Her Cowboy Avenger (17 page)

As soon as the thought occurred, he recognized how ridiculous it was. He didn’t believe in curses or anything like that. Although, considering it brought back Marshall’s comment yesterday. He’d said the Westons seemed like they were cursed or something. He’d been talking about the family themselves, not the ranch. Either way, Matt didn’t buy it. The Westons had just had bad luck. It happened.

But looking at Landry, his face pale, his expression tense, he believed everything he was saying.

Even so, Matt hadn’t come all the way here not to play all his cards. “You wouldn’t have to keep the ranch. I’m sure you’ve heard about Glen Marshall’s offer to buy it.”

Landry showed no surprise. Matt took that as confirmation that Landry had already known.

“I don’t want the money. Bobby was my cousin and I loved him, and he was my only living relative, too. No amount of money could make up for that. Now will that be all, or do you have any more accusations to throw at me?”

“That’s it.”

“The door’s right there. Use it.” With that, Landry finally pulled the chair out from behind his desk and sat in it, rolling forward to the desk and focusing on the papers on top of it as though Matt wasn’t there.

Turning the conversation over in his mind, Matt opened the door and left. Moments later he was outside on the sidewalk.

It was possible Landry was lying, of course. He was a lawyer; chances were he was good at it. But Matt’s gut told him the man had been telling the truth. Which made this just another dead end.

As he made his way back to his truck, he couldn’t help but think about Landry’s words. So many bad things happening to one family. Including Elena, he thought. She may not have died like the other Westons, but she’d had a rough time of it. A rough time that was still ongoing. Damn. All this, and they were still no closer to the identity of Bobby Weston’s killer. And like the man had said, everybody was left still thinking Elena had done it.

He was almost at his truck when he looked up and spotted her, just as he had the last couple of days.

Lynda, the mayor’s wife, the woman from the street, the woman who’d been watching him.

Just as she was now. Their eyes met once again. This time she quickly glanced away and didn’t look at him again, though the deliberate way she wasn’t was just as telling.

He’d asked Elena about her. She’d said the mayor’s wife was a woman named Lynda Clayton and her husband’s name was Henry. The two of them had never been particularly warm toward her, so Elena figured the woman’s attention was no different from anyone else’s, believing he was working for a murderer. Still, he couldn’t escape the feeling there was more to it. Who was this woman? Why did she seem so interested in him?

With Landry’s talk of curses and bad vibes ringing in his mind, he half wondered if the woman even existed, or if she was just a ghost haunting him for some reason.

No, she was definitely real, as she unlocked the Mercedes in front of her and climbed in. As he watched her start her engine, he realized that while he hadn’t gotten the answer to the biggest question on his mind, he could get an answer to this one. He didn’t have to ask Elena. He could go straight to the source and ask the woman herself.

She was already backing out of the space, getting ready to leave. There was only one thing he could do.

He got in his truck and followed her.

She drove to the east side of town, what he guessed was the good side judging from the look and size of the houses on the street she finally arrived on. She pulled into the driveway of one of them, and he figured that meant she was home.

He parked against the curb and quickly got out of the truck, making his way up the driveway.

She was just opening the front door when he called out, not wanting her to get inside before he could speak to her. “Excuse me, ma’am?”

She glanced up and looked back at him. He saw immediately that she recognized him, a trace of nervousness entering her eyes.

Matt smiled, trying to look reassuring. “Mrs. Clayton, is it?”

She looked at first like she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer before slowly nodding. “That’s right.”

Something in her eyes held him. It wasn’t the wariness of a woman who’d found a stranger on her doorstep. Instead, there was something speculative in her steady gaze, as though she were studying him, trying to gauge him in some way. He recognized the feeling. It was the same way she’d looked at him in town, though he was only now close enough to read it.

“Ma’am, my name is Matt Alvarez. I’m working for Elena Weston out at the Weston Ranch.”

After a moment, she nodded. “Yes.”

He tried to figure out what to say. “Hello, I’ve noticed you staring at me,” wasn’t really going to cut it.

Trying to find the words, he surveyed her, this attractive, well-dressed woman in her early fifties...

Which was about how old Elena’s mother would be if she were still alive.

He wondered if he just had Teresa Reyes on his mind, given his conversation with Elena. But he had to admit, in a town this size, chances were the two women had known each other, maybe grown up together. He couldn’t help but ask.

“By any chance did you know Elena’s mother? Teresa, I believe her name was?”

The flash of emotion that passed over her face before she could hide it was all the answer he needed. Lynda Clayton not only had known Elena’s mother, but the name meant enough to her to stir an emotional reaction. And suddenly he was sure he had the answer to a question he’d been asking for days.

He leaned closer, watching as her eyes widened slightly though she didn’t back away, and said quietly, “You’re the one who sent me the article, aren’t you?”

There was no missing the flare of alarm in her gaze, but she waited too long to deny it to claim she didn’t know what he was talking about. Even as she opened her mouth to respond, he spoke again.

“Do you really want to have this conversation out here? Because I’m not going anywhere. I’ve been wanting to talk to you from the minute I opened that envelope, and I’m not leaving until I have answers.”

She didn’t move, staring at him, doubt etched across her features, until he figured a softer tack might be called for. He gentled his tone.

“I believe you sent me that article because you wanted to help her. Has that changed?”

He saw immediately he’d been right. She stepped back out of the doorway, pushing the door open farther. “Come in then. Quickly.”

Matt did as ordered, stepping over the threshold and past her into the house. As soon as he had, she shut the door behind him.

“So you did send me the article,” he said, still wanting the confirmation.

She nodded tersely without looking at him. “Yes. You might as well come in.” She moved past him into a room on the left. It was the living room. With a heavy sense of weariness, she lowered herself into the nearest seat.

Matt remained in the entryway to the room, giving it a quick glance and checking the other entrances. There was no one in sight and a heavy silence hung over the house. Both seemed to indicate no one else was around. He doubted she would have invited him in if there was.

He refocused his attention solely on her. “Why?” he asked.

“Like you said, I wanted to help Elena.”

“But why contact me?”

“Because there was no one else.”

“There was you. You could have helped her.”

Lynda opened her hands in a helpless gesture. “What could I do? Everyone in this town believes she killed Bobby, and no one was going to believe me just because I said otherwise. And if I started opposing Henry they’d all think I was crazy. So I did the only thing I could. I reached out to someone who might be able to do something.”

“Again, why did you pick me out of all the people in the world? You could have hired her a lawyer, a private investigator...”

“I don’t have the money to do either of those things. If I took the money out of our joint account, Henry would have stopped the payment, and at the very least I’d have to explain why I did it.”

“Why
did
you do it? What difference was it to you?”

Lynda swallowed, her gaze becoming distant. “Teresa Reyes was my best friend growing up. I don’t even know how many people remember that now, it was so long ago. When we were little girls and all through high school, she was like a sister to me. You may not know it looking at me now, but my folks were poor, and so were hers. We were two of a kind, us against all those rich, snobby mean girls. Then I started dating Henry, and things started to change. I had Henry’s approval, so the rich girls started to notice me. Accept me. Teresa and I started drifting apart.” She gave her head a hard shake. “No, that lets me off the hook more than I deserve. We didn’t drift apart. I cut her loose. She was my best friend, and I pretty much just stopped talking to her. Our lives weren’t the same anymore. We were living in different worlds, especially after she started seeing Ed, and Henry and I got married. Henry didn’t want me around Teresa and especially Ed. They weren’t his kind of people. The ‘right’ kind of people. And I went along with him. I didn’t really feel like I belonged with his friends, and Teresa was kind of a reminder of why I didn’t. It was easier to not be friends with her anymore. At least for me.

“Henry and I started having kids, and of course Teresa had Elena. When Teresa left Ed, ran away from her own daughter, I felt so awful. I’d seen her in town sometimes. I knew she couldn’t be happy, but I had no idea things were so bad that she would decide to run away like that. She needed a friend. I should have been that friend. I should have been there for her. It was too late for that. But I could at least try to be there for Elena.

“I kept an eye on her over the years. I knew Henry wouldn’t want me getting involved. That wouldn’t have stopped me if I’d been able, but the one time I tried talking to Ed about her, offering to help in any way I could, he just screamed at me and threw me out of his house. He knew Teresa and I had been close, of course, and he didn’t want anybody around who reminded him of her. Not to mention he remembered how I treated Teresa. He had no use for me, said I was probably one of the things in this town she’d been trying to get away from. I suppose I couldn’t blame him for that at least.

“So I did what I could. Not as much as I should have, but something. Elena needed money for school, so I pulled some strings with a ladies’ organization I belong to out of Dallas that offers a scholarship. It wasn’t much, nowhere near as much as I would have liked. I should have tried harder. I’d hoped she’d be able to get out of Western Bluff, make a fresh start somewhere. But then she married Bobby and stayed.”

“And then he was murdered,” Matt concluded.

Lynda nodded grimly.

“That still doesn’t explain why me.”

“I saw you that summer, the two of you,” she said, surprising him. “Long before Ed found out and made a ruckus about the whole thing. I knew there was something between the two of you. I’d see you at the diner, the way you couldn’t take your eyes off her, the little private smiles you shared, like you were all alone in a room full of people. And when I tried to think of somebody, anybody in this world who might care enough to help her, I remembered you.”

“How did you find me?”

“I have a friend whose son does background checks for the state. It was easy enough. There are a lot of Matt Alvarezes out there, but I knew about what age you were. It was just a matter of tracking down the right one.”

“Weren’t you worried it would look bad, a guy she dated a long time ago showing up right after her husband was murdered?”

“I didn’t believe it could get any worse. How could it? She already had the whole town against her, the police determined to prove she was guilty. What she needed was someone on her side.”

“And you thought somebody she knew for a few months who’d been gone for eight years was the best person out of everybody in the world to be on her side?”

“No, I thought somebody who once loved her might still care enough not to want to see her in prison.”

Loved her? Matt tried not to let his surprise show at the woman’s words. And it was a surprise. Not that he’d loved Elena—he knew that, of course—but that anyone had known, especially someone he hadn’t been aware of and hadn’t spoken to before in his life. The way he and Elena had felt about each other had been private. He’d never told another soul, and other than perhaps her father when he’d tried tearing them apart, he didn’t believe she had, either. It had been between them, theirs and theirs alone. But there wasn’t the slightest doubt in this woman’s voice. To hear her put it so simply, to find out that someone else had known came as a pure shock. “How did you—”

She eyed him knowingly. “I saw the way you looked at her back then, the way she looked at you. You loved each other.”

He couldn’t deny it.

“What about Bobby Weston?” he asked before he could stop himself. “How’d she look at him?”

“Not the same way. I think she wanted to. It was like she was trying her best, but it wasn’t the same.”

The answer gave him no pleasure, imagining Elena unhappy like that. “And Weston?” he asked quietly. “Did he love her?”

A hint of sadness entered her eyes before she lowered them. “Yes,” she said. “I believe he did. Certainly in the beginning. He looked at her the way she never looked at him.”

It was the last thing Matt ever would have expected, but damned if he didn’t feel a twinge of sympathy for the man. But then, he knew what it was like to love Elena more than anything, and to believe she didn’t love him the same way. He wouldn’t have wished that feeling on anybody, not even the man who’d gotten to marry her. And while he couldn’t condone the way Bobby had treated her, he could understand it. Because he also knew what it was like to think he hated her. He couldn’t imagine what it would have been like to be married to her, be around her every day, and feel that way. As much as he hated to admit it, he wasn’t sure his behavior would have been any better.

Hell, he’d walked away from her, leaving her crying on the street. He really wasn’t much better.

But he could still make it up to her.