Redemption

Kate nodded, actually tempted. She could definitely use an afternoon away from this place. And if everyone was going to be at the fair, this would be a great time to do some exploring on her own.

She watched Bethany drive off, seriously considering locking the door and putting out the Closed sign. Lou wouldn’t mind having the afternoon off, she thought as she turned toward the kitchen to talk to him.

Behind her, the bell rang and a draft of cool spring air rushed in. She gave a silent curse and plastered on her welcoming smile as she turned.

“Hey, Kate,” bellowed a large blond woman wearing a Western shirt and jeans with a pair of new red cowboy boots and a straw hat. In the woman’s arms was a stack of brightly colored quilts.

Kate’s smile broadened. Priscilla Farnsworth or Cilla, as everyone called her, was a breath of fresh air. Loud, full of life and with a laugh that was contagious, Cilla was a member of the Beartooth Quilting Society. The group of women, ranging in age from thirty to eighty, came in every Thursday afternoon for pie and coffee. Often they would bring some of their latest quilts to show her.

Kate had been invited to attend one of their meetings when she’d first hit town. Cilla and Thelma Brooks had come into the café her first week one morning after rush to ask if she sewed, if she wanted to learn and if she would buy a raffle ticket for a quilt they were selling to raise money for the one-room schoolhouse down the road.

Both women had apologized for being so pushy. “It’s just that we get so little new blood,” Thelma had said, and Cilla had added with a laugh, “That makes us sound like vampires.” That was when Kate had fallen for the woman’s laugh. She’d bought a raffle ticket, said she didn’t have time right now to quilt—maybe later.

“We quilt and talk and eat!” Cilla had said. “Lord, how we eat. But what’s the point of getting together unless someone bakes something, right?”

Kate didn’t sew and didn’t have a clue about quilting, not that she told them that. Every woman in these parts sewed, gardened and canned—except for Kate.

“I had this great idea,” Cilla said as she bustled in now and dropped the stack of quilts into an empty booth. “I was on my way to the fair and I just swung right in here. Now, if you hate this idea, just say so. You won’t hurt my feelings. What do you think about us putting up a few of our quilts in the café?”

Kate opened her mouth, not sure what was going to come out, but she didn’t have to worry. Cilla didn’t give her a chance to speak.

“Okay, you hate the idea. I just thought these walls could use some color. No offense. Oh, me and my big mouth. You probably had plans to change the paint color and now I’ve gone and—”

“No, I don’t hate the idea,” Kate said. And plans? Her life had been moving so fast that her only plan had been to get moved into the apartment upstairs and reopen the café. She’d needed the money and hadn’t given a thought to sprucing up the place. If it had been good enough when Claude was alive, then she’d figured it was good enough now.

Also the Branding Iron was the only café in Beartooth, and she knew if it didn’t open again quickly after his death, the townsfolk would start going down the road to Big Timber. They were creatures of habit. She didn’t want their habit of hanging out at the Branding Iron to change.

“Why don’t you show me what you brought?” she said, realizing the walls definitely could use a coat of fresh paint.

The women of the Beartooth Quilting Society had made the first and only friendly overture anyone had made toward her since she’d arrived in town. She knew only too well how these small communities were when it came to outsiders. Which was just fine. She preferred her privacy, and anyway, she wouldn’t be staying long, now, would she? She thought of Jack French’s comment earlier about her leaving. What was it Jack thought he knew?

“Aren’t you worried that the quilts will smell like grease before long?” Kate asked, the scent of bacon permeating the air as she spoke.

“We’ll rotate them in and out,” Cilla said. “And we’ll do all the hanging and taking down. You won’t have to mess with any of it.”

Kate considered the walls. “I was thinking about painting first.” Well, she was now. “What color would you suggest?” That was something else she didn’t have a clue about.

“A nice neutral. You know, I have some extra paint from when I did my downstairs. Why don’t the girls and I swing by with it Monday after you close? It wouldn’t take us any time at all.”

“Cilla, that is such a generous offer, but—”

“Not at all. We’re glad to do it. Now, come take a look at these quilts and see what you think.”

Kate felt swept along, as if she’d fallen into the roaring creek that ran by town and was now on her way to the Gulf of Mexico via the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi rivers.

“I think they’ll do this place wonders, don’t you?” Cilla said after she’d shown Kate an array of intricate and beautiful quilts.

“I love them all,” Kate said. “And I appreciate you thinking of me.”

Cilla smiled, a twinkle in her eye. “I can’t imagine what brought you to Beartooth, but I’m glad you’re here. I hope you plan to stay.”

“Thank you,” Kate said, and glanced toward the Beartooth General Store across the street. As usual, Nettie Benton was watching from the front window, determined to find out the truth about her new neighbor. Kate feared Nettie wouldn’t stop until she uncovered everything about her.

Kate remembered the note and felt a chill run the length of her spine. She’d put the note in her apron pocket and dropped the apron in the bin by the back door earlier when she’d been visiting with Bethany.

After waving goodbye to Cilla, Kate locked the door, flipped the sign in the window to Closed and told Lou to take the day off. The moment he left, she hurried to the bin with the aprons in it. As she pulled hers out and reached into the pocket, her heart took off at a gallop. Frantically she dug in one pocket, then the other.

The note was gone.

CHAPTER FIVE

KATE WAS FRANTICALLY DIGGING through the aprons in the bin, searching for the note, when she heard a vehicle drive up in front of the café. She ignored it and the knock at the front door. The Closed sign was up. The person would eventually take the hint and leave.

She tried to tell herself not to panic. She didn’t need to find the note. She knew only too well what it had said. So why was she panicking?

Because she didn’t want the note to fall into anyone else’s hands.

With a jolt, she realized it probably already had.

“You must not have heard my knock.”

Kate whirled around to find the sheriff standing in the back doorway. A large, broad-shouldered man in his fifties, he blocked out the sun.

“Lose something?” he asked. He was good-looking, even for a man his age. His blond hair had started to gray, but it wasn’t noticeable except for a little in his thick, drooping mustache. He removed his Stetson as he opened the screen door and stepped into the back of the café, his gaze intent on her in a way that made her heart hammer even harder.

“My grocery order,” she said as she picked up the pile of towels and aprons she’d tossed on the floor in her search, and dropped them back into the hamper. “I thought I left it in my apron. Apparently, I left it somewhere else,” Kate said, pulling herself together. “I thought I’d drop it off on my way to the fair.”

She hadn’t planned on going to the fair. Quite the contrary—she had other, more important things to do. But if the sheriff thought he was keeping her...

“I won’t keep you long,” he said, taking the hint. He stood, turning the brim of his Stetson in his fingers as he looked toward the dining room. “Mind if we have a seat?”

“What is this about?” she asked. She’d seen him go to the general store the other day before coming over for his usual morning cup of coffee. Had Nettie put some bug in his ear? Everyone in the county knew he had a crush on Nettie Benton. Not that anyone could understand what he saw in the nosy old woman.

“Just need to have a little chat with you,” the sheriff said as he took a seat in one of the booths.

Kate tried to imagine what Nettie could have told him. It would be just like Nettie to fill his ear with some nonsense or other. Or even shades of the truth, which could be worse.

“Can I get you a cup of coffee?”

“No thanks, Ms. LaFond. I don’t want to keep you from the fair.”

She nodded. Bracing herself, she joined him in the booth, trying hard to hide how nervous he was making her. First the note, and now whatever this was.

“Have you seen this morning’s newspaper?” he asked.

She hadn’t had a chance and said as much.

He pulled a copy from his jacket pocket and shoved it across the table at her. “If you don’t mind taking a look.”

She flattened the newspaper, the sketch on page one practically leaping off the page at her—along with the headline: Do You Know This Man? Kate knew the sheriff couldn’t have missed her startled reaction.

“Have you ever seen this man before?” he asked.

Kate suspected he already knew the answer. The moment she’d seen the sketch, she’d given herself away. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t lie. Jack French had not only seen her with the dead man, he’d also punched him and bloodied the man’s nose.

“He’s dead?” She didn’t have to fake her surprise or the break in her voice.

“He was murdered.”

She leaned back against the booth seat and tried to catch her breath. “Murdered?” She’d heard some of the locals talking about a hobo who’d been found down by the Yellowstone River, but that was more than twenty miles away. There’d been no mention of murder.

The sheriff sat across from her, waiting—and watching her with that same intensity she’d noticed when he’d walked in. “How do you know the man?”

“I don’t know him. I’d never seen him before he accosted me the other night in the alley beside the café. Fortunately, Jack came along—”

“Jack?”

“Jack French. He ran him off.”

“And then what happened?”

“Nothing. The man left, I went upstairs to bed and Jack went on down the street.”

“You say the man accosted you?”

“I had gone for a run. He was in the alley by my apartment stairs. I thought he was drunk, because he obviously had me confused with someone else.”

“What did he say to you?”

“I don’t even remember.” But she feared Jack would, and would tell the sheriff. “Like I said, I thought he was drunk. He wasn’t making any sense. I’d never seen him before in my life.”

“Did you see what he was driving?”

She shook her head. “Maybe Jack did. It sounded like a truck when he took off, but I could be wrong.”

“Jack just happened to be walking by?”

“It was the first time I’d seen him, as well. It wasn’t until the next morning that I learned who he was and that he’d just gotten out of prison.” Why had she said that? She felt a stab of guilt for even bringing it up.

“Did Jack seem to know the man?”

“No. Jack just came to my defense, I guess, when he heard the commotion. He hit the man and ran him off.”

“This was after the man hit you.”

It wasn’t a question, but she nodded anyway and touched her cheek. “He slapped me when I told him to leave me alone or else.”

“Or else?”

“I like to think I can take care of myself,” she said, even more shaken as she realized that she and Jack might have been the last two people to see the man alive. Except for the killer. “I wasn’t very appreciative when Jack came to my rescue. I was too shaken by the encounter with the man,” she added, trying to cover for whatever Jack would tell the sheriff. “Now, though...”

He nodded as if thinking the same thing she was—that she’d been lucky. She glanced at the sketch of the dead man on the front page of the paper again and shuddered. She didn’t even want to think about who might have murdered him. Or why, because she feared the killer would be coming for her next.

The sheriff rolled up his newspaper and stuffed it into his pocket again. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”

“I’d be happy to. Like I said, I’m sure the man had me confused with someone else.” If only that were true, she thought.

After the sheriff left, she went upstairs and got the gun she kept hidden in the apartment. Claude had warned her. Apparently it was time to start carrying it.

* * *

I KNEW YOUR MOTHER.

That was the first thing Claude Durham said to her. Kate looked up to find a fiftysomething man standing next to her at the Nevada café where she’d been working, just outside Vegas.

At the time, she’d been standing at the pass-through waiting for her last order of the day to come up so she could leave. She’d been killing time, gossiping with Connie, the older waitress she worked with at the small dive of a café out in the middle of the desert.

“That’s quite the pickup line,” she said to the man. Her feet hurt and she was too tired for whatever he was selling. Not only that, he was also too old for her.

He gave her an impatient look. “You sure that’s the way you want to do this?”

She gave him a second glance. He was pale, balding. What little hair he had was short and gray. He had a belly on him and he was sweating profusely.

He’s sick, she’d thought. “Look, mister—”

“I don’t have a lot of time, so let’s cut to the chase,” he interrupted. “If we have to do this here, fine. I knew your mother in Beartooth.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Montana. Where you were born.”

“My mother never was in Montana.”

“Not your adoptive mother, your real mother, your birth mother.”

“Meg was my real mother.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Too bad she didn’t live longer—maybe she could have taught you to be nicer to your elders. I would have thought your adoptive father, Harvey, could have done better with you than he obviously did.”

“How is it you know so much about my life?” she demanded.

He ignored the question. “They told you that you were adopted, didn’t they?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Did they tell you how they came to raise you in the first place?”

A sinking feeling hit in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”

“What did they tell you about your real...your birth parents?”

She’d asked a few times when she was younger. Her parents had hemmed and hawed. She’d quit asking. “What was there to tell? Obviously my birth mother didn’t want me. She might not have even known who my father was.”

His pale face colored with a flush of anger that surprised her. “That’s bullshit,” he snapped. “Your mother was a saint. She knew exactly who your father was and she loved you more than you—”

“Then why didn’t she raise me?”

“She died when you were eighteen months old.”

His words stopped her cold. It took her a moment before she asked, “What about my father?”

“That’s why I’m here. To tell you. Now, do you want to do this here, or can you tell your boss you’re done so we can get out of here?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but made his way out to an old pickup parked outside.

Her order came up.

“I’ll get that for you,” Connie said.

“Thanks.” Her hands were trembling as she took off her apron, tossed it into a booth, went outside to open the passenger-side door of the man’s truck, but didn’t get in.

“You look like hell.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. Maybe just because it was the truth and it seemed they were about to talk truths.

He laughed, a sick smoker’s cough following it. “I’ll make this quick,” he said when he finally quit coughing. “I’m dying.”

“So you decided to look me up and tell me...what?”

“Get in the truck.”

“First, tell me who you are and why you’re the one bringing me this news.”

He looked out the pickup’s sand-pitted windshield at the café. “What are you doing working in a dump like this? I’ve been watching you for the past couple of days. You’re a damned good waitress. You could do better.”

Anger rushed like a familiar drug through her veins. She’d been told once by a psychologist that she used anger as her go-to defense mechanism. No kidding.

“Thanks for the concern.” She started to slam the truck door, planning to walk away.

“Your mother gave me something to give to you, but I also have something I want you to have. Consider it your inheritance.”

She studied him through the open door of the truck. “If you’re going to try to tell me that you’re my father or some—”

“Just get in and listen to what I have to say. I own a café in Beartooth....”

She didn’t remember sliding into the pickup seat. She did remember telling him to go to hell.

* * *

NETTIE’S NEW RENTER was an enigma. While she looked sweet and innocent, there was an edge to her that told a different story. When Nettie had shown her the apartment, the girl had gone straight to the window that overlooked the paved street running through town. To the southeast, the highway went to Big Timber. To the north, it turned to gravel just out of town before breaking off into dirt roads that turned to 4x4 trails as they headed up into the Crazies.

Beartooth was the end of the road, so to speak. Not the kind of place a young girl would want to hang out.

But that wasn’t the only thing about the girl that bothered Nettie. There was something that seemed almost familiar.

I must be getting old. The other day, I was thinking that Kate LaFond reminded me of someone, she thought now.

She shook her head. Good thing Bob wasn’t here. If she had voiced these suspicions around him, he would have shaken his head and told her she was losing her mind.

“So, what do you think of the apartment?” Nettie had asked the girl when she showed it to her.

She hadn’t even turned from the window as she’d answered. “It’s exactly what I was looking for.”

Nettie had tried not to let the girl’s lack of enthusiasm hurt her feelings. She had decorated the apartment and felt she’d done a remarkable job in making it homey and nice. But apparently her efforts had been wasted on the girl, who cared more about the view.

Curious again about what was so interesting outside, Nettie had moved up behind her to look out. The girl’s gaze had seemed riveted on the Branding Iron. Or maybe it was the large table of local ranchers who met there every morning.

Nettie had tried to make out who was gathered there, but someone inside the café had been blocking her view. With a start, she’d recognized that broad back.

Sheriff Frank Curry had stood with his back to the window, talking to the group of men. A moment later he’d stepped out of view.

The girl had turned then, clearly startled to find Nettie right behind her. “I’ll take the apartment. That is, if you’ll rent it to me. I hope you will.” There had been that desperation in her tone again.

Nettie had told herself that it didn’t matter why the girl was so set on renting the place. It wasn’t as if anyone else had been around offering to rent it. Let the girl have it. She’d planned to require references but figured this was the girl’s first apartment, so what was the point? Anyway, it would be her parents who would be footing the bill.

“I’ll need your name, address and a phone number in case of an emergency,” Nettie had said, handing the girl a piece of paper and a pen. She’d watched her quickly jot down the information, then pull out a wad of hundred-dollar bills.

“You did say you would take cash for first and last month’s rent, plus six months’ rent deposit, right?” the girl had asked, looking worried.

It must have been because of Nettie’s surprised expression. “Sure, cash is great,” she’d said as the girl had counted out bills and handed them over, along with her information.

“You sure you didn’t rob a bank?” Nettie had asked in jest as she took the money.

“I cashed in one of my stocks.”

One of her stocks? “Well, I hope you enjoy the apartment....” Nettie looked down at the sheet of paper the girl had handed her and read the name. “Tiffany Chandler.”

“I will. It’s perfect,” the girl had said again before returning to the front window.

Nettie’d had a sneaking suspicion even then that it wasn’t art—but someone in the café across the street—that had made the apartment so perfect.

* * *

AFTER HIS TALK with Kate, Frank stood for a few moments on the broken sidewalk. The spring sun felt warm and smelled of pine and water from the nearby creek.

He turned his face up to the warmth and closed his eyes, breathing in the familiar scents and enjoying the feel of the sun on his face. His mind, though, mulled over what he’d learned.

According to Tucker, the man had described Kate and known she was running the café. No mistaken identity. But the man apparently hadn’t asked for her by name, so maybe he did have the wrong woman. Maybe.

As Frank opened his eyes, he was startled to see a face framed in the upstairs window of the general store. He felt a jolt, not used to seeing anyone up there, let alone a waif of a girl.

She looked ghostly, so pale, with straight blond hair that appeared almost white in the morning light. She was wearing a pale colored top that seemed to shimmer in the breeze from the open window. As if she’d spotted him watching her, she faded back from the window—gone in the blink of an eye, almost as if she’d never been there at all.

“Nettie’s new renter,” he said under his breath, surprised by the turn the girl had given him. Nettie had certainly rented the place quickly. It had only been the other day that he’d noticed the sign in the store window.

He thought about walking across the street to the store, but he didn’t want Nettie thinking he was worried about her—or her new renter.

Also, he was anxious to talk to Jack French. He’d called out to the W Bar G and learned that Jack had the day off but had been out to the ranch and was on his way back into Beartooth.

He thought about when he’d questioned Jack about the horsehair hitched rope from the murder scene. Of course there was no reason Jack would connect the man he’d chased off down the alley the night before—with the murder weapon, right?

* * *

JACK HAD JUST driven up in front of his cabin when he saw the sheriff sitting in the shade of his porch.

He felt that old sinking feeling he always did at the sight of a lawman. Maybe that too was genetic.

While in prison he’d learned that crime and violence ran in some families. He knew he should feel lucky that it was only trouble that coursed through his DNA. But then maybe trouble was like a gateway drug, and violence was only one misstep away.

Either way, he had a sheriff sitting on his porch waiting for him.

He shut off the engine and climbed out of his pickup. “Howdy, Sheriff,” he said. “Glad to see you made yourself comfortable.”

“I didn’t think you’d mind.”

“Nope, sure don’t,” Jack said as he climbed the steps. Too late, he thought about the note in his pocket, the one he’d sneaked out of Kate’s discarded apron. If it was found on him— “Can I get you a cold one?”

He wasn’t surprised when the sheriff shook his head. “Just need a few minutes of your time. The fair opens today. I would imagine that like everyone else in the county, you’re headed there.”

Jack nodded and leaned against the porch rail. He was too antsy to sit. He hadn’t forgotten being hauled off to jail by the sheriff in the wee hours of the morning two years ago for something he hadn’t done. He didn’t need to remind himself that it could happen again. Innocent men really did get arrested sometimes and sent to prison.

“You want to take this inside?” he asked the sheriff.

“Out here is fine. It’s such a beautiful day.”

Wasn’t it, though? Jack wanted to say, “Get on with it,” but he held his tongue. The old Jack French wouldn’t have been able to.