THREADS
a Blaine Horney Mystery
by
Kris Karrel
Jigsaw Press
Sun River, Montana
THREADS, A Blaine Horney Mystery, © copyright 2007 by Kris Karrel. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted by any means—including, but not limited to, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, audio or video—without express written consent by the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
For information address: Editor, Jigsaw Press, P.O. Box 136, Sun River, Montana, 59483.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarities to actual events, locales, or persons, either living or dead, is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-934340-25-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2007935047
Smashwords Edition
Jigsaw Press
Sun River, Montana
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For Bob and Connie—
May the sun always shine on your parade.
Chapter One
The plate of fried eggs and crisp bacon, hash browns and side of wheat bound for the cowboy seated at the counter left Doreen Miller’s hand the very instant Shane Seidel’s dead wife strolled right out of the grave and into the Morrison Café, a sandy-haired boy of seven or eight in tow.
Dillon Travers spun his stool lazily about to gape at the reason his breakfast was now a puddle of grease and broken china at Doreen’s feet. The cook and third owner of the place in thirty years, Merle Vestry, waddled through the swinging kitchen doors, cut off in mid-gripe about waste and slack service by the unbelievable.
The four regulars sharing the corner booth—retired cowboys and ranchers in for their morning dose of coffee and gossip—were tight-lipped staring to a man. The atmosphere reeked of a creepy reverence, a quiet equaled only by the county morgue where Doreen had, years earlier, identified the mangled body of her late husband.
Shane’s resurrected wife appeared oblivious to the silent uproar created by her entry, focused as she was on the boy.
“Scramble,” he said, looking up at her.
“Kevin, sit down for Mommy?” She guided him to the center booth of five running the length of the picture window overlooking Main Street, then slid next to him on the orange bench seat, their backs to the door.
“Scramble,” Kevin insisted, his voice rising. Small fists battered the tabletop, rocking the condiments clustered at the end of the table nearest the window. “Scramble, scramble, scramble.”
Impossible, had to be. The woman was dead, her daughter, too. No one presently living in or around the small town of Morrison, Montana, knew that with as much certainty as Doreen, except perhaps Shane, who’d discovered them, or Ross Hedley, county sheriff and first officer to arrive on the grisly scene.
Dillon left his seat, damn near running out the door, breakfast apparently forgotten. Or maybe he’d lost his appetite.
Doreen wished she’d followed not a second later when the woman turned her blonde head, ostensibly looking for the waitress, and she simply unable to make her feet move until Merle jabbed her in the back.
***
On the first anniversary of his total devastation, Shane Seidel toasted his late wife and daughter with a shot or ten of the best scotch money could buy, then failed to quit bending his arm. Sinking beyond his usual stupor, he managed to crawl on all fours across the hand-finished hardwood floor to the new king-sized bed where he slept for the very first time. Even this righteous a wasting couldn’t prevent the visit to his personal Hell. But on this night, unlike any previous, his wife’s spirit rose out of the midst of the gore, their ten-year-old child at her side.
Susan reached out to him, as if she might bridge the gap between living and dead, yet before he could surmount his disbelief to take her hand, she and daughter, Kory, vanished like smoke dissipated by a hostile, unforgiving wind.
He roused to escape this anguish, stared long minutes through the sheer curtains at a full moon, then cried himself back to sleep.
Shane opened his swollen, scratchy eyes to sunrise and one hell of a headache, woozy and sick to his stomach, compelled by the incessant pounding on the front door to drag his worthless ass out of bed.
***
Sunrise capping the distant snow-covered peaks in shades of dusky rose, the Texas Ranger dumped his brown suitcase into the carpeted trunk of the leased Jaguar, thinking the worn out old thing looked ridiculous lying there. Thrift store trash in a fifty-thousand dollar wrapper. He slammed the trunk, the expensive whomp immediately swallowed by the noise of idling tractors and a gusting wind at the truck stop on the outskirts of Great Falls.
Ten large under the table, plus expenses, had put him on the road out of San Antone, that and his captain’s handshake guarantee of two extra weeks leave upon his return from Morrison, a Montana town so small it didn’t rate a dot on a map, any map he could find. Half the cash languished in a safety deposit box already.
He settled behind the padded steering wheel, then touched the breast pocket of the tailored suit to make sure the photo was still there.
Why the ethics of this little side job had begun to nag as the miles passed under the tires, he didn’t have a clue. Wasn’t like he was changing sides in the war on crime or anything. A personal favor for an unidentified friend of his captain wouldn’t exactly hurt his career. Certainly. Not like he’d be stepping on any influential toes either. Hell, the case itself was cold enough, a year old yesterday. And out of his or any Ranger’s usual jurisdiction, way out, whole states out.
Ten large simply to discover what he could, finger the bad guy if at all possible—with or without enough evidence to convict.
Should be cut-and-dried easy.
Especially for a Ranger with a psychic gift, one that in the blink of his mind’s eye crisscrossed the world in threads. The Earth webbed in a gossamer gauze, the ectoplasmic trails of people past and present, the residue of their daily lives, any moment of which he might experience simply by crossing their paths.
Might. When it worked.
Place memory an article had called it; events stored in the environment. No mention of how a Ranger able to vividly sense the memory stored in a specific place might actually end up reliving some of those events cached in ye olde environment. That much he’d learned the hard way, on vacation no less, a murder scene over five years old at the time he’d stumbled across it.
No mention in that or any other article he’d collected over the years of the damn threads leading into and away from these so-called events, threads his mind simply colored to life, oftentimes when least expected.
No reference whatsoever to the whispers that sometimes haunted the threads themselves—like the plans made by those two murderers at the remote scene outside of Austin on the trot to their getaway car and Dallas.
Not a word about two threads his mind had colored shit yellow and puke green trailing a host of devious thoughts through an assortment of apartments and seedy hotel rooms across three Texas cities that eventually led not only to the discovery and apprehension of the serial perps themselves, but a murder weapon complete with prints that was used in the deaths of nine other women, every case up to that time unsolved.
He wasn’t about to contact any researcher or writer just to update them on a subconscious mental process he could only liken to a bloodhound sifting myriad scents in choosing the right one to track.
Wouldn’t he be a laughing stock then? Or worse yet, a target for those less than desirable elements of society that might consider him a threat?
Still, when it worked, when anxiety, anger, even stress or fear didn’t cloud his inner vision, the psychic gift was a perfect tool for a Texas Ranger, one that had earned him a fair amount of respect within certain circles, not to mention a coveted spot with the unsolved crimes investigative team. A mental quirk, a hitch in his giddy up that he’d be the first to admit to family and friends, the smattering of other Rangers solidly in the know that he understood even less than he might control.
Always a downside to everything. Like a hangover chases good whiskey, or a high-class escort expects to be paid, or his father’s harping insistence that he strike out on his own.
The name on some mythical office quashed all consideration of leaving the Rangers. Every single time.
Horney Investigations.
Beat Blaine Horney, PI, or B. Horney, Private Investigator, but not by much.
What kind of clients could he expect to draw with a name like that? Crackpots, deviates, or worse.
Surely.
Jokes were never-ending as it was. A steady paycheck had a lot more appeal, for now anyway.
Side jobs notwithstanding.
***
“Goddamn it, Shane. Open this door. Ain’t you up yet?”
Sweat pasting his unruly dark hair about his pulsing temples, Shane whipped open the front door to silence Dillon’s pounding fist and cried, “What the fuck’s your fire?”
The lean, lanky pain in the ass, and best hand in these or any parts, was visibly pale, a wild look in his brown eyes. Black hat askew, hair the color of fresh mud bristled like a wire brush gone crazy about his ears. His aged red Ford pickup idled at the base of the stairs, the driver’s door hanging wide open.
Suddenly, as if he thought better of knocking, Dillon grimaced, straightened his hat with a furious swipe of his hand and pivoted on his boot heel to start back down the steps.
“Just hold on there now, Dill,” Shane said. “You come beating on my door like hell’s broke loose, then don’t have a word to say?”
Right hand waving at the blue sky, Dillon continued his descent, muttering, “Nuh-uh, nuh-uh.”
“Nuh-uh, what?” Shane asked and stepped over the threshold, the concrete chilling his bare feet.
Just as Dillon made the landing, his jiggling truck inched back, then abruptly sped up, cutting a tight semi-circle in reverse to broadside the passenger door of Shane’s late-model Silverado at better than ten miles per hour.
“Well, hell,” Shane said, shaking his head until the pain insisted he stop that nonsense.
Dillon glanced up at Shane, back to the T-boned trucks, and then studied his boots, hand patting his shirt pocket for the cigarettes he’d most likely left on the dash.
“Might want to just shut her down there, Dill,” Shane said.
He sprang to the task, behind the wheel in seconds, gears grinding, engine revving, separating the two trucks to the screeching protest of late-model running board yielding to older, heavier rusty bumper.
What’d upset Dillon so badly, Shane couldn’t begin to fathom. He buckled his belt about his waist, glad of the cool morning air over his bare chest. His mouth pasty and rank, his nose announcing a shower was an absolute must, right now coffee seemed the quickest antidote to everything that ailed—physically.
***
Doreen turned to Merle and murmured, “She’s dead, dammit. That can’t be—.”
“Get her goddamn order,” he snapped in a hoarse whisper, then gestured at the floor. “And get this fucking mess cleaned up before someone goes out of their way to slip and sue.” He hurried back into the kitchen, muttering to himself, the swinging doors whapshushing behind him.
Chills traveled Doreen’s spine on pin-needled feet, goosepimpling the bare flesh of her arms. No amount of denial, no pointing out the fact that Susan Seidel had never once styled her hair nor carried a Gucci handbag to match the fashionable sandals on her pedicured feet could convince Doreen’s stony heart that her eyes were simply lying to her mind.
There she sat, Susan Seidel, the naturally blonde beauty dressed in designer jeans and a white silk shirt giving Doreen a fierce eye, as if mad about being dead for a year. And that little boy beside her, he’d looked normal enough when first he’d trailed a living ghost through the door, now growing more and more agitated, acting off somehow, retarded maybe, making faces and gesturing with his hands.
“Scramble,” he wailed, writhing on the bench seat to free himself from his mother’s tight arm. Doreen fished her uniform pocket for a pen and order pad, prepared to march across the black and white checkered linoleum to take the stunning bitch’s order, stopped by a sickening realization.
Once Shane saw this woman, if she and that boy weren’t simply passing through like phantom reminders of sins past, no other woman would be a blip on his radar. Not that Doreen had ever been anything more to him than just a girl in class, or a one-night stand at high school graduation, so drunk he didn’t know who or what he’d fucked and cared even less. Lord, how she wanted to be…more. Not for love; no, never anything as paltry and diminishing as that.
The rumors of the house he’d built on that fine ranch of his ran along the lines of a small palace inside. Not that she’d ever seen any more of the place than various stages of completion, and that only at some distance, set off as it was from the dirt road running past the newly-graveled drive. And the one time he’d almost stumbled upon her sneaking along the banks of Old Woman Crick, dodging the cottonwoods, trying for a close-up view…she shivered anew at the recall. The closest she’d ever managed was a look inside that two-story barn his father’d built years ago, a major disappointment, nothing spectacular there.
As one, the four old men left the end booth, tossing dollar bills on the table, acknowledging the spitting image of Susan Seidel with polite smiles and nods, touches to the brims of their hats, altogether failing to hide their collective stupefaction. Weren’t they all gray as death now?
“Are you on some kind of a break?” the woman demanded, her arms about the struggling boy, muffling his repetitious demand for scramble, scramble, scramble.
Doreen pasted a phony smile over her indignation. “Be right there,” she said with the calculated warmth of an ice cube. “Want a menu?”
“No,” the woman retorted, every bit as cold. “Two eggs scrambled for each, sides of bacon—soft—wheat toast for me, lightly buttered. A cup of coffee, glass of orange juice…for god’s sake, Kevin—.”
The boy twisted free of her, screeching unintelligibly, kicking the wall below the window, shaking the table, tumbling the condiments, the sugar dispenser striking the vinyl seat opposite, rolling to rest on its side in the crack.
“What about some milk for the kid?” Doreen asked.
“He’s a child, not a kid, and if I wanted milk, don’t you think I’d order it?”
Doreen whirled angrily about, ripping the order ticket free of the pad, scowling at Merle’s slit-eyed scrutiny through the order window cut in the stainless steel wall.
“I got it,” he said tersely, his moon face contorted in an angry grimace she’d seen all too often lately. “Get off your ass, Doreen.”
“Fuck you,” she whispered under her breath. The empty coffee cup in her shaking hand chattered in the saucer, the boy quieting by slow degrees at his mother’s indecipherable murmurs.
Bitch, that fucking bitch, nothing like Susan, sweet little Susan Seidel, all her sappy goodness ended in a gurgling rush of blood.
Chapter Two
Shane took a seat at the head of the dining room table, puzzled yet by Dillon standing just inside the front door, shifting in his boots, ready to run like a rabbit at the yap of a dog.
“Will you sit the fuck down?” Shane said. “Ain’t mad, if that’s what you’re worrying over.”
The man’s hesitation mystified until a black thought girdled Shane’s nausea in stark terror. Had there been another murder? Another victim or two bathed in their own blood and left for their kin to discover?
“Old bitch jumped into gear again,” Dillon muttered, a furtive glance at Shane.
“Figured as much.”
One last look out the open door and Dillon abruptly strode to the table, jerked an adjacent chair out and away, legs scraping the hardwood floor.
“Well, spit it out, dammit,” Shane said, massaging his temples. “Not in the mood for a mystery this morning.” Had enough of mystery, burned by one, branded forever more like the crop of new calves by the time this day ended.
Behind him on the kitchen counter, the coffee maker groaned to a finish in the intervening silence.
“Well, I…I could’ve sworn I just seen your…your wife,” Dillon said, eyes fixed on the simple, yet elegant light fixture hanging from the bare wood beam that Susan had once declared her favorite.
Shane’s fists clenched instinctively, fingernails digging deep into callused palms, unable to make more than the tiniest dent in skin tough as tanned cowhide. “Don’t fuck with me, Dill.” His voice flat-out astonished, a meanness never intended, the warning growl of an injured bear.
“Shane, you know I wouldn’t go near the subject normally but…” Dillon dropped his gaze to the table. “In the café…this woman…” he winced, shuddered and hunched, “Doreen dropped my breakfast…even Merle…the old guys…but then on the way out here, I got to thinking and—.”
The chair flipped over backward when Shane shot to his feet. “You want to piss me off, quit, get yourself fired maybe?” The hangover minor issue to his mushrooming rancor, he snatched the chair to rights and marched into the kitchen, to the cupboard above the coffee pot for a clean cup.
Dillon rose from the table and blocked the arched entry between the two spacious rooms. “Unless you’re firing me this minute, you just hear me out. On the way over here I—.”
“She’s dead, goddamn it,” he cried, firing the mug into the stainless steel sink, shards of glass exploding in all directions. He bit his lip to keep his eyes dry, gripped the sun-soft yellow lip of the Formica counter, the pain in his head nothing to the torment coursing fresh through his soul. Tasting blood, smelling the gore, staring out the window to the Front Range of the Rockies, yet seeing only that sticky knife handle protruding from his daughter’s bare chest, his wife’s slit throat, their impossibly lifeless stares.
Dillon advanced a step to claim the bottle of scotch lying on its side atop the stainless steel stove, the dregs swallowed in a single gulp.
“Aunt mentioned a twin sister,” he said after wiping his mouth on the back of his hand.
Shane shoved Dillon aside to exit the kitchen, threading the dining and living rooms, striding past the stone fireplace and down the hallway to the master bedroom. Forget the fucking shower, a shirt he needed, socks and boots, then off to meet the others for the annual spring branding.
Still, Dillon’s remark haunted like the ghosts of his personal nightmare—did Susan have a twin? He cursed his pickled memory, buttoned the cuffs of his white shirt. The outrage dissipating like air escapes a slow leaking tire, his thoughts flattened by the frustrating inability to answer with any surety this most rudimentary of questions.
Shirttails tucked into his jeans, he sat on the edge of the bed to pull on his socks, then stood up, stamping his feet into his boots, troubled more by what he abruptly realized he didn’t know about his late wife than of that which he was certain.
The only kin she’d ever contacted through the years was the aunt he’d never laid eyes on until the day of the funeral, an old woman to whom he’d never so much as said hello until he’d had to call her on the phone.
Etta Walker, who’d made herself right at home amid that fucked-up blur of days he’d put his beloved wife and only child, his heart and soul into the cold, hard Montana ground. He’d drank himself comatose at the wake, coming to the next morning in a straw-packed stall, horse shit for a pillow, wondering what the fuck he was going to do now. Rather, how he was going to finish what he should’ve began the very instant he’d found them.
With that one notable exception, the mourners had all been from his side, from Morrison and the surrounding area, friends he’d grown up with who’d become more Susan’s than his the very day he’d brought her home to the double-wide house trailer on twenty acres he sold a few years later, after both his parents had died, to Dillon.
And that sharp old lady, Etta, she’d taken it upon herself to collect all his weapons, hadn’t she? As if she knew what he planned to do. Once the yellow police tape had been removed, it was Etta who’d headed the clean-up crew, volunteers all, and previous to the funerals even, ordered his truck cleaned out as well. Revolver, hunting rifle, shotgun, even butcher and utility knives disappeared for a time. Surprisingly enough, she’d stayed on longer than anyone expected or planned, sleeping in that spare bedroom wholly untouched by death night after night. Refusing a room in the motel, living right there in the house for the month it took Shane to realize he would never step foot in the place again unless he was blind drunk and didn’t care where he might be stepping. Dillon and Ed at her beck and call, Etta waited to leave until he’d sobered up enough to make a place for himself in the barn at the ranch, until he’d ordered some of the materials to build the new house from the plans he and Susan had commissioned six months before the tragedy—actions that served to convince everyone concerned that for Shane the worst had passed.
But the worst hadn’t really passed, had it? Pain fresh as the moment of discovery had merely called a truce of sorts for the time being. And of its inevitable return, he was more than afraid.
Yet now, for the first time since he’d met his wife in that Billings bookstore almost eleven years ago—amazed when such a prize of a gal agreed to dinner, fully astonished when she wouldn’t let him leave for a week after the rodeo had ended, his father laughing long distance at his bewilderment instead of demanding his immediate return—now his curiosity overwhelmed him.
He’d never wondered much about Susan’s past, content to leave it as undisturbed as she appeared to want it, as if by pressing her for details monsters might rise out of murky depths to threaten their happiness. The rings on her finger, the birth of his daughter had not been enough (no, never enough) to ease the fear that one day she’d wake up to the fact she’d married nothing but a low-life cowboy. Even after both his mother and father passed, leaving not only the house in town and the 5500 acres of prime Montana grass he’d worked all his life, but a surprising half million dollars in investments to their only son, the feeling of inadequacy never quite went away.
He had Susan’s phone book, and in it the old lady’s number, but was she yet alive? Shane clapped his black Stetson on his head and headed out the front door.
“You remember anything specific about this sister?” he asked upon joining Dillon, who was inspecting the damage to his old Ford and Shane’s Silverado.
“Mentioned her being a twin, I thought,” he said gruffly, hands jammed in his front pockets now.
“Let’s give Etta a call.”
Dillon’s footsteps trailed Shane up the stairs and back inside.
If his wife had a twin sister, God forbid, how the hell would he ever face her? Like trying to beg forgiveness of a living ghost, something Shane would never grant that ghoul in the mirror whose face he shaved every morning, sorely tempted at each pass of the razor just to cut the sorry bastard’s throat.
***
The kid unnerved Doreen more than most, though she’d be loath to admit anything of the sort—to herself or anyone else. When she’d set breakfast down in front of him and his mother, the knowing look in his steel gray eyes made her skin crawl, as if he saw past her conscious thoughts, through the stone walls guarding her ulterior motives to the secrets buried deep in her soul.
Keen to protect her interests, she’d been intent not a moment before on inquiring after the snotty bitch’s name, perhaps mention in passing that she was the spitting image of Shane Seidel’s late wife, simply to gauge the reaction, if any, and what she might learn as a result. Scheming stopped cold by the boy’s intense smirking scrutiny and a troubling whisper centered solely in her mind.
Just one little word, gelid and distinct, like bullets fired from a gun.
Dead, dead, dead.
She’d fled the table, and the boy’s unwavering stare, to clean the grease from the floor. Glancing his way periodically to quell her mounting trepidation, restore her flagging self-confidence, convince herself she was just imagining things, she found his eyes waiting nearly every time, the egg-encrusted corners of his mouth perpetually upturned.
How could this stupid little boy know anything? The planning and execution flawless, the risk almost nil, every step plotted in much the same exhaustive manner as the brakes on her late husband’s—.
Hear, hear, hearme…
You?
She raised her eyes to meet the uncompromising gaze of the boy yet again.
“Kevin, are you finished?” his mother asked, diverting his attention, but not before his eyes flared ever so slightly, the smirk deepening to what looked for a fleeting instant like a grin of cognition. He slammed his fork to his empty plate, turning his head and upper torso aside in a futile effort to escape the napkin in his mother’s hand.
He couldn’t know…could he?
Fear hollowed Doreen’s stomach, shortening her breaths. Perhaps they were just passing through, gone forever once the bill was settled. Maybe that old wives’ tale was true and each person had a twin somewhere in the world, this very small world indeed.
Impossible, that child whispering in her head…wasn’t it?
Doreen whipped the guest check free of her pocket, in a hurry now to rid herself of this bitch and her oh-so-creepy little boy, send the apprehension packing with their departure, rush the paranoia back to sleep, lay to rest the foggy memory threatening again to surface.
For days and weeks immediately after the dirty deed, mind-numbing terror startled to life at each ring of the telephone, each dreaded knock upon the door, every suspect glance of a stranger, all of which had proved to be nothing in the end.
He’d never explained his reasons. Not that she remembered many of the details, much less cared to know why.
No one in town had figured the brakes with any certainty, even less so the murders, the law left with almost no leads. Her husband’s death ruled an accident, the killings of Susan Seidel and her daughter, Kory, generally assumed to be a random act perpetrated by an unknown, possibly a drifter passing through. The authorities had given up the search for suspects months ago, relegating the dismal blemish on Morrison’s lackluster reputation to the ranks of the unsolved, the case buried now in files gathering dust that no one would revisit. Bedding that asshole sheriff had kept Doreen abreast of any developments.
She slapped the check on the table, her flight to relative safety behind the counter stopped in mid-stride by the woman asking in a haughty tone, “Excuse me, but do you know where I might find Shane Seidel?”
Words failed Doreen for the mortification. She pivoted on her serviceable heel to face the booth, relieved that little Kevin was staring not at her, but out the window to the intersection, the amber traffic light blinking incessantly beyond the gray-haired old woman in the flower print dress zeroing in on the cafe’s front door. Doreen clamped her jaw so hard her teeth clacked.
Damn if that wasn’t Harriett Moseler, fat slug of a retired librarian with her pudgy arthritic finger presumably on Morrison’s weakening pulse, her claim to fame the binoculars trained on her tiny realm of a neighborhood seemingly at all hours of the day and night. The gray-haired spinster had apparently waddled the three blocks (wheezing the whole way, sure as shit) to see for herself if the rumor, which had obviously spread faster even than initial word of the murders, was true.
If Harriett hadn’t announced her intentions to anyone with ears for weeks prior, Susan Seidel and Kory might not be dead. If the old bat had never taken that Memorial Day jaunt to Branson, Missouri with a chartered busload of “valued” bank customers, not a one under sixty-five, Shane might not be the widower he was now.
“You don’t know him?” the woman asked the instant Harriett pushed open the glass door.
Doreen, determined not to let anything, or anyone, agitate her further, replied, “Everyone knows him.”
The boy turned a furtive glance her way, then frowned at the table.
Killdead, you.
Her heart rate doubled, the hackles on Doreen’s neck rose at the frosty chill renewing its grip on her spine.
His mother’s eyes narrowed, her upper lip shivered. “Then can you tell me where I can find him, or is that something else you charge for?”
Outrage gagged Doreen as Harriett approached the booth.
“Miss?” she said, “I’m sorry to bother you, but…”
“What can I do for you,” the woman said briskly, little Kevin preoccupied with the saltshaker now.
“Forgive my intrusion,” the old lady said at her phony, ingratiating best. “You know you bear a striking resemblance to a woman who died a year—.”
“Susan?” she asked and Doreen backpedaled half a step in outright horror.
“Why, yes,” Harriett said. “I take it you two are twins?”
“Were.” Abruptly, she offered her hand. “Kelly Runyon. I’m looking for my sister’s husband, Shane.” The old woman gave her fingers a quick squeeze, then Kelly shot a sideways glance at Doreen and asked, “Do you know where I can find him, ma’am?”
Her respirations audible, Harriett retrieved the sugar dispenser with a look of disapproval, then lowered herself to the bench seat opposite Kelly and her boy, the orange vinyl protesting the load in high-pitched whimpers akin to flatulence. She launched into detailed directions to the Lazy Heart, Shane’s ranch, which Kelly efficiently noted in a small spiral-bound notebook yanked from a pocket of the black Gucci bag.
Little Kevin scowled at his interlaced hands, thumbs pressing, pushing his forefinger…
Killdead. You.
At the sudden sharp pain traveling up both arms, Doreen held her breath, waiting until she was safe behind the counter to look down at her clenched fists. Silicone nails painted bright cherry red were sunk deep in both palms, nails she’d driven seventy miles in her ancient Dodge Aspen to Great Falls to get. Slowly she splayed her fingers, disgusted that the middle nail of her right hand remained embedded in her flesh, blood pooling about the painful protrusion, not unlike the knife handle left in Kory Seidel’s preteen breast.
Kelly deftly changed the subject when Harriett boldly inquired as to the reason she and Kevin were here. Merle behind the grill, watching through the order window in the stainless steel wall, narrowed his eyes in a glance at Doreen, then turned away.
Much as she detested the whole idea, Doreen would have to make a call later, and pray the number still worked.
***
The drawl in Shane’s ear summoned a fuzzy memory of Etta Walker’s wrinkled smile, her laughing black eyes.
“Shane? How are you, boy?”
“Fine, ma’am,” he replied, a curt nod to Dillon loitering in the doorway.
“And how’re those young friends of yours, Dill and Ed?”
“Annoying the hell out of me, as usual.”
A breathy little giggle and she said, “You’re sounding a lot better than last we spoke.”
He hesitated at a prickle of chagrin, then said, “Finished the house.”
“Bet you did a bang-up job, too, son.”
He stumbled again, fully embarrassed now and fishing for words, unable to form so much as a “thank you,” let alone ask her what he needed to know.
“Kelly,” Etta said abruptly. “That’s why you’re calling.”
“Who?”
“Kelly Runyon, Susan’s twin. Should be up your way shortly. Expecting a phone call any time. Thought this might be it.”
“I’d wager she’s arrived, ma’am.”
Dillon edged a step closer, head atilt.
“Well, that’s good to know,” Etta said. “Got her son with her, too, handsome boy, autistic unfortunately.”
“Aw-what?”
“My great-nephew Kevin, he’s autistic, a neurological disorder.”
Shane swiveled in the chair to face the darkened monitor, cordless phone pressed to his ear, shuffling papers on the desk for a pen to scribble Kelly Runyon and Kevin on a bright blue sticky pad.
“How do you spell that, ma’am?” he asked, printing the word autistic in block letters below the names. “So, what’re they doing here?”
“Leased a little house, sight unseen or so she said, just outside of Morrison.” She launched into a sketchy description, which Shane guessed was probably old man Wilkey’s place, the proximity to his ranch, not to mention a certain event in the distant past distressing him further.
Why now? Why had Etta just sidestepped an explanation?
The headache wasn’t helping him think any, his stomach churning and turning in hangover, or was that merely bald fear? Surely, this Kelly’d know the minute she laid eyes on him what a failure as a husband and father he’d been.
“Shane? Still with me, son?” Etta asked.
“She wasn’t at the funeral.”
“My fault, I’m afraid. I warned her off—thought it might too hard on…on everyone.”
Meaning me, he thought, fighting to keep his mind from imagining what kind of hell having this Kelly at the funeral might’ve been, realizing the very next instant he owed Etta Walker a deeper debt than ever he might repay.
“Susan and Kelly are…were…complete opposites. Fought like hell growing up, finally quit speaking for good right after their mother passed. Where Susan is… “ Etta hesitated, then said, “Susan was sweet, a dreamer.”
“Yes, she was,” Shane said, recalling her laughter like the tinkling of chimes in a sultry breeze, her touch warm and loving, her mouth soft and—.
“Shane,” Etta said sharply, snapping him back to focus. “Kelly’s a different animal. Put herself through college, fought tooth and nail to keep a good job after Kevin was diagnosed and that sonofabitching daddy of his run out on them, just like her and Susan’s daddy run out on my sister.” A soft sigh and she said, “Susan never mentioned much of this, did she?”
“None of it that I recall, ma’am,” he murmured, debating whether to confess he’d been more than happy to simply let her past lie.
“Both of them acted like the other was…” Etta paused, cleared her throat away from the receiver, then said, “Don’t get the wrong impression, son. Kelly’s not cold or heartless by any means. She’s the other side of the coin—no nonsense…tough, real tough.”
“Then why’s she—?”
“You really need me to spell that out for you?”
“But there’s no leads.” God, if he wasn’t wandering toward the ever-present black pool of despair waiting at the back of his mind.
“To be perfectly frank,” Etta said, “Kelly thinks your county sheriff is lazy at the very least. She left umpteen messages with his office and never got a single call back.”
Despite having known him all his life, Shane had wondered himself in darker, angrier moments if Ross Hedley was up to the job.
“But if Susan and Kelly weren’t speaking for years—.”
“Family’s family, boy, you know that. They weren’t above asking about one another now and again.”
How would he ever cope with seeing Susan’s twin—in town, the grocery store, at the post office? Might prove too much to handle. What then? Sell the ranch? Leave for a while? Let Dillon and Ed run his operation as they had the past year? And go where?
He needed something…
“Say, why don’t you come up here for a while,” he said, then looked over to Dillon, who grinned and nodded eagerly. “Stay as long as you like. My dime.”
Etta laughed softly and said, “What’re you, looking for someone to run a little interference?”
For the first time in a year, Shane chuckled. “Something like that maybe. Might want to pick your brain, too.”
“Well, there’s five minutes of your time wasted, but all right. I’d like that, like to see your house and get a look at you…sober for a change.”
“Ewww, you know, I’m awful sorry about—.”
“Hush, boy. You lived, didn’t you?”
His sinuses peppered unexpectedly. “Yes, ma’am, but—.”
“That’s all that matters.” She drew an audible breath and said, “I’m sixty-six years old now. Believe me, surviving the worst life throws at you and being able to smile a little after…that’s all that matters.”
Dillon chucked him on the shoulder, then headed out of the room, boot heels thumping the floor.
“She’ll be looking me up then?” Shane asked after a hard swallow cleared the lumps from his throat.
“There’s something else I suppose I should mention…” He waited but then she said, “Talk about that when I get there. Tomorrow too soon for you?”
Relief flooded the tension right out of him. “Whatever works for you, ma’am.” He leaned over and switched on his computer. “First class all right?”
“Save your money, boy. Coach is fine. Just make it an aisle seat. Don’t care to look out the window as much as shorten the distance to the toilet.”
Again, she’d done what would’ve been all but impossible prior to dialing her number—brought a smile to his face, a soft chuckle past his lips. “First class on the aisle then. Pick you up in Great Falls— tomorrow. Call you back in a few minutes with the details.”
“Oh, now, you really should save your money.”
The bonus he’d planned for Dillon and Ed suddenly popped into mind, making the earlier wreck in the parking lot seem almost funny. “I have saved my money, ma’am, for special occasions just like this.”
She clucked her tongue. “Well, if you don’t beat all. Suppose it’s cold up there.”
“Not nearly as hot as Del Rio, I’m sure.”
Chapter Three
Anxious as she was to escape that greasy spoon, and its slut of a waitress, Kelly Runyon had to make a conscious effort to keep her foot from mashing the accelerator.
Doreen.
Nametag as cheap as her overdone cologne, and that make-up? Good God, did the woman go out of her way to look like a cheap hooker or what?
Everything about the black-haired bitch shouted easy, man-bait, a sleazy cold-hearted trap waiting to take an innocent victim for all he was worth. She shuddered in disgust, glanced at Kevin buckled in the seat beside her. Happily preoccupied with that Tonka truck, a rusty red dented old toy he’d screamed over at a garage sale until she paid the two dollars simply to keep him quiet and the questioning stares to a minimum. He wouldn’t get in the car without it now.
With flick after flick of his forefinger, Kevin ceaselessly spun a front wheel, entranced by the repetitive movement.
At least he’d learned to articulate his needs to some degree, although Kelly and his special-ed teacher had been the only two for months able to decipher what little he said. Still, if Kelly kept up the therapy, forced him to interact with her and the world using the techniques she’d learned over the past five years, he’d continue making progress. At least that was her hope, ever at odds with herself over the move, what the change in routine might do to her boy, uncertain even now if seeking her sister’s killer wasn’t selfish on her part.
Maybe it was selfish, but who else was going to do it? A sheriff too lazy to return a call? The county detective seemed nice enough, patiently explaining every month that he had nothing new and would contact her should there be any developments in the case, reciting her cell phone number as proof he’d written it down and kept it.
Shane hadn’t been fit for much of anything according to her aunt, hadn’t even called the old lady since she’d left him more drunk than sober to wallow in his grief. So what if he’d decided to build the house? Etta had expressed some reservations at the time, questioning whether he’d ever really get started, let alone finish, but now, according to Harriett, the place was rumored to be quite the accomplishment.
Still, none of that translated into someone, anyone, interested enough in solving the crime to keep the case alive. Shane’s focus had been mainly booze and building, not pushing the law for answers. Almost as if he didn’t care who’d done it, or would rather be dead than alive.
Well, maybe he did, maybe he’d truly loved his wife and daughter, maybe he’d pushed for resolution and gotten nowhere. How would Kelly know what he’d done or hadn’t, or planned to do in that regard?
Figures Susan would choose a cowboy, her dreams ever leading her away from the comfort and convenience of suburban living to the hinterlands of bumfuck Montana.
Harriett had been nice enough for all her small-town nosiness, helpful with directions at any rate, displaying the appropriate, if not contrived, level of concern after Kevin kicked her in the shin not once, but three times, practically forcing Kelly to confess her son’s affliction. The retired librarian intimated there might be some assistance available in Great Falls, but definitely not here in Teton County, far too strapped financially to provide services for children with special needs. The way Harriett made it sound, the entire area was woefully lacking in resources compared to Denver, where there’d been a multitude of programs to help her make the most of the small window of opportunity to reach Kevin, generally regarded by educators, doctors, and therapists to be the years between ages two and five.
She hardly remembered her own father, just a vague, shadowy figure associated with an undefined sense of great unease, enough so that she’d caught herself squirming lately whenever he crossed her mind. Her mother had worked her fingers to the bone from virtually the day he’d left, then died of a heart attack at 54—right after her twin daughters turned 18 and were planning to fly the coop—as if having nothing to do but live for herself simply wasn’t worth the effort.
Her funeral had been the catalyst for the sisters’ final separation, the grief and the decisions—caskets and how much money to spend on flowers, type of service, even where she would be buried—spawning the worst fight of their lives, an argument that escalated to all-out war over a two-week period. Their mother no longer around to mediate, Aunt Etta unable to do more than attend her own sister’s burial before going right back home to a husband entering the final stages of prostate cancer.
The mirror image of her mother peering into the open casket the day of the funeral was too difficult, too painful for Kelly to dwell on for very long, even now. Etta must’ve realized the hurt her presence had inadvertently caused or she never would’ve asked Kelly to stay away from Susan’s burial. Nor would Kelly, after a ton of protests and buckets of tears, ever agreed.
She blinked to sharpen her attention on the two-lane county road winding through thick stands of trees and sporadic fields of green, the occasional residence notwithstanding.
After she and Susan had learned the mortgage on their mother’s three-bedroom home was greater than the paltry life insurance would cover, Kelly was determined to go to college and make something of herself. Susan on the other hand, she’d taken her half of what little each girl had cleared on the sale and ran off to Billings, her aspirations never any loftier than love and marriage, children, and life in the country.
Again, that deep-seated regret she might never assuage pinched Kelly’s breath, watered her eyes. If only she’d spoken to her sister, met her niece and brother-in-law at the very least, made the tiniest effort to make amends. As if she’d had all the time in the world instead of wasting years pretending her mirror image never existed.
Finding the bastard, or bastards, who’d taken two innocent lives was the least Kelly could do, not only for them, but yes, for herself. She glanced at Kevin, endlessly flicking that toy tire, the black plastic wheel spinning as effortlessly as the truckload of remorse whirling ever at the back of her heart.
Kelly slowed her car upon approaching her rental, dismissing the temptation to stop for a first look in fear of losing her nerve. Noting the odometer instead, she began counting the miles. According to Harriett, four from the driveway of the little gray house (Wilkey’s place she’d called it) to the culvert that bridged Old Woman Crick and then the turnoff to the right. Seven miles of dirt road (or so Harriett guessed) to the crest of a hill from which both Shane’s new house and the older, two-story barn at the end of a graveled drive would be in view. Kelly pressed the car for a little more speed, then just as suddenly backed off the accelerator.
Who in this world would ever outrun their own regrets?
Old Woman Crick turned out to be five and a half miles, not four, when Kelly wheeled her vehicle to the right onto a dirt road that loosely paralleled the stream.
Cows never lifted their smooth black or woolly cream or sleek red heads to note the passage of the slate gray Taurus. Calves of every color and size romped amongst themselves, nursed at their mothers’ sides, or slept in lush green pastures warming under the late May sun. Birds large and small rose singularly and in flocks into the cobalt sky before settling anew among the leafy cottonwoods and elms. Antelope grazed to either side of the road in clusters of three or four, one mother leading a set of twins along a barbed-wire fence in search of better pickings.
At nine miles the Front Range of the Rockies seemed close enough to touch, the postcard peaks snow-capped white atop granite gray shoulders. Kelly lowered her window a half inch to air clean and crisp and exceedingly sweet. Too many days the view from her desk in Denver, even her three-bedroom home in the Littleton suburbs had been entirely obscured by the stinking yellow cloud of smog, one of the sorrier results of the population spreading outward in all directions to overtake both foothill and plain. Maybe Montana would be better for Kevin in the long run, the pace of life here undoubtedly slower, less demanding, safer—.
She shook her head. Hadn’t been the least bit safe for her sister and niece, now had it?
At eleven miles, Kelly wondered if she hadn’t been so lost in thought she’d entirely missed the ranch Harriett had called the Lazy Heart. At twelve and a half she topped a rather steep rise to a ranch-style brick home in the distance, a two-story barn rising behind like a steel-white nanny. The trees and bushes limning the creek veered off to the right one hundred yards before the white board fence to either side of a freshly graveled drive met the dirt road.
Kelly braked to a stop, drew a deep breath to ready herself for what would surely be a stressful introduction when Kevin, looking directly at her instead of that spinning tire, said, “Home?”
And damn if her thumping heart didn’t hope, but only for the split-second it took her skeptical mind to take umbrage at the betrayal.
***
Doreen toyed with excuses to leave work, dismissing every one to avoid arousing Merle’s rancor. Though she’d strained to overhear, she’d missed two digits of the phone number Kelly had given Harriett when pots and pans clattered in the kitchen. Knowing that old bitch would never supply Doreen with information about anyone or anything, there was no point in triggering her suspicions, and gossip, by asking. Yet remained the unease over that little boy, that whisper in her head, as if he’d read her mind and knew all her secrets.
The hands on the clock slowed with each passing moment, a sense of urgency bedeviling her not unlike the night thirteen years earlier that she’d lain beside her sleeping husband, nursing her bruises and her hate, and finally made up her mind. Or the morning she’d woke alone a year later and set her sights on a real prize, never knowing the bloody debt she would pay in years to come to give her that slimmest chance in hell.
She hadn’t wanted the child to die, but he’d convinced her somehow, much later in a day she remembered only in bits and pieces—random snapshots of minutes few and far between—that there’d simply been no way around it. He was so cold, so efficient, dropping hints immediately afterward that the same could just as easily happen to anyone, at any time, even herself.
Shane, however, hadn’t read the new script carved in blood that day, too wrapped up in that house after his wife and child were gone to pay attention to anything else, much less a plainer woman named Doreen. She’d waited in the Shamrock night after lousy night, until it became clear even to a persistent girl such as herself that he wasn’t going to stop in for a drink, much less party to binge and beyond. He wasn’t anything close to the hard-drinking wild man he’d been before marriage, though she’d have bet her life that once he’d gotten six months past the loss, he’d fall back into his old ways. She’d counted on that much in fact, only to be sorely disappointed thus far. And now this bitch and her sorry little brat show up to spoil the future.
The lunch rush was no rush, just one or two townsfolk, a lost tourist, a couple of dollars in tips.
“Damn, Merle,” she said. “Where is everybody?”
He worked the stub of an unlit cigar in his mouth. “You forget? Branding at Shane’s today. Might close up early and go out there myself, just for the food and drink.” He patted his round belly. “Better than what I do here, by a long shot.”
“But his wife did all the cooking.”
The kitchen that day had smelled of baked beans thick with molasses and brown sugar, onion, mustard and potato salad. Dozens upon dozens of deviled eggs in flat Tupperware trays stacked on the top shelf of the refrigerator. Kory just out of school that Friday before Memorial Day, yet not at the ranch with her father as expected, but in town and helping her mother instead, the only real surprise, the only unexpected complication.
“Guessing he might’ve got a caterer this year.” Merle closed his eyes a moment, then pivoted on his heel, headed for the back. “God,” he said softly, “imagine having to face that.”
Doreen followed him. “Face what?”
“Are you blind?” he asked, stopping at the doorway to his tiny office. “Had to be his wife’s twin sister in here this morning. Can you imagine how hard that’s going to be for Shane if the woman hangs around town?” He snorted then, shook his head in turning away. “No, I don’t suppose you could—you don’t have one empathetic thought in your greedy little brain.”
Her outrage at the insult sideswiped any chance of a retort, yet she stuttered, spluttered, fought for words, finally leaving him there, his snigger echoing after her on the swift retreat through the kitchen, the whap-shush of swinging doors, to a spot behind the cash register on an island display cabinet adjacent to the front door.
God, she hated that fat little fuck. The occasional grab of her ass, the brush of his hand against a breast, lately threatening to fire her over every little thing, as if he’d ever really do that.
Oh, but he’d guessed some of what she’d been a party to, hadn’t he? Or figured he had. Insinuated as much with snide comments that maybe accidents aren’t always as accidental as they might appear and people don’t conveniently die just when others wished they would. Even told her one time when she’d pissed him off that everyone in town knew she’d had plenty to do with her husband’s death and though she’d easily summoned the tears, and with them a reluctant apology, the look in his eye she caught once in a while warned her that she hadn’t fully convinced him. Not in light of a remark she’d made just two months prior to the fatal crash about how she’d love to get rid of that old 1940 Chevy pickup, a money-eater half-restored whose needs were far more important to her husband than new clothes and shoes for his wife. Well, she’d been distressed that day, her assortment of make-up inadequate to cover that first, and only, black eye.
But Merle had kept his mouth shut on that incriminating remark, hadn’t he? Especially after she opened hers—for a small fee, of course. His foul smell and equally foul taste, his hands at her ears, trapping her head, his grunts forever imprinting disgust on her mind…she barely stopped herself from right then wiping her mouth and ruining her lipstick. Maybe that’s why he’d been so mean of late, in need of another flame-red ring around that tiny brain between his legs.
She lived to make him wait until he was desperate, unless something came along that she simply had to have. Either way, five minutes on her knees and—.
The front door opened to two men dressed in identical navy blue coveralls, the taller blond looking immediately to the dinner-plate clock yellowed with age on the overhang above the counter, the shorter of the two eyeing her with the lascivious need of the perpetually randy.
“Well, hello, darling,” he said as both grabbed themselves a stool at the counter.
“Ah, fuck, way too early,” the taller muttered.
“Hungry?” Doreen asked and smiled at the shorter one. “What can I get you?”
A sideways glance at his younger partner, he hiked bushy black brows and lifted his left hand to mime drinking from a cup. “Coffee, sweetheart.” Perhaps making a point of showing her there was no wedding band on the appropriate finger.
A metallic whap from the kitchen and Doreen knew without a glance behind that Merle was at the grill, watching her every move through the order window. Damn he acted as jealous as her father sometimes, but then again her father’s brain had always been much larger, much more than a mouthful, and he knew how to get the most out of her.
She poured coffee, passed them each a menu, her focus the shorter man, the taller twisting his gold wedding band, yanking it down his finger and back over his knuckle several times before slapping the countertop with his palm.
“Dammit, we’re probably going to have to kill a couple of hours, then find the place, then unload.” He extracted a cell phone from a breast pocket. “Be driving all goddamn night just to get home.”
“Rather get a room instead,” the shorter said, brown-black eyes locked on Doreen, the menu lying unopened on the counter in front of him. “Party a bit maybe.”
“What’ll you have?” she asked, leaning on her forearms expressly to allow him a peek at her goods. A party might be lucrative, a good diversion, a good excuse to put off making that damnable call, albeit temporarily.
He laid a hand over hers, his gaze wandering from her cleavage to her face and back, a smile forming below his wispy mustache. “Not so fast. Haven’t made up my mind yet.”
“I could help you with that,” she said, batting nary an eyelash at the crash of pots back in the kitchen.
“I bet you could, honey. Name’s Bobby,” he said and looked to name tag pinned over her left breast. “Doreen.”
“Bobby,” she repeated. The kitchen quiet now, Merle’s unseen stare likely burning twin holes in her back.
The tall one flipped open a pocket-size notebook, eyes flickering between the scrawl on the page and the cell phone numbers he stabbed. He put the device to his ear and frowned at the coffee pot along the back wall, ignoring Doreen and Bobby.
“Miss Runyon, this is Mike Smith with Denver Moves. We’re now in your area and ready to deliver. Please return this call as soon as possible. My number—.”
“Cheeseburger,” Bobby said, stealing Doreen’s attention from that notepad lying on the counter under Mike’s hand bearing the phone number she was sure a bitch like Kelly would keep unlisted.
The phone number might be handy, just in case, especially since she had a damn good guess as to why Bitch Kelly had dragged her odd little boy to Morrison. Obviously, with movers here, she wasn’t leaving anytime soon.
“Cheeseburger and fries for Bobby,” Doreen said, then turned to ask, “And what about Mikey?”
Scowling, he laid the cell phone atop the notebook, defeating Doreen’s purpose for the moment. “Not hungry.” He turned to Bobby. “No answer, no messages.”
“We’re early, pal. Maybe she hasn’t got here yet.”
Doreen turned to meet Merle’s unhappy scrutiny as expected and smiled sweetly. “Cheeseburg—.”
“I got it,” he said tersely, pointing a spatula toward his office at the back.
She pivoted to rest her elbows on the counter once more.
“Why don’t we just stay the night, Mike?” Bobby said, mustache twitching, eyes traveling Doreen from chin to cleavage again.
“In this little shithole,” Mike replied, then managed a weak smile for Doreen. “Sorry, hon, didn’t mean to insult your town here, but… my wife’s having an affair and I want to get back, surprise her with the sonofabitch.”