Hitched!

He looked at his beautiful wife and was more than grateful she’d agreed to this. He wasn’t sure he could have done it alone. Josey, so far, was a godsend. His grandmother was a lot more on the ball than he’d thought she would be at this age.

Grandma had disappeared into the musty maze of the lodge, leaving them in the entryway. Jack was surprised that he still felt awe, just as he had the first time he’d seen it. This place had been built back in the nineteen forties and had the feel of another era in Western history.

He stared at the varnished log stairway that climbed to the upper floors, remembering all the times he’d seen his mother coming down those stairs.

“Mrs. Winchester said you are to wait down here.” Jack swung around, surprised to see the gnarled, petite elderly woman who had managed to sneak up on them. To his shock, he recognized her. “Enid?” She was still alive?

If she recognized him, she gave no indication as she pointed down the hallway then left, saying she had to get their room ready. She left grumbling to herself.

Behind them, the front door opened, and an elderly man came in carrying Jack’s two pieces of luggage from the trunk of the Cadillac. Alfred, Enid’s husband. Amazing.

He noticed that Josey still had her backpack slung over one shoulder.

Alfred noticed, as well. “I’ll take that,” the old man said, pointing to it.

She shook her head, her hand tightening around the strap. “I’ll keep it with me, thank you.”

Alfred scowled at her before heading up the stairs, his footsteps labored under the weight of the bags and his disapproval.

“I can’t believe those two are still alive,” Jack whispered to Josey, as he led her down the hallway. “I remember them both being old when I was a kid. I guess they weren’t that old, but they sure seemed it.” He wondered if his grandmother would be joining them and was relieved to find the parlor empty.

Josey took a seat, setting her backpack on the floor next to her, always within reach. Jack didn’t even want to speculate on what might be in it. He had a bad feeling it was something he’d be better off not knowing.

Chapter Three

Deputy Sheriff McCall Winchester had been back to work for only a day when she got a call from a fisherman down at the Fred Robinson Bridge on the Missouri River. Paddlefish season hadn’t opened yet. In a few weeks the campground would be full with fishermen lined up along the banks dragging huge hooks through the water in the hopes of snagging one of the incredibly ugly monstrous fish.

This fisherman had been on his way up to Nelson Reservoir, where he’d heard the walleye were biting, but he’d stopped to make a few casts in the Missouri as a break in the long drive, thinking he might hook into a catfish.

Instead he’d snagged a piece of clothing—attached to a body.

“It’s a woman,” he’d said, clearly shaken. “And she’s got a rope around her neck. I’m telling you, it’s a damned noose. Someone hung her!”

Now, as McCall squatted next to the body lying on a tarp at the edge of the water, she saw that the victim looked to be in her mid-twenties. She wore a thin cotton top, no bra and a pair of cutoff jeans over a bright red thong that showed above the waist of the cutoffs. Her hair was dyed blond, her eyes were brown and as empty as the sky overhead, and around her neck was a crude noose of sisal rope. A dozen yards of the rope were coiled next to her.

McCall studied the ligature marks around the dead woman’s neck as the coroner loosened the noose. “Can you tell if she was dead before she went into the water?”

Coroner George Murphy shook his head. “But I can tell you that someone abused the hell out of her for some time before she went into the water.” He pointed to what appeared to be cigarette burns on her thin arms and legs.

“Before he hung her.”

“What kind of monster does stuff like that?” George, a big, florid-faced man in his early thirties, single and shy, was new to this. As an EMT, he’d gotten the coroner job because Frank Brown had retired and no one else wanted it.

“Sheriff?”

McCall didn’t respond at first. She hadn’t gotten used to being acting sheriff. Probably because she hadn’t wanted the job and suspected there was only one reason she had it—Pepper Winchester.

But when the position opened, no one wanted to fill in until a sheriff could be elected. The other deputies all had families and young children and didn’t want the added responsibility.

McCall could appreciate that.

“Sheriff, we found something I think you’d better see.”

“Don’t tell me you found another body,” the coroner said.

McCall turned to see what the deputy was holding. Another noose. Only this one was wrapped around a large tree trunk that the deputies had pulled up onto the riverbank.

As McCall walked over to it, she saw two distinct grooves in the limb where two ropes had been tied. Two ropes. Two nooses. The thick end of the dead branch had recently broken off.

She looked upriver. If the limb had snapped off under the weight of two people hanging from it, then there was a good chance it had fallen into the river and floated down to where the deputy had found it dragging the second noose behind it.

“Better go upriver and see if you can find the spot where our victim was hung,” McCall said. “And we better start looking for a second body in the river.”

PEPPER WINCHESTER RUBBED her temples as she paced the worn carpet of her bedroom, her cane punctuating her frustration.

The first of her grandchildren had arrived—with a new wife. She shouldn’t have been surprised, given Jack’s lineage. None of her sons had a lick of sense when it came to women. They were all too much like their father, suffer his soul in hell. So why should her grandsons be any different?

Her oldest son Worth—or Worthless, as his father had called him—had taken off with some tramp he met in town after Pepper had kicked him out. She would imagine he’d been through a rash of ill-conceived relationships since then.

Brand had married another questionable woman and had two sons, Cordell and Cyrus, before she’d taken off, never to be seen again.

Angus had knocked up the nanny and produced Jack. She shuddered to think how that had all ended.

Trace, her beloved youngest son, had gotten murdered after marrying Ruby Bates and producing McCall, her only granddaughter that she knew of.

Pepper stepped to the window, too restless to sit. When she’d conceived this plan to bring her family back to the ranch, she wasn’t sure who would come. She’d thought the bunch of them would be greedy enough or at least curious enough to return to the ranch. She didn’t kid herself that none of them gave two cents for her. She didn’t blame them, given the way she’d kicked them all off the ranch twenty-seven years ago and hadn’t seen one of them since.

So why was she surprised that Jack wasn’t what she’d expected? The same could be said for his wife. She wasn’t sure what to make of either of them yet.

She pulled back the curtain and stared out at the land. Her land. She remembered the first time she’d seen it. She’d been so young and so in love when Call had brought her back here after their whirlwind love affair and impromptu marriage.

He hadn’t known any more about her than she had him.

How foolish they both had been.

It had been hard at first, living on such an isolated, remote ranch. Call had hired a staff to do everything and insisted no wife of his would have to lift a finger.

Pepper had been restless. She’d learned to ride a horse and spent most of her days exploring the ranch. That was how she’d met neighboring rancher Hunt McCormick.

She shivered at the memory as she spotted movement in the shadows next to the barn. Squinting, she saw that it was Enid and her husband, Alfred. They had their heads together and their conversation looked serious. It wasn’t the first time she’d caught them like that recently.

What were they up to? Pepper felt her stomach roil. As if her family wasn’t worry enough.

JOSEY STUDIED JACK. He seemed nervous now that they were here at the ranch. Was he realizing, like her, that his grandmother had gotten him here under false pretenses?

“As you’ve probably gathered, my mother was the nanny here as well as the mistress of Angus Winchester, my father,” Jack said distractedly, as he moved to look out the window. “According to my mother, they had to keep their affair secret because my grandmother didn’t approve and would have cut Angus off without a cent.” He turned to look at her. “As it was, Pepper cut him and the rest of her family off twenty-seven years ago without a cent, saying she didn’t give a damn what they did. When my father died, my grandmother didn’t even bother to come to his funeral or send flowers or even a card.”

“Why would you come back here to see your grandmother after that?” Josey had to ask.