“How many others did she bellyache to?”
“I don’t know. I thought she told only me.” This time it was Jessie who sounded bitter.
“So what’s this about the sheriff?” Ellie asked.
For a moment Jessie’s mouth tightened into a straight line. “Me. My big mouth. This morning you made me wonder if Lew really did kill himself, so I said as much to the sheriff. Two hours later he arrested Bowie.” He looked at Ellie. “You remember the man who wanted to kiss you this morning?”
At first she didn’t know what he meant; then she thought of the cowboy with the beer belly who had puckered up and made everyone laugh. The memory made her smile.
“That’s Bowie, and he’s been taken in for questioning about Lew’s murder.”
“What?” she asked. “He didn’t seem like a killer to me.”
“No, he’s not. But he likes the ladies, and a few years ago there was an unfortunate incident with one of Valerie’s drunken guests. When she sobered up and saw Bowie in daylight, she decided to press charges. Woody had to pull strings and call in a lot of favors to get Bowie off.”
“So now it’s happening again?” Ellie asked.
“Not if I can help it!” Jessie said as he threw a rock at the water’s surface. Turning, he looked at her. “So if she murdered him, how do we find out?”
He was looking at her as th
ough she knew this sort of thing. “Did you tell the sheriff what you know?” she asked.
“That’s how Bowie got into this mess, isn’t it? If I hadn’t said that I doubted that Lew was as depressed as everyone thought he was, then maybe the sheriff wouldn’t have asked so many questions and found out that Bowie lusts after Lew’s wife in a big way.”
“I see. And if I hadn’t said anything in the first place . . .”
“Exactly,” he said. “This is our joint fault. So how do we fix it?”
It was one thing to write a book about a woman who got herself into jams as she investigated murders but quite another to try something like this in real life.
Ellie stood up. “Look, this woman may be a killer. I don’t think that I want to stick around for that. I’m on borrowed time here, and I don’t want to change my future so that I return dead.”
Jessie blinked at her. “You know, sometimes you say really odd things. You talk about things that have yet to happen as though they already have happened. And as though you know the future.”
“That’s silly,” Ellie said quickly. “How can anyone know the future? It’s just that I—I mean, I—”
“Go on,” he said. “I’m waiting.”
“The truth is that I need to get back to L.A. as soon as possible. I have less than three weeks to stop my exhusband—my soon-to-be ex-husband—from taking everything that I’ve earned in writing and giving me a burden of debt for eternity, not to mention taking away my dignity and my self-esteem.”
“How can you be sure that he’s going to do this?”
“I know him,” she said.
“Yes. I can almost believe that’s all there is behind this. You have a good perception of people. You didn’t accept what other people assume to be true about Woody and Valerie. I can tell anyone that she’s a gold digger and they’ll believe me. But you didn’t.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Have you told that lie to many people?”
“Only women,” he said without a trace of humor. “I want you to stay and help me find out—”
“You aren’t going to ask me to stay and help you snoop around a murderer, are you?”
“You don’t know that she is a murderer. And, besides, aren’t your books about some woman who investigates murders?”
“Do you think that writers experience what they write about? Do you think that Stephen King has lived through everything that he’s written about? When would he write?”
Jessie grinned. “Okay, it was worth a try. So how about if you have her to lunch, find out what she’ll tell you, and give me time to look through some files? Maybe something was written down.”