Deadly Identity (11 page)

Gwen giggled. “Well, who knows what you will do with all this classroom information you'll be getting week after week.”

“I've already got some ideas,” Rachel admitted, sharing her smile.

“Okay, so you know you use only quilting-quality cloth.”

Looking at all the colors, Rachel felt amazed. The store was chock-full of women who were each buying from ten or fifteen different bolts of cloth. The quilting shop was large, airy and with plenty of room for browsing. A number of them had carts with many bolts of cloth in them. Gwen had told her that these
were longtime quilters buying cloth for new quilts they'd be making. It was an exciting process.

A young woman in a U.S. Forest Service uniform came in. She removed her hat. Rachel leaned over and ask, “Who is that?”

“Oh, that's Casey Cantrell. She's our newest forest ranger to be stationed up at the Grand Tetons National Park.” And then, Gwen sidled up to her and whispered, “Rumor has it she's got a colorful past….”

Inwardly, Rachel grimaced. If only Gwen knew about her own colorful past. “I imagine you see and hear a lot in here.”

Gwen chuckled. “Oh, yes. If you want to know what's really going on in Jackson Hole, you come here.” She pointed her index finger down toward the floor.

Another woman with red hair, clad in fur, entered. Rachel thought she looked svelte and model-like compared to the slightly frumpy Casey Cantrell.

“Uh-oh,” Gwen muttered, her brows dipping. “That's Senator Carter Peyton's wife, Clarissa. She's a handful. Treats my girls like dirt on some days. When Clarissa has had a fight with her husband, she takes it out on all of us. When she's in a good mood, she's the kindest person you could know. She raises millions for charity.”

Watching the woman who held her shoulders squared beneath the three-quarter-length red fox fur, Rachel nodded. “Does she quilt?”

“No, but she's got a cousin who lives in Cheyenne who does. Probably coming in to buy her some patterns or such. Clarissa is only thirty years old. Her husband has been a senator here in Wyoming for eight years. Kinda sad,” Gwen murmured. “Two years ago he left his wife and two children at home and flew to a Republican fundraiser in Cheyenne. Their house caught fire and everyone died.”

“Oh,” Rachel gasped softly, “how
awful!
” Now she watched Clarissa with new eyes. Feeling deep compassion for the woman, she whispered, “He must be devastated.”

“It's the senator that's the troublemaker,” Gwen said. “He blames lieutenant Matthew Sinclaire for letting his family burn alive. He's got a real grudge against him.”

“A grudge?”

Gwen tucked some of the fabric bolts back into order and muttered, “He's threatened to kill Matt. Now, Matt's born and raised here. I watched him grow up into a fine young man. Not a mean bone in that firefighter's body. You know? The night that fire happened, it was during a blizzard. The two-mile dirt road to his home was mud. The firefighters' trucks sank to their axles, and they were stuck a mile from the burning home. Matt and two other firefighters slogged through foot-deep mud that last mile trying to save the family. But it was too late.” Shaking her
head, Gwen added more grimly, “The senator thinks it's Matt's fault, and he's out to get him.”

“What do you mean?” Rachel asked, alarmed.

“One thing you'll learn about Wyoming men—some of them are meaner than a pissed-off rattlesnake. Peyton is one of 'em. We've thought for a long time that he's mixed up in drug dealing from Mexico. Can't prove it, but he acts crazy at times. He's a loaded gun ready to go off. I feel sorry for Matt. You know he's widowed? He has a little girl, Megan, who's s eight now. There was a ‘mysterious' fire about a month after Peyton's place burned to the ground. Matt lost his wife, Beverly. Megan managed to get out alive, but the poor child is utterly traumatized. She hasn't spoken a word since the fire.”

Rolling her eyes, Rachel whispered, “That's awful. Do you think the senator set fire to the lieutenant's home to get even with him?”

Gwen wiggled her eyebrows. “You know, Rachel, you're a very smart young woman. Cade suspects that Peyton put a couple of men up to the fire. There's no proof, of course….”

Rachel turned her gaze to the red-haired Clarissa at the counter who was giving orders to Sharon, one of Gwen's assistants. Her voice sounded imperious.

“Hey, enough town gossip. Follow me,” Gwen said, lifting her hand. She led Rachel over to a spinner rack containing quilting books and magazines. “We always start out our new quilters with this book.” She
picked one up and handed it to Rachel. “First-time quilters shouldn't be scared off with some detailed pattern that calls for nine different colors. That's a lot for a first-timer. This book,
Quilts for Baby Easy as A, B, C
by Ursula Reikes, has a very simple pattern in it.”

Gwen led her back to the cutting table and opened up the colorful book. “We'll be using her Rail Fence pattern from the book.” She ran her finger over the information on materials and on cutting the strips or rails. “Now, all you need is four bolts of fabric. You should try and choose four that have some fun colors that you would like to put together.”

Studying the pattern, Rachel felt the excitement building in her. “This all looks like Greek to me,” she said, laughing. “But I see it's going to take three fabrics for the rail pattern, right?”

“Yes,” Gwen said. “There's a real art to matching up the fabrics. What I'd suggest is you go wander through the store and choose. Bring them back here and we'll look at them together.”

“This is going to be fun. It's like picking paints for a picture,” Rachel said.

Gwen grinned. “Exactly. Choosing fabric is one of the most exciting ‘hunts' a quilter has. Off with you! Come and get me when you've chosen your colors.”

Rachel felt as if she were in a rainbow store of colors. One half of the store was devoted to Hoffman
batik cloth. Gwen explained that the patterns, which reminded Rachel of watercolors splashed across the fabric, had been created using a wax process and had been washed at least eight times. Drawn to this type of cloth, she ended up with a sunny yellow, a darker forest green and a rich, reddish-brown known to her as sienna. Taking her bolts to one of the cutting tables, she found Gwen just finishing up with an elderly lady with wire-rimmed glasses.

“Got them?” she called to Rachel from across the large rectangular table.

“I hope so,” Rachel said, sounding unsure.

“Those are nice colors,” the gray-haired woman said.

“Janet, meet Rachel. She's a first-time quilter. She's taking my class.”

It was impossible to reach across the cutting area to shake Janet's hand, so Rachel nodded and smiled. “Nice to meet you, Janet.”

“You're going to fall into an obsession about quilting,” Janet warned her with a cackle.

“I think I already have,” Rachel confided. “I got lost in all the colors. There's so many.”

“Yes,” Janet said, pushing her glasses up on her nose. “And that is the siren's call—all those bolts of color. Each one you see you'll begin to see it as a rail, an inner border or an outer border or a backing. Pretty soon, you'll have bolts dancing in your
sleep and you'll be dreaming of how to put them together.”

Excitement thrummed through Rachel. She'd enjoyed being at the quilting store. The gossip was something she hadn't been aware took place and Gwen seemed to know everyone and a little something about each person who had entered the store. As happy as she was, a bit of dread trickled through her. The store stood on the main square. A lot of people milled on the sidewalks. Could one of them be Dirk? For a moment, Rachel simply watched. It was a habit. But a good one. Would she ever be free of him?

R
ACHEL COULD HARDLY WAIT
until Cade got home that evening. She had the table set. Jenny was gnawing on a cracker in her high chair near where they would eat dinner. Dressed in a blue romper, the infant was having a lot of fun with her food and smeared it across the plastic table in front of her. Rachel sat down and gently wiped her bow-shaped mouth.

“That's just too yummy to resist, isn't it?” she murmured to the baby, smiling and gently training her hair back into place on her tiny head.

Jenny cooed and waved what was left of the cracker at Rachel.

Laughing, she heard the door open and close. Cade entered, looking especially tired, and some of her happiness dissolved.

“Hard day at work?” she guessed, greeting him.

Cade nodded and hungrily drank in the scene of Rachel sitting next to Jenny. It buoyed his sagging spirits. “Some days are worse than others,” he said, shrugging out of his dark brown nylon jacket as he
crossed the kitchen. “I'll get a quick shower and change for dinner.”

Cade leaned down and kissed the top of Jenny's head. The infant smiled up at him and waved her half-eaten cracker around. “Nothing like a baby to change how you feel,” he said. As he drowned in Rachel's blue gaze, warm with understanding, Cade straightened up. “I'll be back.”

He disappeared down the hall and into the master bedroom. It had been one hell of a day. The memory of a horrific accident that had occurred just outside of Jackson Hole flashed before him as he quickly got undressed. He threw his gear on the bed. All he wanted was a hot shower to wash away the screams, the cries of pain, the panicking bystanders and the blood.

As Cade stood under the hot, pummeling streams of water, he felt the tightness ease in his shoulders. For him, water was a safe haven against the world he lived in sometimes. He scrubbed his face with the soap and inhaled its lime scent. How many times had he showered right after Abby and his baby daughter had been killed? Two or three times a day. Cade never told anyone about his abnormal habit. After a while, he didn't need them and was back to one every night before bedtime. Water was cleansing and healing.

He stood in the tile shower, the water dripping off his face after he'd rinsed away the soap. Most of all, he needed to cleanse the blood that had been on
his hands earlier. After getting back to the sheriff's department, he'd scrubbed them in the men's lavatory before writing out a report on the car accident. The shower washed away the reminders of the day and made him feel as if he was truly clean once more.

Cade closed his eyes and simply allowed the streams of water to fall across his body. The steam was so thick within the glass-encased area that it was more like warm white clouds surrounding him. It all felt so good. The sense of being able to let down, to relax and let the nightmare of a day dissolve, flowed off him.
Home. I'm home. I have a baby daughter who waits for me…
In another three months, Jenny would legally be his as the adoption process crawled through its different phases in the court system. He still grieved over the loss of Lily.
I have Rachel….

Opening his eyes, Cade wiped away the water from his face and stepped back just enough to keep the streams flowing across his chest downward.
Rachel. Oh, God, how many times today after dealing with that accident did I think of her? Of Abby and Susannah?
Cade hadn't seen an accident of this magnitude since he'd lost his family in a similar accident. And this one brought all of it back to him in spades. Cade wondered when the past would leave him alone once and for all. Turning off the faucets, he opened the shower door and stepped out into the spacious bathroom. He pulled a dark brown terry
cloth towel from the linen closet and quickly dried himself.

After dressing in well-worn jeans and a burgundy polo shirt, he retrieved his old, patched cowboy boots. Some things he couldn't part with, and this pair of boots were like old friends to his feet.

There, he was ready. Cade picked up a brush and tamed his damp hair back into place. His beard darkened his face, but he wasn't going to shave twice a day. In the mirror he noticed dark shadows beneath his eyes and the murky look to his gray gaze. He looked like hell warmed over, but it was understandable after his awful day. In his years as a deputy, he'd heard of others in the department who had seen what he saw today. To hear it was one thing. To actually see it…well, that was very different. Rubbing his hand across his hard jaw, Cade took in a deep, trembling breath. Maybe he just needed to cry. After a situation or crisis, Cade had cried alone and no one had ever known about it. Not even Abby or his parents. Sometimes he'd cry to relieve the awful pressure in his chest after an accident he'd had to handle. Frowning, he looked away from the mirror. Cade never wanted to see another decapitation as long as he lived.

Rachel heard the pleasant thunk of Cade's cowboy boots coming down the hall. She had cleaned up Jenny's mess on her table, and the little girl played with colorful rubber rings instead. Looking up, she saw Cade emerge from the hall. While he appeared
a little better, she sensed something awful had happened to him today. Outwardly, he looked like the Cade she knew, but one glance into his bloodshot eyes, and Rachel knew better.

“Sit down,” she invited, rising from her chair. She moved over to the counter where she had everything ready to be brought over to the table. “What do you want to drink?”

“A stiff belt of whiskey,” he answered, sitting down.

Turning, Rachel blinked. “Really?”

“No…just teasing. Water is fine, thanks.” Cade turned his attention to Jenny and she wrapped one of her tiny hands around his index finger. Sitting with his new baby daughter and Rachel's presence in the kitchen gave him a modicum of comfort that nothing else ever would. Not even a shower.

“Here's your salad,” she said, placing two bowls with fresh greens on the table. “Pick your dressing.” She pointed to the lazy Susan.

“Thanks,” Cade said. “Looks great. I appreciate you doing this, Rachel. You've been such a godsend.” And she had.

Coloring beneath his compliment, she teased, “Listen, if a man gives me thanks for the hard work I put into a meal, that will keep me around for a long time. It's when our work goes unappreciated that we women feel taken for granted.”

Choosing a balsamic and olive oil dressing, Cade
murmured, “Oh, I'll never take you for granted. Not ever.”

“That's nice to know. Here's our bread to go with the salad.” Rachel sat down after bringing out a plate of oven-warmed garlic French bread. She saw the frown on his brow. Something awful had definitely happened today, but Rachel knew this wasn't the time to talk about it. Let him come down from the day, relax and maybe after dinner, he would broach it with her. Maybe not.

Rachel couldn't pry. That was husband-and-wife stuff, not employee-to-employer chitchat. Still, she yearned to have a deeper connection with Cade. And that kiss the previous month had redefined their relationship in a confusing sort of way. It was always in the forefront of her mind that he felt sorry for her. He didn't feel love for her—only sympathy.

Pouring red-wine vinegar and olive oil on her salad, Rachel sought to find a way to lift his darkness. “Today your mom came over and invited me to come and learn how to quilt at her store.”

“Oh?” Cade lifted his head. The salad tasted like cardboard to him. He didn't have much of an appetite. Normally, after calls like that, food wasn't high on his priority list. “You're going to learn how to quilt?”

She grinned. “Yep. And I spent all afternoon at her shop. Your dad took care of Jenny while I was gone. Gwen taught me about the different qualities of fabric and what makes quilting fabric so special.”

Hearing her husky voice and seeing the happiness in Rachel's eyes lifted Cade's sadness. “My mother is more teacher than quilter, although she makes a mean quilt, too. She loves to teach others.”

Rachel laughed. “I was surprised how fast the hours went by! She taught me about choosing the right colors for the quilt I'm going to make. In a lot of ways, it's like painting with a brush on canvas. I never realized how quilters are really fabric artists.”

The food began to taste better. Cade speared half of a small grape tomato. “So, did you find fabric? Did Mom give you a plan?”

“I've got the fabric and the quilt guide is in the living room. I figured if you weren't too tired later, that I'd show it all to you.”

“I'd like to see it,” Cade said, meaning it. “What kind of quilt is Mom guiding you to make?”

“A baby quilt.” Her smile lessened a bit. “I hope you don't mind. I'd like to make one for Jenny.”

Cade's normally gruff voice softened. “No, I think that's great. Thank you. She'll have it all her life. Quilts are special that way and I like the idea of your energy, your care and love going into making it for her.”

Relief flowed through Rachel. “Wonderful!” Since the kiss she had tried very hard to be detached emotionally when she was around Cade. It was impossible and she struggled mightily every day. Somehow, Rachel made herself stay light and professional. No
more intimacy. If Cade could do it, so could she. Yet, every time she saw the man, her body cried out for his touch, another kiss and his embrace. This would only work if both of them honored their agreement.

After Cade finished his salad, he got up and took the bowls to the sink. He brought over the spaghetti and sauce. After setting them down, he took a seat.

“You can't have this just yet,” he told Jenny, running his index finger along her smooth, chubby arm. “But soon. For now, just smell great food, dumpling.”

Rachel served the spaghetti. Cade wanted a lot less than he usually took. “At six months she can have a limp piece of spaghetti to play with. I'll start working with her next week.”

“That's going to be fun,” Cade said. The scent of fresh basil and oregano in the sauce made his mouth water. He might have been in emotional hell but his physical body was starving for food.

Rachel chuckled. “Well, she's already on organic baby foods and she's taking well to it. I'm sure spaghetti will be a lot of fun for her.”

Cade tasted the sauce. “Are you sure you're not Italian?”

“No, no Italian in my blood.”

“What then? You're a really good cook.”

“I'm just a genetic mutt,” she parried, hoping he didn't ask for more information. Rachel was getting so tired of lying that she almost wanted to stop doing
it. In reality, she was a mix of English and Dutch ancestry through her great-great grandparents who had come here and bought the family farm in Iowa so long ago.

“I see,” Cade murmured, swirling his fork around in the spaghetti.

“I'm glad you like it. I stopped on the way home after my beginning quilt class and picked up the fresh herbs at the grocery store.”

“I'm happy you're getting out more,” Cade said, meaning it. “I was getting worried about you being cooped up in here too long.”

“Your mom fixed that.” Rachel laughed. “And she made us a spring cake for dessert.”

“I love her cooking. You and she could win blue ribbons at the county fair.”

A warmth flowed through Rachel. Jenny was cooing happily as she played with her rings. This was what a family should be like, she thought. Not the disaster she'd had with Dirk. There was such unspoken happiness swirling in the kitchen. The odor of fresh-cooked food, the sound of a happy baby and Cade at the table. She was in some kind of wonderful dream.

“I don't know about entering my food at the fair, but according to Gwen, there's a huge quilt contest. I hope to see it this fall. I think she's entering.”

Brows raising, Cade said, “Good. She's one of the
best quilters in the valley, but she'd never tell you that.”

“Your mom is a humble sort. It was fun watching her in the store today. She has such a passion for quilting and her enthusiasm is infectious. I've never seen so many happy women in one place. There's so much laughter in that store, Cade. It amazed me. I loved it.”

“Mom loved getting that store off the ground. It took five years and a lot of savings to do it. I was ten years old when she decided that's what she wanted to do. She and dad sat down and created a business plan. Since Mom is the accountant for our ranch, she took the plan to the local bank. They wouldn't give her a loan, and she was steamed. So, for five years they pinched pennies to save enough cash up front so the bank would loan her the rest in order to start the store.”

Rachel shook her head. “Anything worth wanting means plenty of hard work to manifest it.”

“Right on,” Cade said. To his surprise, he'd cleaned up the food on his plate. Being with Rachel and Jenny gave him a reprieve from today's horrific events. Cade was grateful. “Mom wanted the quilt store for two reasons. She's very business-minded and saw that our organic cattle operation wasn't taking off like we'd hoped. She had been a part of the quilting club here since forever. Mom knew everyone wanted
a store here instead of having to drive clear to Idaho Falls, Idaho, to get their fabric and patterns.”

“So, she did it because of that?” Rachel asked. “Was the beef operation not keeping their heads above water financially?”

“Right,” Cade said. He pushed back his chair and stood up. He leaned over and picked up her empty plate. “Mom figured that in a five-year period after the store became a reality, it would help keep our ranch solvent. And it did.” He cleaned off the plates beneath the faucet and placed them into the dishwasher. Cade was glad to be talking about everyday things. Good things.

Rachel stood up and went to the coffeemaker. “And now, from what I can see, Gwen has plenty of business.”

Cade brought down two mugs from the cupboard. “Oh, Dad calls her the ‘rich one' now.”