Page 21 of Engaging the Deputy (Silver Stars of Montana #3)

“You’re acting strange. Is it because I asked you to help me with the jelly?”

Olivia looked at her mother sitting across from her at the table. Each year, Sharon Brooks picked the crab apples from the huge trees in the backyard and froze the juice to make jelly once the weather got colder.

“I already told you that I’d be happy to help with the jelly.”

“You’re sure?” Her mother had insisted on making her lunch when she’d returned to the house. Beanie weenies, her mother’s specialty.

“If I’m acting strangely, it’s because I had an odd morning,” she said, her gaze on the last few bites of her lunch. She could feel her mother waiting. Eventually, the woman would get it out of her. “I went out to Starling.”

“Why would you do that?” Sharon demanded, making her wish she hadn’t told her.

“I wanted to see the root cellar where we were trapped during the tornado.” She shrugged. “I had a nightmare about it.”

“I can’t believe you’d go out there again and alone. What were you thinking?”

“I didn’t go alone. Jaden followed me out there. He made sure it was safe.” She could feel her mother’s eyes on her. The woman knew her too well. “He kissed me.” She smiled and felt her face light up. “It was…amazing.”

“I guess that answers all your doubts,” her mother said and rose from the table to start clearing away the dishes.

“He’s the one who had doubts,” Olivia corrected her, only to have her mother huff. “I love Jaden. I want to marry him.”

“And how does he feel about it?” her mother asked, turning to look at her daughter. “This kiss have the same effect on him?”

“Yes, I think so.”

“You think so.” She turned back to her dishes. “You think you’re ready to marry a deputy sheriff and live in Fortune Creek, huh. What about Cody?”

“I told you. He’s just a friend.”

Her mother kept hand-washing the dishes in the sink.

Olivia rose to carry her dishes over. “Why don’t you let me do that?” With a shock, she realized that her mother was crying.

“Mother?” No response. “Mom, what is it?”

Shaking the water off her hands, her mother reached for the dish towel and dried her hands before she looked at her. “Will I see more of you if you’re living closer?”

“Yes, of course.” She saw how much she’d hurt her mother the years she’d stayed away.

“I’m so sorry that I didn’t come home. It wasn’t you.

” She reached out and her mother stepped into her arms. She held her close as her mom cried, reminded of all the times her mother had held her when she was growing up.

It had just been the two of them. They’d been close.

She hated how much she’d hurt her mother.

Her cell phone rang from where she’d left it on the table. She ignored it.

“You should get that,” Sharon said, stepping from her arms to reach for a paper towel to wipe her face. “It might be important. Go ahead.”

Olivia picked up the phone, saw it was Cody and hesitated. Turning around, she saw that her mother was busy finishing up the dishes. “I need to take this,” she said and stepped into the other room. “Hello?”

* * *

Jaden drove out of town on a road with no traffic, toward the mountains. Dean had said the barn where his wife and Rob worked together was out there.

He hadn’t been driving long before a barn shape appeared ahead.

The structure was small by barn standards, more like a large shed and surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.

As he pulled off the road, stopping at the barbed-wire gate, he climbed out.

He’d opened his share of Montana ranch gates.

Shoving it aside, he drove in, pretty sure of what he was going to find.

The door to the small barn-shaped building had a large padlock on it.

Jaden walked around the side to look for a window.

He found one covered with what appeared to be black tar paper.

Angie really didn’t want anyone to see what she was working on with Rob, he thought as he circled the building to find all the windows blacked out.

Walking to his patrol SUV, he opened the rear and dug out what he needed from the tools he carried. Hesitating, he pulled out his phone and called Judge Nicholas Grand back upstate. “I’m going to need a warrant,” he said.

“Heard you were working on a murder investigation down there.”

“I’m pretty sure I’m about to find out why the victim was killed. But it means getting into a structure where he worked. The owner has left town in a rush.”

The judge chuckled. “Could be a body in that structure. Who knows what you’ll find. You’ll get your warrant.”

“Thanks, Judge.” He disconnected, picked up his hacksaw and headed for the front door again.

It took a few minutes to cut through the padlock.

Leaning his hacksaw against the outside of the building, he started to open the door but stopped.

He knew that if he was right, the place could be booby-trapped.

Picking up the saw again, he stepped back and pushed the door open with the blade end. Nothing happened. He looked past the doorway into the room, seeing pretty much what he’d expected. Several large tables. Scales. Baggies.

Dean had said that Angie had been restoring old furniture. Restoring didn’t seem to be the right word. The old furniture was clearly being used to hide bagged drugs.

As he reached to close the door, he brushed something inside the room. An alarm went off. He slammed the door, the alarm still blaring—not that there was anyone around to hear it. Had the alarm been to scare people away?

Frowning, he shook his head. No. It had been to warn someone that the door had been breached. If he had worked here, he would know how to turn it off—or never set it off in the first place.

As he pulled out his phone to alert the DEA state boys, he wondered if the alarm was also set up to notify whoever was in charge of the operation. Angie? She apparently was long gone. Rob wasn’t being notified of the alarm. Clearly, someone else was involved in the operation.

* * *

When there was no response on the other end of the phone line, Olivia asked, “Cody? Are you there?” She was beginning to wonder if he’d accidentally called her.

“Sorry, I had a customer,” he said. She could hear the sounds of the hardware store in the background. His father insisted on playing those old songs from the thirties and forties as background music.

“Is everything all right?” Cody sounded winded and she said as much.

“Just had to carry out a bunch of supplies to a pickup. I ran all the way back in. It’s getting cold out. That wind is brutal,” he said and seemed to catch his breath.

“I was surprised you called. What’s going on?”

“I get off work in thirty minutes. I was hoping I could talk you into going with me out to Starling.”

She glanced back toward the kitchen as she pushed out the front door, closing it behind her.

Cody was right. It had gotten a lot colder, a sure sign that winter wasn’t that far off.

Often it snowed by Halloween. It hadn’t this year, but now that it was November, the mountain peaks were snowcapped and there was a bite to the air.

Shivering, she said, “I was out there this morning. There’s nothing to see, believe me.”

“You went out there by yourself?” He sounded like her mother.

“No. The deputy went with me.”

“Really? What were the two of you looking for?”

“We weren’t looking for anything exactly,” she said. “I just wanted to see it in the daylight. I was surprised that the hole wasn’t as deep as it had seemed Halloween night.”

“Then you have no interest in going with me.”

“I’m sorry. I can’t now anyway. I’m helping my mother put up crab apple jelly.”

“You can’t get out of it?”

She glanced back at the house. “No. Maybe you can get Emery to go with you.”

“He’s busy.”

“Or Krystal.”

He groaned. “I told you, we aren’t together, not really.”

“And I told you, I don’t care.”

“Yeah, you’ve made that clear. You and the deputy getting back together?”

“I hope so.” Silence. “I should get back inside the house. It’s freezing out here and—”

“You have to help your mother make jelly… Getting pretty domestic, aren’t you. I remember when we were kids and you tried to make fudge.”

She smiled. “Chocolate glue, you mean?”

He chuckled. “Good times.”

She could hear the disappointment in his voice. “Want a jar of jelly?”

“Sure,” he said. “Save me one.”

Olivia heard something in his voice. “Don’t go out to Starling alone. Promise me you won’t go. It’s too dangerous.”

“Yet you and the deputy survived it.”

“I’m serious. Promise me.”

He sighed heavily. “I promise. It was silly. I doubt it would have jogged my memory anyway. Don’t laugh, but I hate not being able to remember the last time you and I were together—even if it was during a tornado, down in an old root cellar.”

She did laugh. “Trust me, it was far from romantic.”

“I’ll have to trust you on that. Got a customer. Gotta go. Take care of yourself, Olivia. I’m sure we’ll see each other again.”

She laughed again at his words. “Of course we will. We’ll always be friends.”

No response. Had he already disconnected? No, she could hear the hardware store music in the background. “Cody?” The phone went silent.

For a moment, she almost called him back and told him she’d go to Starling with him. He’d sounded so sad. But then the front door opened.

Her mother asked, “Is everything all right?”

Pocketing her phone, she turned and smiled. “Just getting ready to make some crab apple jelly with my mother. Just like old times. I need to start paying more attention to how it’s done. Who knows—one of these days I might have a kitchen of my own. Though no one makes jelly as good as yours.”

Her mother smiled and said, “You and your malarkey,” but Olivia could tell that she was touched by the compliment as they both headed for the kitchen.

* * *

Outside town, at the barn, Jaden pulled his coat tighter around him as he waited for the state DEA team to arrive. This case had been running them ragged. Knowing that Rob Perkins had been involved in this drug distribution business might be the key to solving his murder.

Rob could have been involved with dangerous people, as Emery had suggested. The question was, were they his friends? He thought about Dean. How could he not know what his wife and Rob were involved in? And if he had known, had Dean just thrown his wife under the bus to save himself?

His cell phone rang. Angie Marsh’s car had been found in Spokane, abandoned on the street. “Looks like it’s been looted,” the police officer told him.

“Any sign of Angie Marsh?”

“Checked the surveillance camera in the area.” He described the woman who’d gotten out of the car. Petite, dark-haired, wearing jeans and a hoodie. It hadn’t captured much of her face, but she was young.

That definitely sounded like Angie. The officer said he would get back to Jaden if he had anything to report about the woman. Like if her body was found. Or if another camera picked her up getting into someone’s vehicle.

He thanked the officer and disconnected as a gust of wind out of the nearby mountains sent a chill through the air. What was it about this case? He felt as if he wasn’t getting anywhere. It didn’t help that Livie might be more involved than she realized.

Jaden squinted as dust blew past, reminding him of the hillside at Starling. Everything reminded him of Livie.

That thought didn’t get a chance to go any further as he saw a van drive slowly by on the road, then speed up and disappear over the rise.

He hadn’t needed to see the van’s license plate or to see him behind the wheel to know that it was Emery’s gray van.

What had he been doing out there, on this particular road, so far away from town?

The alarm. More than likely it was to warn those involved that someone had found out their secret—or already knew their secret and had come hoping to find drugs. Either way, whoever was running this operation now knew.

He waited, wondering if Emery would return this way. Not if he was guilty, in which case, he’d take another way back to town.

Even after the DEA boys arrived, Jaden kept an eye on the road.

The van hadn’t come back.