CHRISTMAS AT THE CARDWELL RANCH (3 page)

Teresa had quickly stepped in.

“Back off. I have it under control,” Mia had snapped, wiping at her alcohol-soaked jeans.

Teresa might have argued differently, but the man had raised his head and looked right at her before getting up and leaving.

Mia had apologized a while later when they’d both gone up to the bar to get their drink orders. “I just didn’t want you getting involved.” Mia’s gaze had met hers, worry in her eyes. “I might have already involved you too much. I’m sorry.”

She’d been startled by her words. Even more startled when Mia had gone to the room where they kept their coats. Teresa saw Mia take something out of Teresa’s ski jacket pocket and stuff it into her jeans pocket.

Teresa had confronted her, only to have Mia pull away. She’d stood helplessly as Mia grabbed her tray of drinks and headed off through the crowd toward one of the large tables at the back of the bar.

Not long after that Mia had seemed unsteady on her feet.

As Teresa had gone back over to the empty table where the man had been sitting, to clear his table, she spotted the hypodermic needle lying under his chair. Her heart had begun to pound. Was Ethan right? Was the argument over drugs?

It still gave her chills to remember the look on the man’s face when he’d glanced up at her. Not long after that, she’d seen Mia stagger into some man before leaving through the back door. Mia had definitely appeared drugged. Had she left with the man?

She felt a chill now as she slogged through the deep snow, glad she wasn’t that far from home. She’d left behind the cluster of buildings that made up the center of Meadow Village. Now there was nothing but snowy darkness. Pines, their branches heavy with snow, stood like sentinels at the edge of the mountain to her right. To her left, the golf course was an empty field of deep snow.

The storm hadn’t let up for hours. She kept her head down against the falling snow, but it still clung to her face and eyelashes. With each step, she regretted not going back into the bar and calling Ethan. Sometimes she was her own worst enemy.

At the sound of a car approaching, she moved to the edge of the road. Probably Ethan, she thought. Was it possible he’d simply fallen asleep and on awakening, realized he hadn’t picked her up?

She felt headlights wash over her. Chilled to the bone, she could feel the deep wet snow soaking into her jeans up to her knees. She was angry with him, but right now she didn’t feel like fighting. Worse, she didn’t want her own foolish stubbornness to make her end up walking the rest of the way home just to spite Ethan or try to make him feel guilty.

Once they got back to the apartment, she would take a nice hot shower. Maybe have a beer with him. Or a soda, she thought, remembering that she was pregnant. She might even be up for making love. Anything to take the edge off and forget for just a while that her life was a mess and had been as far back as she could remember.

Teresa shielded her eyes from the blizzard and the bright headlights as the vehicle caught up to her. A thought struck her in that instant. The engine sound was wrong. She knew it wasn’t Ethan in his old pickup even before she saw the large black SUV slow to a stop next to her.

It was one of those expensive big rigs like ones she saw all over Big Sky. The windows were dark as well as the paint. She was trying to see inside, to see if she knew the driver, when the back door was suddenly flung open.

The man who jumped out was large and bundled up in a bulky coat. Her heart was already racing by the time he grabbed her. She tried to scream, but he clamped a gloved hand over her mouth and dragged her toward the large SUV. She fought, but he was too strong for her. Still, she got in a few good kicks and punches before he forced a smelly cloth over her mouth and nose, and everything went black.

Chapter Three

Hud got the call just after daylight the next morning. He’d been up all night with the break-in. He needed sleep and food badly, and was on his way home, hoping for both when the call came in.

“My fiancée didn’t come home last night.”

“Who am I speaking with?” he asked. The man sounded more than a little upset.

“Ethan Cross.”

Hud knew Ethan, knew his record. A wild, good-looking kid who’d gotten into trouble a lot before going to the academy and becoming a highway patrol officer.

“Your fiancée is Teresa Evans?” he asked to clarify. Ethan had been with Teresa since high school. That was the nice thing about a small community. Hud knew the players, at least the local ones.

“She works at the Canyon. I was supposed to pick her up after closing, but I got called out on an accident down by Fir Ridge. With the roads like they were, I didn’t get back in time. When I realized she wasn’t home, I went looking for her. This isn’t like her.”

Hud took a guess. “Did the two of you have a fight earlier yesterday?” It was an old story, one he’d heard many times.

“Not really a fight exactly. Still, she wouldn’t not come home.”

“She probably just stayed at a friend’s place to let things cool down. Have you checked with any of her friends?”

“There’s only one she’s been tight with recently. I tried Mia’s number, but she doesn’t answer.”

“Mia Duncan?” Hud asked, and felt his pulse quicken when Ethan said yes. “Have you tried Teresa’s cell phone?”

“She forgot to take it when she left for work. I found it when I called her number looking for her.”

“Let’s give her a few hours and see if she doesn’t turn up,” Hud said, hoping he didn’t have two missing women, since Mia Duncan hadn’t turned up yet, either.

* * *

T
AG
COULDN
’
T
BELIEVE
how much he’d missed this. As he trod through the knee-high snow on the mountain the next morning swinging the ax, he breathed in the frosty air and the sweet fresh smell of pine.

“How about that one?” Dana called from below him on the mountainside. They had climbed up the mountain behind his cousin’s ranch house Christmas tree hunting. Now she motioned at one to his far right.

He waded through the new-fallen snow to check the tree, shook off the branches, then called back, “Too flat on the back. I’m going up higher on the mountain.”

“There’s an old logging road up there,” she called from down below. “I’ll meet you where it comes out. If you find a tree, give a holler. Meanwhile, I’ll keep looking down here.” She sounded as if she was enjoying this as much as he was, but then Dana had always loved the great outdoors.

He felt a chill as he remembered what had happened to her and her family last spring. Some crazy woman had pretended to be a long-lost cousin, and having designs on Hud, had tried to kill Dana, her children and her best friend, Hilde. Fortunately Deputy Colt Dawson had found out the woman’s true identity and arrived in time to save them all.

Tag couldn’t imagine something so horrifying, but if anything, his cousin Dana was resilient and Camilla Northland was in prison, where hopefully she would remain the rest of her life.

The new snow higher up the mountain was as light as down feathers and floated around him as he climbed. He had to stop a couple of times to catch his breath because of the altitude. “You’re not in Texas anymore,” he said, laughing.

The land flattened out some once he was near the top, and he knew he’d hit the old logging road. As he started down it, he kept looking for the perfect tree. Dana’s husband, Marshal Hud Savage, had warned him not to let Dana come back with one of her “orphan” trees. Hud hadn’t been able to come along with them. He was working on a burglary case involving a condo break-in and a possible missing person.

“She’ll find a tree that she knows no one will ever cut because it’s so pitiful and she’ll want to give it a Christmas,” Hud warned him. “Don’t let her. You should see some of the trees that woman has brought home.”

Tag told himself he would be happy with whatever tree they found as long as it was evergreen. But he knew he was looking for something special. He hadn’t had a real Christmas tree in years. Along with getting one for Dana’s living room, he planned to pick up a small one for his father’s cabin. He knew Harlan probably didn’t decorate for Christmas, but he’d have to put up with it this year since his son was determined to spend Christmas with him.

Dana had said she would lend them some ornaments and the kids would make some, as well. Tag couldn’t wait, he thought, as he looked around for a large pretty tree for Dana and a smaller version for him and his father.

He hadn’t gone far down the logging road when he picked up a snowmobile track coming in from what appeared to be another old logging road. Dana had told him that they often had trouble in the winter with snowmobilers on the property because of the catacomb of logging roads that ran for miles.

He remembered hearing one late last night, now that he thought about it. A lot of people got around that way in the wintertime. For all he knew, his father had been out and about after the bar closed. To visit his girlfriend? The thought made him smile.

“I found a tree!” Dana called from somewhere below him on the mountain. He couldn’t see her through the thick, snow-filled pines.

“An orphan tree?” he called back, and heard her laugh. “Hud will have my head,” he mumbled to himself as he started to drop off the side of the mountain, heading in the direction he’d heard Dana laugh.

He’d only taken a couple of steps when the sun caught on an object off to his right. Tag saw what looked like a branch sticking up out of the snow. Only there was something very odd about the branch. It was blue.

As he stepped closer, his heart leapt to his throat. It wasn’t a branch.

A hand, frosty in the morning sun, stuck up out of the deep snow.

* * *

M
ARSHAL
H
UD
S
AVAGE
arrived by snowmobile thirty minutes after he’d gotten the call from his wife. He found Dana and Tag standing half a dozen yards away from the body. It was the second time in the past six years that remains had been found on the ranch. Hud could see that Dana was upset and worried.

“It’s going to be all right,” he told her. “Go on down to the house and wait for the coroner. He’ll need directions up here.”

As soon as she left, he stooped down and brushed the snow off the victim’s face. Behind him, Tag let out a startled sound, making him turn.

“You know her?” he asked.

Tag nodded, but he seemed to need a minute to find his voice. “She works at the Canyon,” he said finally. “I think her name is Mia. I ran into her at the bar last night. Or more correctly, she ran into me. Was she...
murdered?
”

“Looks like she was strangled with the scarf around her neck,” Hud said. He could see where the scarf had cut into her throat. “But we’ll know more once the coroner and the lab does the autopsy.”

“I thought it might have been an accident,” Tag said.

Hud studied him. He seemed awfully shaken for a man who’d only just run into the woman the night before. “So, what exactly happened last night at the bar?”

He listened while Tag recounted the woman stumbling into him, apparently quite drunk, and how he’d gone out the back door after her to make sure she was all right. “I saw her getting into a pickup with a man.”

“And you think her name was Mia?” Hud asked. Could this be the missing Mia Duncan? He had a bad feeling it was.

Tag told him that all he knew was what another server at the Canyon had told him. “She had apparently left in the middle of her shift.”

“Do you know the name of the other server you talked to?”

“Lily. At least that’s what the bartender called her.”

Hud nodded. “Tell me about the man the victim left with behind the bar.”

“Cowboy hat, pickup. It was snowing so hard I can’t even swear what color the truck was. Dark blue or brown, maybe even black. That’s about it. I only got a glimpse of the man through the snow,” Tag said.

“But he got a good look at you?”

He saw that the question took Tag by surprise. “Yeah, I guess he did.”

“I might need a statement from you later,” Hud said. “If you think of anything else...”

“I’ll let you know,” Tag said as the coroner and another deputy arrived by snowmobile. The coroner’s had a sled behind his snowmobile.

“Dana will have a pot of coffee on when you reach the house,” Hud told him. He’d seen Tag’s rented SUV parked in front of the ranch house.

Tag nodded and turned to leave.

Hud watched him go, worrying. Dana had just been disappointed by one “cousin.” He didn’t want her disappointed again if he could help it. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Tanner “Tag” Cardwell knew a lot more about the victim than he’d admitted.

He reminded himself that his instincts were off. He was probably just looking for guilt where there wasn’t any.

* * *

T
AG
WAS
GLAD
he didn’t have to talk to anyone on the walk down the mountain. His head was spinning.

He’d been shocked when he’d recognized the dead woman—even more shocked when he’d seen what she was wearing. A leather jacket like the one he’d seen lying over the arm of his father’s couch just yesterday.

Since discovering the body, he’d kept telling himself it couldn’t be the same woman. Just as his father couldn’t be involved in this.

That was why he hadn’t mentioned the jacket to the marshal, he told himself. He couldn’t be sure it was the same one. But both his father and the woman had been at the bar last night. Tag knew how some women were about cowboy guitar players—even old ones.

A chill had settled in his bones by the time he reached the ranch house. He liked the idea of a hot cup of coffee, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone—especially his cousin—about what he’d seen on the mountain.

As he climbed into his rented SUV, he told himself that the woman’s death had nothing to do with his father. And yet Tag couldn’t wait to reach the cabin. Harlan Cardwell had some explaining to do.

* * *

L
ILY
TRIED
NOT
to roll her eyes at her brother.
“Ace.”

“Don’t ‘Ace’ me. Lily, it’s time you got back on the horse. So to speak.”

She really didn’t want to talk about this and now regretted stopping by her brother’s tiny apartment over the bar this early in the morning. She’d come to talk about Mia Duncan—not her ex-fiancé, Gerald Humphrey.

“What chaps my behind is that Gerald was the wrong man for you in the first place,” Ace said as he refilled her coffee cup. “That man would have bored you to death in no time.”

She thought about how much she and Gerald had in common. Of course Ace thought him boring. Ace had never understood what she and Gerald had shared.

“But to pull what he did,” Ace continued. “If he hadn’t skipped the country when he did, I would have tracked him down and—”

“I really don’t want to have this discussion,” she said, picking up her mug and moving over to the window. The world was covered in cold white drifts this morning. The sun had come out, turning the fresh snow to a blinding carpet of diamonds.

“Sis, I love you and I hate to see you like this.”

Lily spun back around, almost spilling her coffee. She couldn’t help being annoyed with the older brother she’d idolized all her life. But this was a subject they had never agreed on.

“You hate to see me like
this?
” she demanded. “Ace, I’m
happy.
I have a great life, a rewarding career. I’m...content.”

He mugged a face. “Sis, you live like a nun except for the few times a year that I drag you out to help me with the bar.”

“We really should not have this conversation,” she warned him, wondering now if he had actually needed her help at the bar or if his asking her to work the holidays with him was part of some scheme to find her a man. If it was the latter... She said as much. “Ace, so help me—”

He held up his hands in surrender. “You know how much I need your help. And I didn’t mean to set you off this morning.”

But he had. “You should be more concerned about your
other
employees. If you had seen Mia’s condo...”

“I
am
concerned. I put in a call to the marshal’s office first thing this morning, but no one has called me back yet. I called the condo number Mia gave me, but not surprisingly, there was no answer there. I figure once she discovered the break-in, she probably stayed with a friend last night.”

Lily wasn’t so sure about that since she didn’t think Mia had made any friends in the weeks she’d been working at the Canyon. The only person Mia had spoken to at the bar was Teresa. Which had seemed odd because of the age difference.

Mia was in her late thirties, while Teresa was barely twenty-one. Neither was outgoing, so that could be why they’d become somewhat friends, at least from Lily’s observation.

So this morning, she’d placed a call to Teresa’s cell, only to reach her boyfriend, Ethan. “Mia isn’t the only one who’s missing this morning,” she told her brother. “That’s why I came by so early. Teresa didn’t come home last night.”

Ace seemed only a little surprised, but then he’d been running a bar longer than Lily had been helping out. “Maybe Mia and Teresa are together. I’m sure they’ll turn up. Teresa and Ethan probably had a fight. I noticed she was acting oddly last night.” He frowned. “But then again, so was Mia, now that I think about it. I saw her get into it with one of the customers. Teresa came to her rescue, but Mia handled it fine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about that last night?” Lily demanded.

“Because it blew over quickly. You and Reggie didn’t even notice.”

“Who was the customer?”

Ace shrugged. “Some guy. I didn’t recognize him. Lily, people act up in bars. It happens. A good server knows how to handle it. Mia was great. I’m telling you, I wouldn’t be surprised if they both show up for work tonight.”