Christmas at Cardwell Ranch

“Lily. At least that’s what the bartender called her.”

Hud nodded. “Tell me about the man the victim left with behind the bar.”

“Cowboy hat, pickup. It was snowing so hard I can’t even swear what color the truck was. Dark blue or brown, maybe even black. That’s about it. I only got a glimpse of the man through the snow,” Tag said.

“But he got a good look at you?”

He saw that the question took Tag by surprise. “Yeah, I guess he did.”

“I might need a statement from you later,” Hud said. “If you think of anything else...”

“I’ll let you know,” Tag said as the coroner and another deputy arrived by snowmobile. The coroner’s had a sled behind his snowmobile.

“Dana will have a pot of coffee on when you reach the house,” Hud told him. He’d seen Tag’s rented SUV parked in front of the ranch house.

Tag nodded and turned to leave.

Hud watched him go, worrying. Dana had just been disappointed by one “cousin.” He didn’t want her disappointed again if he could help it. But he couldn’t shake the feeling that Tanner “Tag” Cardwell knew a lot more about the victim than he’d admitted.

He reminded himself that his instincts were off. He was probably just looking for guilt where there wasn’t any.

* * *

TAG WAS GLAD he didn’t have to talk to anyone on the walk down the mountain. His head was spinning.

He’d been shocked when he’d recognized the dead woman—even more shocked when he’d seen what she was wearing. A leather jacket like the one he’d seen lying over the arm of his father’s couch just yesterday.

Since discovering the body, he’d kept telling himself it couldn’t be the same woman. Just as his father couldn’t be involved in this.

That was why he hadn’t mentioned the jacket to the marshal, he told himself. He couldn’t be sure it was the same one. But both his father and the woman had been at the bar last night. Tag knew how some women were about cowboy guitar players—even old ones.

A chill had settled in his bones by the time he reached the ranch house. He liked the idea of a hot cup of coffee, but he didn’t want to talk to anyone—especially his cousin—about what he’d seen on the mountain.

As he climbed into his rented SUV, he told himself that the woman’s death had nothing to do with his father. And yet Tag couldn’t wait to reach the cabin. Harlan Cardwell had some explaining to do.

* * *

LILY TRIED NOT to roll her eyes at her brother. “Ace.”

“Don’t ‘Ace’ me. Lily, it’s time you got back on the horse. So to speak.”

She really didn’t want to talk about this and now regretted stopping by her brother’s tiny apartment over the bar this early in the morning. She’d come to talk about Mia Duncan—not her ex-fiancé, Gerald Humphrey.

“What chaps my behind is that Gerald was the wrong man for you in the first place,” Ace said as he refilled her coffee cup. “That man would have bored you to death in no time.”

She thought about how much she and Gerald had in common. Of course Ace thought him boring. Ace had never understood what she and Gerald had shared.

“But to pull what he did,” Ace continued. “If he hadn’t skipped the country when he did, I would have tracked him down and—”

“I really don’t want to have this discussion,” she said, picking up her mug and moving over to the window. The world was covered in cold white drifts this morning. The sun had come out, turning the fresh snow to a blinding carpet of diamonds.

“Sis, I love you and I hate to see you like this.”

Lily spun back around, almost spilling her coffee. She couldn’t help being annoyed with the older brother she’d idolized all her life. But this was a subject they had never agreed on.

“You hate to see me like this?” she demanded. “Ace, I’m happy. I have a great life, a rewarding career. I’m...content.”

He mugged a face. “Sis, you live like a nun except for the few times a year that I drag you out to help me with the bar.”

“We really should not have this conversation,” she warned him, wondering now if he had actually needed her help at the bar or if his asking her to work the holidays with him was part of some scheme to find her a man. If it was the latter... She said as much. “Ace, so help me—”

He held up his hands in surrender. “You know how much I need your help. And I didn’t mean to set you off this morning.”

But he had. “You should be more concerned about your other employees. If you had seen Mia’s condo...”

“I am concerned. I put in a call to the marshal’s office first thing this morning, but no one has called me back yet. I called the condo number Mia gave me, but not surprisingly, there was no answer there. I figure once she discovered the break-in, she probably stayed with a friend last night.”

Lily wasn’t so sure about that since she didn’t think Mia had made any friends in the weeks she’d been working at the Canyon. The only person Mia had spoken to at the bar was Teresa. Which had seemed odd because of the age difference.

Mia was in her late thirties, while Teresa was barely twenty-one. Neither was outgoing, so that could be why they’d become somewhat friends, at least from Lily’s observation.

So this morning, she’d placed a call to Teresa’s cell, only to reach her boyfriend, Ethan. “Mia isn’t the only one who’s missing this morning,” she told her brother. “That’s why I came by so early. Teresa didn’t come home last night.”

Ace seemed only a little surprised, but then he’d been running a bar longer than Lily had been helping out. “Maybe Mia and Teresa are together. I’m sure they’ll turn up. Teresa and Ethan probably had a fight. I noticed she was acting oddly last night.” He frowned. “But then again, so was Mia, now that I think about it. I saw her get into it with one of the customers. Teresa came to her rescue, but Mia handled it fine.”

“Why didn’t you tell me about that last night?” Lily demanded.

“Because it blew over quickly. You and Reggie didn’t even notice.”

“Who was the customer?”

Ace shrugged. “Some guy. I didn’t recognize him. Lily, people act up in bars. It happens. A good server knows how to handle it. Mia was great. I’m telling you, I wouldn’t be surprised if they both show up for work tonight.”

Lily hoped he was right. “Did you ask Mia why she left early night before last?”

“She apologized, said she’d suddenly gotten a migraine and hadn’t been able to get my attention, but since it hadn’t been that busy...”

Lily nodded. Had Mia been drinking the night before last as well as last night? If so, Lily really hadn’t seen that coming.

But what did she really know about the woman? Other servers she’d worked with often talked about their lives—in detail—while they were setting up before opening and cleaning up after closing. She’d learned more than she’d ever wanted to know about them.

Mia, though, was another story. She seldom offered anything about herself other than where she was from—Billings, Montana, the largest city in the state and a good three hours away. It wasn’t unusual for people from Billings to have condos at Big Sky. Mia’s parents owned a condo in one of the pricier developments, which made Lily suspect that the woman didn’t really need this job.

“What do you know about Mia?” Lily asked her brother now.

He shrugged. “Not much. She never had much to say, especially about herself. I could check her application, but you know there isn’t a lot on them.”

“But there would be a number to call in case of emergency, right?”