“Nobody ever tells me anything,” Keely replied bitterly. “I know that Dad’s mixed up in something, that the police are interested in him for whatever it is and that Jock is involved somehow.” She straightened. “And I know that you’re broke and Dad is threatening you for money.”
Ella bit her lower lip hard enough to draw blood. “You couldn’t know that. Who told you that?” she demanded.
“Is it true?” Keely prevaricated.
Ella looked around wildly and brushed her untidy hair back from her thin face.
Keely moved forward a step. “Is it true?” she repeated softly.
Ella took a deep breath. For once, she really looked her age. “Yes,” she said. “I thought the money would never run out. There was so much of it. Your grandparents invested in land when it was cheap. As the town grew, more people needed land, so they started renting it out for businesses. When they died, I continued the practice, raising the rents as the land prices increased.”
“What happened?” Keely prodded.
Ella laughed hollowly. “I got greedy. My parents would never buy me designer clothes or even a good car. They made me pay my own way, from the day I started working. They wanted me to go to college, but I thought I was smart enough. Your father thought I’d get all that money the minute I married, so he married me. But it didn’t work out that way.” She drew in a long breath, her eyes with a faraway look. “All I had was an allowance. Brent and I bought expensive cars and diamonds and ate in the best restaurants and took long trips overseas. We ran up a fortune in bills. My parents paid it, then they stopped my checks.” She laughed again as she glanced at her daughter. “Brent got used to living high. He couldn’t go back to wages. He found a way to make a lot of money quick.” Her face tautened. “You were far too young to understand what was going on. My parents died in a plane crash and we inherited the estate, but there wasn’t much left. Mostly just the land—we’d spent the rest. I wanted him out of my life. He wanted that game park, so I made a deal with him. I sold land and gave him the proceeds. I was free, still relatively young, and I wanted to celebrate. So I did. Then your father dumped you here and the luxury lifestyle was a thing of the past. I resented you for that. But it probably saved us from being tossed out into the street with the clothes we were wearing. I’d gone hog wild and didn’t even realize it. By the time I did, it was too late.”
She moved into the living room and sat down, heavily, in a chair. Keely sat down on the arm of the sofa across from her. It was unusual for her parent to speak to her like this, as an equal, without even sarcasm.
Ella brushed back her hair. “I managed to salvage a couple of the properties before they were foreclosed on for unpaid bills. But my renters found cheaper rents and moved out. I was left with empty buildings that I couldn’t repair, and nobody wanted to use them. Within the past six months, it was suddenly all gone, except for the house and the land it sits on.” She looked up at Keely. “Your father and Jock are broke and they need a grubstake. They want me to sell the house and property to fund it.”
“But it’s all you have left,” Keely argued. “Tell them you won’t do it. Sheriff Carson will look out for you.”
Ella bit her lower lip. “It’s more complicated than that, Keely,” she replied quietly. “You see, your father and I did something…illegal, when you were very small. If he tells what he knows, I can go to prison.”
Keely’s mouth thinned. “If he uses it, he’ll be incriminated, as well, and he can go there, too.”
The older woman smiled sadly. “They’d have to catch him first, wouldn’t they?” she asked. “He’s been one jump ahead of the law all his life.”
“What did you do?” Keely asked, reasoning that her mother would probably close up and say nothing else.
Ella took a sip of her drink. “I’ve lived with the guilt for years,” she said, almost to herself. “I thought it wasn’t going to bother me, what we did. I thought…” She took another sip of the drink. “A local boy saw Brent bringing in a shipment of cocaine and hiding it in our basement. He was going to tell the sheriff.” She grimaced. “My father was dying and he’d already threatened to disinherit me because of Brent. If there had been a scandal, and Brent and I had been prosecuted, I’d have lost everything. They could have proved that I…paid for the shipment that Brent was going to cut and resell on the streets.”
“What did you do?” Keely asked apprehensively.
“The boy liked to get high,” Ella continued miserably. “He did it all the time, anyway. He had a supplier, one of Brent’s dealers—she died and her sister married a local cattleman a few months ago. We promised him that we’d send the boy a kilo of coke, all for himself, if he wouldn’t tell on us.”
Keely was feeling sick. She already had an idea of who her mother was talking about. “And?”
“Oh, he agreed. In fact, we promised him a dime bag on the spot. That’s a hundred dollars of cocaine in street talk. What we didn’t tell him was that it was one-hundred-percent pure—it wasn’t cut with anything to lessen the effect. We gave it to his supplier, and he had her inject him. And he died. Of course, she didn’t know, either. But we had her in our pocket then, too, because she couldn’t prove that she didn’t know she was killing him.”
Keely’s eyes closed. “It was Sheriff Hayes Carson’s younger brother, Bobby, wasn’t it?” she asked huskily.
Ella sighed. “Yes. I’ve lived with the guilt and the fear all these years, terrified that Sheriff Hayes would find out. He wouldn’t rest until he put me in prison. He’s blamed others, and that took the heat off me. It was the only hope I had…”
“No wonder you paid for the game park for Dad,” she said, seeing clearly the pattern of the past. “It’s why you let him take me along.”
Her mother nodded slowly. “After Bobby died, I couldn’t bear to look at Brent anymore. He made me feel like a murderess. I was afraid, too, that he might get high one night and tell someone what we’d done. So he promised to leave town if I’d let him have the money for the game park. He even said he’d straighten up, give up drugs, try to get his life back together. He said he’d never wanted anything more than he wanted that game park.”
Keely’s eyes became tormented as she remembered what her mother had said; she’d had to pay her husband to take Keely with her.
“No,” Ella said quickly, reading Keely’s expression. “I wanted to hurt you that night. It wasn’t true. Brent wanted you with him. He said that if I fought him, he’d go to the police with the truth. He had nothing to lose by then. He’d already been arrested for possession twice and gotten off with the help of a lawyer. But he’d never get away with murder, and neither would I. So I let him take you.” She looked up. “I never even asked if Jock was the reason. You see, Jock had noticed you when he came by to see Brent and told him about the old game park that he was running. The owner wanted out. Brent said that Jock liked young girls. I didn’t even connect it, at the time.” She shivered. “I should be shot.”
Keely felt sick all over. Perhaps that accident, as terrible as it was, had saved her from something much more terrible. Now she realized what had probably happened. Soon after her father had purchased the rickety old game park where Jock worked and started renovating it, Jock had been arrested. Apparently he’d served time in prison, too, because it was only two years later that he showed up at the park. That was when things started to go downhill, and only about a week before Keely’s accident. After that, Jock couldn’t bear to touch her. Probably it was his idea for Brent to dump Keely, so the two of them could pursue other illegal enterprises. Keely might have been part of the plan for those jobs, she thought with muted terror. She’d been saved from more than she knew at the time, even though she’d resented being deserted.
She hadn’t known her father at all. She’d thought he loved her. In those two years when it was just the two of them, and Dina keeping books, her young life had been happy and secure. Her father had, twice, even given up drinking; although Keely hadn’t known he was using drugs. But just before Jock had turned back up, Brent Welsh had involved himself with the flashy woman who took him for everything he’d saved; and there had been a good bit. Jock had been livid when he’d discovered that.
“What are you thinking?” Ella asked.
She looked up. “How happy we were for a couple of years. I guess it was while Jock was in prison, because he left when Dad and I settled into the game park and only came back a few days before Dad brought me here.”
