Beartooth.
He thought about when he’d questioned Jack about the horsehair hitched rope from the murder scene. Of course there was no reason Jack would connect the man he’d chased off down the alley the night before—with the murder weapon, right?
* * *
JACK HAD JUST driven up in front of his cabin when he saw the sheriff sitting in the shade of his porch.
He felt that old sinking feeling he always did at the sight of a lawman. Maybe that too was genetic.
While in prison he’d learned that crime and violence ran in some families. He knew he should feel lucky that it was only trouble that coursed through his DNA. But then maybe trouble was like a gateway drug, and violence was only one misstep away.
Either way, he had a sheriff sitting on his porch waiting for him.
He shut off the engine and climbed out of his pickup. “Howdy, Sheriff,” he said. “Glad to see you made yourself comfortable.”
“I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“Nope, sure don’t,” Jack said as he climbed the steps. Too late, he thought about the note in his pocket, the one he’d sneaked out of Kate’s discarded apron. If it was found on him— “Can I get you a cold one?”
He wasn’t surprised when the sheriff shook his head. “Just need a few minutes of your time. The fair opens today. I would imagine that like everyone else in the county, you’re headed there.”
Jack nodded and leaned against the porch rail. He was too antsy to sit. He hadn’t forgotten being hauled off to jail by the sheriff in the wee hours of the morning two years ago for something he hadn’t done. He didn’t need to remind himself that it could happen again. Innocent men really did get arrested sometimes and sent to prison.
“You want to take this inside?” he asked the sheriff.
“Out here is fine. It’s such a beautiful day.”
Wasn’t it, though? Jack wanted to say, “Get on with it,” but he held his tongue. The old Jack French wouldn’t have been able to.
“I don’t know if you’ve seen today’s newspaper or not,” the sheriff said and reached into his jacket pocket.
What the hell? Jack thought. How long was this going to drag out? He reached for the paper, unrolled it and stiffened as he glanced at the sketch of the man he’d seen the other night in the alley.
He could feel the sheriff’s gaze on him. “Recognize him?”
Frank Curry wouldn’t be sitting on his porch unless he knew that Jack did.
“This is the man who was bothering Kate LaFond a few nights ago in the alley by the café,” Jack said, and he saw the sheriff sit up a little in the old rocker.
“I understand you hit him.”
“Only after I heard him hit the woman. I didn’t know who she was. It was my first night back and I really didn’t want to get involved, but...” He shrugged.
“She said she wasn’t very gracious about you coming to her rescue.”
Jack smiled at that.
“You didn’t know the man from prison?”
He thought of the hitched rope the sheriff had shown him with the blood on it. “Never seen him before in my life. This the man I heard was found down by the river?”
“Murdered,” Frank said.
That didn’t come as a surprise, given the blood on the rope.
“So you never crossed paths until a few nights ago,” the sheriff said.
“Nope.”
Frank got to his feet. “Remember that horsehair hitched rope I showed you? You said Montana State Prison’s cons hadn’t hitched it.”
Jack waited.
“You were right. I checked. Seems only four prisons in the West are known for hitching horsehair. Deer Lodge, Montana; Yuma, Arizona; Walla Walla, Washington; and Rawlins, Wyoming. Each one has its own designs and colors. I’m thinking it might be from the Yuma prison. But I suspect you probably already knew that.” He was eyeing Jack, waiting.
Jack shook his head. “Like I said, I never hitched in prison. Too busy working the ranch. It just didn’t look like any pattern I’d seen up there.”
The sheriff rubbed a hand over his square jaw. “You know I never figured you for rustling that bull. I always had the feeling there was more to it.” His gaze locked with Jack’s. “But if you’re innocent as you said you were that night I arrested you, then I can’t help but wonder who would do something like that to you and why.”
Jack didn’t move, didn’t breathe. He’d realized as he was being dragged out of his house that morning two years ago that he’d been set up, but he’d saved his breath after his initial cry of innocence. When there is a world-class bull in your corral that doesn’t belong to you and you’ve been pissing in the wind for much too long, well, you just have to figure that you’ve practically been asking for it.
“It cost you two years of your life, any way you look at it,” the sheriff said. “That would make an innocent man pretty angry. Might even make him want to get retribution. ’Course there’s no way to get back those years, no matter what a man was to do.”
Jack held his tongue.
“I’ve always liked you, Jack,” the sheriff said as he tipped his hat. “I’d like to see you stay out of trouble.”
Jack let out the breath he’d been holding along with a chuckle. “Me, too, Sheriff. Me, too.” Right now retribution was the furthest thing from his mind.
His thoughts were with Kate LaFond and her conversation with the man in the alley, the now dead man.
“I’ve been looking for you. I just didn’t expect to find you here.”
What had the dead man meant by that?
“Let go of me. I already told you. You have the wrong woman. But if you don’t leave me alone—”
You’ll end up dead?
Maybe it had been a case of mistaken identify, just as Kate had said. Or maybe not. His gut told him there was a whole lot more to it. Just as there was more to the woman herself.
He didn’t dig the note out of his pocket until the sheriff had driven away. Earlier, he’d stopped by the post office to pick up his mail. Something had made him circle to the back of the café. Lou, the cook, had been out by the garage, smoking a cigarette.
Jack had stepped into the café kitchen without anyone seeing him. Kate was busy out front with Cilla, talking quilts. Jack had seen the worn aprons in the bin and on a hunch had looked in the pockets.
At the time, he’d just been curious after seeing Kate’s first reaction to the note.
