Read Online Gray Ghost Murders (9781101606070) by Keith McCafferty - Free Book Online Page A

would be.” Stranahan briefly explained the circumstances that had brought him to the river.
    The man nodded. “I was half hoping you wouldn’t show. I found it this morning. It’s hard to part with a box as nice as that one. My name is Patrick Willoughby, by the way.”
    Stranahan took the outstretched hand. Just for a moment the man looked down, showing a bashful expression. A portly fellow with a moon face and thin lips, he reminded Sean of the late newscaster Charles Kuralt, who also had been a Montana fly fisherman.
    â€œDo you own the cabin?” he said.
    Recovering from his brief inability to hold Sean’s eyes, Willoughby peered up at him through the thick lenses of his glasses.
    â€œIt’s a joint ownership by our club,” he said. “When the estimable Weldon Crawford of yonder mansion bought the old Anderson ranch, he financed the construction by selling off a few parcels. When this one came on the market, we pounced.”
    â€œYou mean Weldon Crawford Jr. from Kalispell? The congressman who introduced the bill to reinstate hunting for grizzly bears?” Bears were a polarizing issue in Montana. Crawford’s efforts to remove federal protection and turn management over to the state had drawn national media attention.
    â€œHe does make waves,” Willoughby said. “But to tell you the truth I’ve not had the pleasure. Oh, we’ve said hello a few times and Polly Sorenson was invited up to the house for dinner last year—Polly is one of our members—but I’ve been here a week this summer and seen no sign of the man. The congressman, I mean.”
    They had arrived at the cabin porch, having followed a small rill of water up from the river. Sean read the lettering burned into a piece of driftwood above the door: THE MADISON RIVER LIARS AND FLY TIERS CLUB.
    Willoughby stepped out of his boot-foot waders, hung them from one of a series of pegs driven into the wall, and slipped his feet into sandals on the porch. He hung his hat on a nail.
    â€œYou can leave your rod beside mine here in the rack,” Willoughby said. “Who made it, by the way? I’m something of a student of vintage bamboo rods. You don’t see them anymore, at least not many that catch anything but the dust over a mantelpiece.”
    â€œMy father, actually.”
    Willoughby peered at it through his glasses. “Looks a little like a Thomas Payne rod. That’s a compliment, by the way. Does it cast a nice line?”
    â€œYou have to settle into its rhythm, but once you get used to it, it casts a very nice line.”
    â€œMr. Stranahan, I can see you are a man after my heart.”
    He opened the screen door and ushered Sean inside.
    â€œDon’t you want me to take these boots off?” Sean said.
    Willoughby made a dismissive gesture with his hand. “We go in and out of here in waders all the time.” He reached along the wall inside the door. The candle-tip bulbs of a chandelier flared. He hit another switch and a half dozen copper sconces cast the room in a warm amber glow.
    The front room, consisting of the living area with a small kitchen alcove, was paneled in light wood and except for an ornately carved stool and two wicked-looking spears crossed over an African shield was furnished in American hunting lodge motif—slat-back couches and stuffed chairs with ducks in flight, casually arranged around a glass-topped coffee table littered with fishing magazines. On the shelves of matching bookcases were miniature glass domes like those used to display pocket watches. Classic British salmon flies tied with exotic feathers stood on clear pins protruding from the walnut bases. Other flies, mostly dries, were housed in custom-made wall display boxes that reflected prisms of light from the elk antler chandelier. Against the south-facing wall were a fireplace and chimney built from smooth river stones. The skull and horns of a bison were