The Lost Sheenan's Bride (Taming of the Sheenans Book 6) (12 page)

Even the critics, though, couldn’t ignore Sawyer Newsome’s ability to stir the audience. He drew crowds and created devoted followers with his passionate, charismatic speeches.

The 1996 revival was New Awakening’s sixth visit to Paradise Valley. They’d arrived for two weeks of sermons, services, and prayer groups. The tent was just beginning to fill for the Thursday evening service on August first when they heard the first siren, and then the second, and then the third.

And the fourth.

And the fifth.

Ambulances, fire trucks, sheriff patrol cars.

More patrol cars.

And more.

The start of the service was delayed as people tried to decide if they should go see if they were needed. The valley ranchers were a relatively tight-knit group, and while not always friends, they pulled together in emergencies.

The fleet of emergency vehicles was ominous indeed.

Some ranchers left. Others stood ready by their trucks, waiting for word, or the signal, that they were needed. And then a car careened into the lot with news that the entire Douglas family had been murdered in their own home.

Pastor Newsome tried to turn the evening’s service into a prayer vigil but families were unnerved. A family had been senselessly slaughtered and nobody knew who did it. The killer, or killers, was still on the loose. He—they—could be anywhere. People raced home to arm themselves, barricading their families behind locked doors.

Saturday evening when no one showed up for the service, Pastor Newsome took down the tent, packed up the folding chairs, hitched the trailers, and left for Cheyenne.

And that was when people began to talk.

The authorities caught up with Pastor Newsome in Wyoming. Sawyer and his “people” were interrogated, but there was nothing to tie them to the murders. Indeed, Sawyer Newsome was in the middle of leading a group of local ladies in prayer when the murders took place. All of his deacons were on the school grounds, too. It couldn’t be them.

But people still wondered, speculating, as Caroline Grace Douglas attended the revival every year without fail, often with one or more of the Douglas children. The younger ones would go to the Bible “camp,” and the older ones would join Grace in the tent for the worship service.

But then others dismissed the speculation as dozens of local families participated in the revival each summer. The New Awakening revival had become as much a part of summer as the Fourth of July picnic and the September rodeo. It was unthinkable that Pastor Newsome—a man of God—could be involved with something that was clearly the work of the devil.

In his research, Shane discovered all the interviews the detectives conducted with those who attended the revival, getting statements, checking facts and leads. The detectives believed they’d spoken with everyone, but how could they be sure?

Now, seated on the couch with the Bible and bulletin, Shane flipped the bulletin over, scanning the scriptures, songs, and prayers before carefully sliding it back into the Bible where he’d found it and flipping through the rest of the Bible. There were more pages underlined, more delicate pencil marks, and then at the front he saw the flash of a name.
Catherine Jeanette Cray
.

He went back to that very first page. The name had been written in an unruly black script at the top of the first page of the book, and he lightly touched her name, written in that ragged, not quite confident calligraphy—Catherine Jeanette Cray. His mother.

This was her Bible.

He felt a hitch in his breath, his chest growing tight.

He was almost thirty-five and he still knew so little about her. He’d spent his life trying to come to terms with the mother who never returned for him, and seeing her girlish handwriting made him feel conflicting emotions. He didn’t want to like her, but he loved her. He didn’t want to care about her, and yet he still needed her. Or, at the very least, to come to some kind of peace with her.

On the inside of the front cover there was an inscription from an Aunt Olive.

He didn’t know of an Aunt Olive. But apparently there was one. His past was like a shadowy cave with dark tunnels in every direction. It was easy to get lost. Easy to become confused. Over the years Shane had begun to fill in some of the missing pieces of his past—the Finley was a maternal great-grandfather, and Cray a maternal grandfather, and Swan the first name that had belonged to the Finely great-grandfather—but there were still so many things that didn’t make sense. Why had his grandmother felt the need to give him so many names? Why not just call him Shane Swan? Why add the Finley? Why the subterfuge, if there had indeed been subterfuge? Or had his grandmother simply been misunderstood by all around her?

Questions, and doubts, and a never ending mystery…

Just like the damn book he was writing.

He’d never set out to become a writer, but stories came to him, stories and questions, and Shane could never resist a puzzle, or a mystery.

Which was why he was here, sitting on an old, uncomfortable sofa in the home of a family that should have been by all rights his family, and yet they were strangers. Strangers who hated him.

They were arrogant, too.

The simmering rage boiled up, making his chest hot and his stomach burn. He didn’t like the anger, didn’t like the way he felt when his temper stirred, but every time he thought of their attitude and their arrogance.

Their
house.
Their
land.
Their
community.
Their
name.
Their
reputation.

The Sheenans acted as if they were lords of a small kingdom. Marietta and Paradise Valley belonged to them. Perhaps they didn’t rule with iron fists, but they had tremendous influence. In a matter of weeks they’d turned much of Marietta against him.

He was certain they’d inherited the arrogance and pride from their father, William Sheenan. He’d read plenty about his biological father. His biological father had not been a kind man. He’d certainly had enemies, neighbor rancher Hawksley Carrigan, for one. Shane knew all about the land and water dispute. The two had feuded for over thirty years.

Shane would have liked to have met his father, just once. He would have liked to stand toe to toe with Bill Sheenan and look him in the eye. It would have been easy to do. They were the same height. Six-foot-one.

Shane had seen pictures of him as a young man, and Shane definitely had the Sheenan cheekbones, jaw, and mouth—one of the reasons he wore a beard—but he had his mother’s nose, as well as her coloring. All his brothers but Cormac had her coloring. He wished there were photos of her as a young girl. He would have liked to see what she looked like as a child. He’d been surprised when he moved in last spring that there were no photos of her in the house. He’d wondered if they were all in the master bedroom, locked away. The master bedroom was the only room that had a lock. Shane was free to roam the house, but the master bedroom was strictly off limits.

Shane hadn’t cared initially. Now, knowing he had just a month left here, he wondered what secrets there were behind the locked door.

Shane stroked the page with his mother’s name one last time, and then down the page before flipping it over to a page with a list of events and dates. Important events that needed to be recorded—her confirmation, and then years later, her marriage to William Sheenan on September 1974, and then the birth of each baby.

1975
   
Brock

1979
   
Troy & Trey

1981
   
Cormac

1982

1985
   
Dillon

He froze. There it was. It was what he’d been looking for all these years—not for the Douglas story, but his. 1982, his birth year. And no, his name hadn’t been recorded, but the year he’d been born had been recorded with all the others.

He stared at the blank space next to the date, finding it significant, wondering if anyone else in the family had ever bothered to look at her Bible, and noticed the empty spot next to the year. Perhaps it meant nothing to his brothers. Perhaps they thought it referenced a miscarriage or still birth.

But it meant something to him. It meant that his mother had recognized the birth, and she’d included it in her Bible, in the record of her life, in the history of her family.

In a very small way he mattered. In a very small way he’d existed…even if only for her.

J
et usually attended
the nine a.m. church service with Harley and the kids at St. James, but when she woke Sunday morning there was a text from Harley saying that Mack had woken up in the night with a stomach bug and Harley didn’t want to risk exposing anyone so they were staying home. Which meant Jet was free.

Jet could have skipped church, but she didn’t. She went to the hour-long service and then afterwards walked to Main Street where she joined the line at Java Café for a croissant stuffed with scrambled eggs and cheese, but the line moved with agonizing slowness. Finally she placed her order for the eggs and croissant and a latte with an extra shot, and then searched for a place to sit.

A couple at a table for four said she could join them and then returned to their conversation. Jet didn’t want to listen in so she pulled out her phone and pretended to be checking email and Instagram, but it was impossible to ignore the conversation when she realized they were discussing the Douglas family and the murders on the ranch.

“Only three of the six Douglas kids survived, all the older ones,” the woman said to her boyfriend. “The oldest son was gone, driving someone to a party, so that’s why those two survived, but the rest were shot.”

“They all died?” the man asked.

“Everyone but Quinn. You know Quinn Douglas. He’s that outfielder that was just signed by Seattle.”

“His family was killed?”

“And he was shot like four or five times. He was supposed to die. The fact that he didn’t was a miracle.”

“But everyone else died?”

“Yes.”

“Why was he left alive?”

“I don’t know…maybe they thought he was dead?”

Jet couldn’t move. Her ears felt like they were burning while the rest of her was icy cold. She didn’t want to sit here and listen to them discuss the murders, feeling a fierce protectiveness towards McKenna, understanding for the first time what it felt like hearing absolute strangers discuss a family she knew as if they were the Kardashians.

This was why the Sheenans were angry about the book. This was why they didn’t want the book to happen, and yet, listening to the details, she found herself drawn into the conversation, and she knew it wasn’t because of McKenna but Shane. “Excuse me,” she said, interrupting the couple’s discussion. “I’ve just recently moved to the area. Do you live here?”

“I used to,” the girl answered, tearing a chunk from her bagel. “I’m going to grad school in Missoula but Michael and I thought it’d be fun to head this way for a weekend ski trip and a visit to Marietta.”

“Did you live here at the time of the Douglas ranch tragedy?” Jet asked.

The girl nodded. “I was only five but I remember hearing my parents talk about it late at night in their bedroom. My dad told my mom to keep a gun on her always and not to be afraid to use it. He said with a murderer on the loose it was better not to take chances.”

Jet was fascinated. “What did your mother say?”

“She cried. She was scared. She didn’t want Dad to leave her for work, but he had to. He was one of the foremen on the Circle C Ranch and work had to be done.”

“The Circle C Ranch?”

“The Carrigans’ ranch in Paradise Valley. We lived on the ranch, so we were right there where it all happened.”

Jet pushed her half-eaten croissant away. “So you were neighbors?”

She nodded again. “Just up the road from the Douglases. That’s what made it so scary. The killer could be any one of the people living in the area, or hiding in the hills, or in one of the old homesteads, or maybe even in one of the abandoned mines…” Her voice drifted away. “Mom couldn’t handle it. Eventually we moved to town, and then later, they divorced.” She was silent for a beat and then added, “My mom used to say that whoever did it killed two families…the Douglas’ and ours.”

The girl’s boyfriend reached over and covered her hand with his. Jet looked at their linked fingers and then blurted, “You know that a book is being written about the tragedy.” She didn’t know why she said that, but she was curious about the girl’s response.

“Good,” the girl answered firmly. “Maybe they’ll finally catch that a-hole—or a-holes. Whoever did it should be punished.”

“Do you think most people feel that way?”

“That the murderer should be punished?”

“About the book being written.”

“I think people will be okay with the book if it solves the crime. Otherwise…what’s the point?”

The girl’s boyfriend began stacking their plates and Jet knew they were about to leave but she had to ask one last question.

“Who did your mom think did it? Did she ever say?”

The girl shrugged. “She didn’t know. That’s why she started to hate the ranch. It made her feel crazy.”

The boyfriend stood and the girl stood. Jet did, too. “So no theories?”

“Lots of people said it might have been one of those seasonal ranch hands, or even someone who’d once worked for Mr. Douglas, but my mom thought it wasn’t about Mr. Douglas, but Mrs. Douglas.”

“Why Mrs. Douglas?”

“She was really beautiful. Many people say she was the most beautiful girl to ever come out of Crawford County. She was Miss Montana, did you know that?”

Jet shook her head.

“I don’t know exactly what happened,” the girl added, “but she gave up her crown after just a few months. She didn’t like being in the spotlight—I think she had some weird fans or maybe just one really obsessive fan—but it freaked her out and she left midyear, which was a big scandal in and of itself, and then got really religious afterwards, always attending church and Bible studies and revivals.”

“So whoever committed the crimes could have been obsessed with Mrs. Douglas?”