Redemption (26 page)

“Where do you want me to put these?” the delivery man asked, and Nettie showed him. When she looked again, she saw Frank across the street, talking to Arnie Thorndike in front of the café.

* * *

S
HERIFF
F
RANK
C
URRY
caught Arnie Thorndike coming out of the Branding Iron. The lawyer had a toothpick sticking out the corner of his mouth. An old straw hat covered most of his graying hair. As usual, he was dressed in a ragged flannel shirt, worn jeans and a pair of boots that should have been tossed in the trash miles ago.

“Got a moment?” Frank asked, and motioned to his patrol truck sitting down the block.

Arnie shrugged acceptance as if he had nothing better to do. He probably didn’t.

“I’ve discovered some things about Claude Durham since the last time we talked,” the sheriff said once they were seated in the pickup, windows down, a warm breeze blowing through.

“Claude?” Thorndike said. He looked tired, half-awake, as if he’d just eaten a large meal and had been on his way home for a nap.

“I know you feel a sense of loyalty to him even though he’s gone.”

“What’s this about, Frank?”

“I asked you if you knew how Kate LaFond ended up with the café.”

Thorndike nodded. “And I told you Claude left her the café. That he had his reasons.”

“You failed to mention that one of his reasons was that she is his daughter. Is it true?”

“Claude didn’t want anyone to know—for her sake, not his.”

“Did he also not want anyone to know who her mother was?” When the lawyer didn’t answer, Frank said, “So you know about Teeny Ackermann.”

“And you know why Claude didn’t want anyone to know,” Thorndike snapped. “Can you imagine what the locals would have to say about her having any connection to the Ackermanns, let alone that her mother was married to Cullen?”

“Not legally,” the sheriff pointed out.

“They lived as man and wife while Cullen’s first wife was locked in a root cellar in the side of the mountain.”

Frank didn’t need to be reminded.

“Claude saved her,” Thorndike said. “He got her out of here, set her up with a couple who was desperate for a child and kept an eye on her. He did right by her and in the end, she repaid him by giving him part of her liver.”

“Why didn’t you tell me this when we first talked?” Frank demanded.

“Because you were just fishing for information out of curiosity. I suspect now it’s more serious. I heard that man found dead by the river was one of the Ackermann boys.”

News traveled like the wild winds that came out of the Crazies, blowing through at gale force.

“I suppose you also knew Claude and Cullen were brothers.” This time Frank saw surprise cross the lawyer’s features. “So you
didn’t
know? Claude never told you? Or Cullen? You were his lawyer, at least before he was arrested.” Thorndike had just gotten out of law school about the time Cullen Ackermann had moved to the area. “So you worked for both of them but didn’t know.”

The lawyer chuckled and shook his head. “Neither of them ever mentioned it. They didn’t look much alike and they certainly didn’t act like brothers.” He let out a laugh. “Hell, what am I saying? Claude knocked up Cullen’s young wife. I guess they
did
act like brothers.”

“Teeny wasn’t legally married to Cullen, since he’d never gotten around to divorcing his first wife,” Frank pointed out. “Not to mention she was being kept there like a prisoner.”

“Cullen was a bastard. I can’t say I’m sorry he’s dead.”

“You aren’t going to tell me you don’t know Cullen was growing pot up there in the hollow, are you?” Frank asked.

Thorndike just gave him an impatient look.

Frank shook his head. “I should warn you. Three of his sons apparently survived. That murdered man found down by the river? It was Darrell Ackermann, the younger of the surviving three. I don’t see any reason they would bother you, even though you were their father’s lawyer at one point. I assume he didn’t leave them anything.”

Thorndike shook his head, but he looked worried. “Those boys were more dangerous than Cullen.”

“Cecil broke into Loralee Clark’s place. When he came back, she wounded him. We’re still looking for him.”

“And Gallen?”

The sheriff shook his head. “But I suspect he’s around. Loralee said it looked like someone had been camping out up in the Ackermann’s old compound. When I checked it out, I found someone had been digging up there.”

“Fools still believe their old man left behind a pot of gold.” He shook his head. “I’m surprised they didn’t get blown up or worse.”

Frank thought about Kate’s mother and the way she’d died up on that property, killed by one of the booby traps Cullen had built. “Is there anything else you want to tell me, Arnie?”

“You know more than I do.”

He doubted that. Arnie Thorndike had always played his cards close to the vest. Then again, he was a lawyer, used to keeping people’s secrets. “I just thought you might be the reason they’re back—to collect their father’s inheritance.”

Thorndike laughed. “They come around me and they’ll collect buckshot from my side-by-side shotgun.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

J
ACK FINISHED WORK EARLY
and drove out to his family’s old homestead. The last time, he’d gotten waylaid by Kate. At least that had been his excuse not to face the place that day.

Now he was determined to face a few things in his life—beginning with the old homestead, and ending with Kate LaFond and the bargain he’d made her.

The more he’d looked at the map, the more restless he had become. All his life he’d heard stories about Ackermann’s gold. But he hadn’t dreamed there was anything to them since he was a kid.

Kate believed it, though.

He mentally kicked himself as he admitted why he’d agreed to help her. It certainly wasn’t for fifty percent of the gold. He didn’t need the money. His mother’s family had left him what he’d considered a small fortune. He’d never touched it.

So why agree to help Kate find gold he didn’t even believe existed?

Because he had some crazy idea that he could protect her.

What a laugh. While she needed protecting, he had no idea how to keep her safe, short of kidnapping her.

That thought definitely had its appeal.

A brisk breeze blew down out of the Crazies. Overhead the sky was an incredible cloudless blue. Jack had always loved these days as a boy. Waking to the sound of birds chirping in the trees outside his bedroom window, the breeze restlessly stirring his curtains, the smell of coffee perking.

His father had brewed coffee on the stove in an old pot, refusing to buy one of those newfangled things that didn’t know a damned thing about making coffee.

He thought of his father—a tall, weathered man with a quiet sadness in his blue eyes. Jack wondered if he’d ever really known his father, known the demons that haunted him.

Unconsciously, Jack slowed as the house came into view. It was a two-story, the windows blank, the once-white paint now grayed. Everything looked weathered as he pulled in, rolled to a stop and cut the engine.

He sat in the pickup for a moment before getting out and walking toward the house. The place had a worn feel about it, almost a comforting familiarity. Nearby, he could hear the steady whine of a windmill. As far as he could see to the east, the land had turned a vibrant green that appeared as smooth and lush as velvet.

Jack had never tired of this view. He’d forgotten what it was like to look across open land like this. There was something calming about it—unlike the view to the west.

The Crazies climbed skyward in the waning light of day. Rugged rock cliffs still clung to some of the light, but the dense pines were dark as the coming night.

Jack pushed open the front door. A musty, closed-up smell rushed out. Everything was covered with a thick layer of undisturbed dust. He was surprised that the local kids hadn’t taken advantage of the fact that he’d been gone two years to use the house for parties, since he’d left the door unlocked. Then again, there were plenty of old barns and much cooler places to hold a kegger than the old French house.

The worn wood floors creaked under his feet as he moved like a ghost through the house. Memories assaulted him in every room, some actually good, others not so much.

He stood for a moment, looking into the deep shadows, remembering the night the sheriff had come to tell him that his father was dead.

He’d been seventeen, his birthday just weeks away.

“There’s been an accident,” Sheriff Frank Curry had said. “I’m sorry, Jack. Your father didn’t make it.”

Delbert French had been drinking, not wearing his seat belt, and the weather had been bad. Raining cats and dogs, his father would have said.

It wasn’t until later that Jack had learned another vehicle had been involved. The sheriff had the paint color, so he knew it had been an older model blue pickup.

A half dozen people in Montana drove a pickup with that particular paint color. But only two lived in the area. One of the trucks had been abandoned for years and no longer ran.

The other one was owned by Ruth McCray. It was the one her son, Hitch, drove around the ranch. By the time the sheriff learned this, Hitch had already reported the pickup stolen.

Jack had always suspected that Frank Curry wasn’t fooled. That like Jack, he had to suspect that Hitch had been behind the wheel that night. But the pickup had never turned up. Jack could only guess where it was now. In some deep ravine up in the mountains? Or at the bottom of Saddlestring Lake?

Either way, it was gone and even if Jack had found it, what would it prove? Hitch would stick to his story that it had been stolen.

Knowing the truth didn’t always set you free, Jack thought now as he walked through the house to the back door. The back steps groaned under his weight and he had to wade through dried leaves from two past autumns.

As he walked toward the barn, a memory as bright as the afternoon flashed before him of playing in the hayloft one summer day. Maybe there were one or two good memories here, he thought as he stepped into the cool shade of the huge structure.

He surveyed the last of his inheritance. The house would definitely have to be razed and some of the outbuildings, too. The bunkhouse where he’d been staying when he was arrested was still in good shape.

The two rusted T’s of the clothesline were still behind the house with several sagging lines still hanging between them. When he thought of his mother, he pictured her in a cotton-print dress, hanging clothes on the line behind the house. But he’d been so young, he wasn’t sure that was even a memory.

Wind swayed the high grass in the pasture, undulating like waves. Looming over it all were the Crazies, snowcapped and pristine, looking cold and unforgiving.

For a moment, he stood merely breathing in the spring day, remembering how he used to feel about this land.

His cell phone rang.

“You didn’t call,” she said by way of greeting when Jack answered the phone without looking to see who was calling.

“
Chantell?
How did you get my number?”

“Carson. He was so sweet to give it to me. Don’t be mad at him.” She did her pouting sound that apparently worked so well for her.

“What do you want, Chantell?”

“You promised you would call me.” He hadn’t, but before he could argue the point, she continued. “It’s not because of that woman who owns the Branding Iron, is it?” She scoffed at the idea. “I saw you talking to her at the fair. She’s really not your type, Jack.”

He gritted his teeth, surprised anything she would say could make him angry. Apparently her talking about Kate could. “Listen, Chantell—”

“Come on, Jack. You and I were good together.”

“Too good together, if you ask your father.”

She sighed. “You can’t be angry at him for sending you to prison! Jack, he’s a
judge.
”

“Even judges aren’t above the law.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I didn’t steal that bull.”

“Daddy says that’s what they all say,” she said, laughing.

“I was set up.”

Her laugh died off into silence for a few moments. “Set up? By whom?”

The “whom” reminded him of her Ivy League college education. Jack had graduated from Montana State College, or Cow College as it was known.

“Your father.”

This time the silence was much longer.

Then an impatient “Jack.”

“I’m going to prove it and bust his ass.” The moment the words were out, he knew that had been what he was going to do the whole time. He’d just been deluding himself if he’d thought he could let it go.

“That’s crazy,” she said, and he could tell she was wishing she hadn’t called.

“Not really. He never liked you dating me, Chantell. Maybe he thought we were getting too serious. Or maybe he was just tired of seeing you date a saddle bum. Isn’t that what he called me? Whatever the reason, he did it.”

“He rustled a bull and put it in your barn to frame you? Jack, that’s ludicrous.”

Jack told himself to stop. If he really was going after the judge then he didn’t want the judge knowing it. Nor did he want to show his hand by telling her how her father had done it. “He hired it done. Let’s leave it at that.”

“I’m sorry, Jack.” Not sorry her father had framed him. Not sorry he’d spent two years of his life behind bars for something he hadn’t done.

Nope, she was just sorry she’d called. He could well imagine her saying to her friends, “Jack French used to be fun.” Then making her sad face before she quickly got over it.

“Take care of yourself, Jack,” she said and hung up.

He snapped his phone shut and climbed up to the hayloft to look out over this place where he’d grown up. The wind whistled past the eaves. An old rocker on the back porch of the house seemed to lean into the gale. He used to sit in that rocker at night, staring up at the Crazies, drinking beer and daydreaming about his future.

He hadn’t daydreamed about his future in years.