Authors: B. J. Daniels
“Really?”
The young woman nodded. “All her inquiries were from the mid– to late–nineteen seventies.”
Harper had no idea and said as much. “So where does this anarchist group come in?”
“The Prophecy? Apparently, my sister thought that your mother had been part of the group and that’s what got her killed. Back in the seventies they blew up some government buildings, killed some people. A couple of the group went to prison. The others were never caught, until recently. The leader was believed to be the only woman in The Prophecy, a woman who resembled your mother, Sarah Johnson.”
She stared at Ariel in shock. “I had no idea.” She’d been kept in the dark. Who else knew about this? Her father obviously. But did her sisters? “If my mother really was part of the group...”
“That’s just it. Turns out apparently that some members of The Prophecy were trying to only make your mother look like she was the one called Red. Another woman confessed to being Red when some of the male members were caught. Another one was killed.”
“Wow, I’m beginning to realize how much I’ve missed being away at college and then abroad all these years,” Harper said. She wondered what else her family hadn’t told her and instantly thought of Brody and his family—and the body buried on the ranch.
“I know I should let it go, but it just feels...unfinished,” Ariel said as she got to her feet. “I was hoping someone in your family might have heard more about this anarchist group and how investigating your mother might be tied to my sister’s death.”
“Your sister didn’t leave any information?”
“No. The file on your mother was incomplete. That was another reason I was suspicious. My sister took copious notes on her cases.”
“That
is
odd.”
“Well, I’m sorry to have bothered you with this.” She reached into the side pocket of her purse. “If you don’t mind, can I leave my card with you? Should you hear anything...”
“I’ll let you know. I’m so sorry about your sister.”
“Thank you.”
Harper glanced at the card. It only had Ariel’s name and number on it. She walked her to the door. “So, are you a private investigator, as well?”
Ariel laughed and shook her head. “Good heavens, no. I’m a community planner. It was bad enough having a father and sister as gumshoes.”
Ariel stopped and pointed to a photograph of Buckmaster and Angelina. “I recognize your father. He’s running for president.”
Harper nodded. “That’s my stepmother with him. We don’t have any photos of my mother.” She knew that was odd and saw that Ariel did, too. “We think my stepmother got rid of all of them when she married my father.”
Ariel raised a brow.
“There was no love lost between them, even before my mother came back from the dead.” She saw the change in the young woman’s expression. “But I’m sure my mother had nothing to do with Angelina’s death or your sister’s. Like you said, it turned out she wasn’t a member of The Prophecy.”
“Right.” Ariel looked skeptical. “But if your mother had been, given the apparent animosity between her and your stepmother, she might have wanted to get rid of her competition.”
* * *
B
RODY
FOUND
HIS
father in his blacksmithing shop. A blast of heat hit him the moment he opened the door. Silhouetted against the fire that burned hot in the furnace was Finn McTavish. Finn was smaller than his older brother, Flannigan, with a shock of dark hair and lightning-blue eyes. He was also a gentle man with a hearty laugh and an affable personality.
The three of them lived on the McTavish Ranch, which would someday be Brody’s. It was large enough that they each had their own homes some distance apart. While Brody worked the cattle part of the ranch, his father and uncle worked as blacksmiths, their family trade.
Hearing him enter, his father shoved back the helmet he wore and laid down the piece he’d been working on. Motioning for him to follow, he stepped out the back door. Brody walked through the blast furnace of the shop into the cool of bright spring sunlight outside. His father had pulled up an old crate and sat down. He motioned for Brody to take one.
As he pulled up a crate and lowered himself onto it, he could feel the older man’s gaze on him. He’d never been able to hide anything from his father. Finn McTavish had second sight. At least that’s what the family said about him. Brody believed that his father “saw” things that other people didn’t because he paid attention.
“What’s wrong?” Finn asked.
Brody met his father’s gaze. “We uncovered something on that stretch of land we lease between the ranch and the Hamiltons.”
“We?”
“Harper Hamilton.”
Finn nodded. “One of the twins.”
Brody said nothing. He’d done his best to hide how he felt about her. She’d been too young for him for years. Now that she was home and age didn’t matter so much... He was sure his father knew what he’d hoped but appreciated him not saying anything.
“We...ran into each other.” He saw no reason to get into the whole story. He was embarrassed enough by it. “Her horse had gotten away. When we found the mare...we also found a grave that had been uncovered. Rain had washed it down, the wooden casket breaking open in the pines.”
His father said nothing as he turned to look out at the Crazies in the distance as if imagining the scene. This early in the spring, the mountains were still deep in snow. The rain that had unearthed the corpse had turned to snow in the high peaks of the Crazy Mountains. They stood brilliant white against the blue of the Montana sky, as inaccessible as Harper Hamilton now was to him.
The melt hadn’t started yet this year. Soon the rivers and streams would be swollen and brown with silt and the valleys would green up as if overnight. Spring brought a newness to the land. The green was almost blinding under the warm sun and the clear blue sky. Brody loved this time of year. It had always felt as if anything was possible in the spring. At least until this spring.
“The body?” Finn asked without looking at him, as if he already knew.
“A woman.”
His father’s gaze shifted back to him. Tears welled in that sea of blue, eyes so much like his own. “The sheriff identified her yet?”
He shook his head. “But it’s her. It’s Maggie, isn’t it?”
Finn got to his feet and headed back inside his shop. As he passed his son, he put a big hand on Brody’s shoulder and gently squeezed. There was sorrow in his eyes, and pity. His father knew somehow that his son had been in love with Harper Hamilton for years. He also knew how impossible it would be for the two of them to be together now.
But Brody wasn’t thinking about that right now. His thoughts were with his uncle and the unbearable news he was about to receive. Maggie had been his only daughter, the sunshine of his life.
Shaken, Brody stood as the door closed behind Finn. He heard him inside shutting down the furnace. How long had his father known it would end like this? Brody hadn’t wanted to believe it and yet the moment he’d seen the broken casket, the body of the woman, he’d known. Just as he’d known who had killed and buried her there.
Brody was born after Maggie disappeared. But he’d learned about Maggie when he got older, even though his uncle and father didn’t like talking about her. He shook his head, anger making him fist his hands at his sides as his heart ached. For thirty-five years the dirty secret had lain as silent as Maggie’s grave. But the McTavishes had known the truth. Now, what JD Hamilton had done would come out. Both families would suffer. He didn’t want to think about how his uncle would react. Maggie’s name would be dragged through the mud. But so would the Hamiltons.
Brody thought of Harper. All these years of waiting for her to grow up and now this. He was a damned fool for thinking the two of them stood a chance. Not a Hamilton and a McTavish.
* * *
A
FTER
DIGGING
OUT
the old missing persons report, the sheriff no longer deceived himself that the body that had been found could be anyone but Margaret “Maggie” McTavish. The clothing she’d been wearing the last time she was seen matched exactly the clothing found on the remains.
Frank knew he couldn’t wait until the autopsy report came back to notify next of kin. Because the remains had been mummified, Charlie had called in several doctors to assist. That meant that the autopsy would take longer than normal.
“Not that many doctors get to do an autopsy on a mummy,” Charlie had said. “Because of the ancient ones that have been found and autopsied, we have some techniques available that we didn’t have that many years ago. But it will take time.”
Time was the one thing Frank didn’t have. Word had gotten out, just as he’d feared it would. He’d already received several calls. He’d put them off with the usual “we won’t know anything until the autopsy results are in.”
Not wanting to give this kind of news over the phone, Frank drove out to Flannigan McTavish’s home to tell him before he heard it from someone else. Charlie Brooks had offered to make the trip, since the coroner was often the person who delivered news of a death. But the sheriff couldn’t put this on anyone else.
Flannigan was a big Irishman who’d come to this country as a teenager with his parents and much younger brother, Finn. His family had settled in the valley, farming and ranching and blacksmithing. When Flannigan’s wife left him, he’d raised their only child, Maggie, alone.
By the time his brother, Finn, had married and was expecting their first and—as it turned out, only child, Brody—Maggie had already disappeared.
Frank had been a deputy when the call had come in that Maggie McTavish was missing. He hadn’t been assigned to the case. The sheriff at the time had handled it himself. But he remembered seeing the eldest McTavish after Maggie’s disappearance. Flannigan had looked like a broken man.
The man who walked from his shop out to the patrol car as Frank parked and exited looked strong as a bull moose. He’d aged well, as if determined not to let what had happened defeat him. Or maybe he wanted to live because in his heart he had to believe that Maggie would come home one day.
If so, Frank hated to think what this news would do to him.
“Sheriff,” Flannigan said, extending his hand. As they greeted each other, Flannigan glanced in the backseat of the patrol SUV as if expecting to see someone there. Pushing eighty, his face was weatherworn and wrinkled, but like his work-strong body, the keenness in his piercing green eyes belied his age.
“Flannigan, I’m afraid I have some bad news.”
The older man nodded. “It’s Maggie, isn’t it?” he asked as if he’d been expecting this news for the past thirty-five years.
“We don’t have a definitive identification yet, but based on what she was wearing the day she disappeared and other evidence found at the scene, it’s her. We’re investigating her death as a homicide.”
Flannigan took a step back before slumping against the vehicle. Frank started to reach for him, but the older man waved him off. After a few moments, Flannigan pulled himself together.
“I’d like to ask you some questions, but those can wait,” the sheriff said. “I understand, though, that her room was left as it was thirty-five years ago. I’d like to take a look in it, if you don’t mind.”
To his surprise, Flannigan shook his head. “No reason to talk about it that I can see. No reason to go snooping in her room, either. What’s done is done.” He started to turn away.
“I’m going to need your help to find her killer. If there is anything you know about what happened to her, now is the time to tell me,” the sheriff said.
“Just let me know when I can bury my daughter,” Flannigan said.
“I’m not sure how long it will take after the autopsy.”
He spun back around, his once-handsome face a mask of fury. “She hasn’t been through enough? You’re going to let them cut her up?”
“We’re looking for evidence that will—”
“Bring her killer to justice?” Flannigan spit out the words. “Her killer is dead and buried. There is no bringing him to justice.”
“We don’t know who killed her without—”
“Everyone knows who killed her and why,” the big man erupted. “You’re looking for a way to save him—
and his senator son
.”
“You’re wrong. If her killer is dead, it may seem like hollow justice to you. But I’m determined to find your daughter’s murderer. That’s why I need your help. You were one of the last people to see her alive. If you—”
“I already said no.” The elder McTavish shook his head and walked away. Over his shoulder, he said, “You’re on private property, Sheriff, and it’s time for you to leave. My daughter’s been through enough. Please leave before I do something I might regret.”
In the distance, Frank could see a pickup headed this way, moving fast. He recognized it as one driven by Finn McTavish, Flannigan’s younger brother. The sheriff waited a little longer, watching the staggering steps of Maggie’s father, not wanting to leave the man alone. Then he got into his patrol SUV and drove away as Finn pulled up in the yard.
Frank only got a glimpse of the man’s face. Finn already knew. Which could only mean Brody knew the victim’s identity the moment he’d seen the body.
CHAPTER FIVE
G
RACE
H
AMILTON
WATCHED
the young lovers cross the pasture arm in arm.
“That conniving bitch.”
“Grace,” JD said in that reprimanding, disappointed and impatient way of his. He put all his disgust into her name so he didn’t even have to bother to say more.
Her husband was always taking up for that woman her foolhardy son had brought into their home as his wife. Not for long, though, if Grace had anything to do with it.
“Give Sarah a chance,” JD said. “Buck loves her. Isn’t that good enough?”
“His name is Buckmaster. If I had wanted him called Buck, I would have named him Buck.”
Her husband gave her a weary look.
“You may be fooled by her because she’s pretty and nauseatingly coy, but believe me, there is nothing sweet or helpless about that woman. She knew exactly what she was doing when she married our son.”
“I don’t have the energy to argue with you about this,” JD said. “I’m going to ride up into the Crazies and fish for a while.” He stepped to her and planted a kiss on the top of her head.
She clutched his arm, desperately wanting back the man she’d married. She felt JD slipping out of her grasp as he pulled away to leave. He’d been pulling away now for what? Months? Or was it years?
“I didn’t mean to—”
“Grace, please try to make our son and his bride feel welcome here in our home. I’m begging you.” He turned and left before she could respond—no doubt why he’d left so quickly.
She turned back to the window. Buckmaster and his bride had stopped in the pasture to embrace. She watched them kiss and then draw apart. Sarah Johnson Hamilton looked back toward the house as if sensing she was being watched. Could she see Grace standing before the window?
Grace didn’t think so until she saw Sarah give her a self-satisfied smile before turning back to Buckmaster.
Her heart began to pound harder. The woman was evil. Grace had felt it the moment she’d met her. There was something dark and...broken in Sarah. Why didn’t JD believe her?
Because JD prided himself on seeing the best in everyone. Because her husband was a fool—just like her son, she thought uncharitably.
She watched her son and his wife head back toward the house. She had tried to talk to Buckmaster, but, like his father, he’d cut her off, saying she just needed time to get to know Sarah. Not wanting to alienate her son, she’d backed off.
But now as she hurried down to her room, closing the door behind her, Grace knew she had to find a way to save her son from this woman. And she would have to do it alone since she couldn’t depend on JD to help her.
In fact, she wasn’t sure she could depend on JD anymore at all. He’d promised that he would never leave her, but a part of him had already left to be a senator, she thought as she moved to the window in time to see him ride away toward the mountains.
First her son, and now she was losing her husband.
* * *
S
ENATOR
B
UCKMASTER
H
AMILTON
got the call in the middle of a staff meeting. He’d put his phone on vibrate, pulling it out almost unconsciously since he had no plan to answer it. The primaries were coming up in June. That didn’t give him much time to secure his place in the race for president.
Listening to his advisers on what else needed to be done, he glanced at his phone to make sure it wasn’t one of his daughters calling. When he saw that it was the sheriff calling from Montana, he excused himself and took the call out in the hallway.
“Frank?” he said into the phone. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing to do with your daughters,” he told the senator quickly. They’d had a lot of calls like this lately. Buckmaster’s only concern had always been the same. Were his girls all right? “I’m sure you’ve heard about the recent...incident on your ranch from Harper.”
“Incident?” He had talked to Sarah earlier but only briefly. When he’d told her he was in a staff meeting, she’d said it was nothing and he’d promised to call her later.
“Harper didn’t tell you about the remains she and Brody McTavish found on the ranch?”
“I haven’t spoken with Harper. What’s this about remains? On my ranch?” His first thought was a homeless person traveling through on the rails.
“I wanted to give you a heads-up,” Frank was saying. “Based on what she was wearing when she disappeared and other evidence, the remains appear to be Margaret McTavish’s. We’ll know more after the autopsy.”
Buckmaster blinked a couple of times. At first the name rang no bells. Then it hit him.
Maggie. Maggie McTavish.
He swore silently. “I don’t understand.” But he feared he did.
“She’d been buried in a wooden box on that hillside next to the McTavish place. Buck...” Just the use of his first name by the sheriff told him the news was about to get worse. “We’re investigating this as a homicide. As a professional courtesy, I wanted to call you myself. We should have a positive ID soon. But you know me well enough that I don’t believe I have to tell you I intend to find her murderer, no matter where that trail leads.”
He didn’t hear anything Frank said for a few seconds. Maggie McTavish. Murdered... Buried on Hamilton Ranch...? Dear God, no.
“...so I’m going to need to talk to you, and Sarah, as well.”
Buckmaster shook his head as what the sheriff was saying finally registered. Frank was warning him. He swore again. What was the point of an investigation? There wasn’t a person in the county who wouldn’t have already dug his father up and hanged him for the murder. “Sarah and I don’t know anything. That was years ago.”
“Thirty-five this fall,” Frank agreed. “But with most everyone else who was connected with Maggie gone...”
“You mean with my father dead.” He leaned against the hallway wall and closed his eyes. “You can’t believe that he had anything to do with this.” Even as he said it, though, he realized how little he had known about his father. Maybe JD Hamilton had a side that he’d kept hidden from all of them.
“Quite frankly, I don’t know what to believe.”
“How was it that her body turned up now?” he demanded. With him so close to winning the primary election, it felt as if his opponents had to have literally dug this up.
“We had a bad storm the other night. The body had been buried in a wooden box up on a hill near the fence between the properties. The rain must have loosened the earth... Harper happened to be riding her horse in the area when—”
“Wait.” Buckmaster opened his eyes and pushed off the wall. “You say my
daughter
found the body?”
“She and Brody McTavish.”
“What the hell were those two doing together?” The words were out before he could call them back. He heard a door open.
“You’ll have to ask your daughter,” the sheriff said.
One of his advisers motioned that they were waiting on him.
“I’ll do that. In the meantime, you’ll keep me informed on your investigation.”
“Of course. Are you planning to be home soon?” Frank said quickly, as if hearing in Buckmaster’s voice that he was anxious to get off the line. “I really do need to talk to you. I’ll call Sarah—”
He didn’t want the sheriff talking to Sarah alone. “I’ll fly home. Don’t bother Sarah with this until I get there.” Silence. “She doesn’t know anything anyway.” When the sheriff still didn’t say anything, he swore. “No matter what you suspect about my...” He almost said
wife
, but he caught himself before he did. Even though he thought of her as his wife, he and Sarah weren’t married. Not yet anyway. “Sarah, she isn’t strong.”
“Like your mother,” Frank said.
Buckmaster could hear in the silence that followed that the sheriff hadn’t meant to say that. “My mother is a suspect, as well as my father?” He swore.
“Everyone is a suspect until I find out who killed her. Call me when you get in,” Frank said.
Buckmaster disconnected and started back toward his meeting. His stomach roiled. He straightened his tie and reached for the doorknob. For years he’d been following in his father’s footsteps. First senator, now a candidate for president...
His father’s damned legacy, he thought with a bitter laugh. He’d thought any secrets had been buried with JD.
What did you do, Dad? What the hell did you do?
* * *
S
TILL
REELING
FROM
the morning she’d had, Harper called the one person she’d always been able to count on—her older sister Ainsley. She quickly told her about their gruesome discovery.
“Oh, Harper, I am so sorry. Are you all right?” Her sister had quit law school to find locations for movie sites in Montana. Their father hadn’t been happy about it, Harper had heard that much at least on the family grapevine. But Ainsley seemed happy and swore it was only temporary.
“It was awful, but I’m okay. I’m just glad Brody was there.”
She heard a smile in her sister’s voice. “I am, too.” They fell silent for a moment. “Do they know whose body it is?”
“The sheriff said they won’t know anything definite until the autopsy,” Harper told her.
“So it could have been there for years?”
“Apparently it was. You should have seen it,” she said. “It was the creepiest thing I have ever seen. I haven’t told Dad. Mother wanted to do it. I don’t know if she was going to wait until we knew something definite or not.”
“Probably a good idea. No reason to upset him until she has all of the facts,” Ainsley agreed. “He has enough going on. I’m sure if there is something to worry about, the sheriff will let him know.”
Harper thought about that. “I had a visitor when I returned today. Ariel Crenshaw, the sister of the private investigator Angelina hired to dig up something on Mother.”
Ainsley groaned. “Angelina. That woman, rest her soul. Why would the PI’s sister come by to talk to you?”
“She’s looking into her sister’s death. She said some members of an anarchist group called The Prophecy were connected to both Angelina’s death and that of her sister, the private investigator Angelina hired to look into Mother’s past. Did you know about this?”
“No. Angelina thought Mother was involved with this group?”
“Apparently. She hired the PI to find out something about Mother’s
college
years, in particular, the late seventies.”
Ainsley was quiet for a long moment. “That
is
odd.”
“I can’t believe we didn’t hear something about this.”
“There must not have been anything to it,” Ainsley said. “So, was it nice seeing Brody again?”
* * *
S
ARAH
HEARD
SOMETHING
in Buck’s voice when he called to tell her he’d already heard the news about Maggie McTavish. She braced herself. With the primaries coming up, she knew the kind of stress he was under. He didn’t need this. Worse, he didn’t have anyone he could lean on in DC.
She couldn’t be with him and that worried her. The problem was that she knew Buck only too well. He was already having second thoughts about his run for president. With this latest news, he would start having even more doubts. He could still pull out before the primaries. She couldn’t let that happen. Somehow, she had to give him the strength to continue, because she knew how much the country needed him. And how much he needed this, even if he was starting to question it.
“I’m flying in tomorrow morning. Meet me at the airport,” he said to her surprise. “It will give us extra time to talk. I can’t stay away long.”
“I thought you were in meetings with your advisers for the next few days?” That he wanted her to meet him at the airport was odd. He always left his SUV at the airport. Unlike a lot of politicians, he didn’t have a staff car or hire limos to take him places. He drove himself because, at heart, he was a Montana rancher. No private jet. No driver. No expenses that would raise eyebrows from his constituents.
“What’s this about a body Harper found on the ranch? I assume that’s why you called me earlier.”
“I didn’t want to upset you and since there is nothing you can do here—”
Buck swore. “Frank says the remains are Maggie McTavish’s. He wants to question the two of us in connection with
murder
.”
Something hard and cold settled in her stomach. “Question us? About
what
?”
“What the hell do you think?” he snapped. “I knew all this was going to come back someday and bite me in the ass, but I never expected this. Pick me up at the airport. We need to get our stories straight before we meet with the sheriff.”
* * *
B
RODY
HAD
HEARD
his father’s pickup engine rev and knew he was on his way over to his brother’s place to give him the news. He’d hurried around the shop building, but he was too late. He realized as he saw his father racing toward his brother’s house that if he needed him to come along, he would have asked him.
Of course, Finn would want to tell his brother the news alone. Brody couldn’t bear the thought of how his uncle was going to take it. From what his father had told him, Maggie had been Flannigan’s pride and joy. This news would break the old man’s heart—as if Maggie hadn’t done that when she was alive.
He hurried to his pickup. What would happen now? He hated to think. But he needed to talk to his dad and uncle. It wouldn’t be long before the news was all over the county. He needed to know what they were going to do about getting Maggie justice.
His uncle and dad had started the ranch, but their hearts had always been in the blacksmithing part of the operation. When he turned twenty-one he’d taken over the ranching and farming. They’d both been at the age where they were happy to hand over the reins. He had tried to make their lives easier, since both of them had worked hard their whole lives.