Smokin' Six-Shooter
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“So much for Western hospitality,” she muttered under her own breath, then turned toward the house and felt herself shiver despite the heat.
JOLENE STEVENS GLANCED at the clock on the school-house wall. The hot air coming through the open windows and the sound of the birds and crickets chirping in the grass had all five students looking wistfully toward the cloudless blue sky and the summerlike day outside.
“Hand in your writing assignments and you may go home a few minutes early,” she said, giving up the fight to keep their attention. “Don’t forget you have another part of your story to write tonight. Tomorrow we will talk about writing the middle of your story.”
The air was close inside the schoolhouse, the breeze coming through the open window as hot as dragon’s breath against the back of her neck.
Jolene lifted her hair as she waited for her sixth-grader, Codi Fox, to collect all the assignments. She tried not to let any of her students see how anxious she was, not that they were paying attention. As Codi put the stack of short stories on the corner of her desk, Jolene made a point of not looking at them.
Instead she watched as her students pulled on their backpacks, answered questions and wished everyone a nice evening. None of them seemed in the least bit interested in the short-story assignments they’d just turned in.
If one of the students was bringing her the extra story, wouldn’t he or she have been anxious to see Jolene’s reaction? Apparently not.
After they’d all left, she straightened chairs, turned out lights, picked up around the schoolroom. The small, snub-nosed school bus came and went, taking three of her students with it. She waved to the elderly woman driver, then stood in the shade of the doorway as the parents of her last two students pulled up.
As soon as the dust settled, Jolene went back inside the classroom to her desk. Her hands were actually trembling as she picked up the short-story assignments, afraid the next installment of the murder story would be among the pile—and afraid it wouldn’t.
She quickly counted the individual stories. Six.
With a sigh of relief and an air of apprehension, she sorted through until she found it.
IT HAD BEEN ONE THOSE hot, dry springs when all the churchgoers in Whitehorse County were praying for rain. The small farming community depended on spring rains and when they didn’t come, you could feel the anxiety growing like a low-frequency electrical pulse that raced through the county and left everyone on edge.
Everyone, that is, but her. She wasn’t worried that day about the weather as she hung her wet sheets on the line behind the old farmhouse and waited—not for rain but for the sound of his truck coming up the deadend road.
JOLENE SWALLOWED AND looked up, afraid someone would come through the school’s door at any minute and catch her. Reading this felt like a guilty pleasure. Gathering up her work, she stuffed everything into her backpack and biked home.
Once there, she poured herself a glass of lemonade and, unable to postpone it any longer, picked up the story again.
THE SWELTERING HEAT ON the wind wrapped her long skirt around her slim legs, and lifted her mane of dark hair off her damp neck as she stared past the clothesline to the dirt road, anticipating her lover’s arrival.
She’d sent the little girl off to play with her new friend from across the creek. A long, lazy afternoon stretched endlessly before her and she ached at the thought, her need to be fulfilled by a man as essential as her next breath.
Over the sound of the weather vane on the barn groaning in the wind and the snap of the sheets as she secured them to the line, she finally heard a vehicle.
Her head came up and softened with relief, a clothespin between her perfect white teeth, her lightly freckled arms clutching the line as if for support as she watched him turn into the yard.
Dust roiled up into the blindingly bright day, the scorching wind lifting and carrying it across the road to the empty prairie.
She took the clothespin from her mouth, licking her lips as she secured the sheet, then leaving the rest of her wet clothes in the basket, she wiped her hands on her skirt and hurried to meet the man who would be the death of her.
JOLENE TOOK A BREATH and then reread the pages. She had no more clue as to who could have written this than she had the first time. Nor was she sure why the submission upset her the way it did. It was just fiction, right?
Why give it to her to read though? All she could think was that one of her student’s parents always wanted to write and was looking for some encouragement.
“All my daughter talks about is the short story you’re having the students write,” Amy’s mother had told her. “The other students and their families are talking about it as well. You’ve excited the whole community since I’m told the stories will eventually be bound in a booklet that will be for sale at next year’s fall festival.”
Was that how the author of the murder story had found out about the assignment? Which meant it could be anyone, not necessarily one of her student’s parents. But one of the students had to be bringing it in to class.
Jolene got up and went to the window, hoping for a breath of fresh air. Heat rose in waves over the pale yellow wild grass that ran to the Little Rockies.
What did the writer expect her to do with this? Just read it? Critique it? Believe it?
She shuddered as she realized that from the first sentence she’d read of the story, she had believed it. But then that was what good fiction was all about, making the reader suspend disbelief.
Even though she knew how the story ended since the writer had begun with the murder, she had the feeling that the writer was far from finished. At least she hoped that was the case. She couldn’t bear the thought that whoever was sending her this might just quit in the middle and leave her hanging.
She looked forward to seeing the next part of the story Wednesday morning and didn’t want to think that she might never know who or why someone had given it to her to read. As disturbing as the story was, she felt flattered that the writer had chosen her to read it.
As she stood looking out the window, she had a thought. Had such a murder occurred in this community? The old-timers around here told stories back to the first settlers. If there had been a brutal murder around here, she was sure someone would be able to recall it.
Especially one involving a young widow with a daughter living in an old farmhouse one very hot, rainless spring.
Jolene glanced back up the road to the Whitehorse Community Center. Several pickups and an SUV were parked out front for the meeting of the Whitehorse Sewing Circle. If anyone knew about a murder, it would be one of those women.
DULCIE WAITED UNTIL THE dust settled from the combine and the cowboy before she turned back to the house. Her gaze was drawn to the second-floor window again and the pale yellow curtain.
She was sure the color had faded over the years and she couldn’t make out the design on the fabric from here, but something about that yellow curtain felt oddly familiar.
Careful to make sure no rattlesnakes had snuck up while she’d been waiting, she took a few tentative steps toward the house. Had she seen this house with its yellow curtains in a photograph? Surely her parents had one somewhere.
Boards had been nailed across the front door and the lower windows. There would be no getting into the house without some tools. But did she really want to go inside?
She noticed a sliver of window visible from beneath the boards and moved cautiously through the tall weeds to cup her hands and peer inside.
She blinked in surprise. The inside of the house was covered in dust, but it looked as if whoever had lived here had just walked out one day and not returned.
The furniture appeared to be right where it had been, including a book on a side table and a drinking glass, now filled with cobwebs and dust, where someone had sat and read. There were tracks where small critters had obviously made themselves at home, but other than that, the place looked as if it hadn’t been disturbed in years.
Since the murder?
Dulcie felt a chill and told herself the cowboy might have just made that up to scare her, the same way he had warned her about rattlesnakes.
According to the documents, Dulcie had been left the property twenty-four years before. She would have been four.
Who left property to a four-year-old?
Laura Beaumont apparently.
Dulcie drew back, brushed dust from her sleeve and started to turn to the rental car to leave when she heard a strange creaking groan that made her freeze.
What sent her pulse soaring was the realization that she’d heard this exact sound before. She found her feet and stepped around the side of the house to look in the direction the noise was coming from.
On top of the barn, a rusted weather vane in the shape of a horse moved in the breeze, groaning and creaking restlessly.
Dulcie stood staring at it, her eyes suddenly welling with tears. She had been here before. The thought filled her with a horrible sense of dread.
She wiped at the tears, convinced she was losing her mind. Why else did a pair of yellow curtains and a rusted weather vane make her feel such dread—and worse—such fear?
Chapter Three
Russell Corbett drove the combine down the road to where he’d left his four-wheeler. He hated trading the luxury of the cab of the combine with its CD player, satellite radio and air conditioner for the noisy, hot four-wheeler.
He much preferred a horse to a vehicle anyway, but he couldn’t argue the convenience as he started the engine and headed back toward Trails West Ranch.
As he neared the old Beaumont place, it was impossible not to think about the woman he’d almost crashed into earlier, sitting in the middle of the road. Fool city girl, he thought, shaking his head again. Thinking about her took his mind off the heat bearing down on him.
He hadn’t paid that much attention to her. Even now he couldn’t recall her exact hair color. Something between russet and mahogany, but then it had been hard to tell with the sunlight firing it with gold.
Nor could he recall the length, the way she had the weight of her hair drawn up and secured in the back. He idly wondered if it would fall past her shoulders should the expensive-looking clip come loose.
He did remember her size when he’d bent over her, no more than five-six or seven without those heels, and recalled the impression he’d gotten that while her body was slim, she was rounded in all the right places. He’d sensed a strength about her, or maybe it had just been mule-headed stubbornness, that belied her stature and her obvious city-girl background.
Realizing the path his thoughts had taken, Russell shook them off like water from a wet dog. He must be suffering from heatstroke, he told himself. No woman had monopolized his thoughts this long in recent memory.
He told himself he wasn’t even going to look as he passed to see if she was still parked in front of the old farmhouse as he passed. It was too hot to save her from herself, even if she had wanted his help.
But he did look and told himself it wasn’t disappointment he felt at finding her gone. It was relief that she wasn’t in some trouble he would have to get her out of.
He slowed the four-wheeler as he noticed the fence lying on the ground. With a curse, he stopped and got off to close it. The woman had a lot to learn about private property and leaving gates open, he thought.
Glancing at the house, he was glad to see that nothing looked any different. Not that the woman could do much damage to the place. No way could she have broken into the house—not with those manicured fingernails of hers.
He’d never paid much attention to the old Beaumont place, although he’d passed it enough times since the land just beyond it was Corbett property and seeded in dry-land wheat.
Standing next to the gate, he stared at the old house, recalling someone had told him there’d been a murder there and the house had been boarded up ever since. People liked to make houses seem much more sinister than they actually were, he thought. He was surprised he hadn’t heard rumors of ghosts.
But even if nothing evil lurked in that house, it made him wonder what the woman had found so interesting about the place since, from her surprised expression, she hadn’t known about the murder.
Hell, maybe she’d never seen an old farmhouse before.
As if he’d ever understood women, he thought, as he climbed back on his four-wheeler, just glad she hadn’t befallen some disaster. If all she’d done was leave the gate open then he figured no harm was done. By now, she would be miles away.
Still he couldn’t help but wonder what had brought her to his part of Montana in the first place. She certainly was out of her realm, he thought with a chuckle as he headed back to the ranch.
THE WHITEHORSE SEWING Circle was an institution in the county. Jolene had noticed that when the women who spent several days a week at the center making quilts were mentioned, it was with reverence. And maybe a little fear.
Clearly these women had the power in this community. Jolene got the impression that a lot of decisions were made between stitches and a lot of information dispersed over the crisp new fabric of the quilts.
It was with apprehension that she walked over to the center and pushed open the door. She’d been inside before for several get-togethers since she’d been hired as the community’s teacher. This was where all the wedding receptions, birthday and anniversary parties, festivals and funeral potlucks were held.
The wooden floors were worn from years of boots dancing across them. It was easy to imagine that hearts had been won and lost in this large open room. A lot of events in these people’s lives had been marked here from births to deaths and everything in between. If only these walls could talk, Jolene thought, wondering what stories they would tell.
As the door opened, sunlight pouring across the floor, the women all looked in her direction. They were gathered toward the back around a small quilting frame. A baby quilt, she realized, as she let the door close behind her.
“Hello,” Pearl Cavanaugh said, smiling her slightly lopsided smile. Pearl had had a stroke sometime back and was still recovering, Jolene had heard. Pearl’s mother had started the Whitehorse Sewing Circle years ago, according to the locals.
“I just thought I’d stop in and see what you were making,” Jolene said lamely. How was she ever going to get to her true mission in coming here?
She knew she had to be careful. For fear the story might stop, she didn’t want the author of the story to find out she’d been asking around about the murder.
“Please. Join us,” Pearl said.
The women looked formidable, eyes keen, but their expressions were friendly enough as she pulled up a chair at the edge of the circle and watched their weathered, arthritic hands make the tiniest, most perfect stitches she’d ever seen.
“The quilt is beautiful,” she said into the silence. She could feel some of the women studying her discreetly.
“Thank you,” Pearl said, clearly the spokeswoman for the group. Her husband, Titus, served as a sort of mayor for Old Town Whitehorse, preaching in the center on Sundays, making sure the cemetery was maintained and overseeing the hiring of teachers as needed.
“You have all met our new teacher, Jolene Stevens,” Pearl was saying. “She comes to us straight from Montana State University.”
“So this is your first teaching assignment,” a small white-haired, blue-eyed woman said with a nice smile. “I’m Alice White.”
“I recall your birthday party,” Jolene said. “Ninety-two, I believe?”
Alice chuckled. “Everyone must think I’m going to kick the bucket sometime soon since they’re determined to celebrate my birthday every year now.” She winked at Jolene. “What they don’t know is that I’m going to live to be a hundred.”
Jolene tried to relax in the smattering of laughter that followed. “This area is so interesting. I’m really enjoying the history.”
“I’m sure everyone’s told you about the famous outlaws who used to hide out in this part of the state at the end of the eighteenth century,” a large woman with a cherubic face said. Ella Cavanaugh, a shirttail relation to Pearl and Titus, as Jolene recalled. Everyone seemed to be related in some way or another.
“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as well as Kid Curry,” added another elderly member, Mabel Brown. “This part of the state was lawless back then.”
“It certainly seems peaceful enough now,” Jolene commented. “But I did hear something about a murder of a young widow who had a little girl, I believe?”
She could have heard a pin drop. Several jaws definitely dropped, but quickly snapped shut again.
“Nasty business that was,” Ella said and glanced at Pearl.
“When was it?” Jolene asked, sensing that Pearl was about to shut down the topic.
“Twenty-four years ago this month,” Alice said, shaking her head. “It isn’t something any of us likes to think about.”
“Was her killer ever caught?” Jolene asked and saw the answer on their faces.
“Do you sew, Jolene?” Pearl asked. “We definitely could use some young eyes and nimble fingers.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“We would be happy to teach you,” Pearl said. “We make quilts for every baby born around here and have for years. It’s a Whitehorse tradition.”
“A very nice one,” Jolene agreed. She had wanted to ask more about the murder, but saw that the rest of the women were now intent on their quilting. Pearl had successfully ended the discussion. “Well, I should leave you to your work,” Jolene said, rising to her feet to leave.
“Well, if you ever change your mind,” Pearl said, looking up at her questioningly. No doubt she wondered where Jolene had heard about a twenty-four-year-old unsolved murder—and why she would be interested.
As Jolene left, she glanced back at the women. Only one was watching her. Pearl Cavanaugh. She looked troubled.
DULCIE DROVE BACK INTO town, even more curious about her inheritance. She returned to the real-estate office only to find that April was officiating a game at the old high-school gym.
The old gym was built of brick and was cavernous inside. Fortunately, the game hadn’t started yet. She found April in uniform on the sidelines.
“I’m sorry to bother you again,” Dulcie apologized. “Who would I talk to about the history of the property?”
April thought for a moment. “Talk to Roselee at the museum. She’s old as dirt, but sharp as a tack. She’s our local historian.”
The small museum was on the edge of town and filled with the history of this part of Montana. Roselee turned out to be a white-haired woman of indeterminable age. She smiled as Dulcie came through the door, greeting her warmly and telling her about the museum.
“Actually, I was interested in the history of a place south of here,” Dulcie said. “I heard you might be able to help me.”
Roselee looked pleased. “Well, I’ve been around here probably the longest. My father homesteaded in Old Town Whitehorse.”
Even better, Dulcie thought.
“Whose place are we talking about?”
“Laura Beaumont’s.”
All the friendliness left her voice. “If you’re one of those reporters doing another story on the murder—”
“I’m not. But I need to know. Was it Laura Beaumont who was murdered?”
Roselee pursed her lips. “If you’re not a reporter, then what is your interest in all this?”
“I inherited the property.”
The woman’s eyes widened. She groped for the chair behind her and sat down heavily.
Dulcie felt goose bumps ripple across her flesh at the look on the woman’s face. “What is it?” she demanded, frightened by the way Roselee was staring at her—as if she’d seen a ghost.
The elderly woman shook her head and struggled to her feet. “I’m sorry. I’m not feeling well.” She picked up the cane leaning against the counter and started toward the back of the museum, calling to someone named Cara.
“If I come by some other time?” Dulcie said to the woman’s retreating back, but Roselee didn’t respond.
What in the world, she thought, as a much younger woman hurried to the counter and asked if she could help.
“Have you ever heard of a woman named Laura Beaumont?” Dulcie asked.
Cara, who was close to Dulcie’s age, shook her head. “Should I have?”
“I don’t know.” Dulcie felt shaken from Roselee’s reaction. “Do you have a historical society?”
The young woman broke into a smile. “You just met the president, Roselee.” She sobered. “Wasn’t she able to help you?”
“No. Is there someone else around town I could talk to?” She dropped her voice just in case Roselee was in the back, listening. “Someone older who knows everything that goes on around here, especially Old Town Whitehorse, and doesn’t mind talking about it?”
Cara’s eyes shone with understanding. She, too, whispered. “There is someone down south who might be able to help you. Her name is Arlene Evans. She’s…talkative.”
JOLENE GLANCED AT HER watch as she left the Community Center. If she hurried she could make it into White-horse before the newspaper office closed.
Now that she knew there had been a murder, she was anxious to go through the Milk River Examiner newspapers from twenty-four years ago to find out everything she could about it.
Back in the schoolhouse, she went to her desk and opened the drawer where she’d put the stories. All six were there. She had yet to read the other five, so she stuffed them all into her backpack.
Turning to leave, she was startled to find a dark shape filling the schoolhouse doorway.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you,” Ben Carpenter said as he stepped inside. He was a big man who took up a lot of space and always made Jolene feel a little uncomfortable. She suspected it was because he seldom smiled. Ben was at the far end of his forties and the father of her moody eighth-grader, Mace.
“I was just finishing up for the day. Is there something Mace needed?” The boy resembled his father, large and beefy. Jolene had only once seen his mother, Ronda, but recalled she was tiny and reserved.
“I stopped in to see how Mace is doing,” Ben said. “I ask him, but he doesn’t say much. You aren’t having any trouble with him, are you? If you are, you just let me know and I’ll see to the boy.”
Jolene didn’t like the threat she heard in Ben’s tone. “He’s doing quite well and, no, I have no trouble at all with him.”
“Good,” Ben said, looking uncomfortable in the small setting. “Glad to hear it. His mother has been after me to find out.”
Jolene doubted that. Ronda Carpenter seemed like a woman who asked little of her husband and got even less. “Well, you can certainly reassure her. Mace is doing fine.”
Ben nodded, looking as if there was more he wanted to say, but he changed his mind as he stepped toward the door. “Okay then.”
Jolene was relieved when she heard his truck pull away from the front of the school. She felt a little shaken by his visit. Ben always seemed right on the edge of losing his temper. His visit had felt contrived. Was there something else he’d come by for and changed his mind?
Was it possible he was the author of the murder story? It didn’t seem likely, but then some people wrote better than they spoke.
Locking up behind her, she biked to her little house. Then, with the installments of the murder story in her backpack, she got in her car and headed toward Whitehorse.