Hard Rustler

Her grandmother would have understood because Annabelle had always been the favorite. At least, that’s what she told herself.

“You’re so much like me, Annabelle Clementine, that sometimes I swear you’ll be the death of me.” Then Grandma Frannie’s expression would soften and she’d press a cool palm to Annabelle’s cheek. “So much like me. It’s like seeing myself at your age.”

“That’s why I’m your favorite,” she’d say, and her grandmother would shake her head and laugh before telling her to run along outside.

But it had to have been true. Otherwise, why would Frannie have left her the only thing she had of any value—this house. And left it only to her instead of to all three sisters?

A tap on the passenger-side window startled her. Her eyes flew open, but it took a moment to chase away the bittersweet memories along with the guilt and the tears.

* * *

REALTOR MARY SUE Linton glanced at the silver sports car and shook her head. Leave it to Annabelle to show up in something like that. She shouldn’t have been surprised since this was the Annabelle Clementine she’d known since grade school.

She had been surprised, though, when her former classmate had called and asked Mary Sue to represent her in the sale. Not surprised. Shocked. The two of them had never been friends, traveling in a completely different circle of friends, even as small as the classes had been. The truth was that Annabelle hadn’t uttered two words to her throughout four years of high school. Did people still say stuck-up?

Blonde and blue-eyed, with a figure that Mary Sue would have killed for, Annabelle was The Girl Most Likely to Become Famous. At least, that’s what it had said in their senior class yearbook. Everyone knew Annabelle was going to be somebody. Annabelle had said it enough times.

But, then again, she’d also said that she would never come back to Whitehorse. And here she was.

Still, why come all this way to sell her grandmother’s house? Mary Sue had told her on the phone that she could deal with everything but the paperwork and save her the trip. She had expected Annabelle to jump at it. Instead, the woman had insisted on coming back to “handle” things.

“If you don’t trust me to get you the best price...” Mary Sue had started to say, “you can kiss my—”

But Annabelle had interrupted with, “It’s my grandmother’s house.”

Right. Just like it had been her grandmother’s funeral. Everyone in town had turned out. Annabelle’s two sisters had flown in and out. No Annabelle, though. So was Mary Sue supposed to believe the house had sentimental value to this woman? Not likely.

After tapping on the sports car window, she bent down and looked in. One glance and it was clear that her former classmate had aged well. She looked better than she had in high school. Mary Sue felt that old stab of jealousy.

She started to tap again, but to her surprise, Annabelle appeared to be furtively wiping away tears. Shocked at such a sign of emotion, Mary Sue was taken aback. Maybe she was wrong about Annabelle. Maybe she did have a heart. Maybe she did care about her grandmother. Maybe she even cared about this house and Whitehorse and the people she’d once snubbed.

The thought almost made her laugh though as her former classmate climbed out of the convertible sports car saying, “Okay, let’s get this over with so I can get out of this one-horse town.”

* * *

DAWSON UNLOADED THE horse trailer, parked it and went into the ranch house he’d built himself. He’d worked hard the past thirteen years and now had a place he was proud of on the family ranch. The oldest son of two, he’d had to take over helping his mother run the ranch after his father had died. He’d worked hard and was proud of what he’d been able to accomplish. Annabelle wasn’t the only one who’d done well over the years, he told himself with no small amount of defensiveness.

“Got a chip on your shoulder, do you?” he grumbled with a curse. He’d been thinking about her again. All the way to town he’d been trying to exorcize her from his thoughts with little luck. Before she’d left town, she’d made him feel as if he was never going to amount to anything. It still stuck in his craw.

He kept seeing her sitting in her car while he refueled it. She hadn’t even had the good grace to look at him—not to mention acknowledge that she’d once known him. Known him damned well, too.

Dawson gave that memory an angry shove away. When Annabelle Clementine had left town in a cloud of dust years ago, she’d said she was never looking back. Well, today proved that, didn’t it?

Worked up over his run-in with her, he told himself he just needed a hot shower and clean clothes. But as he caught his reflection in the bathroom mirror, he came to a startled stop and had to laugh. He wouldn’t even recognize himself after two weeks in a hunting camp in the Missouri Breaks.

He stared at his grizzled face and filthy, camp-worn clothes, seeing what she’d seen today. Even if she had recognized him, seeing him like that would only have confirmed what she’d thought of him all those years ago. He looked like a man who wasn’t going anywhere.

Stripping down, he turned on the shower and stepped in. The warm water felt like heaven as he began to suds up in a fury. He just wanted that woman out of his hair—and his head. But his thoughts went straight as an arrow to that image of her standing beside the river. Her long blond hair gleaming in the sunlight and that black outfit hugging every unforgettable curve he’d once known so well. Growling, he turned the water to cold.

Out of the shower and toweling himself off, he looked at his reflection in the mirror again. Was it really possible that she hadn’t known him? He reached for his razor, telling himself it didn’t matter. With a curse, he acknowledged that he’d been lying to himself for years about his feelings for her—ever since that day he’d rescued her from his tree house when she was five.

And he’d rescued her again today, he thought with a curse. He just never learned.

* * *

ANNABELLE TOOK THE key from her pocket and opened her grandmother’s front door, Mary Sue Linton at her elbow. Taking a deep breath, she stepped inside, bracing herself for more painful memories. Instead, shock stopped her cold just inside the door.

“You can’t sell the house like this,” Mary Sue said, stating the obvious next to her. “I thought you said your sisters cleaned everything out?”

“They said they took what they wanted.” She couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her grandmother hadn’t been a packrat, she’d been a hoarder. The house was crammed full of...stuff. She could barely see the floor. The rooms appeared to be filled with furniture, knickknacks, stacks of newspapers and magazines, bags of clothing and clutter. The house looked more like a crowded old antique shop than a home. Unfortunately it didn’t take a trained eye to see that all of this wasn’t even junkshop worthy.

“What am I supposed to do with all of this?” she demanded. “I can’t very well have a garage sale this time of year. If there was anything in all this mess worth selling.” It was late November. Christmas was only weeks away.

Mary Sue shrugged. “You could hire someone to help you pack it all up. Unfortunately, the local charity shop can’t take most of this. If there are things you want to save—”

“No.”

“I was going to say that you could put them into a storage shed.”

Annabelle was shaking her head, overwhelmed as they worked their way along the paths through the house.

“Otherwise, I could give you some names of people who might be able to help you at least haul it out to the dump.”

“Great. How long is that going to take? I need to get this house on the market right away.” She followed the narrow trails, going from room to room, Mary Sue on her heels, until she reached what had once been a bedroom but now looked more like a storage room where a bomb had gone off.

“This is no normal hoarding,” Mary Sue said. “It looks like someone ransacked this room.”

Annabelle agreed it did appear that someone had torn into all the boxes and dumped the contents on the floor. Her grandmother before she died? Her sisters when they’d come back for the funeral?

“Look at the window,” Mary Sue said in a hoarse whisper as she grabbed Annabelle’s arm, her fingernails digging into tender flesh.

“Ouch.” She jerked free and kicked aside some of the mess to move to the window, which was now half open, the screen torn. “The lock is broken.”

Behind her, Mary Sue let out a shudder. “Someone broke in.”

That was the way it appeared, although she couldn’t imagine in her wildest dreams why they would want to. She closed the window and turned to find Mary Sue hugging herself.

“Whoever broke in isn’t here anymore,” she tried to assure the Realtor. “Let’s look upstairs. Maybe it’s better.” Unfortunately, the upstairs wasn’t any better; both bedrooms were stacked full of clutter, including her grandmother’s old room.

Back downstairs, she took another look at the front downstairs bedroom. It wasn’t quite as full as the others. She checked the closet, found what must be her grandmother’s clothing and assumed that, as Frannie got older, she’d moved downstairs.

“Could this be anymore outdated?” Mary Sue called from the kitchen.

“I think I can clean out one of the downstairs bedrooms so at least I’ll have a place I can stay,” Annabelle said as she joined her in the kitchen. The front bedroom downstairs had been hers growing up.

Mary Sue didn’t seem to hear her. Instead, she was frowning at the clipboard she had in her hands.

“What?” Annabelle demanded. “Don’t tell me there is another problem.”

“No, not exactly. But it is strange. This is a layout of the house I got from the records department at the courthouse,” she said, indicating the sheet on her clipboard. “That wall shouldn’t be there.”

“What?”

“This shows an alcove.”

“An alcove? Maybe it’s back there behind all the junk and you just can’t see it.”

Mary Sue’s frown deepened. “Do you remember an alcove from when you were growing up here?”

She was supposed to remember an alcove? Seriously? “No. The plans for the house must be outdated.”

“Not according to the courthouse. Your grandmother bought this house when she was in her twenties so she had it for...”

“She was seventy-six when she died, so she had it for more than fifty years.” Annabelle hadn’t realized how long Frannie had lived in Whitehorse until she’d seen it in the obituary that one of her sisters had sent her. It hadn’t been out of kindness that Chloe had mailed it to her. Her older sister had never been that subtle. Both Chloe and Tessa Jane—TJ—had tried to make her feel guilty about their grandmother leaving her the house—let alone Annabelle missing the funeral.

“Frannie owned this house almost from the time it was built,” Mary Sue was saying. “So if anyone made the changes, it had to have been your grandmother. Why would she wall up an alcove? I wonder what’s behind it?”

“Okay, you’re giving me the creeps now,” Annabelle said. “Clearly, you have the plans for the wrong house. Aren’t there a bunch of houses along this street with similar floor plans?”

Mary Sue nodded, but didn’t look convinced. “I can check at the courthouse again I guess. But you have to admit, if the plans are right, then it is more than a little odd to wall up the alcove, let alone—”

“You’re letting your imagination run away with you. You knew my grandmother.”

With a lift of one eyebrow, Mary Sue said, “She said her husband died before she moved to Whitehorse, but what if—”

“Seriously? You think my grandfather’s body is stuffed in there?”

“Ever seen the play Arsenic and Old Lace?”

“Frannie Clementine was one of the most kind and generous people in town. She wouldn’t hurt a fly.” Standing just over five feet, Frannie had been a tiny, sweet-tempered woman who loved kids, garage sales and cooking. She attended church every Sunday, come rain or shine or snow.

Annabelle could tell that Mary Sue was enjoying trying to scare her. Was it any wonder that they hadn’t been friends in high school?

“Just sayin’,” the Realtor said, clearly trying to hide a grin. “Did you know that since her death right before Halloween last month, kids are saying that this house is haunted?”

“That’s ridiculous. Just because she died in this house...” Annabelle tried to hide the shudder that moved through her at the thought. If one of her neighbors, old Inez Gilbert, hadn’t come over to check on Frannie, she would have been lost in all this mess for weeks. That thought did nothing to improve the situation.

“On Halloween some kids saw what they said was a ghost moving around in the house. They said it looked like an old woman dressed in all white and—”

“Stop,” Annabelle snapped, having had enough. The house was creepy as it was with all the memories, not to mention being filled to overflowing with collected junk. She really didn’t need this. “It was probably Inez from next door. The woman is a horrible busybody and always has been.”

If Mary Sue thought she could scare her, then she didn’t know what scary was. Unfortunately, Annabelle did. It was losing a dream job and a fabulous lifestyle, and being forced to do things she’d told herself she would never do, like return to this town and all the memories that came with it.

“The house isn’t haunted. There never was an alcove—”

Mary Sue tapped her clipboard. “But the plans—”

“The alcove isn’t here now so that’s all I care about. I need to get packing and you need to get this house sold. Just get me the names of people who will help clean it out.”

Right now, though, she needed a breath of fresh air and Whitehorse had plenty of that. She stepped out onto the front porch, letting the door close behind her. She’d known this wouldn’t be easy, but it was turning out to be more difficult than she could have imagined. The memories, the stories, the stupid missing alcove, not to mention all that junk. She definitely had more pressing things to worry about than a bunch of local kids thinking the house was haunted.

The clock was ticking, she thought, looking at her car, the last vestige of her former life other than the clothes on her back. She had to get this house sold.

* * *

MARY SUE GRITTED her teeth. Annabelle annoyed her to no end. “Hasn’t changed a bit,” she muttered. “Get me this, do this for me.” She looked around the house, her gaze going to the kitchen and the missing alcove. “I hope there is a body walled up in there—and a vindictive ghost who hates blondes.” That would serve Annabelle right.

She felt guilty, but only a little, for trying to scare her former classmate. But she was still puzzling over the missing alcove as she stepped out onto the porch. Her mother had been a Realtor. Maybe she’d ask her if she knew anything about the old Clementine house, as it was known around town. It sat along with a half dozen others on a street locally and affectionately known as Millionaire’s Row. The houses were large, a lot of them the same basic floor plan.

Mary Sue moved to the end of the porch to look back at the rock wall that marked the property line. On the other side of the wall was the Milk River. Between the house and the river, though, were large trees and an expanse of grass broken only by some cracked sidewalk that ended at an old garage that had seen better days.

“That should come down,” she said of the dilapidated structure and marked it on her sheet on her clipboard. Through the trees, she could make out only a portion of the neighboring house’s eaves in the distance. These really were beautiful old houses along this street, so private because of the old-growth trees and the huge lots. Not exactly Millionaire’s Row now, but definitely prime real estate in this town.

“So where can I reach you?” Mary Sue asked, turning to Annabelle who appeared distracted. Not that she could blame her. The supermodel had quite a job before her.

“You have my cell number and you know where to find me. I’ll be staying here.”

“In the house?” Mary Sue couldn’t help her surprise.

Annabelle turned to look at her. “Why wouldn’t I stay here?”

“No reason, except...” She remembered all the clutter and the fact that Frannie had died here. Not that unusual for a woman her age, but still, add to that the walled-up alcove... Mary Sue shivered.

While she had been trying to scare Annabelle earlier, she had to admit that the house had an odd feel to it. Maybe it was just her, but there was something... Or maybe she had managed to scare herself more than she had Annabelle and all because of that discrepancy in the floor plan—and the fact that someone had broken into the house and might come back.

She mentioned this to Annabelle who only waved away the idea. “It was probably kids. You know how teenagers are, an empty house, ghost story dares...”

Mary Sue didn’t know, but she had a feeling that Annabelle was all too aware of how kids like that acted because she’d been one. “I just thought you’d want to stay at the hotel, since that’s where your sisters stayed when they came home for the funeral.”

Annabelle made an angry sound under her breath. “They didn’t stay here? No wonder they didn’t take much—let alone tell me how full this house was. I thought they were here going through things. From what I can see, they didn’t take anything. You were the one who let them into the house with the key I sent you, right?”

Mary Sue sighed, wondering if Annabelle was going to blame her. “Yes, but I didn’t come inside. The house was left to you. I was the one who was responsible for opening the door and making sure it was locked when they left. That was all. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable going in the house without you.”

“So did they take anything?”

“Not as far as I could tell.” She shrugged. “I let them in, they went into the house, but only for a short period of time, they sat on the porch steps for a little while and then they left and I locked up. From what I saw, they took a few framed photographs, but I think that was about all.”

Annabelle looked as if she was going to blow a gasket. “I should have known they wouldn’t be of any help. That’s just great. Well, they’re not getting anything now. Not that there is anything worth keeping in there. From what I’ve seen, most of the stuff is on the way to the dump just as soon as I can get it loaded up. I’ll need help right away. Did you make those calls yet?”

Mary Sue tried not to bristle. “You do realize that tomorrow is Thanksgiving, right?” she asked. “And the day after that is Black Friday, when a lot of people in town will be shopping, either locally or driving the three hours to Billings.” Billings was the largest city in Montana and two hundred miles to the south. Mary Sue was planning to go down to shop with a couple of friends, spending the night at a hotel and making a trip out of it.

“Your point?”

“It’s going to be hard to find anyone to help this time of year,” she said, and added quickly before Annabelle could argue. “But let me make a few quick calls.” She hurriedly stepped off the porch and walked down the cracked driveway toward her car, phone in hand. Even though it was now close to freezing outside, she didn’t want to go back into the house. Nor did she want Annabelle to hear her phone conversations. When she told people who they would be working for, she expected them to balk.

A few minutes later, she returned to the porch where Annabelle was pacing. The model looked cold, but no wonder, since she was inappropriately dressed for Montana weather. Mary Sue guessed that she wasn’t anxious to go back inside the house, either. “I found a couple of men who are willing to help for thirty dollars an hour.”

“Thirty dollars an hour? I’m not asking them to remodel the house.” Annabelle looked through the window with a shake of the head as if calculating how many hours work was in there. “Forget it,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll do the packing myself. Where can I find some boxes?”

“Behind the town recycling center. But you aren’t going to be able to get very many into that car of yours. Are you sure you don’t want—”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“Okay, but once you get everything boxed up, you’re going to need a truck to take it either to the dump or a storage unit, if you decide to keep some of it.”

“Got it. I’ll deal with all that once it’s boxed up.”

“I have plans, otherwise...” Otherwise what? Did she really feel guilty about not offering to help? If Annabelle was too cheap to hire help, that was her problem.

With a wave of her hand, her former classmate dismissed her.

“All right, then let me know when the house is ready to go on the market,” Mary Sue said, not about to mention that the place would need to be cleaned. A nice coat of fresh paint in the rooms would also help. But she didn’t feel that Annabelle was up to hearing more bad news right now and Mary Sue wasn’t up to giving it.

Anyway, she was anxious to talk to her mother. As she walked to her car, her clipboard in hand, she tried to convince herself that she’d gotten the wrong floor plan from the courthouse.

Except she knew better. She prided herself on being thorough. Frannie had walled up the alcove. But why? And what was in the closed-up space?

* * *

“SHOULDN’T YOU BE ASLEEP?” the assisted-living nurse asked from his doorway.

Bernard “Bernie the Hawk” McDougal gave her the smile that had worked on women since he was a boy. Even at eighty-nine, the old mobster still could make a woman blush with no more than a wink and a grin. There might be snow on the roof, but it was still plenty hot down in the furnace.

“Just finishing up here,” he told her from his desk and waited until she moved on before he picked up the scissors again.

He pulled the newspaper clipping toward him, still shocked that he’d discovered it online while surfing for obits of women of a certain age. The moment he’d seen this one, he’d printed it out, but the resolution wasn’t good so he’d called the newspaper where it had run—the Milk River Courier—and had the paper overnighted to him.

It had arrived this afternoon while he was napping. When he’d awakened, he’d seen the envelope waiting for him on his desk and quickly torn into it. Inside he’d found the complete edition of that week’s Whitehorse, Montana, newspaper—all four pages of it.

Now he studied the face in the obituary mug shot. The photo didn’t do her justice. The one he’d seen on the internet had been much more flattering.

But no photo of his Baby Doll could hold a candle to the woman in the flesh—especially back when she was young. She’d been a blonde beauty. Tiny and gorgeous, she’d been exquisite. The kind of woman who stopped traffic and turned heads. She’d certainly turned his, he thought with a curse. And the things she’d put him through from the first time he’d laid eyes on her.

That was something else about her that had attracted her to him. She wasn’t intimidated by him or any of his goons. Oh, that woman had a mouth on her. She could cut a man down to size as if her tongue was a switchblade.

He chuckled to himself. He’d wanted her and would have married her, but she wasn’t having any of that. She liked being mysterious. Hell, he’d never known her real name. That first night at the party, he’d seen right away that she and her friend had crashed his little get-together on the posh rooftop of his favorite New York City restaurant. He’d thought about booting the two of them, but there was something about her.

She’d flirted with him but refused to tell him who she was, as if she thought he’d call her daddy to have her picked up and taken home. A few minutes with her and that was the last thing he planned to do.

“Okay, you want to play it coy? You’ll just be my Baby Doll, then,” he’d said, knowing even then that he had to have her.