“Manage this place, for one thing.”
She could tell that he didn’t want to talk about himself, and for her, that was a point in his favor. Martin was a nonstop talker. Sometimes Ellie hid inside her clothes closet behind her long skirts so he couldn’t find her, just so she could have a few minutes of silence.
“Okay,” she said, deciding to let him off the hook. “What about Valerie and Woody?”
Ellie could see Jessie visibly relax when the questions stopped being about him.
“Okay,” Jessie said, knife poised above the scallions. “Where do I s
tart? Valerie was chosen for her beauty and her fertility. Woody was married for thirty years to a very nice woman, but they had no kids, so Woody spent his time making money. Everything he touches seems to turn to money. If Woody stuck a pitchfork in the ground, he’d hit a gold mine.”
Ellie was pretending that she was interested in the tortilla chip in her hand, but she was listening very hard to the way Jessie said this. She was glad that, as hard as she listened, she could detect no sound of jealousy about his brother’s good fortune.
When Ellie said nothing, Jessie continued. “Unexpectedly, she fell ill and died over the course of about six weeks, and suddenly, Woody was alone. Truthfully, he’d had no experience with women.”
Jessie put the scallions in a skillet, then began to chop tomatoes and green peppers. “And that’s when Valerie showed up. She was from Texas, graduated from some expensive private college, and not married. Experienced, but unmarried.”
At that Jessie looked up at Ellie, maybe to see how she was going to respond to that statement. But Ellie didn’t say anything. She was listening too hard to want to interrupt.
“They met through one of those chance-in-a-million things. Her brother was in the hospital with a broken leg at the time that Woody’s wife was in the hospital—one of those small, private hospitals where ‘only the best’ is a norm, so Valerie didn’t have to check to see that Woody was rich. She was pregnant by my brother almost before they closed the coffin on his wife.”
Ellie wasn’t going to fall for his poor-little-rich-man-seduced-by-the-younger-woman story. It was her feeling that, no matter how they’d met, or how much money was involved, Valerie and Woody were a love match. She kept her eyes on a chip as she spoke. “So I guess your big brother used to spend lots of time with you when his first wife was alive, but now he spends all his time with his beautiful young wife and his new son.”
When Jessie was silent, she looked at him, and for a moment, she thought that he was going to be furious—and Ellie knew that if he was angry, she’d back down. Why, oh, why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut?
But Jessie looked at her in astonishment; then he roared with laughter. “You really call the shots as you see them, don’t you?” he said. “You’re the only person who hasn’t believed my story about Valerie being a piranha and after my brother’s money.”
She didn’t share his laughter. “Why would you want anyone to think that?” she asked.
He gave her a one-sided grin. “Every time I tell that story to a female, she wants to prove to me that she isn’t a gold digger, so she falls right into my arms.”
Ellie knew that she was supposed to laugh at what he’d just said, but she didn’t. Instead, she was annoyed, and, when she thought about what he’d said, she was angry. He was using a line on her that he admitted to using on all women.
He was standing there, looking at her, waiting for her reply, but she couldn’t think of what to say.
As luck would have it, the phone rang and saved her from having to answer. But when she picked it up, a male voice asked for Jessie. Obviously, everyone on the ranch knew where he was.
Wiping his hands on a towel, he walked around the bar, then took the phone from her and listened for quite a while. And it was easy to see from the look on his face that something bad had happened. Her first thought was that Woody had had a heart attack.
“I’ll be right there,” Jessie said softly, then put down the receiver. “I have to go,” he said, and started for the door. “I’m sorry about breakfast and sorry about . . .” He trailed off.
“What is it?” she asked, her hand going to her mouth in fear. “Is it Woody?”
Jessie paused at the door. “No. One of the men committed suicide last night and he was just found.”
At the word “suicide,” Ellie halted. In the last three years that action had haunted her, followed her about.
Reaching out, Jessie put his hand on her cheek and smiled at her. “Look, you and I need to talk. There’s something between us, and . . .” He didn’t seem to understand it any more than she did. “After I take care of this with Lew, I’ll come back and we’ll spend some time together.” With that, he opened the door and left the little house.
For a moment Ellie just stood there in a daze. As long as he didn’t touch her, she was all right. But when he touched her, she didn’t seem able to think straight. And when he—
“Lew!” she said out loud; then the next second she was out the door and running to catch up with Jessie. “Lew McClelland?” she asked him. “The man who flew me here? He committed suicide?”
“Yeah,” Jessie said as he walked quickly. “Sorry you met him. Look, you’re a guest, so why don’t you go back—”
“Why did he kill himself?” Ellie asked. “He was a nice man. I liked him a lot.”
At that Jessie gave her a sharp look, but he didn’t slow his walking. “Lew was depressed, deeply depressed. I knew it and some other people did, but we couldn’t do anything about it. Now it’s too late.”