Luck of the Draw Page 3

  Ward had gone out on a rollover earlier today on the way to the national park. But even if he’d been in the area, Sid didn’t want him on this case. The man was like a bull in a china closet. He couldn’t even spell the word subtle. All he needed was Ward tromping around up on this mountainside in the rain thinking he could solve this case, make himself a hero and win the fall election for sheriff.

  “Is Deputy Conners available?” he’d asked. “Great. Send her.” She would do what needed to be done until the state crime team arrived.

  Now as he reached the area he’d cordoned off with crime scene tape, he saw the deputy walking up the hill from where she’d parked her vehicle and couldn’t help but smile. Ward Farnsworth would have driven up, lights and sirens blazing, and pulled right up to the crime scene tape—if he’d seen it in time. Otherwise, he’d have gone right through it.

  Lizzy had parked down the road and walked up. “You wanted to see me, sir?” she said as she reached him.

  He was always a little taken aback by this grown-up version of her. Elizabeth “Lizzy” Conners lived next door to him. He’d watched her grow up from the time she was a gap-toothed tomboy who’d climbed his trees and held her own with the neighbor boys.

  He’d never dreamed she would go into law enforcement. But after the police academy, she’d shown up at his door asking for a job. She turned out to be the best hire he’d ever made.

  “I need you to make sure this area isn’t disturbed,” he said.

  She nodded. “Will do.” Ward would have argued. Or asked a lot of questions. Lizzy just did as she was asked and did it well.

  He’d heard that she planned to throw her hat into the ring for his job this fall. She was a little green, but she had a good head on her shoulders. And she might be able to win against Ward who hadn’t made any friends during his years in law enforcement.

  As he walked back up the ridgeline to where the crime techs were working, he smiled to himself. He would love nothing better than to have Lizzy become the next sheriff.

  * * *

  AS GARRETT STARTED to push open the door to the large rambling ranch house, he realized he didn’t even remember the drive down to the ranch, he’d been so distracted and upset. He feared that the moment he walked in, Dorothea would see it and demand to know what was going on before he was ready to tell her.

  He needed a beer. He wasn’t saying a word about it until he had one. Or two.

  As he walked into the house and closed the door behind him, he realized he hadn’t needed to worry. Dorothea Brand had other things on her mind as she stormed out of the kitchen. “Your brother is impossible,” she said, hands on her ample hips.

  “Which one?” He thought his brother Will and bride, Poppy, weren’t back from their honeymoon yet.

  “The only brother in our kitchen,” Dorothea snapped.

  Garrett had to smile. The squat woman with her cap of dark hair and intense gaze was like part of the furnishings and had been as far back as he could remember. She’d come to work at the guest ranch thirty years ago and never left. When the guest ranch closed up for the season, she moved into one of the wings of the main ranch house down here in the valley, taking over the housekeeping duties.

  Now at over fifty, she oversaw the housekeeping duties and everything else related to the three brothers—whether they appreciated it or not. Hell, she’d practically raised them after they’d lost their mother. Dorothea had stepped into that role like the mother hen she was.

  “What’s Shade done now?” Garrett asked as he moved through the large living room headed for the kitchen, following a burnt smell that only increased in strength with each step.

  The brothers batched most of the year, eating whatever one or the other of them cooked. Dorothea couldn’t boil water. At least that was her story and she was sticking to it. During the guest ranch months, they hired Buckshot Brewster to cook. He cooked one note: chuckwagon, which meant beans and meat, usually slightly charred.

  But even Buckshot didn’t char meat like this. “What was it before you incinerated it?” he asked as he looked into the skillet his brother had pulled off the stove.

  “Grouse. At least I think that’s what it was. I found it in the freezer earlier,” Shade said sheepishly as he fanned smoke out the open window. “We could order pizza.”

  “Fine with me.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out a beer, popping the top as he turned to look at his brother. “Shade, thanks for going up and paying the construction crew.”

  “What was up?” Shade asked. “You sounded strange on the phone.”

  He let out a sigh, knowing neither of them would forgive him if they heard from someone else. He took a long pull on the beer. It went down icy cold. “I spent most of the day with the sheriff.” He looked up as Dorothea poked her head into the kitchen doorway.

  “The sheriff?” she echoed.

  He wondered if her interest was in crime or the sheriff himself. It was no secret that there was something in the air when Dorothea and Sid were around each other. He took another long pull on his beer. It tasted wonderful. He felt himself begin to relax a little.

  “Order us some pizza and I’ll tell you all about it,” he said.

  It wasn’t until they were seated in the living room that Garrett told his story once again, cutting it down to the basics. “I was on my usual afternoon horseback ride up on the mountain when I witnessed something. A man appeared to be forcing a woman into the pines at gunpoint.” Dorothea sat, eyes wide, as she listened. “I had pulled out my binoculars. She got away for a moment, but he caught her, hit her and put the barrel of the gun to her head.”

  “Oh, my word,” Dorothea said on a breath.

  “I dropped the binoculars, quickly pulled my pistol and fired a shot in the air, thinking if the man knew they weren’t alone...” Garrett sighed and took a long drink of his second beer. “But before I could pick up the binoculars again, I heard four shots, one right after another.”

  “He killed her?” Shade said.

  “By the time I retrieved my binoculars and looked all I could see was part of a denim-clad leg in the deep grass. I got a glimpse of the vehicle as the killer escaped. A dark blue SUV. But I never got a good look at the woman’s or the man’s face.”

  “I can’t believe this. He killed her even knowing you were watching them on the mountainside across from them?” Dorothea asked.

  “That’s what I thought, but when Sid and I reached the body, it wasn’t the woman. It was the man.”

  “What?” Shade and Dorothea said almost in unison.

  “I guess somehow when I fired the pistol it distracted him and she got the gun away from the man, shot him and then took off. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. But she did it so quickly...” He shook his head.

  Dorothea looked scared. “So what happened to the woman?”

  Garrett shrugged. “Apparently she got away.”

  “She didn’t go to the cops?” Shade asked.

  “Apparently not.”

  Dorothea was studying him intently. “Why wouldn’t she go to the authorities? She knew someone had seen them. It sounds like a case of self-defense unless there was some reason she couldn’t go to the police.”

  He raised his hands in surrender. “You know as much as I do.”

  “You can bet this isn’t the end of it,” she said, sounding worried.

  “Don’t go putting salt along the threshold to my room,” he warned her. “And no other spells, either.” Dorothea fancied herself a witch. “I’m fine.”

  Shade grunted. “The killer saw you,” his brother reminded him, as if he had to be reminded. “In this case, I think Dorothea might be right. If the woman realized where the shot had come from it wouldn’t be that hard to find you. Maybe you shouldn’t go back up to the guest ranch.”

  Garrett swore. “Seriously? The woman
was simply defending herself,” he argued with a whole lot less conviction than he felt. “The man is dead. So I really doubt anyone is coming after me.” Even as he said it, he questioned what a jury would think about her shooting the man four times in the chest. How was she able to get the gun away from him to do that to begin with?

  “Sounds like a woman who knows how to defend herself,” Dorothea said as if she’d been thinking the same thing. “She might not be as...helpless as you thought she was.”

  “She isn’t going to come after me, all right? Why would she?” Garrett said. “What I saw looked like self-defense and that’s what I told the sheriff. Probably by now, she’s sitting in the police station or sheriff’s department confessing everything.”

  Neither said anything, but he could see what they were thinking. If not at the sheriff’s department, then maybe she was on her way up to the guest ranch looking for him because nothing was like it seemed. And how hard would it be to find him since Sterling’s Montana Guest Ranch was on the map—right across from the ridgeline where the killing had taken place?

  “It’s over and I’m fine.” He got up to answer the knock at the door. “Shade, I hope you ordered sausage and pepperoni pizza and none of that girl pizza with pineapple on it.” He was smiling as he said it because he knew Dorothea would take exception. Better to have her arguing about the pizza than worrying about some woman coming in the middle of the night to kill him.

  * * *

  SID WAS FOLLOWING the coroner’s rig off the mountain with the body inside when he got the call about an accident on one of the logging roads in his area. A dark blue SUV had appeared to be traveling at a high rate of speed when it went off the road and crashed into the pines.

  The description matched the vehicle Garrett had had seen. Also the logging road was one of the tributaries off this mountain. “The driver?” the sheriff asked.

  “A woman. Unconscious. Taken to the hospital in Whitefish. Haven’t gotten a status yet. But the deputy on duty ran the plates. The SUV she was driving was stolen.”

  “Any identification on her or in the car?”

  “None that deputies could find.”

  “I’m on my way,” he said and flipped on his lights and siren. The coroner pulled over to let him pass and minutes later he was walking into the hospital in the town of Whitefish.

  “The woman who was brought in earlier from the car accident on the logging road to the north of town?” he asked at the nurses’ station and was directed down the hallway.

  He stopped in the doorway to her room when he saw the doctor changing her bandage. She lay in the bed, pale and bruised. He could see where a small part of her long, dark hair had been parted to sew stitches into her scalp. As he watched the doctor check her wound, and then put the bandage back in place, he waited for her to open her eyes. She didn’t.

  Sid stepped in and cleared his throat. “How is she doing?”

  “Sheriff,” Dr. Bullock said with a nod. “She’s still unconscious, but stable. Right now, we have her listed as Jane Doe. Unless you have some identification on her.”

  “No, not yet. Was there anything with her clothing?”

  Bullock shook his head.

  He thought of Garrett. “There is someone I’d like to take a look at her.” As he studied the woman in the bed, Sid was aware of a gut feeling he couldn’t ignore. Since taking the job as sheriff, he’d gone with his gut and never regretted it. “In the meantime, I’d like her under protective custody.” Did he really think someone might try to kill her again? His gut said it was a possibility and one risk he wasn’t willing to take.

  Also, he didn’t want the woman going anywhere until he had a chance to talk to her. He would have felt better if, when she wrecked the stolen car she was driving, she had been headed toward town—and the sheriff’s department. Instead, she was headed back into the mountains toward Glacier Park. Trying to get away? Or just turned around? Once she was conscious, he’d find out.

  He texted Deputy Conners. “I’m going to put a deputy outside her door.”

  The doctor raised a brow.

  “This woman is a person of interest.” That’s all he planned to tell the doctor or anyone else at this point. He wanted the woman’s story first. In any shooting, even one that was allegedly self-defense, the woman would be arrested and arraigned while the investigation continued.

  Dr. Bullock looked from the sheriff to the woman lying in the bed. She looked so damned innocent, he could see why the doctor had his doubts. Nor did she look capable of strong-arming a gun from a man half again her size and shooting him four times. But if Sid had learned anything, it was that appearances were often deceiving.

  “Also forensics will be coming in to check for powder residue on her hands and clothing. I’m assuming you still have what she was wearing.”

  “It was about to be sent down to laundry,” the doctor said. “I’ll make sure it gets bagged for you. Anything else?”

  “We’ll also be taking a DNA sample to see if we can find out who she is,” he said. “I’d just as soon we keep a lid on this for now,” even though he knew everyone in the hospital would be speculating about her soon enough. “I want to speak to her about what happened before anyone else does. I’d appreciate it if you could give me a call as soon as she regains consciousness, no matter the hour.”

  “If she regains consciousness,” Dr. Bullock said. “You never know with head injuries.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ALISTAIR VANDERLIN HAD his secretary place the calls. He wasn’t up to hearing the complaints he knew were coming. All he was doing was putting off the inevitable, he knew, but at least he could deal with them as a group, rather than one at a time.

  He had his secretary tell each of them to come to the Seattle house on Capital Hill at six—early enough that he wouldn’t have to offer them dinner. All three of them wouldn’t turn down a drink, especially since he stocked only the good stuff, as they preferred to call it.

  When he’d inherited the guardianship job, he’d thought he was only taking on one child, a five-year-old at the time. What he hadn’t realized was that he would have more to take care of, all of them like baby birds with their mouths opening demanding more and more.

  Sighing, he looked at his watch. Amethyst would show up first. She couldn’t bear the thought that her brother, Peter, knew what was going on before she did. And of course her husband, Rance, would be trailing in her wake.

  Alistair could barely tolerate the man. Clearly Amethyst had married him for his blond good looks and not his personality or his ability to support himself. Oh, the man talked a good line about all the deals he had going—according to him, but Alistair knew better. The spineless Rance was in this for the money. Unfortunately, Amethyst had already gone through the bulk of her inheritance and was having trouble supporting her outrageous spending habit.

  It boggled his mind to think how much money had run through her fingers like sand in a matter of years. If his friend Horace hadn’t put some of his stepdaughter’s inheritance in a trust with monthly allotments, she would be broke and Rance would already have moved on.

  The doorbell rang. He braced himself as he waited for the maid to answer it. As he did, he looked around his wonderful home with its magnificent views of the Seattle area and knew that he wasn’t the only one who had benefited by Horace’s generosity. Also from his death.

  Amethyst rushed to him in a flurry of expensive fabric and perfume as if propelled by a gust of wind. She looked a lot like her deceased mother. Tall and blonde with the face of a model. At thirty-eight, she was deeply involved in an ongoing battle against aging with the best pharmaceuticals that money could buy.

  From a distance, she appeared stunning. But up close, it was clear that she was too thin, too pampered, too hungry. There was a jagged-edge brittleness about her that made a sensible person want to keep his distance.


  “What has my stepsister done now?” she demanded before he could offer her a drink.

  He looked behind her to see Rance chatting up the maid before he too entered the main living room.

  “Drink?” he said to the man.

  “I’ll have what you’re having,” Rance said. Of course he would.

  “And you?” he asked Amethyst.

  She looked annoyed as she glanced around the room. “Peter isn’t here yet? He just has to be late to annoy me.”

  “Amy, it’s not even six yet,” Rance said, calling her by a nickname that even Alistair knew she hated.

  She shot her husband a withering look before turning her blue eyes on him again. “Gin and tonic. Make it a double,” she said as if he were a bartender.

  “Coming right up,” Alistair said, relieved to be going to the bar as he heard the married couple begin to bicker.

  He took his time making the drinks, thinking of his good friend Horace and the promise he’d made to look after his only biological child should something happen to him. He suspected Horace had known his life was in danger.

  But Alistair had promised, thinking nothing would come of it. Little did he know that six months later, Horace and his new wife, Thea, would be murdered and he would become five-year-old Monica’s guardian.

  Amethyst had been thirteen, Peter eleven, at the time, children from Thea’s other marriages before she’d thrown her net over widower Horace. Amethyst had gone to her grandmother’s along with a comfortable monthly allowance and a very large inheritance when she turned thirty. Eight years later she was broke.

  Peter had gone to an uncle with questionable means of support, who also received a substantial monthly allowance for his care, and had collected a generous inheritance when he turned thirty, as well. Horace had wanted his children to make something of themselves before they received their inheritances, not realizing that what they did was merely wait to be rich.