Читать книгу Texas Gun Smoke - Joanna Wayne - Страница 9

Chapter Three

Bart spent a restless night and got up aggravated with himself for letting thoughts of Jaclyn rob him of needed sleep. He had plenty to do without worrying about a woman who didn’t want his help. He tried to concentrate on issues at hand, checking the progress of the new fence going up in the northwest pasture and meeting with his brother Matt to discuss the possibility of increasing their Angus herd size by ten percent over the next twelve months.

By noon the meeting with Matt had concluded and Jaclyn had moved to front and center of his thoughts again. He started to go up to the big house for lunch but instead drove right by it and toward the gate. It wouldn’t hurt to check on her and make certain she was recovering from amnesia—if she’d ever actually had any memory problems.

He reached the hospital at ten after twelve and went straight to the second floor. A middle-aged nurse carrying a meal tray spotted him before he reached Jaclyn’s room.

“You’re one of Lenora Collingsworth’s sons, aren’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m Bart.” It was difficult to go anywhere in Colts Run Cross and not run into someone who knew him or a member of his family.

“I’m Bev Garland. I know your mother from our Feed the Children program. She’s on our board of directors.”

“I’ll tell her I ran into you.”

“You must be here to see the mystery woman.”

“How did you guess?”

“Easy—she’s our only patient. And I heard you were the one who rescued her from the wrecked car last night.”

“I just happened to be the first one to show up. How is she?”

“She ate a big breakfast and she seems to be feeling fine, but she can’t remember a thing. Poor woman. She can’t even call her husband and tell him she’s safe.”

“Is it okay if I stop in and see her? I promise I won’t stay long.”

“Stay as long as you like, but I don’t know how much conversation you’ll get out of her. She hasn’t said but a few words to any of us all morning. I think the confusion is making her depressed. I was just taking her a lunch tray. You can tag along with me.”

“Thanks.” His boots clomped across the tile while her rubber-sole shoes barely made a sound. The nurse balanced a tray of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and green peas in one hand and tapped on the door with the other, though she didn’t wait for a response before pushing into Jaclyn’s room.

“I have lunch and a visitor,” the nurse announced in a singsong voice that sounded as though she was talking to a toddler.

She set the tray on the table that swung over the bed. The covers were tousled and pushed back. Jaclyn was nowhere in sight. “You have company, honey,” the nurse said again, this time looking toward the closed bathroom door.

There was no response.

Bev asked about Bart’s grandfather Jeremiah, who was recovering at home from a stroke, and listened to his explanation before walking to the bathroom door and tapping lightly.

Still no response. She knocked again, then turned the handle and pushed the door open. “Not in there,” she said, turning back to Bart. She shrugged her shoulders and placed her hands on her bulging hips. “Now where did that woman get off to?”

“Are you certain she wasn’t discharged?”

“I was standing right here when Dr. Cane said he wanted to keep her another day. The patient didn’t even put up an argument.” Bev opened the small locker built into the wall. “Now this is strange. Her clothes are missing.”

“Looks as if she discharged herself,” Bart said.

“I don’t know where she’d go when she didn’t even know her name.”

Which gave a lot of credence to his belief that the amnesia was faked in the first place.

“I better call Dr. Cane and let him know his patient ran out on him and her bill.” The nurse was muttering to herself as she shuffled from the room.

Bart grabbed a piece of chicken on his way out. Seemed a sin to let good fried chicken go to waste. He took the stairs again and exited through the back door. He was almost to his truck when he caught a glimpse of someone hunched down and darting between cars.

A second glance and he knew it was Jaclyn, her handbag and duffel flung over her shoulder, trying car doors. He dashed across the parking lot, reaching her just as she found the kind of easy mark she’d been looking for. Not only was the door of the white compact car unlocked but the keys were also dangling from the ignition—not all that uncommon in Colts Run Cross.

Bart grabbed her arm as she started to climb behind the wheel. “Care to explain what you’re doing?”

She groaned. “Don’t you have a life?”

“Not nearly as exciting as yours.”

“I was only going to borrow the car.”

“We call taking a car without permission ‘stealing’ in Texas.”

“You do have the quaintest customs.” She stepped away from the car. “Now I suppose you’re going to call that nice sheriff so that I can spend some time in one of your friendly jail cells.”

“I’m giving it serious thought.”

“Look, no harm was done. I didn’t even start the engine. Why don’t you forget the sheriff and give me a ride to the nearest Greyhound bus station so that I can go home?”

“What about your amnesia?”

“That’s the neat thing, see. My memory came back, just like the doctor said it would.”

“Then I guess you have a last name now?”

“Sure. It’s Jones. Now are you going to give me a ride or not?”

Jaclyn Jones. He doubted that. “Why take a bus? You could just rent another car. The one you were in is going to be out of commission for a while.”

“Like I said last night, I’m a little short of cash.”

“Tell you what—level with me about who ran you off the road and why, and I’ll give you a ride wherever you want to go.”

“I’ve already leveled. I don’t know the who or the why. And what do you care, anyway?”

“Call me nosy—and law-abiding.” Bart started punching numbers on his cell phone.

“Who are you calling?”

“The sheriff.”

She grabbed his hand before he completed the call. “Okay, I’ll tell you everything.” She scanned the area. “Just not out here in the parking lot. Where’s your truck?”

“A couple of rows over.”

She walked with him to his vehicle, then threw herself into the passenger side and propped her duffel between them. “It’s an ugly story.”

“I wasn’t expecting Cinderella.” Though with Jaclyn, it could well be a fairy tale. “Why don’t we start with your real name?”

“Jaclyn Jones.” She spelled Jaclyn for him.

“I’ll buy the Jaclyn part. The nurses couldn’t find your driver’s license last night. Where is it?”

“I left it in my other handbag.”

“How convenient. What part of Louisiana are you from?”

“I’m currently living in New Orleans.”

That might actually be the truth. “So what brought you to Colts Run Cross?”

“I don’t see as it’s any of your business, but I’m having an affair with a married man who lives in Houston. We wanted to go somewhere where we could venture out of the bedroom for a change and not risk running into anyone we knew.”

“Where’s the boyfriend now?”

“We got into a fight last night, and I broke it off with him. He went berserk and evidently followed me when I left the motel.”

“Which motel?”

“I don’t remember the name of it, just some shabby, nondescript motel. Anyway, I’m sure he’s cooled down by now and is ready to beg my forgiveness.”

“But not sorry enough to rent you another car or even drive you home?”

“I’m going home to my husband and putting all this behind me—at least I am if I can get there.”

Bart didn’t know how much, if any, of her story was true, but it would explain why she hadn’t wanted to call her husband. He started the truck and backed out of the parking spot. A few minutes later he was headed in the same direction from which he’d come, toward Jack’s Bluff and the spot where she’d been run off the road last night.

“Did you talk to Hank about your friend Margo’s car?” he asked.

She visibly bristled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“The Buick was registered to a Margo Kite. I was assuming that was a friend—unless you stole the car from her.”

She looked away. “Right. Margo. I’ll explain everything to her when I see her again.”

Her cell phone jangled. She said hello, but that was it. After that she merely listened as her muscles grew taut. Her hands were shaking by the time she broke the connection.

“Was that the boyfriend?”

“Yeah.” Her shoulders slumped and she kicked off her shoes and pulled her feet onto the seat with her. “He’s a jerk. So what’s new?”

Neither of them spoke until he was almost to Jack’s Bluff. He slowed the car as they approached the gate. The smart thing to do would be to keep driving to the bus station, but the inconsistencies were eating away at him.

The story she’d told about the lover was no more convincing than her having had amnesia. The only thing he was certain of was that someone had tried to kill her last night, and from all indications she was still afraid.

All of which was none of his business. He tried to drill that mantra into his brain but got nowhere. She was scared and distrustful but vulnerable. Dropping her off at a bus station without knowing she’d be safe seemed excessively cold and cruel for a man who stayed up all night with horses in labor and lost sleep worrying over a premature calf.

He turned left and opened the metal gate to the ranch with the remote attached to his visor.

Jaclyn snapped to attention. “Hold it right here, cowboy. I did not agree to make any unscheduled stops with you.”

For a woman begging favors, she could sure climb on her high horse in a hurry. “You missed lunch at the hospital. I thought you might be hungry. And even if you’re not, I am.”

“Are you sure we’re just stopping here for food?”

“What else would it be?”

“You’re a man. I’m a woman. Surely you can figure that out.”

“I wouldn’t seduce you on a bet.” Not exactly true, but it sounded good. The problem was he didn’t know exactly what he hoped to accomplish by spending additional time with Jaclyn. He just wasn’t quite ready to let it go. And he was always ready to eat.

JACLYN STARED AT THE house, which sat a few yards from where Bart had stopped the car. It was a two-story frame structure set in a clump of sycamores and oaks and a few types of trees she didn’t recognize. A covered front porch ran the length of it, with a wooden swing at one end and a couple of painted rockers at the other.

There was no landscaping except the natural Texas countryside of grass, scrubby brush and a large pond a few yards behind the house, but it still looked welcoming. Maybe it was the pot of blooming begonias by the door. A fish jumped as she scanned the sun-glittered water, a streak of silver that broke the surface with a splash.

“Some bunkhouse,” she said as she followed Bart to the porch.

“I like it. The menu choices will be limited, but I can rustle up a sandwich.”

“A sandwich is good.” She wasn’t particularly hungry, but it could be a long time before she made it back to Margo’s New Orleans apartment. She wouldn’t be buying much in the way of food along the way. Her cash resources weren’t just low, they were scratching bottom. Worse, she was no closer to the information she needed. The trip to Colts Run Cross had been a total bomb.

“The begonias are beautiful,” she said as Bart opened the front door and waited for her to enter.”

“Compliments of my mother. She thinks I need flowers.”

“Your mom brings plants to the ranch?”

“Yeah. No reason for you not to know,” Bart said. “This isn’t a bunkhouse, it’s my house, and Jack’s Bluff Ranch belongs to my family.”

“Why didn’t you say that in the first place?”

“You didn’t ask.”

But she should have known from her first look at the tux. Apprehension swelled. The rich always stuck together. If she’d had any thought of telling Bart the truth, it was out of the question now.

“I haven’t done much to the inside of the house yet,” Bart said as he held the front door open for her to enter. “I mostly spend time on it in the winter when work on the ranch slows down a bit. I don’t do much but sleep here in the summer. I’m usually busy until late and then grab dinner up at the big house with the rest of the family.”

The big house—as if this were a cracker box. It was three times the size of her one-bedroom efficiency back in Shreveport. She looked around. The front room was empty except for a couple of recliners and a TV boxed in between bare shelves. But the windows were splendid, floor-to-ceiling and offering a pastoral vista that stretched as far as she could see.

“Nice room,” she said. “I like the view.”

“I don’t like to feel closed in.”

She followed Bart to the kitchen, keenly aware of how sexy he looked in his jeans, Western shirt and boots and how well he fit in his world. A world as different from hers as night and day.

Bart opened the door to the refrigerator while Jaclyn absorbed the ambience. She ran her hand across the top of a rectangular oak table with cuts and scratches and an abundance of character.

“My great-great-grandfather made that,” Bart said. “It had been retired to a storage barn behind the original bunkhouse. I decided it needed to be rescued.”

“So you don’t just rescue damsels in distress?”

“I’m a softy at heart.”

He looked plenty tough to her, but the idea of family belongings being passed down in any condition was a foreign concept to her. “Is the potbellied stove a family heirloom, as well?”

“It is, but notice I have an actual electric range for cooking—well, for scrambling eggs and making coffee. That’s the extent of my culinary skills.” Bart pulled out two packages wrapped in butcher paper. “How about a ham-and-cheese sandwich?”

“Fine. I’ll be glad to help, but I need to wash up first.”

“The bathroom is just down the hall, second door to your right. Excuse the unfinished walls. My sister Becky insists it should have wallpaper and keeps bringing home patterns that look like someone spilled sherbet on them.”

Becky was missing the mark. Bart was clearly not a pastel kind of guy, and even unfinished, the house reeked of him. Virile. Masculine. It smelled of him, too, all outdoorsy and musky, with scents of leather and coffee thrown into the mix.

He was unlike any of the men who’d come and gone in her life, and she’d have to stay on guard every second to keep from believing he might be different enough that she could trust him. This time she couldn’t screw up.

BART STARTED TO SLICE a fresh tomato but stopped to stare at the handbag Jaclyn had left on one of the kitchen chairs. The unexpected urge to snoop swelled inside him. It wasn’t the kind of thing he’d normally do, but he didn’t ordinarily become entangled with a woman like Jaclyn. While he was considering the action, she returned, grabbed the purse and marched back to the bathroom with it safely clutched in her hands.

He left the knife and the tomato on the table and stepped out the back door. The temperature had dropped to the low sixties, delivering the first real hint of fall. Leaves drifted to the damp earth, and a couple of crows heckled him from the branches of a hackberry tree.

He made a quick call to Langston’s private number at Collingsworth Oil and was amazed when he actually got him on the first try. Langston was the mover and shaker in the family, the only one of the four brothers who’d actually taken to the business world.

“You got a minute?” he asked as soon as Langston answered.

“If it’s important, I’ll find one. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if you’d make a call to your buddy Aidan Jefferies for me.” Aidan was a homicide detective for the Houston Police Department and he and Langston had been buddies for years.

“Is there a problem at the ranch?”

“No, it’s a long story, but I’m trying to run down some information on a woman who was in a wreck out this way last night. It’s important and rather urgent.”

“I can give you his cell phone number if you want to call him yourself.”

“No, I only have a minute, but if you’d just ask him to see what he can find on a Jaclyn Jones or a Margo Kite, both of New Orleans…” He spelled Jaclyn the way she’d spelled it for him in the hospital.

“Do you have social security numbers on them?”

“No. All I can tell you is that Jaclyn is in her early twenties. And the address for Margo was…” He tried to recall the information from the registration, but all he could remember was a street name. “Margo lives on St. Anne—or at least she did at one time.”

“That’s not much to go on, but I’ll give him a call for you.”

“I’d appreciate that. Tell him he can call me back on my cell phone if he learns anything.”

“You got it. I expect to hear the rest of this story when we both get a minute.”

The screen door squeaked open and Jaclyn joined Bart on the back porch. “Sure thing. Right now I’ve gotta run.” Bart broke the connection and returned the cell phone to his pocket.

“I thought you were making sandwiches,” Jaclyn said, looking at him suspiciously.

“I got a call from one of my brothers.”

“And I guess you had to tell him about rescuing the ditzy blonde.”

“Are you ditzy?”

“Only if it suits my purpose.”

She’d finally said something he believed.

“So are we going to eat or not?”

He followed her back through the screen door. In minutes they were seated at the old oak table, munching on sandwiches and chips. Bart had milk with his. Jaclyn had a diet soda. Bart tried to make conversation, but Jaclyn managed to sabotage every attempt with silent shrugs or one-word responses.

They’d finished the meal and rinsed the dishes and were walking back to the car when Aidan called back. It was quicker than Bart had anticipated.

Aidan got right to the meat of the matter. “The New Orleans PD took a missing-persons report on a Margo Kite, age twenty-three, on October seventh.”

Today was October twenty-third, so they were talking just over two weeks ago. “Who filed the report?”

“A woman named Jaclyn McGregor, who claimed to be a friend. She spelled her first name the same way as your Jaclyn Jones, for what that’s worth. The police took the report but virtually dismissed it, as Miss Kite had given up her apartment as of October fifteenth and told the landlady that she was leaving the area. She was reportedly unemployed.”

“That’s it?”

“There were two Jaclyn Joneses in New Orleans with police records—one for writing bad checks, the other for having a grand total of twenty parking tickets. One was age thirty-two, the other age forty-five.”

Wrong age to be the Jaclyn staring at him now and obviously listening to his conversation. But the Jaclyn McGregor who’d filed the missing-persons report on Margo Kite had possibilities. “I appreciate the help on that.”

“Want to say what this is about?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Okay, then hope that helps.”

“It could.” He brought the call to a quick end and grabbed Jaclyn’s arm so that she couldn’t walk away. “That was a bit of interesting information, Jaclyn McGregor.”

“Let go of me,” she ordered, but the look on her face and the depths of her eyes told him all he needed to know.

“Why did you lie about your last name?”

“I’m a chronic fibber. I’m a procrastinator, too. And I hog the covers. Now just drop me off at the bus station and forget you ever met me. Better yet, drop me off at the highway and I’ll thumb my way back to town.”

“Now that’s smart.”

She stiffened. “What do you want from me, Bart?”

“The truth.”

“So you can regale the family tonight with tales of the daring rescue of the mystery woman who’d been run off the road by a lunatic? Why don’t you just go out and get a life of your own?”

“I think you’re in trouble. I might be able to help.”

“Well, you can’t. So let it go.”

“Have you found Margo Kite?”

Her eyes shadowed and she trembled. “What do you know about Margo?”

“Only that you filed a missing-persons claim. Is that why you’re in Texas—to search for Margo Kite?”

Jaclyn paled. Her composure was wavering fast. “Maybe.”

“There was no boyfriend last night, was there?”

She turned away.

“Tell me about your friend’s disappearance, Jaclyn. I have lots of connections. I might be able to help. If not, you haven’t lost anything but a few minutes of your time.”

“You really don’t want to get involved in this, Bart Collingsworth. You don’t want to get involved with me.”

He let go of her arm. “Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?”

She didn’t answer, but when he took her right hand in his, she let him lead her back to the porch and to the swing that creaked in the slight breeze. “Tell me one good reason I should trust you, Bart Collingsworth.”

“Because from the looks of things, you don’t have anyone else to go to for help. And I’m offering.”

“You’re making a mistake, cowboy. A monumental mistake.”