All Lantry saw at first was the gun aimed at Dede’s heart—and froze. The man holding the weapon was short and stocky, and Lantry had the feeling he’d seen him before.
“That’s it, Mr. Corbett,” the man said. “Don’t do anything rash, or I’ll have to shoot her.”
“Let me guess. Ed, right?” Dede didn’t sound afraid, and that amped up Lantry’s fear for her twofold.
Ed gave a slight bow of his head in response. “I’ll take that necklace now.”
“You killed Frank for this?” Dede demanded, holding up the necklace. Lantry could hear the fury just under the surface. “You killed my husband for this?”
Ed shifted nervously as he watched Dede wind the necklace tighter around her fingers. “If you want to blame someone for Frank’s death, you only have to look as far as that mirror on the wall.”
Dede froze. “You’re blaming me because you killed Frank?”
“Easy, Dede,” Lantry warned, but he suspected she wasn’t listening. He could see the rage etched on her face. She closed her hand into a fist around the necklace.
“If he hadn’t been so busy trying to protect you, he’d still be alive,” Ed said, his own tone laced with anger. “I didn’t want to kill Frank. But he forgot his loyalties. He betrayed us because of you.”
Dede had her head cocked to one side, a stance Lantry had seen before. He didn’t have to see the fire in her eyes to know that any moment she might launch herself at the man—to hell with the fact that he had a gun on her.
“He didn’t betray you. He just didn’t want any part of you or this burglary,” she said, biting off each word.
“You don’t know anything about Frank. He was one of us. He knew the cost of betrayal. He got greedy and wanted all the money for himself.”
Dede opened her fist and let the necklace dangle from her fingers. “You think this was about money?”
“That necklace is worth almost two million dollars.” His gaze flicked to Lantry. “Not chump change to some of us.”
Just as they’d suspected, Ed didn’t know the necklace was a worthless duplicate. Lantry thought it might be better to keep it that way.
Before Dede could spill the beans, Lantry jumped in. “There’s no reason for bloodshed, Ed. You should have come to me right away. I’m a reasonable man. We could have made a deal for the necklace. It would have saved you a lot of time and effort. You wouldn’t have had to kill Frank.”
Ed seemed to relax a little, though he shifted his gaze to Dede every few seconds as if afraid of what she might do next. He wasn’t the only one.
“We’d heard stories about you,” Ed said. “We weren’t sure you would be agreeable. But then, every man has his price, doesn’t he?”
“Exactly. You could have cut me in. Much less messy that way.”
Ed smiled. “A man who thinks like I do. I can appreciate that.”
“Maybe it’s not too late,” Lantry said.
Ed laughed. “Under the circumstances, I’m not sure that’s in my best interest.”
Ed had killed Frank and probably Tamara Fallon. Clearly, the man had nothing to lose.
* * *
DEDE HAD BEEN so furious she’d almost blown it. As her blood pressure dropped a little, she realized what Lantry had right away.
Ed thought the necklace was the real thing.
She blinked, feeling lightheaded. She couldn’t help but think of Frank when she looked at this man. He’d killed her husband, and for what? A pile of worthless glass and metal.
She had wanted to scratch the man’s eyes out and take her chances with the gun in his hand.
Irrational thinking. She was thankful that Lantry had kept his senses. Ed seemed amused by Lantry, although she could tell he was watching her out of the corner of his eye, not sure what she might do next.
Dede shivered and realized Ed had left the back door open when he’d come in. That first sound she’d heard must have been him breaking the door lock.
She glanced toward the open doorway and the darkness beyond. Something moved through the falling snow behind him.
Someone else was out there.
“I’ll take that necklace now. Nice and easy,” Ed was saying.
“Why should we give it to you, knowing you plan to kill us either way?” Lantry asked.
“Like you said, there’s no reason for more bloodshed,” Ed said with a smile, lying through his teeth.
“What was it you had on Frank?” Dede asked.
Ed seemed surprised by the question. “Didn’t he tell you?” He laughed. “No, of course, he didn’t. He was ashamed.” Ed’s smile died abruptly. “Ashamed of his own brother.”
“Brother?” Dede had barely gotten the word out when a figure materialized out of the snow and darkness behind Ed.
Dede felt a start as the person stepped into the dim light. Violet’s face was bruised badly on one side of her face, her eye swollen and discolored. She carried something in her hands.
Dede didn’t see what it was until she raised her arms and swung the large chunk of firewood at the back of Ed’s head.
Ed must have sensed someone behind him or seen Dede’s surprised expression. He started to turn, swinging around, leading with the gun.
Dede threw the necklace at him in a high arc. She saw the indecision on his face. The fear that someone was behind him and the irresistible need to catch what he thought was an almost two-million-dollar diamond necklace.
Greed would have won out but he was half-turned, the gun already coming around to point at whatever was behind him. Ed twisted back, reaching with his free hand for the necklace as the chunk of firewood clutched in Violet’s hands made contact with his skull.
Dede heard the thwack and the gunshot, both seeming simultaneous. Before she could move, Lantry grabbed her, taking her down to the floor, covering her with his body as a second shot was fired. She heard a cry, then the sound of a body hitting the floor.
It all happened in a heartbeat. Lantry was on his feet, Dede scrambling up after him.
The deafening sound of the gunshots echoed like cannon booms inside the cabin. Violet’s cry of pain and the sound of Ed’s body hitting the floor were followed by the thud of the chunk of firewood landing next to him.
Dede looked toward the doorway to find Ed lying at Violet’s feet and Violet clutching her chest, her fingers blooming red with blood. Violet’s gaze met her own as the older woman slowly dropped to her knees and fell forward beside Ed.
Lantry lunged for Ed, snatching the gun from his hand—but there was no need. Dede could see death in the dull glaze of his eyes. She shook off her inertia and rushed to Violet’s side.
The woman had saved her life. Again.
“Violet? Violet, can you hear me?” Dede looked over at Lantry. “We have to get her to the hospital.”
* * *
THE AMBULANCE AND sheriff’s deputies met them twenty miles out of Landusky. Dede sat in the back of the patrol car watching the falling snow as Violet was loaded onto a stretcher.
She could hear Lantry arguing with his brother outside the car.
“Damn it, Lantry, you don’t know how lucky you are that you’re not on your way to the jail,” Shane said. “I fought like hell to get you released on your own recognizance pending further investigation into this case.”
“You can’t let them send Dede back to that mental hospital. She doesn’t belong there. I’m telling you that all of this was her ex-husband’s doing.”
“She pulled a gun on a deputy and took you hostage at gunpoint.”
“I’ll say I went of my own free will.”
Shane swore again. “Lantry, I’ll see that she’s protected, twenty-four seven, but I can tell you right now, she’s got to go back to the hospital for a mental evaluation.”
“I’ll pay to have someone come here and do the evaluation,” Lantry argued. “Help me with this, Shane. This woman is innocent. She’s been through hell. If she hadn’t come to Montana to warn me—”
“I’ll see what I can do, all right?” Shane said, raising his voice over the sound of an ambulance taking off for Whitehorse.
Lantry climbed into the front of the patrol car and turned to look through the steel mesh at her.
“I hate to see you at odds with your brother,” she said quietly.
He smiled and her heart took off at a gallop. “Shane and I are fine. It’s you I’m worried about.”
“Your brother’s right. I’ll be safe in jail. Both Ed and Claude are dead.” Ed had confessed to killing Frank. Violet would back up her story about what happened in the van. There was that matter with the gun and the deputy, but even if she had to spend some time behind bars, she was just grateful that it was over and said as much to Lantry.
“It won’t be over until you’re cleared and free,” he said with conviction. “You’ve been through enough.”
His brother climbed behind the wheel and took off after the ambulance. Lantry fell silent. Dede watched the snowy landscape glide past as flakes fell like feathers from the ice-black sky overhead.
* * *
LANTRY SAT IN HIS brother’s office, legs stretched out, his eyes dull from lack of sleep.
As Shane returned from down the hall with Dede, he stood up. Dede looked as awful as he felt. He drew her into his arms.
“Lantry, if you’ll wait down the hall,” Shane said to his brother after a moment. Lantry let go of Dede but didn’t move.
“I’ll be fine,” she said.
He nodded and reluctantly left the room, closing the door behind him.
“I need to ask you some questions,” Shane said. “I understand you hired a private investigator to follow your then-husband.”
Dede nodded. “Jonathan O’Reilly.”
“A private investigator by that name was found murdered the same week as your husband and Tamara Fallon. His office had been ransacked, all files and computers destroyed,” Shane said.
Dede looked sick. “You don’t think—”
“No, we don’t believe you had anything to do with the murders, given the evidence we’ve uncovered.”
“What kind of evidence?”
“You said Ed told you that Frank was his brother, right?” Shane asked.
“I’m sure he meant they’d been like brothers,” Dede said.
“We ran the mental-hospital driver’s fingerprints and were able to ID him from an old arrest record,” Shane continued. “He was using an assumed name for employment at the hospital. His real name is Claude Ingram. Ed was his brother.”
“Brothers?” Dede couldn’t believe this.
“There’s more,” Shane said. “I checked into Frank Chamberlain’s background, assuming he must have been from the same small Idaho town since you’d said they’d apparently known each other since childhood.” Shane glanced at Dede. She nodded. “No Frank Chamberlain.”
She felt herself pale.
“Both Claude and Ed were born in Idaho, a little town called Ashton. They had two other siblings. A sister and a brother.”
Dede felt a chill even in the small, cramped room.
“Franklin John Ingram—”
Dede let out a gasp.
“—and Tamara Sue Ingram.”
“Tammy was Frank’s sister?” She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head. “That can’t be possible. I thought Frank and Tamara…”
“Apparently they were in business together—both in security alarm systems and the burglaries of the clients’ jewels,” Shane said. “We’re still waiting on DNA results, but from the identification found near the body, the woman found in the river was Tamara Fallon.”
Dede shivered, remembering the photos of Tammy the PI had shown her. A slim, pretty woman with long blond hair pulled back in a ponytail and high cheekbones.
“No wonder Frank couldn’t say no to them,” Dede said. “Some family the Ingrams turned out to be. Is it any wonder Frank wanted to get away from them? Obviously he’d changed his name, thought he’d escaped them.” She felt sick. “And now they are all dead.”
* * *
AFTER SHANE HAD TAKEN their statements separately, he got the call from the judge. He quickly realized just how small a town Whitehorse was and how things worked here.
Shane hung up and looked across the desk at Dede and Lantry. “Seems some strings have been pulled.”
Dede would be remanded into Grayson Corbett’s custody, fitted with a house-arrest device that would monitor her movements within a quarter-mile of the ranchhouse.
“How is Violet?” she asked Shane before she and Lantry left the sheriff’s department.
“Looks like she’s going to make it.”
“Can I see her? She saved my life…and Lantry’s.”
Shane shook his head. “Only her mother has been allowed to see her. I can pass a message on to her mother for you.”
“Just tell Violet thank you, all right? What she did was very brave.” Or some might say crazy. Dede wondered why she’d done it. Why hadn’t she just taken off and tried to save herself?
Kate Corbett put Dede up in the main house’s guest suite and made her feel at home. Lantry was busy doing legal maneuvering, trying to keep them both out of jail, so she saw little of him that first day.
She couldn’t believe it was almost Christmas Day. Trails West Ranch was decorated beautifully, and she knew that Kate had added several packages under the tree with Dede’s name on them.
Dede wandered around the big house, feeling lost. She knew she was still in shock and dealing with everything that had happened. It saddened her how little she’d known about a man she’d married, and hated that Lantry might be right about marriage.
She’d loved Frank, planned to have his children. Now she was thankful she hadn’t become pregnant.
Dede looked up to see a UPS truck pull up out front. A moment later Kate came into the room carrying a large package.
Kate had just gotten back from her knitting class in town and seemed more excited than usual. “I just found out that my daughters-in-law are all expecting! I’m going to have to learn to knit much faster if I hope to get baby buntings made before the grandbabies are all born.”
Now Kate held out the package. “It’s for you. It’s from Lantry.”
“Why would Lantry—”
“Open it,” Kate said.
Dede tore open the box to find a beautiful guitar inside. Carefully she took it out. How had Lantry known? She felt tears rush to her eyes.
“You play?” Kate asked in confusion.
“I used to.” Back before Frank, back before all of this. Her fingers ached to strum the strings, to make the music that used to fill her heart with such joy. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll take it back to my room for now.”
Kate nodded, looking concerned. “Is there anything I can do?”
Dede smiled and touched the woman’s arm. Kate Corbett had been so kind to her. “Thank you, but I just need time to process everything that’s happened. I feel that I got Lantry into this, and I—”
“Lantry and his profession got Lantry into this,” Kate said, not unkindly. “Lantry took your husband’s case. I would imagine he will always regret that.” She smiled. “Except that it brought you into his life,” she added quickly. “Otherwise, you two might never have met. I’ve seen the change in my stepson. Lantry had planned to go back to Texas right after Christmas, back to being a divorce lawyer. He won’t do that now, you’ll see. You’ve had a profound effect on him.”
Dede smiled at that. “I almost got him killed. Have you heard anything on Violet Evans?”
“She’s being moved to a private mental hospital close by right after the wedding Christmas Day,” Kate said. “Arlene is marrying Hank Monroe tomorrow. Arlene got special permission for her daughter to attend the wedding.”
As she carried the guitar Lantry had given her down to her room, Dede thought about what Kate had said. They’d all been changed by what had happened. Would Lantry really give up his career because of it?
Once in her room, Dede ran her fingers lovingly across the guitar strings. She hadn’t played in so long. Slowly, she picked up the guitar, her fingers remembering the music as she began to play.
* * *
LANTRY HAD A LOT on his mind. In a word: Dede. At first he’d been so busy trying to get her cleared that he hadn’t had time to think about the future. Her mental evaluation had gone well. Now, if he could just work his legal magic, Dede would be free to return to Texas after Christmas.
The duplicate necklace and both his and Dede’s statements, along with evidence that continued to come in on the Ingram siblings, had forced a judge in Texas to take another look at Dede’s commitment to the mental hospital.
Just after the holidays, a local judge would rule on the other charges against Dede.
There would be nothing keeping Dede in Montana after that. Nothing keeping him, either, for that matter.
He had come so close to being disbarred. It surprised him that he wasn’t more upset about that. But he realized he had no interest in returning to his law practice in Texas. Or returning to Texas at all.
He could sell his practice, walk away with a nice chunk of change and then what?
He knew he was at a crossroads, but not one where he’d ever been before. For the first time in his life, he didn’t know what he was going to do tomorrow or the next day.
He thought about his father’s offer. “There’s some good grazing land that will be coming up for sale soon to the south. If you were interested in staying, I sure could use your help.”
“Dad, I…I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” he’d said truthfully.
“This case has changed your mind about being a divorce lawyer?”
Lantry had chuckled. “You could say that.”
“Or is it the woman?”
“A lot of both,” he’d found himself admitting.
“Are you in love with her?”
Lantry had looked at his father, realizing this talk was Kate’s doing, since it was so unlike his father to ask such a question. “Dede’s still in love with her ex-husband.”
“Oh.” His father had looked uncomfortable. “Kate seems to think Dede’s in love with you. Kate’s seldom wrong about these things.”
Lantry had laughed. “And she told you to talk to me.”
His father had laughed as well. “She might have suggested I mention that land I was thinking about buying. Said there was a beautiful spot down that way for a house.” Grayson had shrugged, unapologetic for trying. “You’re a cowboy, son. It’s in your blood.”
That it was, Lantry thought as he drove toward the ranch, anxious to see Dede.
* * *
THE HOUSE WAS QUIET, Juanita in the kitchen, Kate in her study, knitting. Dede felt restless and more anxious by the hour. Not about going to jail, for she knew Lantry would move heaven and earth so that didn’t happen.
No, it was about leaving Montana—and Lantry.
They hadn’t been together since the cabin in Landusky. She had seen Lantry struggling when he was around her.
“He’s in love with you,” Kate told her that morning when she caught Dede watching Lantry leave the house.
Dede had laughed and shook her head. “I’m sorry, but you’re wrong.”
Kate had smiled a knowing smile. “He doesn’t know how to handle it, since he’s never felt like this before. Trust me. He’s in love with you. Look how hard he’s working to get you cleared of all the charges. Right now he’s trying to get that stupid house-arrest device off your ankle before Christmas day.”
Now Dede stood at the window, remembering Kate’s words. Lantry had definitely spent every waking hour since her arrest trying to get her freed. But she suspected he liked the work because it kept him from having to deal with his feelings, deal with her.
“Lantry thinks you’re still in love with your ex-husband,” Kate had said.
“The man I fell in love with didn’t really exist,” Dede had told her. “It’s hard to explain how I feel about Frank. Empty. Sad. Disappointed. Sorry. I suppose a part of me still loves the man Frank could have been, the man he wanted to be.”
Kate had smiled and hugged her. “You and I have more in common than you might think. I loved a man when I was young. He let me down. It is only now that I realize he never was the man I wanted or needed him to be. But I mourned for years for what that love could have been. As women it isn’t easy to let go of those dreams, is it?”
“No, it isn’t,” Dede said to herself now. Just as it wasn’t going to be easy to leave this place, to leave Kate and the rest of the family who had welcomed her so lovingly. Or to leave Lantry.
Just as it wouldn’t be easy to spend Christmas here with all of them, knowing she would be leaving as soon as the holidays were over.
Since her father’s death, Dede had pretty much ignored Christmas other than to go to church on Christmas Eve.
Kate had insisted Dede stay through the holidays even if Lantry was able to get her exonerated. Kate had been right about one thing: there was nothing waiting for Dede in Texas.
She pressed her fingers against the cool glass of the window as she looked out over the ranch. A Chinook had blown in, the warm wind melting off the snow. The weatherman had promised a white Christmas, though, warning of another storm coming in tonight.
Lantry hadn’t managed to get her freed of the house-arrest device on her ankle, but he had asked that she be given a larger area to roam.
She watched one of the mares running around the corral as if enjoying the feel of the warm wind. Dede thought about telling Kate she was going to walk down to the corral, but didn’t want to disturb her when she was concentrating so hard on her knitting.
The wind was warm and smelled of spring—an illusion, since winter had only begun. Growing up in Wyoming, Dede remembered days like this that teased and tempted.
The sun was low, the daylight fading fast. She wondered when Lantry would be home. Late, she was sure. As she walked, Dede listened to the wind in the large pines. The Christmas lights swung to and fro on the branches.
The mare came right over to her. Dede reached in her pocket and took out the apple she’d gotten from Juanita and offered it to the horse.
“You’re sure pretty,” she said to the horse as the mare chomped the apple then snuffled her hand and pocket to see if there were any more.
Dede felt a sliver of trepidation at the thought of someday enjoying riding again, but Kate had told her this mare was gentle, and as she rubbed its neck she thought the mare wanted to go as badly as she did.
“How about I see if I can round up some tack?” she told the mare. “The best I can do is a ride around the corral, but if you’re up for it, so am I.” The mare whinnied.
Dede headed for the barn, the mare trailing along beside her inside the corral.
It was dark in the big old barn. Dede felt around for a light, snapped it on. Inside the cavernous barn, she could still hear the howl of the wind. It was cooler in here, cold compared to the warm wind and waning sunlight outside.
She walked through the barn toward the stalls and found the tack room. She didn’t hurry and knew part of it was fear.
It had been different riding the two horses she’d borrowed to escape. Greater fears had driven her.
She didn’t have to ride ever again. She heard the mare whinny at the corral fence at the other end of the barn.
Dede laughed as she dragged out a halter and horse blanket and was checking out the array of saddles when she heard the barn door open and close. The wind? Or had Lantry returned and come looking for her?
Her heart did a little flip.
She listened. Must just have been the wind, she thought, disappointed. Dede reached for one of the saddles.
The barn lights went out.