Gun-Shy Bride (3 page)

Luke knew his chances of catching the poachers were slim. Not that his Uncle Buzz would have seen it that way. Buzz Crawford had built a reputation on being the toughest game warden Montana had ever seen.

But Luke tended to write more warnings than tickets and knew he couldn’t solve every crime in the huge area he covered. He didn’t have the “kill gene,” as his uncle often told him, and that explained the problem between him and Buzz.

The problem between him and McCall Winchester, his first love—hell, the only woman he’d ever truly loved—was a whole lot more complicated.

M
C
C
ALL WAS STILL CONSIDERING
the ramifications of her father possibly blackmailing the former game warden. “If Trace had something on Buzz—”

“I don’t know that for sure,” Ruby hedged. “Your father really didn’t need to blackmail anyone. His mother and the Winchester money would have gotten him out of any trouble he got into.”

Not this kind of trouble,
McCall thought.

But she knew what her mother was getting at. Whitehorse was a small town and deals were made between local judges and some families. McCall also knew the legendary Buzz Crawford. He wouldn’t have taken well to blackmail.

“So if my father wasn’t worried about this poaching charge…” And apparently he hadn’t been, if he’d gone hunting the next morning on that ridge. “Then why did you think he ran off?”

Ruby waved a hand through the air. “I was pregnant and crazy with hormones, out of my mind half the time, and Trace…”

“You fought a lot,” McCall guessed after having seen how her mother’s other relationships had gone over the years. “Did you have a fight the morning before he…disappeared?”

Ruby looked away. “Why do you we have to talk about this? Trace and I were both young and hotheaded. We fought, we made up.” She shrugged. “There was no one like Trace.” She smiled as if lost for a moment in the past.

And for that moment, Ruby looked like the pregnant young woman in love that she’d been in the few photographs McCall had of her—usually in uniform, alone, at the café.

The moment passed. Ruby frowned. “No matter what you’ve heard, Trace didn’t leave because of you.”

“So did he take anything when he left—clothes, belongings?”

“Just his pickup and his rifle. He would have made a good father and husband if his mother had stayed out of it. Pepper Winchester has a fortune, but she wouldn’t give him a dime unless he got out of the marriage to me and made me say my baby was someone else’s. What kind of mother puts that kind of pressure on her son?”

McCall didn’t want her mother to take off on Pepper Winchester again. Nor was she ready to tell her mother what she’d found up on the ravine south of town without conclusive evidence.

She got to her feet. “I need to get going.”

“You sure you don’t want some tuna casserole? I could get Leo to dish you up some for later. You have to eat and it’s just going to get thrown out.”

“Naw, thanks anyway.” She hugged her mother, surprised how frail Ruby was and feeling guilty for upsetting her. “I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”

“All that was a long time ago. I survived it.”

“Still, I know it wasn’t easy.” McCall could imagine how hurt her mother must have been, how humiliated in front of the whole town, that her husband had left her pregnant, broke and alone. McCall knew how it was to have the whole town talking about you.

“It wasn’t so bad,” Ruby said with a smile. “Within a couple of weeks, I had you.”

McCall smiled, feeling tears burn her eyes as she left,
her hand in her pocket holding tight to the hunting license—the only definite thing she had of her father’s—unless she counted his bad genes.

W
ORD ABOUT THE BONES FOUND
south of town had traveled the speed of a wildfire through Whitehorse. McCall heard several versions of the story when she stopped for gas.

Apparently most everyone thought the bones were a good hundred years old and belonged to some outlaw or ancestor.

By the time McCall left Whitehorse, the sun and wind had dried the muddy unpaved roads to the southeast. The gumbo, as the locals called the mud, made the roads often impassible.

McCall headed south into no-man’s-land on one of the few roads into the Missouri Breaks. Yesterday she’d driven down Highway 191 south to meet Rocky. But there were no roads from the ridge where she’d stood looking across the deep gorge to the Winchester Ranch.

Getting to the isolated ranch meant taking back roads that seldom saw traffic and driving through miles and miles of empty rolling wild prairie.

Over the years McCall had thought about just showing up at her grandmother’s door. But she’d heard enough horror stories from her mother—and others in town—that she’d never gotten up the courage.

The truth was, she didn’t have the heart to drive all the way out there and have her grandmother slam the door in her face.

Today though, she told herself she was on official
business. Of course one call to the sheriff would blow that story and leave her in even more hot water with her boss.

But already in over her head, McCall felt she’d been left little choice. Once the report came back from the crime lab—and she gave up the hunting license—it would become a murder investigation and she would be not only pulled off the case, but also locked out of any information the department gathered because of her personal connection to the deceased.

Before that happened, she hoped to get the answers she so desperately needed about her father—and who had killed him.

She knew it would be no easy task, finding out the truth after all these years. Her mother was little help. As for the Winchesters, well, she’d never met any of them. Trace had been the youngest child of Call and Pepper Winchester.

His siblings and their children had all left the ranch after Trace disappeared and had never returned as far as McCall knew. Her grandmother had gone into seclusion.

The Winchester Ranch had always been off-limits for McCall—a place she wasn’t welcome and had no real connection with other than sharing the same last name.

The fact that her father had been buried within sight of the ranch gave her pause, though, as McCall slowed to turn under the carved wooden Winchester Ranch arch.

In the distance she could see where the land broke and began to fall as the Missouri River carved its way through the south end of the county. Nothing was more isolated or wild than the Breaks and the Winchester Ranch sat on the edge of this untamed country.

It gave her an eerie feeling just thinking of her grandmother out here on the ranch, alone except for the two elderly caretakers, Enid and Alfred Hoagland. Why had Pepper closed herself off from the rest of her family after Trace disappeared? Wouldn’t a mother be thankful she had other children?

McCall drove slowly down the ranch road, suddenly afraid. She was taking a huge chance coming out here. Even if she wasn’t shot for a trespasser, she knew she would probably be run off without ever seeing her grandmother.

Weeds had grown between the two tracks of the narrow, hardly used road. Enid and Alfred only came into Whitehorse for supplies once a month, but other than that were never seen around. Nor, McCall had heard, did Pepper have visitors.

As she drove toward the massive log structure, she was treated to a different view of the ranch from that on the ridge across the ravine.

The lodge had been built back in the 1940s, designed after the famous Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone Park. According to the stories McCall had heard, her grandfather Call Winchester had amassed a fortune, tripling the size of his parents’ place.

There had always been rumors around Whitehorse about Call Winchester—the man McCall has been named for. Some said he made his fortune in gold mining. Others in crime.

The truth had remained a mystery—just like the man himself. Call had gone out for a horseback ride one day long before McCall was born, and as the story goes, his horse returned without him. His body
was never to be found. Just like his youngest son, Trace. Until now.

An old gray-muzzled heeler with one brown and one blue eye hobbled out to growl beside McCall’s patrol pickup.

She turned off the engine, waiting as she watched the front door of the lodge. The place looked even larger up close. How many wings were there?

When no one appeared, she eased open her vehicle door, forcing the dog back as she stepped out. The heeler stumbled away from her still growling. She kept an eye on him as she walked to the front door.

She didn’t see any vehicles, but there was an old log building nearby that looked as if it was a garage, large enough to hold at least three rigs.

While she’d never seen her grandmother, McCall had run across Pepper’s housekeeper, Enid—an ancient, broomstick-thin, brittle woman with an unpleasant face and an even worse disposition.

McCall had heard a variety of stories about Enid Hoagland, none of them complimentary. The housekeeper and her husband apparently took care of Pepper. Enid did the cooking and cleaning. Her husband, Alfred, did upkeep on the isolated ranch.

Some said the Hoaglands acted as guards to protect and care for Pepper. Others were of the opinion that the old couple kept Pepper Winchester hostage on the ranch to make sure they got the Winchester fortune when she died instead of her heirs.

McCall knocked at the weathered door, glancing around as she waited. A quiet hung over the wind-scoured place as if everything here had withered up and died.

She knocked harder and thought she heard a sound on the other side of the door. “Sheriff’s Department. Open up.”

After a long moment, the door creaked slowly open. An old woman appeared on the other side, and for a moment McCall thought she was about to come face-to-face with her grandmother.

But as the light flowed into the dark entry, she saw that it was only Enid Hoagland.

Enid scowled at her. “What do you want?” she demanded by way of greeting.

“I need to speak with Pepper Winchester.”

“That isn’t possible. Mrs. Winchester doesn’t see anyone.” She started to close the door, but McCall stuck a booted foot in the doorway.

“I’m sorry, but she’ll have to see me unless you want me to come back with a warrant to search the house,” McCall bluffed. “Tell her it’s Deputy Sheriff McCall Winchester.”

A malicious light flickered on in Enid’s close-set gray eyes. “You’re making a mistake,” she said under her breath.

McCall feared the old woman was right.

A sound like the tinkling of a small bell came from deep in the lodge. Enid seemed to hesitate. “You will regret this.”

McCall didn’t doubt it. The older woman stepped aside and the deputy sheriff entered her father’s family home for the first time in her life.

Enid led McCall into what could only be called a parlor. The decor was old-time Western, the rustic furnishings dated as if the house had been sealed for more than thirty years.

McCall was too nervous to sit. She’d forced her way in here, and now she wasn’t sure what she would say to her grandmother when she finally saw her for the first time.

At the sound of faint footfalls in the hallway, she turned, bracing herself, and yet she was still shocked. Nothing could have prepared her for the elderly woman who stepped into the room.

Pepper Winchester was surprisingly spry for seventy-two. She stood, her back ramrod straight, her head angled as if she was irritated. Her face was lined but there was something youthful about her. She was tall and slim, elegant in her black silk caftan.

Her hair, which had apparently once been dark like McCall’s, was now peppered with gray. It trailed down her slim back in a single loose braid. Her eyes were ebony, her cheekbones high, just like McCall’s.

The resemblance was both striking and shocking. McCall had had no idea just how much she looked like her grandmother.

If Pepper Winchester noticed the resemblance, her demeanor gave no notice of it. Nor was there any indication that she knew who McCall was.

“Yes?” she demanded.

McCall found her voice. “I’m Deputy Sheriff McCall Winchester.”

Had the dark eyes widened just a little?

“I need to ask you a few questions.”

“I’m sure my housekeeper told you I don’t see visitors.”

But you saw me. Why was that? Not because of the threat of a warrant.
“I wouldn’t have bothered you if it wasn’t important. It’s about your son Trace’s disappearance.”

“Have you found him?” The hope in her grandmother’s voice and posture was excruciating. So was the fear she heard there. And yet, Pepper Winchester had to know that if there was any news of Trace, the sheriff would have been here—not some lowly deputy.

“I’m investigating his disappearance,” McCall said quickly, taking out her notebook and pen.

“After twenty-seven years?” Pepper asked in disbelief. She seemed to shrink, all the starch coming out of her, all the spirit. “What’s the point?”

“When was the last time you saw your son?”

Pepper shook her head, her dark eyes dimming in the dull light. “I should think you would know that, since I gave that information to the sheriff at the time.”

McCall saw that this had been a mistake. What had she hoped to accomplish? She had wanted to see her
grandmother. And now she had. The best thing she could do was to leave before Pepper Winchester got on the phone to the sheriff.

But she’d come too far. She couldn’t leave things like this. Nor had she gotten what she’d come for. “Is there anyone who might have wanted to harm him?”

Pepper raised her head slightly, her dark eyes locking with McCall’s. “Other than your mother?”

“Did your son have any enemies?”

“No.” Instantly, she corrected herself. “Buzz Crawford. He hated my family, Trace in particular.” Her voice broke as she said her son’s name.

Again the former game warden’s name had come up in relation to Trace.

“Was your son blackmailing Buzz Crawford?”

“
What?
Who would even say something like that? Your
mother?
” She raised her nose into the air. “My son didn’t have to resort to blackmail. He was a
Winchester
. He wasn’t going to serve any jail time. I would have seen to that.”

Her grandmother’s gaze flicked over her, anger and impatience firing those dark eyes, then she sighed deeply and started to walk away, signaling this conversation was over.

“Then why did you think he left town? Because you cut him off financially?” McCall asked, unable to hold back. “Or because you were demanding he divorce my mother and renounce the child she was carrying?”

Pepper Winchester spun back around, eyes narrowing dangerously. “You know nothing about my relationship with my youngest son.
Nothing
.” She held up her hand before McCall could say another word. “You
should leave.
Now
.” With that her grandmother turned and disappeared through the door.

McCall closed her notebook and looked up to find Enid Hoagland framed in the doorway, a smug little smile on the horrid woman’s face.

“You are not to ever disturb Mrs. Winchester again,” Enid said as she walked McCall to the door and closed it firmly behind her.

Standing on the front step, McCall took a deep breath of the crisp spring air. Her heart seemed to struggle with each beat. What had she been thinking coming out here to see the grandmother who had denied her all these years? Still denied her.

Letting out the breath, McCall walked to her pickup, her eyes burning. She could feel someone watching her, the gaze boring into her back. Her grandmother? Or that awful Enid?

She slid behind the wheel, anxious to get away before she shed the tears now blurring her eyes. She wouldn’t give either old woman the satisfaction of seeing how much that had hurt.

P
EPPER
W
INCHESTER STOOD
at the window trembling with rage as she watched McCall drive away.

“You should have told me how much she resembles me,” she said, knowing Enid was behind her even though she hadn’t heard the woman approach. Trace used to say that Enid moved as silently as a ghost—or a cat burglar.

“What would have been the point?” Enid asked. “You didn’t have to see her. Now you’re upset and—”

Pepper spun around to face her ancient housekeeper
as the patrol pickup disappeared down the road. “Of course I’m upset. Why would she come here and ask about Trace?”

“Because she believes he was her father.”

Pepper scoffed at that, just as she had when Trace told her that he’d gotten that tramp Ruby Bates pregnant. But the proof had been standing in her house just moments before.

There was no denying that McCall was a Winchester—and her father’s daughter.

“You’re the one who let her in,” Enid complained. “I could have gotten rid of her.”

When Pepper had seen the sheriff’s department vehicle pull in, she’d thought it might be news about Trace and had been unable to smother that tiny ember of hope that caught fire inside her.

“She’ll be back, you know,” Enid warned in obvious disapproval. “She wants more than what she got this time.”

Yes, Pepper suspected McCall would be back. She’d seen herself and Trace in the young brazen woman.

“So,” Enid said with a sigh. “Can I get you anything?”

My son Trace.
That was the only thing she wanted.

“I just want to be alone.” Pepper turned back to the window, looking down at the long curve of the road into the ranch.

All this time, she’d expected a call or a visit from the sheriff. Word from someone about her son. And after twenty-seven years to have his daughter show up at her door…

Why would McCall be investigating her father’s disappearance
now?
Or had that just been an excuse to come out to the ranch?

For weeks after Trace left, Pepper would stare at that road waiting for him to come down it. How many times had she imagined him driving up that road in his new black pickup, getting out, his jacket thrown over one shoulder, cowboy hat cocked back to expose his handsome face, his long jean-clad legs closing the distance as if he couldn’t wait to get home.

She’d been so sure he would contact her. Eventually he would call for money. He’d known she could make his hunting violation charge go away—just as she had the others.

For that reason, she’d never understood why he would run away. She’d blamed that tramp he’d foolishly married. Trace wasn’t ready for marriage, let alone a child. Especially one Pepper had been convinced would turn out to be someone else’s bastard. She’d despised Ruby for trapping her son and giving Trace no way out but to leave town.

But after weeks, then months had gone by with no word, Pepper feared
she
was the reason her son had left and never came back. The thought had turned her heart to stone.

She’d walled herself up here in the lodge unable to face life outside the ranch. Worse, she’d replayed her last argument with Trace over and over in her head.

McCall was right. She
had
threatened to cut him off without a cent if he didn’t divorce Ruby and denounce that bastard child she was carrying. Trace had pleaded with her to give Ruby a chance, swearing the baby was his.

Pepper sighed. Apparently, he’d been right about that at least, she thought now. She was still trembling from finally coming face-to-face with Trace’s daughter. McCall.

That bitch Ruby had named the girl after her grandfather, Call Winchester, just to throw it in Pepper’s face.

But there was no doubt. The girl definitely was of Winchester blood.

She frowned as she remembered something McCall had said.
“Then why did you think he’d left town?”

McCall hadn’t come to the ranch out of simple curiosity. If that were true, she would have shown up sooner.

Pepper stepped to the phone. For years, she hadn’t spoken to another soul other than Enid and her housekeeper’s husband, Alfred—and fortunately neither of them had much to say.

Then McCall had shown up, she thought with a curse as she dialed the sheriff’s department.

L
UKE SPENT A COUPLE OF HOURS
looking around Whitehorse for the poachers’ pickup before he headed south. His jurisdiction included everything from the Canadian border to the Missouri River—an area about the size of the state of Massachusetts.

For that reason, he put close to twenty-five thousand miles on his three-quarter-ton pickup every year. His truck was his office as well as his main source of transportation unless he was in one of the two boats he used to patrol the area’s waterways.

This time of year, because of paddlefish season, he spent most of his time on the Missouri River south of Whitehorse. Today he was checking tags and watching for fishing violations. Fishing was picking up all over his area from the Milk River to reservoirs Nelson and Fort Peck.

For the next few months, he’d be spending fourteen-
to fifteen-hour days watching fishermen, checking licenses and boats for safety equipment.

That wouldn’t leave much time to catch the deer poachers, but he figured they knew that.

Tired from getting up at dawn, Luke headed back toward Whitehorse a little earlier than usual. His place was just to the south, his parents’ old homestead that he’d bought when he’d recently returned to Whitehorse. The homestead had been sold following his parents’ deaths but he’d managed to get it back.

He liked to think it was a sign that he’d made the right decision by coming back here. A sign that there was a chance for him and McCall. He was building a new house on the property and was anxious for a couple of days off to work on it.

As he drove over the rise on the road, the stark skeleton of his new house set against the sunset, he slowed. The truck parked down by his stock pond didn’t look familiar.

He pulled his pickup to a stop and got out, scanning the old windbreak of Russian olive trees as he did. The unfamiliar truck had local plates. As he walked past the pickup, he saw an older outboard lying in the back in a pool of oil and the broken tip of a fishing pole floating next to it.

“Hey!”

The greeting startled him even as he recognized the voice.

His cousin Eugene Crawford stepped from behind one of the outbuildings where he’d obviously gone to take a leak. He had a fishing pole in one hand and a beer in the other.

“Grab your rod,” Eugene said. “Let’s catch a few.”

The last thing Luke wanted to do right now was fish. He needed some shut-eye. Hopefully the poachers would take a night off and let him get some rest.

“Sorry, but I’ve got to hit the hay,” he told his cousin.

“At least come down and watch me catch a couple.”

After Luke’s parents were killed in a small plane crash when he was seven, his Uncle Buzz had taken him in and he and Eugene were raised like brothers.

His cousin, who was two years older, had always looked out for him, fighting his battles, covering his back. In high school, Eugene had been the popular one, a former high school football star and a charmer with the girls.

Now Eugene lived in the past, high school being his glory days after an injury his freshman year in college ruined any chance he had to play pro football.

Since then, Eugene had struggled, going from one job to the next, having his share of run-ins with the law as well as women. Just recently divorced for the third time, Eugene seemed to be down on his luck, if that old beat-to-hell pickup he was driving was any indication.

“All right. But just for a few minutes,” Luke said, giving in the way he always had when it came to Eugene.

“So, catch any poachers lately?” his cousin asked as he cast out into the pond and sat down on the edge of the earthen dam. It was an inside joke, something Buzz had always asked from the time Luke had become a game warden.

“A few,” he answered, just as he always did with Buzz.

Eugene laughed as he watched his red-and-white bobber float on the dark surface of the water. Long
shadows lay across the pond, the sky behind him ablaze with the setting sun.

Luke suspected his cousin hadn’t just come out here to fish.

“Sit down,” Eugene said, an edge to his voice. “You look like any minute you’re going to check my fishing license.”

It would be just like his cousin not to have one. Eugene liked to push the limits.

“I told you. I’ve got to get some sleep,” Luke said, realizing he wasn’t up to dealing with Eugene’s problems right now, or his excuses.

“Sure. I know. You have a job,” Eugene said sarcastically.

“Whatever it is, I’m really not up to it tonight.”

“Yeah, you got your own problems, huh. Don’t want to hear about mine.” His cousin swore, reeled his line in, checked the bait and threw it back out. “I need money. I’m not screwing with you. It’s a matter of life and death.”

Luke sighed. “How much are we talking?”