standing with her shoulders squared and her jaw firm against the backdrop of funeral flowers and two open graves. Her dark curls are as wild and free as the Texas breeze. Even with grief in her eyes, she’s a magnificent woman. I’ve only known Stephanie for two days, but I know her well enough to know this is breaking her heart, but not her will. She’s come home to Texas to say goodbye to her uncle Albert and aunt Emily, the couple who raised her after her parents divorced—it seemed neither one wanted her. They were her real family, and now they’re dead.
Dead in a very suspicious manner, I might add.
Stephanie faxed me the coroner’s report—accidental death when a barn structure collapsed during a wind sheer. Right. I checked the Internet weather reports and Pecos, Texas, was the only town in the Southwest to suffer a wind sheer on May 26. Everywhere else in the region had perfect weather, except the one spot where the barn stood. Neighbors half a mile away didn’t notice any bad weather. No, this killer wind blew out of a perfectly clear sky and collapsed a barn that had been standing for fifty years. Yeah, a freak, killer wind. Stephanie is right. There’s something rotten in Texas.
Stephanie has come to the cemetery to pay her respects to her relatives, but I’m here to gather information. About fifty people are attending the gravesite rites. Some are obviously cowboys who worked for the McCammons. There’s one who looks like a young Rowdy Yates, lean and muscular and filled with that peculiar cowboy grace. He’s staring at Stephanie as if he’d never seen a woman, but she’s too busy controlling her emotions to notice him.
Beside the cowboys are a little cluster of city folk who don’t fit in at all. I look around and watch the mourners watching Stephanie. A few of the older attendees really seem upset at the deaths. There are some here, though, who arouse my suspicions. The way the McCammons died is one thing we’re looking into. The other is this new will that suddenly turned up. Stephanie has been completely disinherited. There is no mention of the McCammons’s plan to turn the ranch into a trust, something they’d often discussed with Stephanie.
Damn! Stephanie is crying. She isn’t making a sound, but huge tears are running down her flawless cheeks. Behind her sunglasses, her hazel eyes are filled with pain. Let me give her a little kitty nuzzle and a love bite. There, that made her smile. She’s pulling herself together, and just in time, too.
The minister is closing his service. So far, no one has spoken to Stephanie or offered a word of sympathy. The mourners are breaking up, and Stephanie is signaling me to join her at the Jeep we rented in Dallas. We’re not going to escape unscathed, though; here comes a blond woman with a determined stride.
THE SUN BROILED the back of Hank Dalton’s neck, and as soon as the prayer was over, he put his straw cowboy hat back on his dark curls, eager for the moment when he could remove the confining suit coat. Only his respect for Albert McCammon would have forced him into a black coat on a hot May day. Albert McCammon had been a genius with a herd of cows and some parched dirt. He’d spend many a hot day teaching Hank how to settle an injured cow or train a horse. And on those days, Albert had talked often of his niece, Stephanie Chisholm, a woman so beautiful the angels smiled in her presence and so smart she could accomplish anything she set her mind to.
Now, Hank found himself staring at the young woman, and she was even lovelier than Albert had described. He guessed her to be about thirty-five, a willowy five foot seven inches, with dark hair that looked like it was made for sensual moments spread across white sheets. For all of her beauty, she was struggling to hold back her tears. He liked the way she held herself straight, even though she had to know that everyone in town was talking about her, and the talk wasn’t pleasant.
He shifted so that he could get a better view of her and noticed the black cat that seemed to lurk around her legs. What kind of woman traveled with a cat? He had a dog, Biscuit, a blue heeler that was indispensable working the cattle. But a cat? He wondered what Albert’s heeler, Banjo, would think about a cat. What would become of Banjo? If Stephanie didn’t want the dog, Hank would take him. In fact, Hank would be perfectly willing to take the entire McCammon Ranch. That was heavy on his mind as he stood among the mourners and listened to the service that concluded Albert and Emily’s days on earth.
“I wouldn’t be mooning after Stephanie Chisholm,” Jackie Benton whispered in his ear.
Taken aback, Hank glanced at Jackie. The blonde was normally easygoing. Hank suddenly remembered the old gossip about how her husband, Johnny, had been dumped by Stephanie.
“What? Stephanie is a man eater?”
Jackie shook her head, her eyes dancing with amusement. “No, she’s just a city girl. She doesn’t have any use for the ranch life.”
“Is that so?” Hank felt a glimmer of hope. Maybe Stephanie would sell the McCammon Ranch to him. If she wasn’t interested in ranching, she’d have to do something with it. A ranch couldn’t just look after itself.
“Her life is martini lunches, cocktail galas and art gallery openings. She’d die here.”
“But she has a link to the land. This was where she grew up,” Hank said, thinking about the thirty thousand acres that comprised the ranch. The big benefit to the McCammon land was Twisty Creek. Last year, Hank had an abundant water supply in the form of Charity Branch. But land developers had put in a subdivision north of his place and diverted the branch so that now, he was having to pump water in for irrigation and his cattle.
“From what Johnny told me, Stephanie always wanted to live in a city. Even as a teenager she was mooning and dreaming about the excitement of New York. She has her own advertising agency in New York now, along with her Fifth Avenue penthouse. She makes a ton of money—look at her. Those are designer clothes, and I should know. Look how they fit her. She’s a dress designer’s delight.”
Hank couldn’t tell if Jackie was envious of Stephanie or admiring. He cleared his throat and turned his attention to the minister, who was getting ready to say the last prayer before Albert and Emily were returned to the earth.
“I will say Stephanie has spunk,” Jackie allowed. “Folks around town feel that she abandoned Albert and Emily. There was a betting pool going down at the café that she wouldn’t even show up for the funeral. I guess she proved them wrong.”
“I didn’t live here when she was still in town, but I spent a lot of time with Albert. All I ever heard from him about her was a lot of praise. She made him proud.”
“That’s right,” Jackie said. “I think I’ll go over and invite her to the house for the meal.”
STEPHANIE FOCUSED on the Jeep only twenty yards in front of her. If she could just make it, then she could close the door, drive away, and give in to the grief that threatened to overwhelm her. Uncle Albert and Aunt Emily were dead. She’d never see them again. She’d been away in New York when they needed her. The guilt and grief were so heavy Stephanie stumbled.
“Ms. Chisholm!”
She turned to face the blond woman barreling toward her. Stephanie took in her expensive black suit, the Italian heels and the hat with a veil which settled perfectly on short blond curls.
“Yes?” she said, knowing that she’d have to talk to people to find out what had really happened. But she’d never seen this woman before.
“Ms. Chisholm, I’m Jackie Benton, Johnny’s wife.”
Stephanie took an involuntary step back. She’d scanned the crowd and hadn’t seen Johnny Benton, the man she’d been engaged to marry more than a dozen years before. The man
