Corralled. B.J. Daniels
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gave him a royal pain. He moved toward the bar, being careful not to step on the bloody footprints the man had left behind.
Buford didn’t need to ask the man’s name. He recognized Jett Akins only because his fourteen-year-old granddaughter Amy had a poster of the man on her bedroom wall. On the poster, Jett had been wearing all black—just as he was this morning—and clutching a fancy electric guitar. Now he clutched a tumbler, the dark contents only half full.
The one time his granddaughter had played a Jett Atkin’s song for him, Buford had done his best not to show his true feelings. The so-called song had made him dearly miss the 1960s. Seemed to him there hadn’t been any good music since then, other than country-western, of course.
“Mr. Atkins found the body,” Kevin said from the entryway.
Jett Atkins looked pale and shaken. He downed the rest of his drink as the sheriff came toward him. Buford would guess it wasn’t his first.
“You found the body?” he asked Jett, who looked older than he had on his poster. He had dark hair and eyes and a large spider tattoo on his neck and more tattoos on the back of his hands—all that was showing since the black shirt he wore was long-sleeved.
“I flew in this morning and took a taxi here. When I saw Martin, I called the club’s emergency number.” His voice died off as he looked again at the dead man by the fireplace and poured himself another drink.
Buford wanted to ask why the hell he hadn’t called 911 instead of calling the club’s emergency number. Isn’t that what a normal person would do when he found a dead body?
He turned to Kevin again. “How many people were in this house?”
“Mr. Sanderson had left the names of six approved guests at the gate with the guard, along with special keys for admittance to all the amenities on the grounds,” Kevin said in his annoyingly official tone. “All of those keys have been picked up.”
“Six people? So where are they?” the sheriff demanded. “And I am going to need a list of their names.” Before he could finish, Kevin withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and stepped around the sunken living room to hand it to him.
“These are the names of the guests Mr. Sanderson approved.”
Buford read off the names. “JJ, Caro, Luca, Bets, T-Top and Jett. Those aren’t names.” He had almost forgotten about Jett until he spoke.
“They’re stage names,” he said. “Caro, Luca, T-Top, and Bets. It’s from when they were in a band together.”
Stage names? “Are they actors?” Buford asked, thinking things couldn’t get any worse.
“Musicians,” Jett said.
He was wrong about things not getting worse. He couldn’t tell the difference between women’s or men’s names and said as much.
“They were an all-girl band back in the nineties called Tough as Nails,” Jett said, making it sound as if the nineties were the Stone Age.
“You don’t know their real names?” Buford asked.
“They are the only names required for our guards to admit them,” Kevin said. “Here at the Grizzly Club we respect the privacy of our residents.”
Swearing, Buford wrote down: Caro, Luca, T-Top and Bets in his notebook.
“What about this JJ?” he asked. “You said he picked up his key yesterday?”
“She.”
Buford turned to look at Jett. “She?” he asked thinking one of these women account for the woman’s cowboy-boot print in the dead man’s blood.
“JJ. She was also in the band, the lead singer,” Jett said.
The sheriff turned to the club manager again. “I need full legal names for these guests and I need to know where they are.”
“Only Mr. Sanderson would have that information and he … All I can tell you is that the five approved guests picked up their amenities keys yesterday. This gentleman picked his up at the gate today at 1:16 p.m.,” he said, indicating Jett.
“Which means the others are all here inside the gates?” Buford asked.
Kevin checked the second sheet of paper he’d taken from a separate pocket. “All except JJ. She left this morning at 10:16 a.m.”
Buford glanced over at the body. 10:16 a.m. That had to be close to the time of the murder, since the dead man’s blood was still wet when a woman wearing cowboy boots appeared to have knelt by the body, then sprinted for the front door.
Blythe pressed her cheek against Logan’s broad back and breathed in the rich scents on the cool spring air. The highway rolled past in a blur, the hours slipping by until they were cruising along the Rocky Mountain front, the high mountain peaks snow-capped and beautiful.
The farther Blythe and Logan traveled, the fewer vehicles they saw. When they stopped at a café in the small western town of Cut Bank along what Logan said was called the Hi-Line, she was ravenous again.
“Not many people live up here, huh,” she said as she climbed off the bike. A fan pumped the smell of grease out the side of the café. She smiled to herself as she realized how much she’d missed fried food. All those years of dieting seemed such a waste right now.
“You think this is isolated?” Logan said with a chuckle. “Wait until you see where we’re headed. They say there are only .03 people per square mile. I suspect it’s less.”
She smiled, shaking her head as she tried to imagine such wide-open spaces. Even when she’d lived in the desert there had been a large town closeby. Since then she’d lived in congested cities. The thought of so few people seemed like heaven.
Blythe could tell Logan wanted to ask where she was from, but she didn’t give him a chance as she turned and headed for the café door. She’d seen a few pickups parked out front, but when she pushed open the door, she was surprised to find the café packed.
One of the waitresses spotted her, started to come over, then did a double take. She burst into a smile. “I know you. You’re—”
“Mistaken,” Blythe said, cutting the girl off, sensing Logan right behind her.
The girl looked confused and embarrassed. “I don’t have a table ready. But you look so much like—”
Blythe hated being rude, but she turned around and took Logan’s arm. “I’m too hungry to wait,” she said as she pulled him back through the door outside again.
“Did you know that waitress?” Logan asked, clearly taken aback by the way she’d handled it. “She seemed to know you.”
She shook her head. “I must have one of those faces or that waitress has been on her feet too long. I didn’t mean to be abrupt with her. I get cranky when I’m hungry. Can we go back to that barbecue place we passed?” She turned and headed for the bike before he could press the subject.
“You sure you’ve never been to this town before?” he asked as he swung onto the bike.
“Positive,” she said as she climbed on behind him. It wasn’t until he started the bike that she let herself glance toward the front windows of the café. The young waitress was standing on the other side of the glass.
Blythe looked away, promising herself that she would make it up to her one day. If she was still alive.
She shoved that thought away, realizing she should have known someone would recognize her even though she looked different now. It was the eyes, she thought, and closed them as Logan drove back to the barbecue joint.
It wasn’t until later, after they’d settled into a booth and ordered, that she tried to smooth things over with Logan. She could tell he was even more curious about her. And suspicious, as well.