Page 32 of Head Room (Caught Dead in Wyoming #15)

DAY THREE

MONDAY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

My parents arrive tomorrow.

The drumbeat of that phrase started when I opened my eyes.

A lot of pieces joined that drumbeat. The spreadsheet. The to-dos. The pressures of even our pared-down wedding. The darts of doubt about what Mom and Tamantha slipped in while we let them take over the planning.

And maybe a murderer unidentified and on the loose.

Try finding suggestions for that one in bride magazines.

As I pulled around the Circle B’s ranch house and parked in back, Tom came out of the barn, wiping his hands on an old towel. He had on a work shirt that had gone from long sleeves to short sleeves thanks to what appeared to have been an eyes-closed fast whack with a large pair of scissors.

Didn’t matter one bit.

When we met, I gripped his forearms to leverage up to kiss him. Didn’t take a lot of leverage because he helped.

After, I said, “You know I’m oddly obsessed with your wrists.”

“I know.”

“Technically, your lower forearms and your wrists. Your hands, too.”

“I know.”

“Also the area behind your ears, the hairline down to your neck.”

In a lower tone, he said, “I know.”

“You’re not going to reciprocate?”

“No. Because I’m obsessed with all of you.”

That deserved a kiss.

Or two.

Eventually, we headed toward his ranch truck.

“Before we go, I have something I’d like you to read.” I pulled my device out of my bag and handed it to him, opened to the manuscript. “Read this.”

“Now? All of it?”

“Not all of it. The prologue.”

I watched as he slid through the pages.

With the last word, I said, “Spoiler alert — the tall guy in the officer’s uniform and the young guy, Peter, join the Galvanized Yankees and are stationed in Wyoming.”

“Huh. She named the dead nephew Thomas.”

“That’s what you have to say to me?”

“Yeah. Didn’t need to be the lead guy, but would’ve been nice to survive a while.”

I propped my hands on my hips. “You have never told me you’re descended from a Galvanized Yankee.”

“Nope. Never have.”

“We’re getting married. You’re not supposed to keep secrets.”

“Elizabeth. We both have secrets going into this marriage. Not the kind we’re keeping locked up. More like they’re in an overcrowded closet and we haven’t gotten to them yet. We’re going to spend decades sharing them, while trusting that neither of us has deal-breaker secrets.”

“Fine. Be reasonable.”

With barely a twitch at the corner of his mouth, he added, “On my side, I know if I didn’t have secrets for you to figure out, you’d be bored with me in no time.”

“And vice versa? I need to come up with more secrets?”

“Can’t imagine any time I’d be bored by you.”

I humphed. “You also didn’t tell me you knew about Irene Jardos writing a historical romance that includes Galvanized Yankees, apparently drawn from your ancestor.”

“Didn’t know she was doing that, exactly. Didn’t know you knew about her writing. Didn’t know you were interested. Didn’t know you had a copy.”

My turn to be reasonable. I quickly told him about Hannah giving me the damaged manuscript, a copy being made, and my starting to read it.

“You think it has something to do with what happened at the sergeant’s cabin?”

“I have no idea. I can hope, because that would give us a direction to follow, but I have no idea. And before you say it, yes, that’s often how it works with these inquiries. Tell me about this ancestor.”

“A branch of the family landed in Wyoming as a Galvanized Yankee. Came from North Carolina. Don’t recall the county. We’ve got it written down in the records somewhere.”

“What was he like?”

“No idea. My mom has one of those old-timey portraits of him in his uniform.” His eyes narrowed in recall. “Young, serious, kind of boney. That was my impression.”

“Was his family wealthy?”

“You asking if they were slaveholders? I don’t know. Mom’s sister researched some, but she died when I was teenager and I don’t recall much from when they talked about it. No idea where the research went. Mom might have it.”

He went silent a moment.

“Seems like my aunt said they had a small farm. Not wealthy, was my impression. Doesn’t answer if they had slaves or not, though.”

“Anything about him coming west with a family member?”

“Like nephews?” He opened his palms to the sky in a no idea gesture.

And I couldn’t say that it would matter if he had. Irene accurately following a piece of Burrell family history from generations ago would mean . . . what?

“I know that generation ranched an area north of the Oregon Trail, which is where most of the forts were. Took a couple generations to get up here. Happened after Cody — Buffalo Bill and the town — brought people in and irrigation opened up the low side. Cottonwood County was slower to it than Park County.”

He didn’t say it outright, but I suspected he was more interested in the later generations because they staked out the land that became the Circle B, the land that kept his heart pumping in so many ways.

It was a visceral difference between him and his father, who’d treated ranching as a side gig to the highway construction business he’d built. And then his father retired and left Wyoming.

I couldn’t imagine Tom ever doing either. I was fully prepared to spend my golden years with both of us in the same place and doing the same things we’d done in our pre-golden years.

Marry the man, marry the ranch.

That I knew. That I was prepared for.

Prepared for meeting his parents? Not so much.

“Why’re you so interested in Irene Jardos’ writings?” he asked.

“Connie and Mrs. P extolled the woman’s ability to assess people. If someone in her story translated to real people living now it might be a pointer to what happened with her husband . . . Yeah, I know. It sounds crazy.”

“Pretty thin.”

I breathed out shortly through my nose in agreement. “As thin as any of the other straws I’m grasping at. Maybe I keep reading because I don’t want to admit there’s nothing else to do.”

“Or it’s a good story.”

“Or it’s a good story,” I agreed. “Although at this point in the manuscript, it’s becoming more of a sketch than a full story.”

“Maybe you like that even better. Lets you fill in, instead of being told things right out.”

“Hah. A different kind of mystery novel, huh? Not a novel about a mystery, but a novel that is a mystery.”

“You follow the clues and make the story your own,” she said. “On the other hand, you can’t say there’s nothing else to do to try to find out more. You’re going to try to talk to the guys, see what they might know about the sergeant. Let’s go.”