Denim Detective Read online

  That she could even think of quitting, sobered Deedra. She fought down the defeatist musings, her gaze steadied on her handsome husband and his flock of admirers. A new, different thought sliced the fog of negativity, something so obvious it hadn’t occurred to her earlier. The killer wouldn’t be looking at Beau with longing, but eyeing her with daggers. But no one was paying her the least attention. No, edit that. One woman was looking at her and shaking her head in sympathy. Dr. Haynes’s nurse, Cassidy Brewer.

  Cassidy, a former rodeo queen, a champion barrel racer, wore her dark-golden hair down her back in a braid as thick as a child’s arm. A perpetual tan showed off the highlights in her blond tresses and accentuated her wide indigo eyes. She had an earthiness, a natural sensuality that other women felt and men found irresistible. As far as Deedra knew, however, she’d never been married. Or had a serious romantic relationship.

  Was it too much of a stretch to wonder if unrequited feelings for Beau kept her single?

  Deedra strode to the counter where she stood. “I have a two-o’clock appointment.”

  “Must be annoying to have to beat off the competition.” Cassidy nodded toward Beau, who was now surrounded by women.

  Competition? The idea struck Deedra as ludicrous. Then again, “competition” was exactly what her deranged stalker considered her. She kept her voice low. “I’m Beau’s wife. I don’t need to compete for his attention.”

  Cassidy looked unconvinced. “Your lips to God’s ears.”

  Deedra’s temper flared, and she curled her fists at her sides, fighting the urge to slap the smirk from the nurse’s mouth. For all she knew, Cassidy Brewer might be a dangerous killer. Deedra gazed at the other woman’s ruddy hands and wondered whether she could shoot a gun as well as she could ride a horse. And did that even make sense? Wouldn’t a nurse’s weapons of choice more likely run to drugs or pills? Like her pills?

  A shiver tracked her spine. A nurse would know how to get into a hospital. Know how to switch the stored blood of patients.

  “Nora Lee just beeped me,” Beau said, halting her train of thought. She wanted to tell him what had just occurred to her. That Cassidy Brewer was a definite suspect. But not here. Not now. Not with Cassidy’s glare boring into her.

  Beau shifted his weight on the cane and dipped close so that only she could hear him. “Apparently something needs my personal attention.”

  Her gaze slammed into his, her heart skipping with hope. “Has she heard from the forensics lab?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t want to phone from here and ask.”

  “Then I’m coming with you.”

  “No. You need to see the doctor.”

  “No, I—” But he was right. She did need to see the doctor. She could not put it off. She relented. “Okay, I’ll stay.”

  He studied her. “Will you be all right?”

  She heard the ladies sigh at his concern for her and, mentally, she rolled her eyes. She’d been taking care of herself since her teens; she could survive an hour or so in a doctor’s office. “Of course.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. Go on.”

  “I’ll be back by the time you’re finished.” He squeezed her lower arm reassuringly, and, despite her determination not to rely too much on Beau, she knew she did. “I’ll be fine.”

  BY THE TIME she’d finished with Dr. Haynes, prescription in hand and a tentative surgical date set, Beau had not returned. Deedra considered sitting on one of the plastic chairs to wait and decided she’d rather have some air and get away from the overt glances the newly arrived patients sent her.

  Without Beau running interference the townsfolk seemed like some noxious cloud billowing from a copper pit, sucking all the oxygen in its wake. She hurried outside. The air tasted so fresh she indulged in several lungs full as she scanned the street for Beau’s car. What was keeping him? Had his deputy’s call had something to do with the sniper after all?

  Or was the sniper here somewhere, watching her through the sight of her rifle? Maybe she should go back inside. No. She wasn’t going back into that waiting room for anything. She glanced around for a pay phone, but couldn’t find one. Her gaze landed on the attorney’s office. She’d call the station from there. She darted across the street, praying Beau was right about the sniper not risking shooting her in town.

  Gold lettering etched the obscured glass door: T. R. Rudway, Attorney at Law. She reached for the knob. The door swung inward, and she stood face-to-face with a very pregnant woman around nineteen. Deedra stared at the other woman’s distended stomach and her heart clenched, squeezing out envy and grief and a slew of other emotions that weakened her knees.

  “Watch where you’re going,” the nineteen-year-old snapped.

  Deedra caught her breath. She straightened and moved back, offering an awkward apology. The pregnant woman shouldered past her, mumbling under her breath something that Deedra couldn’t quite hear but that most certainly maligned her parentage.

  “Nice talk, Mommy,” Deedra said.

  “Screw you!”

  Deedra resisted the impulse to continue this spitting match, to vent her frustrations on someone she didn’t even know. She let the door shut the woman out, but Deedra’s temper simmered, and she knew it wasn’t just the teenager’s attitude but the unfairness of it all that had her riled. What law of the universe made someone like that foul-mouthed youngster a mother and left her unable to bear another child?

  Fighting off a spate of self-pity, she forced herself to focus on her surroundings. Rich cherry wood paneling graced the walls and extended to the furnishings. The dark hues were offset by accessories in varying tones of beige and gold and a couple of huge potted palms.

  There was something cooling, calming about the space, as though a soft breeze swept through it. None of this went with her mental image of an attorney named T. R. Rudway. She’d pictured a two-bit ambulance chaser.

  This office, however, bespoke success and big money. It belonged in a cosmopolitan city. Not Buffalo Falls. So why was it here? Surely this community couldn’t dredge up enough annual legal business to justify the expense or the formality. In fact, she couldn’t imagine any local farmer or rancher coming in here, their boots caked in cow or horse dung, to consult an attorney.

  Just who were T. R. Rudway’s clients? Was this lawyer doing something illegal right under Beau’s nose? She wondered if he’d ever been here, ever even met ol’ T.R.—probably some potbellied good old boy dripping in gold and diamonds, bartering who knew what kind of deals for wealthy lawbreakers.

  There was no receptionist, but she heard voices in a connecting room. The door to the inner office opened, and a couple stepped through. Deedra knew designer clothing, real gold and genuine diamonds, when she saw them, but she didn’t know this couple. Out-of-towners, no doubt. Wealthy out-of-towners, just as she’d figured.

  The man spoke to someone in the office, his voice dripping with a twang straight out of the Deep South, “How soon before the adoption is final, Ms. Rudway?”

  Ms. Rudway? T.R. was a woman?

  A shapely brunette in a dove-gray suit filled the door frame, clearing up all doubt of her gender. She wore no jewelry. It would have been too much, given her natural beauty. She was stunning. “Around three weeks or so, Tom. The pregnancy is textbook normal. As soon as the mother goes into labor, I’ll notify you and Lucille.”

  “We’ll be able to take our baby straight home from the hospital?” the woman asked, her accent as thick as her husband’s.

  “Soon as the doctor releases him,” the lawyer assured them.

  Deedra shrank against the receptionist’s desk, listening but not wanting to draw attention to herself. What was a couple from some Southern state doing in a small town in Montana arranging to adopt a baby? Why weren’t they making these arrangements in their home state?

  Or maybe Deedra was reading something sinister into something innocent? Her mind flashed on the nineteen-year-old with attitude. Maybe she wa
sn’t an unmarried, pregnant teen, but a surrogate mother. Maybe T. R. Rudway found women willing to bear babies for wealthy couples if the price was right. Or maybe she just specialized in private adoptions.

  Deedra glanced around the outer office again. Expensive private adoptions. She and Beau had discussed adoption after learning she needed a hysterectomy. Actually, he’d suggested it; she’d dismissed it. She hadn’t wanted any babies but their own. Now she felt a twinge of envy for the anticipation this couple must feel looking forward to that new infant.

  “That’ll be the best call of our lives.” The man draped his arm around his wife and guided her toward the exit.

  Deedra waited until the door shut to make her presence known. “Er, Ms. Rudway?”

  T.R. jerked as if she’d been poked in the back. “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there. Are you my three-o’clock?”

  “No. No.” She stepped toward the attorney and saw a flicker of something in the woman’s hazel eyes, something too dark and fleeting to identify. Perhaps caution. Deedra decided to test that wariness. “I was wondering if I might use your phone to call my husband…the sheriff.”

  Those same eyes rounded at the mention of Beau, and Deedra knew she’d struck a nerve of some kind. But she didn’t expect the lawyer to say, “You’re Deedra Shanahan?”

  Deedra frowned. She didn’t know this woman. But the attorney had obviously heard of her. “How did you…?”

  T.R. laughed. “Besides the start of the Crazy Daze sales, which commence today, your return to town was the topic du jour this morning at Granny Jo’s.”

  “No doubt.” Deedra hated the heat charging up her cheeks. “Strangely, though, I can’t say I’ve ever heard of you. So, I’m guessing you opened this office sometime in the past two months.”

  “Two months next week.”

  “From the look of things, business is good.”

  “Very.” She pressed her card into Deedra’s hand. “But a lawyer can always use new clients. If there’s ever anything I can do for you…or Sheriff Shanahan…please don’t hesitate to contact me.”

  To work out a contract? For adoption services? To sue someone? Whatever branch of the law T.R. practiced was not specified on the card resting in Deedra’s palm. Deedra cleared her throat. “Sure, thanks. The phone?”

  “Certainly.” T.R. gestured to the one on the receptionist’s desk, then strode to her office and shut the door.

  Giving Deedra privacy?

  Or was she listening in on an extension?

  Deedra couldn’t hear breathing on the phone line and almost laughed at her paranoia, even if she had good reason for it. She dialed the police station.

  Heck Long answered. “Hello, Ms. Shanahan. No, I don’t know where the sheriff is. Or anyone else. I just came in from patrol and found the office empty, but if you should see Beau before me, would you tell him that he’s got some phone calls here? A couple of them are marked urgent. Huh, both from the same woman, a Missus or Miss Carter.”

  Deedra’s heart skipped at the name, but in the next second she cautioned herself against jumping to conclusions. Carter was a common enough surname. “Did she leave a first name, a phone number?”

  “Ah…yeah,” he said, as though he were scanning the message for details. “Yeah. They’re both here. First name’s Nell. Nell Carter. Don’t know what she’d want with the sheriff, though. According to the phone number she left, she was callin’ from Butte.”

  It was Freddie’s mother. What possible reason would she have to call Beau? Perhaps Nell was trying to reach her. No. She would have called the ranch, not the police station. Maybe she had. She promised Heck she would pass along the messages, disconnected and dialed the ranch. Pilar answered, but said Deedra’s call was the first one all afternoon.

  She hung up. A niggling unease gripped her. Nell had called Beau. Not once. But twice. The messages marked “urgent.” Nell didn’t even know Beau. She would call Nell now if she hadn’t cut up her long-distance calling card two months ago.

  Deedra made for the door, her mind turned inward to the day Beau and she had visited Nell’s house, the day they’d found out Freddie had been murdered. Did Nell know something about the murder she hadn’t told the police?

  Deedra recalled seeing the curtain in the upstairs window move—as if someone were there, hiding. At the time she’d thought she might have imagined that movement. Now she felt sure she hadn’t. And the question was: Had Nell shut herself away from the outside world in grief…or in fear?

  She had to find Beau. Now. But he wasn’t waiting for her outside. The uneasiness gathered inside her like a building storm. Where was he? What was keeping him? The police station was only a few blocks away. She set out for it on foot, praying she’d run into him along the way.

  Despite the warm afternoon, Deedra felt chilled, her skin prickly. Every step left her more jumpy. More anxious to reach Beau. But progress was impeded by the annual Crazy Daze summer sales T. R. Rudway had mentioned. Sidewalks were crowded with racks of clothes, bargain tables and shoppers.

  She paid all of it little attention and was thankfully not accosted by any of the bargain hunters, but on Custer Street, a familiar face snagged her attention. The rude, pregnant teen she’d encountered earlier at the attorney’s office. She was at the end of the street on the opposite side.

  Curious, Deedra watched her turn into the last door on the block, into the office of Dr. Elle Warren. Deedra’s psychologist. Deedra stopped midstep, a rush of unpleasant memories hitting her. She’d poured her heart out to Dr. Warren after Callie… Her throat tightened and began to ache as if someone were strangling her.

  Dr. Warren’s counseling had not helped her salvage her relationship with Beau, it had only increased her resentment of his neglect. But worse than that the sessions hadn’t helped her accept and deal with the loss of her daughter…they had only increased her belief that Callie lived.

  She’d had to run away from this town in order to face her daughter’s death. She’d come home to lay her baby to rest. But once she’d driven back into this town, before she’d even reached the cemetery, the doubts had crept in again. And now, as she stood on this street, staring at Dr. Warren’s office, she felt Callie’s presence yet again.

  Hope as gentle and strong as a baby’s grip took hold of her heart, and though she tried to shake it off, to shove it away, she couldn’t. God help her, she couldn’t. Something snapped inside Deedra, split like the wall of a dam, a crack here, a crack there, held-back remembrances spilling out, trickling into her awareness. And then the cracks grew larger until the whole wall gave and memories gushed through her like a flash flood she couldn’t outrun.

  Moments of joy, moments of Callie, happy moments, loving moments. In the deluge of longing that claimed her senses, every other thought crashed away like uprooted trees, including her urgency to find Beau. All Deedra wanted was Callie.

  She wandered into the nearest shop, the only three-level department store in town. Of their own volition, her feet carried her to the second floor, into the baby department. She roamed between the rows of infant wear, stopping and lifting a tin of baby powder from the shelf. She popped the seal and inhaled the talcum’s sweet scent, recalling Callie damp and squirmy after her bath, laughing as Deedra dried her, powdered her, spread baby lotion over her delicate, silky skin.

  The knot in her throat wound tighter. Tears stung her eyes. She fought them, absently clutching the tin to her aching heart, spinning away from the staring eye of the salesclerk. She had to get out of here. But as she moved to the exit, her gaze hooked on a slash of mint-green gingham poking from between a crush of sales items on a nearby rack. She stumbled forward and plucked the item free.

  Her heart stopped. It was a puffy-sleeved, smock-topped dress with ribbons at the collar. Callie had worn a similar dress when she’d gone missing. Deedra dropped it and jerked back as if it were a live rattler that had just bitten her.

  Tremors rocked her as if the earth were quaking, so
on to crumble and suck her into a black hole. Only the laughter saved her. Pulled her back from the edge of the abyss.

  A child’s laugh.

  Callie’s laugh.

  Deedra jerked around, wildly seeking her daughter. There! At the checkout counter. A woman she didn’t recognize held a little girl with wavy black hair. Callie! She couldn’t see the child’s face, but she knew. She knew. Her heart that moments ago had stopped, now galloped. “Callie.”

  She kept her gaze locked on the raven hair and, like a pigeon on a course for home, started forward as if she had wings and could fly over all the obstacles between herself and her little girl. Of course, she couldn’t. She rammed into a waist-high display. No! No! Diaper bags, stuffed toys and Deedra sprawled to the floor. The tin of talc she’d forgotten she still clutched, burst open spewing powder into an arc to rain down on the mess like some fragrant snowfall. Coughing and batting at her face and clothing, Deedra fought to untangle herself, fought the salesclerk trying to help her and bounded up.

  The child and the woman had gone.

  “No!” she groaned. Heartache and panic spread through her chest and into her head. She raced to the stairs. Then clambered down. Her frantic gaze scouted every aisle. Every exit. There! Going out the door! She tore through the store, ducking and weaving between the shoppers, nearly knocking over an elderly man, oblivious to the shocked and curious stares coming at her from every direction.

  She hurried outside. Once again she searched the sidewalks. Her heart in her throat. Her breath a ragged pain in her chest. There! On the sidewalk ahead. She ran for the woman. “Stop! Give me back my child!”

  The woman turned, took one look at Deedra, dropped her packages, swept up the little girl and ran, too. The child began to cry. The woman ran faster and ducked into a doorway ahead. Deedra arrived right behind her, panting. Oh, God, she was finally going to have Callie back.