by Janet Dailey
“I would learn more if I got straight answers,” Jessy countered, lifting her voice to make certain he heard her. She was almost certain she detected a low chuckle from him.
After two trips, Laredo decided that they had carried up everything they would need that night. The rest of the items were loaded into the back of his truck to be hauled up later after he had cleared away the deadfall.
Preparing to leave, Jessy slid behind the wheel of her pickup. “Tell Chase I’ll see him. I may not be able to make it back tomorrow, but I’ll come as soon as I can slip away again.”
“I’ll do it,” Laredo replied. “By the way, were you able to find anything on that Brewster fellow?”
“Not yet. I did check the hotel bill. There were several local calls on it and a few long-distance ones, but most of those were to the Triple C. I’ll keep trying to find something,” she promised and shifted the pickup into reverse, backing up and making a tight turn to make the bumpy trip back to the old fire road.
When Jessy arrived at the Triple C headquarters nearly two hours later, she was quick to notice Cat’s vehicle parked in front of The Homestead. Trey was on the veranda, demonstrating his rope skills to Quint while Laura sat in one of the rockers, playing with her doll.
The minute Trey saw her pull up to the house, he abandoned his miniature lasso and ran to the steps to meet her. “Hi, Mom. Quint’s here.”
“I see that,” Jessy said and playfully pushed the brim of Trey’s cowboy hat down over his face, then glanced at Quint. “Where’s your mom?”
“Inside with Sally.”
With both arms wrapped tightly around her doll, Laura hopped out of the rocker and scampered to Jessy’s side. “Sally’s cryin’,” Laura declared, attaching a high degree of importance to the news. “She misses Grampa a lot.”
“Grampa’s gonna buy me a horse,” Trey stated and immediately galloped away, tossing his head and whinnying in his best imitation of the animal.
Jessy went straight to the kitchen to let Sally know she was home.
As expected, she found Sally seated in one of the kitchen chairs, a balled-up handkerchief pressed to her mouth in an attempt to smother the sobs that shook her shoulders. Cat was crouched beside the chair, a comforting hand resting on the housekeeper’s arm while tears ran down her own cheeks.
When Sally caught sight of Jessy, she swallowed back her tears and mopped at the wetness on her face. “I’m sorry, Jessy,” she sniffled. “I know I shouldn’t carry on like this in front of the children, but”—her lip quivered—“I miss Chase so much.”
“We all do, Sally.” Cat’s voice trembled with feeling. “But you know he would want us to be strong.”
“I try. I really do,” Sally insisted tearfully. “But when you said you wanted to—” She pressed the handkerchief to her mouth again as if the rest of the sentence was too painful to speak.
“Forget it,” Cat told her. “We won’t clean out his room today. Okay?” she said with quiet encouragement, and Sally nodded in mute agreement. “You look exhausted, Sally. Why don’t you go lie down for a little while?”
“But the twins—” Sally began in protest.
“I’ll watch them for Jessy. You go get some rest,” Cat urged.
“I’ll try.” Sally pushed out of the chair and moved toward the doorway, a pronounced heaviness in her movements.
Jessy was grateful for Cat’s silence as she waited for Sally to leave the kitchen. Jessy needed time to collect her wits. Cat’s statement may have reassured Sally, but it had alarmed Jessy.
Right now the task of clearing Chase’s room of all his clothes and personal belongings had merely been postponed. Jessy had to come up with a logical reason to keep it that way.
“I’m worried about Sally,” Cat said the moment the woman was safely out of earshot. “Have you noticed the circles under her eyes and the weight she’s lost?”
“I know. She admitted to me that she hasn’t been able to sleep much,” Jessy replied.
“She can’t keep this up, not at her age, not without damaging her health,” Cat murmured with concern. “Maybe she should make an appointment at the clinic. Perhaps Dr. Brown could prescribe a sedative to help her sleep.”
“See if you can convince her of that,” Jessy agreed. “In the meantime, it won’t hurt to leave Chase’s room as it is for a couple months, not only for Sally’s sake but Trey’s as well. He still goes in there a lot.”
“You’re right,” Cat agreed and sighed heavily. “I just wanted to be useful. You and Sally have so much to do. This was something I could do to help.”
“Then do me a favor: see if you can find someone to watch the twins during the day,” Jessy suggested. “Sally doesn’t need that responsibility right now. I’ll leave it in your hands. Whoever you choose will be fine with me.”
“I’ll get on it right away,” Cat promised. “By the way, Culley mentioned that he saw you this morning.”
“Yes. I passed him on the road. I didn’t notice him until I was all the way by.” Jessy wasn’t entirely comfortable with this new subject.
“He said he thought you were on your way to the Circle Six.” Cat didn’t come right out and ask where Jessy went, but the unspoken question was there.
“I thought about stopping by to see you, but I had too many things to do.” Jessy smiled to herself, realizing that she had just taken a page out of Laredo’s book with her evasion. “And I still have a lot to do, so I’d better get at it.”
Using that as her exit line Jessy left the kitchen, and headed for the den to tackle the paperwork she had postponed.
The summer sun blazed hot and strong over the rough and rocky foothills. Perspiration rolled down Chase’s neck as he hefted a bundle of shingles onto his shoulder, his muscles straining under the burden. But it was a kind of sweat and strain that felt good and vaguely familiar.
After adjusting his load for better balance, he moved to the ladder propped against the cabin. A shirtless Laredo was on the roof, nailing down the last batch of shingles. The rhythmic pounding of his hammer echoed in the stillness. With his free hand, Chase grabbed hold of a rung and started up.
He was halfway to the top when Hattie toted a pail of dirty water out of the cabin. The instant she saw Chase, she came to an abrupt stop.
“Would you mind telling me what you are doing on that ladder, Duke?” she challenged.
“Enjoying the view. What does it look like?” He smiled away her question.
“Then enjoy it from down here.”
“I think I’ll have to start calling you Harping Hattie,” Chase replied, eyes twinkling. “A little honest work won’t hurt me.”
“It won’t hurt you a bit,” Hattie agreed, “as long as you do it on the ground. What would you do if you got a dizzy spell while you’re on that ladder?”
“Count on you to catch me,” he teased.
“You don’t know me very well. I would let you fall just to teach you a lesson.”
“Now that sounds like hard-hearted Hattie,” Laredo said through the nails he held between his teeth.
“It’s called tough love,” she countered with her usual spunk and set the pail on the ground. “When you come down, you can empty this bucket and fill it with some clean water. When you get done with that, I have a mop waiting for you inside—or a scrub brush. You can take your pick.” She turned on her heel and went back inside.
Laredo removed the last nail from between his teeth and glanced at Chase, dry amusement gleaming in his eyes. “If we aren’t careful, she’s going to turn into a slave driver.”
“There is something about a dirty house that seems to get a woman’s dander up.” Chase slung the shingle bundle onto the tar paper-covered roof not far from Laredo’s feet, then paused and turned his face to the steady breeze. His idly roaming glance noticed a plume of dust in the distance.
“Better hold it, Laredo,” he warned. “There is somebody on the road. They look to be a mile or so away yet, but sound can trave
l a considerable distance in this country.”
Laredo immediately straightened from his task and slipped the hammer into the loop on his tool belt. Turning sideways, he scanned the long vista, zeroing in on the dust cloud. “Pass me those binoculars hanging from the ladder.”
After removing the high-powered binoculars from their leather case Chase handed them to Laredo and waited in silence while the other man focused them on the source of the dust cloud. “Can you tell who it is?”
“A ranch pickup with the Triple C insignia on its door. I can’t make out the driver. It might be Jessy. Then again, it might not be. We’d better play it safe. It’s time to take a break anyway.”
He waited until Chase had begun his descent, then moved to the ladder and swung a foot onto a rung. When he reached the bottom, he passed the binoculars to Chase and headed for the water jug. After guzzling down a large quantity of it, he poured some on his faded blue kerchief and used the wet cloth to wipe the sweat from his face and neck while Chase tracked the vehicle’s progress through the binoculars.
Laredo cast a sideways glance at him. “Which way is it headed?”
“If it turns west at the next intersection, probably here. Which should mean it’s Jessy.” He kept the binoculars trained on the pickup. “It’s about time she showed up. It’s been three days now. I expected her to come yesterday.”
“I don’t imagine it’s easy for her to slip away.” Laredo wandered over to stand beside Chase.
“Probably not.” But the admission was a grudging one. A second later he announced, “She turned west.” He lowered the glasses. “It’s Jessy, all right, I just got a good look at her.”
Fifteen minutes later, the pickup bounced onto the relative flatness of the hill’s wide shoulder and rolled to a stop next to Laredo’s truck. Jessy climbed out of the cab, stepped to the rear of the pickup, and lifted a duffel bag out of the back, then headed for the cabin where Chase stood with Laredo.
“Hi.” Her smile of greeting was wide and warm as she ran her glance over Chase, noting the changes in him. “The bandage is off and your color is back. You must be feeling better.” Without waiting for him to reply, she set the duffel bag on the ground. “I threw some clothes and a pair of everyday boots in here. I thought you would be needing them. Sorry I couldn’t come any sooner, but I’ve been busy.”
“With what?” Chase asked, faintly annoyed that he had no idea about what was going on.
“Actually it was ‘with whom,’ ” Jessy replied. “I spent most of the last two days with lawyers and accountants, handling all legal loose ends that hadn’t been tied up. Talk about something that was a total waste of time, that was it. I can’t imagine what we’ll have to go through to get you declared legally alive.”
“That won’t be for a while yet,” Chase stated.
“You still don’t remember anything.” Jessy’s gaze remained steady on him.
“No.” Chase didn’t mention the few disjointed items that rattled around in his mind, names that were either meaningless or made no sense.
Jessy shifted her attention to the cabin, taking note of the new windows, the rehung door, and new screen door before glancing at the partially repaired roof. “Why didn’t you finish the roof before you installed new windows?” She turned a wondering look on Laredo.
“Hattie was tired of battling flies. Fixing the roof was low on her list of priorities,” he explained. “Getting the well pump fixed and running a water line into the cabin were first on her agenda, with the windows coming a close second.”
As if on cue, Hattie appeared on the other side of the screen door. “Hello, Jessy. I don’t mean to be rude, but I am up to my elbows in dirt. There is some lemonade in the ice chest. Tell Laredo to pour you some.”
“I don’t care for any right now, thanks anyway,” Jessy said.
“It’s there if you decide you want some. I’d love to visit, but it will take me the rest of the week to make this place habitable. Have Laredo show you the shower he put in out back. It’s very ingenious. Of course I still have to heat the water for it, but it’s a shower.”
“A shower?” She glanced curiously at Laredo as Hattie moved away from the door to return to work.
“It’s a little contraption I rigged up—a canvas bucket with a shower-head attachment. You pull the rope and water comes out. It stops when you let go of the rope.”
“Sounds practical and efficient,” Jessy remarked, impressed by his ingenuity.
“It is,” Laredo agreed without any brag in his voice.
With a touch of impatience, Chase interrupted, “What have you been able to learn about the phone calls I made in Texas?”
“Not a lot, unfortunately,” Jessy said with regret. “The man you went there to see was Tom Brewster. Some business came up and he had to postpone his appointment with you until the next day. When you didn’t show up for that meeting, he said he was more than a little upset. It wasn’t until the next day that he learned you had been killed in a traffic accident.”
“What does he do? Did he know why I wanted to see him?” Chase felt certain that Tom Brewster was an important key.
“He’s a vice president at the Blanchard Bank, and you didn’t say why you wanted to see him, just that it was something you preferred to discuss in person. Since he’s in the loan department, he assumed you had a project that you wanted to have financed.”
“Do I?” Chase couldn’t remember.
“Not that you ever mentioned to me,” Jessy replied.
“And if you did, why would you go to a bank in Texas?” Laredo inserted. “I don’t think you were after a loan.”
“Not unless my regular bank had turned me down.”
“After spending much of the last two days with accountants and bookkeepers, I can tell you with absolute certainty that the ranch has more than a sufficient amount of operating capital. There isn’t any need for a business loan,” Jessy told him. “There was one other thing Brewster said that might be important. You told him that you had obtained his name from a mutual friend, but you didn’t identify the man by name.” She paused, another possibility occurring to her. “Maybe it wasn’t a man. Maybe it was Tara. It would be logical. After all, she’s from Fort Worth. Should I ask her about it?”
“It might not be wise for you to start asking questions. The wrong person might find out that you are getting suspicious about what I was doing in Texas. He might decide you know whatever it is that I am supposed to know—assuming that’s the reason someone tried to kill me.” It was all a big, confusing puzzle to him.
Suddenly the horn in Jessy’s pickup began honking incessantly, its stridency shattering the quietness. “That’s the mobile phone.” She ran to the pickup and picked up the telephone, silencing the horn.
“Yes, this is Jessy.” She mentally braced herself for news of an emergency somewhere on the ranch.
“Jessy. Monte here,” came the cheerful reply. “At last I have succeeded in running you to ground.”
“Hello, Monte.” Jessy relaxed. “What do you need?”
“I planned to come by the ranch this afternoon, but no one at the house knew when you would be back.”
“Probably around one or two this afternoon.”
“Could you spare me an hour of your time?”
“Is it important?” she asked, thinking of the many and varied items on today’s agenda.
“I have something special to deliver to you.”
His statement aroused her curiosity. “What is it?”
“That is a surprise,” he declared with a trace of smugness. “And I am confident you will be very pleased with it. I shall see you at two o’clock then.”
“I’ll be there,” Jessy promised and hung up.
Observing her slightly bemused expression when she approached them, Laredo tipped his head to one side, studying her closely. “Is there a problem?”
“No,” she said with a quick shake of her head, her mouth curving easily into a smile. “It was
just Monte. He’s coming over this afternoon and wanted to know what time I would be back. He has something to deliver—something special, he said—but he wouldn’t say what. It’s probably a calf from his herd of registered Highland cattle, although I can’t imagine why he thinks I would be so pleased to get one.”
“Who is Monte?” Chase questioned.
“Monte Markham, our newest neighbor,” Jessy replied with a casualness that indicated her ease with the subject and the man. “He bought the Gilmore ranch last spring. But he’s originally from England, and it shows.”
“Just since spring, huh,” Laredo murmured thoughtfully, “which means he’s new to the area. That’s interesting.”
“You think it might mean something,” Chase guessed.
“Like you once said, it’s too soon to rule out anyone.”
“You don’t really think Monte might be involved in the attempt on Chase’s life?” Jessy was more than a little skeptical.
“Is that so impossible?” Laredo’s smile made the question seem less of a challenge.
“Not impossible, but unlikely,” Jessy replied. “I mean, what would be his reason? The man is practically a stranger. We barely know him at all.”
“But I have the impression that he has become a frequent visitor. Am I right?” The smile stayed, but there was a watchful quality to his eyes.
“I don’t know if I would call it frequent, but he has been over several times since he moved here. To me, it never seemed anything more than a desire for some company.” She shrugged to emphasize her total lack of concern.
“Obviously he isn’t married,” Laredo concluded. “Just out of curiosity, how old is he?”
“Thirty or forty. I never asked.” Quick to see where his thinking was leading, Jessy added crisply, “And if you’re suggesting that he might be interested in me, you’re wrong.”
“Maybe.” Laredo dipped his head in a gesture of concession, then held her gaze. “Then again, any man in his right mind is bound to spend a little time considering everything the widow Calder has to offer.”