“Little missy,” he said, his voice booming in the high-ceilinged room. “You’d be Marilee Jennings?”

Her automatic desire was to say no in the hope that he would go away and embarrass someone else, but her head bobbed in affirmation. You’re too honest for your own good, Marilee.

He stuck out a hand that resembled an inflated rubber glove, gripping hers before she could wipe the cantaloupe juice off. “Miller Daggrepont, Esquire,” he announced in a voice loud enough to wake the ghost of Madam Belle. “Attorney-at-law and renaissance man. I’ve got a surprise for you, little lady.”

“I’m not sure my heart can stand it,” Mari said, only half joking.

“Come on along,” he ordered, tugging her up from her seat. “This is important. You can eat anytime.”

He appeared to be an expert on that subject. Stomach grumbling a protest, Mari shuffled after him, thinking that wild elephants probably couldn’t drag Miller Daggrepont away from a table. He towed her down the lobby of the Moose and outside, rumbling along like a freight train. Hustling down Main Street, he jaywalked across to First Avenue, and continued on, oblivious of the curious looks people cast their way.

The buildings here, as on Main Street, were a jumble of styles and ages. The shops were a mix of practical and pretentious-a dentist’s office, a wilderness outfitter’s post, the Curl Up and Dye hair salon. Designer fashions hung in the window of the Beartooth Boutique. Next door an old man sat on one of several riding lawn mowers parked out in front of Erikson’s Garden Center.

They turned in at a brick building with an ornate front window. EDEN VALLEY ASSAY arched across the glass in gold gay-nineties-style lettering, but the brass plaque on the door itself read MILLER DAGGREPONT, ESQUIRE. ATTORNEY-AT-LAW.

“This is where I keep my collections,” he said, thumbing through an enormous ring of keys. “I collect everything. Signs, toys, farm equipment, you name it. Never know when the next big rage will hit. I made a killing on Indian artifacts when all the Hollywood types started moving in. They think they’re going native when they hang an old horse blanket on the wall. Damned fools, I say-not because of the collecting. Nothing wrong with collecting. They’re just damned fools in general.”

He swung the door open and went in, pulling Mari along behind him like a recalcitrant child. Shelves lined the walls from floor to ceiling. A row of low display cases ran down the center of the floor from the front of the room to the back. Old advertising signs and license plates hung by wires from the ceiling. The floor was littered with a jumble of junk. Toward the back of the main room two of the tall cases had been tipped over, dumping a mountain of toys, glassware, tin canisters, wooden boxes, and God-knew-what onto the floor.

“Watch your step,” Miller ordered, grunting his disapproval at the mess. “Some damned drunk broke in the back door last night and turned the place upside down. You know we’re just catercorner from the Hell and Gone. Cowboys come into town and they go crazy. It’s like bringing a wild pony into the house.”

Mari picked her way along behind him, stepping over the prone form of a cigar store Indian and a woman’s straw hat decorated with faded silk cabbage roses. “Mr. Daggrepont, I’ve worked with lawyers for six years, and I have to say I’ve never come across an office quite like this one.”

His booming laugh rattled the tin signs overhead. “Well, little missy, I’m not your run of the mill attorney. Like I said before, I’m a renaissance man.”

He led her down a hall and into a smaller room that was an even worse mess than the front had been. An old desk sat in the middle of it all. Somewhere on the desk, beneath a drift of fishing tackle and assorted debris, a telephone rang. Daggrepont ignored it. He let go of Mari to work on the combination lock of an old vault set into the back wall.

“This was the assay office back in the 1860s,” he explained. “Gold was discovered up in the Absarokas. The place went bonkers with gold fever. The town boomed. Didn’t last long though. The lode wasn’t rich enough and it was too damned hard to get to. Those mountains are rugged sons a’guns.”

Mari had read all about it in her guide books, but she didn’t comment on it as she picked her way across the office. He heaved the vault open and she raised up on tiptoe in an attempt to peer over his shoulder. “Uh, Mr. Daggrepont, would it be too much to ask what this is all about?”

He shot her a look of annoyance, his eyeballs swimming behind his thick glasses. “Lucy MacAdam,” he said, cigar stub bobbing above his chins. “I was her attorney. You’re her heir.”

The news knocked her in the head like a mallet. Mari swayed a little on her feet and stumbled back. “I’m her heir? That can’t be. I mean, why-what-?”

Daggrepont ignored her stammering, searching for the proper file among the boxes on the shelves that lined the vault. “Thank heaven for this vault,” he grumbled. “There’d be hell to pay if some drunk dumped these files. Inez would be sorting paper from now till kingdom come. Ah! Here it is. Lucy MacAdam.”

He pulled the file and herded Mari back out into the office, where he swept off a chair and ordered her to sit. He leaned his bulk back against the desk and told her the gist of Lucy’s last bequests.

“She didn’t have any living relatives. Left everything to you. Her place, her bank account, this letter-” He held out a sealed envelope to her. Mari took it with limp fingers and held it in her lap. “All subject to inheritance taxes, funeral expenses, and, um, my fees, of course.”

“Of course.”

“But it’s all yours as soon as it clears probate. Oh, and there’s one other thing. Damn near forgot.”

He trundled back into the vault and came out with a foot-tall old tin replica of Mr. Peanut, which he thrust into Mari’s hands. She stared at the smirking peanut, then up at Daggrepont and back again.

“What is it?” she asked at last.

“Why, it’s Lucy. She had herself cremated.”

She drove out to the ranch with Mr. Peanut strapped into the passenger seat beside her. Daggrepont had immediately tried to persuade her to sell the ranch. Inheritance taxes would be astronomical, considering how property values had gone up. What would she want with a ranch anyway? She had a life back in California, didn’t she?

No, she didn’t, but she didn’t tell that to Daggrepont or to his weasely real estate buddy who had just happened to drop by. The same way a vulture just happens to drop by road kill. She shuddered at the thought of the pair of them-Shamu in cowboy boots and the Earl Scheib of Montana real estate. I can sell that property for you, little lady. I can sell anything, anytime, anyplace. On the verge of giddiness, she had nearly asked him if he could paint her car any color for $99.95.

“Lucy,” she said, cutting a look at the tin peanut. “You always did have a bizarre sense of humor, but this is really too much.”

The peanut just smirked at her.

She had to get away, to think, to try to sort through it all in her mind. The ranch seemed the best place to do it. Somehow she thought an answer might come to her there. But another part of her knew there would only be more questions, and her stomach churned at the prospect.

By daylight the place Lucy had called home for the last year was as picturesque as anything Mari had ever imagined. The log house was set on high ground overlooking a broad valley with a wide, glittering stream running through it. The hills above were covered with pine and aspen. The valley beyond the stream was dotted with grazing horses. She fell in love with it the minute she stepped out of the car. It radiated a sense of peace, a sense of constancy. Nothing about it struck her as being Lucy’s style at all.

She climbed the steps onto the porch and followed it around the side of the house to a broad deck that overlooked the stream. The bent willow furniture and Adirondack chairs had escaped the vandals’ zeal. Setting the tin on the glass-topped table, she sank down onto the cushions of a high-backed chair and stared out at the panorama.