Married In Montana

“A trash can,” Rafe said, holding up the bag of refuse. “This where you spend your Sunday afternoons?”

“Sometimes.” Bobby swung his legs—still in his Sunday pants and shiny boots—back and forth from the knees. He’d ditched the tie and folded back his starched shirt cuffs. “You might’ve noticed, we’re not exactly living at the center of the social world.”

“Who are your friends?”

“Megan Wheeler.” Bobby touched the top of her head with his drink can. “Dan Aiken, Racey Taylor, Jerry Heath, Kim Rawlins. Anything else you need to know?”

Rafe reached into a juniper shrub and pulled out a recently emptied beer can, still wet with condensation and scented with yeast. “I might like to know who sells beer to underage kids on a Sunday.”

Bobby’s angelic expression wasn’t intended to fool anybody. “I wouldn’t know. I’m a decaf diet-cola man, myself. Dan swears by guava juice.”

“Makes my hair shine,” the boy said, rubbing a hand over his head. Bobby and friends laughed…except for Megan, who still looked worried.

Straight answers from this crowd were unlikely, but Rafe decided to take one shot. “Seen anybody else around this afternoon?”

“No, sir.” Bobby leaned back on his elbows. “Nobody but us nature lovers.”

They were being careful to avoid giving him any concrete reason for suspicion. Without probable cause or a bona fide warrant, he couldn’t search the vehicles for alcohol, an illegal kill or anything else. And Rafe didn’t doubt that Judge LeVay and Robert Maxwell would, between them, discount even the strongest probable cause.

“Enjoy,” he said, approaching Bobby as he lounged in the truck bed. He set the bag of trash on the tailgate, between the boy’s knees. “And rub up that shine on your halo by dumping this where it belongs.” Whistling for Jed, he turned his back on the group and headed for the trail that would take him back toward town.

“You can count on us,” Bobby yelled after him.

Rafe heard the triumph edging his tone. “I know I can,” he called over his shoulder.

The important question being…for what?

DURING THE NEXT WEEK, the game warden got two more reports of poached bucks farther up in the mountains. Bobby Maxwell came into town every night about eight-thirty and drank until the bar closed or the bartender threw him out. Dan Aiken was with him, more often than not. Eavesdropping in the diner, in the general store, in the grocery market, Rafe learned that those two, along with Jerry Heath, hung out together like the Musketeers. And got into almost as much trouble.

He heard them himself, racing their trucks down Main Street at midnight between Thursday and Friday. They roared past him just as he reached the intersection in his own truck. Bobby gave him a grin and a salute as he flashed by. Then, with a squeal of tires that dragged sparks from the asphalt, the three vehicles wheeled off into the darkness in three different directions. Rafe was tempted to drive up to Walking Stones and wait for the Maxwell kid to come home, then arrest him for drunk and disorderly, DUI, and any other infraction that came to mind along the way.

But another wee-hours confrontation with Robert Maxwell would be as counterproductive as the last. Judge LeVay would hand out the same warning to keep clear of Maxwell business, while the folks in town would chalk up yet another win to Boss Maxwell, and their respect for Rafe would drop another notch. He knew a no-win situation when he saw one.

The solution to his problem came to him at breakfast Friday morning. Sitting in his usual spot at Grizzly’s, Rafe picked up his coffee mug, stared at it for a second, then grinned. There was still one person concerned about Bobby and his friends whom he could approach without risking his health or his job. In fact, getting her on his side might raise his status around town, help him settle the Maxwell kid down and improve his personal life.

He made the call when he went home for lunch. A voice he didn’t recognize answered the phone. “Walking Stones Ranch, Beth Peace speaking. May I help you?”

Rafe cleared his throat. “This is Deputy Sheriff Rafferty. Could I speak to Thea Maxwell, please?”

A silence followed, and he didn’t think he was imagining the disapproval pulsing through the line. “Miss Maxwell is at work, Deputy. Can I take a message?”

“Sure.” His disappointment was way out of proportion to the situation. “Please ask her to call me at the office before six, or at home afterward.” He dictated the numbers. “It’s important that I talk to her. Not urgent.” No need to cause a panic. “But I’d like to get in touch as soon as possible.”

“I’ll tell her. Goodbye.” Beth Peace disconnected briskly. Secretary or housekeeper or whoever, she’d taken on the familiar Maxwell attitude.

The phone rang a total of eight times before he left the office that afternoon. Rafe jumped each time, picked up the receiver with his breath a little short…and dealt with two traffic complaints involving tourists, three questions about the start of deer season, a report of vandalism to an abandoned cabin in the woods, a hang-up call and a wrong number. No word from Thea Maxwell.

By nine that night, he’d decided she was going to ignore him. That realization, coupled with a message on his answering machine that said his furniture remained lost on the highway between Los Angeles and Paradise Corners, shortened his temper to the point where even talking to Jed was too much of an effort.

When the phone rang at nine-thirty, Rafe had just dropped his only coffee mug, which left a zillion pieces of pottery scattered across the kitchen floor plus one long and extremely painful shard embedded in his foot.

“Hello.” Not his friendliest tone. Receiver clutched between shoulder and cheek, he tried to ease the ceramic splinter out of his arch.

“Um…Deputy Rafferty? It’s Thea Maxwell.”

He jerked as she said her name. The splinter burrowed deeper. Rafe swore.

“I beg your pardon?” Glacier mode.

“Damn, here we go again.” Rafe gave up on the splinter. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t talking to you.”

“That’s just your usual phone manner?”

“I have a piece of glass in my foot and was trying to get it out when you called.”

“Are you okay?” Her question carried a current of laughter. And maybe a hint of concern?

“I’ll live.” He dabbed gingerly at his bleeding foot with a paper towel. “I think.”

“I’m sorry, too, for calling so late. We worked past dark, bringing some cows down from the high country. A few of them spooked, detoured through a steep gorge, and the only way out was back into the mountains. That added about five hours to the process.” Weariness roughened her voice.

“I’ve had those kinds of days. You need a meal and a bath and a bed.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “So why did you call? Our housekeeper said it was important.”

Rafe pulled his thoughts back from a mental picture of Thea Maxwell soaking in a tub of warm, sweet-smelling water. “Uh…yeah. It’s about your brother.”

“Oh, really.”

“But I don’t want to get into anything tonight.” He’d expected the sudden change in her tone, but it bothered him anyway. “I wondered…is there sometime in the next day or two that you could come into town?”

“You want to interrogate me at the jailhouse?”

He sighed. “I want to buy you a cup of coffee, maybe a piece of pie, and talk this situation over like reasonable people.”

Thea recognized Rafe Rafferty’s exasperation. She couldn’t blame him—he didn’t have a clue that her question was purely defensive, an effort to get control of the excitement his invitation provoked. “I, um, I usually come in on Saturday mornings to pick up groceries. Do you have time…tomorrow?”

“Sure.” How could he sound so calm when she felt as if she was standing in the middle of an electrical storm? “How’s ten-thirty sound? Too early?”

“Th-that’s fine.”

“I’ll see you then.”

Was he hanging up? “Rafe, um, Deputy? Wait a minute. Deputy?”

“Rafe will be fine.” She practically heard him grin. “What’s wrong?”

“Where do you want to meet?”