Hard Rain (10 page)

“But what work is that?” Frank said, clearly not expecting an answer.

“Whatever Senator Buckmaster Hamilton has hired him to do.” He could hear what the sheriff wasn’t saying, that he’d heard this theory before and was still doubtful. But Russell believed Buckmaster was capable of unspeakable things to get what he wanted.

“Just for the sake of argument, why would Buckmaster want the doctor back now?”

“Maybe to give Sarah back her memory so they can be the happy couple they used to be,” he said sarcastically. “To make sure she never remembers what happened before she went into the river that night. If it came out now, it could end his career. He wouldn’t want to take that chance.”

Frank sighed. “I guess only time will tell.”

“Apparently, all we can agree on is that whatever the doctor is doing back in the States, it involves Sarah,” Russell said.

“Just keep in mind, for all we know, Sarah is the one who called him back to the States.”

Russell shook his head. “I heard about Maggie McTavish’s remains being found on the Hamilton Ranch. That should tell you everything you need to know about the Hamilton men.”

“Let’s not forget that Sarah was in that house when Maggie disappeared.”

Russell couldn’t believe his ears. “You can’t think Sarah would kill her. What possible motive could she have had?”

“She was the one who encouraged JD to run for president. And now she’s encouraging Buck to do the same thing. If it meant that much to her thirty-five years ago, she might have realized that Maggie was a roadblock and decided to take care of it herself.” The sheriff shrugged. “Truthfully, I don’t know what to think. But at this point, everyone involved is a suspect in Maggie’s murder, including Sarah.”

* * *

L
YNETTE
“N
ETTIE
” C
URRY
glanced down the road for a sign of her husband’s pickup’s headlights. He must be working late, she told herself. In the yard light, Frank’s crows were lined up on the telephone line that hung between the house and barn.

Her husband had studied crows since he was a boy. The ones who’d settled on his ranch were like his children. He’d given them names, actually seemed to understand the sounds they made. Nettie couldn’t deny that the crows reacted to him as if happy to see him whenever he came home.

Like now, when they, too, were looking down the road, expecting to see a cloud of dust. Frank was usually home by now and the crows knew it.

As she moved away from the window, she wondered if it was the Maggie McTavish case that had delayed him. Something had been nagging at her all day. Now, as she walked into the kitchen, she knew what she had to do.

The small box was hidden in the back of one of the kitchen drawers because she didn’t want her husband to know about it. Frank would make fun of her. For now, what was inside was her secret.

Taking out the box, she held it carefully, as if its contents were precious or breakable. Moving to the kitchen table, she opened the box and gently took out the pendulum that hung from a thin cord. It felt warm cradled in her palm.

“This is silly,” she’d told herself numerous times. She’d ordered the stupid thing after it had been discovered that Sarah Johnson Hamilton had returned to Montana after twenty-two years with a pendulum tattoo on her tush. Nettie had been intrigued as to why the woman would have something like that permanently needled into her flesh. So she’d ordered a pendulum just for the fun of it.

Logically, did she really believe that this thing could tell the future? Unfortunately, the other times she’d tried it, the pendulum had told her things that had proved true.

Since then, she’d experimented with it. Holding the end of the cord now, she positioned the pendulum a few inches over the tabletop and took a deep breath before letting it out.

The pendulum stilled as if waiting.

First, she asked it a question that she already knew the answer to. “Is the body that was found Maggie McTavish?” she asked in a whisper.

For a moment, the pendulum didn’t move, then slowly it began to circle. Yes.

She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She wanted to ask who had killed her, but the pendulum, while nothing short of amazing, could only answer yes or no.

“Will her killer be caught?”

The pendulum wobbled for a moment, then began to circle. She felt a huge sense of relief. Of course, Frank would catch the killer.

“Is the killer someone I know?” she asked.

The pendulum had come to a stop again between questions. As it started to move, she heard the sound of a car door slamming. She dropped the pendulum on the table, her heart pounding. Shooting to her feet, she quickly scooped it up and shoved it into the small box. As the front door opened, she hurriedly hid the box in the back of the kitchen drawer.

She’d just slammed the drawer closed, when she heard her husband come into the kitchen. Spinning around, she cried, “You worked late.” Her voice came out too high, too cheery.

He stared at her, then toward the back door. “Why do I feel as if you just sent your lover scurrying out the back door.” He glanced past her to the window over the backyard.

“You just startled me,” she said, wiping her perspiring hands down the clean apron she’d put on earlier. “My mind was a million miles away.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, clearly not believing it for a moment.

“I made tuna salad earlier,” Nettie said as she moved to the refrigerator. “I can toast the bread, if you like.”

“No need. Just plain bread will be fine.” He sat down on the chair at the table that she’d only abandoned moments before. She could tell he was still watching her. It was the sheriff in him. He saw through people, maybe especially her.

“If there is something I should know, Lynette...” he said as she put a sandwich in front of him. He took a bite, his eyes focused on her.

She was about to confess about the pendulum. So what if he made fun of it and her for being so silly about the stupid thing. This was the second time he’d almost caught her playing with the darned thing.

Fortunately, she was saved by the bell. His cell phone rang. He glanced at it and said, “It’s work. I have to take this.”

Nettie listened as the dispatcher relayed the message. All the time Frank was on the phone, he was watching her suspiciously.

She chuckled to herself. He didn’t really think there was someone else, did he?

* * *

S
ARAH
AND
BUCK
drove to the main ranch house.

“I’d like to spend the night with you, but I need to be sure that Harper is all right and the others if they’ve heard about this latest situation,” Buck had said.

She understood. He had a flight out soon. But he’d said he’d get a ride to the airport.

As she drove away, she felt like crying. It surprised her that she could feel this lost. The truth was that she was tired of waiting in the wings. It made her think of Russell and the life she could have had if she had married him. She felt instantly guilty. Before she’d dropped him off, Buck had talked about how he wanted his campaign manager to step up the process of getting her back into his life.

“Jerrod is determined that it can’t come out about the two of us until after the primaries,” Buck had said.

“Maybe he’s right.”

“I want you standing next to me the day I’m elected.
If
I’m elected. That was what I had planned, but now this thing with Maggie McTavish...” He’d sworn. “It’s always something. Sometimes I think I should just withdraw from the race so we can be together and to hell with everything else.” When she hadn’t said anything, he’d looked over at her. “What?” he’d demanded.

She’d said what she knew he’d wanted to hear. “You’re going to be the next president of the United States. You aren’t going to let anything keep you from it. And when it happens, I will be standing next to you.”

Relief had washed over his expression, softening it. He needed her with him. She had to be there with him. He’d reached for her hand and squeezed it. But sometimes she didn’t understand why it meant so much to her.

Now alone again, she drove home only to pace the floor. How long could she keep Buck in the race with the way things were going? It wasn’t just this latest news that worried her. Going into her bedroom, she took out the copy of the photo from the back of the drawer. She’d requested it from the sheriff after he’d found what he believed to be proof of where she’d been during the missing twenty-two years.

She stared at the woman in the photo as if looking at a stranger. It was a much younger version of her and not just someone who resembled her. But she had no memory connected to that younger self—or to the location or the story that went with it.

Apparently she’d gone to Brazil with the man in the photo, Dr. Ralph Venable, a psychiatrist. He looked to be much older than her. According to what the sheriff had found out, she’d worked with him in a hospital for twenty years as his assistant. It seemed inconceivable since she had no training. She wondered how exactly she had “assisted” all those years.

It scared her that she didn’t recognize the man.

More frightening was the realization that this wasn’t the man from her nightmares.

So who was Dr. Ralph Venable? According to the sheriff, a suspected member of The Prophecy, the anarchy group that she’d sworn she knew nothing about. And yet, she’d spent more than twenty years with this man?

Sarah rubbed at her temples, remembering what Buck had said.

“These people set you up because you looked like that woman Red—Virginia Handley. She and the rest of them are responsible for what has happened to you, including wiping your brain and giving you false memories. No wonder you’re so scared. You don’t know what is real and what isn’t.”

That they’d tried to frame her, she could believe. But that they’d somehow stolen all memory of the past from her and given her false memories... “But how is that possible?”

“The sheriff found out that Dr. Venable was experimenting with brain wiping,” Buck had told her. “He thinks that’s what happened to you.”

Russell thought the same thing. He’d been the one to suggest the idea to her in the first place. It still didn’t explain why she’d tried to kill herself in the Yellowstone River that winter night only months after her twins were born.

“The night you drove into the river, you survived and called someone to come pick you up,” Buck had told her, based on what the sheriff had been able to piece together.

She’d heard the veiled anger in Buck’s tone and wondered if he would ever be able to get over what he saw as her betrayal. Not just that she’d tried to kill herself. That could have been because of postpartum depression, so he couldn’t blame her if that had been the case.

No, what he blamed her for was that she hadn’t called her own husband after failing at suicide. Instead, she’d called someone she trusted. Or only thought she could trust. But who had that been? This Dr. Venable?

She had no memory of any of it. When Buck had talked to her regarding what the sheriff had found out about those years, it was as if he was talking about a stranger.

“Whoever this man was who you called, he took you to a clinic up by White Sulphur Springs where Dr. Venable was doing his experiments. The clinic closed a few days later and both you and the doctor disappeared.”

Not disappeared. Took off to Brazil where Dr. Venable continued his experiments. That’s what the sheriff thought. That’s what Buck thought. And one of the people Dr. Venable had experimented on apparently was her.

So had she gone to Brazil willingly with this crazy doctor? Was there some reason she’d wanted—or needed—her memories wiped away?

Sarah put the photo back in the drawer where she kept it hidden. Her head ached as it often did when she tried to remember the past. She didn’t know what to believe. She thought of the happy memory of her and Buck riding horses across the pasture, the sun on her face, the breeze blowing back her blond hair.

A false memory. Buck had said it had never happened. Apparently, she’d been thrown from a horse soon after she and Buck were married and refused to get on one again. She had no memory of it.

What made it worse was that Buck said the incident had taken place near Horsethief Creek—in the same area where Maggie’s body had been found.

She rubbed her temples, her head aching. The harder she tried to remember, the more the past hid in the darkness and the more she realized she had no idea who she really was or what had really happened to her.

What glimpses she had of her memory terrified her, because if those memories were true, then there was a good chance she was not only a member of the anarchy group The Prophecy, but that she was a killer.

CHAPTER TEN

I
T
HAD
BEEN
several weeks since JD had gone back to the lake. He knew it was foolish. But the temptation was too great. He was too old for her, more than twice her age. That he’d thought of the difference in their ages was telling enough. That he saw himself diving into the lake, cutting through the icy water and coming up to find her next to him haunted his dreams nightly. He wanted to see her again, so he stayed away.

When he was around Maggie, he felt alive, as if anything were possible. He forgot for a while about the problems at home. He recalled other summer days when he was a boy, lying in the sun next to the lake, watching clouds float past and daydreaming about the future.

A woman by the name of Mabel Murphy cleaned once a week for them. She often chattered on without him paying any attention, but at the mention of Maggie McTavish, he tuned in to what she was saying.

“Huge argument right there at the Creamery. You know Bobby Barnes, good-looking kid, star athlete, works at his dad’s car dealership? Maggie McTavish could certainly do a lot worse. The two were an item last year. Bobby was trying to get her back, though I can’t imagine why. Put his hand through the wall. I heard he broke some bones. That girl. She is nothing but trouble.”

JD felt Grace’s gaze on him.

“I’ve seen her on our property riding that big bay of hers headed up into the mountains,” his wife was saying. “I wonder what she does up there in the mountains? Maybe she’s like my husband and enjoys fishing.”

“Fishing.” Mabel made a rude sound. “What that girl is hooking into ain’t no fish.” She laughed heartily at her own joke.

JD excused himself to see to one of the horses.

A week later, he rode up to the lake with his fishing rod. He’d desperately needed time away from the ranch. Grace had become even more disagreeable since Sarah had given birth, and Buck was busy working on their new house.

“You should see the way Sarah looks at me,” Grace had complained. “I swear she hates me.”

“Maybe if you were just a little more welcoming to her...”

“You always take her side,” his wife had said in disgust. “Why don’t you go fishing,” she’d added, and wheeled away.

Why not, he’d thought.

Now, though, as he neared the lake, he hoped Maggie wouldn’t be there. He felt...vulnerable. Grace’s relentless complaining and constant bickering with her daughter-in-law had him wanting to escape the house more and more.

But as he rode up to his spot where he liked to fish, he saw her horse and heard the beckoning splash of water on the other side of the huge boulder.

He reined in and, for a moment, almost turned his horse around and left. Then he heard her voice and felt a pull like gravity.

“Came back for a swim, did you?” Maggie asked as she glided into view.

* * *

“O
H
,
GOOD
,
YOU
’
RE
HOME
,”
the senator said as he walked in the front door of the ranch house. “I have to catch a flight back to Washington, but I was hoping to see you before I left. Are you all right? You look flushed.”

She felt like she had at sixteen when she’d come home from a date to find her father waiting up for her. “I— It’s hot out,” she said, the best she could come up with.

Just seeing Brody had put a flush in her cheeks, let alone arguing with him. Even the thought of him sent a wave of heat through her. Did he actually think he’d talked her out of continuing her search for Maggie’s killer?

“I was hoping you were staying the night,” she said to her father.

“Have to get back, big debate coming up.” He looked distracted for a moment before he focused on her and smiled. “You appear to have adjusted to being home again,” he said as he took in her Western attire. She did a twirl for him just as she’d done as a little girl, only today there was no frilly dress. Today she wore jeans, boots and a Western shirt.

“So you’re enjoying being on a horse again?” he said as they both sat down.

“I am.”

He seemed to remember that it was out riding when she and Brody had found Maggie McTavish’s remains. “I’m sorry you had to see that yesterday. Damned shame.”

She was thankful he’d brought it up. “I wanted to ask you about Maggie and...” Harper knew that her father was pressed for time. Also, there was no easy way to ask the question. “Did my grandfather have an affair with her?”

He held up both hands. “Please, I don’t want to talk to you about this. I just had to go through this with the sheriff.”

“I’m sick of not knowing what is going on with my family. Did my grandfather have an affair with Maggie McTavish?” Harper demanded. “The truth is going to come out. Stop trying to protect me.”

Her father sighed. “Harper, I don’t have time for this.” He started to get up.

“Dad, I need to know. I’ve been looking into her murder.”

He sat back down. “What?”

“Someone has to.”

“The sheriff is looking into this as we speak. You have no business—”

“
No business?
JD Hamilton was my grandfather. This is my family. You have all kept me in the dark about the goings-on here for too long. I know what everyone is saying, but is there any truth to it?”

“I’ll tell you what I just told the sheriff. I have no idea.”

She knew he was hoping she would let it go at that. But she couldn’t. “How is that possible? If anyone should know, it would be you. You lived with your parents for a while, right? After you and Mother got married.”

Her father turned to her, his face a mask of pain. “I honestly... Something was going on, that’s all I can tell you.”

“
Something?
Why do you say that?”

He raked a hand through his graying blond hair. She saw his gaze turn inward. “I overheard them arguing. My father wasn’t the kind of man who even raised his voice, so I was shocked.”

“Did you hear what they were fighting about?”

Her father groaned. “Harper, I don’t want to drag all that up again.”

“You aren’t going to have a choice. Maggie was murdered and buried on our ranch. The sheriff has been asking questions and pretty soon the media is going to get wind of it. We need to know the truth so we can—”

“You mean
you
need to know the truth. Is this about Brody McTavish?”

She bit down on her lower lip for a moment, surprised when her eyes blurred with tears. “What if it is?”

“Baby girl,” her father said, getting up to come over and sit next to her. “You can’t be in love with this man.” He took her hand.

“Why can’t I?” she demanded, pulling her hand free of his. “Tell me. If you know something...”

“You can have any man you want.”

“What if I want
him
?”

* * *

T
HE
SHERIFF
WASN
’
T
surprised that the news about Maggie having been buried alive was already in the wind. He’d hoped to contain the gruesome details, but from the look on his wife’s face, Lynette had already heard.

“Is it true?” she demanded when they met for lunch. They were sitting on the picnic table outside the Beartooth General Store as they often did on the days that she worked.

He nodded and finished his sandwich, scrunching up the plain brown bag she’d brought it in. He was still wondering why she’d been acting so strangely when he’d come home last night. She’d acted if as she were hiding something from him. He’d never understand her completely, he told himself, and tried to let it go.

“Mabel?” he asked.

“She called me first thing this morning with the news. You know I hate being the last one to learn about these things.”

That he
did
know about her.

“Did Mabel tell you where she was?”

“At home.”

“Wearing her phone out calling people with the news,” he said, resigned that there was no containing news like this. He glanced at his watch.

“It’s just so...awful,” Lynette said.

It was. He tried not to think about the vivacious young woman and how her life had ended. “I have to go,” he said, getting to his feet to take his paper bag and Lynette’s over to the trash can.

“You have to catch her killer.”

“I will.”

“I know,” she said, smiling at him.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Lynette?” he asked frowning. “You’ve been acting strangely even for you.”

“I’m fine.” She got to her feet. “I should get back to work.”

This was the woman he knew. She had to get back in the store so she could keep her end of the grapevine oiled and running smoothly.

“I love you, Lynette,” he said impulsively. “If there is anything you need to tell me...”

She met his gaze and laughed. “I don’t have a lover if that’s what’s worrying you.”

He couldn’t help but smile. He truly did adore this woman. “I’m glad to hear that. I already have one murder on my hands as it is.” But it hadn’t skipped his attention that she hadn’t told him what it was she was hiding from him.

Frank decided to pay Mabel Murphy a visit. He found her getting ready to go into town. She wore a large-print bright flowered dress and too much perfume. Her lips had been painted bright red and there were two matching patches of red rouge on her cheeks.

“Special occasion?” he asked when he saw how she was made up.

“I’m sorry?” She frowned as if she didn’t know what he was talking about.

“You’re all dressed up. I must have caught you at a bad time.”

“Just on my way into town to do some shopping.”

More than likely to gather and dispense gossip. “If you could spare a few minutes, I wanted to ask you some questions.”

Her expression brightened. “I have all the time in the world.” She motioned him in excitedly. “This is about Maggie McTavish, isn’t it? I knew it when I heard about that body being found on the Hamilton Ranch.”

She led him into a living room furnished with antiques handed down by family members. Mabel didn’t spend much time at home so there was a fine layer of dust on everything.

Frank took the chair she offered and got right to it. “I understand you used to clean for Grace and JD Hamilton.”

Mabel looked pleased as a peacock. She sat, folded her dimpled hands in her lap and said, “I certainly did and I got an earful.”

“About Maggie McTavish?”

“About her and the daughter-in-law. Grace hated Sarah.” Mabel leaned forward conspiratorially. “Grace lived in fear that Sarah was going to kill her.” Looking pleased with herself, she said, “The fall down the stairs that killed her wasn’t her first. Of course, JD and her son thought Grace was getting senile. I wasn’t so sure. But then again, she would have done anything to free her son of his wife.”

While interesting, the sheriff needed to know about Maggie. “Did Grace mention Maggie?”

Mabel nodded quickly. “She saw her riding her horse by the house on her way to the mountains. That’s where they met, at some lake up there. JD pretended he went up there to fish. Posh! He never came home with fish, but he looked pretty pleased with himself after an afternoon up there in the mountains.”

He could see that Mabel didn’t know any more than the other gossips in town, but he had to try. “So you never actually saw Maggie and JD together?”

“No, but I wasn’t born yesterday. One of them would ride by and then the other would take off. Same coming back down from the mountains. Grace knew. She’d sit at that window, so mad she could have eaten nails.”

“They might not have gone to the same place.”

Mabel shook her head smugly. “I saw the drawing Maggie did of JD.”

“Drawing?”

“It was of him fishing at some lake in the mountains. She couldn’t have drawn that if she wasn’t up there with him.”

“What happened to the drawing?”

She shrugged. “I saw it while cleaning his room, you know they had separate rooms after Grace’s fall down the stairs and her needing a wheelchair. The drawing was lying on his bedside table. Maggie had even signed it. He caught me looking at it. After that I never saw it again. I think he hid it.”

Frank hated to even ask, but did anyway. “So who do you think killed Maggie?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? JD. He had the most to lose if the truth came out.”

“What about Grace?”

“Oh, she wanted to, I know that. But how could she, being confined to that wheelchair?”

Yes, how could she? Frank realized he needed to talk to Grace’s doctor.

* * *

B
RODY
WORRIED
ABOUT
HER
.

Harper found herself smiling as she drove into town to pick up a few things. His worrying about her, though, hadn’t changed anything. He wasn’t interested in helping her find out the truth, apparently. Nor did he think they had any hope of ever being a couple.

She intended to prove him wrong. The way she saw it, they had only one chance. All she had to do was find out the truth. It was the rumors, the accusations, the speculation, that would keep them apart forever if she didn’t. The truth—no matter how bad it was—would put an end to the rumors. They would face whatever it was and everyone would move on. At least that was her hope, naive or not.

It was late afternoon, the sun disappearing behind the Crazies, when she saw the car Brody had said was a 1957 Chevy Bel Air. It sped past, the driver seeming not to notice her sitting at the stop sign. She didn’t get a look at the driver because of the sun glinting off the windshield, but she was bound and determined to find out who was driving.

She hesitated only a moment before she flipped a U-turn in the middle of the street and followed the car. To her surprise, the driver didn’t go far. She saw him turn into Bill’s Auto Repair and park. As she drove slowly past, she realized she’d been holding her breath.