LITMIR.BIZ

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Chapter Four

      The next morning, McCall woke blurry-eyed to the sound of a vehicle driving up in her yard. She pulled on her robe and padded out to the living room as she heard someone coming across the deck, making a beeline for her front door.

      It was too early for company. Had something happened?

      She thought of Luke. Not him again, she hoped. Seeing him waiting for her last night had been the last straw after the day she’d had. She’d had a devil of a time getting to sleep last night and it was all Luke Crawford’s fault. What the hell was he doing back in Whitehorse, anyway?

      Usually, she found peace in her cabin on the river. The place was small, but the view from her deck made up for it. She loved to sit and listen to the rustle of the cottonwood trees, watch the deer meander through the tall grass along the river’s edge and breathe in the sweet scents of the seasons.

      Last night, though, after she’d watched Luke drive away, not even a beer and a hot bath had soothed what ailed her.

      Now she realized she hadn’t locked the door last night. The knob turned, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father’s hunting license on the kitchen counter where she’d left it last night.

      She quickly snatched up the license and, lifting the lid on an empty canister on the counter, dropped it inside.

      She’d barely dropped the lid, when the door was flung open.

      “What in the world?” she bellowed as her mother came busting in.

      Her mother stopped in midstride, a cigarette dangling from one corner of her mouth. “Did I forget to knock?”

      “Do you know what time it is?” McCall demanded. “What are you doing here?”

      “I had to see you before I went to work,” her mother snapped back. “You might remember I work early.”

      Before McCall could wonder what was so important that it had her mother here at the crack of dawn, Ruby enlightened her.

      “I can’t believe you went out to the Winchesters'. What were you thinking?” her mother demanded. “Now that old woman is threatening to have you arrested? It’s all over town.”

      McCall leaned against the kitchen counter. “Why is it that anything I do is always all over town within minutes?”

      Ruby waved a hand through the air as if it was too obvious. “You’re a Winchester.”

      McCall sighed. “Only by name.” A name she’d often regretted.

      “You’re Trace Winchester’s daughter.”

      As if that were something to celebrate, McCall thought, but was smart enough not to voice that senti-ment her mother, especially in the mood Ruby was in. No matter what Trace had done to her, Ruby would defend him to her death.

      “As Trace Winchester’s daughter, I should have the right to visit my grandmother,” McCall said instead and motioned at her mother’s cigarette. She didn’t permit smoking in her cabin. Not after inhaling her mother’s secondhand smoke for years.

      “Don’t you want to know how I found out?” Ruby asked, looking around for an ashtray.

      “Not particularly.”

      “That bitch Enid. She must have called everyone in town this morning, announcing that her boss was going to have you arrested.”

      “I wasn’t arrested.” But she could be soon for interfering in a murder investigation. She tried not to think about that right now, though.

      Ruby, not seeing an ashtray, opened the cabin door and started to flick the cigarette out, then apparently thought better of it.

      “That old harpy,” she said, stepping outside and leaving the door open as she ground the cigarette into the dirt. “I thought she’d be dead by now. She’s got to be a hundred. Mean to the core.”

      McCall poured yesterday’s coffee into two mugs, put them in the microwave and handed her mother a cup as she came back in. Taking the other cup, McCall curled up on one end of the couch.

      The coffee tasted terrible, but it was hot and she needed the caffeine. Her mother sat down at the opposite end of the couch. She seemed to have calmed down a little.

      “I just don’t understand why you would go out there after all these years?”

      “Maybe I finally wanted to see my grandmother.”

      Ruby eyed her. “Just like that?”

      “Just like that.”

      “And?”

      “And I saw her. End of story.”

      “Did she even know who you were? Of course she did. One look at you and she’d see the Winchester in you.”

      “You never told me I looked so much like her.” She hadn’t meant it to sound so accusatory.

      Ruby shrugged and took a sip of her coffee. Her mother was so used to drinking bad coffee she didn’t even grimace. “So what did she say to you?”

      “It was a short conversation before she showed me the door.”

      Ruby toyed with the handle on her coffee mug. “Are you going to see her again?”

      Was she worried McCall would be accepted by the Winchesters when Ruby hadn’t been? The idea would have been laughable if it hadn’t hurt so much.

      “She called the sheriff on me. Does that answer your question?”

      Ruby was ablaze, cursing Pepper Winchester clear to Hades and back, not that it was anything new.

      “I’m sorry, baby,” her mother said. She finished her coffee and got up to rinse the mug in the kitchen sink. “But don’t feel too bad. It isn’t like she was close to any of her kids or her other grandkids. She’s just an evil old crone who deserves to live like a hermit.”

      McCall didn’t tell her mother that she felt a little sorry for Pepper Winchester—anyone who’d seen the in her eyes at the mention of Trace’s name would have been.

      Ruby checked her watch. “I’m going to be late for work.” She looked at her daughter as if she held McCall responsible. “Promise me you won’t go back out there.”

      McCall was saved by the ringing of her cell phone. She found it where she’d dropped it last night and checked caller ID. “It’s my boss.”

      “Then you’d better take it,” Ruby said. “Stop by the café later.”

      “If I can,” McCall said and waited until her mother disappeared out the door before she took the call, fearing that her morning was about to get worse.

      “YOU’RE UP EARLY,” Buzz Crawford said from the deck of his lake house as Luke joined him.

      “Haven’t you heard? Poachers never sleep.”

      Buzz chuckled. “You’re right about that. Catch any lately?”

      He’d spent the night down in the river bottom patrolling. He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway after his visit to McCall. This morning he’d caught a few hours’ sleep before coming by his uncle’s.

      “A few,” he said, distracted at the thought of McCall.

      Buzz shook his head. “You’re too easy on the bastards. These guys around here aren’t afraid of you. When I was warden, they knew if they broke the law I’d be on them like stink on a dog.”

      Luke had heard it all before, way too many times.

      “So how’s the fishing been?” he asked to change the subject. It was one of those rare April days when the was already in the fifties and expected to get up as high as seventy before the day was over. The sky overhead was a brilliant blue,

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