THE LARGE CAR seemed to float on the horizon, followed by a dark cloud of smoke. The sound of its engine reaching them before Tucker could see the figure behind the wheel.
As the woman braked and pulled into the rest area, the sun gleamed dully off the weatherworn brown paint of her older-model car.
“Ready?” Kate asked before opening her door.
He grunted in answer, dreading what this woman was going to tell them. Kate was right. He wanted to believe that Madeline had been forced into doing what she had. Being a liar was one thing. Being a coldhearted, conniving bitch was another. But he feared that the only person who knew the truth was dead. Then again, Kate was right. Someone had helped Madeline with her con. That person would be just as guilty as Madeline.
Waves of heat rose from the rest area’s dark pavement. Spring had come to Montana with a vengeance.
Tammy Holden sat behind the wheel of her car as they approached. Was she going to change her mind and take off without a word? Not if she wanted the five hundred dollars Kate had brought her.
The woman seemed to hesitate before she finally opened her car door and slowly climbed out. She looked around as if she thought she might have been followed—or that they had. But from this wide spot along the highway, they could see for miles. The road both ways was empty. It wasn’t like this stretch of pavement ever got much traffic.
More to the point, what did the woman have to fear? Were people that afraid of the Dunns?
“Thank you for coming,” Kate said. Tammy nodded and looked at Tucker. “This is Tucker Cahill.”
Like him, he figured Kate was looking for a reaction to his name. How much did this woman know about Madeline and her...business?
But Tammy’s face remained expressionless as she gave him a nod. “You bring the money?”
Kate reached into her pocket and brought out five one-hundred-dollar bills. She thumbed them, pocketed them again and said, “Why don’t we talk in my car?”
Tammy licked her lips, looked toward the large SUV and said, “I can’t stay long. I have to work an early shift today.”
The three of them walked to the rig. Kate opened the side door. “I think we’ll be comfortable in here so we can see each other.” She climbed into the third-row bench seat, leaving the other two second-row seats for them.
Tammy seemed again to hesitate, then got in, taking the far seat. Tucker left the door open as he took the other seat, and Kate showed them how to swivel their chairs so the seats faced each other.
Cozy as it was, Tammy looked uncomfortable and anxious to get this over with—take her money—and leave. “What do you want to know?” she asked the moment they were settled in.
“You said you knew Madeline and her family,” Kate began. “What was she like?”
The woman shrugged. “Strange like the rest of her family.”
Tucker groaned inwardly. “In what way?”
“Odd,” the woman said.
“Tammy, I need more than that for five hundred dollars,” Kate said.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. They moved to town when I was sixteen. Bought the lumberyard. Built that huge place outside town. It was like a castle with a moat.”
“A moat?” Tucker asked suspiciously.
“Well, not a real moat, but a rock wall around it and two vicious dogs that kept people out. You should have heard the stories she told me about what went on in that house.” The woman’s painted-on eyebrows shot up.
“What did go on in that house?” Kate asked.
“Her father was some sort of religious nut who woke them up in the middle of the night to pray. Her parents fought all the time. Her father was so cheap they barely had enough to eat. He held late-night séances with the devil. It was enough to make my hair stand up on end.”
“Late-night séances with the devil?” Tucker asked sarcastically.
“At least that’s what Madeline told me.”
Tucker shot Kate a look. “And you believed her.”
“Her father wouldn’t let the girls go to public school. Not good enough for them. Fine for the son, but the girls were homeschooled. At least that’s what everyone was told. Of course that was before the crazy awful mother died.”
“Wait, so if Madeline didn’t go to school, when did you ever see her if the house was such a fortress?” Tucker asked.
“She’d escape and come to my house,” Tammy said. “She liked to borrow my clothes because hers were so awful. Long skirts, dresses, nothing cute, let alone low cut. Later she got a job at the café part-time. Her father would drop her off and pick her up.” She shuddered. “He had these weird eyes. Possessed is what everyone said. He was always watching her, she said. He told Madeline that if he ever caught her with a boy, he’d lock her in that house and never let her out.”
“So he was protective,” Kate cut in.
“And with good reason. Madeline was always flipping her long blond hair and making cow eyes at the men who came into the café so she got bigger tips.”
Kate smiled. “She have a lot of boyfriends?”
“Never in town. Her father wouldn’t allow it. That’s why she was always sneaking off when her father was away on business to meet boys, then coming back to the café and bragging about what they gave her.”
“You ever see her wearing a diamond pendant?” Kate asked.
“Pendant?”
Kate described it to her and the woman nodded.
“A family heirloom?” Tucker asked quietly, and Kate nodded without looking at him. He guessed Clay had given it to her.
“She wore it one day at the café. But I didn’t believe it was really a diamond and it made her mad. She didn’t wear it after that because nobody believed her. When I asked her about it, she said her brother stole it and pawned it in Great Falls.”
“So they were poor?” Tucker asked, hating the picture Tammy was painting of the Dunn family, let alone Madeline. He still wanted to believe that someone else might have been behind the con and that Madeline had been a victim as much as he had.
* * *
“POOR?” THE WOMAN let out an unpleasant sound. “Rich as sultans.”
Kate wondered how many sultans this woman had known. “How do you know they were rich?” She’d found rich meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. She couldn’t help sounding skeptical. Rich to this woman could mean just about anything.
“That huge house. Madeline said her father was a businessman, but some people in town thought he was some kind of criminal.”
Kate just bet they did.
“No one but family was allowed inside.”
“So you were never invited out there?” Tucker asked.
Tammy shook her head. “Like I would go.” She shuddered. “It was worse for her sisters.”
“Sisters?” Tucker asked and looked at Kate as if she’d forgotten that it appeared Madeline had a twin.
“You knew them, too?” Kate asked.
“They were too afraid of their father to sneak out, Madeline said. I would see them at the upstairs window sometimes when I’d go over there and hide in the bushes until Madeline came out. My mama would have licked me good if she’d known I did that. I wasn’t supposed to go near that place.”
“But you saw her sisters,” Kate prodded.
Tammy nodded enthusiastically. “One of them would wave, then quickly get away from the window so she didn’t get in trouble.” Looking at her watch, she said, “I really have to go pretty soon.”
“Did she have any other friends?” Kate asked.
“Not that I know of. Just her sisters and me.”
“How many sisters did she have?” Kate asked.
“Two. Misty and Melody.”
“Misty?” Tucker said. “We went out to her grave.”
Tammy looked away. Suddenly she appeared nervous. “Don’t like speaking of the dead. They say she killed herself, but I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“But you just said you saw the sisters occasionally,” Kate pointed out. “Surely you would have heard if one of the sisters died.”
“Yes,” she said, glancing again at her watch. “We heard stories. Heard her father pushed her down the stairs. Also heard she was found hanging in her room.”
Kate tried not to shudder. “People thought he’d killed his own daughter?”
Tammy shrugged.
“So where is Madeline’s father now?” Tucker asked.
The woman shook her head. “No one knows what happened to any of them. One day they all disappeared. The house was empty and they were gone as if they’d never existed. Heard the father got a job back East.” She shrugged again. “Most everyone just thought good riddance and were glad to see them go.”
“Back to the sisters,” Tucker said. “Madeline and Misty were twins?”
“Identical twins?” Kate asked.
Tammy looked confused.
“Did Madeline look exactly like her sister Misty?” Kate asked.
“They all looked alike.”
“What do you mean they all looked alike?” he asked.
“The sisters. They were triplets. I really have to go.” Tammy pushed out of her seat. Tucker moved to let her exit the SUV and Kate quickly followed. As she passed him, she mouthed, “There are three identical Madelines?”
* * *
“SO YOU HAVE no idea where we can find her brother?” Kate asked once they were all outside the SUV.
Tucker could see that Tammy was ready to roll. She shifted on her feet and kept looking at her watch. “K.O.? Last I heard, someone said they saw him working in a bar in The Gap. But that was a while back.”
“What about her sister Melody?” he asked.
“Probably with him wherever he is. They were close, you know?” He didn’t know and asked what she meant. “All cut from the same cloth, as my mother used to say.” Tammy shrugged. “Listen, I need the money now. I have to get to work. If I’m late, they’ll suspect somethin’. You don’t know how people talk in small towns.”
Tucker had a pretty good idea after growing up in Gilt Edge. “Why wouldn’t people talk to us about the Dunns?”
“Everyone’s afraid of them. And that house out there?” Tammy rolled her eyes. “People say they’ve seen lights on at night, but the electricity is off. They say it’s haunted by Misty Dunn.” She shivered.
Kate took the bills from her pocket and handed them to her. The money disappeared into Tammy’s pocket in a blur.
“You didn’t know Madeline was a triplet, huh,” Tammy said. “It was so eerie seeing all three of them together since their father forced them to dress alike, even wear their hair the same. I saw them once in their yard. I couldn’t tell them apart. It gave me a funny feeling, you know what I mean?”
“I think I do,” Tucker said.
With that, she headed for her car, leaving the two of them staring after her dumbfounded. A few moments later the engine coughed a few times, finally caught and, the muffler dragging, Tammy Holden drove away in a cloud of exhaust.
Tucker watched her until the vehicle went from a speck against the open landscape to nothing. Even the gray exhaust blowing out the back dissipated into the Montana spring day before he looked over at Kate.
* * *
BILLIE DEE FELT ANTSY. Henry had said he would help her. But she was used to helping herself. She knew she wouldn’t rest until she knew the truth about Ashley Jo.
How many times had she looked into the faces of young women on the street—always searching for that one face? A familiar face that could be her daughter’s? And then Ashley Jo had walked in.
Billie Dee had to know. She’d come into work early, feeling like a thief as she made her way to the file cabinet. Darby kept the employment information on his employees locked, but she knew where he kept the key.
Moving through the near dark of early morning, she walked toward the front of the building. Normally, she loved this time of the morning when the place was deathly quiet.
But now it gave her the heebie-jeebies. Moving behind the bar, she found the shelf. The small metal box was at the very back. She doubted anyone other than Lillie and Mariah even knew it was there. Darby never took it out except when he thought no one was watching.
That made Billie Dee feel even more guilty. She was always watching. It was a bad habit, one she’d picked up when she’d had a killer after her.
Reaching into the back of the shelf behind packages of bar napkins, she pulled out the metal box. For a moment she feared it would be locked, that Darby had taken an extra precaution since hiring an employee he didn’t know.
But the box opened without any problems. The key lay in the bottom along with other extra keys to the place. This key was small and silver.
She picked it up, surprised how icy cold it felt. As icy cold as her heart right now. Why hadn’t she asked Darby about Ashley Jo? But she knew the answer to that.
Billie Dee didn’t want him questioning why she wanted to know. Or making anyone suspicious of her motives.
Feeling as if time was running out, she hurried down the hall to the file cabinet. Her fingers shook so hard that at first she couldn’t get the key in the lock. Good thing she hadn’t gone for a life of crime since she was so bad at this.
Finally the key slipped into the lock; she turned it, took a breath and pulled out the drawer she knew held the employment applications.
Ashley Jo’s was at the front. Her heart pounding, she withdrew it. For a moment, she couldn’t bring herself to open it. What if the birth date was wrong? What if it was right?
Regretting what she’d done, Billie Dee still couldn’t stop now. She opened the folder. Her gaze quickly took in the basic information until it lit on age.
Twenty-six.
Her heart threatened to beat out of her chest. Twenty-six.
She hurriedly looked for a birth date. Her head swam and she had to reach for the back of a nearby kitchen chair to steady herself.
But then she saw that the date was wrong. It should have been March 13, 1992. But the date read March 15, 1992.
She stared at it, heart dropping. Ashley Jo couldn’t be her daughter unless...unless the wrong birth date had been put on the birth certificate.
At the sound of a vehicle, she quickly put the folder back, slammed the file cabinet and hurried to the bar to return the key. She’d just pulled out the small metal box when she heard the sound of the garbage truck as it lifted the huge containers next to the building.
The key safely in the box, the box back where she’d found it, Billie Dee began to breathe normally again. All the way back to the kitchen, though, she felt guilty. Her religious upbringing, she thought, knowing it was much more than that.
She’d been guilt-ridden for twenty-six years.
* * *
“TRIPLETS?” KATE SAID the word like a curse. “Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse. There were two more of them?” Standing in the middle of the rest area parking lot, she looked over at Tucker as if in shell shock. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“I don’t even know what I’m thinking,” he said truthfully. His phone rang. He hadn’t realized that he’d turned it back on since this morning. He pulled it from his pocket, saw it was Flint and declined the call. His gaze settled again on Kate. She was shaking her head, looking sick.
“Three Madelines?”
“Not anymore,” he said. “Sounds like it’s down to one.”
“One is too many,” she said under her breath.
He looked toward the horizon, trying to get his balance. It was as if the earth had tilted on him again. Since the day he’d met Madeline, he’d been off-kilter. He wondered if the ground under him would ever feel stable again, because after getting the note on his pickup, it was clear that they weren’t through with him.
“You think they were all in on it and that this last Madeline might be the one,” she said as if capable of reading his mind.
He turned his gaze away from the horizon to look at her. “There were times when Madeline seemed so distant, as if...”
“As if she wasn’t the same person.” Kate nodded, her jaw tight.
“Did your brother—”
“He said he never knew which Madeline he would see, the one who loved him, or the one who just wanted money from him.”
He stared at her. “Was it possible he knew they were triplets?”
Kate shook her head. “He didn’t even know she had a sister from what I’ve read in his journal. He thought it was just her, her brother, father and mother.” She sighed. “So you think all three of them could have been working together. Then Madeline drowns, Misty kills herself and Melody... What does Melody do?”
Tucker shook his head.
“She leaves Clawson Creek in the middle of the night with her father and brother, never to be seen again.”
“It looks that way,” he had to agree.
Neither of them said anything for a few long moments.
“Are you going to be all right?” Kate finally asked, breaking the silence between them.
He nodded and met her gaze. “What about you?”
She shrugged.
“It’s possibly sadder than even I thought.” He’d told Kate the truth. More than anything, he simply felt sad for all of them because of Madeline, no matter how many there had been of them. But to think that one of them was still out there that looked exactly like the woman who’d... Who’d what? Turned him every way but loose? Sent him running from his home and family for nineteen years? Filled him with guilt that he still hadn’t been able to throw off?
Or worse? What had Madeline done to him? Maybe more than he wanted to admit, because for all those years, he’d protected his heart as if wrapping it in cast iron.
But Kate had split that iron shell wide-open and left him vulnerable again.
“So we find the last Madeline,” she said as if still tapping into his thoughts. “You aren’t going to pretend that you don’t want to, are you?”
“I don’t want to. Like I told you before, I want to put all of this behind me. I only came up here with you today for backup.”
She stared at him as if she didn’t believe him. “You aren’t curious about the last Madeline?”
“You ever hear the expression about curiosity and cats?”
Kate laughed and shook her head. “You’re only kidding yourself. There is no way you can let this go.”
“You might be surprised.” He started for her SUV. When he reached it, she was still standing where he’d left her. Only she didn’t look like the confident, determined woman he’d come to know. She looked as if all this was wearing her down. He knew the feeling.
“Come on, I’m buying lunch at the Stagecoach Saloon,” he called to her.
She walked slowly, the shock of what they’d learned no doubt like another weight she had to carry. Melody could be the Madeline who’d pushed her brother over the edge. She could also be the one he’d fallen for. She was the last person Tucker wanted to find.
Now more than ever he just wanted to forget the whole thing. No good would come of finding Melody Dunn. But he feared Kate wasn’t giving up. As she reached the SUV, he could see the determined set of her shoulders and that need for vengeance burning in her gaze again.
He couldn’t do this anymore. But if he stopped, that would mean letting Kate go on alone. He wasn’t sure he could do that, either.