THE MYSTIC Moose had been the finest saloon, hotel, and house of ill repute for miles around during the days of the cattle barons. Of course, it wasn’t called the Mystic Moose in those days, but the Golden Eagle-both for the majestic birds that hunted in the mountains around New Eden and for the gilded replica sent to the first proprietor of the hotel by Jay Gould in honor of the grand opening.

Madam Belle Beauchamp had built the place with the considerable fortune she had accrued on her back beneath the richest of the robber barons and cattlemen, and on her knees peering through keyholes while those same gentlemen wheeled and dealed both above the tables and under them. Madam Belle had known all the great men of the day and had made a killing in the stock market. Even though she had traveled extensively, she had called New Eden home until her death because she loved the land, the mountains, and the hearty, hard-working, God-fearing, mostly honest people who had taken root there.

No expense had been spared in the building of the hotel. Every room had been gaudy and grand. The chandeliers that hung in the main salon had been shipped west from New York City by train. The twenty-foot gilt-framed mirror behind the bar had reportedly come from a castle in Europe, courtesy of an adoring duke. Montana had never seen anything more extravagant than Madam Belle’s Board and Brothel, as it had been called by some.

Sadly, Madam Belle’s popularity faded with her beauty, and her fortune trickled away into bad investments and worse lovers. As spectacular as the Golden Eagle was, New Eden was too far off the beaten path for any but the most curious to visit. The hotel fell into disrepair. Madam Belle fell to her death from the second floor gallery, a victim of dry rot in the balustrade. And so ended the flight of the Golden Eagle.

Mari stood on the veranda of the renovated hotel, reading the story that was beautifully hand-lettered on yellowed parchment and displayed tastefully in a glass case on the wall beside the carved front doors. The details didn’t even make a dent on her brain. She wasn’t even sure how she had come to be standing at the doors to the Mystic Moose.

After leaving the sheriff’s office, she had just started walking, needing to clear those awful scenes from her memory-Lucy’s body from a distance, Lucy’s body up close, entry wound, exit wound. Her head pounded from the effort to eradicate those horrific images of blood, death, decay. She had walked the west side of Main Street clear out to the Paradise Motel, then crossed and walked back down the east side, oblivious of the sights and sounds and people around her.

The contradictions of the town penetrated in only the most abstract of ways-the pickups that looked as though they had been gone after with tire irons and the luxury cars that cost more than most people’s houses; the boarded-up, bankrupt stores and the windows displaying extravagant silver jewelry and custom-made sharkskin cowboy boots; the ruddy-faced cowboys and ranchers in town on errands and the faces of people who had graced the covers of People magazine. All of it seemed more dreamlike than real. In keeping with the theme of the day.

She walked for hours, heedless of her surroundings, unaware of the curious and pensive looks she got from the locals; preoccupied by thoughts of death, fate, justice, injustice, coincidence, Raffertys. Fragments of thought hurtled through her mind like shrapnel, sharp-edged and painful. There were too many bits and pieces. She couldn’t seem to grasp any one of them long enough to make sense of it. Caffeine and grief and exhaustion pulled at her sanity and shook her nerves like so many ragged threads, until she wanted to grab her hair with both hands and just hang on, screaming.

She needed to sit down somewhere quiet and dark, have a drink to dull hypersensitive senses, smoke a cigarette to give herself something ordinary to focus on.

The double doors of the Moose swung open, and a tall, handsome woman in a long denim jumper and expensive-looking suede boots strode out, her jaw set at a challenging angle, her eyes homing in on Mari from behind a pair of large glasses with blue and violet frames. Her face was a long oval with strong features and a slim, unpainted mouth. A dense, wild mane of red-gold hair bounced around her shoulders.

Mari started to step out of her way, murmuring an apology, but the woman took hold of her shoulders with both beringed hands and looked her square in the face.

“Dear girl,” she said dramatically, her expression dead serious. “You have a very fractured aura.”

Mari’s jaw fell open, but no words came out. A jumble of quartz crystals on sterling chains hung around the woman’s neck. Opals the size and shape of sparrow eggs dangled from her elegant earlobes. “I-I’m sorry… I guess,” she mumbled, feeling more and more like Alice on the other side of the looking-glass.

The woman stepped back, tipped her head, and laid a long hand against her forehead. “‘Weep not for me, nor all the pieces of my shattered heart,’ ” she said loudly, her voice suddenly dripping the honey of the Deep South. “‘I shall gather them to me and go on, valiant and undaunted.’ ” She straightened and heaved a cleansing sigh, her features settling back into the same fierce, businesslike expression she had worn a moment before. “From Lila Rose by Baxter Brady. It closed after three weeks in the St. James, though through no fault of mine. I assure you, I was brilliant.”

Mari just blinked.

The woman pulled a small highly polished black stone from the pocket of her jumper and pressed it gently into Mari’s palm, curling her fingers up to hold it in place. “There. That will help.”

Without another word she strode away, boots clumping on the wooden steps as she left the veranda for the parking lot on the south side of the building. Mari stared after her, forcing a couple in Rodeo Drive western wear to step around her on their way into the hotel. As the doors swung shut behind them, a puff of air brought out the aromas of fresh bread and simmering herbs. Mari’s nose locked on like a bloodhound’s. Food. Food always made sense. Rousing herself, she went in search of it.

The Mystic Moose bar was magnificent. Instead of recreating the fussy opulence of Madam Belle’s Golden Eagle, the new owners had opted for rustic chic. Rough white stucco walls and heavy, carved mahogany wood-work. Massive versions of Lucy’s antler chandelier hung from the thick exposed beams in the high ceiling. The back wall was dominated by a series of tall multipaned windows and French doors that led onto a broad terrace and gave a magnificent view of the mountains that rose to the east. The centerpiece of the south wall was a huge fieldstone fireplace, over which hung an enormous mounted moose head. The moose looked straight across to a beautiful bar that gleamed in the soft afternoon light with the rich patina of age and loving care. Behind it, Madam Belle’s gilt-framed mirror still hung; twenty feet of homage to an illicit affair of a bygone era.

There was a fair number of customers for the middle of the afternoon. A few cast curious looks in Mari’s direction as she made her way to a table near the fireplace and settled into a large, comfortable captain’s chair. She put her rock on the table and stared at it vacantly.

“If you don’t mind my saying, luv, you look positively knackered.”

The cultured British tones brought her head up and added another layer of confusion to the fog shrouding her brain. “Excuse me?”

“I say, you look all done in,” he said, a gentle smile curving his mouth. He looked fortyish and attractive with wavy auburn hair, a bold nose, and a kind shine in his eyes. An afternoon beard shadowed his lean cheeks, but took nothing away from the overall impression of style and quality he projected in a loose-fitting ivory silk shirt and coffee-brown trousers. He leaned across the table and placed a cocktail napkin beside her stone. “Is something the matter?”