Sinister (8 page)

God, it still smelled like home.

Must have been Mrs. Mac’s cooking, or maybe the cleaning stuff she used. There was something reassuring about the odors of wood smoke and lemon, and—all rolled together, the smells and the wide-plank floor and the sun hitting the clock in the nook—it all reminded him of his mother. This had been her home, the land and family that she loved, and her spirit lingered here. The feeling was strong. Right now, Colton could almost believe she was in the kitchen trying out a new cobbler recipe or upstairs going over the books. If he didn’t know better, he’d think Mom was haunting the place, giving Pilar a bit of a poke.

He dropped his duffel onto the floor.

“Who’s there?” Janice MacDonald emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “Colton . . .” She beamed with pleasure. “I was wondering if we’d see the Montana cowboy for the wedding,” she teased, patting his shoulder. “But you’re too skinny. What do they feed you up there?”

“Beer and Jack Daniel’s,” he answered, smiling.

“Well, that’s no good for you. Your father is away in Cheyenne, but let me go get Pilar.”

“That’s okay. If you can just show me where you want me . . . ?”

“I’d better get her,” Mrs. Mac said as she headed up the stairs. “She’ll want to see you and she’s the boss now.”

Good God.

He didn’t believe for a second that Pilar was in love with Ira, but it seemed she’d do anything, including messing with Rourke’s well-being, to please the old man. Colton suspected that the exotic beauty wanted a direct hand on the Dillinger wealth. Well, she could have it. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about his father’s empire.

Except where his kid was concerned.

And that was going to be the tough part.

He rubbed the back of his neck in frustration. Things were already sticky and they were only going to get worse. A helluva lot worse.

“Colton?” Pilar’s voice greeted him before she appeared.

Montana’s ears perked up and he gave a low growl.

“Stay,” Colt ordered under his breath, and the dog sat on the entry floor, just as his father’s bride swept through the archway leading to the back of the house.

She was as beautiful as he remembered. Thick, jet-black hair wound into a knot at the base of her skull, full lips and dark eyes that still sparkled with a sexy mischief. Dressed to the nines in a sweater and tight jeans, Pilar was still a knockout. He could still appreciate her attributes, though what he mostly felt upon seeing her again was wariness.

“So you decided to come after all,” she said, beaming up at him. “I’m thrilled. It’s so good to see you.” Were those tears she was blinking back manufactured? “It’ll mean so much to your father.”

“I came to meet Rourke.”

“I know.” She sniffed and ran a finger under each of her eyes to stem the tears. “He’s upstairs in his room. I’ll get him.”

“Hold on a minute.” Colton put a hand on the banister, blocking her little hop up the stairs. “Before you drag him down here, how’s he doing? I mean, with all this.”

“All this? Oh, the marriage and you being his father and all.”

“Yeah, ‘and all.’”

She lifted a shoulder. “You know how resilient kids are. He’ll get used to it.”

Colton didn’t detect much compassion in her response. “I thought you agreed to keep it quiet. Then Ira tells me he knows, and so does the boy.”

“Your father is the only one I told ... besides Rourke, of course. But I had to tell Ira. There can’t be secrets between a husband and wife.”

“Did you learn that from lying to Chad all those years?”

“Whoa. Low blow, Colt. Below the belt, and I don’t want any crude jokes about that, okay. Come on, everyone has a few secrets. Even you. You can’t tell me there isn’t someone special in your life that you shared our secret with.”

She had him there. “The only person I told is my sister Ricki, and she knows how to keep a secret.”

“Well.” Pilar put her hands on her slender hips. “That explains why she’s so cold to me . . . and so nice to Rourke. He likes her, you know.”

“I don’t blame him. Ricki’s good people.”

“Hard to believe, coming from one Dillinger to another,” she said dryly as she turned back to the stairs. On the first landing, she paused and looked down at him, and for the first time he saw real concern in her eyes. “Please remember Rourke’s my son. I love him with all my heart. A mother’s love, you know. Unconditional.”

He was surprised at this emotional outburst, but as if understanding that she was baring her soul a little too much, she squared her shoulders and glanced into the foyer. “One thing.” She wiggled a finger toward the door where Montana sat on the mat. “We don’t allow dogs in the house.”

“Since when?” He couldn’t remember a day when his father’s favorite hunting hound hadn’t been curled near his chair by the fire.

“New rule. I’m allergic. We have barns and stables and all kinds of outbuildings.” Her edict pronounced, she hurried up the remaining stairs, her heels clicking on the hardwood before she crossed the catwalk and disappeared into a hallway.

“Don’t move a muscle,” Colton told the dog. He could hear muffled conversation from upstairs and then the sound of her returning footsteps.

“Come on,” she whispered to the boy who was following her down the stairs.

In that second, Colton’s life changed forever. Aside from his reddish hair, the kid was the spitting image of Colton as a youth. He even moved awkwardly as Colt once had, all legs and arms. How Pilar had passed him off as Chad Larson’s son was a mystery. Watching the kid trudge down the stairs as if he were walking toward the hangman’s noose, Colton felt an odd glitch in his throat.

“Rourke,” Pilar said. “This is Colton Dillinger. He’s Ira’s son—the one I told you about. Do you remember what I said about him?”

“Chad was my father,” the boy retorted intensely.

“I know you always thought that, but it’s not true,” Pilar said brusquely. “Chad raised you as if you were his own, but Colton is your real father.”

“You’re a liar!” Rourke accused, turning to face his mother.

Colt shifted his weight. This wasn’t going well, but then he’d never thought it would.

Pilar said firmly, “I never told you the truth before because I didn’t think you were old enough to understand that—”

“But I’m old enough now?” he charged, defiance flashing in his eyes, the same kind of rebellion that Colton had felt. “Now that you’re sleeping with the old man, I’m old enough to know that you screwed his son, too?”

Whoa!

Pilar gasped, and for the briefest of seconds Colt wondered if she might slap her son. To ward it off, Colton caught her wrist. Fury burned in Pilar’s dark eyes as she spun to face Colt.

“The boy’s got a point,” he said.

“I don’t need you standing up for me!” Rourke’s face was flushed. “Let go of my mother.”

Colton slowly released her and Pilar smoothed her sweater, lifting her chin in defiance. “This is starting off well. Now, let’s go into the family room and try again, so we can all get to know each other.”

“Fuck that!” Rourke pushed past his mother and headed for the stairs. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me!”

“Rourke, come back here right now!” she demanded.

With his head down, the boy bounded up the steps and disappeared around the top landing without looking back.

“Rourke!” Pilar hollered.

Watching him flee, Colton felt a mixture of relief, guilt and compassion. And part of him wished that he could escape up the stairs as well.

“I’m going to drag him down here by his ears, if I have to,” Pilar declared, starting up the stairs.

“Unconditional love?” Colt threw back at her, and when he saw a shaft of pain in her eyes, said a little more softly, “Let him go.”

She started up the first few steps. “But he just swore and disrespected me and you, and he
never
uses foul language—”

“Give him a little time to get used to things.”

“I’m getting married in a week!”

“It’s not a deadline for Rourke, though. You and Dad are in the all-fired rush to get married. Give the kid a break. And, if he doesn’t want to see me this trip, I’ll come back some other time.”

Pilar paused on the landing and crossed her arms over her breasts. With an angry glance cast to the second floor she said, “Look, Colt, I’m not going to let my son swear like one of Ira’s cowhands.”

“
Our
son,” Colton reminded her as somewhere upstairs a door slammed so hard the timbers of the house shook and Montana gave out a startled little woof.

“I did not raise that boy to be defiant!”

“He’s eleven. You hit him with some pretty big news. And there’s plenty more attitude just around the corner.”

“Not from my son.”

“Yeah, you’re right. Doesn’t run in the Dillinger family. Or with you, for that matter. I’ll bet you gave your mother fits as a teenager.” She glared at him as he added, “Sometimes, you just have to back off a little, Pilar,” then picked up his duffel bag and whistled for Montana to come.

“Where are you going?” she demanded.

“Looking for a place to stay.”

“But you can stay here. I’ll have Janice get one of the guest suites ready.”

“Nope.” Colton shouldered his bag and headed toward the door, his boots finding their way across the familiar planks of the floor. “Wherever I bunk, the dog goes, too.”

Seven o’clock on a Friday night, and Sam had to hustle to stop into the downtown shops before they closed. This time of year, Main Street wasn’t exactly bustling after dark, even though his department was working overtime due to being short staffed, two more deputies down with the flu. That’s why he, after his regular shift, was braving the cold in the streets of the town, helping pass out flyers, despite the work piling up on his desk and computer. He caught Hub Booman at the cleaner’s and Aura Calo at the bookstore just as they were closing. The barbershop, pizza place and realtor’s office had come next. He’d been lucky to be able to hand off the flyer to Cal in the flower shop; Sally would have held him captive in conversation for half an hour.

By the time he headed toward Molly’s he had covered most of the merchants and he was bone weary. Tomorrow morning, with hopefully a full crew, he’d get one of his deputies to hit the daytime businesses, like the bank and the feed-and-seed shop.

A blast of warm air carried the scent of fresh baked rolls and roasted meat as he opened the door. It smelled good. Classic rock was playing on the jukebox, and the dinner crowd was tucking into plates of fried chicken, roast beef and gravy, or the Friday spaghetti feed.

Sam went straight to the bulletin board by the door and tacked up one of the flyers.
MISSING—AMBER BARSTOW.
The e-mailed photo from the young woman’s parents had printed up nice and clear, her dark hair shining, her smile carefree and giddy.

If only that photo could speak. Tell him where she was. Already she’d been missing more than a week, and Sam didn’t like the idea that she’d been last seen here in Prairie Creek. It was his responsibility to find her, and he didn’t think he’d sleep a wink until that happened.

But he needed to eat, and he wouldn’t mind spreading the alarm about Amber in person. In Prairie Creek, that meant putting the word out at Molly’s Diner.

The stools at the end of the counter were taken by the crew from Slim’s barbershop, with Slim himself at the end chewing on a breadstick. Paul Nesbitt, the town mayor, was there with his wife, Chrissy, sitting alongside Ricki Dillinger.

And that was the only empty seat, right next to Ricki. Sam hesitated as he unzipped his jacket and considered grabbing dinner at the saloon instead. He didn’t have anything against Ricki. Hell, growing up best friends with her brother Colton, he’d ridden and corralled cattle alongside that girl. There’d been years of campfires and competitions, shooting matches and horse races. Ricki had been like a sister to him, and he’d missed her when she flew out East to be a city girl.

But now, Ricki was back, and Sam wasn’t feeling so brotherly anymore. It pissed him off. Feelings. Shifting tides of emotion that were about as easy to stop as a cold front coming down from Canada.

“Sheriff?” The mayor twisted around on his stool. “Pull up a stool and grab some grub.”

“Sounds good.” Sam shook off his jacket and hung it on a hook, trying to grow a thick skin in the process. “I’ve been passing these around town.” He held up the stack of flyers, then passed a few out to the patrons at the counter. “We’ve got a missing person, last seen at Big Bart’s.”

“Sorry to hear that.” Paul held the flyer away to accommodate his farsightedness. “I heard there was some commotion out by Big Bart’s today. A search party?”

Sam nodded. He’d spent most of the day organizing the search, but even with men and women from all the nearby law enforcement agencies, the county was a huge parcel of land to scour, and snowdrifts and freezing temperatures didn’t help.

Leaning close to her husband, Chrissy sighed. “Pretty girl. These things always scare me.”

“She got any friends in the area?” asked Henry, who’d been cutting Sam’s hair since he was five.

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I’m hoping someone might come forward once we get the word out. Her car was abandoned with a flat tire, and it would be great if a friend picked her up.” Safe and sound. That’s what Sam had told his own daughter when she used to wake up from a nightmare.
Don’t worry, you’re safe and sound.
He wished he could say the same for Amber Barstow.

“When was the last time we had a missing person here?” someone asked.

“Never happened while I was sheriff.” Sam took the empty stool beside Ricki, who was studying the flyer, staring at the photo in the same way he had.

“That’s a question for the town archives,” Paul said. Running an insurance agency with Chrissy, Paul was a big fan of facts and statistics.

“There was a guy in the sixties,” Slim offered. “Vietnam vet. Turned out he went off in the woods and shot himself.”

Sam saw that Ricki was halfway through a roast beef platter. “How’s the beef tonight?” he asked.

“Melt in your mouth.”

“I’ll take one of those, Cordelia. And water.” He turned to Ricki, who was usually not part of the Friday night crowd at Molly’s. “What are you up to?”

“Treating myself to dinner. Just dropped my daughter off at the high school for the basketball game.”

“That’s good. Glad she’s making friends.”

“Well, actually I had to force her to go, mean mother that I am.” Ricki pushed the flyer back on the counter and picked up her fork. “What are you working, four to twelve?”

“I started at six-hundred hours with the search party out by Big Bart’s. I’m down one deputy with another on maternity leave, a few more are out with the flu, but this isn’t something I can put off till after Christmas.”

“Does the state have a missing persons unit?”

“Naw. Highway patrol is more focused on the highway. Right now I’m coordinating the multistate search, but if we don’t find her the FBI is probably going to get involved.”

“Coordinating a multistate search and passing out flyers yourself?”

“As I said, right now, we’re short staffed.”

Ricki glanced again at the flyer. “She lives in California?”

He nodded. “She was visiting her boyfriend’s parents for Thanksgiving, just outside Billings. Apparently things didn’t go so well, so she drove back on her own. Headed out of there Saturday morning.” Generally Sam didn’t go over the details of a case with folks in town, but Ricki was different. A former NYPD cop, she knew law enforcement, and she was into it, but then she was Ricki.

As they ate, they discussed possible scenarios for Amber Barstow. Sam wasn’t buying the theory that she’d hooked up with a friend—or the cowboy in the black hat—and left her car abandoned for nearly a week. “She left a suitcase in the trunk of her car, stuffed with clothes and makeup. And birth control pills. Would you go off for a week without your birth control pills?”

Ricki put her Diet Coke back on the counter. “Nope. And most women don’t part with their makeup bag.” She raked reddish curls from her forehead, a gesture he’d seen a thousand times but never tired of. “This is bad, Sam.”

He nodded and told her about his phone interviews with Amber’s parents, her fiancé, and Bill Russell, the Sacramento cop who had interviewed Amber’s employer and searched the missing woman’s apartment for clues. “I’ve got a Skype interview set up with Amber Barstow’s boyfriend.” He checked his watch. “In about an hour.”

“Wow.” Her green eyes were hopeful. “You’ve pulled together a lot of information in twenty-four hours.”

The praise felt good, but he only said, “It’s not enough. Not until we find her.”

 

 

Sabrina’s afternoon had been chock-full. She’d handled a collie with a broken leg and an injured hawk found by a farmer’s boy, two phone consultations with vets in neighboring towns and a sheaf of paperwork. It was after seven when she was able to hang up her lab coat for the day. Of course she wasn’t finished working; there were always calls to the surrounding ranches, and tonight she was scheduled to visit the Dillinger ranch.

Traffic moved slowly through the small town. Friday night brought people in for dinner or a movie, and pedestrians bundled in thick jackets or coats hurried along the sidewalks. Breath fogging as they talked, people passed lampposts and bony trees strung with sparkling white lights lining Main Street.

Caught behind a flatbed as it lumbered through the two stoplights in the heart of the town, Sabrina told herself the delay didn’t matter. She was late already, but she’d called ahead and explained that she’d been hung up at the clinic. Davis Featherstone, foreman at the Dillinger ranch, had said he’d wait for her. So her workday had stretched from eight hours to ten, or maybe more.

Silver garlands had been strung over Main Street with decorative bells and stars in the center, and she smiled up at one as she passed under it. There was nothing like Prairie Creek at Christmastime.

Sabrina had thought about leaving this part of Wyoming. She had for a while, during college and veterinary school, but she’d come back when her father had his first heart attack. He’d survived it, then had another that had taken his life. Her mother had wandered around in a fog for six months before she’d packed up the house and moved down to Cheyenne to live with her sister. Now, even though she was the only Delaney left around these parts, Sabrina had stayed in this little town of hundred-year-old buildings, most with western facades. Maybe she was just a nostalgic ninny, but Prairie Creek seemed to be indelibly etched in her heart. The fact that she and Antonia were able to partner up and buy out Doc Storey, the man who had been the town veterinarian for as long as Sabrina could remember, had made staying all the more appealing.

Now, she drove past the winking neon lights of Big Bart’s Buffalo Lounge, a local watering hole located just outside town, and thought about the Dillingers. She’d worked for them for a lot of years and had a decent relationship with Ira, and she didn’t want to mess that up. It was just as well Colton wasn’t coming to the wedding. Or was he? Even though Pilar had confirmed that detail, Sabrina wasn’t convinced. She understood that Ira Dillinger wanted all of his kids at his wedding and Ira usually got his way.

She downshifted as she approached the Rocking D spread and drove across the cattle guard at the main gate. Another hundred yards down the lane, she passed the spur that led to the charred remains of the old homestead house.

Suddenly cold inside, she shuddered through the memory of that night, about what she and Colton had been doing while fire roared just down the road. That had been the night she and Colton had first made love, but it had turned out to be the beginning of the end for their relationship.

“Oh, God, stop it,” she said aloud, angry at herself. She wasn’t going to buy a one-way ticket down memory lane. At least not tonight. To clear her mind, she adjusted the heat in her old rig as the windows were beginning to fog over again.

As she rounded the final bend, the Dillinger ranch house appeared in the darkness. Situated on a rise, festooned in Christmas lights, the interior lamps glowing warmly behind walls of glass that rose to a tall, peaked roof, Ira Dillinger’s home was as grand and modern as the old homestead house had been rustic and time-worn. Sabrina had always thought that the architect who had been commissioned to draw up the plans for the new place had attempted to mimic the mountain peaks surrounding this part of the valley.

A ladder was propped against the side of the house and others were lined up by the driveway. No doubt getting ready for the impending nuptials. An older Explorer was parked near the garage.

Sabrina’s heart nearly stopped as she pressed the brakes. Was that a
Montana
license plate?

It was.

“Crap!”

Instantly her heart rate went into overdrive. So much for all those rumors that Colton Dillinger wasn’t returning.

 

 

Ricki wasn’t one to sit around and mull things over. When an idea came to her, she acted on it, as evidenced by her defection to New York City and her wayward marriage to Ari. But tonight ... tonight it seemed like she was getting a nudge from fate or kismet or one of those phenomena that shines on your face until you finally wake up and say, “Yeah, I get it.”

Earlier, Sam Featherstone had sat down beside her at Molly’s. He’d mentioned that the department was understaffed. They’d even discussed the girl who had gone missing. If that wasn’t invitation enough to visit the sheriff and ask about a job, she didn’t know what was.

She’d picked up three girls from the game, dropped them at the yogurt shop with twenty bucks, and driven the four blocks to the sheriff’s office. On a roll now, she pulled open the door of the sheriff’s office and was greeted by a blast of heat. “Wow. It’s warm in here.”

“Thank the Lord, because earlier today we had no heat at all, and that is not acceptable.” Naomi Simmons folded a page to mark her spot in the fat paperback she was reading. “It’s hard enough working the late shift, but in a chilly office ... ?” She hugged her sweater, handcrafted with a smiling Rudolph, and pretended to shiver. Rudolph’s nose, a red jingle bell sewn into place, actually gave a muffled jangle. “I just don’t have the tolerance for that anymore.”

A transmission barked over the police band radio. “Excuse me,” Naomi said, turning away to answer.

Ricki smiled. The smell of burnt coffee, the radio dispatch, the Christmas decorations strung haphazardly from the ceiling, the battered desk chairs and the path on the floor worn from the steady tread of boots past the front desk ... God, she missed this. Hard to admit, but true.

As Naomi handled the dispatch, she eased the zipper of her jacket down and paced past the big clock on the wall, which was next to a photo of Sam and his staff and a handful of plaques from civic organizations. There was a swear jar on Naomi’s desk, a tin that probably contained sweets, and a photo of her with her husband and kids—two boys, who seemed to be college age. In the photo, Naomi wore a print dress with cabbage patch roses that made her look like a grandma. She was one of those people who had always seemed old for her age—even back in junior high.