Crazy Mountain Kiss by Keith McCafferty Read Free Book Online Page A

hundred-acre property might have seen Cinderella, and that was the ranch manager, Earl Hightower. The girl was friendly with Hightower, who Huntington said was teaching her guitar. Huntington tried to raise him on the VHF handset. Although you could use a cell phone from the main ranch house, which was set on a bench above the river, Hightower’s house was tucked back into a cottonwood grove at a lower elevation and didn’t get reception. Hightower didn’t pick up, so she drove to the house, which was out near the main gate, and foundhim in his barn. He reminded Huntington that he’d been out of town the day before to pick up a brood mare from a ranch out of Big Timber. So no, he hadn’t seen Cinderella. Questioned more closely about the previous afternoon, he said he’d driven back to the Bar-4 at 5 p.m., turned the horse over to Watt, and then had driven back out the ranch road to his house and had dinner with his wife. Afterward, maybe seven-thirty or so, he took his dog on a walk out to the main gate and back, like he did every night, and spotted headlights turning onto the ranch access. He recognized the truck as belonging to the groomsman, Landon Anker. Anker idled down and they had acknowledged each other by each cocking a forefinger, the ubiquitous Montana salute. Anker came in to do chores once or twice a week after school and again on weekends. Sometimes he’d worked till nine or ten at night. Hightower thought nothing of the brief encounter and no words were exchanged.
    They were standing on Hightower’s porch during the conversation, when Loretta Huntington saw the ranch manager’s face change. Hightower had extended his arm toward the county road, where the low-angle sun glinted off a metallic speck in the distance. The glint was from U.S. 89, in the direction of Wilsall. A car parked at the roadside? Anker’s car? His family was from Wilsall. Hightower got binoculars from his house and confirmed that it was a dark-colored truck. Anker’s GMC was dark blue. They investigated, found that it was in fact the young man’s truck, parked behind a berm in the road, maybe twenty yards off the pavement. The truck was unlocked and the key was in the ignition. The right rear tire was flat. Hightower squatted down and found what looked like the head of a roofing nail flattened against the tread. There was a spare in the bed of the pickup. Hightower climbed into the bed and stood on it. The spare was flat also.
    At this point, a logical solution presented itself. Huntington said that on two previous occasions, Anker had picked up her daughter from the ranch early in the morning and they had gone into Wilsall to his parents’ house to eat a pancake breakfast prepared by hismother. That would explain why her truck was still parked in the lot, rather than at the gate. Then, while driving to town they had got the flat and, unable to fix it, had probably walked the last two miles to his house. There were holes in the theory, starting with the fact that if Landon Anker had pulled up to the ranch house at six-thirty or seven that morning, Loretta probably would have heard the motor, or at least the dogs barking, and she hadn’t. Then, too, it was unlike her daughter to fail to mention the change of schedule to her. As she confessed to Harold, she was trying to talk herself into believing the best-case scenario. Upon first seeing the truck, she had feared that her daughter had been involved in an accident, or that the two had driven off to go neck somewhere during the night, and as it was cold, had run the motor and asphyxiated on the fumes. She told Harold that Cinderella had a crush on the young man, but that she really didn’t know if he returned her affections.
    Not wasting time, Huntington and Hightower drove to the Anker homestead, where they found the boy’s parents sitting down to breakfast. They hadn’t seen their son for twenty-four hours and thought he was