Smokin' Six-Shooter

Arlene nodded solemnly. “It was a horrible tragedy, both mother and daughter.”

“Do they think the killer—”

“No,” Arlene said quickly. “The sheriff said she had fallen and hit her head and drowned. The creek wasn’t very deep that spring. It had been very hot and dry.”

Dulcie felt shaken. The mother murdered, the daughter killed in a freak accident. It still didn’t explain how Dulcie had inherited the property. Or why she’d reacted the way she had when she’d seen the yellow curtains in that second-floor window and heard the tortured sound of the weather vane.

She downed the cold drink in her hand, suddenly exhausted. “Thank you for the lemonade. It was delicious.”

“So will you buy the property?” Arlene asked as Dulcie rose to leave.

She could see that the woman was curious about Dulcie’s real reason for asking about Laura Beaumont and her daughter. Maybe even more curious why she’d want the property.

“I hope I haven’t dissuaded you.”

“Not at all,” Dulcie said. “I’m going to sleep on it. I couldn’t make any kind of a decision as tired as I am.”

She left Arlene and drove back to Whitehorse. It had gotten dark, the sky deepening from dove gray to an inky black devoid of moon or stars, as if the heat had melted them. She tried not to think as she let the car’s air-conditioning blow on her, but her mind raced anyway.

She wasn’t Angel Beaumont. But it gave her no peace. Laura murdered, her daughter, Angel, drowned in the creek, the property left to Dulcie—a little girl herself at the time. Something was wrong with all this, she could feel it.

As she passed through town, the temperature sign on the bank read eighty-four degrees. It was going to be another miserably hot night.

She chose the first motel she came to on the edge of town. Once inside her room, she showered, turned up the air conditioner and lay down on the bed.

She thought about calling Renada, but didn’t feel up to it even though there was a message from her friend. Tomorrow, when she didn’t feel so exhausted, so depressed. If she called her now, Renada would hear how discouraged she was and insist on coming out to Montana. Anyway, it was too late to call with the time difference between here and Chicago.

Dulcie expected to fall into a deep sleep almost instantly, as tired as she was. But when she closed her eyes, she saw the yellow curtains move in the upstairs bedroom and heard the groan of the weather vane on the barn in the hot, dry wind.

All she could think about was that little girl. That poor little girl.

JOLENE WOKE TO DARKNESS and sat up, startled, to find she’d fallen asleep in her living-room chair.

The pages from the short stories fluttered to the floor at her feet as she reached for the lamp next to her chair and checked the time.

Well after midnight. She must have been more tired than she’d thought. She blamed the relentless heat, which had zapped her energy and left her feeling like a wrung-out dishrag.

Even this late, the air in the small house was hot and close. She felt clammy and yearned for a breath of cool air as she turned up the fan in the window. All it did was blow in warm air, but even warm air was better than nothing.

As she leaned down to retrieve the stories, she caught sight of the murder story.

Her fingers slowed as she reached for it, remembering with a start what she’d learned at the newspaper. Widow Laura Beaumont had been murdered twenty-four years ago and she, like the woman in the supposedly fictional murder story, had a young daughter.

A daughter who’d been found drowned in the creek.

The short story had to be about the same woman and her child, didn’t it?

She put the critiqued story installments into her backpack, although she wouldn’t be returning them until the entire story had been finished, turned in and graded.

She didn’t want to stifle their creativity with her comments on the earlier assignments, although her comments were very complimentary of their endeavors. The idea was to encourage her students to write freely. She understood the fear some people had about putting words to paper.

As she zipped up the backpack, she looked down at the murder story on the table where she’d left it. She would hide it in the house for now. She didn’t want to take the chance that someone would find it in the schoolhouse and read it.

The story was becoming more and more like her dark secret and that should have made her even more uneasy than it did, she thought.

As she headed to bed, Jolene realized that the author of the murder story had gotten to her. Not only couldn’t she wait for the next part, but she now felt personally involved in solving the mystery.

Reading Monday’s and Tuesday’s assignments in order, she had looked for some clue as to the writer. Was the writer just someone with an active imagination? Or a local gossip who thought she knew what had happened that summer, if indeed the story was about Laura Beaumont and her daughter, Angel?