Boots and Bullets

“None that I know of,” Andi said, thoughtfully.

Kate knew her friend. If anyone could track it down, it was Andi. “Let me know what you find out.”

A COUNTRY-WESTERN BAND played on a flatbed trailer parked along the main drag. Fall Festival was in full swing by the time Cyrus got there. He hadn’t seen Kate Landon, wasn’t even sure she’d show up.

Seeing that silver bracelet in her shop had thrown him for a loop. Then when she’d told him it had belonged to her mother …

He’d gone back to his hotel room and spent most of the afternoon trying to make sense of it, as if any of this made any sense. Maybe seeing Kate and the bracelet was just a coincidence. Just like the murder had been nothing more than his overactive imagination at work.

His head hurt and he tried to put all of it out of his mind as he walked along the crowded streets clustered with booths offering everything from crafts and home-grown pumpkins to Christmas-tree ornaments and baked goods.

A mixture of alluring scents floated along the street: burgers, chocolate, coffee, hot apple cider, barbecue, cotton candy. But one scent in particular drew him until he found the booth where women were making frybread.

He breathed in the delicious aroma, remembering another fall when he was five and his father brought him and Cordell into town for the Fall Festival.

“Two?” the woman behind the counter asked.

Cyrus started. Did he look as if he needed two frybreads? That’s when he noticed Kate had come up beside him and was doing the same thing he’d done, breathing in the wonderful aroma.

Her eyes were closed as she breathed in the scent of the frying bread, her expression one of unmitigated pleasure. He smiled to himself, guessing he’d had the same look on his face just moments before.

“Two,” he confirmed as Kate Landon opened her beautiful green eyes. He couldn’t believe how happy he was to see her and that happiness had nothing to do with his reason for coming to Whitehorse. “I take it you like frybread,” he said with a grin.

“I love frybread. This is why I wasn’t about to miss the Fall Festival or miss seeing you again.” She seemed to blush as her last words came out. As he handed her one of the confections covered with sugar and cinnamon, she said, “Thank you, but you didn’t have to buy mine.”

“My pleasure,” he said, taking his own and motioning to one of the picnic tables in the small park by the railroad line that still took passengers as far as Seattle or Chicago and all points beyond.

“How is the haunted house coming along?” Cyrus asked as he took a seat across from her.

“Slowly but surely. I’ve been so busy with getting all the furnishings out of the old hospital and opening my shop that I’m behind.” She took a bite of her frybread, emitting a soft satisfying groan.

He watched her, smiling as she licked the sugar and cinnamon from her lips, making it hard for him to concentrate on the questions he wanted to ask her.

“So are you a Whitehorse native?”

She opened her eyes and shook her head. “West Yellow stone.”

“That’s quite a change, from a tourist town surrounded by mountains to a prairie town on the Hi-Line just miles from Canada. How did you end up here?” he asked. It was an odd place for a single woman to open a business—unless she came with a husband or a lover, or had family here, he thought.