Gun-Shy Bride (15 page)

“How
did
you get the job with my husband?” Sandy asked as she advanced on her, the gun steady in her hand and pointed at McCall’s heart. “Because you aren’t afraid of anything? Or was it because you could twist Grant around your little finger? He always told me how much he liked you.”

From the expression on Sandy’s face, that had been a mistake on the sheriff’s part.

“What are you doing here?” McCall asked, understanding only that she was in serious trouble. That over-caffeinated, frantic look was in Sandy’s eyes, and she held the gun like a woman who knew how to use it.

Sandy gave her an impatient look. “Don’t try to con me. The moment I saw you standing at my front door, I knew that Grant was right. He said you made a damned good deputy because you were bright and saw what other people didn’t.”

“You’re both giving me too much credit,” McCall said. Outside, the wind had picked up. It whipped the cottonwoods, a limb scraping against the side of the house and flickering shadows past the window. “I haven’t a clue why you’re here.”

“Guess,” Sandy said with a giggle.

A thought worked its way through the panic. “Buzz didn’t kill my father.”

Sandy laughed, a sound like piano wires snapping. “How can you say that? The man confessed.”

No doubt at gunpoint.

McCall tried to concentrate, but the wind and trees whipping against the cabin kept distracting her. She felt too tired for this, her mind numb from shock and fear and a deep sense of regret.

How could she have been so wrong? Buzz had looked so guilty,
too
guilty. No wonder she’d felt such an emptiness when it had looked as if he’d done it—and taken the easy way out.

The sheriff was right: she
had
been too emotionally involved.

“You aren’t going to tell me
you
killed my father, are you?” McCall asked. “I thought you loved him.” She was only a few feet away from Sandy, but she knew better than to make a play for the gun.

“I
did
love him.” Hatred flared in Sandy’s eyes. “I
loved
him more than you can ever understand. I would have done anything for him. And what did he do to me? He broke my heart.” She was crying now but still holding the gun aimed at McCall’s heart.

McCall’s mind was racing again as she tried to put it all together. “Trace felt guilty about what he’d done to you, so of course he would agree to meet you on the ridge to talk.”

Sandy’s eyes narrowed. “Very good.”

Trace had been furious with Ruby over her little tryst with Red, so he would have been primed to do anything his old girlfriend asked.

“But things got out of hand,” McCall guessed.

“He refused to leave that tramp and you,” Sandy said. “I told him you probably weren’t even his baby. He thought he was just going to get to walk away from me.” Her eyes took on a faraway look that turned McCall’s blood to slush.

Outside the cabin, something moved across the window. Not a limb.
Someone.

“So you killed him,” McCall said, trying hard not to look past Sandy to the window again. Someone was out there headed for the front door. Luke? But he’d said he wouldn’t be back. Her heart soared then dropped like a stone. Had he seen the sheriff’s wife holding the gun on her? If he hadn’t, he’d be walking into this deadly situation.

“What did you use? A gun, a knife, a rock?” McCall asked as she took a couple of steps toward the back of the cabin, hoping to turn Sandy so she wouldn’t be able to see whoever was about to open the front door.

“What are you doing?” Sandy demanded, grabbing the weapon with both hands. “Stop moving.”

“I just need to sit down,” McCall said, motioning toward the kitchen chair nearby.

“You’ll be lying down soon enough and for a very long time,” Sandy snapped. “Enjoy standing.”

“So how did you do it?” McCall asked, forced to be content with having turned Sandy at least most of the way from the door.

“I shot him if you must know.”

“With the same gun you’re holding on me?” McCall asked.

“As a matter of fact. Ironic, isn’t it?”

The front door eased open. McCall still couldn’t see who it was, but the way it opened, she was sure the person outside had seen what was going on.

“Then you buried him on the ridge,” McCall said. “Took his rifle—”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I left as quickly as I could, but as we were driving back to town, I passed Game Warden Buzz Crawford and remembered the vendetta he and Trace had going on. I put in a call to Fish and Game saying there was someone poaching on the ridge. I knew once Buzz found Trace dead, he wouldn’t call it in. He knew no one would believe him, not the way he hounded Trace all the time. Everyone would believe he did it.”

Something Sandy said stopped McCall for a moment, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was before Sandy finished. McCall could imagine Buzz finding Trace’s body. He would know he’d been set up. The smart thing would have been for him to call 911, but Sandy was right. He would have looked guilty no matter what. He had motive and opportunity, and he was standing over his nemesis’s dead body.

It explained why Buzz had acted so guilty. Everything was starting to make sense. “Buzz buried Trace and got rid of the pickup in the stock pond, then wrote up a poaching ticket to make it look as if my father skipped town because of it.”

Sandy smiled, clearly pleased with herself.

Out of the corner of her eye, McCall saw a blurred dark shape slip in through the front door and drop behind the couch. “And you took my father’s rifle.”

“I thought I might need it someday. As it turned out, I did. Grant was forever boring me to death with talk about his cases. It was too easy to know exactly when to plant the rifle and make sure Buzz Crawford took the fall.”

“Nice job,” McCall said, horrified and yet at the same time awed by Sandy’s twisted criminal mind. “But Buzz must have wondered who the real killer was.” The answer came to her in a flash. “My mother.”

That would explain why Buzz hated Ruby Bates Winchester so much. He thought she’d killed Trace and framed him for the murder. That’s why he’d thought McCall had access to Trace’s rifle and had used it to frame him.

“Bingo!” Sandy said with an unhinged glee.

“You tied it all up with a nice big bow on top,” McCall said. “If you’d just left it at that, you would probably have gotten away with it. But once you murder me, you will ruin your perfect scheme.”

“Oh, that’s just it. I’m not quite done yet. But I will be after you write your confession, admitting that in an attempt to protect your mother, you framed Buzz and, racked with guilt, took your own life.”

“You really don’t think anyone is going to believe my mother killed Trace or that I framed Buzz, do you?”

Sandy burst out laughing. “Are you serious? Everyone in town has speculated for years that Ruby did it. And all of Whitehorse has questioned having a woman deputy in the sheriff’s department. Everyone knows we’re the weaker sex,” she added with a chortle. “It will break poor Grant’s heart since he is so fond of you. But that’s the price he pays for hiring you in the first place.”

The dark shape rose behind Sandy, and with a start, McCall saw the man’s face. Sheriff Grant Sheridan?

That’s when McCall remembered what Sandy had said that had caught her attention.
We.
She’d said “
we
were driving back to town” after murdering Trace.

Sandy hadn’t been alone that day when she’d met McCall’s father on the ridge.

McCall’s gaze shot to Grant. The sheriff was out of uniform, dressed in a faded long-sleeved shirt, a pair of worn jeans and sneakers. His head was bare. He stood, arms akimbo, his usually forlorn face set in deep ridges of disappointment.

He stood behind Sandy, his weapon drawn—but pointed at the floor.

L
UKE HAD STARTED DOWN
Highway 191 toward his place south of town when he’d passed, first Sandy Sheridan, then moments later, the sheriff.

Grant was driving his old pickup instead of his patrol car, and he wore a baseball cap pulled low.

Luke wasn’t sure what had made him curious as he’d watched Grant in his rearview mirror. The sheriff pulled over, leaving his motor running, as if to let a car go by before he fell in behind his wife again.

He’s following her, Luke thought, as Sandy turned down the river road—and Grant followed a good distance behind.

Luke swung his rig around and went after them, wondering if something else had happened. Since his talk with Eugene, he’d been so upset he hadn’t been thinking clearly.

But now as he came around a curve in the road, he saw that Sandy had pulled off at the fishing access closest to McCall’s cabin on the river. If there was one thing Luke knew, it was that Sandy Sheridan was no fisherman.

Even stranger, the sheriff made a quick turn onto a ranch road, going only a short distance before pulling into the trees and cutting his lights.

Luke kept going on past the ranch turnoff and the fishing access road. As soon as he knew he was out of sight around a curve, he pulled over, cutting his lights and engine and got out.

He waited a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then he headed back down the road toward McCall’s cabin, working his way through the trees. Ahead, he saw a dark figure come out of the trees from the spot where Grant had parked his pickup.

What the hell was going on? Whatever it was, it couldn’t have anything to do with McCall, right?

Then how did he explain why the sheriff’s wife appeared to be headed right for the cabin?

Luke had to hang back to let the sheriff cross the road and disappear into the trees, before he continued to follow the two.

He lost sight of Sandy near McCall’s cabin. A moment later he saw the sheriff sneaking along the side of the cabin, then disappearing around to the deck door.

Luke followed, his anxiety growing. When he heard the first shot, he took off at a run. Earlier, during their lovemaking, he’d remembered seeing the pistol he’d lent McCall beside a flowerpot on the deck.

M
C
C
ALL STARED AT
G
RANT
, realizing he must have been the person Sandy was with that day. It seemed odd, but who else could it have been?

Grant hadn’t moved. He stood with his head down, looking sick, his weapon still dangling from his right hand.

Sandy still hadn’t realized they weren’t alone. “Your mother ruined my life when you took Trace away from me,” Sandy said. “He wouldn’t have left—if Ruby hadn’t been pregnant with
you
.”

McCall saw where this was going. And if Sandy and Grant had killed Trace—

The front door blew open. Grant apparently hadn’t closed it properly.

Sandy swung around and saw her husband, Grant. Her finger must have been itching on the trigger because she got off the first shot.

McCall heard the second shot as she dived for the door. A bloodcurdling scream followed the report of the gunfire. Someone groaned.

As McCall scrambled toward the front door, she saw Grant trying to get to his feet. He still had the gun in his hand. Was it possible he’d shot Sandy? Or had he been trying to hit McCall?

“Stop!” Sandy yelled. “I don’t want to shoot you in the back, but I will.”

The third bullet ricocheted off the wall next to McCall, sending splinters into the air. McCall stopped and lifted her hands as she slowly turned around to face Sandy.

Grant, she saw, had fallen back on the floor, facedown in his own blood. Sandy had his gun—and her own. Blood bloomed from her left side, but she seemed oblivious of being hit. Grant had shot her? To shut her up? Or keep her from killing McCall?

McCall glanced at Grant, watching for any sign of life. None. Meeting Sandy’s gaze, she prepared herself to meet her maker. Sandy had nothing to lose now.

She had killed Grant. Now she had to kill McCall.

There would be no suicide note. No pretend suicide.

“It’s over, Sandy,” McCall said, knowing her only chance was to try to talk the woman down. “The killing has to stop. Trace is dead. Now Grant. I don’t know what happened on that ridge all those years ago with my father, but I do know that you didn’t mean to shoot Grant and I don’t believe you would have killed Trace if it hadn’t been for Grant being on that ridge with you that day.”

Sandy began to laugh. “You aren’t as smart as Grant thought you were. Grant wasn’t with me when I killed Trace.”

“Then who…”

“I wasn’t the only one who hated Trace.” Sandy spat out the words. “It wasn’t even my idea to get him on that ridge in sight of the Winchester ranch.” She smiled at McCall’s shock. “They say blood is thicker than water.” Sandy shook her head. “Not when it comes to sibling rivalry. Trace’s own flesh and blood wanted him dead. What does that say about your father?”

“You’re lying.”

“How different it would have been if Trace had married me,” Sandy said. “He would have changed,” she said with conviction, showing just how delusional she was.

For a moment, Sandy seemed to be lost in a daydream of what her life could have been like if she’d been the one to get Trace Winchester down the aisle. Her face softened as she steadied the gun with both hands to kill McCall, her eyes moist, a smile on her lips as if seeing herself beside Trace in the small white chapel on the edge of town.

That’s how she died.

McCall would later wonder if Sandy even felt the bullet that pierced her heart. Luke’s shot had been true. He’d fired at the same time he’d thrown McCall to the side. Sandy’s shot had burrowed into McCall’s front door in the exact spot where she’d been standing just an instant before.

It had been so close that she swore she felt it brush past. Luke had saved her life.

The realization came with tears as she’d looked over at him, the two of them lying on her living room floor. He’d mouthed the words. Or at least she thought he
had, since the sound of the gunshot so close to her ear had made her think she’d gone deaf.

I love you.

And then she was in his arms, and he was holding her as if he would never let her go ever again.