B.J. Daniels - Classified Christmas

Cade Jackson? The husband of the deceased woman from the newspaper clipping?

Andi lifted the camera and impulsively snapped his photograph. As she pulled the camera down, he disappeared into the crowd.

Cold and tired, she returned to the newspaper office just down the block, anxious to get her photographs into the computer. Warmer, she decided to go ahead and write up her story even though it was late.

She knew she was just avoiding the small apartment she’d rented on the other side of town. It wasn’t far from the newspaper given that Whitehorse was only ten blocks square. She usually drove to work out of habit more than necessity, although she didn’t relish walking through all the snow.

The apartment was small and impersonal to the point of being depressing. In time she would make it hers, but right now she preferred the newspaper office to home.

After she put in the photographs and wrote cutlines for each, she sat down at the computer to write an accompanying article.

Her mind wandered, though, and she found herself calling up the photograph of the cowboy she’d seen on the main street tonight, the one the woman had called Cade. How many Cades could there be in Whitehorse?

The publisher had said Cade Jackson and his wife, Grace, had only been married a short period of time before her death. That meant there should be a wedding announcement in the file, she thought, unable to shake her curiosity as to why someone had sent the cassette and clipping to her.

Five minutes later, she found the wedding announcement and photo. The two had married November 14—just weeks before her death.

Andi studied the photograph of the groom, comparing it to the one she’d taken of the cowboy she’d seen on the street tonight. Cade Jackson. The two were one and the same.

The cassette was still in her pocket. Now more than ever she was anxious to find a player and see what was on the tape.

Intent on the cowboy, Andi finally looked at the wedding photo of the bride, Grace Browning Jackson. Her mouth went dry, her heart a hammer in her ears.

She knew this woman.

Except her name hadn’t been Grace Browning. Not even close.

Andi Blake stared at the photograph, telling herself she had to be mistaken. But she knew she wasn’t.

It was Starr, she’d stake her life on it. Starr Calhoun wasn’t someone she could have forgotten even if the first time Andi laid eyes on her wasn’t indelibly branded on her memory. They’d both been only young girls. Andi remembered only too well the look they’d shared before all hell broke loose.

And it wasn’t as if Andi hadn’t seen Starr Calhoun since, she thought with a chill.

It made sense, Starr masquerading as this Grace Browning woman and marrying a local yokel. Starr Calhoun had been hiding out here, using marriage as a cover, waiting. Waiting for what, though?

Her brother Lubbock! He’d been arrested only an hour away from Whitehorse six years ago. She felt a chill as she realized she was meant to come here. As if it had always been her destiny. As if Starr Calhoun had called her from the grave.

She shivered and glanced toward the front window of the newspaper office along the main street, suddenly feeling more than a little paranoid.

A few shoppers straggled past. The Christmas lights still glowed in the park across the street by the train tracks. Next to the old depot, a half dozen passengers waited by their suitcases. Whitehorse’s depot had closed years ago, but a passenger train still came through. Passengers had to call for tickets and wait outside until the train arrived.

Andi got up and closed the front blinds, doublechecking the front door to make sure she’d locked it.

It didn’t take her long to find a more recent photograph of Starr Calhoun on the FBI’s most wanted list. She printed the photo, standing over the printer as it came out. The copy wasn’t great. But then the original had been taken from a bank surveillance camera.

That had been six years ago August. Wearing masks and carrying sawed-off shotguns, a man and woman had robbed a series of banks across Texas amassing an estimated three million dollars over a two-week period.

During what turned out to be their last robbery, there had been an altercation and the mask Starr Calhoun had been wearing was pulled off by a teller exposing her face to the surveillance camera.

A warrant had been issued for Starr Calhoun, but she and her accomplice had gotten away and had never been heard from again. Nor had the money been recovered.

The accomplice was believed to be her brother Houston Calhoun, a known criminal who’d done time for bank robbery.

The Calhoun family shared more than their distinctive pale blue eyes and curly auburn hair. Nor was the robbery six years ago the first time Starr Calhoun had been caught on a bank surveillance video camera.

She was first filmed at the age of three when her infamous parents Hodge and Eden Calhoun hit a bank in Orange, Texas, with all six children in tow ranging in age from fifteen to three.

Hodge and Eden had eventually been caught, their children put into foster care and scattered to the wind.

Andi made a note to find out the latest on the rest of the Calhouns. At least she had a good idea where Starr had disappeared to, she thought, studying the wedding photograph.

She couldn’t help the small thrill she felt. Her instincts had been right. As a reporter, she’d made a point of keeping track of the infamous Calhoun family. Whenever a news story from any part of the country mentioned one of the Calhouns, her computer flagged the story for her.

That’s how she’d seen the article about Starr Calhoun being ID’d in the bank surveillance tape six years ago. Also the lesser story about her older brother Lubbock Calhoun being arrested not long after that.

She’d forgotten about where Lubbock had been arrested, though. It wasn’t until she’d been looking for a job away from Fort Worth that her job search had popped up a newspaper reporter position in Whitehorse, Montana, on her computer and triggered the memory of Lubbock’s arrest.

Too excited to wait until she saw him the next day, she had called her friend Bradley. Bradley Harris worked in fact-checking at the news station. The two had become good friends almost at once. He loved Tex-Mex food and old movies and was safe because he was gay and Andi didn’t date men she worked with. Actually she didn’t date at all—too busy with her career, she told herself.

“Why Montana? It sounds like a one-horse town,” Bradley had joked when she’d told him about the job, leaving out the part about Lubbock being arrested near there. “Surely there is somewhere closer you could disappear to. Wait a minute.” He knew her too well. “How close is this town to where Lubbock Calhoun was arrested?”

Bradley was one of the few people who knew about her interest—or obsession as he called it—in the Calhoun crime family. She’d thought he wouldn’t make the connection.

Reluctantly she’d showed Bradley on a Montana map on her computer. Lubbock Calhoun had been arrested for an outstanding warrant in a convenience store in Glasgow, Montana, six years ago—an hour away from Whitehorse.

“I think it’s a sign I should check into this job,” she said and waited for Bradley to talk her out of it.

And Bradley had tried, pointing out that it had been six years, Lubbock was probably just passing through Montana, and “What could you possibly learn after all this time? Not to mention, you’ll be stuck in One Horse.”

“Whitehorse,” she’d corrected, the job having taken on more appeal with the possible Lubbock Calhoun connection.

“I’m worried about you and this thing with the Calhouns,” he’d said. She suspected he knew why they held such interest for her because he was the best researcher she’d ever known. But he never let on.