The Secret Sister Read online

  “I want to see papers on those pots,” the sheriff said curtly.

  “I’m sure you do.”

  Silence grew until Danner realized that nothing more was going to be said unless he said it.

  “Get them.”

  The man didn’t move.

  Veronica did. She scooped up the papers she had been reading and handed them across the counter to Danner.

  “All in order,” she said. “Landowner’s notarized signature, in situ photos, USGS map coordinates, the works.”

  The sheriff scanned the papers quickly. Too quickly. Christy suspected that Danner either didn’t know what he was looking at or didn’t care.

  The way Danner threw the papers back on the counter said he didn’t give a damn.

  “All in order, right?” Veronica said with forced lightness.

  “This time,” the sheriff said coldly.

  “Every time,” she said, “and you know it as well as I do. Everything in my gallery is aboveboard and top quality.”

  Danner didn’t answer. He’d already dismissed Veronica. He was focused on the younger man, who was watching him with cool disdain.

  “You disappoint me, boy,” Danner said.

  The man’s smile said he knew he wasn’t anybody’s boy.

  “Because I’m still alive?” the man drawled.

  “Because you don’t have enough sense to stay out of places you aren’t wanted.”

  “Last time I checked, it was a free country.”

  “Seems to me,” Danner said, “a kid who had a bullet in his lung a few months back would have better sense than to try the high country again.”

  Christy flinched at the sheriff’s casual words.

  A bullet in his lung.

  She stared at the younger man. For the first time she saw that his clothes were a bit loose, as if he’d lost weight recently. Brackets of pain or anger cut into either side of his mouth so deeply that even the thick, closely trimmed beard couldn’t conceal them.

  “Don’t worry about me,” the man said. “I’m a survivor.”

  The sheriff wasn’t impressed. “What do you want here?”

  “Same thing I always did. To be left alone like every other law-abiding citizen.”

  “You better move on, boy. I’m going to ride you like a green pony.”

  “Why?”

  Danner seemed surprised by the cool question. “We don’t take to murderers around here.”

  “Then why aren’t you looking for the man who tried to murder me?”

  The sheriff straightened up fully and dropped his hands to his sides. His right palm brushed against his holster.

  Christy wondered why he needed to reassure himself about the gun. The sheriff was at least eighty pounds heavier than the other man.

  “I’ve only been in office a few months,” the sheriff said. “That’s hardly enough time to draw up a list of your enemies, much less talk to them. Anyway, it was just someone after spring venison, and you know it.”

  The younger man’s teeth showed in a quick, cold smile. “I don’t know anything of the sort. As for your busy schedule, you might have more time for investigations if you spent less time playing security guard out at Xanadu.”

  “Look here, you—”

  “But I can see how Hutton’s campaign contributions—”

  “—son of a bitch! You have no—”

  “—might be more important than solving a shooting.”

  “—right to question me!” Danner finished angrily.

  “Ten thousand dollars is a lot of money in a county like this.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Danner demanded.

  “You tell me, Sheriff. You’re the one cashing Hutton’s checks.”

  “And not Larry Moore, is that it? You’re pissed off that your buddy didn’t get elected sheriff.”

  “Larry couldn’t be bought.”

  Danner turned his head a little and squinted, like a man who didn’t think he’d heard correctly. He hooked his thumb into the gun belt just ahead of the holster. His palm curled back over the hammer of the gun.

  The other man faced the sheriff and hooked his right thumb into his own belt, a clear and conscious mimicking.

  Christy blinked. She couldn’t believe the unarmed, recently injured man was facing the threat of a gun so calmly. The closest thing he had to a weapon was his sterling belt buckle. As weapons went, it wasn’t much—a palm-sized silver oval mounted with a circle of fine turquoise.

  “I wasn’t bought,” Danner said. “I got elected to keep bad actors like you from getting in the way of good citizens.”

  “I did my time,” the man said flatly. “I don’t owe you anything. I don’t owe the state of Colorado anything. The only person I owe is the son of a bitch who shot me and left me to die. I always pay my debts. Ask anyone.”

  “You better watch that mouth, boy. Might make a man nervous enough to cause another hunting accident.”

  The man with the beard became very still.

  Instinctively the sheriff started to back up, then stopped himself. His hand closed over his gun.

  Christy’s breath clogged her throat. This can’t be happening. This is an art gallery in the twenty-first century, not some saloon in the Wild West.

  “Are you trying to tell me something, Danner?” asked the man.

  “I’m only telling you the same thing your doctor told you. Remington isn’t a healthy place for a lung-shot ex-con. Everyone would be better off, including you, if you’d just drift.”

  The man’s laugh was even harder than his smile. “Every western town needs an outlaw to keep the tourists happy. Looks like I’ve just been elected.”

  He turned his back on the sheriff and spoke to Veronica. “I’ll be by tomorrow to talk about these pots.”

  Christy watched the man walk out of the gallery and get in the Suburban.

  The sheriff swore under his breath and left without a word.

  When the bell over the door shivered into silence, Christy forced herself to draw a deep breath.

  “A decade doesn’t seem to have changed the average western male very much,” she said.

  Veronica gave a hoot of laughter. “Yeah, that’s one hell of a man, isn’t it? Six-foot-two of trouble on the hoof.”

  “He looked taller than that. Must have been the gun.”

  “Gun? Oh, you mean Danner. Yeah, he’s six-four. But I was talking about Cain.”

  “Cain?” Christy asked faintly.

  “Aaron Cain.”

  She shook her head, feeling disoriented. The man with the dark beard was the man Jo-Jo had warned her against.

  “If I was a betting woman—and I am—I’d back Cain in a brawl against anyone.”

  Christy hardly heard. She stared out the window at the man her sister had warned her against.

  “What’s a Moki poacher?” she asked finally.

  “A thief.”

  “Is that why he was shot? Was he stealing something?”

  “Cain? He’s no Moki poacher, no matter what the university types say.”

  Christy looked as bewildered as she felt.

  Veronica smiled and began carrying one of the cartons Cain had left into a back room, talking all the while.

  “People around here take their Anasazi sites seriously,” she said. “If you have a degree from a fancy school and dig up pots, you’re an archaeologist. If you don’t have a degree, you’re a grave robber, even if you’re well educated, careful to record what you do, and have a landowner’s permission to dig.”

  Veronica vanished into a back room but kept talking.

  “But if you dig on public lands, you’re a pothunter and a Moki poacher.”

  “And a son of a bitch?” Christy offered dryly.

  Veronica’s laughter rang again.

  “Well, Danner and Cain never had much good to say for each other,” Veronica admitted, grabbing the second carton. “Danner liked giving orders even before he was elected sheriff.”

/>   “Cain doesn’t look like he takes orders worth a damn.”

  “Not that boy. Then there was their little disagreement over Hutton’s model, that fancy blonde.”

  Christy was glad Veronica couldn’t see her reaction. By the time the gallery owner came back out, Christy had her expression under control.

  “The one they call Jo?” she asked carefully.

  “That’s the one.”

  Veronica disappeared into the back room again.

  “What happened?” Christy asked.

  “Danner wanted her. He didn’t get her. But I saw Cain and the blonde over in Montrose one night, working the honky-tonk trapline.”

  Jo-Jo and Cain? Christy shook her head.

  “She was all over him like a rash,” Veronica said. “It was the only time I saw them together, but…”

  Veronica’s voice faded as she vanished into the back again, leaving Christy to wonder if Cain had been the man able to teach Jo-Jo that there were some things beauty couldn’t buy. And that’s why Jo-Jo hated him.

  The thought went through Christy like a shock wave, unsettling everything in its wake.

  Maybe that’s why Jo-Jo called and offered the gold necklace. Maybe she’s finally grown up and wants to mend her fences.

  Maybe Aaron Cain was a miracle of reality in Jo-Jo’s relentlessly self-centered life.

  Christy almost smiled. Cain didn’t look like a walking miracle, but stranger things had happened between men and women.

  Something very like hope bloomed in Christy.

  Maybe he touched the Jo-Jo I always believed was there, deep beneath the selfishness, a woman who could be reached with enough patience, enough understanding, enough love.

  Maybe Jo-Jo is finally able to love and laugh and share.

  Maybe she’s able to feel pain that isn’t hers.

  A sister in more than blood.

  That was the ultimate lure, the irresistible one, the shining promise of a childhood healed.

  Suddenly Christy couldn’t wait to see Jo-Jo.

  This time. This time it will be different.

  Chapter 6

  Colorado

  Later Saturday morning

  Empty cattle vans rocketed past Christy, heading for the high country to bring cattle back down to the valleys for the winter. The slipstream of the big trucks made her little rental car shake.

  “One more thing that hasn’t changed,” Christy said under her breath. “Big trucks and narrow roads. Welcome back.”

  And her damned cell phone still couldn’t find anything to talk to.

  On either side of the two-lane highway, small dirt tracks led off between barbed-wire fences to ranch houses that were more than a hundred years old. Even in the bright warmth of the sun, there was a feel of winter’s depths in the run-down brick and turn-of-the-century frame houses.

  Christy knew how houses smelled, how they felt, how they creaked when the wind blew in the middle of the night and tree branches scratched against the glass. She knew what it was like to be a teenager staring through tears at a cheap dresser mirror and asking herself why God had given her a brain instead of a face and body that brought men to heel like hound dogs with long tongues hanging out.

  Part of Christy had never stopped wondering. She’d just given up on ever finding an answer.

  She put away the often bitter, sometimes sweet childhood memories and concentrated on the narrow road and the wide land. The last weeks of September lay serene in the long meadows and lofty divides of the Rockies. On the hard shoulders of the mountains, the highest aspen groves had already turned a pure, burning gold. Above timberline the wild peaks varied from dark red to steel gray and black. The sky was a blue so vivid it blazed even through sunglasses.

  Remington County had the same compelling, muscular grace as the landscape of her childhood. She was drawn to the land even though it revived unhappy childhood memories. A stubborn, unchanging part of her still loved being surrounded by the grandeur of untamed mountains rising against a wild blue sky.

  She turned off the road onto a narrow paved lane that led to Xanadu. Ahead, a lush stand of spruce grew right up to the road. A new snake-back fence zigzagged alongside the pavement on both sides. The fence was picturesque, but it also carried a message.

  Keep out.

  The message was reinforced by a guard in a self-consciously rustic shack at the edge of a spruce grove.

  When Christy stopped in front of the shack, she realized that the folksy appearance was barely skin deep. Underneath the shack’s cedar shingles there was a gleaming steel security center with high-tech connections to the rest of the world. Whether for vanity or necessity, Peter Hutton had built an efficient, expensive, armed barrier between Xanadu and the rest of the world.

  The guard stepped out of the shack. He wore blue jeans whose crisp look came from being ironed, and probably starched as well. His white western shirt was equally crisp and definitely starched.

  She suspected it was the same for his underwear.

  “What can I do for you, ma’am?” the guard said.

  No question in his voice. He was polite, but just barely. His tone and his body language said that his job wasn’t to help. He was wearing a pistol and a five-pointed star like Sheriff Danner’s. The nameplate beneath it said SANDERS.

  Christy wondered if the people of Remington County cared that their tax money was being spent to guard a fashion designer’s privacy.

  “I’m Christy McKenna from Horizon magazine in New York.”

  Sanders pointed back the way she’d just come.

  “All reporters are supposed to check in at the press center in the hotel in town,” he said. “The media party isn’t until tomorrow night.”

  She took off her dark glasses and looked at him with eyes that were more gray than green. When she spoke, her voice was every bit as cool as his.

  “I’m not here for the press party. I’m here at Mr. Hutton’s personal invitation.”

  The guard looked skeptical, checked a clipboard, and shook his head. “McKenna?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve got a list of special guests, ma’am. Your name isn’t on it.”

  Christy smiled without warmth. “Check with your supervisor.”

  Sanders reached for a phone just inside the door of the shack, punched in a number, and waited.

  She waited too, wondering why such aggressive security was necessary in Remington County. The West of her childhood was one of unlocked doors and unchained gates.

  The deputy’s voice came heavily through the silence. “This is the front gate. I’ve got a Miss McKenna here from some New York magazine, says she’s supposed to see the Man.”

  Christy couldn’t hear the reply. She didn’t have to. She saw its effect immediately.

  The deputy shot a fast, rather disbelieving glance at Christy. “Yeah,” he said to the phone. “Okay.”

  He listened some more.

  “Yes. Yes, sir. Right away.”

  Sanders hung up, stuck his head out of the shack, and whistled shrilly through his teeth. “Yo! Hammond! Front and center!”

  A younger deputy trotted into the sunlight.

  “Sorry about that, Miss McKenna,” Sanders said to her. “Nobody ever tells us anything down here. You’re to go right on up.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Deputy Hammond will show you the way. If you have any luggage, Hammond will take care of it. Mr. Hutton has one of the guest suites ready for you.”

  Not only security, but gofer too. Interesting. “That won’t be necessary. I have a room in town.”

  “But Mr. Hutton—”

  “Thank you for your help,” Christy said over the deputy’s objections. “Mr. Hutton knows—or should know—that I’m a reporter, not his personal guest.”

  “Uh, yeah. Sure. Whatever.”

  Shaking his head, Sanders leaned back into the guard shack.

  Deputy Hammond slid into the front seat beside Christy. He looked fresh out of
high school. He wore a badge and carried a pistol like a real deputy, but didn’t have anything close to command presence. He glanced sideways at her quickly, almost shyly.

  The heavy wooden gate slid open.

  “Drive right on through the gate, ma’am,” Hammond said in a soft voice.

  For the first half mile, spruce trees and snake-back fences lined the road. The brighter green of pastures gleamed through gaps in the trees. Very beautiful, but…

  Something was wrong.

  She frowned, trying to figure out what it was.

  The road climbed up a long grade to the top of a sandstone mesa that was studded with dwarf cedar and juniper.

  “I don’t get an armed escort very often,” Christy said finally. “Is the West really that wild?”

  Hammond touched the gun on his hip self-consciously and shook his head. “No, ma’am. Mr. Hutton just likes to treat his really special guests well,” the young deputy said as they crested the mesa.

  “So I’m a really special guest?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Do you have many?”

  “I don’t know. I’m new to the deputy trade.”

  New but trained well enough to keep his mouth shut around reporters, Christy noticed. She gave up talking and concentrated on the scenery, letting impressions sink into her. The afternoon air was like polished crystal. She rolled the window down and inhaled old familiar scents, meadow grass and pine, sunlight and clean, silky air.

  After two miles the hardtop gave way to a broad, graveled ranch road that had been graded recently. The road crossed the mesa, dropped into a narrow meadow, and wound upward into scattered tall pine trees.

  The shadow of a hawk riding the wind caught her eye. She watched the bird’s graceful, predatory ease and wished she could ride the winds of change half as well. The fan of the hawk’s tail was a startling russet, the color of fire burning just beyond reach.

  “What a gorgeous color,” Christy said.

  The deputy glanced at her, then at her hair.

  “You and that bird related?” he asked with a wide grin.

  At first she didn’t understand. When she did, she laughed, totally unaware of the change smiling made in her looks.

  Hammond wasn’t. His eyes narrowed with sudden male calculations that were much older than his smooth face.