Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip Read online

  Copyright Information

  Heaven Painted as a Poker Chip

  Copyright © 2014 by Dean Wesley Smith

  First published in a different form in Smith’s Monthly #10, July, 2014

  Published by WMG Publishing

  Cover and Layout copyright © 2014 by WMG Publishing

  Cover design by Allyson Longueira/WMG Publishing

  Cover art copyright © Rolffimages/Dreamstime, Adam Vilimek/Dreamstime

  Smashwords Edition

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

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  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Other Titles from Dean Wesley Smith

  Copyright Information

  For Kris

  Long live popcorn for the brain.

  Section One

  THAT’S GOT TO HURT

  ONE

  TWENTY-SEVEN MINUTES before she died, Dr. Jewel Kelly stepped out of the front door of her small office in Buffalo Jump, Montana, and set her medical bag on the sidewalk beside her. She then made sure the office door was locked tight. With a control on her key chain, she triggered the alarm. She doubted anyone around this town would take anything, but better safe than sorry.

  She picked up her bag, pulled her ski parka in close around her, and stepped over under the eve of Bernie’s General Store. Her little office was like an outbuilding off of Bernie’s store. Three rooms and a bathroom.

  Enough for her to get the job done, but not by much.

  She again set her medical bag down on a dry spot near the building and turned to face the small town and wait for her ride.

  She was a tall woman at five-ten, with long brown hair she loved to keep pulled back, and green eyes people said could stare right through you. At twenty-five, she liked more than anything else to run to stay fit. And she loved reading a great romance novel. In med school in Seattle, she had had time to run, but not read.

  Now she had more than enough time for both. She usually put in a five-mile run up near the high school every afternoon, staying off the main highway as much as possible.

  The run every day at least made her feel alive.

  A cold mist of a late April spring day covered the main street of Buffalo Jump, Montana, which was also a major two-lane north-south highway. The air had a bite to it, and she had no doubt that later tonight the mist would turn to snow and the road would freeze over.

  She had planned to spend the night in her log cabin a half mile to the south of town, in front of a nice fire, sipping on a glass of white wine and reading the new Nora Roberts novel. Then maybe later, after a nice bath, she would have a date with her best friend, Mr. Buzzy. She had a hunch that in Buffalo Jump, Montana, she was going to wear out good old Buzzy before she found a real man she wanted to date.

  To her right and south was Jay’s Gas and Minimart, across from that was Carol’s Restaurant, a diner that actually had some pretty good food and was pretty clean. Beyond that, the two-lane highway disappeared off into the pine forest, now growing dark as the early evening wore on.

  That was the road out of these mountains to Missoula.

  To her left and north sat the twenty buildings that made up the main part of Buffalo Jump, including an old hardware store and some basic offices, two bars, and two antique stores to catch the occasional tourist who thought to stop.

  She had been in the antique stores, but not the bars. She wasn’t much of a drinker except for a nice glass of good wine after dinner.

  On the other end of town, she could barely see through the light rain the white tower of the only church, a Presbyterian church, whose basement doubled for a meeting room for the big town events. She hadn’t been in there yet either. She had never been much of a church-goer back in Boise where she grew up.

  A sprawling red-brick school sat off the main street against a pine-covered hillside and serviced all grades for most of the county, with dozens of lumbering, bright-yellow school busses pouring in and out of town every day. There was even had a high school football team.

  Her favorite running route was from her office, up past the school, out a dead-end gravel road for two miles, then back.

  Right now she could run up the middle of the main street and no one would even notice. There was no traffic at all and just a few cars parked in front of the bars.

  A typical late Thursday afternoon in small town Montana.

  Silence closed in around her and she shuddered. Not even a slight wind through the pines around the town broke the oppressive stillness.

  She pulled her dark-blue ski parka in around her, making sure it was zipped, then pulled her ski gloves out of her pocket and put them on. She could never seem to be warm enough here, except when sitting in front of the fire in her cabin.

  Under the parka, she had on a nice white blouse and today she had worn jeans for only the second time. It seemed everyone else in town wore jeans, including the mayor, who ran the small grocery store, so she might as well.

  Besides, jeans were far more comfortable in the cold weather. Not as drafty as the skirts she wore the first month on the job here. Nothing like a cold Montana wind whipping up a skirt and hitting a cotton-covered crotch to give a girl a real thrill.

  And not a fun thrill.

  She was the town’s only doctor, actually the county’s only doctor. And at times like this, she had no idea why she had agreed to the tuition deal to practice medicine here. Sure, she got all her debts forgiven, not a small chunk at all, if she stayed five years, but she wasn’t sure if she could handle five years out in the middle of nowhere like this, even though her dream had been to be a GP.

  She had only been here for six weeks and mostly been bored out of her mind. She didn’t drink and she didn’t go to church. That didn’t leave a lot left to do except exercise, read and give Mr. Buzzy a workout regularly.

  She had delivered one baby in the small building the county called a hospital up beside the school. And she had fixed a few broken bones and one concussion from a bar fight.

  For one night, she had even had a woman in the little four-bed hospital with a gall bladder attack. Jewel had to check in on her every hour to make sure the woman didn’t get worse and need to take a Life-Flight out to Missoula.

  The woman hadn’t gotten worse and the woman’s husband the next day had driven her to Missoula, four hours away, for the operation.

  Today was Jewel’s first call for an injury in Jackson Ridge, another small town about twenty miles away on the highway to the north. The call had come into her cell phone from the county sheriff, and he had told her a deputy would pick her up.

  She had told the sheriff she had her car and could drive fine, but the sheriff, a man named Martin, insisted a deputy go along with her.

  “Trust me,” he had said. “The area this call came from is not a place you go in alone. Especially with that little overseas thing you drive.”

  Clearly, her red Miata had been noticed, and not in a good way.

  “Besides,” the sheriff had said, “it’s going to be snowing soon and the highway’s going to be slick. You don’t want to be driving after dark out in these woods until you get to know the roads some.”

  She had thanked the sheriff and said she would be waiting in front of her office in ten minutes.

  “Deputy Ralston will be there as quick as he can,” the sheriff had said and hung up.

  So now she stood under the eve of the general
store, moving from foot to foot, her hands deep in her ski parka pockets, watching the excitement of Buffalo Jump on a late Thursday afternoon.

  Except for the misting rain, nothing moved.

  Nothing.

  Total and complete silence.

  What the hell had she been thinking coming here?

  TWO

  NINETEEN MINUTES BEFORE he died, Deputy Sheriff Tommy Ralston got into his patrol cruiser that he had parked in front of his family’s summer home on the edge of Slatefish Lake, and tossed his hat into the back seat.

  Luckily, he hadn’t started the steak he planned to have for dinner after the long day on the highways. His shift had lasted ten hours, starting early, and now the sheriff wanted him to take the new doctor down to Jackson Ridge on Mule Dump Creek for an injury call. More than likely one of the Stevens twins had gotten in a fight with a wife and she had stabbed him or something.

  He understood why the sheriff had wanted him to go along. Those Stevens’ boys had missed the line for brains when they were getting handed out.

  Tommy got his patrol car started and headed back into Buffalo Jump. He was ex-military, Marines for three years, and had two degrees that the military had paid for when he got home from the desert. One degree in math from Cal Tech and one in criminal justice from UC Berkeley.

  That’s when his money had run out, before he could go on into law school as he planned. And he didn’t feel much like going into debt just yet. The one thing the Marines had taught him, and that wasn’t to be in a hurry.

  His family had had the summerhouse on the lake up here that they used rarely, and he had fond memories of coming up here from Spokane where he was growing up. So he figured why not take a law enforcement job for a few years before really moving on into the next phase of his schooling.

  The sheriff had been more than happy to have him on board, and for the first year, Tommy had really liked the job. But he was still young at twenty-eight and figured it was time to move on after the summer season.

  He had decided he would help the sheriff get through the tourists and then head back to California for the winter. He had saved most of his two years of salary, which would, with a little help from his father, get Tommy through the first year of law school at Berkeley before he had to borrow any money.

  Tommy had on jeans, cowboy boots, and had put back on one of his brown sheriff’s uniform shirts over a t-shirt with the UC-Berkeley logo on it. He kept his schooling and California roots pretty quiet up here. Not the kind of thing the people who lived in these Montana mountains would take kindly to.

  He had tossed a few breakfast bars on the passenger seat to hold him through the drive to Jackson Ridge and back. And a couple bottles of water, in case the new doctor wanted something to drink.

  He hadn’t met her yet, or even seen her, but he had heard she was young and drove a red Miata. More than likely in another year here she would be trading that in for a Jeep Grand Cherokee or something.

  He turned the corner near the big church and onto the silent main street of Buffalo Jump. The towns in this part of the mountains really just rolled up their sidewalks and shut down, except for the bars, by four or five in the afternoon. Only the mini-mart at the far end of town was open to catch a few stray tourists still on the highway. And it would be shut down by nine.

  He could see the doctor standing to one side of her office. She looked to be wearing a big blue ski parka and was moving from foot-to-foot as if cold.

  He turned up the heat in the patrol car and moved the bars and water bottles to the center console, tossing his clipboard on the floor in the back with his hat.

  As he pulled up and stopped, she bent down and grabbed her medical bag, then came over and climbed into the passenger seat, putting the medical bag on the floor between her feet.

  “You want me to put that in back?” he asked.

  “No thanks,” she said, breathlessly, not yet looking at him. “Thanks for having the heat up.”

  And with that she turned and looked at him.

  And he froze.

  Flat froze.

  That had never happened to him at any point in his past, not with other women, not in the desert while in the service.

  All he could see was her smile and those intense green eyes.

  She seemed to freeze as well.

  They sat there like that, the patrol car idling, the heater running, staring at each other.

  Finally she broke first and extended her hand. “Jewel Kelly,” she said, with the most incredible and alluring voice he had ever heard come from a woman.

  He nodded. “Sorry, Tommy Ralston.”

  She smiled. “Your first name is Sorry?”

  “Tommy,” he said, smiling back at her. “Sorry I was staring.”

  He shook her hand, not wanting to let go of it, but finally doing so.

  She was staring at him just as much.

  “Before you start,” she said, smiling at him. “Let me take this coat off. It’s warm in here.”

  “I thought that was just me,” he said, adjusting the heat down some as she laughed.

  She opened the door, letting in the cool night air, stood outside the car, and took off the heavy ski parka. She handed it to him before climbing in and he put it in the back seat.

  Then, as she was figuring out the seat belt, he turned back to look at her.

  She was stunning, with her long brown hair pulled back.

  No other way to put it. And clearly in shape, built like an athlete.

  And she was a medical doctor, so she was smart.

  Holy crap, what was she doing in Buffalo Jump, Montana?

  Then she turned and smiled at him again and he wondered if he could even breathe.

  “Well, Deputy,” she said. “Let’s have an adventure.”

  He laughed. “Doc, not sure if going to Jackson Ridge could be called an adventure. But I’m game if you are.”

  “In this town,” she said, “I’m game for damn near anything.”

  He laughed. “Bored already, huh?”

  She just shook her head as he did a U-turn and headed north.

  “You have no idea,” she said.

  “Been here myself for going on two years,” he said, smiling at her. “I think I do.”

  THREE

  THEY WERE JUST at the nine-mile mark out of Buffalo Jump and she was still stunned that Deputy Tommy Ralston was as handsome and as smart as he was.

  And that he worked in Buffalo Jump. How was that even possible?

  In the fifteen minutes it had taken them to go the nine miles on the winding road, she had already discovered he was an ex-Marine, had two degrees from California schools, and planned on heading back to law school.

  She had also discovered that he was funny and handsome beyond any hero in any of the romance novels she had read.

  And he was single, never married.

  Again, how in the hell was that possible?

  His dark brown eyes, when he looked at her, seemed to see more than she wanted anyone to see. She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, if she had her way, he would be seeing a lot more of her.

  The road to Jackson Ridge was winding along the face of a mountainside covered in huge old pine trees. After the first mile, she had forced herself to keep an eye on the road instead of just turning sideways and staring at him, which was what she really, really wanted to do. The last thing he needed was for her, the doctor, to get carsick and throw up in his patrol car.

  That would not be a very good first impression.

  So she had been staring ahead when a majestic deer with huge antlers jumped up out of the brush and stood right in the middle of the highway in front of them.

  “Deer!” she shouted, bracing herself with both hands on the dashboard.

  She could see the deer’s big brown eyes spotlighted in the headlights of the car. It seemed to be staring at them, daring them to hit it.

  “Shit!” Tommy shouted, expertly moving the patrol car to the right to miss the h
uge animal.

  And much to her surprise, he did miss the big majestic creature, but not by much.

  But the road on the other side of the deer had turned sharply left.

  Tommy had swerved right because there wasn’t enough room around the big deer on the left.

  She could see the edge of the road ahead as a very dark line. No guardrail, of course. This was Montana. Guardrails were for sissies and city folk.

  Tommy fought hard, but couldn’t get the car straightened back out on the slick, almost frozen pavement.

  But he made an amazing attempt and almost did.

  But almost, in this case, wasn’t enough.

  The patrol car left the highway and got airborne as the hillside beside the road sloped steeply away.

  Flying was something she was fairly certain cars were never supposed to do.

  “Brace yourself!” Tommy shouted.

  She pushed back into her seat.

  This was not going to be good.

  While the car was in the air, Tommy reached down to the radio and flipped a switch.

  The car hit once on the steep slope and bounced violently, again something she was fairly certain a car was never supposed to do.

  Tommy fought the wheel, trying to keep the car straight and headed downhill.

  That didn’t work out so well either.

  Right ahead of them was one of the biggest old-growth pine trees she had ever seen.

  Far bigger around at the base than the car.

  No chance, even as an expert driver, could Tommy miss that tree.

  He didn’t.

  And that was the last thing she remembered.

  FOUR

  TOMMY FOUND HIMSELF outside the car, stunned, as the echo of the crash carried through the trees and on down the hill. He must have been tossed clear of the wreck somehow.

  Now he was standing near the car on a steep dirt and pine-needle slope. The smell of gas filled the air, but it was raining enough to keep most chances of fire down.