Redemption

“It’s been too long since I’ve awakened to a sheriff on my doorstep,” Arnie said. “Hell, I must be getting old. I’m not even going to put up a fight.” He held out his wrists, pantomiming letting the sheriff put the cuffs on.

“This is a friendly visit,” Frank said with a chuckle. Arnie Thorndike was an old hippie who’d caught the tail end of the “flower power” movement in California before returning to Beartooth and getting his law degree. “I need to ask you about Claude.”

The grin left the man’s weathered face. “Then I guess you’d better come in. I just made coffee.”

“I need to know about Claude’s will,” Frank said as he followed Arnie into the cluttered kitchen. “He did leave a will, right?”

Thorndike dug out a couple of mismatched coffee mugs, filled both, then motioned the sheriff to a small room off the side of the cabin.

It wasn’t until they were both seated in threadbare recliners, the morning sun coming through the dusty window, that Arnie spoke.

“I miss the hell out of Claude,” he said and took a slurping sip of his coffee. He seemed to relax, his eyes misty. “There wasn’t a day at the café that he didn’t have some joke or story to share. Didn’t matter if the story was true, Claude could spin a yarn like no one I’ve ever known.”

“Did he have any family?” Frank asked.

“Not that I knew of.”

“So he never married? I know he left Beartooth only a few times over the years, but he wasn’t gone long. The café apparently was his family, his entire life.” But Frank had learned over the years of being a sheriff that even a man who appeared to have nothing to hide often had secrets. For all he knew, on those few occasions when Claude had left Beartooth for several months at a time, he had a family hidden away somewhere.

“Any idea where he went the few times he did leave Beartooth?” the sheriff asked. “Claude never seemed to want to talk about it.”

“You know he wasn’t all that healthy.”

That was putting it mildly. Nettie over at the store used to nag Claude like crazy, telling him to quit eating off his own menu. It was no surprise when he’d dropped dead.

“Are you telling me that’s why he left Beartooth those times? Because of his health?”

The attorney took a sip of his coffee. “I think he had a surgery or two.”

“For his heart?”

Thorndike shrugged. “He didn’t like talking about his medical problems.”

“Or any personal ones,” the sheriff said. “Which brings me back to his will, if he had one. I talked to a friend of mine who’s a Realtor. He told me that, to his knowledge, the café was never listed for sale. So how is it that Kate LaFond ended up owning it?”

“Claude left it to her.”

Frank couldn’t have been more shocked. “Why?”

“He just did. It was clear he had his reasons. He didn’t share them with me.”

“What do you know about her?”

“Other than the fact that she is no Claude? The woman doesn’t tell dirty jokes or bitch about anything. The Branding Iron just isn’t the same.”

Frank took a sip of his coffee, pretending not to hear the break in Thorn’s voice. The man had lost his best friend and was clearly struggling with that loss.

“Her coffee isn’t as good either, but I’m adjusting,” Thorndike said, lightening his tone and the mood. “If Claude wanted her to take over the place he loved, he must have had his reasons.”

Frank nodded. But like Nettie, he was even more curious about Kate. What was the connection between Claude Durham, a confirmed cantankerous old bachelor, and Kate LaFond, a young woman no one knew anything about?

* * *

KATE HADN’T PLANNED to go to the Sweetgrass County Spring Fair. But after the sheriff’s visit, she didn’t feel she had a choice. She couldn’t be sure he wasn’t keeping an eye on her, and staying home—or worse, taking off for the hills—would only make her look more guilty. As if that was possible.

One down. Two more to go, though. Better hurry, Kate. Ticktock.

Who’d left her the note? Someone who knew what she was doing in Beartooth, that much was clear. One down. Two more to go, though. Did the writer, like the sheriff, suspect she’d killed the dead man found by the river? Or had the letter writer killed him?

She shuddered as she realized that the note had been taken while she’d been busy with Cilla. Maybe the letter writer had taken it back. But then that meant he’d been watching her and had seen her put it in the apron pocket and later deposit it in the bin.

She realized anyone who’d been in the busy café that morning could have stuck the note under a plate as they were leaving.

As she drove out of town, Beartooth, while darned close to a ghost town on its good days, felt eerily deserted. As much as she hated to admit it, she felt spooked and realized she was glad to be driving into Big Timber.

On the twenty-mile drive through rolling ranch and farmland, she could feel time slipping through her fingers, though. The author of the note was right. The clock was ticking. With winter over, the ground finally thawed and the equipment ready, there was nothing stopping her.

The thought made her laugh. Nothing stopping her? There were so many roadblocks thrown in her way.... She pulled into the fair’s parking lot and killed the engine, pushing away the thought of two more men after her who might be out there right now, watching her and waiting.

She climbed out into the warm spring day, telling herself she could handle whatever was thrown at her. Or at least she hoped she could. She’d had a few curveballs thrown at her in her life, but nothing like this.

The spring fair was everything she’d heard it was. There were barns filled with prize-winning cows, pigs, horses, sheep, rabbits and even chickens. Other buildings held homemade clothing and baked goods, some sporting blue ribbons.

As she moved through the crowds—the men in their jeans, boots, fancy Western shirts and Stetson hats, the women just as duded out—she felt as if she must stand out like a sore thumb.

This was a world apart from where she’d grown up. Everything about Montana, especially Beartooth, felt alien to her and had since she’d arrived. She did what she could to blend in, even wearing boots and boot-cut jeans, Western shirts with snaps instead of buttons, and spending most Sunday mornings on a hard pew at church with the rest of the community.

She laughed at the regulars’ jokes and kidding each morning. She’d learned to drive a stick-shift four-wheel-drive pickup as well as run a café. Last fall, she’d cut firewood for the coming winter and, once the blizzards hit, she’d shoveled snow and stoked the apartment woodstove just to keep warm as if she was a local.

Since moving to Beartooth, she’d done what she had to to survive.

But now with time running out, she felt discouraged. It had taken longer than she’d thought it would to get the café up and running and to settle into this new, strange life. But she couldn’t afford to hire anyone to run the place for her.

Then winter had set in too soon. She hadn’t gotten a feel of the land before the snow had started, the temperature dropping, the ground freezing, making finding what she’d come for impossible.

All she’d been able to do was bide her time. Get the lay of the land, as her father would have said. She thought of Harvey Logan, the only father she’d known. He would have loved Montana. It was rich in history, with lots of stories of outlaws and gold miners, homesteaders and hard winters, along with buried treasure, strongboxes from robbed stages that were never found. Hidden miser’s gold, nuggets the size of her fist, turning up when foundations were dug for one of the many towns that had sprung up overnight.

But what a hard life early settlers had faced. She thought of last winter and couldn’t imagine how anyone had survived a hundred years ago without modern conveniences. She’d wanted to throw in the towel more times than she could count on those days when winter blizzards had rattled the café windows and whirled snow into icy drifts as the temperature plummeted.

She couldn’t help but question if all of this was worth it.

At the thought, she drew on the granite-hard determination that had gotten her this far in life. She deserved to get what was coming to her—no matter what. One day it would all be worth it, she assured herself as she walked past tables of baked goods and handcrafts and women hawking their wares.

The sun beat down on her. She could hear shrieks coming from the carnival rides as she passed a line of canvas tents offering everything from tamales to tractor parts. The smell of cotton candy and corn dogs permeated the air, making her feel a little nauseous.

Kate started to turn back the way she’d come, having had enough. She knew she was still upset over the note and the sheriff’s visit. She was pushing her way through the crowd when she saw him.

Jack French didn’t appear to have seen her, though. At least she hoped he hadn’t, as she quickly ducked into the nearest tent.