As McCall pulled up in front of the Winchester Ranch lodge, the old blue heeler came out to growl and a curtain moved behind a window at the end of one wing.
McCall got out and, again keeping an eye on the dog, went to the door and knocked.
This time it was her grandmother who answered. Her long thick hair was freshly plaited. She wore black just as she had on the first visit, but she’d added a beautiful gold link necklace.
She looked graceful and elegant, and McCall couldn’t help but notice that her expression seemed softer.
“Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Pepper said. She motioned McCall into the parlor again, but this time there was a fire going in the fireplace, a welcome addition on a day like this.
McCall took the chair she was offered, noticing the scrapbooks on the coffee table in front of her.
“I have something I thought you’d like to see before lunch,” her grandmother said, taking a chair next to her and opening one of the books.
McCall saw at once that the scrapbooks were filled with family photographs. Her heart leaped in her chest at the sight of four children beside Pepper, who looked young and beautiful. She was holding the baby, Trace.
The four young children were her Aunt Virginia and Uncles Angus, Brand and Worth. This was the first time she’d laid eyes on them. As far as she knew, none of them had returned to the ranch after Trace disappeared. Apparently she had cousins she’d never met, as well.
Worry as to why her grandmother was showing her these put a damper on her excitement at this glimpse into her family and her father’s earlier life.
“Your father was the sweetest baby,” Pepper said, touching the baby’s face in the photo. She turned a page. “He was two here.”
McCall stared at the photo of her father. “He was adorable.”
Her grandmother smiled. “Yes, he was. I spoiled him—I know that.” She turned the page, pointing out Trace in each photograph even though it wasn’t necessary.
He was the handsomest of Pepper’s children and clearly her favorite. She noticed what could have been jealousy in the faces of the others in one photo where Pepper was making a fuss over Trace. McCall felt a growing unease.
“Trace was such a good boy. A little wild like his father, but he had a good, strong heart.” Pepper’s voice broke with emotion, and she turned her face aside to wipe furtively at her tears.
McCall touched a finger to the photo of her father as a boy, seeing herself in the squint of his eyes, the cocky stance, the dark straight hair and high cheekbones.
Pepper turned the page, and McCall smiled when she saw the snapshots of her father as a teenager. It was clear why Ruby had fallen so hard for him. He was stunningly handsome, a mischievous look in his dark eyes, a swagger about him.
“He was so good-looking,” McCall said, almost lamenting the fact, given what Red had told her about her father and women.
“He played football the year they went to state,” Pepper said. “He was quite the athlete, but his first love was hunting.”
She looked up then. “I heard you were the one who found his truck.”
“It was a lucky guess,” McCall said, uncomfortable with her grandmother’s intense gaze on her.
“He loved that truck. I ordered it special for him. It looks nothing now like the pickup my son drove away in the last time I saw him.” She cleared her throat. “I had wondered what happened to his rifle. It was his grandfather’s, you know. An old model 99 Savage. It had his grandfather’s and father’s initials carved in the stock. How foolish of the killer to keep it, don’t you think?”
It was the first she’d spoken of her son’s death and Buzz Crawford’s arrest. Something in her words filled McCall with a growing uneasiness.
A bell tinkled down the hall. Her grandmother closed the scrapbook and rose. Was it possible Pepper didn’t believe Buzz had killed her son?
But why?
EUGENE DIDN’T SHOW up for the bail hearing, much to Luke’s relief. It was just as well, since he wasn’t sure what he might do to Eugene when he saw him. That thought filled him with a hollow sadness. And to think he’d felt as if Eugene was like a brother to him—like Abel and Cain as it turned out.
The judge set bail for five hundred thousand, saying he didn’t believe Buzz, who had served the county for years as a game warden, was a flight risk.
Luke put up his land to raise the money to get his uncle out on bail, then got in his pickup and headed for Glasgow and the game warden district office where all daily logs were kept—including those stored from Buzz’s time as warden.
He told himself he was doing this for McCall. In truth, he would have done anything for her, not that she would believe it right now. He knew from the look on her face this morning that she thought he’d chosen his family over her.
She was wrong about that.
But he was going to Glasgow for himself as much as McCall. He needed to know the truth, and he hoped it could be found in what Buzz had written in his daily logs.
A tumbleweed cartwheeled across the road propelled by a wind that lay over the grass and howled at the windows of the pickup. Luke could see another spring thunderstorm moving across the prairie toward him.
He loved the storms in this part of the country. Everything was intense up here, from the weather to the light that made the pale green spring grasses glow and warmed the Larb Hills in the distance to a dusty purple.
The storm swept across the open landscape, rain pelting the pickup, wind chasing tumbleweeds to trap them in the barbed wire fences that lined
