Smokin' Six-Shooter Read online

  A still, breathless silence had settled in along with the heat. Dulcie listened for a moment to the steady, quickened beat of her heart, then grasping the knob, she slowly turned it and felt the door begin to swing in.

  Chapter Five

  “What do you know about the old Beaumont place?” Russell asked his father when Grayson met up with him later.

  Grayson seemed distracted for a moment as he pulled his gaze away from the cloudless sky. “Not much. Why do you ask?”

  “I just met the owner. At least she claims she’s the owner. She says she might be putting the place up for sale.”

  Grayson studied his son. “She? This isn’t the city girl you were telling us about at supper, is it?”

  “One and the same.” He shook his head. “She’s over there now exploring that old house.”

  Grayson looked worried. “By herself? Son, do you think that’s wise?”

  Russell snorted. “I think it’s crazier than hell. But the woman doesn’t take advice well.”

  His father laughed. “What woman does? Maybe it’s the way you gave it though. If she’s serious about selling that property, I definitely think we should make an offer. That land connects up with ours and has laid fallow all these years. I think we could get a pretty good wheat crop out of it, not to mention the property’s got water on it. Why don’t you see what she wants for the place,” Grayson said, rubbing his jaw.

  Russell studied his father for a moment in the dim light of the barn. “You talk to the other ranchers and farmers?”

  Grayson nodded. “We all kept telling ourselves that we’re bound to get some moisture, but every day it seems to be hotter and drier. If we don’t get some rain soon…”

  Hiring a rainmaker was a desperate measure and they both knew it. Russell remembered so-called rainmakers being run out of town in Texas after they failed to make it rain and talk had turned violent.

  “They’ve suggested a rainmaker who’s been here before,” Grayson said, reaching into his pocket to pull out a slip of paper. “I got his name and number.”

  “I’ll make the call,” Russell said and saw his father’s relief as he handed over the information.

  One inch of rain was worth a million dollars in this part of the country. Fifteen thousand to make it rain was cheap. If this Finnegan Amherst could make it rain, then he would be worth every penny.

  “And go check on that woman,” Grayson said as he started to leave. “Make her an offer she can’t refuse,” he added with a wink.

  DULCIE PUSHED THE DOOR of the old house all the way open and was hit with a blast of stale, putrid air. She recoiled, questioning her sanity. Did she really have to go into this house? What more could she hope to learn about the former owner and her daughter in a house that had been empty for the past twenty-four years?

  She didn’t know, but she had to find out what the connection was between her and Laura Beaumont. If it was in this house, then she had to look. This was her house now, she reminded herself.

  Screwing up her courage, she took a tentative step inside. Instantly she was as fascinated as she’d been when she’d looked in the window the day before. The house seemed to have been frozen in time. Nothing out of place. Obviously forensics hadn’t torn the house apart like they would have nowadays at a crime scene.

  She tried the floorboards, testing them with her weight as she recalled what Russell Corbett had said and mugged a face at the thought. The man was infuriating, but he had gotten her into the house, and for that she would forgive him his oh-so-male arrogance.

  The dusty, worn wooden floor creaked and groaned a little, but seemed solid enough as Dulcie entered the room. She left the front door open for the air. Even hot air from outside was better than nothing. It also let in light so she could see better. Both good reasons, although the truth was she wanted the door wide open in case she needed to make a run for it.

  The living room was just as it had appeared through the window. She moved slowly through the room, trying to imagine the woman who’d lived here sitting in that chair with the glass and book next to it on the table.

  How was it possible that she had been left this property and knew nothing about Laura Beaumont or her daughter? Her parents must have befriended the woman, helped her out maybe through some organization.

  As kind and generous as her parents had been, Dulcie was convinced that had to be it. At some point, her parents must have come up here after the murder and brought four-year-old Dulcie with them. That would explain these odd almost-memories she kept feeling.

  Laura, wanting to repay the Hugheses, had in turn left all she had in the world to them. It was a great scenario except for one thing. Laura Beaumont hadn’t left her worldly possessions to Dulcie’s parents. She’d left this house and land to Dulcie.

  That, she reminded herself, was what worried her. No one left property to a four-year-old unless it was their own child.

  At the kitchen door, she stopped, shocked by what she saw. Dishes still on the table. A bowl and a spoon in front of one chair, an overturned cereal box and what appeared to be signs of those critters Russell had told her about.

  In front of the other chair was a small plate with a knife next to it and a coffee cup. Dulcie could imagine two shadowy figures sitting there, the daughter having cereal, the mother having toast and coffee. Neither having a clue how horribly this day would end.

  She blinked and drew back, knowing she was putting off going upstairs. She’d been afraid that the house would feel familiar, that she would remember being inside here.

  But as she stood there, she realized she felt nothing. She hadn’t been inside this house. At least she couldn’t recall this part of the house.

  Retracing her footsteps, she moved to the bottom of the stairs and looked up. With the shutters closed up there, it was much darker at the top of the stairs.

  Dulcie hesitated. She’d been called bold and daring because of her business ventures. But when it came to this sort of thing, she was far from fearless. She had a yellow streak a mile wide.

  Unfortunately, she also possessed a stubborn streak that, while it had seen her through some tough times, right now it meant she wasn’t leaving here until she went upstairs. So she might as well get it over with.

  She clutched the banister, then quickly let go, grimacing as she brushed the cobwebs from her hand onto her canvas pants. Testing each stair with a tentative step, she climbed upward into the dim darkness.

  A FEW OF THE LOCALS HAD stopped by right after Jolene was hired to finish out the school term for the teacher who’d run off and gotten married. The locals had brought homemade bread, cinnamon rolls and homemade canned goods from their root cellars.

  She’d felt welcomed by their visits and their gifts.

  But now as she saw Midge Atkinson drive up in front of her house, Jolene wanted to hide and pretend she wasn’t home.

  Unfortunately, she feared Midge had seen her pedal down the road from the school only moments before.

  From the window, Jolene watched Midge climb out of her SUV and glance around as if looking for a charging dog. Or looking to see if anyone was watching her. She carried a wicker basket to Jolene’s front door and knocked.

  Making sure that the murder story was carefully hidden in a bottom drawer and the house was neat enough for visitors, Jolene answered the door.

  “Hello,” she greeted her guest warmly. She’d been warned about Midge Atkinson.

  Midge’s husband, John, owned half the businesses in town and Midge spent the money from them, was the way Jolene had heard it. “No one crosses the Atkinsons,” one woman had whispered conspiratorially to her. “Midge likes to wield her power. I don’t think I have to tell you who wears the pants in that family.”

  As a matter of fact, Midge was wearing pants today, a pair of purple ones with a matching large, garish print blouse. “I brought you a little something,” she said, slipping past Jolene and into the house without waiting to be asked.

  As Jol
ene closed the door, she noticed Midge inspecting the place. Her visitor’s gaze fell on the table where Jolene had left the students’ short stories she still had to read.

  “Here, let me take that,” Jolene said of the basket Midge was holding. She set it down on the table and quickly put the stories into her backpack, zipping it closed. “Please sit down. What can I get you to drink?”

  “I can’t stay long,” Midge said as she took a seat near the fan in the window. “Something cool to drink would be nice though.”

  “I have sun tea. Do you take sugar or lemon?”

  “Lemon.”

  Jolene went into the small kitchen and opened the refrigerator. As she took out the tea and a lemon, she heard the chair Midge had been sitting in squeak and turned in time to see Midge slip across the room to the table.

  She filled two glasses and put a slice of lemon on the side of each before she returned to the living room. Midge was sitting at the table.

  “That fan is too noisy,” Midge complained. “This is fine here.” She took the glass of tea and Jolene joined her at the table, trying not to look again in the direction of her now-open backpack.

  She had zipped it closed, hadn’t she? But why would Midge open it? Only one person would know about the murder story—the author. And of course Jolene. And the student who was bringing it to her. And maybe the friend of the author.

  Jolene groaned inwardly at the thought of how many people might know about the story.

  “Aren’t you curious about what I brought you?” Midge asked, sounding perturbed. Perturbed because Jolene hadn’t thanked her yet? Or because she hadn’t found what she’d been looking for in Jolene’s backpack?

  Pulling the basket toward her, she saw that it was filled with store-bought muffins. In this part of Montana, bringing store-bought anything was almost an insult.

  “How thoughtful. Thank you.”

  Midge gave a slight shrug. “I hadn’t welcomed you since you were hired. How are things going?”

  “Fine. No problems.”

  Midge took a drink of her tea, winced and said, “It’s bitter. I think you left it out in the sun too long. I’ve had enough anyway.” She shoved the nearly full glass away and rose.

  Jolene got up to see her out, but Midge didn’t make it to the door before she turned, hands clasped in front of her and said, “I heard you were asking questions about some unpleasant business from years back.” She tsked. “You really don’t want to concern yourself with that sort of thing. We like our teachers to concentrate on making a pleasant, educational environment for our students. I would suggest you restrict any research projects to the part of our history for which we have pride, such as our early homesteaders.”

  Jolene was so shocked she couldn’t reply at first and then she had to bite her tongue to keep from telling Midge Atkinson what she thought of her suggestion.

  Midge’s quick smile was more a grimace as she turned abruptly toward the door. “Oh, and I would like my basket back when you’ve finished with the muffins.”

  “Of course.” As the irritating woman drove away, Jolene closed the door and leaned against it, wondering who in the Whitehorse Sewing Circle had ratted her out.

  DULCIE STOPPED AT THE TOP of the stairs and took a shallow breath. The air up here on the second floor of the farmhouse seemed even more foul and stagnant than the floor below. She looked down the hallway toward the front of the house. Four doors stood partially open.

  Behind the one closest to her, she saw a broom closet with an ancient vacuum leaning against one wall and a ratty broom.

  Stepping lightly, she edged toward the next door. The room was nearly empty except for an old treadle sewing machine sitting against one wall.

  Dulcie moved to the next door and peered in. The little girl’s room. Someone had painted a blue-and-white ceiling resembling sky and clouds. On the walls around the bed were painted half a dozen angels, complete with wings and cherubic sweet faces. Had the mother painted these?

  As Dulcie stepped into the room, she saw that the artist had signed his or her name in the bottom of one corner of the room. M. Atkinson.

  The name meant nothing to her. She glanced again at the paintings. A roomful of angels for a little girl named Angel. She tried to picture the little girl who’d lived here. Tomboy or doll-playing princess?

  Nothing about the room felt familiar. With a sigh of relief, Dulcie told herself she’d never seen it before. If she’d come to Whitehorse with her parents for whatever reason, then she’d stayed outside this house—outside where she could see the yellow curtains in the second-floor bedroom window and hear the weather vane on the barn.

  A small, once-white dresser stood against one wall. She pulled out a drawer. Empty. She tried another. Also empty. How strange that everything else in this house seemed to be just as it had been left twenty-four years ago, except that Angel’s clothes were missing. Why take a dead child’s clothing?

  RUSSELL CALLED THE NUMBER his father had given him, surprised when a girl answered the phone. For a moment, he thought he’d dialed the wrong number.

  “Is there a Finnegan Amherst there?”

  “My grandfather. Just a moment.” The phone dropped but a few moments later a raspy, deep-throated voice asked who was calling.

  “Russell Corbett from the Trails West Ranch outside of Whitehorse, Montana.”

  He heard a soft, dry chuckle. “I wondered when you’d be calling.”

  “Then you must know what I’m calling about,” Russell said, hoping his father and the other ranchers and farmers weren’t about to throw their money down a rat hole. The rainmaker definitely sounded like someone’s grandfather, old grandfather.

  “You need a rainmaker,” Finnegan Amherst said.

  “We need rain,” Russell corrected.

  Again the man chuckled.

  “So are you interested?”

  The rainmaker sighed. “Let me think about it. If I decide to come up, I’ll be there tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll call.”

  With a curse Russell realized that the man had hung up.

  “Might as well go waste some more time,” he said to himself as he headed for his pickup, sure Dulcie Hughes would drive a hard bargain for her land.

  DIRECTLY ACROSS THE HALL from Angel Beaumont’s room was the bathroom. Dulcie could make out a large old claw-footed tub against the back wall.

  She moved cautiously toward the front bedroom. Through the partially open door, she could see part of the faded yellow curtains billowing in the hot air stealing in through a broken pane.

  A chair was positioned by the window, a book lying on the floor, open and facedown and like everything else in the house, covered with dust.

  Dulcie hesitated at the threshold to the room. She touched the door, pushing it all the way open. Nothing came scampering out, but she heard the sound of tiny feet overhead and thought of those critters Russell had warned her about.

  When she stepped in, she saw the wallpaper and felt a jolt. She knew this pattern of old-fashioned tiny yellow flowers. It was so familiar that her knees threatened to buckle under her as she tried to fight the crush of dread mixed with terror.

  She had been in this room. The room where Laura Beaumont was murdered. Her parents wouldn’t have brought her up here. So how was it possible?

  Feeling sick, she gripped the doorjamb for a moment until the light-headedness passed.

  Dulcie had made a point of not focusing on the high double bed with its antique iron frame. But suddenly she couldn’t stop her gaze from going to the soiled mattress. Cringing, she looked away to see a large chest of drawers against the wall.

  As if sleepwalking, she crossed the room and opened the top drawer to find it filled with women’s undergarments. The second drawer had more of the same. The third and fourth held shirts and blouses, jeans and slacks.

  Someone had taken the child’s clothes, but left the mother’s?

  She opened the closet. Dust-coated dresses hung limp from metal hangers
. Shoes were scattered across the closet floor. A closet full of high heels and pretty dresses.

  Yellow must have been her favorite color. Just as it was Dulcie’s. She closed the closet door, ready to flee as she wished on a ragged breath that she’d never come here.

  With a start, she caught movement on the other side of the room. A scream rose in her throat but she quickly tamped it down as she realized what she’d seen. Her own reflection in a cloudy mirror over a vanity on the opposite wall.

  The top of the vanity was cluttered with a brush, a mirror, an assortment of bottles and jars, all coated with thick dust.

  Dulcie suddenly needed fresh air, even brutally hot air. She started to close the closet door, bumping into the dresser. Something slithered down the wall to the floor.

  She stepped back, ready to scream, but stopped when she saw what had fallen. Squatting, she gingerly picked up what appeared to be a snapshot that had fallen from behind the dresser and landed facedown on the floor.

  She turned it over and stared into the face of a little girl. A face so like her own, it could have been her twin. Or Dulcie herself.

  Chapter Six

  From the floor below came a thunk as if something had been knocked over. Startled, Dulcie stuffed the photo in her pocket and looked around for anything she could use to defend herself.

  She was thinking about critters when she tiptoed down the hallway toward the top of the stairs. She grabbed the old broom from the small closet and positioned herself on one side of the stairs, ready for anything that came racing up.

  A stair creaked under the weight of a heavy boot heel. It must be a pretty large critter, she thought. Russell Corbett? Had he come back to see if she needed protecting? Or maybe to give her more advice?

  As the footfalls neared, she clutched the broom in both hands, planning to use it like a bat if necessary. But even as she stepped to the top of the stairs, armed and ready, she was hoping to see Russell Corbett’s handsome face looking up at her.