Big sky deception, p.1
Big Sky Deception, page 1
He didn’t dare take even one step toward her.
She was already so near that he felt as if he could feel the electricity sparking between them. It would take so little to close the distance between them.
Her gaze locked with his, stealing his breath as he saw the flare of heat in her eyes and realized it wasn’t all anger and determination. She felt the heat between them. Her gaze shifted from his eyes to his mouth. Her lips parted as if of their own will. He felt a pull stronger than all his determination and was too aware of the bed next to them. Too aware of this woman.
She’d pried open his closed heart in a way that felt more than dangerous. You think you got your heart broken last time? This woman could very easily rip it out and stomp the life out of it—right before she drove out of town.
She blinked and stepped back, either running from the need in his gaze or her own.
Big Sky Deception
New York Times Bestselling Author
B.J. Daniels
B.J. Daniels is a New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author. She wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. She lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and three springer spaniels. When not writing, she quilts, boats and plays tennis. Contact her at bjdaniels.com, on Facebook or on Twitter @bjdanielsauthor.
Books by B.J. Daniels
Harlequin Intrigue
Silver Stars of Montana
Big Sky Deception
A Colt Brothers Investigation
Murder Gone Cold
Sticking to Her Guns
Set Up in the City
Her Brand of Justice
Dead Man’s Hand
Cardwell Ranch: Montana Legacy
Steel Resolve
Iron Will
Ambush before Sunrise
Double Action Deputy
Trouble in Big Timber
Cold Case at Cardwell Ranch
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Molly Lockhart—She grew up believing her father preferred his dummy over her. On news of her father’s murder, she went to Fortune Creek, Montana, to find Rowdy and destroy the dummy.
Sheriff Brandt Parker—The young law officer thought all he had was a murder to solve—and a ventriloquist’s dummy to find. But it turned out that he and Molly had another mystery to solve—while trying not to fall in love.
Clay Wheaton—What was the ventriloquist doing lying murdered in a small-town Montana hotel? And why were so many people interested in his missing dummy, Rowdy the Rodeo Cowboy?
Georgia Eden—The insurance saleswoman has her own reasons for wanting Rowdy the Rodeo Cowboy found.
Jessica Woods—The parapsychologist/ghost hunter wants to check out the claim that Rowdy the Rodeo Cowboy was heard singing—after his ventriloquist was murdered.
Cecil Crandell—He did what he felt was best for his family—including sending away his son all those years ago.
Irma Crandell—Her regret—along with her anger—have been building for years. She can never forget what happened to her son, Seth—nor can she keep on pretending that she’s forgiven.
This book is dedicated to Barb Otteson—a wonderful neighbor and talented quilter friend who has brightened so many of my days! For years, we hardly saw each other in the neighborhood because I was blocks away at my office writing books. So glad for the mini quilt retreats where we have gotten to know each other and shared stories—and always laughter.
This one is for you, neighbor!
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Excerpt from Whispering Winds Widows by Debra Webb
Chapter One
Clay Wheaton flinched as he heard the heavy tread of footfalls ascending the fire escape stairs of the old Fortune Creek Hotel. His visitor moved slowly, purposefully, the climb to the fourth and top floor sounding like a death march.
His killer was coming.
He had no idea who he would come face-to-face with when he opened the door in a few minutes. But this had been a long time coming. Though it wasn’t something a man looked forward to even at his advanced age.
He glanced over at Rowdy lying lifeless on the bed where he’d left him earlier. The sight of his lifelong companion nearly broke his heart. He rose and went to him, his hand moving almost of its own accord to slip into the back under the Western outfit for the controls.
Instantly, Rowdy came to life. His animated eyes flew open, his head turned, his mouth gaping as he looked around. “We could make a run for it,” Rowdy said in the cowboy voice it had taken years to perfect. “It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve had to vamoose. You do the running part. I’ll do the singing part.”
The dummy broke into an old Western classic and quickly stopped. “Or maybe not,” Clay said as the lumbering footfalls ended at the top of the stairs and the exit door creaked open.
“Sorry, my old friend,” Clay said in his own voice. “You need to go into your case. You don’t want to see this.”
“No,” Rowdy cried. “We go down together like an old horse who can’t quite make it home in a blizzard with his faithful rider. This can’t be the end of the trail for us.”
The footsteps stopped outside his hotel room door, followed swiftly by a single knock. “Sorry,” Clay whispered, his voice breaking as he removed his hand, folded the dummy in half and lowered him gently into the special case with Rowdy’s name and brand on it.
Rowdy the Rodeo Cowboy. The two of them had traveled the world, singing and joking, and sharing years and years together. Rowdy had become his best friend, his entire life after leaving too many burning bridges behind them. “Sorry, old friend,” he whispered unable to look into Rowdy’s carved wooden face, the paint faded, but the eyes still bright and lifelike. He closed the case with trembling fingers.
This knock was much louder. He heard the door handle rattle. He’d been running for years, but now his reckoning was at hand. He pushed the case under the bed, straightened the bed cover over it and went to open the door.
Behind him he would have sworn he heard Rowdy moving in his case as if trying to get out, as if trying to save him. Old hotels and the noises they made? Or just his imagination?
Too late for regrets, he opened the door to his killer.
* * *
“MOLLY LOCKHART?” The voice on the phone was male, ringing with authority.
“Yes?” she said distractedly as she pulled her keyboard toward her, unconsciously lining it up with the edge of her desk as she continued to type. She had a report due before the meeting today at Henson and Powers, the financial institution where she worked as an analyst. She wouldn’t have taken the call, but her assistant had said the caller was a lawman, the matter urgent, and had put it through.
“My name’s Sheriff Brandt Parker from Fortune Creek, Montana. I found your name as the person to call. Do you know Clay Wheaton?”
Her fingers froze over the keys. “I’m sorry, what did you say? Just the last part please.” She really didn’t have time for this—whatever it was.
“Your name was found in the man’s hotel room as the person to call.”
“The person to call about what?”
The sheriff cleared his throat. “Do you know Clay Wheaton?”
“Yes.” She said it with just enough vacillation that she heard the lawman cough. “He’s my...father.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m afraid I have bad news. Mr. Wheaton is dead.” Another pause, then, “He’s been murdered.”
“Murdered?” she repeated. She’d known that she’d be getting a call one day that he had died. Given her father’s age it was inevitable. He was close to sixty-five. But murdered? She couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to murder him unless they’d seen his act.
“I hate to give you this kind of news over the phone,” the sheriff said. “Is there someone there with you?”
“I’m fine, Sheriff,” she said, realizing it was true. Her father had made his choice years ago when he’d left her and her mother to travel the world with—quite literally—a dummy. There was only one thing she wanted to know. “Where is Rowdy?”
The lawman sounded taken aback. “I beg your pardon?”
“My father’s dummy. You do know Clay Wheaton is...was a ventriloquist, right?”
“Yes, his dummy. It wasn’t found in h
“Missing?” She sighed heavily. “What did you say your name was again?”
“Sheriff Brandt Parker.”
“And you are where?”
“Fortune Creek, Montana. I’m going to need to know who else I should notify.”
“There is no one else. Just find Rowdy. I’m on my way there.”
* * *
BRANDT HUNG UP and looked at the dispatcher. The sixtysomething Helen Graves was looking at him, one eyebrow tilted at the ceiling in question. “Okay,” he said. “That was the strangest reaction I’ve ever had when telling someone that their father’s been murdered.”
“Maybe she’s in shock.”
“I don’t think so. She wants me to find the dummy—not the killer—but the dummy.”
“Why?”
“I have no idea, but she’s on her way here. I’ll try the other number Clay Wheaton left.” The deceased had left only two names and numbers on hotel stationery atop the bureau next to his bed with a note that said, In case of emergency. He put through the call, which turned out to be an insurance agency. “I’m calling for Georgia Eden.”
“I’ll connect you to the claims department.”
“Georgia Eden,” a young woman answered cheerfully with a slight southern accent.
Brandt introduced himself. “I’m calling on behalf of Clay Wheaton.”
“What does he want now?” she asked impatiently.
“Are you a relative of his?”
“Good heavens, no. He’s my client. What is this about? You said you’re a sheriff? Is he in some kind of trouble?”
“He was murdered.”
“Murdered?” He heard her sit up in her squeaky chair, her tone suddenly worried. “Where’s Rowdy?”
What was it with this dummy? “I...don’t know.”
“Rowdy would have been with him. Clay never let him out of his sight. He took Rowdy everywhere with him. I doubt he went to the toilet without him. Are you telling me Rowdy is missing?”
Brandt ran a hand down over his face. He had to ask. “What is it with this dummy?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I thought you might be more interested in your client’s murder than his...doll.”
Her words came out like thrown bricks. “That...doll as you call it, is insured for a very large amount of money.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I would not kid about something like that since I’m the one who wrote the policy,” Georgia said. “Where are you calling from?” He told her. “This could cost me more than my job if Rowdy isn’t found. I’ll be on the next plane.”
“We don’t have an airport,” he said quickly.
She groaned. “Where is Fortune Creek, Montana?”
“In the middle of nowhere, actually at the end of a road in the mountains at the most northwest corner of the state,” he said. “The closest airport is Kalispell. You’d have to rent a car from there.”
“Great.”
“If there is anything else I can do—”
“Just find that dummy.”
“You mean that doll.”
“Yes,” she said sarcastically. “Find Rowdy, please. Otherwise...I’m dead.”
Brandt hung up, shaking his head as he stood and reached for his Stetson. “Helen, if anyone comes looking for me, I’ll be over at the hotel looking for a ventriloquist’s dummy.” She frowned in confusion. “Apparently, that’s all anyone cares about. Meanwhile, I have a murder to solve.”
As he headed out the door for the walk across the street to the hotel, he couldn’t help being disturbed by the reactions he’d gotten to Clay Wheaton’s death. He thought about the note the dead man had left and the only two numbers on it.
Had he suspected he might be murdered? Or traveling alone—except for his dummy—had he always left such a note just in case? After all, at sixty-two, he was no spring chicken, his grandmother would have said.
Whatever the victim’s thinking, how was it that both women had cared more about the dummy than the man behind it?
Maybe worse, both women were headed this way.
Chapter Two
The sheriff walked up the steps of the historic Fortune Creek Hotel onto the full-length porch across the front. It was a beautiful late March day in Montana. But while spring-like and sunny today, it would change in a heartbeat and start snowing again. He took in the all-wood edifice that had been built in the 1930s by a wealthy easterner who’d wanted a hunting lodge for his many friends. Since then, it had changed little structurally. A tall rather skinny building, it rose to four floors with only four large rooms per floor.
While the building had sat empty for a few years after changing owners several times, a local man had bought it and was now remodeling the rooms, starting on the fourth floor. Ash Hammond was determined to keep it open year-round—no easy feat in a town as small as Fortune Creek.
“’Morning, Ash,” Brandt said as he pushed through the large front door. The former football star nodded from behind the reception desk. “Sorry about the inconvenience.”
Ash, his own age of thirty-four, waved off the apology. “Just another day in small-town Montana.” A good-looking dark-haired cowboy, Ash had left after high school to play college football as a quarterback at the University of Montana. He’d gone on to the NFL, playing for a few years before returning to town to buy the hotel. No one had been more surprised by that than Brandt who’d rodeoed at Montana State University before going into law enforcement.
Brandt had returned home after working in several large cities as a cop. He’d quickly tired of the rat race, missing the peace and quiet of Fortune Creek. He figured Ash had felt the same way. Leaving had made sense at the time. Coming back had made more sense. He’d come home to escape it all, but murder seemed to be the one thing he hadn’t been able to get away from.
“Any idea who did it?” Ash asked quietly even though the lobby was empty.
The sheriff shook his head. Murder here was as rare as hen’s teeth, which was another of his grandmother’s sayings. “Anything you can tell me about Mr. Wheaton?”
“He checked in three days go, paying in cash for a week.” Ash shrugged. “Only thing odd was the doll he had sitting on his arm. It talked more than he did.”
“So you met Rowdy?”
“Was that its name? Kitty said when she went up to clean his room, she’d heard two voices inside, but hadn’t seen another person when she’d knocked and Wheaton had opened his door. Looked him up on the internet this morning. Seems he used to be a pretty famous ventriloquist. Played Vegas.”
“So what was he doing in Fortune Creek?”
Again Ash shrugged.
Brandt thought of the two women he’d notified of the death earlier by phone. “Do you know what he did the three days he was here?” The sheriff had heard everyone in town talking about the man and his dummy, but he’d never seen the guy until he’d died.
“He didn’t go out much,” Ash was saying. “Hardly left his room. Didn’t let Kitty in to clean it. I hardly ever saw him, but the few times I did he always had the dummy with him. Alice said he came down to the café a couple of times. He usually had his meals delivered. She said he had the dummy with him, and the dummy did his ordering for him. She thought he couldn’t talk.”
Brandt shook his head. “But the dummy definitely wasn’t around when you found his body.”
Ash shook his head. “I only stepped into the room to check for vitals, then I called you. I left the room, closed the door and didn’t leave until you arrived, so no one could have taken it when I was there. Think the killer took it with him?”
“Looks that way. Did anyone visit him during those three days?”
“Not that I know of,” Ash said. “At least they didn’t come through the lobby. But they could have used the fire escape exit.”
“Isn’t that kept locked?”
“It’s exit only, but when I came up to check Wheaton, I saw that someone had propped the door open with a book.”
“A book?” the sheriff asked in surprise.
“An old paperback. East of Eden. Read that in school, don’t you remember?”
