Woody laughed. “We could arrange a steer for you, but I think . . .”
“Very funny,” she said. “So, okay, I guess I’ll be there.” She still couldn’t believe that she was doing this.
Woody pulled back his sleeve and looked at his watch, then at the detective’s door that was still locked. “I have to go now, but if you see Montoya, tell him I was here and that he can’t tell ten minutes from Shinola.”
“Gladly,” Ellie said, then watched as Woody turned and walked down the hallway, giving her a wave as he descended the stairs.
For a moment, Ellie sat on the bench. As soon as she reaffirmed her list with the detective, she’d—What? Do just what Woody had said and spend the weekend going over all that Martin had done to her?
Suddenly, Ellie was sick of giving her life over to Martin Gilmore. Since the day she’d filed for divorce, he had been her whole life. She’d spent the eight months after the divorce papers had been filed preparing to make a judge believe that she was a good person and not the crazy, neurotic liar Martin portrayed her as. But all she’d done to try to defend herself had failed. Since the divorce, she’d wallowed in such self-pity that her ex ruled her life more than he did when she was married to him.
She looked at the still-locked door of the detective’s office, then at the stairs that led to the outside and to the road that led to downtown Los Angeles. Rodeo Drive. She had a lot of complaints about L.A., but the shopping wasn’t one of them. Since she’d returned, she opened her handbag only to get her car keys in and out, but now she started rummaging inside. Her credit card holder held cards that she hadn’t seen in years: local video stores, a public library card. And her platinum American Express.
Holding the silver card up, she looked at it. It had a pretty much unlimited credit line, and, as Woody had said, the more she spent, the less she’d have to divide with her ex-husband during the divorce. Smiling, Ellie stood up. Forget the detective, she thought. She was going shopping!
Nineteen
Smack on four P.M., Ellie drove into the parking lot of the local airport: small but big enough to handle the private jets that landed there. She was quite nervous about what she was planning to do in spite of the fact that she’d called Steven Bird at the bank and checked Woody out. “Very nice man,” Steven had said. “I’ve known him for years.” She asked a few questions and wasn’t surprised to find out that Woody’s “little boy” was just a toddler. She could believe that a man like Woody had a wife young enough to produce a baby just a couple of years ago and that Woody was “active” enough to have produced him.
After Ellie put down the phone, she decided to see what toys she could find for the child. And while she was at it, she might as well buy a gift or two for her hostess. Based on Woody’s clothing, Ellie decided to take a chance and drove to a divine store full of Native American art and jewelry.
Five minutes after she pulled into the parking area at the airport, a man walked over to her. “You’re Jordan Neale?” he asked.
He was a good-looking man, not flashy, but nice, about thirty, wearing all denim, top and bottom, just as Woody had been, but she could tell that this man’s denim was for style, not for work. This man was no cowboy. Accountant, she’d guess. Or maybe even a lawyer. He looked intelligent and educated.
“Sort of,” she said as she dismounted from the Range Rover. The step was so high off the ground that most of her women friends complained that they might as well be climbing onto a buckboard. But Ellie loved the car; by experience she knew that it could climb straight up a snow-covered mountain. “Jordan Neale is a character I write about, and my pen name is Alexandria Farrell. But my legal name is plain ol’ Ellie Abbott.”
The man smiled. “I see. Woody . . .” Smiling, the man shrugged off the rest of the sentence. “I’m Lew McClelland and I work for Woody. Is your luggage in the back?”
At that question, she looked a bit guilty. “I hope you don’t have one of those planes that can hold only about thirty pounds of luggage, because I, well, I did a little shopping.”
The truth was that Ellie had made up for three years of buying nothing. When you are forty pounds overweight, mirrors are your enemy. But now, at a hundred and one, she’d loved trying on clothes—and she’d purchased nearly everything that she’d tried on. Thinking of the AmEx bill that she was going to receive made her smile.
“I’m sure we can handle what you have,” the man said; then he opened the back of the Range Rover and saw the tightly packed mountain of leather luggage that Ellie had in the back. She’d had to fold the backseats down to hold all of it.
“Some of it is gifts for Woody’s wife and son,” she said weakly.
With his head cocked to one side, he looked at her. “You bought all of this in one afternoon?”
“Contents and luggage,” she said with her chin raised defiantly.
“You and Valerie are going to become best friends,” he muttered, then pulled the top case off the pile.
As it turned out, Woody wasn’t going to be returning with them. She’d been told that something unexpected had come up and he would be arriving at the ranch later. Instead, two of Woody’s employees, Lew and another man, were to take Ellie to the ranch.
As she mounted the steps into the plane, she looked back at Lew. “Will you have to fly back to pick up Woody later?”
From the outside, the plane was nice, but it wasn’t an especially luxurious aircraft. Maybe she’d overdone it on clothes buying. But then, something that Steven Bird had said—no, maybe it was the way he’d said it—had made Ellie think that there was a lot of money around Woody.
At that Lew smiled in a way that said he had a secret. “No. He has another plane.” Turning his head, Lew looked across the runway. Sitting there sparkling in the sun, was a big silver jet. Not one of those commercial jets, but a private one, the kind that are featured in Architectural Digest and have interiors clad in silk and wrapped in mahogany.
“His?” Ellie asked.
“His,” Lew answered.
“I see,” she said. “So when we’re talking about Woody, are we talking the m-word or are we into the b-word?”
For a second Lew didn’t catch her meaning, then he grinned. “B,” he said. “With an s on the end of it.”