When he’d told her about his grandmother and this visit, Josey had pictured an elderly woman lying in bed hooked up to machines, about to take her final gasp.
This woman standing before them didn’t look anywhere near death’s door. Josey had speculated that this was about money. What else? But if she was right, then Jack had underestimated his grandmother. This woman looked like someone who planned to live forever and take whatever she had with her.
“Since I didn’t realize you had a wife,” Pepper Winchester was saying, “I’ll have to instruct my housekeeper to make up a different room for you.”
“Please don’t go to any trouble on my account,” Jack said.
The grandmother smiled at this, cutting her dark gaze to him, eyes narrowing.
Be careful, Josie thought. This woman is sharp.
JACK HESITATED AT the door to the huge ranch lodge. This place had once been filled with happy memories for him, because he’d lived here oblivious to what was really going on. Ignorance had been bliss. He’d played with the other grandchildren, ridden horses, felt like a Winchester even before his mother had confessed that he was one and he realized so much of their lives had been lies.
“Coming, dear?” Josey called from the open front doorway.
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
