Also the Branding Iron was the only café in Beartooth, and she knew if it didn’t open again quickly after his death, the townsfolk would start going down the road to Big Timber. They were creatures of habit. She didn’t want their habit of hanging out at the Branding Iron to change.
“Why don’t you show me what you brought?” she said, realizing the walls definitely could use a coat of fresh paint.
The women of the Beartooth Quilting Society had made the first and only friendly overture anyone had made toward her since she’d arrived in town. She knew only too well how these small communities were when it came to outsiders. Which was just fine. She preferred her privacy, and anyway, she wouldn’t be staying long, now, would she? She thought of Jack French’s comment earlier about her leaving. What was it Jack thought he knew?
“Aren’t you worried that the quilts will smell like grease before long?” Kate asked, the scent of bacon permeating the air as she spoke.
“We’ll rotate them in and out,” Cilla said. “And we’ll do all the hanging and taking down. You won’t have to mess with any of it.”
Kate considered the walls. “I was thinking about painting first.” Well, she was now. “What color would you suggest?” That was something else she didn’t have a clue about.
“A nice neutral. You know, I have some extra paint from when I did my downstairs. Why don’t the girls and I swing by with it Monday after you close? It wouldn’t take us any time at all.”
“Cilla, that is such a generous offer, but—”
“Not at all. We’re glad to do it. Now, come take a look at these quilts and see what you think.”
Kate felt swept along, as if she’d fallen into the roaring creek that ran by town and was now on her way to the Gulf of Mexico via the Yellowstone, Missouri and Mississippi rivers.
“I think they’ll do this place wonders, don’t you?” Cilla said after she’d shown Kate an array of intricate and beautiful quilts.
“I love them all,” Kate said. “And I appreciate you thinking of me.”
Cilla smiled, a twinkle in her eye. “I can’t imagine what brought you to Beartooth, but I’m glad you’re here. I hope you plan to stay.”
“Thank you,” Kate said, and glanced toward the Beartooth General Store across the street. As usual, Nettie Benton was watching from the front window, determined to find out the truth about her new neighbor. Kate feared Nettie wouldn’t stop until she uncovered everything about her.
Kate remembered the note and felt a chill run the length of her spine. She’d put the note in her apron pocket and dropped the apron in the bin by the back door earlier when she’d been visiting with Bethany.
After waving goodbye to Cilla, Kate locked the door, flipped the sign in the window to Closed and told Lou to take the day off. The moment he left, she hurried to the bin with the aprons in it. As she pulled hers out and reached into the pocket, her heart took off at a gallop. Frantically she dug in one pocket, then the other.
The note was gone.
CHAPTER FIVE
KATE WAS FRANTICALLY DIGGING through the aprons in the bin, searching for the note, when she heard a vehicle drive up in front of the café. She ignored it and the knock at the front door. The Closed sign was up. The person would eventually take the hint and leave.
She tried to tell herself not to panic. She didn’t need to find the note. She knew only too well what it had said. So why was she panicking?
Because she didn’t want the note to fall into anyone else’s hands.
With a jolt, she realized it probably already had.
“You must not have heard my knock.”
Kate whirled around to find the sheriff standing in the back doorway. A large, broad-shouldered man in his fifties, he blocked out the sun.
“Lose something?” he asked. He was good-looking, even for a man his age. His blond hair had started to gray, but it wasn’t noticeable except for a little in his thick, drooping mustache. He removed his Stetson as he opened the screen door and stepped into the back of the café, his gaze intent on her in a way that made her heart hammer even harder.
“My grocery order,” she said as she picked up the pile of towels and aprons she’d tossed on the floor in her search, and dropped them back into the hamper. “I thought I left it in my apron. Apparently, I left it somewhere else,” Kate said, pulling herself together. “I thought I’d drop it off on my way to the fair.”
She hadn’t planned on going to the fair. Quite the contrary—she had other, more important things to do. But if the sheriff thought he was keeping her...
“I won’t keep you long,” he said, taking the hint. He stood, turning the brim of his Stetson in his fingers as he looked toward the dining room. “Mind if we have a seat?”
“What is this about?” she asked. She’d seen him go to the general store the other day before coming over for his usual morning cup of coffee. Had Nettie put some bug in his ear? Everyone in the county knew he had a crush on Nettie Benton. Not that anyone could understand what he saw in the nosy old woman.
“Just need to have a little chat with you,” the sheriff said as he took a seat in one of the booths.
Kate tried to imagine what Nettie could have told him. It would be just like Nettie to fill his ear with some nonsense or other. Or even shades of the truth, which could be worse.
“Can I get you a cup of coffee?”
“No thanks, Ms. LaFond. I don’t want to keep you from the fair.”
She nodded. Bracing herself, she joined him in the booth, trying hard to hide how nervous he was making her. First the note, and now whatever this was.
“Have you seen this morning’s newspaper?” he asked.
She hadn’t had a chance and said as much.
He pulled a copy from his jacket pocket and shoved it across the table at her. “If you don’t mind taking a look.”
She flattened the newspaper, the sketch on page one practically leaping off the page at her—along with the headline: Do You Know This Man? Kate knew the sheriff couldn’t have missed her startled reaction.
“Have you ever seen this man before?” he asked.
Kate suspected he already knew the answer. The moment she’d seen the sketch, she’d given herself away. Not that it mattered. She couldn’t lie. Jack French had not only seen her with the dead man, he’d also punched him and bloodied the man’s nose.
“He’s dead?” She didn’t have to fake her surprise or the break in her voice.
“He was murdered.”
She leaned back against the booth seat and tried to catch her breath. “Murdered?” She’d heard some of the locals talking about a hobo who’d been found down by the Yellowstone River, but that was more than twenty miles away. There’d been no mention of murder.
The sheriff sat across from her, waiting—and watching her with that same intensity she’d noticed when he’d walked in. “How do you know the man?”
“I don’t know him. I’d never seen him before he accosted me the other night in the alley beside the café. Fortunately, Jack came along—”
“Jack?”
“Jack French. He ran him off.”
“And then what happened?”
“Nothing. The man left,