ranch and building our house to remember much, either,” she said, offering him a way out.

He looked over at her as if surprised. “So that is the tack we take? We lie?”

The sun beamed in a cloudless sky to the south of the Crazy Mountains, but it held little warmth even though it was afternoon. A cold spring breeze swept down from the snowcapped peaks, bringing the chill with it.

“Let’s go inside,” she said, knowing that it wasn’t just the breeze that chilled her. The last thing she wanted to do was relive the past. Was that why she couldn’t remember much of it?

She pushed open the door, moving to the gas fireplace. Turning it on, she waited for warmth to come out of it as Buck finally made his way into the house. He moved slowly, as if old and tired. Or perhaps just not wanting to face what was coming.

“I’d brought you back to the ranch with me after we eloped,” he said, as if the past were puzzle pieces that didn’t quite fit together. “I should have known my mother would never forgive me for not giving her the big wedding she’d apparently always wanted for me.”

Did he really believe that was the only problem Grace had with the two of them getting married? Was he that naive? Or was he trying to rewrite history just as she suggested?

“I’m sorry things were so rocky once we returned to the ranch,” he said.

“We did have that short honeymoon
before
we went to Vegas,” she said, not wanting to dredge up Grace and that part of the past. There were some things best left buried. Like Maggie McTavish.

Buck smiled at her as he came to stand in front of the fire. “Those were some of the happiest days of my life.”

His words surprised her. She remembered feeling anxious. A part of her had thought those few days might be all they would have together. She’d been half-afraid that she’d given him too much of herself too fast.

Give away the milk and a man has no reason to buy the cow.
Her mother’s words. Shacking up in a motel for a few days of wild, passionate lovemaking was fun, but she’d expected Buck to come to his senses. They were both young, him twenty-five, her twenty-four. And yet, he’d fallen for her. It still amazed her on some level even after all of these years. She’d never felt that lovable.

“I couldn’t let you go,” Buck said simply. It was why they’d eloped. She’d put the idea into his head. Had she been afraid even then that JD and Grace Hamilton wouldn’t accept her? Or had she wanted it finalized before Buck changed his mind? She’d always thought he’d look at her one day and realize he’d made a mistake. She still felt that way, though here he was, still in love with her.

The gas fireplace was finally putting out some heat. Sarah finished her cocktail and put down the cold, wet glass to hug herself. So much of the past worried her—and not just the twenty-two missing years. She couldn’t trust her memories. People told her things, but she didn’t feel them skin-deep, let alone bone-deep.

“I still can’t believe we eloped,” she said into the silence.

He laughed softly. “We were crazy for each other.”

“Or just plain crazy, according to your father.”

Buck’s expression darkened. “He was worried because his own marriage hadn’t turned out like he’d hoped.” Buck’s father, the senator, had been upset, saying he hoped his son hadn’t jumped into something without thinking first. But it was his mother’s reaction that Sarah would never forget.

“I’m sorry about the way my mother treated you,” Buck said as if he could no longer deny how bad it had been. “I’ll never forgive her for that.”

Sarah stepped away from the fire, her back to Buck. “She and I finally understood each other before she died.”

“I’m glad.”

A silence fell between them. They’d avoided the one subject she knew the sheriff would be questioning them about. JD and Maggie McTavish.

“Do you think he did it?” Buck asked after a moment.

* * *

“W
E
ARE
TRYING
to retrieve DNA from the preserved fetus,” the coroner told the sheriff when Frank stopped by his office. “As I told you, the victim was about five months pregnant.”

“I still can’t believe she was that far along,” Frank said, wondering how she’d been able to keep it a secret—and who might have known. “You think it’s still possible, then, to find out who fathered her child.” Isn’t this what he’d been hoping to hear? It wouldn’t prove who the killer had been on its own, but it would definitely add to the suspects, he thought, if the baby wasn’t JD Hamilton’s.

“I’m still hopeful, since everything was well preserved. Chances are that you might be able to make a DNA match. Because it’s been so many years, you may be dealing with the progeny of the baby’s father, though.”

Buckmaster Hamilton, Frank thought.

“I don’t envy you that job.”

He smiled at that. Buckmaster had called earlier to say that he and his former wife, Sarah, would be coming by the office this afternoon. “How long will it take to compare the DNA once I get samples for you?”

“We can put a rush on it. It will depend on the quality of the sample we get from the fetus if we can get a close match. Also, it depends on how many samples you bring us. How many are we talking about?”

Frank stood, settled his Stetson on his head of thick graying blond hair and turned toward the door. “I have no idea at this point. That was thirty-five years ago. Obviously, I have at least one suspect in mind. Unfortunately, if I can’t get DNA from progeny, then I am going to have to get a court order to have JD’s body exhumed. But if there were others, which, according to the rumors, there were...”

“Good luck.”

“Yeah,” he said, thinking of how this was going to go down when he asked the presidential candidate Senator Buckmaster Hamilton for a DNA sample—let alone threatened him with the exhumation of his father. By law, Frank wouldn’t be able to force Buckmaster, so that might take a court order, as well.

As he left the coroner’s office, he figured the senator had to have known about the alleged affair between his father and Maggie McTavish. But maybe he didn’t know about the baby. Frank thought it would be telling to see the possible future president’s reaction to providing a DNA sample.

CHAPTER EIGHT

JD
HAD
GONE
to his son’s house after he left Grace at the hospital following her second accident. Sarah opened the door. She was wearing an apron that did little to cover her protruding belly. There was flour on her hands and a dusting of it smeared across one cheek. She was laughing as if Buck had said something funny just before she opened the door.

“JD,” she said. “I’d give you a hug but I’m making biscuits and Buck is giving me instructions.”

“I’m just trying to help,” he called from the kitchen. “Can you believe the woman has never made biscuits from scratch before? Don’t tell Mother.”

JD followed Sarah into the warm sunny kitchen. When the two had moved out of the homestead house and into this small cabin on the ranch, Sarah had gone to work and quickly spruced it up. With the construction of their new house coming along quickly they wouldn’t be here long. The new house was a good distance from the old homestead—and Grace.

He looked around, admiring what Sarah had done. It felt like a home. He experienced a pang, thinking of his own home. Grace had lost interest in it after Buck was born, just as she’d lost interest in a lot of other things. Her whole life had revolved around her son and now she felt she’d lost him.

But how far would she go to get him away from his wife? He hated to think.

“Don’t let me keep you from your biscuits,” he said as he took a stool at the kitchen table where the biscuit-making was going on. He could smell beef stew bubbling in a pot on the stove. His stomach growled, but he didn’t want to impose so he decided to make this quick.

“Sarah, did you happen to stop by the house today?” he asked.

She looked up from the dough she was wrestling into a large round ball. “No, was I supposed to?”

“I just thought you might have seen Grace earlier,” he said.

“No, is something wrong?”

“She took another fall.”

“Is she all right?” Buck asked, quickly concerned.

“She’s going to be fine. The doctor wanted to keep her overnight—”

“We should go to the hospital,” Sarah said, putting down the biscuit dough and starting to wipe the flour from her hands.

“I think it would be better if she got some rest tonight. Maybe the two of you could stop by tomorrow after she’s home.” He prayed that Grace would have come to her senses by then. This time she’d sworn that Sarah had come by and, insisting that she needed fresh air, had pushed her wheelchair out on the deck. Screaming for help, but with no one around to hear, Grace said her daughter-in-law had shoved her off the deck, wheelchair and all. Fortunately, it was only a three-foot fall. But she’d gotten skinned up and she’d hurt her back again.

“Are you sure there is nothing we can do?” Sarah asked.

He met her blue eyes and saw nothing but concern. But for a moment... Grace was going to poison him against Sarah if he let her. “Just learn to make biscuits,” he said, getting to his feet. “That will make your husband happy.”

Sarah exchanged a private, intimate look with Buck. “Making him happy is all I ever want,” she said, and placed a hand over her swollen belly.

JD thought of Maggie. He had a sudden image of her pregnant, her face radiant, her smile dazzling as she met his gaze.

* * *

A
FTER
HER
ENCOUNTER
with Brody, Harper had tried to think of a logical way to learn as much as she could about Maggie McTavish. When her mother returned her earlier call, she said she couldn’t talk then because she and Buck were going to meet with the sheriff. But she could tell from her mother’s voice that she wasn’t happy about the prospect of talking to her daughter about JD and Maggie and the past.

Harper knew this wasn’t going to be easy. Both Brody and Kat had tried to talk her out of looking into the murder. But Kat didn’t know what was at stake. And as for Brody...

She tried not to think about him as she drove into town to the library, parked and entered the old brick building.

A woman in her midfifties was at the desk. She looked up as Harper approached. “Can I help you?” Her name tag read Karen Parker, Librarian.

“I’m looking for a Sweet Grass County High School yearbook.”

Without a word, the woman led her back into the stacks. Harper loved the smell of books and the feel of libraries and always had. That was probably why she’d stayed in school for so long instead of returning to the ranch after her first degree.

“What year?” Karen Parker asked.

“Nineteen seventy-nine.”

The librarian turned to look at her in surprise. “That’s the year I graduated.”

“Really? Then you must have known Maggie McTavish.”

The woman looked as if she’d just tasted a lemon. “No.”

“No? The classes were so small I thought for sure—”

“I knew who she was, but that was all. She didn’t...associate with girls much.”

Harper opened the yearbook to the senior class of 1979.

Her gaze fell on a young man named Kyle Parker. She looked up at Karen. “Any relation to Kyle Parker?”

“My husband.” With that, the woman turned and went back to her desk.

Harper found the other three high school yearbooks, took a chair and looked through the annuals, still a little perplexed by Karen Parker’s unfriendly attitude once she’d mentioned Maggie. It had been years. Wouldn’t she have gotten over high school by now?

It wasn’t until she found a photo of Maggie with Kyle Parker from her freshman year that Harper thought she might have discovered the reason for Karen’s reaction. The shot had been taken at a dance. Both were crowned with a caption that read: Couple of the Year.

Sophomore year there was another photo of Maggie, this time with Will Sanders. Junior year Maggie was with Bobby Barnes. Senior year there was no photo of Maggie with anyone that Harper could find—not even in the array of senior prom photos. Had Maggie not gone to her prom? Was she already involved with JD?

She found one photo that caught her eye, though, and had to flip back to it. A school dance? Maggie was in the distance. Closer were two boys glaring in her direction. Harper recognized them both from their senior photos—Kyle Parker and Will Sanders.

Wanting Brody to see these, she took the yearbooks and approached the desk. But one look at Karen and she had a bad feeling that she wasn’t going to be able to check them out.

Karen barely looked up. “You can’t check those out.”

“But I can make copies, right?”

“The self-serve machine is broken.”
When Harper said nothing, the woman sighed and said, as if put out, “Mark the pages and I will copy them for you.”

Harper would rather have copied them herself, given which pages she wanted. But she took the scraps of paper Karen gave her, marked the page numbers and stuck them in the yearbooks before handing them to her.

Looking even more put-upon, Karen disappeared into the back. At one point Harper thought she heard her on the phone talking to someone. She’d sounded upset, angry. After what seemed like more time than necessary to make a few copies, Karen returned. She definitely looked upset.

If Karen had appeared unfriendly before, she appeared so livid that she was actually shaking as Harper paid for the copies. “Can I ask what you want with these?”

Harper tried to think of a reasonable lie and, short of that, went with the truth. “I’m trying to find out who killed Maggie McTavish.”

The woman let out a surprised snort. “Isn’t that the sheriff’s job? And why would you want a photo of my husband?”

“I was curious about who she dated in high school.”

Karen huffed. “You’re trying to lay the blame somewhere besides at your own family’s door, that’s what you’re trying to do. Well, it won’t work. Everyone already knows who killed her.” With that, she turned and disappeared into the back again.

This time there was no doubt. She was on the phone and talking quickly, although Harper couldn’t make out her words.

Once outside, she got into her SUV and looked again at the photos from the yearbook. Wasn’t it possible one of these boys had never gotten over Maggie? What would he have done if the woman he loved began seeing someone twice her age? She looked again at the photo of Kyle and Will glaring at Maggie. Photos didn’t lie. There was animosity in their stares.

Putting the copies aside, Harper started her engine and pulled out. She hadn’t gone far when an older model Chevy pulled in behind her. She’d seen the car before, though she didn’t know whom it belonged to. Nor did she think much about it until the vehicle stayed with her as she left town.

She was on the narrow road that led to Beartooth when the driver looked as if he was going to pass. Instead, he pulled up beside her for a moment, laid on his horn, startling her, and then gunned the car, swerving in front of her as if to force her off the road. She hit her brakes as the car’s tires boiled up gravel and dirt that pelted her windshield.

Wondering what the driver’s problem was, Harper called him a name under her breath as he disappeared up the road in a cloud of dust. Then she put it out of her mind. She had more important things to think about. She couldn’t wait to show Brody the photos.

* * *

“I
KNOW
WHAT
you want to talk to us about and it’s bullshit,” Buckmaster said the moment he and Sarah walked into the sheriff’s office.

Sarah looked shocked that he would start the conversation like that. “Buck—”

He waved off her interruption. “There is no reason to beat around the bush here. Frank wouldn’t have called us both in unless he wanted to talk about Maggie and my father.”

“So, they did have a relationship?” Frank said, also surprised that they were getting straight to the point. He’d been dreading this meeting.

“
No.
It was all one-sided,” the senator said with authority. “Maggie tormented him. She threw herself at him shamelessly. I have no idea why she wanted him when there wasn’t a man in the county who wouldn’t have taken her up on her offer.”

Frank raised a brow. “Yourself included?”

“Don’t try to twist my words on me. Maggie was trouble. I knew to stay away from her.” He seemed to realize that Frank was having a hard time believing that. “I know what you’re thinking. She wasn’t interested in me because she was after my father. Okay, that’s probably true. Maybe I would have taken advantage of the situation if it had been offered to me. But I can tell you my father didn’t. He was devoted to my mother. He would never have even been tempted.”

The sheriff sighed and Buckmaster seemed to realize he’d gone too far again.

“Fine, he was probably tempted, but I
know
he didn’t act on it.”

“How do you know that?” Frank asked.

The senator seemed at a loss for words for a moment. “I saw the battle that was raging inside him,” he said with a curse. “My mother had been ill for so long. She was confined to a wheelchair and, let’s face it, she wasn’t an easy woman. She refused to have a nurse living in the house with us to take care of her, so he resigned from his post as senator near the end of his term to stay home with her.”

“I thought he resigned because he was planning to run for president?”

“That was later. It was clear that he missed politics, so my mother encouraged him to run. She knew how much being a senator had meant to him. She wanted him to have the presidency. She didn’t want to stand in his way. She knew he would make a good president.”

“You say she knew him,” the sheriff said. “Then she knew about Maggie McTavish? Was that why she wanted him to run?

Buckmaster swore and started to deny there was anything to know, but Frank stopped him.

“Did she know what he was going through with Maggie?” the sheriff asked. “Isn’t it possible that Maggie was why your mother wanted to get him away from the ranch, away from Montana?” Frank noticed that Sarah hadn’t said a word. “Is this how you remember it?” he asked her.

Sarah looked startled that he’d dragged her into the conversation.

“Leave Sarah out of this,” Buckmaster said irritably. “I hope my mother didn’t know what Maggie was doing, but I guess it’s possible. Look, what you’re really asking is if my father killed her.” Sarah laid a hand on his arm, but Buckmaster shrugged it off. “You didn’t know my father like I did. He...was the most honorable man I’ve ever known.” His voice broke. He looked away as if embarrassed. “That’s how I know he didn’t act on any...feelings he might have had for Maggie.”

Feelings?
Buckmaster knew that there was more going on between his father and Maggie McTavish than her simply tormenting the man.

Frank looked to Sarah. “You were there. Do you think JD had feelings for Maggie?”

She shook her head. “Buck’s right. Maggie just wouldn’t leave JD alone. It was...shameful the way she behaved. But JD wasn’t the only man she threw herself at. If you look at her track record... As I recall she and Bobby Barnes were an item. I can’t remember the names of the other boys I heard she was with in high school. Bobby might be able to give you some names.”

Frank studied the two of them for a long moment before he got to his feet. “I think that will be all for now. If I have any more questions—”

“Since your investigation has nothing to do with my father, I’m sorry but I can’t be coming home every time you have a question,” the senator said.

He’d expected this reaction. “In that case, you might want to give the lab a sample of your DNA now, then.”

“What?”
Buckmaster demanded.

Frank met his gaze and saw confusion and then panic in the senator’s eyes. “I need your DNA, but I also need your permission to have your father’s body exhumed.”

“Like hell.”

“I can get a court order, if I have to.”

The senator looked beside himself. “Why would you need—”