Courting Trouble (20 page)

Her laptop was open before her. Tulsa lost track of the number of times she read the police report about Connie’s death, read the name of the one witness that was never interviewed, read the coroner’s report about Connie’s fatal injuries… She ran her fingertips over her eyes. Hudd was never mentioned in the report and yet—she knew that he’d been involved.

“Tulsa, darlin’? You need more coffee?”

Tulsa tilted her head upward and looked at Rose, who now stood beside the table. The corners of Rose’s mouth curled and she greeted Tulsa with a gentle smile, the kind of smile that wiped worry from your face and made you feel hugged without even a touch. The smile formed tiny crinkles around Rose’s dark brown eyes. Her eyes contained a lifetime of Powder Springs’ secrets. She knew everyone in town, and by owning the Wooden Nickel, she heard every bit of gossip.

“Thank you,” Tulsa said and handed the coffee cup to Rose.

“What’s got you out on a cold night like this?” Her voice sounded soft—concerned. Rose refilled Tulsa’s coffee cup.

“Just used to being alone, I guess,” Tulsa said.

Rose nodded. “Want some company?”

Tulsa closed her laptop and pushed it to the side of the table. “Sure.”

On her feet, Rose appeared quick and light as she scurried from kitchen to table, but as Tulsa watched Rose lower herself into the vinyl booth, she could almost hear the creaks and pops of Rose’s joints and tired old bones. Rose sighed, a long slow burst of air as she settled back into the booth.

“Feels good to sit,” Rose said. She flipped over the coffee cup in front of her and poured herself a cup. “Don’t usually take breaks anymore, at least not until we’re closed—too hard to get this old engine started back up.”

Her happy eyes now drooped with fatigue as if she’d kept every tired bit held off until just this minute. Tulsa thought of Rose as somehow ageless—she and her brother Earl had always owned the Wooden Nickel, but Rose wasn’t young. Tulsa examined Rose’s thin-skinned hands, creased with lines. Her knuckles bulged with long-time overuse.

Tulsa heard scrubbing and the low hum of music from a radio. They both glanced toward the kitchen where Rose’s brother, Earl, listened to Mick Jagger wail about his failure to get satisfaction and prepped the kitchen for tomorrow’s breakfast rush.

“So I hear that settlement conference is comin’ up. How are you doin’ with everything?” Rose reached her hand across the table and brushed her fingertips across the backs of Tulsa’s hands. Such a womanly touch—so maternal—so comforting.

Heat pricked the back of Tulsa’s eyes. She tilted her head and her gaze glanced from the top of the table to Rose’s eyes. Tulsa was used to giving her usual line to Savannah, to Ash, to Emma and Jo and Sylvia—the line that Tulsa was fine, that she could handle everything, that
she
wasn’t the one people should be worried about—but whether it was the fatigue, melancholy, grief, or everything combined, Tulsa simply couldn’t find the energy to give Rose the polite white lie.

“I’m worried,” Tulsa started, then paused. The beat allowed her a breath—a moment to try to formulate thoughts through all the emotions that clouded her head. “I’m sad.” She opened up her hands from around her coffee cup and her palms fell open like the bloom on a flower. “And somehow I feel like it’s my fault.”

Rose bobbed her head and her gentle smile remained on her lips, but a raw, hard strength entered her eyes. “You know that’s not true. You can be worried and tired and concerned, but you can’t blame yourself for this—Bobby is back and he wants to see his daughter—that’s no fault of yours.”

Tulsa twitched an eyebrow. Of course Bobby wanting to spend time with Ash was no fault of hers, so why did she feel the inner need to try to fix everything for everyone?

“You’re right,” Tulsa said slowly. She looked out the window toward the courthouse and then let her eyes skim across the slick black surface of the street to Cade’s office. A single light still burned—his office light—you could see through reception all the way into his office. Was he still there?

There was so much to be confused about, so many questions, so few answers—she wanted facts and a direction, a way to get her answers. All these emotions, they clouded her perspective, made her vulnerable, and confused the decisions she made. With each thought of Cade, she felt his lips on hers, his hands on her body, her breasts—even though she didn’t want this desire that coiled tight and thick in her gut, she could not get rid of these feelings.

Tulsa pulled her eyes back from the light in Cade’s office. Heat simmered low in her belly and she felt the tiniest flush in her cheeks. She slowly lifted her gaze and met Rose’s eyes. Rose watched Tulsa, but not with judgment or even amusement—the weight of Rose’s look felt more like empathy and understanding.

Gratitude blossomed in Tulsa’s chest. Sometimes she felt so very alone. She was the oldest sister, she was the senior partner in her law firm, she didn’t have a mother, and her Grandma Margaret was dead—sometimes she felt like she carried the weight of the world alone.

“You can’t help what the heart wants,” Rose said. “Or who you love.” Her lips thinned out and she pressed them closed as if she somehow understood the conflict that tore at Tulsa’s insides. The loyalty to her family versus her desire for Cade. Cade didn’t make her struggle any easier with his blind loyalty to Hudd. What if Cade knew what Hudd had asked of Tulsa years ago—before she abandoned Powder Springs, before she broke Cade’s heart—then would Cade still believe in his father’s innocence?

“Being here has got to be hard on you—on both of you.” Rose said. “I hear things, and people talk, and I’ve seen the two of you together—for Ash of course, around town. And, well, you will make the best decisions for you, but don’t be a fool and try to convince yourself that those feelings don’t exist—and on both sides. Because whether you decide those feelings are worth pursuing or not, you’ve got to at least acknowledge that the feelings are there and they’ve been there a long time for both of you.”

Rose said the things that Tulsa didn’t want to hear and the things that Tulsa couldn’t say. She said them without judgment—a simple statement of fact.

“I know they’re there, and I’m not ignoring them… I just…” Tulsa shook her head and searched out the window with her gaze for some answer—any answer. “I… we… just can’t get around it all—all the stuff. Ash and Connie and Hudd and—”

Rose nodded and held up her hand. “One of those is important, I’ll grant you that. But two of them are the past and one of them is dead.”

Tulsa’s heart curled inward and tightened. She clamped her lips closed and wet heat prickled behind her eyes. Rose was right—she was absolutely right. Ash was important, but Hudd and Connie—while Tulsa might want answers for closure—what had happened between Tulsa’s mother and Cade’s father was in the past and couldn’t be changed.

The silence settled around them, heavy with memories of the lives lost and emotions felt, heavy with the desire for moments to have turned out differently, people to have been less dented and damaged.

“You know,” Rose said, breaking the stillness, “your Grandma Margaret was always good to me.” Rose tilted her head toward the kitchen, toward Earl. “She was good to both of us. When Earl and me was kids, Margaret looked out for us when our mother wasn’t around. And our mother? She wasn’t around. Work mostly. Margaret was…” Rose paused and did the math. “Ten years older than me and twelve years older than Earl. We lived at the Murphy place, three doors down from your grandmother’s house.”

Tulsa took a deep breath and ran her fingertip around the edge of her coffee cup. Rose and Earl had long since moved from Mayweather Street by the time Tulsa and Savannah entered the world, but Grandma Margaret had spent her entire life in the same home. She’d been born upstairs in the very room that was now Savannah’s.

“Yes.” Rose stirred her coffee and nodded her head. “I always did like your Grandma Margaret.” Rose sipped her coffee and settled the cup back into the saucer. “Broke her heart when Connie died.” Tulsa looked at Rose. A softness around Rose’s eyes indicated that her comment was meant as a type of condolence to her, to Savannah, and even to a long-dead Grandma Margaret.

“I remember,” Tulsa whispered.

“Wasn’t right,” Rose said softly. Her gaze trailed out the window into the coldness of the night. “What he did wasn’t right.”

The days following Connie’s death—Tulsa’s memories were a blur. Memories of pain filled with vibrant bits of color: the wake, the visitation, the burial. Once Tulsa left Powder Springs, she compressed these remnants of her mother into a tiny compartment in the back of her mind. Being here, amongst the residue of her youth, she couldn’t keep those carefully mastered thoughts contained.

Tiny memories bled into the present.

Just this minute—in this specific booth—Tulsa could envision a Saturday morning when Connie didn’t suffer from a hangover and she, Grandma Margaret, Savannah, and Tulsa had come to the Wooden Nickel for Rose’s sweet, fresh cinnamon rolls. Connie’s tingle of laughter as she placed the sticky bun laced with sweetness between Savannah’s lips. The heat in Tulsa’s eyes grew and she shook the memory from her head and focused her gaze on Rose—on the present.

“There are people who don’t want to be found and then there are people that some don’t want you to find.” Rose’s voice was deep, slow, cryptic, with the hint of secrets that shouldn’t be shared. “And Wilkes Stevenson? The man that was with Hudd the night your mother died?” Rose tilted her head and widened her eyes. “Wilkes is the second kind.”

A shiver rushed up Tulsa’s spine. Mentioning Wilkes was akin to mentioning a ghost. Tulsa’s heart hammered in her chest with the idea that the one person who had actually witnessed Connie’s death could be found. Gone was the melancholy, gone was the fear, gone was the ambiguity, sadness, and indecision. Wilkes was the answer—the closure that Tulsa needed.

“You know where Wilkes is?” Tulsa whispered.

“I don’t,” Rose said. She gently placed her spoon on the saucer beside her coffee cup. “But I know a man who does.” Rose looked toward the kitchen and just between the counter and the heat lamps Tulsa caught sight of Earl cleaning the grill. “And you know what? Earl? He liked your Grandma Margaret too.”

Chapter Twenty

Dark gray clouds with bruised purple undersides hung low on the horizon. Weather was headed into Yampa Valley—strong, violent weather. Cade leaned forward over his steering wheel and peered through his windshield at the dense clouds sliding across the sky. The weight of oncoming precipitation hung in the air. The thick, heavy clouds might hold rain or sleet or hail or snow—hell in the Rockies, the clouds could hold all four. A shiver raced down Cade’s arms. He tightened his grip on the steering wheel and pressed his foot harder against the accelerator. Those clouds didn’t bode well.

Especially after Wayne’s call.

Cade gunned his truck onto the gravel drive. Wayne’s SUV, along with two other deputy cars, was parked at the ranch house. Cade glanced at the clouds hovering low in the west. Buoyed by the strengthening wind, the aspen trees whipped back and forth across the blackened sky. Cade’s heart hammered in his chest and his throat thickened—fear; dark and solid, lodged like a lump.

Cade exited his truck. “Where is he?” he yelled over the rush of the wind.

“If I knew the answer to that question, do you think I would have called you?” Wayne called from the porch. He pulled the walkie-talkie that he held in his right hand away from his mouth and placed it against his ear.

Cade bounded up the porch steps. Wayne appeared calm. Only a brother would notice the tightness around Wayne’s mouth and the worry etched at the side of his eyes. He pressed the button on his walkie-talkie and barked out an order about the woods backing up to the back pasture.

“What happened?” Cade asked.

Wayne shifted his weight and settled a hand on his hip. “About three hours ago Hudd told Lottie he needed to check the barn,” Wayne said. “She watched him totter off down to the barn and when he didn’t come back up to the house after an hour, she went down there to check on him. And guess what?”

“No Hudd.” Cade scrubbed his hand over his jaw. His lips pressed tight and wrapped around the edges of his teeth. His shoulder tightened and the muscle clamped into a giant knot. Cade’s left hand grabbed at the back of his neck, trying to reduce the rock-sized bulge in his neck and shoulder. “Any ideas?”

“He mumbled something about his car,” Wayne said.

“His car?” Cade tilted his head to the side. “He hasn’t driven in nearly two years.”

“Right,” Wayne said. “Part of my concern.” His gaze searched the front yard. There was nothing but grass, aspen trees, and wind. “You were right; he’s lost a step. This and thinking Tulsa was Connie? All those synapses aren’t firing.”

“Wish I had time to gloat,” Cade said and scrubbed his hand across his jaw. His eyes searched the distance. “Where do you want me to look?”

“I’ve got Sammy on the edge of the woods in the back pasture. Lottie went to the hunting lodge.” Wayne’s gaze returned to Cade from staring across the open range. “How in the hell he could make it to the hunting lodge on foot I don’t know, but she’s going to check. I’m about to head toward the National Forest.”

They both searched the sky. With the thick clouds, darkness threatened. The temperature hovered in the low sixties. In an hour the sun would set and the temperature would drop.

“If we don’t find him in the next hour, I need to get a search-and-rescue team together,” Wayne said.

The unspoken part of Wayne’s statement hung in the air—heavier than the wind, heavier than the impending precipitation, heavier than the thought of a lost Hudd—because the unspoken part of the sentence was that if Wayne and Cade didn’t find Hudd before dark, then Hudd wouldn’t live through the night.

“What about west on Yampa Valley Road?” Cade added. “You got anyone looking that direction? He used to own the fifty acres of scrubland at the base of the forest. Think he might head that way? Instead of toward town?”