Montana Lawman

Montana Lawman

Allison Leigh

ALLISON LEIGH

There is a saying that you can never be too rich or too thin. Allison doesn’t believe that, but she does believe that you can never have enough books! When her stories find a way into the hearts—and bookshelves—of others, Allison says she feels she’s done something right. Making her home in Arizona with her husband, she enjoys hearing from her readers at Allison@allisonleigh.com or P.O. Box 40772, Mesa, AZ 85274-0772.

For my girls

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

P anic tasted cold and dark in her mouth as Molly Brewster sat bolt upright. Her heart charged in her chest and she sucked in a harsh breath, willing away a surge of nausea. Something was gouging into her hip and she reached blindly, fingers closing over the weapon. She yanked, pulled it free and stared at it.

How to Take Control of Your Life—and Keep It. The title of the hardcover book stared back at her.

She’d fallen asleep on the couch reading.

Her panic oozed away, leaving her limp. She swung her legs off the couch and huddled forward, pushing the book onto the coffee table. She was trembling and her heart still knocked crazily inside her chest, so loud she fancied she could hear it in her ears.

“It’s Sunday afternoon, Molly,” she whispered. “You’re perfectly safe.”

The knocking grew to a thunderous sound.

The door. Someone was at the door. Pounding louder than her heartbeat, making the door shudder nearly as much as she was.

Shaking her head at her foolishness, Molly pushed off the couch and hurriedly crossed the living room toward the door. The nightmare she’d been having clung to her mind, making her feel more fuzzy than ever, and her hand shook as she grabbed hold of the doorknob.

She no longer lived in fear.

She deliberately yanked open the door, if only to prove to herself that the nightmare was nothing but imaginings. The tall man standing on the other side, though, nearly startled her right out of the few wits she still possessed. Her hand kept a tight, sweaty hold of the doorknob.

Control. She scrambled frantically for the silent mantra. You are in control.

She made herself look at him, gaze skimming up the blue jeans, stuttering over the badge hooked over his belt, traveling over a hard torso clad in a khaki-colored uniform shirt that was probably crisp when he’d put it on, but now looked more than a little wilted because of the heat. Beyond that, to his sharp features, black hair and dark, inscrutable brown eyes, she couldn’t force herself to look. Control only went so far, and the man had made her feel itchy from the first time she’d seen him, even before she’d known what he was.

The doorknob was practically making a permanent imprint on the palm of her hand, but she still couldn’t seem to make herself let go. “Deputy Tanner. What are you d-doing here?”

Holt Tanner slid his dark glasses down a notch, eyeing the woman clinging to her door as if it were a life raft. Approximate height, five-five. Weight about one-fifteen. Age had been listed as twenty-seven, but she looked even younger…regardless, she was too damned young for him.

Annoyed with the thought, Holt pulled off his sunglasses completely and tucked them in his shirt. “I need to ask you some questions, Ms. Brewster.”

There wasn’t one lick of color in her alabaster face. If anything, she looked as if she’d seen a ghost. As they had almost from the moment he’d met Molly Brewster when he’d first moved to Rumor eight months ago, her eyes glanced at him, then away. Just long enough for him to get a gut-tightening sight of those incredibly light blue eyes surrounded by lush black lashes. Just long enough for him to wonder, yet again, what she was hiding.

If there was one thing Deputy Sheriff Holt Tanner knew for certain, it was that he couldn’t afford to trust Molly Brewster. She was secretive, for one thing. And she made him hot, for another. One or the other irritation was bad enough, but the combination of the two was definitely no good for his peace of mind.

To be clichéd about it—been there, done that.

“Regarding?” Her delicate brows arched in query, and the coolness of her voice was completely belied by the fact that she looked as if a sharp word would make her shatter.

“Harriet Martel’s death.”

“I answered all of your questions at the sheriff’s station weeks ago.”

He looked past her into the dim coolness of her living room, noticing the way she shifted when he did so. As if she didn’t want him to see inside. Considering he was a good half foot taller than she was, she could shift all she wanted and he’d still see over her head into the pin-neat home.

There was a flowered couch, an armchair, a coffee table with a book on it, and little else to indicate the type of person dwelling there. “You were very cooperative when you came to the station,” he agreed smoothly. “And you’ve been cooperative since then when we’ve spoken. May I come in?”

Her lips were pale, vulnerably nude and soft looking until they drew up all tight the way they invariably did whenever he was around her. “It’s a, um, a terrible mess.”

He considered telling her that she should never bother lying. She was pretty miserable at it. But he was used to people who didn’t want to talk with a cop no matter what the circumstances. She just didn’t know that he wasn’t one to give up on a case.

No matter what the cost.

“We could always talk down at the station,” he said pointedly. “One way or the other, Ms. Brewster, I do intend to talk with you.”

Her lashes swept down, and it looked to him as if she was conducting a mental struggle. “Have a seat,” she said after a moment, “and I’ll bring out some cold lemonade.”

The concession was better than nothing. But he made no move toward the two iron chairs sitting on her railed porch until she’d carefully closed the front door in his face.

Whistling tunelessly, Holt dropped down onto one of the chairs—the one closest to the front door. He tugged loose the top button on his shirt and dragged the brown tie even looser. Who’d have thought he’d have to leave a lifetime in L.A. for a dinky town in Montana to find out just how miserable August heat could be?

He stretched his legs out in front of him and studied the quiet street on which Molly Brewster, librarian, lived. The town park was only a block away, and in the silent afternoon he could hear the occasional shriek or laugh coming from that direction.

He could feel the minutes ticking by as surely as he could feel the sweat creeping down his neck. He twitched his tie again, stretched out his legs a little more and watched an ugly little spider creep across the whitewashed eave. It, at least, seemed oblivious to the heat that had been making even the most even-keeled people in town cranky.

The creak of the door warned him the moment before Molly stepped out onto the porch, carrying two tall, slender glasses. Lemon slices and ice cubes jostled as she carefully stepped past him to set one of the glasses on the small table separating the chairs. Without looking at him, she sat down, cradling her own glass in both hands.

He looked at her. Feet encased in tidy white tennis shoes placed squarely on the wooden porch; the hem of her lightweight blue sundress tugged down as near to her knees as possible.

Shapely knees.

He stifled a sigh and picked up his glass of lemonade. It was tart and refreshing and he barely kept from guzzling it down because of the damned afternoon heat. Because her knees were smooth and way too beckoning. Because she was a decade younger than he was, and he wasn’t there to notice her damned, pretty knees.

He set the lemonade back on the glass-and-iron table with a tad more force than was wise, and was grateful the glass didn’t just crack right then and there. “You found the body a little more than four weeks ago.”

She was staring fixedly ahead of her, but at least there was more color in her face, so he wasn’t concerned she might keel over in a dead faint. “I found Harriet, Deputy.” Her voice was soft, but held a distinct edge.

“You were friends with her.”

“Most people called her the head librarian, considering the small staff we have, but she was actually the director of the public library. My boss,” Molly corrected. “As you well know. She reported directly to the board of trustees for the library.”

“And now you’re the head librarian.”

At that, she seemed to sigh a little. “The library needs to have someone in charge. Rather like the sheriff’s department, I should think.”

He watched her thumb glide back and forth over the moisture condensing on her glass. Her nails were unpainted, neatly groomed, cut short. If she was the type to chew her nails, she hid it well.

His ex-wife had spent a weekly fortune having her nails kept long and viper-red. He watched Molly’s thumb a moment longer. Her unvarnished, natural-looking fingers were a far cry more feminine than Vanessa’s could ever claim to have been. The thought snuck in, out of place and definitely unwanted.

“Why is it that Sheriff Reingard assigned Harriet’s case to you, anyway?”

It was a fair enough question, though he could have done without the challenging attitude underlying her words. “I was a detective in California before I came to Montana.”

Her expression didn’t change. “What was your crime that you were banished all the way from sunny California to our little town?”

“You think Rumor is a destination for those who are banished? Is that why you’re here from…wherever?”

“Sunday afternoons are generally spent with family and friends around here,” she said after a moment, not addressing his question any more than he’d addressed hers. “At the Calico Diner or the Rooftop Café.”

“Pretty hot afternoon to spend at the Rooftop unless you can get a seat inside.” He picked up his glass and drank down another third. But she was right. Rumor was the kind of place where families spent Sunday afternoons together. They had dinner together either at home or at one of the popular places in town, or they had picnics down at the park.

They weren’t sitting on the porches of librarians conducting a murder investigation. That was definitely more Holt’s type of life. Even Dave Reingard was probably bellying up to a pot roast and garden salad with his wife Dee Dee and their five kids.

“Yet, fortunately for me, you’re home on a Sunday afternoon,” he said blandly. “Family and friends give you the day off today or something?”

Her lips tightened a little and he nearly smiled. He knew for a fact that Ms. Molly Brewster was as standoffish as he was. Maybe more. Yet she’d worked with Harriet Martel as the assistant librarian for all of the eighteen months since she’d moved to Rumor from God-knew-where.

“What did you want to know, Deputy? I’d like to get back to what I was doing before you interrupted me.”

He picked up his lemonade once again, casually swirling the liquid in the glass. He wasn’t surprised that it was homemade. She looked the sort to make homemade lemonade on hot August afternoons. Truth be told, she looked the sort to be rocking babies and baking cookies. But it was her secretive nature that nagged at him. “Which was what?”

“None of your business.”

He smiled faintly. “Is it me you don’t like, or men in general?”

“What did you say your reason was for intruding on my afternoon?”

“Don’t you want Harriet’s murderer to be found, Molly?”

Her face paled a little. She carefully set aside her lemonade. “Of course I do.”

“Then help me.”

“Help you what?” She rose to her feet, hugging her arms around her as if it were cold outside, instead of just shy of Hades. “I’ve already told you everything I know. I went to Harriet’s home that Monday because she hadn’t shown up for work. It was completely unlike her, and though I’d called a few times, she didn’t answer. So I drove over to her house because I was concerned. The door was unlocked and she was…was—”

Seated in a chair, a single .22 caliber GSW to the head. The weapon that fired the shot was on the floor right beside her, intending to look like suicide. Chelsea Kearns, the forensics examiner who’d been called in on the case, had conclusively ruled this out.

“I don’t need you to go over what you found again at Harriet’s home, Molly,” he said quietly.

The relief that crossed her face was nearly painful to see and more in keeping with her quiet blond prettiness than her barely veiled antagonism. “Then, I…I don’t understand what you do want,” she said. “I’ve already told you everything I know.”

“Tell me what you don’t know.”

She looked at him, her eyes shadowed. “Shall I make up things, then? Is that the kind of law enforcement officer you are?”

“No, I don’t want you to make up anything. Look.” He sat forward, resting his wrists on his knees. “Sit down. Relax. Please,” he finally added.

She slowly sat. Tugged her dress down closer to her knees again, as if she knew he had a hard time not looking at them. He could have told her that her smooth, lightly tanned calves and trim ankles, clad in tiny white socks were just as much a distraction, but figured it wouldn’t help the situation. She already looked at him as if he were something to be scraped off her shoe.

“There’s got to be something we’re missing,” he told her. “Harriet obviously had a private life that nobody knew about. She was four months pregnant at the time of her death. She didn’t get that way by Immaculate Conception. And from everything that her sister, Louise Holmes, has told us, it doesn’t seem as if Harriet was likely to have been artificially inseminated.”

Molly’s cheeks went pink, and for a minute he was in danger of losing his train of thought.

“You think the father of her baby killed her?”

Tessa Madison, the clairvoyant who’d been brought in by Harriet’s nephew, Colby, had gotten the sense that Harriet was resisting an abortion. But Holt was more interested in physical evidence than psychic impressions. He didn’t discount them, but a jury wasn’t gonna convict on “feelings.”

He rubbed his forehead, wondering at that moment why the hell he’d ever believed moving to Montana would be a lifesaver. “I think that there was more going on in Harriet’s life than some people knew. Look at the way she had an ex-husband turn up.”

“I read in the papers that Warren Parrish isn’t a suspect, after all. He had an alibi or something, didn’t he?”

Holt had liked Parrish a lot for the crime. But facts were facts and there was no way Parrish could have killed his former wife. “The more I find out about Harriet,” he said, “the more complete a picture I can create of her life. The better I understand Harriet, the better I’ll understand her murder.”

“I can’t think there is anything that would make murder understandable.”

“Understandable. Not condonable.”

“Do you have any other, um, suspects?”

Not one we can find. “I can’t comment on that,” he said.

For the first time, her lips twitched. “How wise of you, considering I’d hotfoot it right to the newspaper office to give them a scoop for the Monday-morning edition. Or worse, I might run immediately over to the Calico and blab your report.”

“The news at eleven has nothing on the speed of the Rumor grapevine.”

Her eyes met his in shared humor for the briefest of moments.

Even then it was too long.

He pulled his small notepad out of his pocket and deliberately thumbed through the pages. The humidity and heat was even having an effect on the thin pages. In some places his ink was smudging.

Harriet’s writing had been smudged during the last moments of her life as she sat at her desk, he reminded himself grimly. She’d used only what she’d had available to her to leave behind three scrawled initials—a novel and her own blood. “Did Harriet keep a journal? A diary?”

“I told you before that I never saw one.”

“Then you can tell me again.”

Her shoulders visibly stiffened. “Why does this feel like an interrogation?”

Holt looked at her. “Trust me, Molly. If I were really interrogating you, you’d know it.”

Her lashes swept down, and color suddenly rode high on her velvety cheeks. “It’s you,” she said suddenly. “I don’t like you.”

He’d been a cop for more than fifteen years, and he had a fair ability to read people. Maybe that’s why he could see that she was more surprised at the soft, fierce words that had escaped her lips than he was at hearing them. And for a moment he let himself focus on Molly Brewster. Not as an irritatingly inconvenient component of his investigation but as the puzzle that she was, all on her own.

Oh, yeah, she was surprised at the words that had popped out from her mouth. She was also bracing herself, as if she expected him to slam her in the hoosegow for speaking her mind.

“It’s good to say what you feel.” He picked up the lemonade and finished it off, wondering why his suspicious nature had taken that moment to step back in favor of wanting to put her at ease. It was just more evidence that when it came to women, his instincts were all messed up.

Her smooth forehead crinkled slightly. “Is it? I suppose you make a habit of doing so.”

Now that was a laugh. “A diary, Molly. Or journal. Think about it. Did Harriet doodle on her desk pad at work?” Tessa had gotten some strong impressions when she’d been near Harriet’s desk at the library. “Did she keep phone messages tucked away in a file? Confide in you over coffee on Monday morning before the library opened? Anything?”

“Harriet drank grapefruit juice in the mornings at the library, not coffee. And you already went over her office for evidence. Between you and the sheriff when he did it, you two practically tore the office apart. I even had to have some screws tightened on her desk because you’d worked the side piece loose.”

He stifled an oath. She was secretive and she didn’t like giving simple, straight answers. Well, hell, no wonder he wanted to take her to bed. She was like every other woman he’d had the misfortune to want. As far as he was concerned, it was like some cosmic joke on him. The only women he was attracted to were the very women he couldn’t afford to trust. The kind that ended up putting him through a wringer before they were through.

The case, he coldly reminded himself. Concentrate on the case.

“Other than the morning when you went out to check on her, had you ever been at Harriet’s house before?”

Her lips firmed. He waited, wondering if she’d have the nerve to lie, even though her face plainly showed it when she did. “Yes,” she finally said.

“How many times?”

Her shoulders shifted. “I don’t know.”

“When?”

“Just after I moved here.”

“Why?”

“To go over some details.”

“Personal details?”

“No!” She wouldn’t look at him. “About the job at the library.”

“How did you get the job?”

“Harriet offered it to me.”

“After you’d been banished to Rumor?”

“I wasn’t banished! Rumor is a haven, not a prison.” She’d jumped to her feet again.

A haven from what? “So you applied for the job after you moved here?”

“No.”

“Then how did you get it? Apply by mail, phone, fax, email?”

“I met Harriet at a conference and she offered me the job.”

“Just like that.”

Her teeth were clenched. “Just like that.”

“So, at this conference, did you two hang out together? Hit happy hour with the rest of the ladies?”

“I didn’t hang out with Harriet. And I seriously doubt she ever once went out to a happy hour.”

He sat back, hitching his ankle up to his knee and lazily tapped the notepad on his bent leg. “Why?”

“She wasn’t like that.”

Frankly, based on his brief encounters with Harriet Martel before her death, he had a hard time seeing her as a barfly. She’d been brusque, albeit helpful enough, when he’d gone into the library for some reference material. Not until she’d died and he’d begun investigating her murder had stories of her quiet, kindhearted actions come to light to help counteract the image of the solitary woman. In her mid-forties, Harriet had been strong-willed, opinionated and not immediately personable, though she’d done a lot of kind things for other people.

“How do you know she wasn’t like that?”

“I worked with her!”

“Yes, you did,” he agreed softly. “Yet you expect me to believe that you and the victim didn’t once have any kind of conversation that verged on personal matters. That she never confided in you, that you never overheard her confide in someone else. Come on, Molly, the library isn’t that large. Your office even connected with hers.”

She looked away, her jaw set. But it was too late; he’d already seen the sheen in her eyes that turned them from barely there blue to glistening aquamarine. He pushed to his feet and moved around until he could see her face.

Between him, the two chairs and little table and the rail around the porch, she had no place to go, and he instinctively kept from crowding her any more than necessary. “What are you afraid of, Molly? Do you suspect someone yourself? Just tell me. I’ll protect you.”

Her head suddenly went back, and the part of him inside that hadn’t turned to stone long ago went cold at the expression in her eyes.

“The last thing I need is a cop vowing protection.” Scorn practically dripped from her tense body.

“Are you saying that you do know something? Molly, you can voluntarily help me or not. Either way, I’ll get at the truth. Whatever you’re hiding will come out.”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“That’s no threat.” He lifted his hand, narrowing his eyes a little when she jerked back. He continued the movement, swiping away the spider that was busily spinning a line of web straight toward her shoulder. “I always find my man. Or my woman.”