Even now, with her knowledge of what was going to happen, this sanity thing was a sticking point. How did one prove that one was sane?
She had been concentrating on this question so hard that she hadn’t noticed that someone had walked up the carpeted stairs and down the hall. When she glanced at the doorway and saw the man leaning against it, she jumped. “Oh!” she said, then, “Sorry. I didn’t see you come up.”
He was a tall man, in his mid to late sixties, or maybe in his seventies and well preserved. As with many men in California, he was dressed in cleaned-up cowboy gear. Usually this was an affectation, but Ellie had an intuition that this man was real. This man probably spent most of the day on horseback and his favorite animal was, no doubt, the longhorn steer.
“Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said softly. He was one of those men who inspire jealousy in women because age looked good on him. Those sun creases radiating out from the corners of his eyes probably made him more handsome than he had been when he was a younger man. He wore Levi’s, a cream colored cotton shirt with pearl inlaid silver buttons, cowboy boots with deep undercutting, and he held a tan cowboy hat in his hands. “But you were thinking so hard that I could have run a herd of cattle through here and you wouldn’t have seen a thing.”
She smiled at him. There was something about him that made her feel at ease, as though he were an old friend. “I was just thinking about how to prove that I’m not crazy. Any ideas on how to go about that?”
She’d meant the statement to be taken as a joke, the way she had always coped with serious subjects and intense emotion, but the man didn’t smile. Instead, he looked at her with serious eyes. “If you’re here to see Mr. Montoya, then I guess this is a court case, and if you’re trying to prove you’re sane, then you must have money. Nobody cares about the sanity of a poor person. So who’s trying to get control of your money?”
For a moment Ellie just looked at him with her mouth hanging open. “Yes,” she finally managed to say. “My ex-husband. Will be ex, anyway.”
“Makes sense,” the man said. “What’s he doing? Saying that he’s always ‘managed’ your money and since you’re crazy, he has to keep on managing it even after you dump him? And since you’re a woman and he’s a man, the court is probably listening to him.”
Maybe it was the way he said it, maybe it was the horrendous amount of work she’d done in the last three days, or maybe it was just being back into it all again, but Ellie put her hands over her face and burst into tears. Like a knight of old, the man sat down on the bench beside her, pulled out a clean, blue bandana handkerchief, and handed it to her. “I’m sorry,” she said, still crying. “I don’t usually cry in front of people, but it’s all been so awful and no one believes me! People think that the courts of America are fair and just and that if someone goes to trial, she’ll get a fair shake. And people think that because I’ve earned so much money that I have power. But I have no power because no one believes me. They all believe him. I don’t understand it. Whatever I say, they think is a lie, but whatever he says, they believe. I told them he has a lot of money hidden somewhere, but neither my lawyer, his lawyer, nor the judge believed me. But he said he cowrote my books and they accept that as fact. The man couldn’t name three titles of my books, much less tell the plots, but they believe that he wrote them with me. Yet I said that if I was sane enough to earn the money, then I was certainly sane enough to know how to put it in a bank, but they said no, that wasn’t true. After all, writers are really just glorified liars, aren’t they? And now I can’t believe I’m saying all these things to someone I’ve never met!”
Ellie was trying to stop the tears as she wiped at her eyes with the handkerchief. It would be her luck that her ex had hired this man and he would testify against her in court. The first time she went through the divorce, it seemed that every person she’d ever met had been willing to testify against her.
“That’s where I’ve seen you before,” the cowboy said, leaning back to look at her.
Ellie sniffed. “What? Where?”
“On the cover of a book. My wife has them all over the house. You’re that . . . What’s the name? She says it all the time.”
It had been years since anyone had recognized her from a book cover. For one thing, Ellie had gained so much weight that she no longer looked like her publicity photo, and for the other, if you don’t have a book published for three years, the public forgets you. But now she wasn’t fat and she had just had a book come out six weeks ago. It was still in the top five on the New York Times Best Sellers list.
She sniffed again. “Which name? Alexandria Farrell or Jordan Neale?”
“That’s it!” the man said. “Both those names. My wife loves your books. Really loves them. She says she wants to be the woman in the book. Which one is that?”
“Jordan,” Ellie said, her tears drying up.
He nodded toward her notebook beside her. “Don’t tell me that you’re writing another one?”
“Maybe not a Jordan Neale, but another book, anyway.” The way he was looking at her was making Ellie feel much better. For years now she’d felt nothing but pity coming from people, pity because she’d become fat, pity because she wasn’t writing, pity because she’d let some man beat her in a court case. “I wouldn’t have let him win,” she’d heard a thousand times. And the truth was that if it had happened to someone else, Ellie would have been the one saying that she would have fought until she won. But the women who said that hadn’t been up against a judge who considered Ellie a liar and insane.
“This is amazing,” the man said, then held out his hand to shake hers. “I’m Marcellus Woodward,” he said, “but everyone calls me Woody.”
She took his hand, warm, dry, brown from the sun. “Ellie Abbott,” she said, then caught herself. “Gilmore. It’s Gilmore until the divorce, but—”
“Well, Miss Abbott,” he said, smiling at her, “I’m very pleased to meet you. You wouldn’t want to come home with me, would you?”
She blinked at him. It had been a long time since a man had tried to pick her up.
“No, no,” he said, smiling.
He had nice teeth, she thought. In fact, if he weren’t thirty years older than she was . . .
“I live up north, on a ranch, and it’s Friday, so maybe you’d like to fly up with me and spend the weekend with my wife and me and our little boy? And my brother will be there and about fifty ranch hands.” When Ellie didn’t reply to this, he lowered his head and gave her a shy glance through his lashes. “But maybe you’d rather spend the weekend here digging up dirt about your husband.”
At that Ellie laughed, really laughed. “You are a devil, aren’t you?” she said, grinning. “You’ve seen something you want—a famous writer as a gift for your wife—so you’re going after it, aren’t you? I would sure hate to take you into a courtroom.”
Lifting his chin, he grinned back at her. “Ain’t lost a case yet,” he said. “Here, hand me that notebook of yours.”
She did so and he wrote down a few names, then handed the book back to her. The names were all of prominent people in and around Los Angeles. In fact, some of the names made her eyes widen.
“You know any of those people?” he asked.
One of the names was a banker whom she’d known for years. “Yes.”
“Then call him or all of them and ask about me. They can probably even fax you a picture of me. I want you to check me out so you don’t think I really am the devil.”
Ellie looked down at the notebook. In all the years she’d been married, she’d been absolutely faithful to her husband. She’d never so much as flirted with another man.
Three years ago, it would never have occurred to Ellie to accept an invitation to go away for the weekend, not with friends and certainly not with a stranger. If Ellie wanted to do anything that wasn’t related to work and earning more money for Martin to spend, he would start whining that he never got to go anywhere, but then he wasn’t a big-de
al celebrity like she was.
“Well?” Woody asked. “You want to go or not?”
When Ellie looked up at him, her heart was pounding in her throat. This was a wild thing for her to do. Accept an invitation from a man she’d met in a hallway?
“Sure. Why not?” she said at last.
Woody smiled, then stood up. He was so tall that Ellie had to lift her chin straight up to look at him. “Meet me at the local airport at four. But I want you to call those people and ask about me so you aren’t worried that I’m going to jump on you.” He said this with a twinkle in his eye that said that he wanted to jump on her, but he’d restrain himself.
He made her laugh—and he made her feel better than she had in years. “What clothes should I take?” she asked.
The twinkle in his eyes deepened. “Everything that you spend now you won’t have to split with him later, so I suggest you buy yourself a whole new wardrobe and the luggage to carry it in. Just make sure you bring something you can ride in.”
Ellie’s eyes widened in horror. “Ride? As in, on a horse?”
Woody laughed. “We could arrange a steer for you, but I think . . .”
“Very funny,” she said. “So, okay, I guess I’ll be there.” She still couldn’t believe that she was doing this.
Woody pulled back his sleeve and looked at his watch, then at the detective’s door that was still locked. “I have to go now, but if you see Montoya, tell him I was here and that he can’t tell ten minutes from Shinola.”
“Gladly,” Ellie said, then watched as Woody turned and walked down the hallway, giving her a wave as he descended the stairs.
For a moment, Ellie sat on the bench. As soon as she reaffirmed her list with the detective, she’d—What? Do just what Woody had said and spend the weekend going over all that Martin had done to her?
Suddenly, Ellie was sick of giving her life over to Martin Gilmore. Since the day she’d filed for divorce, he had been her whole life. She’d spent the eight months after the divorce papers had been filed preparing to make a judge believe that she was a good person and not the crazy, neurotic liar Martin portrayed her as. But all she’d done to try to defend herself had failed. Since the divorce, she’d wallowed in such self-pity that her ex ruled her life more than he did when she was married to him.
She looked at the still-locked door of the detective’s office, then at the stairs that led to the outside and to the road that led to downtown Los Angeles. Rodeo Drive. She had a lot of complaints about L.A., but the shopping wasn’t one of them. Since she’d returned, she opened her handbag only to get her car keys in and out, but now she started rummaging inside. Her credit card holder held cards that she hadn’t seen in years: local video stores, a public library card. And her platinum American Express.
Holding the silver card up, she looked at it. It had a pretty much unlimited credit line, and, as Woody had said, the more she spent, the less she’d have to divide with her ex-husband during the divorce. Smiling, Ellie stood up. Forget the detective, she thought. She was going shopping!
Nineteen
Smack on four P.M., Ellie drove into the parking lot of the local airport: small but big enough to handle the private jets that landed there. She was quite nervous about what she was planning to do in spite of the fact that she’d called Steven Bird at the bank and checked Woody out. “Very nice man,” Steven had said. “I’ve known him for years.” She asked a few questions and wasn’t surprised to find out that Woody’s “little boy” was just a toddler. She could believe that a man like Woody had a wife young enough to produce a baby just a couple of years ago and that Woody was “active” enough to have produced him.
After Ellie put down the phone, she decided to see what toys she could find for the child. And while she was at it, she might as well buy a gift or two for her hostess. Based on Woody’s clothing, Ellie decided to take a chance and drove to a divine store full of Native American art and jewelry.
Five minutes after she pulled into the parking area at the airport, a man walked over to her. “You’re Jordan Neale?” he asked.
He was a good-looking man, not flashy, but nice, about thirty, wearing all denim, top and bottom, just as Woody had been, but she could tell that this man’s denim was for style, not for work. This man was no cowboy. Accountant, she’d guess. Or maybe even a lawyer. He looked intelligent and educated.
“Sort of,” she said as she dismounted from the Range Rover. The step was so high off the ground that most of her women friends complained that they might as well be climbing onto a buckboard. But Ellie loved the car; by experience she knew that it could climb straight up a snow-covered mountain. “Jordan Neale is a character I write about, and my pen name is Alexandria Farrell. But my legal name is plain ol’ Ellie Abbott.”
The man smiled. “I see. Woody . . .” Smiling, the man shrugged off the rest of the sentence. “I’m Lew McClelland and I work for Woody. Is your luggage in the back?”
At that question, she looked a bit guilty. “I hope you don’t have one of those planes that can hold only about thirty pounds of luggage, because I, well, I did a little shopping.”
The truth was that Ellie had made up for three years of buying nothing. When you are forty pounds overweight, mirrors are your enemy. But now, at a hundred and one, she’d loved trying on clothes—and she’d purchased nearly everything that she’d tried on. Thinking of the AmEx bill that she was going to receive made her smile.
“I’m sure we can handle what you have,” the man said; then he opened the back of the Range Rover and saw the tightly packed mountain of leather luggage that Ellie had in the back. She’d had to fold the backseats down to hold all of it.
“Some of it is gifts for Woody’s wife and son,” she said weakly.
With his head cocked to one side, he looked at her. “You bought all of this in one afternoon?”
“Contents and luggage,” she said with her chin raised defiantly.
“You and Valerie are going to become best friends,” he muttered, then pulled the top case off the pile.
As it turned out, Woody wasn’t going to be returning with them. She’d been told that something unexpected had come up and he would be arriving at the ranch later. Instead, two of Woody’s employees, Lew and another man, were to take Ellie to the ranch.
As she mounted the steps into the plane, she looked back at Lew. “Will you have to fly back to pick up Woody later?”
From the outside, the plane was nice, but it wasn’t an especially luxurious aircraft. Maybe she’d overdone it on clothes buying. But then, something that Steven Bird had said—no, maybe it was the way he’d said it—had made Ellie think that there was a lot of money around Woody.
At that Lew smiled in a way that said he had a secret. “No. He has another plane.” Turning his head, Lew looked across the runway. Sitting there sparkling in the sun, was a big silver jet. Not one of those commercial jets, but a private one, the kind that are featured in Architectural Digest and have interiors clad in silk and wrapped in mahogany.
“His?” Ellie asked.
“His,” Lew answered.
“I see,” she said. “So when we’re talking about Woody, are we talking the m-word or are we into the b-word?”
For a second Lew didn’t catch her meaning, then he grinned. “B,” he said. “With an s on the end of it.”
“Well,” Ellie said, then could think of nothing else to say, so she went up the remaining stairs. Lew was right behind her, and he motioned her toward a seat in the cabin. She was the only passenger. It didn’t surprise her to see a box on the seat beside her, and when she opened it, she saw a packed lunch of small sandwiches with different fillings, a tin of smoked oysters, a box of petit fours, another box of Godiva chocolates, and a bottle of champagne. At first, Ellie started to dive right in, but instead, she pushed the food away. She’d found out where boxes of Godiva chocolates led—straight to her thighs.
The two men were checking the dials on the control panel in front, a
nd Ellie leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes. A billionaire, she thought. Billion with an s on the end of it.
“How about this?” she heard, then opened her eyes to see Lew holding out a plate of food toward her. There was grilled chicken, salad, and some steamed vegetables. In his other hand, Lew held a bottle of water.
“Thank you!” Ellie said, then smiled at him. Wonder if he’s married? she thought, then wanted to kick herself for thinking such a thing. She was still married. But not for long, she thought as she took the food he offered her.
“We’ll be there in about an hour,” Lew said, “so as soon as we’re aloft, you can move around. There are books and magazines in the back, as well as the head. Anything you need, let us know.” Smiling, he took his seat in the pilot’s chair beside the other man, who turned, gave Ellie a smile and a salute, then both men gave their attention to the airplane’s controls.
They landed before Ellie had time to finish all the articles in three People magazines. It was certainly odd to see stories about people and to know what was going to happen to them within the next three years. She knew which marriages were going to break up, who was going to die and who was going to be involved in a scandal. But, to Ellie’s mind, by far the worst thing was knowing what was going to happen to Princess Diana in just a few months.
When the plane landed, she was almost grateful to have an excuse to close the magazines. She didn’t like knowing the future. People magazine had once done an article on her and she was glad it wasn’t in the magazines she’d just seen. She didn’t want to see herself smiling and thin, but know that for the next few months she was going to go through the worst ordeal of her life.
“Ready?” Lew asked as he opened the door of the plane.
When Ellie looked out, she saw beautiful northern California landscape, rolling land in the foreground, snow topped mountains in the far distance. Between her and the mountains she could see little dots that she was sure were cattle.
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