Murder in the crazy moun.., p.1
Murder in the Crazy Mountains, page 1
A Camel Press book published by Epicenter Press
Epicenter Press
6524 NE 181st St.
Suite 2
Kenmore, WA 98028
For more information go to:
www.Camelpress.com
www.Coffeetownpress.com
www.Epicenterpress.com
www.klborgesauthor.com
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design by Scott Book
Interior design by Melissa Vail Coffman
Murder in the Crazy Mountains
Copyright © 2025 by K.L. Borges
Library of Congress Control Number: 2025937036
ISBN: 978-1-68492-256-7 (Trade Paper)
ISBN: 978-1-68492-257-4 (eBook)
To the animal rescue organizations of Montana,
whose valiant work is never done.
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Acknowledgments
Iowe a debt of gratitude to DeeDe Baker, the awe-inspiring founder of Dog Tag Buddies, a real-life Montana organization that trains rescued dogs as service dogs for veterans. She provided information and reality checks for the book that were much appreciated.
Thank you to my early readers: Elena, who read it first, also Bob, Linda and Kim who cheered me on along with my husband, Miles, who dared to say when a scene wasn’t working. This is a better book because of your feedback!
I would especially like to thank all the people at Epicenter Press who made this a published work rather than a manuscript sitting on my home bookshelf.
A final word of appreciation goes to those of you who have purchased Murder in the Crazy Mountains, I wish I could say a personal “Thank you,” to each and every one of you. A portion of my proceeds will be donated to animal rescues in the Billings area, as well as to Dog Tag Buddies.
Prologue
The chill night air swirled down the mountain’s slope, bringing the fresh scent of pine trees to the man. A jeweled tapestry of stars blazed forth overhead, undimmed by either the moon or lights from a city. Nearby, the booming hoot of a great horned owl rolled through the air as the bird of prey began its nightly hunt, but the man noticed none of these natural splendors as he stood silent in the trees. His full attention was fixed on the crumpled figure of the woman that lay at his feet.
He burned with anger and outrage at the precarious position she had put him in. She had disrupted his life as she led him on, ultimately duping him into divulging information that was not his to share. She was dead, no denying it, and if the police found out, she would cause him to go to prison. Bitch, he vindictively spat at her still form.
He would have to separate himself from her bloody corpse. Given enough distance and time, no future investigators would be able to link him to her demise. Instead, she would be just another unsolved missing and murdered brown woman in Montana, one of many, grist for task forces that ultimately led nowhere.
He had never been in this area of Montana before, and in a few hours would be several hundred miles away, never to return. Hiding her body well enough to prevent its discovery for months, years, hopefully forever, that was his focus now.
Fortunately for him, nature had provided a ready-made graveyard, complete with headstones; no shovel work necessary. He had only to get her underneath the multitude of rocks that lay tumbled at the toe of the slope. He pulled on leather work gloves to protect his hands and set to work shifting stones. Soon he was sweating heavily despite the chill of the night air.
The owl had quit hunting for the night, and the stars had begun to fade in the approach of dawn when the murderer slunk unseen back through the shadowed woods, to drive furtively away from the mountains, fleeing in a nondescript passenger car of an indeterminate dark color.
One
My eyes almost popped out of my head and my mouth hung open for an embarrassingly long moment at my first sight of the crazy quilt dog. He was a powerfully built dog, with a hound’s deep chest, long legs and a coat of slick, short hair. His coloration was striking; the dog was covered with a unique pattern of irregular black patches and stripes, laid on top of a light gray background, but it was the dog’s eyes, fixed unwaveringly on mine, that really gave me a jolt. Extraordinarily round in shape and accentuated by circles of black, as if he were wearing war paint, his eyes were a surreal electric blue, absolutely unworldly, and unreadable.
A young couple, probably in their late teens, had just arrived with the dog for a late drop off to RogerDog Rescue, a dog-only shelter located on the southern outskirts of Helena, Montana. The two of them, both dressed for the fall outdoors in lightweight hiking pants topped by fleece jackets, stood silent at the side of their black and silver Dodge pickup, protectively flanking the starved looking dog. Tearing my gaze away from the dog’s eyes to glance at the man and woman, I found myself on the receiving end of hard stares from two more sets of blue eyes and belatedly realized I wasn’t making the best first impression. Sheepishly shutting my mouth, and switching my attention to the two young people, I ran a hand through my silvering, pixie cut hair as I straightened up to my full height of five foot three. I gave them a warm smile in greeting and introduced myself.
“Hi, I’m Kelly Boyd. You’re the ones who called earlier aren’t you? About bringing in a stray dog you found in the mountains?” At their cautious nods of affirmation, I continued. “Let’s all go inside the office. You can fill me in on the whole story and we’ll get this guy settled in as a RogerDog.”
I am a diehard devotee of Shakespeare’s writings, and in the twenty-twenty view of hindsight, it’s hard to believe that I failed to immediately recognize the dog for what he was—an incarnation of Hamlet’s grey, grim ghost that haunts the castle ramparts, moaning from the darkness of murder most foul, crying loudly for vengeance.
As the college kids and the dog followed me inside the office, though, I didn’t have the slightest foreshadowing of doom. Nope, as far as I could see, being profoundly late for dinner was the most serious outcome stemming from the dog’s arrival.
I am a seasoned volunteer at RogerDog Rescue, a shoestring shelter that houses up to twenty dogs at a time. I act as a de facto second-in-command for the place, behind the leadership of the founder, Betty Mills. I have worked here for the last two years, starting soon after retirement from a twenty-five-year career as a high school math teacher down in Billings.
I’ve always loved working with animals, and as a girl dreamed of becoming a veterinarian or zoo worker. I had set aside those aspirations in college; instead embracing a more practical career as an educator. Now, no longer busy with the demands of the classroom, the long-dormant dream of being an animal worker had reawakened in my heart. After my husband, known as Boyd to all except his mother, and I moved to the Helena area, I joined RogerDog Rescue working four days a week, with my duties split between office work and hands-on time with the dogs.
I fell in love with the varied tapestry of animals, people and experiences that make up life at RogerDogs. As a rescue worker, you never knew what a day would bring. Will there be glory or despair? Will you find yourself a hero, or a clown? Sometimes I tag all these bases in a single day, before lunch! The only guarantee is that the day will be interesting, never boring and at the end of it, my heart will be filled with a warm glow, lit by the love shining in the dogs’ eyes and the knowledge that I have made a positive difference in their lives with my efforts. If teenage math students had provided as much daily satisfaction to the heart and ego, I would never have retired.
I also discovered early on that rescue work has a way of sucking you in beyond ‘regular’ hours, if you don’t set clear boundaries and stick to them. Normally, I wrap up my day by four o’clock and return home to Boyd and our own two dogs, a pair of blue heelers named Sadie and Leo.
This day there were a couple of hours to go before quitting time, and I was outside the yellow, prefab metal building that houses RogerDog Rescue, taking a break to breathe in some fresh air and sunshine. It was
It would be a sin not to enjoy such a day while it was available. All too soon it would be the period for early season snowstorms in Montana, with winter itself coming to stay by Thanksgiving.
Betty Mills exited the building behind me and at first I thought that she was stepping outside to take a smoking break, as she is wont to do at intervals during the work day. Instead, she crossed to where I was standing by our respective cars: mine a trusty blue Subaru Outback and hers, a disreputable gunmetal gray jeep that has the dubious honor of sporting an odometer reading over 200,000 miles and that coughs out enough blue smoke when started to warrant a visit from the EPA.
“What a gorgeous day, Betty! They don’t come better than this, do they?” I chirped in her direction before taking a good look at the woman.
“Jesus, here you are, I been looking for you,” she replied in a raspy voice. I shot her a surprised look; and belatedly clocked her red-rimmed, bleary eyes that were set in a paper-white face. A high flush spread across her cheekbones, as if she had recently been slapped. Betty Mills continued in an especially hoarse croak of her gravelly voice, which always sounds like she has smoked a pack of cigarettes before breakfast. “I’m feeling like total crap, Kelly. I gotta go home. You think you can take over and not burn the place down while I’m gone?”
I stared at her for a moment before answering.
Betty Mills is a hard-faced woman with dirty-blonde, lanky hair, who, in previous versions of herself has been a ranch cook around the West, a long-haul trucker, and a bartender, with a stint in the military sandwiched in somewhere along the line. She looks to be in her fifties but is most likely younger; sun exposure and cigarettes do have a pesky way of artificially adding on years. Betty has maintained her military posture, standing a ramrod straight five-ten, and possesses a set of muscular arms and shoulders that are kept in shape by throwing hay bales around for her horses. Hell, maybe she bench-presses grizzly bears, too.
What she doesn’t do is leave RogerDog Rescue for personal time off, ever. Betty Mills leaving the building was akin to the sun itself abruptly taking a powder during its daily sojourn across the sky.
“Sure, Betty, I can hold down the fort. Not anything special going on today, is there?” I said, feeling simultaneously concerned for Betty and filled with a secret giddy thrill. Me! I was going to be in charge! Kelly the Rescue Queen!
“Are you driving yourself home, or do you want me to call an ambulance, boss? You’re looking kind of poorly,” I queried her, half-jokingly. The woman looked seriously ill.
“Har-dee-har-har,” Betty rasped back at me. “Thanks, but no thanks. If you remember, I don’t live but ten minutes away, I think I can just about manage to get myself home. But, hey, you’ll need to stay later today. I told some girlie that she and her boyfriend could drop off a dog after-hours. They called a little bit ago from down by the Crazy Mountains, said they found the dog wandering lost while they were hiking. They called the Bozeman shelter first and got spooked about the dog’s long-term safety once his stray hold was up. Apparently, Bozeman’s overcrowded right now, and the dog’s got some sort of leg injury. They thought he’d wind up euthanized if they left him there. You got any problem staying until they get here? Shouldn’t be much later than six.”
“Got it,” I quickly assured her. “Don’t worry about it. Grace and J.J. must be almost done with the afternoon cleanup. I’ll make sure everything’s shipshape before they leave, then I’ll hang out until the new dog gets here. Boyd’s busy in his shop, working on his latest carving project. I’ll text him a head’s up, but I doubt he’ll notice if I’m home late. Now for heaven’s sake, go home before you die here, and I have to deal with the sheriff’s office.”
After two years of working with Betty Mills, I knew better than to offer up warm and fuzzy solicitousness to the woman, even though we were now good friends. She possesses the stoicism and hardiness of a pioneer woman and has zero tolerance for what she calls fussing and foolishness on my part.
Shooting me a rheumy-eyed glare and scowling fiercely, Betty shuffled to her jeep without any further discussion. She fired it up in a cloud of environmentally unsound blue smoke and drove off in the direction of the ramshackle property where she lives with her husband, Randy, a couple of horses, and, incongruously, a black and white miniature pig.
I texted Boyd to let him know that I was going to be late.
It was almost seven o’clock by the time the pickup truck pulled into our gravel parking lot. By then the glory of being Kelly the Rescue Queen had tarnished as I had become seriously hungry. We have snacky stuff on hand in the office, but my stomach was ready for a more substantial offering than pretzel twists and diet cola. The ebullient Grace and her silent sidekick, J.J., had offered to stay and wait with me, being eager to see the new dog arrive—but I had convinced them that tomorrow would be soon enough and they had departed before five o’clock.
Chase and Tara, the college kids who found the dog, were indeed leery of relinquishing him to a shelter. Later, after I assured them that he was safe as a RogerDog for as long as it took to rehab and rehome him, they loosened up enough to come inside and complete his intake. His ribs stood out starkly and he couldn’t put much weight on his left front leg, but didn’t appear to need immediate, emergency veterinary care. A visit to Dr. Rex could wait until the next day.
Thirty minutes later, the dog was installed in a kennel with food and water for the night, and I left the premises. The kids were on their way to meet up with friends in Helena, and after checking that the door was locked behind me, I fired up my trusty Subaru and pointed the headlights toward home. Time to see what Boyd, Sadie and Leo had done with their day.
Two
Boyd’s shop was closed up and dark as I passed it on my way up the quarter-mile-long driveway to our house. Nestled in the low hills a mile to the west of the highway that runs through the valley south of Helena, the house commands spectacular views of Canyon Ferry Lake on the Missouri River, but the shop was the clincher to our purchase of the property.
Huh, I thought to myself, what’s up with that?
Boyd had owned and operated a construction company for thirty-plus years in Billings and his deep-seated love of working with tools, the bigger the better, had not been dinted by retirement. He had gotten into chainsaw art last September after we attended the annual international competition held in Libby. The four-day festival included several ‘quick carve’ events in which men and women work with chainsaws and bare logs to create, on-the spot, detailed carvings in under an hour. He had been fascinated to see the high-speed emergence of mermaids, eagles, and bears from the six-foot-tall, two-foot diameter chunks of wood. Before the next weekend had rolled around, Boyd had scavenged up some logs of his own and had begun channeling his inner chainsaw. Initially, he had worked with pre-gridded carving patterns and YouTube videos, but quickly moved into carving his own designs.
Currently, he was working on a composition of otters and trout that he hoped would be good enough to earn him a spot as a selected competitor in a June festival over in Oregon.
Most days, Boyd would lose all track of time when he worked on his carving projects and would have to be pried out of the shop at the end of the day by yours truly, no matter the hour. Finding the shop already shut seemed ominous. It made me nervous that he worked with chainsaws when there was no one around to help if the saw carved Boyd instead of wood.
With a small frown between my blue eyes, I hopped out of the Subaru and quickly walked up the steps to the redwood deck that runs along the east side of the house. I gave the deck a quick scan before walking across; a flock of wild turkeys had recently started to hang out at the house, leaving golf ball sized calling cards behind, but the deck was free of hazards tonight. Lights were on in the kitchen, which was reassuring, but I still felt concerned.
