“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.”
* * *
BRODY 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.
* * *
AFTER 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