The men didn’t argue with that. In fact, they seemed relieved to get the heck out of there. The sisters were a different story, though. One of them hadn’t given up on gouging out her husband’s eyes because she went after him again. Since Jake still had his hands full with the other two, Garrett took this one.
She kicked him in the shin, then socked him on his funny bone.
And Garrett could have sworn he saw flippin’ stars.
“Go, now!” he shouted to the men, and he held the combative woman back long enough for them to hightail it out of there.
“You piece of cow dung!” the woman yelled.
She added a few more choice labels, but she must have spent every drop of her energy doing that because then she sagged against him. If Garrett hadn’t taken hold of her, she would have dropped to the floor.
Nicky took over for him by pulling the woman into her arms. “Diana, you just need to take a moment. And when you think this through, you’ll see the silver lining in this. Your husband is alive.”
Diana looked at her, blinked, and then the tears started. Her sisters began to cry, too, and even though Garrett wasn’t a crying expert, these didn’t seem to be tears of relief.
“I’m not a widow,” Diana muttered. Again, Garrett wasn’t picking up on any sense of relief. Just the opposite, in fact.
“And neither are we,” one of the other sisters said. That brought on even harder crying.
Maybe they’d enjoyed not having their loser husbands around. Hell, maybe they just liked having people feel sorry for them. Garrett still felt sorry for them, but it had nothing to do with their marital status.
Diana lifted her chin, and it appeared she was trying to steel herself. “We’ll go upstairs, pack our things, and then we’ll leave tonight.” She pulled away from Nicky and started out of the room.
“Wait.” Nicky stepped in front of her. “You don’t have to leave right away. Stay at least until morning.”
“Of course we have to go. This is the Widows’ House, and it wouldn’t be right if we stayed. We have husbands, and it would be a slap in the face to everyone else here if we stayed.”
It wasn’t an especially good argument considering that Meredith had stayed here and Lady was nowhere near grieving mode. But clearly the sisters had made up their minds because they joined hands and walked out, each mumbling something about finding a more appropriate support group to suit their emotional needs.
He didn’t want to tell them that they probably wouldn’t get far because they appeared to be satisfied with their stoic exit. But with the trail in such bad shape, they wouldn’t be able to drive anywhere, and Lady might be too busy to give them a tow. Hell, the woman might be outside right now screwing the sisters’ husbands.
Nicky stood there, watching them as if she might go to them, but she stayed put when his mother and Gina went upstairs with them. Nicky tried to call Clay again. Because Garrett was standing so close to her, he heard it go to voice mail.
“I’ll try Sophie,” he said, taking out his own phone. After that, though, he was talking to Nicky.
“By the way, what happened with Candy?” Nicky asked in a whisper. “I didn’t want to ask Belle because I didn’t want to upset her.”
“Everything went as planned. Candy demanded money, and Clay arrested her.”
“And he didn’t say anything about Loretta?”
“Not a word.” Garrett doubted that Loretta had anything to do with Candy, but maybe she did. If there hadn’t been other pressing things to deal with, he would have asked Nicky about that possibility. “Look, I know this is a bad time, but we have to talk.”
“About Loretta?”
“No.” And he didn’t want to get into it with a possible audience around.
He took her out of the library and went in search of a private place to talk. In a house built like a giant ant farm, that shouldn’t have been a problem, but it was.
Ginger was in the kitchen. Ruby, in the foyer. There were guests in the parlor and dining room, so Garrett headed for the back porch. There was a tin roof covering it so they wouldn’t get wet, but he had to nix that when lightning zagged through the night sky.
“Can you at least tell me what’s wrong?” Nicky asked as Garrett took her into the back hall. At least no one was there.
He stopped, turned to face her. “After I got back home, I got a visit from someone named Doris.”
There’d already been plenty of concern on Nicky’s face, but his words only made her expression worse. There was a hitch in her breath, and she dropped back a step. “She told you?”
He nodded, not even sure what he’d heard from Doris was the actual truth. “She told me her side of the story. Now, I’d like to hear yours.”
“Oh, God,” Nicky whispered, and she turned away from him. “I was going to tell you. I was. But the timing was never right.” She paused. “Kaylee doesn’t know.”
Yeah, he’d figured that out, but before he could ask anything else, he heard more shouting. Not from the sisters this time. It was Lady.
“Uh, Nicky? You really need to get out here.”
Nicky didn’t budge, but she did when she heard the next voice.
Loretta.
“Nicky, I need to see you,” the woman said. “I’ve got to leave the Widows’ House right now.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
NICKY DEFINITELY DIDN’T want to do this right now Loretta was obviously in some kind of trouble, and while the conversation with Garrett was important, it could wait.
Not long, though.
But it could wait long enough for her to find out why Loretta had been taken into police custody. Nicky also needed to know how and why Loretta had been released and why she was back here at the house. Besides, Loretta might need a lawyer for whatever it was she had done.
There was no mystery about Nicky’s final secret. It was out. And it was obvious that Garrett was upset. She’d lied to him by omission, and it probably had felt like a punch to the stomach because she’d started up an affair with him without telling him about Kaylee.
“I won’t be long,” Nicky said to him, but that might be another lie. If Loretta had been arrested for something serious, she might have to go back to the police station with her. At least until Loretta could get another attorney there.
Garrett didn’t insist on her staying put, probably because he, too, was concerned about Loretta. He followed Nicky back to the front of the house, and she immediately saw Clay, Sophie and Loretta. At least Loretta wasn’t in handcuffs, but her eyes were red from crying, and she looked pale and shaky.
In addition to the tears, both Loretta and Clay were soaking wet and muddy.
“I didn’t kill him,” Loretta volunteered right away.
Nicky hadn’t been certain what the woman might say, but she certainly hadn’t expected that. Oh, mercy. Had Loretta been implicated in a murder?
“I was just meeting him here,” Loretta went on, but it was hard to understand her through the sobs. Also hard to hear because even more people were coming into the room. Belle was one of them, and she was clearly waiting for some answers like the rest of them.
“You need to start from the beginning,” Clay reminded Loretta, and he led her into the nearby parlor and had her sit down. Of course, everyone went in there, too, but Loretta didn’t seem to notice that this wasn’t going to be a private conversation.
Loretta nodded, took a sip of whatever it was that D.M. handed her. She spit it right back out in the glass and made a face. Apparently, the cocktail experiment was a bust. In the grand scheme of things, that was small potatoes, but all the bits and pieces of this crappy night were starting to feel like dead weight on Nicky’s shoulders.
“I knew Donny Ray, and we came here to...visit with each other,” Loretta finally said.
That part came through loud and clear, and it helped Nicky start to fill in some blanks.
Loretta and Donny Ray had been lovers. Here, at Z.T.’s place. Since it had also been Nicky and Garrett’s tryst location, it was hard to fault the woman for that, but she could fault her some for the rest of it.
“Belle didn’t know we came here,” Loretta went on. “No one did. I knew this place would be unlocked and that we’d have some...privacy. So we’d use the trail to get here.”
Nicky shook her head. “But no one found a vehicle belonging to Donny Ray or anyone else for that matter.”
“That’s because he rode a motorcycle. He would always hide it in the woods. It’s probably still out there somewhere.”
“Or it could have been stolen,” Clay quickly pointed out. “Reena said the Penningtons had teenage boys around that time, and their land was close to the Grangers’ Ranch.”
He was right, but the Penningtons had moved to Florida well over a year ago, and their sons had left long before that. Clay would have to track them down to question them.
But there was also another possibility.
“My brother could have taken it,” Nicky suggested. “He was always coming home with spare parts and junk that he’d find. And one day he pulled out a motorcycle from our old shed, and he rode off. I can ask him if he found it in the woods.” She turned to Loretta. “Why didn’t you say something when you found the body?”
“Because I didn’t know it was Donny Ray. I swear I didn’t,” she added, glancing at some of the others in the room. “Donny Ray and I had had an argument because I wouldn’t move to Mexico with him, so when I showed up and he wasn’t here, I thought it was over between us for good. I left and didn’t come back until the day we made this place the Widows’ House.”
Garrett shook his head. “But when you saw the skeleton, you must have had an inkling that it was Donny Ray.”
“I didn’t. I don’t ever remember him wearing shorts like that. A suit like that, either. But he was always playing the goofball. You know, dressing up funny the way Kaylee does sometimes. Once he showed up looking like a cowboy. Another time, like a mobster from one of those old James Cagney movies.”
It was possible he was trying to disguise himself. After all, Donny Ray was a minister, and he was meeting his lover. Then again, maybe he just hadn’t outgrown a love of playing dress up.
“Any idea why Donny Ray would have put some of his clothes in the library and others in the trunk upstairs in the room Kaylee’s using?” Nicky asked.
Loretta sighed. “That was another game of his.” She paused, blushed. “He would hide my clothes, too, and after we had our intimate time, he’d have me look for them. I think he liked the idea of us running around the house in just our birthday suits. Sometimes, though, that would lead to even more intimate times.”
Of course it would, but Nicky couldn’t imagine the prudish Loretta prancing around the house naked. In fact, she was glad she was having a hard time imagining it.
“What about his wedding ring?” Judging from Garrett’s tone, he had as many questions as Nicky did. And he wasn’t especially pleased with any of this.
“Of course, Donny Ray had a wedding ring because he was a widower,” Loretta answered, “but I didn’t know what was engraved inside it. It looked just like an ordinary wedding ring to me.”
It did on the outside. And Nicky supposed that it was reasonable that a widower wouldn’t have taken off his ring to show his lover. But that brought her to a gray area.
“Why come here to Z.T.’s?” Nicky pressed. “Why not just go to his place or yours...”
Loretta glanced away. And Nicky knew why.
“Did Donny Ray know you were married at the time?” Nicky added.
Loretta nodded. “He didn’t approve. He wanted me to leave my husband. And I considered it. I’m not a loose woman like...some people around here.” She glanced at Lady. “It’s just I’d fallen out of love with my husband but couldn’t divorce him. That wouldn’t have sat well with my family.” Her gaze landed on Garrett for that.
Maybe the looks were Loretta’s way of judging, but at least Lady wasn’t sleeping around on a husband, and Garrett hadn’t done that to Meredith, either.
Loretta stopped long enough to wipe away more tears. Belle gave her a tissue. Lady offered her another drink, a green one this time. Loretta took the tissue but declined the drink.
“When I saw that skeleton in the closet, I didn’t want to believe it was Donny Ray,” Loretta went on. “It hurt too much to think that he might have died here, in pain, waiting for me.”
“There wasn’t any trauma to the body,” Clay interjected, “so he probably died of a heart attack. I don’t even think he fell or anything because none of the pots or pans on the shelves around him had been disturbed. If he’d fallen, he probably would have tried to catch on to something and would have toppled things.”
Well, that meant there’d likely be no charges against Loretta, but still, this would eat away at her for the rest of her life. Nicky tried not to be frustrated with the woman because she doubted Loretta was lying about any of this, but if Loretta had just let them know that it could be Donny Ray, then Garrett and his family wouldn’t have had to deal with the likes of Candy.
“Jake said he saw Reena cuff her. Why did she do that?” Nicky asked Clay. She tried not to sound like a lawyer whose client hadn’t been handled properly.
Clay looked as if he wanted to curse. “She jumped the gun. Loretta came in and said she killed a man so Reena reacted without getting to the bottom of it first.”
“I meant I felt responsible for his death,” Loretta corrected. “I still do.”
Nicky let out a long breath and gave the woman a hug. It seemed to help, and Loretta got to her feet. “I had Clay drive me over. We had to walk quite a ways, though, because of all the stuck cars. Anyway, he said he’ll take me to a friend’s house in San Antonio.”
“I can do it,” Jake volunteered. He looked at Clay. “You should probably stick around here for a while in case the Ellery sisters run into the Ellery brothers again. The one that stands in the middle said something about finding some rusty pliers. She can’t be up to anything good if she’s looking for something like that.”
Clay gave another “I want to curse so badly” huff even though he likely didn’t know what was going on with the Ellerys. That was something Nicky was going to have to fill him in on. At least he knew about Doris since he’d been the one to help her fill out the paperwork for a restraining order against the woman.
“I’ll get my things packed,” Loretta said, heading for the stairs.
Nicky had already made this offer to the sisters, but she made it again to Loretta. “Why don’t you at least stay until morning or until the storm has passed.”
Loretta frantically shook her head. “I can’t stay. Now that I know Donny Ray died here. You’ll just have one less widow in the house.”
Four less, Nicky mentally corrected. There’d be a lot of empty beds tonight. And considering the way Garrett had looked at her earlier, he wouldn’t be sharing hers.
“Let’s talk,” she whispered to him. She stood, faced the others. “Help yourselves to the party food, and if you don’t want to have to go back out in the storm, find a place to crash here.” She turned but then stopped. “Oh, and watch out for the loose crab in the kitchen.”
Now that she’d given that invitation and warning to everyone, she motioned for Garrett to follow her. Nicky didn’t want to go upstairs where Kaylee and the sitter were because she didn’t want them to overhear her. She also didn’t want to run into Loretta or the sisters again. Her empathy reservoir was drained right now.
But at least some things were settled.
Candy was out of the picture. They knew more or less what’d happened to Donny Ray. And despite
the ruckus the Ellery brothers had caused with their arrival, there hadn’t been any injuries. Heck, once the sisters got over the shock of no longer being widows, they might even be able to reconcile with their spouses. If the men could get over those penis phobias, that is.
There was no one in the library so Nicky went there. Ironic that Garrett and she kept ending up there, but at least it had doors, and she made sure both were shut.
“What exactly did Doris want?” she asked.
“Kaylee,” he answered without hesitation. “She believes she has the right to raise her.”
Nicky felt the chill go through her, head to toe. Another irony because she rarely felt anything but heat around Garrett.
She sank down onto the foot of the chaise, and since she would need it, Nicky took a deep breath. “No, she doesn’t have that right.” She looked up at Garrett. “What exactly did she tell you?”
He also drew in a long breath. “That she was Kaylee’s grandmother. Is she?”
“Yes. But Kaylee is also my late husband’s child.” There, she’d said it aloud. Now, for the rest. “You already know that Patrick had affairs. Several of them. Well, about three years ago, I saw some papers from my insurance company. Patrick usually handled that, but that time I opened it before he did. Anyway, someone claiming to be me had used my insurance card for a hospital stay.”
“Kaylee’s birth mother?” he asked.
Nicky nodded. “At first, I thought it was just a case of identity theft, but when I showed it to Patrick, he admitted that the woman was Shanda Stokes, and the baby was his. Needless to say, I was stunned, and while I was still reeling, he brought the baby home. Shanda had abandoned her in the hospital.”
Garrett cursed and sat on the chair across from her. “Shanda allowed you to adopt her?”
She nodded again. “Shanda wanted money for her, and we paid.” Or rather Nicky had paid her. “Patrick wasn’t exactly thrilled with the idea of being a father, but he’d brought Kaylee home because he didn’t want the hospital questioning anything about the birth since he knew about the insurance fraud. He’s the one who’d given Shanda my medical card and had helped her get a fake ID so she could use it.”
No Getting Over a Cowboy Page 24
