Dangerous Refuge Read Online Free PDF Page A

hair.’ Last time I saw him was the morning after the regular Tuesday night poker game. And he was none too happy.”
    “Wouldn’t be the first all-nighter he pulled over a poker table,” Tanner said, remembering. “High-stakes games?”
    “High enough for Refuge. We’re not Las Vegas or Monaco.”
    “Everyone still play in the back of the Stampede Bar?”
    Laughing, Millerton shook his head. “Haven’t played there since it flooded more than ten years ago. Now we go to the Silver Lode Lodge. There’s, oh, I don’t know, maybe twenty people who come in and out of the group, usually only ten at any time. I’m not what you’d call a regular. Lorne was. He loved cleaning out men with deeper pockets than his.”
    “He loved being on top, period,” Tanner said.
    “You know him better than I expected,” the lawyer said wryly. “Anyway, he soured on the Conservancy deal. Said he wanted nothing to do with it. He marched into the poker game and demanded that I change his will back to the original. I told him to go home and sober up. He cussed me out but good and left.”
    Tanner didn’t doubt it.
    “When I got here the next morning,” the lawyer continued, “he was camped out in his truck in the parking lot, waiting. Still dressed in his poker clothes. He was sober and stubborn as a field of mules, so I agreed to change his will to make you the sole heir again—ranch house, outbuildings, land, stock, water rights, and national forest grazing leases.”
    “Bet that went down with the Conservancy like a straight shot of gasoline,” Tanner said.
    Millerton shook his head. “It doesn’t help you, either. There will be legal reviews. There’s a good chance that Lorne will be ruled intestate, in which case everything will go to the state of Nevada.”
    “Sounds like I wasted a long drive.”
    “I really can’t say. Legally it’s rather a complex question. If Lorne hadn’t made any amendments to the old will, then it’d be pretty ironclad, assuming no outstanding debts or liens or such.”
    “Is there a document that shows Lorne’s intentions to change his will to give the land to the Conservancy?”
    “I believe there was a witnessed handshake, sort of a deal to make a deal, which would be finalized at a big party. Then came his verbal, sober instructions to me Wednesday morning, plus a handwritten statement to revert to his original will. I gathered that he was writing his instructions to me when he saw that his dog was sick, so he just tore off the sheet he was writing on and headed to the vet, then waited for me until nine. I have those handwritten instructions, and the new will he requested, but he never came back that afternoon to sign the final document. It’s in a legal limbo.”
    And who benefits most from that? Tanner thought automatically. What he said aloud was, “So he died after he left his instructions with you and before he could sign the final will?”
    “Or he changed his mind again before he died. Nobody knows except Lorne. If I were the Conservancy, I’d certainly argue that case.”
    For a small town, this place is sure crawling with lawyers, Tanner thought. And all he knew about the law began and ended in the criminal codes. “What did the coroner say about time of death?”
    “I don’t think the death has been certified yet. Sometime yesterday or the night before that, but it’s unclear. Only thing I know for certain is that it happened before this could be set out in legal language.”
    Millerton took a sheet of yellow paper from the folder and handed it to Tanner.
    The paper had been torn raggedly at the top. Tanner would have bet good money that the tablet the sheet had come from was on the counter next to the phone at the ranch house. Lorne had written the words so vigorously that the pencil had broken several times, leaving impatient gouges on the paper. This was not the work of a drunk. The language was firm and straight to the point. His uncle had been coldly angry,