Chapter Three
“Your brother’s asking to speak to his lawyer,” Deputy Rance Fletcher said as Max returned to the sheriff’s office.
“Of course he is,” the sheriff said.
“Who’s his lawyer?”
“I’ll take care of it.” Max tossed his brother’s keys onto his desk and headed for the cellblock, snatching up the keys to the cells on the way.
Cordell was where he’d been earlier, snoozing on the bench, his Stetson cocked over his eyes, his legs crossed at his boots.
“Comfortable enough?” he asked sarcastically.
Cordell had always been able to sleep anywhere under any circumstances since they were kids—unlike Max.
It was something Max had resented for years, but especially right now.
After what his brother had told him, he wondered if he’d ever sleep again.
“Rance tell you I wanted to talk to my lawyer?”
“You sure your…lawyer wants to talk to you?”
“Doubtful, but I need a lawyer and there’s only one in town.” Cordell swung his boots off the bench and sat up, casting his hat aside as he raked a hand through his hair. There’d been a time when people had thought the two of them were twins even though Max was older by five years.
“You do know it’s Saturday. The law office is closed today.”
“I still have the home number on speed dial,” his brother said with a wry smile.
Max could only shake his head.
“I wouldn’t mind making the call in private, all things considered,” Cordell said.
Max just bet he would. He thought about the fight he’d had earlier with Goldie. Why was he being so hard on his brother when he’d missed Cordell like one of his own limbs and had worried about him the whole time he was gone?
Relenting, he pulled out his brother’s cell phone and held it through the bars. “You have three minutes.”
“I doubt it will take that long.”
* * *
Cordell dialed the familiar landline number and listened to it ring. Once, twice, three times before it was picked up with an aggravated, “If this is about Cordell Lander, we already know.”
It had been so long since he’d heard a familiar voice, it made him smile.
“Hey, Amy Sue.” Silence. “Sounds like good news travels fast.” More silence.
“I find myself in need of a lawyer. Is Josie close at hand?” He knew she was.
She spent every chance she got out at her grandmother’s old farm even though she had a combo apartment–law office in town.
When she came on the line and he heard her voice after all this time, his heart swelled as if filled with helium.
“I figured you’d be calling.”
“Josie.” He uttered her name like a prayer. She sounded so good that his eyes filled, and his chest ached. “Sure would like to see you.”
“Amy Sue said you need a lawyer. These old charges against you? Or are they new ones?” she asked, sounding like the attorney she was.
“Old.”
She made a dismissive sound. “I can probably get them thrown out, if I can tell the judge that you’ll be leaving town right after you’re released.”
“I can’t promise that. I need to help Max with something.”
“Do not tell me that you’ve involved Max in your trouble.”
“I don’t have time to go into it on the phone, but Max is in more danger than I am. That’s why I’m back. I’m not leaving until my brother is safe. That’s why I need to get out of jail.”
“Did Max buy this story of yours?”
“Oh, you know Max. He thinks he’s invincible and I’m just a screwup.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, clearly agreeing.
“He probably doesn’t think he needs me. But this time, he does, trust me.” The moment he said it, he knew it was the wrong thing to say. “You used to trust me,” he added quickly.
“And look where it got me,” she said.
He heard the cellblock door open, and footfalls headed his way. “Max only gave me three minutes, but there’s so much I need to—”
“I’ll see you Monday morning.”
“That might be too late.” He thought she had already hung up.
“What kind of trouble are you in, Cordell?” Her tone sounded almost warm, concerned, definitely caring, giving him hope. “Never mind, I don’t want to know. I’ll be right there.” Just like that, this time she really was gone.
He disconnected and turned to see Max waiting for his phone. “She going to represent you?” He sounded doubtful.
“She’s coming right in,” he said, holding out the phone. “We can’t waste any time with Grimes on his way here.”
Max shook his head, clearly refusing to believe anything Cordell had told him as he took his cell and pocketed it. “You all right about seeing her again?”
“Seriously? You want to talk about how I feel about Josie?” He sighed since the answer was simple. He felt as if he’d been kicked in the chest by a horse at just the sound of her voice. “She’s not married, is she? Seeing anyone?”
“Married? No. Dating…?” He shrugged. “You can take that up with her when she gets here,” his brother said and started to walk out.
“You can try to convince yourself that I’m wrong, but Roger is still headed this way,” he called after his brother.
Max slowed and turned as if he’d changed his mind. Walking back, he said, “I’ll move you into a cell with a bed.”
Cordell sighed. “How gracious of you. That sandwich was great, but what time’s dinner? I really didn’t take time to eat on the road.”
Max unlocked his cell and opened another one with a narrow cot-like bed. “It’s Saturday so the special is Goldie’s fried chicken, mashed potatoes and corn. I suppose you’ll want pie. Your favorite still banana cream?”
His grin broadened. “You remembered.” He was actually touched by that. “Boy, is it good to be home, bro. I just wish it was under different circumstances.”
“Yeah,” Max said and locked the cell after Cordell entered. “I can’t wait to see what happens when the town finds out what’s in the back of that trailer you brought.”
“I told you. It’s a peace offering.”
“You serious?” his brother said, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine what you were thinking. You aren’t going to have to worry about our dead phony stepfather killing you. The town’s people will be showing up with pitchforks demanding your head on a stake.” With that he walked out.
“About dinner? What time did you say it is?”
His brother didn’t answer as he let the door slam behind him.
* * *
“You’RE GOING TO represent him?” Amy Sue asked in horror. “After everything Cordell did to you?”
“He didn’t do anything to me that I didn’t want to happen,” Josie snapped.
She’d been more than a willing participant.
She’d fallen for the town bad boy, and she’d fallen hard.
When he’d broken her heart and left town, no one blamed her—the good girl—for getting involved with him.
It was all Cordell who caught the community’s wrath.
Josie was their pride and joy. The girl who had made good and come back here after passing the bar.
“It’s bad enough that he’s in town, but if you get him out of jail…”
“It’s my job. Strictly business.”
Her sister laughed. “You can actually say that with a straight face? No wonder you’re such a good lawyer.” Amy Sue had never understood why Josie had come back to Dry Gulch to open her practice.
“You have all kinds of job offers,” her sister had cried. “You could get hired anywhere, start your own practice anywhere, why would you come back here? I thought you were trying to get out of Dry Gulch.”
“It’s you who wants out, Amy Sue,” Josie had said in exasperation. “You’re just too scared to drive out past the city limits. Don’t blame me for my choices when you have never let yourself make one.”
Amy Sue had never understood that Dry Gulch, their grandmother’s farm, this part of Montana was Josie’s home.
It’s probably why their grandmother had left the place to her in a trust so it would be handed down to Josie’s children.
Their grandmother had never thought Amy Sue would stay around and she didn’t want the property ever sold.
She trusted Josie to make sure it wasn’t.
Even though Josie had left for college and gotten her law degree, she’d always planned to return home. The area needed a lawyer.
“You’ll go broke,” her sister had contended. “Or get bored to death.”
“Good thing I don’t need much money, and I’m not easily bored,” Josie had told her. “Sis, I know what I’m doing.”
But Amy Sue had dug in her heels, determined it was Cordell Lander’s fault Josie hadn’t left for greener pastures.
“You want to be here when he comes back. You really think he’s coming back to farm this property?
” They had the land leased, which brought in more than enough for them to live on even without Josie’s law office income.
She wondered now if Amy Sue remembered those words.
Josie would have denied she was here because of Cordell to her dying day.
But now she had to wonder if at least there had been some truth to it.
Was she that foolish that she’d been waiting around all this time for Cordell to return?
No, she thought. As to whether or not she was still in love with the bad boy, that was her own burden to carry since it appeared that he hadn’t changed one iota.
Maybe worse, it seemed that whatever had brought him back, he was involving his brother in it.
“I’m sure that once I get him out of jail, he’ll be gone,” she told her sister now.
“Can you finish up the canning? I have a client I have to see and take that damned phone off the hook.” Cordell was back and everyone thought they needed to warn her.
The town’s people were determined to protect her heart from getting broken again.
As if a heart once broken could be that easily repaired for another bout of heartbreak.
Given how the town’s people felt about her, she hoped Cordell wouldn’t give the residents of Dry Gulch any more reason to want to run him back out of town.
* * *
Amy Sue watched her sister leave. Oh, she would finish the canning, but she wasn’t happy about Cordell Lander being back. Of course he was already in jail. Why couldn’t Josie see that the two of them had no future?
She looked around the farmhouse kitchen. Her grandmother had been wrong. She loved this place. She didn’t want to leave. She was the obvious one to keep the farm going—not her sister. Josie thought she was the only one with plans. Little did she know.
Smiling, Amy Sue reminded herself that one day she would run this farm with her husband, a man who wanted to work the land as much as she did. She would show her sister. Josie thought she knew her so well. She had no idea. Wouldn’t she be surprised to learn that Amy Sue had a man in her life?
She looked forward to the day when Josie got to meet him. She couldn’t wait to see the expression on her sister’s face. All the residents of Dry Gulch who thought Amy Sue Brand would be an old spinster out here on the farm alone raising cats would realize how wrong they’d been.
But the main person she wanted to show was her grandmother, who’d left the farm to the wrong granddaughter.