Summer Breeze (40 page)

Ray licked his lips, gave a shaky laugh. "Pardon me?"

"What was in it?" Amanda's whole body was shaking. "Arsenic? You were so worried about making sure I drank it that I grew suspicious. Then I noticed an odd taste. While you had your back turned, I dumped it out. You thought I'd swallowed it all when you left to come here for Darby. You figured I'd be dead by the time he reached my place, that I'd never be able to say I hadn't sent for him."

Joseph looked back and forth from Ray to Amanda, not understanding any of the exchange.

Poisoned tea?

"You killed my nephew." Amanda raised the rifle to her shoulder. "You murdered his wife and Daniel and little Tansy. Shot them down in cold blood. I never wanted to believe it was you. The very thought broke my heart. God forgive me, it was so much easier to lay the blame on Jeb. So I turned a blind eye and told myself that my son, my long-lost child, couldn't have done such a heinous thing."

"Put that gun down, Ma." Meeks laughed again. "You aren't going to shoot me."

It hit Joseph then, like a fist to his jaw. Ray's eyes. The first time Joseph met the man, he'd experienced an odd sense of familiarity and asked Ray if they'd met before. Now Joseph knew what it was about Ray that had struck a chord in his memory.
Bis eyes.
He had Rachel's arresting blue eyes and her fine features as well.

"Now you've killed my Rachel," Amanda went on, her voice beginning to shake as badly as her body was. "I loved that girl like my own. How could you do this?"

Ray held his hands out to his sides and retreated another pace. "You're talking crazy. Arsenic in your tea? You're my mother. I love you. Why would I do such a thing?"

"That's a good question." Amanda curled her finger over the trigger. "Stand fast, Raymond. If you take another step, I'll drop you in your tracks."

"This is insane!" Ray cried.

"Is it? I noticed that someone had been in my desk last week. Then I discovered that my will was missing. I thought I might have misplaced it. But then it reappeared in the drawer, right where I always kept it. Even then, I didn't want to believe what my common sense was telling me. What a sentimental old fool I

was, hoping against hope that my boy was everything he pretended to be. But the truth was, you took the will to get legal counsel to see where you would stand if I married Darby. I'm sure you learned that everything I own will become his, leaving you with nothing."

Amanda shook her head sadly. "You wanted it all. Didn't you, Ray? A little gold here and there wasn't enough to satisfy your greed. Getting my little spread after I died wasn't grand enough for you, either. You wanted the gold, you wanted this ranch, you wanted
everything.
And time was suddenly running out. I was days away from marrying Darby. You had to stop that from happening, and you had to kill Rachel, as well, to take possession of this ranch. Joseph had found the mine. You knew you'd be able to do no more digging without running the risk of getting caught."

"You gave me up!" Ray yelled. Swinging an arm to encompass the ranch, he cried. "It should've been mine. I had as much right to it as Henry, maybe more! You worked harder to make a go of this place than his father ever did. But what did I get? A tiny little spread where I'd have to scratch out a living for the rest of my life. Oh, yes, and the gold! Some compensation that was, none of it really mine to take, and me taking a huge chance every time I came over here to chip rock."

Ray moved back another step. "You talk about your family. What about
me?
Then, to add insult to injury, you decide to get married when you're seventy years old with one foot already in the grave. I've worked that meager, parched piece of land for almost eight years, waiting for you to die so it'd be mine, and you were going to take even that from me."

"What happened in the past is over. I eventually found you, didn't I? And I didn't willingly give you up. My father forced me to do it."

"A lot of comfort that is to me. I got cheated out of everything, even the Hollister name!"

"It's no excuse, Raymond. You've wrongfully taken human life. You have to pay for that."

"Hang, you mean?" Ray shook his head. "No way. For once in your life, be a decent mother and just let me go."

"I can't do that," Amanda said sadly.

Ray went for his gun.

"Don't, Raymond!" Amanda cried. "Please, for the love of God, don't."

Joseph rolled sideways to cover Rachel with his body, but before he could draw his weapon, Amanda Hollister fired her rifle. Ray's blue eyes filled with incredulity. He dropped his chin to stare stupidly at the blood blossoming over the front of his gray shirt. The revolver fell from his hand.

"You shot me," he whispered.

And then he dropped facedown on the dirt, shuddered, and died.

The rifle slipped from Amanda's trembling grasp. On unsteady legs, she made her way to her son, dropped to her knees, wrapped her arms around his limp body, and started to sob.

"God forgive me. My baby boy. God forgive me. God forgive me."

Darby knelt beside her. As he laid a hand on her

heaving back, he sent Joseph a tortured look. There were no words. Amanda Hollister had just killed her own son. Joseph sorely wished that it hadn't been necessary. But sadly it was. Ray had gone for his gun. He wouldn't have hesitated to shoot. Amanda had done what she had to do to keep her son from hurting any more innocent people.

Nevertheless, the memory of this day would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Rachel came slowly awake. Nearby she heard the crackling of a fire, which terrified her for a moment, but then she felt Joseph's big, hard hand curled warmly around hers and she knew that she was absolutely safe. She slowly lifted her lashes. His darkly burnished face hovered above hers, his beautiful blue eyes cloudy with tenderness.

'There she is, finally coming around," he said softly. "I thought you were gonna sleep until sometime next week. I tried to tell Doc not to dose you with that much laudanum, but he wouldn't listen."

Rachel only dimly recalled Doc's being there. She glanced uneasily around. She lay on a dark leather sofa in a strange room. A fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth of a large river-rock fireplace. "Where am I?"

"My place. Don't panic. Every window in this section of the house is boarded over, inside and out. Esa and David's handiwork. And Ace blocked off the hallway just beyond the water closet.

It's not quite as good as your kitchen, but almost. We brought in a bed before he blocked the hall. We have the place trimmed down to one room, more or less." He smiled and lifted her hand to trail silky lips lightly over her knuckles. "When I built this house, I think I was building it for you and just didn't know it. I made the kitchen and sitting room all one area."

Rachel turned onto her side to better see his face. Moving made her hands hurt. When she glanced down at her knuckles, Joseph said, "You kept them out from under the wet blankets to hold them close around you. The heat from the fire was pretty intense and blistered the backs of your fingers."

Rachel sank back against the pillows. It all came back to her then—the fire, throwing blankets into the fishpond and draping them around herself to stay safe from the flames, smoke, and heat.

"Oh, Joseph." She gave him a questioning look. "Ray's dead, isn't he?"

He nodded, his expression going solemn. "Amanda shot him."

Rachel squeezed her eyes closed. "Poor Mannie."

"Who?"

"Mannie. It's what I've always called Aunt Amanda. Ray was her son?"

Joseph kissed her knuckles again. "It's a long story," he said.

"Tell me," she whispered, and so he began. Much later, when he finally stopped talking, Rachel said, "So that's why my pa always said Mannie had brought shame upon the family name.

Because she had a child out of wedlock."

Joseph nodded. "I guess she never stopped pining for the baby boy she gave away. When she had the

falling out with your father and left the ranch, she hired a detective to try to find her son."

Rachel sighed. "I remember when Ray came to work for Mannie. She was always patting his arm and smoothing his hair. I wasn't that old back then, about fourteen, I think, but I thought it was odd. I decided that she probably just liked him a lot."

"A whole lot. He was her son, and she loved him."

"But she never told anyone?"

Joseph ran a hand through his hair. The strands fell back to his shoulders, glistening like threads of spun gold. "Darby rode over a bit ago. He has the whole story now, straight from Amanda, and he wanted me to hear it first so I might explain it all to you."

Rachel searched his gaze. "Is it bad?"

"Let's just say your aunt Amanda isn't entirely innocent in all of this. But let me start from the first. All right?"

Rachel nodded.

"Years ago, when Amanda was still a fairly young woman, she had a secret place on the Bar H

where she often went to be alone. Your great-grandfather Luther Hollister and your grandpa Peter didn't treat her very well. They never quite forgave her for getting pregnant. When their coldness toward her got to be too much, she'd go to her secret place, a cave that she'd found up in the rocks near the creek. One afternoon, she took a lantern with her to see how deep the cave went, and she discovered that there was gold in the rock.

'To spite her father, who'd already informed her that he had cut her out of his will and meant to leave

her nothing, she kept the gold a secret, never telling anyone. It was her one little bit of revenge. In her defense, I have to also add that Amanda never thought there was a lot of gold. She had no way of knowing how deep into the rock the vein went, and generally speaking, this area hasn't proved out to be rich, No Name being a perfect example. Keeping the discovery to herself was more an act of defiance, her only way of striking back at two men who had made her life a misery. She'd not only been forced to give up her baby, but she'd lost the only man she ever truly loved."

"Darby."

Joseph reached to smooth Rachel's hair. She so loved the feel of his touch that she turned her cheek into the palm of his hand.

"Yes, Darby. There's been a lot of sadness in her life. Finally locating Ray was one of the few things that ever went right for her, or so she thought. He had been adopted by a Kentucky farmer and his wife, mainly so he could help with the work around their place. Ray had a terrible childhood, according to the story he told Amanda, getting whipped for the least infraction, sometimes not getting fed as additional punishment." Joseph sighed and shrugged. "Who knows the real story? Maybe he was horribly abused, maybe he wasn't. He could have made it all up to make Amanda feel even more guilty for giving him up as a baby."

"So he could control her," Rachel whispered.

Joseph nodded. "We'll never know. But Amanda did feel terrible for him. She had so little to offer him, really, a small spread that made barely enough to keep

the wolves from her door. He was her son, a Hollister by birth, and, in her mind, deserved so much more. She saw no point in legally claiming him as her child. She had no other children to contest her will. At that time, your father had the family ranch and was doing well. She knew he wouldn't care who got her meager little patch of land. Claiming Ray as her child would have caused a scandal that might have reflected on her loved ones." He smiled and trailed a fingertip over Rachel's mouth. "Namely you. She saw no point in causing a bunch of gossip that might hurt you. So she just made Ray Meeks her sole beneficiary so he would get what little she had when she died."

"Which wasn't much," Rachel observed.

"No, not much. So to make up for it, Amanda told Ray about the cave on her family's land. If he was careful, he could sneak in and chip out some gold now and again. Small compensation, in her mind. She had no way of knowing that Ray would discover a veritable fortune inside that cave, enough gold that he would kill to protect the secret."

Joseph stared at the fire thoughtfully. "The day your family was killed, I believe one of you children went up into the rocks and came upon the cave."

Memories flashed through Rachel's mind in a dizzying rush. "Tansy," she whispered raggedly. "I remember that now. She went traipsing off right before lunch, and Ma sent me and Daniel to find her. She was already coming back down the hill when we came upon her. I remember her saying that she'd found a dark, scary place, and had seen a spook looking out at her. She was fanciful and often told whoppers. Daniel

and I pretended to be interested, but we didn't take her seriously." An awful pain moved through Rachel's chest. "We went back down to the creek and had lunch. Daniel and I were still eating when the first shot rang out."

"It stands to reason that Tansy's spook was Raymond Meeks," Joseph said thickly. 'Tansy had seen the cave and possibly his mining paraphernalia. He knew she would probably tell. He couldn't take that chance, so he rode down the hill and opened fire on all of you, his hope being that Estyn Beiler, the marshal back then, would think it to be a random act, some drunked-up plug-ugly who happened onto your land and decided to do a little target practice."

Rachel felt sick, physically sick.

"Only that wasn't how it went. Instead, Amanda Hollister was the prime suspect. If all of you had died, she was next in line to inherit everything. She was the only person who really stood to gain by your deaths— or so everyone believed. You can bet Ray Meeks sweated bullets, terrified that Beiler would start digging and discover that another person stood to gain as well, namely Ray because he was the sole beneficiary of Amanda Hollister's will."

Rachel cupped a hand over her eyes.

"You okay?" Joseph asked softly. "We can let this go, honey. I know it has to be difficult for you to hear."

Rachel lowered her hand. "No, no. I need to know, Joseph. Then I just want to put it behind me if I can."

He sighed and resumed talking. "Ray left you for dead that afternoon, not realizing that the bullet glanced off your skull. He was probably in a hell of a