Chapter 18
DAISY
The name has been sitting in the county records for three days and I still haven’t figured out where he fits.
Daniel Rupert Cutter.
Three days of Wyatt’s office and cold tea. Sunday dinner passed without Wyatt and Rhett, the table louder than usual in the way things get when someone’s trying to fill a space without admitting there is one.
The article finally went to Glen this morning. So did Daniel Cutter’s name, and a short ask to dig into him because the investigation is still stalled on that singular name.
Cutter is a public notary. His signature turns up in the property transfer documentation for the Miller ranch, buried in the third page of an eighteen-page title report.
Not the holding company’s name, not a real estate agent or even an attorney.
Just a witness. A notarized signature on a transaction that transferred the Miller place to Mountain West Acquisitions for over a hundred thousand dollars below the assessed value.
And the same signature on the Holburn land sale the year before that.
On a hunch, I pulled Whitmore’s formation paperwork out of the state database again last night. Articles of incorporation, page two, bottom corner.
D.R. Cutter.
Then Whitmore’s dissolution filing from three years later. Same stamp. One retired Blackstone Creek notary on Helena incorporation documents for a firm that never existed anywhere but on paper. Either Daniel Cutter was driving to Helena, or somebody was driving the paperwork to him.
I’ve run it through every database I have access to and cross-referenced county assessor records back almost fifteen years. The trail keeps hitting the same walls, except this wall has a name on it, and names have addresses.
Sky Country Books is the bookshop on Main Street.
I noticed the sign the day June walked me around town when Hemingway, the fat orange cat, sat unmoved in the window while June tapped the glass like he might deign to acknowledge her.
I filed it away the same way I file everything—out of habit, without knowing why.
The name above the door is Cutter.
Now I know why.
What I don’t know is what I’ll find when I walk through that door, or whether asking questions about a name on a title report will close it behind me permanently.
A notary who signed four fraudulent transfers didn’t do it alone, and whoever was pulling the strings has already proven they’re not above making problems disappear.
My father paid fifty thousand dollars for proof and ended up dead on a road he’d driven a thousand times.
I’m aware of the math.
Still.
The trail runs through Sky Country Books and I didn’t come back to Blackstone Creek to stop at the walls.
My tea has gone cold again. I’ve lost track of how many investigations have been conducted over forgotten mugs.
I rinse it at the sink and look out the window to the training paddock visible at the far edge of the yard.
West is already in there, moving in that slow, deliberate way of his around a gray mare I don’t recognize.
Everything about her posture suggests she hasn’t yet decided whether the world is safe.
I watch for a minute longer, then I go outside. By the time I reach the paddock fence, I still haven’t figured out what I came to say.
He hears me before he looks up. Not because I make noise, but because West Hartley seems to operate on some form of awareness that functions entirely independently of the five standard senses, and almost two weeks back on this ranch has not diminished how much that unsettles me.
“Mornin’.” He doesn’t turn around. The mare’s ear swivels toward me, and she shifts a half-step away, keeping West between us.
“Morning.” I lean on the top fence rail and watch. “She’s new.”
“Came in Tuesday. Out of a property dispute near Billings. They weren’t sure they could place her.”
“But you thought different.”
“Figured she deserved the chance to decide for herself.” He lets the rope out an inch. The mare blows a breath but holds her ground. “Takes time.”
The two of them move together in a slow, quiet negotiation that looks like nothing from the outside and is clearly everything up close. His hands are easy. His feet barely shift. He gives her space to recalibrate between every small ask, like he has all the time in the world and genuinely means it.
The mare is watching me now from behind his shoulder. Assessing. She doesn’t move toward me, but she doesn’t move away.
“West.” I keep my voice steady. “Thank you. For Saturday morning. With Felix.”
He doesn’t stop working. His hands stay loose on the rope. “Didn’t take much.”
“Still. It wasn’t your mess to handle.”
There’s a pause. The mare shifts and he shifts with her, barely a movement at all. Then he looks at me for the first time, brief and direct. Like he’s been waiting for the right moment and decided this is it.
“You’re one of ours, Daisy Monroe. Figured it was time someone said it.”
He says it the way he’d state the height of a fence post. Like a fact, not a comfort.
Present tense. As if it never needed stating, because it was never in question, and the only reason he’s saying it now is that, apparently, I needed to hear it out loud.
The mare shifts her weight. She doesn’t move toward me, but she doesn’t step away either.
“Some things just need more time,” West says. Those green eyes, so like his brother’s, hold mine for just a beat longer before he turns his attention back to her.
I nod, then push off the fence and head back toward the house. The morning sun is warm across the yard. Behind me, a meadowlark starts up, clear and carrying, and I find myself walking a little faster.
Because I have absolutely no idea what to do with that.
* * *
Glen replies on Friday morning, which is either good or terrible timing, depending on how I look at it.
SENDER: Glen Calloway glen.calloway@
RECIPIENT: Daisy Monroe daisy@
RE: Glacier Ridge + other
Article’s good, Daisy. Really good. Will run it as is with the edits I’ve marked. Staff position is yours when you get back.
Re: the other thing. The Cutter you’re after has a daughter—Alma.
Worked commercial accounts at the local bank for nine years before her father got sick.
Quiet exit when he went into the hospital.
No black marks, no formal complaints, just a woman who walked out the door and never went back. She’s running Sky Country now.
Worth a conversation if you can get one. Be careful.
I read it twice. Then I close the laptop and sit with it for a minute.
The article is done. The staff position is mine.
Everything I came here for, professionally speaking, is sitting in my inbox with a green light and Glen’s signature underneath it, but the thing I’m focused on is a bookshop on Main Street and an old man’s daughter who may or may not know what her father signed his name to.
June’s head appears around the office door at noon.
“I’m making a town run. Need anything?”
I look at her. She looks at me with the specific expression of someone who has already decided how this afternoon is going to go and is simply waiting for me to catch up.
“Give me two minutes.” I grin as I reach for my jacket.
The drive into Blackstone Creek takes fifteen minutes and June fills every single one with the Henderson fundraiser aftermath, which has apparently generated enough gossip to sustain Blackstone Creek through the winter and well into spring.
“Dolly Briggs has called Maggie four times.” June doesn’t quite manage to suppress the laughter in her tone as she navigates the county road with one hand on the wheel. “Four times, Daisy. Each call was longer than the last.”
“About the auction?”
“About Wyatt.” She says it with the careful neutrality of a woman who has filed her own opinions away for later. “Dolly has theories.”
“Everyone in this town has theories about everything.”
“Dolly’s are more detailed than most.” She glances at me sideways. “She’s also not entirely wrong, which is the annoying part.”
I look out the window at the valley rolling past. “What does that mean?”
“It means Dolly Briggs has been watching this family for thirty-some years and she notices things.” June signals the turn onto Main Street. “She called Maggie to ask if you were staying.”
The question lands quietly.
“I’m not.” And I mean that. I’m not.
June doesn’t respond to that. She parallel parks with the efficiency of someone who has done it ten thousand times and gets out of the truck, and I follow her onto the sidewalk into the warm Friday afternoon.
Main Street is unhurried the way it always is between the lunch rush and dinner.
The hardware store is open, and the afternoon is warm enough that the florist has moved half the shop onto the sidewalk, late spring wildflowers in every direction.
Sky Country Books sits on the corner, exactly where it always has.
The sign is painted dark green with gold lettering, sun-faded at the edges, and Hemingway is in the window in his customary position of supreme indifference.
Except the door has a sign on it.
Closed due to a family matter.
Apologies for any inconvenience.
I stand on the sidewalk and read it twice.
June appears at my shoulder, already crouching to tap the glass at Hemingway’s eye level. The cat doesn’t twitch. She taps again.
“June.”
“He’ll move eventually. It’s a matter of patience and commitment.” She straightens, finally registering the sign. “Oh no. Danny’s in hospital.”
“Daniel Cutter?”
“Mm-hm, yeah. Goes by Danny. He’s in Bozeman.”
She peers through the glass, then slowly shakes her head.
“Alma must be driving back and forth. She’s been running that shop alone since he retired.
” She tilts her head in thought. “Heart, I think. Or maybe it was a fall. Lou at the feed store mentioned something last week but you know how Lou is. He starts with the medical facts and ends up talking about his cousin’s knee surgery in 1987. ”
“Is he okay?”
“Lou’s cousin? Apparently, the knee never fully recovered.”