Thea Devine (30 page)

He came from a prominent San Francisco family and he wound up in Colville. She remembered saying those very words to Reese.

“Maggie!”

She heard Reese’s voice and looked up to see him standing in the doorway, so purposeful and vigorous.

… and he wound up in Colville too.

He must have looked into it.

And then the thing clicked that had been nagging at her since she said the words, and a whomp of fear hit her in the stomach like a brick.

She looked up and smiled at Reese. “Reese, I’ve been here for hours. Where have
you
been?”

* * *

Now she had to tread carefully. She had an inkling of what was going on, just an inkling, and she did not know where to look for the whole explanation. She needed Logan desperately now, and oh, where was he? Herding cows. What could a cowboy do for her indeed!

Reese was ready to court and coddle her, and that was almost unbearable. Mother Colleran came in and out, chiding Maggie for her indiscretion.

“Everybody saw you, Maggie; I could die from embarrassment that you actually went off with that man in front of a hundred people.”

“He’s an old friend, Mother Colleran. I felt faint. My land was burning up. I was grateful he could offer me a place to lie down.” Tonelessly, she offered her mother-in-law all the palliatives she would need to placate her gossipy friends.

“And she’s better now,” Reese said. “We’ll just have a nice dinner out in the hotel dining room and she will be fine.”

“I won’t be fine,” she said to him later. “The grassland is burned to a cinder.”

“That’s too bad, Maggie.”

“Yes it is, and I have been feeling as though the fates really have it in for me. What are the chances of two destructive fires happening in a single lifetime, let alone within weeks of each other, Reese?”

He looked startled. “I hadn’t thought about it. Look, Maggie, some drifter camped on your land and was a bit too careless with a campfire. The other … I don’t know.”

“That would be a reasonable explanation
if
the other hadn’t happened, and
if
Mr. Brown hadn’t suggested that that land was ripe for disaster. It was so heavy-handed it is almost laughable.”

“Mr. Brown never struck me as being obvious,” Reese said.

“I would not have thought so either. I suppose now everyone thinks I’d be better off unloading the land, including our Mr. Brown. Including, perhaps, you?”

“Maggie, Maggie, Maggie, you do whatever you have to do. You’ve been so adamant about it, how could anyone fault any decision you make?”

“You tell me, Reese.”

“I can’t,” he murmured, but he thought he would like to. He wanted to tell her other things, things she was missing by denying him. He was spending himself extravagantly at Melinda Sable’s and somehow he wanted her to know it.

“What will you do then?” she asked suddenly.

“I like Colville,” he said.

“But the estate is not limitless, Reese. I can’t support you and Mother Colleran on it, and frankly I don’t intend to. And if I don’t sell my property, I’m going to be close to appropriating principal. By the terms of the will I can’t do that, no matter what.”

“I’m working on something,” he said in a faintly resentful tone.

“Good,” she said. “We have one more week of luxury in the suite, and then I’m afraid we’ll all have to find other accommodations. I can’t afford the hotel, either.”

“That fire really scared you, didn’t it?” he asked nastily.

“No, Dennis scared me. He’s given me an either-or-choice. I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I don’t have a business to offset the drain on my income, unfortunately. We don’t have living quarters that we own. We have nothing, Reese, that isn’t coming directly from Frank’s estate, and frankly, I resent the expense.”

“All right, Maggie. That’s damned clear. Frank left everything to you, and by God,
you
are the only one who is going to benefit. You want it all. Fine. You’ll get it all. I
can make other arrangements. I’m afraid you’ll have my mother to contend with for a while yet. I can’t take her where I will be going right now.” He stood up abruptly and threw down some money.
Bitch, bitch bitch
, he was screaming inside, She would deny him everything,
everything
. The cowdog would get it all, every last cent that had been Frank’s and should have been his and his mother’s. Damn, damn, damn.

He stalked out of the dining room, looking tall and elegant and so much like Frank in his manner that people just stopped and stared.

Maggie looked down at her plate. On it was a hundred-dollar bill.

“Arwin, do you know precisely when Denver North came scouting around here looking for a route to join up in Cheyenne?”

“Well now, Maggie, let me think. Hmmm. Do you know, I think it was a few years before Frank came, yes I do. They sent a party of boss types up here along with a survey team and they all rubbed their chins, and said, yep, it looks okay, and then they went away and nobody came for a while.”

“Thanks, Arwin.”

“Why did you want to know?”

“I’m not sure, isn’t it strange? I mean, just after Frank died was when we got the first notice that they were coming in and buying up land and going to survey. They had permits and government rights of way and whatever other kind of paper they always have. I was just wondering …”

But she didn’t know what she was wondering.

Did Frank know Denver North was going to be coming and buying up every piece of land in sight?

There, she had phrased the question and it sent a chill
down her spine. What if she asked Arwin? What would he say?

“Wondering what, Maggie?”

“Whether it has any bearing on why someone fired my land last night,” she said slowly.

“Reese said it was a drifter.”

“Reese was here?”

“Bright and early this morning.”

Spreading the story, she thought grimly.

She walked slowly back to the hotel, thinking. She had her amazement that Frank had settled in Colville, and her astonishment that Reese had followed him here. She had everything that had happened since Reese had arrived, including the pressure being put on her to sell the ranch land. And she had the fact that Frank had left her everything to dispose of as she would. What did it all add up to?

She had Logan.

He would come tomorrow, she knew he would. She only had to get through one more night, a much easier task since she had asked Reese to leave the suite.

She had to remember to ask Miles to locate a room for Mother Colleran and herself, preferably far apart, for the rest of the time they would spend in the hotel.

Dennis was waiting for her when she returned to the hotel.

“Out early?”

“Taking a walk.”

“I have to remind you, Maggie, your month of deliberation is almost up.”

“I’m aware of that. In fact I want to make arrangements to move to single rooms for another, oh, month, and by then something should be settled, I should think. Don’t you?”

“Don’t give me your light and airy voice, Maggie. You know very well that you must give an answer to Mr.
Brown on the town property. I wish you would say yes to his offer today.”

Maggie scanned his face. It was the face of her earnest lawyer with her best welfare at heart. She saw nothing else there, and she made an intuitive decision right then. “Tell him no, I don’t want to sell the town property.”

Dennis was astounded. “Maggie! Why are you spiting yourself and putting yourself in an untenable position financially?”

“I don’t know. I just don’t feel that I should sell the
Morning Call
site.”

“All right, Maggie. Pretty soon you’ll drive yourself so far into the ground you may have to take the only way out.”

“What is that?”

“Accept my proposal, of course.”

“I couldn’t possibly, Dennis. Not even in the most adverse of circumstances.”

“This is not the place to talk about it, Maggie. And you don’t know what the future will bring.”

“No I don’t. Is
that
a threat, Dennis?”

“It’s a wise word to a wise woman who might be wise to cooperate occasionally.”

“I see,” she said.
Cooperate
. Exactly. Cooperate.

God, if only she had the
Morning Call
morgue to rummage around in. All the answers had been there, she just knew it. All she had now were tenuous threads, amorphous connections that didn’t make sense. And they all centered around one thing—no, one person—Frank.

Chapter Seventeen

Her refusal to … cooperate … must have somebody hopping, she thought. Something had to happen, and soon. They were starting to lay track on Danforth land now, and they were getting close to the moment when they had to veer off and begin grading down around Logan’s property.

She felt a tension shimmering in her bones. It was as if she were playing some kind of cat and mouse game with them, where the cat knew where the mouse was hiding, and the mouse knew it would be swallowed up any minute and still gamely dashed around, taunting its tormentor.

She was doing that. She didn’t know who the tormentor was. It could be Mr. Brown, it could be Dennis, it could be Reese. It could even be Madame Mother. Maybe it had always been Frank, she didn’t know.

But she knew, she was absolutely sure, that Frank had looked into it, and he had not turned up in Colville on some peripatetic whim. Frank had come because Denver North was coming, and Frank had bought as much land as he could on the route to Cheyenne because he was sure he would have a commodity that Denver North eventually would want to buy.

And then he had been killed, and he left it all to her the person who least wanted to sell.

It didn’t make sense.

She waited for someone to approach her, to threaten her, to make an overture of some kind so she could see what she was fighting. All she knew was she was fighting Mr. Brown’s determination, Dennis’s deadly desire to have her, and Reese’s easy profligacy with her money.

Nothing happened. No one approached her. No one said a word except what Dennis told her that morning.

But she knew now that her indecision had nothing to do with her being irresolute; some intuition held her back, and she trusted it implicitly. She would find the answers, and then she would know what to do.

“You cannot mean to move me out of this suite,” Mother Colleran protested angrily. “The desk clerk just stopped me and handed me the keys to some little dingy room on the third floor. There has obviously been some mistake, Maggie.”

“No mistake,” she said mildly. “We have another week of luxury before the money runs out.”

“I don’t believe you. Frank’s estate must have been enormous. You were running a business from it. You paid salaries from it. You—”

“I can’t support you and me and Reese with no money coming in, Mother Colleran, it’s as simple as that.”

“You can sell the Colleran land.”

Maggie shook her head. “It is amazing to me how
everyone
wants me to sell that land. It’s almost as if you think you’re entitled to a piece of the profit.”

Her mother-in-law’s eyes flickered and she turned away abruptly. “Don’t be ridiculous, Maggie. Frank left it to you. I just don’t think he intended for you to waffle around the decision for so long.”

Maggie felt another little jolt of perception. The old crow didn’t think Frank
intended… ?
“What did Frank intend, Mother Colleran?” she asked casually.

But her mother-in-law had caught the inference. “He certainly didn’t intend for you to walk around here destitute when you have something that will bring you enough money to live comfortably no matter what you decide to do.”

“And you,” Maggie said pointedly.

“That’s beside the fact. I’m not at all important in terms of this decision.”

“You’re right about that,” Maggie muttered, and her mother-in-law pretended not to hear her.

“You have to do what’s best for yourself, Maggie, always remembering that in spite of the fact that the newspaper is gone, you are still Mrs. Frank, and Mrs. Frank does not live in dingy hotel rooms parsing out silver like she was a recluse.”

“Indeed. And how does
Mrs. Frank
live?”

“She lives like Frank lived, comfortably, openhandedly, with status—”

“And with the good advice and comfortable companionship of her beloved mother-in-law,” Maggie finished acerbically.

Mother Colleran stared at her. “Really, Maggie, there’s no cause to get nasty. You don’t have to take me into account at all.”

“I don’t,” Maggie murmured. “However, at the moment, I have not made a decision, and we will vacate these rooms in another week and make the best of things until I do decide what to do.”

“Well, I hope to tell
you
, Maggie, that Frank never would have dawdled around being virtuous about it. What good is the land now anyway since the fire?”

Another little jolt. “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose it’s possible to reclaim the pastureland. I could marry Logan
and we could build a real nice spread on that land …”

Her mother-in-law’s face contorted in the most terrifying expression Maggie had ever seen, murderous, driven beyond all restraint—and then it was gone. “So you could, Maggie. It’s yours to do with what you want, of course. But I tell you, I will never live in the same house with that man, Maggie.
Never
. Think about it.”

“I’ve thought about it; it appeals to me enormously.”

“Even if you could have Reese,” demanded her mother-in-law.

“Especially if that were possible.”

“Well, I won’t stand for it, Maggie, I just won’t. That cowboy, that roughshod farmer, that …” She flounced into her room, and slammed the door, and still her voice came out at Maggie, muffled, writhing with imprecations.

Maggie sighed. Madame Mother certainly hated Logan. She wondered why.

So now he was a boarder at Melinda Sable’s, and though it cost him a premium price, Reese was glad to pay the freight to be able to pretend to seduce Melinda Sable’s luscious body every night. She wasn’t Maggie, but her attitude was exactly right; playful, reluctant, bold, and submissive all at once. In his wildest fantasy, he saw Maggie living in this very house and begging him to visit her in her room in that same tantalizing tone of voice.

Her naked body was a constant image in his mind, and he ached with a rock-hard determination to possess her. He wanted her at his feet, totally beneath him, at his mercy, vanquished. He wanted to hear her ripe lips murmur sweet compliments of his mastery.

She was primed for the taking. She swore she didn’t want him, but she wanted no one else. She only wanted to rut in every conceivable place with the cowdog, but he
knew his eventual domination of her would wipe the memory from her brain.

She needed only one night with him. He was not Frank, a man who had not appreciated the temptress he had had in his very own bed. No, he adored the audacious sensuality he had seen the cowdog incite, adored the brazen need that compelled her to demand to be taken whenever her desire kindled.

To have a woman like that, wanton, ripe, willing, without having to approach her with a hundred dollars in his hand … He invariably stiffened with anticipation every time he thought about it. Maggie in the hands of the cowdog; what did he know about satisfying such lust as Reese had seen in her?

He knew nothing about Maggie’s profligate sensuality.

Only Reese Colleran could replace the husband who had abandoned her. It was the one thing he had come to Colville for, a decision he had made long before he had ever seen Maggie’s voluptuous body. And now he could have that
and
Maggie’s hot receptivity too. He kept remembering the first time he had seen her, from the hill above the church. And invariably when he thought about Maggie, he saw in his mind’s eye the first time he had unwittingly spied on her.

The memory always aroused him unbearably. At those times it was good he had Melinda Sable’s body to bury himself within. Even now, as his quiescent member spurted to life, he was halfway out the door, seeking surcease from his ravenous need.

But Melinda was busy this day. Melinda was sweet; she patted him gently on his face and stroked his throbbing erection. “You know there’s a sweet little girl in the room down the hall, Reese. Brand new; you might want to try her. I’ve been waiting to give her a really powerful man. She’s a friend of Maggie Colleran’s, Reese. Her name is
Annie Mapes.”

“I know what I’m going to do.”

Logan turned at Maggie’s statement and sent her a long considering look from across the room. He was all muscular cowhand today, so much so that Mother Colleran had bolted from the suite when he arrived, fresh from riding with his herd to pasture upland.

They hadn’t said more than a couple of words to each other after her departure. It was almost as if they felt shy with each other.

He smiled at her gently. “I knew you’d figure it out, Maggie.”

She shook her head. “I figured some of it out. Not everything. And do you know what it’s really about? I
think
it’s about Frank. Isn’t that unbelievable? After all these years. The man won’t stay buried.”

“Colville keeps him alive,” Logan said. Much to his detriment, he thought. He knew she was reminded of Frank in one way or another every day, whether it was by her courtesy address or by something Frank had done. He didn’t see the townspeople calling her “Mrs. Logan.” Not at all.

“
No
. Listen, Logan. He looked into it. Frank looked into it. Remember, I said my bloodlines are very good. I said I was sure Frank looked into it. Didn’t anybody think it was odd that someone like him wound up in Colville? Do you see? I said the same thing to Reese. He wound up in Colville, too.”

“They looked into Colville?” he said, puzzled. “They … Frank …” he searched for the connection, “Frank ….knew about Denver North.”

She let out a breath. She wasn’t imagining it; it was a possible, even logical conclusion. “And the first thing he did was buy that tract of land—how many thousand
acres?—right on a direct line north to Cheyenne. He came to buy land and sell it.”

“Well, fine. And he stayed.”

“No. No. That’s the part I’m still working out. I still don’t understand why he willed it to me. Do you see? He never expected he wouldn’t realize an enormous profit on it. But even so, there was his brother and his mother and even Dennis. Why me?”

“Maybe Dennis knows why.”

“Dennis would never tell me… now. Every time I think about what has happened since A.J.’s death I have this mad feeling that it is all deliberate.”

He didn’t protest her statement.

“Don’t you?” she demanded.

“But you say it’s connected to Frank. How? Where?”

“It’s crazy. Reese comes to Colville. He wants to see his mother, he wants to be my friend. To help with the paper. And that happens right after Harold Danforth and I tangle about the railroad. Right? And then Arwin is telling me that people are saying I’m antirailroad because I want to get more money for the land I have. Then the for-hire notices appear in a place over which I have no control. The paper. More suspicion. Then Reese practically proposes to me. A.J. is mysteriously killed and Reese immediately steps in. Mr. Brown comes on the scene and begins making offers few can refuse. I refuse him. The sheriff then as good as accuses me of murdering A.J., except he can’t find any proof and he only has a theory. I run a story about the miserable worker accommodations up at the track site, and two days later, the office burns down. Suddenly I have two pieces of property to sell and the only bidder is Denver North. And that is on top of Dennis proposing to me at least twice, and Mother Colleran urging me to sell. I had a feeling that A.J. had been killed so someone pro-Denver North could take his place, and I could be framed for murder so that I
could be gotten rid of, clearing the way for the sale of the Colleran ranch. You’re right, it sounds crazy.”

“Or,” he said soberly, “it sounds like a conspiracy.”

A conspiracy. At his words the tension in her diminished. She wasn’t quite demented then. She had an ally who thought the things that had happened were not exaggerations of her imagination. She felt a sweet gratitude for his discernment. He had handed her a possibility, something solid to work with, to work backward from, because the first words that leapt into her mind as he said it were “Who? How?”

“Everybody. Nobody. People you don’t even know, if Frank and Denver North are the focus of all of this.”

“But the end result has been this enormous pressure for me to sell, and circumstances have made it imperative that I consider selling.”

“But who stands to gain the most, Maggie?”

“That’s just it,” she said unhappily. “Me. And only me.”

And then she didn’t know what she was going to do. The very idea of a conspiracy was both potent and frightening. It meant she had more than one enemy; it meant she couldn’t attack lest she were gunned down from behind.

Like Frank. Like A.J.

God, how she kept coming back to that, too.

Had the same person murdered them both?

Another connection. Five years apart … how was it possible? How could those two deaths be linked?

The net tightened still more.

She felt a jangling fear that nothing she did would be enough to save her, that she would be sacrificed to the
maw of somebody’s greed.

Whose
greed, when she was the only one who would benefit?

She was consumed with a racing need to take some kind of action.

“Nothing to your mother-in-law?”

Logan’s voice pulled her back from her scattershot thoughts.

“Nothing. Nothing to Reese. Nothing to Dennis, although only he is empowered to act for me when I do sell.”
Only
he, she thought. He hadn’t been in Colville then. He had come on Frank’s summons from San Francisco.

Her mind raced ahead. If Frank had brought him to Colville, he must have written to him. What if he had written letters about Denver North? He bought up the land with no intention of ranching whatsoever, she could see now in retrospect. What would she find in a letter that she didn’t know already?

She didn’t even care what she might find. The thought was she could
do
something, she could move, she could take action.

“Logan I want to break into Dennis’s office.”

He didn’t move a muscle. He didn’t try to dissuade her. He smiled his slow, gentle smile. “Any time you like.”

They watched Dennis’s office all day from the front window of Bodey’s store.

“You two ain’t no decoration, hanging out there like that,” Arwin said.