Her Cowboy Avenger (4 page)

“He wasn’t,” she acknowledged with a sardonic smile. “We eloped and didn’t tell anyone about it until it was done, and then I went back to school.

“We both thought it would only be a few months until he joined me in Austin. Instead, a few months later we found out the truth about Junior. He hadn’t been feeling well, had been going to doctors to get checked out, which is why he needed Bobby’s help, though he assured everyone he was fine. But he wasn’t. He wasn’t just sick, he was dying. He was going fast, and didn’t admit it almost until the end. Then he was gone. He wasn’t married and didn’t have any kids, so Bobby inherited the ranch.

“At first I assumed he’d sell. But Bobby felt like he owed it to Junior to stay and run the ranch. I understood, and felt like I had to support that. His brother had just died, this was his family spread, and he was the last of the Westons. I couldn’t exactly argue with him. So when I finished school, I came back, too, and we stayed.”

“And you’re still here,” Matt summarized.

Elena nodded, more than a hint of resignation in the gesture. “Still here.”

“Were you happy?”

She looked at him, her gaze steady. “No,” she said flatly. “Neither of us were. After the first couple years I did begin to argue that Bobby should sell, but he wouldn’t. The thing is, Big Jim was something of a local legend around here, and all his life Bobby heard about how great his father was. And then, after being the second brother, the one who wasn’t expected to take over, he suddenly had pretty big shoes to fill, especially since he was the last Weston. It was a lot of pressure. At least he saw it that way, and it changed him. We had some setbacks over the years, some rough times, and Bobby took every one of them personally, as though he was failing his father and his brother. He became obsessed. The ranch was all he ever thought about. He was constantly coming up with plans and schemes to make things work better around here, none of which ever panned out, which only made things worse.

“The night he was killed, we’d had an argument. I’d pretty much had enough. Bobby had this idea to build this new irrigation system, claiming it would make things work a lot smoother around here. Of course, it would also require digging up half the spread and spending every last remaining cent we had. It was complete madness and would do nothing to solve any of the actual problems.” She swallowed hard. “I told him if he intended to go through with it, I would have no choice but to leave him. I wasn’t going to stand by and watch him destroy himself and what was left of our lives on his obsession with the ranch. He told me to go, because if I couldn’t understand how important it was to him, then I didn’t really love him anyway.

“I walked out and went for a drive to clear my head. I just needed to think about things for a while. I didn’t really go anywhere, didn’t think about where I was headed. I just drove until it seemed like I’d gone far enough, turned around and came back. I was gone for about four hours. When I came back, I noticed the door to his study was open and the light was still on. I almost ignored it, just wanting to go to bed and not have another confrontation, but I knew if I did he’d just stay up all night the way he did too much of the time.”

Elena sucked in a breath. “That’s when I found him. He was lying on his back on the floor. He’d been shot in the chest. I felt for a pulse, but he was already dead. He was still warm though. I don’t know how long he’d been there. Maybe if I’d come home earlier, I could have called someone, could have saved him—”

“You can’t think like that,” Matt said gently. “If you’d come back earlier, the shooter could have killed you, too.”

“I know,” she admitted softly. “But I wish I could have done something for him. Instead, all I could do was call the police and tell them he’d been killed. Unfortunately, everyone knew that we’d been arguing, and no one else had a reason to kill him, which makes me the prime suspect. The sheriff has made it clear he thinks I’m guilty. I know he’d love to make an arrest. The only thing keeping him from doing it is a lack of physical evidence. The murder weapon was most likely a pistol that belonged to Bobby. He kept it in his gun cabinet. It’s been missing since the murder. The killer must have taken it, but the sheriff is convinced I hid it somewhere, which is why he and his men have been by pretty much every other day to search the place.

“In the meantime, the hands quit. We had only a few working for us. I paid them for their work to date, but they knew I couldn’t afford to keep them on. At least one made the point that I was probably going to need every penny I had for my defense.”

“Sounds like somebody you’re better off not having around,” Matt noted.

“Most likely,” Elena agreed. “But the result is that I have this ranch to run all by myself with nobody to work it, and a whole town that thinks I murdered my husband.”

“Surely there have to be others who had issues with your husband, especially if the ranch was having as much trouble as you say it is.”

“I’ve been over the books numerous times over the past week. We’re low on funds and have plenty of debts, but these are held by banks and certainly wouldn’t be worth killing him over. And while not everybody in town necessarily loved him, I haven’t been able to come up with anyone with serious enough issues to want to do him harm. Believe me, I’ve been racking my brain trying to think of a single possibility.”

“What about these hands you had working for you? Weren’t any of them around that night? Didn’t any of them see anything?”

“No. They’d all gone to town. Bobby had given them the day off.”

“Convenient,” Matt said. “That strike anybody as odd?”

Elena shrugged. “Not really. Afterward I kind of wondered if he suspected this blowout between us was coming and didn’t want anyone around to overhear. It had been building for some time,” she admitted.

“Is it possible one of the hands killed him? Maybe they were worried about getting paid?”

“They were all in town at the bar. They have alibis.”

Her voice was thick with frustration. He could understand why. The situation certainly didn’t look good. But listening to her, he didn’t have a doubt in the world that she was telling the truth. She was no murderer. Whatever else might have changed about her over the years, that hadn’t. Which meant she needed help. She might not have sent the article to him—he definitely believed her about that, too—but the result was the same.

Before he could say anything, the sound of an engine reached them, drawing their attention toward the front of the house. Someone was coming up the driveway.

Matt glanced back at her. “Expecting company?”

Her heavy frown answered before she did. “No,” she said, rising from her chair.

He pushed away from the door frame, ready to follow. “Any idea who it could be?”

“Not really,” she said, moving past him. “But if there’s one thing I’ve learned by now, it’s bound to be trouble.”

Chapter Three

She’d been right, Elena reflected grimly as she watched the two men climb out of the police vehicle they’d parked in front of the house. It was trouble.

Sheriff Walt Bremer climbed out first, heaving himself from behind the driver’s seat with a great deal of effort. In his mid-fifties, he was a big man in every way, increasingly around his midsection. He’d always been pleasant enough to Elena and she’d never had any issues with him before. But once he’d zeroed in on her as his prime suspect, he’d turned on her so thoroughly it was hard to believe he’d ever had a kind word for her in the past.

A second, equally familiar man emerged from the passenger seat. Travis Gerard—Cassie’s husband, Bobby’s best friend since they were boys, and a local deputy. He was thirty, like Bobby had been, a long, lean figure with close-cropped hair and dark eyes. Like Cassie, he was someone she’d socialized with numerous times over the years due to his friendship with Bobby. But their relationship had started out cool and only grown cooler at the same time her marriage had, understandably enough. As Bobby’s best friend, she knew he’d been treated to plenty of Bobby’s complaining about her over the years, how she wasn’t supporting him, how she was too concerned about money. Once he’d actually pulled her aside and tried to play marriage counselor, by telling her she had a responsibility to be there for Bobby. She hadn’t been in the mood to explain Bobby’s latest bright idea, and hadn’t really thought it was any of his business, so her lack of cooperation had likely only lowered his opinion of her. He’d been cold enough toward her when it seemed like she wasn’t getting along with Bobby. Unsurprisingly, now that it seemed that she’d killed him, Travis was hellbent on making her pay.

As they approached, she saw that the men’s interest wasn’t in her, but in the man standing at her side, and she knew immediately why they’d come. Her interaction with Matt in town, and the fact that she’d driven off with him, hadn’t gone unnoticed. The sheriff no doubt wanted to know who Matt was—and what he was doing with Elena.

For a second, she felt a flicker of apprehension. She hadn’t thought about the outside impact of Matt’s presence here. If their prior relationship came out, the fact that he’d come back to town so soon after Bobby’s death could look very bad—for both of them.

Before she could begin to sort through the ramifications and how to deal with the issue, the men had reached the house. “Afternoon, Elena,” Walt said with a pleasantness that couldn’t have been more fake.

She made the immediate decision to go on the offensive. Once again, she couldn’t afford to look the slightest bit weak or guilty. “Good afternoon, Sheriff. Travis,” she said, nodding to the younger man in turn. She noticed he didn’t bother looking at her, his attention fixed on Matt, eyes narrowed with clear suspicion. “I’m glad to see you both.”

The briefest flash of surprise crossed across Walt’s face. “Oh, you are, are you?”

“Of course. You’re here about my truck, right?”

“What about it?”

“Oh, I thought you might be here because someone slashed my tires when I was in town a little while ago.”

The sheriff’s eyebrows shot sky high. “That’s a pretty serious allegation, Elena. You have any proof?”

“Two tires don’t just go flat for no reason.”

Walt shrugged one shoulder. “Stranger things have happened.”

“But I’m sure you’ll investigate to find out what really happened, won’t you, Sheriff?”

“I’m a little busy trying to solve Bobby’s murder at the moment to waste time on a minor nuisance matter. I’m sure that’s where you’d prefer my resources to be focused—catching your husband’s killer, isn’t it, Elena?”

His cloying tone made it sound like he’d caught her in some kind of trap. She simply stared back at him, unyielding. “Of course. I’d like nothing more than for you to catch the actual person responsible for killing Bobby.”

Walt’s expression turned sardonic, clearly saying he saw what she was implying and he wasn’t fooled by her in the least. But when he spoke what he said was, “Aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend, Elena?”

She almost started. For a moment, she’d actually managed to forget Matt was even there.

Before she could figure out how to explain Matt’s presence and who he was, Matt answered first.

“Mrs. Weston just hired me to help her out around here.”

It was all Elena could do not to snap her head toward him in surprise. Instead, she did her best not to let her reaction show, not wanting to tip off the policemen that it was a lie when that would only look more suspicious.

It turned out she didn’t need to worry. Walt and Travis never took their eyes off Matt, Walt’s expression becoming contemplative, Travis’s plainly hostile.

“Help her out with what?” Travis asked, a sneer in his tone.

“The ranch,” Matt said smoothly without missing a beat. “It sounded like she could use some help around here with things.”

“Did she tell you why she needed help?” Walt asked, the question clearly leading somewhere.

“Her husband recently died and the men he’d had working for him moved on.”

“Did she tell you her husband was murdered?” Travis demanded. “Shot to death in that very house? Or did you already know that?”

“As a matter of fact, she did tell me that,” Matt said.

“And that doesn’t make you nervous about working for her? It sure scared off the rest of the hands.”

“I guess I’m made of stronger stuff than they are.”

“What’s your name again?” the sheriff asked, even though they all knew full well Matt hadn’t offered it.

“Alvarez,” Matt said. “Matt Alvarez.”

Deciding she’d had enough of this, Elena spoke up. “Is there something I can help you with, Sheriff? Something must have brought you out here, since you didn’t come about my truck.”

Walt smiled thinly. “We just thought we’d stop by and see if you remembered anything else about the night Bobby was murdered.”

“No, I haven’t,” she said simply.

“In that case, I guess we’ll be going.”

He shot one final glance at Matt, then turned and headed back to his car. It took a moment for Travis to do the same, glaring at Matt, then Elena before following the sheriff.

She and Matt didn’t speak as the two men climbed back in their vehicle. They watched in silence as the sheriff backed up, then headed down the driveway.

When the car was nearly out of sight, Elena finally spoke. “Why did you tell them that?”

“As soon as I saw who it was, I figured we were going to have to explain what I was doing here. That seemed like the best explanation.”

“But now it’ll look bad if you don’t stay.”

“I’m not going anywhere, not until I have some answers.”

The determination in his voice sent a shudder down her spine. “I’m not sure your staying here is a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“If anyone finds out about our...prior relationship,” she said delicately, “it will look really bad that you suddenly showed up so soon after Bobby’s murder and are staying here.”

“It’s been eight years. I doubt anybody will remember. I was nothing more than a ranch hand passing through, and we were careful about not being too public because you didn’t want your father finding out, remember? Only a few people knew in the end anyway. Are the Nolans still around?” he asked, referring to the people who’d owned the ranch where he’d worked that summer.