Blue Sage (Anne Stuart's Greatest Hits Book 3) Read online

  “Poor Lonnie,” Addie said absently, taking Tanner’s money and ringing up the cigarettes. “You come back when you have more time, boy, and we can talk about your ma. I still miss her.”

  Tanner gave her a smile of sudden sweetness, the kind of smile, Ellie thought, that a woman would die for. Addie wasn’t immune to it.

  “I miss her too,” he said simply. “Thanks, Addie.”

  “Take care of Ellie,” Addie admonished.

  Tanner cast her a swift, curious glance, and for a moment the faint glimmer of a smile reached his blue eyes. “I’ll try, Addie. I’ll try.”

  Her face was flaming again when she reached the car. She paused by the driver’s door, waiting, as he sauntered after her.

  “You know,” he drawled, “life would be a lot easier on you if you learned not to blush.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” she said frankly. “I’d just be hiding my emotions away behind a mask, like you do. I don’t want to be you, Tanner. I don’t want to wear a mask with everyone. If I’m going to get embarrassed I don’t mind people knowing it.”

  His eyes narrowed against the bright sunlight. “I get amateur psychology along with the welcome wagon?”

  “Sorry,” she said, not contrite. “Do you want to drive?”

  “Why should I?” He paused, looking at her.

  “I don’t know. Men usually like to drive,” she said irritably.

  “And you know so much about men,” he added.

  “Why do you keep saying things like that? I haven’t been living in a convent. There are plenty of men around here. You forget, I’m a widow.”

  “I don’t forget. No, I don’t want to drive. I don’t need to prove my masculinity by ferrying the little woman around.”

  “What about proving you’re a gentleman by sparing my bad leg?” she snapped back, then regretted it. She didn’t want to remind him of what his father had done to her. He was living with enough on his shoulders.

  Tanner didn’t look the slightest bit chastened. “Is that what people do? Make allowances for you, coddle you, keep you from having to stand on your own two feet? In the twenty-four hours I’ve known you I’ve seen you can do just about anything if you forget you’re supposed to be lame. I’m not about to encourage your notion of yourself as the wounded martyr. Drive your own damned car.” He slid into the passenger seat and slammed the door shut behind him.

  She stood there, white with shock and fury. She knew if she opened her mouth she’d start shrieking with rage, she knew if she moved she’d start beating on the car with her fists. She counted to ten, once, twice, willing herself to calm down.

  Finally some of the anger faded. She hadn’t been that angry since... Heavens, she didn’t know when she’d been that angry. If Tanner was able to ruffle her famous equanimity, how was he going to affect people with a shorter fuse?

  Wounded martyr, was she? The damnable thing about it was he’d hit upon her role very accurately. That’s exactly how people saw her, and out of lassitude she’d fulfilled their expectations. Now, in one day Tanner had seen through it, and her. Maybe she did need some of his formidable defenses. He was far too observant, seeing things, hinting at things he couldn’t possibly know. If she was going to survive his unwelcome visit, survive the next two and a half weeks, she was going to have to become more adept at hiding.

  She took a few deep, calming breaths and opened the car door. Tanner didn’t say a word when she started the car, didn’t say a word as she pulled away from Addie’s Quick-stop. He just kept staring out the window, his eyes narrowed and far too knowing.

  She drove slowly and steadily, heading toward town. They were almost there when she finally trusted her voice enough to say something.

  “You know,” she said conversationally, “you’re a real bastard.”

  He leaned forward, smiling at her with that oddly sweet smile. “Ellie,” he said softly, “I only wish I were.”

  * * *

  Chapter Seven

  * * *

  “How about some coffee?” Lonnie Olafson was standing in the door of the Morey’s Falls Gazette, his blue-striped oxford shirt rolled up at the elbows, his khaki pants properly creased, his Nikes scuffed, his sandy hair drooping boyishly across his high forehead. If his blue gaze behind the pale-rimmed glasses held a trace of reserve, the hand he held out was steady.

  Tanner had avoided shaking hands with him the day before. This time he didn’t have much choice in the matter. Ellie was watching him like a hawk, that generous mouth of hers pursed in disapproval. He could feel other eyes at his back, watching him. Hostile eyes. Half the town had turned out to see him walk into Lonnie’s newspaper office. He couldn’t believe that so many people had nothing to do at ten o’clock on a Wednesday morning. They were there to get a good look at Tanner’s son, and if Lonnie was reluctantly welcoming, the rest of them weren’t.

  “Coffee would be wonderful,” Ellie said, coming up beside him and threading her arm through his, drawing him into the building, away from the prying eyes. There was nothing sexual in her touch, and yet it was somehow more acceptable than the limp grasp of Lonnie’s hand. The instant they were inside she released her hold, and for a half a moment he was tempted to reach out and grab her arm once more. Not for sexual stimulation, but for some odd, ultimately demoralizing form of comfort. He resisted that temptation, noting with interest Lonnie’s proprietary glare.

  “None for me,” Tanner said, unwilling to accept anything more than he had to.

  “Don’t be ridiculous. That stuff you had this morning didn’t even deserve to be called coffee,” Ellie said. “Lonnie makes the best coffee in town, and anyone would be a fool to turn down a cup of it.”

  “I don’t need...”

  “Lighten up, Tanner,” Ellie said, clearly enjoying herself. Getting sassy, was she, Tanner thought. She must feel safer with an audience. “You’re here for help. Accept it.”

  Lonnie was watching all this with a faintly troubled expression. “What’ll it be?”

  Later, Tanner promised himself. “Two coffees. Black.”

  “But Ellie drinks it with cream and sugar,” Lonnie protested.

  “Make mine black, Lonnie,” Ellie said. “Tanner thinks I’m already full of too much sweetness and light.”

  The troubled look deepened on Lonnie’s high forehead. “Two black coffees,” he said. “Go on into the back room. I’ve laid out the papers for that period. You realize there’s a few days gap. When my father...died it took a little while to get things back in order. Even so, we still have the most extensive coverage of the, er, uh, incident.”

  “Incident?” Tanner echoed with a snort of derisive laughter. “There’s no need to be tactful on my account. Call it anything you damn well please. Slaughter, murder, whatever.”

  “Massacre,” Ellie said firmly, undaunted. “That term seems to cover the situation pretty well. Got anything to eat, Lonnie? I’m starving.”

  A faint smile lit Lonnie’s face. “I expect half the women in town will find some excuse or other to come in here and get a look at Tanner. At least a few of them will be bringing donuts and pastries.”

  “I hope Nilda Tompkins is one of them. She may be the nosiest woman this side of the Mississippi but she makes the best muffins around.”

  “I’ll keep any visitors in the front room. You and Tanner take your time in the morgue.”

  “Fitting name,” Tanner said, following Ellie’s tall, straight figure into the back. She’d left her gold-headed cane in the back of the car, and her limp was almost imperceptible, confirming Tanner’s suspicions. She limped when she remembered she was crippled. When something occupied her mind, her walk was almost completely normal.

  The morgue of the Morey’s Falls Gazette was as depressing as its name. Stacks and stacks of yellowing news sheet covered the shelves of the small, dark room. There was one window, a narrow one set high on a stained wall, and the small patch of sunlight filtering through shed more light on the scarred table than
the flickering fluorescent fixture overhead. Tanner moved over to a chair, staring down at the grainy textured photograph of his father’s face in the open volume spread out for his perusal, keeping his own expression carefully blank.

  “Do you want me to leave you alone?” Ellie’s husky voice broke through his abstraction. He looked up, into that direct, warm gaze, and felt a tightening somewhere in his gut.

  “Suit yourself,” he said evenly, dropping into one of the chairs and pulling the yellowed paper toward him. “It makes no difference to me.”

  “Then I’ll stay.”

  He almost forgot she was there. During the next three hours he sat in the old oak chair, the words sinking into his brain, playing out pictures of pain and anguish and devastation. He read about Nils-Jacob Lundquist, the youngest victim, the sixteen-year-old son of the widowed Judge Lundquist. He read about Harald Olafson and his new assistant editor, about middle-aged ranchers and young mothers, about farmers and grandfathers and college students wiped out in a blaze of gunfire.

  At least Charles Tanner had been a marksman. No one died a lingering, painful death. He knew how to hit a target, hit it neatly and cleanly before turning the gun on himself. His only mistake was sixteen-year-old Eleanor Johnson.

  There were pictures of Ellie, pictures from younger days, with a faded-looking man in the background. For a moment Tanner wondered if that were the Judge, then realized the man was Ellie’s father, another victim of the massacre. The photos were too grainy—newsprint reproductions of old snapshots, and he couldn’t get any sense of her before she’d been shot. She looked like any other young girl, on the edge of womanhood, the blurred face innocent and smiling.

  He found an interview with Judge Lundquist, accompanied by the old man’s picture. The Judge spoke thoughtfully of the need for healing in the town, the sorrow of his own loss, the devastation that would take years to recover from. Tanner looked down into the heavy, jowly features, the stern eyes and conservative mouth, and disliked him on sight. He tried to imagine Ellie in bed with him, tried and failed. If that was the limit of Ellie’s sexual experience she was in for quite a shock.

  “There’s a lot more stuff at the local library.” Ellie’s rich voice startled him for a moment. “We have most of the national accounts of the massacre. Time, Life, Newsweek, all that sort of thing. If you want I can get a key. I’m on the library board and they pretty much let me do what I want.”

  “When’s the library usually open?”

  “Every other Tuesday from ten till three. You just missed it.”

  He leaned back in the chair, balancing on the back legs, and folded his long hands in front of him. “I’d forgotten what a small town can be like. Have you read all this stuff?”

  She hesitated for only a moment. “A number of times. About three years ago I reread everything we had in town about it. We had reporters nosing around again, asking questions, and I realized I’d forgotten almost everything. I’d even forgotten what Charles Tanner looked like.”

  “I can guess why the reporters showed up again. There must have been another mass murder, right?” He toyed briefly with the flimsy paper in front of him.

  “Exactly. Every time some crazy man takes a gun and blows away a fast-food restaurant or a post office they dredge up all the other...”

  “Incidents,” Tanner supplied with a cynical twist of his mouth that couldn’t be called a smile. “They kept trying to track me down, get my opinion. After I broke a few cameras and a few noses they stopped coming around.”

  “Maybe I should have learned karate,” Ellie said. “I guess I’m too polite. I don’t know how to say no.”

  Tanner turned the full force of his attention on her. He could see that look in her eyes, knowing she’d said the wrong thing, waiting for him to turn it around into some sort of come-on that she’d have to deflect. He only smiled faintly, determined to keep her off balance.

  “Okay,” he said. “I’ve read the accounts, and I remember enough from the national media. Charles Tanner got up the morning of July fourth, 1972, put on his army uniform, picked up his M-l rifle and several handguns and drove his old pickup into town. There was a Fourth of July celebration in the middle of town, on the site of a proposed new bank, and half the town was there. He opened fire, shooting for about a minute and a half, and then turned the gun on himself. Is that essentially it?”

  Ellie looked a little dazed. “A minute and a half?” she echoed. “That short a time? It seemed to last an eternity.”

  “What happened to you?”

  She swallowed. He could see this was costing her something emotionally, could see that serene exterior raveling around the edges. Anyone with compassion would back off. Right now his supply of compassion was running extremely low.

  “I was one of the first ones hit. I was talking with Nils-Jacob when he started shooting. I went down, Nils-Jacob fell on top of me, and no one realized I’d only been wounded. I just lay there until the shooting stopped.”

  “And?”

  “What do you want from me, Tanner?” she demanded, her voice raw with pain. “You want gory details and lots of blood? Sorry, I can’t help you on that score. I’ve managed to blot out most of what happened that day. I know the facts, the time sequence, the death count, everything. But I don’t remember the emotions, and I don’t want to. You’ll have to get that from someone else.”

  He looked at her for a long moment. “What I’m more interested in,” he said, his voice low and soothing, “is why no one noticed something was going on. A man walking around in an outdated army uniform and a high-powered rifle shouldn’t be an everyday occurrence.”

  “The gun was a new touch. Your...Charles Tanner often wore his uniform. He’d come into town, not say a word to anyone, cash his disability check and buy some groceries and go back home. Everyone just thought he was a harmless eccentric.”

  “No one had any idea he was over the edge?”

  “He kept away from everyone. I suppose people had their suspicions. Odd things began to happen a couple of years before the massacre. Someone began peering in people’s windows. No one was sure who it was, but they thought it might be Charles. Then animals started being killed. Cattle, horses, old hunting dogs were found dead. Someone began daubing blood on people’s porches. No one knew for sure who it was, but Charles Tanner was the obvious culprit.”

  “And no one did anything?” Tanner’s voice was cold, emotionless.

  “No one had proof. This is a close-knit community—they don’t go for help to outsiders. They would have had to go to the state or maybe the VA for help, and no one wanted to do that.”

  “They paid for it, didn’t they?”

  She stared at him, that clear-eyed gaze troubled. “I guess they did. For what it’s worth, Doc had called in help two days before the massacre. Someone was coming from the VA after the holiday weekend to talk with Charles.”

  “A little late,” said Tanner.

  “A little late,” Ellie agreed. They sat there in silence for a long moment.

  “Did they ever build the bank?”

  “What?” She was startled for a moment. “Oh. No, the backers pulled out. I guess they thought Morey’s Falls wasn’t the best possible spot for a new bank. They turned the empty lot into a park.”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “I’d forgotten. There’s some sort of memorial.”

  She looked even more uncomfortable. “They’re erecting a granite marker, with the names of all the victims carved in it. They’re planning a big dedication on the Fourth of July.”

  “They? Aren’t you a part of all this? The town survivor?”

  “For what it’s worth, I tried to stop the town council from doing it. I think we’ve spent too much time in the past. No one listened.”

  “Couldn’t you have made a fuss?”

  She met his eyes defiantly. “I told you, I’m not good at saying no, particularly to people I care about. The Judge left the money for the memorial, and I have to be the
one to unveil it. I don’t like it, but I’m writing the check and writing my speech.”

  He said nothing for a moment. “And that’s when you want me gone. Before this touching little ceremony.”

  “Tanner,” she said wearily, “don’t make it worse.”

  He stifled the brief surge of compassion. “I could hardly do that, could I? It’s about as bad as it could be. I thought I was living with ghosts. It’s nothing compared to this town.”

  “You’re probably right.” She was looking away from him, refusing to meet his gaze.

  He pushed his chair back from the table. “All right,” he said. “If you want me out of here in two and a half weeks we can’t afford to waste time. Let’s go.”

  “Go where?”

  “The Charles Tanner Massacre Memorial Park.”

  “Don’t call it that.”

  “What do you call it then?”

  “The park. For pity’s sake, just call it the park,” Ellie said.

  “Okay, Ellie. Let’s go for a walk in the park.” God, he was regretting this. Regretting that he’d ever set foot in the state of Montana, regretting that he’d allowed himself to involve Ellie Lundquist in all this. He should have sent her on her way that morning and gone about this at his own pace.

  Ellie was complicating matters. He was reacting to her, responding to her in ways he didn’t like. She was the essence of martyred saint, while he was the son of evil incarnate as far as this town was concerned. He had no business with her, no business at all, and if he had a shred of decency in his body he’d leave her alone.

  Lonnie had reappeared in the open doorway. He’d checked on them periodically during the last three hours— Tanner had felt those eyes on the back of his neck each time he’d paused in the door. “All finished in here?”

  “For now,” Tanner said, rising and stretching his long arms over his head. “I appreciate your help.”