Hard Evidence by Roxanne Rustand Page A

Claire’s eyes, followed by the inevitable flash of anger. “You didn’t tell me that,” she snapped. “Why not?”
    Tessa had talked to Claire on the phone yesterday, but reminding her would probably just upset her more. “I’m sorry…I must have forgotten,” Janna said gently. “Do you want to go?”
    “Of course I do. That’s where I should be, after all. I don’t belong here.”
    “You’ll be going just for the afternoon, Mom. Tessa is gone for weeks at a time on her pack trips, and she’s also busy with the livestock, so you wouldn’t have any company if you lived there. Maybe next winter, when things slow down for her…”
    Claire’s eyes sparked with fire at the reminder. “I was born in that house and so were you girls. I lived there for seventy-two years, and I hardly need company watching over me.”
    Unable to come up with a tactful answer to that, Janna finished polishing the window, then put the plastic bucket of cleaning supplies on the kitchen table.
    Given Claire’s declining health, the best options had been to consider supervised residential care, find an in-home caretaker, or have her live with a daughter who could watch over her consistently. As always, the three sisters had vehemently disagreed, but in the end they’d finally come to a consensus.
    With Tessa’s schedule and Leigh not moving back to the area until later in the year, Janna had been the best option. Unfortunately, she and Claire had always shared the stormiest mother-daughter relationship.
    At the sound of truck tires crunching up the lane, she breathed a sigh of relief. “I think that’s Tessa now.”
    Instantly Claire’s face transformed. Without a word, she pivoted and strode out of the cabin.
    “I love you, too, Mom,” Janna whispered softly as she took a last look around the cabin, then shut the door and followed Claire up to the lodge.
    Tessa leaned against her truck, her McAllister strawberry-blond hair pulled through the back of a ball cap in a long ponytail, her T-shirt revealing sun-bronzed, well-toned arms. The pair of leather gloves hanging out of the back pocket of her worn jeans suggested that she’d just finished working a horse or fixing fence, and that her day was far from finished.
    Trim, athletic and strictly no-nonsense about her appearance, Tessa had an air of intelligent competence that Janna had always admired.
    Claire went straight for the passenger-side door and climbed in, but Tessa pushed away from the truck and met Janna partway. As usual, she cut straight to the chase without wasting time on pleasantries. “I heard about the trouble here. Why didn’t you call?”
    “I thought you were up in the mountains until last night and figured Mom told you when you called her.” Janna glanced at the swing set area by the lodge, where Rylie was in plain sight playing fetch with Maggie. “The DCI was here two days ago, but we might not have any answers for months—possibly even a year.”
    “So there’s no identification? No cause of death?”
    Janna shook her head. “Wade thinks it could hurt business here, if rumors start to fly.”
    “An old skeleton hardly has anything to do with the lodge now.” Tessa snorted. “If anything, it’ll help get the word out about you reopening the place. How’s Mom? Are you two at war yet?”
    “I’d hoped things would be different between us now, but they aren’t.” Janna smiled ruefully. “What makes it harder is that she resents being away from the home place on the ranch, and she’s angry at all of us about that. She doesn’t understand it’s safer for her to be here.”
    “We expected that.”
    “And she’s forgetful, just as you said. We had a customer arrive for the whole summer, and I had no clue that she’d accepted the reservation. Frankly, I don’t think she can be left alone…at least not for more than an afternoon.”
    Tessa bristled. “She’s not a child.”
    “Her old freedom might have worked back at the ranch, but