Redemption (8 page)

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Nope, sure don’t,” Jack said as he climbed the steps. Too late, he thought about the note in his pocket, the one he’d sneaked out of Kate’s discarded apron. If it was found on him— “Can I get you a cold one?”

He wasn’t surprised when the sheriff shook his head. “Just need a few minutes of your time. The fair opens today. I would imagine that like everyone else in the county, you’re headed there.”

Jack nodded and leaned against the porch rail. He was too antsy to sit. He hadn’t forgotten being hauled off to jail by the sheriff in the wee hours of the morning two years ago for something he hadn’t done. He didn’t need to remind himself that it could happen again. Innocent men really did get arrested sometimes and sent to prison.

“You want to take this inside?” he asked the sheriff.

“Out here is fine. It’s such a beautiful day.”

Wasn’t it, though?
Jack wanted to say, “Get on with it,” but he held his tongue. The old Jack French wouldn’t have been able to.

“I don’t know if you’ve seen today’s newspaper or not,” the sheriff said and reached into his jacket pocket.

What the hell?
Jack thought.
How long was this going to drag out?
He reached for the paper, unrolled it and stiffened as he glanced at the sketch of the man he’d seen the other night in the alley.

He could feel the sheriff’s gaze on him. “Recognize him?”

Frank Curry wouldn’t be sitting on his porch unless he knew that Jack did.

“This is the man who was bothering Kate LaFond a few nights ago in the alley by the café,” Jack said, and he saw the sheriff sit up a little in the old rocker.

“I understand you hit him.”

“Only after I heard him hit the woman. I didn’t know who she was. It was my first night back and I really didn’t want to get involved, but...” He shrugged.

“She said she wasn’t very gracious about you coming to her rescue.”

Jack smiled at that.

“You didn’t know the man from prison?”

He thought of the hitched rope the sheriff had shown him with the blood on it. “Never seen him before in my life. This the man I heard was found down by the river?”

“Murdered,” Frank said.

That didn’t come as a surprise, given the blood on the rope.

“So you never crossed paths until a few nights ago,” the sheriff said.

“Nope.”

Frank got to his feet. “Remember that horsehair hitched rope I showed you? You said Montana State Prison’s cons hadn’t hitched it.”

Jack waited.

“You were right. I checked. Seems only four prisons in the West are known for hitching horsehair. Deer Lodge, Montana; Yuma, Arizona; Walla Walla, Washington; and Rawlins, Wyoming. Each one has its own designs and colors. I’m thinking it might be from the Yuma prison. But I suspect you probably already knew that.” He was eyeing Jack, waiting.

Jack shook his head. “Like I said, I never hitched in prison. Too busy working the ranch. It just didn’t look like any pattern I’d seen up there.”

The sheriff rubbed a hand over his square jaw. “You know I never figured you for rustling that bull. I always had the feeling there was more to it.” His gaze locked with Jack’s. “But if you’re innocent as you said you were that night I arrested you, then I can’t help but wonder who would do something like that to you and why.”

Jack didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He’d realized as he was being dragged out of his house that morning two years ago that he’d been set up, but he’d saved his breath after his initial cry of innocence. When there is a world-class bull in your corral that doesn’t belong to you and you’ve been pissing in the wind for much too long, well, you just have to figure that you’ve practically been asking for it.

“It cost you two years of your life, any way you look at it,” the sheriff said. “That would make an innocent man pretty angry. Might even make him want to get retribution. ’Course there’s no way to get back those years, no matter what a man was to do.”

Jack held his tongue.

“I’ve always liked you, Jack,” the sheriff said as he tipped his hat. “I’d like to see you stay out of trouble.”

Jack let out the breath he’d been holding along with a chuckle. “Me, too, Sheriff. Me, too.” Right now retribution was the furthest thing from his mind.

His thoughts were with Kate LaFond and her conversation with the man in the alley, the now dead man.

“I’ve been looking for you. I just didn’t expect to find you here.”

What had the dead man meant by that?

“Let go of me. I already told you. You have the wrong woman. But if you don’t leave me alone—”

You’ll end up dead?

Maybe it had been a case of mistaken identify, just as Kate had said. Or maybe not. His gut told him there was a whole lot more to it. Just as there was more to the woman herself.

He didn’t dig the note out of his pocket until the sheriff had driven away. Earlier, he’d stopped by the post office to pick up his mail. Something had made him circle to the back of the café. Lou, the cook, had been out by the garage, smoking a cigarette.

Jack had stepped into the café kitchen without anyone seeing him. Kate was busy out front with Cilla, talking quilts. Jack had seen the worn aprons in the bin and on a hunch had looked in the pockets.

At the time, he’d just been curious after seeing Kate’s first reaction to the note. Now with a growing feeling of dread he stared down at the block letters printed with a dull pencil on a half sheet of plain white paper.

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

Next to the words was a kidlike drawing that at first glance resembled a game of hangman. But if the rope the sheriff had shown him was what Jack thought it was—the murder weapon—then whatever Kate was running from... It had found her.

CHAPTER SIX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He called a friend who was a local Realtor.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Did he have any family?” Frank asked.

“Not that I knew of.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“For his heart?”

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

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

“Claude left it to her.”

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

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

“What do you know about her?”

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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