Hard Rain (3 page)

Russell was determined that the reason she’d tried to kill herself all those years ago was because of something unforgivable that Buck had done, something she’d pushed into the dark recesses of her memory, unable to face it. Or worse, Russell had a crazy theory that Buck had somehow had her brain purposely “wiped” so she couldn’t remember.

Russell’s hatred of Buck scared her. Her fear was that she’d changed the loving, caring man and that now he might do something crazy in an ill-conceived attempt to save her from Buck.

She glanced at the phone, saw who was calling and felt a rush of guilty disappointment that she quickly smothered. It was her daughter Harper calling. The only one of her six daughters who had reached out to her.

* * *

S
HERIFF
F
RANK
C
URRY
shoved back his Stetson and gazed up the hillside. He was a big strong man, even now that he was in his midsixties, with a gunfighter mustache that was more gray than blond anymore.

Earlier, he’d been having lunch with his wife, Lynette, on a picnic table outside the Beartooth General Store when he’d gotten the call.

“One of these days we’re going to get through a meal without being interrupted,” he’d said as he’d tossed his half-eaten sandwich into the small brown bag.

“And you would be bored to tears and driving me crazy,” Lynette had said. She’d said it jokingly, but there was underlying worry in her expression.

He’d been threatening retirement but hadn’t been able to quit just yet. There was one case—not even an official one—that he couldn’t leave until he saw it through to the end. But after that...

The return of Sarah Johnson Hamilton from the grave had been like a pebble thrown into a quiet pond. The ripples just kept getting bigger. He knew he was waiting, all his instincts telling him there was more to her return. The fact that her former husband was running for president only made him more concerned.

But when he’d had the FBI look into it, they had found nothing that threw up any red flags for them. Some people saw Sarah as a nutcase. Others were convinced she’d been suffering from postpartum depression after giving birth to the twins. Still, it left a lot of unanswered questions.

Unfortunately, Frank was left to worry alone. Now standing at the bottom of a hillside on Hamilton Ranch, Frank had a bad feeling that this was another ripple that eventually would be like a tsunami, threatening to drown the entire community, if not the country.

“I figure that gully washer of a storm we had the other night loosened the soil up on the hilltop,” Undersheriff Dillon Lawson was saying. “The old wooden casket swept right down the hill to end up broken open in the pines.”

Frank nodded in agreement at Dillon’s assessment as he shifted his gaze to the corpse. He’d seen photographs of mummified bodies, but this was his first in the flesh. The skin was dark and hard, stretched over the bones in a gruesome grimace. The victim had shrunk to skin and bones, her clothing pooling around the shriveled torso and limbs.

What made the sight even more ghastly was the long hair still attached to the skull. Now, covered with mud, the woman’s hair lay in muddy waves above her.

“This is remarkable,” Coroner Charlie Brooks said as he knelt next to the corpse. “I’ve never seen one preserved quite this well. The body had apparently been buried in this wooden box, which kept it from animals, but the fact that it didn’t decompose...” He scratched his head. “Remarkable.”

Frank thought about what a shock it must have been for Harper Hamilton and Brody McTavish when they’d found it. He’d taken both of their statements after getting the call and rushing to the scene. While the two had come by horseback, he and Dillon had taken an old logging road that ended at the top of the hillside—and the original burial site, given the hole left there.

Brody had assured him that they hadn’t touched anything. “We called as soon as we saw what it was.”

Harper had been visibly upset. “Who is it?” she’d asked in a whisper.

“We don’t know yet, but it appears to be an old grave,” he’d told her.

“So, not anyone we might know,” she’d said, sounding relieved.

“More than likely not,” Frank had said, though he couldn’t be sure of that until after Charlie did his job. Unfortunately, he had his own suspicions. He just hoped he was wrong.

“You’re both free to go, but we’re going to treat this area as a crime scene until we know more,” he’d told them.

“What would make it mummify like that?” Dillon asked Charlie now.

“Probably a variety of things. There are two kinds of mummies, anthropogenic, those created by the living, and spontaneous, which are created unintentionally due to natural conditions. I’d say this one is spontaneous.”

“Spontaneous?” Dillon asked.

Charlie looked up from his inspection of the corpse. “The internal organs are removed from the anthropogenic mummies and chemicals are used to preserve the bodies. Spontaneous ones have occurred in extreme heat or cold or conditions such as those found in bogs.”

“This certainly isn’t a bog,” Dillon pointed out.

“True,” the coroner agreed. “In order for the body to mummify under these conditions, I’d say she was buried at the top of the hill where there is little vegetation and the soil is much drier than the soil down here in the trees. The body would have had to go into the ground in late fall before the soil was completely frozen and then the weather would have had to have gotten very cold after that. The winter temperatures would explain the absence of flesh-eating organisms, like maggots. Cold also slows or completely stops the body’s bacteria from decomposition, resulting in a mummified body that could last thousands of years.”

“So it could be an old settler’s grave, right?” Dillon asked. “Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve uncovered one in Montana.”

The coroner shook his head. “The nails in the coffin aren’t that old. Also, the clothing’s all wrong. She’s wearing
jeans
.”

“Don’t blue jeans date back to the late eighteen hundreds?” Dillon pointed out.

Charlie considered the corpse. “If I had to guess, I’d say she hasn’t been here that long. I could be wrong. She
is
well preserved.”

Frank said nothing. He had a bad feeling he knew exactly how long this woman had been here. “Any way to estimate how old she was when she was buried?”

The coroner considered the mummified corpse for a moment. “Young. Maybe teens, early twenties. I’ll know more when I get her on the autopsy table.”

“What are the chances of getting any DNA that we could use to try to identify her?” Frank asked.

“I’m hopeful,” Charlie said. “Scientists have been able to extract DNA from mummies a whole lot older than this one. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”

“Will be interesting to find out who she was,” the undersheriff said as he motioned to the shattered remains of the wooden box the body had been buried in. “Wasn’t much of a burial.”

“Looks like an old feed box found on places all around this county,” Frank said. “Let’s make sure we take the box in as evidence.”

“Wait,” Dillon said. “You’re thinking foul play?”

“Just covering all bets.” Nothing like a hard rain to loosen the soil and unearth all kinds of things, he thought.

Charlie reached out to take some strands of the victim’s hair between his fingers. Rubbing off the mud, he said, “I can tell you one thing. She was a redhead.”

Frank stepped away, needing to take a breath. Dread had settled like a bad meal low in his belly.

Behind him, he heard the coroner ask Dillon, “Have you taken all the photos you need? Then I’m ready to move her.” An assistant who’d been waiting patiently in the pines at some distance now moved in with a body bag. “Let’s roll her over. Easy... Hold up.”

Frank had been lost in thought when he heard Charlie say, “Sheriff, I think you might want to see this.”

With growing dread, he stepped back to the scene.

“She was wearing a leather Western belt,” the coroner said, looking up at him. “Assuming it’s her belt, her name is tooled into the leather. It says Maggie.”

CHAPTER THREE

T
HE
SHERIFF
SWORE
, pulled off his hat and raked a hand through his graying blond hair. “Maggie?” he repeated. It appeared that he hadn’t jumped that far after all to the conclusion that had his stomach roiling.

“Do you know who she is?” Charlie asked. He was new to the area. The undersheriff was also looking at him quizzically. Dillon, too, wasn’t from around here so neither of them would know.

“A teenager went missing, hell, it must have been almost thirty-five years ago now,” Frank said. “She just up and disappeared. A lot of people thought that she’d run away. It wouldn’t have been unheard-of, especially this girl. Her name was Margaret Ann McTavish or Maggie as everyone called her.”

“McTavish?”
Dillon said. “A relative of Brody’s?”

“His cousin. I was in my midtwenties when she vanished. Maggie was eighteen.” He shook his head at the memory of her and avoided looking at the remains lying in the mud. It broke his heart to see her like this.

“She was a beauty. Green eyes, long red hair, with a wild streak. So it was no wonder that everyone figured that she’d taken off. Rumor was that she’d headed out to Hollywood to become a movie star or to New York to become a model.”

Frank called up an image of her from one hot summer day. He’d been driving along the dirt road near her ranch when he’d spotted her. She’d been on a horse, tearing across the pasture like the devil himself was after her. Her long red hair was blowing out behind her. She’d been wearing a white T-shirt, cutoff jeans and cowboy boots. He remembered the sheen of the sun on her bare browned limbs. She’d had a body that should have been illegal, at least that’s what all the young men around here said. But it had been the look on her face that he thought of now.

“I’ve never seen anyone who lived life to the fullest as much as she did,” he said, overwhelmed for a moment by the deep sorrow he felt as he finally looked down again at her mummified corpse. “We all thought we’d see her on television or maybe in some late-night movie.” He shook his head. “But we never heard anything about her again.”

“No one suspected she’d met with foul play?” the coroner asked.

Frank had had a couple of theories of his own. “I thought there might have been more to the story of her disappearing like the way she did. I hadn’t been a deputy with the sheriff’s department long at that point. Maggie’s father, Flannigan McTavish, filed a missing persons report. The sheriff at the time looked into it.”

Now he could admit to himself that he’d thought the sheriff hadn’t really investigated the case and Frank knew why. “I was worried something had happened to her, but there apparently wasn’t any evidence of foul play.”

“Didn’t her father suspect she hadn’t run off?” Dillon asked.

Frank put his Stetson back on his head and sighed. “Maggie McTavish was like a wild horse that had to run free. There was no corralling her. That’s why I think everyone thought she’d taken off for greener pastures or had gotten herself into trouble and had to leave. She’d apparently packed a few clothes, because they were missing along with a duffel bag,” he recalled the sheriff telling him. “That was the end of it. I think even Flannigan finally believed she’d run off.”

“Why do I get the feeling there’s more to the story?” Dillon said, studying him.

“There were more rumors.” He thought about those now and swore under his breath. “There was talk that Maggie had been seen with Senator John David ‘JD’ Hamilton.”

“Senator Buckmaster Hamilton’s father?”
Dillon asked in surprise.

“The one who is now running for president,” Charlie said, nodding as if seeing where this was going.

“The Hamilton and McTavish ranches had access to each other,” Dillon was saying. “But wasn’t JD a whole lot older—and
married
?”

Frank nodded. “He would have been about forty-two. She was eighteen. His son, Buckmaster, was older than Maggie. His wife, Grace, was confined to a wheelchair by then.”

The undersheriff let out a low whistle. “Sounds like a scandal waiting to happen, especially with JD running for president just like his son is now. So if the rumors were true about him and this teenaged girl...”

“He might have had to do something about it,” Charlie said, and looked down at the corpse. “While JD Hamilton’s presidential race is obviously history, Maggie turning up now seems like the worst possible time for his son, Senator Buckmaster Hamilton.”

Frank nodded. “On top of that, I’m worried about what Flannigan McTavish will do when he finds out. There was no love lost between him and the Hamiltons even before the rumors started about Maggie and JD.”

* * *

“H
ARPER
,
YOU
SHOULD
go home,” Brody said, needing her to leave so he could get back to the ranch. It wouldn’t take long before everyone in the county had heard about the woman’s body being found. He needed to reach his family before that happened and yet he was hesitant to leave Harper.

The two had led their horses back to the spot where he’d been mending the fence. Neither had said much on the walk.

Brody felt sick to his stomach. Had he not known whose body it was the moment he saw it... He struggled now with the implications and what this was going to do to his own family.

Harper pocketed her cell phone after making a call. Standing next to her horse, reins in hand, she still didn’t move.

He could see how hard this had been on her and she didn’t have a clue how much worse it was going to get. He swore under his breath thinking of the kiss earlier, back when he thought the two of them had a chance.

Harper’s wide blue eyes shimmered. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.” Her voice broke. This had been a shock for her. But it was going to be more of a shock when she found out who’s remains they’d found.

“Did you reach your father?” he asked, wondering how the senator was going to take the news.

“It went to voice mail. He’s really busy right now. He’s in DC so there isn’t anything he could do anyway.” Her eyes welled with tears. “My morning started off so good, and then you scared the life out of me jerking me off my horse like that, and then my horse ran away and then—”

“You do realize that if I hadn’t mistakenly
rescued
you, you would have ridden right past me—until your horse caught a whiff of that back there and bucked you off onto your perfect little...backside. Now, please let’s just go home.”

“I wasn’t blaming you.” He saw her swallow and fight tears as she swung up into her saddle. She looked so beautiful sitting up there, chin up, head thrown back so her mane of windblown blond hair tumbled down her slim back. The sun kissed her face, making him ache inside at the memory of his mouth on hers.

As desperate as he was to get to the ranch, Brody couldn’t help but see the vulnerable young woman under the Hamilton girl facade. He thought it must be hell being one of the Hamilton Girls, as they were called. And now, with her father running for president, it had to be even worse. The pressure was really on the Hamilton sisters to be perfect.

When he thought of the girl she’d been, it always made him smile. He’d fallen in love with that girl. He had surprised himself when he’d told the adult Harper Hamilton that he had been waiting for her to grow up. That was exactly what he’d been doing, he realized. It had always been Harper he’d wanted. And now this.

“I called the ranch. There’s no one there,” she said, her voice breaking again. “The staff must be off or running errands.”

He understood now her hesitation. She didn’t want to go home, because there was no one there for her. He felt a piece of his heart break. He’d always thought she had everything and right now she didn’t have the one thing she needed most. He had both his father and uncle. He’d known all his life he could depend on them when he needed them. Now they would need
him
.

“There must be someone you can call. One of your sisters? Or your mother.” He hated that he couldn’t stay with her, but right now, he had to get to his father and uncle.

Harper pulled out her phone again. Brody tried not to listen to the phone call to her mother as he gathered up his tools and loaded them into his saddlebags. He felt badly since her mother hadn’t been her first choice. But then, the woman was almost a stranger to Harper.

As Harper finished her call and pocketed her phone again, he saw her expression. Like him, she was having second thoughts about her going to her mother. As much as he needed to get home... “Look, if you don’t want to—”

“No, it’s fine. She’s staying at one of the houses on the ranch. I can go by horseback.”

“You’re sure you don’t want to call one of your sisters?” he asked. “Not that I’m butting in or bossing you.”

She smiled at that. “I think it just comes naturally to you. Just as it comes naturally to me to rebel when someone treats me like a child.”

“We’ve both agreed you’re a grown woman,” he said. Their gazes met, the attraction flashing like ground lightning between them. “You should get to your mother’s, then.” His head and heart ached with even the thought of what this was going to do to his family. He couldn’t think about what it would do to Harper and her family. Not right now.

As if she hadn’t heard him, she looked back at the hillside where they’d found the body. “I know it’s silly since I’ve lived on this ranch from the time I was born and I’ve never been afraid of anything, but I feel...”

“Spooked,” he said, and nodded as he glanced back toward the hillside in the distance before turning to her. That was only one of the emotions ripping through him right now.

“I’ve always thought I was pretty strong and could handle most anything.”

“You are.” He’d never seen her this vulnerable. A part of him wanted to protect her, but there was no protecting her from this.

“I’m sorry how this day turned out for you,” he added, remembering that she’d said the reason she was screaming was because she had been in such a great mood. It was that free spirit in her that he’d seen when she was a kid that had endeared her to him.

Now he wanted to wrap her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be all right. That he would help her get through this. But it would have been a lie. This was going to tear them apart before they even got the chance to be together.

“If you want, I could ride—”

“No,” she said with a shake of her head. “I’m fine. My mother’s isn’t far from here.” She started to rein her horse around to leave but stopped. “You know you
did
rescue me, Brody. Thank you. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here.”

He said nothing around the lump in his throat as he tipped his hat and watched her ride west.
Just let her go.
But it was the last thing he wanted to do. Unfortunately, he had no choice now. He looked back at the pine-covered hillside where the authorities were now loading the remains, and quickly turned away.

* * *

“W
HO
WAS
THAT
you were with?” Sarah Johnson Hamilton asked her daughter as she glanced out the window. On the phone, Harper hadn’t told her mother about what had happened earlier. She’d just asked if Sarah was going to be home and could she stop by.

Harper frowned. “I rode here alone.” Stepping to the window, she looked out to see Brody riding away. He’d
followed
her? With a pang, she realized that he’d been more worried about her than he’d wanted her to know.

“Then who was that?”

“Brody McTavish. We...ran into each other earlier.” Harper was surprised to see her mother’s disapproval and challenged her. “Why, what’s wrong with him?”

“Nothing,” Sarah said, and turned away from the window. Her smile never met her eyes. “What was he doing on the ranch?”

“He was mending fence on that lease property next to ours. If there is some reason you disapprove of him... But then, why would you? You don’t even know him. He was just a boy when you left.” She hadn’t said it to hurt her mother. She’d just been thinking out loud.

Her mother looked as if she’d been slapped. “I didn’t mean to find fault with him. I’m sure he’s nice.”

“He is.” Well, most of the time, she thought. She still couldn’t understand why he’d wanted to get rid of her so quickly after they’d found the body.

Her mother moved to her to brush dust off the shoulder of her shirt. “I’m so glad you didn’t get caught in that thunderstorm. You’re not even wet.”

“It went to the north,” Harper said distractedly.

“Let’s go into town and get lunch. A girl day, what do you say?”

Harper stepped back. She couldn’t help being annoyed. “Why don’t you want me seeing Brody?”

Sarah looked frustrated. Harper could tell that she wished she hadn’t brought it up. “I would hate to see you get interested in a boy so soon since returning home. I want to spend more time with you.”

She really doubted that was the reason. “Brody isn’t a boy.”

“No, he’s a grown man and quite a bit older than you,” Sarah said.

“Eight years. He used to come to parties that my sisters threw at the house. He seemed...nice.”

“These parties happened when your father was gone,” her mother guessed. “I don’t think he would have approved.”

“Approved of Brody or the parties?”

“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I didn’t mean—”

Harper waved away their disagreement. This wasn’t why she’d come here. “Don’t you want to know why I asked if I could come see you? When Brody and I were riding earlier, we discovered a body.”

“What?”

“That’s why I’m here. I didn’t want to go to the house with only staff there at best. I was upset—”

“What do you mean you discovered a body?”

“It had been buried on a hillside. I guess the rain washed it down.” She shuddered. “It was the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen.” Harper looked to her mother for comfort, but there was none coming.

“What hillside?” Sarah demanded.

Harper waved a hand in the direction of the other end of the ranch. “Next to the McTavish land. That’s where I ran into Brody.”