if the law doesn’t?” Rylan asked.
“Then we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”
Rylan studied his father for a long moment. “I’ll wait to see what the sheriff comes up with.”
His father laid a big hand on his shoulder. “Thank you, son. I can’t lose another one of you.”
* * *
SHERIFF FRANK CURRY dragged the evidence box marked Ginny Sue West over to his desk and lifted the top. Until recently, it had been years since he’d reviewed the material. He’d had to force himself to put it away. The case had kept him awake at night.
He’d read through the report dozens of times. Everything had been pretty straightforward. Local girl Ginny West had been struck in the head with a blunt object before her body had been dumped beside the road a couple of miles from town.
She’d still been alive at the time. In the shallow ditch where she was found, there was evidence of where she’d tried to crawl out. But her injuries had been significant. She’d died of the blows she’d sustained before her body had been found.
There were no defensive wounds, which led him to believe she’d known her killer, and that’s why she’d gotten into a vehicle with him. That didn’t narrow down the suspects since Ginny West would have felt safe getting into a vehicle with most anyone in the county.
The ranch pickup Ginny had driven into town had been found behind the Range Rider bar. Originally, Frank had thought she might have met with foul play because of something that had happened in the bar earlier that night.
However, no one remembered seeing her. Which had led him to believe she’d never gone inside the bar. Whoever she’d run into in the parking lot behind the bar had made sure of that. Which could explain why her purse was found in the pickup.
The main suspect had been Ginny’s boyfriend who’d she’d broken up with about a week prior to her murder. Several locals had seen Carson Grant arguing with Ginny in public. It hadn’t helped either that Carson was WT Grant’s son or that Carson had been in some minor scrapes growing up. People in this community never forgot.
Carson, who’d sworn he’d been on the ranch all night, also had an alibi. And there was no evidence to prove he’d had a hand in Ginny’s murder. The town was convinced, though, and Frank thought it had been smart of WT to send Carson away.
Now, with the new evidence and Carson back in Beartooth, if there was any chance of closing this cold case, then Frank was taking it. But the last thing he needed was another murder on his hands, though.
He had asked the lab to put a rush on the tests. It was a long shot, but if he could get some DNA evidence, they could all move on with their lives. And if there was nothing on the barrette... At the very least it had gotten Carson back to town. Now he just had to hope talk of new evidence would force the killer to make a mistake and out himself.
His instincts told him that even with his suspicions about Carson Grant, this case wasn’t as cut-and-dried as everyone thought.
CHAPTER FIVE
CARSON LEFT THE HOUSE after dinner on the pretense of going for a walk. Cherry had turned in early. He couldn’t help smiling when he thought about her and WT at dinner. He wished he was more like her. She could handle WT with one hand tied behind her.
Margaret, the housekeeper and cook, had put a box of his old clothes in the bedroom he and Cherry shared. He’d found a pair of his Western boots and put them on, along with some worn jeans and a flannel shirt. When he looked in the mirror, it gave him a shock. He’d expected to see the twenty-year-old he’d been, but his face gave away an unmistakable regret.
He’d left the house, unable to bear another moment with his father. He hadn’t gone far down the road when he saw Destry go roaring past in one of the ranch pickups.
The fact that she was just now coming back didn’t bode well. Something told him the cows she’d gone to rescue from the road weren’t the only problem she’d run into. Did it have something to do with him?
He’d known his being back here would be trouble for her. He loved his sister and hated what he’d put her through already. Now it was about to get worse. Destry would be collateral damage, but he had little choice. All of this had been set in motion long before she was even born.
It wasn’t far to the homestead house as the crow flies, but over a mile by road. After he started down the mountain, he spotted the barn and corrals on the mountain just out of sight from the house. Nearby was the airstrip and hangar where the plane was kept.
Not far into the walk, he regretted not driving. The wind felt cold. Either that or his blood had thinned. It wouldn’t be long before snow would blanket the ground, and stay there through April, even May.
Down the road in the fading light of day, he caught sight of the old house where he and Destry had grown up.
“So you were born...poor?” Cherry had asked.
“My father had been dirt poor, as WT called it. He was doing okay by the time I came along and even better when Destry was born. We weren’t rich, by any means. We lived in the old homestead. He hadn’t built the new place yet or had his plane accident.” Funny, but Carson recalled those years more fondly than he’d expected he would.
“WT made some good investments, bought up any land that came available—and usually cheaply since this was before Montana property went sky high. As they say, the rest is history,” he’d told her.
Cherry had been impressed. “Well, that’s good for you,” she’d said.
Was it? If WT still lived in the old homestead house and the ranch was small as it had been when he started, would he be so dead set on his son taking the place over? Carson doubted it.
And wouldn’t things have been different when Ginny West was murdered? WT couldn’t have afforded to send his son away for eleven years. Carson would have had to stay—no matter the consequences.
Cherry had been surprised that his sister preferred living in the two-story log house instead of the mansion their father had built. Carson understood only too well. But he would have made the old man build him his own house, something new and modern and even farther away. Clearly, he wasn’t his sister.
The twilight cast a soft silver sheen over the land, making the dark pines shimmer as he crossed the cattleguard and approached the house. This far north, the sun didn’t set in the summer months until almost eleven. Now, though, it was getting dark by eight-thirty. Soon it would be dark by five.
The wind had picked up even more, he noticed distractedly. Something was definitely blowing in. The wind was so strong in this part of Montana that it had blown over semis on the interstate and knocked train cars off their tracks.
It was worse in the winter when wind howled across the eaves and whipped snow into huge sculpted drifts. He remembered waking to find he couldn’t get out to help feed the animals because the snow had blown in against the door. Often he’d had to plow the road out so he and Destry could get to the county road to catch the school bus.
It had become a state joke that while other states closed their schools when they got a skiff of snow or the thermometer dropped below
