“Or else?”
“I like to think I can take care of myself,” she said, even more shaken as she realized that she and Jack might have been the last two people to see the man alive. Except for the killer. “I wasn’t very appreciative when Jack came to my rescue. I was too shaken by the encounter with the man,” she added, trying to cover for whatever Jack would tell the sheriff. “Now, though...”
He nodded as if thinking the same thing she was—that she’d been lucky. She glanced at the sketch of the dead man on the front page of the paper again and shuddered. She didn’t even want to think about who might have murdered him. Or why, because she feared the killer would be coming for her next.
The sheriff rolled up his newspaper and stuffed it into his pocket again. “If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”
“I’d be happy to. Like I said, I’m sure the man had me confused with someone else.” If only that were true, she thought.
After the sheriff left, she went upstairs and got the gun she kept hidden in the apartment. Claude had warned her. Apparently it was time to start carrying it.
* * *
I KNEW YOUR MOTHER.
That was the first thing Claude Durham said to her. Kate looked up to find a fiftysomething man standing next to her at the Nevada café where she’d been working, just outside Vegas.
At the time, she’d been standing at the pass-through waiting for her last order of the day to come up so she could leave. She’d been killing time, gossiping with Connie, the older waitress she worked with at the small dive of a café out in the middle of the desert.
“That’s quite the pickup line,” she said to the man. Her feet hurt and she was too tired for whatever he was selling. Not only that, he was also too old for her.
He gave her an impatient look. “You sure that’s the way you want to do this?”
She gave him a second glance. He was pale, balding. What little hair he had was short and gray. He had a belly on him and he was sweating profusely.
He’s sick, she’d thought. “Look, mister—”
“I don’t have a lot of time, so let’s cut to the chase,” he interrupted. “If we have to do this here, fine. I knew your mother in Beartooth.” When she didn’t respond, he added, “Montana. Where you were born.”
“My mother never was in Montana.”
“Not your adoptive mother, your real mother, your birth mother.”
“Meg was my real mother.”
“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Too bad she didn’t live longer—maybe she could have taught you to be nicer to your elders. I would have thought your adoptive father, Harvey, could have done better with you than he obviously did.”
“How is it you know so much about my life?” she demanded.
He ignored the question. “They told you that you were adopted, didn’t they?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Did they tell you how they came to raise you in the first place?”
A sinking feeling hit in the pit of her stomach. “What do you mean?”
“What did they tell you about your real...your birth parents?”
She’d asked a few times when she was younger. Her parents had hemmed and hawed. She’d quit asking. “What was there to tell? Obviously my birth mother didn’t want me. She might not have even known who my father was.”
His pale face colored with a flush of anger that surprised her. “That’s bullshit,” he snapped. “Your mother was a saint. She knew exactly who your father was and she loved you more than you—”
“Then why didn’t she raise me?”
“She died when you were eighteen months old.”
His words stopped her cold. It took her a moment before she asked, “What about my father?”
“That’s why I’m here. To tell you. Now, do you want to do this here, or can you tell your boss you’re done so we can get out of here?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but made his way out to an old pickup parked outside.
Her order came up.
“I’ll get that for you,” Connie said.
“Thanks.” Her hands were trembling as she took off her apron, tossed it into a booth, went outside to open the passenger-side door of the man’s truck, but didn’t get in.
“You look like hell.” She wasn’t sure why she said it. Maybe just because it was the truth and it seemed they were about to talk truths.
He laughed, a sick smoker’s cough following it. “I’ll make this quick,” he said when he finally quit coughing. “I’m dying.”
“So you decided to look me up and tell me...what?”
“Get in the truck.”
“First, tell me who you are and why you’re the one bringing me this news.”
He looked out the pickup’s sand-pitted windshield at the café. “What are you doing working in a dump like this? I’ve been watching you for the past couple of days. You’re a damned good waitress. You could do better.”
Anger rushed like a familiar drug through her veins. She’d been told once by a psychologist that she used anger as her go-to defense mechanism. No kidding.
“Thanks for the concern.” She started to slam the truck door, planning to walk away.
“Your mother gave me something to give to you, but I also have something I want you to have. Consider it your inheritance.”
She studied him through the open door of the truck. “If you’re going to try to tell me that you’re my father or some—”
“Just get in and listen to what I have to say. I own a café in Beartooth....”
She didn’t remember sliding into the pickup seat. She did remember telling him to go to hell.
* * *
NETTIE’S NEW RENTER was an enigma. While she looked sweet and innocent, there was an edge to her that told a different story. When Nettie had shown her the apartment, the girl had gone straight to the window that overlooked the paved street running through town. To the southeast, the highway went to Big Timber. To the north, it turned to gravel just out of town before breaking off into dirt roads that turned to 4x4 trails as they headed up into the Crazies.
Beartooth was the end of the road, so to speak. Not the kind of place a young girl would want to hang out.
But that wasn’t the only thing about the girl that bothered Nettie. There was something that seemed almost familiar.
I must be getting old. The other day, I was thinking that Kate LaFond reminded me of someone, she thought now.
She shook her head. Good thing Bob wasn’t here. If she had voiced these suspicions around him, he would have shaken his head and told her she was losing her mind.
“So, what do you think of the apartment?” Nettie had asked the girl when she showed it to her.
She hadn’t even turned from the window as she’d answered. “It’s exactly what I was looking for.”
Nettie had tried not to let the girl’s lack of enthusiasm hurt her feelings. She had decorated the apartment and felt she’d done a remarkable job in making it homey and nice. But apparently her efforts had been wasted on the girl, who cared more about the view.
Curious again about what was so interesting outside, Nettie had moved