Cardwell Ranch Trespasser - By B. J. Daniels Page 0,52
you doing?”
She turned in surprise to find Dana standing in the doorway. She must have started to leave, but then changed her mind.
“I asked you what you were doing.”
Hilde knew there was no reason to lie even if she could have thought of one Dana might believe. “I need your DNA to check it against Dee’s.”
The shocked look on Dana’s face said it all. That and what she said before turning and really leaving this time: “Oh, Hilde.”
* * *
COLT DROVE OUT of Tuttle, took the third right and pulled down a narrow two-track toward a stand of live oak. He hadn’t been in the South in years. Oklahoma wasn’t considered the South to people from Georgia or Alabama, but anywhere that cotton grew along the road was the South to him.
He followed the directions the woman at the grocery and gas station had given him until the road played out, ending in front of a weathered, stooped old house that was much like the elderly woman who came out on the porch.
He parked and climbed out. Thelma Peters was Richard and Camilla Northland’s aunt on their mother’s side of the family, PJ Harris had told him.
“Everyone’s called me PJ since I was a girl,” the elderly woman at the store had told him. “Not because it has anything to do with my name, which by the way is Charlotte Elizabeth. No, I got PJ because that’s what I was usually wearing when I would come down here, to this very store, in the morning so my father could make me breakfast. My mother had died when I was a baby, you see. He’d pour me a bowl of cereal, ask me if I wanted berries. I always said no, then he’d pour on some thick cream.” Her eyes had lit at the memory. “I can still taste that cream. Can’t buy anything like it anymore.”
He’d finally managed to turn her back to Richard and Camilla’s aunt.
“Thelma Peters. She’s an old maid. I can see where having those two in her house turned her against ever having any of her own children.” PJ had studied him again then. “Don’t be surprised if she comes out on her porch with a shotgun. Don’t take it personally. Just make sure she knows you aren’t that no-count nephew of hers. I’d hate to see you get shot.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” he’d promised.
“I’m here with some good news,” Colt called out now to the elderly old maid holding the shotgun.
“If you’re preaching the Gospel, I’ve already found the Lord. You wasted your gas coming out here,” she called back.
“I’m a deputy marshal from Montana,” he called to her. A slight exaggeration at the moment. He saw the change in her as if she was bracing herself for whatever bad news he was bringing. “Your nephew Richard has been killed.”
Thelma Peters nodded, then took a step back and sat down hard in an old wooden chair on her porch. The barrel end of the shotgun banged against the worn wood flooring at her feet, but she held on to the gun as she motioned him to come closer.
Colt walked up to the house, shielding his eyes against the sun. The yard was a dust bowl. The weeds that had survived were baked dead. “I’m sorry to bring you the news.”
She looked up then and, from rheumy but intelligent blue eyes, considered him for a long moment. “You certainly came a long way to give it to me.”
“I need to ask you about Camilla.”
Thelma let out a cough of a laugh. “You cross her path, too? Best say your prayers.”
“I don’t know if I’ve crossed her path or not. Do you happen to have a picture of her?”
The woman looked at him as if he was crazy. “Not one I keep out, I can tell you that.”
“I sure would appreciate it if you could find one for me. I’m worried about a family in Montana that this woman has moved in with.”
She grunted and pushed herself to her feet, using the shotgun like a crutch. “Better step inside. This could take a while.”
* * *
WHEN DANA CAME back from town, she was clearly upset.
“You didn’t go see Hilde,” Dee said, wanting to wring her neck. She’d begged her to stay away from her former friend. “Dana, what were you thinking?”
Hud, who’d come home to watch the kids while she ran to the store, seconded Dee’s concern.
“I had to see her,” Dana cried, then shook her