Castle Rock (17 page)

Julie's voice was muffled now. “Jed, it couldn't be that you are just the teeniest little bit interested in Serena, could it?”

Serena heard his answer and her face flamed in the dim stable light. “Hey Julie, are you jealous? I'll have to spend more time with Serena if it has such a nice . . .”

His voice broke off and Serena knew Julie was kissing him.

That was when Serena turned and fled. She burst out of the stables and ran toward the hacienda. She gained her room without seeing anyone, but she found no peace there. She paced up and down the long lovely room, past the row of Kachinas and back again. The devils that rode her clung and pained. Abruptly, her mouth thin, she lifted her small traveling case down and quickly packed. Still moving fast, wild to be gone, she pulled off her boots, kicked off her Levis and shirt, and dressed for town.

In the hall, she paused at Danny's door, opened it to look in. He was asleep, sandy lashes dark against his pale face. The cast looked huge. Serena gently closed the door. It was good for him to sleep. She would call and talk to him when she reached Santa Fe.

Before she left, she must talk to Joe Walkingstick.

She found him in the west pasture, working on a leaky stock tank. He saw her Mustang coming and climbed down to wait. When she pulled up, he was mopping his face. “Hot,” he said simply.

“Is it coming okay?” she asked.

“Sure. I'll have it fixed by this afternoon.” He looked at her curiously. “You going into town?”

“Yes. I have some things to attend to. I'll stay at La Fonda.”

“When will you be back?”

“In a day or two. I'll pick up the fireworks for the Fourth and the prizes for the rodeo.” But she made no move to go. Joe waited, his dark eyes alert. He didn't ask. He never wasted words.

“Joe.”

He looked at her intently, realizing from her tone that she had something out of the ordinary to say.

“Joe, I want you to promise me that you will look after Danny.”

“Danny?”

She told him then, everything she knew or surmised. His face never changed expression but, when she finished, he nodded once and she knew, without question or comment, that Joe would do his best, that Danny would be safe.

So she didn't worry, not all the way down to Santa Fe, not during a peaceful afternoon as she wandered down narrow streets, looking at paintings and sculpture and pottery. She didn't worry and she tried very hard not to think about Castle Rock. She made several calls, arranging for shipment of the fireworks and ordering a silver-trimmed saddle as the grand prize and a number of bridles and belt buckles as secondary prizes. She enjoyed her dinner at the old hotel, enjoyed being alone and watching the other guests, wondering where they came from and what brought them to Santa Fe, an old city that had seen conquistadors and friars, outlaws and lawmen, peaceful Indians and warriors, and, of late years, artists and writers of all persuasions, many superb, many mediocre. After dinner, she stopped in the bar for one more drink then walked slowly upstairs to her room.

She lay sleepless but dry-eyed for a long time, watching the arc of the moon in the movement of shadows across her ceiling, and thought of herself and Peter and Will and Jed.

Twice now, she had opened her heart to treachery. Did she have a weakness, a lack of judgment that doomed her to betrayal?

Trusting the wrong man could happen once to any woman. Once, perhaps, it must happen to every woman. She had been lonely when Peter came and he was handsome. But she had not, in any real sense, committed herself to Peter so his annexation by Julie hadn't broken her heart. It did make her doubt her own perceptiveness because she had thought, until the very end of the summer, that he cared for her. She knew that Peter's choice hadn't been Julie's doing. Oh yes, she had flirted with Peter. Julie flirted with any man, every man, but somehow Peter had cared for Serena one day and the next for Julie.

Was the true attraction Castle Rock? Had Peter discovered that Serena was only Dan McIntire's ward, that she had no claim on Castle Rock?

Serena bunched a pillow behind her head and watched the shifting shadows above her.

If that had been the case, then Dan McIntire's will must have infuriated Peter.

Although that could have been the reason for Peter falling away, how did she account for Jed?

She had been so sure, so positive, that Jed cared for her. So certain.

Once again in her mind she heard Julie's soft husky voice, the rustle of her dress, and the sudden cessation of Jed's words because Julie was kissing him.

So she had been wrong. One more time. Maybe Jed liked to kiss all the ladies, although she could have sworn . . . But, obviously, she had pretty lousy judgment as far as men were concerned.

Well, she had a ranch to run and a boy to protect. Horrible to think that someone at Castle Rock, someone she knew, would be willing to sacrifice Danny's life to get Serena off the ranch. At least Danny was safe for now, secure in his room.

Serena sighed. She couldn't hide here in Santa Fe, grieving for a love that hadn't been. She must go back to Castle Rock and try to meet the threat that moved unseen across the ranch.

Will would help her. She could count on Will. With Will and Joe, she would face the danger down, keep Danny safe, make Castle Rock the happy haven it had always been.

She would leave love for another time, perhaps another place.

Will would help her . . .

So sleep came finally and, deep in her mind, she clung to that thought. Will would help her.

The phone rang shrilly.

Serena struggled against the heavy hotel spread and came flailing awake, uncertain for a moment where she was, frightened by the loud demanding ring in the dark room. She reached up, grabbed up the receiver, and came wide awake at the sound of Will's voice.

“Serena, oh Serena, I hate to tell you this.”

“What?” She forced out the word. She could scarcely manage to ask because she knew in her heart that something dreadful, something hideous, had happened.

“Danny's gone.”

She didn't answer. She couldn't. The enormity of his words left her stunned.

“There isn't a trace of him,” Will continued in a rush. “We've looked everywhere, upstairs, downstairs, in the cellar, in the outbuildings. God, we've looked everywhere!”

“Oh no. Will, no.”

“Serena, I'm so sorry. I never thought . . . I didn't stay with him last night. I wanted to but he said no. I guess he thought it was babyish. I knew his head was okay. He hadn't had any trouble all day. I told him he could call me on the house phone if he needed anything and he said sure. He was so chipper. He'd been around on his crutch all day like a monkey. God, I never thought . . .”

“He can't be missing,” Serena insisted. “He can't.”

“He is.”

Millie had taken in his breakfast tray and wakened everyone when she couldn't find him.

“When you say everyone got up,” Serena said sharply, “was everyone in bed?”

“In bed? Oh, I guess not really. Joe was already up and down at the corral. Jed, too. They were getting ready to take some hands and go check the cattle in Big East. Instead, they helped search the house.”

“Where were Julie and Peter?”

“Asleep. But they got up and helped look. So did the Minters and the professors. We all looked. Everybody's still looking but I came in to call the sheriff and you.”

The sheriff. She must talk to him, tell him what she knew, what she guessed. She had no proof of anything. But wasn't the fact that Danny was missing a terrible kind of proof that something was wrong at Castle Rock?

“All right, Will. You stay in charge. Send out search parties. Especially to Castle Rock. Call the Circle Bar M and Burnt Hill and Crazy Horse. They'll send riders to help. We'll find Danny.”

“Sure, Serena. We'll find him.”

Neither of them gave flesh to the specter that haunted their thoughts. They would find Danny, find him alive. They wouldn't even think it could be any other way.

“Tell the sheriff everything you know, Will. I'll be home as fast as I can.”

She didn't stop for breakfast. She grabbed coffee to go in a Styrofoam cup and a doughnut and the Mustang was wheeling north fifteen minutes after Will called. As the road lifted and curved, past scrub brush, sage, and skunkweed, Serena kept looking to the west and thick puffy clouds, like a tufted gray quilt, that hung on the horizon. If those clouds darkened and swelled into oily black mounds, it could presage a New Mexico cloudburst. Danny must be found before then.

All the long way back to the ranch, Serena drove furiously, her face white and set, her thoughts angry and self-recriminatory. She never should have left Danny behind. Never. But she had felt secure with Joe on the lookout. Who would ever have thought Danny might disappear in the middle of the night? Certainly it had never occurred to her. There was no reason to blame Joe. She had warned him to protect Danny against “accidents.” His disappearance couldn't be considered an accident. It was kidnapping. But to what end?

Serena was terribly afraid she knew the answer.

She drove recklessly across the ranch, dust boiling behind her. She skidded the Mustang to a stop beside a police van parked next to the stables. Sheriff Coulter stood, hands on his hips, his sunburned face creased in a frown, listening to a deputy.

Serena caught the end of the deputy's sentence “. . . sure as hell looks like an inside job to me, Sheriff.”

Sheriff Coulter frowned. “You didn't find any sign of forced entry?”

“Nothing. Not a scratch anywhere.” The deputy added a little defensively, “If anybody broke into this house last night, I'll eat my hat.”

“All right, Tom,” the sheriff said mildly. “If you couldn't find it, I'd guess it wasn't there.” He sighed. “Get pictures of the kid's room. The door. The windows.”

The deputy looked surprised. “But this isn't a homicide.”

Sheriff Coulter was brusque. “We don't know what the hell it is. Get the pictures.” He looked past the deputy and nodded to Serena. “I'm glad you're back, Serena. I want to talk to you. Just a second and let me check on what's happening.” He poked his head into the back of the van. “Has anything come in?”

“No,” a man's voice answered. “The search party has reached Castle Rock. They're poking around in the caves but they haven't spotted anything to indicate he might be there. Other parties are working their areas but don't have anything to report.”

“Okay. I'm going up to the house with Miss Mallory. Call me if you hear anything.”

“Yes, sir.”

The sheriff backed out of the van and turned to join Serena. “Do you have a quiet spot where we can visit?”

“My office. Sheriff, I have a lot to tell you.”

He looked at her sharply. “Is it anything that will help the search? I have six parties out there now.”

“No. If I had any idea where he was, I'd certainly tell you. But I may know why he was taken.”

Once in her office with the door closed behind them, Serena told her long story. When she described the plane that the Burnt Hill hand had seen, the sheriff exploded, “Why the hell didn't you call me?”

Serena looked away from his angry face. “I suppose I was trying to handle it myself because . . . if someone in the family was involved, I thought perhaps I could stop it, scare them away from coming back.”

“Just pretend it never happened?”

Slowly she nodded. “Then when I thought maybe Uncle Dan had been killed—”

“Dan killed?”

Serena explained how she had reasoned it out, Dan McIntire riding out to look again at Castle Rock, someone lying in wait for him, then, as Uncle Dan started to dismount, a rifle shot, a bolting horse, and an “accident.”

“But, Serena, what could the landing of a smuggler's plane and even Dan's murder have to do with Danny being kidnapped now?”

So she told him in a dry and brittle voice of how Julie had sent her away from Castle Rock. “But Uncle Dan left it in his will for me to run Castle Rock and take care of Danny. So I came back to the ranch and the next week there was a rattlesnake in Hurricane's stall.”

“Who could have put it there?”

“Anyone. Everyone. I rode out on Hurricane every day with Danny. Everyone knew that.”

“The rattler didn't get you.”

“It almost did.” Her voice was shaky.

“Why didn't you call me then?” he asked angrily.

“Murder by snake?” she asked wryly. “I didn't think anyone would believe that. But I should have come to you when Danny was hurt. Someone burned the rope.”

“Another accident,” the sheriff said heavily. “Who found the rope?”

“Jed Shelton.”

“Jed Shelton. Isn't that the new young fellow?”

Serena nodded.

“Wasn't he flying the Aerocommander when you found Dan's body?”

“Yes.”

“Was he here on the ranch when the Burnt Hill hand saw that plane take off?”

“Yes.” Then she added stolidly, “So was Will.”

The sheriff shot her a quick little look of surprise and she felt color mounting in her cheeks.

The sheriff lit a cigarette, drew the smoke in deeply. “All right, let's leave that for the moment. Let's get back to Danny. Why would anybody take Danny away? What would that have to do with any of the rest of this?”

“It's simple enough,” she said wearily. “I'm a danger because I know about the smuggling—and I won't drop it. I think another shipment must be coming in soon and they're afraid that somehow I will ruin it. If nothing else, they know I'm watching and looking. They want me off the ranch. The rattlesnake didn't get me. But if anything happens to Danny, the ranch will belong to Will and Julie and Julie would kick me off the ranch the minute she could.”